King of Thorns (50 page)

“I don’t want you right now,” I said. It sounded more politic than calling her spiced squid.

I put my hand to the back of my left thigh. It was throbbing like a bastard after the run up the stairs. I’d opened a wound I didn’t remember taking. I think perhaps I did it falling into the cave just before the avalanche. Six thousand men dead for a morning’s work, and I come away with a self-inflicted wound in the arse. My fingers came back bloody.

Four quick steps took me to the bed. I threw back the covers. Miana flinched like I’d hit her. I wiped my hand over the clean linen; squeezed my leg wound again and repeated the process.

“There,” I said. “Does that look like enough?”

Miana stared. “I never—”

“It will have to do. It looks like enough to me. Damned if I’m bleeding more than that.”

I ripped the sheet from the bed and thrust it out through the window bars, noting two spent arrows on the floor that must have looped in from the ridge earlier in the day. I tied the sheet to one of the bars and let the wind flutter it out so all the world could see I’d made a woman of Miana.

“Speak a word of this to anyone and Lord Jost will insist we do it on the high table in the feast hall with everyone watching,” I said.

She nodded.

“Where are you going?” she asked as I made for the door.

“Down.”

“Fine,” she said. She sat on the bed with a slight bounce. Her feet didn’t touch the floor.

I set my hand to the doorhandle.

“But they’ll sing songs about Quick Jorg for years to come. Fast with one sword, faster with the other,” she said.

I took my hand off the doorhandle, turned, and walked back to the bed. Defeated.

“What would you like to talk about?” I asked, sitting beside her.

“I’ve met Orrin of Arrow and his brother Egan too,” she said.

“So have I.” Remembering how that swordfight ended still gave me a headache. “And where did you meet them?”

“They came to court in my father’s castle in Wennith, on one of their grand tours of the empire. Orrin had his new wife with him.” She watched me for a reaction. Someone had been talking to her.

“Katherine.” I reacted anyway. It wasn’t as if being married to a child would end my fascination with women, this one in particular. “And what did you think of the Prince?” I wanted to ask about Katherine, not Orrin and his brother, but I bit down on the urge, not to save Miana’s feelings but in disgust at the weakness even mention of Katherine put in me.

“Orrin of Arrow struck me as the finest man I’d ever met,” Miana said. Clearly she had no compunction to save my feelings either! “His brother Egan, too full of himself, I felt. Father said as much. The wrong mix of weak and dangerous. Orrin though, I thought he would make a fine emperor and unite the Hundred in peace. Didn’t you ever consider just swearing to him when the time came?”

I met her gaze, shrewd dark eyes that had no place in a child’s face. The truth was that I’d thought many times what I would do if Orrin of Arrow came back to the Haunt, regardless of whether he brought an army with him or not. I didn’t doubt not one person would find me better suited to the emperor’s throne than Orrin, and yet without my say so thousands had been prepared to bleed to stop him. To get somewhere in life you have to walk over bodies, and I’d paved my way with corpses and more corpses. Gelleth burned for my ambition. It still does.

“I considered it.”

Miana started, surprised when I spoke. She had thought I wasn’t going to answer.

“There might have been a time I could have served as steward to Orrin’s emperor, might have let my goatherds and his farmers go about their lives in peace. But things change, events carry us with them, even when you think you’re the one leading, calling out commands. Brothers die. Choices are taken away from us.”

“Katherine is very beautiful,” Miana said, lowering her gaze for once.

Screams from outside, the hiss of arrows, a distant roar. “Have we been at this long enough?” I hadn’t asked about Katherine and I had a battle to fight. I made to stand from the bed but Miana put her hand to my thigh, half-nervous, half-bold.

She reached for her dress again, and I thought that there might have been more determination than fear in her, but she wasn’t unlacing. She pulled out a black velvet bag, dangling from its drawstring. Big enough to hold an eyeball.

“My dowry,” she said.

“I hoped for something bigger.” I smiled and took it.

“Isn’t that my line?”

I laughed out loud at that. “Somebody poured an evil old woman into a little girl’s body and sent it to me with the world’s smallest dowry.”

I tipped the bag’s contents into my hand. A single ruby, the size of an eye, cut by an expert, and with a red star burning at its heart. “Nice,” I said. It felt hot in my hand. It made my face burn where the fire had scarred me.

“It’s a work of magic,” Miana said. “A fire-mage has stored the heat of a thousand hearths in there. It can light torches, boil water, heat a bath, make light. It can even make a spot of heat sufficient to join two pieces of iron. I can show you—”

She reached for the gem but I closed my hand around it. “Now I know why fire-sworn like rubies,” I said.

“Be gentle,” Miana said. “It would be…unwise to break it.”

In the moment that my fingers met around the gem a pulse of heat ran through me, like a shock, burning up my arm. For an instant I saw nothing but the inferno and it seemed I felt Gog’s sharp hands on my sides, as if he sat behind me on Brath once more as he had for so many days in that spring long ago. I heard his high voice, almost, like Mother’s music, trying to reach me from too far away. Something lit at my core, and the flow of fire reversed, raging unseen down my arm into the gem. A sharp splintering noise sounded from the ruby and I released it with a cry. Miana caught it: quick hands this one. I expected her to scream and drop the gem, but it lay cool in her palm. She placed it on the bed.

I stood. “It’s a worthy dowry, Miana. You will be a good queen for the Highlands.”

“And for you?” she said.

I walked to the window. The ridge where the Prince’s archers had arrayed themselves was still in confusion. The trolls would have retreated to their cave defences, but no man wants to be lining up a shot whilst worrying that a black hand is going to twist his head off any second.

“And for you?” she repeated.

“That’s hard to say.” I took the copper box from my hip pouch. I had sat before this window the previous night and watched the box. A goblet, the box, a knife. Drink to forget, open to remember, or slice to end. “It’s hard to answer you if I don’t know who I am.”

I held the box before my eyes. “Secrets. I filled you with secrets, and there’s one last secret left, blacker than the rest.” Some truths should perhaps be left unsaid. Some doors unopened. An angel once told me to let go of the ills I held too close, to let go of the flaws that shaped me. What remained of me might have been forgiven, might have followed her into heaven. I told her no.

The rockslide, avalanche, the trolls, none of them mattered. Arrow’s army would still crush us. To fight so hard and not even come close to victory. That had a bitter taste.

I’d faced death before with odds as slim but never as a broken man,
some piece of me locked away in a little box. Luntar in his burning desert had done what the angel couldn’t. He’d taken me from me, and left a compromise to walk about in Jorg Ancrath’s shoes.

Do not open that box.

The dead boy watched me from the corner of the room as if he had always stood there, waiting silent day after silent day for this moment, to meet my eyes. He stood pale but without wounds, unmarked save for handprints fish-belly white on his skin, like the scars Chella’s dead things left on Gog’s little brother long ago.

Open it and my work is undone.

I turned the box, letting the thorn pattern catch the light. Damn Luntar and damn the dead child too. When I faced Arrow’s legions for the last time I would do it whole.

Open it and you’re finished.

My hands didn’t shake on the metal. For that I was grateful. I opened it wide, and with a quick motion twisted the lid off, flicking it out past the crimson flutter of the sheet.

Never open the box.

Friar Glen’s chamber once again, lit by the heathen’s glow. The need to kill him fills my hands immediately.

“There was blood and muck,” Sageous says. He smiles. “Saraem Wic’s poisons will do that. But there was no child. I doubt there ever will be now. That old witch’s poisons are not gentle. They scrape a womb bare.”

I find the blade and I’m moving toward him. I try to run but it’s like wading through deep snow.

“Silly boy. You think I’m really here?” He makes no move to escape.

I try to reach him, but I’m floundering.

“I’m not even in this city,” he says.

Peace enfolds me. A honeyed dream of sunlight, fields of corn, children playing.

I wade through it, though each step feels like betrayal, like the murder of friends.

“You think I’m like you, Jorg.” He shakes his head and shadows run. “Thirst for revenge has dragged you across kingdoms, and you think me driven by your crude imperatives. I’m not here to punish you. I don’t hate you. I love all men equally. But you have to be broken. You should have died with your mother.” Sageous’s fingers stray to the lettering on his throat. “It was written.”

And as I reach him he is gone.

I stumble into the corridor. Empty. I close the door, using my metal strip to drop the latch. Friar Glen will have to pray for help. I don’t have time for him now and even through the layers of Sageous’s lies and dreams I hold the suspicion that he is guilty of
something
.

Katherine didn’t bring me to the Tall Castle, and certainly neither did Friar Glen. I didn’t turn right where the road forked from the Ken Marshes just to visit my dog’s grave. I came to see family. And now I need to be quick about it. Who knows what dreams Sageous might send this way?

Sim taught me about moving quietly. It’s not so much about noise. The art is to be always on the move, heading somewhere with purpose. Any hesitation invites a challenge. On the flip side, if there can be no possible reason for your presence, then utter stillness can hide you, even in plain sight. The eye may see you but if you are stone, the mind may discount you.

“You there. Hold fast.”

Eventually all tricks will fail and someone will challenge you. Even at this point they will find it hard to believe you’re an intruder. The minds of guards are especially dull, blunted by a career of tedium.

“Your pardon?” I cup a hand to my ear.

If you are challenged, pretend not to hear. Move closer, lean in. Be quick as you set your hand over their mouth, palm flat to lips so there’s no
edge to bite. Press them back against a wall if there is one. Stab in the heart. Don’t miss. Hold their eyes with yours. It gives them something to think about besides making a noise, and nobody wants to die alone in any case. Let the wall help them to the ground. Leave them in shadow.

I leave the dead man behind me. A second dies at the end of the next hall.

“You!” This one rounds a corner with sword in hand. Almost knocking me down.

Sharp hands. That’s what Grumlow said to me. Sharp hands. It’s his tutorial in knife-work. A sword’s all about the swinging, the thrust, the momentum, timing your move against that of your foe—a man with a knife is a man with sharp hands, nothing more. A knife-fight is a scary thing. That’s why men jab and feint, posture, run. Grumlow says the only thing to do is go in fast, go in first, kill him quick.

I go in fast. His sword falls on the long rug and doesn’t clatter.

Around the corner is the door I’m seeking. Locked. I take the key from the guard’s belt. The door opens on oiled hinges. Silent. The hinges never squeak on a nursery door. Babies fight sleep hard enough as it is.

The wet-nurse is snoring in a bed by the window. A lantern glows on the sill, its wick trimmed low. The shadows of the cot bars reach for me.

I should kill the nurse, but it looks like Old Mary who chased after Will and me in the long ago. I should kill her, but I let her sleep. She would be ill-advised to wake.

I drag the guard into the room and close the door. For a long moment I pause, picturing my escape routes. There is a second exit from the room, leading to the nurses’ quarters. As long as I have two ways to run I feel safe enough. There are passages that lead from the castle. Secret tunnels that lead to hidden doors in the High City. I couldn’t open those doors from the outside, but I can leave by them.

I take a deep slow breath. White musk—his mother’s scent. Another. I step to the cot and look upon my brother. Degran they call him. He’s
so small. I hadn’t thought he would be so tiny. I reach in and lift him, sleeping. He barely fills my hands. He gives a gentle sigh.

The assassin’s work is dirty work.

I vowed to take the empire throne, to take the hardest path, to win the Hundred War whatever the cost. And here in two hands I hold a key to the Gilden Gate. The son of the woman who replaced my mother. The son my father set me aside for. The son on whom he has settled my inheritance.

“I came to kill you, Degran.” I whisper it.

He is soft and warm, his head big, his hands tiny, his hair so very fine. My brother.

The lamp glow catches the white scars along my arms as I hold him up. I feel the briar’s hooks in me.

I should twist his neck and be gone. In the game of empire this is not a rare move, not even unusual. Fratricide. So common there is a word for it. Oft times carried out in person.

So why do my hands shake so?

Do it and be done.

You are weak, Jorg.
Even my father tells me to do it.
Weak.

I feel the hooks so deep, finding the bone as I struggled to save William. The blood runs down me. I can feel it. Streaming down my cheeks, blinding me. The thorns hold me.

DO IT.

No.

I will burn the world if it defies me, carry ruin to every corner, but I will not kill my brother. Not again. I came here to make that choice. To show that I could have chosen to. To weigh the decision in my hands.