Emperor of Thorns Read online

  ‘And what’s to stop another assassin coming while you’re gone?’ Miana asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  It’s never a good idea to tease a woman near her time, and seldom a good idea to tease Miana in any case, unless you want back worse than you gave. She came at me, fists raised.

  ‘You’re coming with me.’ I spoke quickly, backing around Makin.

  ‘You said wives couldn’t come!’ Miana mastered the art of the wickedly murderous look at an early age.

  ‘You’re my advisor now,’ I shouted, backing to the door since none of my guard saw fit to defend me.

  That mollified her enough to halt her advance and lower her hands. ‘I can’t ride like this,’ she said.

  ‘You can go in one of the wagons.’ Each guard troop had a wagon for equipment.

  ‘Well that’ll jolt the baby out of me quick enough!’ She sounded cross but seemed to find the idea to her liking. ‘So I’m to sit all alone in a rickety wagon and be hauled halfway across empire?’

  ‘You’ll have Marten for company. He’s in no state to ride,’ I said.

  ‘Marten? So anyone can come along now?’

  ‘Advisor!’ I raised my hands again. ‘Makin, tell Keppen and Grumlow they can go back to the Haunt.’ I didn’t think missing Congression would bother Keppen in the least, and Grumlow had a woman somewhere in Hodd Town that he’d probably rather spend time with.

  ‘So that’s settled.’ I dusted my hands together and cast an eye over the room’s lurid blues. ‘Let’s go and make Bishop Gomst a happy man.’

  We left Holland’s mansion in a troop. Gorgoth carried the coffer and it pleased me to see that even his arms strained with the weight of all that gold. Lord Holland, his wife, and retainers flocked about us from the front steps to the gates of their compound. Makin made all the replies and niceties, the dregs of my dreaming still soured the day. At the gates Marten pointed out one of the guard wagons to Miana, an uncomfortably functional vehicle. She made an immediate turn, Sir Riccard jumping to avoid the swing of her belly.

  ‘Lord Holland!’ She stopped the man in mid-flow. ‘I wish to purchase your personal carriage.’

  I left Miana to secure the deal, guarded by Marten, Riccard and eight of the ten men who accompanied her from the Haunt. Rike, Grumlow, Keppen, and Kent fell in with us as I led the way to the part-built cathedral of Hodd Town. Gomst had mentioned plans to name it the Sacred Heart after a cathedral of legend that once stood in Crath City. For my part I felt St George’s to be a fine name.

  I settled the brothers within the walls of the great hall, dwarfed by the immense pillars that had stood ready to carry the roof for a decade and more. Lesser clerics, choirboys, and the more devoted and well-wrapped of Hodd Town’s citizens, watched them with undisguised curiosity. Gorgoth put down his burden, set a bare foot to the lid, and stared back causing several choirboys to make a run for it.

  A duty-priest led me to the grand vestibule where Gomst kept his office, due mainly to the fact the chamber had a completed roof. He rose from behind his desk to greet me. From the look of him he slept no better than I did. Gomst never wore his years well and now they hung from him like invisible chains.

  ‘They tell me you do good work here, Father Gomst.’

  He bowed his head and said nothing. In the six years since we found each other again on the lichway before the ghosts came, the grey had risen from his beard and chased the black from his hair.

  ‘I’ve brought you enough gold to have the cathedral completed. I want as many men as can fit around the walls to be working here at every hour of every day.’

  Gomst lifted his head frowning and made to speak.

  ‘On Sundays they can rest,’ I said.

  ‘You think faith and churches will save us from the Dead King?’ Gomst asked.

  ‘Don’t you, Bishop?’ I thought it would be nice if one of us did.

  He drew in a deep breath and set his eyes on me, bright and dark. ‘It’s easier to have faith when you are one of the flock. The closer I get to the top of this long ladder we call the church of Roma … the closer to the Holy See where God speaks … the less I hear him, the further away I feel.’

  ‘It’s good that you have some doubt in you, Gomsty. Men who are certain of everything – well perhaps they’re not men at all.’

  Gomst stepped closer, from shadow into lamplight, and it seemed that I saw him for the first time, set against the memory of another bishop, one more certain of his path and his entitlements. I wondered how long Murillo’s shadow had hidden Gomst from my sight. He was at worst guilty of loyalty to bad kings, of a mind narrowed by a life at court, and of pomposity. Not the most capital of crimes, and old crimes at that.

  ‘You remember the ghosts on the lichway, Father Gomst?’

  He nodded.

  ‘You told me to run, to leave you there alone. And when they came, you prayed. Faith was your shield. We faced them together, you and I, with all my brothers fled.’

  Gomst offered a grim smile. ‘I was in a cage if you recall, or I would have run with them.’

  ‘We’ll never know, will we?’ I gave him the brilliance of my own smile, creasing the stiff burn-scars on my cheek. ‘And all men are cowards. I may not have run that day but I’ve always been a coward, never braver than my imagination.’

  From my belt I pulled out the order he would sign to acknowledge the church’s acceptance of my chest of gold. Gomst looked at it.

  ‘I would have run, but for that cage.’ He shivered.

  I clapped a hand to his shoulder. ‘And here I am building you a new cage, Father Gomst, for just forty thousand ducets.’

  We sat then, Father Gomst and I, and drank small beer, for the water in Hodd Town is barely safe for washing.

  ‘So here I am, Gomsty, with a box full of shiny metal making a cathedral happen. Making the Pope herself trail out of Roma to my doorstep.’

  The bishop inclined his head then wiped a touch of foam from his moustache. ‘Times change, Jorg. Men change.’

  ‘And how did I get my box of gold? By setting my will behind a sharp edge and applying an unhealthy amount of determination.’ I sipped from my flagon. ‘When you move the big pieces on the board, the world seems more like a game than ever. That illusion, that those at the top know what they’re doing – the feeling some folk hold, that the world is safe and solid and well-ordered – well, that illusion wears thin when it’s us who stand at the top doing the ordering. I don’t doubt that for every step you take toward Roma God sounds three steps further away.’

  Gomst’s hands trembled on his cup, his big and ugly knuckles paling. ‘You should watch over those dear to you more closely, Jorg. King Jorg. Triple your guards.’

  ‘Yes?’ His meaning escaped me. Sweat glistened on his brow.

  ‘I – I hear rumours, among the bishops, from visiting monks, wandering priests …’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘The Pope knows. Not from me. Your confession remains between us. But she knows. They say she will send someone.’ He set his cup down, rattling it on the desk. ‘Guard those you love.’

  I wondered at Gomst, surprised by him after all these years. He’d known me longer than any man I still kept counsel with. After my father burned my dog he called Gomst to instruct me. Perhaps he thought some religion would temper the lesson. Or maybe that hammer, the one I nearly killed him with when he set the fire, had made him think I needed an education in divine right. He may have reasoned that if I thought God stood behind him I would be slower to raise my hand against him the next time. Whatever the reason, he dropped my spiritual welfare into Father Gomst’s lap in my seventh year. Or at least he ordered a priest to the Tall Castle for that purpose. It may have been Mother who chose the particular cleric to fill the role.

  Strange to say, but Gomst had watched me grow for longer than did my mother, longer than Makin, or the Nuban, or Coddin. He had seen more of my years pass than any of them, Father included.

  ‘The Pope
’s man has already called, Father Gomst. Two nights ago. He won’t be leaving again. Miana will be coming with us to Congression. In fact, if you play your cards right you can ride with her in Lord Holland’s carriage as soon as she’s taken it off him.’

  ‘I …’

  ‘You need to be at the west gate two hours from now. You’ve got that long to set your priests loose on this project. I will want to see serious progress by the time we get back. Let them know where the gold is coming from. Tell them if I come back from Congression and I’m still not emperor, I’m not going to be in the mood for excuses.’

  10

  Fifty horses churn up a lot of mud. With the season heading into autumn and seven times that number of cavalry we made a river of the stuff. The wagons, set close to the rear of the column, slid through it, their wheels little more than sled-runners often as not. It turned out to be more comfortable than jolting over ruts. In fact if you must travel by carriage I recommend having an army at horse smearing the road out ahead of you.

  ‘Well this is nice,’ I said.

  Actually for a carriage it was about as nice as it gets. Lord Holland had paid to have almost as much attention lavished on the interior as he did at home. The exterior had been finely worked too, but a thick layer of mud obscured all that.

  Gomst sniffed and rummaged for his snot-rag. The bishop had acquired a cold for the journey. As a priest he used to wipe his nose on the black sleeve of his vestment. Bishops have different standards it seems. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t decide to sail, King Jorg,’ he said.

  ‘I considered it.’ The voyage of nearly three thousand miles by sea cut the overland distance from five hundred easy miles to a hundred over mountains. As much as I liked my new flagship I couldn’t talk myself into such a plan.

  Osser Gant sat beside the bishop, sharing his cold. Two old men sniffing and spitting together. Miana, Marten and I sat opposite, facing the direction of travel. I’d squashed in for a look-see and set my muddy feet on the carpet.

  ‘You need a nursemaid and a midwife,’ I said. ‘A bishop, a chamberlain, and a general aren’t going to be much help when your time comes.’

  ‘I have three nursemaids and two good midwives,’ Miana fixed me with that stare of hers. ‘Jenny and Sarah are back at the Haunt. I wasn’t expecting to be bundled off to Hodd Town then hauled off to Congression!’

  ‘We’ll just have to collect some replacements on the way,’ I told her.

  ‘Some waifs and strays? Farmgirls skilled in the delivery of cows and sheep?’

  Women aren’t expected to be reasonable when getting ready to squeeze out a child. I still had my own doubts about the whole process. It seemed as though it would be a tight fit and I was glad I didn’t have to do it. ‘Peasants have babies too, Miana. Lots of them. But no, not a farmgirl. We’re going to be travelling through Teutonia. They’re at least half-civilized, so I’m told. We’ll stop by one of the local lords and prevail on him to volunteer some women of suitable quality and experience.’

  I peered through the window grille, eager to be back out there. I’d spent a whole minute in the carriage and had had enough of it. Swapping the carriage bench and all its fine cushions for Brath’s saddle seemed a fair exchange given that I also got to swap Gomst and Osser for a view, and their sniffing and snotting for a fresh breeze. Outside, the Gelleth lowlands slid past, green and pleasant, fields in the main with occasional strips of woodland splashed in autumn colours. No sign here of the havoc I’d wrecked in the north at Castle Red.

  Our route took us across Gelleth under empire pax and would lead on through Attar to bridge the Rhyme at the city of Honth. From there Captain Harran planned to guide us along the River Danoob through half a dozen Teuton kingdoms until we reached Vyene. A trip estimated at a touch over three weeks. We could make better time and easier travelling on a barge once we reached the Danoob, but with over three hundred horses and their riders aboard most barges have a tendency to sink, and without them aboard, any barge carrying me through Teutonia would be guaranteed to sink. My father held a lot of alliances with the Teuton kingdoms, Scorron in particular, and Teutonia had never liked the idea of the coast kingdoms uniting to the west of them.

  ‘Jorg?’ Miana at my side.

  ‘Sorry?’

  She sighed and folded tiny hands across her belly.

  ‘Yes.’ I guessed an answer. It seemed to satisfy her. She nodded and turned to speak to Marten.

  It wouldn’t be long before he wanted out of there too. A few days for his bruises to fade, maybe a while longer, for he wasn’t young, and he would want to be riding. Something niggled at me, guilt perhaps, for being so ready to abandon Miana. It seemed probable that I should want to spend time with her, but I just didn’t. I liked her well enough, but not well enough to spend three weeks in a carriage with. I wondered if any man would want to spend three weeks sat next to his wife. Would I feel any different if I’d chosen her? If she had chosen me? If it were Katherine beside me?

  ‘And what are you thinking about, Jorg?’ she asked. She fixed me with dark eyes. Not black but hinting green, leaves in moonlight. I’d never taken note of their colour before. Strange what strikes you and when.

  ‘I’m thinking I should take my muddy boots out of this fine carriage and check to see that Harran isn’t leading us astray.’

  She didn’t say so but I could see her disappointment at the corners of her mouth. I stepped out feeling less than a king. Life can be complicated enough even when nobody is trying to kill you.

  I rode alongside the carriage for a while in a black mood. A fine rain fell, unseasonably warm and light enough for the wind to blow into my face whatever angle I held my head. Makin rode up with his usual grin, spitting out the rain and wiping it from his cheeks.

  ‘Lovely weather.’

  ‘People who talk about the weather would be better served by admitting they’ve nothing to say but like the sound of their own voice.’

  Makin’s grin broadened. ‘And don’t the trees look beautiful this time of year?’ I suspected he’d taken a pinch of clove-spice, the stink of it seemed to be on him a lot these days.

  ‘Do you know why the leaves change colour, Makin?’ They did look spectacular. The forest had grown around us as we travelled and the canopy burned with colour, from deepest red to flame orange, an autumn fire spreading in defiance of the rain.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Why do they change?’

  ‘Before a tree sheds a leaf it pumps it full of all the poisons it can’t rid itself of otherwise. That red there – that’s a man’s skin blotching with burst veins after an assassin spikes his last meal with roto-weed. The poison spreading through him before he dies.’

  ‘I never knew death could be so pretty,’ he said, indefatigable.

  We rode in silence for a while and I wondered if men were the world’s leaves. If as we aged the world filled us with its poisons so as old men, filled to the brim with the bitterest gall, we could fall into hell and take it all with us. Perhaps without death the world would choke on its own evils. The northmen, Sindri’s people, have it that a tree, Yggdrasil, stands at the centre, with everything – even worlds – hanging from it. And with Sindri came images of his milk-haired sister, Elin, tall and pale-eyed. Come to me in winter, she had said. I remarked to myself on her eyes in the moment I met her. Miana’s after three years. A tree might stand at the centre of an old man’s world. Whenever I turned my own face to the centre though, I saw a woman. Most young men do.

  Three days later Lord Redmal’s soldiers opened the road-gates to let us cross the border into Attar. Redmal’s grandfather had built a fort across the road fifty years ago to let the folk of Gelleth know they weren’t welcome. Merl Gellethar had flattened it in a dispute a decade before I reduced him to poisoned dust. Attar soldiers now infested the fort’s ruins and watched the Gilden Guard with undisguised awe as they streamed past.

  On the map Attar is a sizeable land, but the Engine of Wrong still turns a
nd turns at Nathal as it has for ten centuries, and the north of Attar is a wasteland. I’m told it’s not a poison or disease that keeps men away from Nathal and the lands around it, just a feeling, just the certainty that nothing there is right.

  It took a day to cross the Attar hill country, where they keep the vineyards on the southern slopes and grow the grapes from which the Blood of Attar is fermented, a wine found at many royal tables. On the margins of the wine lands, as the hills smoothed themselves out for tobacco fields and small farmsteads, Red Kent came riding back from the column’s vanguard with news.

  ‘Another guard column ahead, sire,’ he said, as humble and loyal as you please. I think Kent loved being a knight more than anything and, burned as he was, with that scary rasping voice, he made a good king’s fist to send into trouble and to end it.

  ‘Not the last we’ll see, I suspect. Who is it?’

  He paused and then I knew. Who else would it be. I owned every other land east of us until the sea.

  ‘It’s from Ancrath, a hundred guard.’

  The votes of Ancrath and Gelleth, both resting in my father’s hand.

  I thought again of falling leaves and wondered if it wasn’t time for another old man, full to the brim with poison, to make that final drop.

  11

  Chella’s Story

  Five years of marching back and forth. Five years scurrying to do the Dead King’s bidding. Always on the edge of things, as far from his court as one could be and still remain in the empire. Chella spent five years wading through mud and shit simply to rise enough in the Dead King’s esteem for him to call her to court and seek an accounting for her failure. And she had come eagerly, racing across the broken empire just to face his judgment, just to stand before the inhumanity of the lichkin and have the Dead King watch her from the flesh into which he had settled deepest. Five wasted years – each one Jorg Ancrath’s fault.

  ‘There’s a reason I’m having to hurt you.’