King of Thorns be-2 Read online

He talked with his hands did Taproot, long-fingered hands always flying about his head.

  “I am watching you,” I said. They say Taproot got that habit from his days at the three cup game. Watch me! And the boy will dip your pockets.

  He turned at that, hands plucking at the air. “And who have you brought to see me, Ronaldo? A handsome young fellow indeed, with friends outside.”

  Taproot knew me. Taproot never forgot a face, or a fact, or a weakness.

  “Jorg the Red,” I said. “I juggle.”

  “Do you now?” He drew fingers down his jaw to the point of his chin. “And what do you juggle, Jorg the Red?”

  I grinned. “What have you got?”

  “Watch me!” He fished a dark bottle from the depths of his cloak of many faded colours. “Come take a seat, bring your brothers in if they’ll fit.” He dismissed the dancers with a flutter of hands.

  Taproot retreated behind a desk in the corner, finding glasses from its drawer. I took the only other chair as the others filed in behind Makin.

  “I’m guessing you still juggle lives, Jorg,” Taproot said. “Though in more salubrious surroundings these days.” He poured a green measure into five glasses, all of a motion without a drop lost.

  “You’ve heard about my change in circumstances?” I took the glass. Its contents looked like urine, a little greener.

  “Absinthe. Ambrosia of the gods,” Taproot said. “Watch me.” And he knocked his back with a slight grimace.

  “Absinthe? Isn’t that Greek for undrinkable?” I sniffed it.

  “Two gold a bottle,” he said. “Has to be good at that price, no?”

  I sipped. It had the kind of bitterness that takes layers off your tongue. I coughed despite myself.

  “You should have told me you were a prince, Jorg; I always knew there was something about you.” He pointed two fingers to his eyes. “Watch me.”

  More Brothers followed on in. Gorgoth ducked in under the flap, Gog scurrying in front. Taproot took his gaze from me and rocked back in his chair. “Now these two fellows I could employ,” he said. “Even if they don’t juggle.” He waved to the three spare glasses. “Help yourselves, gentlemen.”

  There’s a pecking order on the road and it helps to know how it runs. On the surface Taproot’s business might be sawdust and somersaults, dancing girls and dancing bears, but he dealt in more than entertainment. Dr. Taproot liked to know things.

  A beat passed. Most would miss it, but not Taproot. The beat let the Brothers know that Makin wasn’t interested. Rike took the first glass, Red Kent the next, another beat, then Row snatched the last. Row threw his down and smacked his lips. Row could drink acid without complaint.

  “Ron, why don’t you take Rike and Gorgoth and show them the thing with the barrel?” I asked.

  Rike gulped his drink, made a sour face, and followed Ron out, the leucrotas next, Gog tagging behind.

  “The rest of you can lose yourselves too. See if you can’t learn some new tricks in the ring.” I sipped again. “It’d be foul at twenty gold a bottle.

  “Makin, perhaps you could be finding out about that rather fine bridge for us,” I said.

  And they filed out, leaving me and Taproot watching each other across the desk in the dim glow of the sun through canvass.

  “A prince, Jorg? Watch me!” Taproot smiled, a crescent of teeth in his thin face. “And now a king?”

  “I would have cut myself a throne whatever woman I fell from,” I said. “Had I been a carpenter’s son, stable-born, I’d have cut one.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” Again the smile, that mix of warmth and calculation. “Remember the times we had, Jorg?”

  I did. Happy days are rare on the road. The days we had ridden with the circus troop had been golden for a wild boy of twelve.

  “Tell me about the Prince of Arrow,” I said.

  “A great man by all accounts,” Taproot said. He made a steeple of his fingers, pressed to his lips.

  “And by your account?” I asked. “Don’t tell me you’ve not met the man.”

  “I’ve met everyone, Jorg,” he said. “You know that. Watch me.”

  I never knew if I liked Taproot.

  “I’ve even met your father,” he said.

  I am rarely uncertain in such matters, but Taproot, with his “watch me” and his talking hands, with his whole life a performance, and his secret ways? It’s hard to know a man who knows too much. “The Prince of Arrow,” I said.

  “He is a good man,” Taproot said at last. “He means what he says and what he says is good.”

  “The world eats good men for breakfast,” I said.

  “Perhaps.” Taproot shrugged. “But the Prince is a thinker, a planner. And he has funds. The Florentine banking clans love him well. Peace is good business. He is setting his pieces. The Fenlands fell to him before winter set in. He’ll add more thrones to his tally soon enough. Watch me. He’ll be at your gates in a few years if nobody stops him. And at your father’s gates.”

  “Let him call on Ancrath first,” I said. I wondered what my father would make of this “good man.”

  “His brother,” said Taproot, “Egan?”

  Taproot knew, he just wanted to know if I knew. I just watched him. He kept telling me to after all.

  “His brother is a killer. A swordsman like the legends talk of, and vicious with it. A year younger than Orrin, and always will be, thank the Lord. More absinthe?”

  “And how much support is there for the Good Prince among the Hundred?” I waved the bottle away. You needed a clear head with Taproot.

  “Well, they’d all murder him for half a florin,” Taproot said.

  “Of course.”

  “But he’s merciful and that can be a powerful thing.” Taproot stroked his chest as though he imagined a little of that mercy for himself. “There’s not a lord out there who doesn’t know that if he opened his gates to Arrow he’d get to keep his head and most of what was behind his gates too. By the next Congression his friends could vote him to the empire throne. And if he keeps going the way he is, he could vote himself to the throne at the Congression after next.”

  “It’s a clever ploy,” I said. Mercy as a weapon.

  “More than that, watch me.” Taproot sipped and ran his tongue over his teeth. “It’s who he is. And he won’t need too many more victories before more gates are opened to him than stand closed.” He looked at me then, dark and shrewd. “How will your gates stand, Jorg of Ancrath?”

  “We’ll have to see, won’t we?” I ran a wet finger around the rim of my glass and made it sing. “I’m a little young to be giving up on ambition though, neh?” Besides, sometimes an open gate just means you’d rather they did the walking. “What about the others?” I asked.

  “Others?” Taproot’s innocent look was a work of art, perfected over years.

  I watched him. Taproot kept his frozen innocence a moment longer. I scratched my ear and watched him.

  “Oh…the others.” He offered a quick smile. “There’s support for Orrin of Arrow there. He’s foretold, the Prince of Arrow. Prophecy aplenty. Too much for the wise to ignore. The Silent Sister is of course-”

  “Silent?” I asked.

  “Even so. But others are interested. Sageous, the Blue Lady, Luntar of Thar, even Skilfar.” He studied me as he spoke each name, knowing in a moment if I knew them. I put little enough on my face at such times, but a man like Taproot needs less than little to know your mind.

  “Skilfar?” He already knew I didn’t know.

  “Ice-witch,” Taproot said. “Plays the jarls off against each other. There are plenty of eyes on this Prince of Arrow, Jorg. His star is not yet risen, but be sure it’s in ascendance! Who knows how high and how bright it might be come Congression?”

  If anyone knew, it would be the circus master before me. I turned Taproot’s words over in my head. The next Congression stood two years away, four more again before the one after that. As lord of Renar I had my place booked, a sin
gle vote in hand, and the Gilden Guard would escort me to Vyene. I couldn’t see the Hundred electing an emperor to sit over them though. Not even Orrin of Arrow. If I went, if I let the Gilden Guard drag me five hundred miles to throw my vote into the pot, I’d vote for me.

  “I’m sorry about Kashta,” Taproot said. He filled his glass and raised it.

  “Who?”

  Taproot dropped his gaze to the bow beside me. “The Nuban.”

  “Oh.” Taproot knew stuff. Kashta. I let him fill my glass again and we drank to the Nuban.

  “Another good man,” Taproot said. “I liked him.”

  “You like everyone, Taproot,” I said. I licked my lips. “But he was a good man. I’m taking the monsters to Heimrift. Tell me about the mage there.”

  “Ferrakind,” Taproot said. “A dangerous man, watch me! I’ve had pyromancers that trained with him. Not magicians, not much more than fire-eaters, flame-blowers, you could do as much with this stuff and a candle.” He raised his glass again. “Smoke-and-spark men. I don’t think he lets the good ones go. But all the ones I had were terrified of the man. You could end any argument with them just by saying his name. He’s the real thing. Flame-sworn.”

  “Flame-sworn?” I asked.

  “The fire is in him. In the end it will take him. He used to be a player. You know what I speak of, a player of men and thrones. But the fire took too much from him and we no longer interest him.”

  “I want his help,” I said.

  “And this is your offer?” Taproot tapped his wrist. I hadn’t seen him so much as glance at my watch but it seemed he knew all about it.

  “Perhaps. What else might interest him?” I asked.

  Taproot pursed his lips. “He likes rubies. But I think he’ll prefer your fire-patterned child. He may want to keep him, Jorg.”

  “I may want to keep him myself,” I said.

  “Going soft in your old age, Jorg?” Taproot asked. “Watch me! I knew a twelve year old hard as nails and twice as sharp. Perhaps you should leave the monsters with me. There’s a good enough living to be made in the freak tent.”

  I stood. I hefted up the Nuban’s bow. “Kashta, eh?”

  “Even so,” Taproot said.

  “I must be on my way, Doctor,” I said. “I have a bridge to cross.”

  “Stay,” he said. “Learn to juggle?”

  “I’ll look around once more for old times,” I said.

  Taproot raised his hands. “A king knows his mind.”

  And I left.

  “Good hunting.” He said it to my back.

  I wondered if he’d taken enough from me to sell at profit. I wondered at what some men can fit between their ears.

  I walked past the dancers. They hadn’t gone far.

  “Remember me, Jorg?” Cherri smiled. The other struck a pose. They both followed Taproot’s advice. Hips and tits.

  “Of course I do.” I sketched a bow. “But sadly, ladies, I’m not here to dance.”

  Cherri I remembered, lithe and pert, hair lightened with lemon and curled around hot tongs every morning, a snub nose and wicked eyes. They both closed on me, half-playful, half-serious, hands straying, warm breath and that gyration in the pelvis that speaks of want. Her friend, dark-haired, pale-skinned, and sculpted from fantasy, I did not recall, but wished I did.

  “Come and play?” the friend murmured. She smelled money. Sometimes, though, reasons don’t matter.

  It’s hard to pass up an offer like that when you’re young and full of juice, but fourteen heads around a rock cairn were telling me to get a move on and I had taken what I needed here, almost.

  I left them and slipped through an exit to the rear of the tent. In a clearing to the left I could see Thomas swallowing a sword, watched by a scatter of circus urchins. He hardly needed the practice but that was Thomas, a crowd pleaser. An odd breed, the gypsies and the talent, needing to live in the torch ring, only alive in grease-paint. I swear, some of them would fade and die given a week without applause.

  Rumbles from the cages drew me. A stack of them on the east side of the camp where the wind would take some of the stink away. They still had the two bears I remembered, pacing their madness in tight circles, dull shaggy fur, the bronze nose-rings big enough to fit an arm. The huge turtle-Taproot claimed it to be two hundred years old-statue-still and as interesting as a big stone, not caged but tethered to a stake. The two-headed goat was a new addition, a sickly-looking thing, but then again it should have been a still-birth, so it was more healthy than anyone had a right to expect. Every now and then the heads would sight each other and startle as if surprised.

  “See anything you like?” A soft voice behind me.

  “I do now.” I turned to face her. She looked good.

  “Jorg,” Serra said. “My sweet Jorg. A king no less.”

  I shrugged. “I never did know when to stop.”

  She smiled. “No.” Dark and delicious.

  “I saw Thomas back there, putting on a show,” I said.

  Serra pouted at the mention of her husband. “It never stops amazing me, how people want to watch that.”

  “That’s why the circus keeps on moving,” I said. “Everything gets old quick enough. The swallowing of swords, the blowing of fire, they’re wonders for an evening or two…”

  “And did I get old quick enough?” she asked. “King Jorg of the Highlands?”

  “Never,” I said. If the sins of the flesh ever got old I didn’t ever want enough years on me to know it. “I’ve not found a girl to compare.”

  “Girl” may have been pushing it but she was a good ten years younger than Thomas, and who better than a circus contortionist to deliver a boy’s first lessons in carnality?

  Serra stepped closer, shawl tight around her shoulders against the chill of the breeze. She moved in that fluid way that reminds every watcher she can cross her ankles behind her head. Even so, on her cheeks, here and there, the white powder cracked, and around her eyes the unkind morning light found tiny wrinkles. She wore her hair still in ribbons and bunches, but now it looked wrong on her and a thread or two of silver laced the blackness of it.

  “How many rooms does your palace have, Jorg?” A husk in her voice. A hint of something desperate at the back of her smile.

  “Lots,” I said. “Most of them cold, stony, and damp.” I didn’t want her to go begging and dirty up my golden memories. I didn’t know what I’d come looking for around the circus camp; Taproot’s stories for sure, but not now, not here in the messy reality behind the show-ring mask. I didn’t know what I’d come for, but not this, not Serra showing her years and her need.

  A moment’s silence, then a growl came, too deep and throaty for a bear, like a giant rasp drawn across timber.

  “What the-”

  “Lion,” Serra said. She twirled, brightening, and took my hand. “See?”

  And around the corner, at the bottom of the cage stack, Dr. Taproot did indeed have himself a lion. I hefted the Nuban’s bow to see the ironwork around the trigger guard. The beast in the cage might be a bit threadbare, showing too many ribs, but his dirty mane remembered the one framing the snarling face on the Nuban’s bow.

  “Well, there’s a thing,” I said. The Nuban had told me in his youth he walked scorched grasslands where lions hunted in packs, and even though the Nuban never lied, I only half-believed him. “There’s a thing.” Words failed me for once.

  “He’s called Macedon,” Serra said, leaning into me. “The crowds love him.”

  “What else has Taproot got caged? I expect a griffin next, then a unicorn and a dragon, a full heraldic set!”

  “Silly,” she husked. Old or not, that magic of hers had started to work on me. “Dragons aren’t real.” The twitch of a smile in her painted lips, her small and kissable mouth.

  I shook it off-the circus was too full of distractions. Distractions I wanted to make a full and thorough examination of. But I had ghosts at my heels and Gog about to burst into flame at any mome
nt…

  “He looks hungry,” I said. “The circus can’t feed its main attraction?”

  “He won’t eat,” Serra said. “Taproot’s tearing his hair about it. Doesn’t know how long he’ll last.”

  The lion watched us, sat sphinx-like with his massive paws spread in the straw before him. I met his huge amber eyes and wondered what he saw. Probably a hunk of meat on two legs not meant for running.

  “He wants to hunt,” I said.

  “We give him meat,” Serra said. “Ron cuts him big hunks of cow, still bleeding. He barely sniffs it.”

  “He needs to take it,” I said. “Not be given it.”

  “That’s silly.” Her fingers ran along mine, starting fires.

  “It’s in his nature.” I looked away. I didn’t think I could win a staring competition with Macedon even if I had time to try.

  “You should let him go,” I said.

  Serra laughed, a note too shrill for comfort. “And what would he hunt? We should let him eat children?”

  A distant scream saved me answering. A distant scream and a tongue of flame reaching up above the tent tops. A dead cook-fire close by suddenly lit. The flame flared, sucked in like a drawn breath, and became a little man made all of fire, a homunculus no taller than a chicken. It glanced around for a heartbeat then tore off in the direction of the scream leaving the fire-pit black and smoking and a line of charred footprints behind it.

  Serra opened her mouth, ready to scream or shout, decided on neither, and took off after the flame-man.

  My gaze returned to the lion, who seemed wholly unmoved by the excitement.

  “Do you think Taproot will still want Gog in his freak-show now?” I asked.

  The lion gave no answer, just watched me with those amber eyes.

  The lions the Nuban had told me of were magnificent beasts, lords of the plains. He understood why men who had never seen one might fight beneath their likeness on a banner. When he spoke of lions on cold nights camped along the roadside, I had sworn to walk those same sun-scarred plains and see them for myself. I hadn’t imagined them caged, mangy, hopping with fleas beside a two-headed goat.

  A single nail pinned the cage door, secured with a twist of wire.