Emperor of Thorns tbe-3 Read online

‘No.’ His eyes glittered, bright with memory. ‘Some official dispute, but too petty to be called a war. Trent and Merca quarrelling over their boundaries. A hundred soldiers and men-at-arms on each side, no more. And they met in my wheatfield. We were both seventeen, Nessa and me, Cerys three. I had a few farmhands, two house servants, a maid, a wet-nurse.’

  Even Rike had the sense to say nothing. Nothing but the clomp of hooves in mud, Gorgoth’s heavy footfalls, the creak of harness, dull chinks of metal on metal, the high sharp arguments of birds invisible against the sky.

  ‘I didn’t see them die. I might have been lying in the dirt by the main door clutching my chest. Nessa likely got cut down while I lay there looking at the clouds. I blacked out later. Cerys hid herself in the house and the fire probably reached her after I’d been dragged unconscious into a ditch. Children do that, they hide from the fire rather than run, and the smoke finds them.

  ‘Took me six months to recover. Stabbed through a lung. Later, I raided into Merca, with a band who survived that day. I found out that the lord’s boy who led that raid had been sent to a cousin’s in Attar to keep him safe. We met a year later. I tracked him to a little fort-town about twenty miles north of here.

  ‘My route back took me through Ancrath, and I stayed there. In time I found service with your father. And that’s all there is to it.’

  Makin didn’t have a grin on him, though I’ve seen him smile at death time and again. He kept his eyes on the horizon but I knew he saw further than that. Across years. ‘That’ is never all there is to it. Hurt spreads and grows and reaches out to break what’s good. Time heals all wounds, but often it’s only by the application of the grave, and while we live some hurts live with us, burning, making us twist and turn to escape them. And as we twist, we turn into other men.

  ‘And how long does it take for a child that you cross nations to avenge, because you couldn’t save her when saving her was an option, to become a child that you knife because you couldn’t accept him when accepting him was an option?’

  Makin gave half a grin then though he didn’t look away from whatever past held him. ‘Ah, Jorg, but you were never as sweet as Cerys, and I was never as cold as Olidan.’

  Another day passed and we trailed the Ancrath column through Attar’s heartlands. Everywhere peasants came on rag-bound feet to watch us pass, wreathed in the smoke from fields where red lines of fire ate the stubble. They abandoned the harvest’s funeral rites, the laying and the stacking of crops, the pickling and the drying for winter, to watch the Gilden Guard and see the pennants of jet and gold flutter on high. Empire meant something to them. Something old and deep, a half-forgotten dream of better things.

  In the late afternoon, sunshine broke through a fissure in the clouds and Miana emerged from Lord Holland’s carriage to ride a sedate mile side-saddle as we plodded through a ford town with the unlikely name of Piddle. Marten took to saddle as well and when Miana retired he kept at my side.

  ‘She’s finding it difficult, sire,’ he said, unprompted.

  ‘More difficult than being at the Haunt waiting for guests from the Vatican?’

  ‘It’s hard work carrying a child in the last month.’ Marten shrugged but I felt he cared more than that.

  Sometimes it cuts to see other men more passionate than I about the things that I should care for. I knew that if the Pope’s assassin had killed Miana and our unborn child I would have grieved. But also I knew that some terrible part of me, down at the core, would have raised its face to the world with a red grin, welcoming the chance, the excuse, for the coming moments of purity in which my revenge would sail upon a tide of blood. And I knew that rage would have swept away everything else, including sorrow.

  ‘It’s a hard world, Marten.’ He glanced across, confused for a moment as we’d ridden a quarter mile since he last spoke. ‘It shouldn’t be easy to bring someone into a hard world. It’s too easy to make a new life, too easy to take an old one. It’s only right that some part of the process present a little difficulty.’

  He kept his gaze upon me, a right earned over and again in my service, and the weight of his judgment built upon me.

  ‘Dammit.’ I snorted my exasperation. ‘I feel outnumbered in that carriage.’

  Martin smiled. ‘A married man is always outnumbered.’

  I spat in the mud and pulled on Brath’s reins with a curse. Five minutes later I sat in the carriage once more beside Miana.

  ‘My father’s carriage is just ahead of us,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’

  It felt odd to be talking about him, especially with Gomst and Osser sat watching us. Gomst at least had the sense to pull out his bible, a book near big enough to hide the both of them, and engage the older man in discussion of some or other psalm.

  ‘Coddin wants me to vote with my father at Congression. To make peace with him.’ The words made my mouth dirty.

  ‘And you would rather … not?’ A smile quirked at the corners of her lips but I didn’t feel mocked.

  A snatch of Gomst’s conversation reached me. ‘“Father, where is the lamb that is to be sacrificed?” And Abraham replied, “My son, God will provide the lamb”.’

  ‘I have many reasons to want him dead. And almost as many reasons to want to be the one to do it.’

  ‘But do you want to do it? The Jorg I know tends to do what he wants to do, and if reasons oppose him he changes them.’

  ‘I-’ I wanted to understand how it all worked, this business of living and of raising children. I wanted to do the job better than he had. ‘Men will tell our son how it was between me and my father.’

  Miana leaned closer, raven-dark hair falling around her pale face. ‘So what will they tell our child?’ She refused to call him ‘our son’ until he came out to prove himself.

  ‘Even the king can’t control men’s gossip,’ I said.

  Miana watched me. She wore a circlet of woven gold but her hair did as it pleased, taking at least two maids and a handful of clips to constrain. At last my incomprehension drove her to explain. ‘How can a clever man be so stupid? How it was between you and Olidan isn’t finished. The story that will be told is not yet written.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I let her shoo me out of the carriage.

  Not until chance took a hand though did I finally find the stones to ride to my father’s carriage. A guard captain came with news and found me skulking mid-column, Gorgoth at my side. Gorgoth always proved good company if you didn’t want to talk.

  ‘The Ancrath carriage has broken an axle.’ He didn’t bother with my title. ‘Can room be found in yours? There’s some objection to using one of the baggage wagons.’

  ‘I’ll come and discuss the matter.’ I suppressed a sigh. Sometimes you can sense the current of the universe flowing and nothing can deny its will for too long.

  All my men rode in my wake. Word had spread fast. Even Gorgoth came, perhaps curious to see where a son such as I had sprung from. We passed the Gilden Guard in their hundreds, all halted on the trail. Every head turned our way. And in a narrow stretch of road, unremarkable save for the stream on whose rocky bed my father’s carriage had broken its axle, I came once more to speak with the King of Ancrath.

  I felt Coddin at least would be pleased. I may not have taken his advice but fate seemed to disagree with my decision, pushing the Ancraths one step further along the path of the old prophecy. Two Ancraths working together were required to break the power of the hidden hands and here were the last two Ancraths. Well, you can lead a horse to water, but I choose what I damn well drink and I hold a low opinion of prophecy. It would take more than hell freezing over to see me allied to my father’s cause.

  They had dragged the carriage some twenty yards up the slope from the stream. I dismounted close by, my boots sinking six inches into churned mud. A breeze tugged the bare twigs in the hedgerows, a taller tree overreached us, black-fingered against a pale sky. The hand on Brath’s reins shook as if the wind pulled on it too. I bit
off a curse at my weakness and faced the carriage door. A thousand years ago Big Jan had pulled me through that door, from one world into another.

  I stood there, cold, my bladder too full, a tremble in my limbs, turned in heartbeats from the king of seven nations bound for Congression to a scared child once again.

  The guard captain of the Ancrath column applied his mailed knuckles to the wood. ‘Honorous Jorg Ancrath requests audience.’

  I wanted to be anywhere else, but stepped closer. None of the guard but the captain had dismounted to prevent violence. Either they didn’t know the stories men told of me, or they didn’t care. Perhaps they saw their job as retribution for breaking pax rather than prevention of such breaches.

  The door opened and from the dark interior emerged a slim and pale hand. A woman’s hand. I stepped forward and took it. Sareth? Father had brought his wife?

  ‘Nephew.’

  And she stepped out onto the riding board, all whispering silks and stiff lace collars, her hand cool yet burning in my grip. The carriage behind her lay empty.

  ‘Aunt Katherine,’ I said, my words once again in short supply.

  17

  Six years had only made her the more beautiful. What Katherine Ap Scorron hid in dreams stood before me on a cold day at the edge of winter.

  ‘Katherine.’ I still held her hand, raised between us. She took it back. ‘My father sent you to Congression? In his stead?’

  ‘Ancrath is at war. Olidan stays with his armies to ensure that the war is not lost.’

  She wore black, a flowing gown of it, satin folds reaching to a broad hem of black suede from which the mud might be brushed when dry. Lace around her neck like ink tattoos, earrings of silver and jet. Still mourning her prince.

  ‘He sent you? With two voting seals and no advisors.’

  ‘Nossar of Elm was to come but he fell sick. I have the king’s trust.’ She watched me, hard eyes, her lips a tight line in a pale face. ‘Olidan has come to appreciate my talents.’ Half a challenge — more than half. As if she might favour father over son and replace her sister at his side.

  ‘I’ve come to appreciate your talents myself, lady.’ I sketched her a bow if only to gather my thoughts. ‘May I offer you a place in the Renar carriage? Father’s repairs to this one seem to have been poorly judged.’ I drew on Brath’s reins bringing him close enough that she could mount from the riding board.

  Katherine left the carriage without further encouragement, stepping up to ride side-saddle to accommodate the length of her dress. For one moment satin lay taut across the jut of her hipbone. I wanted her for more than the shape of her body — but I wanted that too.

  Kent dismounted quick enough so that I could take his horse and ride with Katherine back along the column. I rode close, wanting to speak but knowing how weak my words would sound.

  ‘I didn’t mean to kill Degran. I would have fought to save him. He was my-’

  ‘And yet you did kill him.’ She didn’t look my way.

  I could have spoken of Sageous but the heathen had only put the rope in my hands, the fact he knew someone would get hanged hardly excused me. In the end I could only agree. I did kill my brother.

  ‘Orrin also deserved better from his brother,’ I said. ‘He would have made a good emperor.’

  ‘The world eats good men for breakfast.’ She shook her reins to coax Brath a little faster.

  The words sounded familiar. I kicked Kent’s horse and caught her. She pulled up beside Lord Holland’s carriage. ‘I didn’t know your tastes were so grand, Jorg.’

  ‘My wife’s choice,’ I said.

  I nodded to the guardsman by the carriage door and he knocked to announce Katherine. His knuckles barely made contact with the lacquered wood before the door sprung open and Miana leaned out, dark eyes on Katherine, lips pursed. She looked unaccountably pretty.

  ‘I’ve brought you a midwife, dear — my Aunt Katherine.’

  It’s my sincere hope that Katherine’s look of shock was more spectacular than the one I wore when taking her hand five minutes earlier.

  I entered the carriage first and sat between the young queen and the older princess. I didn’t trust in Gomst to be able to stop the bloodshed should things go badly.

  ‘Queen Miana of Renar,’ I said, ‘this is Princess Katherine Ap Scorron, my father’s representative at Congression and widow to the Prince of Arrow. We met Arrow’s army two years back, you may recall.’ I waved a hand at the old men. ‘Osser Gant of Kennick, Lord Makin’s advisor, and of course you know Bishop Gomst.’

  Miana settled her hands on her belly. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Katherine. Jorg tells me he killed the man who murdered your husband.’

  ‘Egan, yes. Orrin’s younger brother. Though the best deed that day was in putting an end to the heathen, Sageous. He poisoned Egan’s mind. He wouldn’t have betrayed Orrin otherwise.’

  I pressed back into the cushions. Two women, each given to speaking her mind and to trampling any social niceties that stood in their way, are wont to have short conversations that end interestingly. The fact that Katherine allowed for Sageous’s hand in Orrin’s fratricide seemed harsh when she gave me no room to hide in such excuses. In truth, though, I couldn’t hang my guilt on him.

  ‘The firstborn are often the best that the tree will offer,’ Miana said. ‘The ancients offered the first fruit to the gods. It might be that the first child carries whatever goodness their parents have to give.’ She laced her fingers over the greatness of her womb.

  A slight smile touched Katherine’s lips. ‘My sister is the firstborn. Anything gentle or kind went her way rather than mine.’

  ‘And my brother who will one day rule in Wennith is a good man. Any wickedness or cunning that my parents had came to me.’ Miana paused as the carriage lurched into motion, all the columns starting to move now. ‘And you have Orrin and Egan to support my theory.’

  ‘Of course that would make Jorg the Ancraths’ paragon.’ Katherine glanced at Gomst who had the grace to look away. ‘Tell us, Jorg, what was William like?’

  That surprised me. I had been happy letting them spar across me. ‘He was seven. It was hard to tell,’ I said.

  ‘Tutor Lundist said William was the more clever of the two. The sun to Jorg’s moon.’ Gomst spoke up but kept his eyes down. ‘He told me the child had an iron will such that no nurse could sway him from his chosen path. Even Lundist with his eastern cunning couldn’t divert the lad. They brought him before me once, a boy of six determined that he was setting off on foot to find Atlantis. I talked about his duty, about God’s plan for each of us. He laughed at me and said he had a plan for God.’ Gomst looked up but he didn’t see us, his eyes fixed on the past. ‘Blond as if he came from the emperor’s own blood.’ He blinked. ‘And iron in him. I believe he could have done anything that boy — had he been allowed to grow. Anything. Good or ill.’

  My own memories painted a softer picture but I couldn’t dispute Gomst. When William set his mind, when he decided how a thing should be, there was no arguing with him. Even when Father was called upon he would hold his nerve. And despite what I knew of my father’s ruthlessness, when it came to William, it never occurred to me that the matter was yet settled even when we heard Father’s footsteps in the corridor. Perhaps the reason my father hated me lay as simple as that. I had always been the weaker of the two. The wrong son died that night, the wrong son hung in the thorns.

  Miana spoke into the uncomfortable silence. ‘So tell me, Katherine, how is my father-in-law? I have yet to meet him. I’d like to get to know him. I had hoped he might be at Congression so Jorg could introduce us.’

  That painted a picture. What would Father make of my tiny child-wife who incinerated her own soldiers to tear a vast hole in the enemy?

  ‘King Olidan never changes,’ Katherine said. ‘I’ve spent years at his court and don’t know him so I doubt you’d learn much if he had come to Congression. I’m far from sure my sister knows him after six years i
n his bed. None of us know what his dreams for Ancrath are.’

  I read that code clear enough. She hadn’t managed to work her night-magics on Father, and perhaps Sageous hadn’t either. Maybe Father’s was the only hand on the knife that stabbed me. All presuming Katherine wasn’t lying of course, but her words rang true, it didn’t seem she would consider me worth sullying her lips with falsehoods for.

  ‘How goes his war, Princess?’ Osser Gant leant forward. He had quick ways about him for a greybeard, his eyes dark and cunning. I could see why Makin valued him.

  ‘The dead continue to press from the marshes, seldom great numbers in any one place, but enough to drain the land. Peasants are killed in their villages, their bodies dragged to the bogs, farmers die in their homesteads. The dead hide in the mud when Ancrath’s troops pursue, or they shelter in Ill-Shadow, in any place where the land is too poisoned for men. Gelleth has such places.’ She looked my way once more. ‘The attacks sap morale, leave food in short supply. Before I left there was talk of a lichkin walking the marsh.’

  Gomst crossed himself at that.

  ‘And what do they say in Olidan’s court about the direction of these attacks?’ Osser asked. A question of considerable interest to all Kennick men for although they had lost the marshes to the dead many years before, very little of the predation was on the Kennick dry lands. Makin’s troops had little cause for worry as long as they kept their feet on firm ground.

  ‘They say the Dead King hates King Olidan,’ Katherine said.

  ‘And what do you say, Katherine?’ Miana leaned across me, lily-scented, our child kicking my legs through her belly.

  ‘I say the black ships will sail up the Sane estuary and disgorge their troops into the marshes when the Dead King is ready to strike. And that from there they will move through Ancrath, sheltering in the scars the Builders left us, Ill Shadow, Eastern Dark, Kane’s Wound, what your people call “promised lands”, Queen. He will move into Gelleth along the paths Jorg opened with his destruction of Mount Honas, and continue by such means, gathering strength from many sources, until they reach Vyene where Congression’s endless voting will cease to matter.’