Emperor of Thorns Read online

  ‘And why would you?’ My hand settled on the fallen oil flask. I gave it a swirl. Maybe a fifth of it remained.

  ‘Data echoes are not just forbidden from harming their original template. In fact whilst the person whose data created any particular echo still lives there are an enormous number of restrictions placed on that echo, for the convenience, privacy, and peace of mind of the person in question. In the world that I inhabit I have been very much a second class citizen for considerably longer than your empire has existed.’

  ‘In Castle Morrow?’ The world that he lives in?

  A tight smile, quick and gone. ‘Imagine an ocean wider and deeper than all others, full of wonder and variety, and on the surface a thickness of ice broken only here and there. The echoes that the Builders left behind, “data ghosts” if that’s how you want to call us, we echoes swim in such an ocean and the places where we may be seen in this thin world of yours are like the holes in the ice where we can surface. We exist in the joined complexity of the Builders’ machinery, and in places such as the terminal at Morrow we may be seen.’

  ‘So why aren’t you?’

  ‘Why aren’t we what?’

  ‘Seen? Why was it just you haunting that cellar?’

  Another smile, more of bitterness in it than of friendship. ‘Second class citizen. The menial duties fell to me. Keeping an eye on the savages.’

  I had to remind myself that the Fexler who shared anything with me lay on the floor, his blood cooling around him. The Fexler talking to me was not a man, just the idea of a man, an idea held in a machine. I reached out a foot to nudge the dead man. Fexler’s echo shuddered as if the action disturbed him.

  ‘So why did he kill himself?’ I asked. ‘And what stopped him?’

  ‘He started a war,’ Fexler said. ‘And finished it.’

  ‘Hell I lit up one of your suns, it didn’t make me take a knife to my throat straight after.’

  ‘The weapons Fexler Brews launched could not be detonated with a fire.’

  ‘You saw that?’ Fexler’s ghost had been watching me six years back, under Mount Honas?

  ‘Our weapons burned like suns – exactly the same way. Each needs a trigger to ignite it, a smaller, more primitive implosion. Your fire at Silo Eleven using weapons relocated from Vaucluse melted the implosion components into a critical mass. What you saw was a partial ignition of the trigger that would then light the sun. The fuel for the “suns” is short-lived, it’s a matter of half-life, the fuel for the rockets that bore them lasts little longer. All that remains now are the triggers.’

  I wondered if the original Fexler had liked the sound of his own voice so much. In any event it was a sobering thought to know I laid waste to Gelleth with a fraction of the spark that would light a true Builder Sun. And despite my words, the dead of Gelleth had haunted me, literally and in dreams. To have burned the whole world in such fashion would have been … uncomfortable.

  ‘And even with his gun he didn’t manage to kill himself?’ With such toys at their disposal it seemed unforgivable for any Builder to fail in the act of taking a life.

  ‘These cubicles were designed to hold key personnel in stasis until conditions improved to the point where life might be sustained outside again. Fexler was perhaps not thinking clearly as he sat here wrestling with his conscience. Maybe he didn’t appreciate that the automatic systems would kick in to preserve him or perhaps he just didn’t realize how quickly they could act.’

  ‘Either way, he left you in the shit along with all the real people in the world.’

  ‘He did.’ Fexler’s image flickered, a frown above his eyes.

  I grinned. It must have been odd to spend a thousand years cursing the man you were copied from. ‘So now I’ve freed you and you get to swim in your sea with the big fish, and not waste time watching the savages. What do I get out of it?’ Still holding the view-ring to my eye I pulled the gun from Fexler’s warm, dead hand, careful not to point the business end my way. He seemed reluctant to let it go.

  ‘Unfortunately we need to watch the savages even more these days,’ Fexler said. ‘The machines that still keep running won’t run for ever, and unless you people get past swords and arrows there’s never going to be anyone to maintain them. Maintenance requires civilization, and we’re not going to get civilization again until all the wars stop.’

  ‘You couldn’t stop your own wars, Fexler.’

  ‘He couldn’t.’ Fexler looked down at his corpse. ‘I’m another matter.’

  I pursed my lips. ‘Either way – it sounds as though you’d like there to be an emperor on the Gilden Throne.’

  21

  Five years earlier

  In the dry and deathless halls of the Builders, beneath the poisoned dusts of Iberico, I sat half-delirious with fever and spoke to a ghost who had helped me kill the man from whom he sprang.

  ‘And who do the ghosts in your machines want to rule this empire of servants for them?’ I asked.

  ‘Orrin of Arrow is favoured by our projections,’ Fexler said. ‘A peacemaker. A man of progress.’

  ‘Hah!’ I spat from a dry mouth, aching in every limb. ‘So you’ve no real interest in my leaving here to stop him then?’

  ‘Projections favour Orrin,’ Fexler agreed.

  I kicked the warm corpse at my feet again. ‘Are you … is he likely to stand up again? I seem to have made a new friend, the Dead King. Takes an unhealthy interest in me. I find him watching out of any pair of dead eyes that are handy. Would it upset you if I dismember him … you … a little? Just to be sure?’ Part of me hoped Fexler would object and save me the effort of all that hacking. He shook his head as if the matter were unimportant.

  ‘Projections favour Orrin, but some of us prefer to bet on longer odds for greater rewards,’ Fexler said.

  ‘Why so? What rewards? I’d bet on Orrin too if I had a stake.’ The words tumbled from numb lips, the poison pulsed in me, I could smell my wounds. That’s what happens when you stop. Take a rest and the world catches up with you. Lesson in life – keep moving.

  ‘You may recall,’ Fexler stepped closer, edging between me and his earthly remains, ‘that we spoke about a wheel. About how my generation’s greatest works were nothing to do with new ways to scorch the earth but how to change the rules of everything, how to alter the way in which the world worked?’

  ‘Vaguely.’ I waved a trembling hand. ‘Something to do with making what we want matter.’ It didn’t seem to have worked. I wanted him to shut up now and leave me alone, and that wasn’t happening.

  ‘Almost.’ Fexler smiled. ‘The physicists called it an adjustment of quantum emphasis. But the effect was to change the role of the observer. Of you and me. For the will of the observer to matter. So man could control his environment directly through the force of his desire, rather than through machinery.’

  I had the feeling that if I died he would carry on saying his piece to my corpse.

  ‘Unfortunately that wheel wasn’t just turned – it was set turning. It hasn’t stopped. In fact, like so many things in nature, the process has a tipping point and we’re reaching it. The fractures in the world, in the walls between mind and matter, between energy and will, between life and death, they’re all growing. And everything is in danger of falling through the cracks. Each time these powers, the ability to influence energy or mass or existence, are used, the divergence grows. These are the magics you know as being fire-sworn, or rock-sworn, or as necromancy and the like. The more they are used, the easier they become, and the wider the world is broken open. And this Dead King of yours is just another symptom. Another example of a singular force of will being used to change the world and, in doing so, accelerating the turn of that wheel we released.’

  A sigh, and a panel I hadn’t seen before opened on the wall to my left. Enough light came from the cavity behind to illuminate the room. I lowered the view-ring but Fexler vanished, so I set it back to my eye.

  ‘Take the pills.’ Fexler pointed
to the cavity. ‘Swallow two a day until they’re gone. They will cure your sepsis.’

  I got to my knees and scraped the handful of yellow tablets from the alcove. They were the only thing there, and I saw no means of delivery. My throat hurt as I swallowed two of them. They could be poison but Fexler likely had a thousand ways to kill me if he wanted that.

  ‘So what do you want from me, Fexler?’

  ‘As I’ve said, there are many ghosts in the Builders’ machines.’ I saw his frown as he tried to shape his words to my understanding. ‘These ghosts, these echoes, pay your kind scant attention. But their eyes are turning back to the now, to the dust and dirt where we all started. Many of them favour supporting new civilization so that the deep networks can be maintained and repaired. A growing number, however, now care more about the imminent threat as the veils thin. The problems of decay seem less pressing. They feel that the only way to stop the wheel turning, to maintain the barriers that keep earth different from fire, life different from death, is to destroy all mankind. And they’ve had a thousand years to circumvent the rules that once kept them from such acts. With none to wield these powers, with none left to have a will to exercise, the damage will be undone, or at least halted.’

  ‘So poor Fexler’s only fault was that he didn’t light up quite enough suns? If he had killed off the last few people there would be no problem?’ I snorted. ‘It doesn’t pay to start a job and not finish it.’

  Fexler flickered as if he were a reflection disturbed by the arrival of a stone in a pond. He frowned.

  ‘And which camp are you in, Fexler? Make us your servants to fix your carriage, or kill us all off quick before we break the world?’

  ‘I have a third way,’ he said.

  He rippled again, mouth twisting as if in pain. The light wavered in the space behind the panel, and died.

  ‘An alternative the others don’t yet acknowledge – ah!’ He faded, almost vanished, returned too bright, making me squint.

  ‘Take the control ring to Vyene. Beneath the throne there—’

  And he was gone.

  22

  Chella’s Story

  ‘Jorg of Ancrath sends you back to me again, Chella.’

  Something in the grinding of Artur Elgin’s jaw set Chella’s teeth on edge. Something in the way the Dead King ground that jawbone when he moved it to shape his words.

  ‘I’ve brought Kai Summerson to court, sire, a necromancer seeking service—’

  ‘Were you not to Jorg’s tastes, Chella? Did he spurn your proposal?’

  Just the grinding of that bone, hinge and socket, made her skin crawl. That and the glitter of his eyes. She thought of times when she had swum in foulness, of corpse-work in the darkest places, of hunting men’s remains in the deadland borders, enough horror to take almost anyone’s sanity … and yet here she cowered from nothing but the sick click and crunch of a dead man’s jaw.

  ‘Chella?’ A gentle enough reminder but lesser reprimands than that had sent the Dead King’s servants to the lichkin.

  ‘He refused me, sire.’ More than five years on and still the Dead King wanted her old failure replayed.

  ‘And you still think him a foolish youth with more luck than judgment?’

  ‘No, sire.’ Though she did. Whatever strange emotions the boy might stir in her Chella could see little of genius in his actions. When men bet on long odds in sufficient numbers some of them will walk away with the prize. It doesn’t mean those winners will win tomorrow.

  ‘I want him here, Chella, to stand before my court and to answer to me.’

  ‘Yes, sire.’ Though what Jorg Ancrath might have to answer the Dead King for she had no idea. A ‘why’ trembled on her lips but she knew it would never take flight.

  ‘Bring Kai Summerson before me.’

  Chella turned to motion Kai forward, drawing a breath of relief to be released from the Dead King’s stare if only for a moment. In the coldness of wraith-light Kai aged another decade as the Dead King’s regard fell upon him.

  ‘Kai.’ The name dropped like a dead thing from Artur Elgin’s lips. ‘Sky-sworn. Have you flown, Kai? Have you touched heaven?’

  ‘No, lord.’ Kai kept his gaze to the floor. ‘I saw what the eagle sees, but only with my mind. And now I am death-sworn.’

  ‘Death can ride the winds, Kai. Remember that. Why did you not fly? Was it beyond you? Did you not truly hold the sky within you?’

  ‘Fear kept me on the ground, lord.’ Passion in his words now, the Dead King’s talent for touching each raw nerve. ‘Fear of losing myself.’ Chella knew few sky-sworn who took flight ever returned. The winds claimed them. They lost substance and danced in storms, spread too thin to be contained in flesh again. She watched Kai, his knuckles white, nails biting. Did he wish now that he had lost himself in the pitiless blue?

  ‘It’s your will, the power of your desire, that counts in this world – in all worlds.’ For a moment the Dead King seemed almost tender, something more awful than anger coming from Artur Elgin’s dead lips. ‘The force of your conviction can anchor mind to flesh if your sense of who you are, your command of what you are, is stronger than the wind. It’s that same power of will that reels in the silver cord and draws a necromancer back from their travels in the dry lands. That same sense of self returns what won’t pass into heaven back to the shell of a man’s body, to what carried him through life, to the groove he scored in the world, be it corrupt flesh, or even bare bone, and when at last bone is lost, it returns him to a place maybe, a home, a room, to haunt the living, because misery loves company and so do all its friends.’

  Kai lifted his gaze against the weight of the Dead King’s stare. ‘Fear held me.’

  ‘Fear holds many men, fear keeps them from their duty, fathers abandon sons, one brother leaves the next to die.’

  ‘Yes, lord.’

  ‘When the storms come, Kai Summerson, show me death on wings.’ Artur Elgin’s fingers flicked to motion Kai away.

  Until the doors closed behind Kai no further words were spoken. Chella remained, the only living thing in the vaulted throne room. Perhaps hers was the only curiosity. The Dead King had need of her. Why else after all this time was she here once more, within the inner circle, humiliating reminders of her failure the only price of admission.

  ‘Chella Undenhert.’ The Dead King formed the name with care.

  ‘Sire.’ The last to know that name died six years back on Jorg Ancrath’s blade. None had spoken it in decades.

  ‘Some might think necromancy a threat to those of us who step out of the dry lands, out of the dust beyond, competition at the very least.’

  ‘Never that, sire.’ Kai’s words returned to her. Shouldn’t we be the ones to give orders?

  ‘Do you know what I want, Chella?’

  She truly didn’t. ‘Jorg Ancrath?’

  ‘I want what he wants, what all of our kind need. To rule, to own, to hold the highest ground, to have our will prevail.’

  ‘To be emperor?’ Chella knew the hunger of the dead, but ambition came as a surprise, though all the signs lay before her. A dead king in a dead king’s throne.

  ‘The empire will be a start. Remade, it can be a step from which to take everything. I am not called king of here or king of there, they call me Dead King, lord of all that does not live. Do you think in this world I would sit content with “Lord of Brettan”? Or “emperor” of an empire beyond whose borders lie lands unclaimed?’

  ‘No, sire.’ For all the horror of him a child’s greed and child’s pride lay about the Dead King. Perhaps his interest in the Ancrath kings lay in the mirror they held up to him.

  ‘Do you know why the Hundred have not united against me, Chella?’

  ‘They hate each other too much, sire. Gather them on a ship and let it sink – no hand would be spare for bailing or for swimming, they’d all be locked on throats, choking away the air before the waters could.’

  ‘They have not united because they don’t fear
me.’ Artur Elgin rose from the Dead King’s throne. ‘The returned cannot breed, they rot, they know more of hunger than of caution, they can stand against armies only where the ground favours them. It is a wonder that I have taken what I now hold with nothing but corpses to play with.’ Artur’s hand settled on Chella’s shoulder and it took all her control not to flinch it off.

  ‘Empires are won in many ways. Do you know of tactics, Chella?’

  ‘A little, sire.’ If he would just take that hand away …

  ‘And what are the only two tactical advantages of my legions, Chella?’

  ‘I— I— They know no fear?’

  ‘No.’ An exquisite agony bled into her shoulder and the Dead King returned Artur’s hand to his side. ‘A man without fear is missing a friend. An old ghost once told me that.

  ‘My troops have two tactical advantages. They don’t breathe and they don’t eat. That means that any swamp, lake, or sea, is a stronghold and that I need not maintain supply lines. Past that they are poor servants at best. And it is these advantages that have given me the Isles and allow us to assault Ancrath from the Ken Marshes.

  ‘Beyond this, my ambitions require new strategies if they are to be met on a timescale to my liking.’

  The Dead King settled once more in Artur Elgin’s driftwood throne. He ran white fingers along the chair’s polished arms, and Chella heard the screams of sailors drowning.

  ‘Thantos, Keres.’

  Two lichkin detached from their brethren and moved to flank the Dead King. Still Chella’s eyes would not see them, returning only glimpses of ghost-wrapped bone.

  ‘Chella.’ He leaned Artur’s body toward her in the chair. ‘Choosing a strategy is like deciding upon a weapon. And a weapon needs a point if it is to pierce the foe, neh? You, Chella, are going to pierce the belly of the empire for me. I’m sending you on a journey. Brother Thantos and Sister Keres will keep you safe. The remainder of your escort is on a ship approaching the harbour as we speak.’