Emperor of Thorns Read online

  ‘You just shot Harran!’ Rosson, the man on the left, spat.

  ‘I did.’ I nodded. ‘I’m going to shoot you next. I figure I’ll be able to kill twenty of you before I need to start digging the bolts out of your corpses in order to continue. Now must I repeat my question? On what grounds are you drawing steel against me? I’m sure Captain Harran would not have approved. He at least knew his duty!’

  ‘I—’ Captain Rosson hesitated, his blade not yet clear of the scabbard.

  ‘Your duty, Captain, is to protect me. You can hardly do that by hacking at me with your sword now can you? The only circumstance that would permit you to attack me is if I threatened another of your charges. But I’m not doing that. I’m just going to kill the few hundred guard assigned to me.’

  ‘King Jorg – you— you can’t be serious,’ Captain Rosson said.

  I failed to see how I could be more serious, but some men take time to adjust to unfamiliar circumstances.

  ChooOOOooom.

  Rosson hit the mud with a dull splat. At a range of two yards no breastplate, however fancy, is going to stop a crossbow bolt from a mechanism as heavy as the Nuban’s bow.

  I set to winding again, starting to feel the ache in my bicep. ‘Captain Devers? Are you going to bring Jarco Renar to speak with me? Remember, if I try to kill him you can cut me to pieces.’

  Rosson twitched in the mud. He tried to say something but only blood came out.

  Miana and Katherine crowded the carriage door, Gomst peering over the pair. Osser Gant appeared to prefer his ledgers.

  ‘Jorg!’ Katherine’s hair fell around her in dark red curls, a heat in those eyes. ‘These are honourable men!’

  ‘And I am not.’ I held my hand out. ‘Quarrel.’

  ‘Men with families, lives to live …’

  Miana said nothing, her face held tight against emotion, my son clasped to her breast.

  I ignored Katherine and addressed the guard instead, lifting my voice to carry on the cold afternoon breeze. ‘I quite liked Captain Harran. You saw where that got him. The rest of you I hardly know. My newborn son is at risk. I hunted down a lichkin to ensure his safety. Do you think I will flinch at murdering each and every one of you?

  ‘I suggest Jarco Renar be brought before me, or this will not end well.’

  Viewed along the length of my crossbow Captain Devers looked pale and unhappy. He had flipped up his visor to reveal a thin face decorated with scars and pockmarks, a short, dark beard hugging his chin.

  ‘Bring Renar here!’ he shouted.

  While we waited I mounted Brath and backed him in a tight circle. He had been well trained and the smell of blood didn’t bother him. Captain Harran’s helm came free of the hedgerow thorns and I held it in one hand, the crossbow in the other, steering Brath with my knees.

  Sir Kent clambered from his horse onto the top of the carriage. Choosing the right position had kept Kent alive more times than any armour or skill with a blade.

  ‘Bring me some more captains.’ I raised the crossbow toward Captain Devers again.

  ‘No wait!’ He put up his hands, as if that would stop a quarrel! ‘He’ll be here!’

  ‘But you will not.’ I squeezed the trigger, but before I’d applied sufficient pressure the guard ranks parted and Jarco Renar sat before me on a roan mare in golden armour. I turned the crossbow toward him.

  ‘I would have sent out someone else,’ I told him. ‘Just to see if I knew what you look like.’ It happened that I knew what he looked like, though we had never met.

  Jarco hadn’t his brother’s chubbiness, or that deceiving amiability Marclos had. A taller man, broader in the shoulder, he had more of my uncle’s look about him, more of the Renar wolf.

  I advanced Brath toward him. Hands tightened on sword hilts all around me.

  ‘Here.’ I gave Captain Devers the loaded crossbow, leaning in for a conspiratorial whisper. ‘If he attacks me be ready to shoot him. You’re here to protect me, remember. Cousin Jarco has his own defenders, the guard who rode with him out of Crath City.’

  I pulled Brath’s head around. ‘Jarco, so pleased you could join us.’

  ‘Cousin Jorg.’ His horse stepped around Captain Rosson who was taking a damned long time to die for somebody shot through the chest.

  A squeeze of the knees brought Brath in closer. Harran’s empty helm dripped dark blood on my leg.

  ‘I’m not happy with you, Jarco,’ I told him.

  ‘Nor I with you, Cousin Jorg.’

  ‘That rebellion of yours left me weak in the face of my enemies, Jarco.’ With the soldiers lost taking Hodd Town back under control, the defence against the Prince of Arrow would not have been quite so desperate. The battle had left Hodd Town rather the worse for wear too, and it had been ugly to start with.

  ‘You sit in my throne, Cousin.’ He had a touch of Father’s coldness in his eyes, and some of Uncle’s wildness. I would have paid well to be a spy at court the day Jarco came to beg King Olidan’s favour. How had my father greeted his nephew? ‘You rule over my people,’ Jarco said.

  ‘They love me well.’ I smiled to irk him. Jarco knew it for truth. Kings who bring victories are always loved and the price paid soon forgotten. The Highlanders had found new pride at being the centre of a realm of nations. As Uncle’s subjects they had been a footnote in the business of empire, forgotten often as not. Happier, safer no doubt, but men will spend such coin to hold themselves in better esteem, for we are shallow creatures, brutish and raised on blood.

  ‘What is it you want of me, Jorg?’ He faked a yawn and stifled it.

  ‘I note that you worry over your inheritance, Cousin, but you seem to have forgiven me for your father.’ A shrug and a tilt of the head to show my puzzlement. ‘And your sweet brother.’

  ‘I do not forget them.’ Muscles bunching around his jaw.

  ‘Perhaps you would like something to remember them by, to remember your lost heritage? Your lost pride. It can be hard to lose your family.’ I slid Gog from my scabbard, hilt toward my cousin. The blade had been Uncle Renar’s, ancient work, forged from Builder steel and brought into Ancrath hands by my father’s grandfather when he took the Highlands for his own as the empire crumbled.

  Jarco took the sword, quick as you like. Better to have it in his hands rather than mine. I could see the hate burning in him. To some men there’s no poison worse than a gift, none worse than a measure of pity. I would know.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Should some harm befall me, should the Highlands ever cry for a trueborn Renar on the throne, it wouldn’t be you who gets to wear the crown.’

  The blade stood between us, his ancestral steel.

  He frowned, black brows crowding. ‘You make no sense, Ancrath. I hold title before that mewling babe of yours.’ William let out an obliging cry before Miana stuffed his mouth again.

  ‘But even in your grasping for your father’s title, Jarco, you would admit that his right to it outweighs your own?’

  ‘My father … ?’ The point of his sword, of the blade I’d named Gog, aimed at my heart. My breastplate lay neatly wrapped behind me, strapped to the saddlebags.

  ‘I should have let Uncle die. A better man would have. But I do so enjoy our chats. Enough to walk down all those steps to the dungeon several times a week. He speaks of you often, Jarco. It’s hard to understand his words these days, but I don’t think Uncle Renar is well pleased with you.’

  It took one more smile to make him crack. He had a quick arm, I’ll give him that. Even deflected with Harran’s helmet Jarco’s thrust ran through my hair as I ducked.

  ChooOOoom! And Captain Devers did his duty.

  Jarco fell backwards off his nag, feet coming up out of his stirrups. I had to laugh.

  Katherine jumped down beside him in the mud, careless of her skirts. Miana offered me a wordless stare. The look of someone who’s got what they asked for, bitter or not, and knows it.

  ‘You didn’t have to kill him.’ Katherine lo
oked up with murder in her eyes. I like people who have the grace to show their anger.

  ‘Captain Devers killed him,’ I said, and took my bow back from the man in question and slung it over a shoulder.

  ‘My apologies, Brother Rike.’ I handed him Brath’s reins and slid from the saddle. A few strands of cut hair floated down with me.

  I scooped Gog from the dirt and wiped the blade clean on Rosson’s cloak. He watched me from a white face.

  ‘Did anyone ever once tell you I was a nice man, Rosson?’

  He didn’t answer. Dead at last perhaps.

  Gorgoth loomed over me, silent, watching.

  I looked up. ‘I might have grown past the killing of men on a whim, Gorgoth, but be damned sure I consider the safety of my son more than a whim.’

  I sheathed Gog then climbed back into the carriage. Miana waited with William, Osser with his ledgers, Gomst with God’s judgment. I spoke to Katherine instead, down in the mud with Jarco.

  ‘You know he had to die. Or at least you will know it in an hour, or a day. What makes us different is that I knew it from the moment you spoke. And in the end, my way is quicker, cleaner, and fewer people get hurt.’

  33

  Five years earlier

  ‘Very funny.’ I wiped the camel spit from my leg.

  My unnamed steed curled its lip, showing narrow and uneven teeth, then turned to face the backside of the camel ahead.

  ‘When we’re through with this journey I plan to buy you and eat your liver,’ I told it.

  Riding a camel is nothing like horse riding. You’re a yard higher in the air and perched on a creature that regards you as an unforgivable insult. The beast’s natural gait is designed to throw a passenger off at each stride, lurching you first forward and to the left, backward to the right, forward to the right, backward to the left, in endless repetition.

  Omal, one of the drovers for the camel-train, came alongside. ‘Sail him, Jorg. You came by sea, no? Sail him. Not horse – camel.’

  Michael promised me a ship. The drovers’ agents who came to our lodging to collect us for the ‘train’ had laughed at that. ‘Camel! Camel! Ship of the desert, effendi.’ And grinning like loons, as if to humour us, they had loaded Marco’s trunk onto one of the beasts then led us away to join the caravan.

  How Michael arranged to have us travel with the caravan I didn’t know, but it seemed clear that whilst Hamada might be blocked to the Builder-ghosts, they still had ways into Kutta at times of need. I hadn’t asked him. Instead I had seated myself in a wicker chair that looked too frail for the task and said, ‘I would guess you’re one of the ghosts that wants the Prince of Arrow for emperor so he can earn us the peace we need if we’re to school ourselves for service to your machines.’

  Marco’s tight little mouth dropped open at that. Despite the common saying, there are few men whose jaws actually do drop in surprise. Marco’s did, dry lips parting with an audible pop. I could have held tight to my knowledge, for such snippets can be a valuable commodity and the banking clans do so love to trade. However, Fexler had left me such meagre scraps I thought it better to spend them carelessly in the hope that scattering my crumbs might convince others I had reserves of such lore and should be treated with respect.

  I added, ‘If you stood with those that want to burn all life from the world, well I’m sure you know of other places like the vaults in Gelleth where you could find enough fire and enough poison for the job?’

  Marco’s open mouth snapped closed and he turned to Michael, eyes blazing. It didn’t seem to occur to him that I could be lying. An observation that I tucked away for future need.

  I continued, ‘In fact I’d like to know what stops them, these scorched-earthers, from wiping the slate clean? Does a war rage in all the Builder relics, humming to themselves in the dusts of the promised lands, scattered and hidden in cellars, secreted in luggage … ?’

  Michael’s eyes were the least convincing part of his illusion, as though something wholly alien watched me through two holes punched into a man’s face. I wondered what the real Michael had been like, and how far a thousand years had moved this creature from its starting template.

  ‘It’s very easy to kill most of the people,’ Michael said. ‘And very hard to kill absolutely all of them. To do so would require a consensus, cooperation between all, or almost all, of my people. Rather like Congression. Perhaps on the day you finally elect a replacement for your dead emperor you should start to worry that my kind might find a similar unity of purpose.’

  ‘And what of Fexler Brews?’ I would play a closer hand here. Fexler spoke of a third way, and neither of the first two were to my liking.

  ‘Brews?’ It heartened me to see the Builder ghost sneer. At least that much humanity persisted in the data echo. ‘A servant, barely more than a maintenance algorithm. He is free to act now, but after a millennium on the margins of our world he is hardly the spokesman for you to listen to. Would you want me to judge you by the man who winds open your gate to let me in?’

  As I swayed through the Margins, only a little more easy in my saddle than Marco lurching on the mount ahead of me, I knew Fexler Brews for what he was. A glorified gatekeeper with delusions of grandeur.

  The Margins of the Sahar Desert are a vast and barren wilderness of cracked mud. A fissured geometry stretches across these lands, repeating at ever-larger scales, dust-blown, unbroken by mountain, lake, tree, or bush. In places the cracks are paper-thin, elsewhere you might stick your arm down them, and there are others still that would swallow a camel. Twisted creatures skulk in the fissures, hiding from the sun at surprising depths where the mud still remembers ancient rains. In the darkness they emerge.

  Our train comprised six score camels and fifty men to ride them, the desert Moors or Taureg as they called themselves. Most of the Taureg were traders, or drovers like Omal in their employ. They sold goods from the Port Kingdoms in Hamada, and returned with salt blocks. The salt they purchased from factors who in turn bought it from the Salash, almost-men, capable of enduring the oven heat of the deep Sahar where even the hardiest of Moorish tribes could not travel.

  Along with the merchants and their workers, a dozen Ha’tari accompanied us, warriors from a mercenary clan of great repute. They slouched on their mounts by day, dead to the world, and earned their keep at night, driving off predators that emerged from the cracked landscape.

  On the first night of our journey around the camel-dung fires of Taureg we sat with our backs to the night and sipped hot java from cups no bigger than thimbles. I still hated the stuff but the expense made it an insult to refuse. The stars gave more light than the fire, a white-hot blaze of them across the sky. The Moors chattered in their harsh tongue, and in whispers I quizzed Marco. The discovery that not only was I known to the Builder-ghosts, but knew of them, had moderated his opinions somewhat and if he still held me in contempt at least he made some effort to disguise the fact.

  ‘Ibn Fayed must know we’re coming,’ I said. ‘He made efforts to thwart us, and yet he allows our progress now. Surely a dozen Ha’tari aren’t going to stop his men?’

  ‘Clearly his objections to my audit are not sufficiently large to incur the bad feeling that slaughtering a Taureg salt caravan would engender. Those objections were, however, large enough to motivate efforts to deny me transport.’ Marco sipped his java, sucking it through his teeth.

  ‘And he has no objections to my visit?’

  A large dung beetle scurried over my boot. Eight legs, a mutant. For a moment little Gretcha watched me from the fire-glow. I scowled and the fire flared then dimmed, causing the drovers to shift back, muttering.

  ‘Your visit? Why should he even know of it?’ Marco’s permanent frown deepened.

  ‘Yusuf knew of it.’

  ‘And what is Lord Yusuf to you or me?’

  For someone who dragged the means to speak to a Builder ghost around with him, Marco seemed to know very little.

  ‘Yusuf is a mathmagician.�
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  Marco raised an eyebrow at that. ‘Abominations, all of them. But Ibn Fayed doesn’t own such creatures. They have their own agendas. Don’t think the only reason the numbered men may seek you is in the caliph’s service.’

  Beneath my travel cloak I toyed with the view-ring, rotating it through my fingers. A thought struck, a bolt from the diamond-scattered night, piercing me skull to toes. The fingers around the ring closed in a grip that might have crushed it if it were only a little less robust.

  ‘Why do you have to drag that trunk with you, Marco? Why is it so damn heavy?’

  The banker blinked at me.

  ‘It weighs more than the two of us!’ I said.

  He blinked again. ‘How heavy should it be?’

  I clutched the view-ring and thought back to a time when it had taken both Gorgoth and Rike to carry a work of the Builders from a vault deep beneath the Castle Red.

  The trip through the Margins took three days, our journey punctuated by the crossing of the widest fissures on a bridge of three planks, carried for the purpose, laid down and picked up, time and again. We travelled without landmarks, beset with dust storms, always too dry, always too hot. At one point we passed the carcass of a vast beetle, its hollowed carapace large enough to stable camels. In three days those remains were the only thing to break the monotony of flat, cracked, mud.

  The desert announced itself as ripples on the horizon. With remarkable speed the hardpan and dust gave over to sand, rising in white dunes to heights I would not have imagined possible.

  In the desert the Tauregs’ skills became obvious. The way they navigated, counting the dunes as if they were landmarks rather than identical shifting masses. The way they trekked up the lee of each white mountain, threading the path of least resistance, finding the firm-packed sand for good-footing, finding the best respite from the wind, and in the evening, blessed intervals of shade.