King of Thorns be-2 Page 30

  “Two silver and you haul rope when told,” he said.

  “One silver and I get fed with the crew,” I said and started walking toward the gangplank. I could ride the Maria just as well. In fact it sounded better each time I said it.

  “Done,” he said.

  And so I sailed on the Sea-goat with Captain Nellis.

  Before the Sea-goat hoisted sail I took a last walk around the seafront and stopped in at the Port Commander’s office long enough to place a bribe of sufficient weight to considerably lighten my gold supply. Ideally the Brothers would be steered onto a ship that would take them north up the coast and abandon them in a minor port. Makin would be too busy vomiting to notice which side of the boat the land lay off. Failing that, they need only arrest Makin and hold him a week or two-long enough for my trail to grow cold and to remind him that in the end when your king tells you to do something, you do it.

  I like the sea. Even with a gentle swell, with the coast in plain view just ten miles to starboard, it sets me in mind of mountains in motion. I like the nautical phrases. Splice this, belay that. If Lundist proves right and we are all reborn, I’ll go once more round life’s wheel as a pirate. Everything about the ocean puts me in a good mood. The smell and the taste of it. The cry of seagulls. God jammed some kind of magic down their throats. No wonder the crows want to murder them and the ravens are unkind.

  Captain Nellis didn’t like me being on the quarterdeck, or so he said, but I spent my time there, legs dangling through the rail with him behind me, dwarfed by the wheel. He could have roped it off for all the steering he did, but he seemed to like to hold it while he shouted at his men. To my eye he steered them as little as he did the ship. His curses and instructions rolled off the crew and they went about their tasks oblivious.

  “I’ll buy me a ship one day,” I said.

  “Surely,” Captain Nellis spat something thick and unpleasant onto the deck. Without men like him and Row, decks probably wouldn’t need swabbing at all.

  “A big one, mind. Not a barge like this. Something that cuts the waves rather than wallows about in them.”

  “A young sell-sword like yourself shouldn’t set his sights so low,” Nellis growled. “Buy a whole fleet.”

  “A valid point, Captain. Very valid. If my kingdom ever gets a coastline I will buy a fleet. I’ll be sure to name one of them the Spitting Nellis.”

  And so for the rest of that day, and most of the next, the Sea-goat wallowed its way sedately around the shore, stopping once in a small port to unload a huge copper pot and to fill the space with red-finned fish called…red-fin. I slept a night in a hammock, below decks, rolling in the gentle arms of coastal waters and dreaming of absolutely nothing. I can only recommend hammocks if you’re at sea. On dry land there seems no point to them. And sleep above deck if you have the chance. The Sea-goat had an appropriately animal smell to it in the stale heat of its hold.

  My grandfather’s castle is called Morrow. It overlooks the sea, standing as close to a high cliff as a brave child might, but not so close as a foolhardy one. It has an elegance to it, being tall and slender in its towers, and sensibly tiled on its many roofs, having fought fiercer and more prolonged battles with ocean storms than with any army trekking to it overland.

  The port of Arrapa lies just two miles north of Castle Morrow and I disembarked there, taking some pleasure in unsettling Captain Nellis with enthusiastic thanks for his services. I left the crew unloading red-fin and taking on crates of saddles destined for Wennith Town. Why the fishermen of Arrapa couldn’t catch their own red-fin I never did find out.

  A well-maintained cart track winds up from the port to Castle Morrow. I walked, enjoying the sunshine, and turned down the offer of a ride in a charcoal man’s cart.

  “It gets steep,” he said.

  “Steep’s fine,” I said. And he flicked his mule on.

  I wanted to come incognito to Castle Morrow, wanted it bad enough to see Makin thrown in a cell rather than risk him spoiling my cover. It has to be said that my experience with relations has been a mixed bag. Having a father like mine breeds caution in these situations. I needed to see these new family members in their element, without the complications of who I was or what I wanted.

  Add to the mix the fact that my grandfather and uncle were said to hate Olidan Ancrath with a passion for the way he sold the absolution for Mother’s death-as if his brother had merely inconvenienced him by sending assassins to kill her. I might be my mother’s son but I have more than my fair share of Father’s blood and with the tales Grandfather was like to have heard of me it would not be unreasonable for him to see me cast in the image of Olidan rather than the child of his beloved Rowen.

  I had a sweat on me by the time I reached the castle gates, but the cliff tops caught a sea breeze and I let it cool me. I stepped up to the archway. Double portcullis, well-crafted merlons topping the gatehouse, arrow slits positioned with some thought-in all a nice bit of castle-building. The smallest of three guardsmen stepped to intercept me.

  “I’m looking for work,” I said.

  “Nothing for you, son.” He didn’t ask what kind of work. I had a big sword on my belt, a scorching hot breastplate over my leathers, and a helm at my hip.

  “How about some water then? I’ve sweated my way up from the beach and it’s a thirsty mile.”

  The guard nodded to a stone trough for horses by the side of the road.

  “Hmmm.” The water looked only marginally better than the stuff in the Cantanlona swamp.

  “Best be on your way, son. It’s a thirsty mile back to Arrapa too,” the guard said.

  I started to dislike the man. I named him “Sunny” for his disposition and his repeated claims of fatherhood. I reached inside my breastplate, trying not to touch the metal and failing. My fingers discovered the corner they were hunting and I pulled out a sealed letter, wrapped in stained linen. “Also, I have this for Earl Hansa,” I said, unfolding it from the cloth.

  “Do you now?” Sunny reached for it and I pulled it back at the same speed he moved his hand. “Best let me see that, son,” he said.

  “Best read the name on the front before you grubby it up too much, Father.” I let him take it, and used the linen to mop sweat from my forehead.

  To Sunny’s credit he held the letter with some reverence by the very corners, and although we both knew he couldn’t read, he played out the pantomime well, peering at the script above the wax seal. “Wait here,” he told me and set off into the courtyard beyond.

  I smiled for the two remaining guards then took myself off to a patch of shade where I slumped and let the flies have their way. I set my back to the trunk of the lone tree providing the shade. It looked to be an olive. I’d never seen the tree before but I knew the fruit, and the stones littered the ground. It looked old. Older than the castle perhaps.

  Sunny took almost an hour to return and by that time the horse trough had started to look tempting. He brought two house guards with him, their uniform richer, chainmail on their chests rather than the leathers of the wall guard who had to endure the heat.

  “Go with them,” Sunny said. I think he would have given a day’s wages to be able to send me back down the hill, and another day’s to be able to send me on my way with the toe of his boot.

  In the courtyard a marble fountain sprayed. The water jetted from many small holes in the mouth of a fish and collected in a wide circular pool. I had seen illustrations of fountains in Father’s books. Reference was made to the team of men needed to work the pump in order to maintain pressure. I pitied any men sweltering away in darkness to make this pretty thing function…but the fine spray made a cool heaven as we walked past.

  Many windows overlooked the courtyard, not shuttered but faced with pierced veils of stone, worked with great artistry in intricate patterns that left more air than rock. I couldn’t see into the shadows behind but I felt watched.

  We passed through a short corridor, floored with geometric mosaic, into
a smaller courtyard where on a stone bench in the shade of three orange trees, a nobleman waited, plain dressed but with a gold band on his wrist and too clean to be anything but highborn. Not Earl Hansa; he was too young for that, but surely someone of his family. Of my family. I kept more of my father’s features but this man shared some of my lines, high cheekbones, dark hair cropped close, watchful eyes.

  “I am Robert,” he said. He had the letter open in his hand. “My sister wrote this. She speaks well of you.”

  In truth I spoke well of myself when I set quill to parchment some months ago. I called myself William and said that I had proven a loyal aid to Queen Rowen, honest, brave, and gifted in both letter and number. I copied the slant and shape of the writing from an older letter, a crumpled scrap I kept close to my heart for many years. A letter from my mother.

  “I’m honoured.” I bowed deeply. “I hope that the Queen’s recommendation, God rest her, will find me a place in your household.”

  Lord Robert watched me, and I watched him. It felt good to find an uncle that I didn’t long to kill.

  41

  Four years earlier

  “You look very young, William. How many years are you? Sixteen? Seventeen?” Robert said.

  “Nineteen, my lord. I look young for my age,” I said.

  “And my sister has been dead nearly five years. So that makes you fourteen or fifteen when she wrote this?”

  “Fifteen, my lord.”

  “Early in life to have made such an impression. Honest, brave, numerate, literate. So why are you wandering so far from home in such poor circumstances, William?”

  “I served in the Forest Watch, my lord. After Queen Rowen was slain. And when the Watch-master led us against Count Renar who took your sister’s life, Queen Rowen I mean, I fought in the Highlands. But I have family in Ancrath, so when justice was served on the Count, I took to the roads so that I would be thought killed in the battle at the Haunt, and no punishments would fall on my relatives to make me surrender to King Olidan. Since then I have been making my way here, my lord, hoping to continue in service to Queen Rowen’s family.”

  “That’s quite a tale,” Robert said. “To be told in one mouthful without pause for breath.”

  I said nothing and watched the shadows of the orange trees dance.

  “So you fought alongside my nephew, Jorg?” Robert said. “Did you come by your injury that way?” He set his hand to his cheek.

  “I didn’t fight by his side, my lord. But I was on the same battlefield. He wouldn’t know my name and face,” I said. “Not even with this scar. That came more recently. On my travels.”

  “That must be the honesty Rowen wrote of. Many would be tempted to say they fought at his left hand in order to lay stronger claim on my generosity.” Robert smiled. He rubbed at the small dark triangle of beard on his chin. “Can you use that sword?” he asked. He wore plain linens, a loose shirt, his chest and arms tanned and hard muscled. Perhaps more a horseman than a swordsman but he would know blades.

  “I can.”

  “And read. And write?”

  “Yes.”

  “A man of many talents,” Robert said. “I’ll have Lord Jost find a place for you in the house guard. That will do for now. I should introduce you to Qalasadi too-he always likes to meet a man who knows his numbers.” He smiled as if he’d made a joke.

  “My thanks, Lord Robert,” I said.

  “Don’t thank me, William. Thank my sister. And be sure to show us all how good a judge of character she was.” He looked up through the orange-tree leaves at the dazzling blue sky. “Take him to Captain Ortens,” he said, and house guards led me away.

  I slept that night in a bunk in the west tower guardhouse. Ortens, a man with more scars on his bald head than would seem reasonable or even possible, had grumbled and cursed, but he had a chain surcoat brought up from the armoury and sent for the seamstress to fit me with a uniform in the blues of House Morrow. I also got a service blade, a longsword from the same forge as the other guards, assumed to be superior to the one in my dirt-caked scabbard and certainly more aesthetically pleasing, completing the house guard ensemble as it did.

  The older men of the guard offered the traditional doubts about my ability to use a sword, concerns that I would miss my mother, and bets about how long it would be before the captain threw me out. In addition, my foreign heritage allowed for the airing of low opinions of the northern kingdoms in general and Ancrath in particular. Ancrath proved an especially sore point since their Princess Rowen had met a foul end there. I owned that I did miss my mother but it wouldn’t cause me to go running home. I further admitted that I was a citizen of Ancrath, but one who had fought at the gates of the man who killed its queen, and who had seen him pay for his crimes. As to my fighting skills I invited any man who felt overburdened with blood to come and test them for himself.

  I slept well that night.

  The House Morrow wakes early. Most of it pre-dawn so that some progress can be made before the summer descends and any sensible man retreats into the shortening shade. I found myself in the practice yard with four other recent recruits. Captain Ortens came from his breakfast to watch in person as an elderly sergeant put us through our paces with wooden swords.

  I resisted the urge to put on a show and kept my swordplay basic. An experienced eye is hard to deceive though, and I suspected that Ortens left with a higher opinion of recruit William than the one he brought to the yard with him.

  After a couple of hours it grew warm for sword-work and Sergeant Mattus sent us to our assignments. I had always imagined the duties of the guard at the Haunt and at the Tall Castle to be tedious. Not until I tried them myself for half a day did I fathom quite how dull such service is. I got to stand at the Lowery Gate, an iron door affording access to what was little more than an extended balcony garden where the noble ladies cultivated sage grass, miniature lemon trees, and various flowering plants that had lost their blooms months earlier and set to seed. If any intruder were to gain the balcony then I was to refuse him entrance to the castle. An unlikely event since they would need to fall off a passing cloud to reach the balcony. If any lady of the house were to wish to visit the garden, then I was empowered to unlock the door for them and to lock it again when they had taken their leave. I’m bored even scratching it out on this page. I stood there for three hours in an itchy uniform and saw nobody at all. No one even passed down the adjoining corridor.

  Another recruit from the morning’s training exercise relieved me at noon and I set off to find the guards’ refectory. I now know why it’s called relief.

  “A moment of your time, young man.”

  I stopped just a yard from the refectory door and let my stomach complain for me. I made a slow turn.

  “I’m told you are numerate.” The man had stepped from the shade of a lilac bush that swarmed up the inner wall of the main courtyard. A Moor, darker than the shadow, wrapped in a black burnoose, the burnt umber of his skin exposed only on his hands and face.

  “Count on it,” I said.

  He smiled. His teeth were black, painted with some dye, the effect unsettling. “I am Qalasadi.”

  “William,” I said.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “How may I help you, Lord Qalasadi?” I asked. He held himself like a noble, though no gold glittered on him. I judged him by the cut of his robe and the neat curl of his short beard and hair. Wealth buys a certain grooming that speaks of money, even when the rich man’s tastes are simple.

  “Just Qalasadi,” he said.

  I liked him. Simple as that. Sometimes I just do.

  He crouched and with an ivory wand, drawn from his sleeve, he wrote numbers in the dust. “Your people call me a mathmagician,” he said.

  “And what do you call yourself?” I asked.

  “Numbered,” he said. “Tell me what you see.”

  I looked at his scribbling. “Is that a root symbol?”

  “Yes.”

  “
I see primes, here, here, and…here. This is a rational number, this one irrational. I see families.” I circled groups with my toe, some overlapping. “Real numbers, integers, imaginary numbers, complex numbers.”

  He sketched again, flowing symbols that I remembered only dimly. “And this?”

  “Some part of the integral calculus. But it goes beyond my lessons.” It panged me to admit defeat though I should have held my tongue after recognizing prime numbers for him. Pride is my weakness.

  “Interesting.” Qalasadi scuffed the dust to erase his writings as if they might prove dangerous to others.

  “So do you have me figured out?” I asked. “What’s my magic number?” I had heard tell of mathmagicians. They seemed little different from the witches, astrologers, and soothsayers from closer to home, obsessed with casting futures, handing out labels, parting fools from their coin. If he told me something about the glories ahead for the Prince of Arrow I would have trouble restraining myself. If he suggested I might be born in the year of the goat then there would be no restraint!

  Again the black smile. “Your magic number is three,” he said.

  I laughed. But he looked serious. “Three?” I shook my head. “There are a lot of numbers to choose from. Three just seems a little…predictable.”

  “Everything is predictable,” Qalasadi said. “At its core my arts are the working of probability, which produces prediction, and that leads us to timing, and in the end, my friend, everything comes down to a matter of timing does it not?”

  He had a point. “But three?” I waved my hands, groping for outrage. “Three?”