King of Thorns be-2 Read online

  “I went to the grouch chamber this morning,” I said.

  The Builders’ view-ring hung on a thong about my neck, under the tunic Robert’s dresser had given me. I considered drawing it out to show him, but didn’t. Habits learned on the road die hard. I had laid hands on it and it was mine; I would keep my advantage hidden. The metal weighed heavy over my heart. Perhaps guilt feels like that.

  “All that dust and spiders just to have an old ghost tell you to go to hell.” My uncle sipped his wine. “I used to go down a few times a year. But the grouch never changes, and in the end I did.”

  “Do you know what the machinery does?” I asked.

  “Who knows what any of that devilry is for? It pumps water-I understand that much, but they say everything the Builders made did ten different things. My father has left it alone for sixty years, his father left it untouched, and his father before him. It’s from a world best forgotten. Gelleth should have taught you that.”

  My wine tasted sour. The light of that Builders’ Sun reached even here into a summer’s night on the Horse Coast. He was wrong in any case. The Builders weren’t gone, we couldn’t forget them. Their ghosts echoed in machinery buried in our vaults, their eyes watched us from above clouds, we fought our little wars in their shadow. Perhaps we even waged those wars at their instigation, something to keep us busy, to have us too focused on the now to think about the then.

  “Gelleth taught me a lot of things. That we’re children in a world we don’t own or understand. That we stand alone and whether I fail or succeed depends on the strength of my will. On how far I will go. And that no one will come to help us in our hour of need.” And that some things can’t be fixed even if you bring the sun to earth and crumble mountains.

  I thought of Gelleth, of the ghosts Chella drew from me. Since the night of storm and thorns I’d been haunted by what others had done to me. Gelleth taught me I could also be haunted by what I’d done to others.

  The dead child watched me, broken against the tower battlements, blood and hair, a reminder of William and the milestone, his eyes two bright points of starlight. Another ghost, another misfortune seeking a home.

  “You never came. I thought you would come for me.” In my mind I had seen Uncle Robert ride to the Tall Castle a hundred times, with the cavalry of the House Morrow streaming behind him, to demand an accounting for his sister’s death, to claim his nephew and take him home. “If Morrow had ridden to avenge Mother’s death there would have been no Gelleth.” No years on the road. No rivers of blood. No dead child watching.

  Robert studied his goblet. “You fled Ancrath before news of Rowen’s death even reached us here. Olidan was slow to send word, and the word was slow to find its way.”

  “But you didn’t come.” Old anger ignited within me and I went quickly to the stair in case it boiled out. I had climbed the steps a king, a man pressing fifteen years, and now a hurt and wrathful child shouted through me, through the years.

  “Jorg-”

  “No!” The hand I raised to keep him in his seat shook with the fierceness of what I held back and the air seemed to shimmer with heat. I hadn’t known the memories would seize me like this.

  I ran from the tower, scared that I might find the blood of a second uncle on my hands.

  We calmed the hurt between us the next morning, but with pleasantries and empty words of the kind that are layered over rather than used to scour clean. I didn’t let him speak of it again. Instead I spoke of Ibn Fayed and of Qalasadi. I had been to considerable lengths to get an accounting for Mother’s death and for William’s, and yet here were two men who had come within moments of taking Mother’s whole family from me-Uncle, Grandmother, Grandfather. What’s more, the mathmagician had, with a cool head, seen through my secret and chosen to take them all before they even knew I was amongst them, to kill with poison all my mother’s kin and to see me die for it under horrible restitution. There seemed no malice in it, only calculation, but I couldn’t leave such an equation unbalanced. It wouldn’t be proper.

  Robert tried to turn me from revenge. “Ibn Fayed will come to us in time and break his strength here. That will be the time for his accounting.” But I had more immediate plans. Revenge can be the easy path to follow though I have often painted it as the hardest.

  I left for the last time months later, suntanned, taller, provisioned, and laden with gifts. My saddlebags bulged with them, tempting enough for any bandits I might meet. I kept what mattered most about my person. The thorn-patterned box, the Builders’ view-ring, and the weapon that killed Fexler Brews more than nine hundred years previously, a hard and heavy lump strapped beneath my arm. I’ve always seen “no” as a challenge rather than an answer.

  Above those treasures though I left with a message, a mantra if you like. Do not open that box. Open it and my work is undone. Open it and you’re finished.

  Never open the box.

  You won’t see Brother Grumlow try to knife you, only the sorrow in his eyes as you fall.

  45

  Wedding day

  The crash of a rock against the keep wall drowned me out. A shield fell off its hook and clattered to the floor, dust sifted down from above.

  “The gate will not hold,” I said again.

  “Then we will fight them in the courtyard,” Sir Hebbron said.

  I chose not to mention that he had surrendered to me in the same courtyard four years earlier, with just Gog and Gorgoth at my back rather than the Prince of Arrow’s fourteen thousand men.

  If Coddin were present he would have spoken of surrender himself. Not out of fear but compassion. Perhaps he might say that when we fell back to the keep he would call out for terms, so that the common folk sheltering at the Haunt might be spared.

  But Coddin wasn’t present.

  The dead child watched me from a shadowed corner, older and more sad with each passing year. At the corner of my vision he seemed to speak, but if I looked his way he said nothing, blue lips pressed tight. What man can hope for victory when his doom watches from every shadow? He was nothing but mine, this ghost, no trick of Chella’s, no sending of the Dead King, just a sad and silent reminder of a crime even Luntar’s little box couldn’t keep entirely secret.

  Another crash and I looked away from the corner, shaking off the moment.

  The knights and captains watched me, the light from high windows gleaming on their armour. These men were built for war. I considered how many of them I would sacrifice to stop the Prince of Arrow. How many I would sacrifice just to wound Arrow, just to put a bigger hole in his army.

  The answer turned out to be all of them.

  “When they come we will fight them in the courtyard. And through the doors of the keep, and up each stair, and to this very room if need be.” My cheek throbbed where I’d sliced it, aching at each word. I ran my fingers across the line of black and clotted blood.

  “Sir Makin, Sir Kent, I want you leading the defence at the gate. I want everyone in this room out there.”

  They started for the door. Kent stopped.

  “Sir Kent?” he said.

  “Don’t let it go to your head,” I said. “And don’t expect a ceremony.”

  Kent made a slow shake of his head. I could see his eyes shine. I hadn’t thought it would mean much to him.

  “Take the scorpions from the walls and set them in the yard. Put them front and centre. You’ll get one shot and then they’ll just be a barricade,” I said. “And, Makin, get some armour on.”

  The Haunt had five scorpions, giant crossbows on wheels that could send a spear four hundred yards. Line enough men in front of them and you might get something like the chunks of meat on skewers served at table in Castle Morrow.

  “Not you, Miana. Stay,” I said as she made to follow the knights. “And Lord Jost!” I added. “I am depending on your help. Everything is in place.”

  Lord Jost set his conical helm on his head and flicked the chainmail veil out over the back of his neck. He looked f
rom me to Miana. “Our alliance requires that the union be sealed, King Jorg.”

  I threw my hands up. “Christ bleeding! You saw us married. It’s the middle of the day and we’re fighting a pitched battle.”

  “Even so.” No room for negotiation on that pinched face. He turned to follow Sir Makin. “Your grandfather knows the blood of both your parents runs in you, sire. I cannot act until the alliance is complete.”

  And that left me on my throne in an echoingly empty room with Miana in her wedding whites and two guards at the door watching their feet.

  “Crap.” I jumped up and took her hand. Leading her to the door. It felt like taking a child for a walk.

  I brushed past the guards and hurried to the east tower staircase. Miana had to hitch her skirts and half run to keep up as I took the steps two and three at a time.

  A hefty kick sent my chamber doors slamming open. “Out!” I shouted and several maids ran past me, clutching cloths and brushes. I think they had been hiding rather than cleaning.

  “Lord Jost requires that I remove your virginity from you,” I said to Miana. “Or the House Morrow can’t support me.” I hadn’t meant to be quite so blunt but I felt angry, awkward even.

  Miana bit her lip. She looked frightened but determined. She reached for the dress ties at her side.

  “Stop,” I said. I’ve never liked being pushed. Not in any direction. Miana looked well enough, and twelve isn’t so young. I was killing at twelve. But some women bloom early and some late. She may have had the mind of a she-pirate but she looked like a child.

  “You don’t want me?” She faltered. Now she added hurt and angry to frightened and determined.

  I’ve observed on the road that it’s old men who like young girls. Brother Row and Brother Liar would chase the young ones. Younger than Miana. Brother Sim and I had always admired experience. The fuller form. So, no, I didn’t want her. And being told to have something you don’t want, rather like being told to eat spiced squid when what you want is beef and potatoes, will kill your appetite. Any kind of appetite.

  “I don’t want you right now,” I said. It sounded more politic than calling her spiced squid.

  I put my hand to the back of my left thigh. It was throbbing like a bastard after the run up the stairs. I’d opened a wound I didn’t remember taking. I think perhaps I did it falling into the cave just before the avalanche. Six thousand men dead for a morning’s work, and I come away with a self-inflicted wound in the arse. My fingers came back bloody.

  Four quick steps took me to the bed. I threw back the covers. Miana flinched like I’d hit her. I wiped my hand over the clean linen; squeezed my leg wound again and repeated the process.

  “There,” I said. “Does that look like enough?”

  Miana stared. “I never-”

  “It will have to do. It looks like enough to me. Damned if I’m bleeding more than that.”

  I ripped the sheet from the bed and thrust it out through the window bars, noting two spent arrows on the floor that must have looped in from the ridge earlier in the day. I tied the sheet to one of the bars and let the wind flutter it out so all the world could see I’d made a woman of Miana.

  “Speak a word of this to anyone and Lord Jost will insist we do it on the high table in the feast hall with everyone watching,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “Where are you going?” she asked as I made for the door.

  “Down.”

  “Fine,” she said. She sat on the bed with a slight bounce. Her feet didn’t touch the floor.

  I set my hand to the doorhandle.

  “But they’ll sing songs about Quick Jorg for years to come. Fast with one sword, faster with the other,” she said.

  I took my hand off the doorhandle, turned, and walked back to the bed. Defeated.

  “What would you like to talk about?” I asked, sitting beside her.

  “I’ve met Orrin of Arrow and his brother Egan too,” she said.

  “So have I.” Remembering how that swordfight ended still gave me a headache. “And where did you meet them?”

  “They came to court in my father’s castle in Wennith, on one of their grand tours of the empire. Orrin had his new wife with him.” She watched me for a reaction. Someone had been talking to her.

  “Katherine.” I reacted anyway. It wasn’t as if being married to a child would end my fascination with women, this one in particular. “And what did you think of the Prince?” I wanted to ask about Katherine, not Orrin and his brother, but I bit down on the urge, not to save Miana’s feelings but in disgust at the weakness even mention of Katherine put in me.

  “Orrin of Arrow struck me as the finest man I’d ever met,” Miana said. Clearly she had no compunction to save my feelings either! “His brother Egan, too full of himself, I felt. Father said as much. The wrong mix of weak and dangerous. Orrin though, I thought he would make a fine emperor and unite the Hundred in peace. Didn’t you ever consider just swearing to him when the time came?”

  I met her gaze, shrewd dark eyes that had no place in a child’s face. The truth was that I’d thought many times what I would do if Orrin of Arrow came back to the Haunt, regardless of whether he brought an army with him or not. I didn’t doubt not one person would find me better suited to the emperor’s throne than Orrin, and yet without my say so thousands had been prepared to bleed to stop him. To get somewhere in life you have to walk over bodies, and I’d paved my way with corpses and more corpses. Gelleth burned for my ambition. It still does.

  “I considered it.”

  Miana started, surprised when I spoke. She had thought I wasn’t going to answer.

  “There might have been a time I could have served as steward to Orrin’s emperor, might have let my goatherds and his farmers go about their lives in peace. But things change, events carry us with them, even when you think you’re the one leading, calling out commands. Brothers die. Choices are taken away from us.”

  “Katherine is very beautiful,” Miana said, lowering her gaze for once.

  Screams from outside, the hiss of arrows, a distant roar. “Have we been at this long enough?” I hadn’t asked about Katherine and I had a battle to fight. I made to stand from the bed but Miana put her hand to my thigh, half-nervous, half-bold.

  She reached for her dress again, and I thought that there might have been more determination than fear in her, but she wasn’t unlacing. She pulled out a black velvet bag, dangling from its drawstring. Big enough to hold an eyeball.

  “My dowry,” she said.

  “I hoped for something bigger.” I smiled and took it.

  “Isn’t that my line?”

  I laughed out loud at that. “Somebody poured an evil old woman into a little girl’s body and sent it to me with the world’s smallest dowry.”

  I tipped the bag’s contents into my hand. A single ruby, the size of an eye, cut by an expert, and with a red star burning at its heart. “Nice,” I said. It felt hot in my hand. It made my face burn where the fire had scarred me.

  “It’s a work of magic,” Miana said. “A fire-mage has stored the heat of a thousand hearths in there. It can light torches, boil water, heat a bath, make light. It can even make a spot of heat sufficient to join two pieces of iron. I can show you-”

  She reached for the gem but I closed my hand around it. “Now I know why fire-sworn like rubies,” I said.

  “Be gentle,” Miana said. “It would be…unwise to break it.”

  In the moment that my fingers met around the gem a pulse of heat ran through me, like a shock, burning up my arm. For an instant I saw nothing but the inferno and it seemed I felt Gog’s sharp hands on my sides, as if he sat behind me on Brath once more as he had for so many days in that spring long ago. I heard his high voice, almost, like Mother’s music, trying to reach me from too far away. Something lit at my core, and the flow of fire reversed, raging unseen down my arm into the gem. A sharp splintering noise sounded from the ruby and I released it with a cry. Miana caug
ht it: quick hands this one. I expected her to scream and drop the gem, but it lay cool in her palm. She placed it on the bed.

  I stood. “It’s a worthy dowry, Miana. You will be a good queen for the Highlands.”

  “And for you?” she said.

  I walked to the window. The ridge where the Prince’s archers had arrayed themselves was still in confusion. The trolls would have retreated to their cave defences, but no man wants to be lining up a shot whilst worrying that a black hand is going to twist his head off any second.

  “And for you?” she repeated.

  “That’s hard to say.” I took the copper box from my hip pouch. I had sat before this window the previous night and watched the box. A goblet, the box, a knife. Drink to forget, open to remember, or slice to end. “It’s hard to answer you if I don’t know who I am.”

  I held the box before my eyes. “Secrets. I filled you with secrets, and there’s one last secret left, blacker than the rest.” Some truths should perhaps be left unsaid. Some doors unopened. An angel once told me to let go of the ills I held too close, to let go of the flaws that shaped me. What remained of me might have been forgiven, might have followed her into heaven. I told her no.

  The rockslide, avalanche, the trolls, none of them mattered. Arrow’s army would still crush us. To fight so hard and not even come close to victory. That had a bitter taste.

  I’d faced death before with odds as slim but never as a broken man, some piece of me locked away in a little box. Luntar in his burning desert had done what the angel couldn’t. He’d taken me from me, and left a compromise to walk about in Jorg Ancrath’s shoes.

  Do not open that box.

  The dead boy watched me from the corner of the room as if he had always stood there, waiting silent day after silent day for this moment, to meet my eyes. He stood pale but without wounds, unmarked save for handprints fish-belly white on his skin, like the scars Chella’s dead things left on Gog’s little brother long ago.