King of Thorns

  Where the Banlieu shades into the Low City the worst of the taverns crowd around narrow streets. I pass the Falling Angel where I first plotted Gelleth’s end, where I first thought to pay for affection. I know better now. Affection is always paid for.

  I choose another alehouse, the Red Dragon. A grand name for a dim and reeking place of shadows.

  “Bitter,” I say.

  The barkeep takes my coin and fills a tankard from the barrel spigot. If he thinks I look young to drink here, among the broken old men with their red noses and watery eyes, he says nothing.

  I take a table where I can put a corner at my back and watch the windows. The ale is as bitter as my mood. I take slow sips and wait for the night to come.

  I think of Katherine. I make a list.

  She said I was evil and that she hates me.

  She has set her heart on the Prince of Arrow.

  She tried to kill me.

  She destroyed the child she thought was mine.

  She was defiled by another man.

  I run through it again and again as the sun sinks, as the drunkards come and go, carts and whores and dogs and labourers pass in the street, and still I cycle through my list.

  Love is not a list.

  Full dark, and my tankard has stood empty for hours. I walk into the street. Here and there a lantern hangs, too high for thieves, casting a parsimonious light that struggles to reach the ground.

  Despite all my waiting, despite my resolve, still I hesitate. Can I tread the paths of childhood again without taint? Overhead the stars turn, a slow revolution about the Pole Star, the Nail of Heaven. Part of me doesn’t want to go back to the Tall Castle. I push that part away.

  I cross the river by the New Bridge and find a quiet corner where I can watch the High Wall. Crath City and its parts have been named with the same lack of imagination the Builders put into the architecture of its castle. As if the box-like utilitarianism of the castle has leached into the language of the city. If I had the power to build for the ages, to know that what I set in stone would stand for millennia, I would put at least some measure of beauty into the mix.

  The High Wall is indeed high, but it is not well lit, and some way west of the Triple Gate the stonework is broken by the remnants of a second wall that once led off at right angles and is now gone. I practised my climbing here when I was little. It seems easy now. Handholds that I struggled to reach can be bypassed entirely in favour of the next. My hands know this surface. I don’t need to see it. This is memory. I gain the top well before the next guard makes his rounds. On the far side ill-advised ivy makes the descent a simple matter.

  Young Sim taught himself the ways of the assassin. He made a hobby of it, the short knife, drop-leaf in powder or tincture, or once in a while a harp string used to garrotte. Of all my Brothers it is Sim that is the most deadly in the long haul. In a battle I could surely cut him down. But lose sight of the boy and he will not come at you in the next moment, or the next day, but in his own time. When you have forgotten the wrong you did him, he will find you again. Sim taught himself the long game and he passed a little knowledge on to me.

  Disguise is not a matter of clothes and artistry with paints and kohl. Disguise lies in how you move. Of course the right uniform, a chin made of putty, a well-applied scar, all these can be of great help in the proper circumstances, but the first step, Sim taught me, the most important step, is exactly that…how you step. Move with confidence, or at least confidence in your role. Believe you have every right to be where you are. Step with purpose. Then even a prop as small as a hat can furnish a full disguise.

  I stride through the streets of Old City, aiming directly for the East Gate, the gate where deliveries are made to the Tall Castle, supplies unloaded, messages handed to runners for carriage to distant quarters. A patrol of my father’s soldiers, ten strong, passes the head of Elm Street as I walk it. They spare me a first glance but not a second.

  Three torches burn above the East Gate. They call it a gate but it is a door, five yards high, three yards wide, black oak with iron banding, a smaller door set into the middle of it for when it is simply men seeking entrance rather than giants. An armoured knight stands duty before the door. If he wished to see anything he should stand in the dark.

  I turn aside and come to the base of the castle wall close to the corner of the great square keep.

  A man seeking to protect himself from the assassin’s knife concentrates his defence. You cannot stop a single anonymous enemy entering your realm. You cannot stop him entering your city. Unless he is unskilled you would be lucky to stop him finding a way past your castle wall. Your keep may hold him out if it is secure and well guarded—but it would be unwise to bet your life on it. To defeat the assassin you don’t spread your defences over your whole estate, you focus them around you. Ten good men tight around your bedchamber can do more to preserve you than ten thousand spread across a kingdom.

  My father’s keep is secure and well patrolled, but by the time I reached seven I knew the outside of it better than the inside. In the dark of the moon I climb the Tall Castle once more. Builder-stone rough under my fingers, my toes hunting familiar holds through the soft leather of my boots, the scrape of the wall on my cheek as I hug it. I see my knuckles white in the starlight as I grip the corner of the Tall Castle and move up.

  I hold still just beneath the battlements. A soldier pauses and leans out watching some distant light. The battlements are new additions, dressed stone atop the Builder-stone. The Builders had weapons that made mockery of castles and of battlements. I don’t know what the Tall Castle was when the Builders made it, but it was not a castle. In the deepest part of the dungeons under layers of filth an ancient plaque declares “No Overnight Parking.” Even when the Builders’ words make sense alone, they hold no meaning together.

  The soldier moves on. I climb up, cross the thickness of the wall, and shin down one of the wooden supports for the walkways.

  In a dark corner of the courtyard I take off my bravo’s hat and return it to my pack. I pull out a tunic, blue and red in the Ancrath colours. I had a woman called Mable tailor it for me at the Haunt, in the style of my father’s servant garb. With the tunic on and my hair tucked into it, I enter the Printers’ Door. I pass a table-knight about his rounds. Sir Aiken if I remember rightly. I keep my head up and he takes no notice of me. A man with his head bowed is hiding his face and worthy of close inspection.

  From the Printers’ Door it is left then right along a short corridor to reach the chapel. The chapel door is never locked. I look in. Only two candles still burn, both little more than stubs and making scant light. The place is empty. I move on.

  Friar Glen’s quarters are close to the chapel. His door is latched but I carry a short strip of steel thin enough and flexible enough to fit between door and frame, strong enough to lift the latch.

  His room is very dark but it has a high window that opens onto the courtyard where Makin used to school the squires in the arts of combat. A borrowed light filters in and I let my eyes learn its ways. The place stinks like cheese left too long in the sun. I stand and listen to the friar’s snore whilst my eyes hunt him.

  He lies hunched in his bed, an inchworm frozen in midcrawl. I can see little of the room, just a cross on the wall with the saviour absent as if he’d taken a break rather than watch this night’s business. I step forward. I remember how Friar Glen dug in my flesh for those hooks the briar left in me. How he hunted them. What pleasure he took in it, with his man, Inch, holding me down. I pull my knife from its sheath.

  Crouched beside his bed, my head level with his, the snores are loud. So loud you would think he should wake himself. I can’t see his face so I remember it instead; flat I would call it, too blunt for deep emotion but well suited to the sneer. At service with Father Gomst holding forth from the pulpit, Friar Glen would watch from the chair by the chapel door, hair like wet straw around a tonsure that needed little shaving, his eyes too small for the broadn
ess of the forehead above.

  I should slit his throat and be gone. Anything else would make too much noise.

  You raped Katherine. You raped her and let her think I had done it. You made her pregnant and made her hate me so much she poisoned the child from her womb. Made her hate me enough to stab me.

  Katherine’s blow was for Friar Glen, not me.

  My eyes have learned the darkness and the room lies revealed in night shades. I trim a long strip from the edge of his sheet. I make only a whisper below the roar of his snoring but he stirs and complains even so. I cut a second strip, a third, a fourth. I bundle the last strip into a tight ball. A candle stand and small table are set near the bed. I move them farther back so they will not fall and make a racket. I count his snores and get their rhythm. When he breathes in I stuff the wadded cloth into his mouth. I tie another strip around his head to hold it in place. Friar Glen is slow to wake but surprisingly strong. I snatch the remains of the sheet from him and hammer my elbow down into his solar plexus. The air hisses from him past his gag. I see the gleam of his eyes. He coils, foetal, and I bind his ankles tight with the third strip. The fourth is for his wrists. I have to punch his throat before I can manage to secure them.

  I’ve lost my taste for the work by the time he is properly trussed. He is an ugly naked man whimpering in the dark and I only want to be gone from here. I take my knife from the table that I moved aside.

  “I have something for you,” I say. “Something that was very nearly misdelivered.”

  I drive my knife in low, at the base of his scrotum. I leave it there. I don’t want it back. Also, if I pull it free he will bleed to death quickly. I think he should linger.

  Also, I have a spare.

  I am almost at the door, with Friar Glen wheezing and hissing behind me. He makes a loud thump as he falls from the bed, but it isn’t that which stops me.

  Sageous appears. He doesn’t step through the doorway, he doesn’t rise from behind a chest, he is just there. His skin glows with its own light, not bright enough to illuminate even the floor at his feet, but enough to make silhouettes of the endless script tattooed across every inch of him. His eyes and mouth are dark holes in the glow.

  “I see you are making a habit out of the clergy. Are you working your way down the list? First a bishop, now a friar. What next? An altar boy?”

  “You’re a heathen,” I say. “You should applaud me. Besides, his sins cried out for it.”

  “Oh well, in that case…” His smile makes a black crescent in the light of his face. “And what do your sins cry out for, Jorg?”

  I have no answer.

  Sageous only smiles wider. “And what were the friar’s sins? I would ask him but you appear to have gagged him. I do hope the dreams I gave young Katherine have not caused trouble? Women are such complex creatures, no?”

  “Dreams?” I say. My hand searches in my pack, hunting my second knife.

  “She dreamed she was with child,” Sageous says. “Somehow the dream even fooled her body. I think they call it a phantom pregnancy.” The writing on his face seemed to move, words pulsing as if spoken. “Such complex creatures.”

  “There was a child. She killed it.” My mouth is dry.

  “There was blood and muck. Saraem Wic’s poisons will do that. But there was no child. I doubt there ever will be now. That old witch’s poisons are not gentle. They scrape a womb bare.”

  I find the blade and I’m moving toward him. I try to run but it’s like wading through deep snow.

  “Silly boy. You think I’m really here?” He makes no move to escape.

  I try to reach him, but I’m floundering.

  Schnick.

  Makin’s hand on the box. The closed box.

  I found myself cold, short of breath, hands tight around each other instead of Sageous’s neck. He gone. Just a memory. And I’m in the mountains. Still running.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Makin panted.

  I looked around. I stood waist-deep in powder snow. Rock walls loomed on either side. The men of the Watch marched behind me…a hundred yards behind me.

  “You can’t open that. Not now, not ever. Certainly not now!” Makin shouted. He retched and sucked his breath back. He must have run hard to catch me. I snatched the box back from him and buried it in a pocket.

  It’s rare for Blue Moon Pass to be open in the winter. Very rare. A good avalanche will clear it out though, and for a few days before new snow chokes it again, a man can escape across the back of Mount Botrang and then, by a series of lower passes that parallel the spine of the Matteracks, that man can leave the range entirely and the empire is his to wander.

  “Run.”

  A whisper in my ear. A familiar voice.

  “Run.”

  “Sageous?” I asked, voice low to keep it from Makin.

  “Run.”

  Drops of pure nightmare trickled down the back of my neck. I shivered. “Don’t worry, heathen. I’ll run.”

  38

  Wedding day

  “So, will we go to Alaric?” Makin asked.

  I kept walking. The sides of the Blue Moon Pass rose shear around us, caked in ice and snow, the black rock showing only where the wind scoured it clean.

  “I guess the roads to the Dane-lore will be difficult in winter. But she did want you to come in winter, that girl of his. Ella?”

  “Elin,” I said.

  “Your grandfather would offer you sanctuary,” Makin said.

  He knew we’d lost. The dead men stretched out behind us on the mountain, under stone and snow, didn’t change that.

  I kept walking. Underfoot the snow left by the avalanche lay firm, creaking as it recorded my footprints.

  “Is it good there? On the Horse Coast? It’d be warm at least.” He hugged himself.

  There are two paths up into the Blue Moon Pass; it’s like a snake’s tongue, forked at the tip. The avalanche had opened both of them. I’d had the Highlanders place their boom-pots to ensure it.

  “What?” said Makin. “You said ‘up.’”

  I carried on making the hard right that led back down the second fork of Blue Moon Pass, picking up the pace. “Now I’m saying ‘down.’ I had Marten hold the Runyard for a reason, you know.”

  And so with the surviving third of the Watch trailing me I led the way down through the Blue Moon into the high valley above the Runyard. And when the slope lessened and the ground became firmer…we ran.

  We saw the smoke before we heard the cries, and we heard the cries before we saw the Haunt. At last, far below, the Haunt came in view, an island of mountain stone in a sea of Arrow’s troops. His forces laid siege on every side, attacking with ladders and grapple ropes, siege engines hurling rock at the front face of the castle, a covered ram pounding the gates, a legion of archers on the high ridge sending their shafts over the walls.

  To my mind siege machinery is more an act of show and determination than it is a well-judged investment of time. Look! We hauled these huge bits of wood and iron to your castle—we mean business, we’re here to stay. The Renar Highlands were perhaps that rare place where there really were enough big rocks lying around for a castle to be reduced to rubble by trebuchets, though it would take forever. But the ram! The ram is the queen of sieges, especially where walls may not be undermined. No mechanics, no counter-weights and escapements, just a simple direct force applied with vigour to the weakest point so that you may set your men against theirs, and that after all is the aim of it all. If you didn’t outnumber the foe you wouldn’t have marched to their castle and they would not be hiding behind walls.

  Marten’s men sheltered at the margins of the Runyard, as long and gentle a gradient as could be found in the Highlands, running down from our valley to the left of the Haunt. The ridge from which the Prince’s archers gained their vantage broke the Runyard at its far end.

  We could see Marten’s troops, but from lower down the slope they were almost invisible, sheltered by rocks and hidden in
their mountain greys. Marten posed little threat to the enemy, though. His hundred men would make no impression on the three thousand occupying the ridge, even if they weren’t shot down as they advanced.

  “Why?” Makin asked.

  “Why is it called the Runyard?” I chose to answer the wrong question. “Because it’s the only place for miles that you can actually have a horse run without breaking its legs. I’ve seen you at the gallop there many times.”

  Makin shook his head. Hobbs and Keppen joined us.

  “We’re going through the east port?” Hobbs asked.

  Not many men knew about the sally ports, one to the east, one to the west. I didn’t recall ever telling Hobbs about the east port but I supposed it was his business to know. We had, after all, led his Watch out of the west port that morning.

  “Yes,” I said.

  We covered the last of the ground with great care, hugging the valley walls and being in no hurry. The archers proved intent on their targets within the Haunt, crouched behind its battlements. We reached Marten without attracting any attention.

  “King Jorg.” Marten had kept his country accent despite four years at court. He stood in the entrance to the sally port, a crack just wide enough for a single rider. The rocks above the crack looked natural but an experienced eye could tell they had been set to fall with only slight encouragement, a sufficient number of them to seal the portal with some permanence. A peculiar stink hung around the entrance. I saw Makin wrinkle his nose and frown as if he recognized it.

  “Captain Marten,” I said. “I see you’ve held the Runyard against all odds!”

  He didn’t smile at that. Marten had never smiled to my knowledge. It would look odd on his face, long like the rest of him, grey like the short crop above his eyes.

  “The enemy have shown no interest in trying to take it from us. I don’t believe they know we’re here,” he said.

  “All to the good,” I said. “Keppen, lead the Watch back to the castle.”