King of Thorns

  “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?”

  “It’s the first of your magic numbers. They form a series,” he said. “The second of them is fourteen.”

  “See, now you’re talking. Fourteen. I can believe in that.” I crouched beside him since he seemed unwilling to rise. “Why fourteen?”

  “It is your age is it not?” he asked. “And it is the key to your name.”

  “My name?” An uneasiness crept up my back, chill despite the heat.

  “Honorous, I should say. With some certainty.” He scratched in the d
ust and erased it just as quick. “Ancrath, quite likely. Jorg, maybe.”

  “I’m fascinated at how you would calculate all that from fourteen,” I said. I considered breaking his neck and leaving for the docks. But that wasn’t the man I wanted to show my mother’s father, or her brother. It wasn’t the Jorg she had known.

  “You have the look of a Steward to me. The right lines. Particularly around the eyes, nose, the forehead too. And you’ve declared yourself from Ancrath which would fit with your accent and colouring. Almost all Stewards are named after Honorous. You could be a bastard, but who teaches a bastard to even recognize calculus? And if you’re legitimate then as a Steward from Ancrath you would be named Ancrath. And what members of that household are young men? Jorg Ancrath springs to mind. And how old is he? Close on fifteen but not yet there.”

  I didn’t yet know if I was right to like the man but his store of facts and talent for deduction impressed me. “Spectacular,” I said. “Wrong, but spectacular.”

  Qalasadi shrugged. “I try.” He nodded to the refectory. “Your lunch awaits, no doubt.”

  I stood and started across the courtyard. Then paused. “Why three?”

  Qalasadi frowned as if trying to recall a lost sensation. “Three steps outside? Three in the carriage? Three women that will love you? Three Brothers lost on your journey? The magic lies in the first number, the mathematics in the second.”

  The “three steps” put a cold finger down my spine, as if he had rummaged in the back of my skull and pulled out something I would rather keep hidden. I said nothing and walked away, a wild night running through my mind, cut by lightning and glimpses of the empty carriage as I hung in thorns.

  I found myself at the refectory table without memory of getting there. I wondered how long it would be before Qalasadi laid his deductions at my uncle’s feet. He might spoil my game but it presented no danger.

  “Not hungry?” The short guardsman from the gates sat across from me. Sunny.

  I looked down at my lunch and tried to make sense of it. “What’s this stuff? Did someone throw up in my bowl?”

  “Spicy squid.” The guardsman kissed his fingertips and spread them. Mwah.

  I skewered a tentacle, a difficult feat in itself, and set to chewing. The experience wasn’t dissimilar from chewing shoe leather. Except that to fully replicate it you would have to set the leather on fire. Spices are all well and good. Salt to taste, a little pepper, a bay leaf in soup, a clove or two in an apple pie. But on the Horse Coast they seem to favour chillies that will take the skin off your tongue. Having been burned on the outside and not liked the experience, I saw no reason to burn on the inside. I spat my mouthful back into the bowl.

  “That is truly vile!” I said.

  “I would have had it off you,” the guardsman said. “But you went and spat in it. I’m Greyson by the way.”

  “William of Ancrath,” I said. I picked up my hunk of bread and nibbled it, wary that the cook might have mixed a bag of chilli dust in with the flour.

  “What’s the deal with the Moor?” I asked, and ran my fingers over my teeth as if “Moor” were not sufficient description.

  “You’ve met Qalasadi now have you?” Greyson grinned. “He keeps the castle accounts. Works wonders with the local merchants. Gets Earl Hansa the good contracts. Best of all he’s in charge of paying the guards and he’s never a day late. Five years back we had Friar James keeping the books. We could go a month without coin.” He shook his head.

  “He’s close with the Earl and his son, this Qalasadi?” I asked.

  “Not especially. He’s just the book keeper.” Greyson shrugged.

  I liked the sound of that, but wondered at a man of such talent occupying a relatively minor role without complaint.

  “I like him well enough,” Greyson said. “Plays cards with the wall guard sometimes. Always loses, never complains, never drinks our ale.”

  “You’d have thought he’d be good at cards,” I said.

  “Terrible. Not sure he even knows the rules. But he seems to love it. And the men like him. They don’t even give him a hard time about being the castle’s only Moor. And by rights they should. What with his countrymen set on invading the mainland and turning us all to heathens or corpses.”

  “Moors is it?” I asked. “Should I be expecting to kill some soon?”

  Others of the guard leaned in, listening to the conversation as they chewed their squid. I thought perhaps the chilli dissolved the tentacles in the end, because chewing seemed insufficient.

  “You might yet,” Greyson said. “Ibn Fayed, he’s caliph in Liba, has sent his ships three times this year. We’re due another raid.”

  Without warning the rumble of conversation died and Greyson put his head down. “Shimon, the sword-master,” he hissed. “He never comes in here.”

  A man loomed behind me. I focused on the squid but refrained from actually putting it in my mouth.

  “You, boy,” Shimon said. “Ancrath. Out in the yard. I’m told you have promise.”

  42

  Four years earlier

  I knew of Sword-master Shimon. Makin told me stories about him. About his exploits as a young man, champion to kings, teacher of champions, legend of the tourney. I hadn’t expected him to be so old.

  “Yes, Sword-master,” I said, and I followed him out into the courtyard.

  To say he moved like a swordsman would be understatement. He looked as old as Tutor Lundist, with the same long white hair, but he stepped as if he heard the sword-song beating through each moment of the day.

  Qalasadi had gone from the shadows and the courtyard lay empty but for a serving girl crossing with a basket of washing, and the men on guard at the gate. Other guards crowded the door of the refectory behind us, but they didn’t dare follow us out. Shimon had not extended them an invitation.

  The sword-master turned to face me. The bookish look of him surprised me. He could have passed as a scribe, but for the dark burn of the sun and a hawkishness about the eyes. He drew his sword. A standard issue blade the same as mine.

  “When you’re ready, young man,” he said.

  I slid my sword out, wondering how to play this. Qalasadi was probably telling my uncle who I really was right now, so why not make full use of the opportunity?

  I slapped at his blade, and he did that rolling-wrist trick the Prince of Arrow used, only better, and took my sword out of my hand. I heard laughter from the doorway.

  “Try harder,” Shimon said.

  I smiled and picked my sword up. This time I moved in quick with a thrust at his body. He did the trick again but I rolled my wrist with his and kept my blade.

  “Better,” he said.

  I attacked him with short precise combinations, the moves I had been working on with Makin. He fended me off without apparent effort, replying at the end of each attack with a counter-attack that I could barely contain. The rapid clash of metal on metal echoed around the courtyard. I felt the music of steel rise about me. I felt that cold calm sensation rolling out over my arms, cheeks, the skin of my back. I heard the song.

  Without thought I attacked, slicing high, low, feinting, deploying my full strength at precisely the right moments, all of me moving, feet, arms, hips, only my head still. I increased the tempo, increased it, and increased it again. At times I couldn’t see my blade or his, only the shape of our bodies, and the necessity of the dance let me know how to move, how to block. The sound of our parrying became like the clickety-click of knitting needles in expert hands.

  Shimon’s hard old face didn’t look made for smiling, but a smile found its way there. I grinned like an idiot, sweat dripping off me.

  “Enough.” He stepped away.

  I found it hard not to follow him, to press the attack, but I let my sword drop. There had been a joy in it, in the purity, living on the edge of my blade without thought. My heart pounded and sweat soaked me, but I had nothing of the anger that normally builds even in practice sessions. We had made
a thing of beauty.

  “Could you beat me?” I asked, pulling in a breath. The old man seemed hardly winded.

  “We both won, boy,” he said. “If I’d taken a victory we would have both lost.”

  I took that as a yes. But I understood him. I hoped that I would have had the grace to step back if I saw him weaken. Not to do so would have spoiled the moment.

  Shimon sheathed his sword. “Enjoy your lunch, guardsman,” he said.

  “That’s it?” I asked as he turned to go. “No advice?”

  “You don’t try hard enough at the start, and you try too hard at the end,” he said.

  “Hardly technical.”

  “You have a talent,” he said. “I hope you have other talents too. They will probably bring you more happiness.”

  And he went.

  “Unreal,” Greyson said when I returned to the table. “I’ve never seen a thing like that.”

  And that was all the time I had to bask in my glory. The bell sounded to let us know lunch had ended and I got to go back to guarding the Lowery Gate.

  The Lowery Gate nearly broke me. I gave deep consideration to naming myself to my grandfather. In the end though, I wanted to see how this court worked from the inside, how my relatives went about their lives, who they really were. I guess I wanted a window into my past and not to mucky it up with my own surprises.

  I slept again in the guardhouse and woke to new duties. Qalasadi didn’t appear to have gone to my uncle. I suspected that he thought I would wield some influence once my identity was known and he didn’t want to make an enemy of me. If he didn’t let my secret slip, who would know that he ever knew it? And so he would face no censure for not revealing me.

  My new assignment was as personal guard to Lady Agath, a cousin of my grandfather’s who had been living at Castle Morrow for some years. A fat old lady, getting to the point where the weight started to slip from her as it does with the very old. Live long enough and we all die skinny.

  Lady Agath liked to do everything slowly. She paid me no attention other than to moan that my scar was ugly to look at and why couldn’t she have a presentable guard? To the wrinkles brought by her advanced years she added those that fat people acquire as they start to deflate. The overall effect was alarming, as if she were a shed skin, discarded perhaps by a giant reptile. I followed her around Castle Morrow at a snail’s pace, which afforded me the time to look the place over, at least the part of it lying between the privy, the dining hall, Lady Agath’s bedchamber, and the Ladies’ Hall.