Prince of Thorns (The Broken Empire 1)

I sat in the confusion between sleep and the waking world, surrounded by the creak of wood, the shake and rattle of the wind. Lightning stabbed again and I saw the interior of the carriage, Mother opposite, William beside her, curled upon the bench-seat, his knees to his chest.

“The storm!” I twisted and caught the window. The slats resisted me, spitting rain as the wind whistled outside.

“Shush, Jorg,” Mother said. “Go back to sleep.”

I couldn’t see her in the dark, but the carriage held her scent. Roses and lemon-grass.

“The storm.” I knew I’d forgotten something. That much I remembered.

“Just rain and wind. Don’t let it frighten you, Jorg, love.”

Did it frighten me? I listened as the gusts ran their claws across the door.

“We have to stay in the carriage,” she said.

I let the roll and rock of the carriage take me, hunting for that memory, trying to jog it loose.

“Sleep, Jorg.” It was more of a command than a recommendation.

How does she know I’m not asleep?

Lightning struck so close I could hear the sizzle. The light crossed her face in three bars, making something feral of her eyes.

“We have to stop the carriage. We have to get off. We have to—”

“Go to sleep!” Her voice carried an edge.

I tried to stand, and found myself weighed down, as if I were wading in the thickest mud . . . or molasses.

“You’re not my mother.”

“Stay in the carriage,” she said, her voice a whisper.

The tang of cloves cut the darkness, a breath of myrrh beneath it, the perfume of the grave. The stink of it smothered all sound. Except the slow rasp of her breath.

I hunted the door handle with blind fingers. Instead of cold metal I found corruption, the softness of flesh turned sour in death. A scream broke from me, but it couldn’t pierce the silence. I saw her in the next flash of the storm, skin peeled from the bone, raw pits for eyes.

Fear took my strength. I felt it running down my leg in a hot flood.

“Come to Mother.” Fingers like twigs closed around my arm and drew me forward in the blackness.

No thoughts would form in the terror that held me. Words trembled on my lips but I had no mind to know what they would be.

“You’re . . . not her,” I said.

One more flash, revealing her face an inch before mine. One more flash, and in it I saw my mother dying, bleeding in the rain of a wild night, and me hung on the briar, helpless in a grip made of more than thorns. Held by fear.

A cold rage rose in me. From the gut. I drove my forehead into the ruin of the monster’s face, and took the door handle with a surety that needed no sight.

“No!”

And I leapt into the storm.

The thunder rolled loud enough to wake even the deepest buried. I jerked into a sitting position, confused by the stink of hay and the prickle of straw all around me. The barn! I remembered the barn.

A single point of illumination broke the night. A lantern’s glow. It hung from a beam close by the barn door. A figure, a man, a tall one, stood in the fringes of the light. The Nuban lay at his feet, caught in a troubled sleep.

I made to cry out, then bit my cheek hard enough to stop myself. The copper tang of the blood sharpened away the remnants of my dream.

The man held the biggest crossbow I’d ever seen. With one hand he began to wind back the cable. He took his time. When you’re hunting on behalf of a dream-witch I guess you’re never in a rush. Unless one of your victims escapes whatever dreams have been sent to keep them sleeping . . .

I reached for my knife, and found nothing. I guessed it lost along whatever path my nightmare had led me through the hay. The lantern struck a gleam from something metal by my feet. A baling hook. Three more turns on that crank and he’d be done. I took the hook.

The storm howl covered my approach. I didn’t sneak. I walked across slow enough to be sure of my footing, fast enough to give ill fortune no time to act against me.

I’d thought to reach around and cut the bastard’s throat, but he was tall, too tall for a ten-year-old’s reach.

He lifted the crossbow to sight down at the Nuban.

Wait when waiting is called for. That’s what Lundist used to tell me. But never hesitate.

I hooked the hunter between the legs and yanked up as hard as I could.

Where the crash of thunder and the roar of the wind had failed, the hunter’s scream succeeded. The Nuban woke up. And to his credit there was no wondering where he was or what was happening. He surged to his feet and had a foot of steel through the man’s chest in two heartbeats.

We stood with the hunter lying between us, each with our weapon blooded.

The Nuban wiped his blade on the hunter’s cloak.

“That’s a big old crossbow!” I toed it across the floor and marvelled at the weight of it.

The Nuban lifted the bow. He ran his fingers over the metalwork inlaid on the wood. “My people made this.” He traced the symbols and the faces of fierce gods. “And now I owe you another life.” He hefted the crossbow and smiled, his teeth a white line in the lantern glow.

“One will be enough.” I paused. “It’s Count Renar that has to die.”

And the smile left him.

17

The old corridors enfolded me and four years became a dream. Familiar turns, the same vases, the same suits of armour, the same paintings, even the same guards. Four years and everything was the same, except me.

In the niches small silver lamps burned oil squeezed from whales in distant seas. I walked from one pool of light to the next, behind a guard whose armour beggared my own. Makin and Gomst had been led to separate destinations, and I went alone to whatever reception awaited. The place still made me feel small. Doors built for giants, ceilings soaring so high that a man with a lance could scarcely touch them. We came to the west wing, the royal quarters. Would Father meet me here? Man to man in the arboretum? Souls bared beneath the planetarium dome? I had imagined him seated in the black claw of his throne, brooding above the court, and me led toward him between the men of the Imperial Guard.

I followed the single guard, feeling vaguely cheated. Did I want to be surrounded by armed men? Had I grown so dangerous? To be heaped with chains? Did I want him to fear me? Fourteen years old, and the King of Ancrath quaking behind his bodyguard?

I felt foolish for a moment. I brushed a hand over the hilt of my sword. They’d cast the blade from the metal that ran through the castle walls. A true heirloom, with a heritage at the Tall Castle predating mine by a thousand years at least. I ached for a confrontation then. Voices rose at the back of my mind, clamouring, fighting one against the other. The skin on my back tingled, the muscle beneath twitched for action.

“A bath, Prince Jorg?”

It was the guardsman. I nearly drew on him.

“No,” I said. I forced myself to calmness. “I’ll see the King now.”

“King Olidan has retired, Prince,” the guard said. Was he smirking at me? His eyes held an intelligence I didn’t associate with the palace guard.

“Asleep?” I would have given a year of my life to take the surprise from those words. I felt like Captain Coddin must have: the butt of a joke I had yet to comprehend.

“Sageous awaits you in the library, my prince,” the man said. He turned to go, but I had him by the throat.