Prince of Thorns (The Broken Empire 1)

“No.”

Makin looked at his ale. He hadn’t touched it. For a few moments we listened to the sound of Rike crunching chicken bones.

“Have you?” I asked.

He nodded slowly and leaned back in his chair, eyes on the lanterns above the street-door. “When I was a squire to Sir Reilly, we took a message to the Lord Gellethar. We stayed a week in the guest halls at the Castle Red before Merl Gellethar deigned to see us. His throne-room puts your father’s to shame.”

Brother Burlow staggered by, belly escaping over his sturdy belt, a haunch of meat in one hand and two flagons in the other, foaming over his knuckles.

“What about the castle?” I could care less about a pissing contest over throne-rooms.

Makin toyed with his ale, but didn’t drink. “It’s suicide, Jorg.”

“That bad?”

“Worse,” he said.

A painted whore, hennaed hair and red-mouthed, backed into Makin’s lap. “Where’s your smile, my handsome?” She had good tits, full and high, pushed into an inviting sandwich in a bodice of lace and whalebone. “I’m sure I could find it.” Her hands vanished into the froth of her skirts where they bunched around Makin’s waist. “Sally will make it all good. My handsome knight doesn’t need no boys to keep him warm.” She flicked a jealous glance my way.

Makin pitched her to the floor.

“It’s built into a mountain. What shows above the rock are walls so high it hurts your neck to look up at the battlements.” Makin reached for his ale and fastened both hands around the flagon.

“Ow!” The whore picked herself up from the wet boards and wiped her hands on her dress. “You didn’t have to do that now!”

Makin didn’t spare her a glance. He turned his dark eyes on me. “The doors are iron, thick as a sword is long. And what’s above the ground isn’t but a tenth part of it. There’s provisions in those deep vaults to last years.”

Sally proved to be a true professional. She transferred her attentions to me, so smooth you’d think I’d been the object of her affection all along. “And who might you be, now?” She came in close, running her fingers into my hair. “You’re too pretty for that grumpy sell-sword,” she said. “You’re old enough to learn how it works with girls, and Sally will show you.”

She had her mouth close to my ear now, sending tickles down my neck. I could smell her cheap lemon-grass scent, cutting through the ale stink, and the dream-weed on her breath.

“How many men would it take? To bring the place down around Lord Gellethar’s ears?” I asked.

Makin’s eyes returned to the lanterns and his knuckles went white around his flagon. Somewhere behind us Rike gave a roar, quickly followed by the splintering sound of a body meeting a table at high speed.

“If you had ten thousand men,” Makin said, raising his voice above the crashing sounds. “Ten thousand men, well supplied, and with siege machines, lots of siege engines, then you might have him in a year. That’s if you could keep his allies off your back. With three thousand you might starve him out eventually.”

I caught hold of Sally’s hand as it slipped across my belly to the buckle of my belt. I twisted her wrist a little, and she came front and centre, sharpish, with a high-pitched gasp. She had green eyes, like Katherine’s but more narrow and not so clear. Under the paint she had fewer years on me than I first thought, she might be twenty, certainly no more.

“And what if I found us a way in? What then, Brother Makin? How many men to take the Castle Red if I opened us a door?” I spoke to Sally’s face, inches before mine.

“The garrison stands at nine hundred. Veterans mostly. He sends his fresh meat to the borders and takes it back when it’s been seasoned.” I heard Makin’s chair scrape back. “Which son of a whore threw that?” he yelled.

I kept the whore’s wrist turned. I took her throat in my other hand and drew her closer. “Tonight we’ll call you Katherine, and you can show me how it works with girls.”

Some of the dream-haze left her eyes, replaced by fear. That was all right with me. I had two hundred men and no secret door into the Castle Red. It seemed only right that somebody should be worried.

23

My book shifted again. I say “my” book, but in truth it was stolen, filched from Father’s library on the way out of the Tall Castle. The book lurched at me, threatening to snap shut on my nose.

“Lie still, damn you,” I said.

“Mmmgfll.” Sally gave a sleepy murmur and nestled her face in the pillow.

I settled the book back between her buttocks and nudged her legs slightly further apart with my elbows. Over the top of the page I could see the faint-knobbed ridge of Sally’s spine tracing its path across her smooth back to be lost in the red curls around her neck. I wasn’t convinced that the text before me was more interesting than what lay beneath it.

“It says here that there’s a valley in Gelleth they call the Gorge of Leucrota,” I said. “It’s in the badlands down below the Castle Red.”

The morning light streamed through the open window. The air had a chill to it, but a good one, like the bite on ale.

“Mmmnnn.” Sally’s voice came from the pillow.

I’d tired her out. You can wear even whores out when you’re that young. The combination of a woman and time on my hands wasn’t one I’d tried before. I found the mix to my liking. There’s a lot to be said for not being in a queue, or not having to finish up before the flames take hold of the building. And the willingness! That was new too, albeit paid for. In the dark I could imagine it was free.

“Now if I know my ancient Greek, and I do, a leucrota is a monster that speaks with a human voice to lure its prey.” I bent my neck to bite at the back of her thigh. “And in my experience, any monster that talks in a human voice, is human. Or was.”

My feet hung over the end of the bed. I wiggled my toes. Sometimes that helps.

I reached for the oldest of the three books I’d stolen. A Builder text on plasteek sheets, wrinkled by some ancient fire. Scholars in the east would pay a hundred in gold for Builder texts, but I hoped for more profit than that.

I’d been taught the Builder speech by Tutor Lundist. I learned it in a month and he’d gone bragging to anyone who’d listen, until Father shut his mouth with one of those dark looks he’s famed for. Old Lundist said I knew the Builder speech as well as any in the Broken Empire, but I couldn’t make sense of more than half the words in the little book I’d stolen.

I could read the “Top Secret” at the head and foot of every page, but “Neurotoxicology,” “Carcinogen,” “Mutogen”? Maybe they were old styles of hat. To this day I don’t know. The words I did recognize were interesting enough though. “Weapons,” “Stockpile,” “Mass Destruction.” The last but one page even had a shiny map, all contours and elevations. Tutor Lundist taught me a little geography as well. Enough to match that small map to the “Views from Castle Red” painstakingly executed in the large but dull A History of Gelleth whose leather-bound spine nestled in the cleft of dear Sally’s oh-so-biteable backside.