King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

I could hardly see Makin, eyes slitted against the pulse in my head.

Makin shook his head. “Some crimes demand an answer. Corion tried to take that from you. I crossed three nations to find the men who killed my girl.” He sounded worried.

“Idiot.” Numb lips shaped the word.

“Jorg.” Makin kept his voice low. “You’re crying. Take the damn spice.”

“Going to need a bigger army.” Everything had gone black and I felt as if I was falling. And then I hit the ground.

8

Four years earlier

I woke in a darkened room. A fly buzzed. Someone somewhere was being sick. Light filtered in where the daub cracked from the wattle. More light through the shutters, warped in their frame. A peasant hut. The retching stopped, replaced by muted sobs. A child.

I sat up. A thin blanket slipped from me. Straw prickled. The ache in my head had gone. My tooth hurt like a bastard but it was nothing compared to how my head had been. I felt around for my sword and couldn’t find it.

There’s something magical about a departed headache. It’s a shame the joy fades and you can’t appreciate not having one every moment of your life. That hadn’t been a regular headache of course. Old Jorgy got himself a bruised brain. I’d seen it before. When Brother Gains fell off his horse one time and hit his head he went crazier than Maical for the best part of two days. “Did I fall off my horse?” He must have asked that a thousand times in a row. Crying one moment. Laughing the next. We’re brittle things, us men.

I found my feet, still a little shaky. The door opened and the light came dazzling around the dark shape of a woman. “I brought you soup,” she said.

I took it and sat again. “Smells good.” It did. My stomach growled.

“Your friend, Makin, he brought a couple of rabbits for the pot,” she said. “We hadn’t had meat since the pigs got took.”

I raised the bowl to my lips: no spoons here. She left as I started slurping, burning my mouth and not caring too much. For a long time I just sipped and watched the dust dance where fingers of light reached in through the shutters. I munched on lumps of rabbit, chewed on the gristle, swallowed the fat. It’s good to eat with an empty mind.

At last I got to my feet again, steadier now. I patted myself down. My old dagger was on my hip and there was a lump in my belt pouch which turned out to be Makin’s clove-spice. One more glance around for my sword and I went to the door. The day seemed a little too bright, the wind chill and sharp with the stink of old burning. I stretched and blinked. Apart from the hut I’d come from, a stall for animals by the look of it, the place lay in ruins. Two houses with tumbled walls and blackened spars, some broken fences, animal pens that looked to have been ridden through with heavy horse. I saw the woman crouched in the shell of the closer house, her back to me.

The sudden need for a piss bit hard. I went against the hut, a long hot acid flow never seeming to end. “Jesu! Have I slept for a week?”

A wise man once said, “Don’t shit where you eat.” Aristotle perhaps. On the road that’s a rule to live by. Find your relief where you will. Move on each day and leave the shit, all manner of shit, behind you. In the castle I have a garderobe. Which, let’s face it, is a hole in the wall to crap through. In a castle you shit where you eat and you have to think a bit harder about what kind of shit is worth stirring up. That’s what I’ve learned in three months of being king.

Finished at last. Had to be a week’s worth.

I felt better. Good. A yawn cracked my face. The land lay flat to the north, the Matteracks a jagged line to the south. We’d left the Highlands or near as dammit. I stretched and ambled over to the woman. “Did my men do this?” I frowned and glanced around again. “Where in hell are they anyhow?”

She turned, face worn, haunted around the eyes. “Soldiers from Ancrath did it.” A child hung in her arms, limp and grey, a girl, six years, maybe seven.

“Ancrath?” I arched a brow. My eyes kept returning to the girl. “We’re close to the border?”

“Five miles,” she said. “They told us we couldn’t live here. The land was annexed. They started to fire the buildings.”

Annexed. That rang a small bell at the back of my mind. Some dispute about the border. The oldest maps had it that Lord Nossar’s estate reached out this far.

I could smell the vomit now, sour on the morning air. The girl had a blood-black smear of it in her hair.

“They killed your man?” I asked. I surprised myself. I don’t care enough about such things to waste words on them. I blamed the bang on the head.

“They killed our boy,” she said, staring past the black timbers, past me, past the sky. “Davie came out screaming and choking, blind with the smoke. Got too close to a soldier. Just a quick swing, like he was cutting down bindweed, and my boy was open. His guts…” She blinked and looked down at the girl. “He kept screaming. He wouldn’t stop. Another soldier put an arrow through his neck.”

“And your man?” I hadn’t asked about her boy. I hadn’t wanted that story. And the girl kept watching me, without interest, without hope.

“I don’t know.” She had a grey voice. The way it goes when emotions have burned out. “He didn’t go to Davie, didn’t hold him, too scared the soldiers would cut him down too.” The girl coughed, a wet sound. “Now he cries all the time or stares at the ground.”

“And the child?” I cursed my empty head. I had only to think a question today and it came spilling out of me.

“Sick,” she said. “In her stomach. But I think it’s in her blood too. I think it’s the waste.” She pulled the girl to her. “Does it hurt, Janey?”

“Yes.” A dry whisper.

“A little or a lot?”

“A lot.” Still a whisper.

Why ask such questions if there’s nothing to be done? “He did right,” I said. “Your man. Sometimes you need to hold back. Bide your time.” The thorns had held me back when it mattered, made the decision for me. “He did right.” The words that rang so true before I fell off my horse seemed empty beside the shell of their home. A blow to the skull can knock a deal of sense out of a man.

I saw horsemen across the meadow. Two men, three horses. Makin and Rike rode up, keeping an easy pace.

“Good to have you on your feet, Jorg.” Makin gave me his grin. Rike just scowled. “Mistress Sara and Master Marten have been looking after you I see.” And that was Makin for you, always with the making friends, remembering names, jollying along.

“Sara is it?” I said. I supposed these were my people after all. “And little Janey.” For a moment I saw a different Jane, crushed and broken under rocks, the light dying out of her. That Jane once told me I needed better reasons. Better reasons if I wanted to win, but maybe just better reasons for everything.

“Take her inside,” I said. “It’s too cold here.” A vague guilt crept over me, for pissing on one of the only four walls they had left.

Sara stood and carried the girl indoors.

“So you left me for dead then, Makin?” I asked. “Where are the others?”