King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

“I am Robert,” he said. He had the letter open in his hand. “My sister wrote this. She speaks well of you.”

In truth I spoke well of myself when I set quill to parchment some months ago. I called myself William and said that I had proven a loyal aid to Queen Rowen, honest, brave, and gifted in both letter and number. I copied the slant and shape of the writing from an older letter, a crumpled scrap I kept close to my heart for many years. A letter from my mother.

“I’m honoured.” I bowed deeply. “I hope that the Queen’s recommendation, God rest her, will find me a place in your household.”

Lord Robert watched me, and I watched him. It felt good to find an uncle that I didn’t long to kill.

41

Four years earlier

“You look very young, William. How many years are you? Sixteen? Seventeen?” Robert said.

“Nineteen, my lord. I look young for my age,” I said.

“And my sister has been dead nearly five years. So that makes you fourteen or fifteen when she wrote this?”

“Fifteen, my lord.”

“Early in life to have made such an impression. Honest, brave, numerate, literate. So why are you wandering so far from home in such poor circumstances, William?”

“I served in the Forest Watch, my lord. After Queen Rowen was slain. And when the Watch-master led us against Count Renar who took your sister’s life, Queen Rowen I mean, I fought in the Highlands. But I have family in Ancrath, so when justice was served on the Count, I took to the roads so that I would be thought killed in the battle at the Haunt, and no punishments would fall on my relatives to make me surrender to King Olidan. Since then I have been making my way here, my lord, hoping to continue in service to Queen Rowen’s family.”

“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.