Prince of Thorns (The Broken Empire 1)

“Was the show to your liking, Father?” I asked. “I’ve heard that the court has been quiet in Sir Makin’s absence.”

And for the first time in my life I heard my father laugh. A chuckle at first, then louder, then a howling gale such that he had to hold his throne to stand.

21

“Get out.” Father’s laughing fit left him without warning, snuffed like a candle. He spoke into the silence. “Get out. I’ll talk to the boy now.” The boy, not “my son.” I didn’t miss that edge.

And they went. The high and the mighty, the lords and the ladies, the guards helping the injured, two of them dragging Galen’s corpse. Makin followed after Galen, crunch, crunch, crunch, across the broken glass, as if to make sure no life remained in him. Katherine let herself be led by a table knight. She stopped though, at the base of the dais, and gave me a look as if she’d just that moment seen me for what I was. I sketched her a mocking bow, a reflex, like reaching for a blade. It hurt to see the hatred on her face, pure and astonished, but sometimes a bit of pain’s just what we need: to cauterize the wound, burn out the infection. She saw me and I saw her, both of us stripped of pretence in that empty moment, newlyweds naked for their conjugals. I saw her for the same weakness I’d recognized when first we rode back into the green fields of Ancrath. That soft seduction of need and want, an equation of dependence that eases under the skin, so slow and sweet, only to lay a man open at the very time he most needs his strength. Oh, it hurt right enough, but I finished my bow and watched her back as they led her out.

The Queen went too, flanked by knights right and left, slightly awkward down the steps, a hint of a waddle. I could see the swell of her belly now, as she walked. My half-brother if Sageous’s prediction held true. Heir to the throne should I die. Just a swelling now, just a hint, but sometimes that’s all it takes. I recalled Brother Kane from the road, cut on the bicep when we took the village of Holt.

“’T’ain’t nothing, little Jorgy,” he’d said when I offered to heat a knife. “Some farm boy with a rusty hoe. It don’t go deep.”

“It’s swelling,” I told him. “Needs hot iron.” If it’s not too late already.

“Fuck that, not for some farm boy with a hoe,” Kane said.

He died hard, did Kane. Three days later and his arm lay as thick as my waist, weeping pus greener than snot, and with a stench so bad we left him screaming to die alone. It don’t go deep—but sometimes the shallow cut bites to the bone if you don’t deal with it hard and fast.

Just a swelling. I watched the Queen go.

Sageous stayed. His eyes kept returning to the shattered ruin of the tree. You’d have thought he’d lost his lover.

“Pagan, see to the Queen,” Father said. “She may need calming.”

A dismissal, plain and simple, but Sageous was too distracted to see it. He looked up from the glittering remains of the trunk I’d toppled. “Sire, I . . .”

You what, heathen? You want something? It’s not your place to want.

“I . . .” This was new to Sageous, I could see that: he was used to control. “You should not be left unattended, Sire. The b—”

The boy? Say it man, spit it out.

“It may not be safe.”

Wrong thing to say. I guessed the heathen had relied on his magics too long. If he’d truly learned my father’s mind, he’d know better than to suggest he needed protection from me.

“Out.”

Whatever else I might think of my dear father I always did admire his way with words.

The look Sageous gave me held more than hate. Where Katherine channelled a pure emotion the tattooed magician offered bewildering complexity. Oh, there was hate there, sure enough, but admiration too, respect maybe, and other flavours, all mixed in those mild brown eyes.

“Sire.” He bowed and started toward the doors.

We watched him in silence, watched him pace across the sparkling carpet of debris, spotted here with a discarded fan, there with a powdered wig. The doors closed behind him with a dull clang of bronze on bronze. A scar on the wall behind the throne caught my attention. I threw a hammer once, hard, and missed my target. It hit there. It seemed to be a day for old scars, old feelings.

“I want Gelleth,” Father said.

I had to admire his ability to wrong-foot me. I stood there armed with accusations, burdened with all my yesterdays, and he’d turned away from me, to the future.

“Gelleth hinges on the Castle Red,” I said. It was a test. That was just how we spoke. Every conversation a game of poker, every line a bet or a raise, a bluff or a call.

“Party tricks are well and good. You killed the Teuton. I didn’t think you had it in you. You scandalized my court—well, we both know what they are, and what they’re worth. But can you do it when it counts? Can you give me Gelleth?”

I met his stare. I didn’t inherit his blue eyes, I followed Mother in that department. There was a whole winter in those eyes of his, and nothing else. Even in Sageous’s placid gaze I could dig deeper and find a subtext, but Father’s eyes held nothing but a cold season. I think that was where the fear lay, in the lack of curiosity. I’ve seen malice many a time and hate in all its colours. I’ve seen the gleam in the torturer’s eyes, the sick-light, but even there was the comfort of interest, the slightest touch of salvation in shared humanity. He might have the hot irons, but at least he was curious, at least he cared how much it hurt.

“I can give you Gelleth,” I said.

Could I? Probably not. Of all Ancrath’s neighbours, Gelleth stood unassailable above the rest. The Lord of Gelleth probably had better claim to the Empire Throne than Father did. In the Hundred, Merl Gellethar had few equals.

I found my hand on the hilt of my dagger. I itched to draw the tempered steel, to lay it across his neck, to scream at him, to bring some heat into those cold eyes. You traded my mother’s death away, you bastard! Your own son’s blood. Sweet William dead and barely cold, and you traded them away. A pax for the rights to river trade.

“I’ll need an army,” I said. “Castle Red won’t fall easy.”

“You will have the Forest Watch.” Father spread his hands over the throne’s armrests and leaned back, watching.

“Two hundred men?” I felt my fingers tighten on the pommel of my knife. Two hundred men against the Castle Red. Ten thousand might not be enough.

“I’ll take my brothers too,” I said. I watched his eyes. No flicker in the winter, no start at “brother.” The weakness in me wanted to speak of Will. “You’ll have Gelleth. I will give you the Castle Red. I’ll give you the head of the Lord Gellethar. Then you’ll give the heathen to me.”

And you’ll call me “son.”

22

So we sat, Makin and I, at a table in The Falling Angel tavern with a jug of ale between us, and the song of a cracked-voice bard struggling to be heard against the din. Around us the brothers mixed with the lowest of the Low Town, gaming, whoring, and gorging. Rike sat close at hand, his face buried in a roast chicken. He appeared to be attempting to inhale it.

“Have you even seen the Castle Red, Jorg?” Makin asked.