King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

“I do now.” I turned to face her. She looked good.

“Jorg,” Serra said. “My sweet Jorg. A king no less.”

I shrugged. “I never did know when to stop.”

She smiled. “No.” Dark and delicious.

“I saw Thomas back there, putting on a show,” I said.

Serra pouted at the mention of her husband. “It never stops amazing me, how people want to watch that.”

“That’s why the circus keeps on moving,” I said. “Everything gets old quick enough. The swallowing of swords, the blowing of fire, they’re wonders for an evening or two…”

“And did I get old quick enough?” she asked. “King Jorg of the Highlands?”

“Never,” I said. If the sins of the flesh ever got old I didn’t ever want enough years on me to know it. “I’ve not found a girl to compare.”

“Girl” may have been pushing it but she was a good ten years younger than Thomas, and who better than a circus contortionist to deliver a boy’s first lessons in carnality?

Serra stepped closer, shawl tight around her shoulders against the chill of the breeze. She moved in that fluid way that reminds every watcher she can cross her ankles behind her head. Even so, on her cheeks, here and there, the white powder cracked, and around her eyes the unkind morning light found tiny wrinkles. She wore her hair still in ribbons and bunches, but now it looked wrong on her and a thread or two of silver laced the blackness of it.

“How many rooms does your palace have, Jorg?” A husk in her voice. A hint of something desperate at the back of her smile.

“Lots,” I said. “Most of them cold, stony, and damp.” I didn’t want her to go begging and dirty up my golden memories. I didn’t know what I’d come looking for around the circus camp; Taproot’s stories for sure, but not now, not here in the messy reality behind the show-ring mask. I didn’t know what I’d come for, but not this, not Serra showing her years and her need.

A moment’s silence, then a growl came, too deep and throaty for a bear, like a giant rasp drawn across timber.

“What the—”

“Lion,” Serra said. She twirled, brightening, and took my hand. “See?”

And around the corner, at the bottom of the cage stack, Dr. Taproot did indeed have himself a lion. I hefted the Nuban’s bow to see the ironwork around the trigger guard. The beast in the cage might be a bit threadbare, showing too many ribs, but his dirty mane remembered the one framing the snarling face on the Nuban’s bow.

“Well, there’s a thing,” I said. The Nuban had told me in his youth he walked scorched grasslands where lions hunted in packs, and even though the Nuban never lied, I only half-believed him. “There’s a thing.” Words failed me for once.

“He’s called Macedon,” Serra said, leaning into me. “The crowds love him.”

“What else has Taproot got caged? I expect a griffin next, then a unicorn and a dragon, a full heraldic set!”

“Silly,” she husked. Old or not, that magic of hers had started to work on me. “Dragons aren’t real.” The twitch of a smile in her painted lips, her small and kissable mouth.

I shook it off—the circus was too full of distractions. Distractions I wanted to make a full and thorough examination of. But I had ghosts at my heels and Gog about to burst into flame at any moment…

“He looks hungry,” I said. “The circus can’t feed its main attraction?”

“He won’t eat,” Serra said. “Taproot’s tearing his hair about it. Doesn’t know how long he’ll last.”

The lion watched us, sat sphinx-like with his massive paws spread in the straw before him. I met his huge amber eyes and wondered what he saw. Probably a hunk of meat on two legs not meant for running.

“He wants to hunt,” I said.

“We give him meat,” Serra said. “Ron cuts him big hunks of cow, still bleeding. He barely sniffs it.”

“He needs to take it,” I said. “Not be given it.”

“That’s silly.” Her fingers ran along mine, starting fires.

“It’s in his nature.” I looked away. I didn’t think I could win a staring competition with Macedon even if I had time to try.

“You should let him go,” I said.

Serra laughed, a note too shrill for comfort. “And what would he hunt? We should let him eat children?”

A distant scream saved me answering. A distant scream and a tongue of flame reaching up above the tent tops. A dead cook-fire close by suddenly lit. The flame flared, sucked in like a drawn breath, and became a little man made all of fire, a homunculus no taller than a chicken. It glanced around for a heartbeat then tore off in the direction of the scream leaving the fire-pit black and smoking and a line of charred footprints behind it.

Serra opened her mouth, ready to scream or shout, decided on neither, and took off after the flame-man.

My gaze returned to the lion, who seemed wholly unmoved by the excitement.

“Do you think Taproot will still want Gog in his freak-show now?” I asked.

The lion gave no answer, just watched me with those amber eyes.

The lions the Nuban had told me of were magnificent beasts, lords of the plains. He understood why men who had never seen one might fight beneath their likeness on a banner. When he spoke of lions on cold nights camped along the roadside, I had sworn to walk those same sun-scarred plains and see them for myself. I hadn’t imagined them caged, mangy, hopping with fleas beside a two-headed goat.

A single nail pinned the cage door, secured with a twist of wire.

I had pulled a single pin to set the Nuban free years ago, worlds ago. I pulled a pin and he took two lives in as many moments.

That Jorg would have pulled this pin too. That Jorg would have pulled this pin and not given a moment’s thought to children clustered around a sword-swallower, to the livelihoods of dancers and tumblers. To townsfolk or to Taproot’s revenge. But I’m not him. I’m not him because we die a little every day and by degrees we’re reborn into different men, older men in the same clothes, with the same scars.

I didn’t forget the children or the dancers or the tumblers. But I pulled the pin. Because it’s in my nature.

“For Kashta,” I said.

I swung the door open and walked away. The lion would stay or leave, hunt or die, it didn’t matter, but at least he had a choice. As for me, I had a bridge to cross.

I set off after Serra to see what damage Gog had done.

Brother Sim looks pleasing enough, a touch pretty, a touch delicate, but sharp with it. Under the dyes his hair is a blond that takes the sun, under the drugs his eyes are blue, under the sky I know no one more private in their ways, more secret in their opinions, more deadly in a quiet moment.

17

Four years earlier

When you journey north, past the River Rhyme, you start into the Danelands, those regions still unclaimed by the sea where the Vikings of old came ashore to conquer and then settle among the peoples who bowed before the axe. There are few Danes who will not claim Viking blood, but it’s not until the sea bars your path that such claims take on weight and you start to feel yourself truly among the men of the wild and frozen north.