King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

“Looks like a holy day.” Kent stood in his stirrups to see. For all that he was a dark and deadly bastard, Kent had himself a pious nature, the good kind of pious, or at least the better kind.

“Gah.” Rike liked his celebrations louder, more wild, and more likely to end in a riot.

“There’ll be chorals,” Sim said, ever the music-lover.

And so without much more than a nod toward the fact I was king of Renar and that none of them were much more than scabby peasants at the end of it all, the Brothers led me into Hanver. We rode in down the main street, through the crowd, the locals with scrubbed faces, sporting their best rags, the children waving ribbon-sticks, some clutching sugar-apples kept sweet over winter. The Brothers set off on separate ways, Sim to the church, Grumlow to the smithy, Rike handing his reins to a boy outside the first tavern. Row, more particular, chose the second tavern and Kent veered off to a stables to get an expert eye on Hellax’s front right foreleg.

“Looks like there’ll be more than chorals.” Makin nodded ahead to the main square. A wooden platform had been erected, fresh timbers, still weeping. A wide stage, a gallows frame, and three strangling cords dangling in the breeze.

We tied up at the public tether and Makin flicked the watch-boy a copper double.

“Church execution,” Makin said. A white flag fluttered at the far corner of the platform, the holy cross and cup inked onto the linen.

“Hmmm.” I had little enough enthusiasm for matters ecumenical in the Tall Castle. On the road the church spread Roma’s poisons without moderation. And that perhaps is the only time I have considered my father to be a moderating influence.

We stood with the others in the sunshine, snagging skewers of roast mutton from a passing seller. An ale-boy sold us arac in pewter cups, a dark and bitter local brew, stronger than wine. He waited for us to throw it back then went on his way with his cups returned. I may not have any time for the church, but why miss a good execution? Once years back we’d watched them hang Brother Merron and Row had said, “A good execution don’t need a good reason.” Which is true enough.

We heard the singing first, four choirboys, probably none of them cut, not in a wattle-and-daub town like Hanver. Nothing to see to start with save a silver cross up high on a staff, then the crowd parting and the boys in white frocks, voices soaring. I saw Sim way back, mouthing the words, though he didn’t know the Latin, just the sounds of it.

The priests then, two black crows with the holy purple showing at their breast, swinging censers. Blunt-faced, alike as brothers, no older than Makin. Following, drawn on a cart and bound at hand and foot, a mother and two daughters, ten, twelve, hard to say, white with terror. The senior priest brought up the rear, purple silks showing in diamonds through the black of his cassock, a stern man, handsome enough, silver hair in a widow’s peak lending him gravitas.

“I need a decent ale.” Makin spat. “That arac’s left a sour taste.”

It might be that a good execution doesn’t need a good reason, but it seemed to me that no execution the church conducted could be called good. I’d held Father Gomst in contempt most of my life, as much for the lies he told as for his weakness. That night of thorns and rain had shown his lies, clear as if lightning found them in a dark room. But they would have surfaced in time either way. In fairness though, Gomst’s brand of feeble optimism and talk of love had little of the Roma doctrine in it. Father wouldn’t let the pope’s hand inside his castle.

There were jeers among the crowd as the woman and her girls were manhandled onto the platform, though plenty kept silent, faces held tight and joyless.

“Do you know what the Church of Roma has in common with the church that came before it, the faith the popes held in the time of the Builders, in the centuries before the Builders?” I said.

Makin shook his head. “No.”

“Nobody else does either,” I said. “Pope Anticus took in every bible that survived the Thousand Suns in deep vaults, all the books of doctrine, all the Vatican records. All of it. Could have burned the lot. Could be following every letter and footnote. The scholars can tell you nothing except that you’re not allowed to know.”

The priest up on the platform had found his stride, patrolling the edge before the crowd and bellowing about wickedness and witchcraft. White flecks of spit caught the sunlight as they arced over the heads of the peasants closest in.

“I never took you for a theologian, Jorg.” Makin turned away. “Coming for that ale?”

I watched the executioners wrestle the first girl to the post. Not to be a straight hanging then, a little cutting first perhaps. She put up a struggle for a small thing: you could see the strain in the man’s arms.

“Too early in the day for blood, Sir Makin?” I goaded him but the jibe was aimed inward at whatever was putting that same sour taste in my own mouth.

Makin growled. “Call me soft but I’ve no stomach for it. Not for children.”

I don’t think he’d ever a stomach for it, Makin, not for children, not for men, though he’d let himself be carried along in the darkness of the Brotherhood back in those early years when he counted himself all that stood to defend me.

“But they’re witches.” Another taunt meant for myself. They probably were witches. I’d met witches of many flavours and more magic seemed to leak into the world with each passing year, finding its way through this person or that as if they were cracks in the fabric of our days. I’m sure the priest would have had me up on his platform too if he knew I could talk to dead men, if he saw the black veins running corrupt across my chest—if he had the balls to take me. They might be witches, but just as likely the woman had dared to disagree, or invent. Roma hated nothing like it hated invention. A priest might order you burned for making free with some enchantment, but find the trick of a better steel, or rediscover some alchemy of the Builders, and they would have an expert spend all week killing you.

Makin spat again, shook his head, walked away. A judgment on me. On his damn king! I threw off the anger, it was an escape, I could hide in it, but it wasn’t Makin that had made me angry.

Let people pray to God, it’s nothing to me. Some good may even come of it, if goodness is something that matters to you. Trap him in churches if you must, and lament him there. But Roma? Roma is a weapon used against us. A poison flavoured sweet and given to hungry men.

Up on the platform the girl screamed as they stripped her. A man approached holding a cane all set with metal teeth, glittering and pretty.

“It’s the bishop, isn’t it?” I found Kent beside me, his hand on mine as somehow it worked to draw steel without asking my permission. With Kent’s help I kept my sword in its scabbard.

“Murillo,” I agreed. There were few men who would dare mention Bishop Murillo to me. I regret the nails still. I had hammered them slow enough into his head, but even so it was too quick an escape for him.

“A black day,” Kent said, though I couldn’t tell if he meant then or now. Pious or not, he had never once chided me for the pope’s nephew.

I nodded. I had better reasons to hate the church of Roma than for Murillo, but the bishop had put the edge on it. “How’s Hellax?” I asked.

“She’ll be fine. They put a poultice on her leg,” Kent said.