King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

Where the Banlieu shades into the Low City the worst of the taverns crowd around narrow streets. I pass the Falling Angel where I first plotted Gelleth’s end, where I first thought to pay for affection. I know better now. Affection is always paid for.

I choose another alehouse, the Red Dragon. A grand name for a dim and reeking place of shadows.

“Bitter,” I say.

The barkeep takes my coin and fills a tankard from the barrel spigot. If he thinks I look young to drink here, among the broken old men with their red noses and watery eyes, he says nothing.

I take a table where I can put a corner at my back and watch the windows. The ale is as bitter as my mood. I take slow sips and wait for the night to come.

I think of Katherine. I make a list.

She said I was evil and that she hates me.

She has set her heart on the Prince of Arrow.

She tried to kill me.

She destroyed the child she thought was mine.

She was defiled by another man.

I run through it again and again as the sun sinks, as the drunkards come and go, carts and whores and dogs and labourers pass in the street, and still I cycle through my list.

Love is not a list.

Full dark, and my tankard has stood empty for hours. I walk into the street. Here and there a lantern hangs, too high for thieves, casting a parsimonious light that struggles to reach the ground.

Despite all my waiting, despite my resolve, still I hesitate. Can I tread the paths of childhood again without taint? Overhead the stars turn, a slow revolution about the Pole Star, the Nail of Heaven. Part of me doesn’t want to go back to the Tall Castle. I push that part away.

I cross the river by the New Bridge and find a quiet corner where I can watch the High Wall. Crath City and its parts have been named with the same lack of imagination the Builders put into the architecture of its castle. As if the box-like utilitarianism of the castle has leached into the language of the city. If I had the power to build for the ages, to know that what I set in stone would stand for millennia, I would put at least some measure of beauty into the mix.

The High Wall is indeed high, but it is not well lit, and some way west of the Triple Gate the stonework is broken by the remnants of a second wall that once led off at right angles and is now gone. I practised my climbing here when I was little. It seems easy now. Handholds that I struggled to reach can be bypassed entirely in favour of the next. My hands know this surface. I don’t need to see it. This is memory. I gain the top well before the next guard makes his rounds. On the far side ill-advised ivy makes the descent a simple matter.

Young Sim taught himself the ways of the assassin. He made a hobby of it, the short knife, drop-leaf in powder or tincture, or once in a while a harp string used to garrotte. Of all my Brothers it is Sim that is the most deadly in the long haul. In a battle I could surely cut him down. But lose sight of the boy and he will not come at you in the next moment, or the next day, but in his own time. When you have forgotten the wrong you did him, he will find you again. Sim taught himself the long game and he passed a little knowledge on to me.

Disguise is not a matter of clothes and artistry with paints and kohl. Disguise lies in how you move. Of course the right uniform, a chin made of putty, a well-applied scar, all these can be of great help in the proper circumstances, but the first step, Sim taught me, the most important step, is exactly that…how you step. Move with confidence, or at least confidence in your role. Believe you have every right to be where you are. Step with purpose. Then even a prop as small as a hat can furnish a full disguise.

I stride through the streets of Old City, aiming directly for the East Gate, the gate where deliveries are made to the Tall Castle, supplies unloaded, messages handed to runners for carriage to distant quarters. A patrol of my father’s soldiers, ten strong, passes the head of Elm Street as I walk it. They spare me a first glance but not a second.

Three torches burn above the East Gate. They call it a gate but it is a door, five yards high, three yards wide, black oak with iron banding, a smaller door set into the middle of it for when it is simply men seeking entrance rather than giants. An armoured knight stands duty before the door. If he wished to see anything he should stand in the dark.

I turn aside and come to the base of the castle wall close to the corner of the great square keep.

A man seeking to protect himself from the assassin’s knife concentrates his defence. You cannot stop a single anonymous enemy entering your realm. You cannot stop him entering your city. Unless he is unskilled you would be lucky to stop him finding a way past your castle wall. Your keep may hold him out if it is secure and well guarded—but it would be unwise to bet your life on it. To defeat the assassin you don’t spread your defences over your whole estate, you focus them around you. Ten good men tight around your bedchamber can do more to preserve you than ten thousand spread across a kingdom.

My father’s keep is secure and well patrolled, but by the time I reached seven I knew the outside of it better than the inside. In the dark of the moon I climb the Tall Castle once more. Builder-stone rough under my fingers, my toes hunting familiar holds through the soft leather of my boots, the scrape of the wall on my cheek as I hug it. I see my knuckles white in the starlight as I grip the corner of the Tall Castle and move up.

I hold still just beneath the battlements. A soldier pauses and leans out watching some distant light. The battlements are new additions, dressed stone atop the Builder-stone. The Builders had weapons that made mockery of castles and of battlements. I don’t know what the Tall Castle was when the Builders made it, but it was not a castle. In the deepest part of the dungeons under layers of filth an ancient plaque declares “No Overnight Parking.” Even when the Builders’ words make sense alone, they hold no meaning together.

The soldier moves on. I climb up, cross the thickness of the wall, and shin down one of the wooden supports for the walkways.

In a dark corner of the courtyard I take off my bravo’s hat and return it to my pack. I pull out a tunic, blue and red in the Ancrath colours. I had a woman called Mable tailor it for me at the Haunt, in the style of my father’s servant garb. With the tunic on and my hair tucked into it, I enter the Printers’ Door. I pass a table-knight about his rounds. Sir Aiken if I remember rightly. I keep my head up and he takes no notice of me. A man with his head bowed is hiding his face and worthy of close inspection.

From the Printers’ Door it is left then right along a short corridor to reach the chapel. The chapel door is never locked. I look in. Only two candles still burn, both little more than stubs and making scant light. The place is empty. I move on.

Friar Glen’s quarters are close to the chapel. His door is latched but I carry a short strip of steel thin enough and flexible enough to fit between door and frame, strong enough to lift the latch.

His room is very dark but it has a high window that opens onto the courtyard where Makin used to school the squires in the arts of combat. A borrowed light filters in and I let my eyes learn its ways. The place stinks like cheese left too long in the sun. I stand and listen to the friar’s snore whilst my eyes hunt him.

He lies hunched in his bed, an inchworm frozen in midcrawl. I can see little of the room, just a cross on the wall with the saviour absent as if he’d taken a break rather than watch this night’s business. I step forward. I remember how Friar Glen dug in my flesh for those hooks the briar left in me. How he hunted them. What pleasure he took in it, with his man, Inch, holding me down. I pull my knife from its sheath.