King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

Crouched beside his bed, my head level with his, the snores are loud. So loud you would think he should wake himself. I can’t see his face so I remember it instead; flat I would call it, too blunt for deep emotion but well suited to the sneer. At service with Father Gomst holding forth from the pulpit, Friar Glen would watch from the chair by the chapel door, hair like wet straw around a tonsure that needed little shaving, his eyes too small for the broadness of the forehead above.

I should slit his throat and be gone. Anything else would make too much noise.

You raped Katherine. You raped her and let her think I had done it. You made her pregnant and made her hate me so much she poisoned the child from her womb. Made her hate me enough to stab me.

Katherine’s blow was for Friar Glen, not me.

My eyes have learned the darkness and the room lies revealed in night shades. I trim a long strip from the edge of his sheet. I make only a whisper below the roar of his snoring but he stirs and complains even so. I cut a second strip, a third, a fourth. I bundle the last strip into a tight ball. A candle stand and small table are set near the bed. I move them farther back so they will not fall and make a racket. I count his snores and get their rhythm. When he breathes in I stuff the wadded cloth into his mouth. I tie another strip around his head to hold it in place. Friar Glen is slow to wake but surprisingly strong. I snatch the remains of the sheet from him and hammer my elbow down into his solar plexus. The air hisses from him past his gag. I see the gleam of his eyes. He coils, foetal, and I bind his ankles tight with the third strip. The fourth is for his wrists. I have to punch his throat before I can manage to secure them.

I’ve lost my taste for the work by the time he is properly trussed. He is an ugly naked man whimpering in the dark and I only want to be gone from here. I take my knife from the table that I moved aside.

“I have something for you,” I say. “Something that was very nearly misdelivered.”

I drive my knife in low, at the base of his scrotum. I leave it there. I don’t want it back. Also, if I pull it free he will bleed to death quickly. I think he should linger.

Also, I have a spare.

I am almost at the door, with Friar Glen wheezing and hissing behind me. He makes a loud thump as he falls from the bed, but it isn’t that which stops me.

Sageous appears. He doesn’t step through the doorway, he doesn’t rise from behind a chest, he is just there. His skin glows with its own light, not bright enough to illuminate even the floor at his feet, but enough to make silhouettes of the endless script tattooed across every inch of him. His eyes and mouth are dark holes in the glow.

“I see you are making a habit out of the clergy. Are you working your way down the list? First a bishop, now a friar. What next? An altar boy?”

“You’re a heathen,” I say. “You should applaud me. Besides, his sins cried out for it.”

“Oh well, in that case…” His smile makes a black crescent in the light of his face. “And what do your sins cry out for, Jorg?”

I have no answer.

Sageous only smiles wider. “And what were the friar’s sins? I would ask him but you appear to have gagged him. I do hope the dreams I gave young Katherine have not caused trouble? Women are such complex creatures, no?”

“Dreams?” I say. My hand searches in my pack, hunting my second knife.

“She dreamed she was with child,” Sageous says. “Somehow the dream even fooled her body. I think they call it a phantom pregnancy.” The writing on his face seemed to move, words pulsing as if spoken. “Such complex creatures.”

“There was a child. She killed it.” My mouth is dry.

“There was blood and muck. Saraem Wic’s poisons will do that. But there was no child. I doubt there ever will be now. That old witch’s poisons are not gentle. They scrape a womb bare.”

I find the blade and I’m moving toward him. I try to run but it’s like wading through deep snow.

“Silly boy. You think I’m really here?” He makes no move to escape.

I try to reach him, but I’m floundering.

Schnick.

Makin’s hand on the box. The closed box.

I found myself cold, short of breath, hands tight around each other instead of Sageous’s neck. He gone. Just a memory. And I’m in the mountains. Still running.

“What the hell are you doing?” Makin panted.

I looked around. I stood waist-deep in powder snow. Rock walls loomed on either side. The men of the Watch marched behind me…a hundred yards behind me.

“You can’t open that. Not now, not ever. Certainly not now!” Makin shouted. He retched and sucked his breath back. He must have run hard to catch me. I snatched the box back from him and buried it in a pocket.

It’s rare for Blue Moon Pass to be open in the winter. Very rare. A good avalanche will clear it out though, and for a few days before new snow chokes it again, a man can escape across the back of Mount Botrang and then, by a series of lower passes that parallel the spine of the Matteracks, that man can leave the range entirely and the empire is his to wander.

“Run.”

A whisper in my ear. A familiar voice.

“Run.”

“Sageous?” I asked, voice low to keep it from Makin.

“Run.”

Drops of pure nightmare trickled down the back of my neck. I shivered. “Don’t worry, heathen. I’ll run.”

38

Wedding day

“So, will we go to Alaric?” Makin asked.

I kept walking. The sides of the Blue Moon Pass rose shear around us, caked in ice and snow, the black rock showing only where the wind scoured it clean.

“I guess the roads to the Dane-lore will be difficult in winter. But she did want you to come in winter, that girl of his. Ella?”

“Elin,” I said.

“Your grandfather would offer you sanctuary,” Makin said.

He knew we’d lost. The dead men stretched out behind us on the mountain, under stone and snow, didn’t change that.

I kept walking. Underfoot the snow left by the avalanche lay firm, creaking as it recorded my footprints.

“Is it good there? On the Horse Coast? It’d be warm at least.” He hugged himself.

There are two paths up into the Blue Moon Pass; it’s like a snake’s tongue, forked at the tip. The avalanche had opened both of them. I’d had the Highlanders place their boom-pots to ensure it.

“What?” said Makin. “You said ‘up.’”

I carried on making the hard right that led back down the second fork of Blue Moon Pass, picking up the pace. “Now I’m saying ‘down.’ I had Marten hold the Runyard for a reason, you know.”

And so with the surviving third of the Watch trailing me I led the way down through the Blue Moon into the high valley above the Runyard. And when the slope lessened and the ground became firmer…we ran.

We saw the smoke before we heard the cries, and we heard the cries before we saw the Haunt. At last, far below, the Haunt came in view, an island of mountain stone in a sea of Arrow’s troops. His forces laid siege on every side, attacking with ladders and grapple ropes, siege engines hurling rock at the front face of the castle, a covered ram pounding the gates, a legion of archers on the high ridge sending their shafts over the walls.