King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

“I love this city,” I said, and we went back to the others.

We stabled the horses and sat at a tavern by the docks. I call it a tavern but we sat outside, around tables in the sun if you please, with wine in bottles shaped like tear drops with baskets woven around them. Makin with his bare feet, traces of dried mud still visible. Rike complained of course, about the sun, about the wine, even about the chairs which seemed unable to support his weight, but I paid more attention to the seagulls’ chatter. I sat and watched the ships moored at the quayside, bigger than I had thought they would be, and more complex, with rigging and spars and deck ropes and a multitude of sails. I felt better than I had in an age. Even my burns hurt less fiercely, as if the hot sun soothed their anger. For the first time in a long time we relaxed, smiled, and spoke of the dead. Of Brother Row, who I would remember, and Brother Sim, who I would miss for his harping and for his promise. We raised our bottles to them both and drank deep.

Only Kent put up any resistance to the idea of returning without me. I let him protest a while until he ran out of things to say and in the end convinced himself that my plan was the best one. Red Kent’s like that. Give him a little space to turn and he’ll come around.

I stood, rolled my neck, and stretched in the sunshine. “Catch you on the road, Brothers.”

“You’re going now?” Makin asked, putting down his bottle-in-a-basket.

“Well, unless you want to drink till we’re all sunburnt and maudlin and then declare undying love for each other and part with drunken hugs?” I said.

Rike spat. He seemed to have inherited the role of spitter from Row.

“In that case, your path lies that way.” I pointed north. “I should note that the first quarter mile of that path is on a street that boasts several fine-looking whorehouses. So take your time. As for me—I’m going to find out about ships.”

I set off at an amble, following my shadow across the bright flagstones.

“Look after Brath for me,” I called back.

They picked up their bottles and drank to me. “Catch you on the road,” they replied. Even Rike.

And if Makin hadn’t been there I think I really could have ditched them that easily.

40

Four years earlier

In a great port like Barlona there are hundreds of ships at harbour. Most belong to merchants, or collectives of merchants, and hug the coastline loaded with things that are cheap where the ships set out and that command a higher price where they are bound. It’s a simple equation and the devil lies in the details. There are warships too, owned in name by the Prince of Barlona and in the service of his people. In reality it is the wealthiest of the merchants who put new princes on the throne, and the warships serve to protect their trade routes. And among the merchant cogs and the Prince’s warships, a scattering of ocean-going ships, triple-masted and more, deep-hulled, from the strangest and most distant shores. Even one great vessel of sickwood, twice the size of her largest rival, her grey planks grown one into the next, half-living despite the lumberman’s saw. Her hull, crusted with barnacles large as dinner plates even above the wave-line, bore many scars, and on her decks men with copper skin worked at repairs.

I spent a few hours watching the great ships with their foreign crews, yellow men from Utter, black crews from the many Kingdoms of Afrique, turbaned sailors with curling beards, sun-stained, strutting the decks of pungent spice-boats. The Prince of Arrow’s words returned to me. His observations on the smallness of my world and the largeness of my ignorance. Even so, every man amongst these travellers knew of the empire, even though it stood in pieces. And so we had us some common ground.

I saw Makin and the others trailing me almost from the start. He’d had the sense to leave Rike behind, most likely in one of the whorehouses I’d suggested. Rike’s not one to be missed, even on a crowded street. Makin would have done better to leave himself and Red Kent in the whorehouse too. Grumlow I might not have spotted. Grumlow has quiet ways about him.

The smaller and more shabby of the merchant cogs stood at anchor on the margins of the great harbour. They moored along sway-backed quays that abutted semi-derelict warehouses separated by dangerous alleys where the stink of rotted fish made my eyes water. I followed two bare-chested men carrying a barrel up the gangplank onto the Sea-goat.

“You! Get off my ship.” The man shouting at me was smaller and dirtier than the other men on deck but loud enough to be the captain.

“A ship now is it?” I looked around. “Well, I suppose if you set a sail in a rowboat you can call it a ship. But you were unwise to throw away the oars.”

“I was going to let you choose which side you left by. But that offer is now void,” the little man said. The mass of black curls framing his ugly face looked to be a wig, but why anyone would want to set ten pounds of stolen sweaty hair on their head in this heat I couldn’t fathom.

I magicked a silver coin into my hand, an Ancrath royal stamped with my father’s head. “Customer,” I said.

The fat man advancing on me stopped. He looked relieved.

“I want to get to the Horse Coast,” I said. “Somewhere around the ear would do.”

The Horse Coast isn’t named for the stallions that make it famous these days. Apparently the peninsula coastline resembles a horse’s head. I’ve studied the map scrolls in my father’s library and I can say with surety that it looks like a horse’s head in the same way that troll-stones look like trolls, or that the constellation of Orion looks like a belted giant holding a club. They could have called it the Happy Pig Coast or the Crooked Thumb Coast just as well. To give the ancients the benefit of the doubt I will note that the sea has risen twice the height of the Tall Castle since the time of Building and the old maps had to be rewritten many times. Even so, I’d stake a bag of stolen gold on the fact that there was never a time that “horse” was the first thing to spring to mind when contemplating the run of the Horse Coast.

I had plenty of time to think while the little captain favoured me with a sour stare and chewed his lip. I could have picked a ship at random. Any small vessel actively loading would be departing for ports up the coast from Barlona or down the coast. I’d bought a couple of ales for a sailor earlier in the day. He’d gone through his share from his previous trip and was delaying a new signing until the last possible moment. In return for my keeping him from sobriety for a few more hours he’d run off a list of the best bets for a trip south. The Sea-goat’s name had taken my fancy. Who wants to sail on the Maria, or the God’s Grace, when there’s a Sea-goat to be ridden?

“Two silver and you haul rope when told,” he said.

“One silver and I get fed with the crew,” I said and started walking toward the gangplank. I could ride the Maria just as well. In fact it sounded better each time I said it.

“Done,” he said.

And so I sailed on the Sea-goat with Captain Nellis.

Before the Sea-goat hoisted sail I took a last walk around the seafront and stopped in at the Port Commander’s office long enough to place a bribe of sufficient weight to considerably lighten my gold supply. Ideally the Brothers would be steered onto a ship that would take them north up the coast and abandon them in a minor port. Makin would be too busy vomiting to notice which side of the boat the land lay off. Failing that, they need only arrest Makin and hold him a week or two—long enough for my trail to grow cold and to remind him that in the end when your king tells you to do something, you do it.