King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

I liked him. Simple as that. Sometimes I just do.

He crouched and with an ivory wand, drawn from his sleeve, he wrote numbers in the dust. “Your people call me a mathmagician,” he said.

“And what do you call yourself?” I asked.

“Numbered,” he said. “Tell me what you see.”

I looked at his scribbling. “Is that a root symbol?”

“Yes.”

“I see primes, here, here, and…here. This is a rational number, this one irrational. I see families.” I circled groups with my toe, some overlapping. “Real numbers, integers, imaginary numbers, complex numbers.”

He sketched again, flowing symbols that I remembered only dimly. “And this?”

“Some part of the integral calculus. But it goes beyond my lessons.” It panged me to admit defeat though I should have held my tongue after recognizing prime numbers for him. Pride is my weakness.

“Interesting.” Qalasadi scuffed the dust to erase his writings as if they might prove dangerous to others.

“So do you have me figured out?” I asked. “What’s my magic number?” I had heard tell of mathmagicians. They seemed little different from the witches, astrologers, and soothsayers from closer to home, obsessed with casting futures, handing out labels, parting fools from their coin. If he told me something about the glories ahead for the Prince of Arrow I would have trouble restraining myself. If he suggested I might be born in the year of the goat then there would be no restraint!

Again the black smile. “Your magic number is three,” he said.

I laughed. But he looked serious. “Three?” I shook my head. “There are a lot of numbers to choose from. Three just seems a little…predictable.”

“Everything is predictable,” Qalasadi said. “At its core my arts are the working of probability, which produces prediction, and that leads us to timing, and in the end, my friend, everything comes down to a matter of timing does it not?”

He had a point. “But three?” I waved my hands, groping for outrage. “Three?”

“It’s the first of your magic numbers. They form a series,” he said. “The second of them is fourteen.”

“See, now you’re talking. Fourteen. I can believe in that.” I crouched beside him since he seemed unwilling to rise. “Why fourteen?”

“It is your age is it not?” he asked. “And it is the key to your name.”

“My name?” An uneasiness crept up my back, chill despite the heat.

“Honorous, I should say. With some certainty.” He scratched in the dust and erased it just as quick. “Ancrath, quite likely. Jorg, maybe.”

“I’m fascinated at how you would calculate all that from fourteen,” I said. I considered breaking his neck and leaving for the docks. But that wasn’t the man I wanted to show my mother’s father, or her brother. It wasn’t the Jorg she had known.

“You have the look of a Steward to me. The right lines. Particularly around the eyes, nose, the forehead too. And you’ve declared yourself from Ancrath which would fit with your accent and colouring. Almost all Stewards are named after Honorous. You could be a bastard, but who teaches a bastard to even recognize calculus? And if you’re legitimate then as a Steward from Ancrath you would be named Ancrath. And what members of that household are young men? Jorg Ancrath springs to mind. And how old is he? Close on fifteen but not yet there.”

I didn’t yet know if I was right to like the man but his store of facts and talent for deduction impressed me. “Spectacular,” I said. “Wrong, but spectacular.”

Qalasadi shrugged. “I try.” He nodded to the refectory. “Your lunch awaits, no doubt.”

I stood and started across the courtyard. Then paused. “Why three?”

Qalasadi frowned as if trying to recall a lost sensation. “Three steps outside? Three in the carriage? Three women that will love you? Three Brothers lost on your journey? The magic lies in the first number, the mathematics in the second.”

The “three steps” put a cold finger down my spine, as if he had rummaged in the back of my skull and pulled out something I would rather keep hidden. I said nothing and walked away, a wild night running through my mind, cut by lightning and glimpses of the empty carriage as I hung in thorns.

I found myself at the refectory table without memory of getting there. I wondered how long it would be before Qalasadi laid his deductions at my uncle’s feet. He might spoil my game but it presented no danger.

“Not hungry?” The short guardsman from the gates sat across from me. Sunny.

I looked down at my lunch and tried to make sense of it. “What’s this stuff? Did someone throw up in my bowl?”

“Spicy squid.” The guardsman kissed his fingertips and spread them. Mwah.

I skewered a tentacle, a difficult feat in itself, and set to chewing. The experience wasn’t dissimilar from chewing shoe leather. Except that to fully replicate it you would have to set the leather on fire. Spices are all well and good. Salt to taste, a little pepper, a bay leaf in soup, a clove or two in an apple pie. But on the Horse Coast they seem to favour chillies that will take the skin off your tongue. Having been burned on the outside and not liked the experience, I saw no reason to burn on the inside. I spat my mouthful back into the bowl.

“That is truly vile!” I said.

“I would have had it off you,” the guardsman said. “But you went and spat in it. I’m Greyson by the way.”

“William of Ancrath,” I said. I picked up my hunk of bread and nibbled it, wary that the cook might have mixed a bag of chilli dust in with the flour.

“What’s the deal with the Moor?” I asked, and ran my fingers over my teeth as if “Moor” were not sufficient description.

“You’ve met Qalasadi now have you?” Greyson grinned. “He keeps the castle accounts. Works wonders with the local merchants. Gets Earl Hansa the good contracts. Best of all he’s in charge of paying the guards and he’s never a day late. Five years back we had Friar James keeping the books. We could go a month without coin.” He shook his head.

“He’s close with the Earl and his son, this Qalasadi?” I asked.

“Not especially. He’s just the book keeper.” Greyson shrugged.

I liked the sound of that, but wondered at a man of such talent occupying a relatively minor role without complaint.

“I like him well enough,” Greyson said. “Plays cards with the wall guard sometimes. Always loses, never complains, never drinks our ale.”

“You’d have thought he’d be good at cards,” I said.

“Terrible. Not sure he even knows the rules. But he seems to love it. And the men like him. They don’t even give him a hard time about being the castle’s only Moor. And by rights they should. What with his countrymen set on invading the mainland and turning us all to heathens or corpses.”

“Moors is it?” I asked. “Should I be expecting to kill some soon?”

Others of the guard leaned in, listening to the conversation as they chewed their squid. I thought perhaps the chilli dissolved the tentacles in the end, because chewing seemed insufficient.

“You might yet,” Greyson said. “Ibn Fayed, he’s caliph in Liba, has sent his ships three times this year. We’re due another raid.”