Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3) (23 page)

‘Projections favour Orrin, but some of us prefer to bet on longer odds for greater rewards,’ Fexler said.

‘Why so? What rewards? I’d bet on Orrin too if I had a stake.’ The words tumbled from numb lips, the poison pulsed in me, I could smell my wounds. That’s what happens when you stop. Take a rest and the world catches up with you. Lesson in life – keep moving.

‘You may recall,’ Fexler stepped closer, edging between me and his earthly remains, ‘that we spoke about a wheel. About how my generation’s greatest works were nothing to do with new ways to scorch the earth but how to change the rules of everything, how to alter the way in which the world worked?’

‘Vaguely.’ I waved a trembling hand. ‘Something to do with making what we want matter.’ It didn’t seem to have worked. I wanted him to shut up now and leave me alone, and
that
wasn’t happening.

‘Almost.’ Fexler smiled. ‘The physicists called it an adjustment of quantum emphasis. But the effect was to change the role of the observer. Of you and me. For the will of the observer to matter. So man could control his environment directly through the force of his desire, rather than through machinery.’

I had the feeling that if I died he would carry on saying his piece to my corpse.

‘Unfortunately that wheel wasn’t just turned – it was set turning. It hasn’t stopped. In fact, like so many things in nature, the process has a tipping point and we’re reaching it. The fractures in the world, in the walls between mind and matter, between energy and will, between life and death, they’re all growing. And
everything
is in danger of falling through the cracks. Each time these powers, the ability to influence energy or mass or existence, are used, the divergence grows. These are the magics you know as being fire-sworn, or rock-sworn, or as necromancy and the like. The more they are used, the easier they become, and the wider the world is broken open. And this Dead King of yours is just another symptom. Another example of a singular force of will being used to change the world and, in doing so, accelerating the turn of that wheel we released.’

A sigh, and a panel I hadn’t seen before opened on the wall to my left. Enough light came from the cavity behind to illuminate the room. I lowered the view-ring but Fexler vanished, so I set it back to my eye.

‘Take the pills.’ Fexler pointed to the cavity. ‘Swallow two a day until they’re gone. They will cure your sepsis.’

I got to my knees and scraped the handful of yellow tablets from the alcove. They were the only thing there, and I saw no means of delivery. My throat hurt as I swallowed two of them. They could be poison but Fexler likely had a thousand ways to kill me if he wanted that.

‘So what do you want from me, Fexler?’

‘As I’ve said, there are many ghosts in the Builders’ machines.’ I saw his frown as he tried to shape his words to my understanding. ‘These ghosts, these echoes, pay your kind scant attention. But their eyes are turning back to the now, to the dust and dirt where we all started. Many of them favour supporting new civilization so that the deep networks can be maintained and repaired. A growing number, however, now care more about the imminent threat as the veils thin. The problems of decay seem less pressing. They feel that the only way to stop the wheel turning, to maintain the barriers that keep earth different from fire, life different from death, is to destroy all mankind. And they’ve had a thousand years to circumvent the rules that once kept them from such acts. With none to wield these powers, with none left to have a will to exercise, the damage will be undone, or at least halted.’

‘So poor Fexler’s only fault was that he didn’t light up quite enough suns? If he had killed off the last few people there would be no problem?’ I snorted. ‘It doesn’t pay to start a job and not finish it.’

Fexler flickered as if he were a reflection disturbed by the arrival of a stone in a pond. He frowned.

‘And which camp are you in, Fexler? Make us your servants to fix your carriage, or kill us all off quick before we break the world?’

‘I have a third way,’ he said.

He rippled again, mouth twisting as if in pain. The light wavered in the space behind the panel, and died.

‘An alternative the others don’t yet acknowledge – ah!’ He faded, almost vanished, returned too bright, making me squint.

‘Take the control ring to Vyene. Beneath the throne there—’

And he was gone.

‘Jorg of Ancrath sends you back to me again, Chella.’

Something in the grinding of Artur Elgin’s jaw set Chella’s teeth on edge. Something in the way the Dead King ground that jawbone when he moved it to shape his words.

‘I’ve brought Kai Summerson to court, sire, a necromancer seeking service—’

‘Were you not to Jorg’s tastes, Chella? Did he spurn your proposal?’

Just the grinding of that bone, hinge and socket, made her skin crawl. That and the glitter of his eyes. She thought of times when she had swum in foulness, of corpse-work in the darkest places, of hunting men’s remains in the deadland borders, enough horror to take almost anyone’s sanity … and yet here she cowered from nothing but the sick click and crunch of a dead man’s jaw.

‘Chella?’ A gentle enough reminder but lesser reprimands than that had sent the Dead King’s servants to the lichkin.

‘He refused me, sire.’ More than five years on and still the Dead King wanted her old failure replayed.

‘And you still think him a foolish youth with more luck than judgment?’

‘No, sire.’ Though she did. Whatever strange emotions the boy might stir in her Chella could see little of genius in his actions. When men bet on long odds in sufficient numbers some of them will walk away with the prize. It doesn’t mean those winners will win tomorrow.

‘I want him here, Chella, to stand before my court and to answer to me.’

‘Yes, sire.’ Though what Jorg Ancrath might have to answer the Dead King for she had no idea. A ‘why’ trembled on her lips but she knew it would never take flight.

‘Bring Kai Summerson before me.’

Chella turned to motion Kai forward, drawing a breath of relief to be released from the Dead King’s stare if only for a moment. In the coldness of wraith-light Kai aged another decade as the Dead King’s regard fell upon him.

‘Kai.’ The name dropped like a dead thing from Artur Elgin’s lips. ‘Sky-sworn. Have you flown, Kai? Have you touched heaven?’

‘No, lord.’ Kai kept his gaze to the floor. ‘I saw what the eagle sees, but only with my mind. And now I am death-sworn.’

‘Death can ride the winds, Kai. Remember that. Why did you not fly? Was it beyond you? Did you not truly hold the sky within you?’

‘Fear kept me on the ground, lord.’ Passion in his words now, the Dead King’s talent for touching each raw nerve. ‘Fear of losing myself.’ Chella knew few sky-sworn who took flight ever returned. The winds claimed them. They lost substance and danced in storms, spread too thin to be contained in flesh again. She watched Kai, his knuckles white, nails biting. Did he wish now that he had lost himself in the pitiless blue?

‘It’s your will, the power of your desire, that counts in this world – in all worlds.’ For a moment the Dead King seemed almost tender, something more awful than anger coming from Artur Elgin’s dead lips. ‘The force of your conviction can anchor mind to flesh if your sense of who you are, your command of what you are, is stronger than the wind. It’s that same power of will that reels in the silver cord and draws a necromancer back from their travels in the dry lands. That same sense of self returns what won’t pass into heaven back to the shell of a man’s body, to what carried him through life, to the groove he scored in the world, be it corrupt flesh, or even bare bone, and when at last bone is lost, it returns him to a place maybe, a home, a room, to haunt the living, because misery loves company and so do all its friends.’

Kai lifted his gaze against the weight of the Dead King’s stare. ‘Fear held me.’

‘Fear holds many men, fear keeps them from their duty, fathers abandon sons, one brother leaves the next to die.’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘When the storms come, Kai Summerson, show me death on wings.’ Artur Elgin’s fingers flicked to motion Kai away.

Until the doors closed behind Kai no further words were spoken. Chella remained, the only living thing in the vaulted throne room. Perhaps hers was the only curiosity. The Dead King had need of her. Why else after all this time was she here once more, within the inner circle, humiliating reminders of her failure the only price of admission.

‘Chella Undenhert.’ The Dead King formed the name with care.

‘Sire.’ The last to know that name died six years back on Jorg Ancrath’s blade. None had spoken it in decades.

‘Some might think necromancy a threat to those of us who step out of the dry lands, out of the dust beyond, competition at the very least.’

‘Never that, sire.’ Kai’s words returned to her.
Shouldn’t we be the ones to give orders?

‘Do you know what I want, Chella?’

She truly didn’t. ‘Jorg Ancrath?’

‘I want what he wants, what all of our kind need. To rule, to own, to hold the highest ground, to have our will prevail.’

‘To be emperor?’ Chella knew the hunger of the dead, but ambition came as a surprise, though all the signs lay before her. A dead king in a dead king’s throne.

‘The empire will be a start. Remade, it can be a step from which to take everything. I am not called king of here or king of there, they call me Dead King, lord of all that does not live. Do you think in this world I would sit content with “Lord of Brettan”? Or “emperor” of an empire beyond whose borders lie lands unclaimed?’

‘No, sire.’ For all the horror of him a child’s greed and child’s pride lay about the Dead King. Perhaps his interest in the Ancrath kings lay in the mirror they held up to him.

‘Do you know why the Hundred have not united against me, Chella?’

‘They hate each other too much, sire. Gather them on a ship and let it sink – no hand would be spare for bailing or for swimming, they’d all be locked on throats, choking away the air before the waters could.’

‘They have not united because they don’t fear me.’ Artur Elgin rose from the Dead King’s throne. ‘The returned cannot breed, they rot, they know more of hunger than of caution, they can stand against armies only where the ground favours them. It is a wonder that I have taken what I now hold with nothing but corpses to play with.’ Artur’s hand settled on Chella’s shoulder and it took all her control not to flinch it off.

‘Empires are won in many ways. Do you know of tactics, Chella?’

‘A little, sire.’ If he would just take that hand away …

‘And what are the only two tactical advantages of my legions, Chella?’

‘I— I— They know no fear?’

‘No.’ An exquisite agony bled into her shoulder and the Dead King returned Artur’s hand to his side. ‘A man without fear is missing a friend. An old ghost once told me that.

‘My troops have two tactical advantages. They don’t breathe and they don’t eat. That means that any swamp, lake, or sea, is a stronghold and that I need not maintain supply lines. Past that they are poor servants at best. And it is these advantages that have given me the Isles and allow us to assault Ancrath from the Ken Marshes.

‘Beyond this, my ambitions require new strategies if they are to be met on a timescale to my liking.’

The Dead King settled once more in Artur Elgin’s driftwood throne. He ran white fingers along the chair’s polished arms, and Chella heard the screams of sailors drowning.

‘Thantos, Keres.’

Two lichkin detached from their brethren and moved to flank the Dead King. Still Chella’s eyes would not see them, returning only glimpses of ghost-wrapped bone.

‘Chella.’ He leaned Artur’s body toward her in the chair. ‘Choosing a strategy is like deciding upon a weapon. And a weapon needs a point if it is to pierce the foe, neh? You, Chella, are going to pierce the belly of the empire for me. I’m sending you on a journey. Brother Thantos and Sister Keres will keep you safe. The remainder of your escort is on a ship approaching the harbour as we speak.’

We made progress, not good progress but enough. Sometimes the guard didn’t get their charges to Vyene on time, but it hadn’t happened in my lifetime. Even when a member of the Hundred died en route, their corpse would make a punctual arrival.

When towns and villages lay at convenient points we spent the night in commandeered accommodation, otherwise tents were pitched in fields or clearings. I liked those nights best, Katherine and Miana lit by firelight in woods where cold mists threaded the trees, each woman framed by the fur trim of winter robes, all of us huddling close to the heat. Gomst and Osser in their chairs with wine goblets in hand debated as old men do, Makin and Marten kept by the queen ready to make up for my failings, Kent sat quiet, watching the night. Rike and Gorgoth bookended our little band, soaking up the warmth, both looking meaner than hell.

On one such night, with the crackle of the fire and the glow of many others dotted about us through the wood, Miana said, ‘Jorg, you sleep so much better out of the Haunt, why is that?’ Her breath steamed before her in the night and though she faced me it was Katherine that she watched.

‘I’ve always loved the road, dear,’ I told her. ‘You leave your troubles behind you.’

‘Not if you bring your wife.’ Rike snorted and kept his gaze on the fire, immune to the sharp look Marten sent his way.

‘In the Haunt you always talked in your sleep.’ Miana turned to face Katherine now. ‘He practically raved. I had to set my bed in the east tower just to get some rest.’

Katherine made no reply, her face still.

‘But now he sleeps like a sinless child, without murmur,’ Miana said.

I shrugged. ‘Bishop Gomst is the one with night terrors. Should we worry when our holiest rest uneasy?’

Miana ignored me. ‘No more “Sareth”, no more “Degran”, and no more endless “Katherine! Katherine!”’

Katherine arched one eyebrow, delicate, expressive, and delicious. Miana had been irritable all day in the carriage, but then if I’d swallowed a whole baby and it insisted on kicking the hell out of my insides I might be less than my normal tolerant self.