Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3) (41 page)

‘King Jorg.’ He turned his cat’s eyes on me, his great head turning slowly on a tree-trunk neck. He had a gravitas about him, did Gorgoth, something leonine.

‘Of all the people I know.’ I moved to stand beside him and followed his gaze out into the night. ‘Of all of them, since the Nuban died – it’s your friendship, your respect, I wanted. And you’re the one not to give it. I didn’t want it because you didn’t give it – but I do want it.’ Perhaps the beer spoke for me, but it spoke true.

‘You’re drunk,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be holding a baby.’

‘Answer the question.’

‘It wasn’t a question.’

‘Answer it anyway,’ I said.

‘We can never be friends, Jorg. You have crimes on your soul, blood on your hands, that only God can forgive.’ His voice rolled away from us, deeper and darker than the night.

‘I know it.’ I lifted William closer to my face and breathed him in. ‘You and I know it. The rest of them, they somehow forget, convince themselves it can be swept away, misremembered. Only you and Katherine see the truth. And Makin, though it’s Makin he can’t forgive, not me.’

I passed William to Gorgoth, pressing him forward until the leucrota lifted one massive three-fingered hand to receive him. He stood very still, eyes wider than wide, staring at my son, almost lost in the width of his palm.

‘Men shun me – I have never held a baby,’ he said. ‘They think what corrupted me will pass to their children if I touch them.’

‘And will it?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Well then.’

We stood, watching the rise and fall of a tiny chest.

‘You’re right not to be a friend to me,’ I said. ‘But will you be a friend to William, as you once were to Gog?’ The boy would need friends. Better men than me.

The slowest nod of that great head. ‘You taught me that. Somehow you taught me what Gog was worth.’ He lifted William close to his face. ‘I will protect him, Jorg of Ancrath. As if he were my own.’

‘There’s no room at the inn.’ Kai twisted a grin at her. Allenhaure is full. He climbed back into the carriage, slipping off muddy boots.

‘Full of?’

‘King Jorg’s escort,’ Kai said.

‘So have Axtis press on to the next town,’ Chella said.

‘It’s a long haul to Gauss and the guard are always treated well here. Rumbles of discontent I’m hearing, as if there’s real men under all that gilding and those stern expressions.’

‘Not my concern. Let’s be moving.’ Though as she spoke the words it seemed that perhaps it was her concern. She tasted it at first, a wrongness in the air. ‘Wait.’

Kai paused, a boot half-returned to his foot. ‘What?’

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes … ‘Just wait.’ She held up a hand.

Wrongness. A dry sharp sense of wrong, like grit behind her eyeballs. The temperature fell, or perhaps her body just thought it did for her breath didn’t steam.

‘Lichkin.’ Kai felt it too.

‘Hiding himself,’ she said. ‘Thantos.’

‘What does he want?’ Kai’s poise fell away when lichkin drew near. Keres had terrified him. Thantos was worse.

‘It’s a reminder,’ Chella said. Some part of her had been hoping the plan forgotten or changed, a large part, and growing larger as life reclaimed her. She cursed Jorg Ancrath and steeled herself to this new task.

‘Go into town, get a cart and have it loaded with ale casks. We’ll camp in the fields toward the river. The guard can have their revels.’

Kai sniffed. ‘Looks like rain.’

‘Have them build fires. They won’t notice the rain after long.’

‘Ale will do that for you.’ Kai nodded. He couldn’t manage a grin though, not with death stalking so close, scraping every nerve raw.

Chella reached into the purse on her dress-belt. ‘Take this.’ She spilled four heavy pieces of gold into his hand, Brettan bars.

‘What—’ He nudged the small vial of black glass lying amongst the gold in his palm. From the change in his face she could tell he understood.

‘Styx water. One drop per cask.’

* * *

‘What a thing it would be.’ Chella held the goblet before her, making a slow swirl of the ale, the foam all but gone, just islands in a dark and moonlit sea. ‘To fly.’

‘Yes.’ Kai stared into his own dark sea, his own foam scattered islands. Perhaps it reminded him of his drowned land.

A long silence. The soft rain made no sound. Far, in the distance, a muted cheer from Allenhaure, some celebration amongst Jorg’s guard.

‘I almost did.’ Kai set his silver goblet on the table between them. ‘Once.’

‘How can you almost fly?’ Chella shook her head.

‘How can you almost love?’ He looked up at the sky, starless and bible-black. ‘I stood on a lip of rock, held out over the Channel Sea, where the waves pound on white cliffs. And the wind there, it blows so cold and sure, takes the heat from you, wraps your bones. I leaned out into it, nothing but the wind to hold me, and those dark waves slapping and pounding way, way below. And it filled me, like I was made of glass, or ice, or air, and the only thing in my mind was the voice of that east wind, the voice of forever calling me.’

‘But?’

‘But I couldn’t let go. If I had flown I would have flown away from everything I knew. From me.’ He shook his head.

‘And what wouldn’t we give to fly away from being us right now?’ Chella flicked her goblet over and stood as the liquid spilled over the table. All across the field men of the guard lay sprawled as if in sleep, lying, some of them in their gold armour, in the muddy grass. Captain Axtis had ended on his back, half-out of his pavilion, sword in hand, eyes staring at the sky and full of rain. Out of nearly three hundred men only eleven hadn’t at least sipped the Allenhaure ale. The lichkin had found those men in the dark and played his games, first making them silent with the wet tearing of flesh.

‘Will Thantos be needing the others too?’ Kai pushed away the white arm of a camp-girl, sodden dress, hair dark with rain, face-down in the dirt. He levered himself from his chair and stepped over her to join Chella.

She nodded. ‘They’ll go to the woods and join the Dead King’s force when he arrives.’

Kai drew his cloak tight. A mist lay ankle-deep around them, rising out of nowhere as if it bled from the ground, white as milk.

‘It’s starting.’

The sense of wrongness that had scratched at her all evening, twisting likes worms beneath the skin, now crystallized into horror. When the dead return there’s a feeling of everything flowing the wrong way, as if hell itself were vomiting them out.

Axtis sat up first, before his men, before the dead whores, the boys with their serving plates and polish rags. He didn’t blink. The water ran from his eyes, but he didn’t blink. Wrong.

All around them men stood in their golden armour. The Styx water had left no mark upon them, save for the few who tumbled into the open fires of course. Styx water does its work without hurry, dulling senses, bringing sleep, paralysing the voice first, then the larger muscle groups. At the last the death it offers is an agony of tortured muscles fighting and failing. Chella had enough necromancy in her fingertips to know that they had not died easy. Their pain echoed in her.

‘I still don’t understand,’ Kai said. ‘It won’t take long before someone discovers something is wrong with them. And then all that talk of diplomacy is just noise. We’ll be fortunate to escape without being beheaded then burned. That’s what they do to our sort you know? That’s if you’re lucky. If not, it’s burning first, then behead what’s left.’

‘The Dead King has his reasons,’ Chella said.

‘All this to spread terror? It seems extravagant.’

Chella shrugged. Better Kai not know the Dead King’s reasons. She’d rather not know them herself. ‘We ride from here. In the saddle.’

‘What? Why?’ The rain fell faster, harder, just to over-score his point.

‘Well you can stay in the carriage if you want.’ Chella wiped the water from her face and spat. ‘But Thantos will be in there, and lichkin aren’t the best of travelling companions.’

Vyene is the greatest city on earth. I could be wrong of course. It might be that in the vastness of Ling, or beyond the Sahar at the heart of Cerana, or somewhere in the dusts of the Indus there lies a more fabulous work of men. But I doubt it. The wealth of an empire has been spent in Vyene, year upon year, century upon century, exchanged for stone and skill.

‘Incredible.’ Makin took off his helm as though it might somehow hinder his ability to absorb the glories on every side. Rike and Kent said nothing, struck dumb. Marten kept close at my side, every bit the farmer once again, as if six years of war, of leading armies to victory, had slid from him, scared away by the majesty of our surroundings.

‘Lord Holland would be a peasant here,’ Makin said.

Few of the cities I had taken in the year following my conquest of Arrow held a single building to compare with the grand structures lining our approach to the palace. Here nobles of the old empire had built their summer homes, in all shapes and sizes, from confections in rose-marble to edifices in granite that scraped the clouds, all competing to impress the emperor, his court, and each other. My great grandfather had been such a noble, Duke of Ancrath, holding the lands in the name of the empire and at the steward’s pleasure. When the steward died and the empire fell into its pieces, Grandfather made his own crown, claimed Ancrath for himself, and called himself king.

Even in Vyene though, a nervousness ran through the streets. More than the excitement of Congression. The place held a tension, a drawn breath waiting release. Bonefires burned in alleyways and distant squares, corpses given to the flame in fear that something worse might take them. The crowds that watched our procession had a restlessness to them. A guardsman on a skittish horse lost his helm and laughter went up among the locals, but it rang too shrill, edged with hysteria.

The roads to the palace, and there are four, each lie broad enough that a man couldn’t throw a spear from the gates of the residences on one side to those on the other. Our column rode at the centre, fifteen abreast and thirty deep with the carriages in the midst and the wagons to the rear. The followers and hangers-on, including Onsa’s wheel-house packed with negotiable affection, had melted away in the outer reaches of the city. Captain Devers had sent out word to the effect that no undesirables should approach the Gilden Gate. I had to grin at that. I’m sure a wheel-house full of prostitutes would carry less sin through those gates than the Hundred on their best day.

I rode on, my mood growing more grim. I came to swap one crown for a different one, to exchange my throne for a less comfortable chair. Perhaps I would find Fexler Brews’ third way and paper over the cracks that ran through the world. I didn’t know. But I knew the Jorg who wore that new crown, who might sit upon the all-throne, would be no different. No better. No more able to tear free of his past and the hooks that sunk too deep.

The emperor’s palace sits amid a square so vast that the grand houses on the far side appear tiny. The four roads converge upon the palace dome, passing through an acreage of flagstones devoid of statue, fountain, or monument. On normal days the wealthy citizens might flock in this space, spending coin at stalls and stands able to cater to their excess. Around Congression the autumn winds sweep through unhindered.

‘God’s whore!’ Makin broke into my musings. He stood in his stirrups.

Sir Kent had himself a frown at that. Not so keen on the blaspheming since his conversion.

‘Such language!’ I tsked at Lord Makin. ‘What pray tell is amiss.’

‘You could see for yourself if you weren’t riding on your dignity,’ he said, half-smiling but still blinking in disbelief.

I sighed and stood too. In the distance, halfway to the palace, a thin line of black-cloaked soldiers stood across the breadth of West Street. Something familiar about the red-crested helms, the way the gleaming plate armour gave way to ridiculous pantaloons striped in blue and yellow.

‘Well fuck me, it’s the Pope.’ I sat back down.

‘The Pope?’ Rike asked, as if unfamiliar with the word.

‘Yes, Brother Rike.’ The column began to slow. ‘Fat old woman, interesting hat, infallible.’

We closed the distance, hooves clattering on the cobbled road. The papal guard waited, impassive, polearms with their butts to the flagstones, pennants fluttering, blades to the sky. Captain Devers brought his men to a standstill before the line. Behind the Pope’s men a sedan chair rested, a huge and ornate construction closed in on all sides against the weather and prying eyes. The ten bearers stood at attention beside the carrying poles.

‘Her holiness will speak with King Jorg.’ The centremost of the guardsmen called out the demand, perhaps the leader of the squad but marked no differently from any other.

‘This will be interesting.’ I swung out of my saddle and walked toward the front of our column.

Miana opened the door as I passed Holland’s carriage. ‘Make this right, Jorg,’ she told me. ‘Next time Marten might not be there to save the day.’

I turned, took her hand and made a smile for her. ‘It cost me forty thousand in gold to get this meeting, I’m not going to waste it, my queen. I may be foolish on occasion, but I’m not an idiot.’

‘Jorg.’ A warning tone as her hand slipped mine.

The front ranks parted and I approached the papal guard. The man who summoned me forward now looked pointedly at Gog, scabbarded at my hip.

‘Well, show me to her holiness, then. Can’t wait all day, I’ve got business to attend to.’ I nodded to the great dome of the palace rising behind him.

A pause, and he turned to lead me through the line. We came to the carriage-box and three of the bearers hastened forward with chairs, two hefting a broad purple-cushioned stool, one with a simple ebony ladder-back for me.

Another bearer joined them and they stood two to either side of the door to the carriage-box. A very wide door, I noted. A fifth man scurried around to the rear and I heard the opposite door click open. I guessed he might be tasked with pushing.