The Poison Throne (51 page)
Authors: Celine Kiernan
With huge thanks to Svetlana Pironko of Author Rights Agency for her protection and guidance. A wonderful agent and a friend too. Also to my first publishers The O’Brien Press, who took a chance on me and have supported and helped me, and held my hand all through this strange new process.
Many,
many
thanks to all at Little, Brown who have thrown themselves so enthusiastically into the Moorehawke experience.
And lastly to Pat Mullan, whose kindness and generosity of spirit opened a door I had begun to think was locked for good. Thanks Pat, I’ll never be able to thank you enough.
Celine Kiernan
Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, C
ELINE
K
IERNAN
has spent the majority of her working life in the film business, and her career as a classical feature animator spanned over seventeen years. Celine wrote her first novel at the age of eleven, and hasn’t stopped writing or drawing since. She also has a peculiar weakness for graphic novels as, like animation, they combine the two things she loves to do the most: drawing and storytelling. Now, having spent most of her time working between Germany, Ireland and the USA, Celine is married and the bemused mother of two entertaining teens. She lives a peaceful life in the blissful countryside of Cavan, Ireland. Find out more about the author at
www.celinekiernan.com
.
What was the inspiration to write?
I can’t seem to come up with a satisfactory answer to that. It’s the same as when people ask me, “How did you come up with the idea for that drawing?” The idea is just there.
It’s as if the characters and situations are there already, as if they’ve actually happened, and I’m just reporting them. Sometimes a story is so “big” inside my head that if I don’t write it down it feels like I will explode.
Where did the idea come from for the Moorehawke Trilogy?
Hee. I have this thing, this kind of visual in my head of a dark room with lots of boxes in it. Each box has a story in it, and they sit there till I’m ready to work on them. Inside the box, while they’re waiting for my attention, they percolate, or they grow. Like coffee, or fungus.
Anyway, the Moorehawke Trilogy began while on holiday to the south of France. It was a little story about a carpenter’s daughter, a missing prince, a ghost in an avenue and, perhaps, the mention of a talking cat. It was intended as a sun-soaked, bright, action adventure type thing. My kids like to tell me that it went into the box a happy, skipping child and shambled out the other end a drooling blood-soaked monster. I suppose they’re not far wrong.
Do you have a favorite character in
The Poison Throne?
No, I don’t think so. They’re all so different, and they all have their own motivations and their own ideas on how to deal with this very trying and extreme situation they find themselves in. I may not agree with how some of them handle themselves, but I feel for and sympathize with them all.
Is there a character that you really hated creating?
Gosh no! Even my bad guys are fascinating to me. I think it would be impossible to create a character towards whom I had no sympathy at all. There are some characters that I hate to let go—Rory, for example; I really wanted to put more of him into the story. But there was no place for him. Thankfully he plays a huge role in the prequel, so I get to hang out more with him then.
Are some of the characters based on historical people?
Badi’ al-Zaman al-Jazari was a real person, as was his work
The Book of Ingenious Mechanical Devices
. I believe it was on tour in the Chester Beattie recently; I deeply regret not having seen it. But, of course, he’s not a character in the book. So the answer is no, the main characters are not based on real people.
I’ve kept everything grounded in the realities of everyday life at the turn of the 1400s, though. Even the fact that Wynter is a guild-approved carpenter isn’t too far off the wall, as records show that there were two female blacksmiths practicing in London only a few decades later. Though there is an element of fantasy to the books (ghosts and talking cats and the like), I’ve kept the technology as accurate as possible. In regards to some things that come later in the series, I’m trying as much as possible to make sure that Lorcan would actually have been able to succeed in building The Bloody Machine.
I have greatly reimagined Europe and Africa’s political geography, not to mention its history. There never having been a Moorish invasion or any Crusades, political relationships are vastly different than in real life. It is also a fragmented, quarrelsome Europe, with many small powers rather than three or four big ones, and religious persecution and racial intolerance loom in the form of various “inquisitions.” For a kingdom as economically fragile and militarily vulnerable as the Southlands, there are dark times ahead if things aren’t handled properly. Though Jonathon has powerful allies in the Moroccos, and though he has control of the valued Port Road, he knows his kingdom is more and more vulnerable to the instability that surrounds him. As a man of conscience, Jonathon would not like some of the things he will be forced to do as king; they would eat at him as a man.
In your imagination, where precisely in Europe is
The Poison Throne
set?
In a small kingdom that takes up most of the south of France, stretching approximately from north of Lyon to Marseilles, including the mountain ranges that flank that area of land and all of the coast.
Given that you were working full-time when you began the Moorehawke Trilogy, how did you make time to write it?
It’s not easy sometimes. The last few years, I found myself staying up till three and four in the morning most nights, and then getting up for work the next day. It nearly killed me. For the next year at least I can write during the day. That will be bliss.
Describe your writing routine, if you have one.
I have a very strong work ethic. I write four pages a day, regardless of the quality, and if I don’t stick to that I get very anxious. Perhaps if I start biting my nails it will relieve the pressure.
Who inspires you?
In terms of what writers inspire me? I have an abiding love of John Steinbeck. I love Neil Gaiman, Patrick O’Brien and the great Shirley Jackson. I also adored Stephen King’s early work; his early stuff is absolute genius.
I suppose, anyone whose work moves or intrigues me is an inspiration!
introducing
If you enjoyed
THE POISON THRONE,
look out for
Book 2 of The Moorehawke Trilogy
by Celine Kiernan
Wynter sank closer to Ozkar’s neck and slowly dipped her head so that the dark brim of her hat hid her eyes. The horse side-stepped nervously under her and tried to back out of their hiding place. He could sense her fear and it was making him anxious. Wynter murmured to him and stroked his shoulder, but he shook his head, snorted and loudly stamped his foot.
The men moving in the trees ahead of her were getting close. Wynter tracked their progress by the noise of their horses, and she shrank further back into cover as the sounds grew louder. She could not believe how easily these men had escaped her attention. The trees here were so thick and dark that Wynter might never have noticed them, only that they had been foolish enough to light a pipe, and its rich tobacco scent had alerted her to their presence. It filled her with fear to realize that they may have been traveling parallel to each other for days and not known it, the sounds of the men’s horses cancelling out the noises made by Ozkar and vice versa.
Wynter was just raising her head to peer through the trees, hoping for a glimpse of them, when a low whistling signal from the road sent her ducking again, her heart racing. There was a moment of silence from the men, then they whistled a melodic reply, and to Wynter’s horror, began pushing their horses through the brush towards her.
They came frighteningly close and she was filled with an almost irresistible desire to lift her head and look. But it would take just one careless movement and they would spot her, so she kept her eyes shut and her head down and the men passed slowly by.
They urged their horses down a steeply sloping bank and out of sight. Wynter side-stepped Ozkar so that she could observe their descent to the road.
She found herself looking down on the tops of their heads as they passed from the shade into brutal sunshine, and they came to a halt in the road, looking expectantly into the trees on the opposite side. Wynter followed their gaze, and ducked lower at the sight of four horsemen descending the far slope. As these newcomers reached the road, the original two men shook back their dark hats and uncovered their faces. They were Combermen, their rosined hair and beards glistening in the sun. They squinted warily at the newcomers and one of them called out, in stilted Southlandast, the language of Jonathon’s Kingdoms, “So far?”
The newcomers called back, “And not yet there?”
There was a general easing of tension in the men, and Wynter committed these passwords, and the whistles that had preceded them to memory.
As the newcomers pulled to a halt, the shorter Comberman asked, “I take it we face the same direction?”
“Anything is possible,” said one of the newcomers noncommittally. They threw back their headgear, and Wynter felt a thrill of fear. They were Haunardii! Warriors, if their abundance of gleaming weaponry was anything to go by. She leant forward in her saddle, trying to get a better view. She had never personally met any Haunardii but they were notoriously savage and wily. Their narrow, slanting eyes were black as night and they regarded the Combermen scornfully, their flat, honey-colored faces filled with laughing contempt.
“These men humbly suggest that you are not too sharp at keeping yourself hid,” sneered the youngest. “What sort of fool needs a pipe of weed
that
much?”
The Combermen glanced at each other. The taller one bit his pipe firmly between his teeth and began to drift back to the trees. “Stick to thy side of the road and my smoke won’t bother thee,” he said with finality.
The Haunardii looked amused. They smirked at each other and began backing their horses away. It was obvious to Wynter that—like herself—all these men were traveling in secret, eschewing the relative ease of the road for the cover of the thick forest, and it appeared that the Haun’s sole purpose in calling the others had been to mock them for their carelessness. As they retreated, the youngest laughingly said, “We pray that it is not your stealth you are offering at the table of the Rebel Prince!”
The Rebel Prince?
thought Wynter.
Alberon!
She stared down at the men below.
So you are gathering allies to your table. But, Good Christ, Alberon! First Combermen, and now Haunardii? Have you lost your mind?
Down on the road, the young Haunardii was still needling the Combermen, his mocking voice drifting up through the heat. “We humbly suggest you may as well dance down the center of the road yodeling, for all the sly you have exhibited up in the trees.”
“Yes, well,” growled the shorter Comberman, “thy skills in diplomacy will be a great asset to the future king, I dare say. Sleep well these next twelve nights, Haun, and have no doubt, we’ll see
thee
in camp.”
The Combermen were ascending the slope even as they spoke and Wynter eased Ozkar back into the deeper shadows, listening as they snarled their goodbyes. The Combermen angled off through the trees, trailing pipe smoke and muttering as they went. The Haunardii must have climbed the opposite slope and melted into the forest there.