Emperor of Thorns

‘And Ibn Fayed sails against the Horse Coast to raid, or to settle, or is it punishment for not following the Moors’ prophet?’ I had my grandfather and uncle’s views on this but it’s good to look at such things from other angles.

‘His people want to return,’ Lesha said.

This was new. The provost’s granddaughter took her wisdom from the whole book, not just the current page.

‘Return?’ I had seen a Moorish hand behind much that stood in Albaseat though no one seemed eager to admit it.

‘Caliphs have ruled here as many years as kings have ruled. Before the Builders and after. The scribes today call them raiders, burners, heathens, but there’s Moorish cleverness mixed into everything we take pride in.’

‘Not just a pretty face, then,’ I said. She read, this one, for her opinions weren’t ones that could be formed on what others might think it safe to teach. The church held the Horse Coast Kingdoms and the West Ports close – any closer and they’d choke them. Priests kept a low opinion of heathens, and this far south disagreeing with a man of the cloth often proved to be a dangerous pastime. In every town a church scribe busied himself rewriting history – but they couldn’t rewrite what lay written in stone all about them.

Lesha took no offence at my jibe, or at least I think not for her scar tissue couldn’t mirror the emotions below.

We lay quiet for a time then. Almost no sound but for the distant clang of a goat bell. Why the old nanny wasn’t lying in the shade I couldn’t say. The heat wrapped us like a blanket, taking away any inclination to move.

‘You were slow to save that boy, Jorg,’ Sunny said. I thought him asleep for the past quarter hour, but clearly he’d been replaying the morning behind his eyes.

‘I didn’t save him. I saved you. You’re of some use.’

‘You would have let him die?’ Sunny sounded troubled by it.

‘I would,’ I said. ‘He was nothing to me.’ Golden curls and blood, the image played over the back of my eyelids. I opened my eyes and sat up. They broke William’s head on a milestone, swung him by the feet and beat him on the stone. It happened. The world rolled on regardless. And I learned that nothing mattered.

‘I couldn’t stand and let it happen while I watched,’ Sunny said. ‘You can’t kick a child to death in front of Earl Hansa’s guard.’

‘You stepped in for yourself, or for my grandfather?’ I asked.

‘It was my duty.’

I took an olive left at the bottom of the food basket. Firm flesh broke beneath my teeth. The warm and complicated flavour spread as I chewed.

‘Would you have stepped in if it hadn’t been your duty?’ I asked.

Sunny paused. ‘If he hadn’t been so damn big, yes.’

‘Because you couldn’t watch it happen?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘Don’t live by half measures, Greyson.’ I pushed the dusty linen of my sleeve back until the scars from the hook briar showed – pale sigils against tanned skin. ‘I heard a priest once speak of the business of salvation. He urged us not to let the fact that we couldn’t save everyone from their sins stop us trying to save the people in front of us. That’s priests for you. Ready to give up in a moment. Falling over themselves to admit their frailty as if it were a virtue.’ I spat out the olive stone. ‘Either children are worth saving just because they’re children, or they’re not worth saving. Don’t let your actions be dictated by the accident that puts one in front of your eyes and hides the next. If they’re worth saving, save them all, find them, protect them, make it your life’s work. If not, take a different street so you won’t even see the one you might have seen, turn your head aside, put a hand to your eyes. Problem solved.’

‘You’d save them all, would you?’ Lesha spoke on the other side of me, voice soft.

‘I know a man who is trying to,’ I said. ‘And if I hadn’t learned better, then yes, I’d save them all. No half measures. Some things can’t be cut in half. You can’t half-love someone. You can’t half-betray, or half-lie.’

Silence after that. Even the goat slept.

The shade kept us until the shadows started to lengthen and the white blaze of the sun softened into something that could be endured.

We moved on in the afternoon. Night found our party camped in a dry valley ten miles further north, with a roof of stars and the chirp and whirr of insects to serenade us. The olive groves and cork trees lay far behind. Nothing grew in these valleys except unforgiving thorns, mesquite bushes and creosote, making a rich perfume of the night air but offering nothing to burn. We ate hard bread, apples, some oranges from Albaseat market, and washed it down with a jug of wine, so dark a red as to be near black.

I lay in the night watching the stars wheel, listening to the nicker of the horses, Balky’s occasional snort and stamp, Sunny snoring. From time to time Lesha whimpered in her sleep, a soft thing but full of hurt. And rising around it all, the relentless orchestra of night-crawlers, the sound swelling in waves as if an ocean rose about us as the sun fell. I held the copper box in one hand, the other touched the ground, grit beneath my fingertips. Tomorrow we would walk again. It seemed right to walk, and not just to save taking a good horse into poisoned lands. Some places a man needs to have his own two legs take him. Some journeys need a different perspective. The miles mean more if you have travelled them one step at a time and felt the ground change beneath your feet.

At last I closed my eyes and let the multitude of stars be replaced by a single red one. A single star brought the wise men to a cradle in Bethlehem. I wondered if a wise man would follow Fexler’s star.

7

Chella’s Story

Six Years Ago

Defeated in the Cantanlona Swamps

The smell of soil, of earth that crumbles red in the hand, just so, and lets you know you’re home. The sun that lit a life from baby to headstrong young man arcs between crimson sunrise and crimson sunset. In the dark, lions roar.

‘This is not your place, woman.’

She wants it to be her place. The strength of his longing drew her here, with him, riding the wake of his departure.

‘Go home.’ His voice is deep with command. Everything he says sounds like wisdom.

‘I can tell why he liked you,’ she says. She has no home.

‘You like him too, but you’re too broken to know what to do with that.’

‘Don’t dare to pity me, Kashta.’ Anger she’d thought burned out flares once more. The red soil, white sun, low huts, all seem further away.

‘My name is not yours to conjure with, Chella. Go back.’

‘Don’t order me, Nuban. I could make you my slave again. My toy.’ His world is a bright patch now at the corner of her vision, detail lost in jewelled beauty.

‘I’m not there any more, woman. I’m here. In the drumming circle, in the hut shadow, in the footprint of the lion.’ Each word fainter and deeper.

Chella lifted her face from the stinking mud and spat foul water. Her arms vanished into the mire at the elbows, thick slime dripped from her. She spat again, teeth scraping the mud from her tongue. ‘Jorg Ancrath!’