Emperor of Thorns

He came across and secured me with more straps. I watched him, trying to commit each detail of his face to memory. He would be one of the last people I saw.

‘Give me the iron.’ He snapped the words out, taking it from Gretcha’s hands. ‘I’ll do this one myself.’ Returning my glare he said, ‘You might be a lord of some sort. You had enough gold on you. And this.’ He held up his wrist to show the watch from my uncle’s treasury. ‘But we both know that if you were ransomed you would do nothing but hunt us from the moment you were free and safe. I can see it in you.’

I couldn’t lie to him. There would be no point. If I were free I would hunt them over any distance at any cost.

‘Looks like you’ve done this before.’ Rael nodded at my cheek. ‘Maybe we should start where they left off, just to remind you how it felt.’

The red-hot tip of the iron approached the thick scar tissue reaching across the left side of my face. No waver in Rael’s hand however fierce my stare. Gretcha stood beside him, her head reaching only a little past his waist.

The heat scorched my lips and dried the wetness from my eyes, but in the scar-tissue no pain, just a warmth, pleasant almost. The burn had killed all sensation in that flesh, I could scratch it with my nails and only feel the tugging in the untouched skin just below my eye. The iron rested a little below my cheekbone with the pressure of a poking finger. Puzzlement reshaped Rael’s brow.

‘He won’t b—’

A sudden pulse of pleasure flushed through the scar tissue, almost orgasmic, and a flash of heat closed my eyes. The stink of my hair crisping filled my nostrils. Rael screamed and when I looked again the dance had him. That dance men do when unexpected agony seizes them, a stubbed toe or blow to that tricksy bone in the elbow will start it off often as not. He held the wrist of his right hand in the grip of his left. And there, seared across the exposed palm, deep enough to reach the little bones that fill the hand, the line the iron had left on him. The iron itself lay in the dust, bright and shining, as white with heat as if it were at the bellows’ mouth in a forge, the cloth burning around it.

I had to laugh. What were they going to do if I laughed at them? Hurt me? In the shock of it I had bitten my tongue and I laughed now with the taste of blood filling my mouth and the warmth of it running crimson over my lips.

‘Idiot.’ Billan got up and pushed Rael out of his way. He caught my chin and jaw in a painful grip. ‘What did you do, boy?’

‘Boy?’ It hurt to get the word out with his fingers digging into my jaw muscles. I didn’t know what I’d done but I was glad of it. I suspected something in the fragments of Gog bedded in that scar had reacted to the touch of so much heat.

‘Answer me.’

Even now Billan thought he had something to threaten me with. I spat blood into his face. He staggered away with a girlish shriek and that set me laughing all the more. Hysteria had me in its claws. Others among the Perros Viciosos got to their feet. One slab of muscle named Manwa, brother to Sancha who I killed in the pit, took Billan’s arm and tried to settle him. A dirty rag set to the blood didn’t seem able to wipe it off. Seconds later a better view showed that the skin itself had turned scarlet where the blood touched, and in his eyes the blood had scalded his cornea a milky white. It seemed the necromancy that lurked within me and would kill small things through just a touch of my fingers, really did run in my veins.

‘Get Old Mary back!’ Billan shouted it in his blindness. The effort to hold himself back, to deny the lust to choke the life out of me, made him tremble. ‘I want him to scream for a month.’

‘You won’t live a month, Billan. When your brothers understand that your sight isn’t coming back … how long before they tie you to this post do you think?’ I couldn’t stop smiling. Hysteria and bravado would be cut from me quick enough when the crone brought her knives, I knew that, but hell, laugh while you can, no?

Manwa pulled out his sword, which turned out to be my sword. ‘He has a sword of the old-steel and he works magic.’ He turned the blade in his huge fist. He was a big man but his hands belonged to a giant. ‘Maybe we should ransom him? The other one said Earl Hansa would pay for them.’

Rael spat, his face tight with suffering. A burned hand leaves a man no peace. ‘He dies. He dies hard.’

Manwa shrugged and sat down, my sword across his knees.

Two men led Old Mary back to the posts. I saw them first from the corner of my eye and watched so close that I almost didn’t notice the rope go slack around my ankles. Behind the complaints and curses of the Bad Dogs, behind the wet unnatural sobbing from Sunny, I heard a click and whir and a scrabbling like fingers clawing wood. Something fought a path up the post at my back, on the far side. Schnick. The rope around my knees fell away. Nobody noticed.

Mary unrolled her tool-wrap out across the dust again. She gave me a mean look as if I was really going to get it now for disturbing her rest. Again the absurdity of it twitched at the corners of my mouth. She drew the sharpest of her blades, a small cutting edge on a cylindrical metal shaft, the sort of thing Grecko doctors might use for slicing out a canker. Three steps brought Mary to me, unsteady on her feet, sure of hand. She cut away the stained remnants of my shirt. The blade didn’t pull as the cloth parted before it.

‘That’s a very ugly wart you have there, Old Mary,’ I said.

She paused and looked at me. She had mean old woman eyes, very dark.

‘Oh sorry. I mean the one down on your chin. Ugly thing. Couldn’t you just slice it off? With that nice sharp knife of yours? Trim some of those wattles too? We don’t want them calling you Ugly Old Mary now, do we?’

Something dry and unpleasant scrambled over my bound hands. I shivered as hard little legs moved over my wrists. It took all my remaining composure not to twitch the thing off me.

‘Are you stupid?’ Mary asked after the longest pause. She hadn’t said a word to Sunny the whole time she worked on him.

‘Did I hurt your feelings, Old Mary?’ I smiled at her, my teeth crimson no doubt. ‘You know that however much I shout and beg, those words can’t go back in the box don’t you? You are ugly and old. There’s nothing we can do about it, Mary. I expect little Gretcha will be doing your work soon enough and you’ll be her journeyman piece. I wonder what shapes she’ll cut you into?’

The Bad Dogs watched me now, their arguments forgotten. Even Rael and Billan gave up on their hurts for a moment to give me their attention. Victims threaten or plead. Old Mary didn’t know what to make of mockery.

Schnick. My wrists were free. Blood started to flow into them. It hurt worse than anything I’d suffered on the torture pole thus far.

Old Mary shook her head and brushed aside a lock of grey hair. She looked annoyed, less sure of herself. Here she was, ready to open me up piece by piece, and I’d made her self-conscious with throw-away commentary on her wartiness. I grinned wide enough to crack my face. I felt pretty sure they’d have to kill me once I got free. The prospect of attacking them rather than expiring on that pole just flooded me with joy. I couldn’t stop smiling.

‘Cracked, this one.’ Mary set the point of her knife at the extreme right of my lowest rib.

I strained for the faint noise of my saviour crawling up the pole. If it cut the rope across my chest and upper arms everyone would notice it fall and I would still be secured by the head. They hadn’t set a rope around our necks, presumably to stop us choking when straining to get away from the pain.