Emperor of Thorns

The dead sailor kneeled then stood, its grin crimson, blood dripping from its chin. The eyes that watched us weren’t the eyes it first saw us with. Something looked through them. The necromancer kneeled, paler now, more pale than I thought a man could be.

‘My lord,’ he said, not lifting his gaze from the flagstones. ‘My king.’

‘My lord!’ Gomst’s shrill voice.

‘My king!’ Osser Gant.

‘Wake up you fool boy!’ A sharp slap and I found myself looking into Katherine’s eyes.

‘Damn you all!’ Miana said, and the baby started howling.

32

‘Hold the baby, Jorg.’

Miana thrust our son at me, red-faced in his swaddling cloths, drawing breath for a howl. She clambered onto the carriage bench and knelt up at the window to peer out. The walls of Honth made a dark line to the west.

Little William reached capacity and made the slight shudder that presaged a yell. He couldn’t manage much volume yet but the mewl of babies has been designed with great cunning to tear at an adult’s peace of mind, parents especially. I shoved the knuckle of my little finger into his mouth and let him forget the scream while he gave it a vicious gumming.

Katherine sat beside me watching my son with unreadable eyes. I hugged him close, my breastplate now strapped to Brath’s saddlebags in its wraps of lambskin and oilcloth. I’d found babies don’t appreciate armour. William spat my knuckle out and drew breath for another attempt at yelling. He’d come into the world red-faced, bald but for black straggles, skinny in the limbs, fat in the body, more of a little pink frog than a person, drooling, malodorous, demanding. Even so I wanted to hold him. That weakness that infects all men, that is part of how we are made, had found a way into me. And yet my own father had set it aside, if it ever once found purchase on him. Perhaps it became easier to set me aside as I grew.

The howl burst out of William’s little mouth, a sound too big for such small frame. I jiggled him quiet and wondered just how large a stick I’d given the world to beat me with.

I watched Katherine for a moment. We hadn’t spoken of the night’s dreaming. I had questions and more questions, but I would ask them without an audience and at a time when I could take a moment to settle around whatever answers she might have. She didn’t meet my gaze but studied my son instead. I had worried once that she might mean him harm but it seemed hard to imagine now, with him in my arms.

‘There’s someone close by who would kill that child given the slightest chance.’ Katherine looked away as she spoke, her voice low as if it were a small matter, almost lost in the rattle of the carriage.

‘What?’ Miana turned from the window grille, fast, eyes bright. I didn’t think she had been listening, but it seemed she paid close attention to whatever passed between my aunt and me.

‘If I explain, I want your word that this person will be safe from you and your men, Jorg,’ Katherine said.

‘Well that doesn’t sound like me, now does it?’ I made an effort not to let the tension in my arms crush William. Miana reached for her baby, but I held him closer. ‘Suppose you tell anyhow.’

‘Katherine!’ Miana reached across me for Katherine’s hand. ‘Please.’

For a moment I saw the red explosion of Miana’s firebomb in the Haunt’s courtyard. It would not go well if Katherine refused her.

‘The man rides under the Pax Gilden,’ Katherine said.

The guard would kill anyone who tried to attack him, hunt down anyone who succeeded in killing him. Just as they would intervene in, or avenge, any violence in our carriage.

‘You’re not Father’s only representative.’ I should have realized from the start, but finding Katherine in the Ancrath carriage threw off my game. ‘He found a replacement for Lord Nossar.’

She nodded. ‘Jarco Renar.’

‘Cousin Jarco.’ I leaned back in my seat and unclenched the fingers knotted in William’s cloths. I’d heard no report of the man since he escaped his failed rebellion in Hodd Town. That had been a year before the Prince of Arrow arrived at my door. We had us a murderous little struggle: civil wars are always brutal, old wounds left too long festering get to spill out their poison over new generations. The battles left the Highlands weakened, short on men, and empty-coffered. I had thought Jarco’s funds came from Arrow, but perhaps Father had been spending my inheritance.

Nothing would please Jarco more than getting his hands on my son. After all, I killed his brother at Norwood, took his father at the Haunt, and usurped his inheritance. And of course he had his fair share of the family flair for vengeance. I wondered if he were riding as one of the guard. Perhaps he convinced them it was the only way to keep him safe from me. Or they might have him hidden among the straggle of camp-followers reaching back behind us. Finding him would not be easy.

‘How could you not have mentioned this before?’ Miana asked, hands whitening around Katherine’s. ‘He could have attacked any of us.’

‘William is not under the guard’s protection,’ I said. Jarco wouldn’t sell his life just for a chance at mine, but he could kill my son and have the guard defend him. That might strike him as an opportunity too good to miss. Quite the joke.

‘Well put him under the guard’s protection!’ A certain shrillness entered Miana’s voice. Katherine winced, though whether from the volume or beneath Miana’s grip I didn’t know.

‘Children may not be advisors or representatives.’ She knew the rules as well as I. On the bench opposite the old men nodded their heads.

‘But—’ Miana hushed as I gave her back our child and went to the door. I hung half-out, over the mud and ruts, and hollered for Makin. He rode up sharp enough.

‘I want you all around the carriage – Jarco Renar is armoured in gold and looking for a way to reach Prince William.’

Makin glanced around at the nearest riders. ‘I’ll kill him myself.’

‘Don’t. He’s under the Pax.’ As I said it I wondered whose life I might be prepared to spend for Jarco’s death. I waved Makin closer and leaned in so only he would hear me. ‘On second thoughts, I always knew I kept Rike around for a reason. Tell him there’s a hundred gold ducets for him if he kills Jarco. He’d best be prepared to run afterward, though.’

Makin nodded and hauled on his reins.

I called after him. ‘A hundred gold and five Araby stallions.’ It seemed fitting somehow.

‘You!’ I shouted to the nearest guardsman. ‘Get Harran here.’

The man nodded his golden helm and spurred off toward the head of the column.

‘Give me Makin and Marten and we’ll ride home to the Highlands,’ Miana was saying behind me.

‘I would give you Rike and Kent and Gorgoth as well and you still wouldn’t be safe, Miana. We’re too far from home in lands that love us not.’

By the time Captain Harran drew level, flanked by two other troop captains, Katherine and Miana were arguing in fierce whispers with William interjecting the odd protest.

Harran lifted his visor. ‘King Jorg.’

‘I will speak with Jarco Renar,’ I said.