Emperor of Thorns

The worst of it was that I believed him. It sounded like truth. Without pause, I took the book of calculus and set it down on the view-ring, hard. Fexler’s image vanished like a spot of light when you put your hand over the hole that casts it. There’s only so much truth I can listen to in one go.

Qalasadi and Yusuf came to the edge of Hamada to see me off into the desert. I had made my farewells to Ibn Fayed in the coolness of his throne room, accepting gifts of gold, diamonds, amber, and of clove-spice for the journey. ‘There is always pain,’ the caliph told me, closing my hand around the spice.

Omal waited with the camels, ten altogether, three tall, white ones – gifts to me from the caliph – good breeders and from fine bloodlines by all accounts. To me they were as ill-tempered, ungainly, and foul-smelling as the rest of them. Along with Omal we had three more drovers and a guard of five Ha’tari.

‘Safe journey, King Jorg.’ Qalasadi bowed, one hand folded across his stomach.

‘I’ve yet to have one of those, but let’s hope this will be it.’ I grinned and inclined my head a fraction.

‘Next time you will come to my house, meet my wife, see what I have to suffer,’ Yusuf said, a smile on him, eyes bright.

‘Next time I will.’ I turned to go, but paused. ‘And the Prince of Arrow? Don’t your predictions tell you to erase me so that he might have a clear run?’ For a cold moment I wondered if the nine men accompanying me had orders to bury my corpse in a dune.

Yusuf’s grin became a little fixed and he shot an embarrassed glance at Qalasadi. The older man laced his fingers and brought both hands to his chin.

‘Our projections show no significant probability of you impeding the Prince of Arrow, King Jorg. As such we are rescued from having to wrestle with the problems of the one over the many and the many over the one.’

‘If he comes to Renar, Jorg, don’t get in his way.’ An edge of pleading in Yusuf’s voice. ‘It would not be wise.’

‘Well.’ The revelation left me a little nonplussed despite saving me from conflict with the mathmagicians. ‘That’s good then.’ And I went to mount my camel.

37

Chella’s Story

Keres had left a brittle feeling in her wake. The carriage creaked like an old man’s joints and every place she had touched lay rough, discoloured, dry enough to suck the moisture from skin.

‘She’ll find her way back to the Dead King.’ Chella turned away from the road, Kai kept close at her shoulder.

The lichkin would follow fractures and fault-lines, places where the veils hung threadbare between the world and death’s dry dominion. She would travel in coffins, shadow the sick, drift with plague spores, and in time she would enter the Dead King’s court, wrapped again in unquiet spirits, snatched up on her journey.

‘We should be moving, delegate.’ Captain Axtis of the Gilden Guard had marshalled his troops a mile down the road whilst the necromancers tended to Keres’ needs. Although the guard remained ignorant of the lichkin its presence unsettled them, sapping morale. Axtis seemed keen to move on, to leave Gottering to the dead.

‘Let us do that.’ Chella hauled herself back into the carriage. ‘Be as quick as you like, driver.’

They lurched into motion even before Kai shut the door behind him. He caught the side of the bench to stop the fall carrying him into Chella’s lap, and held himself for a moment, twelve inches separating their swaying bodies. Her pulse beat fierce in the veins of her wrists.

Swift hands. For a moment Chella savoured the thought of such entanglement. Kai found his balance and his seat at the same time she pushed him away – a mutual decision. She closed her hands, nails sharp in her palms, and put her head back against the rest. What would I want with a pretty blond thing like him in any case? Unseasoned meat.

‘We will be in Honth soon?’ Kai asked.

‘Yes.’ He knew that. The living just liked to chatter – they would spend long enough silent in the grave. The same need twisted her lips, wanting her to add more. She pressed them tight.

‘Then along the Danoob,’ Kai said. ‘Have you ever seen it, Chella?’

‘No.’

‘They say if you’re in love the waters look blue.’

Before Jorg she had never travelled, never strayed from Gelleth, just that short journey from Jonholt to the mountain. A scant few miles in three lifetimes, but oh the things she had seen on that trip.

The span of three lives spent digging into death, unravelling mysteries, stepping away from life in all its mess and clutter and squabbles. And here she sat, rattling her way toward the heart of empire, sick with being alive, stomach roiling at the jolting motion and at the thought of what lay ahead. Not until the Dead King announced her as his representative and pressed five voting seals into her hands had she ever doubted his genius. Now she knew it for insanity.

At the town of Wendmere Captain Axtis halted the column for lunch. The guard set their five times fifty warhorses, their pack animals, and the steeds of the column-followers to grazing in the meadows, careless of who farmed them or what need the grass was set against. The ragged tail of followers still straggled in as Kai and Chella seated themselves beside the hearth in Wendmere’s finest inn. Chella noted the armourers’ wagons rolling by, the carts of the farriers, the troop’s leather workers, the seamstresses’ tiny wagon. Kai paid more attention to the whores, an ever-changing population trailing the guard, girls on mules, girls in open buggies and gigs, more in Onsa’s wheel-house. Each band with some cut-faced rogue to guard and guide and chivvy and negotiate. Chella could almost see the chains of hunger and misery that towed them behind the golden men of Vyene.

Guards brought in goblets and platters in their velvet-lined cases from the goods train, each piece set with the imperial eagle. Only the Gilden Guard themselves could be trusted to serve their wards, to serve the Hundred or their representatives. Chella found herself wondering if these gleaming warriors could handle their swords as well as they handled the silver cutlery being set before her.

‘What do you think of the empire’s elite, Kai? You served in an army, did you not?’

Kai lowered his goblet from wine-darkened lips. He frowned at the man standing to attention ready to refill it. ‘Who says the guard are “elite”? Every petty noble’s third son who’s too dumb to make it in the clergy gets shipped off to Vyene where each grows fat on bribes as an over-valued “watchman”, and each fourth year they get to go on a little trip to collect the Hundred. Pretty armour doesn’t make a warrior.’

To their credit, the men around them hid their offence well.

‘I guess the truth lies somewhere between,’ Chella said. ‘I hear they train hard, these men of Vyene. They are, perhaps, as well-forged as a weapon can be without fire.’

She looked out, through the distortion of the small and puddle-paned windows, across the rooftops, to distant smoke. Their true protection stalked out there somewhere, Thantos, more cautious than his sister and more deadly.

Keres had been skinned, though! A chill crept over Chella, despite the fire, despite the wine. If the lichkin could have told them what happened – her mind would be at better ease. A trouble named is a trouble tamed.