Emperor of Thorns

‘Well, I hesitate to put it so bluntly …’

‘The rights to the Cathun River purchased absolution for the death of my mother, and of my brother William. Did you know that, Lord Antas?’

‘Why, no …’

‘Do you not think some things are beyond purchase, Antas? Vote for me if you believe the empire needs me on the throne. The fate of a hundred nations shouldn’t tip on river rights, horse trading, and back scratching.’

He frowned at that. Red Kent stood behind him and just a little to the left. I guessed that Antas’s support had never been going to be mine however many rivers we agreed over.

‘Lights out,’ I said, and the throne room plunged into darkness.

I made a slow count to ten beneath the uproar. ‘Lights on!’

Antas sprawled at the base of the dais, neck broken. Kent had already moved on.

I stood up from the throne and the lights shone more brightly so I felt their heat upon me. It had to be now.

‘Men of empire!’ I raised my voice to reach the edges of the great hall, so even the Silent Sister, the Queen of the Red and Katherine could hear beyond the Gilden Gate.

All of them stopped to watch me, even with the murdered lying at their feet.

‘Men of empire. A better man than I would have won your support with the goodness of his deeds, the clarity of his vision, the truth of his words. But that better man is not here. That better man would fail before the dark tide that rushes toward us. Orrin of Arrow was the better man and yet he didn’t survive even to ask your support.

‘Dark times call for dark choices. Choose me.’

I walked the perimeter of the dais in measured steps, staring out across the shadowed heads of state. ‘There is an enemy at our gates. Even now. As we spend our words here, the Lord Commander spends the blood of better men to hold his city. This holy city at the heart of our broken empire. This holy city is the heart of our empire. And if you men, you servants of that empire, do not remake the ancient pact, if you do not set upon this throne a single man to carry the responsibility for all our peoples, then that heart will be cut out.

‘You can feel it, can you not, my lords? It doesn’t take the taint that the Gilden Gate keeps out for you to sense what approaches. It has festered in your kingdoms. The dead rising, the old laws being undone, magics spilling and spreading like contagion. Certainty has left us: the days smell of wrong.

‘Do this now. Do it as one. For the man upon this throne will have to face what comes. And if there is no emperor there will be no one to stand against the tide. And tell me, in your heart of hearts, do you truly want to be that man?’

‘Melodrama! How can you listen to this?’ Czar Moljon, perhaps emboldened by his pain. ‘Besides, no vote will be cast for two days yet.’

‘Taproot.’ I waved him forward.

‘The Congression must vote on its final day in a private ballot, but any candidate may force an early and open vote at any time, on the understanding that failure to win such a vote disbars them from future office.’ Taproot’s hands made as to close a weighty tome, though he spoke from memory.

‘Vote!’ I said and the lights came up.

‘The vote of Morrow for my grandson.’ My grandfather’s voice rang out clear.

‘And the holdings of Alba.’ My uncle beside him.

The women at the Gilden Gate drew away, a hurried motion.

‘I stand with Jorg of Renar.’ Ibn Fayed raised his fist and the four Moorish warriors beside him followed his motion.

‘Wennith for Jorg.’ Miana’s father.

‘And the north!’ Sindri, somewhere behind me. ‘Maladon, Charland, Hagenfast.’

‘We stand with the burned king.’ White-haired twins, jarls from the ice-wastes in black furs and steel.

Gilden Guard appeared at the gate, a crowd of them. They advanced, and as each man passed through he collapsed, boneless. The clatter made the Hundred turn.

Perhaps half a dozen guards lay motionless on our side of the gate having made it no more than a yard or so within. Scores more stood almost as still, filling the antechamber beyond.

We all felt him approach. How could you not?

‘Conaught for Jorg.’

‘Kennick for Jorg.’

My advisors cast their allotted votes, from Arrow to Orlanth. Others followed, a sense of urgency on them now, as if we each heard his footsteps beneath the announcing.

And there he stood, framed in the Gilden Gate, a creature that wore Kai Summerson’s skin and bones. I hoped Katherine had run and run fast.

‘Hello.’ He smiled. Both the word and the smile unnatural things, dragged from somewhere a man would never want to look.

The Dead King approached the Gilden Gate, hands raised, palms out. It seemed he encountered a sheet of glass, for he stopped, fingers flat against the obstruction. He craned Kai’s neck to one side, peering at us all as though we were rats in a trap.

‘A clever gate,’ he said. ‘But it’s only made of wood.’

He stepped back and his dead guards approached with poleaxes to destroy the frame of the gate within the arch.

‘Red March for Jorg.’ A stout grey woman bearing the vote for the Queen of Red’s hereditary seat.

‘The Thurtans for Jorg.’ The man buried in a horsehair robe, an iron crown on his brow.

And more, and still more.

‘How do we stand, Taproot?’ I asked.

‘Thirty-seven out of the forty required.’

Pieces of the Gilden Gate fell splintered to the ground. The Dead King’s presence reached in and men fell to their knees in despair. Even now more than half the votes held back, bound by years of prejudice and wrangling, Congression was a marketplace, to actually put an emperor on the throne, to end their own supremacy in those hundred kingdoms … many would rather die. But there are good deaths and there are bad deaths. The Dead King offered only the worse kind.

‘Attar for Jorg.’

‘Conquence for Jorg.’ Hemmet’s brother, giving away the Lord Commander’s supremacy in Vyene.

The remains of the gate fell in.

‘Scorron for Jorg.’ A stern old man, watching me with dislike.

I returned to the throne.

‘Men of empire does Congression find me worthy?’

The ‘aye’ that rang around the hall held more of desperation than enthusiasm, but it was sufficient. I sat emperor in Vyene, Lord of the Hundred – the Broken Empire remade.

Taproot came to my side, bowing close as the Dead King entered through the Gilden Arch, his troops behind him.

‘Well done,’ I said to Taproot. ‘I didn’t think we were anywhere near thirty-seven when I asked.’

‘Numbers never lie, my emperor.’ Taproot shook his head. ‘Only men.’

The Hundred fell back before the Dead King, no man prepared to hold his ground.

‘It does seem to have been a hollow victory, my emperor. Was it so important that you be confirmed to the throne before we all die?’

‘We’ll find out, shall we?’ I stood once more, glad to be out of that seat. ‘I don’t suppose you can seal the arch, Fexler?’

No response, just the continued flow of dead men into the throne room. The archway had always had the look of a later addition, something cut by masons with more poetry in their fingers.