Prince of Thorns

None of the three noted my arrival, nor did any of the faces pressed to the barred windows in the cell doors turn my way. I walked in. I heard Lundist arrive at the entrance and stop to take in the scene, as I had.

I drew close and the warder without the iron glanced my way. He jumped as if stung. “What in the—” He shook his head to clear his vision. “Who? I mean . . .”

I’d imagined the torturers would be terrifying men with cruel faces, thin lips, hooked noses, the eyes of soulless demons. I think I found their ordinariness more of a shock. The shorter of the two looked a touch simple, but in a friendly way. Mild I’d call him.

“Who’re you?” This one had a more brutish cast to him, but I could picture him at ale, laughing, or teaching his son pitch-ball.

I hadn’t any of my court weeds on, just a simple tunic for the schoolroom. There was no reason for warders to recognize me. They would enter the vaults through the Villains’ Gate and had probably never walked in the castle above.

“I’m Jorg,” I said, in a servant’s accent. “My uncle paid old Wart-face at the door to let me see the prisoners.” I pointed toward Lundist. “We’re going to the executions tomorrow. I wanted to see criminals close up first.”

I wasn’t looking at the warders now. The man on the table held my gaze. I’d seen only one black skin before, a slave to some noble visiting Father’s court from the south. But that man was brown. The fellow on the table had skin blacker than ink. He turned his head to face my way, slow as if it weighed like lead. The whites of his eyes seemed to shine in all that blackness.

“Wart-face? Heh, I like that.” The big warder relaxed and took up his iron again. “If there’s two ducats in it for me and Grebbin here, then I reckon you can stay and watch this fellow squeal.”

“Berrec, it don’t seem right.” Grebbin furrowed his broad forehead. “He’s a young-un an’ all.”

Berrec pulled the poker from the coals and held it toward Grebbin. “You don’t want to stand between me and a ducat, my friend.”

The black man’s naked chest glistened below the glowing point. Ugly burns marked his ribs, red flesh erupting like new-ploughed furrows. I could smell the sweet stench of roasted meat.

“He’s very black,” I said.

“He’s a Nuban is what he is,” Berrec said, scowling. He gave the poker a critical look and returned it to the fire.

“Why are you burning him?” I asked. I didn’t feel easy under the Nuban’s scrutiny.

The question puzzled them for a moment. Grebbin’s frown deepened.

“He’s got the devil in him,” Berrec said at last. “All them Nubans have. Heathens, the lot of them. I heard that Father Gomst, him as leads the King himself in prayer, says to burn the heathen.” Berrec laid a hand on the Nuban’s stomach, a disturbingly tender touch. “So we’re just crisping this one up a bit, before the King comes to watch him killed on the morrow.”

“Executed.” Grebbin pronounced the word with the precision of one who has practised it many times.

“Executed, killed, what’s the difference? They all end up for the worms.” Berrec spat into the coals.

The Nuban kept his eyes on me, a quiet study. I felt something I couldn’t name. I felt somehow wrong for being there. I ground my teeth together and met his gaze.

“What did he do?” I asked.

“Do?” Grebbin snorted. “He’s a prisoner.”

“His crime?” I asked.

Berrec shrugged. “Getting caught.”

Lundist spoke from the doorway. “I believe . . . Jorg, that all of the prisoners for execution are bandits, captured by the Army of the March. The King ordered the action to prevent raids across the Lichway into Norwood and other protectorates.”

I broke my gaze from the Nuban’s, and let it slide across the marks of his torture. Where the skin remained unburned, patterns of raised scars picked out symbols, simple in design but arresting to the eye. A soiled loincloth hung across his hips. His wrists and ankles were bound with iron shackles secured with a basic pin-lock. Blood oozed along the short chains anchoring them to the table.

“Is he dangerous?” I asked. I moved close. I could taste the burned meat.

“Yes.” The Nuban smiled as he said it, his teeth bloody.

“You shut your heathen hole, you.” Berrec yanked the iron from the coals. A shower of sparks flew up as he lifted the white-hot poker to eye-level. The glow made something ugly of his face. It reminded me of a wild night when the lightning lit the faces of Count Renar’s men.

I turned to the Nuban. If he’d been watching the iron, I’d have left him to it.

“Are you dangerous?” I asked him.

“Yes.”

I pulled the pin from the manacle on his right wrist.

“Show me.”

13

 

Four years earlier

 

The Nuban moved fast, but it wasn’t his speed that impressed, it was his lack of hesitation. He reached for Berrec’s wrist. A sudden heave brought the warder sprawling across him. The poker in Berrec’s outstretched hand skewered Grebbin through the ribs, deep enough so that Berrec lost his grip on it as Grebbin twisted away.

Without pause, the Nuban lifted himself halfway to sitting, as close to upright as his manacled wrist would let him. Berrec slid down the Nuban’s chest, sliding on sweat and blood, into his lap. He started to raise himself. The Nuban’s descending elbow put an end to the escape attempt. It caught Berrec on the back of the neck, and bones crunched.

Grebbin screamed of course, but screams were common enough in the dungeon. He tried to run, but somehow lost his sense of direction and slammed into a cell door, with enough force to drive the point of the poker out below his shoulder blade. The impact knocked him over and he didn’t get up again. He twisted for a moment, mouthing something, with only wisps of smoke or steam escaping his lips.

A cheer went up from those cells containing occupants too stupid to know when to stay silent.

Lundist could have run. He had plenty of time. I expected him to go for help, but he was halfway to me by the time Grebbin hit the ground. The Nuban pushed Berrec clear, and freed his other wrist.

“Run!” I shouted at Lundist in case it hadn’t occurred to him.

Actually, he was running, only in the wrong direction. I knew the years lay less heavy on him than an old man had a right to expect, but I didn’t think he could sprint.

I moved to put the table, and the Nuban, between Lundist and me.

The Nuban unpinned both ankles as Lundist reached him. “Take the boy, old man, and go.” He had the deepest voice I’d ever heard.

Lundist fixed the Nuban with those disconcerting blue eyes of his. His robes settled, forgetting the rush from the doorway. He held hands to his chest, one atop the other. “If you go now, man of Nuba, I will not stop you.”

That brought a scatter of laughter from the cells.

The Nuban watched Lundist with the same intensity I’d seen earlier. He had a few inches on my tutor, but it was the difference in bulk that made it seem a contest between David and Goliath. Where Lundist stood slender as a spear, the Nuban had as much weight again, and more, corded into thick slabs of muscle over heavy bone.