Prince of Thorns

“Princess?” I took her hand, holding it high, and we walked through.

The men that built the Tall Castle lacked nothing in skill, and everything in imagination. Their walls might remain for ten thousand years, but they would hold no artistry. The throne-room was a windowless box. A box one hundred feet on every side maybe, and with a twenty-foot ceiling to dwarf the courtiers, but a box nonetheless. Elaborate wooden galleries for the musicians muted the harsh corners, and the King’s dais added a certain splendour. I kept my eyes from the throne.

“The Princess Katherine Ap Scorron,” the herald called.

No mention of poor Jorgy. No herald would dare such a slight without instruction.

We crossed the wide floor, our pace measured, watched by the guardsmen at the walls. Men with crossbows by the walls to left and right, swordsmen at the plinth and by the door.

I might have been nameless, but my arrival had certainly roused some interest. In addition to the guardsmen and despite the early hour, at least a hundred courtiers formed our audience. They waited attendance on the throne, milling around the lowest steps in their velvets. I let my eyes stray across the glittering crowd, pausing to linger on the finest jewels. I still had my road-habits and made mental tally of their worth. A new charger on that countess’s fat bosom alone. That lord’s chain of office could buy ten suits of scale armour. There was surely a fine longbow and a pony in each of his rings. I had to remind myself I played for new stakes now. Same old game, new stakes. Not higher, but different.

The gentle chatter of the court rose and fell as we approached. The soft hubbub of knife-edged comments, damaging sarcasm, honeyed insults. Here the sharp intake of breath at the Prince coming to court still wearing the road, there the mocking laughter half-hidden behind a silk handkerchief.

I let myself look at him then.

Four years had wrought no change in my father. He sat on the high-backed throne, hunched in a wolf-skin robe edged with silver. He’d worn the same robe on the day I left. The Ancrath crown rested on his brow: a warrior crown, an iron band set with rubies, confining black hair streaked with the same grey as the iron. To his left, in the consort chair, the new queen sat. She had Katherine’s looks, though softer, with a web of silver and moonstones to tame her hair. Any sign of her pregnancy lay hid beneath the ivory froth of her gown.

Between the thrones grew a magnificent tree, wrought all of glass, its leaves the emerald of Katherine’s eyes, wide and thin and many. It reached a slender nine feet in height, its twigs and branches gnarled and vitreous, brown as caramel. I’d never seen the like before. I wondered if it might be the Queen’s dowry. Surely it had the worth.

Sageous stood beside the glass tree, in the dappled green light beneath its leaves. He’d abandoned the simple white he’d worn when first we met in favour of black robes, high in the collar, with a rope of obsidian plates about his neck. I met his eyes as we approached, and manufactured a smile for him.

The courtiers drew back before us, Makin to the fore, Katherine and me hand in hand. The perfumes of lords and ladies tickled at my nose: lavender and orange oil. On the road, shit has the decency to stink.

Only two steps down from the throne a tall knight stood in magnificent plate, the iron worked over with fire-bronze, twin dragons coiling on his breastplate in a crimson inferno.

“Sir Galen.” Makin hissed the words back at me.

I glanced at Katherine and found her smile unreadable. Galen watched us with hot blue eyes. I liked him a little better for wearing his hostility so plainly. He had the blonde hair of a Teuton, his features square and handsome. He was old though. As old as Makin. Thirty summers at the least.

Sir Galen made no move to let Makin past. We stopped five steps down.

“Father,” I said. In my head, I’d made my speech a hundred times but somehow the old bastard managed to steal the words from my tongue. The silence stretched between us. “I hope—” I started again but he cut over me.

“Sir Makin,” Father said, not even looking at me. “When I send the captain of the palace guard out to retrieve a ten-year-old child, I expect him to return by nightfall. Perhaps a day or three might suffice if the child proved particularly elusive.” Father raised his left hand from the arm of the throne, just by an inch or two but enough to cue his audience. A scattered tittering sounded among the ladies, cut off when his fingers returned to the iron-wood of the chair.

Makin bowed his head and said nothing.

“A week or two on such a task would signify incompetence. More than three years speaks of treason.”

Makin looked up at that. “Never, my king! Never treason.”

“We once had reason to consider you fit for high office, Sir Makin,” Father said, his voice as cold as his eyes. “So, you may explain yourself.”

The sweat gleamed on Makin’s brow. He’d have gone through this speech as many times as I had mine. He’d probably lost it just as profoundly.

“The Prince has all the resourcefulness one might hope for in the heir to the throne,” Makin began. I saw the Queen frown at his turn of phrase. Even Father’s mouth tightened and he glanced at me, fleeting and unreadable. “When at last I found him we were in hostile lands . . . Jaseth . . . more than three hundred miles to the south.”

“I know where Jaseth is, Sir Makin,” Father said. “Do not presume to lecture me on geography.”

Makin inclined his head. “Your majesty has many enemies, as do all great men in these times of trouble. No single blade, even one as loyal as my own, could protect your heir in such lands as Jaseth. Prince Jorg’s best defence lay in anonymity.”

I glanced over the court. It seemed that Makin’s speech had not deserted him after all. His words had an impact.

Father ran a hand over his beard. “Then you should have ridden back to the castle with a nameless charge, Sir Makin. I wonder that this journey took four years.”

“The Prince had taken up with a band of mercenaries, your majesty. By his own skill he won their allegiance. He told me plain that if I moved to take him, they would kill me, and that if I stole him away, he would announce himself to every passer-by. And I believed him, for he has the will of an Ancrath.”

Time to be heard, I thought. “Four years on the road have given you a better captain,” I said. “There’s more to learn about making war than can be discovered in this castle. We—”

“You lack enterprise, Sir Makin,” Father said. His eyes never flickered from Makin. I wondered if I’d spoken at all. Anger tinged his voice now. “Had I ridden out after the boy, I would have found a way to return with him from Jaseth within a month.”

Sir Makin bowed deeply. “That is why you deserve your throne, majesty, whilst I am merely captain of your palace guard.”

“You are the captain of my guard no longer,” Father said. “Sir Galen serves in that capacity now, as he served the House of Scorron.”

Galen offered Makin the slightest of bows, a mocking smile on his lips.

“Perhaps you would like to challenge Sir Galen for your old office?” Father asked. Again he fingered his salt-and-pepper beard.

I sensed a trap here. Father didn’t want Makin back.

“Your majesty has chosen his captain,” Makin said. “I would not presume to over-write that decision with my sword.” He sensed the trap too.