The door shook. Somebody rattled at the latch. “Hanna! Hanna!” A woman’s voice.

Somehow I stood before the door opened.

“Katherine.” My voice escaped a bruised throat as a squeak.

There she was. Beautiful in disarray. Mouth half open, green eyes wide.

“Katherine.” I could only get her name out as a whisper, but I wanted to shout, I wanted to scream so many things at once.

I understood. I understood the game. I understood the players. I knew what had to be done.

“Murderer!” she said. She took a knife from her sash, a sharp bodkin long enough to run a man through. “Your father knew best.”

I tried to tell her, but no words would come now. I tried to raise my arms, but I had no strength.

“I’ll finish what he started,” she said.

And all I could do was marvel at the beauty of her.

41

 

In a duel, man to man, sword against sword, it can be a lack of skill that gets you killed. Often as not, though, it’ll be a matter of luck, or if it goes on too long, then it’ll be the man who tires first that tends to die.

In the end it’s about staying power. They should put that on headstones, “Got tired.” Maybe not tired of life, but at least too tired to hold on to it.

In a real fight, and most fights are real, not the artifice of a formal duel, it’s fatigue that’s the big killer. A sword is a heavy chunk of iron. You swing that around for a few minutes and your arms start to get ideas of their own about what they can and can’t do. Even when your life depends on it.

I’ve known times when to lift my sword was the equal of any labour of Hercules, but never before I faced Katherine’s knife had I felt so drained.

“Bastard!”

The fire in her eyes looked fierce enough to burn until the deed was done.

I looked for the will to stop her, and came up empty.

A knife is a scary thing right enough, held to your throat, sharp and cool. The thought echoed back to me from that night when the dead came up out of their bog-pools around the Lichway.

The glitter along that knife edge as she came at me, the thought of it slicing my flesh, piercing an eye maybe, these are all the sort of thing that might give a man pause. Until you realize what they are. They’re just ways to lose the game. You lose the game, and what have you lost? You’ve lost the game. Corion had told me about the game. How many of my thoughts were his? How much of my philosophy was filth from that old man’s fingers?

I’d swum in the darkness too long. The game didn’t seem so important any more.

With the embers of my strength I raised both arms. I stretched them wide, to receive the blow. And I smiled.

Something reached out and held her arm. I saw it in her face, twisting there on that perfect brow, wrestling with the rage.

“Father didn’t quite reach the heart, it seems.” I managed a hoarse whisper. “Perhaps, Aunt, you have a better hand?”

The knife shook. I wondered if she’d cut live meat before.

“You . . . you killed her.”

The fingers of my right hand closed around something, a heavy smooth something, on the shelf beside my bed.

Her eyes dropped to the old woman’s face.

I hit her. Not hard, I didn’t have the strength, but hard enough to break the vase I’d found. She collapsed without a murmur.

She lay in the sapphire pool of her dress, sprawled across the flagstones. Life flowed in my arms once more. It seemed as if my strength began to return the moment she fell. As if a spell were broken.

Kill her and you’ll be free forever. A familiar voice, dry like paper. Mine, or his?

Her hair hid her face, auburn on sapphire.

She’s your weakness. Cut the heart from her.

I knew it to be true.

Choke her.

I saw my hands, pale on a neck shading into crimson.

Have her. The voice of the briar. The hooks slipped beneath my skin, and drew me down to kneel beside her. Have her. Take what might never be given. I knew the creed.

Kill her, and you’ll be free.

I heard the echo of a distant storm.

Katherine’s hair ran like silk between my fingers. “She’s my weakness.” My voice now, my lips. One little step, one more death, and nothing would ever touch me again. One little step and the door on that wild night would close forever. The game would truly be a game. And I would be the player to win it.

Choke her. Have her. The voice of the briar. A crackle in the mind. A hollow sound. An emptiness.

Empty.

Her neck felt warm. Her pulse beat under my fingertips.

“Kill her, Briar Prince.”

I saw the words on thin lips, spoken in an empty chamber.

“Kill her.”

I saw the lips move again. I saw the blank eyes, fixed on eternity. “Kill her.”

“Corion!”

For a moment my hands tightened around Katherine’s neck.

“I’m coming for you, you old bastard.” I released my grip.

A smile twisted those thin lips, a fierce twist. I saw it as the vision faded, those blank eyes, and that twist of a smile. My smile.

He had played me. I’d wandered for years with no recollection of him, thinking it my own idea to turn from Renar, thinking the choice a symbol of my strength and purpose, to put aside empty vengeance in favour of the true path to power. And now, on the edge of death, I had recovered what was taken. Recovered or been given. I glanced at Katherine. I recalled an angel in a dark place. The memory left me with a shiver.

I took Katherine’s dagger from the floor, and stood. I left her where she lay, beside the crone I’d throttled. The door opened onto a corridor, one I recognized. The West Corner, I knew where I was. I raised the knife to my lips and kissed the blade. Count Renar, and the puppet master who pulled so many strings, one sharp edge would be enough for them all.

Brother Roddat stabbed three men in the back for each one he faced. Roddat taught me all I know about running and about hiding. Cowards should be treated with respect. Cowards best know how to hurt. Corner one at your peril.

42

 

“Get out of my way.”

“Who the hell—”

“Please Jesu! You’re the same old wart-bag that tried to stop me last time!” And he was. The stink that jumped me when he opened the door brought it all back. “I’m surprised my father let you live.”

“Who—”

“Who the hell am I? You don’t recognize me? You didn’t last time either. I was shorter then, yay high.” I held out a hand to show him. “It seems like a while ago to me, but you’re an old man, and what’re three or four years to the old?” I sketched a bow. “Prince Jorg at your service, or rather you at mine. Last time I walked out of here with a band of outlaws. This time I just need one knight, if you please. Sir Makin of Trent.”

“I should call the guards on you,” he said, without conviction.

“Why? The King has issued no orders about me.” That was a guess, but Father thought he’d struck a mortal blow, so I was probably correct. “Besides, it’d only get you killed. And if you’re thinking of that big fellow with the pike, I rammed his head into the wall not three minutes ago.”