Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Makin, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ I sat on the bed and rotated the chessboard so the white queen and her army faced his way. ‘Make a move.’


Makin had six victories before I set him to snuffing out the lamps. That he took his six to the floor and I took my single win to the luxury of a bed proved scant comfort. I fell asleep with the pieces flashing before my eyes, black squares, white, the twinkle of rubies and emeralds.

A storm came in the night, raging against the canvas. Tents are boasters, telling exaggerated tales of the weather they save you from. The sound was of a deluge fit to drown the kingdom and a wind that could scour the rocks from mountain slopes. Under a weather blanket, curled below a hedge, it might not have woken me, but beneath the great drum of the pavilion roof I lay staring into darkness.

Sometimes it’s good to hear the rain, but not be wet, to know that the wind is howling but to feel no breath of it. I waited in that timeless comfortable dark and at last the scent of white musk rose, her arms folded about my chest, and she drew me down into dreams. There seemed an urgency to it tonight.

‘Aunt Katherine.’ No doubt my lips twitched toward the words while I slept.

In the beginning Katherine sent me only nightmares, as if she counted herself my conscience and needed to torment me with my crimes. Time and again baby Degran died in my hands and I woke screaming, sweat-soaked, a danger to any who shared my bed. I spent nights roasting over the slow fire of Sareth’s grief, shown from every angle by the arts her sister taught herself while married to the Prince of Arrow. Miana could not keep to my chambers and set herself a bed in the east tower.

Dream-sworn, I told myself. She’s a dream-witch. Sageous’s ilk. But it didn’t stop me wanting her. I painted Katherine’s image across the dark storm of my imagination. She never showed herself and so I brought forth my first sight of her, that time-locked memory when we collided in the corridors of the Tall Castle.

Katherine showed me her loved ones – those I had killed. Sir Galen championing her through the bright days of her youth in Scorron, and her maid Hanna at a time when she looked less sour and offered a child-princess comfort in a loveless court. In dreaming, Katherine made me care about her cares, about her people, twisting me with the strange logic of the sleeping mind such that they seemed important, real, as real as the memories from before the thorns. And all of this in the too-bright light of the Gelleth sun, the flesh-stripping glare of that Builder Sun, always behind me, throwing my shadow like a black finger into the midst of their lives.

I let her arms draw me down through midnight. I had never fought her, though I felt I could, and I think perhaps she wanted me to. Even more than she wanted to show me the wrongs I had wrought, even more than she needed to make me feel it as she felt it, I think she needed me to fight her, to struggle against her spell, to close my dreaming eyes and try to escape. But I didn’t. I told myself that I chose to face what I feared. That her torments would burn me clean of sentiment. But truly – I liked her arms around me, the feel of her close at hand, touching yet untouchable.

Whispers of light reached me through the starless night. Of late the dreams she drew me to were more confused, unfocused, as if she dreamed also. I would see her, or touch her, but never both. We would walk the Tall Castle, or the Palace of Arrow, her dresses flowing, silence binding us, the walls aging and crumbling as we passed. Or I would smell her, hold her, but be blind, or see only the graves of Perechaise.

Tonight though, the dream came cold and clear. Broken stone crunched beneath my shoes, the rain lashed me. I climbed a slope, bent against the gale. My fingers moved blind across natural rock, a wall rising before me. I knew every sensation but held no control as if I were a puppet and another kept the strings.

‘What lesson is this, Katherine?’