Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

Yusuf ran a finger across pages of scrawl. ‘Two.’


‘It’s what the magic gives us,’ Qalasadi said.

Something cold tingled at my cheekbones. ‘Why two?’

And the mathmagician frowned, as he had in the courtyard at Castle Morrow, as if trying once again to remember that lost sensation, to recall a forgotten taste.

‘Two friends lost in dry-lands? Two friends to be made in the desert? Two years away from your throne? Two women who will own your heart? Two decades you will live?’ The magic lies in the first number, the mathematics in the second.’

‘And what is the second number?’ Anger left me, the remaining image two sad mounds in the dirt of the Iberico, fading.

‘The second number,’ Qalasadi said, without checking his papers, ‘is 333000054500.’

‘Now that is a number! None of these twos, threes, and fourteens you plague me with. What the hell does it mean?’

‘It is, I hope, the coordinates where you abandoned Michael.’





35


Five years earlier

It came as something of a relief to discover the order of mathmagicians didn’t require my death, as it seemed likely they could have arranged to take it, certainly after I’d delivered myself into their hands with such cunning. Also good to learn that they now considered there were better routes than those that led to Morrow, other ways to place the necessary voting power into Ibn Fayed’s hands and to assure the Prince of Arrow’s ascendance. It meant that I in turn did not require their death.

It is true that I had a bad record with soothsayers and the like predicting glory for Orrin of Arrow. For once, however, I felt able to step around it and move on. Maybe I was growing up. I comforted myself with Fexler’s words about the changing world and the power of desire. Perhaps for those whose burning desire was to know the future rather than live in the present, perhaps for them it was that desire more than the means they employed that gave them some blurry window onto tomorrow. Whether it be Danelore witches casting rune stones, or clever Moors with equations of fiendish complexity, maybe their raw and focused desire delivered their insights. And if my desire were the greater, maybe I would prove them wrong.

The need for vengeance, for retribution against Qalasadi after his attempt on my family, had never burned so bright as the imperative that took me to Uncle Renar’s door. In fact it felt good to let it drop. Lundist and the Nuban would have been proud of me, but in truth I liked the man and it was that rather than any newfound strength of character that allowed me to set it aside.

In some chamber above us a mechanism whirred and a great bell began to sound out the hour of the day.

‘Yusuf and I will accompany you to the caliph’s court,’ Qalasadi said, voice raised.

‘He won’t want to execute me? Or lock me in a cell?’ I asked.

‘He knows you are here, so whether you go to court with us, or are taken there later under armed guard, is unlikely to change events,’ Qalasadi said.

‘Though if his soldiers have to drag you there, projections do slide toward less desirable outcomes,’ Yusuf added.

‘But you have already calculated what will happen?’ I frowned at Yusuf.

‘Yes.’ A nod.

‘And?’

‘And telling you will make the outcome less certain.’ Qalasadi closed the book he had just opened and picked it up. Yusuf threw an arm over my shoulders and steered me toward the door.

‘And Kalal stays here?’ I asked above the tenth and loudest intonation of the bell.

Yusuf grinned. ‘The sums don’t do themselves, you know.’

To their credit neither Qalasadi or Yusuf raised an eyebrow at the tower’s lack of a front door, and I guessed it was not one that would be easy to replace. The younger men in their whites, still with the blackened teeth, alarming in their wrongness, had gathered the fragments together in a small sad heap to one side of the doorway, and others from within the mathema had joined them. Several dozen of the students sat in a circle, murmuring, passing crystal pieces amongst one another, the occasional cry going up when they found two fragments that matched. They fell silent as we passed.

‘I see you found a new solution to the door, Jorg,’ Yusuf said, his voice dry.

‘It presents a better puzzle now,’ Qalasadi said, ‘though one that is less of an obstacle.’