Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

We crossed the plaza under the sun’s blaze. You could almost see the lake boiling away, but it put a hint of coolness in the air, a blessing worth more than gold in the Sahar. The steps up to the caliph’s gates were broad and many, larger than steps made for men, deceiving the eye so that as you climbed the true size of the palace became apparent in a slow dawning.

Supplicants queued on the steps in the shade of a grand portico. Gates, that looked to be made of gold, towered above us all, and royal guards in polished steel stood ready to receive the caliph’s visitors, bright and faintly ridiculous plumes bobbing above conical helms. Qalasadi and Yusuf bypassed the score and more of black-robed petitioners. I spared a smile for Marco, wedged in the midst of the locals and struggling to heft his trunk up another step.

‘As-salamu alaykum.’ Qalasadi wished peace upon the giant who stepped to bar our way. A sensible wish given the size of the scimitar at the man’s hip. Hachirahs, Tutor Lundist’s book had called them, their blades sufficient to hack a man in two.

‘As-salamu alaykum, murshid mathema.’ The man bowed, but not so low that one might stab him unawares.

More words exchanged in the shared tongue of Maroc and Liba. I had enough of it to judge that Qalasadi was assuring the guard of my royal status, despite appearances to the contrary. It might have been politic to spend some time and some gold cleaning off the desert and dressing the part, but it seemed wiser to meet with Ibn Fayed before Marco gained an audience.

We entered by a gate within the gate and three plumed guards led us along marble corridors, marvellously cool. The silence of the palace enveloped us, a peace rather than the sterile absence of sound in the Builders’ corridors, and broken on occasion by the tinkle of hidden fountains and the cry of peacocks.

The caliph’s palace had nothing in common with the castles of the north. For one thing, it had been built for pleasure, not defence. The palace sprawled rather than towered, its halls and galleries wide and open, running one into the next, where they should divide into bottlenecks and killing grounds. And we passed not a single statue, painting, nor any but a few tapestries depicting only patterns in many bright colours. The men of the desert lacked our obsession with raising our own images, setting down our ancestry for the ages in stone and paint.

‘We’re here.’ Qalasadi’s warning felt redundant. Double doors faced us, taller than houses, fashioned from vast slabs of ebony inlaid with gold. Wood is a rarity in the desert: the ebony spoke more loudly of the caliph’s wealth than did the gold.

Palace guards with polearms stood in alcoves to each side, the bladed ends elaborate in shape and catching the light from small circular windows in the ceiling far above.

‘Well,’ I said, then ran out of words. I have stepped into the lions’ den before, but perhaps not since I walked alone into Marclos of Renar’s personal army had I put myself so deeply into the hands of an enemy. At least with Marclos my brothers were just a few hundred yards away in a defensible position. I stood now in a well-guarded palace in an alien city amidst a vast desert in a strange land a continent away from home. I had nothing with which to bargain, and no gifts to offer, except perhaps for the trick I had played in the desert. I couldn’t say if Qalasadi’s coordinates were correct, but I did know that the Builder ghost, Michael, would not be accompanying Marco to court.

‘We will wait here. Your audience is to be a private one.’ Qalasadi set a hand to my shoulder. ‘I can’t tell you that Ibn Fayed is a good man, but he is at the least a man of honour.’

One of our escorts stepped forward to knock three times upon a boss set across the join of the doors. I turned to face the two mathmagicians.

‘A pity it wasn’t three friends your spells predicted I would make in the desert.’ I could do with friend like the caliph, even if that friendship only extended to letting me leave.

Behind me the great doors stole into motion. A breeze ran cool across my neck and I turned to face my future.

‘Good luck, Prince of Thorns.’ Yusuf spoke at my ear, voice soft. ‘We became friends at sea, you and I, so you still have a friend to make in the desert. Choose well.’

The walk from doors to throne, along a silk runner the colour of the ocean, took a lifetime. In the vast and airy marble cavern of Ibn Fayed’s throne room, walking between sunlit patches as if through the light and shade of forests, ideas, phrases, lines of attack, all bubbled up in fragments, roiling one over the next whilst all the time my gaze rested on the figure in his seat, first distant, drawing closer. Around the perimeter of the chamber great window arches stood to catch the breeze, each screened by elaborate shutters, more perforation than wood.