Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

‘You dare?’ The Voice may have spoken an alien tongue but the volume and tone drew ten curved blades from the scabbards of the imperial guard.

‘Harsh language to use over an unpaid debt, Marco?’ I did my best to ignore the glittering steel a foot to my left, the guardsmen having included me in the insult. ‘By the look of things I would say the caliph is good for it?’ I didn’t wave my arm at the opulence of our surroundings, concerned that someone might lop it off.

‘You wallow in ignorance, Jorg of Renar, like a pig in filth. It will please me to see you burn.’

‘Marco! I thought we were friends?’ I tried not to smile but I was never the actor.

He looked away from me toward the throne. ‘Ibn Fayed, you are sentenced to die. All of Hamada is forfeit.’

Two long steel bolts appeared in Marco’s chest, jutting out at diverging angles. I took a moment to recognize them as projectiles, fired from some overlarge crossbows that must be concealed in galleries above us.

Marco staggered half a step and raised his hands. ‘Die.’ Joints crackled as he formed a fist. It put me in mind of that scorpion in the Hills as I unwound it. For a heartbeat he hypnotized all of us, stood there impaled on those bolts, his hat rolling on its brim at his feet. Fist slammed into palm.

And nothing.

Though perhaps it seemed brighter for a second, as if the sun had peeked out from behind clouds.

Marco pounded fist into palm a second time. ‘No!’ He swept us with a wild gaze, looked down at the shafts in his chest, and collapsed.

‘This is what is in your hand?’ the Voice asked. ‘A madman?’

‘Look out of your window, Ibn Fayed.’ I pointed west.

A sharp clap sent one of the guards running to haul open the shutters.

The man pulled on a concealed rope and the screens parted, the brightness of the day dazzling us. For long moments we stood blinking in the desert light, trying to see into the brilliance of the outside world. And there it rose, boiling upward over the dunes, a fierce column of orange and black, fire threaded with night, opening into a inferno, mushrooming above the sands, and above that, impossibly high, a white halo of cloud spreading, outpacing the flames.

The burned half of my face pulsed with warmth, a heat on the edge of pain, the light of it filling my eye and making something new of the flame-cloud, lending it an ethereal beauty and the aspect of a gate, or fissure in the world, opening onto something that could be heaven or could be hell.

‘It would take you two days on camel back to stand dead centre beneath that explosion,’ I said.

‘I don’t understand.’ Ibn Fayed stood from his throne.

‘Have Marco’s trunk brought here,’ I said.

The caliph nodded. His Voice called out the command.

We had no need of small talk while we waited. The explosion demanded the eye. None of us spoke. Even the servants laid down their feathered poles to watch. And after five minutes we saw the dunes rise, the sand leaping into the air, one after the next, bang, bang, bang, faster than an arrow in flight. The sound hit us, a wall of it, loud enough to take every shutter from its hinges and leave a finger’s width of sand across each inch of the marble floor. The rumble that followed drew out for an age, deep and full of terror.

Qalasadi and Yusuf came through the great doors, six guards behind them carrying Marco’s trunk. If they knocked we didn’t hear them.

They set the trunk beside Marco’s corpse.

‘You have checked this?’ The Voice pointed at it.

‘We have.’ Qalasadi nodded. ‘In any event, nothing of the Builders’ magic can pass the gates and seals set upon this palace.’

‘That’s n—’ I bit off the words and patted my chest. Gone! The view-ring wasn’t there. ‘How in hell—’

‘I cut the thong just before we left the mathema,’ Yusuf said. ‘Kalal stayed to pick it from the floor.’

‘A light touch, Brother Yusuf. I hadn’t taken you for a thief.’ It unnerved me to think he had held a blade at my neck, but I supposed they had had me in a noose since I set foot on the quay at Kutta port.

‘Theft is about timing, Jorg, and timing can be calculated.’ He seemed unashamed.

I remembered the bell sounding as we left the tower, holding my attention, drowning out other senses, over-writing the clink of view-ring striking floor.

‘Besides,’ Yusuf continued. ‘It would have been detected and taken at the palace gates, casting you in a very bad light. A friend couldn’t let that happen to a friend.’

I shrugged. There seemed little else to do. In any event, they hadn’t detected my gun. Perhaps when they spoke of the Builders’ works they meant the ones with more magic and less mechanics. The ones where lightning ran trapped in metal veins.

‘Open it.’ Ibn Fayed, returned to his throne, gaze flicking from window to trunk, trunk to window.

Qalasadi kneeled, undid the catches, worked some magic on the lock – a lock I knew to be very tricky – and threw back the lid.