Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

Jorg nodded. ‘Even so. Another William, to make his grandfather proud. Though I don’t know if Olidan of Ancrath lived long enough to be a grandfather?’


‘If he’s dead I know nothing of it.’ Time was she felt each death as ripples in a pond, and the King of Ancrath would have made quite a splash – now though, she might have new eyes for the living world, but she lay deaf to the deadlands. Jorg’s fault, of course. She said it to herself again, hoping to believe it. Jorg’s fault.

Jorg frowned, just for a moment, replacing it with the smile he wore in place of armour. ‘No matter.’

‘I’ve no designs on your son, Jorg,’ Chella said. It surprised her to find that she didn’t.

‘And you, Kai Summerson? Are you a child killer?’ Jorg asked.

‘No.’ A sharp reply, the offence written on his face. It seemed laughable that a necromancer should rail against such a suggestion, but then she remembered Kai had killed no one since she took him. When you learn the dark arts amid the corpse-hordes of the Isles murder is no longer a pre-requisite.

‘Me, I have taken the lives of children, Kai. Baby boy, small girl, it means little. The lives of men even less. Do not cross me.’ Careless words scattered like broken glass for the Brettan to pick a path through. Chella came to Kai’s aid before he cut himself.

‘Does your son make you happy, Jorg?’ The question felt important. Jorg Ancrath with a baby boy. Chella tried to picture him with the infant in his arms.

Jorg flashed a dark look her way. He bowed his head, shielded by the hair that swept about his face, and for the longest time she thought he would not reply.

‘There are no happy endings for such as us, Chella. No redemption. Not with our sins. Any joy is borrowed – laughter shared on the road, and left behind.’ He turned to Kai. ‘I have killed children, Kai Summerson. In such company you will too.’ Something familiar lay in his voice, in the framing of his words. She could almost taste it.

Returning his gaze to Chella Jorg watched her face awhile, sorrow in his own. ‘We have both walked black paths, lady. Don’t think that mine leads back into the light. Of all those that tried to guide me, of my father, of the whispers from the thorn bush, of Corion’s evil council, the darkest voice was ever mine.’

And in a moment of recognition Chella knew who the Dead King was.





38


When Makin reported the Isles’ contingent catching up our own golden host I had known Chella would be amongst their number. Known it blood to bone, without evidence or reason. And I left our carriage, my wife, my child, my tantalizing aunt, with more swiftness than was seemly, and with less trepidation than when I went to my father’s carriage, though this one might hold the Dead King himself. I closed the door on them all, on all my weaknesses. Despite my tempering of years some foolish part of me still reached for the happiness of family, the redemption love might bring. Broken hopes that would not serve me. I closed the door on them and rode toward what I knew best – toward the damned. My past lay black, the future burned, and in the thin slice between, the world expected me to be a father, to hold a son, to save him, save them all? Too much to ask of a man so dark with sin. Too much to ask of any man perhaps.

The Dead King’s carriage, whilst not so grand as Lord Holland’s, had nothing funereal about it. Even the presence of two necromancers hadn’t tainted the atmosphere. In fact I didn’t know for sure if Kai Summerson practised the arts of reanimation: he seemed too young, too full of life. And Chella herself had changed. Beyond a doubt. In past encounters she had burned with an unholy joy, so fierce that its light became an after-image on the memory, obscuring truth. In the swamps and caverns an ambiguity of the flesh made her all things to all men, or at least to this one, ripe with the darkest juice. Now it seemed that a stranger sat opposite me, more old, more pale, still with a beauty to her, hair very black, high and delicate angles to her face, an elegance not seen before, her eyes dark with secrets and in unguarded moments becoming wounds.

‘I still mean to kill you,’ I said, in part to pass the time as we rumbled through the streets of Honth.

She shrugged, less easy in her indifference than of old. ‘The Nuban forgave me. You should too.’

That made me start. ‘He did not!’ But he probably did. The Nuban never held grudges – said he had enough to carry and a long way to go.

‘So, tell me about the Dead King.’ I asked Kai and he shuddered at the words. Just for a moment, quickly suppressed.

The Brettan looked out of the window before he answered, as if seeking the reassurance of daylight, comfort in the passing of narrow homes in plaster and thatch, each stuffed with lives, mother, father, squalling brats, toothless elders, bristling with argument and laughter, every flea hopping.