Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes … ‘Just wait.’ She held up a hand.

Wrongness. A dry sharp sense of wrong, like grit behind her eyeballs. The temperature fell, or perhaps her body just thought it did for her breath didn’t steam.

‘Lichkin.’ Kai felt it too.

‘Hiding himself,’ she said. ‘Thantos.’

‘What does he want?’ Kai’s poise fell away when lichkin drew near. Keres had terrified him. Thantos was worse.

‘It’s a reminder,’ Chella said. Some part of her had been hoping the plan forgotten or changed, a large part, and growing larger as life reclaimed her. She cursed Jorg Ancrath and steeled herself to this new task.

‘Go into town, get a cart and have it loaded with ale casks. We’ll camp in the fields toward the river. The guard can have their revels.’

Kai sniffed. ‘Looks like rain.’

‘Have them build fires. They won’t notice the rain after long.’

‘Ale will do that for you.’ Kai nodded. He couldn’t manage a grin though, not with death stalking so close, scraping every nerve raw.

Chella reached into the purse on her dress-belt. ‘Take this.’ She spilled four heavy pieces of gold into his hand, Brettan bars.

‘What—’ He nudged the small vial of black glass lying amongst the gold in his palm. From the change in his face she could tell he understood.

‘Styx water. One drop per cask.’

*

‘What a thing it would be.’ Chella held the goblet before her, making a slow swirl of the ale, the foam all but gone, just islands in a dark and moonlit sea. ‘To fly.’

‘Yes.’ Kai stared into his own dark sea, his own foam scattered islands. Perhaps it reminded him of his drowned land.

A long silence. The soft rain made no sound. Far, in the distance, a muted cheer from Allenhaure, some celebration amongst Jorg’s guard.

‘I almost did.’ Kai set his silver goblet on the table between them. ‘Once.’

‘How can you almost fly?’ Chella shook her head.

‘How can you almost love?’ He looked up at the sky, starless and bible-black. ‘I stood on a lip of rock, held out over the Channel Sea, where the waves pound on white cliffs. And the wind there, it blows so cold and sure, takes the heat from you, wraps your bones. I leaned out into it, nothing but the wind to hold me, and those dark waves slapping and pounding way, way below. And it filled me, like I was made of glass, or ice, or air, and the only thing in my mind was the voice of that east wind, the voice of forever calling me.’

‘But?’

‘But I couldn’t let go. If I had flown I would have flown away from everything I knew. From me.’ He shook his head.

‘And what wouldn’t we give to fly away from being us right now?’ Chella flicked her goblet over and stood as the liquid spilled over the table. All across the field men of the guard lay sprawled as if in sleep, lying, some of them in their gold armour, in the muddy grass. Captain Axtis had ended on his back, half-out of his pavilion, sword in hand, eyes staring at the sky and full of rain. Out of nearly three hundred men only eleven hadn’t at least sipped the Allenhaure ale. The lichkin had found those men in the dark and played his games, first making them silent with the wet tearing of flesh.

‘Will Thantos be needing the others too?’ Kai pushed away the white arm of a camp-girl, sodden dress, hair dark with rain, face-down in the dirt. He levered himself from his chair and stepped over her to join Chella.

She nodded. ‘They’ll go to the woods and join the Dead King’s force when he arrives.’

Kai drew his cloak tight. A mist lay ankle-deep around them, rising out of nowhere as if it bled from the ground, white as milk.

‘It’s starting.’

The sense of wrongness that had scratched at her all evening, twisting likes worms beneath the skin, now crystallized into horror. When the dead return there’s a feeling of everything flowing the wrong way, as if hell itself were vomiting them out.

Axtis sat up first, before his men, before the dead whores, the boys with their serving plates and polish rags. He didn’t blink. The water ran from his eyes, but he didn’t blink. Wrong.

All around them men stood in their golden armour. The Styx water had left no mark upon them, save for the few who tumbled into the open fires of course. Styx water does its work without hurry, dulling senses, bringing sleep, paralysing the voice first, then the larger muscle groups. At the last the death it offers is an agony of tortured muscles fighting and failing. Chella had enough necromancy in her fingertips to know that they had not died easy. Their pain echoed in her.

‘I still don’t understand,’ Kai said. ‘It won’t take long before someone discovers something is wrong with them. And then all that talk of diplomacy is just noise. We’ll be fortunate to escape without being beheaded then burned. That’s what they do to our sort you know? That’s if you’re lucky. If not, it’s burning first, then behead what’s left.’

‘The Dead King has his reasons,’ Chella said.