Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

‘Clothes!’ I clapped to summon a little attention, but Jameous kept glancing to the road.

I took a look myself, wondering if the town-law had turned up to lend the councilman a hand and try my patience. In place of the padded armour and iron-banded clubs of the town-law rank upon rank of bearded Norsemen marched past, the weak sun glinting on ring-mail, garish colours on their wide, round shields, helms set with ceremonial horns to either side. I made it to the window in time to see the centre of the parade approaching. Four figures on horseback, the warriors ahead of them encircled by the coils of serpent horns.

‘Damn me!’ I stepped out through the splintered wood. Councilman Hetmon crawled away at a good lick, but I’d lost interest in him, and indeed in all my sartorial ambitions. ‘Sindri!’ Riding high on that white gelding of his, a robe of white fur, hair now unbraided and confined instead by a gold band, but Sindri even so.

‘SINDRI!’ I bellowed it at him. Just in time as the two warriors marching before his horse winded their serpents and drowned out all other noise.

For a moment it seemed he hadn’t heard, and then he turned his horse, shouldering through the ranks, setting the marchers in disarray.

‘—ell are you doing here?’ His words reached me as the howl of the serpent horns died away.

‘I’ve come to see my throne.’ My cheeks ached with a smile that hadn’t needed me to put it there. It felt good to see a familiar face.

‘You look like hell.’ He swung down from the saddle, furs swishing, some kind of arctic fox by the look of them. ‘I took you for a Saracen at first. A sell-sword, and not one finding much luck.’

I glanced down at myself. ‘Heh. Well I guess I picked up a few things in Afrique. A pretty good tan for one.’ I set my dark wrist to his pale one.

‘Afrique? Are you never still?’ He glanced back at the column halted in the street. ‘Anyhow, you must come with us. You can ride beside Elin. You remember my sister Elin?’

Oh I did. Visit us in winter, she had said. ‘My horse is back at the inn,’ I told him. ‘And where are you bound? And for what? Has it grown too cold in the north?’

‘Getting married.’ He grinned. ‘Walk with me, if it’s not beneath a king’s dignity.’

‘Dignity?’ I matched his grin and flicked a splinter from my shoulder.

Sindri rejoined his column on foot and I took the place of the warrior beside him. ‘My lady.’ I nodded up at Elin, pale in black velvets, white-blonde hair cascading behind her.

‘You’ve not met my uncle Thorgard, and Norv the Raw, our bannerman from Hake Vale?’ Sindri indicated the other riders, older men, grim, helmed, scarred.

I smacked a fist to my breastplate and inclined my head, remembering the low opinion such men held of the courtesies traded in Vyene. ‘And your father?’

‘His duties keep him in Maladon. Dead things rising from the barrowlands. Also his health is—’

‘A chill, nothing more.’ Duke Maladon’s brother leaned across his nephew.

The column restarted with a blast of serpent horns. We marched on into the silence left in their wake. ‘Married?’ I asked. ‘To a southerner?’

‘A lass from the Hagenfast, good Viking stock. One of Father’s alliances, but she’s a pretty thing. A hellcat in the furs.’

Elin snorted on the other side of him.

‘So you’ve all trooped down to Vyene … ?’

Sindri reached up and flicked one of the bull’s horns on his helm. ‘We’re traditionalists. Frozen in our ways. We’ve barely let go of the old gods three thousand years after the Christ came. In the north any marriage of great consequence must be witnessed by the emperor, and that means coming to court. Even if there’s no emperor. Or steward. So here we are.’

‘Well it’s good to see you.’ And I meant it.





45


Five years earlier

I came to the Gilden Gate dressed in Sindri’s spare cloak and tunic, with boots from one or other of his warriors, my rank recognized by the Gilden Guard on Sindri’s vouching. The Gate lay deep inside the palace, not an entrance but a rite of passage. I had always imagined the Gate would tower, stand wide enough for a coach and horses, require ten men to open.

‘That’s it?’

‘Yes.’ Hemmet, Lord Commander of the Gilden Guard, didn’t elaborate. He must have met this reaction dozens of times.

We stood, Sindri, his inner party, Hemmet and I, in an antechamber the size of Father’s throne room and appointed with more grandeur and more taste than anything most of the Hundred could aspire to. And in the expanse of the west wall, set with the busts of emperors past, each in white marble deep in its niche to watch the ages, stood the Gilden Gate. A modest entrance in which an ancient wooden archway stood unsupported. Oak perhaps, black with age, any carving smoothed away by the passage of years.