Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

‘Red March for Jorg.’ A stout grey woman bearing the vote for the Queen of Red’s hereditary seat.

‘The Thurtans for Jorg.’ The man buried in a horsehair robe, an iron crown on his brow.

And more, and still more.

‘How do we stand, Taproot?’ I asked.

‘Thirty-seven out of the forty required.’

Pieces of the Gilden Gate fell splintered to the ground. The Dead King’s presence reached in and men fell to their knees in despair. Even now more than half the votes held back, bound by years of prejudice and wrangling, Congression was a marketplace, to actually put an emperor on the throne, to end their own supremacy in those hundred kingdoms … many would rather die. But there are good deaths and there are bad deaths. The Dead King offered only the worse kind.

‘Attar for Jorg.’

‘Conquence for Jorg.’ Hemmet’s brother, giving away the Lord Commander’s supremacy in Vyene.

The remains of the gate fell in.

‘Scorron for Jorg.’ A stern old man, watching me with dislike.

I returned to the throne.

‘Men of empire does Congression find me worthy?’

The ‘aye’ that rang around the hall held more of desperation than enthusiasm, but it was sufficient. I sat emperor in Vyene, Lord of the Hundred – the Broken Empire remade.

Taproot came to my side, bowing close as the Dead King entered through the Gilden Arch, his troops behind him.

‘Well done,’ I said to Taproot. ‘I didn’t think we were anywhere near thirty-seven when I asked.’

‘Numbers never lie, my emperor.’ Taproot shook his head. ‘Only men.’

The Hundred fell back before the Dead King, no man prepared to hold his ground.

‘It does seem to have been a hollow victory, my emperor. Was it so important that you be confirmed to the throne before we all die?’

‘We’ll find out, shall we?’ I stood once more, glad to be out of that seat. ‘I don’t suppose you can seal the arch, Fexler?’

No response, just the continued flow of dead men into the throne room. The archway had always had the look of a later addition, something cut by masons with more poetry in their fingers.

The Dead King approached the dais, somehow a dark figure despite the sky-blue of Summerson’s cloak. Behind him a golden wedge of the emperor’s guard. My guard – Chella in their midst. And I stood my ground, upon the dais, before the throne, with the Hundred aligned behind me in their own wedge. Gorgoth joined me on the dais at my left shoulder, Makin at my right, Kent behind him, Marten behind Gorgoth, not a weapon between them. Sindri mounted the first step, Uncle Robert taking the same place on the far side. The guard who had watched over our Congression, a dozen men in total, stood with the Hundred, all save one who’d contrived to break his neck in the confusion and donate his sword to Rike.

I spared a glance for the men at my shoulders. I’d called them brothers on the road many a time, stood with them in the face of danger, shared meat and mead. A brotherhood of the road, sure enough, but a mean thing, men to die with rather than for. But in this place, before this enemy, who brought with him the certainty and song of death, who breathed a fear far worse than any I had felt upon the lichway when the ghosts came many years before, in this place it seemed that the men who stood with me were true brothers.

‘Hello Jorg.’ The Dead King looked up at me from the base of the dais.

His regard remained the same no matter whose eyes he watched me from. Somehow familiar, overburdened with accusation, a cold inspection that woke in me every sorrow I had known.

‘Why are you here?’ I asked.

‘The same reason as you.’ He never looked away. ‘Because others said that I may not.’

‘I say that you may not,’ I told him.

‘Will you stop me? Brother Jorg?’ His tone light but with the most bitter undercurrent, as if the ‘brother’ burned his tongue.

‘Yes.’ Just the nearness of him took the strength from my arms. He carried death, bled it from every pore, his existence an insult to all things living.

‘And how will you do that, Jorg?’ He climbed the first step of the dais.

I swung at him by way of an answer, iron-wood blurring through the air. Stick met flesh with a wet thump. The Dead King closed Kai’s hand about it, twisted the rod from my hand and smashed it into splinters on the edge of the second step.

‘How will you stop me, Brother?’ He climbed the second step. ‘You’ve no power. Nothing. An empty vessel. What little magic you ever held has long gone.’

We stood face to face, close enough to reach out for each other’s necks, though I knew how that would end.

‘And what magic do you bring, I wonder?’

For he carried something more complex than necromancy, more than horror and the crude animation of dead flesh. The despair, the longing, and the loss that threatened to drown us all, that made the kings of nations cower and pale, that wasn’t a weapon, not something made for us, but just an echo of what rang through him.