Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

‘All dreams are real, Jorg. Even this one.’


‘What—’ My arm twitched and red agony flooded me. I found my breath again. ‘What do you want of me?’

‘I want to save you,’ she said. ‘Come.’ And she offered me her hand. A hand in which colour moved like the faintly-shadowed skin on molten silver. To take that hand would end all pain. She offered me salvation. Maybe that was all salvation had ever been. An open hand waiting to be taken.

‘I bet my brother told you to go to hell,’ I said.

Lightning struck once more and there was no angel, just a Renar soldier carrying William by the ankles like a hunter’s kill. Carrying him toward that milestone, carrying him to dash his head open.

Nature shaped the claw to trap, and the tooth to kill, but the thorn … the thorn’s only purpose is to hurt. The thorns of the hook-briar are like to find the bone. They do not come out easy. If you make a stone of your mind, if you thrash and tear, if you break and pull and bite, if you do these things you will leave the briar for it cannot hold a man who does not wish to be held. You will escape. Not all of you, but enough to crawl. And crawling, I left the briar. And reached my brother.

We died together. As we always should have.

A cold stone hall. Echoing. The ceiling black with smoke. Whimpers of pain. Not human pain, but familiar nonetheless.

‘One more,’ Father said. ‘He has a leg left to stand on, does he not, Sir Reilly?’

And for once Sir Reilly would not answer his king.

‘One more, Jorg.’

I looked at Justice, broken and licking the tears and snot from my hand. ‘No.’

And with that Father took the torch and tossed it into the cart.

I rolled back from the sudden bloom of flame. Whatever my heart told me to do, my body remembered the lesson of the poker and would not let me stay. The howling from the cart made all that had gone before seem as nothing. I call it howling but it was screaming. Man, dog, horse. With enough hurt we all sound the same.

I looked into the flame and found it that same incinerating incandescence which had waited for me at the end of my tunnel, blind, white hunger, blind, white pain. Flesh knows what it wants and will refuse the fire whatever you have to say about the matter.

But sometimes flesh must be told.

‘I.’

I couldn’t do it, Brothers.

‘Can’t.’

Have you ever dared a jump, perhaps from some untold height into clear waters and found that at the very edge you simply cannot? Have you hung from four fingers above an empty span of yards, hung by three fingers and by two, and known in that moment that you can’t drop? While any grip remains, your flesh will save itself in the face of all odds.

The heat of that fire. The fierceness of the blaze. And Justice twisting in its heart, screaming. I couldn’t do it.

I could not.

And then I could. I leapt. I let myself drop. I held my dog. I burned.

A dark sky, a tugging wind. It could be anywhere or any when, and yet I knew I had never been here.

‘You found me, then?’

William, seven years to him, golden curls, soft child’s flesh, Justice curled at his feet. The old hound lifted his head at the scent of me, his tail beating once, twice against the ground. ‘Down, boy.’ William set his hand between those long ears.

‘I found you.’ We shared a smile.

‘I can’t get in.’ He waved at the golden gates towering behind us.

I walked across and set a hand to them. The warmth filled me with promises. I pulled away.

‘Heaven is over-rated, Will.’

He shrugged and patted our dog.

‘Besides,’ I said. ‘It’s not real. It’s a thing we’ve made. A thing that men have built without knowing it, a place made out of expectation and hope.’

‘It’s not real?’ He blinked at that.

‘No. Nor the angel. Not a lie, but not real either. A dream dreamt by good men, if you like.’

‘So what is death, really?’ he asked. ‘I think I have a right to know. I’ve been dead for years. And here you are, five minutes in, knowing it all. What is real if it’s not this?’

I had to grin at that. The older brother all over.

‘I don’t know what real really is,’ I said. ‘But it’s deeper than this.’ I waved at the golden gates. ‘Fundamental. Pure. And it’s what we need. And if there’s a heaven it’s better than this and requires no gates. Shall we find out?’

‘Why?’ Will lay back, still scratching between Justice’s ears.

‘Did you see your nephew?’ I asked.

Will nodded, hiding a shy smile.

‘If we don’t do this, he’s going to burn. Him and everyone else. And it will get pretty crowded around here. So help me find it.’ No half-measures. No compromise. Save them all, or none.

‘Find what?’

‘A wheel. That’s how Fexler thought of it. And expectations seem to matter here.’