Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

I waggled my hand. ‘Little bit.’ In truth I hadn’t known I was getting an escort, let alone picked the man. ‘In any case, you’ll enjoy getting out and about,’ I said. ‘Surely even the Iberico Hills beat a day standing guard at the Lowery Gate?’


He spat at that, strengthening his resemblance to Row still further. ‘I’m a wall guard, not a house flower.’ A stretch of his arm showed off the sun’s nut-brown stain. House guards are never so tanned.

With the mule’s tether in hand I set off for the gate. Sunny followed. His packhorse stood outside the castle wall in the shade of an olive tree, high laden as if we were bound for a crossing of the Aups.

However reluctant the show Sunny put on, my mule had him beaten. I had to haul the beast past the horse trough. I named him Balky and encouraged him with a stick. In the end I had my way, but the fact that Balky did not want to go where I led was never in doubt. I guess he really was the wise one after all.





5


Five years earlier

Castle Morrow, like the Haunt, is set apart from the region’s main town. Both castles are placed for defence of their occupants. In the Hundred War the conquering of kingdoms is the business of avarice. The Hundred want their new lands to be rich and plentiful, full of taxpayers and recruits. Most attacks will aim to kill the land’s ruler so the aggressor may claim his throne and take the kingdom unharmed. Wars of attrition where the peasantry are slaughtered, cities burned, crops destroyed, are less common and happen most often when the two sides are evenly matched, both struggling to gain the advantage required to assault the foe’s castles.

The city of Albaseat rests on fertile plains maybe fifty miles inland from Castle Morrow. It took Sunny and me three days to walk the distance, having started late on the first day, and pausing for frequent stick-based negotiations with Balky. The River Jucca feeds the surrounding farmlands. We approached the city along the Coast Road, which for the last few miles leads along the riverbank, past orchards of every sort, through vineyards, along the foot of slopes thick with olive groves. Turning for Albaseat’s gates we walked between tilled fields heavy with tomatoes, peppers, beans, onions, cabbage, potatoes, enough food to feed the world.

The walls and towers of Albaseat shone in the southern sun.

‘Makes Hodd Town look like a pile of offal,’ I said.

‘Where?’ Sunny asked.

‘Capital city of the Renar Highlands,’ I said. ‘The only city really. More of a big town. Well a town anyhow.’

‘The Renar Highlands?’

‘Now you’re just trying to irk me.’ I didn’t think he was, though. He blinked and looked away from Albaseat’s towers.

‘Oh that Hood Town, my apologies.’ It wasn’t often that Sunny remembered I was the king of anywhere and it always left him looking surprised.

‘Hodd Town!’

The guards at the city gates let us pass without question. It wasn’t often that I remembered Sunny was Greyson Landless, royal guard from Earl Hansa’s court.

Albaseat not only left Hodd Town looking like a tumbledown village, it made Crath City look shabby in comparison. The Moors had ruled Albaseat for generations and left their mark everywhere, from the great stone halls that stabled grandfather’s cavalry to the high towers from whose minarets you could look out over the source of his wealth, laid out in many shades of green. I did just that, paying a copper to climb the winding stair of the Fayed Tower, a public building at the heart of the great plaza before the new cathedral. Sunny stayed at ground level, watching his horse and Balky from the tower’s shade.

Even a hundred yards above the plaza’s baking flagstones it felt oven hot. The breeze through the minaret was worth a copper on its own. Without the slow green waters of the Jucca the fields would be desert. The green gave over to parched browns as the land rose and I could see the first rolling steps of the Iberico Hills away to the north. Whatever taint they carried seemed to stain the air itself, turning it a dirty yellow where the horizon started to reclaim the hills.

I leaned out, hands on the windowsill, to spot Sunny below. The city marched off in all directions, broad and ordered streets lined with tall, whitewashed houses. To the west grander mansions, to the east the low homes and tight alleys of the poor. My grandfather’s people living in the peace of his reign, his nobles plotting, merchants trading, blacksmith, tanner, and slaughterman hard at work, whores aback, maids aknee, washerwomen hauling loads to the river-side meadows where horsemen trained their steeds, the pulse of life, an old and complex dance of many partners. Quick, quick, slow.