Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

‘He’s a street cur,’ the smith said. ‘Too stupid to learn. I’ve fed him for a month. Kept him under my roof. He’s mine to end.’ He brought his heel down hard, his weight upon it.

A loud retort of leather on stone. The boy rolled clear but lacked the strength to get up. The smith roared a curse – it drowned my own – the burn that stretched across my face from chin to brow as if a red-hot hand had branded me, now burned again with the same pain that it first gave. I’ve been told that conscience speaks in a small voice at the back of the mind, clear to some, to others muffled and easy to ignore. I never heard that it burned across a man’s face in red agony. Still, pain or no pain, I don’t like to be led or to be pushed. Perhaps I selected Balky as a kindred spirit for I took direction as poorly, even from my own conscience on the rare occasions it made a bid for control.

Sunny passed me, aimed for the smith. He hadn’t even drawn his sword.

‘I’ll buy him from you!’ I shouted. Sunny could come in handy and I guessed the smith would break his arms off before the idiot thought to reach for his blade.

That made the smith stop in his tracks, Sunny too, with a sigh of relief, and it quieted the pain. The smith eyed the silver on my breastplate, the cut of my cloak, and thought perhaps that his satisfaction might be worth less than the contents of my coin pouch.

‘What’s your offer?’

‘A contest of your choosing. You win and I pay you this for the boy.’ I held a gold ducet before my face between index and middle finger. ‘Lose and you get nothing for him.’ I magicked the coin away.

He had a good frown at that. The boy managed another roll and fetched up against the wall of the harness shop opposite.

‘Perhaps you think you can hold a hot iron longer than I can?’ I suggested.

The frown deepened into crevasses topped by the black band of his brows. ‘Strength,’ he said. ‘Who can hold the anvil overhead the longest.’

I glanced at the anvil a few yards back into the smithy. Perhaps two men of regular height might weigh as much. ‘Rules?’ I asked.

‘Rules? No rules!’ He laughed. He flexed an arm and muscle mounded on muscle. The Great Ronaldo would be impressed if Taproot’s circus ever made it to Albaseat. ‘Strength! That’s the rule.’

‘Show me how it’s done, then.’ I walked into the smithy. The glow of the forge fire and of two smoking lamps gave enough light to avoid the workbenches and various buckets. The place had a pleasing smell of char and iron and sweat. It reminded me of Norwood, of Mabberton, of a dozen other battles.

The smith followed. I set a hand to his chest as he passed me. ‘Your name?’

‘Jonas.’

He walked around the anvil. I glanced at the ceiling where tools hung from the beams. He would have just enough room. I would have plenty as he stood a hand taller than me.

Sunny stepped up behind me.

‘The boy’s still alive, I take it? I’m not doing this for a corpse.’

‘He’s alive. Might be hurt bad.’

Jonas crouched beside the anvil. He closed one big hand around the horn and set the heel of his other hand beneath the lip of the anvil’s face.

‘You’ve done this before.’ I gave him my grin.

‘Yes.’ He showed his teeth. ‘I can taste your gold already, boy.’

He tensed, building for the explosion that would drive the ironwork upward. That’s when I hit him, with a hammer from the nearest bench. I struck the side of his head just by the eye. The noise wasn’t dissimilar from his boot hitting the child. The hammer came away bloody and Jonas pitched forward over his anvil.

‘What?’ Sunny asked, as if somehow he hadn’t seen it in the half-light.

I shrugged. ‘No rules. You heard him.’

We left them both lying in their blood. Whatever fire ate at my face I didn’t need another stray, and even if the boy could walk, taking him to the Iberico would be more cruel than another month in Jonas’s care. At least the boy was sitting up and looking about, which was more than could be said for his master.

A corner and another street brought us to the plaza. We pushed a path through bakers’ boys with trays of loaves overhead, between laden farm carts ready to be offloaded onto the stalls already set to either side of the gate towers. The place heaved, late arriving traders made haste to erect their tables and awnings, and the townsfolk came mob-handed to buy, coins clicking in their hip pouches, eyes darting, hunting bargains in the predawn grey.

‘We’ll be lucky to find the provost’s man in all this.’ Sunny snatched at a passing bread roll and missed.

‘Have some faith, man,’ I said. ‘How hard is it to spot a king?’ I looped Balky’s reins over his pack-saddle and ran both hands through my hair, throwing the length of it wide across my shoulders and back.

We reached the gates, the smoothness of the wall stretching above us to the paling sky. Hooves clattered across the flagstones as we led our animals beneath and traversed a dark tunnel through ten yards of wall.