Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

Lesha snatched herself away. ‘You’re just a child. You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ But she didn’t sound displeased.

We rode until noon and took shelter from the sun in the shade of a stand of olive trees. The farmer’s wife proved enterprising enough to delay her own siesta and toil up the slopes to offer us wine, cheeses, and hard brown herb-bread. The old woman crossed herself briefly when she saw Lesha but had the grace not to stare. We set to the meal, and sent her back with an empty basket and a handful of coppers, enough for twice the amount of food were it served in a fine tavern.

‘Tell me about the Moors,’ I said to nobody in particular. The piece of cheese I licked from my finger was soft and crumbly both at once. It smelled like something that shouldn’t ever be eaten, but had a pleasingly complex and pungent taste.

‘Which ones?’ Lesha said. She looked asleep, stretched on the dusty soil, head pillowed on her bundled cloak at the base of the tree shading her.

She had a point. I’d seen at least a dozen Moors in Albaseat, wrapped in white robes, most of them all but hidden inside the hood of a burnoose, some trading, some just bound upon their business.

‘Tell me about the Caliph of Liba.’ It seemed a good place to start.

‘Ibn Fayed,’ Sunny muttered. ‘The thorn in your grandfather’s arse.’

‘Has he many like Qalasadi working for him?’ I asked.

‘Mathmagicians?’ Sunny asked. ‘No.’

‘There aren’t many like that,’ Lesha said. ‘And they don’t work for masters in any case. They follow a pure path. There isn’t much that men like that want.’

‘Not gold?’ I asked.

Lesha raised her ruined head to watch me then sat up against the tree. ‘Only rarities hold interest for their kind. Wonders such as we might find in the Iberico, but just as likely old scrolls from the Builder times, ways of calculating, old lore, the sort of cleverness that never seemed to get written down on anything that lasts, or at least that we can read.’

‘And Ibn Fayed sails against the Horse Coast to raid, or to settle, or is it punishment for not following the Moors’ prophet?’ I had my grandfather and uncle’s views on this but it’s good to look at such things from other angles.

‘His people want to return,’ Lesha said.

This was new. The provost’s granddaughter took her wisdom from the whole book, not just the current page.

‘Return?’ I had seen a Moorish hand behind much that stood in Albaseat though no one seemed eager to admit it.

‘Caliphs have ruled here as many years as kings have ruled. Before the Builders and after. The scribes today call them raiders, burners, heathens, but there’s Moorish cleverness mixed into everything we take pride in.’

‘Not just a pretty face, then,’ I said. She read, this one, for her opinions weren’t ones that could be formed on what others might think it safe to teach. The church held the Horse Coast Kingdoms and the West Ports close – any closer and they’d choke them. Priests kept a low opinion of heathens, and this far south disagreeing with a man of the cloth often proved to be a dangerous pastime. In every town a church scribe busied himself rewriting history – but they couldn’t rewrite what lay written in stone all about them.

Lesha took no offence at my jibe, or at least I think not for her scar tissue couldn’t mirror the emotions below.

We lay quiet for a time then. Almost no sound but for the distant clang of a goat bell. Why the old nanny wasn’t lying in the shade I couldn’t say. The heat wrapped us like a blanket, taking away any inclination to move.

‘You were slow to save that boy, Jorg,’ Sunny said. I thought him asleep for the past quarter hour, but clearly he’d been replaying the morning behind his eyes.

‘I didn’t save him. I saved you. You’re of some use.’

‘You would have let him die?’ Sunny sounded troubled by it.

‘I would,’ I said. ‘He was nothing to me.’ Golden curls and blood, the image played over the back of my eyelids. I opened my eyes and sat up. They broke William’s head on a milestone, swung him by the feet and beat him on the stone. It happened. The world rolled on regardless. And I learned that nothing mattered.

‘I couldn’t stand and let it happen while I watched,’ Sunny said. ‘You can’t kick a child to death in front of Earl Hansa’s guard.’

‘You stepped in for yourself, or for my grandfather?’ I asked.

‘It was my duty.’

I took an olive left at the bottom of the food basket. Firm flesh broke beneath my teeth. The warm and complicated flavour spread as I chewed.

‘Would you have stepped in if it hadn’t been your duty?’ I asked.

Sunny paused. ‘If he hadn’t been so damn big, yes.’

‘Because you couldn’t watch it happen?’