Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

The bishop didn’t wake. I made no noise while I freed my hands, tied behind my back. I eased from the bed, slithering across stained silk sheets. On the floor I took the fruit knife from the bedside table and by the glow of the dying fire sawed at the bonds around my ankles. I walked naked from the room. As if there could be more shame. I took the knife and the poker from the fire with me.

In the small hours of night the monastery corridors lay empty. I walked them blind, trailing the point of the knife along the walls from time to time to count my way. I heard plainsong as I walked, though there were none awake to sing it. Even so, I heard plainsong, pure in its promise, as if all things holy and good were pressed into notes, and spilled from the mouths of angels. I hear it even now when I remember those orphan boys, the digging in that field, mud and potatoes, lessons and games. I hear it as if it were reaching faint through a closed door. And the song drew a tear from me, oh my brothers, not the hurt, or shame, not betrayal, or that last lost chance of redemption – just the beauty of that song. One tear on a hot slow roll down my cheek.

I left by the door to the stables, unlatching it and turning the heavy iron ring. Both the soldiers on the other side turned, blinking away boredom. I felled them with two blows of the poker, first to the left temple of the right guard, then the right temple of the left. Whack, whack. They didn’t deserve to be called soldiers, defeated by a naked child. One lay silent, the other, Bilk I think, writhed and groaned. Him I skewered through the throat. That shut his noise. I left the poker in him.

The stables smelled of every other stables. In the darkness, amongst the horses, I could have been anywhere. I moved without sound, listening to the clop of hooves, the restless snort and shudder of disturbed mounts, the scurry of rats. I took as much rope as I could carry and a sharper knife used for working leather. The coils itched my shoulder and back as I returned through the blind corridors.

I left the rope outside the bishop’s door and went back for a bale of straw and the soldiers’ lamp. The big horses that pulled the Pope’s carriage were housed in the stall closest to the stable doors. The larger of the two stepped out when I opened the stall, head down, looking more asleep than awake. I set a tether around his thick neck and left him standing there. He looked as though he would stand forever, or at least until someone gave him reason to move again.

I guessed Murillo’s men-at-arms would be billeted with Lord Ajah’s soldiers in the almonry for the night. At some point the monks would be on the move for the night prayer. I didn’t know when that might happen, nor truly care: I would just kill anyone in my way. The night still had a dream-like quality, perhaps the tail end of whatever poison Murillo had had the priest slip into the wine.

The swinging lamp chased thin shadows across the walls, copies of my limbs. I wedged handfuls of straw beneath the roof eaves where I could reach by climbing on barrel or sill. I wedged more between the split wood, stacked for winter against the chapterhouse wall. There’s not much to burn in a stone-built monastery, but the roof is always the best bet. And of course the guest quarters where the bishop slept offered more combustibles, with several tapestries, wooden furniture, shuttered windows. I went into the priests’ rooms, two priests in the chamber to the left of the bishop’s and three opposite. I cut their throats as they slept, a hand to the mouth while I tugged the sharpness of the leather-knife through skin, flesh, cartilage and tendon, through vein, artery, and wind-pipe. Men sliced like that make strange noises, like wet bellows pumping, and thrash before they die, but in the tangle of their bed linens it isn’t loud. I set straw and bedding ready to fire in the priests’ rooms too.

The high priest, the man who poisoned the cup, ready for Orscar, and drunk by me, I cut. I knew him to be dead but I cut his face and watched the flesh spring open beneath my blade. I sliced away his lips and let the ichor from his eyes, and I prayed, not to God but to whatever devil got to keep his soul, that he would carry the wounds with him into hell.

By the time I returned to Murillo’s chambers I was clothed once more, in the scarlet of priests’ blood. For a time I watched his bulk within the bed, a black lump in the embers’ glow, and listened to the wheeze in and the snored breath out. He posed a puzzle. A strong man who might wake easily. I didn’t want to have to kill him. That would be too kind.

In the end I lifted the covers with a gentle hand to expose his feet. I eased the rope beneath his ankles so a yard lay to one side and the rest to the other. A hangman’s noose is a simple knot, and I used the loop to draw his ankles together before making the knot tight against them. Then I left with the rope coil, playing it out as I went.