Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

On my route back to the stables I set flame to the various piles of straw and bedding prepared earlier. At the stables I cut the rope and tied the end around the plough-horse’s neck. Before I led him away my eye lit upon a fallen hemp bag that lay on the floor with long dark roofing nails spilling from it. I stooped to pick it up.

Brother Gains, who Burlow set to watching the monastery, tells it that I came through the cemetery leading the biggest horse in the world and that all behind me the sky was lit with crimson and orange as fire leapt among the roofs of St Sebastian. He said I came naked and blood-wrapped and that he thought that it was me screaming, until I drew closer and he saw the grim seal of my mouth. Brother Gains, never a man given to religion, crossed himself and stepped aside without a word when I passed him. He watched the taut rope and shrank back further as the screams grew more loud and more piercing. And out of the darkness, lit by the flames of St Sebastian, Bishop Murillo came dragging, leaving his own trail of blood and skin on the grit and gravel of the cemetery path, white bone jutting from beneath the rope that bound his broken ankles.

I let Katherine share that night. I let her watch the brothers take to horse and ride whooping up the road toward the distant orange glow. She saw how I bound Murillo and how such terror ran in him that he forgot the agony of his shattered ankles. And I taught her how long it can take to hammer thirteen nails through a man’s skull, tap, tap, tap. How night shades into day and brothers gather once again, draped in loot and relics, black with char. The brothers formed my audience, some fascinated, like Rike with his new iron cross around his neck, set with a circle of red enamel at the crossing point – red for the blood of Christ. Some watched in horror, some with reserve, but they all watched, even the Nuban with nothing written on his face but the deep lines of sorrow.

‘We’re meat and dirt,’ I told them. ‘Nobody is clean and nothing can wash away our stain, not the blood of the innocent, not the blood of the lamb.’

And the brothers watched as a child learned what revenge can do, and what it can’t. Together Katherine and I watched that child learn how a simple iron nail can break a man’s mind apart, causing him to laugh, or cry, to lose some basic skill, some memory, or some restraint that made him human or gave a measure of dignity. I let Katherine see how something so simple as hammering home a nail can make such profound changes, to the bishop whose head is pierced, and to the boy who wields the hammer. And then I let her go. And she ran.

My dreams would be my own again. I was past games.





9


I woke to the sound of Makin’s voice.

‘Get up, Jorg.’

In the Haunt I have a page schooled in the art of discreet coughs and a gradual elevation in volume until his royal highness deigns to stir. In Lord Holland’s house it seemed ‘get up’ was the best on offer. I struggled to a sitting position, still in the clothes I wore the night before and more tired than when I fell into the bed.

‘And a very good morning to you, Lord Makin.’ My tone made it clear I meant none of it.

‘Miana’s here,’ he said.

‘Right.’ I rolled off the bed onto my feet, still woozy with sleep. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Not shaving?’ He offered me my cloak from the chair.

‘It’s the new style,’ I said, and went out into the corridor beyond, past the guards stationed outside the door. ‘Left or right?’

‘Left. She’s in the blue room.’

And yes, Lord Holland had a whole room, the size of a church hall, given over to displaying the colour blue. Miana stood, pale, pretty, her hands across the stretch of her belly, Marten beside her, leaning on a staff for support, his face black with bruising. At the rear of the room, ten men from my guard, cloaks clasped with the Ancrath boar in silver, stood tight around a black coffer, Sir Riccard with them.

I crossed the room and put my arms around Miana. I needed to touch her with my own hands after being locked into the dream with hands I didn’t own that tried to kill her. She put her head against my chest and said nothing. She smelled good. Of nothing specific – just good. Makin followed in behind and closed the door.

‘I saw the assassin,’ I said. ‘A white man, sent from the Vatican, or made to look as though he was. I saw you kill him. You and Marten both.’ I nodded to him. He knew what it meant to me.

Miana looked up, eyes wide with surprise starting to narrow with confusion, suspicion even. ‘How?’

‘I think he used dream-magics to make the castle sleep, even the trolls below. When you use those methods and spend your power so carelessly, you leave yourself open to others with such skills. Perhaps something of Sageous rubbed off on me when I killed him.’ I shrugged. ‘In any case, you know I have bad dreams. It might be easier to fall into such enchantments from a nightmare than from honest sleeping.’ I didn’t mention Katherine. It didn’t seem politic to remind her that another woman filled my nights.