Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

Greyson’s suffering still trembled in my hands. I knelt beside Old Mary, crumpled in the dirt, watching me with bright eyes, dust on the trail of drool across her cheek. With one hand on her scrawny neck and one atop her head I let Sunny’s pain free. It seems that a necromancer’s fingers can do in moments with strokes and pinches what all her sharp instruments took hours to achieve. Her heart couldn’t take it for long and death reached up for her. She died too easy.

Lesha’s head lay in among the bodies. I retrieved it, killing one malingerer on the way. Most corpses echoed with some remnant of the person when I touched them. Row’s flesh had reeked of him. But Lesha’s head felt empty, not literally, not scooped out, but free of any trace of her, a shell. Somehow it pleased me, that she had gone beyond reach. Somewhere better I hoped.

I set her head beside Sunny, ready to bury. First though, I walked around the posts. The scorpion, missing three legs on one side, some armour broken away from its back, clung motionless to the rear of the post I had been bound to. The leather strap that held my head still hung from its claw. The scorpion’s head lifted a fraction as I approached it, and once more the dark beads of its eyes glowed crimson.

‘Fexler?’ I asked.

It twitched twice and fell from the post, landing on its back. One more convulsion and it wrapped tight with a loud crackling noise, its armoured plates seizing in permanent embrace.

‘Damn.’





15


Chella’s Story


‘Tell me again.’

He’s chained and bleeding in a dungeon surrounded by walking dead, and up above there’s all manner of worse things, mire-ghouls and rag-a-mauls the least of them … and he keeps asking questions!

‘You’re an unusual man, Kai Summerson.’ Chella paced around the pillar once more. She couldn’t seem to keep her feet still. Too much life in them perhaps.

‘This from a necromancer with my woman’s corpse on the floor.’

Chella leaned in close, the iron needle in her hand, but she knew the balance had slipped away from her. Somewhere along the line this unusual young man had deduced that she needed his cooperation. Maybe it had just been too obvious that she would have killed him if her need hadn’t been so great.

‘What is it that you didn’t understand?’ She whispered it into his ear. He couldn’t know how much she needed a success, anything to move her from the cold shadow of the Dead King’s disdain.

‘Sula’s in heaven … and also here?’

A sigh escaped her, sharpened by frustration. Even clever men could be fools. ‘What will not pass into heaven may be returned to the body. How much is returned depends upon the person, and upon the call. It doesn’t take much to get a fresh corpse on its feet. A little hunger, greed, some anger maybe. Sula had plenty of greed.’

‘So not everyone can be returned. Some people pass on clean and whole?’

‘A saint maybe. I’ve never met one.’ Also children. But she didn’t say it. Whatever the road to hell is paved with, the key is to take one step at a time.

‘And having reminded me of heaven you expect me to damn myself to eternity in flames just to avoid a painful death?’ Kai spat blood onto the floor. He must have bitten his tongue. He didn’t seem nearly as scared as he should be. Probably it felt like a dream to him, a nightmare, too much strangeness too quickly. If she had time Chella would leave him a day or two. Fear seeps into a man. In a cold dark place, alone with nothing but imagination for company, terror would gather him in. But she didn’t have two days, or even one.

‘Death is broken, Kai. Hell is rising. How long do you think heaven will keep you safe? The Dead King is putting an end to all of that. Eternity will be here, in this world, in this flesh. All you need to decide is whether to feed the fire or be the fuel.’





16


Perhaps the Engine of Wrong had found a new gear for nothing felt right after Kent brought news that my father’s carriage preceded us. I rode to the front of our column, Makin and Rike falling in around me. At Captain Harran’s side a few minutes later, cresting a low rise, I saw the dull gleam of the Ancrath column ahead. It takes more than a river of mud to keep the Gilden Guard from shining.

I pulled up to stare at the carriage bumping along amidst the horsemen. I last rode in it when I was nine. The old bastard had salvaged it.

‘He scares me too,’ Makin said.

‘I’m not scared of my father.’ I showed him my scowl but he only grinned.

‘I don’t know how he puts the fright in a man,’ Makin said. ‘I mean, I swing the better sword, and yes he’s got a cold temper on him and harsh ways, but so have a lot of kings, and dukes, and earls, barons, lords – hell, any man you give command to is likely to put an edge on it just to keep hold. He’s not even given to torture: his brother, his nephews, all well known for it, but Olidan he’ll just have you hung and be done.’

Rike snorted at that. He’d seen my father’s dungeons from the wrong side. Still, Makin had it right, there were plenty around who made Olidan Ancrath seem a reasonable man.

‘I said I wasn’t scared of him.’ My heartbeat told the lie but only I could hear it.