Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

‘More difficult than being at the Haunt waiting for guests from the Vatican?’


‘It’s hard work carrying a child in the last month.’ Marten shrugged but I felt he cared more than that.

Sometimes it cuts to see other men more passionate than I about the things that I should care for. I knew that if the Pope’s assassin had killed Miana and our unborn child I would have grieved. But also I knew that some terrible part of me, down at the core, would have raised its face to the world with a red grin, welcoming the chance, the excuse, for the coming moments of purity in which my revenge would sail upon a tide of blood. And I knew that rage would have swept away everything else, including sorrow.

‘It’s a hard world, Marten.’ He glanced across, confused for a moment as we’d ridden a quarter mile since he last spoke. ‘It shouldn’t be easy to bring someone into a hard world. It’s too easy to make a new life, too easy to take an old one. It’s only right that some part of the process present a little difficulty.’

He kept his gaze upon me, a right earned over and again in my service, and the weight of his judgment built upon me.

‘Dammit.’ I snorted my exasperation. ‘I feel outnumbered in that carriage.’

Martin smiled. ‘A married man is always outnumbered.’

I spat in the mud and pulled on Brath’s reins with a curse. Five minutes later I sat in the carriage once more beside Miana.

‘My father’s carriage is just ahead of us,’ I said.

‘I know.’

It felt odd to be talking about him, especially with Gomst and Osser sat watching us. Gomst at least had the sense to pull out his bible, a book near big enough to hide the both of them, and engage the older man in discussion of some or other psalm.

‘Coddin wants me to vote with my father at Congression. To make peace with him.’ The words made my mouth dirty.

‘And you would rather … not?’ A smile quirked at the corners of her lips but I didn’t feel mocked.

A snatch of Gomst’s conversation reached me. ‘“Father, where is the lamb that is to be sacrificed?” And Abraham replied, “My son, God will provide the lamb”.’

‘I have many reasons to want him dead. And almost as many reasons to want to be the one to do it.’

‘But do you want to do it? The Jorg I know tends to do what he wants to do, and if reasons oppose him he changes them.’

‘I—’ I wanted to understand how it all worked, this business of living and of raising children. I wanted to do the job better than he had. ‘Men will tell our son how it was between me and my father.’

Miana leaned closer, raven-dark hair falling around her pale face. ‘So what will they tell our child?’ She refused to call him ‘our son’ until he came out to prove himself.

‘Even the king can’t control men’s gossip,’ I said.

Miana watched me. She wore a circlet of woven gold but her hair did as it pleased, taking at least two maids and a handful of clips to constrain. At last my incomprehension drove her to explain. ‘How can a clever man be so stupid? How it was between you and Olidan isn’t finished. The story that will be told is not yet written.’

‘Oh.’

I let her shoo me out of the carriage.

Not until chance took a hand though did I finally find the stones to ride to my father’s carriage. A guard captain came with news and found me skulking mid-column, Gorgoth at my side. Gorgoth always proved good company if you didn’t want to talk.

‘The Ancrath carriage has broken an axle.’ He didn’t bother with my title. ‘Can room be found in yours? There’s some objection to using one of the baggage wagons.’

‘I’ll come and discuss the matter.’ I suppressed a sigh. Sometimes you can sense the current of the universe flowing and nothing can deny its will for too long.

All my men rode in my wake. Word had spread fast. Even Gorgoth came, perhaps curious to see where a son such as I had sprung from. We passed the Gilden Guard in their hundreds, all halted on the trail. Every head turned our way. And in a narrow stretch of road, unremarkable save for the stream on whose rocky bed my father’s carriage had broken its axle, I came once more to speak with the King of Ancrath.