Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

Just the grinding of that bone, hinge and socket, made her skin crawl. That and the glitter of his eyes. She thought of times when she had swum in foulness, of corpse-work in the darkest places, of hunting men’s remains in the deadland borders, enough horror to take almost anyone’s sanity … and yet here she cowered from nothing but the sick click and crunch of a dead man’s jaw.

‘Chella?’ A gentle enough reminder but lesser reprimands than that had sent the Dead King’s servants to the lichkin.

‘He refused me, sire.’ More than five years on and still the Dead King wanted her old failure replayed.

‘And you still think him a foolish youth with more luck than judgment?’

‘No, sire.’ Though she did. Whatever strange emotions the boy might stir in her Chella could see little of genius in his actions. When men bet on long odds in sufficient numbers some of them will walk away with the prize. It doesn’t mean those winners will win tomorrow.

‘I want him here, Chella, to stand before my court and to answer to me.’

‘Yes, sire.’ Though what Jorg Ancrath might have to answer the Dead King for she had no idea. A ‘why’ trembled on her lips but she knew it would never take flight.

‘Bring Kai Summerson before me.’

Chella turned to motion Kai forward, drawing a breath of relief to be released from the Dead King’s stare if only for a moment. In the coldness of wraith-light Kai aged another decade as the Dead King’s regard fell upon him.

‘Kai.’ The name dropped like a dead thing from Artur Elgin’s lips. ‘Sky-sworn. Have you flown, Kai? Have you touched heaven?’

‘No, lord.’ Kai kept his gaze to the floor. ‘I saw what the eagle sees, but only with my mind. And now I am death-sworn.’

‘Death can ride the winds, Kai. Remember that. Why did you not fly? Was it beyond you? Did you not truly hold the sky within you?’

‘Fear kept me on the ground, lord.’ Passion in his words now, the Dead King’s talent for touching each raw nerve. ‘Fear of losing myself.’ Chella knew few sky-sworn who took flight ever returned. The winds claimed them. They lost substance and danced in storms, spread too thin to be contained in flesh again. She watched Kai, his knuckles white, nails biting. Did he wish now that he had lost himself in the pitiless blue?

‘It’s your will, the power of your desire, that counts in this world – in all worlds.’ For a moment the Dead King seemed almost tender, something more awful than anger coming from Artur Elgin’s dead lips. ‘The force of your conviction can anchor mind to flesh if your sense of who you are, your command of what you are, is stronger than the wind. It’s that same power of will that reels in the silver cord and draws a necromancer back from their travels in the dry lands. That same sense of self returns what won’t pass into heaven back to the shell of a man’s body, to what carried him through life, to the groove he scored in the world, be it corrupt flesh, or even bare bone, and when at last bone is lost, it returns him to a place maybe, a home, a room, to haunt the living, because misery loves company and so do all its friends.’

Kai lifted his gaze against the weight of the Dead King’s stare. ‘Fear held me.’

‘Fear holds many men, fear keeps them from their duty, fathers abandon sons, one brother leaves the next to die.’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘When the storms come, Kai Summerson, show me death on wings.’ Artur Elgin’s fingers flicked to motion Kai away.

Until the doors closed behind Kai no further words were spoken. Chella remained, the only living thing in the vaulted throne room. Perhaps hers was the only curiosity. The Dead King had need of her. Why else after all this time was she here once more, within the inner circle, humiliating reminders of her failure the only price of admission.

‘Chella Undenhert.’ The Dead King formed the name with care.

‘Sire.’ The last to know that name died six years back on Jorg Ancrath’s blade. None had spoken it in decades.

‘Some might think necromancy a threat to those of us who step out of the dry lands, out of the dust beyond, competition at the very least.’

‘Never that, sire.’ Kai’s words returned to her. Shouldn’t we be the ones to give orders?

‘Do you know what I want, Chella?’

She truly didn’t. ‘Jorg Ancrath?’

‘I want what he wants, what all of our kind need. To rule, to own, to hold the highest ground, to have our will prevail.’

‘To be emperor?’ Chella knew the hunger of the dead, but ambition came as a surprise, though all the signs lay before her. A dead king in a dead king’s throne.

‘The empire will be a start. Remade, it can be a step from which to take everything. I am not called king of here or king of there, they call me Dead King, lord of all that does not live. Do you think in this world I would sit content with “Lord of Brettan”? Or “emperor” of an empire beyond whose borders lie lands unclaimed?’

‘No, sire.’ For all the horror of him a child’s greed and child’s pride lay about the Dead King. Perhaps his interest in the Ancrath kings lay in the mirror they held up to him.