Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

The crowd even had a different stink to it, spices overwriting any odour of unwashed bodies, mint, coriander, sesame, turmeric, ginger, pepper, others unknown, carried on the men themselves as if they sweated it out.

‘Keep up, Sir Jorg!’ Yusuf grinned over his shoulder. ‘Show but the slightest interest and you’ll be penniless by the time we reach the java house, laden down with rugs, brass lamps, enough dreamweed to kill a camel, and a hooka to smoke it through.’

‘No.’ I pushed aside embroidered rugs from two salesmen, passing between them as if through a curtained entrance. ‘No.’ They spoke empire tongue well enough when a sale stood in the offing. ‘No.’ Once more and we were through, crossing a wide and dusty square pursued by barefoot yammering children wearing dirty linens and clean smiles.

Hemming the far side of the square a dozen or so java houses opened with tables sprawling out into the shade from awnings in faded green and red, behind us the quays and ships – boats mainly, the larger ships tying up at more substantial quays before great warehouses further around the bay.

Apart from the children in their whites, and what could be old women or old men hunched in black wrappings, set on various slow journeys along the shaded margins of the square, nothing moved. The crowds through which we forged a path remained resolutely jammed along the narrow stilted walkways, their cacophony hushed behind us, mixed with the gentle threshing of ocean waves against breakwaters. The sun’s heat pushed down, an immense hand, making even the flies struggle, stripped of their frenzy, languid almost.

A man approached us from one of the alleys between the shops, leading three horses, a tall araby stallion and two mares, all pale. Five such stallions had been part of the compensation Father accepted for Mother’s and William’s deaths.

‘My man, Kalal. We can ride to my estate, or sit awhile first and watch the sea.’ Yusuf gestured at the nearest and grandest of the java houses. ‘You’ll like the java in Maroc, Sir Jorg. Hot and sweet and strong.’

I didn’t like the java in Ancrath or Renar, cold and sour and weak, and expensive, above all expensive. I doubted increasing its strength would change my opinion. Yusuf must have read my frown, though I had thought myself good at writing on my face only what I chose.

‘They serve teas also. And I could introduce you to our national sport,’ he said.

‘Tea sounds promising.’ Never refuse a drink in a dry place. ‘And this sport, does it involve camels?’

Both men laughed at that. Kalal, perhaps a kinsman, had the same colouring and, when he laughed, the same faintly grey teeth.

‘Dice, my friend.’ Yusuf set an arm about my shoulder. ‘No camels. It is the game of twelve lines. Do you know it?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Show me.’

Yusuf steered me toward the tables where old men sat in white robes and red fez, smoking from their water-pipes, sipping from small cups, bent across their boards of triangles, counters, and dice. He barked two harsh words in the Berber tongue and Kalal led the horses off with one last grey grin.

‘A game of chance?’ I asked. Dice rattled in their shakers as we approached.

‘A game of calculation, my friend. Of probability.’

I thought then of Qalasadi’s black smile, of how the mathmagicans despite their science of numbers still kept to tradition and mystery to instil a magic beyond mere arithmetic. I wondered how such teeth might look with the stain of the betel leaf scoured away. Grey perhaps?

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I would like to play such a game. Tell me the rules. I always like to know the rules.’





29


Five years earlier

The board lay between us, the game of twelve lines, counters marshalled, dice ready in the cup. I knew the rules well enough: we had the game in Ancrath, almost the same but named battamon. Yusuf’s explanation of the mechanics gave me time to study him, to consider my options. The way he spoke of the game, of the combinations, the scatter of odds, and the basic strategies, all marked him out as a mathmagician. If not for the teeth though I might not have done my own arithmetic and added the two and the two.

‘Why don’t you go first?’ I said.

He took the shaker and rattled the dice.

Clearly they had done their sums, worked a little magic, and anticipated me. Had they predicted me with certainty, or just mapped out the paths that I might take, weighted them with probabilities, and deployed their resources appropriately? Either way it unsettled me to find myself the subject of calculation.

Yusuf threw the dice, a three and a three. His hand moved almost too fast to see, clicking counters along the board.