Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

‘That I can do.’


I went alone, collared a street urchin and let a copper coin lead us both to a guesthouse. The heavy and ancient door the boy took me to looked unpromising, sitting alone in a wide blank wall. When I knocked, a woman glared at us through the grille. A crone, older than the bleached wood and rusted nails she hauled open. Too wrinkled and bent to need a veil to keep her modest she cast a disapproving eye over me and led on in. The interior surprised me. A short corridor led to an inner courtyard where lemon trees grew in the shade of balconies rising four storeys on each side. Enamelled tiles decorated all surfaces, blue and white, geometrically patterned. An illusion of coolness, if not actual coolness.

I took two rooms, paid in coppers from half a dozen nations, and went to fetch Marco. He had waited where the crone couldn’t see him through the grille and I let her complaints, the sharp and the guttural, run off me as I hauled his trunk through, the modern following in my wake.

‘It’s too small,’ Marco said. Sweat ran off him in rivers but it didn’t seem to bother him. I’d yet to see him drink. I wondered if soon he’d start to shrivel. Something about him called to the death-magic in me, to the necromancer’s heart. It tingled at my fingertips.

‘Too small for what?’ I collapsed onto the trunk. Dragging it up two flights of stairs had half-killed me.

Marco scowled. I had expected bankers, especially travelling bankers, to be closer to diplomats, masters of their own demeanour, but this one made no effort to hide his distaste for me. Perhaps he hoarded his charm along with his gold, for I’d yet to see so much as a glint of either.

‘You owe me for the room, and the guide, banker.’

‘Guide? A child in rags led you off.’

‘A child that I paid,’ I said, still flat out on the trunk.

‘I am keeping tally, Sir Jorg. Now, if you will afford me some privacy …’

I levered myself up and went to my room where I collapsed again. I lay with closed eyes imagining the sharp winds over the icy shoulders of Halradra. In six months I had crossed half the empire. And like Goldilocks with her bears and porridge, I’d found parts too hot and parts too cold. And for the first time I wanted to be back in the Highlands, back where it felt just right. For the first time I thought of my kingdom as home.

When you stare at the cracked blankness of a ceiling your mind will wander. Mine made a list. A list of reasons that brought me here. A list of the answers I would give to that question. None of them sufficient on their own but together a compelling force that had driven me into this foolishness. Orrin of Arrow had sent me, with his talk of oceans and distant lands. Perhaps I thought that with broad horizons of my own I could capture some of whatever magic he held. Fexler Brews had sent me with his little red light, now blinking over the caliphate of Liba. Curiosity had led me into the Iberico and tied me to the Bad Dogs’ torture pole. It would be fair to say curiosity had its hooks in me. Short of opening a certain box curiosity could get me to do most things. Qalasadi had sent me with his treachery. Ibn Fayed with his threat. Grandfather when he judged me worth saving and told me not to go. In the end perhaps, though I called it vengeance, it was not this time the need to strike back that drove me but the need to defend. I had a family.

Long ago my mother had charged me to look after William, to keep my little brother safe. And though I have failed many duties since, that was the first of my failures and the one that bit deepest – deeper than the thorns whose scars record the event. Like Marco I had ledgers to balance, and though this duty was a poor substitute, I would see it through. I had a family once more. That old man in his castle by the sea. The old woman who loved him and who had loved my mother. My uncle, soldier though he was. And no thorns to hold me back. A threat hung over them and this time nothing, man or monster or ghost, would keep me from saving them.

Clarity of vision is a thing much prized. I find when you turn that clear sight upon yourself – and see through to the truth behind your own actions – it might be better to be blind. For the bliss of ignorance I would tell myself that only vengeance drew me, as it did of old, when choice lay black and white like pieces on a board, and life was a simpler game.