Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

Sleep became a rare commodity after the arrival of our newest travelling companion. Day by day Gottering fell further behind us. On the fifth day, Captain Harran declared we would push on through the night to reach Honth by dawn. On that long and rumbling journey a moment of quiet visited and exhaustion dragged me down quicker than the mud of Cantanlona. Jolted by rutted miles, the occupants of Holland’s carriage exchanged partners periodically. I rolled open a sleep-burred eye at one such bump to see Osser Gant’s grey head cradled in the bishop’s lap. Another lurch took my head from Miana’s shoulder, another still put Katherine’s head on mine.

In the darkness of my dreaming Katherine’s skin burned against me, but we shared nothing save warmth. When she lifted me from my quiet nightmare of thorns and rain she gave no warning.

‘Katherine?’ I knew her touch. Perhaps my show and tell of childish woe hadn’t scared her from my dreams as well as hoped. Perhaps like me she merely thought how stupid I had been to let old Bishop Murillo capture me in the first place. I have the church to thank for teaching me that last lesson in reading the signs, in seeing the trap rise around you, in never lowering your guard. A lesson that has served me well.

‘Katherine?’

A dark hall. I moved through bars of moonlight behind shuttered windows. My head turned for me, my fingers trailed the wall without asking permission. Familiar. All of it familiar, the hall, the smell of the place, the roughness of the wall, and of course, the being trapped in another’s head. Steps down, a long and winding stair.

‘This is like that night at the Haunt – when the Pope’s man came calling,’ I said, though no lips moved to speak my words.

The end of the stair. I turned a corner. Familiar, but not the Haunt. More steps down. My hand – his hand – took an oil lamp from its niche.

‘Katherine!’ I made my silent voice louder, more demanding.

‘Ssh! You’ll wake him, you idiot.’ Her voice seemed to come from a deep place.

‘Wake who?’

‘Robart Hool of course! Your spy back at the Tall Castle.’

A door. Hool’s fingers on the black iron of its handle.

‘If he’s my spy why are you using him?’ Espionage was never my forte but I had been rather proud of having a man so high in the king’s guard on my payroll. Until now.

‘Sageous opened him up to true-dreams,’ Katherine said from her well. ‘He sleepwalks and the castle guard know not to wake him or there can be trouble. He’s good with a sword. I use him so I can watch over Sareth when I’m not there.’

‘And now—’

‘Ssh!’

‘But—’

‘Shut. Up.’

Hool moved through the doorway and along a corridor, shadows swinging around him. We came to the Short Bridge, a yard of mahogany crossing over the recess from which a steel door could be summoned to seal the vaults. He crossed over and started down the steps beyond.

It grew colder. We were no longer in the keep of the Tall Castle but below it in a long Builder-made corridor that leads by zigs and zags through the upper vaults to an ancient annex excavated by the dear departed House of Or. Built to house their dead. Less ancient than the castle itself of course, but having the decency to wear its years more openly. In the tomb-vault the walls ran with cracks and in places the stone facings had fallen to reveal rough-hewn rock scarred by pick marks.

Hool’s feet slapped bare on cold stone, his nightclothes thin comfort against the subterranean chill, but his scabbard bumped against his legs, a better kind of comfort altogether. Sleepwalking or no, a swordsman always buckles on his blade. Makin taught him well, back in the days of wooden swords in the courtyard. I hope he’d learned the lesson I taught him too, that afternoon in the duelling square when I stepped outside the rules of the game and felled him with a punch to the throat.

Hool’s footsteps echoed and his breath steamed before him. When the Ancraths displaced the Ors my ancestors were quick to empty the mausoleum, turning out each sepulchre ready for fresher occupants. And in time we started to fill the place. The old statues were replaced, or sometimes just altered. With creditable economy and lack of sentiment my great-grandfather had the masons chip the moustache from the founder of the Or dynasty, reshape his nose a little, and stand over my great-great-grandfather’s corpse in passable representation of the man.

If Katherine used Hool to watch over Sareth, why were we in the tomb vault? Unless of course Sareth had died? What did Katherine want to show me? Another death to stain my hands? Or was she leading me to the place where she had me dragged on the day I returned from Gelleth, where she took me to keep my father from finishing what he started? Reminding me of the life I owed her? He would have cut my heart out if that had been required to stop it from beating, I know that much. Were we returning to Mother’s tomb?