King of Thorns

“Up,” I said.

“Up?” Makin did the surprised thing with his eyebrows. Nobody could look surprised like Makin.

It didn’t seem right to die incomplete.

“It’s not a difficult concept,” I said, standing. I set off walking up the slope aimed a little to the left of the peak, where Blue Moon Pass scores a deep path across Mount Botrang’s shoulder.

Hobbs saw me go. “Up?” he said. “But the pass is always blocked in—” Then he looked around. “Oh.” And he waved at the men, who had come forward to answer their names, to follow.

I still held the box in my hand, hot and cold, smooth and sharp. It didn’t seem right to die without knowing who I was.

The child walked beside me now, barefoot in the snow, his death resisting even the light of day.

With the nail of my thumb I opened the box.


Trees, gravestones, flowers, and her.

“Who found you after I hit you?” I ask Katherine. “A man was with you when you recovered your senses.”

She frowns. Her fingers touch the place where the vase shattered. “Friar Glen.” For the first time she sees me with her old eyes, clear and green and sharp. “Oh.”

I walk away.

I leave the Rennat Forest behind me and walk toward Crath City. The Tall Castle stands behind and above the city. It’s a still day and the smoke rises from the city chimneys in straight lines as if making bars for the castle. Perhaps to keep it safe from me.

From the fields I see the sprawl of the Low City reaching out to the River Sane and the docks, and behind it the land steps upward to the Old City and the High City. The Roma Road cuts my path and I follow it to the Low City, gateless and open to the world. I have a hat stuffed in my tunic, a shapeless thing of faded checks such as the bravos at the river docks wear. I tuck my hair into it and pull it low. I won’t be noticed in the Low City. The people who might know my face do not go there.

I walk through the Banlieu, nothing but slum dwellings and waste heaps, a boil on the arse of the city. Even a fine spring day cannot make these streets bloom. Children root through the mounded filth left by poor folk. They chase me as I make my way. Girls of ten and younger try to distract me with big eyes and kiss-mouths whilst skinny boys work to pull something from my pack, anything they can snatch free. I take my knife in hand and they melt away. Orrin of Arrow might have given them bread. He might have resolved to change this place. I just walk through it. Later I will scrape it from my shoes.

Where the Banlieu shades into the Low City the worst of the taverns crowd around narrow streets. I pass the Falling Angel where I first plotted Gelleth’s end, where I first thought to pay for affection. I know better now. Affection is always paid for.

I choose another alehouse, the Red Dragon. A grand name for a dim and reeking place of shadows.

“Bitter,” I say.

The barkeep takes my coin and fills a tankard from the barrel spigot. If he thinks I look young to drink here, among the broken old men with their red noses and watery eyes, he says nothing.

I take a table where I can put a corner at my back and watch the windows. The ale is as bitter as my mood. I take slow sips and wait for the night to come.

I think of Katherine. I make a list.

She said I was evil and that she hates me.

She has set her heart on the Prince of Arrow.

She tried to kill me.

She destroyed the child she thought was mine.

She was defiled by another man.




I run through it again and again as the sun sinks, as the drunkards come and go, carts and whores and dogs and labourers pass in the street, and still I cycle through my list.

Love is not a list.

Full dark, and my tankard has stood empty for hours. I walk into the street. Here and there a lantern hangs, too high for thieves, casting a parsimonious light that struggles to reach the ground.

Despite all my waiting, despite my resolve, still I hesitate. Can I tread the paths of childhood again without taint? Overhead the stars turn, a slow revolution about the Pole Star, the Nail of Heaven. Part of me doesn’t want to go back to the Tall Castle. I push that part away.