King of Thorns

I gagged the gaoler with strips of cloth and locked him in my cell. Glancing into the other cells along the corridor it appeared that my grandfather was not the locking-up sort. That meant he was either very keen on executions or that he ruled with a light touch.

Slow steps took me to the gaoler’s desk where the ceiling port let the moonlight in. It was late but perhaps not midnight. I had had some time to think and I kept thinking. If I were going to poison my enemies I wouldn’t waste my efforts on thirty guardsmen, I’d try to empty the throne and throw the whole place into confusion. But any kind of poisoning is hard to do. Castle kitchens are well watched, the cooks as trusted as the men who shave the royal throat. Fresh provisions are hard to taint, potatoes, carrots, and the like. Dry provisions are bought incognito and escorted to locked pantries.

I left the dungeons. I still wore the household uniform and the single guard at the exit had been obliging enough to let me knock his head against the wall. Unfortunately a burned face is hard to hide. You can’t present your good side to the whole world. I found a window and took to the rooftops.

Sitting against the main chimney stack, legs stretched out across the terracotta tiles of the great hall’s roof, I pondered.

Not the slugs—sorry, snails. I didn’t partake. So the rice. But poisoning rice? The water and boiling and draining would soak it all away. So the saffron. But that would be purchased from whatever ship next turned up at harbour with stocks on board. How often does a household run out of a spice that costs more per ounce than gold? How many ships carry it? What households other than those of the Hundred would buy such luxury in any case? Bundle all those factors together…what would the odds be…what probabilities would emerge? Just thinking about the necessary calculations made my head hurt.

Qalasadi!

I slid down the slope of the roof, hoping no tiles would come with me. I reached the wide stone gutter and edged across it, looking for a place where it was well supported. Ending my reign as king in a gory splat at the bottom of a seventy-foot drop was no part of my ambitions. I could hear muffled voices from several quarters, the sigh of the ocean, waves lapping the foot of the cliffs, and the relentless buzz and chirp of the night insects that haunt the Horse Coast.

Castle Morrow bakes in the southern sun much of the year. The winters can be ferocious but are rarely cold. There may well be old men in the region who have never seen snow. In consequence the windows are large and unscreened, the storm-shutters heavy and locked open from early spring to late autumn. With a firm grip on the gutter’s edge and my left ankle locked under the bottom row of tiles, I hung upside-down and looked through a high window into the great hall.

The far end of the single long table had been set with silver and crystal. Wall lamps burning smokeless oil gave a welcoming glow. A servant brought in three decanters of wine, two white, one red. Elite house guards in plumed finery stood watch at six points around the hall.

The servant left. Minutes passed. The blood ran to my head, my eyeballs began to prickle and itch, my fingers grew numb where they gripped the stonework. I heard noise down in the courtyard below. A quick commotion. I decided not to move. Silence returned.

At last the black oak doors opened and two servants stepped through to hold them wide as my uncle walked in, escorting Lady Agath. They took their seats, maids now attending to pull the chairs out and settle the nobility. Two more ladies followed in. Old biddies I recognized from the Ladies’ Hall. A young man with a fat gut strode in, wrapped in blue velvet despite the heat. My grandmother, who I saw once at the Tall Castle, came escorted and supported by a pageboy. She looked unsteady, her hair very white, her skin pale, thin, drawn. Then my grandfather, taking his high-backed chair at the head of the table. Earl Hansa surprised me; he looked only a little older than my father, a solidly built man with a short grey beard and long thick hair still streaked with black.

More servants now, bearing covered silver platters.

A drop of sweat left my nose and fell away into the darkness. My head felt fuzzy and full of blood.

The covers came away in a choreographed move, flourished overhead by the servants, and revealing today’s delicacies. No snails. No rice.

I slid with less grace than I had hoped and swung clumsily into the window, sitting on the ledge and steadying myself with both hands. I very nearly ended up in the unplanned splat. Hanging upside-down before attempting acrobatics is not to be recommended.

I had hoped to go unnoticed a while longer but perhaps Lady Agath was the only person in the great hall not to look up.

To his credit, while the fat boy jumped to his feet, and several of the ladies shrieked, Lord Robert called for the house guard to shield the Earl. The Earl Hansa himself took a sip from his wine then called out, “I had a grandson named William Ancrath.”

“And I had a brother of that name,” I called back.