King of Thorns

The Lord of Wennith strode right up to me without preamble, craning his neck to look me up and down as if examining a suspect horse. I resisted the urge to show him my teeth. Plump and grey and old he might have been but he had a look about him that said he knew his business, he knew men well enough and the notion of putting his child in my marriage bed pleased him as little as it did me. He leaned in close to share some confidence or threat not meant for any ears but mine. As he moved forward the ruby swung out on its chain, catching the dying rays of the sun. It seemed to hold them, burning at its heart and that light woke something in my blood. Heat rose through me as I fought to keep my hands from reaching for the gem.

“Listen well, Ancrath,” Kalam Dean of Wennith said, and the ruby swung back against his chest ending further conversation. He gave a cry of pain and jerked away, a charred patch smouldering on his robes beneath the stone.

While guards hastened to Wennith’s side and Grandfather called for servants, the child approached me. “King Jorg?” she said.

“Lady Miana?” I went down on one knee to be level with her, turning my face so as not to scare her with my burns. “And how is your dolly called?” I’d little enough experience with children but it seemed a safe enough opening. She looked down in surprise as if she hadn’t known the toy was there.

“Oh,” she said. “That’s not mine. I’m near grown. It’s Lolly’s, my sister’s.” The shape of her mouth told the lie: it tasted sour to her. Her first words to me and already I’d made a liar of her. If we ever wed it would be the least of my crimes. I would be the ruination of her life, this little girl with her rag doll. If she had any sense she would run. If I had any decency I would make her. But instead I would lie to her father, smile, be for the moment whatever man he needed me to be, and all for the promise of heavy horse, of five hundred riders on the Horse Coast’s finest steeds.

A friar from the Morrow chapel helped Lord Wennith from the throne-room with the aid of a guardsman. Miana trailed after them. She paused and turned. “Remember me,” she said.

“Oh, I will.” I nodded, still kneeling. A proud day like this would stay with me forever if I let it. I gave her my smile. “I won’t let your memory go, Miana. I’ve somewhere to keep it in, nice and safe.”

On the next day Kalam Dean and I finished our negotiations. He didn’t bring his ruby to the discussion but promised it as Miana’s dowry. And on that very same evening I found out how to squeeze an unwanted memory from my mind and set it into Luntar’s copper box. All I kept of Miana was her name, the fact I was to marry her, and that half a thousand cavalry would one day come in answer to my call.


The remaining time I spent at Castle Morrow, and my journey back to the Highlands, are tales best kept for another day. Before I left though, in fact on the day after my engagement, I took myself back to the room beneath the wine-cellar, this time with permission.

My uncle called it the “grouch chamber.” The machine appeared to have only three tasks. Firstly, to keep alive a number of glow-bulbs dotted around the oldest parts of the castle. Secondly, to suck seawater from beneath the cliffs and turn it into pure drinking water for the fountains around the courtyards. And finally, to allow the grouch, Fexler Brews, to enjoy a kind of half-life in which he generally poured scorn on the ignorance of the living, pitied our existence, and moaned about the things he left unfinished in his own.

“Go away.”

Fexler appeared the moment I entered the chamber and repeated his previous greeting.

“Make me,” I said again.

“Ah, the young man with the questions,” Fexler said. “I was a young man with questions once upon a time, you know.”

“No, you weren’t. You’re the echo of a man who was. You were never young—only new.”

“And what is your question?” he asked, scowling.

“Can you end your existence?” I asked.

“Not everyone seeks an end, boy.”

“You think I seek my end?”

“All young men are a little in love with death.”

“I would be more than in love with it if I’d spent a thousand years in a cellar.”

“It has been trying,” Fexler admitted.

“Are you even allowed to want to end yourself?” I asked.

“You’re obsessed with death, child.”

“You didn’t answer the question,” I said.

“I’m not allowed to answer the question.”

“Complicated!” I stepped back and sat on the bottom stairs. “So. What can you do for me?”

“I can give you three questions.”

“Like a genie,” I said.

“Yes, but they give wishes. Two left.”

“That was an observation, not a question!” I cried.

I chewed my lip. “Do you swear to give full and honest answers?”

“No. Two left.”

Dammit. “Tell me about guns,” I said.

“No. One left.”

“Point me at the single most useful and portable piece of Builder-magic in this chamber,” I said.

Fexler shrugged and then pointed to what looked to be one of the valves on the blackened machine. I moved to examine it. Not a valve, something else. A ring set in a depression.

“It’s hardly portable.”

“Twist it,” he said.

I cleaned the area with my sleeve. A silver ring about three inches across topped a stubby cylindrical projection. Shallow grooves around the edge offered some traction. I twisted it. It proved extremely stiff but with the bones in my hand creaking I managed to turn the ring.

Nothing happened.

I twisted again. Easier this time. Again. I spun it several times and the ring came loose in my hand.

“Pretty,” I said.