King of Thorns

The ghost did not return.

I put the ring in my pocket. Interesting or not it seemed odd that the grouch had favoured me above the others that visited him. Uncle Robert never mentioned a gift of any kind, nor any really meaningful answers to questions. Fexler wanted something from me. Something personal. That last nervous grin of his said it. He might be dead a thousand years, might be a Builder, or just the story of a Builder in a machine of cogs and magic, but before all that he was a man, and I knew men. He wanted something—something he couldn’t take but that he thought I could give.

I wondered, despite his mocking, if death held an allure for the ghost too. We aren’t meant to live forever, nor dwell in solitude. A life without change is no life. The spirit beneath Mount Honas agreed with me. Maybe the only way Fexler Brews had to tell me so was to offer me his gift. And to hope that I would help him. He wanted something, that much was sure. Everyone wants something.

I would have to think on it. The machine made Fexler. Grandfather would not thank me for destroying his source of fresh water, and neither would the men who would have to pump the fountains thereafter. Gone or not though, Fexler Brews and I were not finished with each other.


I spoke with my uncle on the night of that visit to Fexler’s cellar. We sat in the observatory tower with an earthenware jug of wine that looked old enough to have been excavated from a pharaoh’s tomb, and two silver goblets chased with rearing horses. A cool wind sighed through the arches and a bright dust of stars covered the black sky.

“Your mother used to come here when we were children,” Robert said.

“She taught us the star names,” I said. “Though William was young for it. He could only ever find the dog star and the Pole Star.” I saw Will pointing, arm stretched out as if to touch each star, finger questing.

“Sirius and Polaris.” Robert sipped his wine. “I can’t remember much more. Rowen had the mind for it. In some twins the gifts are not shared out evenly. She got the brains and the looks. I got…a knack with horses.”

“I got a knack with killing.” The wine ran over my tongue, its flavour dark and layered.

“More than that, surely.” Robert pointed out a constellation through the window arch. “What’s that one?”

“Orion.” I stood and stepped to look out. “Betelgeuse, Rigel, Bellatrix, Mintaka, Alnilam, Alnitak, Saiph.” I named the giant’s parts. “Did you feel her die? Are twins like that?”

“No.” He stared into his goblet.

“Perhaps.” He set the wine before him. “Perhaps it was like that for her. When I got trapped against Crab Cliff by the spring tide Rowen knew where to bring the guard with ropes. We were just children, not even ten years old, but she knew somehow. Another talent that didn’t split even between us.”

I watched him, half-resentful that he had so many years with her. She was my mother and yet everything about her escaped me, a little more each day, sand through fingers. I couldn’t draw her face, tell you the colour of her eyes, or any concrete thing, just angles, glimpses, moments, the scent and softness of her. The security she gave—and the night when I learned it to be a lie.

“I went to the grouch chamber this morning,” I said.

The Builders’ view-ring hung on a thong about my neck, under the tunic Robert’s dresser had given me. I considered drawing it out to show him, but didn’t. Habits learned on the road die hard. I had laid hands on it and it was mine; I would keep my advantage hidden. The metal weighed heavy over my heart. Perhaps guilt feels like that.

“All that dust and spiders just to have an old ghost tell you to go to hell.” My uncle sipped his wine. “I used to go down a few times a year. But the grouch never changes, and in the end I did.”

“Do you know what the machinery does?” I asked.

“Who knows what any of that devilry is for? It pumps water—I understand that much, but they say everything the Builders made did ten different things. My father has left it alone for sixty years, his father left it untouched, and his father before him. It’s from a world best forgotten. Gelleth should have taught you that.”