King of Thorns

“A red day,” I said. I dipped two fingers into something that lived and laughed just hours ago and drew a crimson line down my left cheek then the right.

As we made our way back down the valley I fiddled with the copper box in its leather sack on my hip. All day I had felt Sageous trespassing through the edge of my imaginations, the half-dreams and daydreams to which he could find paths. My own sources, a spy network far less sophisticated than most of the Hundred maintained, told me the Prince of Arrow had a second army, far smaller than the one at my gates, headed for Ancrath and the Tall Castle, presumably to ensure my father kept his troops indoors. There seemed no reason for Sageous to be haunting my dreams unless he had joined Arrow when the balance of power became clear and now served as the Prince’s advisor, seeking of course to own his mind rather than merely guide it.

Then again, the dream-witch might be keeping himself at the Tall Castle. It might be that Sageous sought to know my plans in order to sell them to Arrow and buy Ancrath’s independence for my father. Either way, I wasn’t going to show them to him.

I snagged the thread of memory that I’d been fishing for and pulled at it. The pre-laid plans that I stored in the box always emerged as sudden inspiration, moments of epiphany where disparate facts connected. I drew on the thread of my schemes but this time something went wrong. This time, despite my care, the box cracked open, a hair’s breadth, and I saw in my mind’s eye a dark light bleeding from beneath the lid. I hammered it down in an instant and it closed with a schnick.

For the longest moment I thought that nothing had escaped.

Then the memory lifted me.


“Hello, Jorg,” she says, and my clever words desert me.

“Hello, Katherine.”

And we stand among the graves with the stone girl and the stone dog between us, and blossom swirls like pink snow as the wind picks up, and I think of a snow-globe broken long ago and wonder how all this will settle.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” I say. “I’m told there are bandits in these woods.”

“You broke my vase,” she says, and I’m pleased that her tongue has turned traitor too.

Her fingers return to the spot where I hit her, where the vase shattered and she fell.

I have put her loved ones in the ground, but she talks about a vase. Sometimes a hurt is too big and we skirt around the edge of it, looking for our way in.

“To be fair, you were about to kill me,” I say.

She frowns at that.

“I buried my dog here,” I tell her. She has me saying foolish things already, telling her secrets she has no right to know. She’s like that knock on the head I took from Orrin of Arrow. She steals the sense from me.

“Hanna is buried there.” She points. Her hand is very white and steady.

“Hanna?” I ask.

Thunder on her brow, green eyes flash.

“The old woman who tried to throttle me?” I ask. An image of a purple face floats before me, framed with grey wisps, my hands locked beneath her chin.

“She. Did. Not!” Katherine says, but each word is more quiet than the one before and the conviction runs from her. “She wouldn’t.”

But she knows she did.

“You killed Galen,” she says, still glaring.

“It’s true,” I say. “But he was a heartbeat away from stabbing his sword through my back.”

She can’t deny it. “Damn you,” she says.

“You’ve missed me then?” I say and I grin because I’m just pleased to see her, to breathe the same air.

“No.” But her lips twitch and I know she has thought of me. I know it and I’m ridiculously glad.

She tosses her head and turns, stepping slowly as if hunting her thoughts. I watch the line of her neck. She wears a riding dress of leather and suede, browns and muted greens. The sun finds a hundred reds in her coiled hair. “I hate you,” she says.

Better than indifference. I step after her, moving close.

“Lord but you stink,” she says.

“You said that the first time we met,” I say. “At least it’s an honest stink from the road. Horse and sweat. It smells better than court intrigue. At least to me.”

She smells of spring. I’m close now and she has stopped walking from me. I’m close and there’s a force between us, tingling on my skin, under my cheekbones, trembling in my fingers. It’s hard to breathe. I want her.

“You don’t want me, Jorg,” she says as if I had spoken it. “And I don’t want you. You’re just a boy and a vicious one at that.” The line of her mouth is firm, her lips pressed to a line but still full.

I can see the angles of her body and I want her more than I have wanted anything. And I am built of wants. I can’t speak. I find my hands moving toward her and force them still.

“Why would you be interested in the sister of a ‘Scorron whore’ in any case?” she asks, her frown returning.