King of Thorns

Rike stood outside, looming over the Brothers who pressed about him. Foolish enough they looked, bristling with weaponry as two young girls ran past laughing. An old woman hobbled up with a bundle under her arm, oblivious to Grumlow’s daggers as she grumbled on by.

“Ruth,” I said.

“Sit! Sit!” she cried. “You look half-dead. You’re a just a boy. A big lad, but a boy. I can see it. And boys need feeding. Ain’t that right, Ma?” She put her hand to her neck, an unconscious gesture, and stroked her throat. Pale skin, very pale. She’d burn worse than Rike in the sun.

“They do.” The mother put her head around the entrance from what must be the only other room. Grey hair framed a stern face, softened by a kind mouth. “And what’s the boy’s name then?”

“Jorg,” I said. As much as I like to roll out my titles there is a time and a place.

“Makin,” said Makin, although Ruth only had eyes for me, which is odd because even if I were handsome before the burns, it’s Makin that has a way with…everyone.

“And is there a Master Millson?” Makin asked.

“Sit!” Ruth said. So I sat and Makin followed suit, taking the rocker by the empty fireplace. I leaned my blade against the table. The women gave it not so much as a glance.

Ruth picked up a woollen jerkin from behind my stool. “That Jamie would forget his head!”

“You have a husband?” I asked.

A frown crossed her like a cloud. “He went to the castle two years back. To take service with the Duke.” She brightened. “Anyhow you’re too young for me. I should call Seska over. She’s as pretty as the morning.” She had mischief in her eye. Blue eyes, pale as forget-me-not.

“So what are you doing out here?” I asked. I’d taken a shine to Ruth. She had a spark in her and put me in mind of a serving girl named Rachel back at the Haunt. Something about her made me unaccountably horny. Unaccountable if you don’t count eight weeks on the road.

“Out here?” Distracted she put her fingers to her mouth, a pretty mouth it has to be said, and wiggled at one of her back teeth.

“Ma” came from the kitchen with an earthenware pot, carried in a blackened wooden grip to keep the heat from her fingers. Makin got up to help her with it but she paid him no heed. She looked tiny beside him, bowed under her years. She laid the pot before me and set her bony hand to the lid, hesitating. “Salt?”

“Why not?” I would have asked for honey but this wasn’t the Haunt. Salt porridge is better than plain, even when you’ve eaten salt and more salt at Duke Maladon’s tables for a week.

“Oh,” said Ruth. Her hand came away from her mouth with a tooth on her palm. Not a little tooth but a big molar from far back, with long white roots and dark blood smeared around it, so dark as to be almost black. “I’m sorry,” she said, holding her hand at arm’s length as if horrified by the tooth but unable to look away, eyes wide and murky.

“No matter,” I said. It’s strange how quickly impersonal lust can slip into revulsion. It probably crosses the tail end of that thin line the poets say divides love and hate.

“Perhaps we should eat?” Makin said.

My stomach rolled at the thought of food. The marsh stink, that had yet to fade, invaded the room with renewed vigour.

Ma returned with three wooden bowls, one decorated with carved flowers, and a chair that looked too fine for the house. She set the bowls on the table, the fancy one for me, one before the new chair. The third she held onto, casting about for something, confusion in her eye. She put her hand to the side of her head, rubbing absently.

“Lost something?” I asked.

“A rocking chair.” She laughed. “A place this small. You wouldn’t think you could lose a thing like that!” Her hand came away from her head with a clump of white hair in it. Pink scalp showed where it came from. She looked at it with as much bewilderment as her daughter, studying her tooth.

“The Duke’s castle you say, Ruth?” Makin said from the rocker. “Which duke would that be?” Makin could take the awkward edge off a moment, but neither woman looked at him.

Ma stuffed the hair into her apron and shuffled back into the kitchen. Ruth set the tooth on the window ledge. “Is it supposed to be lucky?” she asked. “Losing a tooth. I thought I heard that once.” She opened the shutters. “To let the dawn in.”

“What duke rules here?” I asked.

Ruth smiled, the smallest smear of black blood at the corner of her mouth. “Why you are lost, aren’t you? Duke Gellethar of course!”

In that moment I realized what was missing. The dead baby, the box-child, he would lie in any idle shadow. But not here. These shadows were too full.

The front door banged open and little Jamie charged in. Boys of a certain age seem only to go flat out or not at all. He grazed the doorpost as he passed and lost a coin-sized patch of skin to a loose nail.

He ran up to me, grinning, snot on his upper lip. “Who’re you? Who’re you, mister?” Oblivious to the missing skin where dark muscle glistened like liver.