Prince of Thorns

“Sir Galen?” I asked. “I’ll be sure to watch out for him.” She had diamonds around her neck on a complex web of gold. Spanard work: none on the Horse Coast could make a thing like that. “It wouldn’t do for the King’s guests to go about killing one another.” I took her for the daughter of a merchant come a-toadying to the King. A very rich merchant, or maybe the daughter of some count or earl from the east: there was an eastern burr to her voice.

“You’re a guest?” She raised a brow at that, and very pretty it looked too. “I think not. You look to have stolen in. By the privy chute to judge by the smell. I don’t think you could have climbed the walls, not in that clunky old armour.”

I clicked my heels together, like the table knights, and offered her an arm. “I was on my way to break fast in the kitchens. They know me there. Perhaps you’d like to accompany me and check my credentials, lady?”

She nodded, ignoring my arm. “I can send a kitchen-boy for the guards and have you arrested, if we don’t meet any on the way.”

So we walked side by side through the corridors and down one flight of stairs after another.

“My brothers call me Jorg,” I said. “How are you called, lady?” I found the court-speak awkward on the tongue, especially with my mouth so unaccountably dry. She smelled like flowers.

“You can call me ‘my lady,’” she said, and wrinkled her nose again. We passed two of the house guards in their fire-bronze plate and plumes. Both of them studied me as if I was a turd escaped from the privy, but she said nothing and they let us pass.

We passed the storerooms where the salt beef and pickled pork lay in barrels, stacked to the ceiling. “My lady” seemed to know the way. She shot me a glance with those emerald eyes of hers.

“So did you come here to steal, or for murder with that dagger of yours?” she asked.

“Perhaps a bit of both.” I smiled.

A good question though. I couldn’t say why I’d come, other than I felt somebody didn’t want me to. Ever since that moment when I found Father Gomst in his cage, ever since that ghost ran its course through me and my thoughts turned to the Tall Castle, it felt as though someone were steering me away. And I don’t take direction.

We passed Short Bridge, little more than three mahogany planks over the great iron valves that could seal the lower levels from the castle main. The doors, steel and three feet thick, would slide up from the gaping slot in the corridor floor, so Tutor Lundist told me. Lifted on old magic. I’d never seen them close. Torches burned here, no silver lamps for the servant levels. The stink of tar-smoke made me more at home than anything yet.

“Perhaps I’ll stay,” I said.

The kitchen arch lay just ahead of us. I could see Drane, the assistant cook, wrestling half a hog through the doors.

“Wouldn’t your brothers miss you?” she asked, playful now. She touched her fingers to the corner of her mouth, where the red pattern of my fingers had started to rise. Something in her gesture made me rise too.

I shrugged, then paused as I worked the straps of the vambrace over my left forearm. “There are plenty of brothers on the road,” I said. “Let me show you the kind of brothers I meant . . .”

“Here,” she said, impatient.

The torchlight burned in the red of her hair. She undid the clasps with deft fingers. The girl knew armour. Perhaps Sir Galen was for more than just beheading ill-mannered louts?

“What then?” she asked. “I’ve seen arms before, though maybe not one so dirty.”

I grinned at that and turned my arm over so she could see the Brotherhood brand across my wrist. Three ugly bands of burn-scar. A look of distaste furrowed her brow. “You’re a sell-sword? You take your pride in that?”

“More pride in that than in what true family I have left.” I felt a bite of anger. I felt like sending this distracting merchant’s daughter on her way, making her run.

“What are these?” She reached out to run her fingers from the brand up to the small of my elbow where the armour stopped her. “Jesu! There’s more scar than boy under this dirt!”

At her touch a thrill ran through me, and I pulled away. “I fell in a thorn bush when . . . when I was a child,” I said, my voice too sharp.

“Some thorn bush!” she said.

I shrugged. “A hook-briar.”

She twisted her mouth into an “ouch.” “You’ve got to lie still in one of those,” she said, her eyes still on my arm. “Everyone knows that. Looks as if it tore you to the bone.”

“I know that. Now.” I set off for the kitchen doors, walking fast.

She ran to catch me, silks swirling. “Why did you struggle? Why didn’t you stop?”

“I was stupid,” I said. “I wouldn’t struggle now.” I wanted the silly bitch to leave. I didn’t even feel hungry any more.