Prince of Thorns (10 page)

19

I woke early. A grey light through the shutters showed me the room for the first time: big, well-furnished, hunting tapestries on the walls. I uncoiled my fingers from my sword hilt, stretched and yawned. It didn’t feel right, this bed. It was too soft, too clean. When I threw the covers back they knocked the servant-bell from the bedside table. It hit the flagstones with a pretty tinkling then bounced onto a rug and lost its voice. Nobody came. That suited me fine: I’d dressed myself for four years. Hell, I’d rarely undressed! And what rags I had would be put to shame by the meanest of servant smocks. Even so. Nobody came.

I wore my armour over the grey tatters of my shirt. A looking-glass lay on the sideboard. I let it lie there face down. A quick run of fingers through hair in search of any louse fat enough to be found, and I was ready to break my fast.

First I threw the shutters open. No fumbling with the catch this time. I looked out over the execution yard, a square bounded by the blank walls of the Tall Castle. Kitchen-boys and maids hastened across the bleak courtyard, going about their various quests, blind to the pale wash of the sky so high above them.

I turned from the window and set off on my own little quest. Every prince knows the kitchens better than any other quarter of his castle. Where else can so much adventure be found? Where else is the truth spoken so plain? William and I learned a hundred times more in the kitchens of the Tall Castle than from our books on Latin and strategy. We’d steal ink-handed from Lundist’s study and sprint through long corridors, leaping down the stairs too many at a time, to reach the refuge of the kitchens.

I walked those same corridors now, ill at ease in the confined space. I’d spent too long under wide skies, living bloody. We learned about death in the kitchens too. We watched the cook turn live chickens to dead meat with a twist of his hands. We watched Ethel the Bread pluck the fat hens, leaving them naked in death, ready for gutting. You soon learn there’s no elegance or dignity in death if you spend time in the castle kitchens. You learn how ugly it is, and how good it tastes.

I turned the corner at the end of the Red Corridor, too full of memories to pay attention. All I saw was a figure bearing down on me. Instincts learned on the road took over. Before I had time to register the long hair and silks, I had her against the wall, a hand across her mouth and my knife to her throat. We were face by face and my captive held my stare, eyes an unreal green like stained glass. I let my snarl relax into a smile and unclenched my teeth. I stepped back, letting her off the wall.

“Your pardon, my lady,” I said, and sketched her a shallow bow. She was tall, nearly my height, and surely not many years my senior.

She gave me a fierce grin and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. It came away bloody, from a bitten tongue. Gods but she was good to look at. She had a strong face, sharp in the nose and cheekbones but rich in the lips, all framed by the darkest red hair.

“Lord, how you stink, boy,” she said. She stepped around me, as if she was checking a horse at market. “You’re lucky Sir Galen isn’t with me, or a skivvy would be picking your head off the ground about now.”

“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.

My arm burned with the memory of her fingers. She was right, the thorns had cut me deep. Every few weeks for more than a year the poison would flare in the wounds and run through my blood. When the poison ran in me I’d done things that scared even the brothers.

Drane lumbered out through the doors just as I reached them. He pulled up short, and wiped his hands on the soiled white apron stretched over his belly. “Wh—” He looked past me and his eyes widened. “Princess!” He seemed suddenly terrified, quivering like a blob of jelly. “Princess! Wh-what are you doing in the kitchens? It’s no place for a lady in silks and all.”

“Princess?” I turned to stare at her. I’d left my mouth open, so I closed it.

She gave me a smile that left me wondering if I wanted to slap it off her, or kiss it. Before I could decide, a heavy hand landed on my shoulder, and Drane turned me round. “And what’s a ruffian like you doing leading her highness astray . . .” The question died in his throat. His fat face crinkled up and he tried to speak again, but the words wouldn’t come. He let me go and found his voice. “Jorg? Little Jorg?” Tears streamed down his cheeks.

Will and I had watched the man throttle a few chickens and bake a few pies: there was no call for him to start blubbing over me. I let him off the embarrassment though, he’d given me the chance to see her royal highness look surprised. I grinned at her and gave a court bow.

“Princess, eh? So I guess that means the road-trash you wanted to have the palace guards arrest is in fact your step-brother.”

She recovered her composure quickly. I’ll give her that.

“Actually, that would make you my nephew,” she said. “Your father married my older sister two months ago. I’m your aunt Katherine.”

20

We sat at the long trestle where the kitchen skivvies ate their meals, Aunt Katherine and I. The servants cleared the low vault and brought in more light, candles of every length and girth in clay holders. They watched from the doorways at either end, a shabby crowd grinning and bobbing as though it was a holy day or a high day, and we were the mummers to entertain them. Drane hove into view and crested through the skivvies like a barge through water. He brought fresh bread, honey in a bowl, golden butter, and silver knives.

“This is the place to eat,” I said. I kept my eyes on Katherine. She didn’t seem to mind. “Bread hot from the oven.” It steamed when I tore it open. Heaven must smell like fresh bread. “I knew I missed you for a reason, Drane.” I called the words over my shoulder. I knew the fat cook would bask in that for a year. I hadn’t missed him. I hadn’t spared him but one thought for every hundred times I dreamed of his pies. In fact I’d struggled to remember his name when I saw him in the doorway. But something about the girl made me want to be the kind of man who would remember.

The first bite woke my hunger and I tore at the loaf as though it were a haunch of venison and me huddled on the road with the brothers. Katherine paused to watch, her knife suspended above the honey bowl, her lips twitching with a smile.

“Mmmfflg.” I chewed and swallowed. “What?” I demanded.

“She’s probably wondering if you’ll go under the table when the bread’s gone and wrestle the dogs for bones.” Makin had come up behind me unnoticed.

“Damn but you’d make a good footpad, Sir Makin.” I swung round to find him standing over me, his armour gleaming. “A man in plate-mail should have the decency to clank.”

“I clanked plenty, Prince,” he said. He showed me an annoying smile. “You had your mind on more pressing matters maybe?” He bowed toward Katherine. “My lady. I haven’t had the honour?”

She extended a hand to him. “Princess Katherine Ap Scorron.”

Makin raised a brow at that. He took her hand and bowed again, much more deeply, lifting her fingers to his lips. He had thick lips, sensuous. He’d washed his face and his hair gleamed as much as his armour, coal-black and curled. He cleaned up well, and for the smallest moment I hated him without reservation.

“Take a seat,” I said. “I’m sure the excellent Drane can find more bread.”

He let go of her hand. Too slowly for my liking. “Sadly, my prince, duty rather than hunger brings me to the kitchens. I thought I might find you here. You’re summoned to the throne-room. There must be a hundred squires hunting the halls for you. You also, Princess.” He favoured her with an appreciative stare. “I met a fellow named Galen searching for you.” Something tight laced those last words. Makin didn’t like Sir Galen any more than I did. And he’d met the man.

I took the bread with me. It was too good to leave.

We found our way back above ground. The Tall Castle appeared to have woken up during my trip to the kitchens. Squires and maids ran this way and that. Plumed guards passed by in twos and fives, bound for their duties. We skirted a lord in his furs and gold chain, girded by flunkies, leaving him with his astonishment, his bowing, and his “Good morning, Princess!”

By corridor and hall we reached Torrent Vault, the antechamber before the throne-room where the tourney armour of past kings lined the walls like hollow knights standing silent vigil.

“Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath, and the Princess Katherine,” Makin announced us to the guards before the doors. He placed me before the princess. A small matter on the road, but a touch that spoke volumes in the Torrent Vault.
Here is the heir to the throne, let him in
.

The crested guardsmen flanking the hallway stood as still as the armour on the stands behind them. They followed us only with their eyes, gauntleted hands kept folded on the pommels of their greatswords, set point to floor. The two table knights at the throne-room doors exchanged a glance. They paused for a moment to bow to Katherine, then set to work drawing the great doors open wide enough to admit us. I recognized one of them by the coat of arms on his breastplate, horns above an elm. Sir Reilly. He’d turned grey in the years I’d been gone. He struggled with his door, straining to move the oak in its bronze cladding. The doors parted. Our narrow view grew from a sliver of warm light to a window on a world I once knew. The Court of the Ancrath kings.

“Princess?” I took her hand, holding it high, and we walked through.

The men that built the Tall Castle lacked nothing in skill, and everything in imagination. Their walls might remain for ten thousand years, but they would hold no artistry. The throne-room was a windowless box. A box one hundred feet on every side maybe, and with a twenty-foot ceiling to dwarf the courtiers, but a box nonetheless. Elaborate wooden galleries for the musicians muted the harsh corners, and the King’s dais added a certain splendour. I kept my eyes from the throne.

“The Princess Katherine Ap Scorron,” the herald called.

No mention of poor Jorgy. No herald would dare such a slight without instruction.

We crossed the wide floor, our pace measured, watched by the guardsmen at the walls. Men with crossbows by the walls to left and right, swordsmen at the plinth and by the door.

I might have been nameless, but my arrival had certainly roused some interest. In addition to the guardsmen and despite the early hour, at least a hundred courtiers formed our audience. They waited attendance on the throne, milling around the lowest steps in their velvets. I let my eyes stray across the glittering crowd, pausing to linger on the finest jewels. I still had my road-habits and made mental tally of their worth. A new charger on that countess’s fat bosom alone. That lord’s chain of office could buy ten suits of scale armour. There was surely a fine longbow and a pony in each of his rings. I had to remind myself I played for new stakes now. Same old game, new stakes. Not higher, but different.

The gentle chatter of the court rose and fell as we approached. The soft hubbub of knife-edged comments, damaging sarcasm, honeyed insults. Here the sharp intake of breath at the Prince coming to court still wearing the road, there the mocking laughter half-hidden behind a silk handkerchief.

I let myself look at him then.

Four years had wrought no change in my father. He sat on the high-backed throne, hunched in a wolf-skin robe edged with silver. He’d worn the same robe on the day I left. The Ancrath crown rested on his brow: a warrior crown, an iron band set with rubies, confining black hair streaked with the same grey as the iron. To his left, in the consort chair, the new queen sat. She had Katherine’s looks, though softer, with a web of silver and moonstones to tame her hair. Any sign of her pregnancy lay hid beneath the ivory froth of her gown.

Between the thrones grew a magnificent tree, wrought all of glass, its leaves the emerald of Katherine’s eyes, wide and thin and many. It reached a slender nine feet in height, its twigs and branches gnarled and vitreous, brown as caramel. I’d never seen the like before. I wondered if it might be the Queen’s dowry. Surely it had the worth.

Sageous stood beside the glass tree, in the dappled green light beneath its leaves. He’d abandoned the simple white he’d worn when first we met in favour of black robes, high in the collar, with a rope of obsidian plates about his neck. I met his eyes as we approached, and manufactured a smile for him.

The courtiers drew back before us, Makin to the fore, Katherine and me hand in hand. The perfumes of lords and ladies tickled at my nose: lavender and orange oil. On the road, shit has the decency to stink.

Only two steps down from the throne a tall knight stood in magnificent plate, the iron worked over with fire-bronze, twin dragons coiling on his breastplate in a crimson inferno.

“Sir Galen.” Makin hissed the words back at me.

I glanced at Katherine and found her smile unreadable. Galen watched us with hot blue eyes. I liked him a little better for wearing his hostility so plainly. He had the blonde hair of a Teuton, his features square and handsome. He was old though. As old as Makin. Thirty summers at the least.

Sir Galen made no move to let Makin past. We stopped five steps down.

“Father,” I said. In my head, I’d made my speech a hundred times but somehow the old bastard managed to steal the words from my tongue. The silence stretched between us. “I hope—” I started again but he cut over me.

“Sir Makin,” Father said, not even looking at me. “When I send the captain of the palace guard out to retrieve a ten-year-old child, I expect him to return by nightfall. Perhaps a day or three might suffice if the child proved particularly elusive.” Father raised his left hand from the arm of the throne, just by an inch or two but enough to cue his audience. A scattered tittering sounded among the ladies, cut off when his fingers returned to the iron-wood of the chair.

Makin bowed his head and said nothing.

“A week or two on such a task would signify incompetence. More than three years speaks of treason.”

Makin looked up at that. “Never, my king! Never treason.”

“We once had reason to consider you fit for high office, Sir Makin,” Father said, his voice as cold as his eyes. “So, you may explain yourself.”

The sweat gleamed on Makin’s brow. He’d have gone through this speech as many times as I had mine. He’d probably lost it just as profoundly.

“The Prince has all the resourcefulness one might hope for in the heir to the throne,” Makin began. I saw the Queen frown at his turn of phrase. Even Father’s mouth tightened and he glanced at me, fleeting and unreadable. “When at last I found him we were in hostile lands . . . Jaseth . . . more than three hundred miles to the south.”

“I know where Jaseth is, Sir Makin,” Father said. “Do not presume to lecture me on geography.”

Makin inclined his head. “Your majesty has many enemies, as do all great men in these times of trouble. No single blade, even one as loyal as my own, could protect your heir in such lands as Jaseth. Prince Jorg’s best defence lay in anonymity.”

I glanced over the court. It seemed that Makin’s speech had not deserted him after all. His words had an impact.

Father ran a hand over his beard. “Then you should have ridden back to the castle with a nameless charge, Sir Makin. I wonder that this journey took four years.”

“The Prince had taken up with a band of mercenaries, your majesty. By his own skill he won their allegiance. He told me plain that if I moved to take him, they would kill me, and that if I stole him away, he would announce himself to every passer-by. And I believed him, for he has the will of an Ancrath.”

Time to be heard
, I thought. “Four years on the road have given you a better captain,” I said. “There’s more to learn about making war than can be discovered in this castle. We—”

“You lack enterprise, Sir Makin,” Father said. His eyes never flickered from Makin. I wondered if I’d spoken at all. Anger tinged his voice now. “Had I ridden out after the boy, I would have found a way to return with him from Jaseth within a month.”

Sir Makin bowed deeply. “That is why you deserve your throne, majesty, whilst I am merely captain of your palace guard.”

“You are the captain of my guard no longer,” Father said. “Sir Galen serves in that capacity now, as he served the House of Scorron.”

Galen offered Makin the slightest of bows, a mocking smile on his lips.

“Perhaps you would like to challenge Sir Galen for your old office?” Father asked. Again he fingered his salt-and-pepper beard.

I sensed a trap here. Father didn’t want Makin back.

“Your majesty has chosen his captain,” Makin said. “I would not presume to over-write that decision with my sword.” He sensed the trap too.

“Indulge me.” Father smiled then, for the first time since our entrance, and it was a cold thing. “The court has been quiet in your absence. You owe us some entertainment. Let us have a show.” He paused. “Let us see what you have learned on the road.” So he did hear me.

“Father—” I started. And again he cut me off. I couldn’t seem to rise above him.

“Sageous, take the boy,” he said.

And that was that. The heathen had his eyes on me and led me mild as a sheep to stand with him between the thrones. Katherine shot me a pale glance and hastened to her sister’s side.

Makin and Galen bowed to the King. They went out through the press of courtiers, breaking free and crossing to where an inlaid marble star, some ten feet across, marked the middle of the throne-room floor. They faced each other, bowed, and drew steel.

Makin bore the longsword Father gave him when he took captaincy of the palace guard. A good weapon, Indian steel woven dark and light, acid-etched with old runes of power. Our time on the road had left its history recorded in notches along the blade. I’d never seen a better swordsman than Makin. I didn’t want to see one here.

Sir Galen made no move. He held his longsword ready, but in a lazy grip. I could see no marking on the weapon, a simple blade, forged from the black iron of the Turkmen.

“Never trust a Turkman sword . . .” I spoke in a whisper.

“For Turkman iron sucks up spells like a sponge and holds a bitter edge.” Sageous finished the old line for me.

I had a sharp reply for the heathen, but the clash of swords rang out over it. Makin advanced on the Teuton, feinting low then swinging high. Makin had an elemental way with a sword. The blade was part of him, a living thing from tip to hilt. In a wild fight he knew where every danger lay, and where his cover waited.

Sir Galen blocked and delivered a sharp riposte. Their swords flickered and the play of metal rang out high and sharp. I could barely follow the exchange. Galen fought with technical precision. He fought like a man who rose at dawn every day to train and duel. He fought like a man who expected to win.

A hundred narrow escapes from death counted out the first minute of their duel. I found my right hand gripping the trunk of the glass tree, the crystal slick and cool under my fingers. By the end of that first minute I could tell Galen would win. This was his game. Makin had his brilliance but, like me, he fought in real fights. He fought in the mud. He fought through burning villages. He used the battlefield. But this dry little game, so narrow in its scope, this was all Galen lived for.