Prince of Thorns (21 page)

41

In a duel, man to man, sword against sword, it can be a lack of skill that gets you killed. Often as not, though, it’ll be a matter of luck, or if it goes on too long, then it’ll be the man who tires first that tends to die.

In the end it’s about staying power. They should put that on headstones, “Got tired.” Maybe not tired of life, but at least too tired to hold on to it.

In a real fight, and most fights are real, not the artifice of a formal duel, it’s fatigue that’s the big killer. A sword is a heavy chunk of iron. You swing that around for a few minutes and your arms start to get ideas of their own about what they can and can’t do. Even when your life depends on it.

I’ve known times when to lift my sword was the equal of any labour of Hercules, but never before I faced Katherine’s knife had I felt so drained.

“Bastard!”

The fire in her eyes looked fierce enough to burn until the deed was done.

I looked for the will to stop her, and came up empty.

A knife is a scary thing right enough, held to your throat, sharp and cool. The thought echoed back to me from that night when the dead came up out of their bog-pools around the Lichway.

The glitter along that knife edge as she came at me, the thought of it slicing my flesh, piercing an eye maybe, these are all the sort of thing that might give a man pause. Until you realize what they are. They’re just ways to lose the game. You lose the game, and what have you lost? You’ve lost the game. Corion had told me about the game. How many of my thoughts were his? How much of my philosophy was filth from that old man’s fingers?

I’d swum in the darkness too long. The game didn’t seem so important any more.

With the embers of my strength I raised both arms. I stretched them wide, to receive the blow. And I smiled.

Something reached out and held her arm. I saw it in her face, twisting there on that perfect brow, wrestling with the rage.

“Father didn’t quite reach the heart, it seems.” I managed a hoarse whisper. “Perhaps, Aunt, you have a better hand?”

The knife shook. I wondered if she’d cut live meat before.

“You . . . you killed her.”

The fingers of my right hand closed around something, a heavy smooth something, on the shelf beside my bed.

Her eyes dropped to the old woman’s face.

I hit her. Not hard, I didn’t have the strength, but hard enough to break the vase I’d found. She collapsed without a murmur.

She lay in the sapphire pool of her dress, sprawled across the flagstones. Life flowed in my arms once more. It seemed as if my strength began to return the moment she fell. As if a spell were broken.

Kill her and you’ll be free forever
. A familiar voice, dry like paper. Mine, or his?

Her hair hid her face, auburn on sapphire.

She’s your weakness. Cut the heart from her
.

I knew it to be true.

Choke her
.

I saw my hands, pale on a neck shading into crimson.

Have her
. The voice of the briar. The hooks slipped beneath my skin, and drew me down to kneel beside her.
Have her. Take what might never be given
. I knew the creed.

Kill her, and you’ll be free
.

I heard the echo of a distant storm.

Katherine’s hair ran like silk between my fingers. “She’s my weakness.” My voice now, my lips. One little step, one more death, and nothing would ever touch me again. One little step and the door on that wild night would close forever. The game would truly be a game. And I would be the player to win it.

Choke her. Have her
. The voice of the briar. A crackle in the mind. A hollow sound. An emptiness.

Empty.

Her neck felt warm. Her pulse beat under my fingertips.

“Kill her, Briar Prince.”

I saw the words on thin lips, spoken in an empty chamber.

“Kill her.”

I saw the lips move again. I saw the blank eyes, fixed on eternity. “Kill her.”

“Corion!”

For a moment my hands tightened around Katherine’s neck.

“I’m coming for you, you old bastard.” I released my grip.

A smile twisted those thin lips, a fierce twist. I saw it as the vision faded, those blank eyes, and that twist of a smile. My smile.

He had played me. I’d wandered for years with no recollection of him, thinking it my own idea to turn from Renar, thinking the choice a symbol of my strength and purpose, to put aside empty vengeance in favour of the true path to power. And now, on the edge of death, I had recovered what was taken. Recovered or been given. I glanced at Katherine. I recalled an angel in a dark place. The memory left me with a shiver.

I took Katherine’s dagger from the floor, and stood. I left her where she lay, beside the crone I’d throttled. The door opened onto a corridor, one I recognized. The West Corner, I knew where I was. I raised the knife to my lips and kissed the blade. Count Renar, and the puppet master who pulled so many strings, one sharp edge would be enough for them all.

Brother Roddat stabbed three men in the back for each one he faced. Roddat taught me all I know about running and about hiding. Cowards should be treated with respect. Cowards best know how to hurt. Corner one at your peril.

42

“Get out of my way.”

“Who the hell—”

“Please Jesu! You’re the same old wart-bag that tried to stop me last time!” And he was. The stink that jumped me when he opened the door brought it all back. “I’m surprised my father let you live.”

“Who—”

“Who the hell am I? You don’t recognize me? You didn’t last time either. I was shorter then, yay high.” I held out a hand to show him. “It seems like a while ago to me, but you’re an old man, and what’re three or four years to the old?” I sketched a bow. “Prince Jorg at your service, or rather you at mine. Last time I walked out of here with a band of outlaws. This time I just need one knight, if you please. Sir Makin of Trent.”

“I should call the guards on you,” he said, without conviction.

“Why? The King has issued no orders about me.” That was a guess, but Father thought he’d struck a mortal blow, so I was probably correct. “Besides, it’d only get you killed. And if you’re thinking of that big fellow with the pike, I rammed his head into the wall not three minutes ago.”

The jailer stepped back and let me pass, just as he had the time Lundist escorted me when I was a boy. On this occasion, I hit him as I went by. Once in the stomach, and a second blow to the back of the neck as he doubled up. For a moment I considered finishing the job with Katherine’s knife, but it’s good insurance to let ineffective jailers live.

I took his keys and moved on down the corridor, knife at the ready. I’d rather have had my sword. I felt half-dressed without it. My mind kept returning to the fact of its absence, to the weightless sensation around my hip, like a tongue returning to an empty socket in constant overestimation of the loss.

Makin put that sword in my hand on the day he found me. As captain of the guard in search of the heir, he had the right to bear it. I’d kept it close ever since, the family blade, Builder-steel.

I found my way to the torture chamber where I’d first met the Nuban. The table at the centre lay empty. There were no faces at the cell door windows. I made a slow circuit, directing the beam of my lantern into each cell in turn. The first held a corpse, or someone so near death as to be mere bones in a bag of skin. The next three were bare. The fifth held Sir Makin. He sat back against the far wall, bearded and smeared with filth, a hand lifting to shield his eyes from the light. He made no move to rise. I felt a hurt in the back of my throat. I don’t know why, but I did. Anger in my stomach, and an acid pain in my throat.

“Makin, oh my brother.” Soft.

“Wha—?” A croak, the sound of something broken.

“I’m to the road again, Brother Makin. I have business to the south.”

I set the key in the lock. A slight tremble, a little rattle.

“Jorg?” A wet sob, half gurgle. “He killed you, Prince. Your own father.”

“I’ll die when I’m ready.”

The key turned, the door opened without resistance. The stink grew worse.

“Jorg?” Makin let his hand fall. They’d made a mess of his face. “No! You’re dead. I saw you fall.”

“All right, I’m dead and you’re dreaming. Now get on your feckin’ feet before I kick out whatever shit they left you. And that ain’t too much by the smell of it.”

That got to him. He tried to rise, one hand scraping across the wall.

I hadn’t thought what kind of state he might be in. To me it seemed I’d taken Father’s knife only yesterday. Makin’s beard said weeks at the least.

He got halfway to his feet, and his leg failed.

I took two steps toward him.

The Count’s castle stood well over a hundred hard miles ahead of me, through the garden lands of Ancrath and into the Renar highlands. He’d never make it.

Makin slid to the floor with a groan. “You’re dead anyway.” The one good eye shone bright with tears.

Play the game. Sacrifice knight, take castle
. That old dry voice again. I’d listened to it so long I couldn’t tell if it were mine or Corion’s. Either way, I should leave him.

“You’ve got one chance here, Makin. That’s two more than most bastards get in life.” The lantern beam swung from wall to wall. “Dead or not, I’ll leave you if you can’t stand and follow me. I left a man here to die before. A man I should have loved. I’ll leave you in a heartbeat.”

He kicked out, fierce with fear or something else, but his arm buckled and his foot just skittered across the muck.

I turned and walked away. Two yards past the door I stopped.

“Lundist died here.” I was speaking too loud for safety, wasting breath on foolishness. “On this spot.” I stamped on it. “I left him to bleed.”

Nothing from the darkness of the cell.

I’d been soft with Katherine, but at no real cost. This was different. They’d broken Makin, he could do nothing but slow me at a time when I most needed speed.

I started for the exit.

“No . . .”

Don’t let him beg
.

“No . . . he didn’t die there.” Makin’s voice came a little stronger now.

“What?”

“He got a bad knock.”

Sounds of movement in the dark.

“A knock’s all. Nothing but a bruise to show for it the next day.”

“Lundist is alive?”

“Your father had him executed, Jorg.” Makin came into the light, clutching the doorframe. “For failing to protect you, he said.” He spat a black mess onto the floor. “More likely he just didn’t have any use for a tutor once his son had run off. That’s been the King’s way all these years. When a thing’s no use any more—throw it away.”

Makin managed a grin. “Damn but it’s good to see you, lad.”

I watched him for a moment. I saw his smile die, and an uncertainty replace it, mirroring my own.

I should leave him. In truth, I should kill him. No loose ends.

I didn’t look at my knife. You never take your eyes off your mark, not when it’s a man like Makin, not even in his current state. But I knew the knife was there. In my mind’s eye I could see the gleam where it cut the lantern’s light from the air. Makin didn’t look at it either. He knew better than to offer weakness to the viper. Nothing decides a man’s mind better than opportunity.

Father would leave him. Dead.

The creature into which Corion had chosen to forge me, that tool, that piece in a game of thrones, he’d never even have come close enough to savour the dungeon stink.

But what about Jorg?

“I’m my father’s son, Makin.”

“I know.” He didn’t plead. I admired that in him. I chose my pieces well.

The knife felt like hot iron in my fist. I hated myself for what I was going to do, and just as much for hesitating. I hated myself for the weakness in me.

For a moment I saw the Nuban, just the white line of his teeth, and the darkness of his eyes, watching me as he’d watched since the day we met.

Makin took that moment. A swift kick snatched my legs from under me. He followed down with what weight remained to him, and sandwiched my head between the flagstones and his fist. We neither of us were in great shape. One punch was all it took to send me back to wherever it was I’d escaped from in Katherine’s room.

Shakespeare had it that clothes maketh the man. The right clothes could take Brother Sim from a boy too young to shave to a man too old to be allowed to. He makes a fine girl also, though that was a dangerous business in road company and reserved for targets that just couldn’t be killed any other way. Young Sim is forgettable. When he’s gone, I forget how he looks. Sometimes I think of all my brothers it’s Sim that’s the most dangerous.