Emperor of Thorns

17

Six years had only made her the more beautiful. What Katherine Ap Scorron hid in dreams stood before me on a cold day at the edge of winter.

‘Katherine.’ I still held her hand, raised between us. She took it back. ‘My father sent you to Congression? In his stead?’

‘Ancrath is at war. Olidan stays with his armies to ensure that the war is not lost.’

She wore black, a flowing gown of it, satin folds reaching to a broad hem of black suede from which the mud might be brushed when dry. Lace around her neck like ink tattoos, earrings of silver and jet. Still mourning her prince.

‘He sent you? With two voting seals and no advisors.’

‘Nossar of Elm was to come but he fell sick. I have the king’s trust.’ She watched me, hard eyes, her lips a tight line in a pale face. ‘Olidan has come to appreciate my talents.’ Half a challenge — more than half. As if she might favour father over son and replace her sister at his side.

‘I’ve come to appreciate your talents myself, lady.’ I sketched her a bow if only to gather my thoughts. ‘May I offer you a place in the Renar carriage? Father’s repairs to this one seem to have been poorly judged.’ I drew on Brath’s reins bringing him close enough that she could mount from the riding board.

Katherine left the carriage without further encouragement, stepping up to ride side-saddle to accommodate the length of her dress. For one moment satin lay taut across the jut of her hipbone. I wanted her for more than the shape of her body — but I wanted that too.

Kent dismounted quick enough so that I could take his horse and ride with Katherine back along the column. I rode close, wanting to speak but knowing how weak my words would sound.

‘I didn’t mean to kill Degran. I would have fought to save him. He was my-’

‘And yet you did kill him.’ She didn’t look my way.

I could have spoken of Sageous but the heathen had only put the rope in my hands, the fact he knew someone would get hanged hardly excused me. In the end I could only agree. I did kill my brother.

‘Orrin also deserved better from his brother,’ I said. ‘He would have made a good emperor.’

‘The world eats good men for breakfast.’ She shook her reins to coax Brath a little faster.

The words sounded familiar. I kicked Kent’s horse and caught her. She pulled up beside Lord Holland’s carriage. ‘I didn’t know your tastes were so grand, Jorg.’

‘My wife’s choice,’ I said.

I nodded to the guardsman by the carriage door and he knocked to announce Katherine. His knuckles barely made contact with the lacquered wood before the door sprung open and Miana leaned out, dark eyes on Katherine, lips pursed. She looked unaccountably pretty.

‘I’ve brought you a midwife, dear — my Aunt Katherine.’

It’s my sincere hope that Katherine’s look of shock was more spectacular than the one I wore when taking her hand five minutes earlier.

I entered the carriage first and sat between the young queen and the older princess. I didn’t trust in Gomst to be able to stop the bloodshed should things go badly.

‘Queen Miana of Renar,’ I said, ‘this is Princess Katherine Ap Scorron, my father’s representative at Congression and widow to the Prince of Arrow. We met Arrow’s army two years back, you may recall.’ I waved a hand at the old men. ‘Osser Gant of Kennick, Lord Makin’s advisor, and of course you know Bishop Gomst.’

Miana settled her hands on her belly. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, Katherine. Jorg tells me he killed the man who murdered your husband.’

‘Egan, yes. Orrin’s younger brother. Though the best deed that day was in putting an end to the heathen, Sageous. He poisoned Egan’s mind. He wouldn’t have betrayed Orrin otherwise.’

I pressed back into the cushions. Two women, each given to speaking her mind and to trampling any social niceties that stood in their way, are wont to have short conversations that end interestingly. The fact that Katherine allowed for Sageous’s hand in Orrin’s fratricide seemed harsh when she gave me no room to hide in such excuses. In truth, though, I couldn’t hang my guilt on him.

‘The firstborn are often the best that the tree will offer,’ Miana said. ‘The ancients offered the first fruit to the gods. It might be that the first child carries whatever goodness their parents have to give.’ She laced her fingers over the greatness of her womb.

A slight smile touched Katherine’s lips. ‘My sister is the firstborn. Anything gentle or kind went her way rather than mine.’

‘And my brother who will one day rule in Wennith is a good man. Any wickedness or cunning that my parents had came to me.’ Miana paused as the carriage lurched into motion, all the columns starting to move now. ‘And you have Orrin and Egan to support my theory.’

‘Of course that would make Jorg the Ancraths’ paragon.’ Katherine glanced at Gomst who had the grace to look away. ‘Tell us, Jorg, what was William like?’

That surprised me. I had been happy letting them spar across me. ‘He was seven. It was hard to tell,’ I said.

‘Tutor Lundist said William was the more clever of the two. The sun to Jorg’s moon.’ Gomst spoke up but kept his eyes down. ‘He told me the child had an iron will such that no nurse could sway him from his chosen path. Even Lundist with his eastern cunning couldn’t divert the lad. They brought him before me once, a boy of six determined that he was setting off on foot to find Atlantis. I talked about his duty, about God’s plan for each of us. He laughed at me and said he had a plan for God.’ Gomst looked up but he didn’t see us, his eyes fixed on the past. ‘Blond as if he came from the emperor’s own blood.’ He blinked. ‘And iron in him. I believe he could have done anything that boy — had he been allowed to grow. Anything. Good or ill.’

My own memories painted a softer picture but I couldn’t dispute Gomst. When William set his mind, when he decided how a thing should be, there was no arguing with him. Even when Father was called upon he would hold his nerve. And despite what I knew of my father’s ruthlessness, when it came to William, it never occurred to me that the matter was yet settled even when we heard Father’s footsteps in the corridor. Perhaps the reason my father hated me lay as simple as that. I had always been the weaker of the two. The wrong son died that night, the wrong son hung in the thorns.

Miana spoke into the uncomfortable silence. ‘So tell me, Katherine, how is my father-in-law? I have yet to meet him. I’d like to get to know him. I had hoped he might be at Congression so Jorg could introduce us.’

That painted a picture. What would Father make of my tiny child-wife who incinerated her own soldiers to tear a vast hole in the enemy?

‘King Olidan never changes,’ Katherine said. ‘I’ve spent years at his court and don’t know him so I doubt you’d learn much if he had come to Congression. I’m far from sure my sister knows him after six years in his bed. None of us know what his dreams for Ancrath are.’

I read that code clear enough. She hadn’t managed to work her night-magics on Father, and perhaps Sageous hadn’t either. Maybe Father’s was the only hand on the knife that stabbed me. All presuming Katherine wasn’t lying of course, but her words rang true, it didn’t seem she would consider me worth sullying her lips with falsehoods for.

‘How goes his war, Princess?’ Osser Gant leant forward. He had quick ways about him for a greybeard, his eyes dark and cunning. I could see why Makin valued him.

‘The dead continue to press from the marshes, seldom great numbers in any one place, but enough to drain the land. Peasants are killed in their villages, their bodies dragged to the bogs, farmers die in their homesteads. The dead hide in the mud when Ancrath’s troops pursue, or they shelter in Ill-Shadow, in any place where the land is too poisoned for men. Gelleth has such places.’ She looked my way once more. ‘The attacks sap morale, leave food in short supply. Before I left there was talk of a lichkin walking the marsh.’

Gomst crossed himself at that.

‘And what do they say in Olidan’s court about the direction of these attacks?’ Osser asked. A question of considerable interest to all Kennick men for although they had lost the marshes to the dead many years before, very little of the predation was on the Kennick dry lands. Makin’s troops had little cause for worry as long as they kept their feet on firm ground.

‘They say the Dead King hates King Olidan,’ Katherine said.

‘And what do you say, Katherine?’ Miana leaned across me, lily-scented, our child kicking my legs through her belly.

‘I say the black ships will sail up the Sane estuary and disgorge their troops into the marshes when the Dead King is ready to strike. And that from there they will move through Ancrath, sheltering in the scars the Builders left us, Ill Shadow, Eastern Dark, Kane’s Wound, what your people call “promised lands”, Queen. He will move into Gelleth along the paths Jorg opened with his destruction of Mount Honas, and continue by such means, gathering strength from many sources, until they reach Vyene where Congression’s endless voting will cease to matter.’

‘And is this what King Olidan has sent you to tell the Hundred?’ Gomst asked. He held his crucifix so tight that the gold bent in his grip, a zealot’s fire in his eye. Such passion made a stranger of the man after so many years of empty piety. ‘It is what the holy say. God tells them this.’

A brittle laugh escaped Katherine. ‘Olidan knows the black ships will sail his way. He says Ancrath will hold, that this new contagion will be stamped out, that Ancrath will save the empire. He asks only that his right to the throne be acknowledged and whilst he leads his armies to save the Hundred they set the crown upon his lap and restore the stewardship. Of course he asks in more tactful language, in many messages suited to many ears, calling in old debts and promises.’ Her green eyes found me, our faces close, my leg pressed to hers and generating heat. ‘Filial duties remembered,’ she said.

‘Why-’

Katherine cut me off. ‘Your father says he knows the Dead King. Knows his secrets. Knows how to undo him.’