Emperor of Thorns

22

Chella’s Story

‘Jorg of Ancrath sends you back to me again, Chella.’

Something in the grinding of Artur Elgin’s jaw set Chella’s teeth on edge. Something in the way the Dead King ground that jawbone when he moved it to shape his words.

‘I’ve brought Kai Summerson to court, sire, a necromancer seeking service-’

‘Were you not to Jorg’s tastes, Chella? Did he spurn your proposal?’

Just the grinding of that bone, hinge and socket, made her skin crawl. That and the glitter of his eyes. She thought of times when she had swum in foulness, of corpse-work in the darkest places, of hunting men’s remains in the deadland borders, enough horror to take almost anyone’s sanity … and yet here she cowered from nothing but the sick click and crunch of a dead man’s jaw.

‘Chella?’ A gentle enough reminder but lesser reprimands than that had sent the Dead King’s servants to the lichkin.

‘He refused me, sire.’ More than five years on and still the Dead King wanted her old failure replayed.

‘And you still think him a foolish youth with more luck than judgment?’

‘No, sire.’ Though she did. Whatever strange emotions the boy might stir in her Chella could see little of genius in his actions. When men bet on long odds in sufficient numbers some of them will walk away with the prize. It doesn’t mean those winners will win tomorrow.

‘I want him here, Chella, to stand before my court and to answer to me.’

‘Yes, sire.’ Though what Jorg Ancrath might have to answer the Dead King for she had no idea. A ‘why’ trembled on her lips but she knew it would never take flight.

‘Bring Kai Summerson before me.’

Chella turned to motion Kai forward, drawing a breath of relief to be released from the Dead King’s stare if only for a moment. In the coldness of wraith-light Kai aged another decade as the Dead King’s regard fell upon him.

‘Kai.’ The name dropped like a dead thing from Artur Elgin’s lips. ‘Sky-sworn. Have you flown, Kai? Have you touched heaven?’

‘No, lord.’ Kai kept his gaze to the floor. ‘I saw what the eagle sees, but only with my mind. And now I am death-sworn.’

‘Death can ride the winds, Kai. Remember that. Why did you not fly? Was it beyond you? Did you not truly hold the sky within you?’

‘Fear kept me on the ground, lord.’ Passion in his words now, the Dead King’s talent for touching each raw nerve. ‘Fear of losing myself.’ Chella knew few sky-sworn who took flight ever returned. The winds claimed them. They lost substance and danced in storms, spread too thin to be contained in flesh again. She watched Kai, his knuckles white, nails biting. Did he wish now that he had lost himself in the pitiless blue?

‘It’s your will, the power of your desire, that counts in this world — in all worlds.’ For a moment the Dead King seemed almost tender, something more awful than anger coming from Artur Elgin’s dead lips. ‘The force of your conviction can anchor mind to flesh if your sense of who you are, your command of what you are, is stronger than the wind. It’s that same power of will that reels in the silver cord and draws a necromancer back from their travels in the dry lands. That same sense of self returns what won’t pass into heaven back to the shell of a man’s body, to what carried him through life, to the groove he scored in the world, be it corrupt flesh, or even bare bone, and when at last bone is lost, it returns him to a place maybe, a home, a room, to haunt the living, because misery loves company and so do all its friends.’

Kai lifted his gaze against the weight of the Dead King’s stare. ‘Fear held me.’

‘Fear holds many men, fear keeps them from their duty, fathers abandon sons, one brother leaves the next to die.’

‘Yes, lord.’

‘When the storms come, Kai Summerson, show me death on wings.’ Artur Elgin’s fingers flicked to motion Kai away.

Until the doors closed behind Kai no further words were spoken. Chella remained, the only living thing in the vaulted throne room. Perhaps hers was the only curiosity. The Dead King had need of her. Why else after all this time was she here once more, within the inner circle, humiliating reminders of her failure the only price of admission.

‘Chella Undenhert.’ The Dead King formed the name with care.

‘Sire.’ The last to know that name died six years back on Jorg Ancrath’s blade. None had spoken it in decades.

‘Some might think necromancy a threat to those of us who step out of the dry lands, out of the dust beyond, competition at the very least.’

‘Never that, sire.’ Kai’s words returned to her. Shouldn’t we be the ones to give orders?

‘Do you know what I want, Chella?’

She truly didn’t. ‘Jorg Ancrath?’

‘I want what he wants, what all of our kind need. To rule, to own, to hold the highest ground, to have our will prevail.’

‘To be emperor?’ Chella knew the hunger of the dead, but ambition came as a surprise, though all the signs lay before her. A dead king in a dead king’s throne.

‘The empire will be a start. Remade, it can be a step from which to take everything. I am not called king of here or king of there, they call me Dead King, lord of all that does not live. Do you think in this world I would sit content with “Lord of Brettan”? Or “emperor” of an empire beyond whose borders lie lands unclaimed?’

‘No, sire.’ For all the horror of him a child’s greed and child’s pride lay about the Dead King. Perhaps his interest in the Ancrath kings lay in the mirror they held up to him.

‘Do you know why the Hundred have not united against me, Chella?’

‘They hate each other too much, sire. Gather them on a ship and let it sink — no hand would be spare for bailing or for swimming, they’d all be locked on throats, choking away the air before the waters could.’

‘They have not united because they don’t fear me.’ Artur Elgin rose from the Dead King’s throne. ‘The returned cannot breed, they rot, they know more of hunger than of caution, they can stand against armies only where the ground favours them. It is a wonder that I have taken what I now hold with nothing but corpses to play with.’ Artur’s hand settled on Chella’s shoulder and it took all her control not to flinch it off.

‘Empires are won in many ways. Do you know of tactics, Chella?’

‘A little, sire.’ If he would just take that hand away …

‘And what are the only two tactical advantages of my legions, Chella?’

‘I–I- They know no fear?’

‘No.’ An exquisite agony bled into her shoulder and the Dead King returned Artur’s hand to his side. ‘A man without fear is missing a friend. An old ghost once told me that.

‘My troops have two tactical advantages. They don’t breathe and they don’t eat. That means that any swamp, lake, or sea, is a stronghold and that I need not maintain supply lines. Past that they are poor servants at best. And it is these advantages that have given me the Isles and allow us to assault Ancrath from the Ken Marshes.

‘Beyond this, my ambitions require new strategies if they are to be met on a timescale to my liking.’

The Dead King settled once more in Artur Elgin’s driftwood throne. He ran white fingers along the chair’s polished arms, and Chella heard the screams of sailors drowning.

‘Thantos, Keres.’

Two lichkin detached from their brethren and moved to flank the Dead King. Still Chella’s eyes would not see them, returning only glimpses of ghost-wrapped bone.

‘Chella.’ He leaned Artur’s body toward her in the chair. ‘Choosing a strategy is like deciding upon a weapon. And a weapon needs a point if it is to pierce the foe, neh? You, Chella, are going to pierce the belly of the empire for me. I’m sending you on a journey. Brother Thantos and Sister Keres will keep you safe. The remainder of your escort is on a ship approaching the harbour as we speak.’