Emperor of Thorns

34

Five years earlier

Somewhere in the loneliness of the Sahar, amongst the twenty days of our crossing, we passed unnoticed from Maroc into Liba. The Taureg spoke of a land that had lain between the realms long ago, devoured by nibbles until Maroc met Liba in the sands. A land of people who would have done well to heed the saying about inches given and miles taken, or as the locals have it, ‘beware the camel’s nose’ after the story of the camel who begs his way by inches into the tent, then refuses to leave.

Hamada rises from desert sands in low mud buildings, rounded as if by the wind, and whitewashed to dazzle the eye. They look at first like pebbles half-bedded in the ground. There is water here: you can taste it on the air, see it in the stands of karran grass that stabilize the dunes and hold back their tides. As you begin to move among the white buildings you see grander structures beyond, nestling in the slight hollow that holds the city. In some ancient time a god fell to earth here and fractured the deepest bedrock, bringing to the surface the waters of an aquifer untapped in any other place.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever been as far from anywhere, Brother Marco.’ I shaded my eyes and watched the city through the heat-shimmer.

‘I’m not your brother,’ he said.

Omal, riding between us, snorted. ‘Far from anywhere? Hamada means “centre”. This is the heart of Liba. Hamada.’

We rode in with the morning sun throwing our shadows behind us, hauling on our reins to keep the camels from bolting for the water. Even so they picked the pace up, snorting and blowing, licking at their muzzles with coarse tongues. Faces appeared at shadowed windows and the drovers called out halloos to old friends. In the shade of tiny alleys scrawny children chased scrawnier chickens.

Deeper in, the streets of Hamada boast tall houses of whitewashed plaster over brick with high turrets to catch the wind. Further still and our column came in sight of great halls in white stone, public buildings to dwarf the works in Albaseat, constructed to the sparse and grand arithmetic of the Moorish scholars. Libraries, galleries for sculpture, pillared baths where desert men might settle in the luxury of deep waters.

‘Not too shabby.’ I felt like the dirty peasant come to court.

‘Gold has been made and spent here.’ Marco nodded. ‘Gold and more gold.’ For once the sneer had left him. It’s an unsettling business having to re-evaluate your world view. Neither of us were enjoying it.

Our caravan turned from the centre road and entered a vast market square with pens partitioned for camels, goats, sheep, and even a few horses. Here black-clad crowds thronged, merchants anticipating the camel train and ready to haggle. Omal and his comrades helped Marco down and set his trunk on the sandy flagstones before him. He approached it with the bandy gait of a man too long in the saddle.

‘I’m not dragging that thing again,’ I said, glad to be off my own camel. ‘It’s been carried twenty days and more, it can be carried for the last mile.’

Rattling a few coins soon found a toothless old rogue with a donkey willing to help us along to the caliph’s palace. The beast looked as ancient as its master and I fully expected its legs to fold beneath it as the three of us lowered the trunk to its back. It proved as contrary as Balky, though, and just hee-hawed its complaints whilst the old man secured the load.

Standing in the heat, sweating while I watched the old man work, the worries that eluded me in the emptiness of the desert returned in force. Since that moment in the Kutta java house when I understood the nature of the trap, it seemed that like Brother Hendrick, impaled on that Conaught spear, I had been driving the blade deeper. Sensible hope of revenge, not that it ever had been sensible, had gone out the window as soon as I realized they knew me, realized I was anticipated. Now in the midst of a desert that could hold me prisoner on its own, I aimed my path at the enemy’s court, set no doubt just a few score yards above the dungeons I would soon rot in.

‘Here’s to you, Brother Hendrick.’

‘Your pardon?’ Marco poked at the brim of his hat to peer at me.

‘Let’s get this done,’ I said, and started walking. Beneath desert robes the copper box, the gun, and the view-ring all rubbed at me, uncomfortable in the heat. It seemed unlikely that any of them would offer salvation.

Broad streets, where the wind scoured only a whisper of sand, brought us past bathhouse and library, law court and gallery, to a steeper dip where beneath the steel sky of the desert a wide and flawless lake reflected the caliph’s palace. Between us and the waters the pillared ruins of an amphitheatre rose from a scattering of rubble. Some work of the Romans, unimaginably old.

‘And what’s that?’ I pointed to a tall tower, the tallest in Hamada, set apart from the palace yet casting its dark shadow down across high walls into the heart of the compound.

‘Mathema,’ the old rogue said over his gums.

‘Qalasadi?’ I jabbed my finger at it.

‘Qalasadi.’ He nodded.

‘We’ll go there first,’ I said. Revenge had brought me here. The need to strike back when struck. Ibn Fayed owed me a debt of blood, but Qalasadi, his debt had a face on it and I would settle that first.

‘Go where you like, Sir Jorg,’ Marco said. ‘My business is at the palace.’

‘And what business is that, Marco? Come now, friend, you can tell Brother Jorg. We’ve travelled many a mile together.’ I showed him my teeth.

‘We’re not brothers-’

I fished into my robes. For an instant Marco flinched, as if he thought I would pull a knife on him. Instead I drew out Yusuf’s die.

‘On the road we are family, Brother Marco.’

I knelt and set the die spinning on the flagstones, whirling like a top on one corner.

‘I’ve come to collect a debt,’ he said. ‘From Ibn Fayed.’

The die rattled across the ground. A two.

‘Go with God, Brother Marco,’ I said.

I came alone to the door of the mathmagicans’ tower. No guard stood there, no windows overlooked it. The tower reached a hundred yards above me, an elegant spire, maybe twenty yards in diameter at the base. The first windows opened about halfway up its length, stepping in a spiral toward the heights of the spire, the stone too smooth for scorpion or spider.

The door had been fashioned of black crystal, flaws glimmering in its upper layers where the sun reached in. I knocked and where my knuckles struck, a circle of numbers appeared, written in gleams, the ten digits the Arabs first gave us.

‘A puzzle?’

I touched one digit, the ‘two’, another grew brighter, the ‘four’. I touched that. The circle vanished. I waited. Nothing.

A harder knock, but my knuckles made no sound against the crystal, just summoned the circle of numbers again. I pressed, chasing the glowing numbers in ever-quicker circles, trying to read the patterns, keeping track for a few seconds then losing the thread.

‘Damn it, I didn’t come to play games.’

The place lay deserted. A few figures moved among the distant ruins, Marco and other visitors toiled up the broad steps before Fayed’s palace, and a thin crowd loitered around the sandy margins of the lake, but not a soul lay within earshot.

I tried again. Then again. Clearly whatever it took to be a mathmagician I wasn’t made of the stuff. The glowing numbers danced their perimeter, fading as I watched. I scowled at the door, and that didn’t work either. More out of frustration than judgment I knocked again and as soon as the number circle appeared I tore the view-ring from its thong and slapped it dead centre. Immediately the procession of numerals sped up, sped again, and blurred into a circle of light. The door began to emit a hum, high pitched and rapidly scaling the octaves. Small lightnings started to fork through the crystal, spreading from the points where the view-ring touched it. My fingertips buzzed with the vibration. Hum became whine became shriek. Vertical became horizontal. And I found myself trying to rise amongst jagged black chunks of what had been a most impressive door.

With ringing ears and numb fingers I located the view-ring amid the sparkling rubble and hastened through the doorway. A corridor led straight ahead, appearing to divide the ground floor. At the far end I glimpsed steps — presumably the stair that wound around just inside the tower walls. Half a dozen young Liban men in white tunics headed toward me from arches to either side of the corridor, their looks those of scholars, astonishment rather than anger on their faces. I drew my knife and let the sleeve of my robes fall around it. Looks can be deceiving.

‘Something’s wrong with your door.’ Without pause I strode between them.

On reaching the stairs, which led off down and up, I chose up. I retied the view-ring on its thong, fumbling the knots, fingers still buzzing.

I had it from Omal that the mathema was more by way of a university, a place of study for the mathmagicians. Qalasadi was some sort of teacher. A tutor to the caliph’s children, a guide for students come to study at Hamada, an arbiter in the affairs of lesser lights amongst the numbered men, as they liked to call themselves. The tower was not his home, not his domain or fiefdom, but even so, somehow I thought I might find him at the top.

Equations kept pace with me as I walked the worn steps, climbing the mathema tower knife in hand. Some ran the full length of the spiral stair, others started and ended within a few yards to be replaced by fresh calculations, all carved into the stonework then inlaid with black wax to make them legible. I passed door after door, each set with a letter from the Greek, starting with ‘alpha’, next ‘beta’. By ‘mu’ I had reached the first of the windows and a cooling breeze spiralled up with me. I passed two mathmagicians coming down, both old men, wrinkled like prunes and so deep in conversation I could have been on fire and gone unremarked.

And finally, where the last window offered Hamada in a broad, bright panorama, the steps ended at a door set with ‘omega’, inlaid in brass into the mahogany. I gave myself a moment. I’d rather climb mountains than steps.

I let my sleeve hide the blade once more and pushed the door. It swung open with a soft complaint of hinges and there, leaning over a wide and glossy desk at the centre of a single circular room, Qalasadi, Yusuf, and Kalal. They looked up in unison and the moment of surprise written on those three faces proved all the reward I could want for my long climb. Yusuf and Kalal immediately bent their head back to the papers as if hunting for an error amidst their scratchings. Both men clutched quills, their fingers stained as black as their teeth.

‘Jorg.’ Qalasadi recovered his composure in the space between two breaths. ‘Our projections indicated the front door would take you considerably longer to pass.’

Yusuf and Kalal exchanged glances, as if asking what other errors may have crept into their calculations.

‘Your projections? For men who want to put out the Builders’ eyes you surely sound a lot like them.’

Qalasadi spread his hands, empty, ink-stained. ‘It’s our actions that define us, not the manner in which we reach the decision to act.’

I threw the dagger, moving my arm across my body so the action would not be telegraphed. The blade bedded in the gleaming table, hilt quivering, a hand’s breadth from Qalasadi’s groin. I’d been aiming for roughly that spot but it was a tricky throw, a flat angle and an awkward motion. I’d thought it a reasonable chance the knife would glance off and end up in his scrotum.

‘Is that on your papers? Had you figured that one out?’ I strode toward the table. ‘Did you have the knife’s trajectory plotted?’

Qalasadi put a hand on Yusuf’s shoulder. The younger men ceased their scribbling and looked up, still hung with frowns as if more concerned by their calculus than my sharp edges.

‘Can I get you a drink, King Jorg?’ Qalasadi said. ‘It’s a long climb up all those steps.’ The ivory wand he’d used to write in the dust of my grandfather’s courtyard lay in his hand now.

I came to the table, just its width between us, my knife skewering a sheath of papers, all covered with tight-packed symbology, and spoke in a calm voice, as reasonable men do. ‘Part of being in the business of prediction, a large part perhaps, must be the art of giving the impression that things are unfolding according to your expectations. A victim who believes himself anticipated at every turn is not only crippled by uncertainty but also easier to predict.’

All three men watched me without reply. No sign of nerves, save perhaps Qalasadi’s fingers rubbing at the short curls of his beard, and a faint sheen of sweat across Kalal’s brow. Yusuf had taken the combs from his hair and bound it all back, tight to the skull. He looked older now, more clever.

‘You must have known I would decide to hit the table with that throw or you would have tried to stop me … unless you didn’t know I would throw the knife at all?’ I found myself digging into the crippling uncertainty I’d just spoken of.

‘And the drink?’ Qalasadi said.

I did have a thirst on me, but that was too predictable. Besides, you don’t cross nations to hunt down a poisoner and then drink what he gives you. ‘Why did you try to kill my mother’s kin, Qalasadi? A friend told me the mathmagicians have their own purposes. Was it just to please Ibn Fayed? To keep his good will and stop him turfing you out of this rather fine oasis?’

Qalasadi rubbed his chin across the top of his palm, closing his fingers about his jaw in consideration. He had the same even pace to him that he showed in Castle Morrow. I had liked him from the start. Perhaps that’s why I showed off for him, maybe gave him the information he needed to deduce my story. Even now, with vengeance a sword thrust away, I had no hatred for him.

‘It’s an irony of our times that men seeking peace must make war,’ he said. ‘You know it yourself, Jorg. The Hundred War must be won if it is to stop. Won on the battlefield, won on the floor of Congression. These things are of a piece.’

‘And Ibn Fayed is the man to win it?’ I asked.

‘In five years Ibn Fayed will vote for Orrin of Arrow at Congression. The Earl Hansa would not. The vote will be close. The Prince of Arrow will bring peace. Millions will prosper. Hundreds of thousands will live instead of dying in war. Our order chose the many over the few.’

‘That was a mistake. They were my few.’ A heat rose in me.

‘Mistakes can be made.’ He nodded, thoughtful. ‘Even with enchantment to tame the variables the sum of the world is a complex one.’

‘So you still intend to gift the realm of Morrow to Ibn Fayed? To let the Moorish tide back yet again into the Horse Coast?’ I watched Qalasadi, his eyes, his mouth, the motion of his hands, everything, just to try and read something of the man. It maddened me to have them stand there so calm, as if they knew at each moment what was on my tongue to speak, in my mind to do. And yet did they? Was it part of their show of smokes and mirrors?

‘We intend that the Prince of Arrow win the empire throne at Congression in the 104th year of Interregnum.’ Yusuf spoke for the first time, his voice edged with just a touch of strain. ‘The Congression of year 100 will be a stalemate: that cannot be changed.’

‘It may be that the caliph’s domains can more easily be expanded in other directions.’ Kalal spoke, his high voice at odds with a serious mouth. ‘Maroc may fall more easily than Morrow or Kordoba.’

The amount of relief that suggestion brought surprised me. ‘I came to kill you, Qalasadi. To lay waste to your domain and leave behind ruination.’

He had the grace or commonsense not to smirk at my apocalyptic turn of phrase. Most likely they knew of Gelleth even in Afrique. Perhaps they saw the glare of it, rising above the horizon. Lord knows it burned bright enough, and high? It scorched heaven!

‘I hope that you will not,’ said Qalasadi.

‘Hope?’ I drew my robe aside, setting hand to hilt. ‘You don’t know?’

‘All men need hope, Jorg. Even men of numbers.’ Yusuf pressed a smile onto his lips, his voice soft, the voice of a man ready to die.

‘And what do your equations say of me, poisoner?’ My sword stood between us now. I had no recollection of drawing it. The rage I needed flared and died, flared again. I saw my grandfather and grandmother laid out pale on the deathbed, Uncle Robert in a warrior’s tomb, hands folded across the blade upon his chest. I saw Qalasadi’s smile in a sunlit courtyard. Yusuf wiping the sea from his face. ‘Salty!’ he had said. ‘Let’s hope the world has better to offer than that, no?’ Words spoken at sea.

I slammed my sword hilt onto the table’s polished wood. ‘What do your calculations say?’ A roar that made them flinch.

‘Two,’ Qalasadi said.

‘Two?’ A laugh tore out of me, sharp-edged, full of hurting.

He bowed his head. ‘Two.’

Yusuf ran a finger across pages of scrawl. ‘Two.’

‘It’s what the magic gives us,’ Qalasadi said.

Something cold tingled at my cheekbones. ‘Why two?’

And the mathmagician frowned, as he had in the courtyard at Castle Morrow, as if trying once again to remember that lost sensation, to recall a forgotten taste.

‘Two friends lost in dry-lands? Two friends to be made in the desert? Two years away from your throne? Two women who will own your heart? Two decades you will live?’ The magic lies in the first number, the mathematics in the second.’

‘And what is the second number?’ Anger left me, the remaining image two sad mounds in the dirt of the Iberico, fading.

‘The second number,’ Qalasadi said, without checking his papers, ‘is 333000054500.’

‘Now that is a number! None of these twos, threes, and fourteens you plague me with. What the hell does it mean?’

‘It is, I hope, the coordinates where you abandoned Michael.’