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 hear
tbeat.”
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.
43
“Explain it to me again.” Makin leaned forward in the saddle to be heard above the rain. “Your father stabs you, but it’s to Count Renar’s castle we’re going so you can cut yourself some revenge?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s not even the Count we’re after. Not him that sent your sainted mother on her way, but some old charm seller?”
“Right.”
“Who had you and the Nuban at his mercy when you first ran from home. And let you go without so much as a beating?”
“I think he put a spell on the Nuban’s crossbow,” I said.
“Well, if he did, it must have been to prevent it missing. The Nuban could stop an army with that thing. Given the right spot.”
“There wasn’t much that the Nuban missed, true enough,” I said.
“So?”
“So?”
“So, I don’t understand why we’re out here in the pissing rain on stolen nags, riding into the worst kind of danger.”
I rubbed my jaw where he’d hit me. It felt sore. The coldness of the rain did little to ease it.
“What’s the world about, Makin?”
He looked at me, eyes narrowed against the wetness of the wind.
“I never had time for those philosophers of yours, Jorg. I’m a soldier, and that’s the end of it.”
“So you’re a soldier. What’s the world about?”
“War.” He set a hand to the hilt of his sword, unconscious of the action. “The Hundred War.”
“And what’s that about, soldier?” I asked.
“A hundred noble-born fighting across as many lands for the Empire throne.”
“That’s what I always thought,” I said.
The rain came down harder, bouncing off the backs of my hands with a sting as if it carried ice. Ahead, at a place where the road forked, I could see a glow, three of them in fact, three patches of warm light.
“Tavern up ahead.” I spat water.
“So aren’t we fighting for the Empire then?” Makin kept pace, though his horse slipped in the mud torrent at the roadside.
“I killed Price here,” I said. “Outside this inn. They called it The Three Frogs back then.”
“Price?”
“Little Rikey’s big brother,” I said. “You never met him. Made Rike look like a gentleman.”
“Oh right, I remember the story. The brothers told it around the fire once or twice when Rikey was off on some private whoring.”
We reached the inn. They still called it The Three Frogs if the sign was anything to go by.
“I’ll bet they didn’t tell you the whole story.”
“Brained him with a rock, didn’t you? Now you mention it, none of them was too keen to talk about it.”
“Me and the Nuban had come down out of the highlands. We didn’t speak the whole time. I had Corion in my head, or the touch of him, like a black hole behind my eyes.
“We didn’t expect to see the brothers. We’d arranged to meet a week earlier on the other side of Ancrath. But I’d called the Nuban on his debt, and off we’d gone.
“Anyhow, there they were. A score of horses on the road, the flame just starting to lick the thatch. Burlow over by that tree, there, with a keg of ale all to his-self. Young Sim, axe on high, chasing a pig. And out comes Price, bending low to fit through the door, smoke billowing around him as if he was the devil himself, and dragging the landlord, one hand round the man’s neck, not choking him, mind: Price could get his mitts all the way round a man’s neck without so much as pinching.
“Price sees me and it’s like something explodes inside him. He knocks the landlord against the doorframe, and there’s brains everywhere. Keeps his stare nailed to me the whole time.
“‘You little bastard. I’m going to open you up.’
“He didn’t shout it, but there wasn’t one of the brothers who didn’t hear him. Me and the Nuban were thirty yards off still, and it was like he’d hissed it into my ear.
“ ‘With a big crossbow like that, I bet you could hit him between the eyes from here,’ I told the Nuban.
“‘No,’ he said. Didn’t sound like the Nuban though. Sounded like a dry voice I’d heard before. ‘They have to see you do it.’
“Price came on at a stroll. I didn’t have any illusions that I could stop him, but running wasn’t an option, so I thought I might as well have a go.
“I picked up a stone. A smooth one. Fit my hand like it was made for me.
“ ‘David had a sling,’ Price said. He had an ugly smile on him.
“ ‘Goliath was worth one.’
“He was only
strolling, but thirty yards never seemed to vanish so fast.
“‘What’s got you so riled anyhow? You missed the Nuban that much?’ I thought I might as well find out what I was going to die for.
“ ‘I . . .’ He seemed foxed at that. Had a distant look, like he was trying to see something I couldn’t.
“I took the moment to let fly. With a stone like that you can’t miss. It hit him in the right eye. Really hard. Even a monster like Price notices that sort of thing. He made an awful howling. You’d have shat yourself if you heard it, Makin, if you’d known he was after you.
“So, I crouched down, and my hands just found another couple of stones, each as perfect as the first one.
“Price is still hopping about, with a hand pressed to his eye and a goo leaking past his fingers.
“ ‘Hey, Goliath!’
“That got his attention. I crack my arm out and let go a second stone. Hits him in the good eye. He roars like a mad beast and charges. I put that last stone through his front teeth and down the back of his throat.
“I tell you, Makin, they were all impossible throws. Not lucky, impossible. I’ve never thrown like that since.
“Anyhow, I step out of his way, and he blunders on for ten yards before going down, choking. I’d put that third one right into his windpipe.
“I pick up the biggest rock I can from that drystone wall over there, and I follow him. He’d probably have choked to death by himself. He had that hanged-man purple look by the time I got there. But I don’t like to leave things to chance.
“He’s half-crawling, blind. And the stink of him, soiled most every way there is. I almost felt sorry for the bastard.
“I didn’t think his skull would break first time. But it did.”
Makin, stepped off his horse, ankle-deep into mud. “We could go inside.”
I didn’t feel the weather any more. I felt the heat of the day I killed Price. The smoothness of the small stones, the coarse weight of the rock I’d used to end it.
“It was Corion that guided my hand. And I think it was Sageous who set Price on me. Father reckons the dream-witch serves him, but that’s not the way of it. Sageous saw that Corion had sunk his hooks into me, he saw he’d lost his new pawn’s heir, so he infected Price’s dreams and fanned the hatred there just a little bit. It wouldn’t have taken much.
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