Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3)

Makin eased his horse through the ranks to reach us. ‘Many happy returns, King Jorg!’


‘We’ll see,’ I said. It all felt a little too comfortable. Happy families with my tiny queen above. Birthday greetings and a golden escort down below. Too much soft living and peace can choke a man sure as any rope.

Makin raised an eyebrow but said nothing, his smile still in place.

‘Your advisors are ready to ride, sire.’ Kent had taken to calling me sire and seemed happier that way.

‘You should be taking wise heads not men-at-arms,’ Makin said.

‘And who might you be bringing, Lord Makin?’ I had decided to let him select the single advisor his vote entitled him to bring to Congression.

He pointed across the yard to a scrawny old man, pinch-faced, a red cloak lifting around him as the wind swirled. ‘Osser Gant. Chamberlain to the late Baron of Kennick. When I’m asked what my vote will cost, Osser’s the man who will know what is and what isn’t of worth to Kennick.’

I had to smile at that. He might pretend it wasn’t so, but part of old Makin wanted to play out his new role as one of the Hundred in grand style. Whether he would model his rule on my father’s or that of the Prince of Arrow remained unclear.

‘There’s not much of Kennick that ain’t marsh, and what the Ken Marshes need is timber. Stilts, so your muddy peasants’ houses don’t sink overnight. And you get that from me now. So don’t let your man forget it.’

Makin coughed as if some of that marsh had got into his chest. ‘So who exactly are you taking as advisors?’

It hadn’t been a difficult choice. Coddin’s final trip came when they carried him down from the mountain after the battle for the Haunt. He wouldn’t travel again. I had grey heads aplenty at court, but none whose contents I valued. ‘You’re looking at two of them.’ I nodded to Sirs Kent and Riccard. ‘Rike and Grumlow are waiting outside, Keppen and Gorgoth with them.’

‘Christ, Jorg! You can’t bring Rike! This is the emperor’s court we’re talking about! And Gorgoth? He doesn’t even like you.’

I drew my sword, a smooth glittering motion, and hundreds of golden helms turned to follow its arc. I held the blade high, turning it this way and that to catch the sun. ‘I’ve been to Congression before, Makin. I know what games they play there. This year we’re going to play a new game. Mine. And I’m bringing the right pieces.’





2


Several hundred horsemen throw up a lot of dust. We left the Matteracks in a shroud of our own making, the Gilden Guard stretched out across half a mile of winding mountain path. Their gleam didn’t survive long and we made a grey troop as we came to the plains.

Makin and I rode together along the convolutions of the track on which we once met the Prince of Arrow, headed for my gates. Makin looked older now, a little iron in the black, worry lines across his brow. On the road Makin had always seemed happy. Since we came to wealth and fortune and castles he had taken to worry.

‘Will you miss her?’ he asked. For an hour just the clip and clop of hooves on stony ground, and then from nowhere, ‘Will you miss her?’

‘I don’t know.’ I’d grown fond of my little queen. When she wanted to she could excite me, as most women could: my eye is not hard to please. But I didn’t burn for her, didn’t need to have her, to keep her in my sight. More than fondness, I liked her, respected her quick mind and ruthless undercurrents. But I didn’t love her, not the irrational foolish love that can overwhelm a man, wash him away and strand him on unknown shores.

‘You don’t know?’ he asked.

‘We’ll find out, won’t we?’ I said.

Makin shook his head.

‘You’re hardly the champion of true love, Lord Makin,’ I told him. In the six years since we came to the Haunt he had kept no woman with him, and if he had a mistress or even a favourite whore he had them well hidden.

He shrugged. ‘I lost myself on the road, Jorg. Those were black years for me. I’m not fit company for any woman I’d desire.’

‘What? And I am?’ I turned in the saddle to watch him.

‘You were young. A boy. Sin doesn’t stick to a child’s skin the way it clings to a man’s.’

My turn to shrug. He had seemed happier when murdering and robbing than he did thinking back on it in his vaulted halls. Perhaps he just needed something to worry about again, so he could stop worrying.