The Complete Broken Empire Trilogy: Prince of Thorns, King of Thorns, Emperor of Thorns

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.