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‘Makes Hodd Town look like a pile of offal,’ I said.
‘Where?’ Sunny asked.
‘Capital city of the Renar Highlands,’ I said. ‘The only city really. More of a big town. Well a town anyhow.’
‘The Renar Highlands?’
‘Now you’re just trying to irk me.’ I didn’t think he was, though. He blinked and looked away from Albaseat’s towers.
‘Oh that Hood Town, my apologies.’ It wasn’t often that Sunny remembered I was the king of anywhere and it always left him looking surprised.
‘Hodd Town!’
The guards at the city gates let us pass without question. It wasn’t often that I remembered Sunny was Greyson Landless, royal guard from Earl Hansa’s court.
Albaseat not only left Hodd Town looking like a tumbledown village, it made Crath City look shabby in comparison. The Moors had ruled Albaseat for generations and left their mark everywhere, from the great stone halls that stabled grandfather’s cavalry to the high towers from whose minarets you could look out over the source of his wealth, laid out in many shades of green. I did just that, paying a copper to climb the winding stair of the Fayed Tower, a public building at the heart of the great plaza before the new cathedral. Sunny stayed at ground level, watching his horse and Balky from the tower’s shade.
Even a hundred yards above the plaza’s baking flagstones it felt oven hot. The breeze through the minaret was worth a copper on its own. Without the slow green waters of the Jucca the fields would be desert. The green gave over to parched browns as the land rose and I could see the first rolling steps of the Iberico Hills away to the north. Whatever taint they carried seemed to stain the air itself, turning it a dirty yellow where the horizon started to reclaim the hills.
I leaned out, hands on the windowsill, to spot Sunny below. The city marched off in all directions, broad and ordered streets lined with tall, whitewashed houses. To the west grander mansions, to the east the low homes and tight alleys of the poor. My grandfather’s people living in the peace of his reign, his nobles plotting, merchants trading, blacksmith, tanner, and slaughterman hard at work, whores aback, maids aknee, washerwomen hauling loads to the river-side meadows where horsemen trained their steeds, the pulse of life, an old and complex dance of many partners. Quick, quick, slow.
To leave all this behind and dare old poisons, to risk an end like those I had given the people of Gelleth, made no sense. And still I would do it. Not for the hollowness inside me, nor the weight of the copper box that held what had been taken, not for the promise of old magics and the power they offered, but just to know, just to do more than skitter about on the surface of this world. I wanted more than I could see from a tower, however high, or even from the eyes the Builders set among the stars.
Perhaps I just wanted to know what it was that I wanted. Maybe that is all that growing up means.
Slow steps brought me from the tower, lost in thought. I waved Sunny to me and bid him lead me to the Lord House.
‘They won’t want the likes of—’ He glanced back at me, taking in the fine cloak, the silver-chased breastplate. ‘Oh.’ And remembering that I was a king, albeit of a realm he hardly knew of, he led on.
We passed the cathedral, the finest I’d seen, a stone confection reaching for blue skies. The saints watched me from their niches and galleries. I felt their disapproval, as if they turned to stare once we passed. The crowds thronged there, before the cathedral steps, perhaps drawn by the cool promise of the great hall within. Sunny and I elbowed our way through, pushing aside the occasional priest and monk as we went.
I came sweating to the doors of the Lord House. I would have stripped to the waist and let Balky carry my gear but perhaps that might have created a poor impression. The guards admitted us, a boy taking our animals, and we sat on velvet-cushioned chairs whilst a flunky in foolish amounts of lace and silk went to announce our arrival to the provost.
The man returned several minutes later with a polite cough to indicate that I might put down the large ornamental vase I had been studying and follow him. When my hands are idle they find mischief of one sort or other. I let the vase slip, caught it an inch from the floor and set it down. Polite coughs leave me wanting to choke out a cough of a different sort. I left Sunny to return the ornament to its niche and bade the servant lead on.
A short corridor took us to the doors of the reception chamber. Like the foyer, every inch of it stood tiled in geometric patterns, blue and white and black, fiendishly complex. Qalasadi would have enjoyed it: even a mathmagician would be hard-pressed to tease out all the secrets it held. High windows caught what breeze was to be had and gave a relief from the heat of the day.
The flunky knocked three times with a little rod he seemed to carry for that sole purpose. A pause and we entered.
The room beyond took my breath, complex in detail but a sparse and simple beauty on the grand scale, an architecture of numbers, very different from the gothic halls of my lands or the dull boxes the Builders left us. The provost sat at the far end in a high-backed ebony chair. Apart from two guards at the door and a scribe at a small desk beside the provost’s seat, the long chamber lay empty and my footsteps echoed as I approached.
She looked up from her scroll while I closed the last few yards, a hunched old woman with black and glittering eyes, reminding me of a crow gone to grey and tatters.
‘Honorous Jorg Ancrath, King of the Renar Highlands. Grandson to Earl Hansa.’ She introduced me to herself.
I gave her the small fraction of a bow her rank commanded and answered in the local custom. ‘You have the right of it, madam.’
‘We’re honoured to welcome you to Albaseat, King Jorg,’ she said through thin, dry lips and the scribe scratched the words across his parchment.
‘It’s a fine city. If I could carry it I’d take it with me.’
Again the scratching of the quill – my words falling so quickly into posterity.
‘What are your plans, King Jorg? I hope we can tempt you to stay? Two days would be sufficient to prepare an official banquet in your honour. Many of the region’s merchants would fight for the opportunity to bend your ear, and our nobility would compete to host you at their mansions, even though I hear you are already promised to Miana of Wennith. And of course Cardinal Hencom will require you at mass.’
I took pleasure in not waiting for the scribe to catch up, but resisted the temptation to pepper my reply with rare and difficult words or random noises for him to puzzle over.
‘Perhaps on my return, Provost. I plan first to visit the Iberico Hills. I have an interest in the promised lands: my father’s kingdom has several regions where the fire from the thousand suns still burns.’
I heard the quill falter at that. The old woman, though, did not flinch.
‘The fire that burns the promised lands is unseen and gives no heat, King Jorg, but it sears flesh just the same. Better to learn of such places in the library.’
She made no talk of postponing my trip until after her nobles and merchants had taken their bites of me. If I were bound for the Iberico Hills such efforts would wasted – money thrown into the grave as the local saying had it.
‘Libraries are a good place to start journeys, Provost. In fact I have come to you hoping that Albaseat might have in one of its libraries a better map of the Iberico than the one copied from my grandfather’s scrolls. I would count it a great favour if such a map were provided to me …’
I wondered how I looked to her, how young in my armour and confidence. From a distance the gaps between things are reduced. From the far end of her tunnel of years I wondered how different I looked from a child, from a toddler daring a high fall with not the slightest understanding of consequence.
‘I would advise beginning and ending this journey among the scrolls, King Jorg.’ She shifted in her chair, plagued no doubt by the aching of joints. ‘But when age speaks to youth it goes unheard. When do you plan to leave?’
‘With the dawn, Provost.’
‘I will set my scribe to searching for a map and have whatever he finds waiting for you at the North Gate by first light.’
‘My thanks.’ I inclined my head. ‘I hope to have some new tales to tell at your banquet when I return.’
She dismissed me with an impatient wave. She didn’t expect to see me again.
6 (#ulink_6e0bbbda-fbc1-5ce2-be4c-b6dd3b104e9d)
Five years earlier
Sunny and I made our way to the North Gate of Albaseat in the grey light that steals over the world before dawn. The streets thronged. In summer the Horse Coast bakes and only the earliest hours of the day offer respite. By noon the locals would retreat behind white walls, beneath the terracotta tiles, and sleep until the sun slipped from its zenith.
In the lanes leading to the gate and the wide plaza that lay before it, business had already started. Tavern doors stood open while men bore kegs in upon their shoulders, or lowered barrels into the cellars by the street-traps. Grey-faced women emptied slops from buckets into the gutters. We passed a smithy open to the road so that passersby could see the hammering and quenching and be tempted to purchase what took such sweat and force to craft. A lad hunched at the forge, poking life back into fires banked overnight.
‘Oh, to be still abed.’ Sunny yanked his packhorse away from some tempting refuse.
A cry turned us back toward the blacksmith’s. We had gone only a dozen steps beyond it. The smith’s boy lay in the street now. He pushed himself up from the flagstones, face grazed, shaking his head, unsteady. The smith paced out from his workshop and kicked the boy hard enough to lift him off the ground. The air left his lungs with a whuff. Under the dirt the boy’s hair looked fair, almost golden, rare this far south.
‘My money’s on the big fellow,’ I said. My brother Will had such hair.
‘He’s a big one, all right.’ Sunny nodded. The smith wore just a leather apron from shoulder to knee and leggings held up with rope. The muscle in his arms gleamed. Swinging a four-pound hammer from dawn till dusk will put a lot of meat on a man.
The child lay on his back, one arm half-raised, too winded to groan, a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. I thought he might be eight, maybe nine.
‘Do I have to kick every lesson into you?’ The smith didn’t yell but he had the voice of a man who speaks over the anvil. He drove his foot into the boy’s head, the force rolling him once. Blood on the smith’s boot now, and staining the boy’s hair.
‘Ah, hell.’ Sunny shook his head.
We watched as the smith stepped in closer.
‘I should stop this,’ Sunny said, reluctance in every line of him. Something in the smith’s face put me in mind of Rike. Not a man to get in the way of.
‘Boys get kicked every day,’ I said. ‘Children die every day.’ Some have their heads broken against milestones.
The smith loomed above the boy, who lay curled now as if hunched against the pain. The man drew back for another kick, then paused, reaching a decision. He lifted his boot to stamp the life out of the lad. I guessed he thought him past use, best to finish him off.
‘They don’t die every day with one of Earl Hansa’s guards watching. The Earl wouldn’t want this.’ But still Sunny didn’t move. Instead he shouted. ‘You, smith, stop!’
The man paused, his heel a few inches above the side of the boy’s head.
‘I’ve picked up strays before and they both died,’ I said past a bitter taste. I saw blood in golden curls and felt the thorns’ tight hold. I learned this lesson young, a sharp lesson taught in blood and rain. The path to the empire gates lay at my back. A man diverted from that path by strays, burdened by others’ needs, would never sit upon the all-throne. Orrin of Arrow would save the children, but they would not save him.
‘He’s a street cur,’ the smith said. ‘Too stupid to learn. I’ve fed him for a month. Kept him under my roof. He’s mine to end.’ He brought his heel down hard, his weight upon it.
A loud retort of leather on stone. The boy rolled clear but lacked the strength to get up. The smith roared a curse – it drowned my own – the burn that stretched across my face from chin to brow as if a red-hot hand had branded me, now burned again with the same pain that it first gave. I’ve been told that conscience speaks in a small voice at the back of the mind, clear to some, to others muffled and easy to ignore. I never heard that it burned across a man’s face in red agony. Still, pain or no pain, I don’t like to be led or to be pushed. Perhaps I selected Balky as a kindred spirit for I took direction as poorly, even from my own conscience on the rare occasions it made a bid for control.
Sunny passed me, aimed for the smith. He hadn’t even drawn his sword.
‘I’ll buy him from you!’ I shouted. Sunny could come in handy and I guessed the smith would break his arms off before the idiot thought to reach for his blade.
That made the smith stop in his tracks, Sunny too, with a sigh of relief, and it quieted the pain. The smith eyed the silver on my breastplate, the cut of my cloak, and thought perhaps that his satisfaction might be worth less than the contents of my coin pouch.
‘What’s your offer?’
‘A contest of your choosing. You win and I pay you this for the boy.’ I held a gold ducet before my face between index and middle finger. ‘Lose and you get nothing for him.’ I magicked the coin away.
He had a good frown at that. The boy managed another roll and fetched up against the wall of the harness shop opposite.
‘Perhaps you think you can hold a hot iron longer than I can?’ I suggested.
The frown deepened into crevasses topped by the black band of his brows. ‘Strength,’ he said. ‘Who can hold the anvil overhead the longest.’
I glanced at the anvil a few yards back into the smithy. Perhaps two men of regular height might weigh as much. ‘Rules?’ I asked.
‘Rules? No rules!’ He laughed. He flexed an arm and muscle mounded on muscle. The Great Ronaldo would be impressed if Taproot’s circus ever made it to Albaseat. ‘Strength! That’s the rule.’
‘Show me how it’s done, then.’ I walked into the smithy. The glow of the forge fire and of two smoking lamps gave enough light to avoid the workbenches and various buckets. The place had a pleasing smell of char and iron and sweat. It reminded me of Norwood, of Mabberton, of a dozen other battles.
The smith followed. I set a hand to his chest as he passed me. ‘Your name?’
‘Jonas.’
He walked around the anvil. I glanced at the ceiling where tools hung from the beams. He would have just enough room. I would have plenty as he stood a hand taller than me.
Sunny stepped up behind me.
‘The boy’s still alive, I take it? I’m not doing this for a corpse.’
‘He’s alive. Might be hurt bad.’
Jonas crouched beside the anvil. He closed one big hand around the horn and set the heel of his other hand beneath the lip of the anvil’s face.
‘You’ve done this before.’ I gave him my grin.
‘Yes.’ He showed his teeth. ‘I can taste your gold already, boy.’
He tensed, building for the explosion that would drive the ironwork upward. That’s when I hit him, with a hammer from the nearest bench. I struck the side of his head just by the eye. The noise wasn’t dissimilar from his boot hitting the child. The hammer came away bloody and Jonas pitched forward over his anvil.
‘What?’ Sunny asked, as if somehow he hadn’t seen it in the half-light.
I shrugged. ‘No rules. You heard him.’
We left them both lying in their blood. Whatever fire ate at my face I didn’t need another stray, and even if the boy could walk, taking him to the Iberico would be more cruel than another month in Jonas’s care. At least the boy was sitting up and looking about, which was more than could be said for his master.
A corner and another street brought us to the plaza. We pushed a path through bakers’ boys with trays of loaves overhead, between laden farm carts ready to be offloaded onto the stalls already set to either side of the gate towers. The place heaved, late arriving traders made haste to erect their tables and awnings, and the townsfolk came mob-handed to buy, coins clicking in their hip pouches, eyes darting, hunting bargains in the predawn grey.
‘We’ll be lucky to find the provost’s man in all this.’ Sunny snatched at a passing bread roll and missed.
‘Have some faith, man,’ I said. ‘How hard is it to spot a king?’ I looped Balky’s reins over his pack-saddle and ran both hands through my hair, throwing the length of it wide across my shoulders and back.
We reached the gates, the smoothness of the wall stretching above us to the paling sky. Hooves clattered across the flagstones as we led our animals beneath and traversed a dark tunnel through ten yards of wall.
‘I’m to ride with you.’ A voice from the black shadows to the side of the exit.
‘There you go, Sunny, we are known.’ I turned and gave him my grin. The glow from the east caught the lines of his face.
The stranger broke from the shadows, a black clot moving to join us. A woman.
She drew close, her horse a tall black stallion, a dark cloak wrapping her as if she expected to be cold.
‘Did you bring a map for us?’ I held out my hand.
‘I am the map,’ she said. I could make out only the curve of her smile.
‘And how did you know us?’ I asked, returning my hand to the reins.
She said nothing, only touched her fingers to her cheek. My scars burned for a moment, another echo of Gog’s fire no doubt for I had surely forgotten how to blush long before.
Sunny held his tongue, but I could feel the smugness radiating off him behind me.
‘I’m Honorous Jorg Ancrath, king of somewhere you’ve never heard of. The grinning idiot behind me is Greyson Landless, bastard son of some venerable line that holds a few dusty acres along the Horse Coast best used for growing rocks. You can call me Jorg and him Sunny. And we’re walking.’
‘Lesha. One sixteenth of the Provost’s horde of grandchildren.’
‘Her granddaughter? I’m surprised. I had the impression that the Provost wasn’t expecting to see us return.’
