Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3) (13 page)

I left the rope outside the bishop’s door and went back for a bale of straw and the soldiers’ lamp. The big horses that pulled the Pope’s carriage were housed in the stall closest to the stable doors. The larger of the two stepped out when I opened the stall, head down, looking more asleep than awake. I set a tether around his thick neck and left him standing there. He looked as though he would stand forever, or at least until someone gave him reason to move again.

I guessed Murillo’s men-at-arms would be billeted with Lord Ajah’s soldiers in the almonry for the night. At some point the monks would be on the move for the night prayer. I didn’t know when that might happen, nor truly care: I would just kill anyone in my way. The night still had a dream-like quality, perhaps the tail end of whatever poison Murillo had had the priest slip into the wine.

The swinging lamp chased thin shadows across the walls, copies of my limbs. I wedged handfuls of straw beneath the roof eaves where I could reach by climbing on barrel or sill. I wedged more between the split wood, stacked for winter against the chapterhouse wall. There’s not much to burn in a stone-built monastery, but the roof is always the best bet. And of course the guest quarters where the bishop slept offered more combustibles, with several tapestries, wooden furniture, shuttered windows. I went into the priests’ rooms, two priests in the chamber to the left of the bishop’s and three opposite. I cut their throats as they slept, a hand to the mouth while I tugged the sharpness of the leather-knife through skin, flesh, cartilage and tendon, through vein, artery, and wind-pipe. Men sliced like that make strange noises, like wet bellows pumping, and thrash before they die, but in the tangle of their bed linens it isn’t loud. I set straw and bedding ready to fire in the priests’ rooms too.

The high priest, the man who poisoned the cup, ready for Orscar, and drunk by me, I cut. I knew him to be dead but I cut his face and watched the flesh spring open beneath my blade. I sliced away his lips and let the ichor from his eyes, and I prayed, not to God but to whatever devil got to keep his soul, that he would carry the wounds with him into hell.

By the time I returned to Murillo’s chambers I was clothed once more, in the scarlet of priests’ blood. For a time I watched his bulk within the bed, a black lump in the embers’ glow, and listened to the wheeze in and the snored breath out. He posed a puzzle. A strong man who might wake easily. I didn’t want to have to kill him. That would be too kind.

In the end I lifted the covers with a gentle hand to expose his feet. I eased the rope beneath his ankles so a yard lay to one side and the rest to the other. A hangman’s noose is a simple knot, and I used the loop to draw his ankles together before making the knot tight against them. Then I left with the rope coil, playing it out as I went.

On my route back to the stables I set flame to the various piles of straw and bedding prepared earlier. At the stables I cut the rope and tied the end around the plough-horse’s neck. Before I led him away my eye lit upon a fallen hemp bag that lay on the floor with long dark roofing nails spilling from it. I stooped to pick it up.

Brother Gains, who Burlow set to watching the monastery, tells it that I came through the cemetery leading the biggest horse in the world and that all behind me the sky was lit with crimson and orange as fire leapt among the roofs of St Sebastian. He said I came naked and blood-wrapped and that he thought that it was me screaming, until I drew closer and he saw the grim seal of my mouth. Brother Gains, never a man given to religion, crossed himself and stepped aside without a word when I passed him. He watched the taut rope and shrank back further as the screams grew more loud and more piercing. And out of the darkness, lit by the flames of St Sebastian, Bishop Murillo came dragging, leaving his own trail of blood and skin on the grit and gravel of the cemetery path, white bone jutting from beneath the rope that bound his broken ankles.

I let Katherine share that night. I let her watch the brothers take to horse and ride whooping up the road toward the distant orange glow. She saw how I bound Murillo and how such terror ran in him that he forgot the agony of his shattered ankles. And I taught her how long it can take to hammer thirteen nails through a man’s skull, tap, tap, tap. How night shades into day and brothers gather once again, draped in loot and relics, black with char. The brothers formed my audience, some fascinated, like Rike with his new iron cross around his neck, set with a circle of red enamel at the crossing point – red for the blood of Christ. Some watched in horror, some with reserve, but they all watched, even the Nuban with nothing written on his face but the deep lines of sorrow.

‘We’re meat and dirt,’ I told them. ‘Nobody is clean and nothing can wash away our stain, not the blood of the innocent, not the blood of the lamb.’

And the brothers watched as a child learned what revenge can do, and what it can’t. Together Katherine and I watched that child learn how a simple iron nail can break a man’s mind apart, causing him to laugh, or cry, to lose some basic skill, some memory, or some restraint that made him human or gave a measure of dignity. I let Katherine see how something so simple as hammering home a nail can make such profound changes, to the bishop whose head is pierced, and to the boy who wields the hammer. And then I let her go. And she ran.

My dreams would be my own again. I was past games.

I woke to the sound of Makin’s voice.

‘Get up, Jorg.’

In the Haunt I have a page schooled in the art of discreet coughs and a gradual elevation in volume until his royal highness deigns to stir. In Lord Holland’s house it seemed ‘get up’ was the best on offer. I struggled to a sitting position, still in the clothes I wore the night before and more tired than when I fell into the bed.

‘And a very good morning to you, Lord Makin.’ My tone made it clear I meant none of it.

‘Miana’s here,’ he said.

‘Right.’ I rolled off the bed onto my feet, still woozy with sleep. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Not shaving?’ He offered me my cloak from the chair.

‘It’s the new style,’ I said, and went out into the corridor beyond, past the guards stationed outside the door. ‘Left or right?’

‘Left. She’s in the blue room.’

And yes, Lord Holland had a whole room, the size of a church hall, given over to displaying the colour blue. Miana stood, pale, pretty, her hands across the stretch of her belly, Marten beside her, leaning on a staff for support, his face black with bruising. At the rear of the room, ten men from my guard, cloaks clasped with the Ancrath boar in silver, stood tight around a black coffer, Sir Riccard with them.

I crossed the room and put my arms around Miana. I needed to touch her with my own hands after being locked into the dream with hands I didn’t own that tried to kill her. She put her head against my chest and said nothing. She smelled good. Of nothing specific – just good. Makin followed in behind and closed the door.

‘I saw the assassin,’ I said. ‘A white man, sent from the Vatican, or made to look as though he was. I saw you kill him. You and Marten both.’ I nodded to him. He knew what it meant to me.

Miana looked up, eyes wide with surprise starting to narrow with confusion, suspicion even. ‘How?’

‘I think he used dream-magics to make the castle sleep, even the trolls below. When you use those methods and spend your power so carelessly, you leave yourself open to others with such skills. Perhaps something of Sageous rubbed off on me when I killed him.’ I shrugged. ‘In any case, you know I have bad dreams. It might be easier to fall into such enchantments from a nightmare than from honest sleeping.’ I didn’t mention Katherine. It didn’t seem politic to remind her that another woman filled my nights.

‘We found these on him.’ Marten held out a scroll, three gold coins, and a signet ring.

The ring held an intaglio in a silver mount, carnelian worked with an intricate device, the papal seal with one bar. It gave the bearer an authority little short of a cardinal’s. I dropped it back into Marten’s palm and took the scroll.

‘A warrant for your death, Miana.’

‘Mine!’ Outrage rather than fear.

‘It’s very pretty.’ The scribe had illuminated it to a high order and not scrimped on the gold leaf. It must have taken a week’s work at least. ‘It’s possible they’re forgeries, but I doubt it. The trouble the forger would earn for themselves would outweigh any gain. And besides, the Pope does have good reason.’

Miana stepped back, her eyes blazing. ‘Good reason! What offence have I ever given the church?’ She clutched herself all the tighter.

‘It’s to punish me, my dear.’ I spread my hands to offer up my guilt. ‘The Vatican must have finally tied me to the sack of St Sebastian’s, and more importantly to them, tied me to the maiming of Bishop Murillo Ap Belpan.’

‘But you’re lord of Belpan now. That line is gone.’ Anger muddied her logic.

‘It’s probably the “bishop” part that has them upset,’ I said.

‘The warrant should be for you, then!’ Miana said.

‘The church frowns on killing kings. It goes against their views on divine right. They’d rather slap my wrist and show me to be penitent. If that fails then perhaps I might die of an ague over the winter, but nothing so obvious as a warranted assassin.’

‘What will we do?’ Marten asked. He held his voice calm but I think if I’d told him to take ten thousand men and lay siege to Roma, he would have left to do it without further question.

‘I think we should open the box,’ I said. ‘I hope somebody thought to bring the key.’

Miana fished the heavy piece of iron from her skirts and put it in my hand, still warm from her flesh. I waved the guards aside and fitted key to lock.

‘Some kind of weapon?’ Makin asked. He stood beside Miana now, an arm around her.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Some kind of weapon.’

I threw back the lid. Gold coins, stacked and tightly bound in columns, reached nearly to the lid, a sea of them, enough to buy Holland’s mansion ten times over.

‘That,’ said Makin, letting his hand fall from Miana’s shoulder as he stepped closer, ‘is a lot of gold.’

‘Two years of taxes gathered from seven nations,’ I said.

‘You’re going to hire your own assassins?’ Marten asked.

‘You could hire an army with that. A large one.’ Makin stooped so low the reflected light made his face golden.

‘No.’ I flipped the lid shut and Makin flinched.

‘You’re going to build the cathedral,’ Miana said.

‘Praise the Lord for clever women. That boy you’re cooking for me in there is going to be scary clever.’

‘Build a cathedral?’ Makin blinked. Marten held his peace. Marten trusted my judgement. Too much sometimes.

‘An act of contrition,’ Miana said. ‘Jorg is going to buy the most expensive pardon in history.’

‘And of course the Pope is bound by tradition and duty to attend the consecration of any new cathedral.’ I turned one of the assassin’s gold pieces over in my fingers. The word ‘contrition’ nibbled at the edge of my pride.

‘Jorg!’ Miana narrowed her eyes at me, knowing my mind. She had known it from the start and sought to turn me with talk of diplomacy.

The Pope stared at me from the Vatican gold. Blood gold for my child and wife. Pious CXII. When they showed you fat on money then you must truly be enormous. I held the coin up for inspection. ‘Don’t worry, my dear. I’ll play nice. When she comes to see the new cathedral I’ve built for her I will thank her for coming. Only a madman would threaten the Pope. Even if she is a bitch.’

‘And what’s to stop another assassin coming while you’re gone?’ Miana asked.

‘Nothing.’

It’s never a good idea to tease a woman near her time, and seldom a good idea to tease Miana in any case, unless you want back worse than you gave. She came at me, fists raised.

‘You’re coming with me.’ I spoke quickly, backing around Makin.

‘You said wives couldn’t come!’ Miana mastered the art of the wickedly murderous look at an early age.

‘You’re my advisor now,’ I shouted, backing to the door since none of my guard saw fit to defend me.

That mollified her enough to halt her advance and lower her hands. ‘I can’t ride like this,’ she said.

‘You can go in one of the wagons.’ Each guard troop had a wagon for equipment.

‘Well that’ll jolt the baby out of me quick enough!’ She sounded cross but seemed to find the idea to her liking. ‘So I’m to sit all alone in a rickety wagon and be hauled halfway across empire?’

‘You’ll have Marten for company. He’s in no state to ride,’ I said.

‘Marten? So anyone can come along now?’

‘Advisor!’ I raised my hands again. ‘Makin, tell Keppen and Grumlow they can go back to the Haunt.’ I didn’t think missing Congression would bother Keppen in the least, and Grumlow had a woman somewhere in Hodd Town that he’d probably rather spend time with.

‘So that’s settled.’ I dusted my hands together and cast an eye over the room’s lurid blues. ‘Let’s go and make Bishop Gomst a happy man.’

We left Holland’s mansion in a troop. Gorgoth carried the coffer and it pleased me to see that even his arms strained with the weight of all that gold. Lord Holland, his wife, and retainers flocked about us from the front steps to the gates of their compound. Makin made all the replies and niceties, the dregs of my dreaming still soured the day. At the gates Marten pointed out one of the guard wagons to Miana, an uncomfortably functional vehicle. She made an immediate turn, Sir Riccard jumping to avoid the swing of her belly.

‘Lord Holland!’ She stopped the man in mid-flow. ‘I wish to purchase your personal carriage.’

I left Miana to secure the deal, guarded by Marten, Riccard and eight of the ten men who accompanied her from the Haunt. Rike, Grumlow, Keppen, and Kent fell in with us as I led the way to the part-built cathedral of Hodd Town. Gomst had mentioned plans to name it the Sacred Heart after a cathedral of legend that once stood in Crath City. For my part I felt St George’s to be a fine name.

I settled the brothers within the walls of the great hall, dwarfed by the immense pillars that had stood ready to carry the roof for a decade and more. Lesser clerics, choirboys, and the more devoted and well-wrapped of Hodd Town’s citizens, watched them with undisguised curiosity. Gorgoth put down his burden, set a bare foot to the lid, and stared back causing several choirboys to make a run for it.