Prince of Thorns

I woke early. A grey light through the shutters showed me the room for the first time: big, well-furnished, hunting tapestries on the walls. I uncoiled my fingers from my sword hilt, stretched and yawned. It didn’t feel right, this bed. It was too soft, too clean. When I threw the covers back they knocked the servant-bell from the bedside table. It hit the flagstones with a pretty tinkling then bounced onto a rug and lost its voice. Nobody came. That suited me fine: I’d dressed myself for four years. Hell, I’d rarely undressed! And what rags I had would be put to shame by the meanest of servant smocks. Even so. Nobody came.

I wore my armour over the grey tatters of my shirt. A looking-glass lay on the sideboard. I let it lie there face down. A quick run of fingers through hair in search of any louse fat enough to be found, and I was ready to break my fast.

First I threw the shutters open. No fumbling with the catch this time. I looked out over the execution yard, a square bounded by the blank walls of the Tall Castle. Kitchen-boys and maids hastened across the bleak courtyard, going about their various quests, blind to the pale wash of the sky so high above them.

I turned from the window and set off on my own little quest. Every prince knows the kitchens better than any other quarter of his castle. Where else can so much adventure be found? Where else is the truth spoken so plain? William and I learned a hundred times more in the kitchens of the Tall Castle than from our books on Latin and strategy. We’d steal ink-handed from Lundist’s study and sprint through long corridors, leaping down the stairs too many at a time, to reach the refuge of the kitchens.

I walked those same corridors now, ill at ease in the confined space. I’d spent too long under wide skies, living bloody. We learned about death in the kitchens too. We watched the cook turn live chickens to dead meat with a twist of his hands. We watched Ethel the Bread pluck the fat hens, leaving them naked in death, ready for gutting. You soon learn there’s no elegance or dignity in death if you spend time in the castle kitchens. You learn how ugly it is, and how good it tastes.

I turned the corner at the end of the Red Corridor, too full of memories to pay attention. All I saw was a figure bearing down on me. Instincts learned on the road took over. Before I had time to register the long hair and silks, I had her against the wall, a hand across her mouth and my knife to her throat. We were face by face and my captive held my stare, eyes an unreal green like stained glass. I let my snarl relax into a smile and unclenched my teeth. I stepped back, letting her off the wall.

“Your pardon, my lady,” I said, and sketched her a shallow bow. She was tall, nearly my height, and surely not many years my senior.

She gave me a fierce grin and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. It came away bloody, from a bitten tongue. Gods but she was good to look at. She had a strong face, sharp in the nose and cheekbones but rich in the lips, all framed by the darkest red hair.

“Lord, how you stink, boy,” she said. She stepped around me, as if she was checking a horse at market. “You’re lucky Sir Galen isn’t with me, or a skivvy would be picking your head off the ground about now.”

“Sir Galen?” I asked. “I’ll be sure to watch out for him.” She had diamonds around her neck on a complex web of gold. Spanard work: none on the Horse Coast could make a thing like that. “It wouldn’t do for the King’s guests to go about killing one another.” I took her for the daughter of a merchant come a-toadying to the King. A very rich merchant, or maybe the daughter of some count or earl from the east: there was an eastern burr to her voice.

“You’re a guest?” She raised a brow at that, and very pretty it looked too. “I think not. You look to have stolen in. By the privy chute to judge by the smell. I don’t think you could have climbed the walls, not in that clunky old armour.”

I clicked my heels together, like the table knights, and offered her an arm. “I was on my way to break fast in the kitchens. They know me there. Perhaps you’d like to accompany me and check my credentials, lady?”

She nodded, ignoring my arm. “I can send a kitchen-boy for the guards and have you arrested, if we don’t meet any on the way.”

“My brothers call me Jorg,” I said. “How are you called, lady?” I found the court-speak awkward on the tongue, especially with my mouth so unaccountably dry. She smelled like flowers.

“You can call me ‘my lady,’” she said, and wrinkled her nose again. We passed two of the house guards in their fire-bronze plate and plumes. Both of them studied me as if I was a turd escaped from the privy, but she said nothing and they let us pass.

We passed the storerooms where the salt beef and pickled pork lay in barrels, stacked to the ceiling. “My lady” seemed to know the way. She shot me a glance with those emerald eyes of hers.

A good question though. I couldn’t say why I’d come, other than I felt somebody didn’t want me to. Ever since that moment when I found Father Gomst in his cage, ever since that ghost ran its course through me and my thoughts turned to the Tall Castle, it felt as though someone were steering me away. And I don’t take direction.

We passed Short Bridge, little more than three mahogany planks over the great iron valves that could seal the lower levels from the castle main. The doors, steel and three feet thick, would slide up from the gaping slot in the corridor floor, so Tutor Lundist told me. Lifted on old magic. I’d never seen them close. Torches burned here, no silver lamps for the servant levels. The stink of tar-smoke made me more at home than anything yet.

“Wouldn’t your brothers miss you?” she asked, playful now. She touched her fingers to the corner of her mouth, where the red pattern of my fingers had started to rise. Something in her gesture made me rise too.

I shrugged, then paused as I worked the straps of the vambrace over my left forearm. “There are plenty of brothers on the road,” I said. “Let me show you the kind of brothers I meant . . .”

The torchlight burned in the red of her hair. She undid the clasps with deft fingers. The girl knew armour. Perhaps Sir Galen was for more than just beheading ill-mannered louts?

I grinned at that and turned my arm over so she could see the Brotherhood brand across my wrist. Three ugly bands of burn-scar. A look of distaste furrowed her brow. “You’re a sell-sword? You take your pride in that?”

“More pride in that than in what true family I have left.” I felt a bite of anger. I felt like sending this distracting merchant’s daughter on her way, making her run.

“What are these?” She reached out to run her fingers from the brand up to the small of my elbow where the armour stopped her. “Jesu! There’s more scar than boy under this dirt!”

At her touch a thrill ran through me, and I pulled away. “I fell in a thorn bush when . . . when I was a child,” I said, my voice too sharp.

She twisted her mouth into an “ouch.” “You’ve got to lie still in one of those,” she said, her eyes still on my arm. “Everyone knows that. Looks as if it tore you to the bone.”

“I was stupid,” I said. “I wouldn’t struggle now.” I wanted the silly bitch to leave. I didn’t even feel hungry any more.

My arm burned with the memory of her fingers. She was right, the thorns had cut me deep. Every few weeks for more than a year the poison would flare in the wounds and run through my blood. When the poison ran in me I’d done things that scared even the brothers.

Drane lumbered out through the doors just as I reached them. He pulled up short, and wiped his hands on the soiled white apron stretched over his belly. “Wh—” He looked past me and his eyes widened. “Princess!” He seemed suddenly terrified, quivering like a blob of jelly. “Princess! Wh-what are you doing in the kitchens? It’s no place for a lady in silks and all.”

She gave me a smile that left me wondering if I wanted to slap it off her, or kiss it. Before I could decide, a heavy hand landed on my shoulder, and Drane turned me round. “And what’s a ruffian like you doing leading her highness astray . . .” The question died in his throat. His fat face crinkled up and he tried to speak again, but the words wouldn’t come. He let me go and found his voice. “Jorg? Little Jorg?” Tears streamed down his cheeks.

Will and I had watched the man throttle a few chickens and bake a few pies: there was no call for him to start blubbing over me. I let him off the embarrassment though, he’d given me the chance to see her royal highness look surprised. I grinned at her and gave a court bow.

“Princess, eh? So I guess that means the road-trash you wanted to have the palace guards arrest is in fact your step-brother.”

“Actually, that would make you my nephew,” she said. “Your father married my older sister two months ago. I’m your aunt Katherine.”