Mark Lawrence - Emperor of Thorns

‘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.

A duty-priest led me to the grand vestibule where Gomst kept his office, due mainly to the fact the chamber had a completed roof. He rose from behind his desk to greet me. From the look of him he slept no better than I did. Gomst never wore his years well and now they hung from him like invisible chains.

‘They tell me you do good work here, Father Gomst.’

He bowed his head and said nothing. In the six years since we found each other again on the lichway before the ghosts came, the grey had risen from his beard and chased the black from his hair.

‘I’ve brought you enough gold to have the cathedral completed. I want as many men as can fit around the walls to be working here at every hour of every day.’

Gomst lifted his head frowning and made to speak.

‘On Sundays they can rest,’ I said.

‘You think faith and churches will save us from the Dead King?’ Gomst asked.

‘Don’t you, Bishop?’ I thought it would be nice if one of us did.

He drew in a deep breath and set his eyes on me, bright and dark. ‘It’s easier to have faith when you are one of the flock. The closer I get to the top of this long ladder we call the church of Roma … the closer to the Holy See where God speaks … the less I hear him, the further away I feel.’

‘It’s good that you have some doubt in you, Gomsty. Men who are certain of everything — well perhaps they’re not men at all.’

Gomst stepped closer, from shadow into lamplight, and it seemed that I saw him for the first time, set against the memory of another bishop, one more certain of his path and his entitlements. I wondered how long Murillo’s shadow had hidden Gomst from my sight. He was at worst guilty of loyalty to bad kings, of a mind narrowed by a life at court, and of pomposity. Not the most capital of crimes, and old crimes at that.

‘You remember the ghosts on the lichway, Father Gomst?’

He nodded.

‘You told me to run, to leave you there alone. And when they came, you prayed. Faith was your shield. We faced them together, you and I, with all my brothers fled.’

Gomst offered a grim smile. ‘I was in a cage if you recall, or I would have run with them.’

‘We’ll never know, will we?’ I gave him the brilliance of my own smile, creasing the stiff burn-scars on my cheek. ‘And all men are cowards. I may not have run that day but I’ve always been a coward, never braver than my imagination.’

From my belt I pulled out the order he would sign to acknowledge the church’s acceptance of my chest of gold. Gomst looked at it.

‘I would have run, but for that cage.’ He shivered.

I clapped a hand to his shoulder. ‘And here I am building you a new cage, Father Gomst, for just forty thousand ducets.’

We sat then, Father Gomst and I, and drank small beer, for the water in Hodd Town is barely safe for washing.

‘So here I am, Gomsty, with a box full of shiny metal making a cathedral happen. Making the Pope herself trail out of Roma to my doorstep.’

The bishop inclined his head then wiped a touch of foam from his moustache. ‘Times change, Jorg. Men change.’

‘And how did I get my box of gold? By setting my will behind a sharp edge and applying an unhealthy amount of determination.’ I sipped from my flagon. ‘When you move the big pieces on the board, the world seems more like a game than ever. That illusion, that those at the top know what they’re doing — the feeling some folk hold, that the world is safe and solid and well-ordered — well, that illusion wears thin when it’s us who stand at the top doing the ordering. I don’t doubt that for every step you take toward Roma God sounds three steps further away.’