Mark Lawrence - King of Thorns

The Ancrath loot, robbed from almost every corner of empire, lay on stone shelves, belched from coffers, stood stacked in careless piles. Armour, swords, gold coin in wooden tubs, mechanisms that looked like parts of insects, gleaming in the lantern light and tainting the air with alien scents, almost citrus, almost metal. I found my prize beside a helmet full of cogs and ash.

The Duke’s gift didn’t disappoint. Beneath a glass dome that wasn’t glass, sealed by an ivory disk that wasn’t ivory, lay a tiny scene, a church in miniature set around with tiny houses, and there a person, and another. And as I held it to the light, and turned its surprising weight this way and that to see the detail, a snowstorm grew, swirling up from the ground until whirling flakes obliterated the view, leaving nothing but a blizzard in a half-globe. I set the snow-globe back, worried for a moment that I had somehow broken it. And miracle of miracles, the snow began to settle.

There’s no magic to it now. I know that the right collection of artisans could make something similar in just a few weeks. They would use glass and ivory, and I don’t know what the snow would be, but as ancient wonders go, there’s little wonder in such things if you’re much past six. But at the time it was magic, of the best kind. Stolen magic.

I shook the snow-globe again, and once more the all-encompassing blizzard rose, chaos, followed by calm, by settling snows, and a return to the world before. I shook it again. It seemed wrong. All that storm and fury signifying nothing. The whole world upheaved, and for what? The same man trudged toward the same church, the same woman waited at the same cottage door. I held a world in my hand, and however I shook it, however the pieces fell, in whatever new patterns, nothing changed. The man would never reach the church.

Even at six I knew the Hundred War. I marched wooden soldiers across Father’s maps. I saw the troops return through the Tall Gate, bloody and fewer, and the women weeping in the shadows as others threw themselves at their men. I read the tales of battle, of advance and retreat, of victory and defeat, in books I would not have been allowed to open if my father knew me. I understood all this and I knew that I held my whole world in my right hand. Not some play land, some toy church and tiny men crafted by ancients. My whole world. And no amount of shaking would change it. We would swirl against each other, battle, kill, and fall, and settle, and as the haze cleared, the war would still be there, unchanged, waiting, for me, for my brother, for my mother.

When a game cannot be won, change the game. I read that in the book of Kirk. Without thought I brought the snow-globe overhead and smashed it on the ground. From the wet fragments I picked out the man, barely a wheat-grain between my thumb and finger.

“You’re free now,” I said, then flicked him into a corner to find his own way home, because I didn’t have all the answers, not then, and not now.

I left the treasury, taking nothing, almost defeated by the rope climb even so. I felt tired but content. What I had done seemed so right that I somehow thought others would see it too and that my crime would not follow me. With aching arms, and covered with rust and scratches, I hauled myself back over the parapet.

“What’s this now?” A big hand took me by the neck and lifted me off my feet. It seemed that the wall guards had been less argumentative over my coin than I had hoped.

It didn’t take long before I stood in my father’s throne-room with a sleepy page lighting torches. No whale oil in silver lamps for this night’s business, just pitch-torches crackling, painting more smoke on the black ceiling. Sir Reilly held my shoulder, his gauntlet too heavy and digging in. We waited in the empty room and watched the shadows dance. The page left.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Though I wasn’t.

Sir Reilly looked grim. “I’m sorry too, Jorg.”

“I won’t do it again,” I said. Though I would.

“I know,” Sir Reilly said, almost tender. “But now we must wait for your father, and he is not a gentle man.”

It seemed that we waited half the night, and when the doors boomed open, I jumped despite the promises I made myself.

My father, in his purple robe and iron crown, with not a trace of sleep in him, strode alone to the throne. He sat and spread his hands across the arms of his chair.

“I want Justice,” he said. Loud enough for a whole court though Reilly and I were his only audience.

Again. “I want Justice.” Eyes on the great doors.

“I’m sorry.” And this time I meant it. “I can pay-”

“Justice!” He didn’t even glance at me.

The doors opened again and on a cart such as they use to bring prisoners up from the dungeon came my great-hound, mine and Will’s, chained at each leg and pushed by a mild-faced servant named Inch, a broad-armed man who had once slipped me a sugar-twist on a fete day.

I started forward but Reilly’s hand kept me where I was.

Justice trembled on the cart, eyes wide, shivering so bad he could barely stand, though he had four legs to my two. He looked wet and as Inch pushed him nearer I caught the stink of rock-oil, the kind they burn in servant’s lamps. Inch reached into the cart and lifted an ugly lump hammer, a big one used for breaking coal into smaller pieces for the fire.

“Go,” Father said.

The look in Inch’s mild eyes said he would prefer to stay, but he set the hammer on the floor and left without protest.

“There are lessons to be learned today,” Father said.

“Have you ever burned yourself, Jorg?” Father asked.

I had. I once picked up a poker that had been left with one end in the fire. The pain had taken my breath. I couldn’t scream. Not until the blisters started to rise could I make any sound above hissing, and when I could I howled so loud my mother came running from her tower, arriving as the maids and nurse burst from the next room. My hand had burned for a week, weeping and oozing, sending bursts of horrific pain along my arm at the slightest wiggle of fingers. The skin fell away and the flesh beneath lay raw and wet, hurt by even a breath of air.

“You took from me, Jorg,” Father said. “You stole what was mine.”

I knew enough not to say that it was Mother’s.

“I’ve noticed that you love this dog,” Father said.

I wondered at that, even in my fear. I thought it more likely that he had been told.

“That’s a weakness, Jorg,” Father said. “Loving anything is a weakness. Loving a hound is stupidity.”

I said nothing.

“Shall I burn the dog?” Father reached for the nearest torch.

“No!” It burst from me, a horrified scream.

He sat back. “See how weak this dog has made you?” He glanced at Sir Reilly. “How will he rule Ancrath if he cannot rule himself?”

“Don’t burn him.” My voice trembled, pleading, but somehow it was a threat too, even if none of us recognized it.

“Perhaps there is another way?” Father said. “A middle ground.” He looked at the hammer.

I didn’t understand. I didn’t want to.

“Break the dog’s leg,” he said. “One quick blow and Justice will be served.”

“No,” I swallowed, almost choking, “I can’t.”

Father shrugged and leaned from his throne, reaching for the torch again.

I remembered the pain that poker had seared into me. Horror reached for me and I knew I could let it take me, down into hysteria, crying, raging, and I could stay there until the deed was done. I could run and hide in tears and leave Justice to burn.

I picked up the hammer before Father’s hand closed on the torch. It took effort just to lift it, heavy in too many ways. Justice just trembled and watched me, whining, his tail hooked between his legs, no understanding in him, only fear.