LITMIR.BIZ

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to the front doors. I had to commend their bravery. I’ve seen Gorgoth reach out both hands and crush two men’s skulls without effort. Lord Holland paused on the steps ahead of me, sensing trouble. He turned with a questioning look.

      ‘I’m taking Gorgoth through the Gilden Gate in Vyene, so I think he ranks high enough for your front door, Holland.’ I nodded him on.

      The guards stepped back with evident relief and we went inside.

      Lord Holland’s guest chambers proved to be more than well appointed – even luxurious might be too small a word. Thick rugs covered the floor, woven silk shipped from the Indus and worked with all manner of pagan gods. No wall remained without art, either tapestry or oil and brush, and elaborate plasterwork, gilded to a high shine, decorated the ceilings. Holland had offered me his own rooms but I didn’t want to live amid his old man’s stink. Besides, if they were richer than his guest rooms I’d be hard pressed to resist stealing stuff.

      ‘Decadence begins when the budget to beautify a man’s home exceeds the coin spent to ensure its defence.’ I turned back to Makin. Gorgoth closed the doors behind him and stood at Makin’s side.

      Makin smoothed back his hair and grinned. ‘It’s pretty. No doubting that.’

      Gorgoth let his gaze wander. ‘There’s a whole world reaching into this room.’

      He had it right. Holland had assembled pieces from all corners of empire and beyond. The works of brilliant men. Years of effort concentrated within four walls to ease the eye of a rich lord’s guests.

      Gorgoth lifted an elegant chair in one blunt hand, his fingers curled around intricate scrollwork. ‘The beauty to be found beneath mountains is more … robust.’ He set the chair down again. I imagined the legs splintering if he tried to sit upon it. ‘Why are we here?’

      Makin nodded. ‘You said bad beds, grinning officials, and fleas. But here we are even so. The beds look fine. Perhaps a little soft and …’ he glanced at Gorgoth, ‘weak, and there may be fleas, though a better class of flea no doubt, and yes, the officials grinned.’

      I pursed my lips and threw myself back onto the grand bed. I sunk into eiderdown, the coverings almost closing above me as if I had fallen into deep water.

      ‘There’s something I need to sleep on,’ I said.

      It took an effort to lift my head to sight Gorgoth. ‘You two amuse yourselves. I’ll send if I need you. Makin, be charming. Gorgoth, don’t eat any servants.’

      Gorgoth rumbled at that. They turned to leave.

      ‘Gorgoth!’ He paused before the door, a door so tall that even he would not have to duck beneath it. ‘Don’t let them give you any shit. You can eat them if they try. You’re coming to Congression as King Under the Mountain. The Hundred may not know it yet but they will.’

      He tilted his head at that, and they both left.

      I had my own reasons for bringing the leucrota to Congression, but good as those reasons were it had been the chance to represent his new people, his trolls, that had persuaded Gorgoth, and lord knows he needed persuading, for I couldn’t order him. And that in itself made another good reason. I had few men around me that would speak honestly and tell me if they thought me wrong. I had only one man who I couldn’t order, who at the very last would twist my head off rather than obey against his instinct. Everyone needs somebody like that around sometimes.

      I sat in Lord Holland’s delicate chair, at a desk of burr walnut so polished it seemed to glow, and played with the chess set I had filched from the guards’ pavilion. I killed a few hours staring at the squares, moving the pieces in their allotted fashion. Enjoying the weight of them in my hand, the glide of them across marble. I have read that the Builders made toys that could play chess. Toys, as small as the silver bishop in my hand, that could defeat any player, taking no time to select moves that undid even the best minds amongst their makers. The bishop made a satisfying click when tapped to the board. I beat out a little rhythm, wondering if any point remained in playing a game that toys could own. If we couldn’t find a better game then perhaps the mechanical minds the Builders left behind would always win.

      Holland took me at my word and allowed no visitors, no requests, no invitations. I sat alone in the luxury of his guest rooms and remembered. There was a time when a bad memory was taken from me. I carried it in a copper box until at the last I had to know. Any closed box, any secret, will gnaw at you, day on day, year on year, until it reaches the bone. It will whisper the old rhyme – open the box, and face the danger, or wonder – till it drives you mad, what would have happened if you had. There are other memories I would rather set away from me, beyond use and recollection, but the box taught me a lesson. Nothing can be cut away without loss. Even the worst of our memories is part of the foundation that keeps us in the world.

      At last I stood, tipped over the kings, both the black side and the white side, and fell once more into the bed. This time I let it swallow me and sank into the white musk of her dreaming.

      I stood in the Tall Castle before the doors to my father’s throne room. I knew this scene. I knew all the scenes that Katherine played for me behind those doors. Galen dying, but with my indifference overwritten by all her yesterdays so that he fell like an axe through both our lives. Or Father’s knife, driven into my chest at the height of my victory, as I reached to him, son to father, a sharp reminder of all his poison, aimed for the heart.

      ‘I’m past games,’ I said.

      I set my fingers to the handles of the great doors.

      ‘I had a brother who taught me a lesson that stuck. Brother Hendrick. A wild one, a stranger to fear.’

      And no sooner was he mentioned than he stood at my side – like the worst of devils summoned by their name. He stood beside me before my father’s doors, with a laugh and a stamp of his boot. Brother Hendrick, dark as a Moor, his long hair in black knots, reaching past his shoulders, lean muscled, rangy like a troll, the pink and ragged slash of a scar from his left eye to the corner of his mouth, stark against dirty skin.

      ‘Brother Jorg.’ He inclined his head.

      ‘Show her how you died, Brother,’ I said.

      He gave a wild grin at that, did Brother Hendrick, and the Conaught spearman charged again from a sudden rolling smoke. The Conaught spear is an ugly weapon, barbed and barbed again as if it’s never intended to come out, cutting blades along the length.

      Hendrick caught the spear in his gut, just as I remembered it, right down to the bright sound of mail links snapping. His eyes went wide, that grin of his wider, twisted now and scarlet. The Conaught man had him, stuck on that spear, out of reach of Hendrick’s sword even if he had the strength to swing.

      ‘Now I’m doubting that Brother Hendrick could get himself off that spear,’ I said, over the ghosts of screams and the memory of swords on swords. ‘But he could have fought it, and maybe just maybe he’d have thrown himself clear. He would have left more yards of his guts on those barbs than remained in his body though. He could have tried to fight it, but sometimes the only option is to raise the stakes, to throw yourself the other way, to force your opponent further down the path they’ve chosen, further than they might want to go.’

      Brother Hendrick dropped his sword and shook the shield from his arm. With both hands he seized the spear high along its haft, past the blades, and hauled himself along it. The point sprang black and dripping from his back, a yard of wood and cutting edges passed into his stomach, tearing a terrible wound, and in two driving steps he reached his foe.

      ‘Watch,’ I said.

      And Brother Hendrick slammed his forehead into the spearman’s face. Two red hands gripped behind a Conaught neck and pulled him closer still. Hendrick fell, locked to his man, his teeth deep in exposed throat. The smoke rolled over them both.

      ‘That spearman should have let go that day,’ I said. ‘You should let go now, Katherine.’

      I gripped the handles to the throne

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