Emperor of Thorns

39

Chella’s Story

The bridge at Tyrol spanned the Danoob in seventeen arches, a broad carriageway riding across stone pillars. The great bridge back at Honth had leaped the Rhyme in one breath-taking arc, but Chella liked the Tyrol bridge better. She could imagine it being built, see in her mind’s eye the men who laboured here.

‘How does the river look to you, Chella?’ Jorg watched close for her answer.

‘Brown and churning.’ She reported it faithfully. ‘What do you see, Kai?’

Kai half stood, peering through the window grille, swaying with the motion of the carriage. ‘Brown.’

‘Are there no lovers amongst us?’ Jorg asked. ‘The legend that the waters look blue to those in love is older than this bridge.’

‘The river is brown. Shit brown. It’s a matter of silt and drainage and the sewers of Tyrol, not of the sick-making fantasies that people want to wrap their fucking in.’ Chella saw no reason to keep the sourness to herself.

‘Not so,’ Jorg said. ‘If the right man loved the right woman he could make that river run blue.’

‘Water-sworn.’ Kai sat back into the shadows, nodding.

‘Meh.’ Jorg shook his head. ‘All this swearing. All these narrow paths. A man can reach into anything and turn it to his cause. It’s not want, or desire, just certainty. Only be assured that whatever you reach into will reach into you in turn.’

He set his boots across the gap between seats, resting between Kai and Chella. ‘Did you ever love, Kai? Was there a girl that would turn the waters blue for you?’

Kai opened his mouth then bit back on the answer. He started forward, then slumped. ‘No.’

‘Love.’ Jorg smiled. ‘Now there’s something that will reach back into you.’

The carriage rumbled from the bridge down onto the north bank where the roads lay better tended.

‘Perhaps you should go back to your own carriage, Jorg, to your queen, and see if you like the view from there any better.’ Chella found herself not wanting him to leave, but tormenting him was all she knew. For a moment she saw the needle she had used to stick Kai, and felt it sliding into flesh again.

He pulled in his feet and leaned in toward her, close, hand resting once more upon her thigh. ‘What is it you’re hoping to achieve at Congression, Chella? The Dead King can’t think to win any converts, surely? I’m not even certain that Master Summerson here is a proper convert. So what is the point?’

‘The point is that we have a right to attend and that the Dead King wishes us to. Either should be enough for you, Jorg of Ancrath.’ Chella winced at the grip on her leg. Life and pain walked hand in hand, neither to her liking.

He narrowed his eyes — how many had seen that look and then nothing else ever again? — and moved closer, his breath tickling across her cheek. ‘You’re here to show us the human face of the dead-tide? To put Congression at its ease? Flatter old kings, a pretty boy to flirt with their queens and princesses?’

‘No.’ Anger bubbled up in her, hot under the coolness of his breath — her hands made claws. ‘We’re here with trickery and treachery and deceit and murder, just like you, Jorg of Ancrath, what else can broken things like us bring to the world?’

‘Renar.’

‘What?’ Her thigh burned, again, where he touched her, again.

‘Jorg of Renar.’

‘Doesn’t it gall you to take his name, the one who murdered little William? Sweet mother Rowan?’

‘Better than to take my father’s name.’

‘Instead you wear his brother’s name? A man you keep in dark torment? Don’t snarl so, I hear the guard speak of it, of how you murdered Harran, and another good man to get to the son.’

He leaned in close. ‘Maybe I keep the name to remind me of the colour of my soul.’ His breath out, her breath in. She tasted cinnamon.

‘Was that all I needed to seduce you, Jorg? To just be a touch less damned?’

He turned from her, staring at Kai in his shadowed corner. ‘Get out.’

And he did, a quick unwelcome flash of daylight, cold and drear, and Kai was gone.

‘I’m still going to kill you,’ Jorg said, very close.

Chella closed his mouth with hers.

She ran her fingers across his shoulders, plunged her hands down then up under the pleating of his road-tunic, across the heat and hardness of muscle laid over his back, stippled by old scars, the slice of a heavy blade, nicks and cuts, a hundred thorn wounds. He moved over her, tall, heavy, the dark wave of his hair falling about them, the scrape of his burned face as his mouth found the hollow of her neck.

Something hot and wet and vital ran through her, a sudden flood that took her breath and lifted her. The life-force she’d been resisting, rejecting, washed away all resistance, implacable as spring. She tore at him, angry, fierce, wanting. He lifted her, without pause or effort, slamming her back against the padded wall. Some small fragment of her worried that the driver might think it the sign to stop, and the guard would gather round. Jorg surged against her and all other voices quieted. His desire woke an answer in her, the need bled from every line of him, spoke in the ragged breaths he drew.

Their bodies came together in a savage recognition of flesh, her limbs strained under the weight of him, hand splayed one second, clenched the next, cushions shredded. Outside, the uneasy snort of horses, the whickering of mares, the stamp of stallions reacting to stray energies, to the scent of their lust. Jorg slammed her against the wall once more, harder, and the carriage lurched forward, the team breaking into a trot despite the driver’s cries. Black skirts gathered around her hips.

Jorg entered her, brutal, quick, wanted — an ungentle coupling, both of them torn by rough need. Chella rose to meet him, all her strength locked against him, riding and ridden, no comfort offered or given. They coupled like wild cats, instinctual aggression kept at bay, a truce imposed by some deeper, older, imperative, but unable to stop the violence bubbling over, ready to part squalling at the moment of release.

‘Enough!’ Jorg threw her off him and lurched backward onto the opposite bench, beyond the reach of her nails, panting, blood at the corner of his mouth.

‘I–I’ll say when it’s enough, King of Renar.’ She spat the words between her gasps. She wanted more, but it might kill her. Every inch of her tingled, burned with a fire of new-woken life. Jorg had been the key to turn the lock. Perhaps any man might have served, but it seemed right that it had been him.

Jorg pushed back sweat-plastered hair and tied up his trews, the belt too broken to hold. ‘I’m far from sure you can even stand, madam.’ The flash of a grin, full of mischief. He looked very young in that moment.

‘So that’s how diplomacy is conducted at Congression?’ she asked, heart still thumping, lying back in warmth and wetness.

‘When we get there we’ll see.’ Jorg scooped some stray buttons from the floor and set a hand to the door. ‘And when I’m crowned we’ll have our last kiss.’

As if she’d ever bend the knee and kiss his hand. The arrogance of it made her snarl.

‘Back to your lady love now, Jorg?’ Chella set a smile on her lips but it didn’t fit well.

‘She’s too good for the likes of me, Chella. I’m soiled goods, past repair. I belong with our kind.’ He flashed that smile again and pushed out the door. ‘Come near my son and I’ll kill you, Chella.’ And he was gone.