Emperor of Thorns (Broken Empire, #3)

by Mark Lawrence

I failed my brother. I hung in the thorns and let him die and the world has been wrong since that night. I failed him, and though I’ve let many brothers die since, that first pain has not diminished. The best part of me still hangs there, on those thorns. Life can tear away what’s vital to a man, hook it from him, one scrap at a time, leaving him empty-handed and beggared by the years. Every man has his thorns, not of him, but in him, deep as bones. The scars of the briar mark me, a calligraphy of violence, a message blood-writ, requiring a lifetime to translate.

You have my advice. Carry it with you. It won’t slow you down.”

But I didn’t love her, not the irrational foolish love that can overwhelm a man, wash him away and strand him on unknown shores.

“Poison is a dirty weapon,” I said. Not that I had been above its use in Gelleth. I maintain a balanced view of the world, but that balance is always in my favour.

“We can’t be trapped by fear. Lives lived within such walls are just slower deaths.”

No half measures. Some things can’t be cut in half. You can’t half-love someone. You can’t half-betray, or half-lie.”

“Decadence begins when the budget to beautify a man’s home exceeds the coin spent to ensure its defence.”

Any closed box, any secret, will gnaw at you, day on day, year on year, until it reaches the bone.

Nothing can be cut away without loss. Even the worst of our memories is part of the foundation that keeps us in the world.

“I’ve come to be a monk,” I said, with the silent proviso that hell would freeze and heaven burn before I let them give me the haircut.

My father taught me not to love or to compromise, the thorns taught me that even family bonds are fatal weaknesses, a man must walk alone, bide his time and strike when the strength is in his hands. Sometimes, though, it seemed all that bound me to those lessons were the scars they had left on me.

“Praise the Lord for clever women. That boy you’re cooking for me in there is going to be scary clever.”

“Lovely weather.” “People who talk about the weather would be better served by admitting they’ve nothing to say but like the sound of their own voice.”

“I can help.” I smiled, sad for her, sad for everything. “If someone had done this for me when I was a child it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.” Her mouth made an “oh” of surprise as the sword passed through her, grating on thin bones. She slid off the blade as I stood.

“That” is never all there is to it. Hurt spreads and grows and reaches out to break what’s good. Time heals all wounds, but often it’s only by the application of the grave, and while we live some hurts live with us, burning, making us twist and turn to escape them. And as we twist, we turn into other men.

When you’re in a dark place, and your light is going to run out before too long, you get on with things. It’s a wonder to me how few people apply that same logic to their lives.

“Fear holds many men, fear keeps them from their duty, fathers abandon sons, one brother leaves the next to die.”

“If there were any justice, lady, God himself would reach down and strike me dead, for I am guilty as you say. But until he does, I will just have to keep moving on and doing what I can in the world.”

“They say that the lichkin have only one mercy.” “What mercy is that, your grace?” Kent rasped. “In the end they let you die.”

The provost sat back in her chair and set her quill on the armrest. A moment later she let her papers fall. “I have sixteen grandchildren you know, Jorg?” I nodded. It didn’t seem the time to say “fifteen.”

“Two dozen—and yet you killed all but one?” The provost arched a brow and set her quill down again as if unwilling to record a falsehood. “Dear lady, I killed them from youngest child to oldest woman, and when I was done I blunted three axes dismembering their corpses. I am Jorg of Ancrath—I burned ten thousand in Gelleth and didn’t think it too many.”

If you must run, have something to run toward, so it feels less like cowardice.

“Marco Onstantos Evenaline of the House Gold, Mercantile Derivatives South,” I said. “How the hell are you?”

“Jorg!” Katherine’s hair fell around her in dark red curls, a heat in those eyes. “These are honourable men!” “And I am not.” I held my hand out. “Quarrel.”

“Very funny.” I wiped the camel spit from my leg. My unnamed steed curled its lip, showing narrow and uneven teeth, then turned to face the backside of the camel ahead. “When we’re through with this journey I plan to buy you and eat your liver,” I told it.

“A wise man told me that history will not stop us repeating our mistakes, but will at least make us ashamed of doing so.”

“You can’t grow if you’re constantly defined by this collection of frozen moments that you keep returning to. And if you can’t grow, you’re not alive.

“We have both walked black paths, lady. Don’t think that mine leads back into the light. Of all those that tried to guide me, of my father, of the whispers from the thorn bush, of Corion’s evil council, the darkest voice was ever mine.”

The Nuban never held grudges—said he had enough to carry and a long way to go.

“Never tell me, never let me be told.” That’s all she ever asked of me. And I’ve held to it as far as I know. Clearly, she deserved better, but it would require a better man to give it.

“How can you almost fly?” Chella shook her head. “How can you almost love?”

The sense of wrongness that had scratched at her all evening, twisting likes worms beneath the skin, now crystallized into horror. When the dead return there’s a feeling of everything flowing the wrong way, as if hell itself were vomiting them out.

The closer door opened and an acreage of purple silk, strained across wobbling flesh, began to emerge. The bearers reached in and retrieved short arms, pudgy hands overburdened with gemmed rings. They pulled. The fifth man pushed. The mountain grunted and a head appeared, bowed forward, sweat making straggles of thin dark hair across a crimson scalp. A crucifix of gold hung below the wattles and folds of her neck, a hefty thing half an inch thick, a foot in length, a ruby at the crossing point for the blood of Christ. It must have weighed more than a baby. And out she came, the supreme pontiff, shepherdess of many sheep, a slug teased from her nest. The flowered reek of perfumes and oils couldn’t hide the rankness that emerged with her.

“Killing old women is easy. But if I don’t walk out of Congression as emperor then I may only live a short while in which to regret the decision.

There’s a slope down toward evil, a gentle gradient that can be ignored at each step, unfelt. It’s not until you look back, see the distant heights where you once lived, that you understand your journey.

“Pull together. He’s trapped in here with us.” This from Onnal, one of Costos’s advisors and a warrior born. So much in life is a matter of perspective. “I rather think you’re trapped in here with me,” I told them.

Likely I would be the shortest-reigning emperor in history.

“Men of empire. A better man than I would have won your support with the goodness of his deeds, the clarity of his vision, the truth of his words. But that better man is not here. That better man would fail before the dark tide that rushes toward us. Orrin of Arrow was the better man and yet he didn’t survive even to ask your support. “Dark times call for dark choices. Choose me.”

“Men of empire does Congression find me worthy?” The “aye” that rang around the hall held more of desperation than enthusiasm, but it was sufficient. I sat emperor in Vyene, Lord of the Hundred—the Broken Empire remade.

We’re fashioned by our sorrows—not by joy—they are the undercurrent, the refrain. Joy is fleeting.