Saint's Blood

by Sebastien de Castell

  ‘None,’ Ethalia conceded. She pinned the bandage on my shoulder before turning to face Darriana. ‘So I suppose I’m due for at least one, don’t you think?’

  Of everything that had happened that day, nothing had terrified me as much as this. ‘Could I respectfully ask that neither of you kill the other until my wounds are dressed?’ I said, as firmly as I could manage.

  ‘Shush, darling,’ Ethalia said. ‘The women are speaking now.’

  ‘You’d do it, wouldn’t you?’ Darriana asked incredulously. ‘You’d accept a duel from me?’ For the first time since I’d met her, she looked genuinely uncomfortable. ‘You fool – you don’t even own a sword!’

  ‘I imagine that will make the outcome all the more embarrassing for you, won’t it?’

  The two of them stared at each other as I sat there, dizzy and confused, convinced there was something I should be doing and yet utterly baffled by what that might be. I saw Darriana’s hand move to the sword at her side and reached down for my own – I’d have to take her quickly, before she drew, otherwise I didn’t think I’d last a single exchange with her.

  Then Darriana stopped and said, ‘Some other time, perhaps. Once you’ve found yourself a weapon.’

  She waited for a reply but got none, and having lost whatever battle of wills had just taken place, she left the room while Ethalia, as if nothing at all untoward had happened, picked up another length of bandage and began wrapping my other shoulder.

  ‘Well, you’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?’ I said.

  She smiled. ‘I’m inscrutable, Falcio. It goes with being a Sister of Mystery.’

  ‘I thought you were a Sister of Mercy?’

  She kissed me on the cheek. ‘I can be more than one thing.’

  It was her way of telling me to leave the matter be, and for a few moments, as she finished dressing my wounds, I did. In the end, though, I couldn’t let it rest. ‘I’m still not . . . since when do you go around challenging former Dashini assassins?’

  ‘I wasn’t challenging her,’ Ethalia replied calmly. ‘I was setting boundaries for her.’

  ‘Boundaries? You’re talking about her as if she were Aline’s age! Darriana’s a grown woman – and a really dangerous one!’

  ‘She’s a grown woman who’s spent most of her life as a tool, used first by the King and later by the Dashini. She has no idea how to behave around normal people, how to be close to them, how to disagree with them. She’s a grown woman who never had the chance to grow up.’ She paused. ‘All of you treat her like she’s some kind of deadly weapon, Falcio, so that’s how she behaves. She’s hurt and she’s sad and she’s lonely.’

  I thought about some of the late-night encounters Brasti had bragged about. ‘She never seems all that lonely to me.’

  Ethalia frowned. ‘Brasti treats it like a game with her, so she does the same, but until she learns to respect herself, a game is all there will be between them.’

  I tried to work my way through the logic of her words, but relationships had never been my strong point. ‘So you challenged her for her own benefit?’

  ‘For her, for you. For everyone.’ She knelt down in front of me and I could see the discomfort in her eyes. It had genuinely hurt her to force Darriana to back down. ‘You are all so wounded, Falcio, inside and out, and it’s making you all so hard you’ve become as brittle as glass. Can’t you see that? You all fight so hard to protect this country, but there’s no one to protect you.’

  ‘You think that’s your responsibility?’ I should probably have seen that ages ago.

  ‘I don’t have a sword, Falcio. I can’t play at political intrigue with those who would destroy this country for their own gain. All I can do is wait until each battle is fought and then try to heal the wounds before—’

  Whatever she was going to say next was lost in a rush of shouts and thumping of boots and clanging of weapons and a sudden clangour as a bell rang out. Two dozen or more Ducal guards raced into the courtroom, and my rapier was in my hand before they’d got within twenty feet of us.

  ‘What in hells is going on?’ Valiana said, running back with Kest, Brasti and Darriana close behind.

  ‘Get Valiana out of here!’ I shouted to the others, then I told Ethalia, ‘You have to go with them.’

  Her face was suddenly very pale. ‘Falcio . . . something’s wrong. Something is . . .’ Before she could finish she fell against me, and in my weakened state I started tumbling backwards.

  Kest caught me, and then took Ethalia from my arms.

  ‘What’s happened to her?’ I demanded.

  ‘She’s breathing normally,’ he said, laying her down on the dais. ‘She appears to be in some sort of . . . I don’t know, some sort of trance.’

  Most of the Baern guards took up positions standing between us and the double doors that led to the chaos outside. Antrim Thomas, one of the only Greatcoats who’d returned, now captain of the Aramor Guards, entered the room and pushed through the men of Baern to address Valiana. ‘This palace’s defences have been breached, Realm’s Protector. We have to get you to safety before—’

  ‘The heir,’ I interrupted, ‘where is Aline?’

  ‘She’s already secure,’ he replied. His eyes went to Valiana, as though he didn’t want to have to be the one to explain how.

  ‘She’s in the carriage with her guards and they’ll have already fled the palace,’ Valiana said. ‘We have protocols in place to both keep her safe and to get her away should we come under attack.’

  ‘Why in hells wasn’t I part of those discussions?’ I asked.

  She looked uncomfortable. There was something she wasn’t telling me. ‘Because it’s not your damned place to know, Falcio.’

  ‘How many men, damn you?’ I asked Antrim, then looked at the Ducal guardsmen. ‘And how in the name of Saint Marta-who-shakes-the-lion did they get through the gates and you not notice until now?’

  ‘That’s just it, Falcio,’ Antrim replied. ‘I don’t think—’

  ‘Just tell us how many men,’ Kest said.

  Antrim Thomas, the King’s Memory, hadn’t asked to be captain of Aline’s guards, but when I’d ordered him to do so he hadn’t flinched. He’d been in fights just as hard and deadly as any of us and I’d never seen him back down. That’s why I felt a chill in my gut when I saw the confusion and fear in Antrim’s eyes as he said, ‘That’s just it. There is only one intruder, but none of us can stop her.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Uninvited Guest

  We waited inside the courtroom, listening to the shouts of soldiers echoing their way through the halls.

  ‘If it’s Trin . . .’ Brasti began.

  ‘Shut up, Brasti,’ Kest said.

  ‘I’m just saying, if this is Trin then I’m quitting the Greatcoats. Three hundred laws in this country, there ought to be one says she can’t try to kill us more than once a year.’

  ‘Whoever it is, they’re coming this way,’ Kest said.

  ‘Realm’s Protector,’ Antrim hissed, ‘you must go now – use the door behind the magistrate’s throne. We can’t ensure your safety if—’

  Valiana drew her sword. ‘I won’t protect the realm by running away.’

  ‘Now who’s going in for reckless symbolic gestures?’ I asked. I looked at Brasti, who was already drawing his bow. He hopped up onto the magistrate’s throne and balanced with one foot on either wooden arm. From there he could fire over the top of the heads of the guards in front of us if it came to it.

  More guards poured into the room, only to be felled before the invading force – I could now clearly make out our foe, but what I saw made no sense to me.

  The intruder, who had apparently managed to get around the two dozen scouts patrolling the roads and riverside around Ossia’s palace, who must have walked right by the crossbowmen and spearmen who stood at the gates and upon the walls, who was even now knocking down the guards who protected the halls and rooms of the palace, was a thin woman in a f
ilthy, tattered dress with pale, matted hair plastered to her face.

  ‘Is that Trin?’ Brasti asked, squinting. ‘I can’t tell.’

  The woman took a step towards us. She was at least thirty feet away, and even now guards were still rushing in the room behind her, trying to grab at her. Whenever anyone got close, she lifted her hand and with the barest twitch of her fingers sent them sprawling to their knees.

  I pushed past the men in front of us and stood before her, maybe twenty feet away. ‘Who are you,’ I asked, ‘and why have you come here?’

  As she took a single, small step forward, I said firmly, ‘You need to stop. You need to stop now and answer my questions before—’

  The woman made no reply.

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Antrim signal and two of his men ran past me, their swords drawn, and attempted to cut her down. Before their blades could reach the apex of their motion both men had dropped their blades and fallen to their knees.

  ‘I don’t know what kind of magic you’re using to prevent the guards from striking you with their swords,’ I said, ‘but it’s not going to work on arrows.’ I was really hoping it wasn’t. ‘You need to stop. Now.’

  Still there was no reply. She took another step forward. Now she was less than ten feet away from me.

  ‘Whoever you are, I beg you, stop. Brasti doesn’t miss, and from this distance he could hit you with both his eyes closed. Do not come any closer.’

  Kest came to stand next to me. He stared as her and said, his voice low, ‘Falcio, I think there’s something on her face, underneath her hair. It looks like . . . is that iron?’

  I peered at her myself and caught a glint of something . . . some kind of mask or helm underneath the hair plastered to her face. For an instant I hesitated, remembering the wooden frames Trin had bound to her victims’ faces to control them from afar. Was this some new form of that same damnable magic?

  Another step closer.

  I no longer had time to find out. ‘Brasti,’ I said, ‘the next time she moves, put an arrow through her heart.’

  ‘I have her,’ he said.

  The woman raised her foot to take another step, but before it landed on the floor in front of her the whistle of an arrow filled the courtroom, swiftly followed by a second, and a third.

  I waited for the intruder to fall, but she didn’t.

  Brasti had missed.

  I turned to Antrim. ‘Get the Realm’s Protector out of here. Now!’

  ‘No—!’ Valiana started to protest, but disobeying the Realm’s Protector would be easier to live with than letting her be killed. Antrim signalled to his men with an odd gesture of his hand that I didn’t recognise – I’d have to investigate that later, I reminded myself – and two of them immediately grabbed Valiana by the arms and began to lead her towards the back of the courtroom, where a single door led into the halls of the palace. Two more walked swiftly alongside them, covering Valiana with their bodies in case anyone intended firing a weapon at her.

  ‘Apparently Antrim’s worked out a few new protocols,’ Kest commented, his blade in his left hand and a look of searing pain in his eyes.

  ‘Oh, now you’ll fight,’ Brasti said from behind us, his voice tighter than usual. He wasn’t used to missing his target. I heard the creak of his bow and once again the sound of arrows flying past us one after the other. ‘Something’s wrong, Falcio. I can’t hit her. I’m aiming right at her, but—’

  ‘Maybe your aim is just off today,’ Darriana said, and I saw a blur as she leaped past me, her thin-bladed sword high in the air, point down, coming in for a strike that would drive the tip right through the intruder’s skull. At the last instant, all the strength seemed to flee her body and she went sailing past, like a doll flung by an angry child, and crashed against the wall of the courtroom before slumping to the floor.

  Antrim shouted, an order I didn’t make out, and he and the remaining Ducal guardsmen rushed the intruder – and once again she raised her hand slightly and they fell to the ground.

  There were more than three dozen bodies in the room, and only Kest, Brasti and I were still standing.

  And the intruder.

  ‘Ossia’s guards appear to have decided on a nap,’ Brasti said.

  I looked at the men on the floor and only then realised they weren’t unconscious – in fact, they hadn’t even fallen, not really. They were on their knees, bowing low before the woman who had just singlehandedly invaded a once-all-but-impregnable Ducal palace.

  The woman took another step.

  ‘Falcio, what do we do?’ Kest asked as a powerful compulsion to kneel started pushing us to the ground. The impulse to give up, to . . . accept . . . was overwhelming. But this woman, whoever or whatever she was, had forgotten one thing about us.

  I forced myself to hold my ground, lifted my rapier and said, ‘We’re the Greatcoats, Lady. We don’t fucking bow to anyone.’

  *

  Stay on your feet, I screamed at my unresponsive body. Do. Not. Kneel.

  Despite my best efforts, my knees were beginning to buckle. I strained against the force, whatever it was, with every ounce of will, but still I saw the woman growing taller while I, ever so slowly, was bending down. In the periphery of my vision, I could see Brasti and Kest losing the battle too.

  I tried to push past the feeling, which was now becoming oddly familiar to me. I will not bow before you, whoever you are.

  The woman’s hand came up a little higher and now I saw a tremble that I didn’t think had been there before. I felt the pressure increase, and I lost another inch in the fight. I tried to change from resisting the pressure to kneel to simply throwing myself at her, but that didn’t work either, though the shaking in the woman’s hand was definitely increasing.

  She took another step towards me and the pressure became unbearable. My knees were half-bent and I was slowly losing my balance.

  It’s too much, I thought, unable even to keep my head up. If she gets past me, she’ll walk right through the palace to wherever they’re keeping Aline.

  I heard first one thump and then a second as first Brasti and then Kest fell to their knees.

  She’ll do whatever it is she’s come to do and no one will be able to stop her.

  Drops of blood dripped onto the floor in front of me and I realised I was straining so hard that I’d reopened my wounds.

  No! I screamed silently. I swore an oath to protect that girl. You don’t get to her without getting past me first.

  With an effort that couldn’t have been any harder had my tongue been crushed under the weight of an anvil, I said, ‘Greatcoats. Don’t. Kneel.’

  The force increased even more and I felt myself beginning to collapse – and then, all at once, the pressure disappeared – it just vanished, not from any surge of will on my part but because something had at last broken in the intruder. She took a stumbling step towards me and I nearly skewered her with my blade before I realised she wasn’t trying to attack me – she was falling to the ground herself.

  She landed hard on her knees in front of me and then fell sideways and rolled onto her back. Some of the hair slid away from her face and I could now see the grey-black iron mask she was wearing. There were no slots through which I could see her features. I approached her slowly, carefully, my rapier still ready.

  ‘Who are you?’ I asked, my voice unusually weak. I leaned over her and swept the rest of her hair back and saw that the mask had been partly broken off, one of the iron bolts attached to a second half that wrapped around the back of her head sheared off.

  You don’t put on something like this by choice.

  Antrim walked unsteadily towards me. ‘Falcio, you don’t look so good.’

  ‘Help me get it off,’ I said, kneeling awkwardly before the woman on the ground. ‘She wasn’t wearing this for protection . . . It’s some kind of—’ I tried pulling at the straps, but they were held fast. There didn’t appear to be any clasps to turn to remove the bolts. I wiped my
hands against my shirt so that I could get a better grip but they came away slick and wet and red. I’m bleeding, I thought stupidly.

  Whatever strength fear and fury had brought me was gone now and I fell onto my side. My face was not far from the woman’s and I could see there were small cuts all over her, visible beneath the torn fabric of her tattered dress.

  ‘Someone get that damned doctor back in here!’ Brasti shouted.

  ‘The mask,’ I muttered. ‘Get the mask off.’

  I didn’t think anyone had heard me, but Kest was raising his heavy warsword in his left hand. He brought it down with stunning force, and for a second I expected to see it driven straight through the mask, but instead, he’d severed the head of one of the iron bolts holding it in place. He did it a second time and I reached out and pulled the mask from her face.

  Her face was so tired, so full of pain, that I almost didn’t recognise her.

  ‘Who in the name of Saint Shiula-who-bathes-with-beasts is she?’ Brasti asked, waiting for the command to fire again.

  As gently as I could, I placed my hand upon her cheek. ‘Not Shiula,’ I whispered, ‘Birgid. Birgid-who-weeps-rivers.’

  At the sound of her name, her eyelids fluttered opened and she reached a trembling hand to cover my own. ‘We are met once again, man of valour,’ she said, her voice incongruously beautiful, musical. Then she coughed, and a trickle of blood escaped her lips. ‘I have failed, Falcio.’

  ‘Failed at what? Who did this to you?’

  But her wounds overcame her and her eyes closed. I felt my own injuries begin to steal the last shreds of consciousness from me, but a single question pulled at my thoughts: who had the power – and the will – to do this to the Saint of Mercy?

  I retrieved my rapiers from the floor and rose to my feet. My vision swam.

  ‘Falcio,’ Kest said, reaching out to me, ‘you need to rest. Your wounds . . .’

  I didn’t hear the rest of what he said. I was too focused on the people rushing frantically about the room and in the halls outside: guards, nobles, merchants. It’s odd the way human beings move together, almost like ants. Even in the midst of chaos, there’s a kind of flow to the motion of their bodies through space. That’s why I noticed one figure, near the far door, who wasn’t moving like the others. ‘Protect Birgid,’ I ordered Kest and Brasti as I took off in pursuit of the man who may have killed a Saint.