‘Including the Saints?’ I asked.
‘The Saints worst of all.’ Erastian looked up at Ethalia and smiled. ‘There were a few exceptions, though – Birgid was different, some of the others, too.’ He reached out a hand and stroked Ethalia’s cheek. ‘She loved you so, child, but there was no other way. She held on for so long. I was hundreds of miles away, and yet I felt her passing. I don’t think the Sainthood could have passed to anyone else, but it must have broken her heart to force this upon you.’
Ethalia glanced back at me, though only for a second. ‘I accept the burden.’
‘It’s always been my experience that burdens are made lighter through love,’ he said. He was staring at me.
What are you trying to say to me, old man? Are you offering me hope? Are you saying there’s still a chance for Ethalia and me? Or are you simply reminiscing? ‘You loved Birgid, didn’t you?’ I asked.
Erastian laughed, and in that laugh I caught a glimpse of what he must have been not so long ago: handsome, charming, full of passion. ‘What man could fail to love Birgid? What woman, for that matter – she was wind and fire and joy. She was certainty itself.’
‘That doesn’t sound much like a Saint of Mercy,’ Ethalia said, surprised.
‘Mercy isn’t passivity, my girl. It isn’t inaction. It is the decision that heals the vanquished and the victor; it is far more powerful than most realise. It is mercy we call out for in the darkest hour; it is mercy we summon to protect us.’ He gazed up at her for a long time, then said quietly, ‘It saddens me that you should be its Saint and yet not understand that.’
Something heavy pounded hard against the doors. Kest might be right; they could hold for ever, but I was done with this place. ‘It’s time to go,’ I said, reaching down to help the Saint of Romantic Love to his feet.
‘I thank you, Trattari, and the Gods know I would dearly love to not die in such a foul place, but I’m afraid this little victory of yours is next to worthless. There are dozens of Knights and clerics, and men darker even than they, roaming these corridors.’
I looked at Ethalia. ‘Can you use the Awe again?’
‘She can’t,’ Erastian interrupted before she could reply. ‘She hasn’t come into her full power yet. Her strength comes from being inside the sanctuary itself, and once you leave this room, the Awe will fade until she has time to—’
‘Fine, fine,’ Brasti said. ‘Then it’s back to the original stupid, horrible plan.’
Erastian looked doubtful. ‘You really think you can get past all the men guarding the mine? I should think the odds rather slim.’
Brasti did at least grin at that. ‘Old man, we’re the fucking Greatcoats. Beating the odds is what we do for a living.’
I pointed at his hand, clumsily bandaged and already showing blood seeping through. ‘You sure you’re ready for this?’
Following his rather lengthy reply, paired with a series of obscene gestures, he removed the wheellock pistol from his holster and raised his arm.
Kest went to the door and removed the bar. The hammering was growing louder and the doors were shaking. ‘Don’t miss, Brasti,’ he said, and opened the door.
*
As the doors opened, three Knights holding a heavy log as a battering ram stumbled into the chamber. Brasti fired the pistol and an instant later, the metal ball shattered against the cavern wall a few feet from where our packs lay.
‘You missed,’ Kest said as he smashed the pommel of his sword against the helmeted head of one of the Knights.
‘It’s that damned pistol,’ Brasti explained. ‘Bloody toy made for children who can’t draw a bow.’
‘Just load another ball,’ I said, facing off with another of the Knights to stop him going for Brasti. I swung the mace and promptly missed, which just pointed out how exhausted I was; the others probably were, too.
The Knight noticed too; he hoisted his broadsword in preparation to cleave my skull. ‘And here I was expecting a real battle, Cogneri . . . or should I say, Trattari?’
The blade came down and I leaped backwards, nearly tripping over the body of one of the slain God’s Needles. I threw the mace at him and was absurdly pleased when it struck him dead centre in his chest. Mind you, it wasn’t a strong enough blow to do much damage, unfortunately, but at least the Knight found it funny. ‘I’m afraid you’re without a weapon – should I lend you one of mine?’
‘Don’t bother,’ I replied. ‘I’m not planning on staying long. Brasti?’
‘Coming, coming,’ he said. We’d made him practise a hundred times on the road and though he professed to hate it, he was actually fairly fast now. He lifted his arm and took aim.
At first the Knight thought he was the target, and when Brasti fired and the bullet harmlessly flew past him he turned and smiled through the slits in the front of his helmet. He started, ‘You miss—!’ before the ball from Brasti’s pistol found its target and struck the piece of amberlight I’d laid on top of Kest’s pack. The shower of sparks set off the pistol powder, which then exploded in a pleasant little fire that sent people scurrying.
‘That was your brilliant plan?’ Erastian asked. ‘A distraction?’
‘Wait for it,’ I said.
It didn’t take long: the modest explosion from the black powder broke through the heavy flask of water, which then poured down over the insides of my pack, which was holding the rather large supply of nightmist I’d taken from the dead God’s Needle back in Luth.
The strange mixture of chemicals and magic inside the powder soon filled the corridors with grey smoke so thick it choked even the light of the lanterns hanging from the walls. I handed Ethalia and Erastian pieces of cloth we’d prepared. ‘Cover your mouths and noses and stay between Kest and me. Don’t bother trying to see – there won’t be anything to see except grey soup – so just close your eyes and hang onto us.’
Brasti shook his head, tutting, ‘Falcio val Mond using magic! What is the world coming to?’
‘It’s a changing world,’ I said, pushing him forward. The five of us entered the billowing clouds. ‘I’m just trying to adapt.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
The Chapel
The mine became an endless ocean of grey into which we swam blind as all the other fish. We had the advantage, however: we’d known this was coming.
Twenty-two paces forward, I whispered to myself, then a left turn, followed three paces later by a slight bend to the right.
People were shouting and screaming all around us – apparently all those nobles and their families waiting to become God’s Needles had little experience of being trapped in a mine. Having the Knights running around barrelling into people with their heavy armour probably didn’t help, either. It’s one thing to be underground with nice bright lanterns every few yards; it’s another thing entirely to suddenly discover you can’t see anything.
The screams became ghostly and confusing, muffled and distorted by the esoteric properties of the nightmist. I found the effect oddly soothing, which worried me. Some new-minted Saint strike me down, I think I’m starting to like magic—
A clawing, desperate hand grabbed my arm and, guessing at where their face would be, I struck out with the palm of my hand. It wasn’t a very solid strike, but it got the job done. I continued striding along the corridor, feeling Ethalia’s hand gripping the back of my coat. ‘There are stairs up ahead, about six paces,’ I said. ‘I’ll pause when we get there. Then we’ll find three steps going up, each one shallower than you’d expect, so be careful.’
I wasn’t sure if she heard me, but somehow we got up the few steps and down the next passageway. By my reckoning we were less than three minutes from the exit now. Despite my earlier confidence, the nightmist was starting to play havoc with my sense of direction. I stumbled into a wall, regained my balance and pressed forward, counting my strides until we should reach the next staircase, the long one that led up and out – but suddenly I felt Ethalia tug at me, then her hand disappeared. I
stopped and turned, reaching out for her but feeling nothing. I heard a shout so loud I thought it came from inside my own head and was starting to head back the way we’d come when I heard the sound of shuffling.
‘It’s all right,’ Kest’s voice loomed out of the darkness. ‘I’ve taken care of it.’
He sounded as if he were miles away, but a hand grabbed onto mine and I knew instantly it was Ethalia’s. I turned and resumed our slow trek down the passage and a few moments later, we reached the stairs.
‘Thirty-six stairs,’ I announced. ‘They get taller near the top.’
My warning turned out to be unnecessary; the open air ahead was far enough away from the source of the nightmist that the smoke became only a light grey haze through which we could clearly see the exit.
Chaos had erupted outside the mine, but this was the good kind of chaos, the sort in which our enemies were scattered and confused. Half had gone into the mine to start the rescue attempt while others were scrambling to find water, thinking that a fire had broken out deep inside – and none of them knew we weren’t the Inquisitors we appeared to be, nor did they know what we’d done. ‘Get down there,’ I commanded a group of men standing with an odd mix of weapons and pails of water, neither of which was going to do the least bit of good. ‘When you get to the cathedral, the clerics will instruct you.’
They nodded and ran past us, clambering down the stairs into the mist. Once they were gone, Ethalia emerged, followed by Kest, carrying Erastian in his arms.
‘I can stand, you silly fool,’ the old man said.
‘Are you sure you’re the Saint of Romantic Love?’ Brasti asked, bringing up the rear, ‘because you sound much more like the Saint of Grouchy Old Codgers.’
‘We need to get out of sight,’ Kest said, pointing to a path that led into the forest. ‘That way we can circle around and make our way back to the horses.’
We travelled deep into the woods, leaving behind the noisy confusion we’d sown. The undergrowth made it slow going, and after ten minutes of walking I called a halt. I pointed at a little trail that cut across our path. ‘Let’s take this. It shouldn’t be more than two hundred yards to the horses.’
Kest and Brasti were several yards down the trail before we noticed neither Erastian nor Ethalia had moved. They were staring into the distance, a strange look on their faces.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
Erastian looked at Ethalia. ‘Do you feel it?’ The two of them started moving deeper into the forest, completely ignoring me.
‘Wait!’ I cried, and when they still didn’t respond I set off after them, gesturing for the others to follow. Perfect, I thought. The one time a plan actually works and now the damned Saints feel the need to ruin it.
Brasti, close behind me, tapped my shoulder. ‘I see something – through that copse—’
I saw it now too: a building of some sort, about twenty feet away, the dirty white stone walls barely visible through the barrier of thick leaves. I drew my Inquisitor’s mace and pushed past the Saints, in case there was trouble waiting for us. After a few minutes of forcing a way through the heavy undergrowth, we entered a small clearing with a circular chapel not unlike the one at the centre of the Martyrium of Baern. Like that one, it had six doors around its circumference, and also like that one, six statues, one for each of the Gods of Tristia, worn and broken by time and neglect. That’s where the similarities ended, however.
‘Saint Zaghev’s balls!’ Brasti swore. ‘What in all the hells—?’
Beside each ruined statue was a tall gibbet made of a recently felled tree and thick new rope. From each hung an emaciated figure dressed in robes so filthy it took me a moment to see that each of the six wore a different colour – the colours of the Gods. Their faces were obscured by iron masks.
We entered the grisly grave site with caution. ‘More murdered Saints?’ Kest wondered aloud, ‘or clerics, maybe? Perhaps this is some kind of ritual punishment for heresy?’
‘Killing priests?’ Brasti asked.
One of the cracked wooden doors of the chapel creaked open and a deep baritone voice answered, ‘You think priests should be immune to paying the price of heresy?’ The barrel-chested man who stepped out wiped thick hands against his heavy leather apron, then hooked his thumbs into the wide belt. His tools – a hammer, tongs, several files and hand-punches – hung from loops on either side. ‘Ah, there you are, Falcio,’ he added, as if we were old friends.
‘Who is this?’ Kest asked me.
I shook my head, unable to speak. I had never met this man, never seen him before, and yet in that moment I knew exactly who he was.
‘You have never met him,’ the boy had said – but I’d had clues, many of them – simple things, obvious things: the carefully designed metal clasps on the iron masks; the complex triggers on the Inquisitors’ pistols, each detail a kind of metaphor for the perfectly crafted way each event had unfolded.
It was as if the whole world had become a machine built to this man’s specifications.
‘What’s going on?’ Brasti asked. ‘Who is this arsehole, and what’s he doing with a bunch of dead priests?’
‘I am a blacksmith,’ the man replied.
‘He’s lying,’ I said, though it was a small lie, buried in one letter.
How many times had we asked ourselves who could so perfectly manipulate the country? The Dukes couldn’t do it; even Trin, who was vastly cleverer, couldn’t. I’d only ever met one person with the brilliance and cunning to pull something like this off. ‘I’m a Tailor,’ she’d told us, so many times. ‘The last true Tailor in all of Tristia.’ She’d been right, of course.
‘Well, who is he then?’ Brasti asked.
‘He’s . . . Whatever the Tailor is, he’s like her. He’s not a blacksmith. He’s the Blacksmith.’
‘Clever,’ the man said, stepping out of the doorway of the chapel to face us. ‘It’s a shame to see a mind like yours go to waste, Falcio. I’ll bet even the old woman never figured it out, did she?’
‘She leaves the little things to me,’ I said smoothly, trying to stop my voice shaking.
‘Don’t underestimate yourself. It is a remarkable thing to unwind the plans of those of us like the Tailor and me. Did you know, it turns out there’s a word for us? Inlaudati: the Unrecognised. It’s not an especially grand name, I grant you, but I suppose that’s because our nature is to remain hidden.’
‘And yet here we are.’
The Blacksmith spread his arms wide. ‘And you should be proud. You found me.’ His eyes showed genuine delight: the secret desire of every murderer to have someone admire his handiwork. But there was something else there, too: he was curious about me, whether I was going to figure out what he’d done.
I already had. I looked up at the figures hanging from the six wooden gibbets, swaying gently in the soft breeze. ‘These aren’t priests and they aren’t Saints.’
‘No . . .’ Ethalia whispered. She and Erastian already knew what I had just now deduced. And then Brasti and Kest’s expressions changed as they too understood what we had found here in this little chapel.
I’d always been the least religious of us all, so I felt it was up to me to say it out loud. ‘This man killed the Gods.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The Heretic
When you come upon a corpse, it’s important to set aside emotion. Rage won’t help you understand death, nor sorrow, and if there’s one thing the dead deserve, it is for their true story to be told. As a Greatcoat, I’d seen no end of corpses in my time; it comes with the job. I’d seen bodies in every state of decay, from the still-warm victim whose eyes stare back at you, demanding answers, to desiccated skeletons picked clean by scavengers until the bones fairly gleam. What surprised me most, staring up at the dead Gods of Tristia, was how ordinary they looked.
‘How can you kill a God?’ Brasti asked. There was a brittleness in his voice, an almost child-like uncertainty that was unusual for him. I’d never re
ally thought about Brasti and Faith in the same sentence; I’d never considered that deep down he might actually be religious.
‘The same way you kill anyone else,’ I replied, my eyes still on the withered corpses hanging above us. ‘You take out your victim when he’s at his weakest.’
‘Correct,’ the Blacksmith said, as if a favoured pupil had answered a difficult question. ‘Although I confess I was disappointed when I found them so enfeebled – there was barely any Faith left inside them with which to do my work.’ He pointed towards the mine. ‘They huddled like beggars in the tunnels, trying to get what warmth they could from half-remembered prayers.’
Though far out of my normal domain, it made a certain sense: faith in Tristia had been declining for centuries – for all the piety-by-rote you’d see on high days and holy days, I didn’t think many people really gave much credence to the Gods any more. Well, not until the Saints being murdered set off a religious panic. ‘You didn’t start with the Saints,’ I said. It felt like I was slowly taking apart a clock, holding up every tiny wheel and pinion and spring; seeing for the first time how they connected to each other. ‘You killed the Gods first.’
He smiled. ‘Again, you impress me, Falcio: such a simple deduction, and yet one that would have eluded most people, so blinded are they by what passes for belief in this broken country.’ He reached up a hand and squeezed the foot of the one I assumed was the hanging corpse of Duestre, God of Craft. ‘We worship them, we pray to them – so what does it tell you when no one even notices when they die?’
Even Kest looked troubled. ‘But the risk of facing a living God . . .’
I was pondering the same question. I looked up at the iron masks covering their faces. Forget the fact that they’re Gods and stick with what you know. ‘You make sure the victim can’t fight back,’ I pointed out. If the masks were made from the ore from the mine, and it was the ore that had long ago transformed prayer into power, then it stood to reason that the Gods might be just as vulnerable to the effects of the masks as the Saints were.
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