‘We all did.’
I looked at the destruction all around us. ‘How was that even possible?’
‘And why aren’t the pilgrims tearing us apart right now?’ Brasti asked. ‘Why aren’t there soldiers waiting to capture us?’
Darriana gave a bitter smile, devoid of anything resembling joy or hope. ‘Because after everything went to seven hells and the first blood was shed, Aline had the bright idea of demanding trial by combat. Apparently that’s something the God gives a shit about, because he agreed. So until the duel tomorrow, no one is allowed to touch us.’
‘So we run,’ Brasti said, looking at me. ‘We get everyone the hells out of Tristia.’
‘Aline won’t run,’ Darriana said, ‘and neither will Valiana.’
‘Why not?’ Brasti looked astounded.
Darriana waded out into the pilgrims, then stopped and stood there like a single living tree in the middle of a grey desert. She spread her arms wide and at last I saw that the men and women and children kneeling all around her and singing their hymns were also coughing and choking, and amongst them I now saw the bodies of those who had already succumbed to the clouds of dust rising from the ruins. ‘The God has commanded that they remain here and sing his praises until Aline and Valiana return to face his judgment.’
CHAPTER SIXTY
The Church
With Darriana once again in the lead, we marched through the streets of the city of Aramor, which looked impoverished without its castle looming in the background, winding our way between the two- and three-storey buildings of brick and stone, the shops and homes built one by one over hundreds of years and clinging to the hillside like barnacles to a ship.
A ship that’s now drifting to the bottom of the ocean.
What surprised me most was how many people were going about their daily business as if it were a normal day, mostly ignoring us, except for the occasional sneer as we passed. No doubt the Greatcoats had proved to be just what they’d always believed: a fantasy, a feeble joke played upon the people of Tristia by a King who understood nothing of their real struggles. But there were some whose heads turned as we passed, whose eyes followed us as if waiting for some sign that this must be some temporary feint on our part that was going to precede our counter-thrust against the forces arrayed against the country. I avoided their gaze the most. They were the greater fools.
There was no plan, no feint, no counter-attack left to us.
‘We’re here,’ Darriana said, gesturing down a long, narrow alley in the dirty riverside district of Ponte Calliet to a plain wooden door beneath a broken, poorly lettered sign that read The Busted Scales. It was a tavern, of sorts.
The Busted Scales had been our informal gathering place, back in the day – the King had provided us with all the space we needed at the castle, but most of us were from poorer backgrounds and didn’t feel entirely comfortable in opulent surroundings. Within these dilapidated walls we could talk and drink and tell our stories without ever feeling too grand.
‘I’d never even been here before,’ Darriana replied. ‘Talia and Allister said this was the best place to prepare. They called it “the Greatcoats’ church”.’
‘Well,’ Brasti said after a moment, ‘it’s certainly as close to a church as most of us ever got.’
As I moved to enter, Darriana grabbed my arm. ‘You want to know why I’m angry with you?’ she snarled. ‘Because this is all your fucking fault, Falcio. You should never have filled Valiana’s and Aline’s heads with all this useless idealism of yours. They should have run the second that monstrosity appeared at Aramor . . .’ She stopped for a moment. ‘We got them out, but not everyone made it.’
‘Who?’ I asked.
She pushed open the door. ‘See for yourself.’
*
The light was dim, but I could see Greatcoats sitting around the same old battered tables, tending wounds or talking quietly. Talia and Allister were poring over a torn map and arguing with Nehra and Rhyleis, the Bardatti.
The Tailor sat in a corner, pulling a heavy steel needle through a greatcoat; I recognised it at once as the one the God’s Needle had stolen from Harden. It’s odd that I remember coats more easily than faces.
Antrim Thomas was kneeling by the old trapdoor to one of our hidden caches of weapons – one of Brasti’s first innovations, years ago. He’d pulled out a pile of swords and spears and was hauling up a shield. I smiled wryly at that; I remembered the King offering it to one of us once and we’d all made a joke of it; what would a Greatcoat need with a shield?
I caught sight of Mateo Tiller, sitting at a bench changing the bandages on a man’s shoulder. It took me a moment to recognise Quentis Maren. ‘It turns out our coats aren’t quite as good at protection as your own,’ he said, seeing me.
I walked over and looked down at the small, almost perfectly round wound. ‘You were shot.’
‘Apparently being leader of the Order of Inquisitors is insufficient to prevent one’s own men trying to kill one on occasion.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I said.
He laughed, then caught his breath. ‘Don’t. It hurts.’
Mateo looked up at me and rolled his eyes. ‘I offered the man all the alcohol he wants. He keeps refusing.’
‘Inquisitors don’t drink,’ Quentis said. ‘It offends the Gods.’
I really wasn’t sure how to answer that.
‘Oh hells,’ he said, catching my expression, ‘you mean it’s true? I was hoping that the Blacksmith and his devil were just bragging.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, ‘but I’m afraid there’s been a change of ownership over our souls.’
‘In that case,’ Quentis said, motioning for a flask on the table, ‘give me that.’
Mateo grinned. ‘I knew I was starting to like you, Inquisitor.’
I felt someone at my side. ‘Falcio,’ Ethalia said softly, and I followed the line of her extended hand to where Aline sat in the shadows with Valiana. I couldn’t help myself; I ran to them.
‘We’re fine, Falcio, let go,’ Aline said, struggling to breathe as I crushed her in one arm even as I reached out with my other to take Valiana’s hand.
I ignored Aline’s protestations for a while, but then I realised how stiff and awkward she was, and guessed she was trying hard trying to hold herself together. Valiana was squeezing my hand, but it felt wrong somehow, sorrowful. Then I felt Ethalia’s hand on my shoulder.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘Come with me,’ Aline said. ‘There’s still a little time and he’ll want to see you.’
*
She led me into a windowless room at the back of the tavern. It was lit with only a couple of candles and I could barely see anything except for a small figure lying on a pair of tables that had been pushed together in the centre, and a taller figure standing over him.
‘Damn you to every hell, I told you to leave us alone!’ Jillard, Duke of Rijou, shouted. ‘We don’t need your sympathy and we don’t want your caterwauling Bardatti laments—’
‘I’ve brought Falcio,’ Aline said gently, and he stopped his ranting.
After a moment he gestured imperiously. ‘Bring him.’
I entered the room, Ethalia close behind, her hand resting on my arm. When I reached the table, I found Tommer lying on his back, looking up into the darkness. His breathing was ragged. He still wore his long leather coat, fashioned to look like one of ours. But his wasn’t a proper greatcoat, of course; it didn’t have the dozens of hidden pockets with tools and tricks to help us survive. It didn’t have the thin bone plates that might have stopped the weapon that had pierced his stomach so deeply that even through the layers upon layers of bandages the crimson of his blood stood out against the darkness.
Ethalia stepped past me to examine the wound, but it turned out there was more than one and I could see in her eyes that there was nothing she could do. This wasn’t a briefly stopped heart; there would be no calling young Tommer back from this.
/> She looked up at me. ‘Falcio, this wasn’t done with a blade.’
Jillard spoke then, his voice quiet, steady, but quite unable to hide the unquenchable rage I could see shivering through his body. ‘Two of the Inquisitors got hold of the Realm’s Protector during the chaos. They dragged her to the gibbet, and my son – Tommer – ran in front of her and tried to duel the God. But before Tommer could issue the challenge . . .’ He paused then, and I heard him take two slow breaths before he spoke again. ‘The God drove his fingers into my son’s stomach.’
‘No,’ I said, and then I said it again, as if repetition could stop the steady clock that was marking off Tommer’s death, one ragged tick at a time.
‘First Cantor,’ the boy whispered, the words broken by coughs that spurted blood from his mouth. His father wiped it away with a silk handkerchief.
I started to reach for his hand and then stopped and looked at Jillard. I didn’t need to see his eyes to know he blamed me for this; I already knew that he despised me and even now in his grief he was probably constructing a lifetime of punishments. Despite all that, I needed his permission.
He gave me the briefest of nods, then went back to wiping Tommer’s mouth.
What do you say to a twelve-year-old boy as he awaits death? Do you tell him he’s brave? Do you make promises of an afterlife in the arms of the Gods whom you know are already dead? Do you kneel and blubber over life’s injustice?
‘Greatcoat, report,’ I said.
The boy’s eyes opened a little wider; he swallowed. ‘Tommer, sir.’
‘You seem a trifle under the weather, Tommer.’
‘I had a spot of trouble, First Cantor.’
‘“A spot of trouble”? Is that what you call it when you attack a God?’
He coughed, and blood spurted from his mouth. He had to swallow several times until he could catch his breath. ‘The fool tried to lay hands on my sister, First Cantor.’
I smiled then, and held it there like a lantern for him, because I knew he could still see me even if no more sounds could make it through the blood filling his mouth and throat, and because I knew he had held on this long so that those would be the words we remembered.
*
A little while later the Duke left, carrying his son’s body with him, still wrapped in the long leather coat. There was a silent promise between Jillard and me; there would be a reckoning between us. Had I not encouraged Tommer in his dream of becoming a Greatcoat, had I shunned him or mocked him, or done any of the dozen things you do when a boy doesn’t understand the dangers of this stupid, stupid life we lead—
‘Falcio,’ Aline said, cutting through my misery, ‘Tommer saved Valiana’s life. He may have saved us all.’
‘He didn’t,’ I said curtly. ‘The God could have killed her if he’d wanted. This is all theatre: a performance. He wants her coming to him on her hands and knees so he can shatter the Law for all to see.’
I heard the sound of an arrow and saw Brasti drawing another as Allister looked on. ‘Off your target, almost an inch,’ he said. ‘Pay up.’
‘I told you,’ Brasti complained, ‘these are new arrows. I need one free shot to get used to the weight first.’
Of course, I thought, because this is what you do when you’re Brasti Goodbow and the world is falling apart around you: you pretend everything’s just fine.
Aline caught my attention. ‘You’re wrong, Falcio. The Blacksmith was going to hang us – when Tommer came, when he tried to challenge the God . . . It was like it scared them, somehow. That’s how I got the idea to demand trial by combat. Maybe there’s some way that—’
‘Enough,’ I said, practically shouting. ‘This isn’t a tale told over wine and song. There’s no virtue in pretending that foolish daring and useless valour mean anything to anyone—’
‘What?’ Brasti interrupted, ‘Daring and Valour are falling out of fashion, you say? I’ll not hear such blasphemy inside these sacred walls.’
I strode up to him, my hand closed into a fist. Brasti’s glib tone had struck a nerve in me. I could still feel the sticky wetness of Tommer’s blood between my fingers where I’d held his hand. Aramor was in ruins. A God had walked among its broken stones and still-falling towers and the Blacksmith had proved once and for all that the Greatcoats could no more bring justice back to Tristia than we could bring back the dead.
‘Falcio . . .’ Kest started, but I ignored him. Brasti stood in front of me, his smug grin still on his face. I was so sick of his jokes, his pranks. I was tired of his drunkard’s advice, his admonitions to ‘just be a man’ about it all. I needed to hit someone, and there was no one else strong enough to punish for my failures.
‘Do it,’ he said. His expression hadn’t changed. His smile was intact and his tone was light and easy, almost as if he were challenging me to a fight, but his eyes held a softness in them that made me see what this was: he wanted me to hit him. He wanted me to unleash my useless anger on him. I looked around at the others. They were as tired and heartbroken as I was.
He wants you to hit him so that you won’t loose your rage on anyone else.
I unclenched my fist and turned away from him, from all of them. I stared at the bare boards of the building, at the dank green moss that had intruded between the cracks. How long did it take for such things to worm their way inside the places that humans built, to slowly weaken them until they would fall from the slightest breeze? It had taken King Paelis a lifetime to devise his great strategy to save this country. Had the Blacksmith needed even ten years to bring his scheme to fruition? Five? One?
I guess it’s easy to bend a people to your will when their nature is to kneel.
‘Falcio?’ Aline’s voice was distant, muted; it was only the touch of her hand on my arm that caught my attention, and it was only then that I realised someone had asked me a question.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘She asked what your plan is, First Cantor,’ Rhyleis replied from where she sat strumming her guitar. She gave my title weight, as if to remind me of the responsibility that came with it. I was really starting to dislike the Bardatti.
The word ‘plan’ sounded absurd to my ears just then, and I caught myself chuckling. The sound was at once freeing and terrifying: the first tentative step into madness. I’d been mad before, after the death of my wife. I’d become a crazed thing, wandering the roads from a tiny village in Pertine that no one had ever bothered to name all the way to the home of a King, killing every man responsible that I could find along the way. I longed for those days again.
I forced myself to look up, and saw my fellow Greatcoats, waiting for me to speak. Allister, Talia, Mateo, Kest, Brasti, Darriana – even Quentis Maren. They had given up their lives to try and do the right thing and where had it got them? I looked at Aline, the heir to a throne that was now worthless; at Ethalia, a Saint whose brethren were pretty much all gone. But it was Valiana who held my gaze longest: my chosen daughter, trapped behind an iron mask from which we had no means to free her. ‘Take your people away,’ the Blacksmith had said. ‘Find a country worthy of your courage. Leave this one to those who may yet be able to redeem it.’
It was the best advice I’d heard in a very long time.
‘Find what supplies you can, if there’s anything left here,’ I said. ‘In the morning we’ll buy horses, or steal them or do whatever it takes and ride south.’
‘We’re doing no such thing, First Cantor,’ Aline said firmly.
I ignored her. ‘Start packing up now.’
The others stared back at me, confused. ‘What’s in the south?’ Mateo asked.
‘Ships,’ I replied.
Nothing had changed since the moment the Blacksmith had spared our lives: we still didn’t have the means to fight him, and chances are we never would. This wasn’t a duel we could win, which meant there was only one strategy left – the one I hated most.
The fugidatist isn’t really a fencer; it’s just the word we use for a man
who’s found himself in a duel he can’t win. Lacking any other means of survival, he just runs around the duelling circle, desperately avoiding his opponent’s blade, crying and begging for mercy, hoping against hope that his opponent will, out of sheer embarrassment, call a halt to the whole affair. It rarely works, but rarely is better than never. I would give Aline what little life there was to be had – I’d give them all what life I could. That would have to be enough.
‘We’re leaving Tristia,’ I said.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Courage
‘Are you out of your fucking mind, “First Cantor”?’ Antrim shouted.
I didn’t know him particularly well; the King had made him a Greatcoat while I was on the road and our paths had never really crossed until recently. It hadn’t taken him very long to take a dislike to me, all things considered.
‘Let it go, Antrim,’ Talia said, her voice so calm that it made me wonder if she had any idea how much fury and disdain was in her eyes as she stared back at me.
He turned on her. ‘No, I don’t think I will. I gave up my home and my life to become a magistrate, and I gave up being a magistrate to try and fulfil the King’s last asinine command. And after all that, after we come to this point’ – Antrim rounded on me – ‘I was ready to die for Paelis’ dream because I thought it might make this rancid shithole of a country just a little fairer, a little better. And now you’re telling me it was all for nothing?’
‘For less than nothing,’ I said. ‘You wasted your life, Antrim.’
His jaw clenched and I could see his teeth behind the snarl of his lips. He wanted to hit me almost as much as I wanted him to do so; I was craving physical pain to match the pain inside me. Maybe this was why Brasti had goaded me.
‘That’s enough,’ Ethalia said, and suddenly we were all struggling to stay on our feet.
‘I don’t think so, Saint of Mercy,’ Talia said. She was resisting the Awe, her hand wrapped around her spear and raising its point. ‘Maybe if you weren’t so damned “peaceful” you might have helped us prevent this disaster.’
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