I felt the tears trickling down my cheeks. ‘That easy, is it?’
‘It’s the hardest thing in the world, Falcio, and that’s why it matters so much. Now come on, finish the game. Who am I?’
I understood now why it was Tommer’s face I saw, but it took me a long time before I could say out loud, ‘You’re the God of Valour.’
*
I’m not sure how long we sat there, drying out in the sun, while the cat alternated between purring and growling on my lap, before I heard voices calling out for me.
‘There he is!’ Brasti shouted, running towards me with my coat and scabbards in hand, Kest hard on his heels. The cat, evidently deciding that it was now sufficiently dry and that five was a crowd, leaped off my lap and went loping towards the alley.
Kest’s eyes narrowed as he approached. ‘How can she be here?’ he asked.
At first I thought Kest was referring to the cat, but then Brasti said, ‘What do you mean “she”?’ He nocked an arrow, then shifted his aim between me and the boy. ‘Which one is real?’
‘Wait,’ I said, rising, ‘this isn’t what you think.’
Brasti turned his arrow towards me, though his eyes were still on the boy. ‘Kest . . . which one is Falcio?’
‘Fascinating,’ Kest said.
It took me a moment to understand what Brasti was seeing.
Saints . . . whoever would have believed it? He always acts like I’m such an arse. Eventually, he figured it out, too, though he didn’t lower his bow. Finally he said, ‘Oh . . . well, this is all sorts of embarrassing.’
‘Who do you see?’ Kest asked me.
I turned to look at the God of Valour. ‘I see Tommer.’
‘Ah. That makes sense.’
‘You?’ I asked.
‘Valiana. Without the mask.’
Brasti put down his bow. ‘Yeah. I see Valiana, too.’
I walked over and hugged him, knowing it would only make things worse for him. I don’t get that many chances to torture Brasti.
He pushed me away. ‘Will you stop grabbing at me every time you see me? And will someone please tell me what in all the hells is going on?’
Kest walked over to stare at the God of Valour. ‘Apparently the world isn’t limited to the Gods we knew.’
‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ I said. ‘This particular God was busy trying to drown himself saving a cat when I found him.’
Brasti looked at first at the God and then at me, then he burst out laughing. ‘But that’s exactly the kind of thing you would do, Falcio!’
I turned to Kest for support but then he too had started laughing.
‘All right,’ the God of Valour said, gesturing for us to sit. ‘We should get to business.’
‘Are you sure?’ Brasti asked, still giggling. ‘There may be pigeons in need of rescue!’
‘You do recall that the world is falling apart?’ I asked.
‘Good point.’ He turned to Valour. ‘Okay, God of Drowning Cats, what are we doing here?’
The God stared at Brasti for a moment, looking annoyed. ‘Evidently my Awe isn’t very powerful yet.’
‘Have you tried it out on kittens? Or maybe start with something smaller – mice, perhaps?’ Brasti turned to me. ‘I think I like this one: he’s exactly as inconsequential as I’d expect a God of Valour to be.’
‘It’s not about me,’ Valour said testily. ‘It’s never been about the Gods. When you saw me down by the stones, it was because I was trying to reach this.’
He reached into his pocket and pulled something out which he held out to me. I leaned forward and saw a small piece of stone, a few inches long and an inch around. Flecks of rust marred the smooth grey surface.
‘That’s an unusual shape,’ Kest said, looking interested.
‘It’s a prayer-stone,’ the God said.
Brasti leaned over to peer at it too. ‘Looks more like iron ore.’
‘It is.’ The God of Valour held it up and rubbed it between the palms of his hands. ‘When the first Tristians came here as slaves, they had no religion, no Gods. They sat together in the night doing this for hours, sometimes days on end. They’d take a rough piece of ore and slowly work it in their hands until it was perfectly smooth, praying all the while. They passed it from person to person within the tribe, each uttering the same prayer, over and over, as they rubbed the stone into this shape.’ He handed the stone to Brasti. ‘Here. You’re going to need this.’
‘For what?’
‘For later.’
‘What did they pray for?’ Kest asked.
‘For the Gods to come and save them, of course.’
‘I thought you told me they had no Gods,’ I said.
‘They didn’t. That’s what you need to understand: the first prayer came before the first God.’
The first prayer came before the first God.
‘I don’t get it,’ Brasti said.
The God of Valour rose to his feet. ‘Of course you do. You’ve always understood, deep down. It’s why you fight, even when the cause is lost. It’s why the King sent you all travelling across the country, spreading your verdicts and virtues, repeating them, over and over, like—’
‘Like prayers,’ Kest said.
The God nodded. ‘Just like prayers.’
‘“The first prayer came before the first God”,’ I repeated.
That was why the Blacksmith had engineered all these events to take place the way they did – why it was so important to destroy faith in the Law.
I looked at the God with Tommer’s face and saw a thin red line of blood on his cheek. It hadn’t been there before. ‘I should go now,’ Valour said, as a second wound appeared, this one on his forehead above his left eye.
‘What’s happening to you?’ Kest asked.
‘The Blacksmith knows I exist, and so does his God; even now we fight.’ Valour recoiled, suddenly, as if someone had just struck him hard across the face. I reached out to grab him, to try to protect him from this invisible enemy, but he backed away from me. ‘You can’t fight for me, Falcio.’
‘Then protect yourself, damn it! He’s killing you! Why are you—?’
The God of Valour smiled, even as his lower lip split and blood dripped down his boy’s chin. ‘Nothing lasts for ever, Falcio. Not people, not castles, not even Gods.’
I thought about the boy whose face the God had taken, who had thrown away his life to buy Aline a single day. I was so sick of losing at every turn. ‘Then why fight?’ I asked. ‘What’s the point?’
Valour looked up at me. ‘Because that’s how we pray, Falcio.’ He mimed an en guarde position, pretending he held a sword in his hand. ‘Because in those moments – those brief, tiny instants where someone like you or Tommer or Valiana rises up – just about anything is possible.’
With that, Tristia’s newest God, one who would live shortest of all of them, turned and set off skipping down the street, heading towards the alley he’d pointed to earlier, like a boy dreaming of great and grand adventures.
Because every act of valour is a prayer . . .
After he’d gone, Brasti said, ‘Just so I understand correctly, Tommer died and helped create a new God, which is great, because he’s not an arsehole like the other one, except that this one is too weak to fight the arsehole God, which means we’re right back where we started from—’
‘No,’ Kest said. ‘Everything has changed.’
‘How?’ Brasti asked.
‘Look at Falcio’s face.’
Brasti stared at me. ‘What about it? He just looks drunk and confused . . . Oh – you mean he has a plan now.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
The Return
The three of us returned to the Broken Scales to find the others making preparations for our departure, but as soon as I came through the door, Aline signalled for the others to stop. ‘Something’s changed,’ she said, looking at me.
Saints, no wonder I never win at cards if I’m this easy to read.
I went to where Valiana was still sitting on the bench next to Ethalia. ‘Can you hear me?’ I asked.
Darriana strode over to us, her eyes narrowed, but I ignored her.
‘Can you hear me?’ I repeated, ‘or do I need to shout into the slits?’
Valiana nodded that obscene iron mask of infamy.
Everyone else had gathered around us now and they were all waiting for me to speak. I took one of the knives from my coat and handed it to Kest. Only he had the skill to do what had to be done without simply breaking the blade.
‘Do you still want me to remove the mask?’ I asked Valiana. ‘Do you still want to fight?’
She nodded, but I grabbed the tavern master’s book and the pen and placed them in her hands. I’m not afraid to die, she wrote.
‘Not good enough,’ I said.
Darriana took a step closer to us, hand on the hilt of her sword.
‘Either draw your blade or back the hells up,’ I said.
She did neither.
‘I am the Realm’s Protector,’ Valiana scrawled.
‘No, you aren’t,’ I interrupted her. ‘A madwoman trapped behind a mask can’t be the Realm’s Protector. So what’s left? Are you still a Greatcoat, or are you just the spoiled girl who thought herself a princess?’
‘Falcio . . .’ Aline said, but I turned her away with a hard stare. This wasn’t the time for gentleness. ‘Answer the damned question.’
She wrote again. ‘I am a Greatcoat.’
‘Then report.’
She hesitated, so I shouted at her, ‘I’m the damned First Cantor of the Greatcoats. When I ask you to report, you report: are you a Greatcoat or not?’
She scratched the answer on the page in jagged strokes that got harder and harsher with every word until by the end the pen tore through the paper. ‘I am Valiana val Mond. I am the Heart’s Answer, and either in the living or the dying, I remain a Greatcoat.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Hold on to that thought and let’s find out which it is.’
I gestured to Kest, who walked behind her. Darriana grabbed at my shoulder and growled, ‘You son of a bitch! She’s still got that poison coursing through her veins – you take that mask off and you’ll send her headlong into madness!’
‘Of course I will,’ I told her, but my eyes were on Ethalia, who had already guessed what I planned to do next. ‘I’m going with her.’
‘Falcio, I don’t know if what you want to do is possible,’ Ethalia said. ‘This isn’t like what happened with Kest. It’s madness, not—’
‘Just try. Please.’
Ethalia took my right hand and placed my left in Valiana’s. I looked at Kest, and he hesitated, just for a moment, but he didn’t bother asking me if I was sure. We don’t play such games, he and I. So when he caught my glance he drove the knife blade down against the iron mask covering Valiana’s face. The edge of the blade, brought down in a single, perfect strike, shattered the two thin metal locks, the mask fell open and behind it I saw Valiana’s pale skin and the fluttering of her lashes as she opened her eyes to the world around her. ‘Oh,’ she said.
I watched as the first tickle of madness began to take her. I felt it as it wormed its way inside my own mind. With what little command of my own voice I had left, I said, ‘Speak the oath.’
*
The movements of Valiana’s eyes were small, the twitches of her cheek barely noticeable, and yet each one reached deep inside me, dragging me down into her insanity.
‘I’m here,’ I said, though no sound came from my lips. All I could do was hope that Ethalia could keep us tethered together as we tumbled into the endless pit of our shared madness. The skin of my face itched. My fingers shivered; I was already trying to let go of Ethalia so that they might scratch that itch, remove the layers of fear one after another, taking away the pain by taking away that which contained it. That was the answer, of course: I just needed to break apart the jar holding the horrors and then they could flutter away and leave me alone.
No! I thought, trying desperately to focus. Fight it! Show her how to hold it at bay.
I had done that once, years ago, after Aline had died: I had taken all the madness the world had to offer and locked it inside myself, burning it like coal to fuel my every step, my every duel on that long road that stretched from Pertine to Aramor, from the village where I’d found my wife brutally dead to the castle where I’d met a strange skinny man with a dream that, even though it wasn’t real, was still worth fighting for.
‘Speak the oath,’ I said, but I felt Valiana pulling away, slipping down further and faster than I could follow.
Stay with me, I begged. You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met. You can do this. You’re a Greatcoat! Speak the oath!
For a moment I felt her hand tighten around mine as she fought the madness, struggling to stay with me, but then her descent began anew. I opened my eyes and saw tears in hers even as her mouth began to open for a scream that, once begun, I knew would never end.
No – please, no. I closed my eyes and reached for memories, for hope, for Faith: there was strength in such things, strength that even the Blacksmith and his damned God couldn’t erase from the world entirely. But it’s not enough, I realised, feeling myself begin to slip as well. A sudden cowardly impulse made me want to pull away – it was too late for Valiana, but I still had a chance. Didn’t I deserve a chance to live? What good would it do if both of us were lost?
Suddenly I realised those thoughts weren’t mine, they were Valiana’s: her last desperate effort to save me, and I reacted as strongly as I could. No, damn you – if you fall, I go with you.
Again I reached, harder this time, drawing from every moment of bravery I knew, mine and Valiana’s, pulling them to us and wrapping them around us like a coat to resist the icy-cold of our madness, but nothing changed.
I felt something, intangible as wind, fleeting as memory, and I grabbed at it with every ounce of will I had inside me. For a brief instant, I held it in my hands, then it slipped away. ‘The oath,’ I shouted. ‘You’ve got to speak the oath.’
But she didn’t, and the darkness became absolute. I heard Ethalia shouting, ‘No! You’ve got to come back now. It’s too—’
Down, down I went, until I struck something hard: I had reached the bottom. My body shivered endlessly. So ends Falcio the fool: a death well deserved for a life so futile.
‘Falcio?’
My eyes opened to see Brasti kneeling over me, shaking me.
‘Brasti?’ I said. The others were standing around me as well. ‘I’m . . . ?’
He shook his head. ‘Not completely fucking crazy? I’m sorry. You most definitely are.’
‘Valiana . . .’ I said.
Brasti stepped back and I saw she had fallen to her knees on the ground next to me. Her fingers were clenching and unclenching as if she were trying to tear up the floor with her nails. Her eyes were blinking too fast, her mouth twitching as unrelenting insanity twisted and turned inside her. I watched in horror as she reached out and clutched the remains of the iron mask, bringing it up in painful, slow increments towards her face. Her lips began to tremble and she said, ‘I was . . . born of nothing and to nothing I will return.’
I failed, I realised with a great wash of sadness. The madness still has her.
For the briefest moment Valiana held the mask over her face, and I knew she was lost to us – but then her hands kept rising, until she was holding the foul thing high over her head. With a sudden violent motion and more strength than I would have thought possible, she brought it crashing down against the flagstone floor with such force that I had to shield my eyes from the shards of iron flying in all directions. When I opened my eyes, the iron mask had been shattered into pieces.
Valiana’s jaw was clenched tight, as if her own body was trying to keep her silent. ‘But until the day I die, I will stand for the laws of this country. I will stand for the King’s Laws.’ She let out a ragged sound, part angry gr
owl, part despairing sob. ‘I will ride these roads and see those Laws enforced.’ Her head turned, too hard, too fast, and I thought her neck would snap, but she was looking at Aline. ‘I will protect you for as long as there is strength in my arm to fight and blood in my veins to bleed.’ Valiana’s whole body was shaking now, her hands thudding against the floor as she tried to push herself to her feet.
Enough, I thought, it has to be enough now.
But she wasn’t done. With all the madness of the Adoracia still burning behind her eyes, pulling at her, tearing at her soul, my daughter rose to her feet. ‘I. Am. Valiana val Mond. I am the Realm’s Protector of Tristia. I am the Heart’s Answer.’
There was no cure for Adoracia poisoning, I knew that – but here was a will too strong to succumb to it. And she would be fighting against this madness for the rest of her life. Valiana reached down to help me up. ‘I am a Greatcoat,’ she said.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
The Oaths
‘Okay, what now?’ Darriana asked, leaning over me as I slumped on the bench against the back wall. Ethalia sat next to me, looking as worn and exhausted as I felt.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked, reaching out a hand to take hers. Her skin was cold.
‘I abide,’ she said, smiling weakly. ‘That was . . . a dark journey.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, trying to suppress the shivering in my hands. ‘I probably should have warned you that the inside of my mind is not a nice place to visit.’
‘Not so bad as all that,’ she said, then she looked up: Darriana was still waiting for an answer.
‘What do you want from me?’ I sighed. ‘I can barely remember my own name right now.’
‘You’re Falcio val Mond, you’re the First fucking Cantor of the Greatcoats and the world is still fucked. Now kindly get over yourself and tell us how we win this thing, because right now it’s looking pretty hopeless.’
I glanced over at Valiana, standing tall, even as she fought back the madness in her veins. She tried to nod reassuringly, even though I should have been the one reassuring her. Then do it, idiot. Tell her. I’m usually embarrassingly terrible at these things, but I forced myself to my feet and stood before her. I placed my palms on her cheeks. Whichever Gods remain, please let me say this without bursting into tears in front of the other Greatcoats. ‘All the hope I will ever need is in the endless courage of my daughter’s heart,’ I said.
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