‘Eleven? That’s all?’
‘It’s only been a few months,’ she replied, ‘and it’s a big country. Well, actually, it’s a small country as these things go, but there’s still a lot of ground to cover.’
‘Which ones have you met?’
‘Antrim Thomas and Allister Ivany, although I see you already know that. I saw Talia, the King’s Spear about a hundred miles north of here a few weeks ago. She said she’d be on her way back soon.’
Eleven. Eleven out of what should be a hundred and forty-four counting Kest, Brasti and me. Where did we all go?
‘There’s something else,’ Rhyleis said, drawing my attention back.
‘What is it?’
‘This thing with the Saints. It’s worse than you’ve heard. I’m hearing lines in the songs about a cult of some sort.’
‘“Lines in the songs”?’
She put a hand on my arm again and pointed to the other musicians. ‘Listen . . . here.’
They were playing a rousing chorus of ‘Any Rose In Spring’, the words familiar to anyone in the southern half of Tristia. It’s about a foolish young man trying to choose between the seven girls he meets, not realising that none of them actually want him.
‘I don’t get it,’ I said. ‘The lyrics are the same as they always are.’
‘Listen to the notes of the counter-melody,’ she said.
I did, but though I had some passing familiarity with music, that was pretty much limited to knowing roughly which end of a flute to blow in. ‘I’m not—’
‘Sorry,’ Rhyleis said, ‘I just assumed . . . the Trattari used to use the same language in some of their songs.’
‘Pretend I’m not from two hundred years ago when the Greatcoats all wrote symphonies for every verdict, will you?’
‘Fine. The counter-melody is like a code, used against the primary melody to delineate which words . . . no, you know what, let me just tell you what it says.’
Thank the Gods.
‘A long time ago there was a cult who called themselves the God’s Needles. Rumour has it that they used a set of esoteric rituals intended to turn their members into Saints themselves. That’s all we know.’
‘Well, I’d never even heard of them before now, if that makes you feel any—’
She shook her head to cut me off. ‘You don’t understand, First Cantor. We’re the Bardatti. Keeping track of these things is what we do.’ She hugged herself. ‘I’m not sure I like the idea of something that’s kept itself hidden from us this long suddenly appearing.’
I didn’t like the idea either. God’s Needles. Why dredge up something old and long forgotten; why now?
‘I need to get back on the stage,’ Rhyleis said. ‘Emeryn is butchering the harmony up there.’ She ran the backs of her fingernails over the strings and then adjusted two of the tuning heads minutely before picking it up and heading towards the stage. She stopped after a step, though, and told me, ‘Oh, and you should probably pay more attention to your woman. Your friend there has eyes for her.’
‘Saint Zaghev . . . is there no one in this country with anything better to do than concern themselves with my love life?’
Rhyleis grinned, though there was something else in her eyes. Sympathy, maybe? ‘A noble hero, filled with valour and pain? A beautiful woman of wisdom and compassion? Two lovers torn apart by Sainthood to boot?’ She ran back to me and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Why, Falcio, it’s a song so tragic it would turn any girl’s head.’
She left me there, troubled by the information she’d brought me and confused by her demeanour. I couldn’t forget that it was Bal Armidor, a Bardatti himself, who’d in some way set me on the path I’d taken in this life.
I suppose there’s a reason why sane men keep their distance from musicians.
*
My first instinct was to head back up to my room, but seeing Brasti smirking at the back of the tavern soured me on that idea. Then it occurred to me that it was entirely possible the whole affair with Rhyleis had been engineered by him, though she didn’t strike me as someone easily brought into another’s scheme. Eventually I let all of it go and walked over to the table where Ethalia and Allister sat. I ignored the quizzical look from him and simply extended my hand to her.
‘Are we leaving?’ she asked. ‘Is there some kind of danger or—?’
‘Just dancing,’ I said.
She sat there for rather a long time, staring at me. I knew I looked like an idiot standing with my hand out like a beggar pleading for pennies, but I have my own stubborn streak at times.
Let her tell me to go away. Let it be because she doesn’t want me near, not for the excuse of some vague spiritual forces.
At last she reached out her own hand and placed it in mind. Her touch was light, tentative, as if she feared my skin might set hers aflame. It very nearly broke my heart then and there.
The hells for hearts, I decided. I’m done apologising.
I led her out to the increasingly crowded dance floor. The musicians had been playing a raucous jig but the moment we set foot on the floor they shifted into a slower cantadia, the playing so seamless I could almost have believed it was simply the natural progression of their set. At least, I might have believed it had Rhyleis not winked at me. Within moments, only a few dancers remained on the floor.
I held Ethalia neither near nor far from me, but kept the elbow of my right arm at the perfect half-bend that was, though technically correct, perhaps a bit too formal for a place like this. I had left my coat in my room so I could feel the warmth of her arm resting on mine, the bunching of my linen sleeve pressing against my own skin. Everything felt alive again, the different parts of my body all chattering noisily at me, for once not simply to remind me of my various poorly healing cuts and bruises. You’re alive, they said. Safe, healthy, happy.
I wondered whether this might be some effect of Ethalia’s Sainthood, but when I looked at her I saw a similar look of confusion and curiosity to the one I suspected I was wearing.
That, or you’ve lost the rhythm again.
Whatever the answer, neither Ethalia nor I spoke at first, but simply submitted ourselves to the melody, our feet following the steps of the cantadia’s slow, swirling journey around the floor. Few of the inn’s other patrons joined us. It’s not a common dance in the country.
Which only proves this is Rhyleis playing with me.
‘I am surprised,’ Ethalia said as the song was ending.
Before either of us could pull away, the musicians transitioned into another slow song, this one an embrazia, so called because the form requires the dancers to hold each other close. A second wink from Rhyleis affirmed my conviction that the Bardatti were a menace.
‘Surprised by what?’ I asked, trying to keep my attention on the steps.
‘You’re a good dancer.’
That almost made me laugh. I could still recall the dozens, no, hundreds of times I’d tromped all over Aline’s feet as she taught me to dance. ‘And again,’ she’d say, determined to make me a passable partner. I swear I’d sweated more over those lessons than all my years learning to fence.
‘I can tell when you’re remembering her,’ Ethalia said, shaking me from my thoughts.
Surprised, I stared into her eyes, searching for some clue as to her feelings on the subject. I saw no rebuke there, nor resentment. I pondered what to say next, finally settling on what was foremost in my mind. ‘Brasti thinks the trouble between you and me is that I can’t let go of Aline.’
I expected Ethalia to shake her head or deny it or, as she often did at the things Brasti said, maybe give a little smile and say, ‘Such is the wisdom of Brasti Goodbow.’ But she did none of those things, just looked past me, past the other patrons and the walls and, it seemed, the very world itself. The musicians, finally recognising the rest of the tavern wasn’t pleased at the sudden absence of fast drinking songs, kicked into a blistering version of ‘All’s the More’, to great cheers. Ethalia said somet
hing, but I couldn’t hear over the din.
‘What did you say?’ I asked, my hands still on her arms though we weren’t dancing any more.
‘It’s not important. We should—’
‘No, tell me.’
She looked up into my eyes. ‘I can’t be Aline, Falcio. Not even for you.’
‘I never asked you to. I would never—’
‘I thought it was a sign, at first, that I shared some of her memories of you.’
I was going to ask her what she meant but then I remembered my very first encounter with her, in Rijou during the Ganath Kalila, Jillard’s infamous Blood Week, when she’d known Aline’s exact final words to me.
‘But Aline is always with you, Falcio. She’s always there – I can feel her pushing at me, demanding that I fight for you, protect you, love you as she would.’ Ethalia looked away. ‘I can’t bear the weight of her. I thought it was natural, something that would fade, but it doesn’t. Sometimes she—’
I shook my head, cutting her off. This too smacked of excuses. ‘She’s not a ghost. She isn’t haunting you. This isn’t some curse you’re under.’
‘I don’t know what it is. In some way, we are connected through her – but no woman could ever fight for you as she did. No woman could ever be who she was. But when the Saint’s Fever is upon me it’s as if she’s there beside me, mocking me, telling me to get up and fight. I never even met her, Falcio, so why is it I feel her presence so?’
There were a hundred things I should have said then – the kinds of things Brasti would say; hells, the kinds of things any sensible man would have said. But my guts were twisted in knots and I felt bitter and angry, and I couldn’t tell if it was at Ethalia or myself or Aline, or maybe the whole damned world.
Ethalia pulled away suddenly.
‘What is it?’ I asked, already glancing around the room for whatever threat might be coming for us, thinking it was a mistake to have come down here without my coat and my rapiers.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said, reaching out for me again, but the skin around her eyes had tightened, as if she were about to reach into a fire.
I stepped back, just a hair, and even that small distance made the tension in her face lessen. Whatever illusions I’d allowed myself, the thought that perhaps this was just a problem between two people, two lovers, who could work together to solve it, shattered. My very presence was causing her intense pain, and I could see she knew what I was thinking.
‘It’s not . . . it’s only when you become . . . there’s a rage inside you, Falcio, it—’
The music was so cacophonous now that I couldn’t think. And the other dancers filling the floor around us were pushing past me, against me, grabbing at me. Be calm, I told myself, but even thinking those words brought pictures to my mind: Saint Birgid, her face battered and bruised, her skin pale from loss of blood; an iron mask, shaped so that the wearer was blind, unable to cry out for help, so that they could be beaten and tortured without fear of being caught.
Be calm? What the fuck is there to be calm about?
I looked around at the people in the tavern. Had someone here been part of it? Were they laughing even now at the memory of it? Of Birgid being tied to the split branches of the tree as they shoved needles into her—
No! Birgid didn’t undergo the Lament, I did . . .
I forced my breathing to slow down, not by letting go of my anger but by channelling it as if preparing for a duel.
‘Falcio?’ Ethalia’s voice sounded very distant, but even through the haziness of my vision I could tell how much it was hurting her to be this close to me.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, turning away.
She grabbed at my arm, her fingers feeling cold and lifeless, like iron shackles closing around me.
‘You should get some rest,’ I said, shrugging off her grip. ‘We need to make for the Sanctuary of Saint Forza at first light.’
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Sanctuary
We travelled past the border of Baern and into Luth the next day, arriving at the Sanctuary of Saint Forza in the late afternoon. I’d fully expected to find it destroyed – it wasn’t, but that didn’t help us at all.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said for the third time.
The sanctuary was above ground, a small stone edifice made up primarily of columns arranged in a circle with the remains of its roof partly blocking out the sun, though much of it had tumbled to the ground. Ethalia sat cross-legged at its centre, eyes closed in concentration, beads of sweat dripping from her forehead and marking tracks down her face.
‘It’s been destroyed,’ Kest said. ‘I’m not a Saint any more but even I can feel something’s very wrong here.’
Brasti walked over and inspected the columns. ‘It looks fine to me. Is it because of the roof or something?’
‘No. The structure itself was no different when I came here.’
‘Then what’s changed?’ I asked.
Allister walked around the perimeter of the small building and finally said, ‘Lady Ethalia, may I enter?’
She nodded without opening her eyes. Allister stepped between two columns and walked around the room. ‘Here,’ he said.
The rest of us joined him. ‘What do you see?’ I asked.
He kicked aside some pieces of broken stone and plaster from around one of the bases of the column. ‘Someone placed these here to cover the marks.’
I knelt down and saw a smear of reddish-brown against the base of the column: blood.
‘There’s more here, too,’ Kest said, from the other side.
‘Well, clean it off,’ Brasti said, rubbing at one of the marks until it started to disappear.
‘Is it making a difference?’ I asked Ethalia.
She opened her eyes. ‘No. It’s . . .’ She rose to her feet and came over to where I was kneeling. She reached down and started to press her fingers against the bloodstain, but her hand shot back as if she’d been bitten by a snake. ‘It’s the blood of a Saint,’ she said. ‘I’m sure of it.’
Brasti was still busy rubbing it away from one of the columns. ‘Well, let’s just get rid of it. Problem solved.’
Not having any better ideas, we spent the next hour doing as Brasti had suggested, but it achieved nothing. So that was one more thing we’d learned: apparently the blood of a Saint could be used to permanently desecrate a sanctuary.
‘We’d better head out,’ Kest said to me, looking at Ethalia. ‘This isn’t going to work. Our best bet now is to try the chapel inside Castle Aramor. It was rumoured to be a sanctuary once, long ago.’
‘Rumoured?’ I said. ‘How is that going to help Ethalia?’ I hated this. All of it. Where was an enemy I could fight? Where were the conspirators we could hunt down? This passive form of assault wasn’t something I knew how to deal with. ‘All right,’ I agreed at last, ‘let’s go. We can make Aramor by week’s end if we don’t lose too much time along the way.’
As I was readying my horse, Allister approached me. ‘Falcio? I’m sorry if I’ve been . . . uncouth . . . as regards the Lady Ethalia.’
‘Uncouth?’
‘I was woken in the middle of the night by a rather strident visitor.’
It took me a moment to puzzle out what he was talking about but then I almost smiled. ‘Brasti decided to have a little chat with you, did he?’
Allister grimaced. ‘He made certain things clear to me. I had no idea that you and she—’
I waved him off, not because I believed him, because I didn’t – he’d known; anyone would have known. But Allister and I had never been all that close and I guessed he’d reasoned that since she obviously couldn’t bear to be near me, whatever had been between us must be over – so why should he not seek her out? Part of me wished I’d been there when Brasti had come for him. Another part of me recognised that as hypocrisy. I had no claim to Ethalia. She wasn’t property, and this sort of brotherly code was nothing more than us making decisions for her.
‘Sh
e’s a free woman,’ I said at last. ‘She has the right to whatever comfort is available to her now.’
That answer appeared to trouble him more than if I’d reiterated Brasti’s threat. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, Falcio, are you all right? You sound . . .’
‘He’s fine,’ Brasti said, coming over and slapping a hand on Allister’s shoulder. I saw how hard he gripped him; the clear message was to ignore everything I’d just said and remember that he and Kest were nearby.
I sighed. A better man than me would have said something.
‘Falcio’s just twisting his guts in a knot like he always does,’ Brasti went on. ‘It’s somewhere between a hobby and a lifelong vocation with him. Soon enough someone will come along and try to kill us and Falcio will be back to normal.’
The clatter of iron-shod horseshoes against the rocky surface of the road interrupted him. Kest and I drew our swords, Allister retrieved his staff and Brasti pulled his horse-bow Insult from the clasps that held it against the back of his saddlebags. He quickly bent it back and strung it before grabbing one of his shorter maple arrows and aiming down the road. ‘Ah, see?’ he said. ‘Here comes someone to lift our spirits now.’
A lone rider raced up the road towards us, coming from the same direction we had. I squinted to see better, but the distance was still too great and the rider was kicking up a good deal of dust. I always envied Brasti at times like this.
‘It’s a woman,’ he said, his tone excessively optimistic. ‘Perhaps she saw me at the tavern last night and is now so lovestruck that she’s left her husband and family behind, just to come and declare her love for me.’
‘No,’ Ethalia said, ‘she carries great fear inside her. I can feel it from here.’
‘She is riding rather quickly,’ Kest noted. ‘Wait . . . What is she wearing?’
Brasti’s eyes narrowed. ‘Falcio, that’s a greatcoat.’
She was getting closer now and I too could see the stiff brown leather of her coat. Then I noticed Brasti was still aiming for her. ‘Brasti? Why are you still—?’
Saint's Blood: The Greatcoats Book 3 Page 13