Knight's Shadow

by Sebastien de Castell

  ‘That’s why you asked us about the King’s Sixth Law of Property,’ I said to Vera.

  ‘Aye, but that’s not what we’ve been charged. Collector Tespet demanded a full half of our yield this year.’

  ‘Is that true?’ I asked Shuran.

  The Knight looked uncomfortable. ‘There is a legal exemption during times of war. Duke Isault has invoked the exemption this year.’

  ‘War? What war?’

  ‘It hasn’t started quite yet, but with some of the radical shifts happening in the political landscape the Duke’s advisors are quite certain that there will be conflict.’

  ‘What “shifts in the political landscape”?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, for one thing, you killed the Duchess of Hervor. You turned the people of Rijou against their Duke and ended the Ganath Kalila.’ He looked at Valiana. ‘You also brought down the Ducal Concord’s plans to put Patriana’s daughter on the throne, which—’

  ‘Does Duke Isault want Trin to take the throne?’ Valiana demanded.

  Shuran spoke calmly. ‘The Duke wasn’t fully aware of her true nature at the time. Like the other Dukes, he thought that you, my Lady, were the true-born daughter of Duchess Patriana of Hervor and Duke Jillard of Rijou. The true depth of her conspiracy was hidden from almost everyone.’

  ‘Trin will never sit the throne,’ Valiana said, her hand on the hilt of her sword. ‘Aline will be Queen.’

  Shuran turned to me. ‘You yourselves have come to request Aramor’s support against the duchies of the north, so does it not follow that we will soon be at war, and so does the Duke not have the right to gather the resources needed for such a conflict?’

  Brasti turned to Kest and whispered theatrically, his voice carrying loud enough for all of us to hear, ‘Is it just me, or does it look like Falcio has pretty much broken the country?’

  Kest looked uncomfortable. ‘I . . . Actually, Falcio, it does. A bit.’ He turned to Shuran. ‘Although it’s worth pointing out that the Duke’s actions in over-taxing his people will almost assuredly start a war even if none were coming.’

  ‘A fair point,’ Shuran said. ‘But now this must be resolved. The people of Carefal cannot simply refuse to pay taxes.’

  ‘Make us pay if you can!’ Vera said. The crowd cheered. They’d had enough of standing around yakking; they were ready for violence. As with any other large group of people, they vastly overestimated how much good being in a crowd would do them.

  Kest and Brasti were looking at me. Damn it. Why am I the one who always has to drop a noose around his own neck?

  ‘All right,’ I said at last, ‘the Duke asked me to resolve this, and resolve it I will.’ I held up a hand. ‘Peacefully.’ I turned to Vera. ‘Pick whoever you want to argue your side.’ Turning back to Shuran I asked, ‘Will Tespet represent the Duke’s position?’

  ‘I suspect he is still too drunk. I can speak for the Duke’s case. Though I make no promise of agreeing to your verdict. You are here as the Duke’s envoy, not as an arbiter of the Law.’

  ‘I’m here trying to keep the bloodshed to a minimum. We’ll see where this leads, but I suggest you remember that.’

  Shuran spread his hands. ‘As you say, let us see where this leads.’

  *

  I’ve presided over hundreds of trials in my time as a Greatcoat. I’ve listened to disputes over sheep-grazing, contracts of marriage and declarations of war between duchies. I’ve had to enforce verdicts by summoning juries from the townspeople, threatening local rulers with reprisals from the King, and on more occasions than I can count, by duelling a Duke’s champion. Never before have I wanted so badly to slit my own throat.

  The townspeople had found a large and surprisingly uncomfortable wooden chair for me to sit in while Vera and Shuran stood in front of me and rehearsed the same arguments they had for the past three hours. It all came down to the same question: did the Duke have the right to impose wartime taxes even when there was no actual war? If he did, what stopped Luth from coming and asking for wartime taxes as well? In fact, it wasn’t entirely unforeseeable that the people of Carefal might find themselves paying taxes to both Aramor and Luth as the two sides fought each other.

  Not that Vera’s solution was any more sound. From her perspective, the Duke had voided his right to collect any taxes at all. She came perilously close to demanding that the Duke pay back all the tax he’d taken from them in the previous years.

  ‘Enough,’ I said at last. ‘I’ll need a few minutes to confer with my fellow Greatcoats.’ I rose from the chair. My backside was sore and I had a pounding headache – not only from the unwavering rancour from each side, but as much from the way this bitter feud illustrated how badly Tristia was coming apart at the seams. Even if I could get Aline on the throne, how on earth could she ever mend this broken country? Duke Isault’s words kept playing themselves over and over in my mind: she’ll be dead a week after she’s crowned.

  Brasti sensed my discomfort. ‘We’re not going to let them starve these people, are we?’

  ‘No, but . . . but we do need Isault’s support. We can’t put Aline on the throne without him. Nothing we do here will achieve anything until there’s a monarch on the throne and—’

  ‘Don’t start up about politics, Falcio. You’ve been letting the Tailor lead you around by the nose for weeks now and it’s got us nowhere. The Duke of Pulnam betrayed us, the Duke of Aramor is manipulating us and now you want us to turn our backs on these people because you’re so desperate to put a thirteen-year-old girl on the throne that you’ve forgotten that the whole point of the Law is to make peoples’ lives better. I like Aline, Falcio, and it really was a miracle beyond any I’ve heard in story or song that you managed to keep her alive during Blood Week. But she’s not my Queen. Not yet.’

  ‘You swore an oath to King Paelis,’ I started.

  ‘Yes: I swore to uphold the laws of Tristia.’

  ‘The law says they have to pay their damned taxes.’

  ‘Not if it means they starve,’ Dariana said, crossing her arms and leaning against a post. Her expression made it clear she cared little for the outcome but wasn’t going to miss the chance to point out my hypocrisy. ‘What happens if Knights from Luth come calling tomorrow demanding their war levies as well?’

  I started to reply, but Kest stopped me. ‘Falcio, have you ever considered that maybe this is what the King had in mind?’

  ‘This?’ I asked, pointing to the crowd. ‘Armed villagers declaring themselves independent and starting wars they can’t win?’

  ‘Maybe they can win,’ Kest said. ‘Not now, not today, but in the future. Maybe this is how it starts.’

  Kest’s words caught me off guard. Maybe this is how it starts. The King had no love for the Ducal system. He spent his life trying to find ways to bring the nobility to heel so that the average man or woman could live their lives in some semblance of freedom. But if he’d wanted chaos and civil war he could have done it when we Greatcoats were at our peak – he chose not to. He’d allowed the Dukes to depose him, rather than have us fight them head on. ‘No,’ I said, ‘he wanted his heir on the throne. Aline—’

  ‘You can’t let that factor into your judgement,’ Valiana said.

  ‘Oh? Since when are you ambivalent about Aline’s future?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not. She’s the King’s heir and I’ll die to put her on the throne. But the King’s Law is the law only if it’s applied without prejudice. You can’t decide one way over another simply out of convenience.’

  It irked me that Valiana should be scolding me about the need to live up to the ideals of the Greatcoats, but she was right.

  I looked back at the crowd, standing a hundred yards away, and Shuran’s Knights, much nearer. If I found in favour of the Duke, these people would either starve, or they would continue to rebel and so die faster. If I found in favour of the villagers, how could I uphold the verdict? I thought back to a conversation I’d once had with the King late one night as
we’d debated the finer points of some obscure law we’d found in one of his old books. ‘When there’s no right thing to do, the Gods command that we follow the letter of the law,’ he’d said. I’d asked whether the Gods would smile on us for doing so. ‘Smile on us? No, Falcio, I’m quite sure that following the letter of the law will get you smited even faster than breaking it.’

  ‘What?’ Brasti asked.

  ‘Hmm?’ I said.

  ‘You chuckled. Or coughed. Maybe you were about to sneeze, but it was something. Have you made a decision? Do we side with Isault or with the villagers?’

  ‘The Law,’ I said. ‘We follow the Law.’

  Come, you Gods, I thought. Come and get me.

  *

  My verdict had exactly one virtue: no one liked it. Shuran’s Knights called me a traitor and a coward for failing to fulfil my promise to the Duke (which, in their minds, obviously meant shutting up the villagers and getting back in time for supper). The villagers called me a traitor and a coward (in fairness, by their logic anything other than killing the Knights with my bare hands was a betrayal).

  ‘The law says one quarter of the yield,’ I repeated for the third time. ‘There is no lawful declaration of war, therefore wartime levies cannot be imposed. There is also no cause for rebellion, which, I should point out, will mean a great deal more starvation than paying the taxes. The monies levied thus far by the Duke’s tax collector, who needs to be released as soon as he’s sobered up, by the way, will count towards this year’s taxes.’

  There were a number of arguments, counter-arguments and outright insults, most of which were directed at me. When I’d had enough I let them know I’d be leaving momentarily and they’d be free to kill each other if that was truly what they wished. The villagers grumbled, but eventually even Vera agreed. ‘Marked,’ she said at last.

  I thought the Knights were going to be trouble, but Shuran silenced them and said, ‘Marked.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked in near disbelief.

  ‘It’s not a perfect solution,’ he said, ‘but it’s not a perfect world, either.’

  ‘Knight-Commander,’ one of Shuran’s men called out. He was young, maybe twenty, with black hair and a sparse beard that looked a trifle ambitious for him.

  ‘Yes, Sir Walland?’

  ‘These people must turn over their weapons, sir.’

  Shuran frowned. ‘Sir Walland, I did not ask for your opinion.’

  Sir Walland stiffened his shoulders. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, it’s the most ancient of Ducal laws: a man may possess an iron-forged weapon only if he be under the direct service of the Duke. Sir.’

  Shuran was tight-lipped as he looked at his over-zealous junior Knight, but after a moment he sighed. ‘He’s right. These people must disarm. The forged weapons must come with us.’

  I’d known this since the outset, but Knights are often ignorant of the specifics of the law, even those set by their own Dukes, and I’d hoped that would be the case here. However, it appeared that Sir Walland was a more astute student of Ducal Law than most. I turned to Valiana, just in case she might know of any exception I could apply.

  But she shook her head. ‘He’s right,’ she said. ‘Every duchy in the country has a similar law.’

  ‘Why?’ Brasti asked. ‘What do you care as long as they pay their taxes?’

  Shuran’s annoyance transferred to Brasti. ‘Because we can’t have armed peasants ready to attack the Duke’s representative the next time they decide they don’t like his policies.’

  Dariana barked out a laugh. ‘See, I think armed peasants is exactly what the Duke needs to make sure he keeps his representatives in check.’

  ‘On this we will have to disagree.’ Shuran kept his tone light, but there was no doubt in my mind that he’d not brook any further incitement.

  A stoop-backed man raised a sword. ‘Well, what if we don’t care much for what you think, Sir Knight?’

  ‘Then,’ Shuran said, his hand moving to the hilt of his sword, ‘we will have to find a different way to resolve the question.’

  ‘What compromise will you accept?’ I asked Shuran.

  ‘Any that ensures the people of this village follow the Duke’s Law and are not in a position to attack him or his representatives.’

  ‘What guarantee can you give me that these people won’t be punished after we leave?’

  ‘So long as they do not take up arms again, they will not be harmed. On this, you have my word.’

  A woman with a farmer’s strong build and grey in her hair stepped forward and spat on the ground between us. ‘A Knight’s word. A Knight’s honour.’ She lifted her arms to show the backs of her hands. Lines of scars riddled skin that was a singular leathery brown. ‘Ten years ago my husband died trying to fend off Knights from Luth when they claimed we owed them taxes. They took everything we had. When the tax collector from Aramor came a week later with his own two Knights and heard my story they said I owed the taxes anyway. They said that if my husband couldn’t protect our land then we didn’t deserve to hold it. I slapped the bastard once – just once, mind you. They dragged me to the smithy and held my hands against the furnace. But they held the backs against it, not the front, see? They wanted to make sure I could still work the land the Duke claimed to pay off my debt. To the hells with Knights’ words and Knights’ honour!’

  As Shuran took a step towards her Brasti nocked an arrow and I pulled my rapier, but the big Knight raised a hand to us. ‘Abide,’ he said.

  ‘I was not always a Knight,’ Shuran said, removing his helm and revealing the burnt left side of his face. ‘I wasn’t born to a noble family. My father was no more a Knight than any of you are.’

  The farmer stared dumbfounded at Shuran’s face. He reached out and took her hand and gently placed the back of it against the skin of his face. ‘We are not so different,’ he said.

  The farmer withdrew her hand. ‘Except that I fight to make things better and you fight to keep them the same.’

  I admired Shuran’s attempt to bridge the gap with the villagers. He was a natural leader – more so than anyone I’d met other than King Paelis himself. I also admired the farmer and the way that neither threats nor flattery could sway her sense of right and wrong. But in the end there wasn’t much that any amount of courage could do about the fact that peasants weren’t allowed to keep proper weapons, not unless they were in the Duke’s service.

  ‘The steel-forged weapons must go with us,’ I said. Several of the Knights began to smirk. ‘But you have to buy them.’

  One of Shuran’s men nearly drew, but the Knight-Commander stopped him with a wave. ‘How much?’ he asked.

  ‘Ten – no, twenty stags a piece,’ Vera suggested.

  ‘Marked,’ Shuran said.

  She looked surprised by how quickly he agreed.

  ‘What about our tools?’ the pitchfork man said.

  Shuran smiled. ‘You can keep your tools. We can’t very well collect taxes if you can’t work your farms.’

  ‘Bows are for hunting,’ Brasti said suddenly. ‘They need them for deer to help get through the winter.’

  For a moment I thought Shuran would argue the point but instead he nodded and said, ‘Fine. Bows are needed for hunting and after all, are not a proper weapon anyway.’ He turned to the crowd. ‘But I saw three crossbows among you. Those come with us.’

  There were complaints and small efforts at hiding weapons, but in the end, everyone did their part. You wouldn’t be able to say the Knights and the villagers parted as friends but at least no one died in the process.

  *

  An hour later we left the village. I urged my horse forward to ride parallel with Shuran. ‘Will the Duke be angry?’ I asked.

  Shuran turned to me, a quizzical expression on his face. ‘What cause would he have for displeasure?’

  ‘Because the villagers will be paying less tax now than before. And you’re coming back with your coin purse significantly lighter.’

&nbs
p; The big Knight started laughing.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I meant no disrespect. It’s just that—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you set the rate of taxation at one-quarter of the annual worth.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It’s just that the Duke empowered me to go as low as one-fifth to settle the uprising. And these swords? They would cost me fifty stags apiece if I had them forged in the smithies of Aramor, so I’ll be making a tidy sum when next we need to replace our weapons.’

  Hells.

  Shuran clapped a hand on my shoulder. ‘You’re an excellent negotiator,’ he said. ‘You should ask the Duke for a job.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Saint’s Fever

  We found rooms in a small inn twenty miles from Carefal. The others passed the evening in the common room downstairs, but I didn’t feel much like company. So the first person I spoke to after leaving Carefal turned out to be my dead King.

  The red brocade robe he was wearing this time had been a gift from the emissary of one of the small impoverished countries beyond the Eastern Desert. The robe was far too long for a man of the King’s modest height, and its decoration was far too elaborate for his plain looks, so Paelis only wore it – when he was alive – when he felt the need to annoy some noble who’d demanded a private audience.

  ‘It throws them off their guard,’ Paelis said, or rather, I hallucinated him saying.

  ‘It doesn’t throw anyone off their guard,’ I imagined myself saying back. ‘It just makes them think you’re half-witted.’

  He grinned. ‘So what’s the difference?’

  That stumped me for a moment. The King always did that: he turned insults aimed at him into backhanded proof of his own cleverness. In my own defence, the neatha was probably addling my mind in addition to paralysing my body. ‘Maybe you should have worn it when the Dukes came to kill you,’ I said at last.

  ‘That wasn’t the plan. I—’ The King started coughing, as he often did, being prone to colds and agues.