Knight's Shadow

by Sebastien de Castell

  This knock wasn’t any of those so I kept my rapier at the ready and waited.

  ‘It’s Knight-Commander Shuran. Open the door.’ After a brief pause he said, ‘And I’d advise keeping the point of your sword aimed at the ground.’

  The fact that he’d used his full title told me there were men with him and the reference to my sword told me he was expecting violence. ‘I’m warning you, Shuran, if the Duke has decided to go back on his word, I’ll make it an expensive decision for everyone,’ I said.

  ‘Open the door, First Cantor. This is a poor time to make threats.’

  ‘Where are Kest and Brasti?’ I asked.

  ‘I came to you first.’

  I thought about that. If he’d come to me first he thought the other two would attack first and he wanted me to keep them from starting anything. With no better solution in mind, I opened the door.

  ‘Thank you,’ Shuran said.

  I could see half a dozen Knights behind him, in full armour.

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked.

  ‘Duke Isault has been murdered,’ he said.

  Chapter Fifteen

  An Inelegant Corpse

  Isault, Duke of Pulnam, made an inelegant corpse. Even under the green silk sheet that had been placed over him, the dome formed by his prodigious belly made him look more like a mound of dirt than a man.

  The body was lying in the centre of the room, surrounded by twelve Knights in full armour clenching their swords. When I reached down to pull away the sheet covering Duke Isault, all twelve swords pointed in my direction.

  ‘First positions,’ Shuran said, his voice betraying neither anger nor anxiety, only absolute certainty that his order would be instantly obeyed.

  His confidence was not misplaced: the Knights moved like a well-oiled machine, returning at once to their former stance, the blade of their swords pointed upwards and resting against their shoulders, ready to attack at will.

  I reached forward again and pulled back the sheet. Isault’s expression was frozen in a snarl, reminding me of the outraged face of a dead bear mounted as a wall trophy. I removed the sheet entirely and saw his arms, folded across his chest, were covered in cuts. He had fought back, taking a dozen thin slices on his forearms as he tried to protect his body. It wasn’t until I pulled his arms apart that I saw the small wound that had been thrust into his heart and ended his life.

  ‘Precise,’ Kest said, standing over me. ‘The assassin could have disabled him more quickly had he not been so determined to kill him with a single thrust.’

  The sounds of heavy boots echoed in the room and a Knight with long blond hair came striding towards us: Heridos, the Knight-Captain who’d ordered the attack on us when we’d first arrived in Aramor the previous week.

  He ignored Shuran completely and spoke directly to the Knights surrounding us. ‘Arrest those men,’ he said.

  ‘Belay that order,’ Shuran said.

  ‘You would allow these murderers to defile the Duke’s body?’ the Knight-Captain demanded. ‘Did you help them do this?’

  Shuran’s gauntleted hand struck out and the Knight-Captain fell back. ‘Keep your wits about you, Sir Heridos, or you’ll lose the head that obedience so recently bought back for you. I am still Knight-Commander of Aramor.’

  Sir Heridos didn’t look pleased. Or scared. ‘A man cannot hold the post of Knight-Commander if he commits treason.’

  Sir Shuran took a step towards him. ‘Think back, Sir Heridos, to the most dangerous moment of your fool’s existence: the one in which you thought you were within a hair’s-breadth of losing your life. I assure you, you are much closer to death now than you were then.’

  ‘These men are assassins!’ Sir Heridos said.

  ‘Our own men were standing guard outside their rooms all night. How could they have committed the murders?’

  Murders? I’d seen two dead guards outside the throne room when they’d brought us here, but somehow I doubted Shuran was talking about them.

  ‘Then they are accomplices!’ Sir Heridos insisted. He held up a piece of parchment. ‘Look here. The Duke had a decree disavowing his agreement with the Trattari. Had he signed it, their plans would have fallen apart.’

  ‘Which does not alter the fact that we had their rooms watched all night.’

  ‘And what about the two women?’ Sir Heridos asked. ‘Or were you not aware they fled the palace last night?’

  ‘Indeed I am aware, Sir Heridos, and I had them followed.’ He turned to me. ‘The ladies have not been harmed. My men followed them for several hours until they were outside our border before they returned. Neither would have had time to come back and murder the Duke.’

  ‘And the other one?’ Sir Heridos asked.

  What other one? Sir Shuran looked at me and then back to his Knight-Captain.

  Kest nudged me. ‘Falcio, something’s wrong.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘They know we couldn’t have done it, so why is Sir Heridos determined to believe it was one of us?’

  ‘Because they’re Knights and we’re Greatcoats,’ Brasti said, ‘and that’s how these things work.’

  I looked at Sir Heridos. The hatred in his eyes was genuine and it was specific. He truly believed we had murdered his Duke. Brasti was right.

  ‘Who stands to benefit from the Duke’s death?’ I asked Sir Shuran.

  ‘His enemies,’ Sir Heridos said, ‘and who hates the Dukes more than the Trattari? Boot-lickers to a tyrant King bound to revenge themselves on those who restored honour to the country these five years past!’

  I thought back to all the times over the last few years when I had stood in the shadows outside a Duke’s home in the cold and rain, the blood in my veins so hot and itchy I had to stop myself from tearing my skin as I wondered whether murder was still murder if the intended victims bragged to each other at their annual celebration marking the day they came with an army and killed my King. Yet Paelis had made us swear oaths that we would not seek revenge. Instead we wandered the countryside trying desperately to fulfil the final enigmatic commands he had given each one of us. I didn’t know how many of us were left now besides Kest, Brasti and me.

  ‘Shut your mouth,’ Sir Shuran said. He turned to me. ‘To answer your question, the Duke was well-liked by the people of Aramor, as far as that goes. The rebels in Carefal were the first I’ve ever known to try to cause trouble. Roset, Duke of Luth, had cause for grievance over border disputes, as did Jillard, Duke of Rijou; however, attacking a fellow Duke would put either man in a great deal of jeopardy from the Ducal Concord.’

  ‘Who becomes Duke of Aramor after Isault?’

  ‘His son, Lucan, is sixteen and next in line. After that, Patrin, who at twelve is too young, so the Duke’s wife, Yenelle, would act as regent. Finally, there is the daughter Avette. She is six. But the killer wasn’t one of the Duke’s family, nor anyone who would hope for more favourable treatment from them.’

  ‘Why not?’ I asked.

  Sir Shuran’s eyes were on mine for a long while.

  He knows something and he wants to see if I know it too.

  After a moment he turned to Sir Heridos. ‘Tell them to come in,’ he said.

  ‘The clerics—’

  ‘I gave you an order,’ he said.

  The Knight-Captain walked back to the entrance of the throne room and opened the door. He motioned to a group of Knights in the hallway and they entered, each one bearing something large wrapped in green cloth in their arms. They gently placed their burdens next to the Duke.

  Sir Shuran lifted the silken covers from them one by one. The first was a woman in her middle years with curly reddish-blonde hair. ‘Her Grace, Duchess Yenelle,’ he said. He pulled the silk cloth from the second. A teenage boy, tall for his age. ‘Her son Lucan.’ The next was smaller and his face was smeared in blood. ‘Her second son, Patrin.’ He reached down and lifted the silk cloth from the final body, this one very small, her bright blonde hair in ringlets
. Her face would have been pretty had it not been frozen in terror. She wore a yellow dress stained dark red from the collar down where the slit in her throat had let the blood flow out from her body. ‘Avette,’ he said. ‘She liked to paint pictures of dogs. She thought that if she could make one beautiful enough it would persuade her father to give her a puppy for her birthday.’

  Sir Shuran was looking at me, measuring my reaction. He had held this back to see what we already knew. Whatever he was looking for, I don’t think he found it.

  ‘The assassin,’ he said to Sir Heridos. ‘Show us.’

  ‘You’ve caught the killer?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t think it will help matters much,’ Shuran replied.

  ‘But then why are we—?’

  ‘It’s easier if we show you,’ the Knight-Commander said, and motioned to Sir Heridos again. The Knight-Captain turned on his heels and began walking towards the other side of the throne room with such eagerness that it took me a moment to realise he was expecting us to follow him.

  He led us into a small office or private library, with shelves of books and a desk that took up the whole of one wall.

  ‘Here,’ Heridos said, pointing to the body lying with a bloodied broadsword next to it. ‘Here is the assassin you sent to butcher the Duke of Aramor and his family.’

  This corpse wasn’t covered in a sheet. It was lying face down on the floor and it was wearing a leather greatcoat.

  Sir Shuran knelt down and turned the body over, revealing a tall woman with light brown hair, her blue eyes set wide, the sharp features of her face drawn into an angry smile.

  ‘How did she die?’ I asked Sir Heridos. ‘Did your men kill her?’

  ‘No, the Duke himself took her before he fell. He thrust his dagger into her black heart.’

  ‘Do you know this woman?’ Sir Shuran asked.

  She was beautiful, in her own way: fierce and foul-tongued and always looking for a good fight. There were lines on her forehead that I didn’t remember, but it had been several years since I’d last seen her.

  I looked back at Kest and Brasti to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me. Brasti let out a curse. Kest peered at her closely, as if examining every detail of her face. He looked at me and nodded.

  ‘Yes, I know her,’ I said, my mind drawn back to a day many years ago when she, like me, first received her greatcoat. She had looked up at the King and smiled, tears streaming down her face, as they were streaming down all of ours. I had never seen her cry before or since that day. ‘Her name was Winnow,’ I said, ‘called the King’s Fist, Fourth Cantor of the King’s Greatcoats.’

  When I looked back at the others I saw that Sir Heridos had finally found something to smile about.

  *

  Watching Sir Shuran argue with his Knight-Captain for the next hour was oddly disconcerting. It wasn’t simply the fact that Sir Heridos was advocating so forcefully for our summary execution that bothered me; that was to be expected given the circumstances. Rather, it was the fact that Sir Shuran, who was as powerful a commander as I’d ever met, appeared to be unwilling or unable to shut the other Knight down. Every time Heridos spoke, Shuran would glance at the Knights and clerics assembled in the throne room, almost as if they were a panel of Ducal magistrates sitting in judgement rather than soldiers who would instantly follow whatever order he gave. I was pretty sure that Heridos had managed to ensure the Knights guarding the room were loyal to him before anyone else.

  ‘Duke Isault’s murder cries out for justice!’ Heridos shouted again. He walked to the bodies of Isault’s family. ‘His wife deserves justice! His children cry out for justice! And two of our own, Sir Ursan and Sir Walland, they too are dead – struck down no doubt by the Trattari whore. Their souls, too, cry out for justice. Though perhaps their pleading sounds foreign to your ears, Sir Shuran.’

  ‘Indeed? Do you hear their voices, Sir Heridos?’ Shuran asked.

  ‘I do! I hear them scream from beyond.’ Heridos opened his arms wide. ‘And so does every man here who loved the Duke.’

  The energy in the room seemed to flow into Heridos. Sir Shuran’s rank, his reputation and his relationships with his men were like memories from another time now. The way Sir Heridos kept using the word foreigner in reference to Sir Shuran clearly resonated with some, if not all, of the other Knights, and I began to wonder how long it would be before Sir Shuran found himself in irons. There was simply too much at stake to consider loyalty now. Power, previously so rigidly allocated and controlled, was now spilling everywhere in the Duchy of Aramor.

  And there it is, I thought, the fragility of Tristia laid bare in front of us. With the Duke and his family dead, who ruled Aramor now? Would one of the region’s Margraves or Lords take power and form a new ducal line? What if one of them had engineered the assassination? But no, the Ducal Knights could never allow that possibility, which meant they would need to take control until the Duchy Council could be convened, otherwise all would be chaos and blood. So that meant that Sir Shuran, Knight-Commander of Aramor, had the power now – but only if the Knights followed him. They had looked so loyal, so disciplined, only a week ago, but since then, Shuran had come with us to Carefal and the Duke had been murdered. Now he was defending the Greatcoats – those very bastards who had, at least as far as the rest of the Knights were concerned, killed their Duke. In its own way, Aramor was at war, and politics would come swiftly on its heels.

  ‘Cleric!’ Shuran said at last.

  There were several men in green robes standing together in the room, but none stepped forward. Shuran’s gaze fell on one in particular, a young man with thinning black hair, who muttered, ‘Knight-Commander?’

  ‘To whom did the Duke pray?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘It is a simple enough question: to which God did Duke Isault pray? You were his personal cleric, were you not?’

  ‘I was, Sir Shuran.’

  ‘And did he not confide in you to which God he gave fealty? I wonder how you could provide him with spiritual guidance if you did not know whether he prayed to War or to Love.’

  For a moment, there was murmured laughter in the room, but it didn’t last.

  ‘To Argentus, God of Coin, Knight-Commander,’ the weaselly little man said at last. ‘All the Dukes of Pulnam have followed the teachings of Argentus.’

  ‘And the Duke’s family? Did they pray to Argentus as well?’

  ‘Of course,’ the cleric said.

  ‘Good,’ Sir Shuran said, ‘now we’re getting somewhere.’

  ‘I don’t see how,’ Sir Heridos muttered.

  Sir Shuran ignored him. ‘And when a faithful servant of Coin dies, where does he go?’

  ‘Why, into the arms of Argentus himself,’ the cleric said, ‘to feast and walk in joy throughout the heavenly manor he creates from his wealth on earth.’

  ‘What?’ Shuran asked. ‘Are you saying a faithful servant of Argentus does not spend all his time screaming in pain and tortured regret at the manner of his death?’

  ‘Of course not, Knight-Commander. Only a faithless man would suffer such a . . .’ The cleric caught the look in Sir Heridos’ eyes and stopped.

  ‘Enough,’ Sir Heridos said.

  ‘Do you still hear our Duke’s voice, Knight-Captain?’ Sir Shuran said.

  ‘This is not the time for—’

  ‘I asked you a question, Sir Heridos. Do you hear the Duke crying out?’

  Sir Heridos looked around the room, but seeing no strong support, he said, ‘What I meant, Knight-Commander, is that the people of Aramor deserve vengeance for what has happened here. It is our duty to serve them in this.’

  ‘Ah,’ Sir Shuran said, ‘now perhaps there is something we can agree on.’

  ‘Good, then—’

  ‘But not in vengeance, Sir Heridos. The people couldn’t care less about vengeance. Or if they do care, that will soon be outweighed by other concerns.’

  Heridos looked as if Shuran had suddenly
tossed him a sack of gold coins. ‘What other concern could take precedence over punishing the murderers?’

  ‘Finding them would be a nice start,’ Sir Shuran said.

  ‘They stand there,’ Sir Heridos said.

  I couldn’t even blame Sir Heridos. Winnow was one of us, after all, as true a Greatcoat as there had ever been, though I could not see how it was possible that a Cantor could have turned assassin. Winnow had no love for the Dukes, certainly – and neither did I, or Kest, or Brasti, or any of us – but she followed the King’s Laws with diligence. What could have made her turn? My mind slipped back to my days in the dungeons of Rijou with Patriana, Duchess of Hervor, laughing as she oversaw my torture, and laughing hardest of all as she told me that half the Greatcoats were hers already, and the other half had turned to banditry. The thought of those hours bound and hanging by my wrists made me shudder; the memories still fresh of those cuts made in my skin and the ointments applied to my wounds that burned flesh and boiled skin.

  I shook my head. You’re dead, you old snake. Stay out of my soul.

  ‘I will be happy to behead these men myself,’ Shuran said, ‘if we have evidence of their involvement, but since they were under our own guard when it happened, I think it would be hard to convict them.’

  ‘You think it a coincidence that they arrived here and six days later the Duke and his family are murdered?’ Heridos cried. ‘They want to put their little bitch on the throne!’

  ‘Which would be a lot easier to do with the Duke alive to deliver the support he’s promised in his decree.’

  ‘Silence, Trattari,’ Sir Heridos said. ‘Would that my men had killed you when you arrived.’

  Sir Shuran took a step towards Heridos. ‘Had they done so, Knight-Captain, they would have disobeyed a direct order from your superior. Shall I remind you of the penalty for disobeying a direct order from the Knight-Commander?’