Knight's Shadow

by Sebastien de Castell

  ‘So you’d rather throw the country into chaos?’

  ‘Aye, I would. Five years, that’s what we’ll get: five years of the nobility falling all over themselves fighting each other for control while the towns and villages are rising up against them.’

  ‘Five years where innocent people will die,’ I said.

  ‘Innocent people are dying already, Falcio – they always have been. At least this way they die on their feet.’

  A small, weary part of me – the part that was too tired to fight any more – wanted to believe there was wisdom in her words, that we might reach some kind of accommodation. ‘And then what happens?’

  ‘Then the country will remember how much better it was with a proper monarch on the throne. They’ll crave someone who can rule with compassion, someone who can keep the country together. And in five years’ time Aline will be ready to lead them and they’ll be hungry for her to take the throne.’

  It was a perfectly logical argument, one built upon the innate political truths that had always governed the people of Tristia. A sensible, pragmatic person would immediately agree. There was only one problem. ‘The King could have done that,’ I said, trying to ignore the fact that my vision was growing blurrier by the minute. ‘He could have spread death and chaos to keep his throne – but instead, he sacrificed himself for the greater peace.’

  The Tailor’s voice was harsh and angry and full of resentment. ‘“For the greater peace”? Is that what you still tell yourself, Falcio? He was dying, you damned stupid fool!’

  She let the words hang there for a good long while before she said, ‘He’d been sick his whole life and he was dying then, just as you are now, Falcio. That’s why he made the Greatcoats step aside; that’s why he let the Dukes take him.’ The old woman stepped close to me, ignoring my rapiers, and stuck her face in mine. ‘It’s so easy to be brave and self-sacrificing when death already has you in its clutches – that’s why you’re always so bloody noble, isn’t it? You died long ago, back when your wife was slaughtered, and ever since then you have walked the earth praying for someone to put a blade in you. My son was the same.’ She slapped me hard on the left cheek. ‘Damn you for trying to make him a Saint when he was only a man.’

  I tried reaching deep inside me, looking for anger to match the Tailor’s own, but all I could find was bitter cold and loneliness. Everything she had said was true. In my heart, Paelis was bold and daring and full of life, and yet in every memory he was coughing and wheezing, his features pale and his voice thin. She was right of course; he was dreadfully sick, so his death could no more be called an act of bravery than a leaf falling from a tree could be said to be aiming for the ground. I had always known that the King was a man like any other. I just couldn’t live with it being true.

  ‘So it was all for nothing,’ I said at last.

  ‘No,’ the Tailor said, grabbing my chin and looking me in the eye. ‘There is still the girl. Aline will rule this Kingdom one day. Let that be the King’s legacy. Let her—’

  ‘You’ve committed murder in her name,’ I said, my voice sounding hollow and tired. ‘How will she rule when people find out? How will she—?’ I looked at Aline, desperate to see her face again.

  She wouldn’t meet my eyes. ‘Falcio . . .’ she said, her voice almost pleading.

  ‘You knew,’ I whispered. ‘The Tailor didn’t trick you – she didn’t lie to you. You knew.’

  ‘I . . . what did you want me to do, Falcio?’ she cried. ‘I told you I was scared. I told you I don’t know how to do this. I don’t want to die!’

  ‘So instead you let this madwoman send her dogs to assassinate whole families. Did she tell you she was murdering the sons and daughters of the Dukes? Did she tell you they were . . .’ My voice caught. ‘They were children, Aline, younger than you. They—’

  ‘I never ordered those children killed,’ the Tailor said. ‘Never.’

  ‘Why should I believe you?’ I said, my voice so full of rage that Aline cowered behind the Tailor.

  ‘What good does it do me to have them dead? Alive, the Ducal Concord would have chosen Ducal Protectors, weak men of low ambition who would never think of seizing the thrones for themselves. My plan worked better with the children alive.’

  ‘And yet your hounds killed them. I saw the bodies of Isault’s children myself.’

  ‘And I’m telling you that wasn’t my orders and it wasn’t my Greatcoats.’

  ‘Don’t call them Greatcoats,’ I said. ‘Don’t you dare—’

  ‘Fine,’ she said, ‘they’re Queen’s Blades. They’re what you and Kest and Brasti and all the others should have been.’

  ‘They’re murderers,’ I said, my eyes on them, ‘and I will see those coats off their backs and them in chains before this is done.’

  She let out a hoarse laugh. I was really beginning to tire of her sense of humour. ‘So much outrage – odd, really, since not one of them would be here without you.’

  I looked around at them. They were all young, younger than most of us were when we joined the Greatcoats – and yet I had seen them in action and I knew they were already deadly fighters. The Tailor couldn’t possibly have found enough ordinary men and women and trained them to be so skilled, not in so few years, and that meant they had to have training already, and probably their whole lives. But they didn’t fight like Knights, and other than Knights and Greatcoats, no one else studied duelling at this level. No one except . . .

  I felt bile rise in my throat even as fear filled my heart. ‘They’re Dashini,’ I said.

  ‘Aye,’ the Tailor said. ‘Of a sort.’

  ‘But that’s impossible. I was at the monastery – I saw the corpses.’

  ‘You saw the Blooded Dashini: those who had taken their final vows and slain their targets. These’ – she gestured around her – ‘are the Unblooded. The ones in training.’

  ‘But why aren’t they—?’

  ‘Why aren’t they dead? Because the Unblooded are not permitted ritual suicide until the Blooded are fully consecrated in the ground. Can you imagine that? They’re supposed to sit there for months, waiting for the corpses of their masters to rot away to nothing before they’re allowed to kill themselves.’

  ‘But you convinced them otherwise.’

  ‘I knew what would happen once you killed those two in Rijou – and I suppose I should offer you my congratulations, by the way. You’re the only man alive to have defeated Dashini assassins. Now do you believe me? Without you, none of this would be possible.’

  ‘So it’s true: the entire Order committed ritual suicide just because I got lucky and killed two of them?’

  ‘The Dashini are only Dashini if they are undefeated,’ she said. ‘I went to the monastery knowing the Unblooded would be there, knowing they would be leaderless and without direction, so I generously gave them a better opportunity. I offered them a chance at greatness.’

  ‘And what did that cost?’ I asked.

  But I already knew the answer: I was the price. I was the gold with which the Tailor had purchased a hundred assassins. The hunt once begun ends only in blood. The illusion of self-righteous anger retreated from the Tailor’s face, leaving only sadness and shame in its wake. I understood then why the Tailor had felt the need to tell me all this, why it was so important to her that I understood the reasons for her plans. She wanted my forgiveness.

  She looked at me for a moment, waiting for me to speak, but for once in my life I found I had no words. Finally she turned to one of the Greatcoats. ‘Dariana, take Aline away now. It’s getting dark and she should have some supper.’

  Aline walked up to me and touched my hand, her own trembling. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be braver.’

  I knelt down for a moment and awkwardly wrapped my arms around her, even as I kept a grip on my rapiers. I could feel the cool, wet skin of her cheek against mine. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘You were as brave as anyone could hope. Go on, sweethea
rt, don’t cry. I’ll be fine once we work things out here.’

  Aline stepped back and slowly reached out a small hand. She put it against my face, and then she began to cry. A moment later she turned and ran away, into the dark shadows of the trees. Dariana strode after her.

  ‘That was generous,’ the Tailor said. For once there was no trace of cynicism in her voice.

  ‘The girl isn’t to blame,’ I said, ‘and she shouldn’t know what comes next.’

  I closed my eyes and pictured my wife Aline, not as she had been in life, but the way she was when I found her dead upon the floor of that tavern. I reached out for one last surge of stubborn, bloody rage, one last rush of fury fuelled by the destruction of all my ideals and the ruin I’d made of my own life. I summoned forth every dark and terrible part of myself, and, as I leapt at the monsters who’d blackened the name of the Greatcoats for ever, I smiled.

  *

  If I could have killed even two of the bastards I would have forgiven the Gods all their injustices. If I’d reached the Tailor, well, then I might even have been grateful. But there were too many, and they were young and fast and fresh, while I was injured and poisoned and tired of living in a world that turned on lies and betrayal. They took me down without my blade touching even one of them.

  ‘I’m sorry, Falcio,’ the Tailor said as three of the Unblooded held me. ‘If there had been another road I would have taken it. I hope you can believe that. What comes now – well, I can’t say it’s for the best, but it’s the only chance any of us have, even you.’

  I had a split lip and I’d been hit in the gut enough times that I could barely take a breath, let alone a deep one. But my arms and legs had gone numb, and as I’ve learned, it’s surprisingly easy to be bold and brave when you have no hope of survival.

  ‘I hope you can believe me when I say it’s not over until I say it is.’

  She smiled. It was a soft and compassionate smile that ill-suited her face. ‘That’s what I’ve always loved about you, Falcio, ever since that day you arrived at my cottage, feverish and starved and more than half-dead, carrying Duke Yered’s severed head in a sack. You never know when to quit.’

  ‘Count on it,’ I said.

  One of the Unblooded turned to the Tailor. ‘You will go now. What comes now is sacred and not for your eyes.’

  ‘I warned you, Falcio. I said I would do anything to put that girl on the throne and I will. Anything.’ Then she walked off.

  As my captors began dragging me away I asked, ‘Where are we off to? I hope it’s all right if I watch. I hate to miss a good sacred ritual.’

  The two who were dragging me stopped for a minute and another grabbed me by the jaw. ‘Have no fear on that account, Trattari. You will see and hear and feel every part of what comes next.’

  ‘Sounds like a party,’ I said, but the confidence in his voice, the raw hatred emanating from him, made my guts start to chill.

  ‘Oh, it is.’ He motioned for the others to continue, and as they dragged me deeper into the forest he asked, ‘Tell me, First Cantor, have you ever heard of something called the Greatcoat’s Lament?’

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The Lament

  The Unblooded had obviously been preparing for this for a while. The clearing they dragged me to, about a hundred yards into the forest, featured a thick yew-tree post standing alone right in the middle. Another tree had been sacrificed to provide two three-foot lengths of post, now attached about five feet up the standing post so that they extended towards the sky. The whole edifice looked like a supplicant begging for mercy from the Gods above.

  Or maybe it’s just supposed to look like a cactus, I told myself, and I gave a little laugh at my own joke.

  The men holding my arms placed me with my back to the post. I was about to say something incredibly cutting and clever when one of them drove his fist into my stomach, and as I doubled over they dragged my arms up and tied my hands to the angled posts.

  When they were done, seven of them ranged themselves in front of me. I’d seen most of them at one point or another during the weeks we’d been harrying Trin’s forces in Pulnam; I’d even had conversations with them, though you wouldn’t have guessed we knew each other, let alone had fought on the same side, because none of them showed any emotion at all. I’ve had to intimidate people myself before now, when it was that or get into a fight that might get someone killed. I’ve even practised trying to look cold-blooded, much to Kest and Brasti’s amusement. But the expressions on the faces of these Unblooded, that was the truest cold I’d ever seen.

  There were four men and three women, one of whom was Dariana. “Deadly Dari” Brasti had called her. I wondered what he would call her if he could see her now. I kept expecting her to say something or do something – to hit me, or spit in my face, make some remark about how stupid I was or . . . well, anything, really, but she just stood with the others, her face lacking the slightest trace of humanity.

  I felt fear seep into me. It swirled underneath my skin and wound its way through my veins. I swear I could feel it creep into my heart.

  One of the men stepped forward. He was short, only five and a half feet tall, with close-cropped blond hair; it had a sandy quality that reminded me of the desert. He was young, maybe twenty, and like the others he had no expression on his face – until the moment he came close to me, when his lips curled up into a smile that would have looked friendly, if he hadn’t been about to murder me.

  ‘Falcio val Mond, First Cantor of the Greatcoats, King’s Heart and husband of the butchered peasant woman called Aline val Mond, lover of the Rijou whore Ethalia, self-proclaimed father to the woman called Valiana.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, as two men stepped forward and started strapping my torso to the post, ‘I am that Falcio val Mond. Were you concerned in case you’d captured the wrong one?’

  ‘My name is Heryn. I am . . . Well, it will make no difference to you who I am. Suffice it to say, I will be performing the Lament.’

  ‘You make it sound like you’re going to pull out a harp and start playing for me. Is that what the “Lament” is? Because if so, this is working out much worse than I’d feared.’

  Heryn ignored my flippant remarks as he pulled out a black leather tube and knelt to set it on the ground. As he unrolled it, long six-inch steel needles appeared, along with tiny bottles of various shapes, each with a silver top. Next to each bottle was a little dark blue cloth. Heryn picked up one of the cloths and flattened it, then placed one of the needles, a piece of blackened metal, onto the cloth. He looked at me for a moment, examining me from my head to my chest and then all the way down to my feet. Then he withdrew one of the bottles from the leather case, unstoppered it and carefully tilted it over the needle. I’d been expecting some kind of fluid but what came out was more of a powder: dried flakes of something dark and red that crumbled as they hit the needle. Heryn carefully picked up the needle and rose to his feet. He pushed my head forward so that my chin was touching my chest. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Let me think about—’

  Without the slightest hesitation he drove the needle deep into a spot near the base of my neck. I’d expected pain. I’ve known pain. I’ve been tortured before.

  But this?

  I screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

  *

  When I awakened the next morning, everything around me had a reddish tinge, as if my eyes were caked in blood. It took a moment for the shadows to resolve themselves into figures. Heryn and Dariana stood before me.

  ‘That took rather a long time,’ Heryn said conversationally. ‘You didn’t move at all! And you didn’t react when I pulled the needle out – for a moment I thought I’d made a terrible mistake, but Dariana assured me that this is a recent affliction.’

  My breathing was slow. The air felt heavy and it was several minutes before I could take in a full breath. ‘Thanks for your concern,’ I said.

  He smiled. ‘So, not quite chastened yet? You crie
d and moaned rather a lot yesterday. I’m afraid today will be worse.’

  The King used to like this phrase he’d found in an old handbook in the royal library, written for spies from a bygone era: There is no crime in feeling fear, nor any virtue in acknowledging it.

  ‘You know, something’s been bothering me,’ I said. ‘Are you still “Unblooded”? Because that seems unfair to me: you’ve murdered men and women and children, so surely they can’t still make you go around calling yourselves “Unblooded” when you’ve caused the deaths of so many innocents, can they? I mean, I realise you haven’t had time to tattoo your faces yet, but shouldn’t you be full-on Dashini by now?’

  Heryn smirked. ‘There are no Dashini any more. You can call us Greatcoats.’

  I pulled at my bonds without thinking, which sent a wave of pain and nausea through my body.

  ‘Careful now,’ Heryn said. ‘I don’t want you worn out too quickly. Let’s set the stage properly, shall we?’

  He waved a hand in the air, which was obviously a pre-arranged signal as two of his men left the clearing for a moment and returned almost immediately dragging a pair of bodies. As they got closer I could see they were a man and a woman, and the bruises around their eyes and reddened cheeks made me think they’d been beaten – though not badly, just enough to make them compliant. It took me a moment more to recognise them as Nehra and Colwyn, the troubadours who’d been following us.

  ‘If you’ve brought them here to torture them as well, I should warn you the man’s singing voice is probably worse than mine,’ I pointed out helpfully, but my words immediately elicited a howl from the self-styled Bardatti, who started thrashing about.

  Colwyn started his begging by immediately distancing himself from me. ‘Let us go!’ he pleaded. ‘We have nothing to do with this man or his actions. We’ve done you no wrong—’

  I carefully turned my gaze to Dariana. It still hurt. ‘You see what happens? You go to all this trouble to betray someone and you still get stuck listening to the tone-deaf troubadour.’