‘Your body is healing,’ Dariana said, ‘but it isn’t healing fast enough to outrun the fever inside you.’
There is a great deal of heat, yes, but who cares? I taste something wet and salty around my lips: sweat. I’m sweating all over. Everything around me is soft, though, so I don’t mind. There are blankets under my body, a pillow under my head.
‘I have to bring you a healer,’ she said.
Wouldn’t it have been easier just not to have tortured me to death? I wondered – no, I actually heard the words. The voice was familiar. It was my voice.
‘It’s better if you rest. We’re in a forest near the border of Aramor – we’re safe. Valiana and Nehra stand guard for you. I’ll get a healer now. Rest.’
Good advice. Excellent advice. Exactly what I’m going to do. Rest. No words. No questions.
‘Why?’ my voice asked. ‘He . . . for eight days, he . . . Why did you wait until the last moment?’
I tried opening my eyes, but the light was harsh. Just sleep, I told myself. Go back into the grey.
You’ve probably realised by now that I’ve never been good at taking advice, least of all my own.
A room came into view, only it wasn’t a room. The walls were wooden, but they were logs, and someone had stuck them into the ground at slightly odd angles. Trees, stupid. The ceiling was a canopy of leaves. I was outside, of course. There was a fire behind me.
I hope it doesn’t burn down the rest of the room.
Dariana, on my right, was leaning over me. ‘Now isn’t the time,’ she said, and started to turn.
I grabbed her wrist, surprised that my arm could even move. ‘No,’ I said, ‘now.’
She shook off my hand. ‘The neatha is gone from your body. That’s why you aren’t waking up paralysed. If I’d stopped Heryn any sooner, you would be dead by now.’
It took a few seconds for my mind to make sense of the words because there were so many of them. I separated each one, looked at it by itself, and then joined it to the others until what she said made sense. It was logical. And yet . . . ‘You’re lying – you didn’t know . . . You couldn’t have known.’
‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe it’s just that I didn’t remember who I was. I knew my name, I knew my history, but none of it was real . . . not until—’
‘You’re lying again,’ I said. Doesn’t this woman know I’m a Greatcoat? We interrogate people for a living, lady. You think I can’t tell that this is just another lie, too? I mean, of course it’s true, but it’s not the real reason, is it?
The way Dariana looked at me hardened. ‘Fine. You want to know why? I was fourteen years old when King Paelis sent me to infiltrate the Dashini. I spent nearly twelve years in that monastery. I was beaten – no, not just beaten, tortured. I was trained – tempered. I’m a sword made from sorrow and grief and the stupid, useless anger of a fourteen-year-old girl too innocent to know what she was volunteering for. And yet your fucking King Paelis sent me to that place, to those men. You want to know why I waited so long to save you, Falcio? It’s because until that exact moment I couldn’t decide which side I was on.’
She left.
The world is made of fragments.
*
There have been three moments in my life when I have experienced true joy: a sensation so strong it breaks through every ache or pain or regret.
The day Kest’s father called me ‘son’ was one of those. The day I married Aline was another. The day I took up my Greatcoat was a third. Happiness is a series of grains of sand spread out in a desert of violence and anguish.
When I woke up in the forest the next day with the last embers of the fire reaching up to greet the dim light coming down through the leaves above me, I had my fourth such moment.
‘Ethalia,’ I said.
She was kneeling down, looking into my eyes, and she was crying, which I assumed meant I didn’t look very good. But she was there, which made me complete. I wanted the moment to go on for as long as I drew breath, but after a few seconds she wiped away the tears and turned to someone I couldn’t see. ‘Get my bag. We have work to do.’
I strained to turn my head and see who she’d been speaking to. It took a moment to make out his features, illuminated as he was by the light of the rising dawn. After a second I realised it was Kest.
And that was the fifth moment.
For a while I just lay there looking at him. He had a thick growth of beard, which was unusual for him, and without conscious thought I stretched out my hand and felt my own face. A thick, scratchy covering of coarse hair greeted my fingers and I wondered what I must look like. I thought I might have something funny to say about that, but Kest shook his head before I could speak.
He stood over me a few moments longer, then looked around for something to sit on. His eyes settled on a flat stone that he lugged over and positioned by the side of my bedding. He sat down next to me and stared at what was left of the fire.
Ethalia held a small jar in her hand. She dipped a finger in it and gently ran her finger along my lips. ‘Try not to swallow it,’ she said. Then she turned to Kest. ‘I have preparations to make. You can speak with him for a few minutes, no more.’
‘She sounds worried,’ I said. ‘You must look really bad.’
Kest smiled, but still he stared at the fire. ‘Ah, Falcio,’ he said at last, his voice deep and resonant, and yet I thought I could hear a note of fragility. That’s when I noticed he had tears in his eyes.
‘Hey,’ I said, ‘I’m fine. Really. Just a little miscommunication with—’
‘The entire world?’
‘Dead people like me just fine, you know. They all say nice things about me.’
‘That’s because they think you’re one of them,’ Kest said. ‘How’s your fever?’
Awkwardly I reached a hand up to my forehead. It came away slick with sweat. ‘My fever seems to be doing extremely well, thank you. How’s yours? Because if you’re planning on glowing red and trying to kill me, you should know that I’m considered quite handy with a sword.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ he said.
I waited a while before asking the question, but in the end I had to. ‘I take it you found the sanctuary.’
‘I did.’
What was it like?’
‘Peaceful,’ he said. ‘Humbling. After a few days, extremely boring.’
‘Boring sounds better to me these days than it used to. Did it work?’
He nodded. ‘When the Sainthood passed from Caveil to me at the end of our duel, it was like . . . it was like I could suddenly see everything in front of me with perfect clarity. I could feel the balance of my sword in ways I’d never understood before. It was . . . overwhelming.’ He chuckled. ‘It also made me completely defenceless, by the way.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Just then? At that precise moment? I was so enthralled that if a six-year-old with a rusty kitchen knife had attacked me he could have cut out my liver before I’d worked out what was happening.’
‘Think how surprised that six-year-old would be once he started glowing red because he’d just become the Saint of Swords.’
‘I understand it better now, Falcio. It’s not what I expected. It’s like . . . like having a question you have to answer, but you don’t have all the information, even though the question is always there, burning inside you.’
‘So how do you answer it?’ I asked, genuinely interested.
‘I’m not sure. But everyone you meet holds a piece of it. Some just have the tiniest sliver, others . . .’ He paused and looked at me. ‘Others have more.’
‘That’s not a reassuring look you’re giving me. That reminds me, how did Dariana find you?’
‘She didn’t.’
‘Then how?’
‘A troubadour told me, if you can believe it.’ He held up a hand. ‘It’s too long a story. Suffice it to say, the Bardatti are every bit as strange and mysterious as the stories suggest.’ He lo
oked at me again. ‘As are you, apparently.’
‘Me? I’m just your everyday, bog-standard travelling Magistrate.’
‘Who survived the Greatcoat’s Lament. Falcio . . .’ His eyes filled with an infinite sadness. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there when they—’
‘Stop,’ I said. I understood what he wanted to tell me; I just couldn’t stand to hear it, not yet. ‘If Brasti were here he’d say, “Stop fawning over everything Falcio does! Sure, it was torture, but you know what else is torture? Having to hear about it – that’s torture!” ’
Kest laughed for a moment, then he touched me gently on the arm to let me know he understood. Some things we don’t talk about.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything about Brasti?’ I asked.
He smiled, and this time it was genuine. ‘As a matter of fact, I heard two separate stories on the way here, of someone people are calling “The Archer”, who’s apparently defeated several bands of the Black Tabards. He picks up five or ten decent bowmen from a village, takes them out and ambushes groups of these Knights before they can cause too much trouble.’
I grinned at the thought of Brasti and his archers. ‘Five or ten bowmen? Isn’t that just like Brasti to think in terms of drips of water when the enemy has an ocean?’
‘I don’t know,’ Kest said. ‘I suspect that if Brasti were here he’d say, “Five drips here, five there, pretty soon you’ve got a whole cup”.’
I started laughing, ignoring the pain that came along with it. ‘Kest, that is by far the worst Brasti impression I have ever heard.’ I began to feel tired. ‘I could use a little grey right now,’ I said.
‘I don’t understand,’ Kest said, looking around the room.
‘Sleep, I said sleep.’
‘You said grey.’
‘Really? That’s . . .’
The world began to shrink down again, from fragments to shards, from shards to slivers, from slivers to a single mote of dust. I heard a woman’s voice calling out. ‘Quickly . . . water . . . heat . . . Falcio, listen to . . . need t . . .’
Grey.
Chapter Forty-Two
Solace
It took days for my fever to break. Ethalia ministered to me with potions and salves, but more often with simpler things: damp cloths to wipe the hot sweat away and cool me down, a gentle touch of her hand across my cheek. She would whisper into my ear; not talking to me, but instead trying to coax my heart to beat and my lungs to breathe, like a general issuing carefully thought-out commands to her army. And sometimes she would kiss me. That was just for me, I think.
We were travelling most of the time, I think. In the mornings, they loaded me onto the back of a narrow cart and hauled me along the back roads of Aramor. At night, they’d hide the cart and bring me and the horses deep into the forest. Kest would carry me in his arms and then lay me down on the ground so Ethalia could check me over while someone else built a fire.
I slept most of the time, though at night I’d often wake to hear voices arguing. Kest and Dariana appeared to be on one side of the argument, Ethalia and Valiana on the other. Nehra never spoke, but sometimes she would play her guitar. There were times I thought I could understand what the notes were saying. It was a love song for someone who’d died, but I couldn’t make out the name, and whenever I thought I was close to understanding the song, or when the arguments became too heated, Nehra would change the notes, just a little, and I’d fall asleep again.
*
I felt a great deal of pain during the days after my fever broke, every minute of which I treasured. Though I was weak, whenever I woke up in the morning I could see and hear and feel straight away. I would open my eyes and will my hand to come close to my face so that I could wiggle my fingers. Fingers are funny things. They made me laugh.
‘Is he mad?’ I heard Dariana say one morning. ‘He keeps doing that and giggling like a half-witted child.’
‘Shush,’ Ethalia said. ‘Go and fetch some water for tea. Someone is coming and I suggest you don’t try to kill her. The Saint of Swords would take it poorly.’
I listened to Dariana rising, sheathing her sword and opening the door. We were in a cabin, though I had no idea when we’d arrived or where the cabin was.
‘If I decide to kill her,’ Dariana said, ‘she’ll be dead. And don’t shush me, you stupid cow.’
I turned my head away from my wiggling fingers because I knew Dariana’s words would make Ethalia smile and I wanted to see the little lines crease around her eyes.
‘You’ll be well soon,’ she said.
‘Really? You have an awfully optimistic view of the world.’
She slid her fingers along the side of my cheek and into my hair. ‘The neatha is gone.’
‘The poisons that Heryn used, did they—?’
‘That’s part of it,’ she said. ‘The Dashini toxins were meant to drive your nerves past breaking point and in so doing, destroy your mind. But neatha is different: it binds itself to your nerves, preventing sensation and movement of the body, so it blocked the toxins, even as the toxins eventually destroyed it. In a way, the neatha saved you from the Dashini toxins, while they in turn saved you from being killed by the neatha.’
A thought occurred to me and I started laughing so hard I couldn’t speak. By the time I could, I realised I was crying. ‘So I should be grateful to both Duchess Patriana and the Dashini for saving my life.’
Ethalia kissed me, which calmed me. ‘That is part of it, and it would serve you well to see it that way. But something else burns inside you and that cannot be quenched by any poison.’
‘My sense of humour?’ I asked.
She smiled and kissed me again, not because what I had said was particularly funny but because she knew I wanted her to kiss me. I felt something stirring inside me and reached out to pull Ethalia into the blankets with me. Saints, maybe I am getting better, I thought.
‘Please don’t corrupt my disciple any more than absolutely necessary,’ a voice said from the door. ‘She’s already terribly wanton.’
Ethalia smiled at me and rose from the blankets, tugging down her skirts as if she were a teenager caught fooling around with one of the local farm boys in the hay barn. ‘Oh my,’ she said, ‘I’m ever so sorry, ma’am. T’weren’t no wrong ’appenin’ here, we was just—’
‘Are you making fun of me?’ Birgid-who-weeps-rivers, Saint of Mercy, asked.
‘Perhaps just a little,’ Ethalia replied, and ran to hug her.
‘There now, child, it hasn’t been that long since we’ve seen each other, has it?’ The way Birgid spoke struck me as odd, especially as she looked younger than Ethalia, with her white-blonde hair framing her pale, radiant face.
Ethalia stood back. ‘It’s been three years!’
‘Ah well, I’ve been busy.’ She sounded sheepish. She hugged Ethalia again, then came and sat down next to me. ‘So.’
‘So,’ I said, not sure what other response I could offer.
She checked me over, and for a woman who looked fifteen years younger than me, did a very fine impression of a disapproving grandmother. ‘I see that my efforts to sway you from the path of violence had little effect.’
‘In my own defence, people were trying to kill me.’
‘That’s just an excuse,’ she said. ‘And now? What will you do?’
I knew what she was asking, or rather, what she was offering: another chance – my third and maybe my last. Ethalia and I could make our way to Baern and find a boat to take us to the Southern Islands, where we’d be free of violence and rid of duty. We’d be happy there. I could let someone else take a turn at trying to fix the world. After all, I’m just one man, with no army, no influence, no power . . .
You don’t need any of those things, a voice inside me said, the voice of a boy still clinging to his childhood ideals. You’re a Greatcoat.
Birgid sighed. ‘Hopeless,’ she said.
‘Not hopeless,’ Ethalia said, ‘and not foolish, either. Somethin
g else – something good.’
Birgid turned to her and smiled. ‘You’re just as bad,’ she said. ‘Go and wait outside for me. Keep the angry girl from coming in here – oh, and try not to have sex with men for money while you’re there.’
Ethalia gave her a wicked grin and then left.
‘Such a foolish child,’ Birgid said.
I reached out and grabbed the Saint’s arm. ‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘You don’t get to call her that.’
Birgid’s eyes bore into mine and I felt something there, something old and powerful and far, far stronger than me. ‘Would you challenge a Saint, Falcio val Mond?’
There was something terrifying in that gaze, but I’d seen a lot of terrifying things lately. ‘Lady, if you’re trying to threaten me you probably should have got to me before I spent nine days being tortured by Dashini assassins.’
‘There are worse things than—’
‘No,’ I said, my mind turning back to the eighth death, ‘there aren’t.’
Birgid sighed. ‘No, I suppose there aren’t.’ She was silent for a moment, then finally said, ‘She argues for you, at night, when she and the others think you’re asleep.’
I’d heard the angry whispers back and forth at night, but I’d never been able to make out what they were fighting about.
‘The Duke of Rijou has called a Ducal Concord at Castle Aramor. He intends to work with the remaining Dukes to put an end to the murder and mayhem that has beset the country.’
A bitter laugh escaped my throat. The last time the Dukes had held a Concord was when they’d decided that the only way to save the country was to depose King Paelis. Hells. ‘The Tailor—’
Saint Birgid smiled grimly. ‘Indeed. She’s taking her forces to Castle Aramor. She knows the Dukes have lost faith in most of their Knights and will go with only those few they know they can trust.’
‘She’ll kill every last Duke,’ I said. ‘She thinks—’
‘I already know what she thinks, Falcio.’
I felt the weight of the world descend on my chest, pushing me down, making it hard to breathe. All I wanted was to go back into that deep grey sleep and wake up somewhere else – somewhere peaceful. That’s what they argue about at night.
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