‘That’s it, isn’t it: it’s about where to take me. Dariana and Kest want to go to Aramor. Ethalia and Valiana want to take me away somewhere safe.’
The Saint of Mercy laughed. ‘Is that what you think? Ethalia loves you and so she tries to sneak you away against your will to be with her?’
‘But then—’
‘Kest and Dariana are the ones trying to get you away from this, Falcio. They don’t believe you can take any more – no one could. Valiana is foolish and idealistic; she doesn’t think you can be stopped. Ethalia is wiser, though you wouldn’t know it from how powerfully she argues your cause. She knows you will likely fail, and die.’
‘Then why does she argue for me to go to Aramor?’
‘Because love isn’t a cage.’ She reached out a hand and stroked my cheek, a soft and intimate gesture that masked something underneath.
‘You’re angry with me,’ I said. ‘Why?’
Birgid turned to gaze at the cabin’s door. ‘She could take my place, you know. It’s what I’d hoped for her.’
That surprised me for a moment, though I could see very clearly that Ethalia could well be the Saint of Mercy. Then I thought about what Kest had been going through. ‘It doesn’t sound like a very good job.’
‘Like most things in life, it is what we choose to make of it.’ She turned back to me. ‘You’ve ruined her, Falcio. She loves you and that love will for ever hold her back.’
I felt a sharp pain, deep in my stomach. What if Birgid was right and Ethalia’s purpose was to become the Saint of Mercy? What did I have to offer her in return? The chance to spend her days and nights waiting alone, wondering if I was alive or dead? Or, worse, the possibility that someone would hurt her to get back at me? No, I couldn’t live with that – not again—
Suddenly my right cheek burned and I realised Birgid had just slapped me, hard, across the face. ‘That’s not exactly merciful,’ I said, holding my hand to my cheek.
‘It’s merciful compared to what I wanted to do. You don’t own her, Falcio val Mond.’
‘I’m not—’
‘It’s not your place to tell Ethalia what she will or will not become, nor what dangers she can or cannot face.’
For a moment I wasn’t sure what to say, but then I thought about Aline, my wife, and I knew exactly how to respond. ‘You’re wrong,’ I said. ‘If I can’t protect her from harm, then what’s the point of love?’
Birgid gave a small laugh. ‘I was wrong about you, Falcio, and about Ethalia too, I suppose. I thought you were just a man of violence, and she a Sister of Mercy, but I saw only one side of the coin. Of course she loves you, for she is compassion and you are valour itself, and compassion is ever drawn to valour.’
She put a hand on my chest and patted me twice as if I were a sick child, then she rose and walked to the door. ‘If you wish to make her happy, Falcio, then turn away from this path and let the world solve its own problems.’
I pushed myself up onto unsteady legs. ‘And if I can’t?’
‘Then know that you are still weak, that you have no army, and that the Ducal Concord begins in three days.’
Chapter Forty-Three
A Final Journey
‘You’ve got to rest,’ Valiana said, pulling on my arm to try to keep me from mounting my horse. ‘We’ve been riding for two days without stopping – you’re going to kill yourself.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said, trying for the third time to get my foot into the stirrup.
Horses can last only so long when they’re ridden hard and so we sold ours after the first day when we reached a town large enough to buy fresh ones, and then again early on the second day. But the horses weren’t the problem. I was.
‘Here,’ Kest said, holding out a small square packet the size of a man’s thumb. ‘You must be out of the hard candy by now.’
I pushed his hand away and reached into my pocket. ’I’m fine,’ I said as I withdrew my own packet and popped the last remaining sliver into my mouth. Almost immediately I felt that strange sharp focus coming to my eyes and my heart beating faster. ‘You should save yours. It won’t do for you to be tired while you’re fighting all those people.’
‘What will you be doing?’ Kest asked.
I leaned my head against my horse’s saddle, waiting for the dizziness to pass. ‘Watching, mostly. I might cheer you on occasionally, if you think it will help.’
Nehra, sitting astride her horse, nudged closer to us. ‘What precisely will you do when you get there?’
‘Writing a story, are you?’
‘I’m Bardatti. It’s what I do.’
‘Well,’ I said, humouring her, ‘if all goes to plan, we’ll arrive before the Dukes have assembled so that when they get there with whatever Knights and guardsmen they still trust, I’ll be able to warn them that a group of Greatcoats are about to arrive with the sole purpose of assassinating them all.’
‘Won’t they send their Knights and guardsmen to arrest you? Especially as you’re wearing greatcoats?’
‘I’ll do my best to explain the difference.’
Nehra frowned. ‘Do you always run headlong into certain death?’
‘Sometimes he walks,’ Dariana said. ‘Occasionally he shuffles. Once I’m pretty sure I saw him amble into certain death.’
Nehra rolled her eyes. ‘You risk your lives on foolish odds.’
‘We risk our lives to make them count,’ Valiana said. ‘It’s what we do.’
I lifted my head and smiled at her. Saints, but I loved how brave she was. What happened to the princess who saw everyone else as a servant? Where was the mad orphan child, desperate to die before anyone could tell her she didn’t have a right to live? All I saw before me now was a Greatcoat. King Paelis would have adored her, I thought.
Dariana mounted and set off, followed by Valiana, Nehra and Kest. I put a hand on Ethalia’s arm before she could do the same. ‘Wait,’ I said.
She turned and I saw the sadness and resignation in her eyes. She knows what I’m about to do. I pointed to the fork in the road ahead of us. ‘That road goes south through Aramor and then into Baern.’
‘Oh? And have you decided to leave behind this madness and come with me?’
‘I can’t, Ethalia. I just can’t sit back and let the country be destroyed. I can’t have the last thing people remember about the Greatcoats be that they came and committed murder to throw the country into civil war.’
She turned away from me. ‘So you ride into danger, yet you ask me to stay behind like some poor fisherman’s wife hoping the storm won’t drag your boat under?’
‘I’m going to have to fight,’ I said. ‘I have to . . . And I can’t do it if you’re there, Ethalia. I need to—’
‘You need to throw away your life recklessly,’ she said, ‘and you’re afraid that my presence will make it that much more difficult.’
‘No, damn it.’ I reached out to her and pulled her towards me, although I expected her to pull away – it’s what I would have done if I’d been her. But Ethalia always had a deeper wisdom than me; she’d known from the start that our time together was a gift and anger the thief who would steal its most precious moments. ‘I don’t want to die,’ I said. ‘Not any more.’
‘There is one path that leads to life and happiness, and another that leads to pain and death. You’ve got a pretty poor sense of direction, Falcio.’
I laughed. We’d known each other a short time, really; I don’t think I’d realised how funny she could be. ‘Of that you can be certain. But let’s not forget it was that same poor sense of direction that led me to you in the first place.’
She tilted her head up and kissed me. ‘Nonsense,’ she said with a wry grin. ‘Some loves are foretold by the stars and demanded by the world and not even the Gods dare stand in their way.’
‘It’s not the Gods I’m worried about – although the way things have been going recently, I probably shouldn’t speak too soon.’ I stepped back and held her at arm’
s length, trying to imprint the memory of her face in my mind for ever. ‘You know I have to do this. I can’t sit back and let everything the King fought for become corrupted, the way everything else is in this damned world.’
‘I haven’t asked you to stop being who you are, Falcio – I would never do that.’
‘Then go south and find happiness, if for no other reason than I’ll fight better knowing you’re in the world.’
‘And what world is left for me if you’re not in it?’ she asked.
‘The one where I loved you.’
She kissed me then, on the cheek. ‘Go then – but love is not a cage, Falcio. You have to remember that when the time comes.’
I walked back to my horse and set off to follow the others, leaving Ethalia and all she represented – all she promised – behind me. She was wrong, and so was Birgid: love was a cage, and I couldn’t do what I had to do next while locked inside it. Another few hours, I thought, and then the Tailor and I were going to have a very long conversation about the direction of the country. Unless she killed me first, of course.
*
The five of us galloped along the back roads that ran through central Aramor, using every shortcut Kest and I could remember from the days we’d spent exploring with the King. Finally, just before nightfall, we came to a small hill a few hundred yards from Castle Aramor. We dismounted and made our way to a vantage point near a copse of trees that looked down on the castle.
‘Just a few minutes’ rest,’ I said, doing my best not to fall to the ground. ‘Then we go down there and do what we came to do.’
Kest walked up the rest of the hill, Dariana and Valiana following close behind. Nehra came and stood beside me. At least she had the decency to pretend she was tired too.
‘I won’t be fighting with you,’ she said.
I turned my head to look at her. She had made no complaint since the moment she’d been captured by Heryn’s men. Colwyn had died, and yet she hadn’t even once sought revenge from Dariana. ‘I’m sorry about Colwyn,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know him, but—’
‘Please don’t say stupid things, Falcio. That’s not the reason.’
‘You don’t agree with what we’re trying to do? You think civil war and chaos are legitimate ways to—’
‘And a second time you show your ignorance, First Cantor of the Greatcoats,’ Nehra said. ‘Come, give us a third, for the Gods love things in threes.’
I looked at this strange woman who was so plain in herself and yet who could make music that transformed everyone around her, who said little, yet knew every story there was . . .
‘It’s about the story, isn’t it?’ I asked. ‘You have to witness the story of what happens here today.’
She slapped me on the back. ‘You see? It appears you’re not entirely without wits. I’ll be there when whatever happens, happens, but I can’t be part of it, not now, not when the tale must be heard, for it must be told.’
I stood up and stretched my back and rotated my shoulders. Stiff, I thought. Still too stiff. ‘I’ll do my best to give you a good story, then,’ I said. ‘Try to get my name right, will you?’
She looked at me then without a trace of ire or sarcasm in her expression, then leaned over and gave me a soft kiss on the cheek. ‘I will, Falcio val Mond of the Trattari,’ she said, and then walked away down the hill.
I winced. ‘Please stop calling us Trattari.’
I heard the sound of steel being drawn and looked up the hill to where the others had continued. The three of them had their swords in hand and I raced towards them, drawing my own rapiers. ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Are they here already?’
Valiana turned to me, looking sick. ‘We’re too late.’
I moved past her and looked down the hill. The lawn in front of Castle Aramor was designed to hold great assemblies. It had been created more than a hundred years ago by uprooting several acres of trees from the forest at the edge of the castle’s walls. The King used to call it ‘the green gauntlet’ because it looked as if a giant had left an eight-hundred-yard-long glove on the ground, with the castle on one side and thick forest on the other. And there, lying all over that lush green grass, were dozens and dozens of dead bodies, scattered as if that same giant had dropped them all from a great height.
The bodies wore greatcoats.
Chapter Forty-Four
Castle Aramor
We stared in horror at the carnage staining the green grass of Castle Aramor below. The dead lay sprawled around the field, the wreckage of their bodies partially covered by their long leather coats, looking like derelict ships filling a harbour after a storm. The wind picked up and the coats flapped in the wind and the smells of blood and death and great fear rose up to us.
Further along the gauntlet I saw row upon row of mounted Knights. There were too many to count, but they numbered perhaps close to a thousand. They sat on their horses as if preparing for a parade. Some were armed with warswords, some with lances, but they all wore black tabards.
Valiana turned to me. ‘I don’t understand . . . they’re all dead. How could they—?’
‘The Dashini are killers,’ Dariana said. ‘We fight in the shadows, in dark alleyways and narrow streets. We fight with stealth and speed, not the brute force of a cavalry charge on an open battlefield.’
‘Then why—? Why would the Tailor try to fight here?’
‘Because we had no choice,’ a woman’s voice said.
The Tailor stumbled out from the copse of trees, her own leather coat covered in blood. She held a broken sword with one hand and pressed a dark red cloth to her side with the other. Her grey hair was flying wild in the wind; her face showed the bruising and cuts of battle. She took two steps towards us and began to topple, but Kest reached her in time and took hold of her shoulders.
‘Just help me sit down,’ she said, tossing the sword away.
Kest helped her as she sat heavily on the grass, then he knelt down to examine the wound in her side.
‘It’s nothing,’ she said, pushing him away. ‘I got nicked by the tip of a Knight’s lance when my horse went out from under me. Most of the blood isn’t mine.’ She looked up at me. ‘I see you survived the Lament. Must be pleased with yourself.’
For just a moment I was back there, tied to that post, with Heryn holding a needle and saying, ‘Shall we proceed?’ It took every ounce of self-control not to stab the Tailor in the throat with one of my rapiers.
She laughed. ‘Ah, Falcio. Look at that face of yours. So much righteous indignation. Well? Come on then. I failed. My Greatcoats are all dead down there. If you’re planning to kill me, now would be a good time.’
‘How?’
‘What do I care? A thrust to the heart would be humane, but at this point you could carve me into pieces and turn me into stew and I’d be grateful.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘how did this happen?’
‘We came to fight the Dukes and their retainers and a few personal guards. We expected a hundred men and instead we found a thousand.’ She waved a hand out at the wide-open space below us. ‘Instead we got that.’
‘Where’s Aline?’ Valiana asked. ‘Is she—?’
‘Captured,’ the Tailor said.
‘We’ve got to—’
‘Keep your sword in its sheath, girly. There’s nothing you can do. They won’t kill her, not now, not with a Ducal Concord in session. They’ll just make her renounce her claim to the throne – she’ll be no threat to them then.’ The Tailor looked at me. ‘Aline’s life is all that’s left to fight for now. You’re going to go down there, First Cantor, and you’re going to beg Jillard to let you take Aline away from here. Promise to take her out of the country, if that helps. You saved his life. Maybe some small good can come from your betrayal.’
Valiana began to draw her sword again, this time for me, but I reached over and put my hand on hers. ‘Stop. It doesn’t matter.’
‘I’m not going to let her accuse you of treason, not after what
she’s done to all of us!’
I looked at the old woman with her iron-grey hair and eyes as hard as steel, her skin like leather and a tongue as sharp as a needle. I had loved her once, I realised, back in those early days with King Paelis. She’d been like one of those sages in the stories, the one who guides the hero to some secret magic that will save the day, only with more swearing and insults. I so wished she really was that foul-mouthed sage I’d believed her to be – or if not, then at least the exact opposite, the vile traitor who seeks the hero’s destruction from the darkness. But it’d taken me a long time to see that she was neither; she was just a mother who had lost her son and a grandmother about to lose her granddaughter. She was brilliant and powerful and devious and cold, but she was human and every bit as flawed and broken as the country that had spawned her.
‘The Tailor’s right,’ I said. ‘All that’s left now is to get Aline her life, if we can.’
‘What’s the plan?’ Kest asked.
‘No plan,’ I said. ‘You take the others and get out of here. I’ll go and see what kind of deal I can make.’
‘They have Aline – what have you to trade?’
I knelt down and picked up the sword the Tailor had tossed on the ground. ‘Whatever I have to offer that they want.’ I stared at the sword’s wide steel blade, broken less than a foot from the hilt. Such a simple thing, and yet capable of so much destruction. Rolled steel, tempered in a fire, beaten with a hammer until it held onto all the violence of its birth, waiting to unleash it on human flesh. I wondered if blacksmiths ever felt regret as they finished their work and stamped their mark on the sword. I held the one in my hand up to the light. The maker’s mark was a simple circle with a cross inside and three dots spread out above, like a crown. Did the man who made this sword have any idea how much chaos he brought into the world?
I looked at the maker’s mark again. It felt familiar, somehow.
Oh, hells . . .
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