Tyrant's Throne

by de Castell, Sebastien

  Kest got between us. Talia let the tip of her spear drift up to his chin. ‘Something you want to say to me, Murrowson?’

  He gave no ground. ‘Only this: if you think Falcio isn’t already eating himself up inside with that thought, you don’t know him very well.’ With his left hand he batted the head of her spear away. ‘And if you think I’m going to let you keep pushing him, then you don’t know me at all.’

  Antrim got to his feet. ‘Let’s all take a breath. We need—’

  ‘Kest-fucking-Murrowson,’ Talia said, bringing her spear back into line, ‘are you sure you were the Saint of Swords? Because most of us always figured you for the Saint of Lapdogs, following Falcio around and growling at anyone who got in his way.’

  ‘Keep pointing that weapon at me, Talia, and you’ll find out exactly who I am.’

  Tempers began to flare in the room, everyone shouting – even those calling for calm – except for Gwyn, who sat silently, looking out the window as if he desperately wanted to climb out of it. Chalmers kept staring at me, waiting for me to say something – to do something – to stop the situation from getting even more out of hand. But I couldn’t. For all Talia’s bluster, the reason her words were cutting so deeply was because she was right: if the others had so lost faith in what we stood for that they’d willingly turn their backs on the King’s dream, then they had done so because I’d failed to give them a reason to keep believing.

  I wasn’t the First Cantor any more, not in any way that mattered.

  ‘Enough!’ Chalmers shouted, her voice too young to sound anything other than shrill. ‘Is this what the Greatcoats have become? Bickering children so eager to assign blame that we can’t even focus on the danger to the country?’

  ‘What would you know?’ Talia asked. ‘Nobody in this room is even sure if you are a Greatcoat, little girl, and certainly nobody wants you here. How old would you have been when the King named you? Thirteen?’

  ‘I was only thirteen when the King named me his “Patience” and sent me to the Dashini,’ Darriana said, although she didn’t sound particularly interested in the conversation. ‘Would you care to challenge my right to be here?’

  ‘I can fight my own battles,’ Chalmers said. She pushed Kest aside and took up position just inches away from Talia.

  ‘You should step back, little girl,’ Talia warned.

  To her credit, Chalmers didn’t cede any ground, though perhaps that might have been because she was shaking too much. ‘You don’t believe I’m a Greatcoat?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Tell me this, then: when this “Magdan” comes with his Avarean soldiers and all those other Greatcoats and I go with Falcio to face them, what do you think’s going to happen then?’

  Talia snorted. ‘You’ll end up lying face-down in a pool of your own blood.’

  Chalmers nodded. ‘From what I’ve heard, we’re horribly out­numbered: the enemy has more warriors and more weapons. So you’re right, I’ll end up dead. Now tell me how that makes you and me any different. Is it that you think you’ll defeat them by yourself? Or that you don’t plan to fight when the time comes?’

  Talia’s sneer turned into something darker for a moment, but then something changed in her expression. ‘All right,’ she said at last, smiling ruefully as she punched Chalmers in the shoulder. ‘I guess you really are a Greatcoat. Little girl.’

  Some of the tension left the air and I could hear the sounds of breaths being exhaled. It occurred to me watching that exchange that there are any number of qualities required to become a Greatcoat: knowledge of the King’s Law, skill-at-arms and willingness to risk life and limb to get justice. Sanity, however, always was entirely optional.

  ‘Can we now get on to figuring out what we do next?’ Antrim asked. ‘Morn is out there with more than forty of our brethren. If they really do try to take over Hervor and Orison, people will never trust the Greatcoats again.’

  ‘They do not trust you now.’

  Everyone turned to see who had spoken. It was Gwyn, still looking as if he were halfway to jumping out the window. He’d seemed perfectly at ease in the wilderness, but the moment we’d reached civilisation – and especially once we’d come inside the castle – he’d become strangely uncomfortable. His accent was thick when he said, ‘This is a very warm place even in the winter, I think.’

  ‘Is that supposed to mean something, Avarean?’ Talia asked.

  ‘It must be hard to leave a place like this, to go where it is cold, where it is dangerous, where a sore foot becomes a sprained ankle, then a broken leg and finally a sleep in the ice that never ends.’

  He turned to face us, his young face showing a kind of . . . disdain, as though we were the callow youths. ‘I am Rangieri, and we do not stay where it is warm, where it is safe. We travel the borders of this country. We go to the northern climes, where it is too cold, to the eastern deserts, where it is too hot. We sail the southern coasts, waiting and watching for signs of raiders from across the water. We are the ones who go scouting to other lands – not for days or weeks, but for months, sometimes for years – to witness armies forming and bring warning before they can invade the soft warm belly of this country.’

  ‘Well maybe one of you Rangieri ought to have warned us a little sooner this time,’ Talia complained.

  ‘We might have,’ Gwyn said. He pulled open his strange coat, so like ours and yet so different, and lifted up his shirt to reveal the still barely healing wounds. ‘But there were only two of us left in the north, and one of your Trattari killed my teacher before setting his blade on me.’

  Even Talia looked chastened by that.

  Mateo glanced around at everyone in the room. ‘What I want to know is, how come Morn picked all the other Greatcoats, and yet none of us knew? I can understand why he never asked Falcio or Kest or Brasti, but why did he never try to bring any of us over to his side?’

  ‘Maybe it’s because he thought you were all too loyal to your First Cantor,’ Brasti said casually. ‘I guess it just goes to show he’s not all that clever.’

  Talia looked like she might go for him then and there, but another voice spoke up. ‘He asked me,’ Allister said.

  Every eye in the room turned on him.

  Allister looked up at me, his face a mask of confusion and self-loathing. ‘I swear, I didn’t know what he was up to, Falcio. He just . . . he found me in Luth, three years back. I was trying to track down a book Saint Anlas asked me to find. The old man used to do that a lot; I used to think he just wanted to be rid of me for a whi—’

  ‘You knew Saint Anlas-who-remembers-the-world?’ Mateo ­interrupted.

  Allister smiled sadly. ‘That was my mission: the King sent me to watch over him. Anyway, I ran into Morn . . . or maybe he’d been looking for me. He said he had a plan to reunite the Greatcoats and fix the country. I thought it was just Morn, you know, being the arrogant prick he always was. But his ideas did make sense.’ Allister’s eyes caught mine again. ‘A nation ruled by magistrates, where the laws were the foundation of the country, not just an afterthought. It did make sense to me, Falcio. After all the horrors I’d seen, after having to stand there when the Dukes and their armies came to kill King Paelis? Morn’s ideas didn’t sound crazy.’

  ‘So why didn’t you go with him?’ I asked.

  ‘I just . . . I couldn’t bring myself to abandon Saint Anlas. I didn’t understand the King’s plan for me, not at all, but somehow I didn’t want to give it up, not then.’ A look of sorrow passed across his features. ‘Then he died and I figured I had to find out who could have killed a Saint – and when I got word that you were nearby, I went to find you.’

  In other words, it was geography and not faith that made Allister come to me and not Morn. Gods and Saints alike! How had I lost the Greatcoats so completely? What terrible failing of mine had sent Quillata and Jakin and all the others
into Morn’s camp? Was it truly only down to a quirk of fate that not everyone had gone with him?

  ‘How much did he tell you about his plans?’ Kest asked.

  ‘Hardly anything at all,’ Allister replied. ‘I mean, he mostly talked about his vision for what we could achieve, but he never mentioned how he intended to accomplish it.’ Again he looked over at me. ‘I swear, Falcio, I had no idea he’d go to Avares and become some kind of all-powerful Warlord—’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ I said.

  A sombre mood descended over the room. Now the shouting and threats were over and done with, all that was left was confusion, fear and shame.

  ‘What do we do then, Falcio?’ Talia asked at last. ‘How do we fight our own people?’

  Oh, so now you want me to lead you again? It was a petty thought, but one I couldn’t quite get out of my head. ‘That’s simple,’ I said, trying to put a light-hearted tone into my words. ‘I’m going to hatch an ingenious plan and then, you know, save the day. In the meantime . . .’ I walked over to where Mateo and Quentis were sitting on my cot and motioned for them to get up. ‘Everyone get the hells out of my bedroom.’

  There were a few chuckles and some groans, and soon the others began to leave, all except for Gwyn. With everything else going on, it hadn’t even occurred to me that he’d never been to the castle before, and had no place to go. ‘Get Brasti to help you find someplace to bunk tonight,’ I said, then added, ‘Don’t let him trick you into going out drinking with him unless you want to end up learning a lot more about . . . southern mating rituals than you might be ready for.’

  He did up his coat, then said, ‘Thank you, but no. My wounds are healed now and I must return to the north.’

  ‘Wait . . . back to Avares? Why?’

  He paused. ‘You said the Magdan has Shan steel weapons and cannon in his arsenal.’

  ‘I saw them myself. Apparently he’s got enough to outfit an army.’

  He glanced around the wardroom. ‘And how many Shan steel weapons do you have here?’

  That drew a chuckle from me. ‘Me? None, of course. Even if you could convince a Shan trader to sell you some, they’d have been too expensive for my salary . . . even when I had a salary.’

  ‘And Avares is not one tenth as wealthy as Tristia. We have livestock and farming, yes, and strong backs, but little trade with other nations.’

  The implication of his initial question suddenly hit me. ‘So how in the name of Saint Zaghev-who-sings-for-tears was Morn able to buy enough weapons to drain a rich country’s treasury?’

  Gwyn headed for the door. ‘That, First Cantor, is what I must go discover.’

  He left me alone with my thoughts and far too many questions, which made for rather poor company, so I stripped off my shirt, grabbed a rapier and started practising the eight fundamental forms. Usually half an hour of repetitions will exhaust me and bore me into oblivion, but the twin dilemmas of Morn and Filian kept turning over and over in my mind. Every plan I envisioned began and ended with murder.

  In the end, I went for two hours before a rapping at my door shook me from my dark thoughts. Recognising Ethalia’s distinctive knock, I put away the rapier and was halfway to the door when I stopped to go back and put on a shirt. I wouldn’t have bothered for anyone else.

  Somehow she noticed it. ‘Have I come at a bad time?’ she asked. ‘Should I go?’

  The sight of her standing in the doorway, the white silk of her robes shimmering against her skin, the long dark hair falling in waves past her shoulders, her expression full of compassion, of wit and laughter and all the things a body longs for to make the pains of life fade away . . . how was it possible that every single person who saw her didn’t feel about her as I did? How could anyone who spent even an hour in her company, hearing her talk, seeing the way she listened . . . how had I come so close to marrying her and yet managed to screw it all up so monumentally?

  And here she was, at my door, coming to see if I was all right. If there was no promise of anything more in her eyes, at least there was the offer of her company and the solace it always provided. I had a joke already prepared, and a smile to go with it. I’d been about to motion for her to enter when something terrible happened – some poisonous combination of exhaustion and confusion and shame over the anger that was burning a hole inside me as I contemplated just how far I was willing to go to put Aline on the throne.

  The words that came out of my mouth had no business being spoken by any sane man.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I think I need to be alone.’

  I saw the skin tighten around her eyes, just for a moment, and her cheeks went red with the humiliation of being turned away – then that thing that sets Ethalia apart from anyone else I’ve ever known came back and she reached out a hand to my chest, laid her palm on my heart and kissed me on the cheek. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘We can talk tomorrow, or the next day if that’s better.’

  My hands tried their best to reach out and hold her; I wanted nothing more than to be close to her. And yet something held me back: the recognition that the man I had to be right now had no business being in love with – or being loved by – someone like her. All of which might have been forgivable had I not said, as she was walking away, ‘It might be a few days. Things are complicated right now.’

  Saints, but I am rubbish at relationships.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The Unwelcome Proposal

  I’m not sure why it is that after screwing something up spectacularly, I generally find myself seeking out the company of Jillard, Duke of Rijou. In this case, my excuse was that I needed something from him very badly, and I was willing to pay the price to get it.

  ‘I wondered how long it would take you,’ he said. Despite the late hour, the Duke of Rijou looked immaculate. His carefully oiled black hair was perfectly styled in a nod to the current contemporary fashion whilst still retaining its classical foundation, clearly showing a man who moved with the times, although those times did not control him. He wore his usual red and silver brocade coat over silk, and I imagined I could examine every inch with a magnifying glass and never find a single thread out of place.

  His smile was perfect too: amused, but not unserious, pleased with the state of the world but not content to leave it be. A man with a smile like that could walk into a palace dressed in rags and covered in filth and still the wealthy and powerful would part before him like water under a cart’s wheel.

  Standing there in the antechamber, the dust from Aramor’s destruction still rising in the air, he looked as if he were about to be immortalised in marble or oils . . . and yet . . .

  Deceit is Jillard’s stock-in-trade. It is his means of protection, his greatcoat. Hidden beneath the perfect smile and the perfect clothes and the perfect hair, the pain of loss lingered there for those with the wit to see. His son Tommer had been the one true star in Jillard’s firmament; the man who stood before me now was a pale shadow of the Duke of Rijou.

  ‘Are you well, Falcio?’ Jillard asked, the corner of his mouth rising just a hair in amusement. ‘You look rather senile.’

  ‘Quite well, your Grace.’

  He turned, an elegant pivot on one heel, reached down for the two glasses of wine sitting on a silver salver and offered one to me.

  Such simple gestures are never simple with men like Jillard. ‘Poison?’ I asked.

  He took a sip from one of them and curled his lip. ‘Decidedly. It’s a poor vintage. I’m afraid we lost much of King Paelis’ legendary wine cellar.’ He looked up from his glass. ‘Do you know, the cellar was actually underground, the least likely room to be damaged, even during the destruction of the outer walls.’ He wrapped his knuckles on the solid stone wall next to him. ‘And yet, despite all the rooms surrounding it remaining intact, the cellar itself caved in. Do you suppose the Blacksmith’s God had a sense of humour?’


  I considered telling him about the King’s private stash, but that would have required explaining why Darriana and I had smashed most of the bottles.

  I raised my glass to him. After all, Jillard had any number of infinitely more unpleasant ways of killing me, if that were his aim. A sip revealed that the Duke was right: the wine did have the faintly bitter aftertaste I’ve come to associate with cheap wines and poison; I’d become something of an expert at both. ‘To your health,’ I said.

  He nodded graciously. ‘Well, Falcio, we have played our little game and decided not to kill each other yet again. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?’

  ‘Aline.’

  Jillard frowned. ‘Please tell me you’re not about to start on your usual litany of threats?’ He made a show of glancing around the empty room. ‘I fear I am too poor an audience for what I have no doubt will be a grand speech on Ducal overreach, the nature of venality and innocence lost.’

  ‘No speeches,’ I said, then hesitated. ‘I need a favour.’

  ‘Falcio, if you’ve come here believing I can somehow elevate the girl to the throne of my own accord, then I fear you’ll be sorely disappointed. What influence I once had with the other Dukes has largely faded away.’

  ‘Really? Why?’

  ‘The boy, of course. Hadiermo and Erris have already met with him privately, and have taken the liberty of assigning him “councillors” and “advisors” to enable him to navigate the more esoteric aspects of the laws and protocols governing questions of royal lineage.’

  Saints. Why couldn’t Trin have had the decency to at least rid the world of those two arseholes during her last attempt to overthrow the country?

  ‘Oh, and in case you’re wondering,’ Jillard went on, ‘that Margrave, Rhetan? The one you made the most powerful noble in Baern apart from Ossia herself – and the man now almost certain to replace her when she can no longer hold her Duchy? He’s already made overtures to . . . how did he put it? “Our rightful and glorious King”.’