Tyrant's Throne

by de Castell, Sebastien

  My own tears were tracing lines down my face, but I only discovered that because of the strangled sob that came out of me unbidden. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’

  She took my hand and placed it over her heart. I’d expected it to be racing, as mine was, but Aline’s was slow and steady. That’s when the fear tightened around my gut.

  Aline spoke to me calmly, almost reassuringly. ‘Duchess Ossia is old now, Falcio. Her hands shake sometimes just from holding her teacup. She couldn’t trust her blade alone.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No. You don’t know anything about—’

  Aline closed her eyes for a moment. ‘It doesn’t hurt, not even a little bit. I don’t think she wanted him to suffer.’

  ‘Stop,’ I said, shaking her until she was looking at me again. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. Death and dying are my expertise. I’m a proper duellist and you’re just a little girl who dresses up like a Queen and pretends she knows things when really she’s no wiser than her fool of a father.’

  ‘I wish I’d met him. The priests say we can only meet those in the next life who we’ve met in this one. That’s not fair, is it?’

  ‘Priests don’t know what they’re talking about either, remember? They’re the ones who thought the Gods made us.’

  A giggle, like the little silver bell they use in Pulnam to declare the end of a fencing match.

  ‘And besides,’ I said, ‘even if you were poisoned, which you’re not, the only poison I know of which is truly painless is neatha, and if I survived it, so can you.’

  She gave me a wan smile, the corners of her mouth only moving a little. ‘You inhaled Duchess Patriana’s poison, Falcio. Do you suppose it’s stronger or weaker when it goes into your blood on the edge of a blade?’

  ‘Get me a doctor, damn you all!’ I shouted, willing my voice to carry over the sounds of the fighting.

  In between clanging sounds I heard Kest say, ‘Doctor Pasquine is on her way.’

  The touch of Aline’s fingers on my cheek made me turn back to her. ‘I need to tell you something, Falcio.’

  ‘Tell me later, when you’re better.’

  She locked eyes with me, her gaze hardening even as her words struggled to find voice. ‘Falcio val Mond, First Cantor of the ­Greatcoats, called the King’s Heart, I am Aline, daughter of Paelis the First, heir to the throne of Tristia. You will heed me now.’

  Some part of me, the part that was fighting to break through the thick layers of self-deception I was trying to wrap around my breaking heart, forced me to say, ‘I’m here. I’m listening.’

  ‘Before my father died he gave you a mission, Falcio. Will you accept mine?’

  I felt a hand on my shoulder and nearly reached back to break it when I realised it was Brasti. I glanced around and saw that the fighting had ended. Duchess Ossia’s troops had surrendered. The woman herself was kneeling on the floor like some penitent beggar.

  ‘Let me pass,’ a fiery voice called out and the Aramor guardsmen parted to allow Doctor Pasquine to make her way to us.

  ‘Falcio, listen to me,’ Aline said.

  ‘The doctor is here, she’ll—’

  ‘Please.’ And when I reluctantly nodded, she whispered, ‘Once I asked you to bury me near my father’s grave on that little hill in Pulnam. Will you do that for me?’

  Doctor Pasquine knelt down on the other side of Aline, eyes on the slash wound and two fingers already on the side of her throat, feeling her pulse.

  ‘Save her,’ I said.

  The doctor ignored me, pulling out a thin metal instrument from her pack and pressing it down on the wound. The blood that oozed out was so dark it was almost black. ‘My lady,’ she said, ‘the flesh is already necrotising. You are dying.’

  My hand reached up of its own accord and wrapped around ­Pasquine’s neck, squeezing hard enough to draw a broken gasp from her. ‘Damn you! Would you take away hope from a child?’

  Something painful struck a nerve in my wrist and my hand came loose. The doctor had jabbed me with her instrument. ‘She isn’t a child and you’re not my patient. I owe her the truth.’

  ‘Stop,’ Aline said to me. She tried to reach out to me but her arm drifted back to the floor. ‘Falcio, please, don’t take this away from me.’

  Stupid girl – after all this time she still didn’t have any clue about life and death. ‘What is left to take away?’

  Her eyes went to Pasquine. ‘I can’t feel anything in my limbs. Does that mean . . . ?’

  ‘Only moments now, my lady.’ The doctor leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. ‘I would have been proud to call you my Queen.’

  Pasquine rose and motioned for the others to step away, leaving Aline and me as alone as two people could be in the midst of a crowd.

  ‘It’s strange,’ Aline said, ‘to not feel anything.’

  I was so angry, so broken and empty, and yet at the same time I was filling up inside with a rage that was demanding payment for this: to smash everything around me, to destroy every person who dared stand upon this earth as she left it. The only thing holding me back was the fear I now saw dawning in Aline’s eyes.

  I reached down and wrapped my arms around her, lifting her to hold her close to me. With my cheek against hers, I asked, ‘Can you feel this?’

  She whispered in my ear, ‘I can feel your tears on my face.’

  ‘It’s sweat, silly girl. Haven’t you noticed how hot it is in here?’

  A light chuckle, more a tiny gasping of breath than anything else, but she found the strength to speak. ‘I wish you could know how much I love you for what you gave me, Falcio.’

  That was too much for me. ‘I failed you.’

  A breath, cool against my ear. ‘I was supposed to die in Rijou. You . . . you gave me the chance to fight for my country, for my people. I saved my brother’s life, Falcio. What more could I . . . ?’

  The words were getting softer and softer. It was getting hard to hear anything, even the sounds of breathing all around me were overpowering her, like ocean waves drowning out the sound of the breeze. Yet still Aline went on, ‘I want you to be the . . .’ she began.

  ‘Be the what?’ I asked.

  In the stories, there’s always just enough time for those dying to give some last commandment, some last words of wisdom to the living. But neatha attacks the nerves, smothering them, taking away movement and sensation, leaving behind endless black.

  I held Aline in my arms even as I felt her body cooling, my mind so desperately wanting to hear her voice that I imagined all the things she might have wanted to say to me.

  Be the man who saved me and not the one who killed those who tried to murder me.

  Be the Greatcoat, and not the Duellist.

  Bury me next to my father.

  I would have kept holding her all night, resisting any attempts to take her from me. I could have held her like that until my last ounce of strength failed me, ignoring the murmurs and cries around me, ignoring Brasti’s words of condolence and Kest’s of reassurance. I could have ignored them all.

  It was the laughter that I couldn’t take.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Regicide

  Trin stood next to Filian, surrounded by those guardsmen loyal to her, their swords and shields facing out to protect her, and she laughed. There wasn’t a trace of regret in her eyes, in the curl of her mouth, the rosy flush of her cheeks. Aline’s sacrifice had meant nothing. Filian would take the throne; he would marry Trin and she would be Queen of Tristia.

  Her laughter sounded strange to my ears. In my mind her voice was replaced with that of her mother. Patriana, Duchess of Hervor, had finally won. After all this time, and from beyond the grave, she had destroyed my King’s dream once and for all.

  The echoes of her merriment and of Patriana’s boasts and taunts filled my
hearing, making my vision blur, my fingers itch. My tongue was as dry as the Eastern Desert under the burning sun. I have known loss many times in my life, but this was the first time I truly understood the taste of defeat.

  Trin didn’t even notice me. She was looking down at Ossia, Duchess of Baern, who was still on her knees and would likely remain there until the order came to take her head.

  ‘Forgive me,’ Trin said, the lightness of her voice giving the lie to her words, ‘it’s just that . . . it’s like one of the old comedies, isn’t it? The ones where identities get confused and everything begins to fall apart until finally one of the Gods descends and tells the audience what happened and then everyone gets married?’ She reached out a hand and stroked Ossia’s silver-grey hair. ‘You’re finally reunited with your son, only to trick the Greatcoats into helping you kill him so that Aline can take the throne – and she ends up giving up her own life to save him. It’s all so very poetic.’

  I blinked the useless tears from my eyes. I would need to be able to see clearly for the next few minutes.

  Some two dozen men protected her. They wouldn’t be nearly enough. I knelt to set Aline’s body gently down on the floor, working through my next moves as I did.

  Many of Ossia’s soldiers remained, along with the Aramor guardsmen. I would draw my rapiers as I rose, shouting at Ossia’s soldiers to attack. Their captain would try to countermand me, but not fast enough, so I could sow confusion on both sides as I’d done at the Margrave’s wedding. Trin’s men would have to split their focus. She was standing a few feet from the dais, perhaps twenty feet away from me. If I ran up the stairs and onto the throne, I could launch myself from there. The closest men would instinctively raise their shields, which would be a mistake for them. I’d need to land with my feet under me, driving Trin’s defenders down, then I’d have to thrust a rapier each at the two men closest to me, one on either side, using the advantage of height to get over their shields. The rest would try to attack me, but they’d be aiming high and I’d duck low under their blades and come up right behind Trin, and only then would everyone realise I’d left my rapiers buried in my first opponents and that I had a knife to Trin’s throat. They’d all expect me to make some sort of threat, ordering them to back off or else I’d kill her – I wouldn’t disappoint them, of course not, but even as I uttered the words, letting them believe we were in a standoff, I’d be burying the knife in her neck.

  It was a good plan.

  The sane part of me, the part that had heard the wisdom in Aline’s words and followed her train of thought, imagining what she hadn’t been able to say, knew there was a problem with my strategy: Trin would die, yes, but Filian would be King and his heart would be hardened against the Greatcoats, against the King’s Law, against everything we’d stood for and fought for and bled for: against the very principles Aline had given her life to preserve.

  That’s why, in those precious seconds when all eyes turned to Trin as she gurgled and bled out, I’d need to kill Filian too.

  Let the Magdan have this country. The poor would be no worse off – in fact, their lives would probably get better. The Avareans would take the territory they wanted. The Magdan would likely purge Tristia of its foul nobility and set his own preferred lieutenants in charge; I expected many of them would be men and women I knew, former Greatcoats. The country would live under a kind of judicial dictatorship. It could do much worse. It already had.

  It was a good plan. Trin would be dead, the country would be no worse off and I would finally have put an end to Duchess Patriana, her daughter and all their foul conspiracies.

  And all it would cost was the last shred of my King’s dream and my own life: a bargain at twice the price.

  I let Aline’s body settle on the ground and rose, my fingers already reaching for my rapiers, the muscles in my calves tensing as I prepared my perfectly planned run up the stairs and over to the throne, then into the chaos that would follow. When I turned, something flat and hard slammed into the side of my head, sending me tumbling backwards. My legs went weak, but I recovered my balance, my rapiers drawn, blinking furiously to clear my vision as I saw the man standing between me and the woman whose death I had so meticulously formulated in my mind.

  It had been a good plan. I’d only forgotten one thing.

  ‘I’m sorry, Falcio,’ Kest said, standing a few feet away from me, holding his shield in front of him. ‘I can’t let you do this.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Fratricide

  My plan adjusted itself without any prompting from me, shifting each detail to accommodate this new inconvenience. It could still work. ‘Step aside, Kest.’

  His face was ashen, as if with that brilliant mind of his he’d already worked out my every move, as if he’d even calculated what would happen to our friendship if he tried to stop me. ‘Please, Falcio, don’t make me do this.’

  ‘No one’s making you do anything. I’m the First Cantor of the Greatcoats and I’m giving you an order. Step aside now.’

  ‘It’s not too late,’ Kest said, and I could hear the tiniest fragment of hope in his voice, even as he shifted his shield on his arm to prepare for the attack that he must have known was coming. ‘Not so long as we hold to the law, you and I. Don’t do this, Falcio. Don’t throw away everything you’ve stood for in exchange for one moment of revenge.’

  I closed my eyes for a moment, letting his words wash over me. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘It’s not worth it.’

  But when I opened my eyes, Kest hadn’t put down his shield – he was too savvy a fighter and had known me too long to be so easily deceived. He knew I couldn’t let Aline’s death go unanswered. Trin was going to die. Filian was going to die. I was going to die.

  What did one more body on the pile matter?

  ‘I won’t ask you again, Falcio,’ he warned.

  ‘Goodbye, Kest,’ I said, and launched myself at him.

  A moment before he’d been the finest fighter in all of Tristia and my best friend in the whole world.

  Now he was neither of those thing; he was simply an obstacle.

  I let him have the first blow. I came in high, my right hand up above my head, the tip of my rapier angled down over his shield while my left was already beginning the thrust that would sneak past his shield once he parried the first attack. Even if he got both of them, I could simply continue the right-hand thrust once the shield was out of the way. There’s a reason why people don’t go into battle with only a shield.

  Kest was too fast for me, of course. He didn’t just parry the high attack but knocked my right rapier out of line, and without pausing for an instant he dealt with my left-hand thrust, not by deflecting it, but by allowing the first foot of the blade past, only to drive the edge of his shield down so hard and so fast that he shattered the blade, leaving me with just one rapier and one rather badly balanced dagger.

  That would have been enough to knock sense into a smarter man, but Kest was taking no chances. Before I could get myself back into guard, he slammed his shield against the side of my face for the second time and I fell backwards again. Getting hit in the head twice within minutes is not especially good for concentration. When I regained my balance, I spat out blood on the floor.

  ‘You can’t beat me,’ Kest said. ‘Not today.’

  I smiled. It was odd how life, once divorced from purpose, could become so much like a game. ‘Let’s find out, shall we?’

  His eyes narrowed, trying to figure me out. ‘Even if you got by me, Trin’s guards would kill you before you got near her.’

  ‘Maybe, if she’d had a chance to get control of the room.’ I tilted my head towards Ossia’s guards. ‘But now all the other soldiers have had time to consider the future. They’ve heard all about Trin; they know there’s no pardon coming for them. She’ll have them executed – but not before she’s tortured them into giving up their lo
ved ones so that she can have them killed too.’

  ‘Stop,’ Kest said. Of course he knew what I was doing. ‘You’re making things worse.’

  That pulled an unexpected chuckle from somewhere deep in my belly. ‘Worse? You fucking fool, Aline is dead!’ I risked raising my broken rapier to point it in Trin’s direction. ‘The daughter of Duchess Patriana is going to take power. How much worse can it possibly get?’

  I didn’t wait for an answer, but instead ran for him, switching up my guard so that my broken left rapier was high and my right was low. He knew I’d have to try for a long lunge with the right as the left was now too short to get past his shield. I feinted low, then high, then lunged for his left hip, but with the precision of a surgeon, he angled his shield so that my blade slid along its surface. I was too close to recover, and I could practically see the word ‘sorry’ forming on his lips as his arm came back to smash the flat of his shield into me a third time. The first two blows had been hard, but measured. This time he’d knock me unconscious to avoid having to kill me outright.

  That was his mistake.

  An opponent who won’t kill you limits his options: his strikes have to be precise, measured. Kest wouldn’t risk striking me with the edge of his shield, not when I was in so close – he’d end up caving in my skull. So it had to be the flat, which meant he needed more distance, but not so much that I could stab him with my rapier as he prepared his own blow. There wasn’t one in a thousand duellists who could do what Kest was planning – he could, of course, because he’s Kest. But all that careful timing meant that he’d missed seeing me flip my broken rapier so that I was holding it by the blade, and he didn’t see until it was too late that I’d brought it up under his shield and hooked the rim with the quillons, yanking it up high so that all of a sudden we were facing each other like two travellers huddling together under an umbrella against the rain. His eye caught mine, then looked down at the tip of my right rapier touching his throat.