Traitor's Blade (The Greatcoats)

by de Castell, Sebastien

Aline was looking back and forth between us, not sure what this was all about.

  ‘This is certainly the finest meal I’ve had in an age,’ I said, placing both hands on the table. They wanted to shake, but they didn’t: they were stiff and achy and not responding much at all. Everyone else looked fine, including Laetha, who took her seat once again to the right of me. Aline was to my left and Radger sat across the table.

  ‘Well, I’m just glad you’re well fed,’ she said, smiling. Nervous. Still nervous.

  She knows, but isn’t sure how far gone I am.

  ‘Well fed, ready for bed, soon to be dead,’ I sang with a laugh.

  Aline giggled at the old children’s rhyme, but the others did not.

  ‘One problem, though,’ I said with a smile.

  ‘What—?’ Laetha began.

  ‘Now I need dessert!’

  They laughed with me, but looked a bit confused. ‘We didn’t have time to prepare … I suppose I could toss some sugar cakes and jam together,’ Laetha said.

  ‘Falcio, don’t be rude.’

  I shook my head. ‘No need, I always bring my own. Aline, dear, could you do a tired, old, worn-out and beat-up man a favour? Reach into my pocket and pass me one of my sweets, won’t you?’

  She looked at me, clearly confused.

  ‘Come now, I’m all settled and comfortable here; I just want one of my candies. The hard one.’

  She rose, and for a brief instant I saw Radger start to reach for her, but then he stopped, catching my eye. I smiled back at him. I could barely move, so I had to do my best to make him think I was still functional. I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention that my very worst night terrors involve being paralysed.

  Aline reached awkwardly into the inside pocket of my coat and pulled out one of the tiny packages. ‘No dear, the hard candy. The soft candy tastes too much like strawberries and it won’t settle with the duck.’

  She reached into the other pocket. Her hand was shaking now, but she was trying to mask it, either because she understood what was happening or because she thought I was losing my mind.

  ‘There now,’ I said. ‘That’s the one.’

  Without further instruction she unwrapped it and popped it in my mouth and I tasted the harsh, almost metallic flavour of the hard candy. A sniff of the stuff will wake you up from a deep sleep. A small bite will let you go for two days and nights on the move without sleep. The amount I swallowed at that moment could prevent a paralytic from stopping my heart – if it didn’t make it burst. I made the sounds I imagined one might make when tasting the tits of Saint Laina-who-whores-for-Gods.

  ‘You certainly seem enamoured of your confectionary,’ Laetha said drily.

  ‘I am indeed, mistress. I am indeed. I would offer you some, but that was the very last piece. Perhaps you’d like to try some of the other candy I have with me? It’s soft, and tastes of summer strawberries.’

  ‘Thank you, no,’ she said. ‘As you say, strawberries go ill with duck.’

  Aline sat in her chair, inching closer to me each time she fidgeted, looking back and forth between us all and clearly terrified. Radger looked at me from across the table with eyes that betrayed nothing, simply waiting.

  Well, fine: I was waiting too. But I still couldn’t move my arms.

  ‘Where did you say the old woman was again?’ I asked.

  ‘We’ve told you three times now, she’s out with the others, searching for Aline.’ Laetha’s voice held only irritation, but her shoulders betrayed fear. Radger rose and headed to one of the cabinets in the corner.

  ‘Right, right – forgive me. And how did you find us again?’ I asked.

  ‘We told you, it was luck. Just luck.’

  ‘Of course. What’s wrong with me?’

  ‘Falcio …’ Aline said.

  ‘And that drink you gave me – delicious! What was it again? Zinroot?’

  ‘Yes.’ Laetha looked over to at her husband, unsure of what to do.

  ‘It was the glass,’ Radger said casually. In his hand he held a thick iron rod, a bit under two feet in length. Each end was wrapped in tanned leather. This was a weapon for disabling a man, perhaps crippling him, but not killing him. ‘In case you’ve been wondering, the poison was in the glass already, not in the drink.’

  ‘Ah. The glass,’ I said as the paralytic began to assert itself on my limbs and organs. ‘I should’ve realised.’

  ‘Few would,’ Radger said. ‘It’s how we sometimes get children to take their medicine when they’re being obstinate: put it on the rim of the glass and fill it with plain water, then drink some yourself from a clean glass to make them feel safe.’

  ‘Radger! What are you doing?’ Aline asked.

  ‘Shush, girl. You come with me now,’ Laetha said, rising from the table.

  Aline jumped from her seat and came behind me. She took the bracer of knives from the inside of my coat and pulled one free, holding it out in front of her.

  ‘Don’t be foolish, child,’ Laetha shouted.

  Radger took a step forward and Aline threw the knife at him. She missed him by a city block, but the knife did give a satisfying thunk as it stuck into the wall. She quickly pulled another one out before Laetha could grab her arm and swung it in an arc in front of us.

  ‘Where is Mattea?’ Aline demanded.

  ‘Let’s all settle down now, my sweetheart,’ Radger said.

  ‘Where is she? You can’t tell me she would do this to me – you can’t!’ With her left hand she started shaking my shoulders, trying to get me to move, but I held, stiff as stone.

  ‘Aline,’ Radger said, taking another step towards us, ‘it’s time for you to be grown-up now. There’s enough limerot in that man’s blood to stop a pack of dogs in their tracks. So just you go with Laetha and leave me to do what I’ve got to do. I’ve got no call to hurt you, but I will if you don’t stop misbehaving now.’

  ‘Damn you!’ Aline screamed, waving the knife as Radger took another half-step towards us and Laetha started reaching out, looking for an opportunity to catch Aline’s wrist. ‘Damn you all! You were supposed to be my friends!’ She started reaching back inside my pocket for something and it took me a second to realise she was reaching for the soft candy again.

  ‘No,’ I said to her, ‘that won’t be necessary. Leave be and step back a few paces, Aline.’

  The girl paused a moment and then complied, but she kept the knife in hand.

  Radger and Laetha looked relieved. ‘See now, you listen to your man there,’ Radger said. ‘He knows when it’s done. No need to make a fuss.’

  ‘In case you’re wondering later on,’ I said, ‘it was the candy.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The candy. You’re an apothecary,’ I said. ‘Haven’t you heard stories of the King’s Hard Candy?’

  ‘That’s – that’s a myth,’ Radger said. ‘No one’s ever been able to make that recipe.’

  ‘Fool,’ I said. ‘You stupid. Fucking. Fool. Did you think you were the first person to ever come up with the idea of poisoning a Greatcoat? Did you really think that the King, with all his money and all his apothecaries, the finest in the country, and all his books from the most ancient libraries in the country – did you really think he never thought we’d have to deal with a fucking poisoner? Did you really think we wouldn’t have a way to deal with that?’

  ‘You’re bluffing,’ he said. ‘You’re trying to bide your time, hoping your stupid little candy will work, but it takes longer than this, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Take a step forward,’ I said. ‘Just one more step, and find out.’

  Radger hesitated.

  ‘Come on! I’m right here – I’m sitting down! My sword’s in its sheath. On the best day of my life do you think I could get up, draw my blade and stab you before you can take one step and thrash me across the head with that iron bar? So what are you waiting for?’

  He looked at Laetha for a moment, then back at me, and with a roar he stepped forward
and swung the iron bar.

  In my own defence, I did actually manage to push the chair back, get up and draw my sword faster than I would’ve thought possible, but the hard candy moves through the body from the inside out. The first thing to work, thankfully, are the internal organs, then the chest, shoulders and thighs. The hands and fingers are the last to come out of the paralysis, which in this case meant my aim was off and the blade went to the side, and the result was that instead of smashing my brains in, Radger hit the side of my ribs with less impact.

  He pushed me hard, and I fell back onto my chair, the rapier dropping from my hand, and he pulled back for a final swing, only then noticing the small knife buried into his side.

  ‘Aline?’ he said, disbelievingly.

  She had snuck in under his blow when I’d stood up and jammed the blade into his side. A big man like that, he could’ve shrugged it off for long enough to finish the job on me. But if you’ve never been stabbed before, it’s bloody painful, and shock takes you quickly.

  Radger stumbled back a few feet. Laetha raced to his side. I leaned over and picked up my sword before pulling myself to my feet.

  ‘Now,’ I said, ‘why don’t you give me the amulet?’

  ‘What?’ Aline said.

  I held my sword point very close to Radger’s bleeding wound. Laetha reached into a pocket in her skirts and pulled it out. She tossed it on the table and Aline ran over and picked it up.

  ‘It’s exactly like the other one,’ she said. Then she reached over and felt in the left pocket of my coat.

  ‘It’s not there,’ I said. ‘It must’ve fallen out in the fight with Lorenzo. That’s why we “suddenly” appeared for you, wasn’t it, Radger?’

  He nodded grimly, biting back pain. ‘They gave us all these copper things,’ he said, ‘but nothing was happening and we just wandered around, looking through the district. But then all of a sudden there it was, a light on the surface and the lines of the streets.’

  ‘They must not work if we’ve got one on our person or too close to us,’ I explained to Aline. ‘If we hadn’t lost it, they never would have—’

  Shit. If I hadn’t been such a damned fool and picked a fight that could have waited, then I wouldn’t have lost the damned thing.

  ‘They just gave you one?’ I asked.

  He shook his head. ‘They gave each of us one.’

  ‘Each of you …’ Aline whispered.

  ‘You don’t understand, you stupid girl,’ Laetha screamed. ‘They came to all of us! Everyone who ever knew you or your damned family: “find them and be rich, fail and be dead.” That’s the choice we were given.’

  She looked pleadingly at the girl, and then at me. ‘What else could we have done?’

  ‘But Mattea – she wouldn’t …’ she whispered. ‘I know she wouldn’t. Where is she? Tell me where she is!’

  Laetha looked furious, but her glance flickered for a moment.

  Aline ran to the cellar door. ‘You … What did you do to her? Mattea! Mattea!’ Aline screamed as she ran to the door and pried it open. I heard her thumping down the stairs into the darkness.

  Radger slumped to the ground and Laetha knelt beside him, crying and staunching his wound with the edge of her long skirt.

  I wanted to sit back down myself, but it was best to stay on my feet, stay moving. The combination of the paralytic they’d slipped me along with the hard candy was a dangerous mixture for the heart, and the more I moved about, the quicker both would get out of my system.

  Radger looked up at me and I could see the guilt breaking through. He wanted someone to tell him it was all right, that anyone would have done the same – or at least to scream at him, to beat him to within an inch of his life.

  I chose to do neither. For once in my life I didn’t feel vengeful. I just felt tired. Damn this loathsome city.

  A moment later I heard Aline’s footsteps, and another’s, climbing the stairs from the cellar. She emerged with an old woman. Grey, tightly curled hair framed a face that might’ve been a map of the world, if the world had been made up only of mountains and valleys. Her hands were still bound and her mouth gagged. Aline ran and pulled the knife out of the wall where she’d thrown it earlier and made quick work of both ropes and gag.

  The old woman coughed and cleared her throat, and straightened as much as she could. She was still bent over and wizened, but I could see strength in those old bones, and there was iron in her eyes. She opened her mouth and gave a sneer that promised foul language and a brutal temperament – and that’s when I finally recognised her.

  ‘Tailor!’

  She looked me up and down – not my face, mind you, nor my hands or feet. Just my coat.

  ‘I see you’ve done your level best to ruin my greatcoat, Falcio val Mond.’

  I felt unnaturally self-conscious. ‘I—’

  ‘Shut it. I’ve got more important things to deal with right now.’

  The Tailor turned to Radger and Laetha. ‘Well now, children. What unwise things have you been up to while you had me roped in the cellar?’

  Neither replied, and she kicked Radger, who groaned.

  ‘You have children?’ I was incredulous.

  ‘Bah. Certainly not Radger and Laetha. No, I paid these two fools for a place to stay and a story people would believe.’

  She kicked Laetha, hard. ‘But it turns out they were even stupider than I’d believed, eh, Laetha? Thought you’d tie up an old woman and make some easy money?’

  ‘And “Mattea”?’ I asked.

  She smiled her evil smile again. ‘Would’ve thought you’d’ve picked up on that, Falcio. It’s an old Pertine word, after all.’

  Mattea. Thread.

  ‘So you make your living as a nanny to noble houses, spreading stories of the Greatcoats?’

  ‘Does more good than livin’ out in the pissing rain huntin’ for scraps, don’t it?’

  Aline suddenly gripped the Tailor around the waste and started sobbing.

  The Tailor returned the child’s furious embrace. ‘Oh, my sweet,’ she said. ‘Oh, my sweetest of girls. I’m sorry if my little lie hurt you any. You keep callin’ me Mattea if you like. And I promise, there are only nine hundred and ninety-nine more lies that I told you – but never, never, never would I have thought my foolishness could bring you into such peril. Never, never.’

  ‘… Not your fault,’ Aline said between sobs.

  The Tailor sighed. ‘No dearie, I suppose you’re right. Not my fault, but my responsibility, yes. My responsibility now.’ She squeezed the girl tight one more time before gently pushing her arms aside.

  ‘You have to go,’ she said to me, rising. ‘Radger and Laetha didn’t lie entirely: near everyone on these streets is lookin’ for you and the reward you mean to ’em.’

  She reached over to the table and took the amulet and put it around Aline’s neck.

  ‘Filthy magic,’ she said, ‘but cheap too, thanks to the laziness of men. Easy enough for a master mage to make, but they don’t work too well together. Keep this on and the others won’t work, at least ’til they think of something else.’

  She turned back to me. ‘Fly now, Falcio val Mond, you great bloody fool. You’ve made a good mess of things now.’

  ‘How is this my fault, exactly?’ I asked. I felt like she was scolding me.

  ‘Rijou and the Blood Week: so how many d’you think you can trust for a hundred miles in any direction?’ she asked.

  ‘No one,’ I said. ‘Not one soul.’

  She gave a mean smile. ‘Soul? Some arse-kissing God must’ve made you an optimist, boy.’

  The Tailor kissed Aline on the top of the head one final time. ‘Now, get yourselves out of here. Find a place to hide until the Blood Week ends.’ The Tailor turned to me, and all the fires of every hell were in her gaze. ‘It’s on you now, Falcio. Get her to the Teyar Rijou and make sure her name is called. You owe him that.’

  I didn’t see how I owed Lord Tiarren any more than I had already
given in trying to keep his daughter alive, but I wasn’t about to challenge whatever it was that was driving the Tailor.

  ‘What about them?’ I asked, pointing at Radger and Laetha in the corner.

  ‘Them? You don’t need to worry about them.’

  ‘What about – what about the Duke’s men?’ Laetha asked, tears streaming down her face.

  ‘Ah, now, sweet little Laetha, you don’t have to worry even a little bit about those nasty big men. Not one little bit.’ She took the knife from Aline’s hand and weighed its balance. ‘Nice little knife this. Think I’ll keep it, if it’s a’right with you.’

  I nodded – what else could I do? – and she pointed us towards the back door before turning her attention to her ‘son’ and ‘daughter-in-law’. ‘Now go, like I said. What comes next is not right for her tender eyes nor your foolish conscience.’

  We left the Tailor to her responsibility.

  I took Aline’s hand and pulled her out through the hidden door in the bedroom into the back alley. It was only later that I realised that, when she had given me the hard candy from my coat, she’d also pocketed the soft candy for herself.

  THE DASHINI

  A few hours later we were in another small alley and had very nearly made it to the outer wall when the two Dashini found us. Dashi’nahiri Tahazu, to give them their full title, is actually a phrase which means, ‘The hunt once started ends only with blood’. They are difficult to find, expensive beyond the value of any man’s life, and have a bad reputation for occasionally killing their employers after the target is eliminated. They are the most secretive order of assassins in the civilised world, though it’s hard to call any world ‘civilised’ if it can produce murderers of this calibre.

  The Dashini wear dark blue silk from head to toe, covering them completely. The fabric is as ingenious, in its own way, as the leather used to make our greatcoats. A man wearing Dashini garb can see out with near-perfect clarity, but his opponents can’t see anything, not even the colour of his eyes, which works out well for all concerned since the true identity of a Dashini hunter is never revealed – not even to the other members of his order. They enter the temple at Zhina as babes, sacrificed to – well, whichever God you sacrifice your newborn child to, I suppose. A dark-blue-clad monk wraps the child in its first silken swaddling clothes, and that’s it; the child’s face will never be seen for the rest of its life. They always fight in pairs, but even their Azu – their partner – knows neither their name nor their face.