No one reached for them.
Silence filled the Rock of Rijou as nobles, soldiers and commoners waited to see what would happen next. Aline squeezed my hand for reassurance, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at her face. I had failed her. I had brought death to this little girl and to myself, because I was obsessed with the belief that my King had some ingenious plan – that he’d had it all along – and that the quest he’d given me all those years ago had some meaning.
‘Find the Charoites,’ he’d said, as if jewels could change the world any more than words could. And now Aline would die, for no better reason than that she’d wanted to hear her family’s name called out, to preserve her rights of inheritance – as if those had any value in this hellhole. In the end, the City Sage hadn’t even given her that. He’d spoken her name, but not that of her family.
The Duke smiled at me from his distance. He would smile until the last coin stopped spinning, until he could see the resigned despair on my face, and until someone in the crowd, realising they had pushed their ruler as far as they dared, decided they would do better to curry his favour by killing us.
The City Sage sat next to the Duke, looking for all the world as if he’d fallen asleep. The old fool couldn’t even remember to give Aline’s family name. That realisation brought back the memory of the wreckage of Aline’s home, now the unconsecrated tomb of the Tiarren family; dead and gone now, their names never to be spoken in Rijou again. Almost every pair of eyes in the crowd was locked onto the spinning coins on the ground, but a few stared at me. Did any of them know Lady Tiarren and her children? Did they blame me for what would come next? How many deaths had I faced only to bring this thirteen-year-old girl to meet her end at the Rock of Rijou, gambling her fate on the hope that, somehow, the people of the most corrupt city in the world would stand up and risk their own lives for hers. I turned to Aline and she gave me a brave little smile, crooked on the left side, like the hint of a secret about to be told. That smile. I wanted to hold her, to say, you are precious to me, even though I didn’t know why; I had no right and no cause. I wanted to tell her that all would be well, that I would protect her no matter what happened, but I couldn’t. Her life lay in the shining metal pieces and the hands that would either take them up or watch them fall. Aline and I turned together to look at the coins, spinning slower and slower on the ground, coming to the inevitable conclusion.
No one reached for the coins.
So I listened.
THE JURYMEN
‘Yer don’t look none too comfortable there, Mister Magister,’ the lady blacksmith had said, years ago in Uttarr during one of my first missions as a King’s Greatcoat.
She was quite right. The stocks in the town square had been passably well built from the local greenwood trees, making a sturdy if not very accommodating structure.
It was my second day in the stocks. In my first attempt to resolve the dispute, I had gone to speak to the local Lord, to plead for his intervention. One of his own clerks had challenged a farmer’s son to a duel after the boy had tried to protect his sister’s maidenhood. Though duelling was legal – even if it did involve a grown man with military experience fighting a boy barely seventeen – forcing that boy to fight without the benefit of a weapon was not.
The man had renewed his interest in the woman, and now it was her elderly father who stood in the way.
‘Yer know what yer problem is, then, eh?’ the blacksmith asked.
I craned my head up to look at her. ‘I don’t listen?’
‘Yer don’t listen. Words came out yer damned mouth, but none got in yer damned ears.’
She had warned me when I’d first come to town. I had verified the information in the poorly written complaint brought to us by a minstrel who had come through town and seen the initial events take place.
‘Yer didn’t listen when I told yer to leave well enough alone. Yer didn’t listen when I told yer the boy was already long dead. Yer didn’t listen when I told yer no one else wanted to die.’
‘And the girl?’ I asked.
‘Yer think she’s not goin’ to end up in some nobleman’s bed afore this is done?’
The Lord had refused to take action against the man, so I’d done it myself. I challenged him to a duel and beat him bloody, and when he’d tried to sneak up on me from behind after the duel had ended, I taught him the first rule of the sword and put my point through his belly and killed him.
‘Yer talked and yer talked and yer talked,’ the blacksmith went on.
The blacksmith had warned me that the Lord himself would have me put in the stocks before hanging me the next week, during their monthly trials.
‘Yer talked about the laws, and the King and rights. Imagine: rights fer people like us?’
When the men had come for me, I’d given a pretty speech to the people of the town, all about the laws that were meant to protect them, that belonged to them, and that sometimes they themselves would need to fight for themselves. And when I was done, I did as the King had instructed us and asked for twelve men and women of the town to take up the role of juror, to safeguard the verdict after I was gone and ensure no harm came to the boy’s family. No one had come forward to take up the gold coins. Two days later they still sat on the ground in front on the stocks where I was now held.
‘Ma’am, if I might be honest, I’m not clear how this is my fault. I administered the law, I fought to protect the girl and her father, and yet I am the one in the stocks.’
‘Aye, that’s true enough. But there’s no one in this town wants t’trade places with yer.’
‘And what exactly should I have done differently?’ I asked.
She knelt in front of me, her knee almost touching one of the gold coins.
‘Yer should have listened,’ she said. ‘You spoke the words – they were fine words – but when no one jumped up and said, “Aye, sir, take me! I’m yer man!” yer just looked at us like we were dogs or children. And then yer leaped on the Lord’s men all alone like a fool.’
I tried to shrug. ‘I thought if I could get the jump on them I might be able to get out before they caught me.’
‘Next time, just run,’ she said.
Then she pulled something out of her bag, a hammer and some other tool that looked like a narrow chisel. She set it on the edge of the lock holding the stocks and with one powerful blow she broke the lock. She put the tools back in her bag and then reached down and picked up one of the gold coins.
‘Don’t look like all that much,’ she said before rising.
I pulled myself out of the stocks and rubbed life back into my aching shoulders.
‘Yer best head on now. Yer horse is tied up around back the barn there. Get on out and I’ll take it from here.’
‘They’ll come after you,’ I said.
‘I’ll beat me stupid husband into service; he’ll help. And there’s another few around here I can get to back me up if it comes to it.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said finally.
‘What’s to understand? Yer spoke the words. I listened.’
*
I listened, and the wait was as awful as you can imagine. A huge crowd of people, and a dais on the far side with the Duke and his young son, and his men all around him, ready to come for us. And small gold coins were spinning idly on the ground, slowing to their ultimate conclusion.
Then suddenly there was a flash of legs and fur and a dog raced out, a Sharpney, fast as a racehorse, and picked up one of the shiny coins in its mouth as if it were a rat.
An arrow hit the ground where the dog had been.
‘Mixer!’ a boy called out as he ran out from the crowd. It was Venger, the little tyrant I’d met days earlier. The boy ran right into the empty space and grabbed one of the coins. As he left the circle and vanished back into the crowd, making a rude gesture at me, then at the Duke, another pair of arrows fell into the circle, breaking against the hard stone.
‘Any man or woman who picks up one
of those filthy coins will take an arrow!’ the Duke roared. ‘Now go back to your homes or I swear I’ll make every one of you pay the red price!’
Then the woman, the big one who had been the first to promise protection for Aline, ran in and took one of the coins and disappeared back into the crowd. Another figure ran in, this one with one arm splinted and bound tight to his chest: Cairn, the poor fool who’d wanted to be one of Lorenzo’s Greatcoats. Then another came forward, and another, each racing inside the circle to grab a coin and then run back into hiding.
But one woman wasn’t so lucky: three arrows pierced her body and she fell to the ground, the coin still clutched in her hand.
People were murmuring. I could see anger on their faces, defiance. More than one looked ready to jump into that circle and pick up one of the coins and swear themselves jurymen, but now the archers were firing in sequence, every few seconds. Thop, thop, went the sounds of arrows breaking against the stone. But they wouldn’t break against flesh.
I heard a shout, and saw a disturbance in the crowd as someone pushed their way through, like a narrow little wave, between the Duke and us.
‘Tommer! Stop, Tommer!’ the Duke was shouting, and when I looked at the dais, I saw his son was no longer there. Suddenly, the boy was right at the edge of the circle. Half a dozen arrows hit the ground in front of him and I marvelled that he hadn’t been hit.
‘Stop, you damned fools – that’s my son,’ the Duke raged.
The boy walked calmly into the centre of the circle and looked carefully at the few coins left before bending down and picking one up. He held it between thumb and forefinger and lifted it before the crowd. ‘No man breaks the Rock,’ he shouted in the shrill, high-pitched voice of an angry youth.
The crowd went wild. They lifted the boy up on their shoulders, cheering like mad. Men and women milled around and through us, and suddenly we were barely noticeable.
The Duke’s son had picked up a Greatcoat’s coin. The Duke’s son had said the words.
Now I could make out eleven men and women who had picked up my coins, and a happily barking Sharpney dog. Cheers of, ‘The Rock! The Rock!’ chorused around the Rock, the sound echoing against the hard stone. Everything else was ignored – the Duke, Shiballe, Aline, myself, the guards … We all ceased to exist in the minds of the crowd.
I was struck dumb by the sight. ‘She was right,’ I muttered to myself.
‘Who was right?’ Aline asked.
‘A woman – a blacksmith. She told me I needed to listen.’
Aline grinned, as if that was the very same advice she’d planned on giving me. ‘You do talk a little too much, Falcio,’ she said.
‘Talk is just about all he ever does, but once in a while it’s enough.’ I turned and saw a shabbily dressed grey-haired old woman with lines on her face and steel in her eyes. The Tailor was holding a heavy travel sack in one hand. ‘But the time for talk has passed and now is the time for the two of you to get out of this thrice-damned place.’
‘Mattea!’ Aline screamed in delight and hugged the Tailor fiercely.
‘Yes, child, seems I’m not done taking care of you yet.’ The old woman looked me in the eye. There was a hint of softness there I hadn’t seen before. ‘You must go now, child,’ she said, looking fondly down at Aline.
‘Why? Why can’t I stay here? I wouldn’t burden you, Mattea—’
The Tailor said gently, ‘That’s not your purpose, child, nor is mine to keep you like my own, though I’d very much love to do that. You’ve done what had to be done: you’ve survived the Blood Week, and now your name and your blood are acknowledged. No man will be able to deny you your name, sweet Aline.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Why—?’
Mattea cut me off. ‘Yes, Falcio: you’ve made it quite clear you don’t understand. So instead, you’ll do what I say. Your pretty words were fine and now the people are in an uproar, wanting something better than what they’ve had with that miserable bastard the Duke. But that will die down soon enough and Shiballe will once again set his games in play to master the city. So go now: take the girl and get out of Rijou as fast as you can. Go and find those other great fools before they do something stupid and make a mess of all my plans.’
Then she gave a wry smile. ‘I don’t suppose that giant beast hidden in that burned-out shop back there belongs to you?’ she asked.
‘That’s Monster!’ Aline said.
‘It damned well is,’ Mattea replied.
‘Don’t say that – Monster is a good horse,’ Aline insisted. ‘She’s a Greathorse.’
‘She nearly took a man’s head off when he poked his head inside. Does a proper horse do that?’
‘Well, does a proper horse do this, then?’ Aline put her hand to her mouth and shouted at the top of her lungs, ‘Dan’ha vath fallatu! Dan’ha vath fallatu!’
There was too much noise from the riotous crowd. ‘She can’t hear you, Aline,’ I started. ‘We’ll go and get—’
I heard a crack like thunder and down the far way I saw the burned-out doors explode outwards, and there it was: the fires of every hell charging towards us. The few people nearby parted like a desperate wave before the thundering onslaught and within seconds she was here.
‘Saints,’ the Tailor said, ‘that’s no horse I’ve ever seen. But thank whatever angry God who made it that she serves you, child.’
Mattea kissed Aline on the forehead and I lifted her onto Monster’s back, then pulled myself up behind her – no easy task on a beast that tall. Then I leaned down and extended my hand to Mattea. ‘Come with us. We can keep you safe.’
The Tailor laughed. ‘Aye, but who’ll keep you safe if I’m pulled away from my task?’ Then she handed me the travel sack. ‘I’ve served this girl since before you met her, and I will serve her after you’ve gone.’
I did not quite understand, but I accepted the truth evident in her face. She began to turn away, but something in my expression made her pause and she looked at me. ‘You really don’t know what you’ve done here today, do you?’ she asked.
I smiled. ‘I took something from the Dukes,’ I said. ‘Something small, perhaps insignificant to them, but I took it nonetheless. They wanted the girl dead, and despite everything Jillard and Shiballe had at their fingertips in this Gods-damned city, I’ve kept her alive. It won’t end their corruption or their conspiracies, but at least I’ve reminded them that they can still be opposed.’
The Tailor’s expression was aghast. ‘Gods, Falcio – is it possible that you really believe that’s all this was about?’
‘That’s all it’s ever been about – but for today at least, it’s enough.’ Then I leaned down to Monster’s ear. ‘K’hey,’ I said, feeling those great muscles bunch. Her hooves shook the earth beneath my legs as I cried, ‘K’hey, k’hey, k’hey—’
THE ARCHERY LESSON
Every once in a while I manage to convince myself that there’s no such thing as magic, that it’s just charlatans’ trickery. But those next few days as we raced northwards along the Spear, I was reminded that at least some magic must be real.
My evidence was not the massive beast carrying us faster than any horse I’d ever ridden, for if one horse can be large, then surely another can be even larger. Nor was it even the City Sage and his calling of the names, for that might have been simply the product of senility. No, my proof that magic existed was that somehow Shiballe was managing to send men after us, and that they were ahead of us, a hundred miles after leaving Rijou.
The men could not have come from the city, for their horses were nowhere near as fast as Monster, and I refused to believe that Shiballe had placed guards on every road out of Rijou in case we actually managed to escape. No, somehow his mages were communicating with agents in the towns nearby, obviously promising huge rewards for our capture.
Monster could ride at speed without stopping, but we couldn’t. The effects of the Blood Week were taking hold once again. Ethalia’s ministrati
ons had gone a long way towards healing my body, but I was utterly exhausted, deep in every fibre of my body, and I couldn’t ride without having to stop every few hours. And even if I had been able, Aline couldn’t. And so our journey north turned into a deadly game of cat and mouse.
When we did have to fight, Monster was deadly. The rage that defined her was not diminishing with her freedom, although she remained fiercely protective of Aline and only rarely tried to bite my head off. But anything else that got in our way was doomed: the Fey Horse just charged it down, her hooves and teeth deadlier weapons than my rapiers.
The attacks lessened as we put more distance between us and the city, but the very last one nearly ended in disaster. Four of them came at us from the sides, swords drawn. They’d obviously been waiting in the undergrowth lining the road, and they timed their attack perfectly, for Aline and I had been riding for hours and were near asleep in the saddle – if we’d had a saddle, that was.
Monster wanted to fight, but I kept urging her forward, and though she growled in frustration, she kept going straight. As we came over the rise, we saw a man standing in the middle of the road a hundred paces ahead of us, an arrow nocked and aimed at us. Monster roared a challenge and raced even faster, preparing to run the man down, but just a few paces later I recognised him and screamed, ‘Jump! Monster, jump!’ in her ear. Squeezing my thighs as hard as I could, I pulled back on her mane – I’d pay for that later, I was sure of it – but at the last instant the man calmly crouched down and Monster jumped over the top of him. I turned to see Brasti fire arrow after arrow into our pursuers, and by the time he was done two of the men had fallen from their horses and the other two were slumped over in their saddles.
All of them were dead, of course. Show-off.
Aline convinced Monster to stop and I jogged back to where Brasti was retrieving his arrows and searching the men.
Traitor's Blade (The Greatcoats) Page 28