The Sword Saint

by C. F. Iggulden

  ‘Will you go to the event this evening?’ she asked suddenly. ‘There will be danger there, Tellius. On his own ground.’

  ‘I don’t think so. What is the point? Darien and Féal are allies now, apparently. Though if our traders wish to sell their goods into the “Nation of Féal” – can you believe it, Win? If our traders want to export, they will need to purchase a licence at a cost that would wipe out any profit for the first few years. Yet I see Aeris and Woodville are already gathering trading caravans. It’s so blatant, Win! They have had their mouths filled with gold, their honour bought.’

  ‘Trade is a good thing, Tellius,’ she reminded him. ‘How many times have you said that? It creates wealth where there was none before. Perhaps Aeris and Woodville and Herne and Bracken … perhaps they simply see it in those terms. Forza has always been a trading house, before everything. In a way, I am least surprised by them.’

  ‘Yes? Perhaps we differ, then. I would rather be poor and free than a rich slave. This treaty binds us in trade, yes, but with trade come courts to adjudicate between merchants. With courts come binding laws, like threads of silk, Win. And where is the mechanism to undo this treaty? Where are we represented in the courts and palaces of this new nation? No, I think we have been bought and parcelled up – and I could not stop it. Perhaps I should have gone back to Shiang.’

  ‘Where half the population are the slaves of the other half,’ she reminded him softly.

  He sighed and held the bridge of his nose with his eyes closed, breathing slowly and deeply.

  ‘I could have done something about that.’

  ‘Now you are just being contrary, my dear,’ Lady Sallet said firmly. ‘You were certain before. “Shiang is months of travel away – and my home is here.” That’s what you told me. Even if you left Darien – and me – you couldn’t know the welcome you’d get, or if they would kill you on sight. The uncle who betrayed his own brother? You said yourself there would be poison in every meal, in every flower. Months to cross thousands of miles – and a single day for an assassin to be purchased and to reach you in your bed. That is what you said. And tell me how much you could achieve in that place, so far from me?’

  ‘More than I managed today,’ Tellius said, bitterness overwhelming him. He saw how she watched the damned orchid on its stand as he passed it. In response, he put his hands behind his back and clenched them into a mass of knuckles and old scars. Tellius was fit and strong, but in his sixties. As he paced, he resembled an elderly schoolmaster.

  Both of them looked up at the sound of a bell tolling a single note nearby. Tellius frowned. Setting up communications between the courts of Shiang and Darien had been a monumental undertaking. Merely building a dovecote for sixty birds had been the least of it. Each of them had to be carried to Darien over mountains and forests, all the way from their home in Shiang. If they had been allowed to fly, they would of course have returned to their original roost, the very quality that made them so valuable. Yet it meant the birds had to remain caged for months. Half of them had died and the remaining thirty had arrived so unfit they could never have managed the return journey. Tellius had overseen the construction of the great pigeon house on the royal estate, where there was space for it. It turned out the smell and noise was less pleasant than he remembered from his childhood.

  Inside that enclosure, the birds could at least flap back and forth to recover some of their strength. Yet with such a distance to cross, each message had to be sent with three birds, to have any chance of getting through. When the last of them had been used, the whole process would begin again, on both sides. There was no way to breed birds with that sense of another home. Merely to send a few words from one city to another took fortunes and labours beyond the reach of anyone but a noble house.

  For the bell to ring, a messenger had to have run from the royal estate, close by the western gate of the city. Tellius shook his head. By their nature, the messages could not be urgent, but they were always serious. Still, he wanted to wave the sound away and concentrate on the problem of the new alliance.

  ‘Go,’ Win said. ‘Go and see, before it drives you mad.’

  He nodded and bowed to her. To the mistress of the house, and in the presence of servants, Tellius observed proper courtesy. Had they been properly private, he might have squeezed her a little as well.

  Out in the courtyard, the sound of the bell seemed to hang in the air, like a slight pressure. The royal messenger bowed low and held out a tiny tube on his outstretched palm. The first ones had been made from resin, but tortoiseshell was lighter – and weight was everything when it had to be carried so far. Tellius noted the colour of the cap as he unscrewed it. He tapped out a roll of paper, unspooling it slowly as he held it to the light. After a time, he nodded and flipped a coin to the younger man.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘Was it good news, sir?’ the messenger asked.

  Tellius shook his head.

  ‘No, but I am grateful all the same.’

  He turned away with a steady step, though what he had read caused his heart to thump and a wave of dizziness to wash through him. They were coming, then, as he had known they would. How could he care for a title he had never truly owned? He had not set foot in Shiang for over forty years. Yet when he closed his eyes, he could imagine the royal precinct and the hub of the city, with scurrying clerks rushing past in robes of white or green or gold. The thought that it was all still going on was oddly comforting. He felt emotions swell in him. What a strange thing it was to grow old! When he had been young, old men seemed to be made of discipline and honour. Now that he had more years than he cared to admit under his belt, it seemed age blurred a man. It took his certainties as well as his strength. Tellius sighed as he went back in. The love of his life had seated herself to wait, her back so straight it would have made a guardsman blush. Win Sallet looked up as he came in through the garden windows. He showed her the tiny tube he still held.

  ‘A nobleman of Shiang is on his way here,’ Tellius said. ‘It can only be to accept my abdication.’

  ‘I see,’ she said. ‘How long before he arrives?’

  As he began to calculate, she rose from her seat and embraced him, holding him tight. Tellius had been brother to one king and uncle to another. He had not wanted to be the last of the line, but for a time he had been the only survivor of a great house – and king of a city she had never seen.

  ‘The new road reaches two hundred and sixty miles east – more by now, though they’ll be writing for new funds any day. My little tavern and the birds I keep there lie at a point exactly a hundred miles from Darien’s gate. It is, at most, two hours’ flight for an experienced bird, which puts them two, perhaps three days out. Enough time to prepare for them – which is why I went to so much trouble to lay that road and set up the taverns along it.’

  He grinned, delighted with one small success on a dark day. It was not hard to imagine a time in the future when carrier pigeons would cross the sky by the thousand, bringing vital information for trade or even war. It was a heady thought, but it did not distract him for long. Lady Sallet kept his hand in hers as she sat by him, looking up as his eyes grew grave once more.

  ‘If I give it up, Win, as I must, they will take down my father’s crest from the hall of memory,’ he said. ‘It will be the end of a line – and everything my father hoped for his sons. That is … that hurts, I will admit.’ He waved away an objection, though she only watched him. ‘I know. I chose this – and it is still the right decision. I will not return – and a king cannot rule from half a world away.’

  ‘But it still hurts,’ she said, kissing his cheek. ‘I am grateful, you know. In case you thought I was not. If you were torn between Darien and Shiang, I am grateful you chose us – and me.’

  He smiled, a little sadly.

  ‘The truth is I was never torn, not really. My past is there, my childhood. What of that? My life now is here, with you. I would not waste a week of it, not to see
a dozen Shiangs. You know, when I say it aloud, I feel a weight lift. If they have come to witness me abdicating the throne, I will do it with a glad heart.’

  ‘Good,’ she said brusquely. ‘The right choice, then. Have you considered what you will tell Masters Hondo and Bosin?’

  Tellius thought of the two Shiang swordsmen and how they would react.

  ‘That … will be a more delicate conversation. Perhaps I should have them at the meeting, in case this Shiang nobleman attempts to bundle me away, or cuts my throat.’

  ‘Is that a real possibility?’ Lady Sallet said.

  Her eyes had narrowed and he saw bristling anger that pleased him. He shrugged.

  ‘I have been gone a long time, Win, but yes. If the man has been ordered to kill me, even at the expense of his life, he will obey – or try to.’

  ‘The royal hall can be barred and secured. I will have his retinue overlooked and marked by guns, Tellius. If they raise a hand to you, they will not leave the city.’

  He smiled and reached to touch her cheek with the back of his hand. On an impulse, he bent to kiss her, though his back twinged. He hid his tension from her, or thought he had. ‘Perhaps I should also ask Master Taeshin to attend,’ Tellius said as he broke away. ‘If he will even speak to me.’

  Lady Sallet concealed her irritation that the man she loved could kiss her and continue to think through the tasks and days ahead. She knew Tellius was burdened, as if his own past had descended on him like a shadow. He would not be free again until the delegation from Shiang had departed.

  ‘You still have time to bathe and change before the event this evening,’ she said.

  He focused on her then, squinting in surprise.

  ‘You think I should go to the house on Vine Street? There is danger there, Win. This Prince Louis of Féal is no friend to me, not after all that was said.’

  ‘Oh, I agree. But we do not turn our backs on an enemy, Tellius. See who else is there, who bows to him, who hangs on his words. In just an hour, you will learn a great deal.’

  ‘And of course if I go, you don’t have to,’ he said, raising his eyes.

  She made a wheezing sound as she laughed, caught by surprise.

  ‘Well, yes.’

  ‘You are the least social woman I have ever met, Win,’ he said. There was amusement in his eyes, but also great affection. She had seemed cold and aloof when they’d first met. The loneliness had been well hidden, but it had been there.

  Matching the gleam in his eyes, she thought for a moment, taking her bottom lip between finger and thumb in a way that made him want to kiss her. ‘Still – take Hondo and Bosin with you. And remind them that your honour is sacrosanct.’

  Tellius took her into an embrace with a rustle of material, this time with more than simple affection in it.

  The sword saint of Shiang was sweating hard as he increased the pace. Hondo was pleased at his form even so. He ran efficiently, without wasted breath or unnecessary movement. It was true he would need to spend part of the evening with an ice pack on each knee, but it still felt right to run, even in the shadow of Darien’s walls.

  ‘This is the last lap, Bosin. Then I am done for the day.’

  The man at his side made no reply, as he had asked no question. Hondo reached out and clapped him on the shoulder. He made a point of touching the giant swordsman whenever there was an opportunity. Bosin had been healed by the Canis Stone two years before, saved from death when wounds and fevers had filled his lungs. Hondo could never be certain he would not have recovered on his own, given more time. The truth was that they had needed Bosin’s sword arm when the city had come under attack. The big Shiang master had been vital to the defence and Hondo could not regret what they had done to him to secure it. Yet he regretted it anyway. Guilt stabbed him when he looked at the calmness in that face. The old Bosin had been a roaring drunkard, more given to telling lewd stories and eating prodigious amounts of food than the much leaner warrior that ran now at his side.

  As with the brashness and temper, Bosin’s weight had fallen away. Neither food nor drink seemed to interest him since he had been healed and sent out to fight for a foreign city. Hondo had taken it upon himself to keep Bosin fit and strong. It had begun as a sort of penance, when he saw the big man sitting idly in a corner, staring at nothing and waiting for orders. Those who were healed by the Canis Stone were not incapable of thought or action. They merely lost warmth. Yet in Bosin’s case, that warmth had been the very heart of him, the wellspring of his life.

  The man who ran alongside Hondo breathed long and slow and showed no sign of discomfort. Bosin may have lost bulk, but his strength had surely increased and he still towered over the sword saint. He had accepted Tellius had the right to give orders – and to appoint Hondo as his trainer. There was a mind there still. It just didn’t care.

  If Hondo told him to lift an iron weight, Bosin would do it until his muscles could not support the thing any longer, so that they trembled and quivered like a horse beset with flies. If they trained with swords, Hondo had to be at his sharpest. Bosin attacked like the wind and he was so strong, a single blow could send the smaller man staggering and off-balance. There were even moments when Hondo was convinced the old Bosin was there once more, but then he would focus on the man’s face and see that blankness – and his heart would sink. On a quiet evening, Hondo had made Tellius swear an oath he would never use the Canis Stone on him, even if the whole world needed the sword saint. Some things were worse than death. The idea that the old Bosin might somehow still be aware, might know and rage at all he had lost – that was an abomination.

  The western gate loomed up before them, with a line of carts leading back to the main road. Hondo raised a hand to halt his companion, though of course that had no effect and Bosin ran on, as if he might continue to the end of the world.

  ‘Enough!’ Hondo said. ‘My knees are aching.’

  He reached to his hip to pat the sword hilt before remembering he had left it in his lodgings at the Red Inn. It was a strange realisation. Not only was he unarmed where once he would have scorned the idea. No, he was unarmed in a strange city, thousands of miles from home. Yet he had not left, because the man he had been sent to bring back had ordered him to remain. Hondo and Bosin and the twins had come to bring Tellius to Shiang for justice. The twins had not survived and the man Bosin had been was gone. Yet when the royal nephew had been killed in Shiang, murdered without heirs, Tellius had become king by default – and that had changed everything.

  With that authority established, Tellius had used the swordsmen of Shiang as a weapon. For one night, Hondo and Bosin had stood against savage creatures or returned souls, things stronger than men and faster than anything had a right to be. Two years later, Hondo was still not sure what they had been. He had expected to die. Yet he had sworn on his honour to obey the king of Shiang, whoever it was.

  None of them were the same after all they had seen and done. As physical injuries healed and scarred, it had taken an entire year before Hondo stopped sitting upright in the middle of sleep, clawing for some weapon or enemy he saw only in dreams. He had begun running around the city to help him sleep, then brought Bosin for company and for the debt he still owed. It was a little like adopting a son, Hondo thought. Bosin was his responsibility, however it had come about. He would not allow another to take the burden. It was an interesting thought.

  ‘Have you eaten?’ Hondo asked.

  Bosin looked back and shook his head. Hondo noticed the big man was barely breathing hard, though they had run twelve miles at a good pace. He could feel himself still heating up, with new lines of sweat making his clothes stick to him. Still, he was much fitter than a year before. As his first master had said, the body could be trained, at any age, from any standard, to something like fitness. Hondo realised he was probably older than Master An had been then, which was disturbing.

  ‘I will buy you breakfast at the stall inside the west gate,’ Hondo said. ‘A paper wrap with
lamb and vegetables. Will that suit you? Or would you prefer fruit?’

  He tried to ask questions that could not be answered with a nod or a shrug. The big man thought about it with a complete lack of interest.

  ‘A wrap,’ he said.

  Hondo nodded and clapped him on the shoulder once again. He tried not to remember that the old Bosin would have eaten half a dozen of the things and probably ended up betting on his own abilities with the stallholder. Those days were gone.

  They walked in through the western gate, both men too well known to the guards to be challenged, though they were stained with sweat and dust. Inside the wall, the stallholder ignored a queue of customers to serve them. One or two grumbled, but only until Bosin appeared to be looking in their direction. Still, Hondo saw three of them were wearing guns. It was becoming a more common sight with each season. He had not yet lowered himself to use the weapons, though he acknowledged their power.

  Hondo remembered a friend he had known in his youth, a boy in his class at their first school. They had learned to read and write letters together, but there had been some sort of fever spreading through the other boy’s village. When the child returned to school, he had been made dull – and deaf in one ear. There hadn’t been any point mourning the loss, nor any way back. Hondo had been almost too young to understand, but he thought he did then, with Bosin. It was a sort of death, if death meant the loss of a particular personality.

  He watched Bosin munch his way through the roll of meat and vegetables until it was all gone.