‘Right again. It’s a shame we cannot help but be at odds, Falcio, when we share the same goal.’
I hated the raw confidence in the Blacksmith’s voice, the way he could say such things without sounding smug or arrogant. I wanted to take the mace in my hand and shatter his skull for all the things he had done – but I had to focus. He’s an avertiere, remember? These thrusts and feints cost him nothing; they were intended to pull me off-balance. ‘What goal is that?’
‘We both want to make this a better country.’ His sincerity unnerved me.
‘You son of a bitch,’ Brasti spat, and drew a long knife from inside his Inquisitor’s coat, but I held up a hand to stop him.
‘Wait,’ I said.
The Blacksmith shook his head. ‘You see? This, right here, is the difference between us: you’re all posture and preening. You seek to change the world through grand acts of daring and cleverness.’ He gestured at Saint Erastian. ‘You came all this way and risked your lives – in an admittedly brilliant gambit – for what? To rescue the doddering remains of a nonentity: an old fool clinging to a fading romantic dream the world long ago forgot.’
‘Better a fool dreaming of love than a butcher who commits atrocities to satisfy his own perverse religion,’ Erastian said.
‘“Religion.”’ The big man repeated the word as if it were an insect he’d spat from his mouth. ‘I’m a craftsman, not some pious preacher selling false hope. I make tools. I forge weapons.’
‘Fine,’ Brasti said, ‘you’re a blacksmith, we get it.’ He looked at me. ‘Can I kill him now?’
‘No,’ the Blacksmith replied, ‘I don’t think you can.’ He signalled with his hand and a figure stepped out from the chapel. The man stood a little taller than me. I could make out broad shoulders and a warrior’s build beneath draped white robes like those the nobles had been wearing in the mine. The man was hooded, but I caught a hint of a smile that made me cold inside.
I forge weapons, the Blacksmith had said.
Brasti was unimpressed. ‘Go ahead, tell your little God’s Needle to make his move. All you’ve shown us so far are madmen, and we’re getting pretty good at killing those.’
The Blacksmith ignored him and looked at me, visibly disappointed. ‘Really, Falcio? You haven’t solved the last piece of the puzzle yet? You must have figured out by now that the Needles were just a means to an end?’ He stepped behind the figure in white. ‘This, I think, will impress you.’
‘I thought you said they couldn’t make Saints,’ Brasti said to Erastian.
‘They can’t,’ he replied, his eyes narrowed as he looked at the figure in front of us.
‘The old man is right,’ the Blacksmith said, reaching his arms around the front of the figure’s white cloak and unfastening the clasp. ‘It turns out making Saints is much harder than it’s worth – that’s why I decided to go for something considerably more ambitious. Rejoice, for I have forged our salvation!’
The Blacksmith drew back the hood and dropped the man’s robes to the ground. The figure wore armour underneath: a sculpted, gold-rimmed steel chest-plate that left his powerfully muscled arms bare. His face was that of a hardened soldier; his eyes were dark, as if he were staring down at his enemy dying on the blood-soaked ground. When he lifted his hand, it held a great axe – and I knew that weapon better than I knew my own rapiers, just as I knew the lines of this man’s face more clearly than my own. I had seen the man only once before, fifteen years ago, and yet his features were etched into every nook and cranny, every scar on my soul. This was the man who had come on that fine spring day to the little farm Aline and I had built together; this was the man who had urged his Duke to take Aline from me.
The man’s name was Fost, and he belonged in hell.
‘Say hello to your new God,’ the Blacksmith said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The God
It was Kest who spoke first. His voice was quiet, as it often was when he was saving the air in his lungs to prepare for his first attack. ‘How is this possible?’
The God didn’t reply, but the Blacksmith did. ‘The way you make any great work: by finding the proper materials. That was the difficult part, of course.’
Ethalia was still gazing up at the bodies hanging from the gibbets. ‘You discovered the Gods were too weak to give you what you needed, so you pursued the Saints instead.’
‘I knew that power like that couldn’t simply fade away – it had to go somewhere,’ the Blacksmith said. ‘Then I made my most important discovery: Saints like Erastian and – and I know you will forgive me for saying this, my Lady – yourself are nothing but spiritual thieves, pilfering Faith from the Gods like back-alley pickpockets. I have simply stolen it back.’
‘Why him?’ I asked. I was trying not to tremble as I stared at Fost. ‘Why, of all the faces in the world, his?’ My hand fumbled for the mace hanging at my belt, but my fingers were trembling so badly I knew that if I tried to lift the weapon, it would only fall from my grip.
The Blacksmith looked at his God, then back to me. His eyes were oddly sympathetic. ‘Tell me what you see, Falcio.’
I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of an answer but the words came out anyway. ‘I see the man who buried the blade of his axe in my wife’s skull, a man deserving of a thousand deaths at my hand, not reverence – not Godhood.’
Brasti swung round suddenly. ‘What! Have you gone blind?’ He pointed at the God. ‘It’s exactly what I told you when this whole mess started: it’s fucking Trin.’
‘No,’ Kest said, ‘neither Fost nor Trin stand before us – and nor is it the man I see.’ He was blinking furiously, beads of sweat dripping from his brow into his eyes.
‘Who do you see?’ I asked, my voice suddenly gentle.
‘I see Caveil-whose-blade-cuts-water. I see every detail of his face – his gaze, his smile, the way he stood when I faced him . . .’
‘Mortal eyes were not meant to gaze upon the Gods,’ the Blacksmith said, ‘and so we each see what our minds will allow.’
And what do you see, Blacksmith? I wondered.
‘How many of my brethren did you desecrate to make this pretty toy of yours?’ Erastian demanded, but the Blacksmith was unaffected by the Saint’s anger.
‘No more than was necessary,’ he replied, offhand. ‘Perhaps a hundred.’
The old Saint looked stricken. ‘A hundred . . . but there were never more than twelve score of us. You killed—?’
‘I did. I killed them,’ the Blacksmith confessed. ‘The first one was Anlas, Saint of Memory. He was always the cleverest of you lot – do you know there’s remarkably little written about Saints? They aren’t even mentioned in our oldest scriptures, but from his screams I tore the truth: that the power you wield is stolen from the Gods. Better yet, with his wheezing final breaths, Anlas told me of this old cult of wealthy zealots who believed they could take that power for themselves by drinking the blood of Saints.’ He shook his head with feigned disgust. ‘Isn’t it odd that the richest among us are such petty creatures?’
Every time he spoke, Ethalia looked pained. ‘You speak of murder as if it were nothing more than—’
‘Nothing more than melting down old horseshoes in order to make new ones,’ the Blacksmith finished. ‘And that, of course, was the real challenge: how to harness the power of Faith once a Saint has been properly desecrated.’
He was trying to make it sound simple, but that too was a ruse meant to deceive us. The perfectly executed murder of Saints, drawing in followers to create the God’s Needles, tricking the churches into bringing back the Inquisitors without his own identity becoming known . . .
‘The Pilgrims,’ I said, my voice sounding faint to my ears. ‘You did all this to spread fear throughout the country, convincing people that the Gods had turned away from them so that you could—’
The Blacksmith’s composure broke for the first time. ‘The Gods did turn away from us!’ he shouted.
I looked
into his eyes, searching for some sign of weakness, for despite his rough appearance, this was a man of the purest intellect. Show me how to wear you down.
‘You are in agony,’ Ethalia said to him, her voice gentle, probing. ‘I can see it in you.’ I could see she was seeking out some shred of humanity with which to draw him back, but it was a mistake.
The Blacksmith took in a slow, deep breath, and when he looked back at her, his eyes were dead. ‘You know nothing of pain, my Lady, but do not worry, for I will rectify that ignorance very soon.’
‘I really don’t think you will,’ I said, but even before I’d finished the sentence, I knew he’d tricked me.
‘Ah, Falcio, you never fail in your consistent inability to surprise me. You want an enemy: a cruel villain you can hate and fight and kill, but I am not he, I’m afraid.’ He ran the back of his hand across his brow like a labourer coming to the end of a long day’s work. ‘People laugh at you, you know. Everywhere you go in this country your Laws are met with disdain. When a peasant farmer thanks you for risking your life in a duel to get his land back, do you think he cares one bit about which Law was broken or restored? Of course not; he just wants his land. Our countrymen don’t wish to obey your Laws.’ He walked back to stand behind the man with Fost’s face and placed his hands on his shoulders. ‘They want to obey their God.’
‘Then maybe you shouldn’t have murdered the six we had,’ Brasti pointed out.
‘Those half-remembered fools? Their era was long past. Our people want a new God: one strong father to lead them.’ He turned to admire his creation. ‘Look at what I have made; tell me he isn’t beautiful beyond all things.’
‘What I see,’ Erastian said, stepping forward to stand between us and the God, ‘is an arse, standing next to another arse, both of whom are deserving of a fine beating.’
The God opened his mouth and spoke for the first time.
‘Blasphemer.’
The word made no sound – it was a shadow wrapping itself around my heart, forcing a scream from so deep inside me that it threatened to shatter my inner ears. The word was the scent of death and decay, worming its way into my nostrils; it was the weight of defeat, settling upon my shoulders. I realised that it wasn’t just me moaning, and I dragged my head around to see Kest and Brasti had both succumbed to the same sensations I had.
‘Tricks,’ Erastian announced, reeling but somehow unbowed. ‘Is that what you have to offer our people?’
‘You show a remarkable lack of Faith for a Saint,’ the Blacksmith replied.
The old Saint planted his feet a shoulder-width apart and faced the God square-on, though he spoke to the Blacksmith. ‘That Faith of which you speak so glibly came from men and women fearing the darkness of the night, the yoke of their oppressors. It is from that Faith that the Gods were spawned.’ To the God he said, ‘You did not create us. We created you.’
The Blacksmith waved a hand. ‘Does the mother of the child who becomes King get to ignore his rule? Why does it matter how a God is created? All that matters is that you obey him.’
Through the fog of my own terror, I managed to say, ‘It matters when that God was created through fear and manipulation—’
‘No,’ he countered, ‘I am the Blacksmith. I do not manipulate, the way your Tailor does. I forge. I shape. I create.’ He looked at me without ire or hate. ‘Don’t you see, Falcio? You and I both know how weak this country has become, how corrupt its citizens, from the highest noble to the lowest peasant. You and the Greatcoats . . . for all the honour and decency you’ve tried to bring to these people, how have they repaid you? With derision, betrayal. You’ve given your lives to save a country that is nothing more than a rotting carcass being fought over by venal noblemen. You know what I say is true, Falcio; you know Tristia can’t survive as it is. We must make it strong again – it will thrive under a God’s rule.’
Erastian gave a bitter laugh. ‘You fool. Our ancestors were full of hate and rage at the world. They sat there night after bitter night, praying for someone to come and kill their enemies. Our Gods are little more than devils cloaked in deceit.’
Of course, I thought, because this is Tristia, where even the Gods we worship turn out to be petty and cheap.
‘And what are Saints, then,’ the Blacksmith asked, ‘but petty thieves seeking their own glory?’
‘We show people they can aspire to something greater,’ Erastian replied. Then he turned to me and grinned. ‘Of course, that wasn’t our original purpose.’ He turned back to face the God. ‘When the people of Tristia crafted their own laws to live by, the Gods became enraged: they sought to make us kneel before them, to swear on our souls to obey their commands. Some of us didn’t; some of us stood firm. That is our purpose: the Saints exist to stand against the tyranny of Gods who would make their worshippers into slaves.’
The God smiled then, and spoke for the second time. ‘You. Exist. To. Serve.’
The sentence was a mountain falling on our shoulders and we all sank to our knees, even Erastian and Ethalia. There was no way for us to resist. Nothing I’d felt before, not even Birgid’s Awe, could compare to this. This wasn’t mere command; it was revelation: we were tiny, insignificant things, born to serve, fulfilled only in genuflection.
Beside me I could hear Kest, grunting like a pig struggling to escape a mudpit that was slowly sucking him inexorably into its depths. I could almost feel the vibrations in the air from his trembling body, from his desperate desire to stand. He made me so ashamed of myself, for not being able even to try, and I hated him then, for having so much more strength in whatever passes for a soul in our miserable flesh than I ever had.
Someone spoke, and it took me a moment to realise who it was until Erastian-who-plucks-the-rose, Saint of Romantic Love, said, ‘Right, well then, I guess the time for talk is over.’
With all the effort I could muster, I brought my chin up enough that I could see him as he rose to his feet, dusted himself off and extended a hand to Ethalia. ‘Remember when I told you that Mercy wasn’t the same thing as passivity? It’s time to fight now, sister. Even the Gods are bound to trial by combat.’
Ethalia looked at me, her eyes wide with pain, as she slowly pushed herself to her feet, and I tried desperately to rise, to join her, to fight by her side.
I couldn’t.
I guess we aren’t all meant to be Saints.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
The Apostate
If you’ve never seen two Saints fighting for their lives against an incarnate God, it looks like – well, nothing, really.
‘Are they doing anything?’ Brasti asked. The three of us were still on our knees, still unable to rise. ‘Because right now it looks an awful lot like they’re all trying to stare each other to death.’
Kest’s laboured breathing told me he too was fighting against the force that held us to the ground. ‘You . . . aren’t seeing it,’ he tried to explain. ‘The battle’s happening beyond this place.’
I tried to see what Kest saw, to bear witness to the war between God and Saints unfolding before us, and for a long time it was just as Brasti had said: the almost comical vision of the three of them facing each other, staring intently into each other’s eyes – then my vision blurred, as if I’d stared at a flame too long, I felt a stabbing pain in my temples, forcing me to close my eyes, and at last I saw the way such duels are fought. There’s no fire, no lightning, no giant serpents swallowing their victims whole. This was something different. This was much, much worse.
‘You . . . see?’ Kest asked.
I see a big man with a back made strong and shoulders made broad from long days working the mill, baring his teeth as he brings his fist down upon his child’s jaw, again and again: a brutal, endless rhythm as he punishes the boy over and over . . .
Two young women hold an old mother down while a third kicks her in the stomach, the leg a swinging pendulum keeping time, once, twice, thrice . . .
A bird lands on a windowsill, dr
awn to a small pile of seed, but before it can eat a hand comes crashing down to grab it and squeezes until the tiny bones of its ribcage crack and give.
‘Hells,’ I whispered. I had seen all that, and a hundred hundred more such horrors; worse, I knew every one was real and happening right now somewhere in the vast distances of this country. This is who we are as a people. This is what we do when no one is watching.
Erastian’s glib voice pulled me out of the blood-soaked visions. ‘Is that really all you’ve got, you dumb son of a bitch?’ The old man’s brow furrowed in concentration and I closed my own eyes and saw—
—a girl, young, her cheeks alight with the first bloom of womanhood. She climbs up the mountainside, although it’s dangerous; everyone knows it, and she’s always been afraid of heights. But not today, because there’s a blue rose that grows there and she plans to pluck it. She’ll hold it between her teeth by the stem and smiling confidently, she’ll stride into town, to the young travelling musician who’d played the song for her on his violin, the song about a rose that couldn’t be found. But she knew where it was, and she would find it: a gift. A promise . . .
‘Fascinating,’ the Blacksmith said, standing apart from the conflict, apparently quite unaffected by his God’s terrible will. ‘Such remarkable intensity from a man whose Sainthood is little more than a childish fantasy.’
‘Kneel,’ the God said, and a rushing filled my ears —a thousand moans escaping the lips of a hundred terrified men, hanging onto the sides of a boat even as the storm tears it apart, begging for the lightning to stop.
‘See, this is the problem with Gods,’ Erastian said, and when I turned, I saw him grinning, his jaw set tight. ‘The only thing they understand is whatever single-minded, half-witted emotion bound itself into their form.’
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