I wasn’t sure who she was talking to.
I walked out of the gate and found myself staring at the same point off in the distance that had transfixed Aline. Maybe if I delayed my journey north I could . . . I don’t know, go out there and find the damned horse? Maybe that would make things better. Bloody creature.
Who told you that you could run off and leave Aline alone like that? I thought we had a deal.
‘She’ll be all right, Falcio,’ said a voice somewhere off to my right, and when I turned, I saw Valiana sitting a few yards away on the stone foundation that supported the long iron gate into the castle. How is everyone able to sneak up on me lately?
‘How long have you been sitting there?’ I asked.
‘An hour or so. Aline comes out here around the same time every morning, so I try to keep an eye on her when I can.’
‘“When you can”?’
She winced. ‘There are seven guards watching her at all times now, Falcio. Two of them are Greatcoats.’
‘Which ones?’ I asked, looking out to see if I could spot them. I couldn’t.
‘Lately, Mateo and Quentis Maren. They work well together.’
I found it odd that Mateo, about as heretical a man as I’d ever met, and Quentis Maren, a former Inquisitor, had become such close friends, but really, it was none of my business. Besides, knowing they were watching Aline made me feel much more comfortable about leaving; that was a much more practical solution to ensuring her safety than trying to lock the heir safely away in an impregnable iron box until I could get her seated on the throne.
‘I’m sorry about the ruse,’ Valiana said.
I waved a hand. ‘It’s all right. You did what needed to be done.’ That sounded like a credible response, but . . . no.
‘You could have told me, Valiana. I could have given just as good a performance for the Dukes – or hells, we could have found a different way to meet . . .’
‘I was wrong,’ she said. ‘I should have trusted you.’
‘Damned right . . .’
Only she wasn’t wrong; that was the thing. I would have railed against meeting with the Tailor. I would have refused and stomped around and . . .
What the hells is wrong with me lately?
‘You’re trying to keep us all from danger,’ Valiana said, as if she could hear my thoughts. I suppose it wasn’t that hard; I felt like anyone could read my face these days. ‘This . . . it’s just a different sort of danger.’
When I didn’t reply, she rose from the stone foundation. ‘Anyway, I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you,’ she said, and walked past me into the castle courtyard.
‘You haven’t—’
But she was already gone.
Negotiations. Intrigue. The dark arts of politicians. The tactical deceptions and secret deal-making that were needed to make a country run. I don’t think I’d ever really appreciated the way the King used to deal so masterfully with such problems, all the while letting the rest of us run off on our righteous quests to bring justice to the people of Tristia. Did he ever resent the way we left him behind to deal with the mess? Did Valiana? She had to work every day to keep the Kingdom running, and every day she had to use a hundred different tactics to fight off a hundred different enemies and always come out the winner.
While my only job involved going around stabbing people with swords and giving long-winded speeches that no one wanted to hear any more.
The sound of hooves shook me out of my introspection. Kest, Brasti and Morn rode up to the gates with my own horse, Arsehole, alongside. ‘Why in all the hells can’t Trin launch her conspiracies in the spring?’ Brasti said. ‘It’s colder than the Tailor’s heart out here.’
Morn chuckled. ‘You think this is cold? This? You should see the frozen shithole we’re headed to.’
Brasti gave me a dirty look.
‘Leave him be,’ Kest said, attaching his shield to one of his saddlebags.
‘You know you’ve got a lot slower since losing your hand, Kest. You’re not a Saint any more—’
‘I’m still fast enough to knock you off your horse three times before you draw your weapon.’ Kest leaned over on his horse to peer at Brasti’s waist. ‘No, you’re still hanging your sword belt too far to the back. Four times.’
Brasti threw up his hands. ‘Will I ever get any respect from you damned bastards with your stupid pointy sticks? Has everyone forgotten that I’m the one who killed an actual God? In fact, I’d like someone to explain why I haven’t become a Saint yet. Is there really no justice in—?’
I turned to see why he’d stopped talking and saw Ethalia walking towards us. She was wearing a blue woollen sweater over her usual simple cotton dress, and she looked . . . well, I’ve probably said enough about how she looks. If it helps, Brasti and Morn shared my reaction as they suddenly became very quiet. Kest is always quiet, so it’s hard to tell whether anyone’s presence makes a difference.
‘I won’t keep you,’ Ethalia said. ‘I know you have a long journey ahead, but a note came for you, Falcio.’
She handed me a folded slip of paper. It wasn’t sealed. I unfolded it to find a single line written in her own hand: Be wise, rather than brave, prudent, rather than bold, and don’t let the complications between us keep you away too long, the note read. I looked into her eyes and tried to make sense of the word ‘complications’. What precisely was that supposed to mean?
‘My darling Ethalia,’ Brasti said, ‘when will you finally rid yourself of this drab and inconsolable fellow and make your way to a warmer and more welcoming bed?’
Ethalia turned and looked at Kest, sitting astride his horse. ‘Kest?’ she asked innocently.
‘Yes?’
‘Might you, as a fellow – if former – Saint, consider knocking some sense into Brasti for me? It’s just that, as Saint of Mercy, I’m not supposed to do it myself.’
‘Give me a moment to consider it,’ he replied. Suddenly his arm flew back and sent Brasti tumbling off his horse. ‘Ah. It appears the answer is “yes”.’
Ethalia took advantage of the ensuing swearing and chaos to place both her hands on my cheeks. Her skin was warm against mine as she kissed me, and my troubles lifted away from my shoulders like ravens frightened off by her presence. Surprised as I was, I held that kiss for as long as I could, because I knew those ravens would return soon enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Road North
The road north felt strange to me . . . or no, not strange, wrong.
I tried to blame it on lack of sleep – in the mere two days we’d spent in Castle Aramor since our return I don’t think I’d slept a full night; that and the after-effects of a week of raging seasickness made riding a real chore. Of course, it didn’t help that Arsehole, my copper-coloured Tivanieze, insisted on prancing about unpredictably, as if every flower, bird or butterfly was calling him over to play.
‘You really should have taken up the stablemaster’s offer to trade him in,’ Kest said, noting my discomfort.
I’d tried, seriously. Tivaniezes are rare enough that I could have exchanged him for a more reliable and less exuberant horse – one who, for example, didn’t object to galloping in a straight line. But for all his faults, I just couldn’t bear to give him up. Arsehole is an unfathomably strange horse, but he and I had come to a more or less cordial understanding over the past few months: I would do my best to ignore his preposterous behaviour and he, in turn, would do his best not to throw me from the saddle more than once a day.
‘I’m fine,’ I said, which was something of a lie. Despite my efforts to pin my discomfort on exhaustion and ill-bred horses, the problem was not so much that we were riding towards an undesirable destination, but rather that we were riding away from the poor, battered castle that still felt like home. The sensation was especially troubling because I could remember with a
ching clarity why I used to love setting out on my judicial circuits.
For all the complaints about the danger, drudgery and distinct lack of proper beds that came with our tours of duty, there was a kind of magic in the roads we travelled. Tristia is a relatively small country, and yet every Duchy, March and Demesne – along with its people – is strange and unique, with its own customs and traditions. It’s as if Tristia is made up of dozens of tiny foreign nations all packed in together. You could visit every part of the country a hundred times over and never fail to be surprised at how different they all are from one another.
Everywhere we went in those days trials awaited us: complex legal disputes and thorny criminal cases that required our expertise and sometimes our blades. Men and women ensnared by the legal machinations of neighbours, relatives or even their Lords told me they’d felt frozen in time, trapped in ice, and it was only the King’s Travelling Magistrates who’d been able to shatter their bonds and let time tick forward once again, freeing them to get on with their lives.
Riding north now brought those memories back in a rush of desperate longing that nearly overwhelmed me. It wasn’t simply nostalgia: I needed that sense of rightness again. I didn’t care if a mission was hard and dangerous; I just needed it to be right. Instead, here I was travelling to Orison, a Duchy without a Duke, now that Perault was dead (and thank the Gods dead and living for that small mercy), to persuade some unruly villagers that they did not, in fact, have the right to secede from Tristia. It was a pretty safe bet no one would be cheering our arrival there.
And afterwards? Afterwards I’d be sneaking into Avares, a country with which we could not risk war, so that I could capture and not kill the woman who had decided it was her Gods-given destiny to destroy everything King Paelis had built.
‘You look twitchy,’ Morn said, bringing his horse alongside mine.
Arsehole reacted with unexpected glee to this new companion and proceeded to bop the muzzle of Morn’s horse, confusing that poor beast no end.
‘I was just thinking,’ I said.
Morn smiled as if I’d actually said something meaningful. ‘You’re thinking about the circuits, aren’t you?’
‘How the hells did you know that—?’
He chuckled. ‘It’s what we all think about whenever we set out on a journey, Falcio: how much has changed, how much we wish it were more like the old days . . . the anticipation of adventure, the sense of . . .’
‘Rightness?’ I suggested.
‘Rightness. Damn me, you always know just the perfect word.’
‘We’ll have that again,’ I said. ‘Things won’t all go back to being the way they were, but once we have a Queen on the throne, we can get back to the work of making Tristia a just society again. Aline is—’
Morn held up a hand. ‘Please, Falcio, don’t start singing this girl’s praises to me. I’ve heard the stories already. “Aline who defied a God to reconsecrate the laws in Tristia; Aline who commanded her people to rise and never kneel again; Aline who sprouted wings and flew up to the heavens to push away the clouds and let through golden sunlight”—’
‘You know what, Morn?’ Brasti asked, riding up behind us. ‘I forgot what a jackass you are.’
Morn chuckled. ‘Well, the rest of us never forgot what utter zealots the three of you were, that’s for sure.’
‘You’ve seen the others?’ I asked. ‘Quillata? Old Tobb? Senneth?’
His expression darkened a little. ‘Some. I saw Bellow a couple of years ago, in a village in Domaris – he’d lost both his legs. You probably know Cunien started his own little band of vaguely noble brigands a few years back and set about redistributing the contents of caravans run by particularly venal nobles amongst the poorest. He’s something of a legend along the northern trade routes.’
‘Damn it, Falcio,’ Brasti said crossly, ‘I told you we needed to get a move on with this piracy plan of ours.’
‘What about the other Greatcoats?’ Kest asked. ‘Falcio sent Bardatti out months ago with the call to reassemble at Aramor, but few have come. Where are the rest?’
Morn shrugged. ‘How should I know? I’ve been living like a half-wild animal, sleeping in caves and walking hundreds of miles through mountains and forest ever since the King died, which hasn’t exactly made for easy socialising with my fellow magistrates.’
A moment later he reached over from his horse and clapped a hand on my shoulder. ‘Don’t look like that, First Cantor. The rest of the Greatcoats will turn up eventually.’
‘Sure,’ I said, forcing a smile I didn’t feel. ‘In the meantime all we have to do is invade a foreign country, sneak into the camp of some devastatingly brilliant new Warlord and kidnap the world’s most dangerous woman – oh, and bring her safely back to stand trial.’
‘You’re forgetting that first we have to go negotiate with a bunch of petulant citizens of Orison and get them to stop threatening to break up the country,’ Brasti added.
Secession wasn’t actually an uncommon problem in Tristia; far too often people got the idea into their heads that separating from their home country would make them rich – or at least, less poor. I knew how to deal with people like that; it always involved a lot of listening, a lot of negotiating and the occasional threat.
It wasn’t until we arrived at the gates of Den Chapier that I discovered a slight setback to my tried and trusted method for securing a deal: there was no one left to negotiate with.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Seditious Village
Like many towns and villages in the northern Duchies, twin statues of the God of Making guard the entrance to Den Chapier. In much of the south he’s known as Mestiri, which means ‘one who masters’, whereas in my home Duchy of Pertine, Craft has always been depicted as a young woman named Feturia. No wonder the people of Tristia have never been able to get along: we can’t even agree on what any particular God looks like. Of course, no one will ever know who was right in Craft’s case, because by the time I met the God, there was nothing left of him (or her) but a skeletal wreck hanging from the Blacksmith’s gibbet.
‘They call him Duestre in these parts,’ Morn said, standing between the two statues. The one on the left depicted the God as a muscular young man drawing iron from a vein of ore inside the stone on which he stood. That rock had probably come from the hundred-mile-long mountain range that divided the Duchy of Orison from Avares. On the right, Craft appeared as a stoop-backed elder, hammering the iron into a sword.
‘Falcio?’ Morn asked. ‘Why are you just standing there?’
‘I . . . nothing. I just—’
‘Give him a moment,’ Kest said. He and Brasti walked over and stood next to me at the entrance to the village. We were all a little hesitant about taking that next step. Brasti held an arrow and his longest bow, Intemperance, but he hadn’t drawn it yet, perhaps because his hands were shaking almost as much as mine. Memories of Carefal – the charred corpses, the stench – played out in my mind. They had worshipped Craft too, but he hadn’t cared; his only concern was the making of things. The unmaking he left to humans.
‘Come,’ said Kest gently, ‘we need to see what’s happened.’
I forced myself to take a breath, to dispel the stench of burning flesh from my memory, and arranged us in a diamond formation with each man facing a different direction. We moved at a snail’s pace through the narrow, unpaved streets, but the emptiness was absolute: no people, no livestock, no sounds, no smells . . . nothing. We walked like ghosts haunting a place that no longer existed.
‘Saint Shiulla-who-bathes-with-beasts,’ Brasti muttered, ‘how many people lived in this town?’
‘Three hundred and twenty, last time I was here,’ Morn replied. ‘Miners and their families, mostly.’
‘Three hundred,’ Brasti repeated. The muscles in his jaw worked awkwardly, as if he were trying to speak but som
ething was lodged in his mouth.
‘Split up,’ I said, once I was confident no ambush was awaiting us. ‘Check the cottages.’
I headed for the town square: there were no signs of violence, no bodies or blood, no broken weapons, nor even signs of scuffles preserved in the cold, hard dirt.
‘No corpses so far,’ Kest said, coming out of a cottage. ‘There’s nothing in the streets on the other side, nor in any of the homes. Might they have been captured?’
Brasti, walking towards us, heard. He shook his head. Kneeling on the ground, he said, ‘There are no signs of struggle, or tracks to indicate anything unusual.’ He looked up at me. ‘It looks as if they simply walked away.’
‘Look here,’ Morn called out. He stuck his head out of a cottage door and gestured for us to join him.
Inside, it was just as you’d expect: three small rooms, one with beds along each of the four walls. The main room had a wood-burning stove. The clothing chests were empty.
‘There’s nothing here,’ Brasti said, coming up behind me.
‘That’s the point,’ I said. ‘They haven’t just left, they’ve moved.’
‘Perhaps the mines ran out?’ Kest asked.
‘Most of these people would have been born here,’ Morn explained, ‘like their parents and their parents’ parents – whole generations never travel more than five miles from their homes. They don’t just pick up and leave . . .’
‘Let’s search for any signs that might indicate a struggle – or even some idea of which direction they went,’ I suggested, and chose a narrow alley that ran between two rows of cottages. I was running a hundred scenarios in my mind, but none of them made any sense. In the village of Phan, in Pulnam, the villagers hid out in broken-down old cabins in the hills when raiders came from the Eastern Desert – could something like that have happened here? But this was no rushed departure, and there were no signs of panic.
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