Reyek poked me with a finger. ‘Cowards. Spies.’
‘And here I thought we were all going to be such good friends,’ Brasti whispered to Kest, not very quietly.
‘Oh, we are, Brasti, I promise you.’ Morn led us out of the infirmary and along the wall of the compound to another building, its construction almost identical but its contents very different. Racks of weapons awaited us: swords, spears, shields, and a variety of pole-arms, including an entire rack just like Morn’s.
‘You really do love those fucking glaives, don’t you, Morn?’ Brasti asked.
Morn ignored the jibe, saying to me, ‘This is just one camp. One armoury.’
‘How many do you have in all?’ Kest asked.
‘Six.’
Hells. Six might not sound impressive, unless you considered just how poorly armed Tristia was right now. When the Knights had abandoned their Dukes and Lords, they’d taken their weapons with them. What few soldiers we did have left were neither well trained nor well armed.
‘What are those?’ Kest asked, pointing to a row of canvas-covered carts in the centre of the building.
Morn signalled to one of his men, who wheeled one of the carts over to us. Morn removed the tarp to reveal that what was underneath was not, in fact, a cart at all.
‘Oh,’ Kest said.
The machine before us was a long wide iron tube set on top of a set of small wheels. A little wooden box shaped like a small trench was attached to the side. Inside was a set of six black iron balls around six inches in diameter. ‘A cannon,’ I mumbled, my eyes going back to the others all in a row, trying to count how many they had here, and how many in their other five encampments. ‘Morn . . . what are you doing with all these cannon?’
My reaction was clearly exactly what Morn had been waiting for – what he’d been building up to all along.
‘I’m going to save Tristia once and for all.’
Things went downhill after that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The New Country
I had to run to keep up with Morn as he walked out the building and towards the front gates of the encampment, my boots crunching over the densely packed snow, making me feel like a child chasing after his father. ‘Tell me how this works,’ I demanded. ‘Tell me how this can end in something other than violence and bloodshed!’
‘Stop being so melodramatic, Falcio. It’s not nearly so terrifying as you make it out to be.’
Then why are you doing your best to terrify me, you arsehole?
Morn didn’t speak again until we were past the gates and on our way up a small hill nearby. My lungs were pumping hard in the cold, thin air of the mountains. Should’ve joined the damned Rangieri instead of the Greatcoats, I thought.
Morn finally came to a stop and pointed east. ‘Those mountains? Those are the ones we crossed together. On the other side are Orison and Hervor: two Duchies whose rulers have never brought the rest of the country anything but oppression and villainy. Both Duchies are without Dukes right now, and their people are suffering. Those people’ – he accentuated the last words – ‘have as much Avarean blood in them as Tristian.’
‘So you plan to annex Orison and Hervor as part of Avares?’ I asked.
‘Of course.’ Morn spread his arms wide. ‘Strike me down here and now, Falcio, for I am a traitor to our country, to our King, to our cause.’ He dropped his arms and shook his head, his eyes never leaving mine. ‘You think I’d go through all this just to take from one country to give to another?’
‘Then what—?’
‘To create something new!’ He gripped me by the shoulders. ‘Don’t you see, Falcio? This is our chance – our one chance. We’re going to create a new country, one founded on unshakeable principles of justice. Every man and every woman will be judged on the way they live their lives, not on how much wealth or power they’ve accumulated. It will be a nation without Dukes or Kings.’
‘Or Warlords?’ Kest asked.
‘The Avareans don’t seek territory, only glory. I will give them the glory they seek, the chance to prove their rokhan and do something their parents and their grandparents never did: to help liberate a people and change the shape of a continent.’
The excitement in his voice, the ardour with which he spoke, was seductive almost beyond imagining. Orison and Hervor: two Duchies I’ve hated as much or more than Rijou; two ruling families who had brought Tristia nothing but strife and warfare.
‘Imagine, Falcio,’ Morn said, sensing my weakness, ‘the Law as the very foundation of a country, not some gilding painted on too thinly to stretch across its surface, but the very rock upon which it’s built.’
The depth of passion gleaming in his eyes was hypnotic, blinding. I could barely hold his gaze.
‘Oh, do fuck off.’
Brasti was staring at us, his arms folded across his chest. ‘There’s no such thing as a country without rulers. Eventually some arsehole comes along and—’
‘Morn doesn’t intend this new nation of his to lack for rulers,’ Kest said. ‘Do you, Morn?’ He turned to me. ‘He means the Greatcoats to have dominion over an entire country.’
Far from being insulted or trying to deny Kest and Brasti’s accusations, Morn was so sure of the incontestable rightness of his plans that I don’t think he even recognised the scepticism on their faces. I doubt it would have mattered anyway, because it was me he was seeking to convince.
‘It’s what we always talked about, Falcio,’ he said seductively.
His final words hit me like a mallet to the stomach. Those days leading up to the Dukes’ war against the King, to the imminent destruction of everything we’d fought for . . . we had said it then: why not a country with magistrates in charge? Who better to rule for the good of the people than those very judges who administered the laws?
Was this what the King had wanted? Was this why he’d sent all of us on these strange missions, to set the stage so that Morn, always one of the King’s favourites, could do the one thing that Paelis himself could never hope to accomplish in his own lifetime?
A petty thought occurred to me then: why not me?
If this was your great plan, your Majesty, why not entrust it to me?
‘It can’t be done,’ Kest said, the dispassion in his voice drawing me out of my own small-minded thoughts.
‘It can,’ Morn countered, making his way up the hill along a path pounded into the snow. ‘I promise you, all of you, every detail has been considered.’
Kest shook his head. ‘Even a single Duchy isn’t ruled by one Duke; the territory is simply too big, the administration too complex – we have Margraves and Viscounts, Lords and Daminas . . . even a country made up solely of Orison and Hervor would need more Greatcoats than we have at Aramor.’
Morn stopped at the top of the hill and turned back to face us. ‘I know.’ Then he smiled and gestured for me to join him. ‘Come.’
I walked up the few remaining yards to stand with him at the summit of the small hill and looked past him to the other side. The sun was high up overhead and the glare off the snow was blinding me. All I could make out at first was a sea of brown and black.
Coats, I realised. Not fur, not armour. Coats.
I’d been fooled before, in Rijou, by the so-called ‘new Greatcoats’, and later by the Tailor with her Unblooded Dashini – but this was no trick, no deception. As my vision cleared I began to make out faces of people I knew: Quillata, her long dark hair wild as always, the scar across her cheek new, but unable to hide her smirk. I remembered the day I’d met her: the King’s Sail. Next to her stood Ran, the King’s Silence – one of the original twelve like Quillata, and next to him, Judian, the King’s Hammer. Face after face, almost all of them familiar to me, every one of them a spark in my heart. How long had I been searching, hoping, even praying that I would see them again – and here
they were.
‘I told you I was going to give you everything you ever wanted, Falcio,’ Morn said, his voice filled with more pride than the Gods should ever allow one man. ‘The Greatcoats are here.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
The First Cantor
I couldn’t move, couldn’t speak. All I could do was stand there and watch them, the sight of their faces washing over me like the tide.
I should be happy, I thought. I should be running down to them, shouting their names, making stupid comments about how beaten up and downtrodden they all look. I should be punching them in the arms, demanding to know why they hadn’t heeded my call to come to Aramor, instead joining up with a loud-mouthed fop like Morn and coming up with this preposterous plan to save the world without me.
Quillata, Ran, Old Tobb, Shana: the men and women who’d joined us in those early days when it had been just me and the King. And others, too: Jakin, whom Kest had recruited. Murielle de Vierre – I couldn’t remember who’d brought her in, but I could still picture the look on her face when Paelis had asked her to take the oath and become the King’s Thorn.
Saints, but I loved them all.
So why was I just standing there, silent, frozen in the snow?
Was it the thick fur cloaks I only now noticed hanging off the shoulders of their coats like an admission that the things we believed kept us safe in our own land were insufficient in this harsh northern country? Was it the way they were looking back at me, not smirking or smiling, not overjoyed to see us, but rather, cautious . . . reserved . . . waiting, I realised suddenly. They’re waiting to see what I do.
‘I count forty-two,’ Kest said. There was something unusual in his voice. Fear? No. Dismay.
Why dismay?
It was only when I looked in his eyes and saw something of myself reflected there that I began to come to my senses. I remembered the one question every magistrate asks of themselves every time a case comes before them, whenever there’s a possibility of using the verdict to shape the world not by the law, but by their own vision of justice. The King used to ask this question sometimes when the two of us got particularly drunk and I’d start going on yet again about venal noblemen and how much better someone like me might do in the top job.
What do you call a judge sitting on a throne? he always demanded, and he always answered his own question: A fucking tyrant, that’s what.
‘Don’t, Falcio,’ Morn said, staring at me, although I hadn’t yet said a word. ‘It doesn’t have to be this way. That little girl you admire so much can still hold onto the south if you want – but Hervor and Orison will be ours: the beginning of something new, something untainted.’
The beginning. I wondered if Morn even understood the implication of what he’d just said.
The Magdan, I reminded myself then. Stop thinking of him as Morn and instead call him the Magdan.
‘Falcio, look around you. This isn’t a trick. These are our fellow Greatcoats. Our friends.’
Our friends.
How long had I been searching for them? How many times had I laid my head on my pillow, unable to fall asleep as I worked out which backwater town or village I’d missed, which damned corner of the country I had failed to search? All these months I wondered why even the Bardatti couldn’t find them.
The answer was simple: they hadn’t wanted to be found.
The Greatcoats weren’t lost. They were here.
‘You look sad, Falcio,’ said the man who had once been Morn, not sounding the least bit sympathetic.
‘I am sad,’ I admitted, my eyes still on the Greatcoats waiting for us below. Had the Magdan told them when to wait there, and for how long, just so he could build up to this moment?
Let them see it, I thought. Let them see the disgust on my face and hear the heartache in my voice.
‘Damn you, Falcio,’ the Magdan said, already walking over to join the others. ‘This isn’t logic or idealism whispering in your ear, it’s just your damned stubbornness.’
I ignored him and turned to look at Kest and Brasti, suddenly terrified by the possibility that they might be wavering as I had been. My heartache eased, if only by a fraction, to see the pain that they felt too – the absolute certainty that what the Magdan proposed wasn’t some grand plan to solve the world’s problems or create a wondrous nation founded on justice rather than power.
This was the death of my King’s dream, plain and simple.
I looked down at our fellow Greatcoats. I think they must have known all along that we wouldn’t go along with this – that’s why he brought us here, far away from Mateo and Antrim and the few who’d come to Aramor, the few who still honoured the King’s memory.
‘You’re making a mistake, Falcio,’ the Magdan said, standing with the others now. He spread his arms wide, a generous King offering to embrace his lowly subject. ‘We should be celebrating. The Greatcoats are reunited.’
‘Did they teach you magic when you came here?’ Brasti asked.
‘Magic is considered a sometimes necessary but largely cowardly pursuit in Avares,’ he replied. ‘Normally only those born with deformities study it. So no, Brasti, I’m not a wizard. Why would you ask?’
Brasti looked out at the other Greatcoats. ‘Too bad. I was hoping maybe all you fucking cowards were under some kind of spell.’
Several hands went to hilts of swords; a few raised bows or crossbows. Old Tobb still had that ridiculous pistol of his; nobody else could shoot straight with them, but he’d always managed to hit his target. Quillata still had her sling.
They’re the same people they’ve always been. That thought nearly sent me to my knees.
Brasti nocked an arrow to the string of his bow. ‘The problem with the bone plates in our coats is that they don’t cover your face.’
‘Falcio . . .’ Kest said. ‘Our chances aren’t good here.’
‘When are the odds ever in our favour?’ Brasti asked.
‘Compared to right now? Every single time.’
‘Then why haven’t you got your damned shield up?’
‘Because he knows,’ the Magdan said, his voice deep and resonant, as if he’d been born to make words echo across the mountaintops. ‘Kest knows what Falcio’s going to do next, just as I do.’
He walked to a spot halfway between his Greatcoats and us. ‘You know what I always used to wonder about the King?’ he asked me.
I didn’t bother to reply; I knew his question because I’d asked myself the same thing the last time I’d been in this situation.
‘How is it,’ the Magdan began, looking up at the sky as if King Paelis were sitting upon a cloud holding court, ‘that for all our study of the King’s Law, of the workings of the country, of the ways of its people, that the First Cantor was selected by something as crass and unsophisticated as a contest to see who was the best fighter?’
‘That’s simple,’ Brasti replied. ‘The King was drunk the day he had to pick a leader for the Greatcoats and he wanted some amusement.’
The Magdan laughed. ‘You know, I used to think that, too, sometimes.’ His eyes went to me. ‘But that’s not why, is it, Falcio?’
‘You know,’ I said, shaking off the stupor that had been paralysing me until now, ‘as someone known to enjoy a good speech, I hate to interrupt your carefully crafted script. But it’s cold out here, so why don’t you just get on with it.’
The Magdan stripped his fur cloak from his shoulders and tossed it aside. ‘I think the reason the King made us fight was because for all his fine words and lofty ideals, he understood the most basic principle of justice: the only laws that matter are the ones you’ve got the strength to enforce.’ He unstrapped the glaive from his back, its blade glinting in the sunlight. ‘Do you still think you have what it takes to be the First Cantor of the Greatcoats, Falcio?’
I drew my own rapier. Kest put a hand on
my shoulder. ‘Falcio, don’t, it’s a—’
‘A trick?’ I looked back at him and smiled just before setting out to meet the Magdan in the snow. ‘Of course it’s a trick, Kest. It’s always been a trick.’
*
I took my time drawing a duelling circle in the snow with the end of one of my scabbards. The Magdan watched, amused by my efforts. ‘So formal, Falcio?’
‘Wouldn’t want you claiming the court was rigged once I’ve kicked your arse,’ I replied. The truth was, I was hoping some of the other Greatcoats would protest, but they didn’t. I glanced at them as I trudged around the space. I’d known almost all of them, but I’d been genuinely close to a few and they didn’t look particularly happy. Quillata looked the most uncomfortable; I remember telling her that I’d told the King that if I ever got killed, she should be his next choice for First Cantor. Yet even she kept silent, which meant they had all known this was coming. The Magdan had told them ahead of time and made them agree not to interfere. Because you are a predictable idiot sometimes, Falcio val Mond.
‘I’m starting to wonder if perhaps you’re just playing for time,’ the Magdan said.
He was right, but I wasn’t just vainly hoping for a last-minute protest from my fellow Greatcoats; I needed to get used to moving in snow. I’ve always relied a great deal on my footwork when fencing, and falling flat on my back in the middle of the fight wouldn’t do. ‘Almost done,’ I said. ‘Have you chosen your second?’
‘I hardly think we need to—’
‘Just do it,’ I said.
He glanced around the other Greatcoats, almost as if he was going to pick someone at random. He wasn’t, though; this sort of thing mattered, which is why I’d forced the issue.
‘Quillata,’ he said.
She was a natural choice: strong, fast, and utterly incapable of giving up a fight when it came to it. Most importantly for the Magdan, it would prove to me whose side she was on.
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