Tyrant's Throne

by de Castell, Sebastien

  It was the smile that did it.

  Trin gave a tinkling little laugh, as if she’d heard the sudden breaking of my heart. I’m usually the last to figure these things out, but this time I knew I was the first.

  To anyone else, Filian would have looked like an ordinary young man – Trin’s lover or servant, maybe no one important, just her next victim.

  But he must have seen my flicker of recognition, because his gaze settled on me and his expression became a little sad as he said, ‘Oh, Falcio, I am so very sorry.’

  All the boy said was, ‘Oh, Falcio, I am so very sorry.’

  The sound of the torch clattering to the floor was followed by the sensation of falling and then a sudden pain in my knees as they struck the hard stone floor. My arms hung useless at my sides.

  ‘They’re dead,’ I whispered. I hadn’t breath enough to speak any louder. ‘Patriana told me she’d killed all the others—’

  Brasti was shouting behind me, ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  I saw the noose pull tight around the boy’s neck as Kest took hold of the rope outside the cell. ‘If this is magic,’ he said, ‘I would suggest you stop it now.’

  The boy said nothing. He didn’t need to.

  ‘Maybe it’s not magic,’ Brasti said. ‘It’s probably poison. Falcio’s always getting poisoned.’

  It was neither of those things. It was the smile.

  It’s always the smile.

  Trin’s voice was odd, almost soothing as she said, ‘Don’t be sad, my dearest Falcio. It was long past time that you met your King.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The Charoite

  Seven years ago I ruled on a legal dispute involving a portrait of the late King Gregor. The painting’s value came principally from the rumour that his wife, Queen Yesa, had been the artist. Despite her terrible taste in husbands, Yesa had been, by all accounts, a lovely woman: bright, kind, and according to those who’d heard her play, an excellent musician.

  Saints, she was a terrible painter, though.

  True, on his best day Gregor’s face displayed all the beauty of a barrel mastiff cross-bred with a tree stump, but this portrait looked like a one-eyed child had dumped his fingerpaints on a canvas and promptly vomited on it.

  You would think such an eyesore would be soon forgotten, but in fact a rather brisk trade in forgeries of portraits of Gregor had been building in Domaris of late – no doubt fuelled by nostalgia for the old King now that his son Paelis (and his annoying travelling magistrates) were getting in everyone’s way. So it was with some amusement that I had found myself asked to rule on which of two versions of the painting was authentic.

  I stopped being quite so amused when I heard the price paid for them.

  Any good forger knows to never sell the same work in the same – or even adjoining – territories, so it was by sheer accident that Viscount Pluvier happened to stop by for a visit with his second cousin, the Margrave Boujean, at his newly constructed palace hundreds of miles away from Pluvier’s own lands. Civil war threatened to break out when Pluvier found, there on the wall of the map room, a near-perfect copy of his own prized portrait of King Gregor. With neither party trusting the dubious allegiances of their fellow nobles, Pluvier and Boujean transported their paintings to neutral ground and then, for quite possibly the only time in our country’s history, two aristocrats actually asked for a Greatcoat to rule on which work was authentic.

  It may surprise you to learn that I know slightly less about art than I do about surgery or romantic relationships, so staring at the nearly identical portraits did me little good. Solving the case – and here’s where I’ll get to the point of all this – required ignoring the paintings entirely and instead watching the eyes of the owners of the works of art. You see, people rarely buy forgeries unknowingly; the price of such an original is high enough that tracing the provenance is worth any extra expense. So I stood the two men next to their paintings, instructed them to keep their mouths shut and watched and waited, and waited some more.

  All men know how to lie, and nobles better than most, but the human face is a canvas upon which our true thoughts are painted, and after enough time, an expert in such matters can always spot the fakes.

  In case you’re wondering, Pluvier had bought the forgery; he’d hoped that by challenging his cousin he could, as part of the settle­ment, somehow swap the paintings beforehand, then demand the forgery – which would now turn out to be the Margrave’s – be destroyed. I never said it was a good plan.

  So what did any of this have to do with a battered and bruised young man chained to a wall in a cell over the border in Avares? Simple: it’s how I figured out why my life was about to become vastly more complicated than I’d ever imagined possible.

  Like a brilliant forgery, Filian displayed all the characteristics of the original. He had King Paelis’ slouch – even with his arms being bound high over his head – and you could see some of the King in his eyes, too, if you knew what to look for. Of course, these could easily be dismissed as common enough traits, just as one could ignore the sharp nose and ever-so-slightly jutting jaw. The subtle twitch of his mouth when he spoke, though? That was so much a part of the man I’d known and loved it was impossible for me to ignore.

  It’s a trick, I told myself, and I silently repeated the words once, twice, a hundred times until I was almost convinced my eyes were deceiving me. I had to, because if this boy was whom Trin claimed, then everything I had fought for was about to come to ruin.

  When I was almost positive it was all a deception, I turned to stare at Trin, chained and roped in her cell, and held her gaze for as long as I could stand to. She’s a masterful liar, perhaps the finest ever to emerge from a class whose very essence is deceit. But discerning truth from falsehood had once been the most important task of my life, and while I’ve been fooled any number of times since I put on the greatcoat, I’m very hard to trick when I know exactly what I’m looking for. I searched Trin’s face for the little things – the subtle tightening around the corners of the mouth, the minuscule tremors in the skin that pass so quickly you’ll miss them if you blink. People make sounds when they’re deceiving you, even when they aren’t speaking: the little grunts and squeaks, the uneven breathing. Kest once read a book that claimed the trained nose could smell a person lying. Whilst I didn’t have that particular ability, I felt sure the author of that book would have taken a long, deep inhale of Trin’s skin and sworn she was telling the truth.

  By the time I forced myself to my feet and went to the open door of her cell, I knew I had to stop myself from entering. If I got too close I was afraid I might pull on the rope the Magdan had so kindly left for me and hanged Trin until I felt the last gasp of air leave her body.

  ‘How did you do it?’ I asked.

  She smiled. ‘You should be gratified, Falcio. Wasn’t the grand quest King Paelis set for you to find his . . . what did he call them again? His “Charoites”? Well, now you’ve found one. In fact, you’ve found the brightest gem of the lot.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ Brasti said, then to me, ‘She’s lying, Falcio. This is just another one of her tricks.’

  I ignored him. Whether or not I believed Filian was the son of King Paelis or not was no longer relevant. There were only two questions that mattered now: would the Ducal Council support the boy’s claim over Aline’s, and was I willing to murder him to prevent it?

  ‘Tell me the rest,’ I said to Trin.

  ‘The rest?’

  ‘How did it work? How did you—?’

  ‘Ah.’ She leaned back against the wall of her cell as far as the rope would allow her. ‘My mother divined the King’s plan, of course. He was, after all, a very clever man, and he knew that any woman he chose to marry would meet with an accident sooner or later, as would any child she bore. So he . . . how shall we say? He spread his lineage across a n
umber of noble households, thanks to a number of especially patriotic ladies.’

  ‘And their husbands?’ Kest asked.

  ‘Most of the noblewomen involved were recently widowed, so the child could conceivably be the late husband’s get, as long as no one looked too closely. As to the rest? Well, I never understood it, but Paelis did always inspire rather excessive loyalty in some of his subjects.’

  There was a question burning in the back of my mind – it had been there since the day I’d finally figured out who Aline was. To ask it would be to reveal a weakness to my enemy, but I couldn’t hold it back. ‘Why didn’t he tell the Greatcoats?’

  Trin laughed. ‘Why didn’t he tell you, you mean? I asked Mother the same question. At first she thought he must have told you – that the lot of you were simply keeping his secret. But after she interrogated you in Rijou, she realised you really didn’t know, and she quickly worked out why Paelis had kept the Greatcoats in ignorance.’

  I reached out for the rope that hung around her slender neck. ‘Tell me.’

  She didn’t sound at all scared; if anything, her expression was pitying. ‘It was because of you, Falcio. The King couldn’t tell you because he was ashamed of what you would think of him. You always wanted him to be so noble, so perfect – and yet here he was, using his position of power to have his way with women for no better purpose than to preserve his own line. Oh, they were willing, I’ve no doubt, but really, how consensual can it be when it is a King doing the asking?’

  This I refused to believe; this part of her story was a lie meant to make me question Paelis, question myself. ‘He – and they – did what was necessary to protect the country from your mother.’

  ‘Tell yourself that if it helps,’ she said sweetly. ‘All of this must be terribly hard on you – I promise you, it was difficult for my mother as well. She went to no end of trouble trying to figure out who the eldest child must be.’

  ‘To kill him?’ Kest asked.

  She shook her head, making the rope sway. ‘No, to save his life. My mother wasn’t the only noble trying to discover the King’s plan. A number of the Dukes were also working on ferreting out these secret heirs.’

  ‘Which Dukes?’ I asked.

  ‘Issault of Aramor certainly suspected,’ Trin replied, ‘although he was too fat and lazy to do anything about it. Duchess Ossia of Baern. My father, of course.’

  Trin must have seen something in my expression. ‘Jillard would have killed them all, Falcio: every single one.’

  ‘Duchess Patriana beat him to it,’ Kest said.

  ‘Oh no, Mother was far cleverer than that. She wanted to find them and force Paelis to acknowledge them publicly, to reveal his fickle, feckless nature, and in so doing, she intended to extract certain promises from him over Ducal rights.’

  ‘Such as rolling back the King’s Laws?’ I asked. ‘Eliminating the Greatcoats entirely?’

  ‘Oh, we’re not against all laws; I’m sure we’ll keep a few around. In fact, magistrates can be useful, as long as their conduct is suited to the practical needs of a nation. You aren’t a bad man, Falcio – even my mother knew that. It’s just that your more extreme ideas about justice represent a luxury that none of us can afford.’

  I let that slide, knowing she was only trying to anger me – that had always been the first step in her manipulations. Damn, but it was hard not to kill her then and there.

  ‘There’s a flaw in this story of yours,’ Kest said. ‘Your mother tried to put you on the throne, not this boy.’

  Filian spoke up for the first time. ‘I’m no boy, sir. I’ll thank you to—’

  ‘Shut up, boy,’ Brasti said.

  Trin’s next words carried an edge to them. ‘You really shouldn’t speak to your King in such an insolent fashion.’

  ‘Why not?’ Brasti said, undaunted. ‘I spoke to the last one that way. Besides, this boy is never going to be my King.’ Brasti turned to me. ‘Please tell me he’s not going to be my King.’

  ‘Tell me the rest,’ I said to Trin. ‘So Patriana kidnaps the boy from his mother—’

  ‘I wasn’t kidnapped,’ Filian said. ‘I would have died, had the ­Duchess Patriana not saved me. She protected me, ensured I learned the ways of a monarch.’

  ‘Really?’ I asked. ‘And what exactly did she teach you?’

  ‘I know the laws,’ he replied, ‘all of them. I’ve read the histories and studied economics and warfare. I know what brought the country to its current state. I know what my father was trying to do to fix it.’ He paused for a moment, then added, ‘I know how much he loved you, Falcio.’

  Brasti snorted. ‘If you know so much about Paelis then you must know how much he fucking hated Patriana.’

  ‘I . . . I’m not so foolish as to think they were friends, but I believe it was political circumstance that kept them enemies. Both loved their country, both wanted to protect its people.’ Filian leaned forward against his ropes, trying to catch my eyes. ‘I will be a good King, Falcio, this I swear to you. I’ve never met Aline, but she is my sister and I will protect her every day of my life. Put me on the throne and you will see I can—’

  ‘Aline will sit that throne,’ Brasti said. ‘You know how I know? Because we’ve all bled a dozen times to put her there.’

  ‘She can’t be Queen,’ Trin interrupted. ‘Filian is a full year older than her, and thus has precedence.’

  ‘That’s horseshit,’ Brasti said.

  ‘No, it’s the law. You remember the law, don’t you, Falcio? It’s that thing you’ve been telling everyone you’ve been fighting for all this time. It’s what you and every other Greatcoat swore to uphold.’

  She locked eyes with me as if she could hold me there against my will, as if she could force the truth of her words into me like the needles the Unblooded had used to pierce my flesh.

  That was her first mistake.

  I knew what to watch for, and for once, I was looking for it. Filian was the son of King Paelis, of that Trin was absolutely certain. But she wasn’t sure if he was older than Aline – oh, he might look a little older, but that could simply be the difference between boys and girls in any family. Trin had been trying to provoke me in order to distract me from the one possible flaw in her plan. She didn’t know Filian’s true age.

  ‘Falcio?’ Kest said. He had his hand on my arm. I hadn’t even noticed. ‘None of this matters right now.’

  ‘You don’t think who sits the fucking throne of Aramor matters?’ Brasti asked. ‘What have I been risking my life for all this time?’

  Kest shook his head. ‘Right now Avares is planning on annexing Orison and Hervor. There’s precious little Valiana can do about it if she doesn’t know it’s about to happen. We need to get back to Aramor and warn her.’

  ‘Which we can do faster with Trin and her little boyfriend dead,’ Brasti said, warming to Kest’s way of thinking.

  They were right, of course: three could travel faster than five, especially since Filian didn’t look especially hardy. Did I really owe this boy anything? Was the law nothing more than a noose to be placed around my neck so anyone who wanted could tug me towards whatever doom they chose for me and the country?

  Again Kest tried to bring me back. ‘Falcio, Morn doesn’t know who Filian is, but he put us in here with Trin because he wants us to kill her. He needs her dead and us blamed for it so that he can strengthen his support in the northern Duchies of Tristia.’

  ‘Fine,’ Brasti said. ‘We kill the boy, then knock her unconscious and drag her back to—’

  ‘Enough,’ I said, careful not to shout and risk attracting the attention of the guards outside. ‘I don’t know what to do about Avares or the Magdan or even the damned Greatcoats any more. All I know is that I woke up this morning as a magistrate. Valiana sent us here to arrest Trin and bring her back to Aramor for trial and so that’s what I’
m going to do.’

  I went back to her and looked deeply into her eyes, making sure she had all the time she needed to assure herself that what I said next was the absolute truth.

  ‘After that I’m going to find a way to prove that this boy is just one more of your many ploys to take the throne for yourself, and then I’ll add another count of treason against you.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The Art of the Prison Break

  ‘How do you intend to effect our escape?’ Filian asked.

  ‘Shut up,’ I replied. In addition to all the other reasons I had for disliking Trin’s would-be heir to the throne, I found his manner of speech deeply annoying.

  ‘I merely wish to ascertain whether there are ways in which I might serve in the endeavour.’

  See what I mean?

  ‘I’m sorry, I’ll be quiet now,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘“I’m sorry, I’ll be quiet now”.’ I held up a hand before he could speak. ‘Those are the only words I want to hear coming out of your mouth whenever I tell you to shut up.’

  His eyes and cheeks went bright red then white as he went from confused to hurt to angry and finally to quiet acceptance.

  ‘Kind of reminds me of Paelis when he makes those little faces,’ Brasti remarked.

  ‘Shut up.’

  The thing about ingenious plans is that they often turn out not to be quite so ingenious if you fail to notice small but important details. I looked at Trin again: her clothes were dirty and ragged, her hair matted against her face. I could see the strain of days, maybe even weeks of captivity in the bruises on her arms and in the grey pallor of her face.

  ‘Enjoying the view?’ she asked, as placid as if we were sitting on the grass under the warm sun by a lake about to share a picnic lunch.

  ‘How did they catch you?’

  ‘It’s sweet that you hold me in such high regard, Falcio, but as I already told you—’