‘Yield,’ I said.
I could see him working through the possibilities for escape faster than I could envision any counter-manoeuvres, but it didn’t matter. He knew I had the one advantage that he had given up from the start. I was willing to kill my best friend.
‘What’s happened to you?’ he asked, the words so quiet I didn’t know whether he’d spoken them aloud or I had simply read his lips. I’ve never seen such agony in a man’s face as I did then: Kest, who ignored pain and exhaustion like other men did a light breeze. Kest, who’d barely grunted when I’d severed his right hand from his arm to stop Shuran. Kest, who even now, even after what I’d done and was going to do, still loved me more than any brother could.
Had I a heart left to break, that would have done it, but my voice didn’t even quaver as I said, ‘They showed me how the world works.’
He nodded, as if somehow that answer made sense. I let my gaze move to Duchess Ossia. The horror of what she’d done was already wearing off and she was rising to her feet. She’d call her men to fight with me – some might refuse, of course; now that Filian was the sole heir, to kill him would be regicide, and everyone fears the curse that comes from spilling a King’s blood. It didn’t matter, though, because I didn’t need them to win, just to create enough chaos for me to finish what I’d started.
Without a word, Kest knelt down, signalling he wouldn’t try to stop me again. I glanced at Brasti, who had an arrow nocked. I knew he wouldn’t fire. His eyes were filled with tears and so much sorrow that he looked like an old man to me. He removed his arrow from the string and he too knelt down on the floor, and as he did that, others did as well, even some of Trin’s men. Perhaps it was because they genuinely didn’t know who was in charge any more. Perhaps it was simply that kneeling is so often second nature to us.
‘Duchess Tarindelle of Hervor,’ I said, stepping past Kest and making my way to her, ‘for your crimes against this nation, for murder and conspiracy, it is my verdict that you will be executed.’
Filian tried to stand in front of her. ‘Who are you to issue such a verdict without trial?’ he demanded.
‘I am the First Cantor of the Magistrates of Tristia,’ I replied. ‘I’m the man with the sword.’
He reached for his belt-knife, but Trin stopped him. She whispered something in his ear and after a few seconds he reluctantly stepped aside. She looked up at me, for once neither smiling, nor making any sly comment or bold threat. Our eyes met, and for the first time I recognised how similar we were: both tacticians at heart, finding the path through obstacles others believed impenetrable. That’s why she knew that there was no move, no ploy that would save her now.
Trin went to her knees and spread her arms wide, tilting her head back, giving me a range of options on how best to end her. It was also a clear signal to her supporters not to interfere. I felt a strange surge of gratitude. She could have commanded her men to protect her and made this a bloody affair, but she didn’t.
Filian was staring daggers at me and I wondered why he didn’t command the guards to stop me – I supposed that too was Trin’s doing. Perhaps she thought I might not kill him if he didn’t interfere.
As I came closer to Trin, my rapier in my hand, I felt an eerie calm take over me. At first I thought it was simply the feeling of peace that comes when you’ve made your decision and no longer question it, then I realised it was something else. I tilted my blade up a few inches and saw her in its reflection.
‘Ethalia.’
‘Ethalia-who-shares-all-sorrows,’ she corrected me. ‘The Saint of Mercy.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The Saint of Mercy
My plan had been so simple, so perfectly clever. I’d considered everything: the room, the furniture, the soldiers and their weapons, Trin, Filian – everything and everyone, except for the woman I loved.
White light reflected off my blade, blinding me for a moment, and the calm I’d felt a moment before began to weigh me down, pulling me to the floor. ‘You’re making a mistake, Ethalia,’ I said. ‘I’ve resisted the Awe of Saints before. I’ll do it again.’
I heard her footsteps coming up behind me and I found myself breathing more deeply, wanting to inhale the scent of her. All my talk of ‘friendship’, of leaving the future uncertain between us, had been rubbish. I loved Ethalia; it was as simple as that. The skin on the back of my neck awaited her touch.
It never came.
She walked right past me to stand in front of Trin. ‘Put away your sword, Falcio. Help me take Aline away from all this anger and destruction. Let us grieve for her together, and wait with her until she can be made ready for burial in the green grass behind this castle that she protected from madmen and Gods alike.’
‘Pulnam,’ I said.
‘What does—?’
‘She wants to be buried in Pulnam, on a little hill outside the village of Phan. That’s where her father was buried. The Tailor knows where it is. She can show you.’
‘Then we will take her there together.’
I shook my head. ‘You’ll have to do it without me. Kest will accompany you, keep you safe on the journey.’
The white light flared. ‘I can take care of myself, Falcio val Mond. Who will take care of you?’
‘Step aside now, Ethalia,’ I said. ‘This isn’t a place for Saints.’
‘Is it a place for murder?’
‘Without doubt. Aline died here, like her father before. This place has been consecrated with the blood of her family.’
‘And now you’ll kill Trin?’
‘I will. She caused this.’
‘And Filian?’
‘I haven’t decided yet.’
‘And me? Look at me, Falcio.’
I struggled to raise my eyes to see her. Her loose dress was covered with the dust in the air all around us. She looked tired. I caught my own reflection in the blade of my rapier, which I was still holding out in front of me even though every part of me screamed that it was an abomination to brandish a weapon in front of the Saint of Mercy. ‘I could never hurt you.’
‘Of course you could, Falcio. You just need to be angry enough to give yourself an excuse.’
Those were the cruellest words anyone has ever said to me. The thought that she believed me capable of doing her harm, after all the things I’d gone through in my life . . . ?
Then her light pulled back somehow, as if the air was being drawn out of me – but it wasn’t air. Something else – compassion. Mercy. I supposed it made sense that the Saint of Mercy might be able to withdraw her nature from a person if she so chose.
So this was how she planned to do it: to make me waver in my certainty by taking away her influence entirely, to make me long for that sense of compassion I always felt around her. How typical. She’d never truly understood the nature of a duellist: that we don’t care how we feel; we just do what must be done. This was Ethalia in her purest form. Manipulative. Deceitful. Using my love of her – the love she’d rejected – to bend me to her will when her Awe couldn’t do the job.
I took a step forward, and she flinched as if I’d struck her. I didn’t care.
‘Falcio, don’t,’ Kest said behind me.
He’d get up and try to stop me in a moment, once he realised what was about to happen. I was going to kill Trin, as I’d promised to do, as I should have done ages ago. Ethalia thought she could stand there and stop me, but she was wrong.
I’d never realised before just how sick I was of people who were supposed to care about me trying to force my hand, to handcuff me to their own weakness. I could have saved this country years ago, if only the King hadn’t commanded me to step aside while the Dukes brought their armies into Aramor. I could have ended this mess and saved Aline if only I’d killed Trin back in Avares. Did Ethalia really think I was going to stop now? I wasn’t. I wanted to kill her almost as much as I wa
nted to kill Trin – in fact, I could just drive my rapier through Ethalia’s heart and straight into Trin’s neck, and then I would be free. At long last, the torment inside me would go away and I would drift back into that blessed madness that had sustained me for so long, before Ethalia had taken it from me.
I took another step towards her, towards Trin, towards freedom.
One lunge. One perfectly executed lunge, just like in the old fencing manuals. Don’t think of Ethalia or the future or anything else. Let the explosion begin in the calf of the rear leg, the muscles carrying the force up into the body, the arm forming the perfect line, the tip of the blade piercing skin then flesh, scraping past bone and through the other side and into Trin’s neck.
Freedom. Freedom from all of them is one lunge away.
Part of me kept expecting my wife Aline to appear, or perhaps King Paelis: hallucinations, memories from my past, come to haunt me into good behaviour. Nothing.
As I began the strike, I looked into Ethalia’s eyes, so sure was I that nothing there could stop me. Her own gaze was peaceful, serene . . . no . . . it was something else: confident. She was convinced I wouldn’t do this. How stupid. Aline, my King’s daughter, used to look at me that way, so absolutely positive that I would stop whichever assassin had come for her – and I’d done it, too; time after time I’d found a way to save her . . . Until now. Was this all I’d ever been? A reflection in the eyes of others? A man with no dreams of his own, who only tried to live up to the expectations of those he cared for? And if that was true, then this, right now, the one act of my own choosing, the only thing I’d ever done for myself, was going to be an act of murder.
No.
I raised my hand high, letting the tip of my sword point straight down. With all the strength in my body, with every last ounce of rage in my being, I drove it down into the marble floor.
By rights the blade should have shattered, yet somehow I’d found the perfect angle and the tip struck a weak point in the marble. My rapier sank nearly a foot into the floor of Castle Aramor’s throne room. I let go of the grip and watched as it quivered from the force of the impact. The stonemason’s warning about the castle’s weaknesses came back to me and I found myself wondering if we were all about to go tumbling down to our deaths. There would have been a kind of poetic symmetry in that, but death, like life, cares nothing for poetry.
Very slowly, I walked back to Aline’s body. I removed my greatcoat and laid it on top of her.
Then I turned and faced the room. ‘I’d like to go to my cell now,’ I said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
The Three Visitors
The first week in a cell is the hardest. Fear is a constant companion, an unwelcome cellmate who talks and talks until you clamp your hands against your ears even though you know it will do no good. Then, when exhaustion finally overtakes you, he whispers such horrors to you that your own imagination seems an insufficient canvas to hold so many dark thoughts.
I suppose it’s even worse for those who still care about living.
For someone like me, who, let’s face it, has never had the most adamantine grip on reality, the real problem is having my sanity fall out from beneath me like a trapdoor opening onto a particularly deep pit. The sensation felt so familiar that the thought of going mad was almost welcome – it does help to pass the time, after all. However, it’s not without its annoyances, specifically, never being sure if the parade of people coming to see you are real or not.
‘Food,’ my night-time guard said, and I looked up from the darkness of my cot to see him holding a tray beneath the dim light of the lantern hanging in the hallway outside my cell. I checked to see if his appearance had changed; in my experience, imaginary people rarely look exactly the same from visit to visit. In this case, Dezerick was much the same as every other time I’d seen him: a big, burly man with oddly beautiful blue eyes offset by a nose that had clearly been broken more than once. He had thick, curly black hair and a beard that looked like it had been recently been adorning a bear’s—
‘You’re not real,’ I said, wagging a finger at him.
He looked surprised. ‘I’m not?’
I got up from my cot so I could see him better. ‘You’ve had a haircut – and not one you did yourself – and your beard has been trimmed. Elegantly.’
‘A man’s not allowed to take some pride in his appearance?’
I kept silent. It’s important to remember not to talk back to hallucinations.
‘Look, do you want this food or not? Otherwise I’m going to eat it.’
Despite myself, my eyes went to the tray: a bowl of soup that smelled of tomato and basil, a thick slice of bread and a plate that appeared to have a slab of actual meat on it (and not rat meat, either). ‘Now I know I’m imagining you,’ I said, breaking my own rule about not conversing with my delusions. ‘Who in the hells would bother putting herbs in prison soup?’
‘Brings out the flavour,’ he said, sounding a little offended. ‘Besides, why would the cooks go to the trouble of making especially unappetising meals just for you when they’ve already got pots of proper soup made for the castle’s guests and staff?’
He was right; you really do have to wonder why most dungeons go to all the trouble of serving such unpalatable food to prisoners.
‘That doesn’t explain the beef,’ I pointed out. ‘And I couldn’t help but notice you’re wearing a clean shirt too . . .’
‘Look, I’m going to put this tray through the slot and you can either eat it or not as pleases you. Now, do you want to hand me your shit-bucket or is that imaginary too?’
Reluctantly, I picked up the bucket and slid it through the gap in the bars intended for that purpose – and immediately ran to the far corner of the cell. Guards often find it terribly funny when, instead of taking away the bucket, they hurl the contents through the bars and drench you in your own filth.
Dezerick gave me a sour look. ‘You really do expect the worst of people, don’t you?’
As he started his slow shamble back down the hall I scrutinised the contents of the tray. My inspection lasted less than a second before I grabbed the beef and took a bite, barely bothering to chew before swallowing it. Yes, fine, it might have been poisoned, but really, I’d attempted to kill the new heir to the throne so I was going to die anyway soon enough. And in truth, the meals hadn’t been bad to start with, and oddly, appeared to be getting better and better. ‘A proper haircut,’ I called out between the bars. ‘Your beard styled and oiled and a nice new shirt. Who’s been bribing you to bring me better food?’
The guard came back and folded his arms across his chest. ‘Did you just accuse me o—?’
‘I’m not complaining. I’m just saying, I hope you made out all right on the deal.’
A wide grin slowly spread across Dezerick’s face. ‘I’ve never had so many give me money! I can’t walk from my cottage to the castle without someone slipping a coin into my hand. “Show him some kindness,” they say, “and there’ll be more on the morrow.” I swear, Falcio, the missus and I are this close to being able to buy a nice little plot of farmland we’ve had our eye on.’ He glanced down at the tray, now mostly empty, as I’d been eating while he’d been talking. ‘Want some more? It isn’t any trouble.’
I shook my head. ‘Thanks, but I’m all right – I don’t want to look fat at my hanging, do I?’
‘Well, I hope that’s not too soon.’ His look made it clear he’d hold me personally responsible for any loss of income should I be executed before he’d become the proud possessor of a snug little farm. ‘Anyway, if there’s anything I can do for you – well, other than letting you escape! – you let me know.’
I considered that for a moment. Books might have been nice, and perhaps an oil lamp to read them by, but that wasn’t how I wanted to spend this favour. ‘There is one thing you could do for me.’
�
�Name it,’ he said warily.
‘No visitors.’
*
Despite my request, I received a visitor that same night. I suppose given who it was, I couldn’t really blame the guard.
‘Hello, First Cantor.’
At first I thought it might be Filian, but where his voice had always annoyed me with its supercilious formality, this one was younger, richer, filled with a kind of warm enthusiasm, like that of a child about to set out on their first fishing expedition.
I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and waited for my vision to clear as I stared at a young man of twelve with unruly dark hair and an overly optimistic grin. Tommer, who’d taken a fatal blow protecting Aline from a God, whose hand I’d held as he’d given up his last breath, was standing a few feet away from me, inside my cell.
‘You’d better be a fucking hallucination, because if you’re the God of Valour I’m going to kick the shit out of you.’
He laughed and brought his small fists up into guard. ‘Shall we have a bout, First Cantor?’
I was seriously considering punching my God in the face when a loud hiss was accompanied by a sudden painful scratch on the back of my hand. I looked down to see the source of the punishment for my blasphemy.
‘You brought the fucking cat?’
‘When I told her I was coming to visit you, she wanted to come along.’
As if to prove his point, the little wretch hopped up on my lap and promptly went to sleep. She was warm, though her fur was a little wet and stank of – well, cat, which made it somewhat harder for me to convince myself that this was all a hallucination. ‘I thought you were dead. I thought the Blacksmith’s God killed you.’
Tommer – no, Valour – tilted his head as he stared back at me. ‘Faith has to go somewhere, Falcio. It can’t just disappear. It’s not magic, you know.’
‘Are you trying to be funny?’
‘I died, as did the others, but we come back, over time. Death returned first – of course – and Love was quick to follow. I was perhaps a little late.’
Tyrant's Throne Page 37
