Traitor's Blade (The Greatcoats)

by de Castell, Sebastien

  Kest put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Through the window?’

  I sighed. ‘The window.’

  Fists were banging on the door outside. ‘Goodnight, Lord Tremondi,’ I said. ‘You weren’t an especially good employer. You lied a lot, and never paid us when you promised. But I guess that’s all right, since we turned out to be pretty useless bodyguards.’

  Kest was already climbing out as the constables were beginning to force the door of our room.

  ‘Hang on,’ Brasti said. ‘Shouldn’t we – you know …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know, take his money?’

  Even Kest looked back and raised an eyebrow at that one.

  ‘No, we do not take his money,’ I said.

  ‘Why not? It’s not like he needs it.’

  I sighed again. ‘Because we’re not thieves, Brasti, we’re Greatcoats. And that has to mean something.’

  He started making his way out of the window. ‘Yeah, it means something: it means people hate us. It means they’re going to blame us for Tremondi’s death. It means we’re going to hang from the noose while the mob throws rotten fruit at our corpses shouting, “Tatter-cloak, tatter-cloak!” – And – oh yes it means we also don’t have any money. But at least we still have our coats.’

  He disappeared out of the window and I climbed out after him. The constables had just broken down the door, and when their leader saw me there with the wooden sill digging into my chest as I eased myself out of the window, there was the hint of a smile on his face. I knew instantly what that smile meant: he had more men waiting for us below, and now he could rain arrows down on us while they held us at bay with pikes.

  My name is Falcio val Mond, First Cantor of the Greatcoats, and this was only the first of a great many bad days to come.

  CHILDHOOD MEMORIES

  The duchy where I was born is called Pertine. It is a small and simple place, largely ignored by the rest of Tristia. The word ‘pertine’ has a number of different meanings, but they all come from the flower that grows on the leeward slopes of the mountain ranges that ring the region. It is an odd sort of bluish colour, and you would call it bright at first, but then as you looked on it further, you’d find yourself adding words like ‘oily’ and ‘runny-looking’ and finally ‘sort of disturbing’. The pertine has no known medicinal properties, it makes you sick if you eat it and it smells horrible once plucked from the ground. Needless to say, you’d have to be pretty stupid to make it the one thing people remember about your region. However, somewhere in the distant past, some warlord decided to pick one of these flowers, put it on his cloak and name this land of my birth ‘Pertine’. I imagine he was born without a sense of smell.

  But the folly continues. The guardsmen who watch over the town and comprise our troops in times of war wear tabards of the same colour and general consistency as the flowers that grace our homeland, which inevitably means they are dubbed ‘the Pertines’ – because they are, after all, blue, oily, runny-looking and ultimately quite stinky.

  I was born to this rich heritage as my father had chosen not only to live in Pertine but also to serve in the Pertine Guard. He wasn’t a very good father to me, nor husband to my mother, and I think he realised that for he fired himself when I was seven years old. I always assumed he got himself a new job as husband and father somewhere else, but I never bothered to find out.

  I paid the fate-scribe at the Monastery of Saint Anlas-who-remembers-the-world a good deal of money to write this, though I will never see it myself. How they can transcribe the events of a man’s life from afar, I do not know. Some say they read the threads of fate, or they bond with a man’s mind and capture his thoughts to put down on paper. Others say they just make this shit up, since by the time anyone gets to read it the person it’s about is almost certainly dead. Whichever it is, I hope they at least get this next part right because there are two stories separated by twenty-five years and I think they’re both important, so try to pay attention.

  The first is this: I was eight years old and living with my mother on the outskirts of a town that bordered the outskirts of the next town. My mother often sent me on errands that, in retrospect, now seem a bit suspicious. ‘Falcio, run into town and fetch me a single carrot. Make it a good one, mind you.’ Or, ‘Falcio, run into town and ask the messenger to confirm how much it will cost us to send a letter to your grandfather in Fraletta.’

  Now, I don’t know how it is where you live, but the cost of sending a letter along the main roads hasn’t changed in Pertine for fifty years, and I’m still not sure what one can make with a single carrot. But me being away pleased my mother well enough, and it gave me time to go to the tavern and listen to Bal Armidor. Bal was a young travelling storyteller who spent a great deal of time in our town. He brought middle-aged men of means news of what was happening outside of Pertine and regaled old men with crooked backs with righteous stories of the Saints. He sang young girls sweet songs of romance that made them blush and their admirers boil … and he told me stories of the Greatcoats.

  ‘I’ll tell you a secret, Falcio,’ he said to me one afternoon. The tavern was almost empty and he was tuning his guitar and preparing for the evening’s entertainment. The bartender, washing last night’s mugs, rolled his eyes at us.

  ‘I promise not to tell anyone, Bal, ever,’ I said, as if taking a solemn vow. My voice was kind of creaky, so it didn’t actually sound much like a real vow to me.

  Bal chuckled. ‘No need for that, my trusty friend.’

  Good thing too, I suppose, since I’m about to break the oath.

  ‘What’s the secret, Bal?’

  He glanced up from his guitar and looked around the room before motioning for me to come closer. He spoke in that whisper of his that sounded like it could travel on the wind and reach you from a hundred miles away.

  ‘You know how I told you about King Ugrid?’

  ‘The evil King who disbanded the Greatcoats and swore they would never again use cloak and sword to help the people of the land?’

  ‘Now, remember, Falcio,’ Bal said, ‘the Greatcoats weren’t just a bunch of swordsmen running around fighting monsters and evildoers, were they? They were the travelling Magisters. They heard the complaints of the people who lived outside the reach of the King’s Constabulary, and they meted out justice in his name.’

  ‘But Ugrid hated them,’ I said, hating the embarrassing whine in my voice.

  ‘King Ugrid was very close to the Dukes,’ Bal said evenly, ‘and they believed it was their right to administer and set the laws on their own lands. Not all Kings agreed with that idea, but Ugrid believed that as long as the Dukes paid their taxes and levies, then what they did on their own lands was their business.’

  ‘But everyone knows the Dukes are tyrants,’ I started.

  Bal’s hand came out of nowhere and slapped me hard across the face. When he spoke, his voice was deadly cold. ‘Don’t you ever say such a thing again, Falcio. Do you understand me?’

  I tried to speak, but couldn’t. Bal had never taken a hand to me before and the shock of his betrayal stayed my tongue. After a moment, he set his guitar down and put his hands on my shoulders. I flinched.

  ‘Falcio,’ he sighed, ‘do you know what would happen to you if one of the Duke’s men heard you use the word tyrant when speaking of their Lord? Do you know what would happen to me? There are two words you must be very careful about ever saying aloud: tyrant, and traitor – because they often go together, and usually with terrible results.’

  I tried to ignore him, but when he removed his hands, I couldn’t help myself. ‘So what is it?’

  ‘What is what?’

  ‘The secret. You promised to tell me a secret, but then you hit me instead.’

  Bal ignored the jibe. Resuming his whisper and conspiratorial manner, he leaned closer, as if nothing had happened. ‘Well, when King Ugrid decreed that the Greatcoats would never ride again, he said it would be for all time, right?’

&
nbsp; I nodded.

  ‘King Ugrid had a councillor named Caeolo – Caeolo the Mystery, they called him – and some people believed he was a wizard of great skill and wisdom.’

  ‘I’ve never heard of Caeolo,’ I said, excitement overwhelming sore cheek and wounded pride.

  ‘Very few have,’ Bal said. ‘Caeolo vanished mysteriously before Ugrid died, and he never appeared again.’

  ‘Maybe he killed Ugrid … Maybe he—’

  Bal interrupted me. ‘Now don’t start that mind of yours tumbling all over itself, Falcio. Once it starts, it won’t stop until you pass out from exhaustion.’ The storyteller looked around the room again, though there was no one else there except for the tavern master cleaning cups at the other end of the room. I don’t know if he could hear us, but he had good ears on him.

  ‘Well, as the story goes, after the decree was read aloud in the court, Caeolo took his King aside and said, “My King, though you are Lord of all things and I but your humble councillor, know that the words of a King, no matter how powerful, outlive him by no more than a hundred years.” Ugrid looked at him, shocked at the impertinence, and cried, “What do you think you’re saying to me, Caeolo?” Unperturbed, Caeolo answered, “Only this, my King, that in a hundred years the Greatcoats will ride again, and your mighty words will fade from memory.”’

  Bal looked down at me with what, at the time, I thought was a sparkle in his eyes, although now, looking back, I think it might well have been a tear.

  ‘And do you know how long ago King Ugrid died?’ Bal asked me. When I shook my head, he leaned in close and spoke directly into my ear. ‘Almost a hundred years.’

  My heart leapt straight up out of my chest. It was like my blood had been replaced with lightning. I could—

  ‘Damn you, Bal,’ the tavern master shouted from across the room. ‘Don’t you go filling that boy’s head with your horseshit.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked. My voice sounded strange to me for a moment.

  The tavern master stepped out from behind the bar. ‘There never were no damned Greatcoats. It’s just a story people tell when they ain’t happy with the way things are. Travelling Magisters going about armoured in leather cloaks and fighting with swords and hearing complaints from bloody peasants and servants? It’s shit folk-tales, boy. It never happened.’

  Something about the way he dismissed the Greatcoats so easily – so completely – made the world feel small and empty to me – as small and empty as a house filled with nothing but the idle fancies of a small boy and the sad longings of a lonely woman who still stared outside on cold winter evenings, waiting for her long-gone husband to return.

  Bal started to protest the tavern master’s comments, but I interrupted, ‘You’re wrong – you’re wrong! There were too Greatcoats, and they did do all those things. Stupid rotten King Ugrid banned them, but Caeolo knew! He said they’re going to come back one day and they are too going to come back!’

  I ran for the door before someone else could hit me – but then I stopped and turned around and I put my fist up on my heart. ‘And I’m going to be one of them,’ I swore. And this time it really did sound like a vow.

  *

  The second story I need to tell you took place two years ago, in Cheveran, one of the larger trade cities in the south of Tristia, and it began with a woman’s scream.

  ‘Monster! Give me my daughter!’ The woman was close to my age, perhaps thirty years old, with black hair and blue eyes like those of the little girl I was carrying in my arms. I imagined she was quite pretty when she wasn’t screaming.

  ‘Mummy, what’s wrong?’ the girl asked.

  I had seen the child fall when her foot had got caught on the table-leg of a fruit-seller’s stand next to the alley that had apparently been her destination. Her eyes full of terror, she’d told me a man in Knight’s armour was pursuing her but when I looked for him he was gone. I’d carried the girl the entire way to her home, which wouldn’t have been very far except that she kept getting confused about the right way back.

  ‘Her ankle is sprained,’ I said, trying to shake the water from my hair to keep it from dripping into my eyes. It’s always raining in Cheveran.

  The woman ran back inside her house – I’d assumed it was to get towels, but when she returned she was in fact brandishing a long kitchen knife. ‘Give me my daughter, Trattari,’ she cried.

  ‘Mummy!’ the girl screamed into my ear.

  There’s a great deal of screaming in this story. Best get used to it now.

  ‘I told you, her ankle is sprained,’ I said. ‘Now kindly let me in so I can put her down. You can try and stab me afterwards.’

  If the woman thought I was in the least bit clever she covered it up by yelling for help. ‘Trattari! Oh, help me! A tatter-cloak has my daughter!’

  ‘Oh, Saint Zaghev-who-sings-for-tears, just let me put the girl down!’

  With no apparent help coming, the woman eyed me warily and then backed away into the house, the knife still between us. I wasn’t worried for myself – my coat would blunt any impact from being stabbed – but there was a decent chance the woman would end up hitting her own daughter in the process.

  In the central room of the house there was a small settee. I placed the girl on her side, but she immediately sat up, then winced when her foot touched the ground.

  The woman ran to her daughter, wrapping her arms around her and squeezing her before pulling back to look at every inch of her. ‘What have you done to her?’

  ‘Other than help her when she fell, carry her here and listen to you scream at me? Nothing.’

  The girl looked up at us. ‘It’s true, Mummy; I was being chased by a Knight and then this man helped me.’

  The mother kept an eye on me and her knife between us. ‘Oh, sweet Beatta, silly child, no Knight would ever harm you. He was probably trying to protect you.’

  Beatta made a face. ‘That’s silly. I was just trying to buy an apple from the fruitman.’

  At that moment, two men and a boy of about twelve ran into the house. ‘Saints, Merna, what’s the matter?’ the taller of the two men asked. All three were of a set: sandy-brown hair and square-jawed, dressed in the brown overalls of labourers. The two men were carrying hammers and the boy held a rock in his fist.

  ‘This Trattari had my daughter!’ Merna said.

  I held up both my hands in a gesture of – well, please-don’t-attack-me. ‘There’s a misunderstanding, I—’

  ‘There’s a misunderstanding, all right,’ one of the men said, taking a step forward. ‘You seem to think a tatter-cloak is welcome to come here and attack our women.’

  ‘Aye,’ said the other. ‘Servants of the dead tyrant aren’t welcome here, Trattari.’

  Despite my desire to calm the situation, I found that my rapier was in my right hand, its point close to the man’s neck. ‘Call the King that again, friend, and we’ll have a problem that your hammer won’t solve.’

  Merna was doing her best to cover up Beatta with her body, but the child poked her head out. ‘Why do you call him that? What’s a Trattari?’

  ‘A Trattari is a tatter-cloak,’ Merna said, spitting the words. ‘One of bloody King Paelis’ so-called “magistrates”.’

  ‘Assassins, more like,’ the taller man said. ‘We should hold him and send Ty to fetch the constables.’

  ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I came here because the girl was hurt and scared – she believed herself in danger. She’s safe with you now, so just let me be on my way.’

  The sight of my rapier made that suggestion sound sensible enough to the workmen, who began moving aside to let me pass.

  ‘Wait,’ the girl said.

  ‘What is it, Beatta?’ the woman asked.

  ‘I said I’d give him some of my supper. He dropped his apple when he came to help me and I said he could share my dinner.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said, ‘I’m not—’

  To my surprise, the girl’s mother rose fr
om the settee. ‘Wait here,’ she said.

  The two men and the boy did a remarkable job of looking like they were keeping me at bay despite the fact that nothing was actually happening.

  ‘Why do you call him “Trattari”?’ Beatta repeated, this time addressing the two men.

  It was the boy who replied. ‘It means tatter-cloak,’ he said. ‘They called themselves the Greatcoats, and their coats were supposed to never show wear so long as their honour held.’

  ‘But of course, they had no honour,’ the shorter of the two men said.

  ‘Because they served the tyrant, Paelis?’ Beatta asked.

  ‘Oh, aye, they were bastards for interfering with the lawful rule of the Dukes. But no, child, the reason they’re called tatter-cloaks is because when the Dukes came with their armies to put a stop to the tyrant’s ways, these so-called Greatcoats stood aside and abandoned their King just to save their own skins.’

  ‘But if the King was bad, then wasn’t it good that they stepped aside?’ the girl asked.

  Her mother returned from the kitchen carrying an apple and a piece of cheese, which she hastily stuffed into a small sack. ‘No, dear. You see, the Knights teach us that any man has honour, so long as he serves his Lord faithfully. But these traitors failed to do even that much. So we call them Trattari now – tatter-cloaks – because their coats are as torn as their honour.’

  ‘Keep the food,’ I said. ‘I’ve lost my appetite.’

  ‘No.’ The woman stood her ground between me and the entryway, holding the sack out to me. ‘I want my daughter to learn right from wrong. She promised you food, and food you shall have. I’ll have no presumed debts to a traitor.’

  I looked at her, and at the men. ‘What about the man?’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘The Knight. The one she said was chasing her. What if he seeks her out again?’

  Merna laughed. It was a remarkably unpleasant sound. ‘As if one of the Ducal Knights would ever harm a child! If there was a Knight there, more than likely he saw you eyeing her and thought he needed to protect her.’ The mother looked at her child. ‘Beatta’s a silly girl. She was probably just confused.’