Traitor's Blade (The Greatcoats)

by de Castell, Sebastien

  When I reached Cairn he looked up in obvious agony. ‘I’m not done yet,’ he said. ‘I can still fight; there’s been no first blood.’

  ‘He’s right, you know,’ Lorenzo said. ‘Good for you, Cairn. Let’s go again!’

  ‘Get up and go and find a doctor for your wrist,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not a coward!’ he half-cried, half-croaked through the pain.

  ‘Fine,’ I said. I pulled my rapier out and slashed Cairn’s arm. A thin line of bright red appeared and he yelled out.

  ‘Why?’ he said through gritted teeth.

  ‘Your honour’s satisfied. You didn’t withdraw. Now go to the fucking doctor and get your broken wrist seen to or you’ll never be able to use a sword anyway.’

  There was a smattering of giggles around the room.

  ‘Shall we begin, oh mighty teacher?’ Lorenzo asked.

  I waited until Cairn had pulled himself up and made his way out the door before I said, ‘I’m going to beat you silly, you stupid, pompous waste of a boy.’

  I’m not sure what it was about that particular phrase that got to him, but something did. Lorenzo came at me with that long rapier of his with seven bloody hells shining out his eyes.

  I’d like to be able to tell you that I pulled some very simple but ingenious move and knocked him flat on his back in one blow. I’d like to say that everyone laughed and he was humiliated and skulked off to begin a career as village idiot somewhere. But unfortunately that’s not how it happened.

  To begin with, Lorenzo really was an outstanding fighter. He was probably as good with a sword as anyone I’ve met except for Kest. And he was younger than me by more than a decade. He was taller, with a longer reach, and stronger, with a steadier hand. I was tired and injured and had no business trying to teach him a lesson. If this had been a contest of strength or skill he would have won hands down.

  But beat him I did. I beat him black and blue and red.

  When he tried to engage my blade, I pulled mine out of line and grabbed the end of his sword with my gloved hand, twisting hard to bend the blade into a small arc and making it difficult for him to pull it away. When he yanked on the sword in frustration I came with it and smashed my hilt into his shoulder. When he tried using his greater height and strength to strike a heavy blow from above I performed a dancer’s lunge to his right and slapped the side of my blade hard against his knee. When he came at me with finesse, I struck back like a drunken brute. When he attacked in rage I countered with finesse. I used every trick I knew to make an opponent angry and careless, to embarrass a man into making mistakes, to humiliate and to hurt. I didn’t want to just beat him. I wanted to break him.

  I snapped two of his ribs and the fingers of his right hand. I took the smirk off his face and very nearly went for his entire mouth in the bargain. I beat him because, in the end, I was meaner and more desperate, and because this wasn’t a game to me. I said that Lorenzo was outstanding with the blade, and he was. He’d likely never been beaten by anyone, ever. Well, I’ve been beaten plenty of times and there’s something to be said for it: it’s how you learn what’s truly at stake. The world isn’t a romantic stage play; it’s not all love or glory. And a swordfight isn’t always about skill or strength; sometimes – maybe even most times – it’s about who’s willing to take a blow just to make sure he delivers a worse one to his opponent.

  He lay in a heap on the ground at my feet, looking up at the ceiling as if Saints were coming down from the sky. I think he was in shock as much as he was in pain. I knew I had taken something away from him, something precious. He could have become a legend with the sword one day, maybe even surpassed Kest, but he would have been a monster, too. And I’m in the business of stopping monsters.

  ‘Let’s go,’ I said to Aline. The crowd was as still as stone statues but, when I moved towards the door, they parted for me. All except for Lorenzo’s woman, Etricia, who put up her blade and waved it at me.

  ‘Fight me!’ she cried.

  I looked at her, all wounded pride and lovestruck. ‘No.’

  ‘Come on, you coward! What, you don’t think women can fight? Fight me like a man, damn you!’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, and knocked the point of her sword out of line and then kicked her between the legs as hard as I could. She dropped to the ground next to Lorenzo in visible agony. It was a mean and cheap move, but that day, in that damned city? On that day I was a very mean and cheap man indeed.

  ‘Anyone else?’ I asked the crowd.

  ‘Anyone else?’ I asked again, louder. My voice was tight, almost shrill. Usually after a fight I’m exhausted; I just want a bath and a bed. But something was different this time. I was angry – if anything, I was more angry than when I’d fought Lorenzo. He was the instigator, but these people had cheered him on. They weren’t monsters; they were the people who fed the monster.

  ‘Then take off your coats,’ I said.

  They looked at me as if I was speaking another tongue.

  ‘Take off the coats. Take them off and put them in the fire.’

  ‘Falcio, stop,’ Aline said. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’

  I ignored her and took a step towards the crowd. ‘Any man or woman who still has a greatcoat on by the time I reach them will get my sword in their belly. Take the fucking coats off and put them in the fire.’

  They did, every single one of them. Etricia, still in some discomfort, was helped by another woman to get Lorenzo’s coat off. In the end, the large central firepit could barely contain them, and the flame threatened to go out from the weight of the leather. Gods, but it stank.

  ‘What … what do we do now?’ a boy barely out of his teens asked.

  ‘Get yourself something else to wear.’

  No one tried to stop me as I pulled Aline along with me and out the door.

  THE SOFT CANDY

  It was morning in Rijou. Although it was still cold, the light felt harsh enough that wherever it struck it seemed to make the stink rise from the gutters along the pavement.

  ‘That was stupid,’ Aline said.

  I looked down at her for a moment before turning right to head east along the broad street called Pikeman’s Way.

  ‘That was stupid.’

  ‘Which part?’

  ‘All of it,’ she said. ‘But for right now, the stupidest part is that we’re walking away in broad daylight and any of them can see where we’re going.’

  ‘They’re fools and cowards,’ I said. ‘There’s not one of them will come looking for us. We’ll keep to the east and make for the Wood-carvers’ District. There won’t be much happening there during the Blood Week and there are a lot of places to hide.’

  ‘It was still stupid,’ she said, ignoring me.

  ‘How many times are you going to say that?’

  She stopped and grabbed me by the sleeve of my coat, trying to turn me around. I decided it was time to clarify who was in charge.

  ‘Look—’

  Her face was full of tears.

  ‘Why are you—?’

  ‘Because I’m scared! Can’t you see that? Don’t you ever get scared?’

  I knelt down, trying to talk to her at eye level, but she was too tall for that, so I got up again and leaned down to her – it was remarkably awkward, and it made what I said next sound even more foolish. ‘I’m scared all the time, Aline. I’m scared right now. But we’ve got to move on and find a place—’

  ‘You’re not!’ Her voice was half-shriek and half-growl, and it made me take a step backwards. It was early enough that there was no one else about, but I was still worried someone living above the nearby shops might take notice.

  ‘You’re not,’ she said, more quietly. ‘No one who was afraid would do something as stupid as you did back there. Those people could have helped us.’

  ‘Those people weren’t—’

  She threw her arms up and down in a gesture of frustration and futility. ‘Those people weren’t Greatcoats, but they could have hel
ped us. They could have given us a place to stay, they might have looked out for us, even just given us money or contacts. Something! Anything!’

  ‘I understand that it’s hard, but you don’t understand everything that’s at play here,’ I started, but she interrupted me.

  ‘No, Falcio val Mond of the Greatcoats, it’s you who doesn’t understand. You don’t understand what it is you’re doing.’ She spoke with all the assurance of a young girl who still thinks life should play out like a storyteller’s romance.

  But I was tired, and aching from more fights in two days than I’d fought in the last year. ‘I’m trying to keep you alive, damn it!’

  ‘No,’ she said, quietly, calmly, ‘you’re trying to get back at them all – Shiballe, the Duke, that woman who calls herself a Princess: everyone who doesn’t believe in you and your Greatcoats.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I said. ‘If I was out to hurt them, believe me, I could find lots of ways that would be less work and less dangerous.’

  ‘But that would be revenge, wouldn’t it? Or assassination? I’m just an excuse for you to fight all these people you hate and beat as many of them as you can before one of them finally kills you and you can die feeling noble and heroic.’

  ‘I wish I had the time to stand here and listen to you berate me, little girl, but I’m afraid I have to try and keep you alive now,’ I said pettishly.

  ‘Then do that! Stop picking fights with everyone you meet and find a way for us to survive this!’

  ‘Fine,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘And how exactly do you think we should go about it?’

  ‘I don’t know! I’m thirteen years old. I’m not supposed to know how to stay alive while everyone is trying to kill me. You’re supposed to be— You’re supposed to know how to do that.’ And with that she started crying uncontrollably.

  I reached out to her, but she pushed my hand away and we stood there in silence, her sobs the only sounds punctuating the emptiness of the street.

  Finally I said quietly, ‘I don’t know how.’

  She looked up from her crying and said, ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know how we can do it. It’s not— I thought it was possible, but this city – it lives on murder and deceit. I don’t know how many are after us, or why, but I do know Shiballe can get anyone in this city to do what he wants. This whole place – the people … It’s practically designed for murder.’

  ‘I’m going to die, aren’t I?’ she said stoically.

  I didn’t want to say it; it would serve no purpose. Even vain hope is still hope, and some reason to keep moving. But somehow it felt wrong to lie just then. This girl had lost her family, and she would soon lose her life, all for no purpose other than the machinations of men who gave less thought to this than to what wine they drank at dinner. She had the right to choose whether to face or hide from the world as it really was.

  ‘Yes, they’re going to find us,’ I said quietly. ‘One or more of them is going to catch us. And yes, they’re going to kill us.’

  She looked at the ground, then she shook herself and looked back at me, her eyes clear. ‘I’m ready then,’ she said.

  I shook my head as if to clear it. I wasn’t sure what she meant, and I wasn’t sure what else to say.

  ‘I want you to do it,’ she said firmly.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Kill me.’ She saw my reaction and immediately put her hand on my chest before I could turn away. ‘You have to. You don’t know what I know, Falcio. They won’t just kill me on the spot. They’ll take me and they’ll torture me – they’ll turn me over to the men who do these things for them. I’m all right – I mean, I can stand to die, but I don’t want any more pain. I don’t want them to—’

  ‘Aline, you’re the daughter of an otherwise unremarkable nobleman who just happened to irritate the Duke by marrying the wrong woman. They’re a lot more likely to kill you and torture me,’ I said softly.

  ‘I don’t care.’ she said stubbornly. ‘I don’t want them to win. If I’m going to die, I want to do it on my terms. I can’t run any more.’

  I thought about that for a moment. How do you answer when they take the last good thing from your life? It’s the same question I’ve been asking myself all these years, since they killed the King – before that even, in truth: since they killed my wife, my brave Aline. Gods, how in the world had I reached this hopeless place, trying vainly to keep a doomed little girl alive for no better reason than that she shared the same name as my dead wife?

  I reached into the inner pocket of my coat and pulled out the tiny package. I handed it to her.

  ‘I don’t want any more of the hard candy right now,’ she said.

  ‘That’s not what it is. Open it.’

  She did. Inside she saw the little square of soft orange and red striped confectionary. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘It’s the soft candy,’ I said.

  ‘You said that before. What’s it for?’

  ‘It’s for when you can’t run any more. It’s for when there’s no hope left.’

  She picked it out of the package carefully with finger and thumb and brought it to her lips.

  *

  ‘There’s always hope,’ the King said, pushing the tiny package back to me. He’d been away on a trip to one of the great cities, ‘courting the nobles’, as he called them, as if it were all a grand joke he told himself for amusement. He wasn’t smiling now, though. ‘You shouldn’t have asked the apothecary to concoct this without my permission, Falcio, if for no other reason than that it smells absolutely foul.’

  ‘Would you have given permission?’ I asked.

  He pushed me towards one of the great reading chairs in the library – we spent a great deal of time there during those early days. The King had no experience with war; he had never served in his father’s army, nor had he been part of Greggor’s administration, nor taken any part in the running of the country. Most of his adult life had been spent imprisoned, with no companionship but the books his mother had stolen for him. Through that mercy she had made him a strong believer in reading, and as a result, we spent hours in the royal library, searching out and reading books on war, on politics, on strategy.

  ‘No, Falcio, I would not have given you permission to create a means for my Greatcoats to commit suicide.’

  ‘If one of us is caught, if we know things—’

  ‘What things?’ the King asked.

  ‘Things – secret things. Damn it, you know what I mean!’

  ‘And you want to kill yourself before anyone can make you reveal those … things?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why not just tell them?’

  ‘Why not just—? Are you playing with me, your Majesty?’

  The King smiled at me. He had a funny-looking smile for a monarch. Despite being better fed and haler than when I’d first met him, he still had that slightly idiotic-looking smile I remembered from the night in his chamber when I’d gone to kill him.

  ‘Falcio, why in the world would I want to lose one of my Magisters simply to keep a secret that, quite frankly, I’ll never know whether they revealed or not?’

  ‘So you want us to just tell them everything when we’re captured?’

  ‘Well, I’m sure you can offer a bit of token resistance – a sort of, “Secrets? What secrets?” type of thing … but really, why not? At least that way I’ll know that the secret’s out. At least that way there’s a chance I keep my Magister, who might later escape and bring back vital intelligence.’

  ‘Your Majesty, there’s something you’re not getting here—’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll enlighten me,’ he said drily.

  ‘If a Greatcoat is near capture, if he’s surrounded, he might be more inclined to surrender if he knows there’s a chance of saving his skin. No matter how brave or loyal the man, it’s a trade he might make.’

  ‘Whereas you’d prefer they fight to the death?’

  ‘You said there�
��s always hope. Well, there’s always hope if you keep fighting.’

  The King smiled. ‘No, Falcio, there isn’t. There’s just always someone left to kill.’

  ‘That’s something, then, isn’t it?’

  The King stood and refilled our wine goblets and we sat in silence for a few minutes, idly glancing at the pages of the open books that weighed down the large oak table.

  ‘You weren’t always a Greatcoat, Falcio,’ he said finally.

  ‘I wasn’t always in the Greatcoats, but I was always a Greatcoat in my heart,’ I corrected him.

  He laughed. ‘Such a romantic! Such an optimist!’

  ‘It saved you from getting a sword in the belly, didn’t it?’

  ‘I rather think exhaustion combined with several crossbow bolts had something to do with that as well.’

  ‘You think I would’ve murdered you, then?’

  He thought about it for a moment, then said, ‘No, not once you’d realised I wasn’t my father and I was still helpless as an underfed kitten. But if I’d been a little better fed, a little stronger …’

  ‘You think so little of me? You think I’d kill someone just because—?’

  ‘You’d kill someone just because they were bigger than you, Falcio, yes. If they were on the wrong side but they were scrawny, you’d find a way to – well, knock them out or some such thing. But if you’d seen me in that room that night, fit and full of health? Yes, I think you’d have killed me and gone off in search of the next closest heir to the throne until you found someone too weak to defend themselves.’

  I didn’t like where this was going, so I picked up the wine goblet and took a drink. It was already empty, so I felt even more the fool.