Traitor's Blade (The Greatcoats)

by de Castell, Sebastien

  But they didn’t start with that. I guessed they might want to soften me up first, which is why I wasn’t surprised when he began pummelling me in the face, stomach and back, asking questions all the while. His accent was so thick, I could barely understand him, but he kept repeating one question, as if by rote.

  ‘She wants to know, are there any others?’ A blow to the stomach.

  ‘She wants to know, are there any others?’ Another blow, this time to the ribs on my right side.

  ‘Any other what?’ I asked.

  Another strike, this time to the face. ‘She wants to know, are there any others?’

  Our relationship went on like that for some time.

  Sometimes he stopped for a while, but only so he could lavish my skin with creams which burned like spilled lighting oil across my chest.

  Then he would begin again with the beatings.

  I didn’t try to hold my tongue – that’s a big mistake. Expressing pain is part of how the body releases it. He wanted me to talk, so talk I did: I told him how I felt. I told him where it hurt. I told him all about myself. I grunted and I moaned and I wept for mercy, and in those moments when he stopped, when I could get myself to speak again, I did what a Greatcoat is supposed to do when we’re captured. I recited the King’s Laws.

  ‘The First Law is that men are free,’ I sang softly. ‘For without the freedom to choose, men cannot serve their heart, and without heart they cannot serve their Gods, their Saints, or their King.’

  *

  ‘What is the Greatcoats’ most powerful weapon?’ King Paelis asked us. He was standing on a low dais in the courtyard as all one hundred and forty-four Greatcoats stood at attention. It was the first day of spring and, for the very first time, the full power of the Greatcoats would go out to the cities, villages and hamlets of the country, to hear cases and administer the King’s Justice. We had trained; we had prepared; we were ready. But the King – never one to leave well enough alone – still felt the need to impart one more lesson before we left.

  ‘The sword is the greatest weapon,’ someone shouted.

  The King shook his head. ‘There will always be someone better with a sword.’

  ‘Well, maybe Kest’s sword, then,’ someone else said. There was laughter.

  ‘Secrecy,’ another offered.

  Again the King disagreed. ‘We are at our best when people know who we are and what we bring.’

  ‘Speed!’

  ‘Strength of will!’

  It went on like that for a few moments, and the King looked down at me as if expecting me to speak, so I said, ‘Our greatcoats. It is our greatcoats that shield us from danger. Their surface protects us from the swords of our opponents. Their lightness makes us move faster than an armoured Knight. Their warmth protects us from the freezing cold. Their pockets hold the things we need to survive. Our greatcoats are our best weapon.’

  There were murmurs of agreement from the others.

  But the King shook his head. ‘Ah, Falcio, even you … No, your greatcoat is still just a thing. It can be taken from you.’

  ‘Never!’ someone shouted.

  The King put his hands up for silence then stepped forward to the very front of the dais. ‘Your greatest weapon is your judgement,’ he said simply. ‘Everything else can be taken from you; everything else could be provided by someone else. There are many men and women with swords; anyone can fight or run or kill. But only you, my Magisters, only you bring the power of your judgement to the people. It is your knowledge of the laws – not just the words, but the meaning behind them. That’s why we sing the laws, so they will be remembered! You sing the verdict so the men and women will carry it in their minds and in their hearts, long after you have left their villages. Your ability is to render judgement, not just as punishment, but as a solution to the fracturing in the heart of the people that occurs when the laws are broken. It is your judgement that sets you apart. My Greatcoats, in your dark hours – and there will be many, make no mistake – in your dark hours, turn first to your judgement, to your voice, and sing the words.’

  Turn first to your judgement, to your voice, and sing the words. And as my torturer battered me with his fists, that’s just what I did. My efforts to convince my torturer of the error of his ways had not produced much in the way of results, though I was gratified the morning when I awoke to the sound of him humming the melody of the King’s Law of Free Travel. He must have been embarrassed that I’d noticed, because he gave me a particularly bad beating that morning.

  By my fourth day in the cell I was not far from ended. Despite the healing salves they periodically smeared on my body to keep me from expiring in peace, there really wasn’t much left of me. Since I could barely lift a finger, never mind devise an escape, they had even released me from the chains.

  It is at times such as these that we Pertines believe an angel will come to hear your last words.

  ‘And here sits Paelis’ great hope,’ a voice said. It didn’t sound much like an angel. I opened my eyes.

  What I saw was a woman in her middle year. Her form was slim but well-shaped, and she wore a gown of dark red, with matching jewels – rubies – hanging from her ears and around her neck. She had striking grey hair, well fashioned above a lined and unsmiling face. She wasn’t beautiful – she had probably never been beautiful – but in the sharp edges of her features and the coolness in her eyes there was still something seductive, something that suggested she knew what you wanted, what you needed – something that would sway commoner or nobleman alike to her will.

  Then I saw the rings on her fingers: seven of them, large and gaudy and shaped like wheels. Despite my weakness, I lunged forward to kill her.

  My torturer, whom I called ‘Ugh’ since that’s what came out of my mouth when he struck me, grabbed me with one hand and held me, though he needn’t have bothered. My attempted attack was more than my body could handle and if he’d let me go I would have dropped to the floor myself. Instead, he punched me in the face and threw me back against the wall.

  ‘Ugh,’ I said.

  ‘My, my. An execution with no trial? I thought you Greatcoats were supposed to be above such things,’ said Duchess Patriana.

  ‘You killed Tremondi, you bitch.’ I coughed something up that I hoped wasn’t a tooth before adding, ‘Did you do it yourself? Or did someone do it for you? I swear if it was your daughter I’ll put the blade in her myself.’

  She looked down at me with a calm expression. ‘You are uncouth,’ she said, ‘and common, and unimportant.’

  ‘Perhaps you should take your leave, in that case. I was just about to instruct Ugh here on the finer points of landholder contracts and farming rights.’

  She smiled. ‘Ah yes, your King’s Laws. So just, so honourable – to master them is to master the sunshine, or the light of the moon. Even to utter them out loud will rouse the soul of the peasantry and free the land from the oppressive nobility!’

  ‘Something like that,’ I said.

  ‘One wonders why Paelis never saved himself the trouble. If he had taught his wonderful laws to the Dukes, he could thereby have freed us of our own ignorance.’

  I smiled. ‘For the same reason we don’t try to teach cats to count. They’re either too fucking stupid or they just don’t care.’

  Ugh lifted me off the ground and punched me again.

  I coughed, and tasted blood on my tongue. ‘Right you are, Ugh. It’s time to get back to it … Much to talk about … Anything else … I can help you with, your Ladyship?’

  Patriana leaned in close and inspected my face with the languid attentiveness of a healer examining a rather unimportant patient. ‘Some of them work for me now, you realise?’ she said quietly.

  ‘Some of whom, your Ladyship?’

  ‘The Trattari. Your fellow Greatcoats – half of them work for me. The other half are bandits these days.’

  I snorted. It hurt.

  ‘Laugh if you want, First Cantor, but it’s a fact
: your noble Greatcoats make their living ravaging the countryside. There have been robberies, Falcio, and murders. And rapes. And all of these committed by your men.’

  ‘Liar,’ I said, despite my intent to keep silent.

  She shook her head. ‘Innocence might be a virtue, Falcio, but wilful ignorance is not. It’s been five years since you were disbanded. Did you really think they’d all stay loyal to a dead King?’

  ‘My Lady, there are no traitors in the Greatcoats. Not one.’ I let the lie slip from my lips like a trickle of blood.

  Patriana laughed. ‘Traitors? You poor, deluded fool. The Greatcoats serve the state! The King has been dead for five years and the Dukes are the lawful rulers of this country. The men working for us aren’t traitors, Falcio – you are.’

  When you’re being tortured, the most important skill is to ignore what you hear. The pain is horrible, but what breaks you is what they say. That’s why you have to live with the pain but block out the words.

  ‘Well then, your Ladyship, you seem to have everything you need. If you don’t mind, I’ll take my leave of you now.’ I let my head slump down and closed my eyes.

  Ugh punched me in the face.

  The Duchess arranged her gown carefully and sat down on the wooden stool. She crossed one ankle over the other.

  ‘Are there others?’ she asked.

  ‘Ah, yes, that. Ugh’s been asking me the same thing for some time.’

  ‘And apparently you have failed to answer. So let me ask you again: are there others? Your attempt to escape the city failed and there’s little reason to prolong your agony. So answer the question: where are the others? Do any still live?’

  The truth was, I honestly didn’t know. Other than Kest and Brasti, I hadn’t seen another Greatcoat in years. I’d tried to convince myself that Parrick, Niles, Dara and some of the others would have survived, that we would all find each other again one day, but the truth was, the only land we would likely ever share together was the land of the dead.

  ‘Lots,’ I said. ‘Hundreds. And I swear the numbers grow by the day.’

  ‘Answer me!’ she screamed, rising from her stool and slapping me across the face. The force of the blow surprised me.

  She went on: ‘I’ve spent my entire life in an endeavour that will reshape this country – that will make it strong in the eyes of Saints and Gods – and I will not have my plans shattered because one of Paelis’ little bastards runs off and rouses the peasants or the damnable Lords Caravaner.’

  ‘I thought you said most of us either worked for you or had turned to banditry. Perhaps you give us more credit than you’d like to admit,’ I said, a little confused by her over-estimation of the Greatcoats’ persuasiveness.

  ‘I give you no credit at all, fool. Now, if you value your sanity or your soul, answer the question: Where are the others?’

  Something about the way she asked the question – the fear, the anger, the deep and utter need to know – something about this strange sincerity coming from the mouth of the woman who, more than any other single person alive, was responsible for destroying my world, compelled me to answer truthfully, ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’

  She reached down and dug her nails into the sides of my face. ‘You filthy, stupid boy. You dog. You think you’ve been tortured? You think you’ve known pain? The things they do here are nothing compared to what I can do to you. I’ll have them slice your skin open and bring starving children in to suckle the blood from your wounds while you watch. I’ll put an ointment on your cock that makes it hard, and have them use you to rape old women to death. I make monsters, Falcio val Mond, and I can make a monster out of you. I know more ways to torture a man than this dog with his poisons and beatings can ever imagine.’

  ‘Shh,’ I said. ‘You’ll hurt Ugh’s feelings if you keep talking that way.’

  She let my head drop. ‘Bring him,’ she ordered Ugh. ‘And have someone bring the girl, if there’s anything left of her.’

  The girl?

  THE FEY HORSE

  When I regained consciousness, my hands were bound at the wrists, but it didn’t bother me much. Dazed as I was, Ugh had to half-carry me through the passageways of the Duke’s dungeon. The walls were the same hard stone that formed the base of the palace and the promenade out front. Here truly was the Rock of Rijou: an inescapable prison for the Dukes to use to entertain themselves with the suffering of others.

  I was crying, not for any reason I could put into words, but because as much as the mind may grow to disdain the body, the body will always mourn the desecration of the spirit. Ugh was singing softly as we walked, and I wondered if he knew he was humming the King’s Law Against Unjust Punishments. If not, it was ironic, and if he did, that was something I couldn’t really understand.

  ‘We say goodbye soon, I think,’ he said in his thick accent that I still couldn’t place. Perhaps he was from somewhere from the far north?

  ‘Goodbye?’

  We reached the end of a long passageway that ended in a set of narrow stairs going up. There was a door at the top with bars revealing fading afternoon light.

  ‘I take you through this door, then to stable. She commands. When horse is done, nothing left to bring back.’

  ‘Horse?’

  ‘Shush now,’ he said. He threw me over his shoulder and started up the stairs. ‘Talk gets me trouble with Lady. But you interesting man. Funny songs. No music for me usually. Maybe not such a bad man as they say. Makes me want to say goodbye.’

  At the top of the stairs he pounded hard on the door, six times. A guard on the other side looked through the bars and then pulled a key from his neck and opened it up. ‘Destination?’ the guard asked.

  Ugh set me back down on my own feet, still holding me up, but more roughly now someone was watching. ‘Stable. Lady give him to horse.’

  ‘Orders?’

  ‘Orders are in my fucking fist, like always. You want to see them closer?’

  The guard stepped out of the way and let us pass.

  ‘Guards are like fucking dumb animals here,’ he said to no one in particular as we proceeded along the open courtyard, then, ‘Maybe you like to run, eh?’

  ‘Sure,’ I replied. ‘Just need a bit of a head start.’

  ‘They say you Greatcoats fucking tough guys in the day. Tricky, eh? Maybe you have trick to use on me, too?’

  I looked at him. ‘I’ve used up all my tricks, I’m afraid.’

  Ugh pushed me forward. ‘Is not important. Guards from here to palace gates. You not get ten paces before they pull you down.’ He turned me and looked me in the eye. ‘So no trouble, yes? No point, yes? No making trouble for me, yes?’

  ‘Let’s go see the horse,’ I said.

  He grunted, turned me back around and pushed me onwards.

  It was a short distance to the stable – I’d imagined he was talking about the palace stables but this was different. We entered through the wide doors into a single large building that stank like sixteen different hells. Inside was almost completely empty, except for a cage made of iron bars in the centre. Next to the cage was a chair, where the Duchess Patriana sat sipping something from a small cup. Inside the cage was a monster.

  The beast was massive, almost twice the size of a Knight’s charger. The head was huge, and stood almost an arm’s length above even a tall man. Its coat was tattered, almost skinned, and every inch of its body was covered in welts and scars. Its ears were flat against its head and its eyes were black as coal. When it opened its mouth, I saw its teeth had been filed to points. The sound that came from its mouth was closer to a growl than any sound I had ever heard a horse make.

  Patriana motioned for Ugh to bring me forward. When we got within a few feet of the cage he let me go, but I started to fall and only his sudden grip on the back of my neck saved me from having my head ripped off by the creature inside the cage. Its eyes were mad with fury at being denied its prey.

  ‘Saints,’ I said. ‘What is it?’<
br />
  Patriana smiled. ‘This? This is one of my pet projects, if you’ll pardon the humour.’

  Inside, the cage was filthy. It had likely never been cleaned, so the horse’s waste just piled up until it dripped through the bars. Hanging from the ceiling of the cage were the torn corpses of some kind of creature, although it was hard to make sense of their shapes, stripped of skin and sinew as they were.

  ‘You need a different hobby,’ I said conversationally.

  She smiled again. ‘You don’t recognise it? I would have thought a romantic like you might recognise one from the storybooks. After all, they are a sort of namesake for your kind, aren’t they?’

  My stomach fell and my heart came up into my throat. ‘It can’t be—’

  ‘Oh, trust me, it is. And very expensive it is to find them, I can assure you.’

  ‘A Fey Horse … you did this to a Fey Horse?’

  ‘Come now, don’t be modest. Didn’t they also used to be called Greathorses? I would’ve thought you’d feel a connection.’

  I’d heard of Greathorses, of course, or Fey Horses as they were more commonly known. But they didn’t look anything like this. Fey Horses were noble and wild. The few herds rumoured to exist were the subject of children’s fantasies, mine maybe even more than most. The dream of finding a Fey Horse, of riding a beast that ran faster than anything else in the world, that could run for days, that could face down a pride of mountain cats or any other beast … The Fey were to horses what Saints are to men – but better than that, for Saints can be capricious, even evil. The Fey Horses in the storybooks were noble protectors. But not this …

  ‘Yes,’ Patriana said, reading my expression perfectly, ‘this really is one of the Fey. She is the last of her herd, in fact.’

  I remembered the old stories, some that Bal Armidor had told at the inn near my childhood home and others from books in the royal library. Paelis and I used to joke about how much faster the Greatcoats could travel if we only had Greathorses to match. ‘Four days’ ride to Warrelton, I think, Falcio, or two if by Greathorse,’ he used to say. There was one book, a favourite of both the King’s and mine, about a boy who learned the language of the Fey Horses and rode them to battle against the Knights holding his mother captive. ‘Dan’ha vath fallatu,’ the boy would say in their special language. ‘I am of your herd.’