Traitor's Blade (The Greatcoats)

by de Castell, Sebastien

  ‘You tell me,’ he said, half-threatening, half-pleading. ‘You tell me how I can be … how I can be like horse, not like me. How I can be as good as horse. You tell me, and I let you go. I let you go. I get you out. Only, you tell me first.’

  I thought he was lying, but then I noticed a bundle on the ground near where the stool had rolled. It was my greatcoat and my rapiers.

  ‘You tell me. You—’

  ‘Shh,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Tell me, tell me now,’ he said, turning his face away from me, as if he wanted this secret knowledge to be transmitted straight into his ears and into his heart.

  I took a hard, painful breath through my mouth. ‘The First Law is that men are free,’ I sang softly. ‘For without freedom they cannot serve their heart …’

  *

  ‘First Law is freedom,’ Ugh sang awkwardly as he hauled me through the passageway. ‘First Law is freedom. Man has heart, must be free. Must choose. No God, no King take away heart; take away freedom.’

  It was an awkward revision to the King’s First Law, but no worse than many versions I’d heard.

  ‘Where go?’ he asked as we reached the bottom of the stairway.

  I looked upwards. ‘The girl – is she still there?’

  He nodded. ‘Horse not let anyone near. Almost break cage.’

  Saints, but the girl must be out of her wits with fear.

  ‘Take me there, then. To the stable.’

  Ugh shook his head. ‘No, is wrong idea. I take you there, guards will see, shout for other guards.’

  ‘I’ll get the girl and take her with me.’

  He shook his head again. ‘No, you still stupid. Know many things – laws, horses. Not palace. Too many guards that way. I take you other way: cooks’ entrance. Cooks not care. I give them money; I tell them I kill them if talk. We get you out.’

  It was my turn to shake my head. ‘The girl. I have to get the girl.’

  ‘Then how you get out from stable to palace gate? How you open gate?’

  ‘I suppose I’ll need a fast horse.’

  He looked at me for a moment as if I had lost my mind. Then he laughed. ‘All right. All right, man of laws, I take you to stable. But then I go. I don’t think horse like me.’

  ‘Perhaps he doesn’t know you well enough yet.’

  The humour was lost on Ugh, who just said, ‘Shut up now. I must take you past first guard.’

  He threw me over his shoulder again and pressed up the stairway and knocked six times on the heavy door again.

  ‘What in hells are you doing here?’ the guard asked as he opened the door and let us through.

  ‘She,’ he said as if that explained everything. When the guard didn’t move, he said, ‘He go back to horse. Go in cage. Not come out.’

  ‘I don’t have any orders to that effect,’ the guard said cautiously.

  Without another word Ugh punched him hard in the face and the guard fell back and hit his head against the opposite wall. He slid down, unconscious.

  ‘Told you: orders in my fucking fist. Now you see up close.’ Ugh put me back down and we walked along the right side of the courtyard back to the stable. When we reached the edge he said, ‘Goodbye now. We say goodbye. No guards in stable at night. Just man who check courtyard, come every hour and look inside. I go back and out cooks’ way. Never come back. You go, die with girl and horse. You free. You choose.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  He shook his head. ‘I told you I would kill you when you arrive. Now you go kill yourself. This no different.’

  ‘It’s different to me,’ I said.

  He nodded at that, then turned and headed back for the other side of the courtyard.

  I entered the stable and saw the beast in the cage in the centre of the building. It was still stamping and fuming, but it wasn’t throwing itself against the bars any more. I crept towards it silently, aware that, despite Ugh’s reassurances, other guards might come by, if for no other reason than to see if the girl was dead yet.

  The horse made that sound between growling and neighing that I found so unsettling.

  ‘Falcio?’ Aline whispered.

  ‘It’s me,’ I whispered back. ‘Are you all right?’

  She nodded, the movement barely showing in the shadowy light of the stable. ‘The bites were shallow,’ she said, ‘but she won’t let me move. She growls at me when I try to get up.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said.

  I reached through the bars towards the horse’s mane. ‘Hey there, girl,’ I said softly.

  The horse bit me and reared her hooves, striking them against the bars.

  The pain brought me back to my senses. ‘Dan’ha vath fallatu,’ I said. ‘I am of your herd, damn you. Don’t bite me any more.’

  The horse made that growling noise again.

  ‘She’s angry,’ Aline said.

  ‘I know she’s angry!’

  ‘She’s angry – but she understands, I think. When I talk to her, she seems to understand. If I say I won’t stand up, then she leaves me. If I say I want to move, she gets mad again. I think she understands, Falcio – but she’s very angry.’

  I sighed. ‘I’m angry too,’ I said. ‘They took my King. They killed my King and they killed my friends and they killed my wife. Do you understand, you great fucking beast? They took my wife from me. My wife – she was everything. She was of my herd, you fucking brute. Dan’ha vath fallatu. You’re angry? Look at the girl. She’s angry too,’ I said, pointing to Aline. ‘They took her family as well, her herd.’ The horse nearly took my hand off, but I pulled it back in time. ‘All right. No more pointing for now.’

  I walked over to the wall where the metal pole with the key was hanging and pulled it off.

  ‘They killed your herd,’ I said to the Fey Horse. ‘They killed all of our herds. Now we have a choice. Dan’ha vath fallatu. We can be one herd and fight together, or we can die alone.’

  I put the key into the slot in the cage. The horse started stamping and smashing at the bars again.

  ‘It’s time to choose,’ I said over the racket. ‘I’m going to open this door. You can attack me and I’ll be dead, and the girl will be too when they come for her. Or you can just run off, and they’ll kill us and eventually find and kill you too. Or you can carry us. None of us can get out of here alive alone, but if you carry us, we can charge the gate and we might – we just might get through alive and into the city.’

  The horse slowed her efforts, but she gave no other sign that she was understanding my words. I’m not sure what signs I was hoping for.

  ‘Open the cage, Falcio, quick! I hear them coming,’ Aline said.

  ‘Show me you’re going to help us,’ I said to the horse. ‘Dan’ha vath fallatu. Show us we are one herd.’

  I could hear shouts. Someone had seen me and there would be guards soon. Hopefully not too many, but I was so weak it would take only one or two at this point. But I still wouldn’t move. But then, slowly, ever so slowly, I saw the horse start to move, almost as if the great beast was shrinking. But she wasn’t, she was just kneeling on the ground. I turned the key in the lock and swung the door open.

  ‘Get on,’ I told Aline.

  She looked at me as if I was mad.

  ‘Either she’s going to help or it won’t matter one way or the other. Get on.’ I picked her up and placed her on the back of the horse. She didn’t kill the girl, so I took that as a good sign and awkwardly climbed on the beast’s back myself, just as the first pair of guards came through the doors.

  I leaned low on the creature’s back. ‘Dan’ha vath fallatu,’ I said, patting the side of her neck. Then I brought my mouth close to her ear and said the only other word I remembered from the storybooks. ‘K’hey,’ I whispered. ‘K’hey, k’hey, k’hey.’ Fly. Fly. Fly.

  As the guards reached the entrance to the cage, their swords drawn, I felt the Fey Horse’s muscles bunch beneath us, and the thunder of an angry God exploded
through the door as she slammed through the cage door and into the guards, leaving them dead on the ground as we bolted out of the cage and into the night sky.

  GENTLE SORROWS

  It was like trying to hang on to an earthquake. I was jostled up and off the creature’s back, and only her own twisting movements managed to keep me from falling to the ground. It was worse for Aline.

  ‘Put your arms through the loops of my coat,’ I shouted as we raced past the entrance of the courtyard, leaving another guard dead beneath the beast’s hooves.

  The Fey Horse was utterly merciless with the guards, as if she remembered every cut, every beating, every slight. She probably did.

  ‘Out!’ I screamed in her ears. ‘We have to get out! You can’t kill every guard in the palace!’

  I suspected she understood my meaning if not my words, for she very nearly threw me off then and there.

  ‘Fine! You can kill them all – you can kill everybody, but the girl will be killed by their swords,’ I screamed. ‘Protect the girl! Protect the foal!’

  I don’t know if the horse heard me over the shouting guards, but she did finally break for the far gate. The doors were twelve feet high and made of bars just as strong as those of her cage. I had to hope that the lock on the door was a weak point.

  ‘Hang on!’ I said to Aline, and knelt low on the horse’s neck as she bolted forward. For a moment I feared she’d run headlong into the gate, but at the last instant she reared on her hind legs and let the momentum carry her as she smashed her hooves into the metal bars of the gate. I saw them bend and sway even as the lock exploded, and just like that we were out. I heard more shouting behind us, and felt the crossbow bolts fly by our ears. At least two landed in the horse’s haunches but, if they hurt her, she showed no sign; she just kept running down the main street. I thanked the Saints that it was late and few people were out to be trampled underneath the beast’s hooves.

  We must have travelled at least a mile outside the palace before the horse let me rein her in. Without bridal or stirrups I had to use the meagre strength left in my legs to try and guide her.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Aline asked as we finally slowed to a walk.

  I slipped down from the horse’s back and tried to stretch my legs, but I had to lean against her haunch to keep from falling. ‘I just need to get my bearings,’ I replied. ‘Then we’ll make for one of the smaller city gates and hope we can make our way out through sheer force.’

  ‘No,’ Aline said.

  ‘What do you mean, “no”?’

  ‘It’s the last night of Ganath Kalila,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow at the Teyar Rijou the noble houses will be recognised once again. We’ll go to the Rock; I can stand for my name.’

  ‘Are you mad? They’ll kill you – they’ll definitely kill me.’

  ‘The day after the Blood Week is the Day of Mercy. No one can be harmed and no one can be arrested, not unless they attack another first.’

  I sighed and looked up at the night sky. ‘Tell me how this ends,’ I asked wearily. ‘Tell me what happens after that.’

  ‘I can get sanctuary from one of the other noble families – I can even leave the city. But I’ll keep my blood rights, Falcio.’

  ‘Your blood rights? And what value does that have when the Duke wants you dead?’

  ‘It’s all I have! It’s all I have left of my mother … of my father …’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I never met Lord Tiarren, but I’m sure he was—’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ she cried. ‘You don’t understand anything.’

  I relented, and we kept walking. Could the girl be right? Was it really as simple as all that? Even with the Duchess here, could the ritual of Ganath Kalila itself really protect Aline?

  The streets were deserted. The last night of the Blood Week was the time to stay indoors, although by this point most of the fights had been fought, most of the murders committed. It’s hard to express how much I hated this place.

  ‘Hello,’ a female voice said, leaning forward from a street bench in the shadows.

  Aline screamed, my rapier came into my hand and the horse leapt towards her, her hooves ready to strike out.

  The woman didn’t run; she stood slowly and reached out to the horse’s face as if she had no fear of the beast at all.

  ‘Dan’ha neta vath fallatu,’ she said softly. ‘I am not of your herd, Mother. But I am no enemy either.’

  ‘Who are you?’ I demanded, my rapier still pointing at her body.

  The woman was beautiful. She was dressed in a white gown that covered her body, shoulders and arms – a gauzy material that shimmered in the moonlight. Her head was partially covered by a kind of hood made from the same cloth, and dark hair spilled out to frame a face that was smooth and soft and smiling gently. It was a face that a man would never forget, and yet it was her voice that made me recognise her.

  ‘You’re real,’ I said. ‘You came to talk to me in my prison cell. You were at the Duke’s ball.’

  The memory made me tighten my grip on my rapier. ‘Who are you, and whom do you serve?’

  ‘I am the friend in the dark hour,’ she said. ‘I am the breeze against the burning sun. I am the water, freely given, and the wine, lovingly shared. I am the rest after the battle, and the healing after the wound. I am the friend in the dark hour,’ she repeated, ‘and I am here for you, Falcio val Mond.’

  ‘A sister,’ I said. ‘A sister of the Merciful Light.’

  ‘A what?’ Aline asked dubiously.

  The Order of Merciful Light was a very specialised clerical order. The nuns were reputed to have remarkable healing and precognitive powers to go along with their … other charms.

  ‘She’s a prostitute,’ I said.

  The woman laughed. ‘I am that, I suppose,’ she said, without ire or shame.

  ‘What do you want?’ Aline asked.

  ‘To fulfil my oath, to honour the will of my God and the commandments of my Saint.’

  ‘Saint Laina-who-whores-for-Gods is one of my favourites, sister,’ I said calmly. ‘But the timing is suspicious.’

  She walked to me and casually pushed the blade of my sword aside before reaching out to touch my face. ‘You’ve been hurt, Falcio. You have many reasons to question the kindness of strangers. But I am no enemy. My name is Ethalia, and I am here for you, to hide you from your enemies, to heal you from your wounds, to salve your heart.’ She looked into my eyes. ‘But you remain suspicious. You are a man of laws, a man of evidence, of proof, and so I shall give you three proofs. Will that suffice?’

  ‘It depends on how convincing they are,’ I replied.

  ‘I will show you, Falcio, with magic, with memory and, though I wish it weren’t needful, with heartache.’

  ‘Falcio, I don’t trust her,’ Aline said.

  Ethalia smiled at the girl. ‘Your father would tell you differently, little one. Shall I speak his name aloud?’

  Aline froze at that.

  ‘As you wish. But time is passing, and the darkness which cloaks us will not last, and so let my first proof be this.’ She walked over to the horse and reached up to place her hands on either side of her face. I thought the beast would take her head off, but instead she dropped her muzzle down to Ethalia, who kissed the Fey Horse on the spot between her eyes.

  ‘Thank you, Mother,’ she said. ‘You will see your children again, in the far fields that stretch past the long night, but not now, and not for many years yet. There is much to do.’

  ‘How did you—?’ I was stunned.

  ‘How did you get her to save the girl?’ Ethalia asked back. ‘How did you get a Fey Horse to let you ride upon her back? She let you because she knows your heart, as she knows the girl’s, and as she knows mine.’

  Ethalia returned to me. ‘The second proof is this,’ she said. Then she knelt before me and held both hands up as if in prayer, opening them then closing them. It was an ancient and formal way of expressing gratitude.

  ‘I d
on’t understand; why are you—?’ I started.

  ‘—Expressing thanks? Because you saved my life, Falcio val Mond, and my second proof is to give you a reason you can understand for my assistance.’

  ‘Lady, I’ve never met you. I doubt I’d forget the face.’

  She smiled and rose. ‘I was younger then.’

  ‘How old are you now?’ Aline asked.

  ‘I’ve watched twenty-three summers pass. But when Falcio saved me, I was just thirteen, no older than you are now.’

  I tried to remember back. It was true that I’d been in Rijou ten years ago, on the King’s business. It was the jeweller’s dispute; I’d come to hear a case against his landlord. The King had wanted to begin seeing justice done even in Rijou, which had never seen any but that which resulted from the Duke’s fickle commandments.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘look how your mind wanders along its narrow paths. You think so much of your King and his laws that you don’t even remember the little mercies you give along the way. Like a girl, being held against her will by a man in the street …’

  ‘The whore!’ I said stupidly. ‘I mean, the girl … You were the girl. I remember, out on the street corner—’

  She smiled patiently. ‘Yes, and a man who had given me money for my services wanted more and I refused.’

  ‘He offered you more money,’ I said, remembering the coins on the ground as he slapped her across the face.

  ‘But the money we take is to help those we serve take value in our gifts, not as a price you would pay to buy pigs at a market.’

  ‘I’m sure they’d be happy to get them for free,’ Aline commented.

  ‘Hush child,’ Ethalia said. ‘Let him remember.’

  ‘There’s not much to remember,’ I said. ‘I remember the man; I remember telling him to stop. He wouldn’t, so I dealt with him. He went home bruised but alive, and I left. It’s no different than what any city guard or half-decent shopkeeper would have done. I was on my way out of the city, having failed utterly to save the jeweller whose case I had come to hear.’

  She shook her head and looked disappointed in me. ‘Three city guards walked past, as it happened,’ she said. ‘And many shopkeepers saw, and Lords, and Ladies. And no one stopped. No one but you. Can you not take some measure of happiness knowing you saved my life? Even a whore’s life, as you put it?’