Knight's Shadow (18 page)

‘Enough,’ Sir Heridos said.

‘Do you still hear our Duke’s voice, Knight-Captain?’ Sir Shuran said.

‘This is not the time for—’

‘I asked you a question, Sir Heridos. Do you hear the Duke crying out?’

Sir Heridos looked around the room, but seeing no strong support, he said, ‘What I
meant
, Knight-Commander, is that the people of Aramor deserve vengeance for what has happened here. It is our duty to serve them in this.’

‘Ah,’ Sir Shuran said, ‘now perhaps there is something we can agree on.’

‘Good, then—’

‘But not in
vengeance
, Sir Heridos. The people couldn’t care less about vengeance. Or if they do care, that will soon be outweighed by other concerns.’

Heridos looked as if Shuran had suddenly tossed him a sack of gold coins. ‘What other concern could take precedence over punishing the murderers?’

‘Finding them would be a nice start,’ Sir Shuran said.

‘They stand there,’ Sir Heridos said.

I couldn’t even blame Sir Heridos. Winnow was one of us, after all, as true a Greatcoat as there had ever been, though I could not see how it was possible that a Cantor could have turned assassin. Winnow had no love for the Dukes, certainly – and neither did I, or Kest, or Brasti, or any of us – but she followed the King’s Laws with diligence. What could have made her turn? My mind slipped back to my days in the dungeons of Rijou with Patriana, Duchess of Hervor, laughing as she oversaw my torture, and laughing hardest of all as she told me that half the Greatcoats were hers already, and the other half had turned to banditry. The thought of those hours bound and hanging by my wrists made me shudder; the memories still fresh of those cuts made in my skin and the ointments applied to my wounds that burned flesh and boiled skin.

I shook my head.
You’re dead, you old snake. Stay out of my soul.

‘I will be happy to behead these men myself,’ Shuran said, ‘if we have evidence of their involvement, but since they were under our own guard when it happened, I think it would be hard to convict them.’

‘You think it a coincidence that they arrived here and six days later the Duke and his family are murdered?’ Heridos cried. ‘They want to put their little bitch on the throne!’

‘Which would be a lot easier to do with the Duke alive to deliver the support he’s promised in his decree.’

‘Silence,
Trattari
,’ Sir Heridos said. ‘Would that my men had killed you when you arrived.’

Sir Shuran took a step towards Heridos. ‘Had they done so, Knight-Captain, they would have disobeyed a direct order from your superior. Shall I remind you of the penalty for disobeying a direct order from the Knight-Commander?’

Heridos wasn’t cowed. ‘Is it the same as the penalty for treason? You weren’t born in Aramor, were you, Sir Shuran? An odd thing, that, since every other man here was born and bred in this duchy. You rose quickly for a man who has been here for only a few short years.’

Now we had come to the point: Heridos was trying to convince his fellow Knights and the assembled clerics that Sir Shuran was a traitor; he’d keep reminding them of his foreignness and see where that might lead.

‘I rose in the ranks, Sir Heridos, because the Duke ordered it so.’

‘The Duke was ever a generous man,’ Heridos said.

Sir Shuran smiled. ‘Yes, that is so. In fact, I can’t even remember why I was first raised to the rank of Knight-Sargent.’ He looked around the room. ‘Can anyone here remember why? I seem to have quite forgotten.’

There was an awkward silence.

‘I know,’ Shuran said. ‘It must have been because it was my birthday.’ He walked over to one of the Knights, an older man with broad shoulders and a fringe of brown hair around his otherwise bald head. Shuran stood inches from the man’s face. ‘Was that it, Sir Karlen? Was I given the rank of Knight-Sargent as a birthday present?’

I watched his performance with admiration: this was a man who knew how to play his crowd.

‘No,’ Karlen replied.

‘No, Sir Karlen?’ Shuran said. ‘Then why do you suppose? Was it perhaps because of my pretty looks?’ He gestured at the burns along the left side of his face.

‘It was for the Battle of Brantle’s Peak,’ Sir Karlen said.

‘The Battle of what? Are you quite sure, Sir Karlen?’

‘Yes, Knight-Commander. You saved the Duke’s life that day.’

Sir Shuran turned around and looked at the rest of the Knights. ‘Really? What an odd thing for a
foreigner
to do.’ He walked over to another Knight, this one almost as tall as he was, but much younger. ‘Then why did the Duke make me Knight-Captain, Sir Belletris?’

‘The brigands,’ the young Knight said. ‘We were set upon by them as the Duke’s family was coming back from Hervor in the north. You saved them – you saved all of us.’

I thought I heard a little hero-worship surfacing in the younger Knight’s voice and demeanour.

‘I did? How remarkable of me. Well then, surely my rise to Knight-Commander must have been just some kind of jest – the Duke loved a good jest, did he not, Sir Heridos?’

Shuran walked over to the Knight-Captain and stood in front of him.

‘You’ve made your point,’ the other man said.

‘No, I don’t think I have. Why was I raised to the rank of Knight-Commander, Sir Heridos?’

‘The attack from Luth last year.’

‘Attack from where, did you say?’ Shuran asked.

‘Luth: the attack by Duke Roset’s men at the border – they outnumbered us three to one and you led the charge that won the battle.’

Sir Shuran looked thoughtful. ‘You know, now that you mention it, I do recall something about that day. But you were there as well, weren’t you, Sir Heridos? We both held the same rank – remind me, why didn’t you lead that charge?’

Sir Heridos muttered something.

‘What’s that? Forgive me, Sir Heridos, I’m a little hard of hearing. Could you repeat that?’

‘I was incapacitated.’

Someone amongst the Knights gave a small laugh.

‘Yes,’ Sir Shuran said, ‘it can be particularly hard to get back up when you’ve dropped your sword and then slipped and fallen in the mud whilst trying to retrieve it.’

Now the laughter spread. Evidently the assembled Knights had reached a consensus. Shuran turned his back on all of them and faced Kest, Brasti and me. For a moment I thought he was about to say something else, but instead he just stood there as laughter filled the room.

Move, you fool
, I thought.
You’re giving Heridos the perfect target!

‘I’ll not be under the thumb of a foreign traitor!’ Heridos shouted.

But even then, Shuran didn’t move. Sir Heridos rushed at him, warsword in hand, and I began to draw my rapier, even knowing I wouldn’t have time. Some of the other Knights could see the attack coming, but none of them moved. Why? This was a dishonourable attack – a coward’s gambit. But then, once Shuran was dead, would anyone care? I watched as Heridos’ blade came up in preparation for a blow that would crush Shuran’s skull. But just as the blade began its descent, I watched in awe as Shuran, in one smooth, perfect motion, spun around, drawing his own warsword and using the momentum to slice through Sir Heridos’ neck.

The head of Knight-Captain Heridos flew through the air and then bounced on the ground, once, twice and a third time, before rolling halfway to the door that led out of the throne room.

‘Shit,’ Brasti said.

I heard Kest exhale next to me and turned to look at him. His eyes blinked repeatedly, as if he were watching the attack over and over again. ‘He’s better than he let on,’ he said finally. ‘It’s going to take me nineteen moves.’

‘Only if you have to fight him again,’ I said. ‘Let’s hope that’s not necessary.’

Sir Shuran slid his blade back into its sheath. ‘Is there anyone else who desires my death?’ he asked the assembled Knights in a voice barely above a whisper.

There was no answer.

‘I said, is there anyone else who would challenge me?’ He slammed a gauntleted fist against one of the square pillars in the room. ‘I am the Knight-Commander of Aramor,’ he said, his voice suddenly very different than it had been before; now it was bold, definitive;
commanding
. ‘If the lot of you want me to step down, speak now. You get one chance. I’ll lay down my sword here and now and you can even clap me in irons if you like. If you think another can do a better job of leading us through the dark days to come, then say the word.’

No one spoke.

‘Think carefully,’ he said, ‘for if I am to remain Knight-Commander of Aramor then this will be the last time – the
very
last time – that I entertain this sort of foolishness. The next man who questions my honour or my rank or tries to attack me, I will break them in two and send the pieces north and south to the ends of the world.’

He walked along the line of Knights and clerics. ‘Well, I await your answer. Am I the leader of the Knights of Aramor?’

‘Yes, Knight-Commander,’ they said as one.

I thought their voices were as loud as could be, but it wasn’t enough for Sir Shuran.

‘I said, am I your leader?’

‘Yes, Knight-Commander!’ they all shouted.

‘As I told Sir Heridos, I’m hard of hearing these days. Speak up, if you would have me hear you.’

‘Yes, Knight-Commander!’ they screamed, their voices so loud I heard the metal swords mounted on the pillars clang. They continued to shout Shuran’s title and it was as if the room was being struck by lightning over and over. Shuran had turned the situation around so completely that men who minutes before had been ready to betray him were twice as loyal to him now as they had ever been before. He no longer simply
led
the Knights of Aramor. He
ruled
them.

Shuran turned to the cleric. ‘Prepare messages for the Margraves and Lords. You will not send even one of them until I have read the words. Knights, prepare the castle guards and the rest of the troops. No one leaves here without my say-so. I’ll have no word of this go out until I’m good and ready. Oh, and have someone bury Sir Heridos with honours.’

‘But sir,’ said the cleric, ‘what of the Duke and his family? We must prepare them for the funeral.’

‘No,’ Shuran said, ‘you make what preparations you need, but leave the bodies here. I need the day to try to make sense of what happened.’

‘And them?’ the cleric asked, pointing at Kest, Brasti and me.

‘The Greatcoats?’ Shuran turned to me. ‘They have a great deal of training in these matters. They will assist me in piecing together what took place. If they give me what I need, then they will have the gratitude of Aramor.’

He glared at each of us in turn. ‘And if not, I’ll kill them myself.’

Chapter Sixteen

The Investigation

‘The girl died first,’ I said to Kest, who was kneeling beside me next to the bodies. Brasti was looking out of the east-facing window; he had no taste for this kind of work. Violence, especially murder, brings a chaos with it that resists explanation and wears on the soul. I had to turn away from Avette’s face every few seconds. She was younger than Aline, with softer features, but my mind kept transposing Aline’s features on to the body of the girl on the throne room’s cold floor.
Look at her
, I told myself.
You’ll do Avette no good by pretending she isn’t dead.

A Greatcoat needs to be able to make sense of the wounds on a body as well as the tearing of clothes and the scuffmarks on the floor. There can be no justice until the story of what happened is uncovered.

‘How do you know?’ Shuran asked, his voice echoing in the now mostly empty room. The rows of metal-clad Knights and silk-robed clerics all giving instructions to confused and weary servants had all filed out and now there were only the three of us and the Knight-Commander. And the dead, of course.

‘Here, where her throat was slit, the cut is heaviest at this side, see? She has small bruises on the side of her face’ – I placed my own fingers in roughly the same position so he could see what I meant – ‘and they were made by a man’s fingers. Did she share a room with any of the others?’

‘Her mother – she sometimes had nightmares . . .’ His voice dropped away.

‘The killer likely held her like this.’ Kest held his left arm out, his hand gripping an imaginary girl’s head. ‘Look at Duchess Yenelle here: the stab wound is in the back of her neck. She was ordered to kneel, then the assassin dragged the girl behind her mother, slit her throat and then pushed the blade straight through the back of the mother’s neck.’

‘What about the boys?’ Shuran asked.

I moved to Lucan, the elder of the two. ‘He has wounds on his arms, you see here? Not just on the outside of his forearms where you would get cut trying to cover your face’ – I held up his left arm, revealing two deep gashes – ‘but here on the inside, from trying to grab at someone armed with a blade. He tried to fight.’

‘They might have died first,’ Shuran said.

‘Look at how deep and jagged these gashes are,’ I said. ‘Was Lucan a reckless boy?’

‘No,’ Shuran replied, ‘he was ever a studious child.’

‘To get this many wounds and for them to be so deep, he must have rushed in close, like a wild man: he saw the bodies of his mother and sister, if not the murders themselves.’

Shuran looked at Kest and me then, his eyes a little wide. I’d seen that expression many times before, especially from Knights. Most people see the world in such simple terms – honour and dishonour; right and wrong, alive or dead – and it takes them by surprise when they have to start seeing things as we do, as pieces of a story built up from the tiny echoes of events past.

A part of me wanted to stop there, despite the urgent need to prove that a Greatcoat hadn’t been the killer. It’s one thing to see a child dead, but quite another to force yourself, step by step, to envision the moments up to their death. It felt wrong, cruel. Perverse, even.

I had told the King as much, once, during one of those many late nights he forced us to pour over the corpses of men and women and children whose deaths we already knew from witnesses. ‘They’re dead,’ I’d said. ‘Let them rest.’

The King had turned to me then, those inquisitive eyes of his probing at me as though he were investigating me too. ‘A murdered man gets no rest, Falcio. He either serves the living by revealing his killer or serves the murderer by concealing his identity. Which would you rather be?’

‘Falcio? Are we to continue?’ Shuran asked, shaking me from my memories.

I met his gaze and found a kind of sickened fascination there. He walked over to the smaller of the two boys. ‘Tell me about Patrin?’

‘He came last, I think.’

‘Why do you say so?’

‘The killer would have started with the more dangerous opponent: Lucan was older, and taller too, so he would be killed first. I think . . .’ I had to pause. The depraved logic of murder was sticking in my throat. ‘I think Patrin saw his mother and older brother being killed.’

‘How can you tell?’

‘I can’t,’ I said, ‘not for certain, anyway, but look here: he has only one wound, a thrust to the heart like his father suffered.’ I pulled the green cloth down to the boy’s knees. There was a darkened patch on his nightclothes, at his groin.

‘He pissed himself,’ Shuran said. His voice held neither judgement nor sympathy.

‘The lad would have been terrified,’ I said, a little defensively.

The Knight-Commander rose and walked over to Duke Isault’s body. ‘And you’re positive the Duke died after his family? How can you be so certain?’

‘Two reasons,’ I said, covering Patrin back up before joining Shuran. ‘First, the killer clearly wanted the whole family dead. The Duke would be the most closely guarded, so there’s a far greater risk of the body being discovered and the alarm being raised.’

‘And the second reason?’

‘Look at his face.’

I watched as Sir Shuran peered into the face of the man who’d given him everything. ‘He was mad,’ Shuran said, and now his voice betrayed a deep sadness. ‘His eyes . . . they’re almost feral.’

Sometimes the dead speak to us in a language so plain it needs no words
, I thought. ‘This is the face of a man who has just been told his family has been killed.’

Sir Shuran left the bodies and walked over to the throne, staring at it as if he expected the Duke to appear on it at any moment.

‘Can you tell me how this could happen, Falcio? Why would your woman – Winnow – have done this?’

‘She wouldn’t,’ I said. This was the part we had left for last. Somehow it felt important to tell the story of the other dead first: those who would be forgotten as soon as the struggle for power in Aramor began.

He turned to me. ‘I can understand how you wouldn’t want to think ill of your fellow Greatcoat, but she is here and her blade took the Duke’s life.’

That part at least was true: Winnow always fought with a broadsword, with a blade that widened slightly just before it angled sharply to its point. The thrust into Isault’s heart had been made with that very sword.

‘It might not have been the same weapon used on the Duke’s family,’ Kest started.

‘They were killed with broadswords as well,’ Shuran said.

‘Yes, but it’s not clear that it was the same weapon. These could have been done with any broad-bladed sword.’

‘Including hers,’ Shuran insisted.

He nodded.

‘Then, forgive me, but it appears to me that we have the killer.’

Before I could say anything else, the doors to the throne room burst open. A Knight with dark hair flecked with grey walked in hauling an old woman, her hair tied back and wearing a dirty apron.

‘What is this, Sir Chandis?’ Shuran asked.

Sir Chandis pulled the woman over to Winnow’s body. ‘Is that her?’

The old woman took sight of the six corpses in the room and shut her eyes.

‘Is that her?’ Chandis demanded, shaking her.

‘Aye, it’s her,’ she said, crying. ‘It’s her.’

‘What is this?’ I asked. ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Wirrina, Knight-Commander,’ she said, looking at Sir Shuran and ignoring me. ‘The head cook.’

‘Of course I remember you, Wirrina,’ Shuran said, his tone kindly. ‘What do you have to tell us about the Duke’s death?’

‘Oh, nothing, sir, I know nothing of that, only . . . the woman? Tessa?’

‘Who?’

‘She means the assassin,’ Sir Chandis said. ‘Wirrina told one of the guards that a servant had gone missing, and she matched the description of the Greatcoat so I brought her to see the body.’

Wirrina held her hands together and shook her head, over and over. ‘It’s her, Knight-Commander, I swear it, though I never seen her dressed that way before.’

‘Did she know the Duke?’ Shuran asked.

‘We all know the Duke, sir, him bein’— Oh, but you mean, know him better’n other people?’

‘Yes, Wirrina, that’s what I mean.’

The old woman looked down and chewed her lip. She shook her head left and right, as if she were having an argument with herself.

‘Speak, woman, you’re in the presence of the Knight-Commander of Aramor,’ Sir Chandis said.

‘I suspect she knows that already, Sir Chandis,’ Shuran said mildly. ‘Wirrina, it will be helpful if you tell us everything you know.’

‘Well, sir, I . . . I don’t want to get into no trouble, not for somethin’ I couldn’t—’

‘You’ll be fine as long as you tell us the truth.’

‘She – well, the Duke sent a boy to fetch her once in a while. I think he . . .’ She trailed off and looked at the floor.

‘You think he had a relationship with her?’ Shuran asked.

‘I’m sure I couldn’t say, not for true, but he did send for her sometimes.’

A silence filled the room briefly as we all tried to work through the implications of that simple statement.
He did send for her sometimes
. The Winnow I had known was hardly likely to give her body away, and most certainly not to a man like Isault. Her own husband had been murdered shortly before she’d joined the Greatcoats – it was his murder and the failure of another Duke to prosecute the crime that led her to join us. So what did she do at those times when the Duke sent for her?

‘Beshard,’ I said suddenly. ‘Where’s Beshard?’ If there was any man in the duchy who would have known of Isault’s relationships, surely it was Beshard. Hells, Isault probably made the old chamberlain watch.

‘Beshard is dead,’ Chandis said.

‘What—? When?’ Shuran asked.

‘We just discovered him in his room, in bed. His throat was opened.’ Sir Chandis was watching Shuran’s expression. ‘Knight-Commander, isn’t it obvious? These men killed the chamberlain to cover up the harlot Trattari’s secret. She wormed her way into the castle kitchens as a maid, caught the Duke’s eye and when the time was right, did the business she was sent to do.’ The Knight pointed at us. ‘By the child, Aline, the one
they
want to put on the throne.’

Sir Shuran raised an eyebrow. ‘I can believe this woman – Tessa or Winnow, or whatever her name was – committed the crimes, but I hardly think it the plan of a thirteen-year-old girl, Sir Chandis.’

‘Thirteen?’ Wirrina interrupted. ‘Oh, I think that’s impossible, sir.’

Chandis sneered. ‘Are you an investigator now, old woman?’

‘Oh, no, sir, not that, it’s just that – well, this Aline, whoever she is? Well, she’d’ve had to’ve hatched the plan when she was eight. Tessa’s been with us for nigh on five year now.’

Five years?
Winnow had been hiding out as a scullery maid for five years? And doing what all that time? Sleeping with the Duke of Aramor?

‘None of this makes any sense,’ I muttered.

Sir Shuran looked to me and then back to the head cook. ‘Thank you, Wirrina. Sir Chandis will take you back to the kitchens now. You need not fear for you or yours; of that I can assure you. I’ll need to talk to you again soon, and in the meantime, Sir Chandis himself will bear full responsibility for your safety.’

Sir Chandis looked properly chastened and after a moment he saluted and left with the old woman in tow.

‘This certainly sounds like a plot, First Cantor,’ Sir Shuran said to me.

‘It does,’ Kest said, ‘but not a very good one.’

‘And why not? It has succeeded admirably.’ The Knight-Commander’s voice was beginning to show distinct irritation.

‘The assassin sneaks into the family’s rooms, knocking out but not killing the guards, and murders the Duke’s wife and children. Then the assassin goes to Beshard’s room and murders him. Finally, the assassin comes here, kills two guards, takes the time to inform his Grace that his entire family is lying dead, then kills him too. Eight dead in total.’

‘Forgive me, Saint of Swords, but that sounds perfectly logical to me,’ Shuran said.

‘Why not kill the other guards?’ Brasti asked. ‘The ones outside the family rooms? Why knock them out? It’s a greater risk.’

‘Elegance?’ Shuran offered. ‘Perhaps this Winnow of yours wanted to kill the nobles but not the guards who were just doing their jobs? Then when she got here, she found she had no choice but to kill Isault’s guards—’

‘What about Beshard?’ I asked. ‘He wasn’t a noble, and yet you say he was killed in his bed.’

‘She would have had to have killed Beshard if he knew of her relationship with the Duke.’ Shuran spread his hands to indicate the bodies on the floor. ‘I realise this may be hard for you to believe, Falcio, but the simplest and most logical explanation is that your woman, Winnow, murdered the Duke and his family.’

‘But
why
?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Perhaps out of revenge for his part in the death of the King.’

‘Five years later?’ Kest asked.

‘Or for some more recent slight. If they were lovers, perhaps the Duke tired of her. Or perhaps she discovered that Duke Isault was not going to give you the decree supporting Aline and was instead going to support Trin.’

‘Was he?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Shuran said. ‘When I spoke with the Duke last night he was quite drunk. He switched back and forth, first swearing he would back Aline, then cursing the King’s name and vowing to support Trin. When I pressed him on the matter he sent me away.’

‘Which way did you press him?’

Shuran gave a weary smile. ‘I asked only that he tell me which way he was going to go so I could prepare my men for whatever we needed to do next.’

What he really meant to say was,
If Isault was going to betray you, I needed to ready my men to arrest you or kill you
. I wondered if he even knew whether he would have followed through on his duty to the Duke or his promise to me. There are times when honour sucks.

We stood there in silence for a few moments more, trying to make sense of what had happened. ‘She’s a bloody mess,’ Brasti said at last. He’d been silent all this time and so the soft, sorrowful note in his voice surprised all of us.