Knight's Shadow (39 page)

‘Stop,’ I called out to the Knight. ‘Please, stop. Don’t do this.’

Toujean ignored me; he was fired up with self-righteous passion as he moved closer to Valiana.

‘You’re right about one thing, Sir Knight,’ Valiana said, shakily recovering her footing. ‘This
is
the story of Tristia, told right here in this cell deep in the belly of this disgusting palace in the heart of the most corrupt city in the world. It’s the story of a Knight so full of dishonour and cowardice that he would murder a young boy to achieve his filthy desire for power.’

‘Shut up,
Dead Whore
. I’m not some farmer’s son you can bray at. I’m a Tristian Knight.’

‘That you are,’ she said, her sword dipping down as she struggled to stay on her feet. ‘And I am . . . I am Valiana val Mond, a peasant and a fool and a Greatcoat all at once.’ She tightened her grip on her weapon. ‘And I’m the dead whore who’s about to kill you.’

She brought her sword up into line and lunged at Toujean’s belly, but he parried the sword away and thrust at her chest.

Fast
, I thought.
He’s too damned fast – she can’t parry him
. But she didn’t try: she let his blade hit her in the left side of her chest. I heard the bone plates of her coat break, and I could have sworn I heard the leather being pierced, and then the sound of something sick and wet . . .

Toujean’s eyes were wide with surprise and delight. ‘She just . . . she just walked into it!’ His smile widened. ‘You
stupid
whore – don’t you know any better? You
never
raise your weapon against a true . . . a trueborn’

The Knight looked down, and only then did he see that the tip of Valiana’s sword was resting just under his neck. ‘Welcome to Tristia,’ she said, and with both hands on the hilt of her sword she pushed the blade up through his neck and into his head.

They stood there for a moment, eyes locked on one another, two storytellers each convinced their tale was the truest. Then Toujean began to blink furiously, and I saw blood start to seep from the corners of his eyes as the flesh inside his skull began to work its way out. The blood dripped down his face, and just for a moment he looked as if he were crying tears of great sorrow. Valiana pulled her blade out and pushed him away from her and as he fell, the tip of his sword came out of her chest. She dropped her own weapon and fell to her hands and knees next to Tommer’s unconscious form.

No, please
, no
!
I thought, pulling uselessly at the handle of the iron door.

Very slowly her right hand slid along the dusty stone floor until her fingers reached the key. Without looking up she threw it towards me and I caught it – just barely, but it was enough. I fumbled at the lock, shaking, until Ugh took the key from me, stuck it in and opened the cell.

I ran inside and dropped to my knees beside Valiana, lifting her head to rest against my legs and pulling a cloth from my coat to hold against her wound. Her eyes fluttered and the colour in her face began to fade. ‘Valiana!’ I screamed. ‘Don’t go! Please—’

She reached up and placed her hand over mine. ‘M’fine,’ she said, her voice barely a whisper. She slowly turned her head and looked at Duke Jillard, cowering, still terrified, in the opposite corner of the room. ‘Bet you wish I was your daughter now.’

Chapter Thirty-Four

The Brave

‘Where in all the hells is the healer?’ I screamed, holding Valiana to me with one arm and pressing the cloth from my coat against her chest to keep the blood from flowing freely.

Tommer rose from the floor of the cell, his eyes dreamy as if he’d been awakened from a deep sleep. He walked over to us and peered down at Valiana. ‘Sister,’ he said. ‘You look tired.’

Valiana forced her eyes open briefly and smiled at him weakly but said nothing.

Footsteps echoed along the passageway and Kest appeared in the doorway, closely followed by Dariana and Shiballe. Several of the Duke’s guards followed them.

‘The healer’s coming,’ Kest said. ‘He was right behind us – he’ll be here any moment—’

Shiballe ran into the cell. Jillard’s shaking had slowed and now he just sat there, murmuring to himself. I was pretty sure that he would be back to the normal wretch he had always been within the hour.

‘The healer will look to the Duke first,’ Shiballe said, back to his usual bumptious self, ‘then he will see to Tommer. After that’ – he looked with distaste at Valiana – ‘I will consider requests for assistance.’

‘Kest,’ I said, my voice even, ‘when the healer arrives, direct him to us immediately.’

Shiballe turned to look at the guards standing outside the cell. ‘Arrest the Trattari,’ he said. ‘Arrest all of them.’

‘Oh, and Kest? Feel free to kill as many people as it takes to ensure the healer has a clear passage to Valiana.’

Tommer shook his head at me. ‘Enough,’ he said. He gestured at the bodies on the floor. ‘There’s been enough death.’ He turned away from me and walked to Shiballe. ‘My father will be well. It will take his mind a few hours to clear the dust. My sister is gravely wounded. She will see the healer first.’

‘She is not your sister,’ Shiballe said, ‘she’s just a peasant. She’s—’

‘I am the son of Duke Jillard,’ Tommer said. ‘One day, perhaps one day soon, I will be the Duke of Rijou. You would do well to remember that, Shiballe.’

For just an instant Tommer was no longer a bruised and terrified eleven-year-old boy. He was the future ruler of the most powerful duchy in all of Tristia. Shiballe’s face began to turn a remarkably pale shade of grey. ‘I . . . Of course, sir.’

Tommer turned to Valiana and looked at her with more warmth than I would have thought possible for a boy who’d just gone through such terrors. ‘She is my sister if I say she is.’ He sat down next to her, leaned his head on her shoulder and closed his eyes. ‘She will see the healer first.’

‘How about we let the one person qualified to make such decisions be the one to determine which of his patients to see and in what order?’ a man’s voice said from behind the crowd. ‘Get out of my way, you great fools.’

The guards parted to make way for an older man with silver-grey hair carrying a leather healer’s case. His elaborate robes of red and gold marked him as a nobleman. He glanced at Tommer, then at Jillard, then knelt down to check Valiana’s eyes. He felt her forehead and neck, then put the back of his hand against her cheek. ‘My name is Firensi,’ he said. ‘Does this feel cold or hot?’

‘Cold, a little,’ Valiana replied.

‘The wound is in her chest,’ I said. ‘Why are you—?’

‘I already know where the wound is. I need to know how well her body is coping with it.’

‘Should I lay her down on her back?’

‘Only if you want to kill her.’ The healer opened his leather case and pulled out a very small wooden box. Inside were some little white pills. ‘Hold this on your tongue,’ he told Valiana, placing one in her mouth. ‘Don’t swallow. Let it melt there. The pain will ease and you’ll feel a calm come over you.’

I thought of Beytina, and her assemblage of fools with tinctures that tasted nice and took away pain but did nothing to prevent the patient from dying. ‘Is there . . . Is there a country healer nearby?’ I asked.

Firensi raised an eyebrow but kept his focus on Valiana. ‘You think I’m some courtly fop who gives out scented potions to wealthy nobles so they can please their wives in bed?’

‘I . . .’ Antagonising the man wouldn’t help; perhaps for once I should just shut up. ‘No, I—’

‘Because that’s exactly what I am,’ he said. He took out bandages and plasters and needles and some bottles of liquid and arranged them on the side of his case. ‘I like good food and good wine and I like my bed to be soft, and made by someone else.’ He turned to me and put a hand on my shoulder. ‘But my mother was a country healer and she could halfway bring back the dead if she chose. This girl is under my care now and I’ll do everything I can for her.’ He squeezed his fingers into my shoulders, pressing into a nerve that made it feel as if he were pushing six-inch pins into it. ‘Now get out of my way and let me work.’

I eased my arm out from behind Valiana’s shoulders and leaned her against the wall, but as I began to rise she grabbed my arm.

‘I don’t want to die, Falcio.’

I stopped and looked down at her, at the strands of dark hair hanging limp and soaking wet against her skin, at the lines of pain creasing her forehead.

‘I know it probably looks that way, but I don’t,’ she said. ‘I’m
scared
of dying –
terrified
. When the Knights . . . Duke Jillard and I were focused on Tommer, and Sir Istan and Parrick were watching the passageway to make sure no one attacked us. Sir Toujean and that other man, they were wounded, they looked so bad, but then they just got right up from the floor and before I knew what was happening poor Sir Istan had his throat slit and Parrick had a sword in his side.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said, ‘you can tell me later. You’re not going to die.’ I looked at Firensi, who was cleaning pieces of leather out of her wound even as blood continued to flow from it. If he knew Valiana’s fate, his eyes showed nothing of it.

Valiana coughed. ‘Toujean dug his hand into the blue bag and he flung dust in our faces. I tried not to breathe it in, but—’

‘It goes through your skin,’ I said.

‘Odd,’ Firensi said, now smoothing some kind of sticky salve over the wound; it smelled uncomfortably like the corpses in the room. ‘That’s not something in any of my books.’

Valiana flinched as he probed the wound and her hand squeezed my forearm. ‘When I first met you,’ she said, ‘you would just throw yourself into danger to save other people. You . . . I hated you, Falcio. You made me feel like I was a spoiled little girl playing at being a princess. I suppose I was. When you said you were staying in Rijou to protect Aline . . . she was no one of consequence, just some girl from a minor noble’s family, and I kept thinking, “If he dies fighting for that girl, if he sacrifices himself to save one little girl . . . what will people say about him?” ’

‘That he was an idiot,’ I said, sitting back down next to her. ‘Born a peasant, raised a fool, died an idiot.’

‘That’s not true.’ Valiana’s fingers slipped down my arm and slid into my hand. ‘It’s long past time you figured that out. What people remember about us? That
matters
. What are we, really, but acts of courage or cowardice, generosity or greed? I don’t want to die, Falcio, but if I do die now, what will they say about me?’

‘That you had a very skewed notion of philosophy,’ I said, my eyes on Firensi’s hands as he applied a kind of thick, sinewy bandage I’d never seen before to her chest.

She laughed, just for a moment, wincing at the pain. ‘No, they’ll say the peasant girl with no name picked up a sword and saved the life of the Duke’s son even though she knew he wasn’t really her brother. They’ll say that an orphan’s courage can be as great as that of any noble or Knight, and they’ll look at the next foolish girl and wonder if she too might be a hero.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘That sounds like a good story, doesn’t it?’

‘A damned good story,’ I said.

She smiled and closed her eyes. ‘Good. Now go and put a stop to all of this madness. I’m feeling a little sleepy.’

I felt a stab of fear as I watched her breathing slow and become shallow.

‘It’s the salve,’ Firensi said, rising up to his feet and stretching. ‘It’s going to keep her out for a while. It’ll be a few hours before I can have her moved so I’ll have someone clear out these bodies and bring some blankets. She needs to be kept warm.’

A thought occurred to me. ‘There is a woman nearby, in Merisaw. Her name is Ethalia—’

‘What, another country healer? Some half-witted apothecary whose parents were brother and sister? Still don’t trust me, eh?’

‘She’s a Sister of the Merciful Light,’ I said, ‘and they can—’

‘I know who they are.’ Firensi looked from me to Valiana. ‘It’s not actually the stupidest thing you’ve said to me so far. It’s spiritual hogwash, largely, but there is some evidence that they are sometimes able to make a body heal faster. Ethalia of Merisaw, eh? I’ll send someone for her in a day or two.’ I started to object, but Firensi held up a hand. ‘Nothing she does will help a sword wound until the body’s decided if it’s going to live or die. I’ll send for her when the time is right.’

Some of Shiballe’s men jostled me aside as they carried in some eight-foot-long wooden poles wrapped with canvas. Under Firensi’s direction they opened them out, revealing the canvas strips to be slings, and carefully lifted Tommer into one of them. While two men gently carried him out of the cell, two more repeated the process for Jillard. Firensi waved the rest of the men away; he obviously intended to stay and watch over Valiana himself.

Toujean and his fellow conspirators were dragged out of the bloody dungeon to rot someplace else.

I followed the procession out of the cell and found Kest and Dariana waiting for me.

‘Parrick’s dead,’ Kest said. ‘The knife went into his liver.’

I prepared myself for a wave of grief and regret, only to find nothing came. Parrick had stood by and kept his silence as I was being tortured in a cell on the floor above this one. Perhaps it was petty of me – he’d been following the King’s last command, after all, and to the letter – but damn him anyway. Damn the King too, for that matter.

‘Your friend here tried to stop the bleeding,’ Kest said, looking at Ugh, who was kneeling over Parrick’s body. ‘But it was too late.’

Ugh rose from the floor. His hands were covered in blood and he looked down at them as if he wanted to cut them off. ‘Fucking useless. Only good for making pain. No good for saving anybody.’

The raw grief on the face of this strange brute of a man struck me: he was so full of violence and yet deep down he was seeking some better tale to make of his life.

I knelt down and removed Parrick’s coat, pulling one arm out of its sleeve and then the other, rolling his body around unceremoniously until he was lying on his back, his vacant eyes staring up at me.

‘What are you doing?’ Dariana asked.

I handed the coat to Ugh. ‘Put this on.’

Ugh’s eyes went wide. ‘I’m no fucking—’

‘I know. You’re no “fucking tough guy Greatcoat”. Put it on anyway.’

The big man slid his arms through the sleeves, and I was surprised to see how well it fitted him – it was a little long, but it did up across the chest and shoulders. He ran his hands across the leather and felt the buttons in the front. He was treating it as if I’d handed him a cleric’s holy robes.

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Dariana demanded. ‘You’re going to make—’

‘You have to take the oath,’ Kest said to Ugh.

Ugh looked up at us. ‘What is oath?’

Neither Kest nor I answered. This is how it is, how it’s always been.

‘This is ridiculous,’ Dariana said, angrier than I would have expected from someone who didn’t care about the Greatcoats. ‘What would your precious dead King say if he knew you were giving a greatcoat to a damned torturer?’

‘I don’t know nothing about no King,’ Ugh said, grimacing at us, his voice thick with angry defiance. ‘Fuck Kings. Fuck Dukes. Only thing that matters is Law. Fifth Law: no unjust punishment for nobody. No torture. No more torture for nobody. You give me coat? I go beat hells out of any man try to torture somebody. You want oath? Fifth Law is my oath. Fuck you if you no like it.’

Kest looked at me. ‘That’s . . . original.’

‘It’ll do,’ I said.

A thin, reedy laugh caught my ears. ‘Look,’ Shiballe called out, standing next to Duke Jillard’s stretcher, ‘they put a coat on a pig and called it a Magister. Shall he adjudicate the disputes of cows and chickens?’

Ugh walked over to where Shiballe was standing. ‘What good is fucking worm, eh? Fucking Duke. Maybe if no more Duke people no need tough guy Greatcoats, eh?’

The Duke, shivering on his back, tried to push himself up on the stretcher. He looked as if he was about to say something but I never heard it. In all the chaos and terror and then the sudden relief of Toujean’s death we had all forgotten about one thing.
The Dashini.

*

A fight isn’t won on strength or speed, nor on the back-and-forth trading of blows and parries. Those are all preamble. A fight is won by the single attack that outwits or overwhelms the opponent’s guard and takes his life. If you could devise just one sequence of movements to accomplish this, you wouldn’t need to bother with anything else. A single, perfect attack is exactly what the Dashini delivered.

It was Kest who noticed it first. In that strange mind of his the world is made up of angles and trajectories. I felt him tense next to me and only then saw that the line of the Duke’s gaze was focused just slightly behind and above us.

We turned and saw the Dashini running naked towards us. His right hand was a ruin, bleeding from the fingers, the bone of his little finger exposed, and my first thought was to wonder if that’s how he’d opened the door to his cell. ‘Dashi—’ I began to yell, but even as I reached down to grip my left rapier I knew I’d never draw it in time.

Had the Dashini held a blade in his hand he could have jammed it down my throat. But he didn’t, and anyway, I wasn’t his target. The instant before he reached us he leapt up and to the right, his foot finding brief purchase on a tiny outcropping two feet above the floor and no more than half an inch deep. He pushed off from it and flipped over and past us.