Knight's Shadow (43 page)

Aline walked up to me and touched my hand, her own trembling. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be braver.’

I knelt down for a moment and awkwardly wrapped my arms around her, even as I kept a grip on my rapiers. I could feel the cool, wet skin of her cheek against mine. ‘It’s all right,’ I said. ‘You were as brave as anyone could hope. Go on, sweetheart, don’t cry. I’ll be fine once we work things out here.’

Aline stepped back and slowly reached out a small hand. She put it against my face, and then she began to cry. A moment later she turned and ran away, into the dark shadows of the trees. Dariana strode after her.

‘That was generous,’ the Tailor said. For once there was no trace of cynicism in her voice.

‘The girl isn’t to blame,’ I said, ‘and she shouldn’t know what comes next.’

I closed my eyes and pictured my wife Aline, not as she had been in life, but the way she was when I found her dead upon the floor of that tavern. I reached out for one last surge of stubborn, bloody rage, one last rush of fury fuelled by the destruction of all my ideals and the ruin I’d made of my own life. I summoned forth every dark and terrible part of myself, and, as I leapt at the monsters who’d blackened the name of the Greatcoats for ever, I smiled.

*

If I could have killed even two of the bastards I would have forgiven the Gods all their injustices. If I’d reached the Tailor, well, then I might even have been grateful. But there were too many, and they were young and fast and fresh, while I was injured and poisoned and tired of living in a world that turned on lies and betrayal. They took me down without my blade touching even one of them.

‘I’m sorry, Falcio,’ the Tailor said as three of the Unblooded held me. ‘If there had been another road I would have taken it. I hope you can believe that. What comes now – well, I can’t say it’s for the best, but it’s the only chance any of us have, even you.’

I had a split lip and I’d been hit in the gut enough times that I could barely take a breath, let alone a deep one. But my arms and legs had gone numb, and as I’ve learned, it’s surprisingly easy to be bold and brave when you have no hope of survival.

‘I hope you can believe me when I say it’s not over until I say it is.’

She smiled. It was a soft and compassionate smile that ill-suited her face. ‘That’s what I’ve always loved about you, Falcio, ever since that day you arrived at my cottage, feverish and starved and more than half-dead, carrying Duke Yered’s severed head in a sack. You never know when to quit.’

‘Count on it,’ I said.

One of the Unblooded turned to the Tailor. ‘You will go now. What comes now is sacred and not for your eyes.’

‘I warned you, Falcio. I said I would do anything to put that girl on the throne and I will.
Anything
.’ Then she walked off.

As my captors began dragging me away I asked, ‘Where are we off to? I hope it’s all right if I watch. I hate to miss a good sacred ritual.’

The two who were dragging me stopped for a minute and another grabbed me by the jaw. ‘Have no fear on that account, Trattari. You will see and hear and feel every part of what comes next.’

‘Sounds like a party,’ I said, but the confidence in his voice, the raw hatred emanating from him, made my guts start to chill.

‘Oh, it is.’ He motioned for the others to continue, and as they dragged me deeper into the forest he asked, ‘Tell me, First Cantor, have you ever heard of something called the Greatcoat’s Lament?’

Chapter Thirty-Eight

The Lament

The Unblooded had obviously been preparing for this for a while. The clearing they dragged me to, about a hundred yards into the forest, featured a thick yew-tree post standing alone right in the middle. Another tree had been sacrificed to provide two three-foot lengths of post, now attached about five feet up the standing post so that they extended towards the sky. The whole edifice looked like a supplicant begging for mercy from the Gods above.

Or maybe it’s just supposed to look like a cactus
, I told myself, and I gave a little laugh at my own joke.

The men holding my arms placed me with my back to the post. I was about to say something incredibly cutting and clever when one of them drove his fist into my stomach, and as I doubled over they dragged my arms up and tied my hands to the angled posts.

When they were done, seven of them ranged themselves in front of me. I’d seen most of them at one point or another during the weeks we’d been harrying Trin’s forces in Pulnam; I’d even had conversations with them, though you wouldn’t have guessed we knew each other, let alone had fought on the same side, because none of them showed any emotion at all. I’ve had to intimidate people myself before now, when it was that or get into a fight that might get someone killed. I’ve even practised trying to look cold-blooded, much to Kest and Brasti’s amusement. But the expressions on the faces of these Unblooded, that was the truest cold I’d ever seen.

There were four men and three women, one of whom was Dariana. “
Deadly Dari
” Brasti had called her. I wondered what he would call her if he could see her now. I kept expecting her to say something or do something – to hit me, or spit in my face, make some remark about how stupid I was or . . . well, anything, really, but she just stood with the others, her face lacking the slightest trace of humanity.

I felt fear seep into me. It swirled underneath my skin and wound its way through my veins. I swear I could feel it creep into my heart.

One of the men stepped forward. He was short, only five and a half feet tall, with close-cropped blond hair; it had a sandy quality that reminded me of the desert. He was young, maybe twenty, and like the others he had no expression on his face – until the moment he came close to me, when his lips curled up into a smile that would have looked friendly, if he hadn’t been about to murder me.

‘Falcio val Mond, First Cantor of the Greatcoats, King’s Heart and husband of the butchered peasant woman called Aline val Mond, lover of the Rijou whore Ethalia, self-proclaimed father to the woman called Valiana.’

‘Yes,’ I said, as two men stepped forward and started strapping my torso to the post, ‘I am
that
Falcio val Mond. Were you concerned in case you’d captured the wrong one?’

‘My name is Heryn. I am . . . Well, it will make no difference to you who I am. Suffice it to say, I will be performing the Lament.’

‘You make it sound like you’re going to pull out a harp and start playing for me. Is that what the “Lament” is? Because if so, this is working out much worse than I’d feared.’

Heryn ignored my flippant remarks as he pulled out a black leather tube and knelt to set it on the ground. As he unrolled it, long six-inch steel needles appeared, along with tiny bottles of various shapes, each with a silver top. Next to each bottle was a little dark blue cloth. Heryn picked up one of the cloths and flattened it, then placed one of the needles, a piece of blackened metal, onto the cloth. He looked at me for a moment, examining me from my head to my chest and then all the way down to my feet. Then he withdrew one of the bottles from the leather case, unstoppered it and carefully tilted it over the needle. I’d been expecting some kind of fluid but what came out was more of a powder: dried flakes of something dark and red that crumbled as they hit the needle. Heryn carefully picked up the needle and rose to his feet. He pushed my head forward so that my chin was touching my chest. ‘Are you ready?’

‘Let me think about—’

Without the slightest hesitation he drove the needle deep into a spot near the base of my neck. I’d expected pain. I’ve known pain. I’ve been tortured before.

But this?

I screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

*

When I awakened the next morning, everything around me had a reddish tinge, as if my eyes were caked in blood. It took a moment for the shadows to resolve themselves into figures. Heryn and Dariana stood before me.

‘That took rather a long time,’ Heryn said conversationally. ‘You didn’t move at all! And you didn’t react when I pulled the needle out – for a moment I thought I’d made a terrible mistake, but Dariana assured me that this is a recent affliction.’

My breathing was slow. The air felt heavy and it was several minutes before I could take in a full breath. ‘Thanks for your concern,’ I said.

He smiled. ‘So, not quite chastened yet? You cried and moaned rather a lot yesterday. I’m afraid today will be worse.’

The King used to like this phrase he’d found in an old handbook in the royal library, written for spies from a bygone era:
There is no crime in feeling fear, nor any virtue in acknowledging it.

‘You know, something’s been bothering me,’ I said. ‘Are you still “Unblooded”? Because that seems unfair to me: you’ve murdered men and women and children, so surely they can’t still make you go around calling yourselves “Unblooded” when you’ve caused the deaths of so many innocents, can they? I mean, I realise you haven’t had time to tattoo your faces yet, but shouldn’t you be full-on Dashini by now?’

Heryn smirked. ‘There are no Dashini any more. You can call us Greatcoats.’

I pulled at my bonds without thinking, which sent a wave of pain and nausea through my body.

‘Careful now,’ Heryn said. ‘I don’t want you worn out too quickly. Let’s set the stage properly, shall we?’

He waved a hand in the air, which was obviously a pre-arranged signal as two of his men left the clearing for a moment and returned almost immediately dragging a pair of bodies. As they got closer I could see they were a man and a woman, and the bruises around their eyes and reddened cheeks made me think they’d been beaten – though not badly, just enough to make them compliant. It took me a moment more to recognise them as Nehra and Colwyn, the troubadours who’d been following us.

‘If you’ve brought them here to torture them as well, I should warn you the man’s singing voice is probably worse than mine,’ I pointed out helpfully, but my words immediately elicited a howl from the self-styled Bardatti, who started thrashing about.

Colwyn started his begging by immediately distancing himself from me. ‘Let us go!’ he pleaded. ‘We have nothing to do with this man or his actions. We’ve done you no wrong—’

I carefully turned my gaze to Dariana. It still hurt. ‘You see what happens? You go to all this trouble to betray someone and you still get stuck listening to the tone-deaf troubadour.’

Dariana said nothing as she helped Heryn’s men to position the troubadours upright against a handy tree trunk. She pulled their arms behind them and tied them at the wrist. Nehra, the woman, gritted her teeth from the pain. Colwyn just screamed.

‘Careful,’ Heryn said. ‘They’re not to be harmed.’

Really?
I thought incredulously.
This is where you decide to draw the line on cruelty? Did someone proclaim it ‘Be Kind to Troubadours’ week when I wasn’t paying attention?

The men let the ropes slacken a little, enough to ensure that Nehra and Colwyn, though not exactly comfortable, were also not in agony.

‘There now, that’s better.’ Heryn clapped his hands in approval. ‘Can’t have a performance without an audience, can we?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but is today’s torture that you try to confuse me to death?’

Heryn walked over to the troubadours. He stood in front of Nehra for a moment, then reached out and with a finger traced her jawline. She didn’t try to twist out of the way, just glared at him and said, ‘Think on what you do here, Unblooded. You betray your ancestors, and that will not soon be forgotten. What is seen by the Bardatti is ever known to the world.’

‘I’m counting on it,’ Heryn said.

He walked back to me and helpfully explained, ‘I’ve had these two brought here to witness the Lament, Falcio: to record what takes place here and ensure it is remembered for ever.’

An absurd thought entered my mind and I couldn’t stop myself from chuckling. ‘Really? I’m afraid that if it’s
facts
you want remembered, you’ve captured the wrong troubadours.’

Heryn smiled at my joke. ‘Well said. This bravado suits you, Falcio val Mond.’ He turned his head and stared at the troubadours. ‘Remember him here, like this: his courage, his daring. When you tell this story, make sure everyone knows that Falcio val Mond was valiant in the face of the Lament.’

‘All this, just because I beat a couple of your Dashini brethren? Heryn, could it be possible that the world’s greatest assassins are also history’s sorest losers?’

Heryn returned to me. There was no ire in his tone. There was no emotion at all. ‘You should be grateful, Falcio. Most men live and die and no one remembers their names – but you? For a hundred years your story will be told, over and over. It will be whispered in the dark, and even with the sun high up in the sky it will be spoken of in frightened tones. Idealistic men and women will look around and say, ‘The world should be a better place. Injustice should be answered.’ They will think about the stories of the Greatcoats, and wonder how a man or woman might fashion such a coat and take up sword and song to make the world a little more fair.’ He placed a hand on each of my cheeks. ‘Then they will remember the tale of Falcio val Mond and the agony and terror he endured, how his mouth was struggling to scream even after his heart had stopped beating. And then they will go back to their sad little lives and try their best to forget there ever was such a thing as a Greatcoat.’

Heryn knelt down again and opened up his leather bag and pulled out another dark blue cloth, then a bottle made of mottled green glass and finally another needle, this one with a tiny hook at the end. Rising to his feet he said, ‘A hundred years from now, Falcio val Mond, your greatest contribution to the world will be that from this moment forward, no one ever dreamed of becoming a Greatcoat again.’ He paused for just a moment, then smiled. ‘So, shall we begin again?’

*

Pain for days on end will, eventually, drive a man to unconsciousness. Turns out the Dashini have found a solution for this aggravating little problem.

‘—oh, no, First Cantor, you can’t miss any of this,’ Heryn was saying as Dariana waved a blue bottle beneath my nostrils, and suddenly I was completely awake and all the aches and pains that made up my body were magnified a millionfold.

I wondered why I’d stopped screaming, then I dimly realised I still was – it was just that my voice was now so hoarse that it was nothing more than a slight crunchy whisper, like wind passing through dead leaves.

There is no crime in feeling fear, nor any virtue in acknowledging it
. ‘I’m getting bored,’ I whispered. ‘Why don’t you kill me?’

‘There are nine deaths in a Lament, Falcio. You should know by now that it’s not about
killing
you. It’s about destroying you utterly.’

‘How many have I had so far?’ I asked. I looked over at the troubadours. Nehra was watching me, her jaw clenched as if it took an act of great will to look at me. She was crying.

‘We are still on the third death,’ Heryn said. ‘Shall we proceed?’

*

On the fourth day I tried to force myself to stop breathing, and when that didn’t work, I tried to bite off my own tongue. When I was able to open my eyes again, I realised my vision was blurred and it was hard to see. The world had become a fog made of grey clouds infused with red tendrils that reached out to me, filling my nostrils and my mouth and even my ears.

I thought about the stories of old men who lost their wives and then, for no apparent reason at all, died in the night. They just . . .
ended
. There was nothing ahead for them but solitude, so their hearts simply stopped beating. Like a drunken fool or a madman I started imploring my own heart.
Stop!
I told it.
Stop beating. Your wife is dead. You should have stopped then but you didn’t, belligerent child. Your King is dead. Your country is dead. The world has shrunk to this tiny prison.

‘Ah,’ a voice said. It was Heryn’s. ‘I see you’re coming around. Kind of you not to take as long this morning. Perhaps we’ve made a terrible mistake and you’re enjoying the pain?’

Stop. Beating. Stop.

‘Shall we proceed?’

*

Madness. Madness was the answer. I had been trying to make myself die, but that was stupid, a fool’s gambit. You can’t make yourself die.

Insanity was the answer: insane people don’t feel pain – or, well, they
feel
it, but they don’t
comprehend
it. They scream and they moan and they laugh and they giggle and they spit and they swallow and they do all the things human beings do, but they don’t
understand
any of it.

Understanding was my big problem, it turned out.

Knowing what day it was – that this was the fourth day – and knowing there were still five more before they finally killed me:
that
was the problem.

So insanity was what I needed now.

‘Good morning,’ Heryn said.

My eyes opened and I saw him looking at me. My stomach churned at the sight of him. Nothing in his face or his body or his hair had changed and yet every part of him, everything about him, made my limbs tremble and my eyes shed tears. The stupid part of me, the part people used to call Falcio, tried to hold his gaze, as if that would make anything any better.

Fool.

I forced my head to turn and saw the Bardatti woman was still tied to the tree. She mouthed a word at me.