Knight's Shadow (44 page)

Fight
.

It took me a while to work out what she meant.

Fight
.

Fight what?
I wondered.

‘Are you ready to proceed?’

Her eyes went wide and I wondered why that simple phrase had so bothered her; after all, Heryn had uttered it every day since they took me.

Then I realised why she looked so horrified.

Heryn hadn’t said it. I had.

*

There was something in my mouth: a metal apparatus forcing my jaw open. Small needles set into its frame jabbed me in my gums, my tongue and the roof of my mouth. The apparatus got larger and larger until I realised its metal form was the entire world and I was simply a bloody cloth hanging over it to keep it from rusting in the rain. The apparatus was all there was, and the only sensation was the dull, pulsing pain I felt every place it touched me. The only taste was its metallic flavour in my mouth. The only sound was . . .

. . . something was wrong with the sound of the apparatus. It should have been hard and thin and piercing, and yet . . . The sound in my ears was warm and soothing, and felt like something which must have once existed, maybe before the apparatus . . .

People.

I had it then.
It sounds like a person
. But not a person talking, something else . . .

It’s called singing, you fool.

I realised then that the two troubadours were singing. The song was the crackle of fire and the warmth of good winter wool. I didn’t understand the words and yet I knew they told of trumpets and horses and a cause worth fighting for. They told of a time – whatever
time
was – a time
after
a battle, a time for relief, for respite. A time for peace.

For a brief moment I became a man again and not a red rag draped over the apparatus, because the troubadours were singing a death song.

They’re trying to help me die
. The pain didn’t lessen; I could still feel every single spike, every burn, every crack and piercing, on my skin, through my flesh, in my bones. But the pain was simply . . .
pain
. You can feel pain, but pain isn’t a crime. Pain is in the body, in the mind, in the heart, but there is something else. There’s a fire burning inside and the pain can’t reach it – the pain doesn’t even know it’s there.
No one
knows it’s there because it’s a
secret
. It’s just a word written on a boy’s hand. He’s just learned it; it’s part of a story about men and women in long leather coats. The boy didn’t understand the word and so he’d asked the storyteller to write it on his hand. ‘Can you read?’ the storyteller asked. ‘Of course not,’ the boy said. ‘But I only need to know the one word.’

I was reaching for that word when Heryn’s voice broke through the song. ‘Remarkable,’ he said. ‘It appears that there is more to the legends of the Bardatti than I had given credit.’ The voice changed, as if it were moving in a different direction. ‘Gag them,’ he said. I felt a hand on my cheek. It sent a little tremor through the apparatus and the pain magnified again. ‘This won’t do,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to start again now.’

*

They gave me something on the seventh day – a liquid. I didn’t know its colour, or its taste. Such things were beyond me now.

I gagged on the liquid at first, but it wormed its way down my throat and into my stomach and from there it travelled along my arms and my legs and into every other part of my body. It radiated outwards to my hands and feet and then to my fingers and toes.

My eyes opened. I could see the clearing, and Heryn and Dariana and the two troubadours, and it took me a moment to understand that my sight had returned, and that I knew what ‘sight’ was. The agony was still there, but this time it was worse because I didn’t just feel it; I understood it as well. For the past few days I had become enveloped in pain, and in so doing had forgotten anything else existed.

‘You tried to escape,’ Heryn explained. ‘But you can’t. Not yet.’

A laugh escaped my throat as my eyes wandered down my chest to examine my body. I was a proper mess: bound to a post with needles sticking out of my face and my naked torso and through my torn and soiled trousers into my genitals. I hardly looked as if I’d moved a finger, never mind tried to escape.

But that’s not what Heryn meant and I understood that. A part of me liked the fact that Heryn was worried I might be going mad. I would have been content to die like that: the broken, drooling wreckage of something that had once been a man. I imagined it would have infuriated Heryn to find me incoherent and unable to fully absorb the torment he was so patiently exacting on me – after all, what was the sense in a performance without a proper audience?

For perhaps the first time I truly accepted that I was going to die, and not just lose my life; I was going to die alone and in pain, filled to bursting with the sick vapours of a lifetime of failures.
Fine
, I thought.
Let it be just as Heryn said. Let them tell stories of Falcio the fool; of Falcio who, like a child, believed that the world can change just because you want it to.

I blinked.
Do what you want to me, Dashini or Unblooded or Greatcoats or whatever you want to call yourselves, for I’ve found a shield you can’t penetrate with your needles and your pins.

Acceptance.

I accept.

What will you do now, Heryn? I accept everything: the pain, the misery, the regret. I
want
it.

I
welcome
it.

A surge of joy sparked in me.
Let them continue
. Seven days, it’s been. Let it go on for seven more, or seventy, or seven hundred.

It would have been a good way to die, I think. It wouldn’t have been bravery, exactly, but it didn’t need to be. It would have been enough.

I was captive and bound, but I believed that I was becoming free.

Unfortunately, late on the seventh night, something pulled me back and brought me more sorrow than any of Heryn’s toxins or potions ever could.

Valiana tried to rescue me.

*

She did her best to be silent, but she lacked the training and of course they heard her coming. She did her best to be swift, but she lacked the speed to outpace them. She did her best to fight, but she was still suffering from the wounds she’d taken in Rijou.

In the end, the only thing she did well was to be brave. She lasted five strikes before Dariana got around her and held her by the neck.

Heryn walked over and put his hand on Valiana’s face. He did that a lot, I’d noticed.

‘You were right, Dariana.’ He turned to me and shook his head in disbelief. ‘I said we’d need to go out and find the girl, that she’d never be so foolish as to come looking for us – and yet here she is: a pretty bird come to rest in our clearing.’ He let her go, walked over to me and reached up to the needle stuck between the bones of my wrist.

I screamed.

He removed the needle that was lodged between the bones of my elbow and I suddenly felt as if my arm was no longer there.

He moved one by one to each of the needles he’d placed so carefully at the nerve endings on each of my limbs, chatting away as he worked. ‘Congratulations, Falcio val Mond,’ he said, ‘we finally have what we need to give you your ninth and final death.’

They’re going to kill her
, I realised.
This is how they do it. This is how they break through the shield of my acceptance.

And yet something was off.

‘I think you skipped a day,’ I whispered.

‘You’re quite right,’ Heryn said. ‘The girl is a vital participant in your final death, but one thing remains first.’

‘You should probably get on with it then,’ I said, more eager to die than I had ever been to live.

‘He’s right,’ Dariana said, examining my face. ‘He’s not long for this world.’

Heryn shook his head. ‘No, we will wait. We have an agreement. It must be honoured.’

‘She should have been here by now,’ Dariana said, eyeing the night stars above us.

‘We will wait,’ Heryn repeated. He turned to the troubadours. Nehra and Colwyn were hanging limply from the ropes holding them to the tree and I realised suddenly that Colwyn had died at some point, but they’d just left him there. So much for ‘They must not be harmed.’

‘Stay vigilant, little Bardatti. She will be here soon, and what happens then will be something no one has witnessed for a hundred years.’

*

It was still the seventh night, just on the edge of morning, when she came to me. My sense of time came from the coolness of the air fighting against the burning sensation that emanated from the ropes and radiated across the damaged canvas of my skin. I could hear the buzzing and whirring of insects and the rustling of the small animals of the forest, louder than normal, as if they were trying, through their normal and natural behaviours, to cover the atrocities being committed in their habitat.

My eyes were closed, but I could see her.

‘It’s nearly time, Falcio.’ The night breeze was playing in her hair. I’d forgotten how curly it was. I don’t think I should be blamed for this, though. She’d been dead for more than fifteen years.

‘Time for what, sweetheart?’ I asked, though the sound that came from my lips was barely more than a moan.

‘Time to be brave,’ Aline said.

I felt the faintest touch of tears underneath the lower lashes of my eyes. The sensation was so small, and yet I felt it just as strongly as the splitting pain in my bones and the stabbing ache in my flesh.

‘I’ve been brave,’ I said plaintively, like a child being accused.

She brought her hand close to my face. I so longed to feel her skin against mine. I had forgotten the lines of her face but I could remember every callus on those hands, every curve of her fingers; that the first joint of the third finger on her left hand had a slight bend in it which always made it hard for her to put on her wedding ring. Better to simply keep it on for ever, she’d said to me one day, and I’d agreed,
for ever
. For ever and ever. But though I remembered every part of her body, all I had was the memory, and even in my hallucination I couldn’t feel her hand against my face.

‘Why won’t you touch me, Aline?’ I asked. ‘Should a woman not touch her husband when they’ve been so long apart?’

‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘They’ve taken that from us.’ I imagined her dark eyes to be sad, though not full of tears. Aline was never one for crying.

‘That’s unfair,’ I said. ‘The torture I can understand. The murder is inevitable. But a man should at least be able to hallucinate his wife stroking his face, don’t you think?’

She gave a little laugh. I’d always been able to make her laugh, although I didn’t think the things I’d said had always been very funny, so it made me wonder if all those times she’d only laughed to make me feel better.

‘You’re going to have to be very brave now,’ she said.

‘You said that already. Haven’t I been brave enough for this world yet? Haven’t I stood my ground all those times, even when outnumbered by Knights and bully-boys and assassins? Haven’t I tried to do right even when the trying was hopeless? Didn’t I put a knife in my King when he asked me to? I’ve
been
brave, Aline. I’m not afraid to die.’

‘You’ve been so brave, my darling. And now you must be braver still.’

‘But why?’ This time I heard the slight creaking sound of my words in my ears and not just in my mind.

‘
Because she is here
.’

My eyes began fluttering open and though I expected Aline to disappear, her body instead shifted back and forth, interchanging with that of another. The seconds ticked by and my wife faded away completely until standing in front of me was another woman, one whose physical beauty exceeded Aline’s, but whose black heart made mine freeze inside my chest. Aline’s hand could not reach me, but I could feel this other hand, with its smooth skin and perfectly straight fingers, gently stroking my cheek.

‘Hello, my lovely tatter-cloak,’ Trin said. ‘What delightful moments we are going to share.’

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The Eighth Death

It might sound strange, but when I realised Trin was there, I felt relieved. Aline had told me I needed to be brave but she hadn’t understood how far down into the depths of despair I had already sunk; there was nowhere left to fall.

It’s nearly over
, I promised myself.
She will torture me and taunt me and when she grows bored, as she surely will, it
will
be over.

‘Tell me how it works,’ Trin said, but she wasn’t talking to me.

Heryn was preparing more needles, this time dipping them first in a viscous black liquid, and then into a dark blue powder. ‘There is the
compound
, of course,’ he said, ‘but it is only a conveyance for the magic. It calls an ancient thing that is quite wonderful in its workings.’ He looked up at her. ‘Have you your part?’

As Trin pulled a little leather bag from inside her shirt Heryn picked up one of his little dark blue cloths and held it out to her. She up-ended the bag and something small and brittle and yellowed fell out. A tooth.

‘I told you I had another, Falcio,’ she said, turning to me. ‘It took a great deal of pain and effort to acquire that first one, the one you so churlishly threw away. Fortunately, there was more than one.’

She turned back to Heryn. ‘Is it enough? To make him—?’

He nodded.

‘And for me?’ she asked.

‘Yes, but your skin must touch his skin.’

Trin began removing her clothes. She first took off her long brown coat and then quickly unbuttoned the top of the spotless white shirt underneath. Then she winked at me and, moving more slowly, unfastened one button at a time, lifting her chin just a little, carefully parting the fabric to reveal her breasts, running the backs of her fingers down her torso until they reached the waistband of her trousers. She slipped out of them too, then removed her underclothes until she stood naked in front of me.

‘You only need a bit of skin, you know,’ Dariana said.

Trin turned to her. ‘What fun would that be?’

‘We should begin soon,’ Heryn said. ‘The preparation is ready.’

Trin came to me and slid the tattered remains of my shirt off my shoulders, then removed my trousers before taking a knife to what was left of my underclothes, which was probably for the best, as they were soiled.

‘Again, not necessary,’ Dariana said.

‘Are you jealous you didn’t think of it first?’ Trin asked. Her hand slid down to my crotch and I felt her fingers lightly graze back and forth. ‘Can you make him hard?’ she asked. ‘I want him to be hard.’

Heryn shook his head. ‘Lady, he is paralysed. We have made a ruin of the nerves in his body. He can feel pain and nothing else. There is only a very little piece of his mind left to destroy.’

‘And his heart,’ Trin said. ‘Let’s not forget my darling tatter-cloak’s heart.’ She reached around me with her arms, one hand on the small of my back and the other behind my neck, then wrapped her right leg around my left and held herself tightly against me, as if I were the mast of a ship in the midst of a great storm.

‘You’re ambitious,’ I muttered. I had something funnier in mind, but I lacked the strength to say it.

‘It is time,’ Heryn said. He held up the two long needles and walked behind me. ‘I must place the instruments precisely, Lady Trin,’ he said, and I felt him move Trin’s hand from the small of my back.

I felt the stab of the needle through my skin, through the muscle and into my spine. There was pain, of course, but it was no more or less than what I’d already been through. Even as Heryn stabbed the second one up through the back of my neck and into my skull I felt relieved.
It’s almost over
, I reminded myself. I looked over at the Bardatti. Colwyn’s dead eyes looked at me, full of condemnation. Nehra’s were horrified.

‘Poor Falcio,’ Trin said, kissing my neck. ‘Don’t worry, you won’t be alone. I will be with you the entire journey. I will see what you see and feel what you feel, and every moment will be shared and precious between you and me. Oh, and her, of course.’

Before I could even begin to wonder what she’d meant, my eyes sagged closed and my breathing slowed. I saw a light, but it wasn’t the light they say comes to a man at the moment of his death. Instead, it was the mundane light of oil lanterns hanging from the wooden beams across a low ceiling, illuminating the common room of an ordinary tavern. Long wooden benches were arrayed around a central fire. There was a bar at the end and a man in his early forties was washing cups, apparently in preparation for the evening crowd to arrive. The place was familiar.

‘Oh my.’ I heard Trin’s voice deep inside me. ‘It’s perfect.’

I heard the sound of doors bursting open and four men came into view: Ducal guardsmen. The thickset men were barely two steps up from bully-boys. One was taller than the others and he carried an axe, and because of that axe I recognised him instantly. His name was Fost. Then I saw that the other three were carrying something between them, and that
something
was writhing and scratching and trying to bite. The woman screamed and struggled and in a glint of the light I caught sight of her face.

And at that moment I finally understood what was happening and what I was about to witness, and only then did I understand Aline’s words.
You must be very brave now, Falcio.

But I couldn’t.
I couldn’t . . .

They held Aline down against the rough wooden table and tore the pale grey dress from her body, and though I tried to force my eyes shut, I couldn’t, because my eyes were already shut. I could see everything with perfect clarity, so sharply delineated it was as if a knife was carving the images on the surface of each eye.

Aline tried to kick them, but two men grabbed her legs while the third held her arms up, as if they were trying to stretch her two sizes taller. I begged for my heart to stop beating, but instead I felt it pounding faster, and lightly, like a bird’s, and I realised I was feeling Trin’s heart against mine.

The men started laughing, and they said something about a cow giving milk, then Fost pulled his trousers down around his knees and said something else, though I couldn’t hear him because the men were laughing too loudly and Trin was giggling in my ears.

Aline swore at them. She said there was a curse she could utter that would shatter them, and all men like them. She said there were darker things that could be unleashed in this world than the foul desires of rapists and murderers. She said her husband would come for them. And still they laughed, and when Fost was done his first turn, he went to change positions with one of the men holding her legs – a fat man with a fringe of red hair around his otherwise bald head – but in the instant before Fost could grab hold she pulled her leg back and kicked the fat man in the face. Blood spurted from his nose, and he leaned forward across her body and punched her in the mouth. She used the momentary distraction to free one of her hands from the man gripping her arms and struck out, her fingertips held tight together as if she were holding a pen, and drove them into the man’s eye.

Even as Aline fought she was screaming. She screamed for the innkeeper to help her; she told lies and said men with swords were coming even now, that she would see any man spared who helped her. But the innkeeper didn’t help her. I watched as he turned and quietly walked away out the back.

Fost and his men got a grip on her again, but she spat something bloody from her mouth, into the eye of the man who’d taken her arms. It was a tooth, I realised: when the fat one had punched her, he’d broken several of her teeth, and my brave, beautiful girl had managed not to swallow them so she could use them as weapons. But teeth are not swords, and an unarmed lass, no matter how brave, will never win against four strong soldiers. Fost struck her hard in the side of her ribs, saying something about knocking the wind out of her sails, and there was a loud crack that filled the room, followed by peals of laughter from the others.

The fat man forced himself inside her and pounded against her in a rage, and I watched her eyes dart back and forth as she looked for a weapon or a way to distract her attackers, even for an instant. For a moment I thought her eyes met mine. But of course that was impossible.

The fat man pulled out from her and said something, but I couldn’t hear it. Instead I heard a terrible wrenching sound: Aline had pulled her own arm from its socket. The sick wet sound caused the man holding her arms to let go in shock, just for a moment, and my brave girl bit her lip bloody through the pain and rose up to jab at Fost with the elbow of her good arm. She struck him in the throat and he stumbled back, then he grunted an order at his men. I couldn’t hear the replies; all sound was lost in the rushing of blood in my ears. The three remaining men, bloodied and bruised and scratched, took hold of Aline once more.

Fost reached for his axe. ‘Enough,’ he said. And this I could hear as clearly as the roar of thunder on a dry night. ‘All she needs is two tits and a cunt for my needs.’

As he lifted the axe high above him, Aline’s eyes went wide, full of terror and anguish, and her endless courage drained at last down to the last drips of the bottle. She was looking at me then, I swear it, and I could hear her screaming my name: ‘Falcio! Falcio!
Falcio!
’

I prayed that when the axe fell I would feel it too, but I didn’t. She had been alone, after all.

There was more laughter as the lights in the tavern began to flicker and fade, and I opened my eyes to see Trin’s face laden with sweat, her gaze unfocused, her lips slightly parted. She was still entangled with me. Her breathing was heavy and she gave a small moan. She was climaxing.

‘It is done,’ Heryn said, and I felt the needle at the base of my skull slowly pulled away, then the one in my back. The others he left in place.

Trin finally removed her leg from around mine, then one hand, then the other.

‘Was it satisfactory?’ Dariana asked. There wasn’t a trace of emotion in her voice.

Trin’s eyes were still on mine. ‘I want to do it again,’ she said.

Heryn gave a small laugh. ‘I’m afraid that isn’t possible, Lady, nor would it increase his suffering, if that’s what you seek. He is broken now, and almost ready for the ninth death.’

‘Pity,’ Trin said, and I watched as she dressed herself.

When she was done, Heryn stepped in front of her. ‘The agreement was—’

‘Yes, yes, my dear Unblooded, our agreement is fulfilled.’

‘Good, then—’

‘But I would like to make a small adjustment,’ she said, pulling a dagger from her belt, ‘with regard to the nameless bitch you have tied up over there.’ She stepped around Heryn and walked towards Valiana, but Dariana positioned herself in front of her.

‘That wasn’t the agreement.’

‘She’s right,’ Heryn said, and when Trin turned to him, a darkness in her eyes, he shook his head. ‘It would be unwise to break faith with us.’

For a moment they were still, all three of them, and then Trin put the dagger back in her belt and came back to me and smiled. ‘I will have to make do with the memory, my lovely tatter-cloak.’ She kissed me on the cheek. ‘Thank you, Falcio. I will always love you for this.’

Oddly, impossibly, I began to cry.
How was there room for misery inside me still?
I told myself it must be the pins and the needles and the oils and the ointments they were using on me. Falcio, that foolish man, had died, days ago, most likely, and it was only these strange Dashini secrets keeping the remains of his body together.
It’s over
, I told myself.
Stop breathing. Just stop breathing.

But still I couldn’t: air came into my mouth and left the same way. Pain came in from the world and grew inside me. I wasn’t dead. I was a garden for shame and regret. But Aline had said something, hadn’t she? It couldn’t have been long ago. It was something about bravery.
You must be braver than ever now, Falcio
. That’s what she’d said.
But I can’t be brave
, I thought, not like she had been.
I’m too busy growing failure inside my heart. It’s taken root now, and it grows and grows and grows
. Yet still her words kept coming back:
You must be brave now. Braver than ever
.

I thought about trying to scream my frustration. I thought about how I would threaten them all. I would list every torment that my rage would inflict on them, as Aline had done. I would make promises of revenge that would make the Gods and the Saints turn their gaze away from Tristia for fear of what they might see when Falcio was finally free. But that wasn’t bravery; that was simply bravado. What good are the threats of a corpse, even when it hasn’t discovered its own death yet? But there had to be an answer. Aline had commanded me to be brave:
very
brave.
Braver than ever before
. What was it the King used to say? Our greatest strength is our judgement; our finest weapon is our knowledge of the laws. It sounded so trite, but what else was left?

Fine
, I thought to myself.
Let the last thing they hear from me be the thing that hurts them most. Let the last knife I wield be the one with the truest edge
. And so I began to recite the laws my King had taught me, one after another, as I had done in my proudest moments at the side of my fellow Greatcoats, and as I had done when I had last believed myself to be near the end, in the dungeons of Rijou. I began with the First Law.
A hundred times I’ll say it
, I told myself.
And then I will move on to the Second
.

‘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.’

My voice was so light that neither Heryn nor Dariana were close enough to hear me. Trin looked up and leaned towards me as if she was trying to make out what I was saying.

‘The First Law is that men are free,’ I repeated. My voice was a little stronger, I thought. I sang it again, and again, and Trin came even closer until her ear was nearly touching my mouth and so I kept singing. I repeated the words over and over, knowing in my heart that the words were magic, that if I just kept saying them they would break through the corruption inside me and all around me.