The Fell Sword (79 page)

He went back to gather the strands of his extrication network, because in a day or so, a great many of his people were going to need to flee the city.

The assassin watched a mime come along the street, dressed all in red and green, with a wreath of berries in her hair. He had been expecting her – she came each day at the same time, and did the same dance. But today she did a different act, and he felt the spirit of action flood him as she stooped, as part of her dance, and made a snowball of the filthy mush in the street. She threw it with neat accuracy at his shutters. Then she did a cartwheel, heedless of the freezing slush.

She stopped under his window and did a handstand, and then pulled from her bag a puppet dressed all in red, and dropped it in the snow.

And stepped on it.

She left the scarlet thing behind her as she danced away.

He rose from the narrow bed in his garret and pulled on a plain, much-mended dirty-white hood, and then put a tinker’s basket over his shoulder.

An hour after first light, the princess processed from the Inner Court to the Outer Court, where she was met by her new Master of the Palace and the Megas Ducas. In the Outer Court the entirety of the Guard stood, shivering and magnificent, in their finest uniforms, a sea of scarlet and purple and gold and shining steel like a mosaic in which each man was a single tessera.

Her Ordinaries and the Nordikans marched to the centre of the Outer court and the Guard marched out by files from the right and left, and the Imperial chariot – empty, but for a driver – proceeded to the princess.

‘I thought that you had betrayed me,’ the princess whispered. She was like an icon brought to life – her face as white as milk, her body adorned in stiff cloth of gold encrusted with jewels and edged and accented in pearls.

‘Majesty,’ the Duke said, very softly.

The procession rolled across the square – a square nigh on packed with the people of the city who followed the princess and her Guard into the great cathedral where the Patriarch said mass.

The Megas Ducas accepted communion and did not burst into flames. Wilful Murder lost a small amount of money over it.

After mass the whole army, with most of the palace staff and the whole of the Academy, instructors, students, and servants in the Academy’s black livery, as well as the greater part of the population of Liviapolis, processed around the city carrying the relics of forty saints.

The aura of
potentia
so permeated the city that when the Megas Ducas was given wine, he could taste the raw power.

After the procession and a snatched meal, eaten cold from golden plates, the Megas Ducas took most of his knights, as well as some Scholae and a dozen knights of the Latinikon to the hippodrome, where heated pavilions had been set.

The crowd was already in the hippodrome – most had gone there straight from mass and the solemn procession. The crowd was so dense that they had raised the temperature inside. The knights were greeted with cheers as they appeared, and then they went into their tents – Ser Michael, as the master of the tourney, had divided them somewhat artificially into two teams.

The Megas Ducas was meant to be last to arrive, and he waited outside the gates of the hippodrome with his retinue of squires and pages; Toby and Nell and Nicholas Ganfroy, his trumpeter, with Ser Jehan leading and his banner carried by Ser Milus, who was a marshal for the day and not jousting. He was dressed from head to toe in scarlet wool and deerskin, with a hat of scarlet leather lined in fox fur and sporting three enormous red plumes. His knight’s belt was around his hips, and he wore a small white scrap of cloth pinned to his shoulder with a brooch of rubies and emeralds. At his side was a sword that all but breathed of
potential
and had a perfection of form that showed even through its red scabbard. The hilt was gilded steel, the grip wired in gold over scarlet deerskin, the pommel enamelled.

There was a great press of people around the gate – at least a thousand men and women, shouting his name. He leaned down from his great horse and kissed a baby – the first time he’d ever done such a thing, and he was rewarded with a warm wet feeling on his hands and a smell, and the mother beamed at him.

Toby handed him a towel and he wiped his hands and grinned at the mother, and then she was lost in the crowd.

The gates began to open, and the wall of sound hit him like a fist. If he had thought that a thousand people packed into the alley by the gate was a huge crowd, what waited for him at the end of the tunnel was twenty times as big, and he reeled as if an enemy had struck him with a lance.

But he got the smile back on his face. At his feet, Long Paw was gently but firmly pushing the crowd back, away from the tunnel into the hippodrome. A few young men and a trickle of older ones squeezed past into the tunnel ahead of the company archers and they flattened themselves against the walls of the tunnel and shouted his style, their cries ringing metallically in the confines of the half-bowshot-long tunnel.

He waved to the crowd trapped outside and made his horse rear a little, and they applauded and he rode into the tunnel. A young man ran alongside his horse, waving, until he tripped on something in the tunnel, and he fell with a shout.

The Red Knight looked down to see what had happened to him. There was a blinding flare of light, something struck him in the chest, and everything went dark.

The Megas Ducas entered the hippodrome last, and he rode in through the Imperial tunnel by the Great Gate very slowly, with great sheets of sound belting across the arena as the city crowd roared for him. But something was wrong – he was very stiff in the saddle, and Nell, the Duke’s page, could be seen to turn her horse in the gate and gallop for the palace.

Ser Michael was summoned. He watched a tight knot of the Duke’s household push into the Duke’s private pavilion, which wasn’t what should have happened. He made a sign to Ser Gavin, the captain of the ‘Outlander’ team, and ran for the Duke’s tent.

Inside, he found Toby kneeling by three stools all placed together. Wilful Murder was white as parchment, and Ser Jehan and Nicholas Ganfroy leaning over—

‘What’s happened?’ Ser Michael asked.

The Duke lay across the stools. He had a lot of blood coming out of him. He was talking, but the voice didn’t sound like his own. There was blood everywhere, and Father Arnaud seemed to be covered in the stuff. He was mumbling – probably in prayer – and his face looked grey.

‘Summon a magister,’ the Duke barked. He didn’t sound himself. ‘A tough one. No – get me that boy. Mortirmir. If he’s here.’

Ser Michael knew a crisis when he saw one. He didn’t ask. He turned and ran for the defenders’ pavilion.

‘Messire Mortirmir!’ Ser Michael called as he barged in. Twenty men were being armed by forty squires and pages in a cacophony of steel plates and a bewilderment of lost lace-points. Wicker hampers lay open on the sand, and only a few lucky men – and Ser Alison – had stools on which to sit.

Morgan Mortirmir had his leg harnesses on. And he had no squire.

He came willingly enough. ‘What’s this about?’ he asked, and then he paled. ‘Shit – it’s not the roof?’ he asked.

Ser Michael towed him by the elbow out onto the sands, where they received a smattering of applause – Mortirmir was the first armoured man to emerge. The crowd wanted to see some fighting.

Ser Michael was still trying to parse what he’d seen and heard. It seemed to him that the voice that had barked orders hadn’t been the Duke’s. He’d sounded very much like Harmodius.

Mortirmir was pushed through the knot of men to the foot of the bed made of stools. The Megas Ducas lay on it, covered in blood – his face was crusted in it and his linen shirt was scarlet.

‘Jesu Christi!’ Mortirmir muttered. ‘I’m no healer.’

Shut up and let me in.

Mortirmir might have reacted differently if not for the week he’d just had. He opened his palace
and in strode a tall man in dark blue velvet.

All the time in the world, now, lad. Is this all you have for memory?

Who the fuck are you?
asked Mortirmir, now terrified. He’d let a stranger into his palace. He was, in effect, naked
.

Yes, that was foolish of you. Sorry, lad. I’m going to wear you like a shirt for a few hours. You will be supremely tired at the end and – bah. Stop wriggling. Your panic is understandable but a waste of my effort.

Sweet Jesu, you are young. And supple. What a pleasure – there.

Even as Mortirmir attempted to fight the intruder – with no effect whatsoever – the man was using his body. He could feel himself kneel by the Duke’s corpse. He could see his arms move.

Most horrible of all, he watched as his memory palace dissolved.

Really, most young people try and build something that is dashing and romantic and far too fucking complicated.
The man in blue velvet sketched rapidly with a wand of gold. The gold – its gleam, and its aethereal presence – calmed Mortirmir. The legions of evil didn’t wield gold.

You play chess, eh, boy? the old man asked.
The floor under their feet suddenly became black and white parquetry – eight squares by eight.

Mortirmir fought the urge to vomit. Nothing so utterly disconcerting had ever happened to him. Even his mind was not his own. His inner vision – in the aethereal – was in the control of this horrible old—

Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Harmodius.

You’re dead!

Hmm. Not exactly. STOP WRIGGLING. There.

Mortirmir’s memory palace was suddenly entirely rebuilt as a garden with a giant marble chess floor in the middle. Every leaf on every wild rose bush was more vivid than anything had been in his former palace.

I’ve never been there – sir – I can’t—

Harmodius laughed. No one has ever been here. I made it up. I’m a little busy, lad. Shut up, please?

Chess pieces began to move.

The white queen’s head rotated and a line of pure green light shot out of it, touched the golden knob atop the king’s head, and turned into a rainbow of colours so vivid they were like a fever dream and Mortirmir wanted to give them new names. The colours focused on a crystal in Harmodius’s hand – an artificiality that Mortirmir could never have contrived. The old man nodded.

You are full of power, aren’t you, boy? I’m not sure I’ve ever had access to this much of the raw stuff. He flashed a smile of pure greed. You really are lucky I have other plans, because this body would suit my needs very well. And how your professors would love to have me as a student! He laughed nastily. Worry not. In fact, I suspect I’ll prove to be your benefactor.

He tossed the jewel he’d just created in the air, and Mortirmir saw his left hand strip the glove off his right. Saw his own right hand hover above the Duke’s side. There was a crossbow bolt protruding just above the heart on the left.

Assassin, the old man said. Very, very close. Another finger’s width to the left, and we’d both be gone. As it is we’re in trouble, and Mortirmir’s finger touched the Duke’s side. Power flared as if a small sun had been released. Poison, alchemy, and magick altogether. Someone wanted my young friend to be very, very dead. The sun intensified, and Mortirmir felt all his potential flowing out of him like water from a broken bottle.

It was the most terrifying sensation.

Worst of all, it became obvious to both of them – together, intertwined – that there was not enough
potentia
between the three – Harmodius, Mortirmir, and the stricken Megas Dukas – to save him. The power ran in as if into a bottomless pit, and nothing changed.

Mortirmir felt Harmodius sag in defeat.

His last
aethereal
pouch of of carefully hoarded
ops
vanished—

There was an explosion of pale, golden green light that seemed to come from the mortally wounded man’s hand.

Mortirmir’s left hand reached in, took the bolt, and withdrew it from the wound with a gentle tug and a horrible wet sucking noise. As the steel head slid free, the skin underneath closed. Perfectly.

Harmodius, deep in Mortirmir’s memory garden, stumbled against a stone pillar – the only remnant of the former palace – and shook his head.
By Saint George, young magister. May you never see that again.

What happened? Mortirmir breathed.

Harmodius stood breathing, like a man who had run a long race. Then he shook his head.
Not my secret to share, young man. He needs to sleep now. How’s your jousting?

Every knight ran three courses. The jousts were arranged carefully – every man knew the order of his opponents, and there were four sets of lists, and squires and pages ran from one to another as Ser Michael directed the whole entertainment.

Ser Alison unhorsed Ser George Brewes, to the crowd’s enormous satisfaction. Ser Francis Atcourt unhorsed the Red Knight, who fought with a singular lack of grace, and the princess put her hand to her chest when he struck the ground. But he rose with some of his usual bounce, and improved in his next exchange, plucking the crest neatly off the helmet of Ser Bescanon, whose lance tip scratched across the Red Knight’s shield and failed even to break.

Ser Gavin dominated the afternoon. His lance was sure, and it was clearly his day – he dropped Ser Francis Atcourt hard enough to make people in the crowd wince, and he broke a lance on each of three opponents from the Latinikon and then managed a spectacular feat against Ser Jehan, striking his helmet below the crest so that the whole helmet failed along its forge-weld lines and burst asunder. The older man was unhurt, but helmetless, as he rode down the list, and he wheeled his horse and bowed to his opponent as the crowd applauded.

Ser Alcaeus was the crowd’s darling, as captain of the defenders, and he dropped three opponents in a row. But the Podesta of the Etruscans, Ser Antonio, knocked him back in his saddle without unhorsing him and was judged the better lance on points. He rode off to stony silence from the crowd, and to the wild celebrations of the Etruscan merchants near the gate.