Traitor's Blade

THE ANSWER

At first the reverberation of her voice was the only sound, but then thunder roared from below us and a cloud of dust rose from the slope.

‘Horses,’ Brasti said. ‘Must be a hundred or more.’

At first all I saw was Monster, her hooves pounding the earth as she raced ahead of a cloud of dust. And then they came through the cloud and the sight I had once dreamed of seeing appeared before me: a hundred Greatcoats on horseback, swords drawn and war cries on their lips.

‘I told you,’ the Tailor said to me, an evil grin on her face, ‘I know where every thread is and I know where every thread’s going.’

‘But how—?’

‘The Dukes were so busy trying to find and kill all the Greatcoats – they knew every name and face – and, while they searched for ways to kill all of you, I found myself some new ones, trained by me and trained right. It’s taken time to assemble them, though, I’ll give you that. That damn fool, Paelis. He had the makings of a great army and what did he do? He scattered them to the four winds. But I’ve made my own Greatcoats, and now we’re going to do this my way.’

The Duke had five times as many men as we did, but few were on horseback and the rest were not exactly what you’d call a battle-ready army. They were conscripted house-guards and he’d dragged them up the Eastern Pass to deal with the Duchess of Hervor. When they saw that first charge of the Magisters, they very nearly scattered then and there.

‘Kill her,’ Shiballe shouted. ‘Kill all of them!’

But my rapier was already in my hand and Kest, Brasti and I knocked the lances away from the Tailor and surrounded her, protecting her from anyone else who might try to fulfil Shiballe’s order.

The captains were screaming at their men to get into formation and, as they did, Shiballe urged the Duke to get to the back lines.

‘I showed you!’ the Tailor was cackling behind us. ‘I showed all of you!’

I looked around and caught a glimpse of her face. It was terrifying to look at, half-joyous and half-enraged, and she was tearing her clothes off and shouting at the sky, ‘You took him away from me! You took every last good thing away from me!

‘This!’ she screamed. ‘This is my answer! This is my answer!’ And now she was whirling around, naked and dancing like a madwoman, as the battle began to rage around us.

‘He was my boy,’ she screamed, crying insanely, ‘my own little boy! You took him from me!’

‘Saints, what’s wrong with her?’ Brasti asked.

Something was forming in my mind: a thought, a memory, pieces of things I’d seen and wondered about in passing, starting to come into focus.

‘I think …’ I started. Was it really possible? ‘I think she might be his mother,’ I said as all the sadness in the world unleashed itself inside me. ‘I think she might be the King’s mother.’

‘But how?’ Brasti stared at her. ‘Greggor would never … I mean, look at her.’

Kest interrupted, ‘Yes, look at her: her face – it wasn’t always like this. Someone … perhaps someone beat her, mutilated her—’

‘He sent me away,’ she shouted in response, as dust and horses and death raged around us.

‘When the baby was born, when he didn’t like the signs, he beat me and he locked me away – but I took it, I took it because I still got to see my baby, even when he grew and Greggor called him weak and locked him up too and finally sent me away. Even when he married that stupid cow and had another child, I took it, because I am a woman and it was a man’s world. It was his world.’

She shook her fists in the air. ‘But there had to be an answer for such things, and so I brought him books and I told him stories. I made him think.’

‘The Greatcoats,’ Kest said, awed. ‘It was her, all along: she taught the King, shaped his thinking.’

‘I started all of it,’ she cackled, standing naked and wrinkled and proud in the sunlight. ‘There had to be an answer for what he did, so I made you. I gave the world a great King and I gave it justice.’

Then suddenly she started crying, like a small child discovering the body of a dead bird for the first time. ‘But then they took him away from me. He wanted nothing but to do right in the world and they took my boy. So there must be an answer,’ she growled. ‘When they take the last good thing from your life, there must be an answer.’

‘Go!’ she said, grabbing me by the collar of my coat, her eyes so wide and wild that I could see the bright red of the skin that encircled them. ‘Go, and give them my answer!’

As Kest and Brasti grabbed horses from fallen men and mounted up, Monster came up to me and nudged me with her great head. I needed no other invitation and leapt onto her back.

‘Come, you Dukes, you fools of men,’ the Tailor shouted. ‘Come and witness a woman’s answer—’

My mind was reeling from the knowledge of what she had done, but Kest pulled at me. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘I’m ready to give my answer now too.’

We rode into the heart of the battle. I was exhausted, and I longed to see the faces of those comrades I’d been missing all these years – Dara, Winnow, Parrick and the others – where were they? But these men and women on horseback, they were Greatcoats too: skilled and fearless. I felt excitement building inside me and I brandished my sword as we plunged into the Duke’s army, breaking their lines. We fought like hunting birds, swooping in and out and taking lives with each attack.

Kest and Brasti and I sang: we sang the war song of the Greatcoats. We sang of justice and mercy, and we sang of blood and violence too. We sang until our voices were hoarse and blood and dust mixed into the ground, wedded for ever into the landscape of violence.

The battle lasted only an hour, but it felt much longer before the Duke’s men gave up their arms and knelt before us on the ground.

‘Is it possible?’ Brasti asked absently to Kest and me as we stood together.

‘That we won? It certainly looks so,’ Kest replied.

‘No,’ he said, ‘look around. I see dead men everywhere. There are soldiers and Knights littering the ground. I see a few Greatcoats sporting injuries, but I see none of us dead.’

I looked around, sure that he was wrong, that I would see at least one Greatcoat on the ground.

‘Gods,’ Brasti said at last. ‘What an army we would have been.’

‘Ye were never meant to be an army, fool,’ the Tailor said.

Brasti looked at her. ‘I see you’ve found your clothes again. Thank you for that, at least.’

She grinned at him. ‘Didn’t like the sight of a real woman, eh? Ah well, no mind. Sometimes we all have to go a little mad, don’t we, Falcio?’

I thought about that for a moment. ‘And sometimes we have to return to sanity.’

‘Aye, that’s true enough,’ she said. ‘Now, leave the rest of the playing for them others. Go and deal with the Duchess. This is all for naught if she gets away with those Patents of Lineage and comes back in force with that damned daughter of hers.’

‘How will I find her?’ I asked, grabbing Monster’s reins.

‘She’s gone west,’ the Tailor said. ‘She has a horse, but she’s still an old woman like me and she’ll need to rest. You saw the caves past those hills when you came here from Orison? Go there – that’s the only place out of the open. And with her patron Saint dead, I don’t think she has long.’

Someone pulled at my sleeve. ‘Take me,’ Aline said, ‘and then the Duchess will want to find us.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

The Tailor slapped me. ‘Stop askin’ such fool questions fer once in yer useless life.’ Then she looked down at the girl and smiled. ‘You’re a good girl,’ she said, patting her on the cheek. ‘Go now, Falcio, and do what has to be done.’

‘Was this your plan all along?’ I asked, as I lifted Aline onto Monster’s back. ‘Did you set Tremondi up to get killed, too?’

‘I did what I had to do, Falcio. The Dukes would have never let the Lords Caravaner reassemble the Greatcoats – but it kept them distracted, and while it did I brought the Greatcoats back together.’

‘Plans within plans and conspiracies to foil other conspiracies. What makes you any different from Patriana?’ I asked.

She gave a snort and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her dirty coat. ‘I never killed her son,’ she said, and then turned and walked away.

It didn’t take us long to reach the caves. There were several openings into the mountain, but not many passages tall enough for a man or woman to make them a good place to hide. Patriana hadn’t bothered to cover her tracks.

‘You brought the girl.’ The Duchess’s voice echoed in the caves.

‘I brought something else, too,’ I said, drawing my rapier.

‘So did I,’ she said, appearing around a corner. I could see where she’d been hiding then: a small alcove, formed naturally in the rock. There was a brazier, its fire illuminating the cave walls, and I could see the scrolls on the ground next to her. She held a crossbow trained at my chest.

‘You can leave the girl and go,’ she said, ‘or you can kill her yourself, if you think that’s more merciful, but either way she dies now.’

I started to say something, but the Duchess was a rude opponent and fired the bolt straight at me. I’ve always made fun of Kest for thinking a sword could block a crossbow bolt, but every once in a long, long while, a man gets a piece of luck. In my case it was the guard of my rapier that I managed to bring up to my belly just in time to block the bolt. The force dented the steel cup around the guard and it jabbed deep into my right hand, but it wouldn’t stop me from killing her.

‘If you think I’m going to stand here and let you reload that thing, then I’m afraid you’ve confused me for someone much more civilised,’ I said.

The Duchess dropped the crossbow to the ground. ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘enough of these games. We are done. Go, and take the brat with you.’

I almost laughed. ‘You can’t be serious,’ I said. ‘This is the best part – the part where I take your head off.’

‘You want the scrolls? Take them. Destroy them any way you see fit. I am old and I am tired, and the things I fought for will never come to pass in my lifetime. So go and live and rut and do all the things men do with their futile lives.’

She warmed her hands over the brazier. ‘You wish to kill me?’ she asked. ‘Then do so. Come on, show the girl how decisions of power and policy are really made.’

I looked at her in wonder. ‘Listening to your clever remarks and profound declarations, I can’t help but wonder: what’s it like, to be truly insane?’ I asked.

She laughed. ‘You are a boy,’ she said. ‘A boy past his prime, I’ll grant you, but a boy nonetheless.’

I coughed. I wasn’t getting much out of this conversation considering I was the one holding the sword.

‘Consider: with these scrolls you could take Valiana and shape the world to your liking. Imagine a thousand Greatcoats, a hundred thousand, all of them bringing whatever justice you choose across the land.’

‘I really don’t think you understand how this works,’ I said. ‘I’m going to destroy those scrolls, and Jillard won’t sign them again, not knowing Trin is the one you’d see put on the throne. He knows you set her up to rule in your interests, not his. With the Patents of Lineage destroyed, your conspiracy goes with them. I’m going to let the rest of the world solve who should rule it.’

She looked at me through narrowed eyes, then she started laughing. ‘You don’t— Gods, Falcio, if you didn’t know about … then why have you gone to such trouble to—? No, I’ll leave that for you to discover. I’ll say this for you, Falcio val Mond, you are indeed the most valorous man I’ve ever met, and only about the third stupidest.’

She picked up the scrolls in her right hand and held them over the flame. ‘Here, then. Let us burn them together. A tribute to the dreams of an old woman.’

She let the scrolls fall, and only then did I see the powder in her left hand. ‘Aline, run!’ I screamed, and the girl fled just as the Duchess dropped the powder onto the flames. There was an explosion, and for an instant the old woman and I were covered in deep-red smoke. Just as quickly, it was gone.

Aline was at the mouth of the cave, past where the cloud of smoke had spread. ‘Run!’ I yelled to her. ‘Go and get Kest or Brasti.’

Then I turned back to the Duchess, but she was already dead. I coughed a bit, from the dust and smoke in my lungs, and realised I was too.

I did think it kind of odd that in my entire life I had never been poisoned before Rijou, and since then I’d been poisoned three times. In the past I’d been beaten, yes, tortured, yes, and had cuts, bruises, wounds from arrows and bolts, and countless encounters with the pointy end of someone else’s blade, but never poison.

Now I couldn’t get away from the stuff.

I was lying back against the wall of the cave as the feeling began to fade from my toes and fingers. I could feel the numbness travelling ever so slowly up my arms and legs, and I wondered what would happen when it reached my heart.

The lack of feeling was strangely pleasant. I hadn’t realised how many pains I had accumulated in my limbs over the past few weeks – Saints, over the past many years.

I wondered why all this had happened. The Duchess and her conspiracy – that I understood, as much as one can ever understand madness, hunger for power and avarice combined, but much of the rest was still a confusing haze to me. I suppose that’s the way it goes. Poets and minstrels see the whole picture, but people like me live their whole lives inside one or two cleverly worded lines and never know what they really mean.

I heard Aline returning with Kest and Brasti. Valiana was with them too.

‘Gods, what’s happened to him? Falcio, where are you hurt?’ Brasti asked.

‘Almost nowhere, now,’ I said, smiling.

He knelt down beside me, and I suppose whatever the Duchess used must do something to the colour of your face because Brasti asked, ‘Poison?’

I nodded. Or I think I did. I couldn’t tell any more. I felt light-headed.

Valiana moved to the other side of me and Brasti grabbed her arm. ‘What do we do—? What can we do for him?’

Sad eyes looked into mine for a moment before she said, ‘I don’t know. I believe it’s neatha. My mother – the Duchess, I mean – she used it on her enemies sometimes. No one ever survived. It is very quick, but it’s not painful.’

With some of the last feeling in my face I felt something wet hit my cheek. Brasti had tears in his eyes.

‘Gods, man, don’t you start now,’ I said softly. ‘We’re going to get a terrible reputation if we just keep travelling across the countryside crying all the time.’

‘Falcio?’

‘Hello, my nameless friend. Have you thought of something to call yourself yet?’

‘I am so sorry …’

‘Don’t,’ I said, my tongue thick in my mouth. ‘Nothing to be sorry for. Just be something now. Be something that counts.’

She looked at me for a moment, shy and unsure. ‘Is there a feminine version of “Falcio” in Pertine?’ she asked.

‘I think “Falcio” is feminine enough,’ Brasti said reflexively, unable to hold back the impulse to joke, and making me hopeful for him again.

‘No,’ I croaked, ‘But I like “Valiana”. It’s a good name.’

‘It’s not mine,’ she said.

‘Then take it. Make it yours.’

She looked down at me, tears in her eyes.

‘I know what this poison does,’ Valiana said. ‘And I know I’m not that important, so I won’t take up much time—’

‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘Be important. If … If I give you a name, will you take it?’

She wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘I will take anything you give me, for it will be more than I have now, and more mine than anything I have been given before.’

I took a moment to gather my breath. I wanted to say this properly. ‘You don’t have to be the victim of someone else’s story. You can be a Greatcoat. You can be …’ I was reaching for the word when suddenly I understood the one thing I’d been looking for all these years. The one thing I could never find. The one thing even the King couldn’t give me.

‘You can be my answer, Valiana val Mond,’ I said softly. Something warm slipped down my cheeks and I guessed they were my own tears this time.

She put a hand on my chest and said to me, ‘My name is Valiana val Mond of the Greatcoats. And I am Falcio val Mond’s daughter, and his answer to the world.’

Then she was gone, and Brasti came and kissed me on the forehead and I had something very clever to say about that but I’m pretty sure nothing came out.

I felt as if I were floating up from the bottom of a lake, my eyes half seeing the world of the water and half the world of the sky. I could see a hilltop not unlike my homeland, but this one was green and rich and blessedly free of those damned blue flowers. There was a figure standing there, and I could see him clear as could be: it was my King, and he was saying something to me but I couldn’t make it out.

I could see the girl, Aline, kneeling over me in this world, and though I couldn’t see as well there as I could in the clear world, I could hear her crying.

I tried as hard as I could and I managed to say, ‘Smile for me. Just once.’ She probably thought I wanted her to feel better, but the truth was that I really did need to see that damned smile again.

And she did.

And suddenly I understood it – all of it. The attack on her family, the King’s mysterious jewels, the Tailor’s cryptic words and, most of all, her name.

So maybe those of us who live our whole lives in just those few lines do get to know what it all means, after all.

I saw my King again but I still couldn’t quite hear him. He had someone with him, and I think he was trying to introduce me. The figure came into focus – it was her. She looked like a different person to me, perhaps because my memories of her had drifted over the years. Paelis had sworn he would bring her back to me one day, my beautiful, sweet wife Aline, and he had fulfilled his vow. My King had named his daughter after her, and now she looked at me with a very annoyed expression. I wondered if the dead knew when we spoke to them, and if the rather unfortunate things I had said about her during my hallucinations on the road to kill the King might have reached her. If so, I would have some explaining to do.

The clear world began to pull me away entirely, but I struggled against it. Damn it, I thought, I’ve done enough for Saints and Gods and you’re going to give me this moment.

‘Kest,’ I croaked, and I saw him kneel next to me. His face was still covered in blood, and those cuts didn’t look good at all.

‘Falcio,’ he said softly.

‘You look terrible,’ I said. I knew somewhere a God or Saint was wondering why they had given me a few more minutes if I was just going to be rude but I didn’t care. ‘The girl,’ I whispered. ‘It’s her, the King’s jewel. His Charoite.’

‘I know. Brasti figured it out, if you can believe that.’ Then he smiled. ‘Can you imagine? The King’s grand plan to save the world after he was gone was to go out and bed a few noblewomen so that we could find his offspring and put them in power.’ I felt Kest’s hand on my shoulder. ‘She doesn’t know, Falcio. She still thinks she’s the daughter of Lord Tiarren. The Tailor is talking to her now.’

‘She’s going to be Queen,’ I tried to say, but the words were barely a whisper now. ‘And you …’

‘I know,’ he said, ‘now comes the hard part. But with a hundred Greatcoats at our backs, I like our chances.’

I tried shaking my head. Not me, I tried to say. I’ve done my duty. I’ve solved the King’s damned riddle and fought his damned battles. I’m going away now to see him again, to listen to his mad dreams and his bad jokes, to sit under shady trees with my wife.

‘Said your goodbyes, have you?’

The voice was old and mean and full of hard-packed sand. My vision blurred in and out and back again and finally settled on the ugly face of the Tailor.

Please don’t let her face be the last thing I remember of this world.

She laughed. ‘Ah, Falcio, ever the sense of humour.’

Through the dull softness of the poison I felt a hard, callused hand grip my jaw and shake me. ‘All done?’ she asked. ‘Said all your goodbyes?’

I tried to tell her that I had, that I was ready now.

‘I can hear you just fine, Falcio.’

Good. Then let me go. And can I suggest you do something about your breath?

She ignored the jibe – or maybe she had lied about being able to hear me. ‘Ready to make the sacrifice now, Falcio?’ she asked.

I already did. I did everything he asked of me.

I slipped under the water again – or was it out of the water? I felt my King’s hand on my shoulder, my wife’s fingertips touching my cheek. The air was scented, pine and baked bread. I want to wake up to this, now.

‘Get the girl over here.’ The harsh voice of the Tailor broke through the sounds of leaves rustling and running streams. ‘Kest, give me your sword.’

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Just you shut up and do as you’re told. Saint or not, I can still put a beating on you better’n you deserve.’

The hand on my jaw shook me again. Foul breath filled my senses and dragged me back into the world. ‘Do you want to know how the neatha works, Falcio?’ the Tailor asked.

No. Why would I care?

She shook me again, and my vision returned for a second. The Tailor’s face was close to mine. In her hand she held Kest’s sword. Aline stood behind her.

‘It’s a powdered form of the soft candy, Falcio – just what you forced Paelis to have his apothecaries make. It works by tricking your body into letting go of itself. That’s why it doesn’t hurt. The poison’s not killing you – it’s just letting you die. It takes away will and need and the stubborn anger of relentless life. Ironic, isn’t it?’

Not especially. Her mention of the King made me seek him out again, but she shook my jaw a third time. ‘No, no, Falcio. You haven’t answered my question. Are you ready to make the sacrifice?’

Yes! Yes, you foul old bitch. I’ve sacrificed everything. I fought for his laws and I fought for his daughter. I’ve fought and fought and fought until all that’s left of me is a blade in my hand and anger in my heart. I’ve made the sacrifice. Now let me go!

‘Ah, you fool. Dying isn’t sacrifice. Haven’t you figured that out yet? All those years of trying to get yourself killed in battle? That ain’t sacrifice, boy. That’s self-loathing. It’s gleeful suicide. It’s vanity.’

I felt her hand release my jaw and saw her stand up. She pushed Aline in front of me and took the sword in both her hands, pulling it back in line with the girl’s neck. ‘Now this? This is sacrifice!’

Aline’s trusting eyes held mine as the blade began its arc towards her neck.

No—! Kest! The old woman’s lost her mind – she’s mad with grief, and no one but me can see it … she’s going to—

Pain exploded in every fibre of my body. Blurred vision sharpened into a narrow tunnel in front of me, though I could see nothing but red. The world was all blood and dust and agony was everywhere, radiating first and foremost from my left hand. My ears were filled with the sounds of my own uncontrollable coughing and tears came streaming from my eyes. I forced them shut. It was as if all my senses were trying to expel all traces of peace and gentleness from me.

‘Falcio?’ Was that Kest’s voice?

I tried to will away the clarity that was coming back to me. No – let me go. Let me go back.

‘Falcio, you need to open your eyes now. You need to let go of the sword.’

Unwillingly, unbearably, my eyes opened. I was on my knees, and Aline was still there in front of me. She hadn’t moved. A sword was held in mid-air, its blade an inch from her neck, held in place by my bleeding hand, its weight making it cut even deeper into my flesh. The Tailor had already let go of it and only my grip was keeping it from clattering to the cave floor.

Kest took the sword in one hand and gently pulled my fingers apart with the other. His eyes were soft and sad for me. Someone wrapped my hand in cloth. If I’d had the strength, I would have ripped it off. I had tasted peace, and love. And reward. I had been at the edge of the warm lands, near those I longed most to see again, and instead, here I was, back in this foul world with all its corruption and putre-faction, its broken hopes and desperate need.

The Tailor shoved Kest aside and grabbed me by the back of the head. Her fingers entangled themselves in my hair and pulled back hard, forcing my gaze up to the ceiling of the cave. She leaned in so that her face filled my vision. ‘This, Falcio: this is sacrifice. This is the price you pay for your valour.’ She kissed me on the lips. It was perhaps the most disgusting sensation of my entire life, but it did take my mind off the pain in my hand.

Then she smiled her crooked smile at me. ‘Now get off your arse and let’s get to work.’

I stayed that way, on my knees, for a few minutes more. I knew I should move, get up, deal with whatever was coming next, but I couldn’t. I had tasted joy and release and an ending to all the pain and rage that had filled my life. Since the day I’d found my wife’s broken body in that tavern, I had taken refuge in madness. Now the madness was gone, taken from me, and only the pain remained. I cursed the Tailor for what she had done. I cursed the King for breaking his promise to reunite me with my wife. And I cursed her too, for having been so damnably brave on that day. You and I will grow old together and laugh at the day these silly birds came to rest in our fields. She had been wrong and stupid and she had left me alone in this place that was so full of festering rot that I could no longer even see the edges of the decay around me.

Hands gripped me by the arms and lifted me up. I knew it was Kest and Brasti, for no one else would have dared. I lacked even the desire to resist, and so I let them carry me out of the cave, my arms slung around their shoulders like a drunk. My eyes were closed, but I felt the warmth of the early morning sun on my face and so I opened them, hoping the harsh light would blind me, at least for a little while.

‘Hells, Falcio,’ Brasti said, his voice soft. ‘There aren’t words to say how sorry I am.’

Out of reflex I opened my mouth speak, but there was nothing to say.

‘Leave it,’ Kest said.

‘No,’ Brasti said. ‘No. This has to be said. We have to acknowledge what’s happened here.’ He let go of me and I found my feet. Kest tried to steady me, but I pushed him away.

Brasti turned to me and put his hands on my shoulders and shook his head. ‘Gods and Saints, Falcio. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so very sorry. I can’t imagine what you’ve just experienced.’

‘Brasti, let him be,’ Kest said.

‘Falcio, I have to know. What was it like? How bad was it?’

My eyes found his. I couldn’t believe anyone could ask me such a thing.

Brasti gave my shoulders a small shake. ‘I need to know, Falcio,’ he said, the sympathy in his expression suddenly replaced by a manic grin. ‘What’s it like having to kiss that hideous old woman?’

For a moment it felt as if everything around me stopped completely. Even the wind held its breath. Until that instant I had never truly understood despair, though I had lived with it my whole life. I thought despair was something you fought and died fighting – something you had to clothe yourself in madness and rage to protect against. But then, against all logic and decency, Brasti had decided, in that impossible moment, to turn all the pain in the world into a joke. You and I will grow old together and laugh at the day these silly birds came to rest in our fields, she had said to me. Hollow words, and yet their very emptiness left a hole that demanded to be filled. The sound that broke through my lips was harsh and awkward, like a man who’d forgotten how to speak, but it set Brasti off and he started laughing like a fool.

‘Gods, Falcio, she kissed you so hard your jaw doesn’t even work right any more.’

Then I heard what was quite possibly the most ridiculous sound I’d ever heard: Kest was giggling. ‘It’s not funny,’ he said, trying to stop.

‘Of course it isn’t, you stupid Saint,’ Brasti said. ‘There’s nothing funny about those mottled lips, that foul breath reaching deep inside a man. Tell me, Falcio, could you actually feel your balls shrivel up when you tasted her tongue?’

‘Stop it,’ Kest said, still chortling so hard he looked as if he could barely keep upright.

‘I really need to know,’ Brasti said, plaintively. ‘If you get to be the Saint of Swords, I should at least be able to be the Saint of Lovers. I imagine that, since you have to be able to defeat anyone in battle, I’ll have to be able to defeat them in bed – and what better preparation could there be than bedding the Tailor? Come on, Falcio, put in a word for me, help me become the Saint I’ve always been meant to be!’

Kest stumbled back and fell down on the ground. ‘Enough,’ he said, ‘I can’t take it any more!’

‘Hah!’ Brasti said. ‘I’ve defeated the great Saint of Swords!’ He started hopping back and forth, his fists in the air in mock imitation of the unarmed combat lessons Kest used to teach. ‘Come on, Kest, how long did you last as a Saint? Half a day?’

In the distance behind him I saw a small figure standing alone. I left Kest and Brasti and walked towards her. She had her arms crossed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me who my father was?’ she asked. Her voice was thick with anger and hurt.

‘I didn’t know,’ I said. ‘I only realised it when I was … when the poison was in me.’

‘And Trin? The Tailor says she’s still out there somewhere.’

‘I—’

Patriana’s laughter back in Rijou still haunted me: ‘My daughter is much more dangerous than I am.’

‘No, I guess I didn’t realise who she was, either.’

‘Well then, you’re a very stupid person, aren’t you.’ It wasn’t a question.

‘I am just starting to discover that, yes.’ Then I looked down at her, as if for the very first time. She was a pretty girl, I thought, though her sharp features would likely prevent her from ever becoming the legendary beauty of storybook princesses. My King’s long nose and wide mouth had seen to that. So many of his little quirks were written in her expression and, despite everything that had happened, I found myself smiling. How could I not have seen it before?

‘What?’ Aline said, kicking me.

I laughed. ‘Your face.’

‘What about my face?’

I knelt down and hugged her. ‘It delights me.’

Her arms suddenly gripped tight around me and great sobs filled the air, but whether they were hers or mine, I could not tell.

‘I never even knew him,’ she said, ‘so why do I miss him?’

I wanted to tell her that I had known King Paelis better than my own self. I wanted to tell her that he was a man of humour, of dirty jokes and wicked smiles – that he had known darkness and despair, and emerged determined to light candles for everyone else. He read every book he had ever chanced to find, and from them he drew a thousand ideas. He had spent his life putting them in motion, but he never forgot his friends or his compassion. I wanted to tell her how she had got the name Aline.

But not now; not yet.

‘Well, first of all,’ I said, ‘he was a terrible swordsman and a lousy cook.’

I felt her cheek rub against mine as she started giggling uncontrollably, and that’s how we stayed for a few minutes more, while mad hopefulness surrounded us and spread like rainwater over the hard surface of the world.