Себастьян Кастелл - Traitor's Blade

When Brasti went to scout ahead, he saw the army arrayed there, waiting for us.

‘I don’t think their scouts saw me,’ he said, ‘but they were already starting to march this way. There’s no way forward, and with the Duke’s men and who knows how many reinforcements from Orison after us, there’s no way back.’

‘Where are we now?’ I asked.

‘The village is called Phan,’ he said. ‘There’s not much here. I asked a boy down the road and he said there’re just a few merchants here, along with the butcher, the smithy and a tailor’s shop, if I heard him right.’

‘Hide, ride or fight?’ Kest asked.

‘Can’t ride, can’t fight,’ Brasti said.

I didn’t have an answer. Something was bothering me.

‘Then we hide,’ said Kest. ‘Can we make do in one of the forests?’

‘Look around,’ Brasti said. ‘It’s mostly fields in Pulnam until you get to the Arch, and the forests they do have are too small. That army looks to have a good five hundred men. They won’t have much trouble smoking us out.’

Aline started crying and Valiana, who hadn’t spoken since Orison, put her arms around her.

‘Then where?’ Kest asked.

‘I suppose we could try to hide here, but I don’t imagine the locals will lie for us when the Duke’s men arrive.’

‘How far behind us are they, do you suppose?’ I asked.

Brasti took a deep breath. ‘Honestly? I don’t think they’re very far. They had better mounts and more of them, and we’ve had to stop far too often to outdistance them by much. The damn wagons could have caught up to us by now.’

‘Doesn’t it seem like an awful lot of work?’ I asked.

‘They want the girl dead,’ Brasti said.

‘They want the scrolls proving Valiana’s lineage, and they already have those.’

‘No, they don’t,’ Valiana said, looking up from where she and Aline were huddled. ‘Feltock made me take them out when we left Rijou. He told me to keep my travelling papers in the packet instead.’

She reached into a pocket in her blouse and pulled out a pair of scrolls marked with Ducal seals.

‘Well, isn’t he a cunning old fox?’ Brasti said, admiration in his voice.

Kest looked at me. ‘It does give us something to bargain with.’

Bargain with the most powerful and canny woman in the world, in front of the army she was commanding? And then what? She kills us, and what’s the difference? Better to just burn the damn papers and see what chaos that brings.

I was tired and sore and more confused than I’d ever been. I walked over to Valiana, who was still hugging Aline.

‘I’m out of ideas and out of hope,’ I said. ‘Just tell me what you want me to do, Valiana, and I’ll do it as best I can.’

‘I’m not Valiana,’ she said. ‘I’m no one and nothing – or if I am something, it’s just what you said in Rijou: a foolish girl who dreamt of sitting on a Queen’s throne without ever thinking about what she would do when she got there.’

I felt a hand on my arm and looked down into Aline’s eyes. She sniffed and then said, ‘We hide, Falcio. We hide, and then we ride, and then we fight.’

I started to pull my arm away but she hung onto it. ‘I don’t think we can win, Aline,’ I said softly.

She took a deep breath and stood up a bit straighter. ‘I know that, but what they’re doing isn’t right. It isn’t fair . And maybe if we fight a little, we can make it a bit more fair. The world should be a more fair place, don’t you think?’

Then I put my hand on her cheek and she gave me a little smile, just for an instant, but I swear with every Saint at my back that in that moment my heart broke and my mind followed, and great wracking sobs filled the air as a thousand hurts arose in my body that I hadn’t felt in so long, from my first bruise to the arrow I took in the leg, and every wound I had forgotten on the long walk to Castle Aramor where I went to kill a King; the sight of my wife’s wasted body on the tavern floor and the sight of the burned mansion in Rijou; the knowledge that I had failed my King to the knowledge that I was about to fail this little girl – all of it came out of me until every wound, every memory, every sorrow was voiced. The tears bled from my eyes until I thought there was nothing left – but there was one thing there. Nothing grand, no great plan or hope.

Just a small thing.

‘Brasti,’ I said softly.

He came over and knelt beside me.

‘What can I do?’ he asked gently.

‘Did you tell me that there was a tailor’s shop in this village?’

It was a small village, so it shouldn’t have taken as long as it did to find the little house on the outskirts, but finally we did find it. We stood outside a tiny tailor’s shop, supported on two sides by crooked trees.

‘I don’t get it,’ Brasti said. ‘What good is a tailor going to be?’

Kest answered for me. ‘Have you ever in your entire life heard of a tailor’s shop in a village this size? It doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Then what do you—? No – you don’t think …?’

A cackling voice broke the silence. ‘Well now, ain’t you just about the sorriest-looking pack of half-dead rabbits I’ve ever seen?’

Though it had been only a few weeks since I’d last seen her, I found the sight of the Tailor strange to behold. She was her usual dishevelled and disreputable-looking self, and yet there was something changed in her bearing.

‘Mattea!’ Aline shouted, and ran two steps towards the Tailor. Then she stopped abruptly, as if she too could tell there was something was different about the old woman.

‘Come on then, girl,’ the Tailor said, one eyebrow raised. ‘I don’t have all day.’

Aline tentatively took a half-step backwards and curtseyed.

‘Hah,’ the Tailor shouted. ‘Did you see that? She curtseyed at me like I’m some fine, high-born lady!’

The Tailor came over, took Aline by the shoulders and looked her straight in the eyes. ‘Nobody bows before a Tailor, do you hear me, girl? Nobody . The Tailor’s much too important for bows and curtsies and pleases and thank-thees and all your other fine claptrap.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Aline said.

‘And we don’t take to no “ma’ms” either.’ Then her gaze softened. ‘Ah, child, there’s no need for this shyness now, is there? I’m still your old nanny Mattea underneath it all, aren’t I?’

‘You’re scaring her,’ Brasti said.

The Tailor rose and her mouth twitched, but then she sighed. ‘Aye, I am at that. I suppose the time for pretend is past.’ The old woman turned. ‘Come, sit down here at the table, all of you. I’ll give you food and drink. We have a little time, though not much.’

She ushered us into the shop and motioned for us to take seats around her large sewing table.

‘How—?’ I asked, my mind struggling to put together how we could all be meeting here, at this place. ‘How is it possible that you’re here? Right here ? In a village we had no reason to ever come to?’

The Tailor brought out a plate of cheese and bread and favoured me with that twisted smile of hers. ‘You had every reason to be here, boy. You followed the strands of your life and they led you here, from Paelis’ foolish quest to Tremondi’s death and through that bitch Patriana’s machinations: all of it pulled you here, and a good Tailor knows where every thread leads.’

Then she grabbed the collar of Kest’s coat roughly. ‘And what in the name of every hells-bound Saint have you been doing with my coats?’ she demanded. ‘Take those damned things off and get in here.’

‘There’s a small army down the road,’ I said, ‘and another one coming up behind us.’