Себастьян Кастелл - Traitor's Blade

‘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.’