Себастьян Кастелл - Traitor's Blade

‘That’s likely as dead as Tremondi himself now,’ Kest replied.

I had to agree. ‘Even if someone does bring it up for a vote, they’ll never take a chance on us now.’

‘Well then, Falcio,’ Brasti said, his voice thick with anger and frustration, ‘let me be the first to thank you for ensuring that the three of us die in pursuit of a fruitless quest for your personal redemption!’

‘We still have a chance, Brasti – even Tremondi had heard rumours of the King’s Jewels in Baern.’

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘just like there were rumours about Cheveran and even bloody Rijou. “Look to the lowest of the noble families.” What in all the hells is that supposed to mean? None of them wants anything to do with us—’

‘If we can find—’

He turned away from me.

I didn’t need to, but I said it anyway: ‘It’s my geas , Brasti. It’s the last thing the King asked me to do.’

The week before the Ducal Army took the castle, the King met with each of his one hundred and forty-four Greatcoats individually, and he gave every single one of us a mission. He called it a geas – something he’d read in one of his old books, no doubt. Some of us he swore to secrecy, others he did not. My mission was to find the King’s Charoites. I’d never heard of any such thing before, but it wasn’t the first time the King had commanded me to do something without bothering to fill me in on the details.

Brasti threw his hands up in the air. ‘He gave all of us geasa , you idiot – you, me, Kest, and all the others too. But the King is dead , Falcio. They killed him, and we stood by and let the Dukes take the castle. And when they were done with him, they stuck his head on a pole in the courtyard, and we stood by while they did it. At your orders .’

‘You shouldn’t start this again,’ Kest warned, but Brasti was on a roll now.

‘And you , you bloody great ass – what was the fastest sword in the world doing while they took the King? Resting in its damned sheath, wasn’t it?’

‘I didn’t see any arrows flying, either,’ Kest replied calmly.

‘No, you didn’t, because I was a good little Magister, just like you were. But where does that leave us? We gave up our lives for a stupid dream, and now it’s dead, and we’re the only Gods-damned fools who haven’t figured it out yet.’

‘If it’s all such a joke, then why is it you’ve never told us what your geas is, Brasti?’ I asked. ‘It’s because he told you to keep it a secret, isn’t it?’

Brasti turned away, but I grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him back around. ‘If everything he cared about died with him, then why do you still keep his secret? I’ll tell you why, Brasti, it’s because you know the dream doesn’t have to be dead if we keep believing in it.’ But even as I said the words, I realised I had made a mistake.

‘Damned Saints, Falcio, you’re the worst,’ Brasti shouted, and I couldn’t stop myself flinching. ‘You bought into all those ideas about justice and freedom just as much as Paelis did.’ He swung his arms wide. ‘Look around you, Falcio. People hate us – no, they despise us. They curse our very names. When a man does something so heinous that they can’t find a word bad enough for it, they call him “Trattari”. That’s not how I wanted to spend my life.’

‘You think life is easier on peasants? Or for that matter on anyone else living under the Dukes, the self-styled Princes? These men who rule their Duchies like Gods were only ever kept in check by the King and by us.’

‘Don’t start “The Song of the Peasants” with me, Falcio. I was born just as poor as you were and I saddled up and rode out there as much as you did. I risked my life plenty of times, and I was willing to die a hero’s death, too. But I won’t die a traitor’s death. It’s not right, it’s not—’

‘Fair?’ Kest asked.

Brasti stopped for moment, and I could see the pain inked across his face. When I first met him, he was one of the most contented people you could imagine. He wore the world like a gold cloak on his shoulders, and he walked about in the utter certainty that all was well with Brasti and all was well with the world. And in five minutes’ time, he’d put that mask on again and you’d never know the difference.

But that’s all it was now: a mask. Underneath he was so bitter, betrayed by everything and everyone, and probably me most of all. I wondered how long it would be before he stopped listening to me when I told him not to steal. I wondered how many of us had already turned to thievery or banditry just to survive. We had been heroes for a little while and now we were just traitors with useless pardons, no allies and no purpose. Maybe we really were tatter-cloaks now.

Kest said something else to Brasti and he answered back, but I didn’t really hear it. For five years I had been following the only clue the King had given me: I’d sought out his allies amongst the lesser noble families. Many were dead now, of course, slaughtered by the Dukes’ Knights on a variety of trumped-up charges, and the few who remained refused to deal with any Greatcoats. The one exception came in the form of a hastily scrawled note, handed to me by the servant of Lady Laffariste, once a confidante of the King’s; it said, simply, ‘Not now. They need more time.’ It was faint hope, and not nearly enough for Brasti, no matter how loyal he was underneath it all. The argument over the King’s last command was an old one between us, and one neither of us would win. Either the King’s Charoites were out there somewhere and we would find them, or we would end our days at the end of a noose.

I got back up on my horse and started down the cobbled streets towards the market. I assumed Kest and Brasti would follow eventually, but at that precise moment, I didn’t really care either way.

It took us an hour to make our way from the centre of the city to the caravan market without being discovered. I still reckoned our best chance was to head south for Baern, where Lord Tremondi’s rumours placed one of the King’s Charoites – supposedly ‘wandering around’ the coast near the city of Cheveran. Despite Brasti’s reasonable objection that we still had no idea what the King’s Charoites were, even he didn’t have a better destination in mind. We had to get out of Solat, and they hated us in the north from Rijou to Orison. Mind you, we weren’t particularly liked anywhere.

‘We don’t hire bloody tatter-cloaks here,’ the caravan captain told me, pushing my chest with a callused hand, ‘so just be off. Go try and screw someone else out of their money.’ The old man was a veteran; you could see it in his stance and wiry muscles. There were seven carts in his caravan, and the lead carriage was an ornate monstrosity which presumably housed the caravan owner. I looked it over critically. It would make a remarkably good target for brigands.

‘Look,’ I said as amiably as I could manage, ‘you’re short several men, and you’re not going to be able to find anyone as capable as the three of us, especially not for what you’re paying.’

‘I’m not paying horse droppings to you, Trattari.’

Even for an old man, he filled out his leather jerkin well enough to make a man hesitate before getting into a fight with him. I’m a cautious person by nature, so I turned to leave, preparing myself to try again with one of the other caravans, but a second later, he called out to me, ‘Why don’t you go and mount that King Paelis of yours one more time, eh? I reckon he’d be willing, and his body’s probably still lying where they left it. Of course, you’d have trouble finding the pole they put his tyrant head on!’