Traitor's Blade

THE BULLY BOYS

My strategem for keeping the girl alive was simple: find a place to hide and stay there until the week was over. Then she would be free to seek shelter from another noble family, or she could leave the city entirely. Either way, she would be alive, and that was a good enough outcome for me. Find a place to hide, wait until it’s over: nothing could be simpler. It was sometime around the third bell of our first night before I realised why it wouldn’t work.

Shiballe had assumed that he and his men would be more than sufficient to take out one man and a young girl, and that error in judgement had bought us enough time to make our way from Aline’s street, through the merchants’ quarter and into the Redbrick District. This had been one of the most affluent parts of the city two centuries ago, but over time the red clay used to make the bricks had begun to wear down, making every building a catastrophe waiting to happen. The richer merchants moved out and the poor moved into the fallen buildings and decaying streets. Those who squatted in the most broken-down buildings were the poorest of all. With broken sewer lines, no running water and with every strong storm promising disaster, it was a terrible place to live – but it would have been a perfect place to hide, if it hadn’t been for the magic. Saints, how I hate magic.

It took us less than an hour to find a suitable hiding place. The building had barely any walls standing and was next to a sealed-off alleyway. The top two storeys had fallen down completely, and the single remaining floor had one long wall and part of another exposed to the elements. But inside, enough debris had fallen to create a kind of fortress within the husk of the old building. There were good sight lines from inside, and at least two escape routes if necessary. Contrary to my expectations, the girl didn’t complain about the standard of accommodation. Instead, she looked around once and then walked in. I made one quick circle around the building to look for possible signs of ownership before I settled down next to her and started rubbing my leg. The wound I’d taken from the constable’s crossbow had mostly healed now, but weeks on the road made for a stiff limb. I supposed it would get all the rest it needed now, though we would soon have to find a source of water and at least a little food to survive the week.

‘They’re coming,’ Aline said softly.

‘They’re not.’ I was confident we hadn’t been followed, and I had taken the added precaution of circling back several blocks to make sure before we settled in Redbrick. And if they hadn’t followed us, then they couldn’t know where we were. And in a city the size of Rijou, the chances of Shiballe’s minions happening upon us were very slim indeed.

‘I can hear them.’

‘It’s the rats,’ I said, then realised it might not be helpful to a young girl to remind her of the likely other residents of the building.

‘It’s not rats. It’s people.’

I listened for a moment. My hearing isn’t exceptional, but it’s not that bad either.

‘There are lots of people living in Redbrick. Trust me, they want nothing to do with us,’ I said. Then I heard the slight sound of metal clanging against metal. Metal was, by and large, expensive, and besides, I know the sound a smallshield makes when it’s attached at a man’s hip and rubs against his sword.

‘Shit.’

When I peered around the corner I could see them coming: four groups of two, working their way in from separate sides of the building. So much for the escape routes.

I tried to think of a strategy for getting out of this without a fight, but nothing came to mind. It was obvious that they knew their quarry was in the building, and even if I could get by one pair, the girl wasn’t fast enough to outrun the others. I didn’t see any pistols or bows, just swords and clubs: bully boys; tough, stupid thugs that go from terrorising other children to killing for money, and sometimes just for fun. I swore under my breath. I could take any one of them – I could take any two of them – but even I can’t fight six at once. My plan for an open space that made for easy escape had just turned into a perfect place to snare us. Bully boys weren’t known for their tactical brilliance and this bunch were likely far too stupid to figure out a good way to ambush us; they’d needed me for that.

‘We should run,’ Aline said.

‘How fast can you run?’ I asked.

‘Fast enough to get to the alley if we can get past the pair on that side.’

‘Won’t work – the alley’s a trap. The one end’s blocked off and the sides are narrow. We’ll never be able to get by the others once they follow us.’

‘But they won’t be able to get around us, either,’ she said.

I thought about it for a moment and then marvelled that this little girl, still coughing from nearly burning to death and on the run for her life, had worked out for herself that we weren’t getting out of this by running. I’d have to fight, and I’d have a lot better chance if they could only come at me one or two abreast.

‘All right,’ I said, pulling a bracer of small throwing knives from inside my coat. There were six of them in all, each one about four inches long and weighted at the tip: not much for distance, but not bad for this situation. ‘As soon as we break through the pair at the alley exit, run straight for the dead end. From there I want you to stay four paces behind me. Do you understand? Four paces.’

Aline looked a little terrified now that she realised we really were going to try and fight our way out of this.

I showed her the bracer. ‘Each time I say “knife”, I want you to hand me one of these. You hand them to me with the flat end pointing towards me. Understand?’

As she held out her hand for the knives I heard feet scrape on the ground not far from us. Two of them would be coming to flush us out, so I planned to give them an easy time of it. I gestured to the girl, then pulled one of my rapiers and leapt out from our hiding place.

Exactly as I’d expected, there were two of them, quite close, both tall and stocky, with clubs at the ready. I could see the other pairs all stationed near the exits. I wanted to take the two nearest us out right away, but that would slow us down and was a luxury I couldn’t afford. Instead I swung my rapier in a wide arc, as fast as I could, and made them jump back.

‘Run!’ I shouted, and Aline followed close behind me as we ran straight at the two men waiting by the alleyway exit. These two also held thick clubs – a stupid weapon against a rapier, but then most bully boys don’t have money or inclination for a good sword, let alone the training in how to use it properly. But I didn’t want these two getting in a blow on the back of my head, so I couldn’t just try to scare them and run past. I feinted low at the one on my right. Always feint low when you can with an opponent with a heavy weapon: if he goes for the feint, it takes a lot more energy for him to get the weapon back up than it does to bring it down.

The feint worked, but the man on the left didn’t hesitate; he swung his own club at my shoulder. As I ducked under the swing, I stabbed the man on the right in the gut before he had time to get his weapon back up to a guard position. We were all so close together that I couldn’t get my blade back into guard myself, so I just pushed against the man’s elbow and threw him off balance, then kicked the wounded man back.

‘Come on,’ I said, and we ran through the exit and into the alley. The backs of the two- and three-storey buildings all pressed close together made for a dark tunnel, with no visible means of escape – no doors, no windows; people here were more afraid of someone breaking into their houses than they were of needing to get out quickly. We made straight for the dead end.

Six feet before the wall I turned. ‘Remember, four paces back except when I call for a knife.’

‘I’m not stupid,’ she said, taking up her position.

I didn’t have time to respond. The uninjured man came through and ran towards us with a yell, club swinging. I let the idiot get within four feet and simply extended my sword as his swing went past my face, missing it by inches. The one thing you don’t do when you have a shorter weapon is just run in and swing it at an opponent with a longer pointy weapon. All he has to do is extend his arm and you’re done. And he was.

The rest of the bully boys came through more carefully. Damn. They all had swords and smallshields and they smiled at each other as they came towards us step by step, knowing that they could make better use of the narrow alley if they held together.

‘Knife.’ I reached back with my left hand, palm up. ‘Knife!’ I said again when I didn’t feel anything. The men were about six feet away when I felt the cool metal against my palm.

‘I’m sorry!’ Aline said breathlessly. ‘It was stuck in the bracer.’

I hadn’t oiled the blades or the bracer for weeks; no wonder she had trouble getting it out. I cursed my own laziness as I threw the blade underhand. Some Saint must have favoured me for a moment, because it dug deeply into a man’s thigh. Greatcoat throwing blades are smaller than usual, but they have a quilled shape to the points that leaves a nasty mark – if you can even get it out.

‘Kest, Brasti, hit them with the crossbows!’ I shouted, glancing up towards the rooftops as I deflected a straight thrust coming at my face. The man in front of me ignored the ploy, but the one just behind him threw his arms over his head in a pretty vain attempt to protect himself from an attack from the top of the alley wall. When you’re fighting a crowd, it’s good to shout potentially threatening things like ‘Crossbows!’ or ‘Fire!’ or ‘Giant Flying Cat!’ every once in a while. When people are in the middle of a battle they’ll look more often than not, and in this kind of fight, every second is a chance to do some damage and otherwise avoid the inevitable.

I took a chance and slipped my rapier point past the man in front to skewer his more cautious friend in the chest. It’s a risky move, for two reasons: first, because your blade is now out of line and the man in front of you has a chance to straighten his point before you can guard against it. I was willing to take that gamble because my opponent wasn’t especially fast and he was using a heavier – and thus slower – sword. The second risk is that you should never stab a man in the chest – the gut, the groin, the sides where the soft-tissue organs are, even the face, they’re all good targets. But the chest has ribs, and ribs are wonderful things for trapping swords, especially when a man starts to fall backwards, and that’s exactly what happened to me as I found myself holding my dying opponent’s weight on my rapier.

His friend in front saw my predicament and smiled the big, dumb smile of a bully boy who’s got you trapped. But the poor man had probably never heard of Falcio’s Flying Blades.

You probably haven’t either, so it’s best if I explain. Early on in my career as a Greatcoat, I had the genius idea of having my rapier blades made with a type of heavy coiled spring in the guard, with a small lever that, if pushed by the thumb, would release the catch and launch the blade into your opponent at a distance. Brilliant, right? Unfortunately, however, as Kest, Brasti, the King, and most especially the King’s Armourer, Heimrin, all pointed out, there was never going to be enough force in such a small spring to launch a two-pound rapier blade very far. The result was that when I pointed my very, very expensive rapiers at someone and pressed the lever, the blades just sort of flopped out a few inches and dropped to the ground. So, as it turns out, Falcio’s Flying Blades became known as Falcio’s Floppy Fumblers. The damned things cost me a fortune though, and they were still perfect weapons if you didn’t hit the lever, so I kept them.

Which is why my opponent, standing just a few inches from me and ready to bring his blade down on my head, was very surprised when I pushed the lever with my thumb, pulled my rapier guard back off the blade and hit him in the face with it. The small studs that adorn the guard make an especially memorable impression, and he fell back unconscious with an expression that indicated he felt the whole thing was really quite unfair.

I dropped the rapier guard and then threw my hand back, palm up, towards Aline. ‘Knife,’ I said again as I unsheathed my second rapier with my left hand.

The girl put a throwing blade in my hand more quickly this time, and I threw it hard at the crowd in front of me. There was a pleasant thunk as it hit a man in the chest. Throwing knives in the chest are perfectly acceptable, by the way, since you aren’t likely to need to pull them back out right away.

‘Knife!’ I said again, twice more in succession, to give my opponents something to think about. Each time Aline was quick and ready and, by the time I was hurling my sixth and final knife, I was marvelling at the fact that I’d never before had this much good luck with throwing knives. Every single one had made contact and taken an opponent out of the fight. Except, of course, for the sixth one.

The remaining two men came straight for me, but by this time I was used to fighting against the alley walls and they had spent too much time with their juices buzzing in their ears while they had to wait for their friends to either win the fight for them or get killed. They were both about the same height, so I used a tight slash across their eyes, missing the first but catching the second. The blinded one fell back and his partner raised his shield-arm to protect his face, giving me the perfect opening to stab him through the groin. It wasn’t the most elegant finish to the fight, but we were alive and they weren’t, so for a brief instant all was right with the world.

I suppose it’s worth mentioning that all throughout our fight, the bully boys kept up a steady stream of insults, inducements, threats and other invective, but none of it was very clever and I feel it would give them too much honour to bother repeating it. They had names, too, and I could describe their physical differences and fighting styles, but I’m not going to. It may be petty, but I don’t think these bastards deserve to be remembered.

As the rush of blood started to subside, I looked at the carnage in front of us.

‘Can I come closer now?’ Aline asked. As she came forward I expected her to be shocked by the sight of the bodies in front of her. Some were unconscious, but most were dead and lying in pools of blood. I was strangely reassured when she hunched over and vomited on the alley floor, but then she stood up, walked over to one of the bodies, pulled out my throwing knife and started cleaning it using cloth from the man’s shirt.

‘You don’t have to do that,’ I said as I put a hand on her shoulder.

She flinched, then pushed my hand away. ‘Someone has to do it. I can’t fight, so I may as well do this,’ she said.

I leaned back on the alley wall and slid down to the ground. I could have slept, right there, right in the middle of an alley strewn with corpses.

When she was done with cleaning the knives and replacing them in the bracer, the girl started to pick over the bodies.

‘Leave them be,’ I said, my voice thick with exhaustion. I forced my uncooperative legs to push me back up so that I could reassemble my rapiers.

‘I have no money, and they tried to kill me. The least they can do is pay for our supplies,’ she said. Brasti would’ve been proud.

But the men didn’t have much money to speak of. Aline showed me a handful of coins and a single silver bit. Their weapons were nothing special compared with what I already carried so I didn’t bother looking any further.

‘Can I take this?’ Aline asked. She held up one of the dead men’s hands to show me a small disc on the palm, a little larger than a caravaner’s silver mark. It was made of copper or bronze and attached by thin leather straps looped around his two middle fingers and thumb.

‘I don’t think it’s valuable,’ I said.

‘I know,’ she said defensively, ‘but it’s interesting and I like how it almost glows a bit when you rub your thumb on it.’

I was about to give in, but something started to itch at the back of my neck. I knelt down next to her and examined it more carefully. The disc had very faint markings on it, parallel lines with offshoots and curves, and a bit near the centre was shinier than the rest.

‘Look,’ Aline said. She pressed her finger on it and it grew shinier, as if it had just been cleaned in that spot.

I looked at it for a moment and then took her hand and replaced her finger with my own. Nothing happened. The spot near the centre was still shinier, but not as much as when Aline touched it. I took my finger off and held her hand above it. The spot looked ever so slightly brighter, and became more so the closer her hand came to it.

‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Magic. I hate magic.’

‘That’s silly,’ she said. ‘Why bother making a disc that just gets a bright spot when you touch it? Even the magic symbols look odd – just a bunch of lines.’

‘It gets brighter when it gets closer to you – and those markings aren’t “magic symbols”, they’re streets. Look—’ I pulled the disc from the dead man’s hand and we walked down to the end of the alley. The markings on the disc, barely visible to the eye, changed slightly.

‘It’s like a map!’ Aline said, clearly missing the salient problem.

‘It’s more than that,’ I said. ‘It’s a map that leads them straight to you.’

Shiballe and the Duke had a mage at their disposal: one powerful enough to create an amulet that could lead their men to us anywhere in the city. It was inscribed on cheap copper – you could make five for a penny. And people ask me why I hate magic.

We made our way further into the old city. I guessed we had a little time before Shiballe discovered that his bully boys had failed him and sent someone else after us. It was possible that he might send the entire City Guard after us, but Rijou is a bad place to do something like that, what with so many narrow, winding streets and so many other ways in and out of districts. And anyway, most of the Guard are otherwise engaged during the Blood Week, protecting the Duke’s favourites and harassing those unfortunates to whom he was less favourably disposed.

Still, the amulet bothered me.

I pulled it out to look at it again. As we’d only found the one, I wasted time on a faint hope that if two were close to each other, they might cancel each other out. Likely nonsense, of course. I’d taken to using it to get a quick overview of the streets and alleyways nearby. Old City wasn’t ideal from a hiding perspective, but since we didn’t have much in the way of other options, I was glad of one helpful feature: the buildings were stacked close together. I found a wall with enough protruding beams and bricks on the outside to make it possible to climb.

‘Why are we going up? Won’t it just make it harder to run?’ the girl asked.

‘The amulets show where we are, but not how high,’ I said as we neared the top. ‘They could be right underneath us and not realise it.’

She didn’t comment, but I suspected that was more from exhaustion than anything else.

We reached the top of the building. It was a full three storeys high, and afforded us what was doubtless a beautiful view of the city at dusk. I could see flames as at least two other noble houses about a mile away went up in smoke: the Duke’s friends at work, no doubt.

‘Where … now?’ Aline said weakly, collapsing onto the roof’s flat surface. I took a more serious look at her and saw that exhaustion was indeed overtaking her.

‘We try to keep to the rooftops when we can. When we can’t, we climb down just long enough to find another place to hide.’

Two days, I realised: we’d been on the move for two full days and neither of us had slept. The night before, she’d suffered the loss of her family. It was too much. I didn’t think she’d make another step.

‘Are there any noble houses who might give you protection?’ I asked, though I was pretty sure I already knew that answer.

With what looked like a real effort, Aline raised her head. ‘No. My nanny said we used to be a powerful family, but not any more.’

Supporting the King had never been a way to make friends in Rijou.

‘I met your father once,’ I said. ‘Lord Tiarren was a good man.’

Aline’s face was thoughtful, as if I’d said something unusual. ‘He was always kind to me,’ she said, ‘but I do not think he loved me as he did my brothers.’

‘Why do you say that?’

She paused again, as if looking for the proper words. ‘He was gentle, and he gave me fine gifts on my birthday. He spoke to me courteously, as he did my mother. But with my older brothers he was always more … proud.’

‘I …’ Damn. What do you tell a child? That fathers don’t always love their daughters as they should? That noble families want strong boys to lead their houses, not girls whose dowries must be paid? ‘I think if your father could see you right now he would be very proud.’

She gave a small smile, but it was a smile for me, not because of me. The exhaustion was overwhelming her.

I knelt down and reached into one of the inner pockets of my coat. I extracted a small package wrapped in silk. ‘Here,’ I said.

Aline took the package and unwrapped it, revealing the square of striped candy underneath.

‘What is this?’

‘We call it the “hard candy”,’ I replied.

‘Candy?’ She looked annoyed.

‘Just eat a tiny bit.’

She started to take a bite and I grabbed her arm. ‘Just a small piece,’ I said. ‘Just a taste.’

The girl looked confused, but she obeyed me and took just a tiny nibble from the corner. Then she made a face, and I thought she was about to spit it out.

I held my finger up. ‘Just wait.’

We sat for a few moments as the sky turned a little darker. Suddenly Aline leapt to her feet, eyes wide, tense as a cat staring down a pack of dogs.

‘How do you feel?’ I asked.

‘Like— Like I could run the length of the city, twice over,’ she replied, looking all around her. ‘I don’t feel tired at all – it’s like I just woke up!’

‘Try to keep steady and focused,’ I said. ‘It takes a while to get used to the hard candy.’

‘It’s all right – I’m fine. We can go now if you like.’

‘No, now I need to rest for a minute.’

She held out the package towards me, but I wrapped her hand around it. ‘You hang onto it. There isn’t much, and I try to avoid using it.’ When she looked at me quizzically, I added, ‘It’s good for keeping you awake, it’s good for running, it’s good for staying alive. But it’s not especially good for strategic thinking, or for swordwork.’

‘Then why—?’

‘We Magisters have to travel a long way, and sometimes, if we need to get somewhere quickly, we have to keep ourselves going for days – or, just as likely, get away from somewhere before we’re caught.’

Aline put the silk-wrapped package in her pocket.

‘Use it sparingly,’ I warned. ‘Too much at once can make your heart explode in your chest.’

The girl sat down next to me, though I knew it was hard for her to keep still now. ‘Why “hard”?’ she asked.

‘Hmm?’ I said, and only then realised I was starting to nod off. The sky was fully dark. We needed to get moving.

‘Why is it the “hard candy”?’

‘Because it’s not the same as the “soft candy”,’ I said, pulling out a still smaller package from another pocket.

‘So if the hard candy is for giving you energy, what’s the soft candy for then?’ she asked, reaching for it.

I pulled it away. ‘It’s for something else,’ I said. ‘It’s for something else entirely.’

‘Falcio?’

I opened my eyes. ‘Shit. How long was I asleep?’

‘Just a couple of minutes,’ Aline said. ‘I wanted to let you rest but I think I heard something.’

I got to my feet and listened. Nothing. Not for the first time, I wished my hearing was more acute.

‘It’s there,’ she said, and then I heard it: soft shoes on stone, climbing to the roof.

‘Damn,’ I said. I pulled out the bracer of knives and handed it to Aline. ‘Same thing as before,’ I said. ‘Stay four paces behind me.’

I pulled both my rapiers out. The roof was a wide-open space, and I could use that to advantage.

They came, eight of them, dark as shadows across the roof. Hells, I never should have let myself fall asleep. We should have kept on the move.

‘Put your swords down or we’ll gut you,’ came a voice from the north edge of the building. It was strangely pitched: was it a woman?

‘I’m fairly sure you’ll gut me whether I put my swords down or not,’ I shouted back. ‘So I might as well bleed you and your friends first.’

‘Not if you put those nice blades down, along with any money you’ve got, and leave our territory,’ the voice replied.

Territory? Then they weren’t Shiballe’s men?

‘I’m afraid we don’t have much in the way of money, and I’m rather in need of these swords of late. How about if we just leave and you can keep your territory?’

I heard Aline gasp, and then made out the sound of someone climbing up the wall right behind us.

‘Tell your man he’s about to learn secrets only the dead know,’ I said, keeping my left point up and taking two steps back to the ledge with my right-hand blade ready to sweep. Something whizzed by my right leg and skipped off the ledge. It wasn’t an arrow, nor a bolt. Could it have been a sling-stone? I heard a stunned cry from behind me.

‘Boxer, y’fool! I told’ja not to try that again. Get the hells back down and keep watch!’ the leader shouted past me.

‘Can’t! My foothold broke! Somebody help me up!’ said the scared voice. This one was high-pitched too.

‘Look, no point anyone dying who doesn’t have to,’ I called out. ‘How about you don’t shoot at me and I give your little friend a hand up?’

‘Call me “little”, you son-of-a—’

‘Shut it, Boxer!’ The leader came a few feet forward, and the others joined him: kids. They were all bloody kids no older than Aline. There was a dog with them too, a Sharpney, by the look of him, a big, fast breed that made excellent hunting dogs. I hoped I wouldn’t have to kill him.

‘You try anything funny and the girl dies first,’ the leader said. He was about thirteen, and I could make out a shock of straight hair above a dirty face. ‘And if you get advantage on one of us, Mixer here will tear your throat out.’ He motioned to the dog.

‘Typical,’ said one of the others, this one clearly a girl. ‘You always try to hit girls first, Venger.’

‘Shut it,’ he said. ‘No foolin’; you let Boxer up and then y’put down your sword or there’s gonna be trouble.’ The dog let out a low rumble in agreement. ‘Mixer, stay,’ he said firmly.

I smiled, put down my left-hand sword and stepped back. I held my hand over the edge and felt something grab it and tentatively try to pull me over, but I was well-grounded and ready for it.

‘Try that again and I’ll drop you, you little shit-eater,’ I said in as pleasant a tone as I could muster.

‘Boxer! Don’t mess around,’ Venger said angrily.

‘A’right,’ Boxer said.

I hauled him up one-handed – not as hard a task as it might have been if he’d weighed more than air. What I saw when I pulled him in front of me was another scrawny, dirty-faced boy, probably ten years old.

‘Y’gonna try and hold me hostage now, bastard?’ Boxer said, clearly readying an elbow for my groin.

I pushed him forward and off-balance and he fell to his knees a few feet between me and the kids.

‘What now?’ I asked.

Venger looked me up and down. ‘You can go, I s’pose, what with Boxer bein’ such a fool turd. But you leave the money. And if you value any part of your life you take that coat off and leave it too,’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘That won’t do, I’m afraid; I need them all. What would you do with a Greatcoat, anyway? It’s bigger than you are.’

Venger sneered. ‘Burn it,’ he said.

It’s nice to be so widely loved. ‘Don’t like Greatcoats?’

‘Don’t like fools that dress up as ’em,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows there ain’t no Greatcoats no more.’

‘He is, too,’ Aline said, stepping out from behind me and leaping to my defence.

‘Shut up, girl,’ Venger said, ‘you don’t know nothin’ ’bout it.’

That got Venger a slap in the back of the head from one of the girls in his group. ‘Stop pickin’ on girls all the time, Venger,’ she warned.

‘Ow! I’m not. She’d be wrong if she was a boy, too.’

‘Listen,’ I said, ‘my name is Falcio val Mond, First Cantor of the King’s Magisters. I’m trying very hard right now to keep this girl alive, and there are a lot of people after me. So you can either take my word that I’m a Greatcoat and get the hells out of our way, or I can take you over my knee and spank you ’til you can’t see straight. Now take your pick.’

That got a few snickers from his friends, but to his credit, he ignored the jibe and kept to business. ‘If you’re a Greatcoat, then answer me this: how come you let the armies kill the King if you’re all supposed to be such tough fighters? How come every one of you betrayed their old Paelis?’

‘Because the Greatcoats were ordered to stand down and accept the Covenant. It was an order.’

‘Yeah? An’ who gave ’em the order?’

‘I did,’ I said.

I had been working in the library of Castle Aramor, maps strewn across the long table and two-centuries-old books on warfare in my hands. The Ducal Army would be here within hours and we had only a hundred and forty-four Greatcoats and a small troop of Royal Guardsmen, and the staff and residents of the castle. It wasn’t a lot to work with, but I had got a few ideas from the old books. I would have dearly loved weapons for countering sieges right then, but I was ready to make do without.

I heard someone come in and turned to see the King. He was casually dressed, in the gear we wore for practising swordwork.

‘I don’t suppose you’d reconsider?’ I asked him, still looking at the diagram of the castle on the table for a way to block the South Gate so that I wouldn’t have to divert troops there.

‘Kings don’t get to run, Falcio,’ he said.

I looked up at him. ‘Well, if you can’t ride fast, you fight hard.’

‘Not this time. The motto is “judge fair, ride fast, fight hard”, remember? “Fight hard” is the last option. Besides, there’s a reason why no King of Tristia has ever been allowed to maintain a private army. The soldiery has always been the Dukes’ protection against a tyrant taking absolute power.’

‘Then what—?’

‘You’re going to stand the men down, Falcio. I’m ordering you to stand the men down.’

‘But we can fight! I’ve thought it through and the Magisters are ready. If you’ll only go over these plans with me I can show you—’

‘Enough. I’m still King, for the next few hours, at any rate.’

‘But I’m telling you we can fight!’

He started to answer, but a coughing fit overtook him. It was coming on winter and he’d not slept in three days.

‘You can fight, Falcio,’ he said finally, ‘but you can’t win. And even if you could, every one of the Magisters would lose their lives.’

‘What kind of life will we have when the Dukes take us?’ I slammed my fist on one of my maps. ‘Where are the noble families, damn it? How many trips have you taken, “courting the lesser nobles”? Where are they now that we need them?’

‘It isn’t their job to throw their lives away on a war they can’t win, Falcio. Saints know what I’ve asked of them is more than they should have had to give in the first place.’

‘You’re talking in circles again when we should be preparing the Greatcoats!’

The King walked over to me and put a hand on the side of my face. People always seem to do that when they want me to shut up and do something I don’t want to do.

‘I’m going to tell you what to do now, Falcio. I’m going to give you the new plan. I’m your friend, but I’m your King first. You are going to surrender the castle to the Duke’s men, in exchange for safe passage and pardons for the Greatcoats.’

He was right; he was my King and my friend and I loved him, but I swear right then I almost hit him. I felt my fingernails pressing into my palms as I clenched my fists. I would have knocked him down, had it not been for the look in his eyes.

‘This is how I want it, Falcio, and this is how it will be. The Dukes will agree. They know the Magisters are fierce, and they won’t want to pay any more for this adventure than they absolutely have to.’

The thought of turning him over to the Dukes was unconscionable. It would mean the destruction of everything the Greatcoats stood for. We had truly believed we could bring law and justice and honour to the world, and now he was taking that from me. I felt sick, betrayed.

‘Fine, damn you, my liege,’ I said, pulling away from him. ‘But don’t ask me to give the order. Get Dara or someone else.’

The King leaned on the table. ‘It has to be you, Falcio.’

‘Why? Why by the Gods? Why would you make me be the one to give this order – this abomination – to the Greatcoats?’

His voice grew very quiet then as he said, ‘Because if you don’t give the order, no one will follow it.’

A few hours later, just before the Ducal Army’s vanguard arrived, I gave the Greatcoats the order, and they followed it.