Hours later I was back in my cottage, collecting my belongings and preparing for our departure in the morning. The Tailor believed that if we continued to harass Trin’s troops we could box her in long enough for Duke Erris to rally his own forces; all we had to do was deny Trin victory long enough for her generals to lose faith in her. From there we might even be able to convince them that a naïve thirteen-year-old girl on the throne was preferable to a psychotic eighteen-year-old murderer with exotic tastes in torture.
I wondered what would become of this small village once we abandoned it. The cries of those few men still alive but beyond saving had all but faded now. Their families had come down from the mountain hideaways to witness the destruction that had fallen upon a place that, until the Greatcoats had come along, had survived border raids and territorial disputes for hundreds of years. The women and children had been so full of shock and fury that I’d feared they might attack us then and there. But in the end, we had the numbers and the weapons, and so they had simply taken their dead and dying and made their way back into the mountains, cursing us all the while.
The memory of their faces had shaken my faith in my King, maybe for the first time in my life. All those years he’d spent planning and plotting, developing strategies and tactics to bring peace and justice to this broken, bitter country, and in the end, what had he left us with? None of us, even those who had been closest to him, knew his plan. Instead, in the days just before losing his throne and his head to the Dukes, Paelis had given each of us a secret and individual command and scattered us to the winds—a hundred and forty-four men and women, dispatched on a hundred and forty-four different journeys—never to know what became of the others.
For five years I had searched for what Paelis had called the “King’s Charoites,” despite having no idea where they might be, nor, in fact, what a charoite was other than a kind of rare precious stone. Finally, I had found Aline: the King’s secret daughter. His blood. His heir. The rarest jewel of them all.
And now what was I supposed to do now?
Put Aline on the throne?
Was that the entirety of your plan, you gangly-limbed, half-starved excuse for a King? We had shared a dream, he and I. At first it was just the two of us, but we’d tricked others into believing it too. Every one of the original Greatcoats could recite the King’s Laws by heart; we could all sing them well enough that even a drunken farmer could remember our verdicts word for word a year later. How many of them still believed in all that talk of law and justice and an easing of sorrow? How much did Brasti and Kest and the other original Greatcoats, wherever they were, still believe?
How much did I?
I removed my coat and set it aside on the bench next to my swords. I would sleep reluctantly tonight, as frightened of my own guilty dreams as I was of finding out what Patriana’s poison had in store for me when I next awoke.
A soft, tentative knock at my door interrupted my thoughts. It was strange that I immediately knew it was Aline. Maybe it was because of those days we had spent together on the run in Rijou, always quiet, always fearful that someone would hear us and raise the alarm. I opened the door and she came in, still wearing the faded green dress.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, looking outside to see if anyone was watching. “If the villagers—”
“The villagers have all gone away,” she said. “Besides, it’s done now. Trin will know her men failed.”
“You should be asleep,” I said.
“I should be dead.”
I knelt down and looked her in the eyes. She was more haggard than scared. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why—?”
“Nothing, except that someone powerful sent men to kill me. Again. Like they always do. Like they always will.”
I stood up and went to pour us each a cup of water from the jug in the small kitchen. “They failed,” I said, handing her the cup.
She drank, and I took that as a sign things might not be so bad and did the same.
“Thank you,” she said, handing me back the cup.
“Do you want some more?”
She shook her head.
“Did you want to sit and talk?”
Aline looked toward the still open door. “Could we go for a walk outside? I’d like to see the stars.”
The Tailor wouldn’t like that and nor would her Greatcoats. I was tired and not looking for another fight. But Aline was the heir, not our prisoner, and by now the Tailor’s men would have set up a proper perimeter.
Also, as the King used to remind me on an almost daily basis, I’m belligerent.
“Sure,” I said. “Just let me grab something.” I retrieved my coat and rapiers and found a thick woolen blanket that I wrapped around Aline’s shoulders.
We walked down the main path, the flickering candlelight escaping through the cracks in the shutters lighting our way. Occasionally we could hear the sounds of other Greatcoats talking inside.
“Where shall we go?” I asked.
“Can we go up the little hill outside the village?”
That was an awkward request. I really didn’t want to take her outside the protection of our camp, but we were unlikely to be attacked again—Trin had made her attempt, and her men had paid the price for it. “All right,” I said, “but just for a little while.”
Aline took my hand and we made our way down the path, passing a group of six of the Tailor’s Greatcoats. They didn’t bother to greet us, but I saw they noted our presence. As long as we didn’t go far they’d likely not complain. I ignored the soft footsteps not far behind us. They had been there since we’d left the cottage.
We crossed the wide trail that passed through the strange rock formation called the Arch. Beyond it was the Eastern Desert and the curved north–south trade route called the Bow that led to Rijou.
Rijou.
The memories of that place still make me shudder.
“Are you cold?” Aline asked.
“No, just thinking.”
“That happens to me too when I think,” she said.
“Oh? What do you think about that makes you shiver?”
She looked up. “I like the stars,” she said, ignoring my question. “You could see some in Rijou, but never as many as here. It’s as if they’re right near us. Come on. I want to get closer to them.”
We made our way up the hill along a narrow path. At the top the terrain flattened out and we sat at the edge. Small animals scurried about in the dark, not quite obscuring the other sound that trailed us.
“She follows me everywhere I go,” Aline said.
I was surprised at first that Aline could hear the footsteps, but then, she was a smart girl and she’d gotten used to paying attention to things around her. “She’s wounded,” I said. “She should be resting.”
“You could tell her, but I don’t think she’d listen. She’s lost, Falcio.”
I looked at Aline’s face to find some clue as to her meaning but she was still just looking up at the stars. “What do you mean?”
“They’ve taken everything away from her,” she said. “She spent her whole life being a princess and now she’s just a girl. I spent my whole life thinking I was just a girl and now they tell me I have to be a queen. It doesn’t seem fair.”
“To whom?” I asked.
She turned to me and put a hand on my arm. “I don’t want Valiana to die for nothing, Falcio. Will you protect her?”
“What do you mean, ‘for nothing’? Saving your life isn’t ‘nothing’.”
She leaned back on the ground and looked up again. “Can you see this many stars in the Southern Islands?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” I said. “I suppose so. I think it’s mostly a function of how many clouds there are and how much light down here there is—that makes it harder for us to see the stars.”
The answer seemed to satisfy her. “So if we weren’t in a big city and it wasn’t cloudy we should see a lot of stars from an island too, right?”
“Aline, what’s this about?”
“Do you think about Ethalia, Falcio?”
That took me by surprise. Of course I still thought of Ethalia—every day. It hadn’t been so long ago that she had healed my wounds and saved the last little part of my soul.
“I do think about her, yes,” I said carefully.
“That morning when you were in her room—when she sent me downstairs,” she started, then admitted, “I didn’t go all the way. I stayed near the door and I heard what she said to you.”
For an instant I was back in that small room, the smell of clean sheets and simple food, of morning flowers and, above all, of her. “Don’t you think it at all possible that you are meant to be happy, that I am meant to be happy, and that our happiness can be found together?”
I had known Ethalia one night and in that short time had fallen in love for only the second time in my life. Minutes after she had said those words I had left her there, alone. Weeping.
“Why are you telling me this, Aline?”
“Do you think she’d still take us to that island that she mentioned? She said I could come too, right?”
“I . . . I’m sure one day, when you’re tired of being Queen, I mean you could . . .” I knew I sounded like an idiot so I didn’t bother to finish.
“No,” Aline said, “I mean, now. If we went back there now—not all the way to Rijou, I know we’d need to get a message to her—but if we could, do you think she’d still take us to that island?”
“Aline,” I said, “you’re the daughter of King Paelis. You’re going to be Queen of all Tristia.”
She shook her head. She wasn’t crying, though. It was as if she’d played this conversation over in her head and was ready for my objections. “I don’t have to be Queen, though. No one can force me to be Queen.”
“I don’t always want to be a Greatcoat but I do it anyway. Where would you be if I’d stopped?”
“Dead,” she said plainly. “I’d be dead. Just like when Shiballe’s men tried to kill me, or when the bully-boys found us. Or when Laetha and Radger betrayed me, or when the Dashini assassins came. Or today.”
I felt a fool. I kept forgetting how young she was, still a child, and already she’d faced as much death as any soldier. “I’ve kept you safe, though, haven’t I?”
“Yes, you did. You killed Shiballe’s men and the bully-boys and those fake Greatcoats and the Dashini. And today you killed more men for me. How many people will you kill for me, Falcio?”
I took her hand. “I’ll kill as many as it takes, Aline. I’ll kill them until they stop coming for you.”
She pulled her hand away and jumped to her feet. “You don’t understand anything! I don’t want you to kill people for me! I don’t want Valiana to die to protect me. I didn’t want the villagers to betray us and then be killed because of it! I’m only thirteen, Falcio, and already I’ve caused the death of more people than I can count. I don’t want it!”
I rose to my feet. “We don’t always get—”
“No! It’s not the same. I don’t want to be a Queen. And you’re not a Greatcoat because you have to be, Falcio—you’re a Greatcoat because you don’t know how to be anything else.” She turned and ran off.
She was right, of course. It wasn’t fair. She deserved better; she deserved to be a child, to laugh and cry and get angry and run off into the darkness and pout. But the world hadn’t been fair to her up to now and it showed absolutely no signs of relenting, and that meant I couldn’t let her go off by herself to pout in the darkness.
So I ran and caught her before she could reach the path down the hill.
“Leave me alone!” she screamed.
“Stop,” I said, taking her arm. “Stop and tell me what it is you want. Do you want me to take you away from here? To take you south, to see if Ethalia would still have us?” Aline’s arm was shaking—no, it wasn’t her. It was me. It was the thought of what might be if she commanded me to take her from this place. Oh Gods, say yes, and in that yes shake me of the bonds that bind me to your father. You gave me no instructions, my King. You just said to find her, and I did that. If she asks me to take her away I will and to the hells with whatever plans you made but never bothered to tell me.
But she didn’t say yes. It was as if she could tell I would have taken her south that very instant if she asked. Instead, she said, “I want to stop being afraid,” not knowing that it was the bravest thing she could have said just then.
“That’s not the same thing. I’m not sure that’s even possible.”
She started crying. “Why do I have to be Queen?”
“You don’t,” I said. “The country can carry on as it has. The Dukes can keep doing what they’ve been doing. Trin can take the throne.”
“Mattea—The Tailor—she said there were others.” Her voice was full of frustration. “Why didn’t you find one of them?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t know they existed, or that you did. But I don’t think any of them are left, Aline. Patriana hunted them all down.” I thought about that a moment. Patriana had held Aline in her clutches. She had beaten her and tortured her—and yet she hadn’t killed her, preferring instead to use her to torment me. And now I thought about it, she’d kept asking, over and over, “Where are the others?” At the time I’d assumed she was talking about the other Greatcoats but in hindsight it was more likely she had been seeking the other heirs, the “Charoites,” as the King had enigmatically called them. What if there were other heirs still alive?
“Aline, if there was another, would you want them to take your place?”
“I . . .” Tears were dripping slowly down her cheeks and I wanted to hold her, but I knew she didn’t want to be touched. So we stood there until she finally looked up at me. “They would have to deal with the same things I do, wouldn’t they?”
I nodded. I didn’t speak, for I could see that her heart had made its decision and now her mind was catching up to it.
“And . . . and it would be worse for them, wouldn’t it? Because they won’t have faced the things I have. It’ll all come down on them at once.”
“I think that’s probably true.”
She stood there, silent, looking back up at the stars for a very long time. “Then it has to be me, doesn’t it? If I don’t do this then it will fall on somebody else and it might be even harder for them. They would have to be braver than me.”
My voice caught in my throat as I said, “I don’t think there is anyone braver than you, sweetheart.”
She wrapped her arms around herself. “We don’t always get to be who we want to be, do we?”
It took me a minute before I could speak. I hadn’t fully understood until that moment how much I’d wanted her to refuse her birthright; to tell me she wanted me to take her away. I’d not admitted, even to myself, how much I longed to go to Ethalia and live out a normal life without the burden of trying to carry on a dead King’s fading dream. I remembered back to the day when I had first met King Paelis, and the wild, idealistic insanity that had followed. I thought about Kest and Brasti and all the others: every one of them had their own tale, every one had made the same choice. “I think . . . I think we get to be what the world needs us to be.”
Aline sniffed once more, as if trying to take back in the tears she had shed. “Then that has to be enough. I’ll be the Queen, then, Falcio, if that will make things better. If that is what the world wants of me.”
We stood like that for a little while before she took my hand and we began the walk down the path and back toward the village.
I should have made a vow then, loudly, to the night and to whatever awaited us in the morning. I should have promised to always be there for Aline, to always protect her. I should have made an oath to the Gods and Saints. But I didn’t. Aline was a smart and serious girl, and she didn’t like it when people made vows they couldn’t keep.
I awoke the next day as I had for the previous several days, unable to move or speak. The first time it had lasted only a few terrifying seconds. Now, as I tried to count the minutes in my head, the paralysis felt expected, almost natural.
Someone was in the room with me. The sound of my visitor’s breathing was soft and slow, punctuated every few minutes by a moan of pain or fear that wasn’t quite breaking through their sleep. Valiana, I thought. Only hours from nearly losing her own life and yet here she was, sitting watch over me. I imagined the Tailor had forced her to stay away from Aline’s cottage and she’d decided to guard me instead. How much she’d changed from the haughty noblewoman I’d met just a few months ago, served by everyone around her, raised to rule over the country. What must it be like to imagine yourself a princess only to discover you’re the child of an unknown peasant woman with no title, no family, no name? I wished I could open my eyes and see her. I wished I could see anything.
I met a blind man years ago, selling fruit along the trade road, being led around by a very old woman whom I assumed was his wife. I’d asked him what it was like to be without sight. Close your eyes, he’d said. Think of a beautiful woman. That’s what I see every minute of every day. His wife had looked over at him fondly. He’d told me the world could be the most lovely place you could imagine, so long as your imagination was fueled by love. I wanted to tell him that when I closed my eyes I too saw my wife, and the sight filled me with pain and sorrow and a rage I could never control. But I feared that if I did tell him I might change the vista he beheld, and so the gap-toothed grin on his old face held me back.
Now, all these years later, I couldn’t remember my wife’s face. Not really. I could describe her to you—her hair, her skin, the crooked smile when she mocked some silly thing I had said . . . That smile. It promised laughter and kisses and more. I could tell you every detail because I’ve made myself remember them, but only as words. We had been poor, so there were no paintings or sketches of her. The sight of her was lost to me forever and there was only one way to get it back.
A rough hand grabbed my jaw and the heat of someone’s breath brought an uncomfortable warmth to my face. I heard Valiana move in her chair. “Stop!”
I felt the first tingles in my fingertips. I couldn’t be sure how long I’d been paralyzed this time, but it felt longer than the day before. My eyes began fluttering open. If ever there was a face I didn’t long to see at that precise moment, it was the Tailor’s.
“Wakey-wakey, First Cantor,” she said, her voice a mixture of sarcasm and urgency. “Time to get up and greet the day.”
Valiana entered my view as she tried and failed to push the Tailor away. “It’s still hours away from when you said we were leaving.”
“That was before,” the Tailor said.
“Before what?” I asked, the thick feeling in my tongue slurring my words.
The Tailor looked at me and only then did I realize how much anger was in her eyes. “Before the Duke of Pulnam betrayed us.”
Outside the cottage the other Greatcoats were making preparations to leave the village. Horses were dragging litters holding the dead bodies of fallen Knights and some of the homes damaged in the fight were being hastily repaired.
“No sense leaving the villagers with broken homes and a bunch of dead Knights to bury,” the Tailor said, striding toward the far end of the village just a little too quickly for me to keep up in my current state. “We’ll take them out and leave them in a nice pile for Trin and that bastard Erris, Duke of Pulnam, to find.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why did he betray us? I thought you said our raids were working.”
She sneered. “The raids worked too well. Trin offered him an armistice. She won’t take the duchy away from him, and in exchange he’ll give her troops access through southern Pulnam so they can bypass the Duchy of Domaris’s defenses. He’ll also pay for the cost of her troops’ passage.”
“He’ll pay? For what?”
“Protection,” the Tailor said. “Seems there are Greatcoats about.”
As we reached the far side of the village I saw Kest and Brasti readying their horses. “Finally,” Brasti said. “Falcio, would you tell her to stop ordering us about without telling us why?”
“What is this?” I asked the Tailor.
“You’re going south.”
“To where?”
“Aramor. Where it all began.”
“Saints,” Brasti said, rolling his eyes. “You do recall that we’re wanted for murder in Aramor, don’t you?”
“Trin killed Lord Tremondi,” Kest said. “Surely Duke Isault must know that by now.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the Tailor said.
“Why?” Brasti asked. “Because the three of us are expendable?”
“Because we have no damned choice, you fool. Duke Isault’s got money and soldiers. We need both and we need them now.” The Tailor grabbed a stick from the ground and began drawing lines in the dirt. “Trin’s going to go south from here,” she said, “to the Duchy of Domaris and its endless forests. Hadiermo, the vaunted Iron Duke of Domaris, is an idiot but he’ll fight her. He knows that Duke Perault has become Trin’s lover, and that he wants to expand his own duchy’s borders. If Domaris falls, Perault will take one half and Trin will take the other and Duke Hadiermo will be left standing out in the cold in his underclothes.”
“How long can he hold out against the combined forces of Trin and Perault?” I asked.
“A few weeks. Maybe a month.”
Kest, Brasti, and I looked at each other as the magnitude of events came crashing down on us: Hervor, Orison, Pulnam, and finally Domaris—all four of the northern duchies. Trin would hold them all with an army that would sweep the south unless the southern duchies rose united against her, which they never would, not without a King or Queen to lead them.
“Ah,” the Tailor said. “It seems light does eventually reach even the dimmest places.”
“Why would the Duke of Aramor side with Aline?” Kest asked.
“Aramor has always had a special relationship with the Kings of Tristia,” the Tailor replied. “Isault didn’t love my son, but he didn’t hate him the way the others did. And he’s an opportunist. He’ll know he can get a better deal from us than from Trin.”
I was still dubious. Isault’s “special relationship” hadn’t done King Paelis much good when he and the other Dukes came for his head. “Let’s say we can turn Isault,” I began.
“You will turn him,” the Tailor said. “Make no mistake: if he sides with Trin this is all over and the world itself won’t be big enough to hide any of us. You’re going to go down there and stroke his ego and promise him whatever you must to get his support.”
“Fine. So I turn him. Then what?”
She tapped each of the duchies of the southwest on her map in the dirt. “From Aramor you go to secure the support of the Dukes of Luth and then Pertine. The Duchy of Baern will fall into line behind them.”
“Trin will have the north and Aline will have the south,” I said.
The Tailor gave me a grim smile as she poked her stick dead center in the heart of the country. “And the final battle will be fought in Rijou, where your old friend Duke Jillard will decide the fate of the world. Still proud of yourself for not killing him when you had the chance?”
“He swore to support Aline’s claim,” I said. “Besides, there are laws, even in times of war.”
“Aye. But you don’t seem to have learned the first one: it’s the victor who makes the laws.” She swept the marks in the dirt away with her foot. “I’ll take the Greatcoats to Domaris and we’ll do our best to slow Trin down. If she thought our raids were a pain before, she’ll be amazed at how much damage we can do once her soldiers have to travel through a hundred and fifty miles of forest.”
“What about Aline?” I asked. “You can’t mean to keep taking her into battlefields like this.”
“You have a better solution?” the Tailor asked.
“We’ll take her with us. We get her the hells away from Pulnam and Domaris, take her south where we can find somewhere safe for her until all this is over.”
The Tailor smiled. “Perfect. I like your thinking, Falcio.”
I searched the old woman’s face for signs of mockery. I couldn’t believe she’d go along with a plan I’d had all of ten seconds to devise. “You’re serious? You’ll let me take her?”
She shook her head. “Of course not, you fool. But I’m counting on the fact that you aren’t the only one who thinks a woman’s place is hiding behind men.”
I started to protest, but she held up a hand. “Don’t start telling me about all the female Greatcoats you recruited. If Aline were a man you’d say she needed to show the world she was brave enough to lead it.”
On the long list I kept in my head of things I hated about the Tailor, second from the top was the arrogant way she presumed to see every one of my flaws. Top on the list was that she was probably right. “If my instincts are so flawed, then why—?”
“Because Trin thinks like a man too. She’ll believe we’ll send Aline south and she’ll be convinced you’re the one who will take her. You really are quite predictable, Falcio.”
Brasti snorted. “It won’t take her spies long to realize we don’t have Aline with us. What are we supposed to do, parade Kest around in a sundress?”
“You’re not going by yourselves,” the Tailor said as Dariana stepped out from behind one of the hitching posts. She was wearing a greatcoat. “Ah, Dari, there you are.”
“I’ve warned you before about calling me that.”
“Well, threaten me a few more times and perhaps I’ll remember to give a damn one of these days.” The Tailor turned to me. “She’ll be going with you.”
“Looks a bit small for fighting,” Brasti said, looking her up and down. “Or much of anything else, really.”
Dariana wasted only the briefest of glances on Brasti before she gave him a dismissive little snort and then turned to stare at Kest somewhat more appraisingly. “So you’re the Saint of Swords, eh?” She let her gaze drift from his face to his hands to his feet and back again. “I’m finding it hard to be impressed.”
“Four moves,” Kest said.
“What?”
“You’re wondering if you could take me. You’d last four moves.”
“Well then,” she said, smiling innocently and reaching a hand out to touch his chest. “Suppose I take you in your sleep?”
“I took that for granted when I said four. Did you want to know how long you’d last if you didn’t take me by surprise?”
“Oh, great Gods save me from these mad duelists,” the Tailor moaned. “Could the two of you compare the length of your swords someplace else? It’s time for you to go.”
“So that’s it?” I asked. “At least let me say goodbye to Aline and Valiana.”
“Aline is already in hiding with my men,” the Tailor said. “You said your goodbyes last night, even if you weren’t aware of it at the time. As for Valiana, you can talk to her all you like on the way south. Here she comes now.”
Two of the Tailor’s new Greatcoats were hauling Valiana between them, lifting her by the arms as she struggled to break free.
“Stop!” the Tailor shouted, and at first I’d assumed she was ordering her men to stand down, but then I realized my rapier was in my hand. “Valiana’s unharmed,” the Tailor said to me.
“Which is more than I can say for the rest of us,” one of her Greatcoats growled as they dropped her in front of us. “Little twit gave me a cut across the cheek before we got the sword out of her hand.”
The Tailor walked up to him and without warning slapped him hard across the face. His eyes darkened. “What’s that for?” he asked. “You ordered us to bring her—”
“All that secret training, all your deadly arts, and a fool who barely knows how to draw her own sword without cutting herself nearly takes your eye?”
“He’ll lose more than that if he touches me again,” Valiana said, rising to her feet and snatching the rapier from my hand.
The other Greatcoat reached for his sword, but Dariana put a hand on Valiana’s arm. “There now, pretty bird. How about we teach you how to handle that little pig-sticker of yours and then we can go and kill a few men—and do it properly, eh?”
The Tailor turned from her men and back to us. “Have we done with the games? Time is wasting and I have more important things to deal with than your petulance.”
“I’ve sworn my life to protect Aline,” Valiana said. “I won’t leave her.”
“Yes, and if we’re all lucky, that’s just what Trin will think.”
“But—”
“You want so badly to be a hero like these fools?” the Tailor asked, pointing at Kest, Brasti, and me. “You want to die thinking you saved Aline; that your life was worth more in the end than it was in the beginning? Fine. Do what I ask and go with them. Go and take the blade in your gut and know that in some small way you’ve helped protect her. Let’s hope Trin’s hatred of you will prompt her to waste resources chasing you. You’re useless to Aline here, except perhaps to get in the way of those with the strength and skill to keep her safe.”
The anger drained from Valiana’s face, along with her pride. She’d been clinging so desperately to the oath that she’d made to Aline because she needed to believe she stood for something, for anything, so that her life could have some meaning. She was just like I had been, years ago, when I first met the King. He’d believed in me, and he’d made me believe in myself. King Paelis was an idealist and a romantic and a dreamer. But the Tailor was none of those things.
“I’ll do what you ask,” Valiana said finally. She turned and walked away from us toward the horses.
The callousness of the Tailor’s words, the way she discarded all of Valiana’s pain and sorrow—all of the pain each of us had experienced in our lives—burned in me. I needed her to know how much I hated this, all of it: her cold, calculating strategies, the way she planned and plotted. She wasn’t much different from the Dukes we all despised.
The others were looking at me, waiting to see how I would react. I didn’t want to be an angry, petulant child. I wanted to be noble and brave and all the things I’d tried to be since the day the King had shaken me out of my madness. But I couldn’t. I simply didn’t have it in me. “You’re a fucking bitch,” I said.
The Tailor smiled. “Aye, I am. I’m exactly what the world needs me to be—what my granddaughter needs me to be. Now go and be what she needs you to be. Get me the support of the southern Dukes so we can win this damned war before the girl we’ve both sworn to protect gets killed.”