The ancient trade route known as the Bow was our means out of Pulnam. When trade was good, as it had been during King Paelis’s reign, hundreds of horse carts and caravans would travel its three-hundred-mile length each year. Roadside inns and taverns had made good business off the success and heady optimism of traveling merchants and those seeking their fortunes in the eastern duchies. Now, five years after the King’s death, the cobblestones laid down centuries before were gradually becoming covered in sand and dirt. Hardy desert brush the color of burnt leaves worked its way slowly from the sides of the road, worming in between the stones. Brigands outnumbered honest travelers now, and even they had trouble making ends meet.
We rode hard during the first week, reasoning that a fast-moving target is harder to hit than a slow one. This turned out to be true, and I thanked Saint Gan-who-laughs-with-dice for the good fortune that helped us survive those first few harried hours after leaving the village. Just before we’d reached the Bow we were set upon by six of Trin’s scouts. They were armed with crossbows and hiding in the brush, leaving us no choice but to run their gauntlet rather than let ourselves be caught in the open grass and sand. We knew they’d have fresh horses ready to pursue us should we somehow evade their bolts, so the moment they’d finished firing their crossbows, we’d turned on them.
Adding a new fighter to a team is a dangerous business. Kest, Brasti, and I had a kind of rhythm, a flow that allowed us to sense each other’s movements. We were fortunate that Dariana fit into the mix so quickly and so well: Kest would immediately identify and attack the strongest fighter of the group, and while Brasti sent arrows flying at those trying to outflank us, Dariana snuck along the edge, slitting throats and stabbing bellies before her enemies knew she was even in range. It took only a few moments for the three of them to kill all six scouts. For my part, I spent that battle, and those that came in the days after, trying to keep Valiana from getting killed.
“You stay at the back,” I said every time. “You don’t try and engage with the enemy, got it? Not until you’re trained and ready.”
“When will that be?” she said every time.
“Sometime after I’ve died peacefully in bed from old age.”
We were attacked twice more during that first week, and it became clear that the Tailor’s ruse had worked: Trin believed Aline was with us, and her scouts did indeed mistake little Dariana for the King’s heir. Her favorite tactic at the beginning of each attack was to put on a show of running in terror, screaming as one of Trin’s men pursued her, only to turn and smile as she drove the point of her sword into his neck. Brasti took to calling her “Deadly Dari.” She in turn took to threatening to eviscerate him anytime he used that nickname within her hearing.
Dariana’s sheer joy in battle unnerved me, but it was Valiana’s recklessness that terrified me. In one encounter, the last of our attackers, having seen Dariana kill two men, had figured out that she couldn’t possibly be Aline, so he went after Valiana instead. She could have run or simply backed away and let me deal with him. Instead, she attacked him ferociously, getting in my way with all her thrusting of her long thin blade, always trying for the kill-shot without bothering with any of that old-fashioned parrying of the man’s attacks. She fought as if she were in a fencing competition, where the sword tips were blunted and the deadliest outcome was a nasty bruise.
Trin’s man wasn’t especially fast, but he was sure-footed and used a series of feints to catch her off-balance. Valiana stumbled back and her sword point dropped—which at last got her out of the way and gave me the opening I needed. I slashed the man’s exposed sword-arm with my left rapier and thrust the right one into his side. As he slid to the ground I withdrew my blade and readied it in case he had any fight left in him, but he fell unconscious and began the steady process of dying as blood welled from the wound.
“I can fight my own battles,” Valiana said angrily.
“No, actually, you can’t, not until . . .” My eyes were still on the dying soldier, but then I noticed out of the corner of my eye that she had a hand on her chest. “Hells,” I said, and sheathed my rapier so that I could see to her.
“It’s barely a scratch,” she said, pulling away from me before I could examine the wound. That’s when I realized she’d left her coat unbuttoned during the fight.
“You forgot to close your damned coat properly,” I said. “You practice your sword-work for hours every day and yet you forget to do the one thing that will save your life!”
Kest and Brasti knew not to get in my way but Dariana came over pushed me aside. She examined Valiana’s wound, then announced, “It’s not so bad. It’ll leave a pretty little scar you can show off.”
I pulled a small black jar from my coat and held it out to Valiana. “Just put on some damned salve,” I said. “Even a shallow wound can become infected.”
“You’ve only got a small amount,” Valiana replied angrily. “What happens if one of you gets hurt? Aline needs all of you alive.”
“I imagine she’d appreciate it if you stayed alive too,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter what happens to me.”
Part of me knew I should deal with these feelings of worthlessness she carried with her, coax her into talking about it and find a way to change her thinking, but I wasn’t a healer. Hells, my only qualification in even discussing diseases of the mind was the fact that I’d spent a good many years being insane myself. So instead I said, “If you won’t do it then take off your fucking shirt and I’ll put the salve on you myself.”
She grabbed the small black jar from my hand and walked a few yards away toward the brush by the side of the road. “If it’s all right with you I’d just as soon not parade shirtless in front of you, Kest, and Brasti.”
Damn me, I thought. I should have forbidden her from coming and to the hells with the Tailor’s orders.
“She needs training,” Dariana said, “and she needs it now, not in some imaginary future where you get over yourself.”
“I’ll train her,” Kest offered, kneeling to wipe the blood from his own blade on the sparse brush by the side of the road.
Dariana laughed. “You?”
“He is the Saint of Swords,” Brasti said, not that he or I—or Kest himself, for that matter—knew exactly what that meant yet.
“He’s also twice her size and probably three times as strong,” Dari argued. “What good will his methods do her?” She walked over to where Valiana was putting her coat back on. “Come on, pretty bird, I’ll show you how you kill a man properly. You need to be able to size up your enemy and find their weaknesses. Every once in a while you need to know how to stay out of trouble in the first place.”
Valiana looked uncertain at first, as if she wasn’t sure if Dari were making fun of her. Valiana had a coat she hadn’t earned and a sword she didn’t know how to use, and she knew that everyone else could see it too. It didn’t help matters much that the most powerful woman in the world longed to see her dead. “Just teach me how to fight,” she said, “I’ll figure the rest out for myself.”
As she led Valiana out a few yards into the desert I said to Kest, “Somehow the prospect of Deadly Dari teaching her to fight doesn’t reassure me.”
“Do you think she’ll hurt her?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Dariana certainly knows how to fight. But she’s so damned eager in battle. I don’t know how to place it. It’s like she’s—”
“Fucking insane?” Brasti suggested.
“Something like that.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, Valiana’s going to do a lot better studying under Dari than with her last teacher. She looked up to that man like he was a Saint and yet he completely ignored her.”
“Who was that, then?” I asked.
Brasti patted me on the shoulder. “You.”
The next day, our tenth since we’d left the Tailor and her Greatcoats, started without incident. Despite the Gods and Saints having graced me with a lifetime of advanced warning, I allowed myself to hope that we’d evaded the last of Trin’s scouts. The further south we went, the more side-routes and horse-tracks from outlying villages appeared, providing more and more opportunities for us to still get to Aramor without using the main trade route.
I’d been looking for a suitable place to leave the Bow to set up camp when I saw a girl in a pale yellow dress crying by the side of the road.
She was kneeling awkwardly on the ground about a hundred yards ahead of us, and her hands were raised, covering her face. Behind her was a small stone building with a circle of stones laid around it, which I took for an old church. I signaled the others to stop.
“Do you see anyone other than the girl?” I asked Brasti.
His eyes narrowed as he peered across the distance. “No one.”
“How old would you say she is?”
“I’d make her to be five feet tall. Maybe twelve or thirteen?” He glanced back at Dariana. “Unless she’s stunted.”
Dariana stayed silent, her eyes focused on the road ahead of us.
“Any signs of a trap?” I asked.
“Nothing I can see,” Brasti said. “There’s no evidence of hoofprints or footsteps going into the trees by the side of the road. She could have swept them, I suppose, but then there’d be some sign of the sweeping itself. There’s not much holding the walls of that old church together, either. If there were more than a couple of men inside I could see them from here.”
Kest looked behind us along the road. “No sounds of anyone coming from behind.”
“No signs of danger at all,” Brasti said.
I loosened both my rapiers. “So, definitely a trap, then.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Brasti said, and motioned for me to go forward. “I imagine you’ll want to walk right into it.”
“I’ll come with you,” Valiana said.
“No, you stay here. Brasti, give Valiana your quiver.” When he’d unslung it and passed it to her I said, “Your job is to hand him arrows as quickly as he fires them. It sounds simple, but you have to keep up. If there’s a horde of Trin’s men hidden nearby I’ll need him to take out as many as possible.”
“What about me?” Dariana asked.
“You stay here too.”
“And do what?”
“Try to look helpless. You’re supposed to be Aline. If it is a trap I don’t want to take a chance on anyone finding out we don’t really have her.”
“The girl’s seen us,” Kest said, looking toward her.
I looked back down the road. The girl’s dark brown hair hung loose and unkempt. She was too far away from me to make out her features or expression, but now that she was facing us I could see a kind of thick oval band that went around her face from the top of her head down to her chin.
“What’s that thing she’s wearing?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Brasti said. “Looks almost like the frame from an oval mirror. Not exactly flattering, but maybe she works for the local cleric and this is the latest in ecclesiastical fashion? You can never tell with religious people.”
The girl held up her hand and waved to me. When I didn’t wave back she turned and ran into the small stone building.
“She might have some kind of crossbow or even a pistol in there,” Kest cautioned.
“Or maybe she’s an innocent girl who’s been attacked and is now scared for her life,” I said.
Dariana snorted. “Do you really believe that?”
“No. I’m fairly sure it’s a trap.”
“Then why go in?”
“So I can find out—”
“Because that’s what he does,” Brasti interrupted. “He asks himself what the dumbest possible thing to do would be in any given situation and then he does it.”
“Let’s go,” I said to Kest.
He drew his warsword and followed me. I left my rapiers in their sheaths and pulled a throwing knife from my coat. I’m terrible with the bow but I have good luck with throwing knives now and then, and if the girl somehow did have a pistol, I wanted something that could bridge the distance between us before she fired.
As we neared the entrance to the little church Kest put a hand on my shoulder. “There’s something wrong.”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” he said. His forehead was slick with sweat.
“Then—”
“I can’t go any closer,” he said.
His eyes were wide and his jaw was clenched tight, as if he were trying too hard to swallow. In my entire life I’ve never seen Kest show fear for himself. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t know. I . . . I can’t go in there.”
I looked again at the little stone building. There was nothing special about the tiny church—you could find dozens like it along the length of the Bow. When I looked down at the ground where some of the blocks had fallen I saw the wide circular ring of stones around it were still largely intact. “It’s just a broken-down old Saint’s temple,” I said. “You’re not getting religious on me, are you?”
“I . . . I seem to be . . .” He tried to take another step toward it and I saw his leg shaking as he did. With a massive effort his foot finally came down, but then Kest sank down to his knees, his head bowed.
“Kest, get up,” I said.
“I can’t.”
“He’s telling the truth,” a woman’s voice called out from inside the church.
I looked into the small building to see the girl in the yellow dress standing in the entrance. Brasti had been right: she was perhaps five feet tall, her ill-fed body that of a girl no more than thirteen years old. Her face though, was a few years older, that of a full-grown young woman. Big dark eyes looked out at me beneath thick lashes. Her nose was straight and delicate and her cheekbones chiseled like a sculpture of the Goddess Love. The skin on her face had a golden tone to it at odds with the pale arms and legs of the girl’s body. Full red lips decorated a mouth that was just slightly wide and yet somehow perfect. Her face held the kind of sensuality that troubadours sing about.
Trin.
I had already pulled back my arm to throw the knife into her throat when Kest grabbed my ankle. “No, Falcio, it can’t be her. Trin is as tall as Valiana. This is someone else.”
“My name is Cantissa,” the girl said, her voice shaking and her hands clasped together as if she were pleading with us for mercy. “I live nearby in the village with my parents.”
“Drop the pretense,” I said. “I’ve seen better actors doing penny one-acts outside alleyway brothels.” The girl was close enough now that I could clearly see the strange oval frame. It was made of dark wood and went around her head. Thick iron screws with short wooden handles for turning them ringed the apparatus, holding it in place. The effect was unsettling and obscene—it was neither mirror nor mask, but whatever it was, it gave the girl Trin’s face.
Magic, I thought. Saints, how I hate magic.
For just a moment the girl’s lip trembled as though I’d hurt her feelings, then the sides of her mouth began to curve up into a wide smile. “Ah, my lovely tatter-cloak, I never could deceive you, could I? I mean, except for the time I killed Lord Tremondi in front of you. Oh, and those many weeks we spent together on the road as I played the part of the handmaiden. Where is Valiana, by the way? Is that her I saw with you over there? I’d love to see her again.”
“I’d bring Valiana over to say hello but I think she’d kill you before figuring out you’re not really here.”
“Oh my, has she finally grown a spine? When I knew her she couldn’t comb her hair without my help. So have you bedded her yet? She was still a virgin when I left her—a terrible state for such an attractive young woman.”
“Really? I understand that your uncle Duke Perault solved that particular problem for you some time ago.”
“Now don’t be jealous, Falcio. I offered myself to you first, surely you remember?” Her hands began to tremble, as if the girl was trying to resist, but after a moment the hands relaxed and moved up to her neck, then began to slide slowly down her body. I think it was supposed to be alluring. “Perhaps with this body you’d find me more appealing? She’s about the same age as Aline, after all.” She turned her head and peaked out of the entrance. “Is that her you have with you?” she asked, looking down the road. “These roads are awfully dangerous for a young girl. I’m sure Cantissa would agree with me—if she could speak.”
“Cantissa can take whatever solace she can in knowing that you will never put your hands on Aline. She will take the throne and become Queen and you will be nothing but a bad memory for this world.”
For just a moment the girl’s hands shook and I knew then that Cantissa was in there, aware, fighting. I looked again at the screws with their small wooden handles. If I removed them, would the spell be broken? I took a tentative step toward her.
“Ah, ah ah,” Trin said. “I don’t think you’re coming to kiss me, my tatter-cloak, so you’ll just stay back, or I’ll make Cantissa here pull her own eyes from their sockets.”
I backed away. Trin watched me and then frowned theatrically. “Really? Not willing to risk even a stupid little farm girl’s life? What if killing her while I’m inside her could kill me as well, Falcio?”
I said nothing, waiting instead to see if there was some sign that what she’d said might be true. Could I do it? How many lives could I save if I killed Trin right now? Would Cantissa understand? Would she even now beg me to do it?
“You really are no fun when you aren’t bound to a chair in a dungeon, Falcio. We’ll have to rectify that soon.”
I saw no value in playing along with Trin’s game. What was her aim—to delay us? Was she even now giving her men instructions somehow, telling them where we were so that she could finally send enough of them to kill us? “What’s happening to Kest?” I asked.
Her glance shifted down to where Kest was still kneeling. “That’s obvious, isn’t it? He can’t enter holy places.” She leaned forward. “You shouldn’t have killed Caveil-whose-blade-cuts-water,” she said to him loudly, as if she were explaining something to a half-deaf simpleton. “That was very bad. You upset someone I like very much.”
“Why wouldn’t he be able to enter holy places? Kest is the Saint of Swords now,” I said.
“True. But I believe the title of ‘Saint’ is a bit of a misnomer. They’re really more accursed than anything else. Poor old Caveil wandered the world searching for opponents worthy of his blade—nearly killed his own wife and son once, I’m told.”
“Why would a Saint be accursed?”
“The Gods don’t appreciate humans growing above their station, Falcio. Haven’t you figured that out yet? It’s the way of all things in the world: we all have a place and a purpose, and there is a cost to defying it.”
I looked down at Kest, whose whole body was shaking as he continued his struggle to move, but it was if he were shackled to the ground. Time to take a chance. I stowed my throwing knife back in my coat and put my hands under his armpits and hauled him backward. Once I had dragged him a foot away he put up a hand.
“I can move again,” he said.
“Good. Let’s go.”
He hesitated for a moment, glancing back at the girl.
“I’m not playing her games,” I said.
Trin laughed. “Silly man, if you won’t play with me then I’ll just get someone else.” She cupped her hands to the sides of her mouth and called out, “Valiana? Come on, sweetheart! Come and play with your beloved Trin!”
Hells, I should have expected this. “Stay where you are,” I shouted, but it was no good. The sound of Trin’s voice—the woman who had taken everything away from her—might as well have been a rope pulling at Valiana’s neck and she raced to the church.
When she saw Trin’s face on the girl, Valiana lunged for her without even drawing her blade.
“Stop!” I said, grabbing the back of her coat and hauling her back to me. “It’s not Trin. It’s a trick.”
“I just wanted to see my beautiful Valiana again,” Trin said, mock-hurt. “Besides, who are you to speak of tricks, Falcio? Pretending you had Aline with you and making me send all those men to chase after you? Now that I’ve finally captured little Aline myself, I’ll have to instruct my men to be especially harsh with her.”
My heart sank. How had the Tailor failed so soon? If Trin had Aline, then the Tailor and her Greatcoats were likely dead—and yet if Trin had won, why bother with this entire performance?
Trin held a hand by her ear as if listening to something off in the distance. “Can you hear that? I think our little Aline has just become a woman.”
Anger threatened to overtake me but the saner, smarter part of me knew something was wrong. I didn’t doubt Trin would order her men to do such a thing, but I knew that she’d want to be there when it happened. A ruse. It’s a ruse. Too late I understood why she’d called out for Valiana.
“Don’t you dare touch her!” Valiana screamed, as if her voice could somehow reach through the wooden frame to Trin’s men. “You will not touch her! Do you hear me? Don’t you dare touch her!”
Trin smiled at me. “See, now was that so hard?”
Valiana turned to me, confused.
I shook my head. “She doesn’t have Aline,” I said. “She wanted to know if we did.”
“Oh, don’t be angry with Valiana. I would have found out eventually. Besides, it hardly takes a master strategist to know the old woman has sent you to get support from the southern Dukes, and one of them would have sent word to me eventually that you didn’t really have the girl.” She paused for a moment. “Which Duke are you after first, I wonder? Roset in Luth has the most soldiers. But Isault has more money. Or perhaps grouchy old Meillard in Pertine? It might make sense to start with your own duchy, wouldn’t it?”
“You’re really not as good at this as you think you are,” I said.
“It hardly matters; none of them will trust the Greatcoats and if you’re smart you won’t trust any of them. It’s really a very cold world we live in, Falcio.”
“Made colder by your presence in it,” I said. “A problem that the Tailor will soon rectify—if your own generals don’t do it first.”
“Now, don’t be mean with me, darling. I went through a lot of trouble to be here with you.” She looked down at the ground and made a coquettish expression, as if she were a young maid about to ask a boy to dance. “I have a gift for you, Falcio.”
The girl’s hands opened for the first time. Cupped inside them was something that looked like a small, yellow-white piece of stone half the size of a fingernail. She held it out to me.
“I had it polished just for you. It was quite brown and ugly when we found it.” When I didn’t move Trin said, “Come. Take it. It cost me a great deal of time and money to acquire it. It’s from your wife Aline.”
I felt the air in my lungs grow cold. Trin knew. She knew about Aline, and how the King had named his heir after her. I’d been a fool to think that Trin or one of her people wouldn’t find out about my past eventually. Despite the risk, I took a small piece of black cloth from my coat, one I used for cleaning my blades, before reaching out and taking the tiny thing.
When I held it close to me and looked inside the cloth I saw that it was a tooth. She’s given me one of my wife’s teeth.
“I’m told it was found inside a tavern where it’s been for—oh my, I suppose it must be fifteen years now. I thought about putting it on a little chain for you but that seemed old-fashioned.”
My hand squeezed around the cloth and the tooth so tightly I thought either my fingers would break or the tooth would crumble to dust. Kest’s hand was on my arm. He knew how close I was to drawing my sword and stabbing Trin through the neck. But of course she wasn’t there and all my rage and frustration would serve only to kill the poor girl Trin was using.
Very slowly and very carefully, I opened my hand and took the tooth from the cloth. Then I turned and threw it as far as I could into the desert.
Trin made a tsk-tsk sound. “Now is that any way to treat a gift? And especially one so rare? Never mind. I have another. I’ll keep it safe for you so that it’s ready when the time comes.”
I started to speak, but then noticed something was happening. The skin of the girl’s face began to grow paler and her eyes became unfocused. A tear slipped from Trin’s eye down her cheek. “Oh, stop, you simpering child, it’s almost over.” She sighed. “It seems my little Cantissa hasn’t long left. The magic is very hard on such a frail young body.”
“Fine. You’ve made your point. Let the girl go.”
“Have I made my point, Falcio? I’m not sure I have, and it’s so very important for you to understand: Cantissa is like Tristia itself. She’s foolish, underfed, and exists only to die in whatever service her betters require. This is the world we live in, Falcio—a place where even an innocent girl has no hope of a life free of the machinations of Dukes and Knights and Saints. Honestly, why would you even bother fighting for such a terrible place? Better to leave it behind. Better to leave it to me. I have armies and influence and more money than you can possibly imagine.”
“If you have so much power, then why are you so concerned about me?”
“Silly man. It’s not about you—it never has been. It’s about what other people do because of you. You inspire people to take foolish actions, Falcio—actions that could become bothersome for a new Queen.”
“The only throne you’ll take is the basest seat in the lowest, darkest hell I can find for you.”
The girl’s hands moved to her hips as if she were about to scold me. “Well, if you’re going to be like that, my tatter-cloak, then I’ll just have to say goodbye!” Trin’s smile widened and her hands reached up to the wooden handles of the screws pressed at each side of the girl’s temples. Before I could reach out she gave them a full turn.
“Stop!” I screamed. Valiana and I both ran toward the girl, but before either of us could reach her she stumbled back into the church and I saw her turn the screws twice more. She fell to the ground and her body began to twitch.
I heard someone running toward us: Brasti was behind me, bow in hand. “What’s happening?” he asked. “What’s wrong with the girl? Who is she?”
“Leave it,” Kest called from outside, but I walked inside the church. The girl’s face was her own now. Cantissa had the plain features of a farmer’s daughter: small round eyes above a slightly flat nose. Those eyes were wide and full of fear now. Blood seeped out from the sides of her head where the screws had pushed through her skull and her body trembled in little spasms. I knelt down and held her to my chest and tried to quiet her shaking until Cantissa finally let go of the world.