“The girl died first,” I said to Kest, who was kneeling beside me next to the bodies. Brasti was looking out of the east-facing window; he had no taste for this kind of work. Violence, especially murder, brings a chaos with it that resists explanation and wears on the soul. I had to turn away from Avette’s face every few seconds. She was younger than Aline, with softer features, but my mind kept interposing Aline’s features on the body of the girl on the throne room’s cold floor. Look at her, I told myself. You’ll do Avette no good by pretending she isn’t dead.
A Greatcoat needs to be able to make sense of the wounds on a body as well as the tearing of clothes and the scuffmarks on the floor. There can be no justice until the story of what happened is uncovered.
“How do you know?” Shuran asked, his voice echoing in the now mostly empty room. The rows of metal-clad Knights and silk-robed clerics all giving instructions to confused and weary servants had all filed out and now there were only the three of us and the Knight-Commander. And the dead, of course.
“Here, where her throat was slit, the cut is heaviest at this side, see? She has small bruises on the side of her face”—I placed my own fingers in roughly the same position so he could see what I meant—“and they were made by a man’s fingers. Did she share a room with any of the others?”
“Her mother—she sometimes had nightmares . . .” His voice dropped away.
“The killer likely held her like this.” Kest held his left arm out, his hand gripping an imaginary girl’s head. “Look at Duchess Yenelle here: the stab wound is in the back of her neck. She was ordered to kneel, then the assassin dragged the girl behind her mother, slit her throat, and then pushed the blade straight through the back of the mother’s neck.”
“What about the boys?” Shuran asked.
I moved to Lucan, the elder of the two. “He has wounds on his arms, you see here? Not just on the outside of his forearms where you would get cut trying to cover your face”—I held up his left arm, revealing two deep gashes—“but here on the inside, from trying to grab at someone armed with a blade. He tried to fight.”
“They might have died first,” Shuran said.
“Look at how deep and jagged these gashes are,” I said. “Was Lucan a reckless boy?”
“No,” Shuran replied, “he was ever a studious child.”
“To get this many wounds and for them to be so deep, he must have rushed in close, like a wild man: he saw the bodies of his mother and sister, if not the murders themselves.”
Shuran looked at Kest and me then, his eyes a little wide. I’d seen that expression many times before, especially from Knights. Most people see the world in such simple terms—honor and dishonor; right and wrong, alive or dead—and it takes them by surprise when they have to start seeing things as we do, as pieces of a story built up from the tiny echoes of events past.
A part of me wanted to stop there, despite the urgent need to prove that a Greatcoat hadn’t been the killer. It’s one thing to see a child dead, but quite another to force yourself, step by step, to envision the moments up to their death. It felt wrong, cruel. Perverse, even.
I had told the King as much, once, during one of those many late nights he forced us to pore over the corpses of men and women and children whose deaths we already knew from witnesses. “They’re dead,” I’d said. “Let them rest.”
The King had turned to me then, those inquisitive eyes of his probing at me as though he were investigating me too. “A murdered man gets no rest, Falcio. He either serves the living by revealing his killer or serves the murderer by concealing his identity. Which would you rather be?”
“Falcio? Are we to continue?” Shuran asked, shaking me from my memories.
I met his gaze and found a kind of sickened fascination there. He walked over to the smaller of the two boys. “Tell me about Patrin.”
“He came last, I think.”
“Why do you say so?”
“The killer would have started with the more dangerous opponent: Lucan was older, and taller too, so he would be killed first. I think . . .” I had to pause. The depraved logic of murder was sticking in my throat. “I think Patrin saw his mother and older brother being killed.”
“How can you tell?”
“I can’t,” I said, “not for certain, anyway, but look here: he has only one wound, a thrust to the heart like his father suffered.” I pulled the green cloth down to the boy’s knees. There was a darkened patch on his nightclothes, at his groin.
“He pissed himself,” Shuran said. His voice held neither judgment nor sympathy.
“The lad would have been terrified,” I said, a little defensively.
The Knight-Commander rose and walked over to Duke Isault’s body. “And you’re positive the Duke died after his family? How can you be so certain?”
“Two reasons,” I said, covering Patrin back up before joining Shuran. “First, the killer clearly wanted the whole family dead. The Duke would be the most closely guarded, so there’s a far greater risk of the body being discovered and the alarm being raised.”
“And the second reason?”
“Look at his face.”
I watched as Sir Shuran peered into the face of the man who’d given him everything. “He was mad,” Shuran said, and now his voice betrayed a deep sadness. “His eyes . . . they’re almost feral.”
Sometimes the dead speak to us in a language so plain it needs no words, I thought. “This is the face of a man who has just been told his family has been killed.”
Sir Shuran left the bodies and walked over to the throne, staring at it as if he expected the Duke to appear on it at any moment.
“Can you tell me how this could happen, Falcio? Why would your woman—Dara—have done this?”
“She wouldn’t,” I said. This was the part we had left for last. Somehow it felt important to tell the story of the other dead first: those who would be forgotten as soon as the struggle for power in Aramor began.
He turned to me. “I can understand how you wouldn’t want to think ill of your fellow Greatcoat, but she is here and her blade took the Duke’s life.”
That part at least was true: Dara always fought with a broadsword, with a blade that widened slightly just before it angled sharply to its point. The thrust into Isault’s heart had been made with that very sword.
“It might not have been the same weapon used on the Duke’s family,” Kest started.
“They were killed with broadswords as well,” Shuran said.
“Yes, but it’s not clear that it was the same weapon. These could have been done with any broad-bladed sword.”
“Including hers,” Shuran insisted.
He nodded.
“Then, forgive me, but it appears to me that we have the killer.”
Before I could say anything else, the doors to the throne room burst open. A Knight with dark hair flecked with gray walked in hauling an old woman, her hair tied back and wearing a dirty apron.
“What is this, Sir Chandis?” Shuran asked.
Sir Chandis pulled the woman over to Dara’s body. “Is that her?”
The old woman took sight of the six corpses in the room and shut her eyes.
“Is that her?” Chandis demanded, shaking her.
“Aye, it’s her,” she said, crying. “It’s her.”
“What is this?” I asked. “Who are you?”
“I’m Wirrina, Knight-Commander,” she said, looking at Sir Shuran and ignoring me. “The head cook.”
“Of course I remember you, Wirrina,” Shuran said, his tone kindly. “What do you have to tell us about the Duke’s death?”
“Oh, nothing, sir, I know nothing of that, only . . . the woman? Tessa?”
“Who?”
“She means the assassin,” Sir Chandis said. “Wirrina told one of the guards that a servant had gone missing, and she matched the description of the Greatcoat so I brought her to see the body.”
Wirrina held her hands together and shook her head, over and over. “It’s her, Knight-Commander, I swear it, though I never seen her dressed that way before.”
“Did she know the Duke?” Shuran asked.
“We all know the Duke, sir, him bein’—Oh, but you mean, know him better’n other people?”
“Yes, Wirrina, I mean other than that.”
The old woman looked down and chewed her lip. She shook her head left and right, as if she were having an argument with herself.
“Speak, woman, you’re in the presence of the Knight-Commander of Aramor,” Sir Chandis said.
“I suspect she knows that already, Sir Chandis,” Shuran said mildly. “Wirrina, it will be helpful if you tell us everything you know.”
“Well, sir, I . . . I don’t want to get into no trouble, not for somethin’ I couldn’t—”
“You’ll be fine as long as you tell us the truth.”
“She—well, the Duke sent a boy to fetch her once in a while. I think he . . .” She trailed off and looked at the floor.
“You think he had a relationship with her?” Shuran asked.
“I’m sure I couldn’t say, not for true, but he did send for her sometimes.”
A silence filled the room briefly as we all tried to work through the implications of that simple statement. He did send for her sometimes. The Dara I had known was hardly likely to give her body away, and most certainly not to a man like Isault. Her own husband had been murdered shortly before she’d joined the Greatcoats—it was his murder and the failure of another Duke to prosecute the crime that led her to join us. So what did she do at those times when the Duke sent for her?
“Beshard,” I said suddenly. “Where’s Beshard?” If there was any man in the duchy who would have known of Isault’s relationships, surely it was Beshard. Hells, Isault probably made the old chamberlain watch.
“Beshard is dead,” Chandis said.
“What—? When?” Shuran asked.
“We just discovered him in his room, in bed. His throat was opened.” Sir Chandis was watching Shuran’s expression. “Knight-Commander, isn’t it obvious? These men killed the chamberlain to cover up the harlot Trattari’s secret. She wormed her way into the castle kitchens as a maid, she caught the Duke’s eye, and when the time was right, did the business she was sent to do.” The Knight pointed at us. “By the child, Aline, the one they want to put on the throne.”
Sir Shuran raised an eyebrow. “I can believe this woman—Tessa or Dara, or whatever her name was—committed the crimes, but I hardly think it the plan of a thirteen-year-old girl, Sir Chandis.”
“Thirteen?” Wirrina interrupted. “Oh, I think that’s impossible, sir.”
Chandis sneered. “Are you an investigator now, old woman?”
“Oh, no, sir, not that, it’s just that—well, this Aline, whoever she is? Well, she’d’ve had to’ve hatched the plan when she was eight. Tessa’s been with us for nigh on five year now.”
Five years? Dara had been hiding out as a scullery maid for five years? And doing what all that time? Sleeping with the Duke of Aramor?
“None of this makes any sense,” I muttered.
Sir Shuran looked to me and then back to the head cook. “Thank you, Wirrina. Sir Chandis will take you back to the kitchens now. You need not fear for you or yours; of that I can assure you. I’ll need to talk to you again soon, and in the meantime, Sir Chandis himself will bear full responsibility for your safety.”
Sir Chandis looked properly chastened, and after a moment he saluted and left with the old woman in tow.
“This certainly sounds like a plot, First Cantor,” Sir Shuran said to me.
“It does,” Kest said, “but not a very good one.”
“And why not? It has succeeded admirably.” The Knight-Commander’s voice was beginning to show distinct irritation.
“The assassin sneaks into the family’s rooms, knocking out but not killing the guards, and murders the Duke’s wife and children. Then the assassin goes to Beshard’s room and murders him. Finally, the assassin comes here, kills two guards, takes the time to inform his Grace that his entire family is lying dead, then kills him too. Eight dead in total.”
“Forgive me, Saint of Swords, but that sounds perfectly logical to me,” Shuran said.
“Why not kill the other guards?” Brasti asked. “The ones outside the family rooms? Why knock them out? It’s a greater risk.”
“Elegance?” Shuran offered. “Perhaps this Dara of yours wanted to kill the nobles but not the guards who were just doing their jobs? Then when she got here, she found she had no choice but to kill Isault’s guards—”
“What about Beshard?” I asked. “He wasn’t a noble, and yet you say he was killed in his bed.”
“She would have had to have killed Beshard if he knew of her relationship with the Duke.” Shuran spread his hands to indicate the bodies on the floor. “I realize this may be hard for you to believe, Falcio, but the simplest and most logical explanation is that your woman, Dara, murdered the Duke and his family.”
“But why?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Perhaps out of revenge for his part in the death of the King.”
“Five years later?” Kest asked.
“Or for some more recent slight. If they were lovers, perhaps the Duke tired of her. Or perhaps she discovered that Duke Isault was not going to give you the decree supporting Aline and was instead going to support Trin.”
“Was he?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Shuran said. “When I spoke with the Duke last night he was quite drunk. He switched back and forth, first swearing he would back Aline, then cursing the King’s name and vowing to support Trin. When I pressed him on the matter he sent me away.”
“Which way did you press him?”
Shuran gave a weary smile. “I asked only that he tell me which way he was going to go so I could prepare my men for whatever we needed to do next.”
What he really meant to say was, If Isault was going to betray you, I needed to ready my men to arrest you or kill you. I wondered if he even knew whether he would have followed through on his duty to the Duke or his promise to me. There are times when honor sucks.
We stood there in silence for a few moments more, trying to make sense of what had happened. “She’s a bloody mess,” Brasti said at last. He’d been silent all this time and so the soft, sorrowful note in his voice surprised all of us.
“What do you mean?”
“Here,” he said, pointing at a wound on her thigh. “Look at how messy this wound is. It’s like the Duke stabbed her three or four times in the same place.”
“The Duke was enraged,” Kest said.
“Sure. So why is the one in her chest so clean? It’s a single strike. Have you ever seen a man driven mad by rage who stabs someone repeatedly in the thigh and then gives them a single thrust to the heart? Why didn’t he butcher her?”
“Probably because he was dying,” Shuran said. “They struggled for a while, she gave him the fatal thrust, and then before he died he thrust his dagger into her heart.”
Brasti snorted. “Just like the old stories.”
“There is a dark symmetry to it.”
“Except a man with a sword through his heart isn’t going to have the strength to do what you say Isault did. Falcio, someone else killed Dara.”
I looked at Kest. “Surprisingly,” he said, “Brasti is right. The chances of all this being due to one woman, even Dara, is nearly impossible. And to then be killed by a fat, drunken man mad with rage? Even seriously wounded, Dara would have dispatched him easily.”
“I agree: there’s another killer,” I said. “Whatever else happened here, it wasn’t all between Dara and Duke Isault. Shuran, you need to let us go after him. Kest, Brasti, and I have experience with this. We’ve tracked killers before.”
“I can’t do that, Falcio. You know I can’t. Releasing you would show weakness to the very nobles and clerics who will be vying for power.”
“Who’ll take the throne?” I asked.
“No one. There hasn’t been a case of an entire ducal family murdered in . . . Actually, I can’t think of a case. I’ll need to have my Knights establish control over the local guardsmen across the duchy until the Ducal Concord can be called.”
“You mean the other eight get to decide who takes over?”
He nodded.
“Who benefits in the meantime?”
Shuran was silent for a few moments. “Me, I suppose, for a while. But it’s not as if the other Dukes would ever elevate a Knight.”
“What about Isault’s enemies?”
“Duke Roset may try to use the opportunity to extend his control over the border between Aramor and Luth. I imagine Carefal and the other villages like it will slip into Roset’s control.”
“What about Trin?” Brasti asked. “Without Isault to support Aline doesn’t that mean things get easier for her?”
“Not really,” Shuran said. “If suspicion falls on her then it’s highly likely the Dukes of Pertine, Luth, Baern, and even Rijou will band together. Assassinating a Duke is not considered good form for a putative monarch.”
“Good, then,” Brasti said. “So all we need to do is go find proof that she’s responsible for this and then we can put this whole mess to bed.”
Shuran stepped forward and put a hand on the hilt of his sword. “I told you, I can’t let you leave. I know you’re not responsible for these deaths but I’ll have enough trouble establishing control without having the nobles accusing me of letting the Greatcoats get away with murder.”
Kest stood in front of him. He hadn’t bothered to draw his own sword, and nor had the Knight-Commander. “We’ve fought once, Sir Shuran. On the best day of your life, do you believe you could win?”
Shuran gave a wry smile. “I don’t know.” He let go of the hilt of his sword and it slid back down into its sheath. “Certainly today is unlikely to be my best day.” He turned to me. “You want me to try and take control of Aramor while being known as the man who let the Greatcoats free?”
“It’s either that, or be the man who let the assassin escape justice. I doubt there’s anything that would please the murderer so much as you detaining us now. You’ll have to decide how best to serve Duke Isault.”
Shuran looked at me, at Kest, at Brasti, as if he hoped for some sign in our expressions that we could be trusted—or perhaps, that we were guilty—anything that would make his decision easier. My hand was close to my rapier. I didn’t really think he would let us go.
He knelt down in front of the Duke’s body. “Isault was kind to me, you know. I think he liked the fact that I was a foreigner, that I was different. He used to make fun of my scars. Everybody else pretends not to see them, but the Duke, well, he always told the truth as he saw it.”
The big Knight rose. “Go,” he said, still looking at the body. “If there was another assassin, he or she will have used the passage behind the door near the throne. It leads out of the castle. If you’re telling the truth, then you’re my only hope of finding whoever did this. If you’re not, then be very sure you understand that I too can find people if I need to.”
The passageway that began behind Isault’s throne wound its torturous way through the inner walls of the palace. It reminded me of the trail left by a snake that had eaten its way through the stone. It took us to empty hallways near the outer walls, then wove its way deep into the heart of the castle itself.
“Saints,” Brasti said at last, “which drunken architect designed this mess?”
“There’s a pattern,” Kest said, as he pointed to one of the narrow doors that periodically interrupted the path. “The main passageway winds its way around the castle, while these side passageways gave the Duke access to nearly every other room in the place.”
“So he could spy on his own people.”
“Better that than the reverse, I imagine,” Kest replied.
I spotted a small bloody smear on the wall again. “The assassin went this way,” I said, pointing to another side corridor. “Why didn’t the damned guards follow the trail?”
“Perhaps they were too busy assuming it really was us,” Kest suggested.
“No,” Brasti said as he knelt down to examine tracks along the dusty floor. His former life—as hunter and poacher—had given him eyes for following a trail that Kest and I lacked. “Look, you can see where some of the guards have followed the trail.”
“Any chance they caught the assassin?” I asked.
“No, see here? The trail looks like it heads to the inner circuit, but that’s only because the assassin wants us to go that way. He’s tried to mask his tracks in the dust but he’s favoring his left leg. What he actually did was to head straight out the passageway to leave the castle.”
Brasti carefully brushed some of the dust out of the way. At first I saw nothing amiss, but peering closer, I could just make out the dark red drops on the floor. “He’s been covering up his blood with dust, and then wiping some on the walls to show him going the other way—but in fact he always backtracks toward the outer passage. Look at the way he’s favoring one leg.”
“Dara always did prefer to go for a leg wound first,” Kest said.
It was a good strategy, and one that had served her well in the past; when it works, it throws the opponent’s balance off and slows them down, giving the swordsman time to concentrate on the killing stroke.
“Too bad someone played her at her own game this time,” I said. “Come on.”
We picked up our pace, all the while keeping an eye out for any overzealous guards who might be continuing their own search. The passageways wound their way around the entire palace, sometimes sloping upward at a ridiculously steep angle to get up to the next story, other times proceeding downward by precipitously narrow stairs. Eventually, despite our best efforts, we lost the trail.
“How far back did he fool us?” I asked Brasti.
“A long way, I think,” he replied angrily. “Damn it. I should have caught on. If we go back now—”
“—we’ll likely end up getting caught by the palace guards.”
Hells. Whoever had done this was better at sneaking than we were at tracking them.
“What now?” Kest asked.
“There’s the way out,” Brasti said, pointing to a circle of white light off to the right of us.
The path became steadily more uneven as we approached the exit. Outside was a sheer cliff dropping a hundred feet to a rocky riverbed, but on closer inspection we spotted a vague excuse for a trail that led away from the castle.
“That’s one hell of an escape route to have to take in the dark,” Brasti said. “I doubt it would have done Isault much good if he’d ever needed it.”
“The assassin made it down,” I said, “I’m sure of it. He or she led us all that way around the entire fucking palace, but I bet they got here hours ago.”
“Then how did these tracks get here?” Kest asked.
“He must have planted them last night,” Brasti said. “The assassin knew this would be the best escape route so he must have set a trail long before he committed the murders.”
Kest looked unconvinced. “That would be a rather large risk to take for someone whose own life depended on not being seen.”
“Not really,” I said. “I’ll bet Isault didn’t let many people use those hallways—what good’s a secret spying network if everyone knows about it? If the assassin knew the way in, he or she probably had the passages all to themselves.”
“That all makes sense,” Kest said, “but something is still bothering me.”
“Other than the obvious fact that we’re completely screwed?” Brasti asked.
“Yes: it’s the timing of the murders. Why kill the Duke’s family first?”
“Because the Duke kept the better guards for himself?” Brasti suggested.
“Except he didn’t. Two guards? He had far more men in the family wing protecting his wife and children.”
“It’s likely he wanted to keep whatever relationship he had with Dara a secret,” I said.
“Fine,” Brasti said, “so he was fucking Dara—which completely confuses me by the way. She never so much as laughed at my jokes—but that aside, it still makes more sense to kill him first. If someone had seen the assassin going in and out of the family rooms, they would have sounded the alarm and the killer would never have reached Isault. No, there had to be at least two assassins: someone killed Isault, and someone else killed his family.”
“That doesn’t stop Dara from being the one who killed the Duke while an accomplice killed his family,” Kest said.
“Not possible,” Brasti said, his voice echoing with absolute certainty.
“So you agree with Falcio?” Kest sounded surprised.
“Of course not,” he replied. “Falcio’s an idealistic idiot when it comes to Dara and the others, the same way he is about the King. He’s forgotten that Dara was a fucking lunatic.”
“Then—”
“That’s the point: if she’d wanted to murder Isault she wouldn’t have waited five years to do it. And she wouldn’t kill him with some poet’s thrust to the heart, either. Do you remember what she was like in a fight? Shit, if Dara had decided to kill Isault she would have decapitated him and all his guards, spent the next hour arranging their heads on spears around the throne room, then drunk whatever was left of his wine before leaving. There’s no way Dara did this out of some kind of desire for personal revenge.”
“There is another possibility,” Kest said. He turned to me. “But you won’t like it, Falcio.”
“What is it?”
“Perhaps we should get out of here first. We’ve got a long walk down that gully and then we’re going to need to get to a village to buy new horses and gear.”
“Tell me,” I said.
He paused for a moment, then said, “You’ve been saying all along that the King must have had a plan; that he wouldn’t have simply left all this to chance. What if this was his plan? What if—?”
“No,” I said, “there’s no way the King would sanction murder. Even if—”
“Hear me out. Aline’s birthright has just been uncovered. Word is spreading that she’s going to try to take the throne. Isault may or may not have been planning to betray us, and suddenly he turns up dead?”
“It’s no—”
“Kest is right,” Brasti said. “Look, Falcio, I know how much you loved the King. Most of us did. But this is war and politics, it’s not sipping wine in the library at Castle Aramor and swapping old books about stoic philosophy. This is about Aline, the King’s own daughter. If you had a child and you knew what would happen to her after you were dead, wouldn’t you do anything to protect her? And if you knew you weren’t going to be around to do it, wouldn’t something like this make perfect sense? Send Greatcoats out, ready to kill the Dukes when the time came—get his stroke in before they can attack her?”
“There’s a flaw in your theory,” I said.
He threw up his hands. “Yeah, you don’t like it.”
Kest looked as if he were trying to work through the theory in his head again, and then again. At last he asked, “What’s the flaw?”
“The three of us are probably the best choices for a mission like that,” I replied, “but he didn’t order us to do any such thing, did he?”
The two of them were looking at me, their eyes a little wide with disbelief. It occurred to me for the first time that neither of them had ever revealed the last command the King had given each of them.
But then Brasti said, “Saints, Falcio. You really can’t see it, can you?”
“What?”
It was Kest who answered, and his voice was quiet, gentler than usual. “The King loved you too much to ask you to commit murder. He knew something like this would kill you, Falcio.”
I leaned a hand against the cliff. My chest felt tight and it was hard to breathe. There was a small part of me that couldn’t help but believe that there was truth in what Brasti and Kest were saying. The King and I had always been close, and I’d always believed that the two of us had shared the same ideals. But in his darkest hour, with the Dukes marching toward the castle with an army at their backs and intent on taking his head . . . could Paelis have gone back on those ideals? In the name of his own daughter, could he truly have commanded my fellow Greatcoats to commit murder? I felt my legs become unsteady, as if the neatha paralysis were taking over again. In my mind King Paelis’s words repeated over and over again: You will betray her.