We five weary, desperate Greatcoats rode in bitter silence toward the northern village of Luth, chasing after forty Ducal Knights. Kest reckoned they had a full day’s head-start on us, despite the great weight of armor they were lugging around. Whenever sleep threatened to overtake me, I pictured the men we pursued as grinning jackals, gleefully tearing innocent villagers to pieces. In truth, the slaughter was likely done quite methodically, dispassionately. These were Ducal Knights, after all: men who were just following orders—oh, and the dictates of what they considered their own honor. I planned to kill every last one of them.
Our enemies were making no effort to mask their trail: every hoofprint was like a smile etched into the dirt, inviting us to follow. Whenever I looked behind us, I could almost see the dead of Carefal following close behind, the men, women, and children staring at me with their flat, empty eyes. I imagined them mouthing the words “coward” and “traitor” over and over, as if by so doing they might force me to greater speed, but we were already riding as fast as our horses and the rough road would allow, alternating between galloping and walking—it was that, or risk the beasts dropping dead of exhaustion.
Dariana and Kest took turns leading, constantly checking for any signs of the Knights deviating from their northern route. That first day Brasti didn’t say a word, and he refused to look any of us in the eye. It was Valiana who broke through to him in the end. She’d ignored his silence and ridden alongside him, not saying anything, just being there. The next day she did the same, and after a few hours I thought I heard him mumble something—I couldn’t hear what, but she didn’t react, whatever it was. I kept my distance, but after a while I could hear Brasti talking, then railing, then sobbing, and through it all Valiana said nothing. She just listened. And when at last he fell to silence, she didn’t try to solve his problems or correct his thinking or tell him he was being a fool.
“Go on,” she said.
I wanted to join them—to say something clever or funny that would, if only out of reflex, force our Brasti to return, to bring back the laughing, arrogant bastard who usually kept the rest of us sane. But I was pretty sure any words that came out of my mouth would just make things worse, so I kept my eyes on the road ahead and my mind on the problem at hand.
Someone was murdering my country.
This can’t just be about keeping order, I thought. The assassinations of Duke Isault and Duke Roset and their families must be connected to the uprisings in the villages.
It would have been easy to pin this all on Trin: we all knew she was depraved enough to command such a thing, and she’d certainly revel in the results—but if she had that kind of power and influence in the region, why hadn’t she taken control of the country already? And if she did drive Tristia into the chaos of a civil war, what would be left for her to rule?
I cursed every single Saint in turn.
I needed more information. I needed to talk this out, to get the jumble of images and words out of my head and see how they sounded to someone else. Valiana had spent her whole life next to Trin and knew more about her and her ways than anyone else, but her attention was firmly fixed on Brasti. I knew I would need him in the battle ahead so I left them alone.
“I wanted to hate her, you know.”
I turned to see Dariana riding next to me.
“I’d heard of her, of course,” she said. “Word was that she was quite the stuck-up bitch: the high and mighty daughter of The Damned Duchess, the girl who all her life believed that Patriana was going to make her Queen. And when Trin was revealed, I waited to see this Valiana make herself the wounded Saint. But she didn’t.”
“No,” I said, “she didn’t.”
“She gets handed a sword and a coat and she just . . . You know, she isn’t even angry? I mean, she wants Trin dead, of course, but mostly because Trin’s trying to kill Aline.” She looked back at Valiana. “How do you figure that? All the trappings of nobility, all that power gets taken away from her and she becomes . . .”
“Noble?”
Dariana snorted. “I suppose.” For a few seconds she said nothing, then, “She should be out of her mind with anger! She should be trying to kill everyone who ever . . .”
Her voice faded away and we rode in silence for a few minutes before I said, “It’s true, isn’t it? What Nile said? You’re the daughter of Shanilla, the King’s Compass.”
Dariana’s eyes narrowed. “Would it matter if I was?”
“I only met her a few times,” I said, picturing the small, red-haired woman with the deep green eyes. “The King named her to the Greatcoats while I was judging a case in Domaris, so we weren’t all that close, but I knew her well enough to respect her.”
“And do you see much of her in me?” Dariana asked.
“I . . .”
Shanilla had been one of our best Magistrates. Her mastery of the vagaries of the King’s Law was second to none—not even Kest could match her. She’d been a competent swordswoman too, though it wasn’t her greatest strength. “You have a little of her look around the eyes. But no, I can hardly imagine two more different people.”
Dariana smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile. “Good.”
There was a fragility in the hard set of her jaw, and it made me feel like I had to try to connect with her somehow. Shanilla had never set out to make an enemy of anyone; she usually tried her best to avoid conflict. And yet some Duke or Margrave or Lord, angered over how she had judged a case or outfought his champion to enforce a verdict, had resented Shanilla enough to send a pair of Dashini assassins to kill her one night, barely a mile away from the safety of Castle Aramor. “You were young when she died, weren’t you?”
Dariana nodded.
“What, fourteen or fifteen?”
Again she nodded, declining to be more specific.
I thought about Valiana and how she’d managed to reach through to Brasti. Maybe I could do the same for Dari. “It’s all right to talk about it,” I said, as gently as I knew how.
“Could I ask you a question, Falcio?”
“Of course.”
“Your wife died about fifteen years ago, didn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“Would you mind describing every detail of the day she died? And perhaps some of the days afterward? Did she scream your name when she was being killed?”
My hands tensed around the reins. “Why would you—?”
Dariana leaned closer. “She was raped, too, right? Have you played out in your mind what they did to her? Every indignity and violation they performed on her body? Do you imagine the faces of each man as he—”
“Stop!” I shouted. “What in all the hells is wrong with you?”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I suppose the memories would only bring you pain.”
“They bring me pain every day, damn you.”
Dariana leaned in until her face was near mine. “Good. Think on your wife if you want to reopen old wounds so badly. Leave mine the fuck alone.”
She gave her horse a nudge and trotted away.
A few minutes later Kest pulled his horse up beside mine. “I don’t think she likes you.”
“We were just talking,” I said.
“No, you don’t understand: when she looks at you, there’s a fierce anger in her stare—it’s maybe even hatred. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen it.”
“You think she means me harm?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I’d keep an eye on her.”
I thought back to all the fights we’d been in together, from the attack by Trin’s scouts in Pulnam to the mêlée with the Luthan Knights in the Inn of the Red Hammer just a few days ago. “She’s had plenty of chances to kill me if she wanted to,” I pointed out. I hadn’t forgotten the morning I’d awakened from my paralysis to find her knife at my throat. “She could’ve done it when we were alone, too.”
“True,” Kest said, “and yet . . .”
“I know. She hates me. There’s a lot of that going around these days. I’m sure everyone will think better of me when I’m dead.”
A normal person might have let that hang in the air a while before speaking but Kest never likes to waste time. “How are you feeling?” he asked, his eyes boring into my face as if he could see through my skin.
“Fine, I guess. I’m a little slower than usual, I think. My mind drifts off more. Mostly, I just wake up so terrified I would piss myself, except even that’s paralyzed.”
Kest nodded. “So . . . not all bad, then.”
A chuckle escaped my lips. “Oh, everything has a bright side, even death by paralysis. For example, I won’t have to worry about getting old and wrinkled.”
He looked me up and down with a perfect semblance of serious examination. “I do believe you’ll make a fine-looking corpse, Falcio.”
“Well, see, that’s the paralysis: I’m getting plenty of beauty sleep each day.”
“I’ve heard that insomnia and sleepwalking are remarkably common ailments.”
“Not for me, they’re not.” I raised an imaginary glass in the air. “To Duchess Patriana and the many unexpected splendors of neatha poisoning.”
He raised his own phantom glass. “Not the least of which is that it killed her first.”
Both of us laughed then, ignoring the strangeness of riding out of violence and into violence, moving seamlessly from a massacre to a battle with only the briefest moment of comfort—each other’s company—to break the pattern. Still, when these little sparks of happiness break through the darkness, you try your best not to ruin them. That’s why I waited a few minutes before I asked the question I’d been avoiding for days. “How long do you think I have?”
His eyes flickered to mine and then to the road ahead. “I’m not a healer, Falcio. I don’t know—”
“Come on,” I said, “you spend your time calculating the difference between how much longer it takes to draw a sword in the rain than when it’s dry. You work out the odds every time a man so much as looks at us the wrong way. Are you telling me you haven’t figured out when the neatha is going to kill me?”
“It’s . . . I don’t know all the factors. Certainly you’re longer in the paralysis each time, and the longer you’re in, the shallower your breathing gets, and sometimes your throat goes into spasm, as if it can’t quite open enough to—”
“How long?”
Kest looked at me and took in a deep, labored breath, almost as if thinking about my symptoms was affecting his own breathing. “Six days, I think. It could be seven.” He turned his head away again. He always does that when he doesn’t really believe what’s about to come out of his mouth. “And there might be medicines which could make a difference. Or the poison could start leaving your system. It might get better if—”
“That’s fine,” I said. “Six days.”
“Maybe seven.”
“Maybe seven. So in that time I need to figure out who killed two Dukes and their families, and why two hundred villagers lie dead in Carefal.”
“They might not be related, you know,” he pointed out. “Nile thought it was a Dashini who killed him—whoever these Knights are, I doubt they’re Dashini.”
“They could be working for the same people,” I said, though the words rang false to my ears even as I said them. “No, somehow that doesn’t make sense.”
“Why not?”
“The Dashini are precise: they’re quick and deadly, like a stiletto blade. They’re a tool to be used when subtlety is required—like a whisper in the dark.”
Kest gave a curious smile. “A whisper in the dark? Have you taken up poetry in your spare hours?”
“It’s that damned Bardatti rubbing off on me!” I complained. “But think about it: Knights are all blunt force and fury: a mace hefted by a strong arm. Using them is a statement, something you shout from the rooftops.”
“So the villagers are trapped between the sharp blade of the Dashini and the heavy hammer of the Knights.”
“Now who’s taking up poetry?” I teased him. “But it’s more than that: someone’s been arming the villagers—and not just once but twice. The first time was before we’d ever even heard of Carefal—and then blow me, they get armed all over again as soon as we confiscate all their steel weapons.”
“Someone really wants to drive the country into civil war,” Kest said.
“No,” I said, “it’s already headed that way—it’s been going in that direction for years. Someone is trying to speed it up.”
“Trin is still the obvious choice.”
“But why? She wants to rule Tristia, not just sit on a pretty throne and watch the country tear itself apart.”
“She is crazy,” Kest said.
“She’s crazy. She’s not stupid.” I looked down the road, focusing on the tracks of the men we were pursuing. “Kest, someone is deliberately leading this country into chaos. Someone wants to see it burn.”
Every hour we rode became its own kind of poison over those next two days. It was making me tired and careless—I spent so much of my time trying not to fall asleep that I’d miss bumps and holes in the road, jerking from an uneasy doze and scrambling to grab the poor horse’s neck to keep from falling off. Time was malleable, first shrinking, with half a day disappearing in a blink, then at other times stretching unforgivably as my mind conjured up images of the horrors the Knights who’d massacred Carefal might be planning for their next target.
“There’s someone ahead,” Brasti said, shaking me from my thoughts.
We reined in, and I lifted my hand to shade my eyes from the sun. “How many?” I asked.
“Just one. A woman,” he answered.
“Is she carrying a weapon?” I drew one of my rapiers and squinted at where Brasti was pointing to. I’d always envied him his distance vision, though I supposed it was only fair; I couldn’t see a near-sighted archer doing too well in a battle.
“How do you manage with such worthless eyesight?”
“By stabbing people who bring it up. Answer the question.”
He leaned forward on his horse, peering out at the road ahead. “I don’t see a weapon. She’s just standing there. Her hair is blond, almost white. She’s wearing a pale dress that . . . I don’t know . . . it flows about her like sheer curtains billowing in the evening breeze.”
“Saints, is everyone turning into a Bardatti—?” Then my thoughts were suddenly pulled back to that small church on the road from Pulnam, where Trin had used an innocent girl as an instrument of torture, just to torment us. “Brasti, is there anything—?”
But he was already there, shaking his head and saying, “No, there’s nothing attached to her head.”
I nudged my horse to a slow walk. No sense in creating trouble if none were needed. Within a few moments I could see the woman myself. From further away her white-blond hair made her seem old, but now I could see that she was younger than we were, perhaps twenty or twenty-five.
“Stop,” Kest said.
Brasti and I pulled our horses to a stop.
“What is it? What do you see?” I asked.
Dariana made a protective sign in the air. “Is she a witch?”
“No,” Kest said. He dismounted.
“What, then?” I asked.
“She’s not here for you,” Kest replied, and began walking toward her, very slowly, almost warily. “She’s here for me.”
When Kest was halfway between us and the woman, Valiana asked, “What does he mean, ‘She’s here for me’?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I turned to Brasti. “Ready your bow.”
Brasti dismounted and pulled Intemperance, the tallest of his three bows, from the saddle and placed the quiver on the ground, leaning up against his leg. He pulled out a handful of arrows and handed some to each of us. “I’ll call your name when I want the arrow. You place it in my open hand, with the fletching toward me, the black feather on the left.”
“Anything else, master archer?” Dariana asked.
“Yes. Don’t get in front of me.”
Kest was standing with the woman now, and they were talking. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, not from this distance, but the way they stood made them look . . . familiar, almost intimate. “Is it possible that Kest knows her?”
Brasti snorted. “A woman? How would that help his sword-fighting?”
The woman shook her head and Kest became more animated—I could see him moving his hands, the way he does when he’s explaining a fight or planning an attack. The woman remained still, as calm as if she were just watching waves splash on to the shore.
After a few minutes, Kest stopped and the woman spoke. I couldn’t hear a word, but she was going on at some length. After a bit, Kest began to look as if he were shivering.
“What’s she doing?” I asked, and drew my second rapier. “Brasti, put an arrow in her leg, will you? Something’s wrong with Kest.”
I started toward them, but Brasti pulled me back. “Stop,” he said. “I don’t think she’s hurting him.”
“Then what’s the matter with him?”
“He’s crying.”
“Kest? Crying?” I couldn’t recall seeing Kest cry, not since we were ten-year-old boys and even then it was only from the things that make ten-year-old boys cry: falling into the river, being beaten by someone older and stronger—and none of those things had happened for many, many years.
“He’s coming back,” Brasti said.
Kest walked back to us, his movements slow, awkward, almost as if he weren’t sure of the terrain.
“What’s happened?” I asked, gripping his shoulder. “Did that woman do something to you?”
“No, nothing,” he said. His eyes were red and unfocused but he didn’t bother to wipe away the tears. “She wants to talk to you.”
“Who?” Dariana asked.
“Falcio. She says she needs to talk to Falcio.”
I was about to begin walking toward her—I really wanted to know what was going on here—but Kest put a hand on my wrist. “Leave your rapiers.”
“Why?”
Kest held out his hands and waited, and for some reason I felt unable to refuse him. “Why?” I asked again as I placed them into his hands.
“Because you get angry sometimes, Falcio. I don’t want you to do anything stupid.”
“All right,” I said, absurdly hurt by his words.
The woman wasn’t looking at me; instead she was gazing past me. Perhaps she was still watching Kest.
“Hello,” I said as I approached her.
She turned to me and smiled. I very nearly dropped down to my knees at her beauty.
Greatcoats don’t kneel for anyone, I reminded myself.
“Hello, Falcio,” the woman said, holding out her hand, palm down. I took it in mine and leaned down to kiss it.
“Thank you for leaving your rapiers behind,” she said. “I know you are loath to be without them.”
I let go of her hand. “A man in my line of work tends to find too many occasions to regret their absence.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “but a man who carries weapons everywhere is wont to make such occasions inevitable.”
Great, I thought, as if I didn’t have enough problems with poets, now I have to deal with a philosopher. “I did not come to dance with you, my Lady. Is that why you asked for me?”
She looked at me with a great softness in her eyes. “They would not have helped that day, you know. Even if you had them there, when those men came to call. Even had you all the weapons and skills you have now, Aline would still have died, and you would have too.”
“Speak—”
“You needn’t threaten me, Falcio val Mond.”
“I wasn’t going to—”
She put a hand up. “‘Speak her name again’, you were going to say. ‘Say it twice more and see what becomes of you’. You threaten people too much, Falcio, and almost always over the wrong things.”
“You appear to know me too well, my Lady.”
This time her voice had a tinge of steel in it when she said, “And you know me too little.”
I stared once again at the features of her face, looking past the beauty that threatened to overwhelm me, noting the line of her nose and the shape of her lips. A woman might dress or color her hair, but she could not change her face. Yet the more I examined the lady in the white dress, the more certain I was that I’d never seen her before. “We’ve never met,” I said at last.
“You are correct,” she said, “but I have called out to you many, many times.”
“When? And if we haven’t met, what answer could you have hoped for?”
She closed her eyes and brushed a fingertip against each one, and the woman and the road both instantly disappeared from my sight and instead I began to see battles, duels, desperate and angry fights. I recognized the opponents in all of them. They were men I’d killed.
“In the heat of the fight,” she said, “I have called out to you, always when the victory was won but before the final blow was struck.”
I felt the final push of my rapier’s thrust into an enemy’s belly, the slash of my blade across a neck. “Why do you show me these things?” I asked.
“You said you didn’t know me,” she said. “I wanted to show you why.”
“Because I win my fights?” I was confused and more than a little irritated, but I knew this—whatever this might turn out to be—was important.
She opened her eyes again and there was anger in them. “Because you ignore me when I call to you.”
“I’m—” I was going to say that I was tired of this game. I’ve seen magic before and I hate it. I knew she wanted me to ask her—to beg her to tell me who she was—and I dislike that even more than magic. “She’s not here for you,” Kest had said. “She’s here for me.” So who would be here for Kest but not me? That was the first clue. I know what you are, Lady; now I need to know who. “You want me to feel pity for men who’ve tried very hard to kill me?”
“Eventually we all find ourselves in need of a little pity.”
“Or perhaps mercy?” I suggested.
She smiled. “I’ve often thought that mercy is more practical than pity.”
“Then I know you, Lady,” I said.
“Oh? What is my name?”
“Your name is Birgid.”
She curtsied. “I am, indeed, Birgid. It is a common enough name, but still an impressive guess. Do you perform other tricks as well, Falcio?”
“The second part of your name is less common, Lady.”
“Then say it, and show the world how wise you are.”
“Saint Birgid-who-weeps-rivers: you are the Saint of Mercy, or so some say.”
She gave a laugh. “Ah, so it’s true what I’ve heard. You are indeed a clever man, Falcio, First Cantor of the Greatcoats.”
I felt something in my chest, as if my heart was suddenly full—of laughter, of sorrow, of anticipation, of regret. “Stop that,” I said angrily.
“I cannot help but move you, Falcio. Valor is ever drawn to compassion; it comes with your recognition of me.” She put a hand on my cheek. “I regret that I cannot sway you when I need to most.”
“And why do you need to sway me?”
She ignored the question. “Do you know where we are?”
We stood at a crossroads: the main road went north, with a side road cutting east and west. “By now we’re in the Duchy of Rijou.”
“We are,” she said. She pointed eastward. “Do you know what lies down that road? Perhaps sixty miles away?”
“Nothing that matters,” I said, “given that the tracks of the men we’re pursuing continue north.”
“There’s a town—it’s small, but pretty. I believe it began as an encampment for merchants awaiting permits to enter the city of Rijou.” She looked at me with those eyes that looked so young and yet felt ancient. “It’s said to be a lovely place to visit.”
A face suddenly filled my mind: dark hair and red lips meant for smiling. Ethalia. “The town is Merisaw,” I said. “You’re talking about Merisaw.”
She nodded.
“Is that why you’re here?”
“I’m here for Kest, not you. And yet isn’t it odd that your hunt should bring you here, to this crossroads? Do you suppose the Gods themselves are speaking to you?”
“No,” I said, “the Gods speak only to the very holy or the very rich.”
A small smiled pulled at the corners of her mouth. “And Saints?”
“I have only a little experience with Saints, Lady, but my instincts tell me they function much the same way as the Gods, though perhaps for a lesser price.”
“You think I’m trying to push you toward Ethalia? Have no fear on that score, Falcio. I would rather you stay far away from Ethalia.”
“You know her?” I asked.
“She is a child of compassion,” Birgid replied, “and she loves you. But compassion is ever overmatched by violence.”
“That’s a rather cynical view, coming from the Saint of Mercy,” I pointed out.
“It comes from a woman who has tried and failed to marry mercy to violence. The child of that union is only more violence.”
I couldn’t help but feel swayed by her: she was as beautiful as the memory of a perfect kiss. When she spoke, it was as if all the best instincts inside me were calling out. But I’ve learned from experience not always to trust my instincts. “I appreciate you taking the time to tell me what a shit I am, Saint Birgid, but I’m trying to stop a war. So if you don’t mind, perhaps you could tell me what you want to say and then get the hells out of my way.”
“I already told you, I didn’t come here for you.” She placed a hand on my cheek. “But even I am drawn to valor. I wanted to meet you in person.”
“You’re here for Kest,” I said, changing the subject to one that made me only slightly less uncomfortable. “Why?”
She removed her hand. “You needn’t fear me, Falcio.”
“I’ve rarely found that statement reassuring. Answer the question, if you would.”
There was a flicker of annoyance in her expression—not, I suspected, because I was being rude, but because she knew I was being rude in order to break through her saintly demeanor. “I came for Kest because he is new to his Sainthood and there are things he needs to know, things a Saint must learn. Caveil should have told him but their relationship was—by necessity—less than cordial. There is a place—a retreat near Aramor. The cleric there can be trusted. Kest may find respite from his desires there.”
“His ‘desires’? You mean this ‘Saint’s Fever’, whatever it is, don’t you? He doesn’t need any sanctuary. He’s got the fever under control.”
“He does not. When he holds it in, the red fever burns him up inside. When he lets it out, it grows in strength. The red will eat Kest alive.” She began to walk along the narrow side-road, but toward the west, not the east. “Come. What I need to tell you now will take only a moment as we walk.”
I joined her but remained silent, still determined I would not be forced to beg for answers. I was done begging people for answers.
She obviously sensed my reticence. “Very well, Falcio. If anyone ever asks, I will be sure to say you were stoic during our entire conversation. This is what you need to know: it was for you that Kest took up the sword.”
“Me?” I stopped walking. “Because we were friends?”
“Yes,” she said, “but such a simple statement doesn’t tell the tale.”
“What, then?”
“When Kest was young, a woman came to him and she told him your future.”
And yet again she was waiting for me to inquire further. This was getting boring. Yet again I refused to play her silly game.
“She told him that you would die at the hands of the Saint of Swords.”
“What?”
I thought back to that day, more than twenty years ago, when Kest came to my door and told me he was going to take up the sword. He’d never said why, and I’d never asked; I think I’d known he wouldn’t answer. “Then—?”
“She told him that the Saint of Swords must always duel an opponent who might beat him—that’s our curse, you understand: we must forever be the truest embodiment of that which we represent. We can resist it; we can try to hold it at bay, but in the end the compulsion will overcome our will.”
“So you must always be the most merciful person in the world?”
“Something like that.”
“What happens if someone capable of greater mercy comes along?”
“On that day, Falcio, I will be very happy.”
I looked over at Kest, who was standing with Brasti, looking away down the road. “So he made himself the greatest swordsman in the world just so that I wouldn’t have to fight Caveil.”
“Yes,” she said. “He always made sure he was better than you.” Her eyes were sorrowful.
“But . . . but it worked, didn’t it? He defeated Caveil.”
“He did. And now he is the Saint of Swords.”
“So then—”
She stretched out her hand to place it on my cheek again. “And right now, you, Falcio val Mond, are the second-best swordsman in the world.”
“I . . .” I pulled away. “You’re playing with me, my Lady. There are many men much faster than I am, far stronger than I am, and most certainly more skilled than I am.”
“I didn’t say the fastest nor the strongest nor even the most skilled. I said ‘the best’. You were the only person who ever beat him in a fight, were you not?”
“It was a tournament,” I said, “and I cheated.”
“Isn’t there an old saying among fencers? The fights that matter most—”
“—are never won on skill,” I said, a little annoyed that I couldn’t stop myself from finishing the sentence.
“Look at him,” Birgid said. “A war wages inside him every second he’s with you. How long do you think he can hold on?”
I looked back at Kest, who was standing twenty feet away from us, his head bowed, and now that I focused on him I could almost feel the red heat radiating from him. Was I really putting him through some kind of private hell reserved for Saints who don’t want to butcher their best friends? I wanted to run to him and tell him to get out of here, to ride back to Aramor and find himself a nice little church to barricade himself inside—but then my thoughts turned to Aline, with her limp hair and face gaunt from weeks of terror and exhaustion, and I thought about the bodies piled up in Carefal.
“He can hold on a while longer,” I said. “I need him. The country needs him.”
A look of frustration—no, something deeper than frustration—showed on Birgid’s unnaturally young features. “And who do you think you are to speak for an entire country?” she asked a little waspishly.
Something in her tone pushed me too far and a reckless anger filled me inside. “Me? I’m no one,” I said. “I’m nothing but a man with a sword in his hand and poison in his veins and far too many enemies out for my head. But I’m trying, Saint Birgid. While you stand there and shower your useless radiance on the world I’m giving my life to save it. Who am I? Lady, I’m a Greatcoat. Who the hells are you?”
I’ve stared down Dukes and Knights and every kind of thug, but the look in Saint Birgid’s eyes was like staring into an infinite expanse of solitude, and I found myself overcome by a sense of loneliness so powerful my legs began to buckle.
“On your knees, man of violence,” Saint Birgid said, her voice still calm, and yet it felt like a wave crashing down on me. “Look not at me with your blind eyes. Look instead upon the ground where you will meet your end if you stay on this course.”
No, I thought, I won’t kneel, not before one of you. When had the Gods or the Saints ever helped anyone but the rich and powerful of this country? I kept my eyes focused on the ground and willed myself to stay standing. You can kill me if you want, Lady, but I’m not bowing down to you.
The profound sense of emptiness kept building inside of me, leaving me feeling so insubstantial that I had to stare at the individual stones on the ground just to remind myself I existed at all. I studied the tracks in the dirt, the bits of broken twig, the patterns of dust, the fallen leaves swept across the road . . .
The patterns were wrong.
The tracks looked as if they kept going north, but someone had swept leaves onto the road. I turned my head to the left and only then saw the covered tracks heading westward. The Knights had tricked us after all. They’d made it so easy to follow them that I’d missed it when they’d laid false tracks going through the crossroads. I would have kept us going northward, oblivious to the fact that the damned Knights had changed course. What was west of here . . . ? Garniol—that would be some ten miles west of here, a village a bit bigger than Carefal but still no more than a few hundred people. The Knights had succeeded in destroying Carefal. Now they were ready to try their tactics on a larger target.
The pressure and the emptiness inside me suddenly faded away and I lifted my head and looked again at Saint Birgid-who-weeps-rivers. There was a deep sadness in her eyes, and I realized what had just happened. She wasn’t allowed to help us directly and so she’d goaded me into anger so she could attack me—apparently the Gods don’t mind if Saints kill people; they just don’t want them helping us.
“It is not our place to interfere,” she said, and suddenly she looked much younger to me, like a child whispering as if an angry parent was watching over them.
“If it makes the Gods feel any better, I have it on good authority that I’m going to be dead in a week or two anyway.”
Saint Birgid turned and walked away from me. “You speak too glibly, Falcio val Mond. Some deaths are worse than others. The one you go to is the worst of all.”