“Well, you’ve really cocked everything up again, Falcio,” the Tailor said, locking eyes with me.
“Yes,” I agreed, looking straight back at her. Her so-called Greatcoats were surrounding us, but they hadn’t taken away my rapiers and that told me they weren’t the slightest bit afraid of me. I tried to pretend that didn’t annoy me.
“All you had to do was stay out of the way,” she said. “You could have gone away with your little whore—you could have been happy with your ‘Sister of Mercy’. Instead you’re here, forcing me to do this.” Her voice was thick with anger and hurt and something close to indignity—as if I was the one who’d betrayed her. She reached a hand out toward me and for just an instant, her expression softened.
I was filled with such a desire for this to all have been some kind of terrible mistake—a misunderstanding between friends that could be solved with words and not weapons, but it took only a quick glance at the murderers standing with her, making a mockery of the coat of office that had meant so much to me for all these years, to remind me that peace between us wasn’t possible, not anymore.
“You betrayed my King,” I said, my voice and my heart as cold as the neatha running through my veins. I drew my rapiers.
Almost as one, the false Greatcoats drew their swords as well, while Tailor looked at me with eyes so hard I could have sworn the irises were little black rocks ringed by angry copper veins. “He was my son, damn you. He might have been your King but he was my son—speak of him that way again, First Cantor, say those words again and I’ll wring your throat myself.”
One of the Greatcoats started to speak but she stopped him. “Keep your mouth shut. I know our agreement.”
I didn’t need Kest to tell me the odds; my chances of surviving this encounter were slim to none, but I had stopped caring. The neatha poisoning was reaching its inevitable conclusion; my fingers were numb and I was struggling to grip my rapiers. Each thump of my heart felt like it might be the last beat of a drummer too exhausted to continue. But when I closed my eyes, I saw the victims of Carefal before me, lying in smoldering heaps upon the ground, and when I opened them, I saw the traitors of my King’s last, best hope.
“To the hells with each and every one of you,” I said. I liked to believe I was goading the Tailor to make a mistake, something that would give me the means to get a blade at her throat and take her captive. With that—and an unimaginable amount of luck—I could then effect my escape. But in truth I was just angry and heartbroken. Maybe my death would be as empty as my life, but at least I would see the blood of these false Greatcoats pool on the cold ground next to mine before I was done here.
“Stop!” a thin voice called, and Aline ran out from behind one of the trees and stumbled to the ground between the Tailor and me.
“Stop,” she cried again, picking herself up. “Don’t do this, Falcio!” Her hair was matted against her scalp; her arms and legs were too thin, her skin too tight on her face. The Tailor took her by the arm and pulled her close.
“You brought her here?” I demanded incredulously. “To see this?”
“She has to stay with me.” The Tailor’s voice was sad, but unapologetic. “Only I can keep her safe.”
“Safe? Is that how you justify this to yourself?” I turned to the others standing around me with their swords at the ready. “Do any of you know the real reason why she ordered you to kill Duke Isault? To kill Duke Roset? It’s not because they were plotting against Aline, I promise you. Isault had given Aline his support.”
“Fool. He would have betrayed us to Trin the moment she threatened his borders.”
“Then why did you send me to him?” I demanded. “Why make me—?”
“Because I needed to send the person they’d most expect to try to kill the Dukes—all around the countryside people are telling the story of Falsio the Brave; Falsio the Duke-slayer. Falsio the Fool.”
“So you sent me there to die? Or just to frame me?”
“No, you great ass—I arranged for the villagers in Carefal to rise up because I knew Isault would want to use you to put down their rebellion. Once he sent you—”
“Your assassin would kill Isault.”
“And you would be out there with his Knights, which would keep anyone from believing the Greatcoats responsible. I didn’t anticipate you’d be so damned stupid as to actually convince the villagers to put down their weapons.”
“And then you went and gave them more,” I said, “and you got them killed.”
“Don’t be such a damned fool. You think I kept extra caches of weapons lying around just in case the villagers decided to sell the ones I gave them?”
She sounded sincere, but I remembered the stench of the smoking corpses piled high in the main square, and too many of them had steel sword-hilts branded into the flesh of their palms. So she was lying—but why bother, when I was about to be dead? But if she didn’t rearm the people of Carefal, then who did . . . ?
“Isault’s troops would have destroyed them,” I said.
“And instead it was the Black Tabards. Do you suppose the dead of Carefal take satisfaction in the difference?”
“Then I suppose we must put the blame on the person who put them in that position in the first place.”
The Tailor barked a laugh. “For once we agree, Falcio. Do you think for even a second I could’ve convinced them to rise up if it hadn’t been for all your damned heroics in Rijou?” She started slow-clapping. “Congratulations, Falcio. You’re the reason this happened, every single part of it. You’re the one who made it all possible.”
I ignored her and turned my attention to her Greatcoats. “Are you proud of yourselves? This madwoman has turned you into assassins.”
A few of them laughed then, but the Tailor silenced them with a gesture. “Boy, you think you’re so clever, but you really haven’t figured it all out, have you?”
“Why?” I asked. “Why would you do this? You’re going to send the country into civil war. How will that put Aline on—?”
The Tailor looked down and patted the matted hair of the girl hugging her leg as she wept piteously. “Aline can’t take the throne—isn’t that obvious? She’s too young—she isn’t ready. The country isn’t ready!” She looked back at me. “And damned Trin is out there, busy securing the all support she’ll need, and once she’s on the throne, that’s it, Falcio, for all of us.”
“So you’d rather throw the country into chaos?”
“Aye, I would. Five years, that’s what we’ll get: five years of the nobility falling all over themselves fighting each other for control while the towns and villages are rising up against them.”
“Five years where innocent people will die,” I said.
“Innocent people are dying already, Falcio—they always have been. At least this way they die on their feet.”
A small, weary part of me—the part that was too tired to fight anymore—wanted to believe there was wisdom in her words, that we might reach some kind of accommodation. “And then what happens?”
“Then the country will remember how much better it was with a proper monarch on the throne. They’ll crave someone who can rule with compassion, someone who can keep the country together. And in five years’ time Aline will be ready to lead them, and they’ll be hungry for her to take the throne.”
It was a perfectly logical argument, one built upon the innate political truths that had always governed the people of Tristia. A sensible, pragmatic person would immediately agree. There was only one problem. “The King could have done that,” I said, trying to ignore the fact that my vision was growing blurrier by the minute. “He could have spread death and chaos to keep his throne—but instead, he sacrificed himself for the greater peace.”
The Tailor’s voice was harsh and angry and full of resentment. “‘For the greater peace’? Is that what you still tell yourself, Falcio? He was dying, you damned stupid fool!”
She let the words hang there for a good long while before she said, “He’d been sick his whole life and he was dying then, just as you are now, Falcio. That’s why he made the Greatcoats step aside—that’s why he let the Dukes take him.” The old woman stepped close to me, ignoring my rapiers, and stuck her face in mine. “It’s so easy to be brave and self-sacrificing when death already has you in its clutches—that’s why you’re always so damned noble, isn’t it? You died long ago, back when your wife was slaughtered, and ever since then you have walked the earth praying for someone to put a blade in you. My son was the same.” She slapped me hard on the left cheek. “Damn you for trying to make him a Saint when he was only a man.”
I tried reaching deep inside me, looking for anger to match the Tailor’s own, but all I could find was bitter cold and loneliness. Everything she had said was true. In my heart, Paelis was bold and daring and full of life, and yet in every memory he was coughing and wheezing, his features pale and his voice thin. She was right of course; he was dreadfully sick, so his death could no more be called an act of bravery than a leaf falling from a tree could be said to be aiming for the ground. I had always known that the King was a man like any other. I just couldn’t live with it being true.
“So it was all for nothing,” I said at last.
“No,” the Tailor said, grabbing my chin and looking me in the eye. “There is still the girl. Aline will rule this Kingdom one day. Let that be the King’s legacy. Let her—”
“You’ve committed murder in her name,” I said, my voice sounding hollow and tired. “How will she rule when people find out? How will she—?” I looked at Aline, desperate to see her face again.
She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “Falcio . . .” she said, her voice almost pleading.
“You knew,” I whispered. “The Tailor didn’t trick you—she didn’t lie to you. You knew.”
“I . . . what did you want me to do, Falcio?” she cried. “I told you I was scared. I told you I don’t know how to do this. I don’t want to die!”
“So instead you let this madwoman send her dogs to assassinate whole families. Did she tell you she was murdering the sons and daughters of the Dukes? Did she tell you they were . . .” My voice caught. “They were children, Aline, younger than you. They—”
“I never ordered those children killed,” the Tailor said. “Never.”
“Why should I believe you?” I said, my voice so full of rage that Aline cowered behind the Tailor.
“What good does it do me to have them dead? Alive, the Ducal Concord would have chosen Ducal Protectors, weak men of low ambition who would never think of seizing the thrones for themselves. My plan worked better with the children alive.”
“And yet your hounds killed them. I saw the bodies of Isault’s children myself.”
“And I’m telling you those weren’t my orders and it wasn’t my Greatcoats.”
“Don’t call them Greatcoats,” I said. “Don’t you dare—”
“Fine,” she said, “they’re Queen’s Blades. They’re what you and Kest and Brasti and all the others should have been.”
“They’re murderers,” I said, my eyes on them, “and I will see those coats off their backs and them in chains before this is done.”
She let out a hoarse laugh. I was really beginning to tire of her sense of humor. “So much outrage—odd, really, since not one of them would be here without you.”
I looked around at them. They were all young, younger than most of us were when we joined the Greatcoats—and yet I had seen them in action and I knew they were already deadly fighters. The Tailor couldn’t have possibly have found enough ordinary men and women and trained them to be so skilled, not in so few years, and that meant they had to have training already, and probably their whole lives. But they didn’t fight like Knights, and other than Knights and Greatcoats, no one else studied dueling at this level. No one except . . .
I felt bile rise in my throat even as fear filled my heart. “They’re Dashini,” I said.
“Aye,” the Tailor said. “Of a sort.”
“But that’s impossible. I was at the monastery. I saw the corpses.”
“You saw the Blooded Dashini: those who had taken their final vows and slain their targets. These”—she gestured around her, “are the Unblooded. The ones in training.”
“But why aren’t they—?”
“Why aren’t they dead? Because the Unblooded are not permitted ritual suicide until the Blooded are fully consecrated in the ground. Can you imagine that? They’re supposed to sit there for months, waiting for the corpses of their masters to rot way to nothing before they’re allowed to kill themselves.”
“But you convinced them otherwise.”
“I knew what would happen once you killed those two in Rijou—and I suppose I should offer you my congratulations, by the way. You’re the only man alive to have defeated Dashini assassins. Now do you believe me? Without you, none of this would be possible.”
“So it’s true: the entire Order committed ritual suicide just because I got lucky and killed two of them?”
“The Dashini are only Dashini if they are undefeated,” she said. “I went to the monastery knowing the Unblooded would be there, knowing they would be leaderless and without direction, so I generously gave them a better opportunity. I offered them a chance at greatness.”
“And what did that cost?” I asked.
But I already knew the answer: I was the price. I was the gold with which the Tailor had purchased a hundred assassins. The hunt once begun ends only in blood. The illusion of self-righteous anger retreated from the Tailor’s face, leaving only sadness and shame in its wake. I understood then why the Tailor had felt the need to tell me all this, why it was so important to her that I understood the reasons for her plans. She wanted my forgiveness.
She looked at me for a moment, waiting for me to speak, but for once in my life I found I had no words. Finally she turned to one of the Greatcoats. “Dariana, take Aline away now. It’s getting dark, and she should have some supper.”
Aline walked up to me and touched my hand, her own trembling. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I couldn’t be braver.”
I knelt down for a moment and awkwardly wrapped my arms around her, even as I kept a grip on my rapiers. I could feel the cool, wet skin of her cheek against mine. “It’s all right,” I said. “You were as brave as anyone could hope. Go on, sweetheart, don’t cry. I’ll be fine once we work things out here.”
Aline stepped back and slowly reached out a small hand. She put it against my face, and then she began to cry. A moment later she turned and ran away, into the dark shadows of the trees. Dariana strode after her.
“That was generous,” the Tailor said. For once there was no trace of cynicism in her voice.
“The girl isn’t to blame,” I said, “and she shouldn’t know what comes next.”
I closed my eyes and pictured my wife Aline, not as she had been in life, but the way she was when I found her dead upon the floor of that tavern. I reached out for one last surge of stubborn, damned rage, one last rush of fury fueled by the destruction of all my ideals and the ruin I’d made of my own life. I summoned forth every dark and terrible part of myself, and, as I leaped at the monsters who’d blackened the name of the Greatcoats forever, I smiled.
If I could have killed even two of the bastards I would have forgiven the Gods all their injustices. If I’d reached the Tailor, well, then I might even have been grateful. But there were too many, and they were young and fast and fresh, while I was injured and poisoned and tired of living in a world that turned on lies and betrayal. They took me down without my blade touching even one of them.
“I’m sorry, Falcio,” the Tailor said as three of the Unblooded held me. “If there had been another road I would have taken it. I hope you can believe that. What comes now—well, I can’t say it’s for the best, but it’s the only chance any of us have, even you.”
I had a split lip and I’d been hit in the gut enough times that I could barely take a breath, let alone a deep one. But my arms and legs had gone numb and as I’ve learned, it’s surprisingly easy to be bold and brave when you have no hope of survival.
“I hope you can believe me when I say it’s not over until I say it is.”
She smiled. It was a soft and compassionate smile that ill suited her face. “That’s what I’ve always loved about you, Falcio, ever since that day you arrived at my cottage, feverish and starved and more than half-dead, carrying Duke Yered’s severed head in a sack. You never know when to quit.”
“Count on it,” I said.
One of the Unblooded turned to the Tailor. “You will go now. What comes now is sacred and not for your eyes.”
“I warned you, Falcio. I said I would do anything to put that girl on the throne and I will. Anything.” Then she walked off.
As my captors began dragging me away I asked, “Where are we off to? I hope it’s all right if I watch. I hate to miss a good sacred ritual.”
The two who were dragging me stopped for a minute and another grabbed me by the jaw. “Have no fear on that account, Trattari. You will see and hear and feel every part of what comes next.”
“Sounds like a party,” I said, but the confidence in his voice, the raw hatred emanating from him, made my guts start to chill.
“Oh, it is.” He motioned for the others to continue, and as they dragged me deeper into the forest he asked, “Tell me, First Cantor, have you ever heard of something called the Greatcoat’s Lament?”