It took days for my fever to break. Ethalia ministered to me with potions and salves, but more often with simpler things: damp cloths to wipe the hot sweat away and cool me down, a gentle touch of her hand across my cheek. She would whisper into my ear; not talking to me, but instead trying to coax my heart to beat and my lungs to breathe, like a general issuing carefully thought-out commands to her army. And sometimes she would kiss me. That was just for me, I think.
We were traveling most of the time, I think. In the mornings, they loaded me onto the back of a narrow cart and hauled me along the back roads of Aramor. At night, they’d hide the cart and bring me and the horses deep into the forest. Kest would carry me in his arms and then lay me down on the ground so Ethalia could check me over while someone else built a fire.
I slept most of the time, though at night I’d often wake to hear voices arguing. Kest and Dariana appeared to be on one side of the argument, Ethalia and Valiana on the other. Nehra never spoke, but sometimes she would play her guitar. There were times I thought I could understand what the notes were saying. It was a love song for someone who’d died, but I couldn’t make out the name, and whenever I thought I was close to understanding the song, or when the arguments became too heated, Nehra would change the notes, just a little, and I’d fall asleep again.
I felt a great deal of pain during the days after my fever broke, every minute of which I treasured. Though I was weak, whenever I woke up in the morning I could see and hear and feel right away. I would open my eyes and will my hand to come close to my face so that I could wiggle my fingers. Fingers are funny things. They made me laugh.
“Is he mad?” I heard Dariana say one morning. “He keeps doing that and giggling like a half-witted child.”
“Shush,” Ethalia said. “Go and fetch some water for tea. Someone is coming and I suggest you don’t try to kill her. The Saint of Swords would take it poorly.”
I listened to Dariana rising, sheathing her sword, and opening the door. We were in a cabin, though I had no idea when we’d arrived or where the cabin was.
“If I decide to kill her,” Dariana said, “she’ll be dead. And don’t shush me, you stupid cow.”
I turned my head away from my wiggling fingers because I knew Dariana’s words would make Ethalia smile and I wanted to see the little lines crease around her eyes.
“You’ll be well soon,” she said.
“Really? You have an awfully optimistic view of the world.”
She slid her fingers along the side of my cheek and into my hair. “The neatha is gone.”
“The poisons that Heryn used, did they—?”
“That’s part of it,” she said. “The Dashini toxins were meant to drive your nerves past breaking point and in so doing, destroy your mind. But neatha is different: it binds itself to your nerves, preventing sensation and movement of the body, so it blocked the toxins, even as the toxins eventually destroyed it. In a way, the neatha saved you from the Dashini toxins, while they in turn saved you from being killed by the neatha.”
A thought occurred to me and I started laughing so hard I couldn’t speak. By the time I could, I realized I was crying. “So I should be grateful to both Duchess Patriana and the Dashini for saving my life.”
Ethalia kissed me, which calmed me. “That is part of it, and it would serve you well to see it that way. But something else burns inside you and that cannot be quenched by any poison.”
“My sense of humor?” I asked.
She smiled and kissed me again, not because what I had said was particularly funny but because she knew I wanted her to kiss me. I felt something stirring inside me and reached out to pull Ethalia into the blankets with me. Saints, maybe I am getting better, I thought.
“Please don’t corrupt my disciple any more than absolutely necessary,” a voice said from the door. “She’s already terribly wanton.”
Ethalia smiled at me and rose from the blankets, tugging down her skirts as if she were a teenager caught fooling around with one of the local farm boys in the hay barn. “Oh my,” she said, “I’m ever so sorry, ma’am. T’weren’t no wrong ’appenin’ here, we was just—”
“Are you making fun of me?” Birgid-who-weeps-rivers, Saint of Mercy, asked.
“Perhaps just a little,” Ethalia replied, and ran to hug her.
“There now, child, it hasn’t been that long since we’ve seen each other, has it?” The way Birgid spoke struck me as odd, especially as she looked younger than Ethalia, with her white-blond hair framing her pale, radiant face.
Ethalia stood back. “It’s been three years!”
“Ah well, I’ve been busy.” She sounded sheepish. She hugged Ethalia again, then came and sat down next to me. “So.”
“So,” I said, not sure what other response I could offer.
She checked me over, and for a woman who looked fifteen years younger than me, did a very fine impression of a disapproving grandmother. “I see that my efforts to sway you from the path of violence had little effect.”
“In my own defense, people were trying to kill me.”
“That’s just an excuse,” she said. “And now? What will you do?”
I knew what she was asking, or rather, what she was offering: another chance—my third and maybe my last. Ethalia and I could make our way to Baern and find a boat to take us to the Southern Islands, where we’d be free of violence and rid of duty. We’d be happy there. I could let someone else take a turn at trying to fix the world. After all, I’m just one man, with no army, no influence, no power . . .
You don’t need any of those things, a voice inside me said, the voice of a boy still clinging to his childhood ideals. You’re a Greatcoat.
Birgid sighed. “Hopeless,” she said.
“Not hopeless,” Ethalia said, “and not foolish, either. Something else—something good.”
Birgid turned to her and smiled. “You’re just as bad,” she said. “Go and wait outside for me. Keep the angry girl from coming in here—oh, and try not to have sex with men for money while you’re there.”
Ethalia gave her a wicked grin and then left.
“Such a foolish child,” Birgid said.
I reached out and grabbed the Saint’s arm. “Don’t,” I said. “You don’t get to call her that.”
Birgid’s eyes bore into mine and I felt something there, something old and powerful and far, far stronger than me. “Would you challenge a Saint, Falcio val Mond?”
There was something terrifying in that gaze, but I’d seen a lot of terrifying things lately. “Lady, if you’re trying to threaten me you probably should have gotten to me before I spent nine days being tortured by Dashini assassins.”
“There are worse things than—”
“No,” I said, my mind turning back to the eighth death, “there aren’t.”
Birgid sighed. “No, I suppose there aren’t.” She was silent for a moment, then finally said, “She argues for you, at night, when she and the others think you’re asleep.”
I’d heard the angry whispers back and forth at night, but I’d never been able to make out what they were fighting about.
“The Duke of Rijou has called a Ducal Concord at Castle Aramor. He intends to work with the remaining Dukes to put an end to the murder and mayhem that has beset the country.”
A bitter laugh escaped my throat. The last time the Dukes had held a concord was when they’d decided that the only way to save the country was to depose King Paelis. Hells. “The Tailor—”
Saint Birgid smiled grimly. “Indeed. She’s taking her forces to Castle Aramor. She knows the Dukes have lost faith in most of their Knights and will go with only those few they know they can trust.”
“She’ll kill every last Duke,” I said. “She thinks—”
“I already know what she thinks, Falcio.”
I felt the weight of the world descend on my chest, pushing me down, making it hard to breathe. All I wanted was to go back into that deep gray sleep and wake up somewhere else—somewhere peaceful. That’s what they argue about at night.
“That’s it, isn’t it: it’s about where to take me. Dariana and Kest want to go to Aramor. Ethalia and Valiana want to take me away somewhere safe.”
The Saint of Mercy laughed. “Is that what you think? Ethalia loves you and so she tries to sneak you away against your will to be with her?”
“But then—”
“Kest and Dariana are the ones trying to get you away from this, Falcio. They don’t believe you can take any more—no one could. Valiana is foolish and idealistic; she doesn’t think you can be stopped. Ethalia is wiser, though you wouldn’t know it from how powerfully she argues your cause. She knows you will likely fail, and die.”
“Then why does she argue for me to go to Aramor?”
“Because love isn’t a cage.” She reached out a hand and stroked my cheek, a soft and intimate gesture that masked something underneath.
“You’re angry with me,” I said. “Why?”
Birgid turned to gaze at the cabin’s door. “She could take my place, you know. It’s what I’d hoped for her.”
That surprised me for a moment, though I could see very clearly that Ethalia could well be the Saint of Mercy. Then I thought about what Kest had been going through. “It doesn’t sound like a very good job.”
“Like most things in life, it is what we choose to make of it.” She turned back to me. “You’ve ruined her, Falcio. She loves you, and that love will forever hold her back.”
I felt a sharp pain, deep in my stomach. What if Birgid was right and Ethalia’s purpose was to become the Saint of Mercy? What did I have to offer her in return? The chance to spend her days and nights waiting alone, wondering if I was alive or dead? Or, worse, the possibility that someone would hurt her to get back at me? No, I couldn’t live with that—not again—
Suddenly my right cheek burned and I realized Birgid had just slapped me, hard, across the face. “That’s not exactly merciful,” I said, holding my hand to my cheek.
“It’s merciful compared to what I wanted to do. You don’t own her, Falcio val Mond.”
“I’m not—”
“It’s not your place to tell Ethalia what she will or will not become, nor what dangers she can or cannot face.”
For a moment I wasn’t sure what to say, but then I thought about Aline, my wife, and I knew exactly how to respond. “You’re wrong,” I said. “If I can’t protect her from harm, then what’s the point of love?”
Birgid gave a small laugh. “I was wrong about you, Falcio, and about Ethalia too, I suppose. I thought you were just a man of violence, and she a Sister of Mercy, but I saw only one side of the coin. Of course she loves you, for she is compassion and you are valor itself, and compassion is ever drawn to valor.”
She put a hand on my chest and patted me twice as if I were a sick child, then she rose and walked to the door. “If you wish to make her happy, Falcio, then turn away from this path and let the world solve its own problems.”
I pushed myself up onto unsteady legs. “And if I can’t?”
“Then know that you are still weak, that you have no army, and that the Ducal Concord begins in three days.”