Saint's Blood: The Greatcoats Book 3 (3 page)

The lark’s pirouette is devastating to behold: it’s what you do when you want to show the world that you’re a true master of the blade – but it’s a move you use
only
when you’re absolutely sure that your opponent has exhausted all his strength. Undriel could have killed me any number of simple, clean ways, but he wanted to break me first.

That realisation sent a surge of anger through me. Death I could have lived with – but this?
You come here to humiliate the Greatcoats, to threaten the girl I’ve sworn to put on the throne, and you want to make
a performance
of it? You forgot the first rule of the sword, you son of a bitch.

I fought the instinct to fall back and instead did something Kest and I used to practise as boys: I counter-windmilled
into
Undriel’s blade. As he spun clockwise while leaping past me, I turned the other way, letting him knock my point out of the way even as I readied my free right hand to grab his blade. It was an outlandish, desperate tactic, but I was, at that moment, an outlandish, desperate man.

As we moved around each other like dancers on a stage, Undriel, suspecting what I was doing, began to pull his weapon away before I could get a solid grip on it, cutting into the palm of my hand in the process – of course, this is why most masters tell you
never
to counter a lark’s pirouette this way. That’s why the second part of my manoeuvre was to toss my own sword on the floor right between my opponent’s legs as he was spinning. The hilt clattered against the marble and the blade became caught between Undriel’s left calf and his right thigh, entangling his feet. He was already midway through his turn and it was too late for him to catch his balance. His eyes caught mine and went wide.

It was my turn to smile.

I stepped into him, bending my knees for leverage and holding his blade tightly in my bleeding right hand as I pressed my left against his chest and shoved with every last ounce of strength that remained in my limbs.

Undriel fell backwards, his feet still caught in my blade, his attempts to regain his balance only making his situation worse. His desperate stumbling took him all the way outside the circle until he bashed the back of his head against one of the marble columns ringing the duelling court.

A satisfying crack echoed throughout the room, followed by the heart-warming sight of Undriel sliding, ever so slowly, down the length of the column until his bottom hit the floor with a loud thump. The blow to his head wouldn’t be enough to kill him, but it was more than sufficient to draw a collective wince from the audience, followed soon thereafter by peals of laughter.

I took the deepest breath I could manage and let myself drop to my knees. I had, by the skin of my teeth, not only evaded a humiliating death that would have embarrassed the Crown and called into question the vaunted abilities of the Greatcoats, I had even defeated the Margrave’s champion without killing him – and I’d done it in a way that would leave people believing I was the superior swordsman and had simply been playing along until it no longer amused me.

All of that would have been extremely gratifying, if only I wasn’t absolutely positive that Undriel was better than I was. I had eked out the narrowest possible victory thanks to a childhood trick and an unexpected stroke of luck. Without those things, I would have been dead.

My name is Falcio val Mond, First Cantor of the King’s Greatcoats. Not long ago I was one of the finest swordsmen in the world.

These days? Not so much.

The funny thing about a duel is how little attention is paid to the opponents after it’s over. Once one man drops, what follows is a furore of activity as audience members pay up or try to slip out before their creditors can catch up with them. Some cheer and boast of their predictions as if they themselves had fought the duel while others gripe and spitt in their cups over the poor performances of the duellists.

And this is the point when the opponents, only now realising just how badly they’ve been hurt, let forth a wide variety of moaning sounds as they crawl towards anything that looks remotely like a chair. Doctors or priests (depending on which is more urgently required) rush in to begin their work, but what I want most in those moments is for Ethalia to come and treat my wounds. However, the duellist for the Crown is always examined first by the royal physician, a heavyset man of middle years named Histus with whom I shared exactly one thing: we both hated him having to treat me.

‘Are you sure you won this duel?’ he muttered as he began prodding at my wounds.

I flinched. ‘Are you sure you don’t work for the other guys?’

He brought out a flask of cleansing alcohol and poured it liberally over the cuts. ‘You know, I’m going to end up amputating one of your limbs if you keep this up.’

‘My wounds aren’t infected.’

‘I never said it would be on medical grounds.’

I glanced over at Undriel, lying on the floor next to one of the columns. Usually there’s a sort of bond that forms between duellists when neither has ended up dead. I didn’t expect that to be the case this time.

A number of Kunciet’s retainers – notably, not the Margrave of Gerlac himself – were standing over Undriel, making noises of great concern, although not, as I might have expected, in reference to his personal wellbeing. Instead, I heard, ‘Do you think he’ll
ever
be a champion again?’ answered with, ‘Can’t see how, not after
that
beating.’ This was followed by sage comments such as, ‘Lost his touch, he has. Knew it the second I saw him enter the court.’

Maybe I was wrong about not feeling a shared bond.

Kunciet was busying himself with a different tradition: the one in which the losing plaintiff immediately starts hurling accusations of foul play and cheating. He launched into a steady stream of denouncements that began with the ungentlemanly conduct on my part (laying a hand on an opponent during a duel?
Improper!
) and followed up with a charge that the duelling circle was not perfectly circular, descending into a rather convoluted accusation of dark sorcery involving Valiana, Aline, Kest, Brasti and me performing some rather daring feats of sexual prowess as part of a ritual dedicated to Saint Zaghev-who-sings-for-tears.

The clerics, no doubt worrying that their financial arrangement with the Margrave was about to become null and void, were vigorously backing him up.

I thought about challenging the fat bastard then and there, until I realised even he could probably take me down at that precise moment. Fortunately, there was someone in the room even angrier than me.

‘One more word from you, Margrave,’ Valiana said, her voice as cold as the North Wind, ‘especially one word aimed at the heir to the throne of Tristia, and I swear it will be you and me in the duelling circle next.’

Kunciet made a sound that was probably meant to be a scoff but which ended up something considerably less dignified.

The thing you have to remember about Valiana is, yes, she’s young, and yes, she was raised to be beautiful and vapid in equal measure. But that was
then
. She’s long since shed those trappings and revealed herself to be smart, daring and more than ready to lay down her life to protect Aline and defend Tristia. More importantly, despite the new title and the responsibilities that went with it, anyone who looked into her eyes would see she was a Greatcoat to the bone.

Kunciet saw that too.

Nobles don’t like to be publicly embarrassed; when their fellows see them as weak it tends to create problems for them. As far as I could see, the Margrave’s only hope now was for support from the Duchess Ossia . . .

. . . who looked up at him, her face expressionless. ‘Lovely to see you, Margrave,’ she said, sipping tea from her beautifully painted porcelain cup. ‘Your visits are always so diverting.’

‘
Outrageous
,’ Kunciet said finally, and apparently that one particular word was acceptable to Valiana because she allowed the Margrave and his retainers and clerics to withdraw from the courtroom.

Two of them were supporting the dazed Undriel until the Margrave growled at them, ‘Leave the bastard outside with the rest of the garbage. Let him crawl back to the filthy village I found him in.’

I felt a brief sympathy for my former opponent. He’d find no other patron now; this was farewell to any chance of wealth and advancement. I imagined he was going to be a pretty unpleasant man to be around from here on out.

Kunciet scowled at me as he reached the double doors, but I’d taken more than my share of cuts already so I felt I’d earned the right to deliver one of my own. ‘Be sure to tell your friends, Margrave.’

‘Tell them what?’ he spat.

‘Tell them the Greatcoats are coming.’

The word ‘outrageous’ having been successful for him the first time, the Margrave of Gerlac elected to use it several more times on his way out.

‘That man really needs to work on his vocabulary,’ Brasti observed blithely. ‘You can’t properly storm off just repeating the same word over and over. He could have at least tossed in an “unspeakable” or perhaps “unpardonable”.’

‘“Execrable”?’ Kest suggested.

‘“Aberrant” has more flair,’ Brasti countered.

‘I think you mean “abhorrent”.’

‘Which one’s “aberrant” then?’

‘The one that means something else.’

Brasti tried to look indignant. ‘Fine. Can we settle on “inconceivable”?’

‘Now you’re just being silly.’

‘Is it too late to bring Undriel back in and just let him kill me?’ I groaned, pulling away from Histus, who was doing an admirable job of making me painfully aware of each and every cut on my body. Finally I spotted Ethalia, pushing through the crowd towards me.

The Bardatti tell us life is sweeter in those precious minutes after narrowly escaping death. In my experience, however, ‘life’ during that particular moment mostly smells like sweat, drying blood and . . . other things. Ethalia, though? She was the exception. I felt a sudden desperate desire to hold her, to sink my face in her long black hair and breathe her in. Had my shirt not been covered in blood, and had I not been having the greatest difficulty standing, I would have run to her. Fortunately, she came to me.

Everything about Ethalia is in the eyes. They’re pale blue, like the line where the sky meets the sea on the horizon, and beautiful, of course, but that’s beside the point. It’s the way she
looks
at me. When she first sees me there’s this immediate flash of joy that brightens her irises, an effect so profound it completely contradicts all those people who firmly believe the world would be a better place if I were dead. Then comes the harder part, when she sees the results of my most recent foolishness. I see the first tears forming in the corners of her eyes, then concern and sorrow give way to determination as her eyes narrow and start moving from bruise to cut to scrape as she determines where to begin.

‘Thank you, Doctor Histus,’ she said, picking up a chair and bringing it to me. ‘I’ll take care of our patient now.’

Histus had an unrelenting disdain for the training Ethalia had received in the Order of Merciful Light. Like far too many people, he considered her order to be nothing more than a brothel with high-priced prostitutes. I suspect it didn’t help that Ethalia was a far better healer than he would ever be.

‘Try not to give him an incurable infectious disease,’ Histus grumbled, closing his bag.

‘I’ll make sure his wounds are properly cleaned, Doctor.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ Histus said, and walked away.

Ethalia gave a laugh. ‘You can’t fault the man’s sense of humour.’

‘I can fault it a great deal,’ I countered.

She sat me down and helped me remove my shirt, then took out a dozen blue jars from her bag. They all looked the same to me, but I knew from bitter experience that they weren’t. She set them in a line on the floor. ‘I know what he meant, Falcio. Do you think there’s anything that Histus could say to me that I haven’t heard since I was thirteen years old?’

Thirteen years old. Saints. What kind of world makes a
—
?

‘Stop,’ she said. ‘You’ll open your wounds again if you keep tensing your shoulders like that.’ She selected one jar, examined it, then exchanged it for the one next to it.

‘I wish you’d give some of these to Histus. His salves don’t do me any good at all.’

‘I’m afraid they wouldn’t work very well for him.’ She scooped out a generous amount, closed her eyes and spread the salve on a large cut on my stomach that I hadn’t even noticed during the fight but which had been stinging like a devil. ‘The salve is a bridge between the healer’s heart and the patient’s wound.’ The instant her fingers touched my stomach a surprisingly warm sensation spread along the cut, taking a good deal of the pain away.

‘You know what I think?’ I said, a little uncomfortable about how I was feeling, especially with so many people in the room. ‘I think you’re making that up. You just have better drugs than Histus!’

‘Shush,’ she said, ‘or I’ll use the strongest of the salves.’

‘What does it do?’ I asked.

Abruptly she reached her arms around me, buried her face into my neck and held me. ‘It makes a man come to his senses, Falcio,’ she said, crying softly. ‘It makes him admit that he’s hurt, that he’s haunted by memories of the past. It makes him stop trying to get himself killed just to prove he isn’t scared. I’m not sure your foolish heart would survive it.’

I reached up awkwardly with my right hand, holding her head as I ignored the pain in my shoulder.
Now, you idiot,
I told myself,
stop hesitating. Stop finding excuses. Ask her to marry you.

I swear the words were about to leave my lips, but unfortunately, that’s when the Realm’s Protector’s not inconsiderable patience came to an end.

‘First Cantor,’ Valiana said, her voice flat as she approached us.

It’s never a good sign when she addresses me as ‘First Cantor’. I rose unsteadily to my feet. ‘Realm’s Protector?’