Saint's Blood: The Greatcoats Book 3 (60 page)

‘I don’t know anything about magic,’ I said, ‘except I hate it. I know even less about Faith. All I know is that this world is full of chaos and corruption, and we Greatcoats stand against that. We stood and we delivered our oaths and – well, maybe oaths are just words, but they didn’t feel that way to me, not when I heard Antrim speak them, or Talia, or any of us. When we speak our oaths, when we bind ourselves to them, the words feel like—’

‘Magic?’ Brasti offered. For once he wasn’t smirking.

‘Greatcoats’ magic,’ Talia said, her hand gripping her spear. She was practically glowing with pride.

‘Words,’ Darriana said, her tone mocking, ‘foolish words and foolish deeds – is this all that’s left to protect this shithole of a world?’

‘Why not?’ Kest asked. ‘It’s the only thing that’s ever worked before.’

‘There’s only a few hours before dawn,’ Mateo pointed out. ‘We should prepare if we’re going to meet the God in the ruins of Aramor.’

He was right and I was about to start giving orders when Aline stopped me. ‘I’m not finished, First Cantor.’

The Tailor came forward again, holding another bundle in her arms. I had never seen this coat before: the brown leather was tinted with subtle hues of red and copper. On the breast was inlaid a dove. ‘Are you sure about this, sweetling?’ the Tailor asked. ‘It seems a terrible idea to me.’

The heir to the throne sighed. ‘Grandmother, will you please stop contradicting me? And stop calling me sweetling.’

‘Never!’ The old woman grinned, and for an instant she actually looked like a doting grandmother. I found it strangely terrifying.

Aline took the coat and for a moment I thought she was about to put it on herself. But she didn’t; she walked to where Ethalia was standing by herself in the shadowed corner. ‘Ethalia-who-shares-all-sorrows, Saint of Mercy.’ The room went deathly quiet. ‘I name you to the Greatcoats.’

*

There was a great deal of yelling, most of it apparently coming from me. ‘You can’t ask her to do this!’ I shouted.

‘Why not?’ Aline asked, her calm an irritating counter to my loud frustration.

I turned to look at Ethalia, who still hadn’t said a word. ‘She’s dedicated her whole life to peace – to compassion. All we do is fight. We fight and we die and—’

‘I accept,’ Ethalia said, quietly.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ I told her. ‘Birgid forced you into becoming the Saint of Mercy; don’t let yourself be forced into this, too.’

Ethalia smiled at me for a moment. ‘No one
forces
me into
anything
, Falcio. Have you not learned that one simple thing about me yet? I chose to accept Birgid’s burden, though I didn’t understand it at the time.’

It was a perfectly sensible and brave thing to say, and it annoyed me. ‘We’re
duellists
, don’t you understand that? For all our talk of laws and justice, most of us are nicknamed after the weapons we carry – swords and spears and arrows, all used to kill.’

Ethalia took the coat from Aline’s hands. ‘And you are named for these, too, for the protection they provide, not only to you but to those you defend.’ She reached out a hand and placed it against my chest. ‘Perhaps we can all be more than just one thing.’

I put my hand over hers and held it there a while.

‘It’s time,’ Aline said. ‘I would hear your oath.’

Ethalia turned to her then, and I wasn’t in the least bit surprised when she said, ‘I am the friend in the dark hour. I am the breeze against the burning sun. I am the water, freely given, and the wine, lovingly shared. I am the rest after the battle, and the healing after the wound . . .’ She paused for a moment, and then said firmly, ‘And I am the sword against the sword, the spear against the spear. I am the answering voice when torment cries out for mercy. I am the friend in the dark hour,’ she repeated, ‘and I am a Greatcoat.’

This time I overheard what Aline said, and despite how furious I was, I had to admit that the name fit. I found myself looking around the room, at Kest and Brasti, with whom I’d started the first step of this journey, so long ago. They were smiling like idiots. I found the reason in the faces of the men and women around us: Antrim, Mateo, Allister, Talia, Quentis, Valiana and Ethalia. There were less than a dozen of us left, fools one and all, protected by nothing more than leather and bone and a few desperate words. It was impossible not to love these people.

Aline went over to where Nehra and Rhyleis were sitting together, mumbling and occasionally scrawling notes in a little clothbound book.
No doubt writing down the story and getting the details all wrong
.

‘Lady Nehra,’ Aline said, ‘do you have the means to get a message to the Blacksmith and his creation, wherever they might be right now?’

‘I’m a Bardatti,’ she replied. ‘Yes. What would you have me say?’

‘Kindly inform the God that the Greatcoats are coming.’

In the penultimate chapter of Sen Errera Bottio’s treatise on trial by combat, he describes seven vices that can lead even the most expert duellist to his death. The first, Bottio argued, is believing the praise of one’s supporters:
Their testaments to your skill and brilliance will be delivered with such eulogistic grandiosity that you risk forgetting your own weaknesses. Your enemy will not.

Sage advice, although in my case it really wasn’t necessary.

‘Congratulations,’ Brasti shouted from where he sat opposite me on a chair in the surprisingly spacious second-floor bedroom I’d taken. ‘After a lifetime of trying to come up with the worst possible plan ever conceived, you’ve finally succeeded.’

‘You have a better one?’ I asked, trying in vain to rub away the headache forming just behind my eyes. Brasti wasn’t the first one to make that particular observation.

He threw up his hands in disgust. ‘Sure, how about you just construct a giant ballista and hurl us one by one at the God, shouting “Injustice! Injustice!” because I’m telling you,
that
plan is at least as good as yours.’

I turned to Kest, who was leaning against the back wall. Up until now he’d stayed very quiet. Now he said, ‘Your strategy is . . .
inventive
, to be sure, but it’s based on conjecture about magic and Faith, things none of us understand. If you’re wrong about even one small part of it, we’ll all be dead before Brasti can even say he told you so.’

‘Which would have been the
only
redeeming part of this plan, by the way,’ Brasti said. He pointed to Aline. ‘And after everything we’ve seen, you’re expecting the heir to just—’

She cut him off. ‘We’re fighting a God. We have to have a little faith in each other.’

Faith, of course, was not a virtue to Bottio’s way of thinking.
The second trap set by those who love you best is that they will try to convince you that your victory is inevitable; that the Gods themselves demand your success. Remember that such sentiment was no doubt expressed with equal enthusiasm to the last man you fought, most likely just minutes before you killed him.
Bottio’s suggested solution to this vice was for the duellist to mutter under his breath the phrase, ‘I am sure to die, I am sure to die!’ over and over whilst friends and family were cheering his imminent triumph.

‘I’m not sure how someone as pig-headed as you ever lived this long,’ the Tailor said as she finished up her repairs to my greatcoat, ‘but this time you’re good and buggered for certain.’ She tossed the coat to me. ‘Try not to get too much blood on it. I’d rather not have to clean it again before I give it to the next fool.’

‘You think there’s going to be anyone left to wear it if I lose?’ I asked.

She rose from her stool and headed for the door. ‘That’s the beauty of Faith, Falcio. There will always be some idiot determined to live up to the bald-faced lies we tell of the past.’ She stopped and gazed at me for a moment, then gave me what I believe was her best approximation of a sympathetic smile. ‘May that thought give you comfort when the God rips your throat out with his bare hands.’

I really don’t think Bottio had the Tailor in mind when he wrote his caution regarding the faith of one’s supporters. After she left I took off my boots and lay back on a bed that was uncomfortably soft and smelled suspiciously of mildew. I closed my eyes, so certain that I wouldn’t have to worry about Bottio’s third vice that I nearly slept through the quiet knocking at my door.

‘Is there any way someone could just kill me and be done with it?’ I asked as I opened the door.

I was surprised to find Rhyleis, the Bardatti musician, leaning against the doorway, yellow hair glimmering in the faint light of the candle she held. ‘I suppose so,’ she said, one side of her mouth turned up in a smile. ‘But it’s only the little death I seek tonight.’

That may just be the most dangerous smile I’ve ever seen.
‘What are you doing here?’

She straightened up. ‘Nehra got a message to the Blacksmith and he sent one of his little Needles to reply. We face the God’s trial at Aramor when the light of the sun first shines upon its ruins.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Nehra told me herself an hour ago. You were there.’

‘Oh, was I?’ Rhyleis asked, looking not at all surprised. ‘Then I suppose I must have come here to bed you.’

‘I . . .’ It’s only on very rare occasions that I wish I had Brasti’s way with words; however, this turned out to be one of them. ‘I’m . . . er . . . flattered?’

‘Of course you are,’ the Bardatti said, reaching out a finger and tapping my nose. ‘I’m very fetching, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

She was at that, and there are times in your life when you just want to feel something other than despair. On the other hand, I could almost hear Errera Bottio screaming in my ear, ‘
While there are few good reasons for losing a duel, there is at least one spectacularly bad one
.’

It was looking awfully like Rhyleis was delighting in my hesitation. ‘You know, it’s rumoured that making love before a duel steadies the hand and steels the nerves, Falcio.’

I chuckled, embarrassingly. ‘I’ve read almost all of the books on fencing ever written, Rhyleis, and never once have I found that particular suggestion.’

‘We Bardatti are the keepers of mysteries,’ she said, and stood on her toes to kiss me. ‘We know any number of things that others do not.’

‘And apparently there are a few things you don’t know that everyone else
does
,’ Ethalia said from behind her.

Neither of us had heard her come up the stairs – or at least I hadn’t. ‘Ah, forgive me, Sancti,’ Rhyleis said without a trace of sincerity. ‘I’m so terribly embarrassed by my wanton behaviour. You must find me truly reprehensible.’

Ethalia came forward into the light of the candle. ‘Rhyleis, I’m not quite sure if you’re trying to mock me for being too prudish or mocking me because I was a prostitute.’

‘Can’t it be both?’ she asked archly. ‘Or perhaps it’s simply that I don’t understand a woman who thinks it proper to discard a delightful puppy by the side of the road and then resent someone else for wanting to pick him up.’

The two of them stared daggers at each other and I remembered how Brasti liked to regale Kest and me with tales about the times when two beautiful women had fought over him. We had always assumed he was making those stories up . . .
because, in fact, he absolutely was making them up.
Hells.

‘Drop the act, Rhyleis,’ I said, irritated.

Rhyleis looked up at me, eyes full of innocent confusion. ‘My darling?’ She kept it up for a good long time before she broke out laughing. ‘It’s not entirely deception, First Cantor. I promise I would, in fact, give serious consideration to spending the night with you . . . were circumstances otherwise.’

Ethalia’s eyes narrowed. ‘This was a performance. You made sure I saw you coming up to Falcio’s room.’

The Bardatti gave a small bow. ‘And now, my sacred work is done.’ She looked up and winked at me. ‘I leave you to your very important spiritual consultations.’ She skipped down the stairs, leaving us alone.

‘And people say
my
plans are stupid,’ I said.

‘Perhaps we should be flattered,’ Ethalia said. ‘Don’t the stories say that when the Bardatti interfere in matters of the heart it is because they foresee a romance for the ages?’

‘Really? Who is it who tells those stories, I wonder.’

She smiled. ‘That would be the Bardatti, I believe.’

It was, I supposed, a kindness on Rhyleis’ part, an attempt to bring some small joy into our lives before everything went to hell. ‘I’m sorry she disturbed your meditations,’ I said.

Ethalia stepped past me into the room. ‘If I am to be honest, I . . . wanted to come.’

‘Really?’ I asked.

What followed was an unimaginably awkward series of furtive glances and half-begun words back and forth, until eventually we managed to establish that Ethalia had not meant she was coming to sleep with me, and I had not intended to imply I wouldn’t want to see her otherwise.

‘We appear to be quite hopeless at this,’ she said at last with a laugh.

‘Being hopeless at things is one of the few skills I’ve mastered lately,’ I said.

Ethalia took one of my hands in hers and suddenly the laughter was gone. ‘Your plan, Falcio . . . it will all come down to you and me at the end.’

‘I know.’

She looked up at me. ‘The others . . . For all their courage, they don’t believe we can win. They fear the will of a God cannot be withstood by mere human beings.’

‘I know that, too.’

We stood there, staring at each other for a long time. Everything about Ethalia is in the eyes, and that’s why I suddenly found myself barely able to breathe. It wasn’t fear or doubt or even compassion I saw there. It was pure determination.

‘Then we will show them just how dangerous the two of us can be.’

Bottio begins his chapter on the deaths of expert fencers with this:
On the morning of your last duel, your opponent, like a brilliant and battle-tested general, will first gain advantage of the terrain.

I remember reading that line for the first time, wondering if I’d mistakenly picked up a book of military strategy. Everyone knows a duelling court has no topography – there’s no ‘terrain’ to benefit one side or the other; it’s just a floor. But in the next paragraph, Bottio explains himself.
Look not to the ground, poor fool, but to the air all around you. Are there ladies in the courtroom who just happen to be wearing the very scent your enemy has learned you are allergic to? Listen. Do the musicians play songs of sorrow that are making you weary and fearful? Has the enemy set sights before you in the court, like pieces on a game board, that will make you feel trapped, like a fox in a cage as the dogs circle around, waiting to pounce?