Saint's Blood: The Greatcoats Book 3 (7 page)

So why am I so cold?

I reached down to grab at my blankets, but my forearm struck against something hard, just a few inches above me. I ran my finger across the surface. It was rough and flat. Something stung as it caught in the skin of my fingertip.

A sliver?

I tried rolling over, only to find my shoulder caught against the wooden boards above me. Panic set in when I reached out to either side and found them blocked as well.

A coffin . . . I’m in a coffin.

The stories told to frighten children and old men, of warriors injured in battle and believed dead by their comrades, only to wake up buried alive six feet beneath the ground, assailed me and I started to breathe too quickly, using too much air. Already I felt as if I were suffocating, trapped underground. Had they thought I’d lost too much blood? Was my heartbeat too soft or slow? Could Kest and Brasti truly have been foolish enough to think that—?

Brasti.

I bellowed, and the sound of my voice echoed over the surface of the wood around me, ‘I’m going to fucking kill you this time you heartless son of a bitch!’

A distant guffaw was followed by the sound of footsteps running towards me and Brasti calling, ‘Hang on, hang on, I’m coming . . .’

Blinding candlelight forced me to close my eyes as my prison lifted off of me, and when I opened them again I saw that I hadn’t actually been
inside
a coffin at all – Brasti had just removed the lid from one and flipped the rest over top of me.

‘It would have come off as soon as you gave it a push,’ Brasti scolded. ‘And don’t shout, either.’ He glanced around the room, most of which was cast in shadows. ‘You’ll wake up Kest and he has no sense of humour lately.’

The doors to the room burst open and Kest strode inside. ‘I told you not to pull this prank, Brasti. I warned you what would happen if you did—’

It should tell you something about Kest that I was, at that moment, afraid for Brasti.

‘Oh, no! I’ve angered Saint Kest-of-the-deep-brooding-stares!’ Brasti mocked. ‘Whatever shall I do?’

This was always Brasti’s idea of how best to deal with trauma: turn it into a joke. I had nearly died, so why not stick a coffin over me to remind me I was alive? Kest had lost his Sainthood along with his hand, so why not make fun of him to show it’s not the end of the world?

Kest didn’t look as if he was finding any of it particularly funny.

‘Fine,’ Brasti said, grinning as he leaped onto the bed next to mine, ‘just pass me my bow and then you can draw that great big stick of yours and we’ll find out once and for all who deserves to be the Saint of something-or-other!’

Without breaking stride, Kest picked up Brasti’s bow, carried it until he was within four feet of the bed and then tossed it high into the air.

Brasti grinned, his right hand already reaching back into his quiver for an arrow while the other went for the bow in midair – but before he could catch it, Kest’s left hand was darting out and wrapping around Brasti’s fingers in a crushing grip. The bow clattered on the floor. ‘What makes you think I need a sword to teach you sense?’ Kest asked.

Brasti winced in pain, his knees buckling. ‘Stop it, you fool, you’ll break my hand!’

‘Apologise to Falcio.’

‘I was only trying to help!’ Brasti said, looking at me pleadingly.

‘Trying to help?’ I asked. ‘That’s a stretch, even for you.’

‘Come on, Falcio. You nearly lost a duel to a pompous fop of a swordsman, practically everyone hates you and then you managed to almost die for the hundredth time. Did you really want to wake up to the sight of Kest wiping your brow with a soft cloth while whispering sweet, reassuring words to you?’

‘Compared to waking up thinking I’d been buried alive?’

Brasti, obviously born without any sense of self-preservation, chortled for a moment before regaining control of himself. ‘Come on, admit it! I bet you’ve never felt more alive than you do right now!’

I sighed, feeling nothing of the kind. ‘Let him go, Kest.’

‘Really?’ Kest asked, his left hand still firmly in control of Brasti’s fingers.

I pushed myself to sit up. ‘If you break his hand now then how am I going to enjoy the full satisfaction of tearing his fingers off later on?’

‘Ah,’ Kest said, and let go of him. ‘Good point.’

‘Now wait a minute, Falcio . . .’ Brasti began.

I smiled. ‘You’ll never know when, Brasti. Maybe tomorrow, maybe ten years from now . . .’ I paused for a long moment, then said, ‘No, probably tomorrow.’

He hopped off the bed and massaged his hand. ‘One day there’s going to be a God of Humour and he’s going to curse the pair of you as apostates.’

I rose from the bed, feeling every cut and bruise on my body come to wakefulness. My chest and abdomen were covered in bandages. ‘How long was I out?’

‘Six days,’ Kest replied.

‘Hells, six days . . .’

‘Doctor Histus offered to draw you a diagram of the vital organs in your body and the exact distance by which Undriel’s smallsword missed them.’

‘Kind of him,’ I said.
Histus. That explains the poor bandaging, anyway.
‘Why didn’t Ethalia tend to my wounds?’ Then I remembered the circumstances that had got me into this state. ‘Saints . . . is Birgid—?’

‘Still alive, so far as we know,’ Kest replied. ‘Ethalia’s been working day and night to heal her.’ He paused for a moment, then admitted, ‘Falcio, Saint Birgid hasn’t woken in all that time. Her injuries aren’t healing.’

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to focus and clear the fog from my head so I could concentrate on the matters at hand. Instead, I found myself remembering my first meeting with Birgid – how disturbingly beautiful and youthful she’d appeared, glowing with a power that had filled me with both awe and trepidation. Then the images in my mind shifted to how she’d looked when I’d last seen her, just a few days ago, her hair matted and filthy, trapped behind an iron mask, shoulders and arms covered in tiny cuts that were somehow . . .
precise
. Planned. This was a careful and meticulous kind of cruelty.

‘Falcio?’ The voice was Kest’s, but it sounded very far away so I ignored it.

I stumbled a little, my hand grabbing onto the foot of the bed as my thoughts shifted again. Now it wasn’t Birgid I was remembering, but myself, bound to the split tree in the clearing those eight days and nights as the Dashini Unblooded tormented my flesh, my mind, my soul.
Stop
, I told myself.
Breathe. Focus. Think about Birgid.

I considered the possibility that somehow there were still Dashini out there and that they had captured Birgid and performed the Lament upon her, but her torture had obviously been different . . .
blunter
, somehow.

‘Falcio, you should rest,’ Kest said. His hand was gripping my arm and I realised that he was holding me up.

‘There’s any number of things that Falcio
should
do,’ Brasti said. ‘But only one thing he’s
going
to do.’

For some reason, that brought me back and I opened my eyes to see Brasti staring at me. I started to speak but he stopped me, placing a hand on my shoulder. ‘No, please, allow me.’ He stuck a finger in the air and jutted his chin up and to the right, as though staring at some far-off horizon. ‘“Though I am grievous injured, I, Falcio val Mond, First Cantor of the Greatcoats and most beloved of the King, must now, in defence of our most sacred ideals, demonstrate my unyielding duty – not to mention, ego – and investigate this most heinous act!”’

‘I don’t talk anything like that.’

Kest looked at me and raised his eyebrows a hair.

‘Oh, the hells for the both of you,’ I said, and surveyed the room to find my clothes, reasoning it probably wouldn’t help anyone for me to wander about naked except for my bandages. Near the bed where I’d awoken was an old wooden crate that was serving as a side table. I dressed slowly, careful not to fall over and embarrass myself in front of Kest and Brasti. After the manner in which I’d been woken, though, I felt justified in making them wait.

I finished by slipping my rapiers into their scabbards and took a slow, stiff walk around the dingy room, leaning periodically against the empty beds that emitted the musty smell of disuse. Under each one lay a plain, wooden coffin.

‘All right, let’s go,’ I said. Then another question occurred to me. ‘Where the hells am I?’

*

‘Welcome to the Martyrium of Saint Werta-who-walks-the-waves,’ Kest said as he led us out through the double doors and into the bright sunlight, ‘in all her dubious glory.’

Broken remnants of single-storey buildings gave sad greetings, their crumbling and dirty white sandstone walls overtaken by vines and tall weeds and now listing like weary sentries over the wreckage of roofs long ago caved in.

‘Not exactly a palace of the divine, is it?’ Brasti asked.

Having seldom taken much interest in the Gods, and even less in their chosen representatives on earth (or at least in Tristia), I’d never spent much time in our holy places, so I didn’t have much of a frame of reference to go on. ‘Where’s the sanctuary?’ I asked, assuming that’s where I’d find Birgid and Ethalia.

Kest pointed to an overgrown path behind me and a larger, six-walled building with a smooth dome about a dozen yards away. It stood on a slight angle, as if the ground on one side was growing tired of supporting its weight. It was ringed by the limbless and headless remains of what once must have been commanding statues of each of Tristia’s deities.

‘The Gods have seen better days,’ I said.

Brasti kicked a marble hand holding a hammer that had probably belonged to Craft, or Mestiri, as he’s sometimes known here in the south. ‘Inspiring, isn’t it?’ he asked, balancing on top of what was left of a carved head that had rolled along the ground and ended its journey against the stump of a dead tree. If the God of Making was troubled by Brasti’s blasphemy, he gave no sign.

I turned to Kest. ‘Why bring Birgid here? Surely she could have received better care at the Ducal Palace?’

‘Duchess Ossia’s clerics demanded it,’ he replied. ‘They said. “A Saint can only be healed under the protection of the Gods, not in the false comfort and vain opulence of a secular palace”.’

Not that clerics have ever objected to living in that same comfort and opulence . . .
‘And Valiana went along with that?’

‘She needs Duchess Ossia’s support, and the Duchess needs the clerics.’

‘No one much cared about what we thought,’ Brasti added. ‘They weren’t even going to let Ethalia travel with her unt—’

Kest gave him a sharp look and he went silent.

‘What?’ I asked.

Kest hesitated, then said, ‘One of the clerics was insisting Ethalia was . . .
unclean
. He grabbed her wrist rather forcefully.’ He carefully ignored Brasti. ‘Someone decided to shoot an arrow about a hair’s-breadth from the cleric’s hand, and might have followed up with some rather . . . elaborate threats. It triggered something of a diplomatic incident. Neither the clerics nor Duchess Ossia were pleased.’

I looked at Brasti, who didn’t look even the faintest bit embarrassed. ‘You were unconscious, and everybody else was useless. So I asked myself, “What would Falcio do in this situation?” and I thought, “Well, he’d draw a weapon and make some kind of dramatic pronouncement, wouldn’t he?”’

It’s hard to know what to say to something like that, so I just said, ‘Come here.’

He looked up at me, eyes narrowed. ‘What? Why?’

‘Just come here.’

He did, slowly, warily as if he thought I might hit him. When he got close enough I grabbed him in both arms and hugged him. See, the thing about Brasti’s idea of friendship is, it’s completely unconstrained by logic or forethought. He doesn’t stop to wonder about the consequences of his actions. He just does whatever it is he thinks you’d want him to do for you in that situation. ‘Some days I love you,’ I said.

He started patting me awkwardly on the back. ‘Um . . . all right. Let’s not make a thing of it, shall we?’

I found myself laughing for the first time since this latest mess began. I let him go and turned to Kest. ‘So in the six days I’ve been unconscious, the Saint of Mercy has slipped into a coma, we’ve been consigned to some half-deserted martyrium and Brasti has shot a cleric.’

‘I barely grazed the skin of his hand,’ Brasti clarified. ‘He’s still perfectly capable of praying. Maybe even more so, now.’

‘There’s actually one more thing,’ Kest said, and led the way down a path that went around the side of the sanctuary. Through the sparse growth of trees we could see the main gates of the martyrium, where a great crowd of people covered the grassy field outside. Some were huddling around makeshift tents, others were kneeling by the gates with their hands clasped together, and many just stood there, staring through the gates. None of them looked very happy.

‘Who in all the hells are they?’ I asked, staring at the mass of humanity outside the martyrium.

‘Pilgrims, if you can believe it,’ Brasti replied. ‘Around a hundred of them.’

‘Word of the attack on Birgid spread quickly,’ Kest added. ‘People from all over the Duchy have been coming here – some are praying for her blessing and some are protesting.’

‘Protesting what?’

Brasti snorted. ‘Whatever the nearest cleric is telling them to protest.’ He pointed at a man in dirty orange robes standing in the centre of a particularly large group. ‘That one appears to think the attack on Birgid is a conspiracy by the Greatcoats to destroy the Saints.’

Of course, because when in doubt, blame a Greatcoat.

‘You can’t really fault them on that, can you?’ a voice called out from behind us and Jillard, Duke of Rijou, resplendent in a purple and silver coat, his black hair freshly oiled and looking entirely out of place, walked through the overgrown vegetation to join us. ‘After all, by my count you’ve killed not one but two Saints of Swords now.’

I always find it difficult to think of what to say to a man who’s tried on multiple occasions to have me killed and who still has no compunction about inserting himself into my affairs. ‘You look . . . well, your Grace,’ I said finally.