Knight's Shadow (24 page)

‘Just enjoying the night air,’ I replied, reaching out with my now completely numb right hand to grab at the top of the wall. When I couldn’t get a grip Kest reached down and took hold of my wrists, supporting me as I pulled myself up.

‘Something’s wrong,’ he said, once I had joined the others.

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Stop being such a—’

‘No, not that. We were too slow.’

I glanced around, expecting to see a dozen guards coming for us, but found none. Brasti snorted. ‘The Saint of Swords is just upset because we haven’t been attacked by a dozen guards yet.’

Kest shook his head. ‘That’s not it; we took too long – the watchmen should have made it back from their rounds already.’

He was right. It had taken us nearly half an hour to make it to the top, but we knew from our earlier surveillance that the guards made the route every twenty minutes.
So where are they?

‘You can report them to their superiors later,’ Brasti said. ‘Stop complaining every time we manage to avoid death and destruction.’

‘Brasti’s right,’ I said. The Duke of Luth could worry about his guards’ shoddy timekeeping; we would just be grateful for those extra ten minutes. ‘Let’s go do what we came to do.’

We began making our way along the battlement. Duke Roset’s home was more like a fortified castle than a traditional palace, a sign of both the man’s military pretensions and his anxieties over his security.
Well, I can’t really blame you, your Grace, since we’re about to threaten your personal safety.

We were about to descend the stairs leading into the upper floors of the palace when Valiana grabbed my arm. I turned and saw the look of profound shame on her face. ‘I’m sorry, Falcio. We could have been caught because of me.’

Part of me wanted to berate her, to remind her that she was inexperienced and reckless, but while that was certainly true, there was something deeper that struck me. ‘You didn’t scream,’ I said.

‘I . . . I don’t understand.’

‘When you began to slip, you stayed silent. Most people, no matter how experienced, would have cried out once they felt themselves falling. You didn’t.’

She gave me a grateful smile and turned to make her way down the stairs.

I wondered once again at Valiana’s courage and determination.
Saints
, I thought,
she could become the finest Greatcoat of any of us, one day
. Of course the chances were I wasn’t going to live long enough to see it happen.

*

Over the next half an hour we moved quickly and quietly through the palace until we reached the wing that held Duke Roset’s private apartments, slipping past guards too lazy or too ill-trained to watch for those who know how to move silently and through the shadows. Greatcoats spend a great deal of their lives sneaking into – and out of – various castles, mansions, prisons and equally well-guarded buildings; that goes with the job. Luth had its own contingent of retainers, watchmen and guards, both Knighted and otherwise, but it turned out none of them had the training we did, or the experience. Not one of them saw us as we walked into Roset’s personal wing. If we’d wanted to, we could have made our way through the deepest hallways in the palace and right to the Duke of Luth’s bedroom and stuck a knife in him. It was easy. It was too easy.

‘Something’s wrong,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’ Brasti asked.

‘Kest was right. No one is where they’re supposed to be. I’m seeing one man guarding a door when there should be two. I’ve spotted several retainers running down the halls like chickens with their heads cut off. The Knights are moving in six-man formations. They’re looking for someone, but they’re not doing it very well. They’re panicked.’

It became very clear that chaos was beginning to overtake the entire building. We moved silently in and out of corridors and empty rooms, keeping out of the way of the palace’s guards, until we stopped inside a small servant’s room that looked like it wasn’t much used. Brasti kept his ear to the door and listened.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

He held up a finger to tell me to be quiet, and only then did I realise there were voices on the other side of the door. My rapier was already drawn but I pulled a throwing knife from my coat as well, ready to throw at the first one through the door. After a few moments, the voices died down and we heard their footsteps as they walked away.

Brasti turned to us. ‘Well, I’ve figured out why things are so disorganised.’

‘What is it?’ Valiana asked.

‘It looks like we’ve arrived late for the party. Duke Roset is already dead.’

Chapter Twenty-One

The King’s Arm

Dariana came in and closed the door behind her, carefully navigating around the stacks of dishes and linens to avoid causing a crash that might draw attention to us even in the din of activity rushing through the hallways of Castle Luth. ‘It’s madness out there,’ she said, almost gleefully. ‘I guess now we know why it was so easy breaking in.’

‘I don’t understand how that was supposed to be easy,’ Valiana said, still massaging her hands. ‘I thought I was going to fall and die.’

‘That’s what being alive is supposed to feel like, pretty bird.’ Dari grinned.

‘Getting out is going to be the problem,’ Kest said. ‘We should leave now – slipping past the guards isn’t going to be easy, not now.’

‘No,’ I said, carefully retying the cords of my small bag of climbing chalk and stuffing it back into its inner pocket, ‘we need to find out what happened to Roset.’

‘Are you trying to get us killed?’ Brasti asked, grabbing me by the lapels. ‘The Duke of Luth ends up dead and the five of us are found in his castle? Do you really think there’s going to be another kindly Knight-Commander like Shuran who just happens to take our side?’

‘Think about it,’ I said, pushing his hands away. ‘The Dukes of Aramor and Luth were enemies, so the most likely person to have assassinated either one of them was the other. And yet now they’re both dead? There’s something wrong with all of this.’

Brasti snorted. ‘Only you, Falcio, would think there was something wrong with Dukes dying. Let them kill each other off – so what if every Duke in the country dies tomorrow? Who will miss them?’

I’d been asking myself that same question during our journey from Aramor to Luth: who would miss the Dukes? If the country really was falling apart, wouldn’t it be better, after the chaos, to rebuild it without the Dukes’ venal influence? But the closer we’d come to the castle, the more I’d realised I could never go through with an act of outright political assassination. When I closed my eyes I could almost see King Paelis, with that lopsided grin of his.
But you came close, didn’t you, Falcio?
He always did love watching me wrestle with my conscience.

Kest peeked out through the door. ‘The guards and Knights are rushing all over the place; there’s no real coordination. It’s like they’ve all gone mad.’

I took his place and looked out at servants and guardsmen alike, all racing up and down the halls, practically running into each other at every corner. Confusion had taken over the castle. The duchies had always been ruled by their iron-fisted Dukes; without them, no one knew what to do. Knights in plate-armour and yellow tabards were trying to establish control, but from whom would they take their orders once the dust had settled?

What I was witnessing was the very reason why King Paelis had never considered forcibly removing the Dukes from power when he was alive. I closed the door and turned to Brasti. ‘What’s happening inside this palace right now is only a small fraction of the mayhem that would engulf the country if we lost all the Dukes: Tristia would be awash in bloody civil war for years to come.’

‘Perhaps that’s what someone wants,’ Kest said. He started to say something else, then he stopped. ‘I hear something. Guardsmen are coming.’

‘They’ll pass us by like the others,’ Brasti said confidently.

‘And then what?’ Dariana asked. ‘Whoever the assassin is, you’re never going to be able to catch him with that mob of fools in the way.’

Valiana caught my eye. ‘Falcio, what about the family? You said that it wasn’t only Isault who was murdered, but his heirs as well.’

‘You’re right – if there was one assassin there could be others – and we don’t know who they’re after now.’

Dariana snorted. ‘A few hours ago you sounded as if you were ready to murder Roset yourself.’

‘Leave it,’ Kest said. He always knew which way I was headed before I did.

But Dariana ignored him. ‘Think, First Cantor: what have we got to gain here? How is any of this going to help Aline?’

‘Everyone shut up,’ Brasti whispered. ‘They’re coming this way.’ He took up a position that gave him the best vantage point to fire at anyone who came into the room. Dariana drew a long dagger from her coat and moved to the side of the door.

The five of us stood in silence. I could make out several men on the other side of the door arguing. ‘Check
every
room,’ one of them said.

‘No one goes in there – besides, there’s no way out. You’d have to be a fool to hide here. For Saints’ sake, man, you’re wounded. Go and see the healer before you bleed out.’

‘Not yet. We’ve got to—’

‘Fine. Suit yourself if you want to watch your own blood stain the floor, Knight-Sargent. I’m going to regroup with the others and get the damned search under control.’

A few moments later the knob turned and an armoured man entered the room carrying a broadsword. I was the first thing he saw. ‘You! It’s you! I damned well—’

Kest’s hand whipped out and grabbed the Knight by the back of the neck, yanking him into the room and shutting the door behind him.

‘Speak softly, Sir Knight,’ Dariana said, the point of her blade at the Knight’s throat.

The Knight’s eyes darted back and forth between her blade and the rest of us. You could almost see his mind working desperately to find a way to hold us all off long enough to get help. Brasti noticed it too, and aimed his arrow at the Knight’s stomach. ‘Make one move, metal man, one small sound, and I’ll send this arrow straight through your—’ Brasti leaned in closer and after a moment he slackened his grip on the string. ‘Falcio, I think someone’s already done this guy in.’

He was right. There was a tiny hole in the belly of the man’s chestplate and blood was slowly dripping out of it.

‘You!’ the Knight repeated, stumbling backwards against the door. ‘I
knew
it was you. I could tell—’

‘We didn’t—’

The Knight dropped his sword and reached up to pull off his helm. Shoulder-length brown hair framed a soft face with a short beard. ‘I knew I remembered that voice, Falcio.’

‘Who are you?’ Kest asked just as the Knight fell to his knees.

‘The Knight looked up at Kest and grinned. You don’t recognise me? It’s—’

‘Nile,’ I said. ‘Kest, it’s Nile.’

Nile, the son of a fisherman who took up the sword to fight for the Duchy of Pertine during a brief war with raiders from Avares, who came back to find his family gone and wandered aimlessly until we found him defending a broken old man from being kicked to death by a Lord’s nephew. Nile Padgeman, Eighth Cantor of the Greatcoats, called the King’s Arm.

‘Saints, Nile, what happened?’ I asked.

Nile shook his head briefly and winced, and as if in response, the blood began to flow faster from the wound in his stomach. ‘He got me, Falcio. The bastard really got me.’

*

As we managed to get Nile seated with his back against the door Brasti voiced the question we were all asking. ‘Saints, Nile, what in the name of Saint Zaghev’s bony arse are you doing here?’

We used to call Nile ‘the King’s Arm’ because even though he wasn’t an especially big man he was so strong he could arm-wrestle men twice his size. The King used to joke that if we could just introduce arm-wrestling as a duelling option into Tristian culture, Nile could single-handedly win the King’s peace for all time.

‘Oh, hello, Brasti,’ Nile said, his voice weaker. A thin trickle of blood mixed with the spittle coming from his mouth. ‘You look . . . older. Wouldn’t have recognised any of you if I hadn’t had word you were coming.’

‘I am not—’ Brasti began, reaching a hand up to his hair.

Kest slapped him on the arm. ‘Focus.’ He turned his attention to Nile. ‘Who told you we were coming?’

‘Got word from Aramor – some little git of a Knight said the three of you might be coming here. You’ll be happy to hear he said there was a reasonable chance you
hadn’t
just participated in the murder of Duke Isault.’

Nile was reaching for one of the metal clasps near the shoulder of his breastplate. I knelt down and helped him undo it.

‘Ah, thanks,’ he said. ‘Gods-damned armour. Five years and I still can’t stand it. I miss my coat. Should’ve kept it with me, but I couldn’t risk someone finding it. You know I had to bury the thing three miles from here? It’s by a lake . . . I wonder if it’s still in good shape. Probably should’ve burned it, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it.’ His eyes looked as if they were going in and out of focus. Then he saw Valiana. ‘Oh, hello there, my pretty. What’s your name?’

‘Valiana,’ she replied.

‘You’re a Greatcoat?’

‘I’m . . .’ She hesitated for a moment and looked at me as if asking for permission.

‘One of the finest,’ Brasti said, and for a moment I resented his quick response because it might make it sound as if I didn’t believe in her.

Nile smiled and reached out a gauntleted hand to touch her arm. ‘Don’t look so frightened, my Lady. I’m dying from a belly wound, not the winter flu.’

Valiana knelt down next to him and gripped his hand in hers. ‘Well, as long as it’s not catching.’

Nile laughed. ‘Ah. Hmm. Say, I’d swear I’ve seen a portrait of you. Gaudy damned thing sent by the Bitch-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. Did that foul old woman ever mention me? I caused her trouble a time or two.’

Valiana hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘She spoke of you many times. She said you were one of the few Greatcoats she feared, and that if she could see you dead at her hand she’d end her days a happy woman.’

Nile gave a chortle. ‘Oh, I like this one, Falcio. She knows how to lie with a straight face. Should’ve been a court lady. Now that I think of it, weren’t you supposed to be Queen at some point? So many damned women trying to be Queen these days – what about you?’ he said, looking at Dariana. ‘You want to be Queen too?’

She snorted. ‘Not bloody likely.’

‘Smart woman. Terrible job from what I understand. The King seemed to hate it.’ Nile craned his neck forward a little. ‘You know, you look just like Shanilla’s little girl. Do you remember Shanilla, Falcio?’

I did. Shanilla was one of Greatcoats I’d admired the most. She knew the King’s Laws and she knew how to fight, but she always tried to keep the peace when she could. She and Winnow had been like sisters. I only barely remembered her having a daughter, though. Was this Dariana’s secret?
Focus
, I reminded myself. ‘What are you doing here, Nile?’ I asked. ‘And don’t bother telling me I look older too because I’ve been tortured and poisoned and I’ve died at least once.’

Nile gave a little laugh that became a cough. I pulled a piece of cloth from one of my pockets and wiped the bloody spit from his mouth.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Some water?’

We all glanced around the room and I spotted a jug sitting on a sideboard. Kest jumped up and brought it over. Looking inside it and sniffing, he said, ‘It’s wine, I think.’

‘Even better,’ Nile said. ‘Give it here.’

Brasti and I supported Nile while Kest poured a thimbleful of the wine into his mouth.

‘Come on, Kest,’ he complained. ‘You always were a prude. I’m dying here.’

Kest gave him a little more, but when Nile tried to reach for the jug, he said, ‘I’m sorry, Nile, but we need answers and getting you drunk won’t help.’

‘It’ll help me—’

‘Nile,’ I said, ‘whoever did this is out there. We need to find him while we still can.’

‘He’s long gone, Falcio,’ Nile replied. ‘You won’t find him – not unless he wants you to, and I don’t think you can take him.’

‘Let me deal with that. First tell me what in all the Saints’ names you’re doing here.’

Nile glanced sideways at me. ‘The King, of course.’

‘What about him?’ Brasti asked.

‘It was his command to me. His last one . . . that day at Castle Aramor, when he met with each of us? He told me to come here and guard the Duke.’

‘How?’

Nile shrugged. ‘It was King Paelis, Falcio. When did he ever give us enough information? He just told me I had to come and guard the Duke for as long as I could.’

‘So you just up and joined the Ducal Knights?’ Brasti asked.

Nile grinned. ‘It was easier than you’d think. I had some Patents of Nobility made up – you remember Pimar? That kid who used to wait on the King? Turns out he was a hell of a forger. He swore to me up and down that the King himself had found a teacher for him and ordered him to learn. Gods, King Paelis was a strange man. Why did we follow him, exactly?’

‘Because everyone else was worse,’ Kest replied.

‘Ah, right, I knew there was a reason. Anyway, Knighthood’s a lot less complicated than they make it out, even with all their rules and codes and “thees” and “thous”. Basically, you have to come from a noble family—’

‘Or have a good forger,’ Brasti said.

‘Right, or that. Hardly anybody checks anyway, since as far as the Dukes are concerned, the Knights are just a bunch of slightly more effective soldiers. Anyway, once you’re in, rank’s of no more use except at tourneys and the like. Once I got the hang of the lance and wearing all this damned metal all the time, it wasn’t so hard.’

‘So you became a Knight-Sargent?’ I asked.

‘Could’ve made Knight-Captain if I’d wanted, but that would have meant more travel, whereas the Knight-Sargents are usually the ones commanding the Duke’s guards.’

‘And you’ve been guarding him for the past five years?’

Nile smiled. ‘Easiest job I ever had, Falcio. The food’s good, the pay is – well, it’s more than a fucking Greatcoat’s, I promise you that. Women pretty much flock to you and no one expects you to marry them.’ Nile looked over to Brasti. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t joined up.’

‘I would have,’ he said, ‘if they weren’t so squeamish about archery.’

‘Fair enough.’ Nile closed his eyes.

‘Help me get him out of this thing,’ I said to Kest, pointing at the breastplate.

Nile reached a gauntleted hand over and grabbed my arm. ‘You do that and I’m just going to bleed out all over the place. It’s keeping my insides together.’ He tried to look down at the small hole in the plate of his armour. ‘Can you believe the bastard managed to get a poignard through that? Thin damned thing, looked like it would break right off. Even if I’d been fast enough, I’m not sure I’d have bothered to parry it. And yet . . .’