Knight's Shadow (25 page)

‘What can we do for you?’ I asked.

‘Nothing. Reckon I’ve got about another ten minutes before I pass out and maybe thirty more after that before I go and find Paelis in whatever hell he’s in now and beat the shit out of him.’ Nile looked at me and laughed. ‘Hah! You should see your expression, Falcio. You never could stand to hear anyone say anything bad about the King, could you?’

‘The assassin, Nile, what was he like?’

‘He was an assassin, Falcio. They don’t exactly make it easy for you to identify them. The room was nearly pitch-black but I think he . . . you know, wore a mask and was generally in dark clothes. I suspect that makes it easier.’

‘How many times have there been attempts on the Duke’s life?’

‘Over the past five years? Other than this time?’

I nodded.

‘None,’ Nile said.

‘None? No one’s
ever
tried to kill him?’

‘Who’s going to do it? The peasants and townsfolk have been under his heel for ever, and none of the nobles would ever dare try it.’

‘What about other Dukes?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘There’s no way – hey, d’you know what I discovered over the past five years? Tristia’s main agricultural crop is spies – not spies against foreign countries, mind you, but ones who spend all their time right here in Tristia. I tell you, Falcio, every castle in the country is bulging with spies from every other castle. If a Duke ever tried to send an assassin after another Duke, chances are he’d be discovered before he even finished writing down the order.’

Nile coughed again, and this time there was a lot more blood. I didn’t think he had much longer. ‘Then who did this? Who could—?’ I asked.

‘No, tell me how he moved,’ Kest said, his eyes peering into Nile’s.

‘Leave it,’ I said.

‘No, I need to know.’

Nile looked straight ahead at the wall opposite. ‘He was flowing, like a river.’ He waved his hand out in front of himself in tiny figures-of-eights. ‘It was like trying to outwit an eel. Slippery. Fast.’

I’d only once ever encountered men who moved the way Nile was describing. ‘Nile, are you telling me the assassin was a
Dashini
?’

‘You know, at first I thought it might be, but he never spat any of that damned dust at me – you know? The stuff that makes you pee your pants while they kill you? But now that I’m thinking about it, he did move the way the stories tell. Say, is it true you fought one in Rijou?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘You know people are saying it was actually two of them. Don’t suppose that’s true, is it?’

I nodded.

‘Saints,’ he said. ‘You killed
two
Dashini? How in all the hells did you accomplish that?’

‘I said some things that threw them off guard just long enough to—’

‘Hah,’ Nile laughed, blood now dripping freely from his mouth, ‘isn’t that ironic? You always did talk people to death, Falcio.’

Valiana reached out to wipe the blood from his mouth but he took her hand instead and held it next to his heart, and then, just like that, without so much as a gurgle or a sigh, Nile Padgeman died. Valiana kept hold of his hand. Even though she’d barely even met the man, she hung on until she was sure his spirit was truly gone and then, only then did she let go, and the tears started to roll silently down her cheeks. I loved her for those tears.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The Duke’s Wife

‘Falcio, we’ve got to get out of here,’ Brasti said.

‘Just a minute,’ I said, passing my hand over Nile’s eyes to close the lids. ‘We should take him with us.’

Kest looked down at me. ‘We can’t. Chances are we’re going to have to fight our way out as it is.’

‘We can’t leave him here,’ I said. Nile deserved better than to be left soaking in his own blood in a servant’s room. He deserved a proper burial, and not in this damned armour but in his own coat. ‘Where did Nile say he buried his coat? By a lake? We can take him there and—’

Kest knelt down to face me. ‘We can’t, Falcio; you know that. They think he’s a Knight here. They’ll bury him with full Knight’s honours.’

Nile would have hated that idea. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why did the King send him here to guard a damned Duke? Did he send Winnow too? Is that why she was in Aramor?’ I felt sick inside.
Had he ordered her to become Isault’s mistress, too?

Kest put his hands on both sides of my face, an odd gesture; he only did it on those occasions when he thought I was losing my mind. ‘Winnow is dead. Nile is dead. The King is dead. Falcio, you have to decide if you want us to die, too, because soon—’

‘Too late,’ Dariana said, leaping to the side of the door and readying her blade.

‘How many?’ Kest asked.

‘More than enough,’ came a deep baritone voice. The door opened and a man in armour with a Knight-Captain’s insignia on his livery came into view. Brasti aimed right for the man’s helmed head, but the Knight put up a hand. ‘Loose that arrow and the full might of the Duke’s guards will fall on you, Trattari.’

‘What happens if I don’t?’ Brasti asked.

‘You.’ The Knight was pointing at me. ‘The Lady Beytina has asked for you.’

‘And who is this Beytina supposed to be?’

‘The
Lady
Beytina is Duke Roset’s wife and, as of about three hours ago, the new ruler of Luth. She is also, for a very short while at any rate, the only thing stopping me from stringing up a rope and hanging the lot of you in the middle of the hallway.’

‘Why would she ask for us?’ Brasti asked.

The Knight snorted. ‘She didn’t.’ He pointed a gauntleted hand at me. ‘She asked for
you
, Falcio val Mond, First something-or-other of the Tatter-cloaks.’

My blade whispered from its sheath.

The guards outside the room tensed but the Knight stopped them. ‘Leave it,’ he said.

‘How could she even know I was here?’ I asked.

The Knight-Captain glanced back at his men. ‘You see what I was talking about? These Trattari – they all think they’re so damned clever.’ He turned back to me. ‘We had word from our spies days ago about what happened in Aramor. Duke Roset knew you’d come here, shaking your fist and demanding some kind of redress for his imaginary crimes.’

I considered our options. The doorway was narrow, which would make it hard for more than one of the Knights to attack us head-on, but by the same token, we had no way out. There were men with crossbows who needed only to fire over the shoulder of their captain to get at us, and we were packed into the little room too tightly to be able to take cover.

‘What assurances do I have as to the Lady Beytina’s intentions?’ I asked finally.

‘The Duchess wants to talk to you privately. More than that, I don’t need to know. Neither do you.’

‘Aren’t you afraid I might assassinate her?’

‘Not really,’ the Knight said. ‘The assassin got to her already.’ He pointed to Nile. ‘Knight-Sargent Kylen there tried to protect her but the assassin’s blade got her in the lung. She’s dying.’

*

I could hear Lady Beytina wheezing from the open door to her room.

‘Fluid in the lungs,’ Kest said. He has always had an uncanny ability to discern any condition that leads to a painful death.

Two guards in yellow livery stood in our way, doing their best not to look nervous, which only magnified the degree to which they seemed terrified of us.

‘Stay back, Trattari,’ the more senior of the two said.

A soft, broken voice came from inside the room. ‘Let them in, Rasten. They aren’t the ones who did this and there’s little more they could do to me now at any rate.’

The guards stood aside and we were allowed entry into the Lady’s room. It was a grand place, with blue and silver trim brightening the dark oak-panelled walls. There were no fewer than three mirrors, two hanging on the walls and one especially ornate one set in a gilded wooden frame carved with elaborate flowers standing near the centre of the room. A small door opened to a dressing room on one side; inside, I could see armoires and racks of clothing.

I remembered what I’d heard about the Lady Beytina now. She had married Duke Roset, three decades her senior, very recently. She was only a few years out of her teens, a very pretty, graceful girl likely just becoming used to the trappings of wealth and power.

‘Here,’ she wheezed. ‘Please, come here, Trattari.’

I left the others by the door and approached her. Two young women knelt by the Lady’s bed, holding her hands while an elderly woman with curly grey hair removed a white towel laden with pale green blades of grass and yellow flower petals from Beytina’s forehead. She replaced it with another towel, similarly filled.

‘It’s called feypurse,’ Beytina said. ‘They tell me it will cure me in no time.’

She was more than pretty; even now she was a stunningly beautiful woman. Long yellow hair, which should have been damp and matted from sweat and fever, had been carefully brushed and arranged just so on her pillows, framing a face pale and pained, and yet still painted the white of alabaster rather than allowing the grey of imminent death to show through. She had a wreath of small blue flowers around her neck which echoed the shadows of a similar hue around her eyes. She looked like one of those paintings of Saint Werta-who-walks-the-waves that often adorn the cabins of wealthy ships’ captains.

I found the whole scene pathetic.

This is how the rich met their ends – neither bravely nor cowardly, but prettily. Such was Beytina’s vanity that even as she made her way inch by inch to Death’s chamber she insisted on looking as if she would rise from her bed at any moment and lead a company of great lords and ladies in a country dance. I wanted to tell her that she was well dead, even now; that a man had snuck into her castle and killed her without a thought to her beauty or her grace or her manners; that there were no doubt many heavens that awaited the soon-to-be-departed but that in all likelihood none of them would open their doors to her.

‘They tell stories of your beauty, my Lady,’ I said when I reached her bedside. ‘None of them do you justice.’

She smiled at me, and I saw the first tiny blur in her eyes that heralded the coming of tears. She blinked them back. ‘Thank you, Trattari.’

She shook off the hands of the girls keeping her company and waved them away, along with the healer. I looked back at Kest and Brasti, who were waiting at the entrance, and they left as well. The guards closed the door behind us.

‘You asked to see me, my Lady,’ I said. ‘Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?’

She gave a small laugh that turned into a hacking cough, displacing the carefully arranged hair and causing the towel to slip awkwardly halfway down her forehead. ‘Please,’ she said, ‘no jests.’

I reached over and carefully began to replace the towel packed with herbs.

‘No,’ she said, ‘get this stupid thing off me.’

I lifted the towel from the bed and then thought of how it might look when the others returned. ‘Are you sure? Isn’t it supposed to—’

‘Don’t be an idiot. You can’t heal internal bleeding with a compress of weeds and flower petals,’ she said.

‘Do you want me to tell your men to find another healer?’

‘That flittering idiot I just sent away was as good as we have here,’ she said. ‘The old fool will give you any number of sweetly flavoured tinctures and pleasant-smelling salves but she wouldn’t know how to prepare ginroot if it grew between her toes.’

‘You have some experience at medicine?’ I asked.

‘I was training to be a healer myself,’ Beytina replied. ‘I was in my final year, in fact, when the Duke met me by chance and set a new course for my life.’ She tried to push herself up on the bed but failed. Her eyes turned to me.

I helped her to sit up, trying not to jostle her in the process.

‘Do you want to hear something funny, Greatcoat?’ she asked while I was still moving her. ‘The healers who come from the small towns and villages – the ones who learn from their mothers and their mothers’ mothers; the ones who prepare foul-tasting potions and rancid-smelling ointments – they actually
cure
people sometimes. And yet the ones trained to work inside the Ducal houses – the ones who learn from the great masters – they are largely ineffective. Oh, they can give you all kinds of very masterful-sounding names for things, but they don’t actually heal you at all.’

‘It’s a wonder any of the nobles survive having a cold,’ I said.

She smiled wanly. ‘They –
we
, I mean – eat well and stay out of the cold. We don’t get wounded very often and we never suffer from hunger or thirst. But when we do get sick, we have neither the medicines to cure our conditions nor the hardiness to sustain us. We are like very tall, very pretty glass vases: throw one stone and we fall to pieces.’ She spread her arms out in a beatific pose. ‘We are full of useless beauty.’

It surprised me that she was so conscious of her condition. The nobles had so carefully constructed their world to keep out the rabble that they would never trust a peasant healer or village witchy-woman in their presence. They were, as the Lady said, incredibly fragile.

‘And yet,’ I said, ‘you seem quite determined to go into the next world looking—’

She smiled, though only one side of her mouth rose to the occasion. ‘Beauty, however lacking in real value, is all the wealth I’ve been able to count on in my life. It got me admitted into school when I didn’t have the money; it earned me a Duke’s hand when I didn’t have a noble name. I have to assume the Gods are just as shallow as the rest of us. Tell me, do you think I should pray to Orros or to Lepheys before I die?’

‘Who, your Grace?’

‘Orros is what we call the God Coin in the Duchy of Luth. Lepheys is the Goddess of Love, but she is sometimes a jealous deity, or so the clerics tell us. Purgeize, God of War, isn’t much better, but surely he will grant me some favour if only I die as pretty as I lived?’

‘I’m afraid I have very little experience with the Gods, my Lady.’

She nodded as if I’d said something wise. ‘True. The Gods do not appear for the small folk, do they? My husband told me once that Orros spoke to him, but I’m not entirely sure Roset wasn’t making fun of me.’ She closed her eyes for a moment. ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter. The noble healers are at least very good with opiates. I feel no pain at all now.’

Despite the glibness of her words, her eyes began filling with tears again. She talked a good game, but I could see she was not just afraid but terrified, and I felt ashamed at my earlier dismissal of her. Regardless of her husband’s actions, she was a young woman about to die for no better reason than that she had accepted an offer of marriage that she could hardly have refused.

‘If you ask it of me, Lady, I will go quickly and seek out a better healer. There is a village not far from here. I could be back within a day.’

She stared back at me for a moment, then said, ‘Give me your hand.’

I reached out, assuming she wanted me to help her rise. Instead she took my hand in hers, brought it to her lips and kissed it once. ‘I like the fact that you would try to save me even though on a different day you would just as likely see me dead. Do you think it’s my pathetic situation that sways you, or the pretty flowers in my hair?’

‘Neither, my Lady.’

‘Please tell me it’s not out of honour or duty, for I’m quite sure I would never believe you.’

‘No, my Lady. I . . .’ There was no good reason for me to comfort her, and certainly no reason to be truthful with her, but she was scared and hurting, and pain and suffering deserves some kind of answer. ‘I was married once.’

‘Was she as pretty as me?’ Beytina asked.

I found it an odd question. ‘She was not half so pretty as you, my Lady, but twice as beautiful.’

The Lady gave a small laugh. ‘Good answer. If I meet your wife in the Afterworlds I will be sure to let her know of both your kindness and your fidelity. But go on, tell me about this woman of yours. Was she especially saintly?’

I thought about my wife, Aline, with her wicked smiles and nasty jokes – the way she’d badger vendors at the market until they would shake their heads in disgust as they looked down at the paltry price she’d paid for their best wares, and then the way she’d come back and give the same man a cake she’d baked as a gift. I remembered the times she would refuse to give even a black penny to the clerics, and how once she’d even stolen from a church, only to use the money to buy meals for the children waiting outside. I remembered the way she would call me a coward if I backed down from our more aggressive neighbours one day, only to beg me not to fight when . . .

‘She was sensible,’ I said. ‘She disliked waste and meanness.’

‘And so?’

‘And so when I look at you, I simply ask myself what Aline would have told me to do. I think she would have said—’

Beytina gave a little snort. ‘Husband, go get that prissy rich woman a good country healer!’

‘Something like that.’

‘And how would you have replied?’

I spoke my next words as gently as I could. ‘I would have told her that a day or even half a day would still be too long. That you have fluid in your lungs and all that’s left is to prepare for the end.’

The Lady reached for my hand again. I didn’t want to touch her but I felt compelled to.
It’s just a hand
, Aline would have said.
It’s not like being stabbed is contagious
. I gave her my hand and when she squeezed it, I squeezed back a little.