*
I did think it kind of odd that in my entire life I had never been poisoned before Rijou, and since then I’d been poisoned three times. In the past I’d been beaten, yes, tortured, yes, and had cuts, bruises, wounds from arrows and bolts, and countless encounters with the pointy end of someone else’s blade, but never poison.
Now I couldn’t get away from the stuff.
I was lying back against the wall of the cave as the feeling began to fade from my toes and fingers. I could feel the numbness travelling ever so slowly up my arms and legs, and I wondered what would happen when it reached my heart.
The lack of feeling was strangely pleasant. I hadn’t realised how many pains I had accumulated in my limbs over the past few weeks – Saints, over the past many years.
I wondered why all this had happened. The Duchess and her conspiracy – that I understood, as much as one can ever understand madness, hunger for power and avarice combined, but much of the rest was still a confusing haze to me. I suppose that’s the way it goes. Poets and minstrels see the whole picture, but people like me live their whole lives inside one or two cleverly worded lines and never know what they really mean.
I heard Aline returning with Kest and Brasti. Valiana was with them too.
‘Gods, what’s happened to him? Falcio, where are you hurt?’ Brasti asked.
‘Almost nowhere, now,’ I said, smiling.
He knelt down beside me, and I suppose whatever the Duchess used must do something to the colour of your face because Brasti asked, ‘Poison?’
I nodded. Or I think I did. I couldn’t tell any more. I felt light-headed.
Valiana moved to the other side of me and Brasti grabbed her arm. ‘What do we do—? What can we do for him?’
Sad eyes looked into mine for a moment before she said, ‘I don’t know. I believe it’s neatha. My mother – the Duchess, I mean – she used it on her enemies sometimes. No one ever survived. It is very quick, but it’s not painful.’
With some of the last feeling in my face I felt something wet hit my cheek. Brasti had tears in his eyes.
‘Gods, man, don’t you start now,’ I said softly. ‘We’re going to get a terrible reputation if we just keep travelling across the countryside crying all the time.’
‘Falcio?’
‘Hello, my nameless friend. Have you thought of something to call yourself yet?’
‘I am so sorry …’
‘Don’t,’ I said, my tongue thick in my mouth. ‘Nothing to be sorry for. Just be something now. Be something that counts.’
She looked at me for a moment, shy and unsure. ‘Is there a feminine version of “Falcio” in Pertine?’ she asked.
‘I think “Falcio” is feminine enough,’ Brasti said reflexively, unable to hold back the impulse to joke, and making me hopeful for him again.
‘No,’ I croaked, ‘But I like “Valiana”. It’s a good name.’
‘It’s not mine,’ she said.
‘Then take it. Make it yours.’
She looked down at me, tears in her eyes.
‘I know what this poison does,’ Valiana said. ‘And I know I’m not that important, so I won’t take up much time—’
‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘Be important. If … If I give you a name, will you take it?’
She wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘I will take anything you give me, for it will be more than I have now, and more mine than anything I have been given before.’
I took a moment to gather my breath. I wanted to say this properly. ‘You don’t have to be the victim of someone else’s story. You can be a Greatcoat. You can be …’ I was reaching for the word when suddenly I understood the one thing I’d been looking for all these years. The one thing I could never find. The one thing even the King couldn’t give me.
‘You can be my answer, Valiana val Mond,’ I said softly. Something warm slipped down my cheeks and I guessed they were my own tears this time.
She put a hand on my chest and said to me, ‘My name is Valiana val Mond of the Greatcoats. And I am Falcio val Mond’s daughter, and his answer to the world.’
Then she was gone, and Brasti came and kissed me on the forehead and I had something very clever to say about that but I’m pretty sure nothing came out.
I felt as if I were floating up from the bottom of a lake, my eyes half seeing the world of the water and half the world of the sky. I could see a hilltop not unlike my homeland, but this one was green and rich and blessedly free of those damned blue flowers. There was a figure standing there, and I could see him clear as could be: it was my King, and he was saying something to me but I couldn’t make it out.
I could see the girl, Aline, kneeling over me in this world, and though I couldn’t see as well there as I could in the clear world, I could hear her crying.
I tried as hard as I could and I managed to say, ‘Smile for me. Just once.’ She probably thought I wanted her to feel better, but the truth was that I really did need to see that damned smile again.
And she did.
And suddenly I understood it – all of it. The attack on her family, the King’s mysterious jewels, the Tailor’s cryptic words and, most of all, her name.
So maybe those of us who live our whole lives in just those few lines do get to know what it all means, after all.
I saw my King again but I still couldn’t quite hear him. He had someone with him, and I think he was trying to introduce me. The figure came into focus – it was her. She looked like a different person to me, perhaps because my memories of her had drifted over the years. Paelis had sworn he would bring her back to me one day, my beautiful, sweet wife Aline, and he had fulfilled his vow. My King had named his daughter after her, and now she looked at me with a very annoyed expression. I wondered if the dead knew when we spoke to them, and if the rather unfortunate things I had said about her during my hallucinations on the road to kill the King might have reached her. If so, I would have some explaining to do.
The clear world began to pull me away entirely, but I struggled against it. Damn it, I thought, I’ve done enough for Saints and Gods and you’re going to give me this moment.
‘Kest,’ I croaked, and I saw him kneel next to me. His face was still covered in blood, and those cuts didn’t look good at all.
‘Falcio,’ he said softly.
‘You look terrible,’ I said. I knew somewhere a God or Saint was wondering why they had given me a few more minutes if I was just going to be rude but I didn’t care. ‘The girl,’ I whispered. ‘It’s her, the King’s jewel. His Charoite.’
‘I know. Brasti figured it out, if you can believe that.’ Then he smiled. ‘Can you imagine? The King’s grand plan to save the world after he was gone was to go out and bed a few noblewomen so that we could find his offspring and put them in power.’ I felt Kest’s hand on my shoulder. ‘She doesn’t know, Falcio. She still thinks she’s the daughter of Lord Tiarren. The Tailor is talking to her now.’
‘She’s going to be Queen,’ I tried to say, but the words were barely a whisper now. ‘And you …’
‘I know,’ he said, ‘now comes the hard part. But with a hundred Greatcoats at our backs, I like our chances.’
I tried shaking my head. Not me, I tried to say. I’ve done my duty. I’ve solved the King’s damned riddle and fought his damned battles. I’m going away now to see him again, to listen to his mad dreams and his bad jokes, to sit under shady trees with my wife.
‘Said your goodbyes, have you?’
The voice was old and mean and full of hard-packed sand. My vision blurred in and out and back again and finally settled on the ugly face of the Tailor.
Please don’t let her face be the last thing I remember of this world.
She laughed. ‘Ah, Falcio, ever the sense of humour.’
Through the dull softness of the poison I felt a hard, callused hand grip my jaw and shake me. ‘All done?’ she asked. ‘Said all your goodbyes?’
I tried to tell her that I had, that I was ready now.
‘I can hear you just fine, Falcio.’
Good. Then let me go. And can I suggest you do something about your breath?
She ignored the jibe – or maybe she had lied about being able to hear me. ‘Ready to make the sacrifice now, Falcio?’ she asked.
I already did. I did everything he asked of me.
I slipped under the water again – or was it out of the water? I felt my King’s hand on my shoulder, my wife’s fingertips touching my cheek. The air was scented, pine and baked bread. I want to wake up to this, now.
‘Get the girl over here.’ The harsh voice of the Tailor broke through the sounds of leaves rustling and running streams. ‘Kest, give me your sword.’
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘Just you shut up and do as you’re told. Saint or not, I can still put a beating on you better’n you deserve.’
The hand on my jaw shook me again. Foul breath filled my senses and dragged me back into the world. ‘Do you want to know how the neatha works, Falcio?’ the Tailor asked.
No. Why would I care?
She shook me again, and my vision returned for a second. The Tailor’s face was close to mine. In her hand she held Kest’s sword. Aline stood behind her.
‘It’s a powdered form of the soft candy, Falcio – just what you forced Paelis to have his apothecaries make. It works by tricking your body into letting go of itself. That’s why it doesn’t hurt. The poison’s not killing you – it’s just letting you die. It takes away will and need and the stubborn anger of relentless life. Ironic, isn’t it?’
Not especially. Her mention of the King made me seek him out again, but she shook my jaw a third time. ‘No, no, Falcio. You haven’t answered my question. Are you ready to make the sacrifice?’
Yes! Yes, you foul old bitch. I’ve sacrificed everything. I fought for his laws and I fought for his daughter. I’ve fought and fought and fought until all that’s left of me is a blade in my hand and anger in my heart. I’ve made the sacrifice. Now let me go!
‘Ah, you fool. Dying isn’t sacrifice. Haven’t you figured that out yet? All those years of trying to get yourself killed in battle? That ain’t sacrifice, boy. That’s self-loathing. It’s gleeful suicide. It’s vanity.’