There’s always been a fundamental flaw with the whole idea of the Greatcoats. It all sounds great in theory, of course: travelling magistrates who can navigate not only the esoteric laws of the Kingdom and its nine Duchies, but who also possess the skill with a blade to enforce their verdicts through trial by combat when necessary. In a country like Tristia, where the duel is an almost sacred tradition, wouldn’t you want your judges to be able to fight?
The only problem is that the mind of a duellist works very differently from that of a magistrate. When conducting a trial, the judge must be open-minded, able to weigh every aspect of the case, to carefully consider each argument and to withhold judgement until the most balanced verdict can be identified and declared. Any duellist who thinks that way will be killed in the first exchange of blows. To survive as a swordsman, you have to find an opening and exploit it without hesitation, finishing the fight before the opponent even realises it’s begun.
For someone like me, this can be problematic.
‘A pleasant evening to you, Duchess Tarindelle,’ I said, proud of myself not only for remembering to use her full name, but also for keeping my hands from reaching through the bars and throttling her. Although self-restraint in this particular case was profoundly unsatisfying, the country was balanced on a knife’s edge, my King’s dream was in tatters and my instincts as a duellist had led to no end of stupid mistakes. Time for the magistrate to be in charge for a while.
She curtsied, letting pale blue silk rustle against the stone flags of the dungeon. It was an almost perfect copy in colour and style of Ethalia’s favourite gown. ‘And a pleasant evening to you, First Cantor. You don’t seem surprised to see me.’
‘I’m not.’ Nor was I surprised that she would use even the clothes she wore as a tool to manipulate me.
Trin tilted her head like a cat, as though she needed both her eyes to see me through the gap in the bars. ‘How did you know I was listening to that little sham of a “trial” your so-called Dal Verteri friends held? I thought I’d been remarkably silent.’
‘You were,’ I replied. ‘I neither saw nor heard you, nor did anyone else.’
She looked surprised. ‘Then how did you—?’
‘Because you’re you, Duchess. Spying and intrigue and murder are what you do. You ask how I knew you were there? Because a hundred guards didn’t come in to arrest everyone in the room. That’s how I knew.’
That earned me a smile. ‘So clever, Falcio. It’s just one of the things I love about—’
‘Enough,’ I said.
She stared through the bars at me and for once I tried to keep the anger from my features, to remove all the disdain and outrage, the disgust and despair. I wanted her to see me for who I really was – and perhaps she in turn might drop her mask and reveal her true self to me.
The coquettish smile disappeared. ‘Enough,’ she agreed.
We stood there silently for a long time. There is something strange, almost otherworldly, about being so close to your bitterest enemy. We shared a terrible intimacy in that moment, a brief pause in our endless sparring, and I found myself wondering if in some other life we might have been friends, or more.
‘I am pleased to see you,’ she said. The words had no inflection, no forced charm or smirking contempt.
The one common bond between magistrate and duellist is that both must be skilled in discerning intent, no matter how well hidden it might be. Trin was genuinely pleased to see me; on some peculiar level she really did like me. ‘Ask me your question,’ she said.
‘What question is that, your Grace?’
‘Are you testing me, Falcio? You want to know what happens next, if by some miracle you do find a way to save this poor little country of ours. You want some sense of what your sacrifice – and that of all the others – would yield.’
I sat down on the cot. ‘And will you answer me truthfully, your Grace?’
‘I’m offended, my tatter-cloak.’ Trin looked around until she spotted the guard’s stool and brought it over. She sat, altogether too elegant for her rough surroundings. ‘Ask yourself a question, Falcio: have I ever lied to you?’
‘Everything about you is deception.’
She spread her hands. ‘Then you should have no difficulty naming a single instance in which I lied to you.’
I couldn’t, of course: for all her schemes and games, for all the conspiracies she’d hatched, the falsehoods she’d told others – even when she’d been masquerading as Valiana’s handmaiden – I realised she’d never actually lied to me.
‘Remarkable,’ I said at last.
Again that smile. ‘I am besotted with you, Falcio val Mond. I honestly can’t explain why, but there is something about you that draws me in. I sometimes wish . . .’
She let that word – ‘wish’ – dangle before me.
Sitting there on opposite sides of the bars of a cell, I felt like I finally truly understood Trin: she was a monster who revelled in destroying her enemies and she was also a tormented young woman genuinely able to admire people, perhaps even to love them. And scarily, the two Trins weren’t separate sides of a coin but inextricably intertwined with each other.
I really would have preferred it if she’d just picked one side.
‘Don’t look so apprehensive, Falcio,’ she said. ‘I’m not in love with you – entranced, certainly, but not in love.’
‘Well, to be fair, your Grace, you don’t know me that well – other than having tortured me and tried to have me killed several times, of course.’
I’d expected a laugh or some clever reply, but instead she shook her head. ‘I do know the difference between love and infatuation. I love Filian. I quite expected to hate him, growing up – the idea that my mother was raising the King’s son to rule in my stead if her plans for me failed?’ She shuddered, very elegantly. ‘Believe me, I considered killing him any number of times, just to remove the temptation that she might switch horses in midstream.’
‘Why didn’t you?’
She sighed theatrically – but for her, every move, every sentence was a performance. ‘You spoke to him, didn’t you? On the journey back from Avares?’
‘I did.’
‘And what did you find?’
‘He is intelligent, like his father, and curious about people. He’s given a great deal of thought to what it means to rule a nation wisely. He has studied many different philosophies on how to govern, and he balances those against the plight of this country.’
‘Does he remind you of King Paelis?’
‘Very much.’
‘And do you think he would make a good King?’
‘He would,’ I admitted.
‘Then you must—’
‘If it weren’t for you.’
She smiled then, as if I’d complimented her, before rising from her stool.
‘Have you decided not to answer my questions, your Grace?’ I asked.
She stopped. ‘I’ve answered the only question that matters, Falcio. You are trying to judge whether it is best for you and the other Orders to fight for Tristia, or whether to let the Magdan and his warriors take it over in favour of a new system of government. Before you can render your verdict, you wish to know what Filian’s rule would mean for our people.’