‘Then who?’
I turned and left her standing there, not because I meant to be mysterious, but because even saying the name out loud made me sick to my stomach. It wasn’t fair – but then, that was the difference between a duel and a war. In a duel, it’s only your own life you throw away, not someone else’s. But I had declared war and now I was going to have to get used to the idea of trading other people’s lives for some small chance at Tristia’s survival. That’s how I’d made my choice of who to send.
I might not understand war, but I know duelling better than any man alive.
*
‘First Cantor?’ she asked, sitting cross-legged on the ground, sharpening that idiotic rusted cutlass of hers with a whetstone and cloth, oblivious to the fact that her blade had no chance of ever piercing Avarean chainmail.
‘How old are you, Chalmers?’ I asked.
‘Eighteen.’
Eighteen years old. I wondered if she’d ever even kissed someone. Chalmers was young, guileless, and lousy with a blade. She wouldn’t last five seconds in the Scorn.
‘How did you become a Greatcoat, Chalmers?’
‘I told you before: the King appointed me. He named me the—’
‘Yes, but why? You couldn’t have been more than thirteen years old. I doubt you’d had much training in the law and it’s obvious it wasn’t for any skill with a blade. So why would King Paelis make you a Greatcoat?’
She put down the whetstone and laid the sword across her lap. ‘I used to spend all my time with my grandmother.’
‘The quartermaster.’
She nodded. ‘I liked the way she had to keep track of so many different things, find out why we had too few or too many of one item or another, who took them, and why.’ Chalmers smiled. ‘I really annoyed my grandmother, all my constant questions, so she started sending me out on these little missions: “Girl, there’s a half-wheel of cheese that’s gone missing from the food stores. Go find me the culprit!” or “Girl, there should be six hammers here but I count only five. Bring me the head of the man who has the sixth!”’
‘And did you?’
Chalmers lifted her chin just a hair. ‘Every time. Including the time when someone stole a small casket of elspeth leaves from the apothecary’s supply room. I followed every trace of that casket, every scrap of blue-green leaves through every tower and passage in the entire castle. It took me nearly eight weeks, but eventually I found the thief.’
‘Who was it?’ I asked, then the answer suddenly occurred to me. ‘Paelis? You caught the King stealing elspeth leaves?’
She nodded. ‘They’re mostly used to heal cuts, but apparently you can use them to create a paste that produces an intoxicating smoke.’
I laughed. The King had been absolutely shameless in his quest to find new and interesting ways to get himself drunk or addled. ‘And so he made you a Greatcoat?’
‘Not right then, no, but he asked how I’d found him out and when I explained it to him, he said to come see him when I came of age and he’d name me to the Greatcoats.’
‘But if you were only thirteen when he died—’
‘The night before the Dukes came for him, after he’d seen you and all the others, I went to see him. He wasn’t pleased to see me, but I said that if he was so damned determined to get himself killed then I would see him fulfil his promise to me first.’
‘And so he named you.’
She nodded. ‘I became the King’s Question that day.’ She rose and put her sword in its scabbard. ‘And before you make some snide comment, I’m as much a Greatcoat as you or Kest or Brasti or any of those others.’
‘Maybe more so,’ I said.
‘How dare you—! Wait, what—?’
She was so young . . . so damned young. And yet, what had Aline said to me? In an unjust country we are all nothing but victims, and the best we can hope for is one chance to prove ourselves, to turn our death into a sacrifice for what we believe in rather than a fate that was set upon us.
‘Greatcoat, report,’ I said.
She straightened herself before me. ‘My name is Chalmers, the King’s Question,’ she said.
‘And mine is Falcio val Mond, First Cantor of the Greatcoats, once called the King’s Heart. Chalmers, I have a mission for you.’
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
The Scorn
The chill air bit through both the leather and the inner lining of my coat. The breath leaving my mouth took the form of pale clouds. It wasn’t yet full winter and I’d been in colder places and times, so it was strange to me that I felt so uncomfortable. I wondered if perhaps the Avareans had some kind of magic at their disposal that froze the blood of their enemies, or if it was simply that moments such as these resist any sense of warmth.
I hate magic, but I think I hate war much more.
The crunch of footsteps in the snow drifted towards me, two sets of them. One strode, angrily, the other was quieter, more precise. Apparently Brasti and Kest had heard about the Scorn.
‘Are you out of your fucking mind?’ Brasti demanded.
‘Probably,’ I conceded.
He and Kest came alongside me. ‘You’re sending an eighteen-year-old girl who doesn’t even have a proper greatcoat to be torn to pieces by a bunch of fucking barbarians whose only method of population control probably comes from eating their own young!’
‘There’s no other way.’
‘You could go yourself – or send Kest, or hells, if you have to, send me. I’ll die for your stupid cause if that’s what it takes.’
‘It won’t work if it’s one of the three of us.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘What won’t work?’
I didn’t answer. I found the language of war too bitter on my tongue.
Kest understood, of course. ‘You want to show the Avareans who we are,’ he said softly.
‘Except they value strength!’ Brasti shouted, far too close to my ear. ‘You’re sending the weakest among us – even Valiana had more training with a sword when she took up the coat!’
‘That’s why he’s doing it,’ Kest said. He could sense my discomfort and so he spoke for me, to shield me from even that well-deserved pain. ‘Nothing about us will impress them except our willingness to fight.’
Brasti stood in front of me. ‘So you’re sending her to die in the hope that a bunch of piss-drinking warriors admire us for it?’
‘I don’t care what the Avareans think.’
‘Please, Falcio, tell me you haven’t fooled yourself into believing you can make the Magdan put a stop to this by showing him just how courageous Chalmers is?’
‘I don’t care what he thinks either.’
‘Then . . . oh, you bloody fool.’
‘It’s the only play,’ I said.
Brasti shook his head. ‘Damn you, Falcio. Damn you and damn the King for this idiotic dream of yours. They won’t change sides. They won’t take down the Magdan for us.’
‘I don’t expect them to.’