Excellent.
‘You sign,’ Kugriek said to me. ‘We make truce with Magdan of Tristia.’
The Magdan of Tristia. I was fairly sure that was going to come back to haunt me one day.
Also on the subject of Magdans, the Avarean Warlords had demanded – on pain of abandoning the truce altogether – that they be given the right to execute Morn and punish those who’d followed him, in accordance with Avarean law.
Since I really didn’t give a shit about Morn, other than ensuring he could never threaten my homeland again, I’d agreed – but I’d demanded one concession of my own: the return of the rebel Greatcoats. The Avareans considered this a fair trade; one of the Warlords was even kind enough to offer me his favourite beheading axe – a magnanimous gesture, I thought.
The Greatcoats who’d sided with Morn were traitors, according to Tristian law, which carried the death penalty. Instead, I tried them as deserters, a lesser crime which afforded the leniency of exile. They could take a ship and depart this troubled continent for ever. You’d’ve thought they would have been a little more grateful.
‘Fuck them,’ Brasti told me as we made preparations for our return to Aramor. ‘None of them were deserving of the coat in the first place.’
‘I suspect they might have shown Falcio a bit more gratitude had he allowed them to keep theirs, actually,’ Kest observed.
That had been one of my non-negotiable terms. I’d given them their lives and their freedom. The coats came back with me.
‘Don’t think this counts as you giving me a proper greatcoat,’ Chalmers complained. I’d found one of the twenty-seven coats we’d retrieved was a perfect fit for her, and actually in much better condition than mine, but she still considered it a poor offering.
‘Stop bellyaching,’ I told her. ‘It’s a thing – an object. It’s nothing but leather with bone plates sewn inside the lining and a bunch of pockets with a few tools and tricks.’
Kest and Brasti stared at me disapprovingly and Chalmers looked hurt. ‘You make it sound meaningless,’ she said.
I sighed. I was going to have to stop being an arse at some point, so it might as well be now. ‘Put it on,’ I told her.
She slid her arms through the sleeves and then set about adjusting the straps and doing up the buttons.
Kest, Bresti and I watched with a kind of reverance as she went through those simple motions. There’s a sacredness in bearing witness when a man or woman – not a God or Saint, but just a regular person – readies themselves to give up everything in service to this strange creation of humanity that we call the Law.
When Chalmers was done I reached out and adjusted her collar. ‘There,’ I said. ‘Now it’s a greatcoat.’
*
My final lesson in the art of warfare turned out to be the discovery that disbanding an army is actually more work than recruiting it in the first place. In all the chaos caused by two heirs to the throne, the secession of half the country and the sudden threat of invasion, there had never been time for proper records to keep track of who had joined, where and when and under what terms. No pensions had been established for the sixteen hundred who’d survived and for the families of more than a thousand who hadn’t, so yet again it fell to me to set terms and sign declarations promising payment for the veterans and families of Tristia’s three-day war.
As if that weren’t enough, Pertine was suddenly intent on rejoining the country, but required assurances: no reprisals, no punitive taxes. I tried suggesting this was for the King to deal with, but Duke Meillard had cannily worked out that we were in dire need of provisions and support to get our soldiers home.
So by the time I finally returned to Aramor and presented myself in the new throne room (which looked suspiciously like my old courtroom, swiftly renovated for its new purpose), I did so with several decrees in hand, all of which entailed costly promises on behalf of a young and inexperienced King whose own coffers were nearly empty. Fortunately – well, depending on where you stood and how many weapons were pointed at you – Trin had a solution for all of this.
‘Worthless scraps of paper,’ she declared, and slapped the arm of the man holding the agreements I’d brought with me, scattering them on the floor. I’d have tried to pick them up, but there were a great many guards surrounding me at the time.
‘This is the only decree that matters,’ Trin said, and held out a rolled-up piece of parchment which I recognised as the one declaring me a traitor and all those who had fought with me insurrectionists. Apparently even winning a Gods-damned war doesn’t buy you out of trouble in this country.
‘I don’t suppose we could get the King’s opinion on the matter?’ I asked, noting the empty throne. ‘Where is our new monarch, by the way?’
‘Attending to matters far more important than this.’ Trin glanced down at the large shield with the Avarean armistice treaty inscribed upon it that was being held out for her by one of the clerks. After a minute or so her face lost all colour and her expression became even more terrifying than usual. I guessed she’d got to the part where I’d given up Orison and her own Duchy in exchange for the truce.
‘You will hang for this,’ she said. ‘You will all . . .’ She turned to one of the guards, only now noticing something that no doubt would have occurred earlier to her had she not been quite so irritated by my return on horseback rather than in a coffin. ‘Where are the others?’ she demanded. ‘Where are Kest and Brasti and the rest of your tatter—’
‘I imagine they’re waiting to break him out of prison again,’ Filian said, walking through one of the side doors. ‘That is why you came here alone, isn’t it, Falcio?’
The King of Tristia wore what I assumed to be the latest fashion in royal couture. To my eyes it looked like a particularly elaborate bathrobe. His hair was elegantly groomed and a new – and properly fitted – gold circlet sat on his head. Beyond the rich clothes, though, he looked tired and his skin had a grey-green pallor to it. I wondered if perhaps Trin had already begun to poison him.
‘Your Majesty,’ I said, as he approached the throne. ‘You look like shit.’
‘I’ve been a trifle ill.’
The clerk holding the shield stared at me, aghast. ‘Who are you that you would dare speak to the King so?’
Filian glanced down at the Avarean shield for a moment. ‘According to this he’s the Magdan of Tristia.’ He looked up at me. ‘A rather ostentatious title for a magistrate, don’t you think?’