‘Alive? Are you insane? Even the Dukes wouldn’t want her brought back alive – Saints, Duke Jillard is her father and he’d be the first to congratulate me for putting a blade in her belly.’
‘He might,’ she said, ‘but that would send the message that we’re scared: that we had to resort to assassination because we feared one woman so much. Worse, it will confirm the fears of those who believe the Greatcoats are nothing more than Aline’s private army. Falcio, if we bring Trin back to Aramor and make her stand trial for what she’s done, the country will know that justice is still alive in Tristia.’
I turned to the Tailor in disbelief. ‘You agree with this? You’d let Trin come back here and—?’
The old woman spat. ‘I’d rather rip out that little bitch’s cunt with my bare hands just to make sure we never see another like her.’ She let out a long breath. ‘But Valiana’s right, and wiser than either of us, thank Saint Felsan-who-weighs-the-world – oh, wait, he’s dead, too, isn’t he?’ She stood up and rested her hands against the bars of her cell. ‘This country is on the brink of failing, Falcio. You’ve seen this. There are plenty of reasons, but the most insidious is that the people of Tristia have no faith in their leaders and even less faith in our so-called laws. Given nowhere else to turn, they’ll simply follow whichever fool talks the loudest.’
Brasti groaned. ‘So this was just a way to get Falcio down here to appeal to his love of suicide missions? Now we’re supposed to invade a foreign country and, while avoiding capture, simultaneously track down and kidnap Trin and then somehow bring her back alive to stand trial?’
‘He’s right,’ Kest said. ‘The Greatcoats weren’t meant for operating inside a foreign country. We don’t know the people or the land – our chances of being captured and killed once we cross their borders are . . . significant.’
The Tailor ignored them both and favoured me with a sour grin. ‘Think of this as an act of daring and valour, Falcio. You’ve always been fond of those.’
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Stonemason
Freed from my very temporary captivity, I spent some time in the Greatcoats’ wardroom preparing for the journey: packing my clothes, re-sharpening my climbing spikes, oiling throwing knives and hunting around for supplies to refill the dozens of now-empty pockets in my coat.
King Paelis, back when he was still alive, appointed Magisterial Valets: specialists whose job was to prepare our coats before each journey. They’d oil the leather using compounds formulated by the Tailor for whichever climate we were heading for. The bone plates would be inspected and replaced where necessary, and each pocket would be checked, all our tricks and traps and weapons carefully maintained and replaced as needed. One of our pockets is designed especially to carry writs for our forthcoming cases, and sometimes the King would sneak in a little note – and he was fond of the odd practical joke too (one circuit, I spent days trying to work out why I smelled so powerfully of lavender). Those childish pranks of his reminded you that he cared – he knew he was sending you off into danger, and he would be so proud when you returned. It was for that reason, as much as the bone plates and the weapons, we felt almost invincible when that greatcoat was on our shoulders.
Rummaging through one of the old cabinets near the weapons racks, I scrounged up a few small fragments of amberlight. I had less luck finding any jars of the black salve we use to treat wounds incurred on the road. Worse still, I was completely out of the hard candy that I’d relied upon so many times these past few years. By the time I was done, I felt oddly naked in my coat; far too many of the pockets were empty. Not for the first time, I worried about how the other Greatcoats – those who’d yet to return to Aramor – were faring without the means to replenish their supplies.
Deal with the problem in front of you, I reminded myself. Get Aline on the throne, then you’ll have all the time in the world to find the rest of the Greatcoats and get the things we need to make us functional again.
With my preparations complete, I spent a few restless hours wandering the halls of Castle Aramor, which had been my habit in the old days on the night before a long journey. Kest used to spend that time reading – travelling through rain, cold and muck with books is seldom a good idea. Brasti would get drunk or seek out . . . other diversions. But me? I liked to remind myself that we weren’t entirely alone out there and to take with me some small sense of this strange castle where I’d first snuck in, a madman, covered in filth and bent on revenge, and had left months later as a King’s magistrate, with a sword at my side and a greatcoat on my back.
I could almost imagine Paelis himself following me down the halls, making fun of my penchant for nostalgia, but sometimes just feeling the stone flags beneath my feet gave me the sense of solidity that was absent in every other part of my life.
‘Take another step and you’re dead,’ a woman’s voice called out.
My rapier was in hand even before I turned to face whoever had come for me. I was in one of the passageways that ran behind the throne room, the few lanterns casting more shadow than light. ‘I only just cleaned this blade,’ I said, ‘so I’m going to be even more pissed off than usual if I have to kill someone with it tonight.’
A figure stepped into view – a woman in a stonemason’s heavy leather apron, carrying a mallet in one hand and a chisel in the other. ‘Reckon you’re going to duel in a hole in the floor, do you?’ She gestured with the chisel to the patch of shadow where I’d been about to step.
The stonemason was far enough away that I allowed myself a glance back. Sure enough, I’d nearly walked right into a three-foot wide hole in the damned floor.
‘Goes down nearly twenty feet,’ she said, coming to join me. ‘The rubble below is so damnably sharp your skin would be cut to ribbons even before your bones broke from the impact, you blind idiot.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, resheathing my rapier. ‘For the warning, I mean, not for calling me an idiot.’
She stuck her tools into the leather loops attached to her apron. ‘Midreida,’ she said, offering her hand. ‘Chief Stonemason. I’m the one who’s keeping your castle from falling down.’
‘Falcio val Mond,’ I said in turn, ‘First Cant—’
‘Everybody knows who you are, you blithering—’
‘For someone whose job is to keep this place standing, perhaps you should fix the fucking gaps in the floors rather than casting aspersions at others.’
‘You might have a point there,’ she conceded, staring down at the hole in front of us. ‘But almost nobody uses this particular passageway anymore, so we’ve just been using it to store our tools at night. We’ll get to it eventually, but there’s only so many hours in the day and this whole place is a wreck.’