I had a hard time resisting the overwhelming urge to grab the rope again and shut her dulcet tones up once and for all.
Trin shook her head at me. ‘Don’t give me those nasty looks, Falcio. You need to concentrate and find us a way out of here – although that might have been easier had the three of you not been so foolish as to lose your little coats somewhere along the way.’
‘We fully plan on escaping,’ Kest said. ‘I wonder, though, why you would think we would bring you with us.’
‘Not just me, silly.’ She pointed towards the cell opposite. ‘You’ll bring my charge and me safely back to Aramor.’
‘Why would we do that?’ I asked.
‘Why do you do anything? Because I have information about Morn that your precious Realm’s Protector will want to hear. Because you’ll believe it’s the right thing to do. But most of all, because of the question you’ve yet to ask me.’
‘Who is this boy you’ve got with you?’ I asked.
‘Why don’t you go and see? The cell door isn’t locked, is it? He doesn’t bite.’
I took the torch from the wall and shuffled slowly into the other cell. Her companion was shaking, but he didn’t say a word. I checked him first, in case he might have a weapon of some kind – his hands were bound, but there might have been a knife-edge on his boot soles, or some other means of doing me grievous harm . . . but all I saw was a scrawny figure trying hard to pretend he wasn’t shivering in fear.
‘Who is he?’ Kest asked.
‘His name is Filian,’ Trin replied.
‘Your new lover?’ Brasti asked from behind me. ‘Looks a little rough. You’ve come down in the world; Duke Perault was a good deal more handsome.’
Brasti was right: beneath the blood and the bruises, the face staring out at me wasn’t anything particularly special. Filian was young, perhaps sixteen or seventeen. Though his eyes struck me as full of intelligence, he was a little plain-faced – his nose was sharp, as were his features. He blinked a good deal, and his mouth twitched a little, as if he were embarrassed and maybe trying to say something funny or clever. After a heartbeat his lips settled into an awkward smile, as if he hoped we might be friends.
It was the smile that did it.
Trin gave a tinkling little laugh, as if she’d heard the sudden breaking of my heart. I’m usually the last to figure these things out, but this time I knew I was the first.
To anyone else, Filian would have looked like an ordinary young man – Trin’s lover or servant, maybe no one important, just her next victim.
But he must have seen my flicker of recognition, because his gaze settled on me and his expression became a little sad as he said, ‘Oh, Falcio, I am so very sorry.’
All the boy said was, ‘Oh, Falcio, I am so very sorry.’
The sound of the torch clattering to the floor was followed by the sensation of falling and then a sudden pain in my knees as they struck the hard stone floor. My arms hung useless at my sides.
‘They’re dead,’ I whispered. I hadn’t breath enough to speak any louder. ‘Patriana told me she’d killed all the others—’
Brasti was shouting behind me, ‘What’s wrong with him?’
I saw the noose pull tight around the boy’s neck as Kest took hold of the rope outside the cell. ‘If this is magic,’ he said, ‘I would suggest you stop it now.’
The boy said nothing. He didn’t need to.
‘Maybe it’s not magic,’ Brasti said. ‘It’s probably poison. Falcio’s always getting poisoned.’
It was neither of those things. It was the smile.
It’s always the smile.
Trin’s voice was odd, almost soothing as she said, ‘Don’t be sad, my dearest Falcio. It was long past time that you met your King.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The Charoite
Seven years ago I ruled on a legal dispute involving a portrait of the late King Gregor. The painting’s value came principally from the rumour that his wife, Queen Yesa, had been the artist. Despite her terrible taste in husbands, Yesa had been, by all accounts, a lovely woman: bright, kind, and according to those who’d heard her play, an excellent musician.
Saints, she was a terrible painter, though.
True, on his best day Gregor’s face displayed all the beauty of a barrel mastiff cross-bred with a tree stump, but this portrait looked like a one-eyed child had dumped his fingerpaints on a canvas and promptly vomited on it.
You would think such an eyesore would be soon forgotten, but in fact a rather brisk trade in forgeries of portraits of Gregor had been building in Domaris of late – no doubt fuelled by nostalgia for the old King now that his son Paelis (and his annoying travelling magistrates) were getting in everyone’s way. So it was with some amusement that I had found myself asked to rule on which of two versions of the painting was authentic.
I stopped being quite so amused when I heard the price paid for them.
Any good forger knows to never sell the same work in the same – or even adjoining – territories, so it was by sheer accident that Viscount Pluvier happened to stop by for a visit with his second cousin, the Margrave Boujean, at his newly constructed palace hundreds of miles away from Pluvier’s own lands. Civil war threatened to break out when Pluvier found, there on the wall of the map room, a near-perfect copy of his own prized portrait of King Gregor. With neither party trusting the dubious allegiances of their fellow nobles, Pluvier and Boujean transported their paintings to neutral ground and then, for quite possibly the only time in our country’s history, two aristocrats actually asked for a Greatcoat to rule on which work was authentic.
It may surprise you to learn that I know slightly less about art than I do about surgery or romantic relationships, so staring at the nearly identical portraits did me little good. Solving the case – and here’s where I’ll get to the point of all this – required ignoring the paintings entirely and instead watching the eyes of the owners of the works of art. You see, people rarely buy forgeries unknowingly; the price of such an original is high enough that tracing the provenance is worth any extra expense. So I stood the two men next to their paintings, instructed them to keep their mouths shut and watched and waited, and waited some more.
All men know how to lie, and nobles better than most, but the human face is a canvas upon which our true thoughts are painted, and after enough time, an expert in such matters can always spot the fakes.
In case you’re wondering, Pluvier had bought the forgery; he’d hoped that by challenging his cousin he could, as part of the settle-ment, somehow swap the paintings beforehand, then demand the forgery – which would now turn out to be the Margrave’s – be destroyed. I never said it was a good plan.