Saint Birgid, where are you when I actually need someone to scold me for thinking a blade could solve all the world’s problems?
A polite cough pulled me back: Kest, alerting me to his presence, which I’d managed to miss entirely – a sure sign that I was unlikely to make a good assassin. The urge to yell at him for sneaking up on me quickly faded when his expression made it clear he’d not put any particular effort into moving silently; if I did bring it up, he’d just ask if I’d prefer that he clomp through the snow more loudly from now on.
One day I would find something that Kest Murrowson was bad at, and on that day all of Tristia would breathe a sigh of relief.
‘Any signs of pursuit?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘Brasti and Gwyn went nearly a mile in each direction. No one is following us.’
‘So Trin was right: the Magdan doesn’t yet know who Filian is.’
‘So it would appear.’ Kest tilted his head as he watched me. ‘You’re troubled that Morn hasn’t sent any of his men after us.’
I sighed. I suppose the logic was simple enough: he had more than forty Greatcoats on his side, so Kest, Brasti and me escaping would make little difference to his master plan. ‘Is it possible that the world doesn’t actually revolve around us?’
Kest reached into his pack, pulled out a strip of dried beef and handed it to me. ‘I don’t know, but if it doesn’t, at least you could stop trying to carry it on your shoulders.’
I accepted the food although I wasn’t hungry and tried to do the same with the implied criticism. I was less successful at that. ‘Forty Greatcoats, Kest. How did I lose that many?’
It’s not Kest’s way to offer words of comfort, especially not platitudes – it doesn’t occur to him to consider someone’s feelings because, really, what difference would it make? The situation is what it is. ‘Forty-two, actually,’ he said.
Forty-two. Take the few who had come back to Aramor and those we knew were dead and forty-two amounted to just about everyone left. ‘Is that supposed to make me feel better?’
Kest shrugged. ‘They made a choice, Falcio, the same as you and Brasti and I do every day of our lives. Do we keep following the strange, winding path the King set us on, or do we allow ourselves the luxury of expediency and just kill our way to a better world?’
He made everything sound so simple: a straightforward choice. Go left or go right. Examine the evidence, analyse the testimony, weigh the truth as if it were little wooden blocks you could sit on either side of a scale and then either set a man free or sentence him to death.
‘I could do it, you know,’ I said, my eyes returning to Filian, who was walking towards us. ‘I could kill him right here and now and no one could stop me.’
‘Perhaps,’ Kest said, ‘but then you’d have a different problem.’
‘Just one? What would that be?’
He unslung his shield and before I even understood what he was doing he’d set it on his right arm and slammed me so hard in the chest I went flying back three feet and landed on my arse in the snow.
‘I’d have to arrest you,’ he said, slinging the shield back on his shoulder. ‘My First Cantor takes a dim view of murder.’
I stared up at him, dumfounded. For the life of me I couldn’t remember Kest ever striking me outside of a bout. So why now? Was it to make the point that even without his right hand, even without a sword, he could still take me down if he had to?
I decided to try and lighten the mood. ‘Hey, I’m not the one who wanted to kill Valiana back when we thought she was Patriana’s daughter.’
‘That’s true. You didn’t want to kill her.’ He paused a moment, then said, ‘All these years, Falcio, for all the danger, for all the horrors you’ve endured, you’ve never once had to choose between the King’s laws and your own sense of what was right.’ He glanced back at Filian, trotting towards us with a pathetically small bundle of kindling in his arms. ‘You can’t have it both ways this time. You’re going to have to decide whether to follow the law or save the people you love.’
I imagined that scale with Aline, Valiana, Ethalia and everyone I cared about on one side. The other side was empty. The Law. The King’s Dream: words with no more weight than the breath it took to utter them.
‘How do I choose?’
Kest chuckled, which was unusual for him. ‘If I knew the answer to that, I’d be the First Cantor.’
*
‘Do you require my assistance, First Cantor?’ Filian asked, clutching his bundle of sticks.
‘Why would I need your help?’
‘You appear to be lying in the snow. I thought you might be injured.’
As I rose to my feet, snow slid down the back of my neck, making me shudder. ‘Give me those,’ I said. I took the branches from him and set about making a fire – well, I set about doing all the things that eventually lead to a fire. I’ve never been any good at fires, so usually I cheat and use a fragment of amberlight, but I’d used it all up for our escape. I’d end up having to let Brasti do it, which inevitably meant enduring a lecture on the importance of basic woodcraft.
Filian was standing mute, his lips moving silently ever few seconds, as if he were rehearsing lines for a stage play. He was really getting on my nerves. ‘What is it you want to say?’ I asked curtly.
‘Do you . . . ?’
He hesitated – was he worried I might hit him? Oh, please, I thought. Give me an excuse.
But then he blurted out, ‘Do you think she’s still alive?’
I might well have struck him, or at least mocked his concern; I might possibly have listed all the people Trin had killed or had horribly murdered in the short time since I’d been unlucky enough to make her acquaintance, starting with a hapless Lord Caravaner who’d been in her way. But staring at that face which shared so many of the features of my dead King, I said instead, ‘I don’t know. The odds aren’t good, but she said it herself: she’s a survivor.’
He looked for a moment as if he might start bawling her name and praying to the Gods, then he visibly pulled himself together. ‘You really hate her, don’t you?’
He doesn’t know, I realised for the first time. He’s never met the woman I know, the one who’s come so close, so many times, to killing the people I care about.
‘Do you love her?’ I asked back. I needed to know his true feelings for her if I was to be able to gauge what kind of man he might become.
Filian’s cheeks turned an awkward sort of pink. ‘I know she’s done terrible things, if that’s what you’re asking. Neither she nor Patriana ever hid from me the ugly truths of politics and warfare.’
‘So how is it even possible that you love her? She’s not just conspired against her own people – hells, she’s killed a fair number of them!’
‘Can I ask you a question?’ He didn’t wait for permission. ‘How many men have you killed, First Cantor?’ Before I could reply, he said quickly, ‘Let me ask it differently. Do you think you—?’