‘I was only thirteen when the King named me his “Patience” and sent me to the Dashini,’ Darriana said, although she didn’t sound particularly interested in the conversation. ‘Would you care to challenge my right to be here?’
‘I can fight my own battles,’ Chalmers said. She pushed Kest aside and took up position just inches away from Talia.
‘You should step back, little girl,’ Talia warned.
To her credit, Chalmers didn’t cede any ground, though perhaps that might have been because she was shaking too much. ‘You don’t believe I’m a Greatcoat?’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Tell me this, then: when this “Magdan” comes with his Avarean soldiers and all those other Greatcoats and I go with Falcio to face them, what do you think’s going to happen then?’
Talia snorted. ‘You’ll end up lying face-down in a pool of your own blood.’
Chalmers nodded. ‘From what I’ve heard, we’re horribly out-numbered: the enemy has more warriors and more weapons. So you’re right, I’ll end up dead. Now tell me how that makes you and me any different. Is it that you think you’ll defeat them by yourself? Or that you don’t plan to fight when the time comes?’
Talia’s sneer turned into something darker for a moment, but then something changed in her expression. ‘All right,’ she said at last, smiling ruefully as she punched Chalmers in the shoulder. ‘I guess you really are a Greatcoat. Little girl.’
Some of the tension left the air and I could hear the sounds of breaths being exhaled. It occurred to me watching that exchange that there are any number of qualities required to become a Greatcoat: knowledge of the King’s Law, skill-at-arms and willingness to risk life and limb to get justice. Sanity, however, always was entirely optional.
‘Can we now get on to figuring out what we do next?’ Antrim asked. ‘Morn is out there with more than forty of our brethren. If they really do try to take over Hervor and Orison, people will never trust the Greatcoats again.’
‘They do not trust you now.’
Everyone turned to see who had spoken. It was Gwyn, still looking as if he were halfway to jumping out the window. He’d seemed perfectly at ease in the wilderness, but the moment we’d reached civilisation – and especially once we’d come inside the castle – he’d become strangely uncomfortable. His accent was thick when he said, ‘This is a very warm place even in the winter, I think.’
‘Is that supposed to mean something, Avarean?’ Talia asked.
‘It must be hard to leave a place like this, to go where it is cold, where it is dangerous, where a sore foot becomes a sprained ankle, then a broken leg and finally a sleep in the ice that never ends.’
He turned to face us, his young face showing a kind of . . . disdain, as though we were the callow youths. ‘I am Rangieri, and we do not stay where it is warm, where it is safe. We travel the borders of this country. We go to the northern climes, where it is too cold, to the eastern deserts, where it is too hot. We sail the southern coasts, waiting and watching for signs of raiders from across the water. We are the ones who go scouting to other lands – not for days or weeks, but for months, sometimes for years – to witness armies forming and bring warning before they can invade the soft warm belly of this country.’
‘Well maybe one of you Rangieri ought to have warned us a little sooner this time,’ Talia complained.
‘We might have,’ Gwyn said. He pulled open his strange coat, so like ours and yet so different, and lifted up his shirt to reveal the still barely healing wounds. ‘But there were only two of us left in the north, and one of your Trattari killed my teacher before setting his blade on me.’
Even Talia looked chastened by that.
Mateo glanced around at everyone in the room. ‘What I want to know is, how come Morn picked all the other Greatcoats, and yet none of us knew? I can understand why he never asked Falcio or Kest or Brasti, but why did he never try to bring any of us over to his side?’
‘Maybe it’s because he thought you were all too loyal to your First Cantor,’ Brasti said casually. ‘I guess it just goes to show he’s not all that clever.’
Talia looked like she might go for him then and there, but another voice spoke up. ‘He asked me,’ Allister said.
Every eye in the room turned on him.
Allister looked up at me, his face a mask of confusion and self-loathing. ‘I swear, I didn’t know what he was up to, Falcio. He just . . . he found me in Luth, three years back. I was trying to track down a book Saint Anlas asked me to find. The old man used to do that a lot; I used to think he just wanted to be rid of me for a whi—’
‘You knew Saint Anlas-who-remembers-the-world?’ Mateo -interrupted.
Allister smiled sadly. ‘That was my mission: the King sent me to watch over him. Anyway, I ran into Morn . . . or maybe he’d been looking for me. He said he had a plan to reunite the Greatcoats and fix the country. I thought it was just Morn, you know, being the arrogant prick he always was. But his ideas did make sense.’ Allister’s eyes caught mine again. ‘A nation ruled by magistrates, where the laws were the foundation of the country, not just an afterthought. It did make sense to me, Falcio. After all the horrors I’d seen, after having to stand there when the Dukes and their armies came to kill King Paelis? Morn’s ideas didn’t sound crazy.’
‘So why didn’t you go with him?’ I asked.
‘I just . . . I couldn’t bring myself to abandon Saint Anlas. I didn’t understand the King’s plan for me, not at all, but somehow I didn’t want to give it up, not then.’ A look of sorrow passed across his features. ‘Then he died and I figured I had to find out who could have killed a Saint – and when I got word that you were nearby, I went to find you.’
In other words, it was geography and not faith that made Allister come to me and not Morn. Gods and Saints alike! How had I lost the Greatcoats so completely? What terrible failing of mine had sent Quillata and Jakin and all the others into Morn’s camp? Was it truly only down to a quirk of fate that not everyone had gone with him?
‘How much did he tell you about his plans?’ Kest asked.
‘Hardly anything at all,’ Allister replied. ‘I mean, he mostly talked about his vision for what we could achieve, but he never mentioned how he intended to accomplish it.’ Again he looked over at me. ‘I swear, Falcio, I had no idea he’d go to Avares and become some kind of all-powerful Warlord—’
‘It’s not your fault,’ I said.
A sombre mood descended over the room. Now the shouting and threats were over and done with, all that was left was confusion, fear and shame.
‘What do we do then, Falcio?’ Talia asked at last. ‘How do we fight our own people?’