Oh, so now you want me to lead you again? It was a petty thought, but one I couldn’t quite get out of my head. ‘That’s simple,’ I said, trying to put a light-hearted tone into my words. ‘I’m going to hatch an ingenious plan and then, you know, save the day. In the meantime . . .’ I walked over to where Mateo and Quentis were sitting on my cot and motioned for them to get up. ‘Everyone get the hells out of my bedroom.’
There were a few chuckles and some groans, and soon the others began to leave, all except for Gwyn. With everything else going on, it hadn’t even occurred to me that he’d never been to the castle before, and had no place to go. ‘Get Brasti to help you find someplace to bunk tonight,’ I said, then added, ‘Don’t let him trick you into going out drinking with him unless you want to end up learning a lot more about . . . southern mating rituals than you might be ready for.’
He did up his coat, then said, ‘Thank you, but no. My wounds are healed now and I must return to the north.’
‘Wait . . . back to Avares? Why?’
He paused. ‘You said the Magdan has Shan steel weapons and cannon in his arsenal.’
‘I saw them myself. Apparently he’s got enough to outfit an army.’
He glanced around the wardroom. ‘And how many Shan steel weapons do you have here?’
That drew a chuckle from me. ‘Me? None, of course. Even if you could convince a Shan trader to sell you some, they’d have been too expensive for my salary . . . even when I had a salary.’
‘And Avares is not one tenth as wealthy as Tristia. We have livestock and farming, yes, and strong backs, but little trade with other nations.’
The implication of his initial question suddenly hit me. ‘So how in the name of Saint Zaghev-who-sings-for-tears was Morn able to buy enough weapons to drain a rich country’s treasury?’
Gwyn headed for the door. ‘That, First Cantor, is what I must go discover.’
He left me alone with my thoughts and far too many questions, which made for rather poor company, so I stripped off my shirt, grabbed a rapier and started practising the eight fundamental forms. Usually half an hour of repetitions will exhaust me and bore me into oblivion, but the twin dilemmas of Morn and Filian kept turning over and over in my mind. Every plan I envisioned began and ended with murder.
In the end, I went for two hours before a rapping at my door shook me from my dark thoughts. Recognising Ethalia’s distinctive knock, I put away the rapier and was halfway to the door when I stopped to go back and put on a shirt. I wouldn’t have bothered for anyone else.
Somehow she noticed it. ‘Have I come at a bad time?’ she asked. ‘Should I go?’
The sight of her standing in the doorway, the white silk of her robes shimmering against her skin, the long dark hair falling in waves past her shoulders, her expression full of compassion, of wit and laughter and all the things a body longs for to make the pains of life fade away . . . how was it possible that every single person who saw her didn’t feel about her as I did? How could anyone who spent even an hour in her company, hearing her talk, seeing the way she listened . . . how had I come so close to marrying her and yet managed to screw it all up so monumentally?
And here she was, at my door, coming to see if I was all right. If there was no promise of anything more in her eyes, at least there was the offer of her company and the solace it always provided. I had a joke already prepared, and a smile to go with it. I’d been about to motion for her to enter when something terrible happened – some poisonous combination of exhaustion and confusion and shame over the anger that was burning a hole inside me as I contemplated just how far I was willing to go to put Aline on the throne.
The words that came out of my mouth had no business being spoken by any sane man.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I think I need to be alone.’
I saw the skin tighten around her eyes, just for a moment, and her cheeks went red with the humiliation of being turned away – then that thing that sets Ethalia apart from anyone else I’ve ever known came back and she reached out a hand to my chest, laid her palm on my heart and kissed me on the cheek. ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘We can talk tomorrow, or the next day if that’s better.’
My hands tried their best to reach out and hold her; I wanted nothing more than to be close to her. And yet something held me back: the recognition that the man I had to be right now had no business being in love with – or being loved by – someone like her. All of which might have been forgivable had I not said, as she was walking away, ‘It might be a few days. Things are complicated right now.’
Saints, but I am rubbish at relationships.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
The Unwelcome Proposal
I’m not sure why it is that after screwing something up spectacularly, I generally find myself seeking out the company of Jillard, Duke of Rijou. In this case, my excuse was that I needed something from him very badly, and I was willing to pay the price to get it.
‘I wondered how long it would take you,’ he said. Despite the late hour, the Duke of Rijou looked immaculate. His carefully oiled black hair was perfectly styled in a nod to the current contemporary fashion whilst still retaining its classical foundation, clearly showing a man who moved with the times, although those times did not control him. He wore his usual red and silver brocade coat over silk, and I imagined I could examine every inch with a magnifying glass and never find a single thread out of place.
His smile was perfect too: amused, but not unserious, pleased with the state of the world but not content to leave it be. A man with a smile like that could walk into a palace dressed in rags and covered in filth and still the wealthy and powerful would part before him like water under a cart’s wheel.
Standing there in the antechamber, the dust from Aramor’s destruction still rising in the air, he looked as if he were about to be immortalised in marble or oils . . . and yet . . .
Deceit is Jillard’s stock-in-trade. It is his means of protection, his greatcoat. Hidden beneath the perfect smile and the perfect clothes and the perfect hair, the pain of loss lingered there for those with the wit to see. His son Tommer had been the one true star in Jillard’s firmament; the man who stood before me now was a pale shadow of the Duke of Rijou.
‘Are you well, Falcio?’ Jillard asked, the corner of his mouth rising just a hair in amusement. ‘You look rather senile.’
‘Quite well, your Grace.’
He turned, an elegant pivot on one heel, reached down for the two glasses of wine sitting on a silver salver and offered one to me.
Such simple gestures are never simple with men like Jillard. ‘Poison?’ I asked.
He took a sip from one of them and curled his lip. ‘Decidedly. It’s a poor vintage. I’m afraid we lost much of King Paelis’ legendary wine cellar.’ He looked up from his glass. ‘Do you know, the cellar was actually underground, the least likely room to be damaged, even during the destruction of the outer walls.’ He wrapped his knuckles on the solid stone wall next to him. ‘And yet, despite all the rooms surrounding it remaining intact, the cellar itself caved in. Do you suppose the Blacksmith’s God had a sense of humour?’