‘Well, you can actually keep quite warm if you do it right. Of course, there are risks. You have to make sure you wake up, for one.’ She pulled the glove from her right hand and I saw three of her fingers were gone from the second knuckle. ‘Alas, I’ll never play the harp, I’m afraid. The frostbite was severe, so I had to cut them off before it spread.’
She said all this as if it were nothing at all, merely the cost of doing business. I found that as terrifying as everything else about her. ‘You appear to be almost impossible to kill, your Grace,’ I said, and I let my hand stray to the hilt of my rapier. ‘But you should know I’m willing to try a few more times.’
It was an idle threat. Even if I could have killed her at that moment – an unlikely prospect, given she had an army at her back – that would just prove the Greatcoats couldn’t be trusted, I’d end up dead and the others would be expelled by the Ducal council, leaving Aline unprotected.
Trin laughed, as she always did at my threats. I suppose it made sense, seeing that I’d yet to successfully harm her in the slightest. ‘Ah, my tatter-cloak. Would that we could be friends.’
‘Quite impossible, I fear, given that you’re a lunatic monster who wants to take over the country.’
‘Why must you always accuse me of madness, Falcio? It’s really quite rude.’ She looked down at the ruin of the fingers on her right hand. ‘I suppose you’re right, though.’ Her eyes went to me and there was something akin to genuine sorrow there. ‘Do you know, I think my mother might have driven me insane as a child intentionally? She did all manner of terrible things to me, all part of my training.’
‘Hang on,’ I said, ‘I’m beginning to feel sympathy for you – oh no, it’s passed now. Please do go on.’
Trin put the glove back on. ‘Whatever her faults, my mother made me strong, and for that, I suppose I must always be grateful.’ Again she looked back at her troops. ‘It is a bit of a mad world, though, don’t you think? I wonder if she understood this at some level deeper than you or I could ever grasp, and perhaps that’s why she made sure I’d be willing to do whatever must be done to save this poor benighted country of ours.’
Something in her confession bothered me; how many times had someone suggested that to preserve Tristia, one must be willing to abandon decency and reason in favour of black bloody murder? How many times in the past weeks had I let that same thought infect me? I shuddered.
‘What do you intend to do now, Tarindelle?’ I asked.
Her mouth twisted into a smile and her lips parted as if she were going to speak, but then she stopped and stood there silently, as if wrestling with an unseen opponent. Finally she said, ‘Go, Falcio, leave this place. Take Kest and Brasti. Take the whor— Take Ethalia.’ She hesitated a moment longer. ‘Hells . . . you can even take Valiana with you. Take them all, now, today. Run from this place, from this country, and I swear I will never pursue you, nor allow anyone else to do so.’
The sincerity in her voice troubled me, so I countered it with defiance. ‘You appear to be forgetting, your Grace, that I’ve beaten you before. Every time, in fact.’
She reached out a hand and I flinched at first, but then I found myself frozen by the odd tenderness in the gesture. Her fingers brushed my cheek. ‘That was a different time, Falcio. You know that now, I think. This is about politics, and the ruthless arithmetic of power. Even after all the terrible things you’ve seen, the horrors you’ve endured, your heart isn’t near black enough for what comes next.’
Some small part of my mind – the part that managed to invent plans and tactics and could figure out the answer ahead of my enemies – forced words out of my mouth that I hadn’t ever wanted to utter. ‘Let me take Aline,’ I pleaded, ‘and I’ll do what you ask: I will leave this all to you.’
Trin shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Falcio. I truly am. If I could let you have her, I would, but you know I can’t; that’s not how this works. There would be confusion among the people, and some would seek to take advantage, to sow discord in hopes of achieving victory at some later date. I have to secure the country’s future now, Falcio, and that means there must be one monarch, and it will be Filian.’
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
The Pact
One of the mistakes fencers sometimes make before a duel is to focus too much on their adversary. You can pour over court records, fixate on every detail of your enemy’s trials by combat (devoting entirely too much time to their victories and not their defeats – but that’s a separate issue). You can even seek out their former opponents and ply them with wine and coin to learn their weaknesses. All of these are fine things to do, but all of them fail to appreciate the true origins of every fencer’s style: their teacher.
Anyone who studies the sword becomes both an imperfect reflection and an improvement on their first master – that’s where you’ll find the key to understanding the danger that you face. The problem for me was that Trin’s teacher had been Duchess Patriana, the most cunning, brilliant and vile manipulator to come out of Tristia (which is saying a lot). Which meant my best chance was to go see the second most cunning, brilliant and vile creature I knew: the Tailor.
That she hadn’t already come to me, recounting in agonising detail every mistake I’d made, demanding to take charge and begin setting the world to rights – the way she saw it, anyway – could only be because she wanted the additional satisfaction of seeing me crawling on my hands and knees to her cell to beg for her guidance.
Fine. I could do that. To defeat Trin I would seek the Tailor out, my head hung low and my tone respectful, and take my medicine like an errant child. I’d already been called a fool and worse by my enemies and my allies alike, not to mention almost every member of my own Order. How much worse could this be?
As it turned out, I was never to find out, because by the time I got down to the dungeon, the Tailor was gone, her cell all but bare.
‘Where is she?’ I shouted back down the hallway to Gerrald, the guard.
‘She left,’ he shouted back, his footsteps thumping as he came to join me. ‘Last night – didn’t even say goodbye.’
I raised an eyebrow at that. ‘“Didn’t even say goodbye”?’
He shuffled about awkwardly. ‘It’s not as if she was locked in, sir. I wasn’t even guarding her, really. Mostly I was just bringing her things or delivering messages for her.’
Some of the furniture – the bookshelves and cot and her big leather chair – were still in the cell, but everything else – every book, every bottle, every last spool of thread – was gone.
‘She left nothing behind?’ I asked.
Gerrald held out his fist and opened it, palm up, to reveal a silver coin. ‘She finally paid up for our bet.’ He put the coin in his pocket and then withdrew an envelope. ‘Oh, and she left this for you.’
I tore open the envelope and found a note inside, a few paltry words scrawled in her own handwriting:
Falcio,
She has won.
Forgive me.
Magrit Denezia