‘Fool!’ she declared. ‘You spend your life trying to protect this country but you don’t understand it at all! If Aline were the elder, the other Dukes might well find a way to declare the younger sibling the true heir: anything to avoid a woman on the throne! They will not go the other way.’
‘Jillard knows Trin better than anyone – he’ll do whatever it takes to keep her off the throne—’
‘The Duke of Rijou is lying to you, Falcio. He plays you like a Bardatti drummer, making you dance to his rhythm. He uses -Tommer’s death as the instrument to control you, through your guilt and your maddening need to pretend that men such as he can be redeemed. Don’t you understand, Falcio? He is playing you, he has been all along!’
‘Duchess . . .’ I found myself suddenly weary from the weight of her accusations. What must it must be like to be a noble, to have so much power and yet never feel safe because your fellows are always plotting, always waiting for the chance to work against you?
Not that my life is turning out any better.
I’d always believed the Greatcoats were different, that we were united by an ethos that went beyond our oaths, but Kest had been warning me for years that I was romanticising the past. Maybe this truly was the way of the world: power was a drink that invariably made you thirstier for more.
‘What would you have me do, your Grace?’ I said quietly. ‘Even if what you suspect is true, I cannot . . . I will not murder a fifteen-year-old boy who has committed no crime.’
I half expected her to slap me again, but instead, she squeezed my arm. ‘I know you can’t, and I can’t fault you for the decency in your heart.’ She sighed. ‘In truth, I expected as much. That is why I come to you with an alternative: a negotiation. Shared power.’
‘You want Aline and Filian to rule? How would that even work?’
The skin around her lips looked tight, as if the words she was trying to get out were distasteful. ‘It isn’t as unusual as you might think. They are only half-siblings. The old royal lines often had—’
‘You want Aline to marry Filian? Have you lost your mind?’
‘No, Falcio, I have simply run out of options.’ She held up a hand. ‘Listen to me. Aline is clever, and wise. She has a strong spirit and she could hold her own in any power-sharing arrangement. She would have the right to her own bodyguards, and you and your fellow Greatcoats would keep her safe from Trin’s machinations. After a while, Filian might even become a good King.’
‘Trin will never allow it.’
Duchess Ossia smiled. ‘That is why we will not give her a choice.’
‘Killing her will make Filian into an intractable enemy.’
‘We needn’t kill her. All we need to do is take control of the castle for a little while – a week at most, time for negotiations to take place. I will bring the Dukes to our side by showing them the wisdom of having both heirs share power.’
‘So that they have time to decide which one to have assassinated?’
‘Perhaps – but more likely my fellow Dukes will see that power-sharing will keep the crown weak, which is, let’s face it, our preferred state of affairs.’
I found the idea sickening for a hundred different reasons, but she was right: we were out of options. Although we were ostensibly waiting for Filian’s lineage to be proven, the Dukes were already rushing to his side; we had no other leverage. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘how does this work?’
‘We need to take control of Aramor.’
I shook my head. ‘I have fewer than a dozen Greatcoats and I don’t—’
‘I have a thousand troops within a day’s march,’ Ossia said.
‘A thousand? How—’
‘They wear no armour. I’ve had them travel in small groups, craftsmen and labourers seeking work. Your man Antrim controls the Aramor guardsmen, so all we need is his assistance to get my men into the castle. Once we have control, we can bring the parties together to negotiate a quick and painless peace.’
‘Trin’s army is larger,’ I said. ‘Two thousand at least.’
‘It won’t matter. Once my soldiers are inside the castle they can hold it against five times that number.’
The conversation had moved so quickly: from cajoling and insults to a palace takeover. It required only a word, a nod of my head.
‘The other Dukes won’t like it – they all have their own troops garrisoned outside the castle. What happens—?’
‘The Dukes hold their soldiers by them like precious gems. They won’t even notice until it’s too late, and they won’t want a battle that might strip them of what few troops they have. This is how it must be, Falcio.’
Her words made sense, but my discomfort wasn’t going away. ‘We’re talking about a coup.’
She gave a laugh. ‘A coup? There isn’t a monarch yet, so how can there be a coup? In fact, all we’re doing is securing the situation so that a lawful solution can be found. Isn’t that what you told me King Paelis wanted you to do? Isn’t that what his little missions were all about? So that you could secure the country and reinstate the rule of law?’
‘You know, it’s not polite to use someone’s words against them.’
Except that’s what this has been about all along. That’s why she’d goaded me about the King’s missions: she already knew what my answer had to be. By that same logic, I had to admit that what she proposed was no less lawful than any of the commands King Paelis had given us the day before he died.
‘I’ll speak to Antrim in private,’ I said. Even that simple acknowledgment tasted bitter on my tongue. I wouldn’t be able to tell Aline or Valiana. They’d never go for it.
And that told me that all this talk of interregnum and securing Aramor so that negotiations could take place was nothing more than pathetic self-deception. I was going to turn my back on the law to get what I wanted, which was Aline safe and on the throne. If it had no other virtues, at least Ossia’s plan meant I wouldn’t have to murder a boy, nor watch my enemy take power. With that realisation came a decision.
I was about to launch my first coup d’état.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The Trap
When I went to meet Duchess Ossia in the cells at the lowest level of Aramor, the late afternoon sun was snaking in through the windows mounted high on one side of the sloped ceiling. The King had never wanted anyone, even his prisoners, trapped in darkness. Oddly, the light made me uncomfortable. Treason should happen in the dark.
‘What exactly are we doing down here?’ Brasti asked as we walked past the heavy iron door and into the long hallway with its rows of cells on either side. How long would I be willing to keep Filian imprisoned here if we couldn’t come to some kind of power-sharing agreement between him and Aline?