Trin stood next to Filian, surrounded by those guardsmen loyal to her, their swords and shields facing out to protect her, and she laughed. There wasn’t a trace of regret in her eyes, in the curl of her mouth, the rosy flush of her cheeks. Aline’s sacrifice had meant nothing. Filian would take the throne; he would marry Trin and she would be Queen of Tristia.
Her laughter sounded strange to my ears. In my mind her voice was replaced with that of her mother. Patriana, Duchess of Hervor, had finally won. After all this time, and from beyond the grave, she had destroyed my King’s dream once and for all.
The echoes of her merriment and of Patriana’s boasts and taunts filled my hearing, making my vision blur, my fingers itch. My tongue was as dry as the Eastern Desert under the burning sun. I have known loss many times in my life, but this was the first time I truly understood the taste of defeat.
Trin didn’t even notice me. She was looking down at Ossia, Duchess of Baern, who was still on her knees and would likely remain there until the order came to take her head.
‘Forgive me,’ Trin said, the lightness of her voice giving the lie to her words, ‘it’s just that . . . it’s like one of the old comedies, isn’t it? The ones where identities get confused and everything begins to fall apart until finally one of the Gods descends and tells the audience what happened and then everyone gets married?’ She reached out a hand and stroked Ossia’s silver-grey hair. ‘You’re finally reunited with your son, only to trick the Greatcoats into helping you kill him so that Aline can take the throne – and she ends up giving up her own life to save him. It’s all so very poetic.’
I blinked the useless tears from my eyes. I would need to be able to see clearly for the next few minutes.
Some two dozen men protected her. They wouldn’t be nearly enough. I knelt to set Aline’s body gently down on the floor, working through my next moves as I did.
Many of Ossia’s soldiers remained, along with the Aramor guardsmen. I would draw my rapiers as I rose, shouting at Ossia’s soldiers to attack. Their captain would try to countermand me, but not fast enough, so I could sow confusion on both sides as I’d done at the Margrave’s wedding. Trin’s men would have to split their focus. She was standing a few feet from the dais, perhaps twenty feet away from me. If I ran up the stairs and onto the throne, I could launch myself from there. The closest men would instinctively raise their shields, which would be a mistake for them. I’d need to land with my feet under me, driving Trin’s defenders down, then I’d have to thrust a rapier each at the two men closest to me, one on either side, using the advantage of height to get over their shields. The rest would try to attack me, but they’d be aiming high and I’d duck low under their blades and come up right behind Trin, and only then would everyone realise I’d left my rapiers buried in my first opponents and that I had a knife to Trin’s throat. They’d all expect me to make some sort of threat, ordering them to back off or else I’d kill her – I wouldn’t disappoint them, of course not, but even as I uttered the words, letting them believe we were in a standoff, I’d be burying the knife in her neck.
It was a good plan.
The sane part of me, the part that had heard the wisdom in Aline’s words and followed her train of thought, imagining what she hadn’t been able to say, knew there was a problem with my strategy: Trin would die, yes, but Filian would be King and his heart would be hardened against the Greatcoats, against the King’s Law, against everything we’d stood for and fought for and bled for: against the very principles Aline had given her life to preserve.
That’s why, in those precious seconds when all eyes turned to Trin as she gurgled and bled out, I’d need to kill Filian too.
Let the Magdan have this country. The poor would be no worse off – in fact, their lives would probably get better. The Avareans would take the territory they wanted. The Magdan would likely purge Tristia of its foul nobility and set his own preferred lieutenants in charge; I expected many of them would be men and women I knew, former Greatcoats. The country would live under a kind of judicial dictatorship. It could do much worse. It already had.
It was a good plan. Trin would be dead, the country would be no worse off and I would finally have put an end to Duchess Patriana, her daughter and all their foul conspiracies.
And all it would cost was the last shred of my King’s dream and my own life: a bargain at twice the price.
I let Aline’s body settle on the ground and rose, my fingers already reaching for my rapiers, the muscles in my calves tensing as I prepared my perfectly planned run up the stairs and over to the throne, then into the chaos that would follow. When I turned, something flat and hard slammed into the side of my head, sending me tumbling backwards. My legs went weak, but I recovered my balance, my rapiers drawn, blinking furiously to clear my vision as I saw the man standing between me and the woman whose death I had so meticulously formulated in my mind.
It had been a good plan. I’d only forgotten one thing.
‘I’m sorry, Falcio,’ Kest said, standing a few feet away from me, holding his shield in front of him. ‘I can’t let you do this.’
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Fratricide
My plan adjusted itself without any prompting from me, shifting each detail to accommodate this new inconvenience. It could still work. ‘Step aside, Kest.’
His face was ashen, as if with that brilliant mind of his he’d already worked out my every move, as if he’d even calculated what would happen to our friendship if he tried to stop me. ‘Please, Falcio, don’t make me do this.’
‘No one’s making you do anything. I’m the First Cantor of the Greatcoats and I’m giving you an order. Step aside now.’
‘It’s not too late,’ Kest said, and I could hear the tiniest fragment of hope in his voice, even as he shifted his shield on his arm to prepare for the attack that he must have known was coming. ‘Not so long as we hold to the law, you and I. Don’t do this, Falcio. Don’t throw away everything you’ve stood for in exchange for one moment of revenge.’
I closed my eyes for a moment, letting his words wash over me. ‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘It’s not worth it.’
But when I opened my eyes, Kest hadn’t put down his shield – he was too savvy a fighter and had known me too long to be so easily deceived. He knew I couldn’t let Aline’s death go unanswered. Trin was going to die. Filian was going to die. I was going to die.
What did one more body on the pile matter?
‘I won’t ask you again, Falcio,’ he warned.
‘Goodbye, Kest,’ I said, and launched myself at him.
A moment before he’d been the finest fighter in all of Tristia and my best friend in the whole world.
Now he was neither of those thing; he was simply an obstacle.