Saint's Blood: The Greatcoats Book 3 (23 page)

A slight whisper followed by the vibration of a blade slicing through the air told me I’d drawn my right-hand rapier. I’d sliced the fold of a man’s sleeve as I’d pulled the sword into line in front of me. The men in greatcoats behind Aline were moving so slowly; it was as if the whole world was grinding to a halt – but I wasn’t moving any faster. I willed myself to be stronger, praying for Brasti, wherever he was, to see the assassins, to let me hear an arrow sing as it flew through the air. He’d have to get them in the face, otherwise their coats would protect them.
Do it
, I thought.
Show us all you can aim true, even with a wounded arm, Brasti. I swear I’ll agree every time you tell us the hundred reasons why the bow is superior to the blade
.

But no arrow came. The two men were still in the shadows and likely Brasti hadn’t noticed them yet. I called out his name, but I wasn’t sure if anyone could hear me above the din that had erupted as those nearby saw me running and screaming like a madman towards the dais where Aline, even now, was smiling innocently at me.

How could she not
know
? How could she not sense that someone was about to push the point of a blade into her heart?
Don’t you understand, you stupid,
stupid
girl? They’ve come to kill you!

I knocked an old woman to the ground as I ran past her, nearly catching her walking stick between my legs but overbalancing her. I ignored my hurt ankle to leap over the stick as it clattered to the floor beneath my feet.

Aline’s expression didn’t change, even to laugh at my awkward rush towards her.
She knows
, I realised. Men and women close to the dais were now pointing behind her and she could see them doing so.
She knows she’s about to be attacked and she thinks I’m going to save her.

The two men in greatcoats were hesitating, having caught sight of each other.
They aren’t together
, I realised thankfully.
So only one’s a traitor . . . but who . . . ?
Both of them looked at me as I screamed, ‘Step back!’ My foot hit the first of the three steps to the dais and slid off the edge, forcing me to scramble inelegantly to keep my balance.

One of the two men nodded at me as though we were old friends and took a quick step back, but his hands were drifting to his pockets. The other, noticing those movements, drew a falchion from inside his coat. Its subtly curved blade the length of a shortsword gleamed in the light.

‘Brasti, now!’ I shouted.

‘You’re in my damn line,’ he shouted back at me, and I dropped to my knees, the hard marble floor sending a painful shock all the way up my legs.

‘Take the shot!’

An arrow flew barely an inch over my head, slamming into the coat of the man holding the falchion. By some magic it pierced his coat and went into his shoulder, unleashing a scream followed by a string of curses as he stumbled backwards.

‘The next one goes in your throat,’ Brasti called out. His voice sounded light and airy, as if this were all a game, but I could hear the razor-edged tension hidden beneath.

‘Falcio, what is going on?’ Valiana asked from behind me, her hand reaching to her side for a sword that she no longer carried; the head of state obviously wasn’t expected to defend herself. The young Ducal Protector of Luth was standing over her protectively.

I could see guardsmen coming up behind her as I pushed myself up. ‘Assassin,’ I said, my voice barely a whisper, then I added, ‘a Greatcoat.’ Aline’s eyes were still fixed on mine. As I moved towards her, the other man, the one who had nodded at me and backed off, suddenly grinned as a long, wickedly curved knife slid down from the sleeve of his coat.

‘The Gods command me!’ he shouted and raised his arm.

Saints, no, we shot the wrong man
— ‘Brasti!’

‘Fucking guards are in the way!’

I threw myself forward, knowing all I had to do was put myself in the way of that knife, and knowing I was too far away. The assassin’s smile grew wider as his eyes met mine; he too knew I couldn’t get to him. Even then, even in that moment, Aline’s eyes remained on me, waiting for me to come to her, waiting for me to save her.

I can’t reach you, sweetheart!

The assassin’s dagger had just begun its downward trajectory when a hand reached out and grabbed it awkwardly by the sharp blade, stopping it inches above Aline’s head. It was the man Brasti had hit and he was grimacing in pain. The arrow was buried deep in his shoulder, but still he gripped the knife, stopping the assassin’s hand.

‘I can’t hold this much longer . . .’ he groaned. ‘Somebody shoot this bastard!’

An arrow shot through the air and into the assassin, hitting him square in the right side of his chest, but he didn’t fall. As though entirely incapable of feeling pain, he grinned and pushed down harder against the unknown Greatcoat’s hand.

‘I am the God’s Needle!’ the assassin screamed, his voice full of rapturous madness. ‘He commands the girl to die! He says . . .’

The assassin’s expression changed and he looked down to see the point of a falchion driven deep into his chest just below his neck. ‘I am Mateo Tiller,’ the Greatcoat said, his face contorted in pain, sweat dripping from his forehead. He twisted the blade hard and the assassin’s knife slid from fingers no longer under their owner’s control. ‘I am the King’s Tongue. He says go to hell.’

*

For a moment no one moved and everything was still, except for the blood oozing from the assassin’s chest and along Mateo’s blade before it dripped onto Aline’s face. Even then she sat calmly, looking only at me, ignoring the would-be killer’s blood staining her cheeks. I ran to her and grabbed her out of the chair, holding her in my arms, the leather coat wrapping around the two of us. I could hear Kest and Brasti shouting at people to stay back and summoning people we knew in the crowd to form a perimeter around us.

The would-be assassin was still spewing his religious madness at the world around him, but several of the guards were now holding him down.

‘I’m all right,’ Aline said in my ear. ‘Don’t squeeze so hard, Falcio.’

‘I’m going to choose to ignore that command,’ I said, listening instead to the beating of her heart and hoping I could slow my own down to match it.

‘I wasn’t afraid,’ she insisted.

‘Well, I damned well was.’

‘I need to . . .’ She started wriggling, trying to get her arm out from under mine, so I let her go and she reached up and wiped some of the blood off her face.

For a moment the two of us just looked at each other.

‘Don’t stare at me like that, Falcio,’ she said. ‘I know I look stupid with blood on my face.’

‘You look like a clown getting ready to put on a children’s show.’

‘Well you smell like the backside of a horse.’

‘That’s perfume,’ I said. ‘I brought it for you as a gift. Don’t you like it?’

‘
You
must. I smell it on you all the time.’

Behind us people were shouting; Valiana was asking questions and Brasti was doing his best to answer them. For Aline and me, this was a place we’d been to before, death only a hair’s breadth away, too many times. I reached out and hugged her again. ‘We have to stop meeting like this,’ I said.

She started to say something but stopped.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing,’ Aline replied, pushing away from me. ‘Valiana needs you.’

I turned and saw the woman I’d named my daughter standing before me, waiting to speak to me. Despite the chaos around us, the look of determination on her face made me want to hug her, too. Unfortunately, someone else got in the way.

‘First Cantor,’ the young man said, giving a slight bow that made a lock of red-blond hair fall over his face, ‘I am Pastien, Ducal Protector of Luth. I’ve long looked forward to talking to you.’

I was about to tell him that he was going to be waiting a while longer but Valiana gave a slight shake of her head. I glanced around and realised the nobles and merchants of the court were all watching us intently.
She doesn’t want me to weaken him in front of his court
, I realised. ‘My Lord Ducal Protector,’ I began, then hesitated.
What the hells do I say to the man? I’ve barely even heard of him
. ‘My pleasure in meeting you carries with it that of all the Greatcoats. Never have I heard an ill word spoken of you.’
There. That’s all I’ve got.

Apparently it was enough: Pastien looked like he’d just escaped execution and Valiana gave me a slight wink that said I hadn’t just destroyed the country. ‘My Lord Ducal Protector,’ she interrupted, ‘I know you will forgive us, but we must get Aline away from here. There could be a back-up plan in place and this room is too crowded for us to protect the heir properly.’

‘Of course,’ Pastien said. ‘Forgive my foolishness in delaying you.’

He wasn’t the only fool. I’d so desperately wanted to know that Aline was all right, to
feel
that she was all right, that I’d failed to consider that other assassins could still be hiding amongst the crowd. ‘I’ll go with her,’ I said.

‘You won’t.’ Valiana’s tone brooked no dissent. ‘We need you here. The assassin is dying and I have no idea what in all the hells is going on.’

‘Aline stays—’

‘I will care for her.’

One look at Ethalia and the rush of danger burning through me calmed, if only for a moment, and all I wanted was reach out to her, to connect to that sense of the world being perfectly safe and sane that I felt only when we were together. But everything about Ethalia is in the eyes, and those eyes no longer looked at me the way they used to.

You’re getting maudlin in your old age.
‘Thank you,’ I said, and looked around. Spotting Kest, I said, ‘Go with them. Kill anyone who tries to touch them.
Anyone
.’

Kest squeezed my shoulder and said quietly, so that only I could hear him, ‘It’s what I do best. Now you need to do what you do best.’

As I returned my attention to the dais and the assassin, any feelings of love or pain drained out of me, leaving a burning rage that threatened to feed on itself. I so badly wanted to put my hands around the throat of the impostor wearing the stolen greatcoat that I had to squeeze them until my knuckles went white.

‘Breathe, First Cantor,’ Mateo Tiller said, holding his bleeding shoulder and leaning rather unceremoniously against the throne of Luth. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

‘We need a healer!’ I shouted, then I saw someone was already heading towards us, her silver case at the ready. ‘Take care of this man,’ I said, pointing to Mateo, but he was shaking his head.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ he grunted. ‘Help the assassin – we need him alive so we can interrogate him.’

Reluctantly, I nodded to the healer and as she set about her business I said thoughtfully, ‘I think I remember you now. You joined the Greatcoats not long before—’

‘Yup,’ Mateo said, ‘barely got a year in before everything went to seven hells. This job isn’t what I was promised – and I do believe I’m owed some back pay.’

‘Aren’t we all,’ I said, and extended a hand to shake Mateo’s. ‘That was damned good work.’

He pushed himself off to a fully standing position and accepted my hand. ‘It was damned, anyway.’ He was a little taller than me, thick hair brushing his shoulders and a beard that reminded me of Brasti’s, though Mateo’s was a deep brown rather than red.

‘“The King’s Tongue”. What does that mean?’ I asked. I didn’t really care, but I was still shaking and I needed to try and slow my heart down before it burst in my chest.

He gave a smile that was more grimace than grin. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t remember, but I used to be a page. I always knew I wanted to join the Greatcoats and I used to follow King Paelis around asking questions about the law all the time, hoping he’d let me join the order. Then he’d get annoyed and threaten to have my tongue cut out for him to wear as a necklace. I said that would make me the King’s Tongue and then he’d
have
to make me a Greatcoat.’

‘That’s a nice story,’ I said, ‘but you’re lying.’

‘True, but I’m in a lot of pain, so it’s possible that I forgot the real reason.’

The sound of a scream made us both turn.

The healer was pressing a red cloth against the assassin’s chest. ‘I can’t save him,’ she said. ‘The sword went through his lung. Saints know why his heart’s still beating.’

I glanced at Mateo. ‘You should have hit him in the stomach. He’d have lasted longer that way.’

‘I was aiming for his stomach, but you had Brasti-fucking-Goodbow shoot me in the shoulder. Bastard managed to hit the exact spot where the bone plates in my coat were broken from a spear last year. So I’m sorry if my aim was off, but kindly go fuck yourself, First Cantor.’

‘Sorry,’ I said, and actually meant it. If only I’d recognised him sooner, this might have gone differently. ‘How did he even get so close to Aline?’ I wondered aloud.

‘Apparently whenever a new Greatcoat arrives, she and Valiana insist on greeting them personally,’ Mateo replied. ‘I got here yesterday and the Realm’s Protector asked that I stay close by. This fellow,’ he said, kicking the assassin’s foot, ‘arrived a couple of days before me. Said his name was Harden something.’

‘Harden Venire, but that’s not him. Harden is dead.’

The healer called to me, ‘I’ve got this man as stable as I can make him. Not sure what’s been keeping him going but it won’t last. He’s got minutes, no more.’

I went to walk over, and nearly passed out when I put all my weight on my ankle. Now that the immediate danger had been dealt with, my body was obviously intending to have a few words with me.

‘Here, sir, I found this for you.’ I turned to see a guardsman holding out a walking stick. ‘If you hand me your rapiers I can hold onto them for you.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said, taking the cane from him, but I’d barely taken a step before the damned thing got caught up in my scabbard and nearly sent me flying. ‘Hells, take it,’ I said, unbelting the damned thing.

‘That’s the wrong side, sir; the doctor said you should use the stick on the opposite side to the injured leg.’

‘Hells, fine.’ I handed him the other one and walked gingerly over to the assassin. Whilst I’d been fumbling about, Valiana had got there first.