Saint's Blood: The Greatcoats Book 3 (37 page)

‘Are you Falcio?’ he asked.

‘I am. What’s your name?’

He looked unsure for a moment, then shook his head. ‘He told me only to give you the message. Nothing else.’

Quentis appeared at my side. ‘Why don’t you come inside and give us the message then.’ He reached out to open the gate, but it was locked and neither of us had the key.

Before I could turn to call for one of the guards, the boy stepped back and brought a hand up to his neck. I saw the glint of metal. It looked like a small iron thimble on his little finger, but there was a half-inch-long needle at the end of it. I heard gasps behind us and realised that many of the pilgrims had followed us. I glanced back and saw some of the guards with them now.

‘He said it would be quick,’ the boy threatened, still holding the tiny needle at his neck.

‘Don’t,’ I said. ‘Just . . . don’t move.’

The boy seemed unperturbed. ‘He said you’d probably need to spend some time trying to figure out if you could talk me into giving myself up. Are you going to do that?’

‘Why don’t you tell us your name and we’ll go from there?’ I asked.

The boy shook his head. ‘He said I should tell you that I have a mother and a father. I have two older sisters and a baby brother, born last harvest. He said to tell you that they would all be dead if I didn’t do as I was told.’

I considered how fast I could draw one of my throwing knives, and whether I could hit the boy in the shoulder in time and not end up killing him by mistake myself. Then I wondered if perhaps Quentis’ pistol might fire now that the nightmist was dying out. I glanced at the Inquisitor but he shook his head, evidently having had the same idea himself.

The boy looked up at me quizzically. ‘Do you need more time? Or can I give you the message?’

‘Go ahead,’ Quentis replied.

The boy waited, unmoving, until I said, ‘Say what you came to say.’

He reached back with his other hand and lifted the cloth to reveal a woman’s corpse beneath. The body was naked, clothed only in dozens, maybe hundreds, of tiny red lines – the last faint traces of blood. She looked thin, withered. The boy removed the rest of the cloth so that I could see the iron mask covering her face. ‘He said to tell you that this used to be Saint Laina-who-whores-for-Gods, and that you probably shouldn’t invoke her name so much any more.’ The boy waited for a moment, then said, ‘He said you might find that funny.’

‘Then he doesn’t know me very well,’ I said. ‘What can you tell me about the man who sent you?’

The boy’s eyes narrowed for a moment, then he took in a deep breath and held it before letting out a long, preposterously theatrical sigh. ‘He said to do that if you asked about him. You’ve never met him. You never will. That’s why you can’t beat him.’

The words my wife – or rather, my hallucination of Aline – had uttered came back to me.
He needs no mask of his own.
But was the boy telling the truth, or was this a ruse to keep me from seeking out my opponent among the plentiful enemies I already knew?
It might be a lie
, I thought
, but if so, it’s a lazy one.
‘What does he want?’ I asked, knowing I wasn’t likely to get an answer but unwilling be shamed into not trying by a child acting on the orders of a madman.

The boy perked up at that. ‘Oh. He said you’d probably swear some kind of oath or make a threat before you got to the point.’ He paused again, mumbling a bit as if rehearsing the words, then he looked back up at us. ‘He said to tell you that there aren’t many Saints left now, but that he’ll stop hurting people just as soon as he gets the one you’ve been keeping from him.’

Ethalia. He wants Ethalia.
‘Tell him he can—’ I stopped myself.
Enough. Stop playing his game.
There was only one thing I could hope to gain from this situation, which was some tiny shred of information I could use later. ‘If I agree, where should I bring her?’

‘Oh, he said you don’t need to take her anywhere,’ the boy said. ‘He has people who will come and get her. Lots and lots of them. If you keep standing in their way, all that’s going to happen is more people will get hurt.’ The boy looked past me to the crowds of pilgrims. ‘You don’t have to die, you know. Your crops don’t have to wither. The Gods are very angry with you, but he said to say that they’ll forgive you once the last false Saint is dead.’

My fists gripped the iron bars between us. Here was the real reason why the boy had been sent, why the God’s Needle had massacred these people. The message wasn’t for me. It was for everyone else.
He wants them afraid so that they’ll give up Ethalia.

The sounds of grumbling started behind us, but I ignored them. The boy was still looking up at me. He still had the point of the short needle against his throat. ‘Do you think he’ll really let my family go?’ the boy asked, speaking for himself for the first time.

I looked into his eyes. I’d been wrong about him being an innocent. That had been taken away from him before he’d begun this journey. I thought about lying to him, giving some small hope to his last moments.

‘He won’t let them go,’ Quentis said, ‘for the same reason he told you to put that needle to your throat. You can’t save them, child. Come inside. Let us help you.’

The boy didn’t move. ‘He showed me something before he sent me here, you know.’

‘What was it?’ I asked, as gently as I could. We had lost this fight before it had begun.

There were tears in the boy’s eyes now. ‘He showed me that there are worse things he can do to my family than just kill them.’ With that the child pushed the needle attached to the thimble on his little finger into his throat. He slumped back against the horse-cart and gently slid down to the ground.

‘Falcio?’ Quentis said, for perhaps the fifth time.

I was still clinging to the gates even though one of the guardsmen had come and opened them. The boy was still lying on the ground, next to his ragged little cart. His skin was a perfect pale white now, his lips blue as a clear sky. The little pony that had pulled him all this way was looking over at its master, doubtless wondering when the boy would get up to feed him.

‘Falcio, there’s nothing more you can do here.’

The wooden surface of the cart was clean, as were the wheels. The only dirt I could see had obviously come from the journey up the road to the palace.
He told the boy to clean it just before he got to the gates to make sure there wouldn’t be any evidence to follow.

‘So many dead,’ a woman moaned, inching closer with several others of the pilgrims.

I looked around at the courtyard. Guardsmen had come to collect the dead, but the pilgrims were making them wait while they said final prayers over strangers and loved ones alike. They began surrounding us. ‘The Gods have turned against us,’ an old man said, stumbling forward, leaning on a crooked staff that matched the curve of his back.

‘Because of you,’ a young woman added. She was pretty, with a flat nose and bright red hair. There was iron in her eyes. ‘You’ve brought this on us, you and your false Queen and your false Protector and your false Saint.’

An elderly woman took my wrist in thin, crinkled fingers. She pulled me towards the bodies in the centre of the courtyard. Not knowing what else to do, I followed. ‘There,’ she said, pointing to a man nearly split in two by the God’s Needle’s massive sword. ‘My husband,’ the words tumbled out in a single sob. ‘Why is he dead while the ones you love still live, Trattari?’

I said something then, something I shouldn’t have. I must have known it was a bad idea because I’d muttered it so quietly that only Quentis had heard. ‘Falcio . . . don’t,’ he cautioned.

A wiser man would have heeded the warning. I didn’t. ‘Because I fight for the people I love,’ I said.

They heard you that time
, I thought, as the pilgrims started constricting me. Quentis tried to grab my shoulder but I shrugged him off and drew my rapiers. ‘Have I offended you?’ I asked the mob. ‘Have I offended your Gods? Is that what it takes to make you fight? Is that what was missing when one man came amongst you and began cutting you down, one after another? Should he have spat on a statue of Phenia, Goddess of Love? Or perhaps Argentus, God of Coin?’

The guardsmen were starting to inch forward, not yet drawing their weapons but I doubted they’d let me go on for long.
What good is this?
I asked myself.
What is there to gain? Do you want them to attack you?

‘Come on!’ I shouted, ‘show me your vengeance.’ I spat the next word. ‘
Tristians
. “The people of sorrows” the Avareans named us when they brought us here in chains to work the mines. Too bad they never took the chains off.’

Somewhere in the crowd I saw a young man clasp his hands to the centre of his chest the way one does when praying to Purgeize, God of War. ‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘pray for the Gods to come down and smite me. Use the great power of your faith to make them strike me dead here and now.’ I spread my arms out to the sky and looked up. ‘I’m right here, you bastards! Come and get me!’

‘That’s enough, Falcio,’ Quentis said. His mace was in his right hand and I wondered if he was planning to protect me with it or knock me out.
He’d be doing me a favour if he did
, I thought.

I sheathed my rapiers. My voice was quieter when I said, ‘Keep praying. Bow before your Gods. Kneel before them.’ I started back to the palace entrance. ‘It’s all you’re good for.’

I pushed past the guardsmen who had, I noted, finally drawn their weapons, and grabbed the heavy pack of nightmist the attacker had left behind. The last thing we needed was for some pilgrim to start weeping over it and set the damn stuff off again.

‘You know,’ Quentis said, following me back to the palace, ‘people are quite wrong about you. You give really
terrible
speeches.’

I felt something soft and wet hit the back of my coat. I didn’t bother to see what had been thrown at me.

Quentis did glance behind us. ‘Not especially grateful to us for saving their lives, are they?’

‘You get used to it,’ I said with a sigh.

I paid little attention to what people said to me as I entered the palace and crossed the grand foyer. A servant, or perhaps he was a clerk, informed me with an upturned nose that the Ducal Protector required my attendance in the throne room. I told him I’d be there at my soonest convenience, which I was fairly determined would be never.

Quentis started on about wider concerns to address and the need to discuss the message the boy had brought – the clerical council who gave him his orders would be arriving tomorrow and they would expect action to be taken. I think he said something about this being a big, complex, changing world and that I needed to recognise that those who led the faithful would no longer be able to sit back waiting for a handful of Greatcoats to fumble about the countryside. This was the time, he informed me, to consider the future.

I said I’d get back to him on that.

By the time I reached the diplomatic chamber, I was being bombarded with questions about the fight outside: sensible questions. Important questions. I didn’t answer any of them.

‘We’re leaving here,’ I informed everyone.

‘To go where?’ Brasti asked.

I glanced over at Valiana, who was still sitting on the sofa, waiting for someone to help her. ‘We need to get her up to her chambers for now. It’s easier to protect her if we all stay together.’

‘And then?’ Kest asked.

‘In two days’ time the troops Valiana sent for will be here. We’ll use them to get all of us back to Aramor safely.’

I started towards Valiana but Aline blocked my way. ‘She wanted those troops to help protect Luth, to show the clerics and the nobles here that the Crown was supporting Pastien – what’s he supposed to do if we just abandon him here?’

I gently pushed past her and walked to the sofa. I leaned over and took Valiana’s hands and helped her to her feet. ‘Pastien can go to any hell he wishes,’ I replied, ‘and he can take his Duchy with him.’

*

‘Can I make a suggestion?’ Brasti asked as he and I led Valiana down the wide central hallway of the Ducal Palace, past the dozens of men and women gawking at the site of the Realm’s Protector trapped in an iron mask of infamy. We pushed past them all and made for the stairs that led to the private rooms Pastien had set aside for her.

‘He still thinks we should kill Quentis Maren,’ Kest said, walking alongside us. He kept his left hand on the hilt of his sheathed blade, although even that seemed to hurt these days.

Aline led the way, her status as heir to the throne sufficient to make the servants and guardsmen stand aside, though they muttered to each other as they did so, and I saw more than one nobleman smirking at Valiana’s condition. If I hadn’t been holding her I would have been hard-pressed to stop myself from scraping away those gleeful expressions with my bare hands.

We passed by a long painting that portrayed all of the Kings of Tristia dating back several hundred years, riding together as they pursued a shining white stag in a very improbable hunt – a symbol, no doubt, for some glorious future they sought to achieve.
But you were wrong, oh Kings
, I thought.
I’ve become something of an expert on this and I’m fairly sure you were all just chasing a hallucination.

‘Quentis says he works for the Church,’ Brasti continued, ‘but there
is
no Church of Tristia, not really. You know why? Because religious zealots can’t work together – it’s as simple as that. Saint Zaghev’s burning balls, how do you expect these people to unite behind one God when they’ve spent the last thousand years arguing over which one has the biggest cock?’

We reached the bottom of the grand staircase and Kest said, ‘According to the
Canon dei
, it’s Purgeize, God of War.’

All of us stopped and looked at him. He was the only one of us who’d made any real study of Tristia’s religious texts. ‘Seriously?’ I asked incredulously. ‘You’re telling me the oldest holy book describes a God’s—’