He sat back and his shoulders hunched and he was the weak, skinny man I’d almost killed once again. I had stopped crying, though I knew I would start again soon. This little King was mad, as mad as I was, but there was nothing else left. I knew what he said was true. Even the Gods, as feckless and fickle as they were, would not long suffer a world of King Greggors and Duke Yereds to survive.
‘I’m not ready,’ I said.
‘You have to be. It has to start now.’
I choked on my own spit for a second. When they take the last good thing from your life, how do you answer?
‘How does it begin?’ I asked.
The King got this little smile on his face, small, almost unnoticeable. I would learn this was one of his most defining characteristics. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.
‘Falcio,’ I said. ‘Falcio val Mond.’
‘Falcio,’ he began, ‘when you were a boy, did anyone ever tell you stories about the Greatcoats?’
THE GATES OF RIJOU
‘And I swear to you, your Ladyship, you don’t want any part of Rijou,’ I shouted back. ‘They don’t call it the “City of Strife” for nothing.’
The voice in the carriage was even, but I could hear an edge of anger as she said, ‘And I have told you, my tatter-cloak, that we have business with Jillard, Duke of Rijou, and we will enter the city tonight.’
‘My Lady … he’s not completely wrong about this.’ Even Feltock was with me on this one, and he never contradicted the Lady. Rijou was a city with nineteen noble houses, all of which fought with each other in endless cycles of intrigues, assassinations and occasionally outright war. The Duke of Rijou did nothing to stop the violence and everything to encourage it, not least because the murders kept those vying for his position in check and the wars kept their private armies small and manageable.
But, for everyone else, Rijou was an awful place. From a distance it gleamed. I don’t mean it shimmered, nor did it shine; it gleamed, the gleam of oily skin on a corpse, or the gleam in the eye of a man who fancies he can kill you without consequence. The city might be rich and opulent, but it was treacherous for anyone without a sheriff in their pocket and an army at their back. In Rijou there was nothing to stop a landlord from changing the terms of a lease anytime he wanted, so long as he could get authorisation from the sheriff. The King had sent Brasti and me there once to hear a jeweller’s dispute with his noble landlord. In this case he had changed the terms to allow himself to set the jeweller’s prices. We heard the case and passed judgement in the jeweller’s favour, only to find him dead the next morning. The Duke paid the fine without question, and the smile on his face told us we were welcome back anytime we wanted to see someone else killed. I had sworn then that one day I would come back and bring justice to this shithole. But I had failed in that, as I had in so many things since. How much justice could I hope to bring to an entire city if I couldn’t even keep one old man alive?
‘My Lady,’ I tried one last time, ‘no one can promise to protect you once we are inside the city gates.’
‘Nonsense,’ she said. ‘We have ten good men with us and you’ve done an admirable job so far of fighting off brigands.’
‘But you see, we can’t take the whole caravan into the city. The Duke’s men won’t allow it. And if you try to enter with more than two or three men-at-arms, someone will think you’re starting a house war and you’ll be killed.’
I waited as she considered this behind her curtains. Finally she said, ‘Very well then. Feltock, take this tatter-cloak and two others and follow my carriage into town so that I may conduct my business with the Duke.’
It was my turn to pause as I tried to find the right words. ‘My Lady, it’s unlikely the Duke will agree to see you. I have no doubt that in your home of Orison you are a person of great consequence, but in Rijou you will be nothing more than another target.’
‘Nothing more?’ she said from behind the curtains of the carriage. The tone of her voice didn’t bode well for me. ‘Feltock?’ she asked after a moment. ‘Tell your pistolman to put a steel ball in that man’s head if he does not immediately mount his horse and lead us down into the city.’
Feltock didn’t hesitate to signal the little man who carried the pistol. He turned to see what I would do. He liked me better these days, and he probably agreed with me about Rijou, but he was a military man and he followed the orders he was given.
Kest was standing by my left shoulder. I couldn’t see Brasti, so I assumed that he had hidden himself, his bow at the ready, behind one of the trees that lined the road into the city.
‘I think I might be able to stop the ball from the pistol,’ Kest said matter-of-factly. ‘Using the angle of the barrel, I should be able to figure out roughly where the ball should hit.’
‘Roughly?’ I asked.
‘It’s never been done before. You’ve got to take a few chances with this kind of thing.’
‘For what it’s worth, my advice is let’s not die right now and save that idea for another day,’ I said, and mounted up on my horse.
I looked around and saw Brasti resting on top of some blankets on one of the open wagons.
‘That’s some fine cover you were giving me there, Brasti.’
He yawned and patted the bow that rested against his leg. He had ten arrows arrayed in front of him so I suppose I should have been grateful for that.
‘I have every confidence in your diplomatic skills,’ he said, ‘especially when it involves following orders. But you’re crazy if you think going back into Rijou is better than trying to parry pistols. Don’t worry. I’ll stay here and guard the caravan.’
‘Get off your ass, boy, you’re comin’ with us,’ Feltock growled. ‘Since you all appear to know so much about it, I’m sure you’ll do a fine job of guarding the Lady’s dignity along with your own skins.’
‘The three of us could always kill you and leave once we’re away from the rest of the caravan, you realise,’ Kest said.
‘True,’ Feltock said. Then he started laughing. ‘But then you’d still have no money and no employer and, from what little I’ve heard, Duke Jillard don’t waste a lot of sentiment on tatter-cloaks now, does he?’
‘I may just kill you on principle if you keep calling us that,’ I said, but Kest, Brasti, Feltock and I led the carriage along the wide, tree-lined avenue that leads from the caravan route, past the first gates and into the city proper. Rijou isn’t exactly a fortress town, but it does have three sets of iron gates. The first we passed through looked unguarded, but the trees that grew alongside the road provided excellent hiding places for the half a dozen guards with crossbows. If you don’t look suspicious enough to be shot on sight and no one has paid the guards to kill you, you can carry on to the second gates, where the men are armoured and the gates run on a sliding track between stone pillars. When the lever is pulled, the gates can come down in a second, instantly impaling anything caught in their way. The guards of the second gate have this great joke: you don’t need to ask permission to enter Rijou; you just walk under the gate. If they decide to drop it on your head, that means admission is denied and you should come back tomorrow and try again. Well, it makes them laugh …
Feltock didn’t favour that approach. Instead, he handed one of the guards the packet of credentials he carried on the Lady’s behalf. The guard looked them over and then passed them on to another man who scrutinised them more closely. The first guard walked up to us and stared me up and down. He was a younger man, with dark hair and a short, sparse beard that didn’t favour him. But he carried himself confidently, and looked like he must be solid under his plate-armour.