It occurred to me that the Lady must have been very careful to ensure her men – or most of them, at least – never saw her. Feltock didn’t look especially shocked, so I assume he had, but none of us had seen her even once in all the weeks we had been on the road. We certainly wouldn’t have forgotten, for she was a stunning beauty, with bright ocean-coloured eyes and delicate features. She saw me staring and smiled, and for some strange reason it hurt me more than she could possibly have intended. I looked at Kest and saw that even he was overtaken for the moment.
The clerk wasn’t. ‘Yes, dear, you’re quite pretty, and I imagine you’re very rich. But the Duke is pretty too, and probably a lot richer, so you still can’t see him.’
‘And why not, little man?’ Her voice sounded the same but now I could hear it was younger than I had previously thought.
‘Well,’ said the clerk, ‘because you kind of look like a whore and the Duke is a married man with several important mistresses and we wouldn’t want to offend any of them, would we?’
I expected the Lady to launch into a tirade at that point, but instead she calmly held out her hands, clenched into fists, in front of the clerk’s face. ‘Little man, look closely at my rings.’
The clerk did so, and then he looked as if he’d seen the end of his life, right there in front of him. ‘Damn me,’ he said.
I stepped behind him and got a look at the rings just before she pulled them back and crossed her arms in front of her. The ring on the left was the Ducal ring of Hervor, meaning her mother wasn’t the Duchess of Orison, as we had suspected, but was in fact Patriana, Duchess of Hervor.
‘Bloody hells,’ Kest said. It was unusual for him to swear, but I echoed the sentiment. Patriana was the worst of the nobles; it was she who had put the spine into the other Dukes and persuaded them to move on King Paelis. I could have slit her daughter’s throat right then with less regret than I had for the axeman in the market.
‘Hervor,’ I said to Kest, who was shaking his head.
‘No, you don’t understand. The other ring: it’s the Ducal ring for Rijou. She’s claiming to be the daughter of Patriana, Duchess of Hervor and Jillard, Duke of Rijou. She’s claiming transcendent blood!’
The Lady smiled at us, then back at the clerk. ‘Do my “credentials” satisfy you now, little man?’
The clerk sputtered for a moment. ‘Well, that is – I mean, I cannot verify – that is to say … Welcome, welcome to Rijou, your, ah, Ladyship.’
‘Highness,’ she said. ‘The term you are groping so ineffectually for is “your Highness”. Or if you prefer, your Royal Highness Princess Valiana.’
The clerk bent down to one knee. Feltock, who didn’t look at all surprised, did the same, as did Trin. Kest, Brasti and I stayed standing. By King’s Law, Greatcoats bowed before no one, not even the King himself. And besides that, I was probably going to kill her.
Despite my prejudice against the place, Rijou is really a very beautiful city at twilight, if you can forget where you are for just a moment.
The Clerk of the Gate had sent word for one of the Duke’s advisors, and a man named Shiballe arrived to escort us into the city. Shiballe was overfed and too well dressed for a messenger, but it wasn’t really my problem at this point. The worst he could do would be to assassinate Valiana, which might not be such a bad thing.
When Shiballe kissed her hand, the Lady looked at me and smiled as if this was all a grand joke she’d played on me personally, as if I should somehow be stunned senseless by her cleverness. That itself would have been enough to make me dislike her, not to mention the fact that her mother was the bitch who helped kill my King. But for some reason what offended me most was watching Trin humble herself, walking three feet behind her mistress, as docile as a lamb off to be sheared. If we did decide to go back on every vow we’d ever taken and kill Valiana, we’d have to kill Feltock first – that wouldn’t be such a hard thing to do; the man was a soldier and he’d made his own bed. Trin would die too, though, before letting anyone touch Valiana, and that was just a shame. When Shiballe kissed Trin’s hand she looked as if a horse had just shat on it, which only served to make me like her more.
The Lady stopped for refreshment with Shiballe. Feltock and Brasti stood guard while Kest and I were sent to scout the rest of the way. I took the opportunity to enjoy the city between sunset and moonrise: twilight in Rijou is quite possibly the only time when, for reasons only the Saints know, the nobles of the city don’t feel the same need to murder their fellow citizens. Unfortunately, we weren’t fellow citizens.
‘We have to do this, Falcio,’ Kest said for the hundredth time. He rarely repeats himself because he eventually just does whatever it is he thinks needs doing and deals with the consequences later, so I had to assume he wasn’t trying to change my mind so much as ease me towards the inevitable conclusion. ‘You know this is what they’ve been planning while we’ve been fumbling around the country,’ he went on. ‘To set up a new monarchy – one completely controlled by the Dukes, so they never have to fear the rise of a new King like Paelis.’
‘The Dukes run everything as it is,’ I said. ‘So what’s the difference?’
‘The difference is that their rule will be entrenched across the entire country, not just in their individual Duchies any more.’
‘Look around,’ I said. ‘The world has become as corrupt and oppressive as any of us could ever have imagined.’
‘Yes, and if we let them sit this girl on the throne it will get much worse. As bad as they are right now, the Dukes still shy away from actively breaking King’s Law. They know it would put them in jeopardy if a strong, decent Duke comes to power or, Saints hope, a new King rises. But if we let them get away with this then the most self-serving, oppressive rule in our history will become law. King’s Law, Falcio.’
‘If it goes that way then we’ll fight, won’t we? And we’ll win – we always win in the end.’
‘Don’t make Brasti right about you,’ Kest said. ‘You know as well as I do that there aren’t that many of us left. We were a hundred and forty-four at our peak and now we’re fair game for anyone with a blade. I doubt there are still fifty Greatcoats left. And who knows what most of them have turned into? I can beat anyone with a sword, Falcio, but I can’t beat ten men with pistols. The old rules won’t work for us. We can win the fight, but I don’t think we can win fair.’
I stopped my horse for a moment. ‘You want to pass judgement before she’s even committed a crime. The King never would have allowed that. It would have destroyed him. It would destroy us.’
‘What about Tremondi?’ he asked.
‘Tremondi? What’s she got to do with him?’
Kest sighed. ‘You really haven’t figured it out?’
‘Pretend I haven’t.’
Kest pointed at the carriage. ‘We know Tremondi was having an affair with the woman who killed him. Who fits the old pervert’s tastes? Valiana does. Who benefits by his death? She does. Who, when we appeared at the market in Solat, managed to find a way to both keep us on a short leash and to ensure the rest of the caravan guards hated us? It was her, with that challenge she put you up to.’
‘Which you made me accept,’ I said.
‘Nothing gets by you, Falcio, except for the bloody obvious. Almost as soon as we left the caravan, once we were away from the city and anyone who might have believed our story, Lynniac and his Knights show up – and what does she do? She makes us fight them barehanded.’