‘Just do it.’
Brasti pushed the door back into place and Kest helped him to shove the dresser in front of it before turning to help as I searched for anything that would link to the woman who’d killed Tremondi.
‘Do you think we’ll find her?’ Kest asked me as we looked down at Tremondi’s butchered remains.
‘Not a chance in any of the hells we’re headed for,’ I replied.
Kest put a hand on my shoulder. ‘Through the window?’
I sighed. ‘The window.’
Fists were banging on the door outside. ‘Goodnight, Lord Tremondi,’ I said. ‘You weren’t an especially good employer. You lied a lot, and never paid us when you promised. But I guess that’s all right, since we turned out to be pretty useless bodyguards.’
Kest was already climbing out as the constables were beginning to force the door of our room.
‘Hang on,’ Brasti said. ‘Shouldn’t we – you know …’
‘What?’
‘You know, take his money?’
Even Kest looked back and raised an eyebrow at that one.
‘No, we do not take his money,’ I said.
‘Why not? It’s not like he needs it.’
I sighed again. ‘Because we’re not thieves, Brasti, we’re Greatcoats. And that has to mean something.’
He started making his way out of the window. ‘Yeah, it means something: it means people hate us. It means they’re going to blame us for Tremondi’s death. It means we’re going to hang from the noose while the mob throws rotten fruit at our corpses shouting, “Tatter-cloak, tatter-cloak!” – And – oh yes it means we also don’t have any money. But at least we still have our coats.’
He disappeared out of the window and I climbed out after him. The constables had just broken down the door, and when their leader saw me there with the wooden sill digging into my chest as I eased myself out of the window, there was the hint of a smile on his face. I knew instantly what that smile meant: he had more men waiting for us below, and now he could rain arrows down on us while they held us at bay with pikes.
My name is Falcio val Mond, First Cantor of the Greatcoats, and this was only the first of a great many bad days to come.
CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
The duchy where I was born is called Pertine. It is a small and simple place, largely ignored by the rest of Tristia. The word ‘pertine’ has a number of different meanings, but they all come from the flower that grows on the leeward slopes of the mountain ranges that ring the region. It is an odd sort of bluish colour, and you would call it bright at first, but then as you looked on it further, you’d find yourself adding words like ‘oily’ and ‘runny-looking’ and finally ‘sort of disturbing’. The pertine has no known medicinal properties, it makes you sick if you eat it and it smells horrible once plucked from the ground. Needless to say, you’d have to be pretty stupid to make it the one thing people remember about your region. However, somewhere in the distant past, some warlord decided to pick one of these flowers, put it on his cloak and name this land of my birth ‘Pertine’. I imagine he was born without a sense of smell.
But the folly continues. The guardsmen who watch over the town and comprise our troops in times of war wear tabards of the same colour and general consistency as the flowers that grace our homeland, which inevitably means they are dubbed ‘the Pertines’ – because they are, after all, blue, oily, runny-looking and ultimately quite stinky.
I was born to this rich heritage as my father had chosen not only to live in Pertine but also to serve in the Pertine Guard. He wasn’t a very good father to me, nor husband to my mother, and I think he realised that for he fired himself when I was seven years old. I always assumed he got himself a new job as husband and father somewhere else, but I never bothered to find out.
I paid the fate-scribe at the Monastery of Saint Anlas-who-remembers-the-world a good deal of money to write this, though I will never see it myself. How they can transcribe the events of a man’s life from afar, I do not know. Some say they read the threads of fate, or they bond with a man’s mind and capture his thoughts to put down on paper. Others say they just make this shit up, since by the time anyone gets to read it the person it’s about is almost certainly dead. Whichever it is, I hope they at least get this next part right because there are two stories separated by twenty-five years and I think they’re both important, so try to pay attention.
The first is this: I was eight years old and living with my mother on the outskirts of a town that bordered the outskirts of the next town. My mother often sent me on errands that, in retrospect, now seem a bit suspicious. ‘Falcio, run into town and fetch me a single carrot. Make it a good one, mind you.’ Or, ‘Falcio, run into town and ask the messenger to confirm how much it will cost us to send a letter to your grandfather in Fraletta.’
Now, I don’t know how it is where you live, but the cost of sending a letter along the main roads hasn’t changed in Pertine for fifty years, and I’m still not sure what one can make with a single carrot. But me being away pleased my mother well enough, and it gave me time to go to the tavern and listen to Bal Armidor. Bal was a young travelling storyteller who spent a great deal of time in our town. He brought middle-aged men of means news of what was happening outside of Pertine and regaled old men with crooked backs with righteous stories of the Saints. He sang young girls sweet songs of romance that made them blush and their admirers boil … and he told me stories of the Greatcoats.
‘I’ll tell you a secret, Falcio,’ he said to me one afternoon. The tavern was almost empty and he was tuning his guitar and preparing for the evening’s entertainment. The bartender, washing last night’s mugs, rolled his eyes at us.
‘I promise not to tell anyone, Bal, ever,’ I said, as if taking a solemn vow. My voice was kind of creaky, so it didn’t actually sound much like a real vow to me.
Bal chuckled. ‘No need for that, my trusty friend.’
Good thing too, I suppose, since I’m about to break the oath.
‘What’s the secret, Bal?’
He glanced up from his guitar and looked around the room before motioning for me to come closer. He spoke in that whisper of his that sounded like it could travel on the wind and reach you from a hundred miles away.
‘You know how I told you about King Ugrid?’
‘The evil King who disbanded the Greatcoats and swore they would never again use cloak and sword to help the people of the land?’
‘Now, remember, Falcio,’ Bal said, ‘the Greatcoats weren’t just a bunch of swordsmen running around fighting monsters and evildoers, were they? They were the travelling Magisters. They heard the complaints of the people who lived outside the reach of the King’s Constabulary, and they meted out justice in his name.’
‘But Ugrid hated them,’ I said, hating the embarrassing whine in my voice.
‘King Ugrid was very close to the Dukes,’ Bal said evenly, ‘and they believed it was their right to administer and set the laws on their own lands. Not all Kings agreed with that idea, but Ugrid believed that as long as the Dukes paid their taxes and levies, then what they did on their own lands was their business.’
‘But everyone knows the Dukes are tyrants,’ I started.
Bal’s hand came out of nowhere and slapped me hard across the face. When he spoke, his voice was deadly cold. ‘Don’t you ever say such a thing again, Falcio. Do you understand me?’
I tried to speak, but couldn’t. Bal had never taken a hand to me before and the shock of his betrayal stayed my tongue. After a moment, he set his guitar down and put his hands on my shoulders. I flinched.
‘Falcio,’ he sighed, ‘do you know what would happen to you if one of the Duke’s men heard you use the word tyrant when speaking of their Lord? Do you know what would happen to me? There are two words you must be very careful about ever saying aloud: tyrant, and traitor – because they often go together, and usually with terrible results.’