I picked up a small piece of still-smouldering wood and let it burn my hand for a moment before letting it fall.
‘But most of the terrible things that happen in this land don’t happen because of evil men, not really. They happen because of people who just don’t know any better. A tax collector who never wonders if this season’s crops might be too small to warrant the silver he has just collected: a family’s entire income. A soldier who never questions why he’s been told to take casks of oil and condemn a mother and her children to a fiery death. And a woman, barely more than a girl, who thinks only about how fine it will be to have a big castle and a pretty throne, and never wonders why so many great intrigues have been set in play to put her there. So no, Valiana, Lady, Duchess, Princess. I don’t think you’re evil. I think you’re much, much worse.’
She looked at me, and then stumbled back and Kest, his reflexes outpacing his intention, caught her before she fell to the ground. Feltock was wise enough to keep his cool and allow Kest to lift her into the carriage.
Shiballe stepped out, a smile on his lips. But then the smile disappeared as he looked past me. Trin, looking in the same direction, went white.
I turned and saw something coming out of the wreckage of the mansion: a girl, young, no more than twelve or thirteen years old. She was covered in soot and she looked disoriented. She stumbled and, as Kest ran to the saddlebags, I ran to the girl. I lifted her out of the carnage that had been her home and laid her down on a bench on the other side of the street near the carriage. Kest passed me water and bandages. I thought her skin might be charred, but cleaning her arms with water revealed that she wasn’t badly burned at all.
‘How did she survive?’ Kest asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
Shiballe called to his guards and began whispering to them.
The girl opened her eyes and coughed. I gave her a little water and she drank it down, but when she tried to speak, wracking coughs overtook her.
I waited until they had passed before giving her a little more water. ‘Don’t try to speak if it hurts,’ I said.
She shook her head. ‘I can – I can talk,’ she said.
‘The girl will come with me,’ Shiballe said, coming towards us.
‘Take another step forward,’ Brasti said, ‘just one more step forward, you fat little monster—’
‘She is a citizen of Rijou and under the Duke’s—’
‘The Duke hasn’t done a very fucking good job then, has he?’
‘How did you survive the fire?’ I asked the girl.
She coughed again. ‘The crawl space,’ she croaked. ‘When Mother dropped the crest and the men lit it on fire instead of letting us out, she told us to go down to the crawlspace. But there wasn’t enough room – it’s so small – and my brothers wanted to fight, which was stupid because you can’t fight fire with swords. And then the little ones ran back up and I couldn’t reach them because something fell on top of the hatch. It’s all stone down there, so the fire couldn’t reach and I had water and towels to put on my face.’
She took another sip of water. ‘I kept trying, but couldn’t get out of the crawlspace – and then I guess the stuff that fell on the hatch must have burned off …’
‘Falcio,’ Kest said.
I looked at him.
‘She’s the last of the Tiarrens. If someone sees her, she’s dead.’
‘Shiballe’s seen her,’ Brasti said. ‘I say we kill him now.’
‘Then we’ll be dead too,’ Feltock said. ‘I’m afraid we have to move on now, men.’
I stared at him. ‘How can you serve Valiana now, when you’ve seen the cost?’
The old man’s eyes looked sad. ‘I’m a soldier, boy. I serve one master at a time and I go where I’m told. You’ll do the same if you’re smart.’
‘The girl can come,’ Valiana said to me as she stepped off the carriage. ‘It is the least we can do.’
I said nothing.
‘And I am the least of women, aren’t I?’ she finished. Her tone was bitter, but I couldn’t tell if it was aimed at me or at herself.
Kest packed up the bandages. ‘We need to move out now. It will be dark soon, and the violence will begin again.’
‘I’m afraid not,’ Shiballe said, his guards standing behind him.
‘By what right do you contradict me, Shiballe?’ Valiana asked, a mixture of anxiety and anger in her voice.
‘Your Highness, this is still your father the Duke’s domain. His orders on this are very clear.’
‘His orders were for her to be protected.’
‘No, your Highness, his orders are for her to stay here, in Rijou. He will care for her as he sees fit.’
‘I will not go,’ the girl said.
‘See, the child knows her place is here, with her people.’
‘You’ve slaughtered her people,’ Brasti said.
‘And you have some proof of this, do you, tatter-cloak?’
‘The girl comes with me,’ Valiana said firmly.
‘Then, your Highness, you will not reach the outer gates alive. You will be slain for conspiring to impede a citizen of Rijou in the performance of her duty to the Duke.’
‘My father would never—’
‘It is treason, your Highness. Your father will be saddened by your loss. But that is all.’
Valiana looked at me. I looked back, and whatever was in my eyes was too much for her. ‘My father swore in front of his nobles that he would protect her family!’
‘No, your Highness, he did not. He swore to look into the matter personally, and ensure that his will was followed in the matter, and he did precisely that.’
‘There must be a way,’ she said to Shiballe, pleading.
‘The girl stays here. She stays until the end of Ganath Kalila. If she is still alive then, on the Morning of Mercy she can go to the Rock of Rijou where her name will be spoken by the City Sage and her presence recorded.’
‘How much fucking chance does she have to stay alive with no family?’ Brasti demanded.
‘It was not I who forced her mother to make such unwise decisions about whom to take to her bed, nor I who advised her husband, Lord Tiarren, to tolerate it.’
The girl tried to run at Shiballe, but Kest gently held her back and sat her on the bench again.
‘Duke Jillard would kill a woman and her family because adultery so distresses him?’ I asked, my voice tight and my hand sliding to the hilt of my rapier.
Shiballe smiled. ‘No, not that. It was the choice of lover the Duke found distressing.’
‘Come, girl, come with me. We’ll find a way out of this for you,’ Kest said to her.
‘No,’ she said, very firmly.
He stared at her. ‘What do you mean, “no”?’
The girl put her hands on the back of the bench and pushed herself up. ‘It is true: it is the Blood Week. If I do not attend the Duke’s ceremony at the end of the week, my family’s name, everything we have, becomes the property of the men who did this. My name – my rights of blood – will be gone for ever.’
She looked up at me, desperate. ‘I won’t do that,’ she said. ‘I won’t run away.’
‘Then you’ll be killed,’ Kest said, as kindly as he could.
‘I’m smart,’ she said, ‘and I’m pretty small. I’ll hide in the city – I’ll move around a lot. I just need to last the week and then be there to place my name on the Duke’s list.’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This child, no more than twelve or thirteen, had just lost everything, her entire family, and now, as if that wasn’t enough, she was going to be killed by the Duke’s men or Shiballe’s men or someone else for an offence she’d had no hand in at all. And yet her answer was that she would stay and fight.
‘What’s your name, girl?’ I asked.