‘Twenty,’ I said, my throat numb. ‘Twenty Greathorses and you destroyed them all …’
‘I trained them, after a fashion, but it wouldn’t take. I burned them. I cut off pieces of their flesh. I fed them poison, beat them bloody, had them strangled with ropes, pulled out their eyes. Nothing would turn them to my purpose.’
‘What possible purpose could you mean for them with such practices?’
She looked genuinely surprised. ‘Why, to make them into war horses, of course. Imagine a division of Knights riding into battle on these brutes: they’d be unstoppable. Do you know you can fire arrows into these things and their hide is so thick they won’t die? They’d just keep going, and oftentimes as not the arrow will eventually fall out and the bloody thing will recover completely from its wounds. Truthfully, killing them was so much work that I still wonder whether it was worth the bother.’
‘What are those things strung from the ceiling?’ I asked, horrified.
‘Ah, you’ve noticed. Well, that’s what finally did the trick. This one’s a female, you see. So what we did was, we impregnated her with the fluids of another horse. They’re able to cross-breed, probably how such small numbers have been able to maintain their herds. When she gives birth, which is just about the only time the bloody thing is weak enough for my men to get in there, we take the foal and we torture it to death. After the fourth or fifth one, the beast finally found its rightful purpose, which is to kill, of course. It’s a bit of a shame that it took so long to figure out, and of course there are still a few problems to solve, such as making it obey commands and not just tear anything it finds to pieces. But that just needs a bit more time, that’s all.’
She said the words as casually as you might tell your neighbour about the weather. I looked around the stable, at the other guards by the doors, at Ugh. How could any man not pull his sword from its sheath and run her through? How could any man endure this?
‘You’re not going to get emotional on me, are you?’ Patriana asked, noticing the tears on my face. ‘After all, we’re not done here yet.’
‘Why have you shown me this?’ I asked. ‘Why not just leave me in my cell, or kill me?’
‘Because,’ she said soothingly, ‘I am a teacher at heart. I want you to learn. I want you to understand.’
‘By every God and Saint, understand what? That you’re a monster?’
‘No, Falcio: understand that I am right.’
‘You’re insane.’
She shook her head. ‘Can you really be so blind? Are you really no smarter than the beast in the cage? Look at her! That’s you, don’t you understand?’
She stood up and came to face me. I felt Ugh’s hand clutching behind my neck, reminding me that I had no power here.
‘Your precious King Paelis was no different. He had a need for weapons, and so he chose you. He selected you like he selected the others, conditioned you for the purpose he’d devised, and then used you to attack his enemies.’
‘You compare building a judiciary to protect people’s rights with making a monster that can do nothing but rend and tear and kill?’
‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Yes. It’s exactly the same. People have no rights, Falcio, save those granted them by their rightful Lords, their rightful owners. Paelis was no different to any of his fellow nobles, though he certainly liked to pretend he was. So he enjoyed watching peasants pretend to be happy? How is that any different from the Duke who has a different purpose for them? In the end, Paelis had power and he used it to create the world he wanted. But he went too far, Falcio. The monarchy have always understood that within our individual realms we have supreme power, but he wanted to change that. He was the one who broke the natural laws of this land, Falcio. He was the tyrant!’
My head dropped and my eyes stared at the ground as I said, ‘He wanted people to be free, that’s all. He wanted—’
‘He wanted to be loved,’ she said softly in my ear. ‘That’s all it was. The idle desires of a weak and feeble mind never meant to hold a crown. It was an accident that took the life of his brother Dergot, the rightful heir. If that stupid bitch, Yesa, hadn’t set him on a window ledge he’d still be alive. Greggor could hardly have done worse than his first wife, but in Yesa he came very close.’
‘Why are you telling me this, Duchess? You’re cold and you’re malicious, but you aren’t vain. If I’m so irrelevant, then why am I here? Why was it so important to show me that you’d corrupted a Fey Horse?’
She took my chin in my hand. ‘Because, my dear boy, I wanted to prove to you that it could be done. You’d never have believed me if I’d just told you, would you? This will make my next experiment that much easier.’
‘What is your “next experiment”?’ I asked wearily.
She smiled and kissed me warmly on the cheek. ‘You are, Falcio val Mond.’
Despite myself, I almost laughed. ‘Me?’
‘Don’t hold yourself too cheaply, Falcio. You’re almost valuable to me now. You see, I honestly believe you hate me more than any other man alive today.’
‘On that one point we may agree, your Ladyship.’
‘And so I have much to learn from you, Falcio val Mond. In the process of turning you, of changing you from Greatcoat to my own loving creature, I will learn much about how to train my people, how to make them more useful to me. That’s what I do, Falcio: I make things useful.’
‘You make monsters,’ I said.
‘If you want to call it that. But make no mistake, I do it very well.’
‘Not so well with your own daughter, though. She may be foolish, but she has none of your vile spirit moving her.’
Patriana laughed. ‘My daughter? Oh, my daughter is much more dangerous than I am. I dare say she is my finest accomplishment!’
I thought about that. Was she lying? I’d put my life on it that Valiana wasn’t evil. Were Kest and Brasti even now dead at her hand? How could the Heart’s Trial not show something like that? Was it rigged? Was all this just a ruse?
‘Enough now,’ Patriana said. ‘Let’s begin your training, shall we?’
She walked back and sat down on the chair.
‘You told me there were no others, Falcio, and the girl seems to agree with you, so—’ She motioned to one of the guards, who opened a door and pulled Aline out. She was bloodied, and her clothes were in rags. A gag was tied around her mouth and her eyes were wide. The guard brought her towards us and dropped her on the ground in front of me. I felt Ugh let go of my neck and I dropped to my knees in front of her.
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why didn’t you take the soft candy? Why did you let them—?’
‘Enough now, Falcio. It’s time to get started.’
At the guard’s signal, the others around the room brought a number of long poles with them. One of the poles was shorter and made of metal, and the end had been cunningly worked into the shape of a simple key, which the guard shoved into the lock. As he twisted it, the other guards used the poles to keep the beast from getting out. Finally, one of the guards attached the end of his pole to a cord, and attached the other end to a collar around Aline’s neck.
‘What are you doing?’ I shouted, but they ignored me. ‘Stop!’ I snapped my head forward and managed to pull free from Ugh’s grip, but another guard pushed me to the ground just outside the bars of the cage. Before, the horse had tried to attack me when I was that close; this time its eyes were wide and it was obviously seeking a way to escape through the gradually opening door to the cage.