He looked down at Aline. ‘The little one has to die, though. She has unfortunate qualities I wish to see extinguished from the world.’
‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Why is it so important to kill off the Tiarren line?’
The Duke smiled. ‘Tatter-cloak, I couldn’t care less for the Tiarren line. Lord Tiarren was a buffoon and his Lady was only interesting to me insofar as her previous entanglements were concerned.’
‘You can’t do this,’ I said, though I had nothing whatsoever to back up my statement.
‘Why not? I seem to have an army behind me.’
‘We have a Saint,’ Brasti said, pointing at Kest.
‘Your Saint seems to be unconscious,’ the Duke replied.
‘My Lord, there’s someone coming up the path,’ Shiballe said.
The Duke looked around, and so did we. A stooped figure was making its way gradually up the hill.
‘Oh, hells, not her again,’ Brasti said.
‘Who?’ I asked.
‘You know who,’ she bellowed from halfway up the slope.
Several of the Duke’s men ran down and grabbed her. They dragged her to the Duke and dropped her at his feet.
‘Bless you, boys,’ the Tailor said to the soldiers. ‘I honestly didn’t think I’d make it up that hill.’
‘What are you doing here, old woman? Do you not value your life?’ Shiballe demanded.
‘Not especially,’ she said, ‘since no one else appears to. But to answer yer Lordship’s question, I came to deliver you a message and these here a gift.’
‘You have time for the message but not the gift, I’m afraid,’ the Duke said. He motioned to one of the soldiers and he brought his lance into line with the Tailor’s belly.
‘My Lord,’ Shiballe said, ‘I know who this woman is now. I’ve heard rumours about her, about her influence on the Greatcoats. She may have information as to their whereabouts. Give me leave to break the information from her.’
‘No need fer that, tubby,’ the Tailor said. ‘I’ll tell yer exactly what y’want to know – what you’ve wanted to know for a long time.’
‘And what’s that?’ the Duke asked, almost amused.
‘Where the Greatcoats are,’ she said casually, brushing more dirt from her sleeve.
‘Well then? Where are they?’
‘Ah,’ she said wagging a finger at him. ‘That’ll cost ye. Not much, mind; a very reasonable fee and one I’m sure ye’ll be willing to pay.’
‘My Lord, give the woman to me. I’ll—’
‘What do you want?’ the Duke asked.
‘It’s just a wee small thing,’ the Tailor said. ‘It’s jest that the Covenant you fine Dukes and the King agreed to, it’s always irked me. You can’t kill me; I can’t kill you … so if ye could just break it fer me, I’d be much appreciative.’
The Duke threw his head back and laughed. ‘The “Covenant”? Woman, don’t you think the Covenant’s been broken for some time now? What do you think I plan to do once you reveal the locations of the Greatcoats to me? Oh, old woman, have no fear. The Covenant is well and truly broken.’
‘Grand,’ she said; then, ‘See?’ She turned to Shiballe. ‘Now, was that so hard?’
Shiballe’s eyes were shifting furiously as he tried to understand what was happening. ‘Tell us then, you stupid old cow. Tell us where the Greatcoats are, if you truly know.’
The Tailor looked up at the Duke and then smiled. ‘They’re here,’ she said.
Then she screamed a single word at the sky, so loud and so clear that I swear the trees themselves would carry the sound imprinted in their bark for all time.
The word was, ‘Paelis.’
THE ANSWER
At first the reverberation of her voice was the only sound, but then thunder roared from below us and a cloud of dust rose from the slope.
‘Horses,’ Brasti said. ‘Must be a hundred or more.’
At first all I saw was Monster, her hooves pounding the earth as she raced ahead of a cloud of dust. And then they came through the cloud and the sight I had once dreamed of seeing appeared before me: a hundred Greatcoats on horseback, swords drawn and war cries on their lips.
‘I told you,’ the Tailor said to me, an evil grin on her face, ‘I know where every thread is and I know where every thread’s going.’
‘But how—?’
‘The Dukes were so busy trying to find and kill all the Greatcoats – they knew every name and face – and, while they searched for ways to kill all of you, I found myself some new ones, trained by me and trained right. It’s taken time to assemble them, though, I’ll give you that. That damn fool, Paelis. He had the makings of a great army and what did he do? He scattered them to the four winds. But I’ve made my own Greatcoats, and now we’re going to do this my way.’
The Duke had five times as many men as we did, but few were on horseback and the rest were not exactly what you’d call a battle-ready army. They were conscripted house-guards and he’d dragged them up the Eastern Pass to deal with the Duchess of Hervor. When they saw that first charge of the Magisters, they very nearly scattered then and there.
‘Kill her,’ Shiballe shouted. ‘Kill all of them!’
But my rapier was already in my hand and Kest, Brasti and I knocked the lances away from the Tailor and surrounded her, protecting her from anyone else who might try to fulfil Shiballe’s order.
The captains were screaming at their men to get into formation and, as they did, Shiballe urged the Duke to get to the back lines.
‘I showed you!’ the Tailor was cackling behind us. ‘I showed all of you!’
I looked around and caught a glimpse of her face. It was terrifying to look at, half-joyous and half-enraged, and she was tearing her clothes off and shouting at the sky, ‘You took him away from me! You took every last good thing away from me!
‘This!’ she screamed. ‘This is my answer! This is my answer!’ And now she was whirling around, naked and dancing like a madwoman, as the battle began to rage around us.
‘He was my boy,’ she screamed, crying insanely, ‘my own little boy! You took him from me!’
‘Saints, what’s wrong with her?’ Brasti asked.
Something was forming in my mind: a thought, a memory, pieces of things I’d seen and wondered about in passing, starting to come into focus.
‘I think …’ I started. Was it really possible? ‘I think she might be his mother,’ I said as all the sadness in the world unleashed itself inside me. ‘I think she might be the King’s mother.’
‘But how?’ Brasti stared at her. ‘Greggor would never … I mean, look at her.’
Kest interrupted, ‘Yes, look at her: her face – it wasn’t always like this. Someone … perhaps someone beat her, mutilated her—’
‘He sent me away,’ she shouted in response, as dust and horses and death raged around us.
‘When the baby was born, when he didn’t like the signs, he beat me and he locked me away – but I took it, I took it because I still got to see my baby, even when he grew and Greggor called him weak and locked him up too and finally sent me away. Even when he married that stupid cow and had another child, I took it, because I am a woman and it was a man’s world. It was his world.’
She shook her fists in the air. ‘But there had to be an answer for such things, and so I brought him books and I told him stories. I made him think.’
‘The Greatcoats,’ Kest said, awed. ‘It was her, all along: she taught the King, shaped his thinking.’
‘I started all of it,’ she cackled, standing naked and wrinkled and proud in the sunlight. ‘There had to be an answer for what he did, so I made you. I gave the world a great King and I gave it justice.’