Then suddenly she started crying, like a small child discovering the body of a dead bird for the first time. ‘But then they took him away from me. He wanted nothing but to do right in the world and they took my boy. So there must be an answer,’ she growled. ‘When they take the last good thing from your life, there must be an answer.’
‘Go!’ she said, grabbing me by the collar of my coat, her eyes so wide and wild that I could see the bright red of the skin that encircled them. ‘Go, and give them my answer!’
As Kest and Brasti grabbed horses from fallen men and mounted up, Monster came up to me and nudged me with her great head. I needed no other invitation and leapt onto her back.
‘Come, you Dukes, you fools of men,’ the Tailor shouted. ‘Come and witness a woman’s answer—’
My mind was reeling from the knowledge of what she had done, but Kest pulled at me. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘I’m ready to give my answer now too.’
We rode into the heart of the battle. I was exhausted, and I longed to see the faces of those comrades I’d been missing all these years – Dara, Winnow, Parrick and the others – where were they? But these men and women on horseback, they were Greatcoats too: skilled and fearless. I felt excitement building inside me and I brandished my sword as we plunged into the Duke’s army, breaking their lines. We fought like hunting birds, swooping in and out and taking lives with each attack.
Kest and Brasti and I sang: we sang the war song of the Greatcoats. We sang of justice and mercy, and we sang of blood and violence too. We sang until our voices were hoarse and blood and dust mixed into the ground, wedded for ever into the landscape of violence.
The battle lasted only an hour, but it felt much longer before the Duke’s men gave up their arms and knelt before us on the ground.
‘Is it possible?’ Brasti asked absently to Kest and me as we stood together.
‘That we won? It certainly looks so,’ Kest replied.
‘No,’ he said, ‘look around. I see dead men everywhere. There are soldiers and Knights littering the ground. I see a few Greatcoats sporting injuries, but I see none of us dead.’
I looked around, sure that he was wrong, that I would see at least one Greatcoat on the ground.
‘Gods,’ Brasti said at last. ‘What an army we would have been.’
‘Ye were never meant to be an army, fool,’ the Tailor said.
Brasti looked at her. ‘I see you’ve found your clothes again. Thank you for that, at least.’
She grinned at him. ‘Didn’t like the sight of a real woman, eh? Ah well, no mind. Sometimes we all have to go a little mad, don’t we, Falcio?’
I thought about that for a moment. ‘And sometimes we have to return to sanity.’
‘Aye, that’s true enough,’ she said. ‘Now, leave the rest of the playing for them others. Go and deal with the Duchess. This is all for naught if she gets away with those Patents of Lineage and comes back in force with that damned daughter of hers.’
‘How will I find her?’ I asked, grabbing Monster’s reins.
‘She’s gone west,’ the Tailor said. ‘She has a horse, but she’s still an old woman like me and she’ll need to rest. You saw the caves past those hills when you came here from Orison? Go there – that’s the only place out of the open. And with her patron Saint dead, I don’t think she has long.’
Someone pulled at my sleeve. ‘Take me,’ Aline said, ‘and then the Duchess will want to find us.’
‘Why?’ I asked.
The Tailor slapped me. ‘Stop askin’ such fool questions fer once in yer useless life.’ Then she looked down at the girl and smiled. ‘You’re a good girl,’ she said, patting her on the cheek. ‘Go now, Falcio, and do what has to be done.’
‘Was this your plan all along?’ I asked, as I lifted Aline onto Monster’s back. ‘Did you set Tremondi up to get killed, too?’
‘I did what I had to do, Falcio. The Dukes would have never let the Lords Caravaner reassemble the Greatcoats – but it kept them distracted, and while it did I brought the Greatcoats back together.’
‘Plans within plans and conspiracies to foil other conspiracies. What makes you any different from Patriana?’ I asked.
She gave a snort and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her dirty coat. ‘I never killed her son,’ she said, and then turned and walked away.
It didn’t take us long to reach the caves. There were several openings into the mountain, but not many passages tall enough for a man or woman to make them a good place to hide. Patriana hadn’t bothered to cover her tracks.
‘You brought the girl.’ The Duchess’s voice echoed in the caves.
‘I brought something else, too,’ I said, drawing my rapier.
‘So did I,’ she said, appearing around a corner. I could see where she’d been hiding then: a small alcove, formed naturally in the rock. There was a brazier, its fire illuminating the cave walls, and I could see the scrolls on the ground next to her. She held a crossbow trained at my chest.
‘You can leave the girl and go,’ she said, ‘or you can kill her yourself, if you think that’s more merciful, but either way she dies now.’
I started to say something, but the Duchess was a rude opponent and fired the bolt straight at me. I’ve always made fun of Kest for thinking a sword could block a crossbow bolt, but every once in a long, long while, a man gets a piece of luck. In my case it was the guard of my rapier that I managed to bring up to my belly just in time to block the bolt. The force dented the steel cup around the guard and it jabbed deep into my right hand, but it wouldn’t stop me from killing her.
‘If you think I’m going to stand here and let you reload that thing, then I’m afraid you’ve confused me for someone much more civilised,’ I said.
The Duchess dropped the crossbow to the ground. ‘Very well,’ she said, ‘enough of these games. We are done. Go, and take the brat with you.’
I almost laughed. ‘You can’t be serious,’ I said. ‘This is the best part – the part where I take your head off.’
‘You want the scrolls? Take them. Destroy them any way you see fit. I am old and I am tired, and the things I fought for will never come to pass in my lifetime. So go and live and rut and do all the things men do with their futile lives.’
She warmed her hands over the brazier. ‘You wish to kill me?’ she asked. ‘Then do so. Come on, show the girl how decisions of power and policy are really made.’
I looked at her in wonder. ‘Listening to your clever remarks and profound declarations, I can’t help but wonder: what’s it like, to be truly insane?’ I asked.
She laughed. ‘You are a boy,’ she said. ‘A boy past his prime, I’ll grant you, but a boy nonetheless.’
I coughed. I wasn’t getting much out of this conversation considering I was the one holding the sword.
‘Consider: with these scrolls you could take Valiana and shape the world to your liking. Imagine a thousand Greatcoats, a hundred thousand, all of them bringing whatever justice you choose across the land.’
‘I really don’t think you understand how this works,’ I said. ‘I’m going to destroy those scrolls, and Jillard won’t sign them again, not knowing Trin is the one you’d see put on the throne. He knows you set her up to rule in your interests, not his. With the Patents of Lineage destroyed, your conspiracy goes with them. I’m going to let the rest of the world solve who should rule it.’
She looked at me through narrowed eyes, then she started laughing. ‘You don’t— Gods, Falcio, if you didn’t know about … then why have you gone to such trouble to—? No, I’ll leave that for you to discover. I’ll say this for you, Falcio val Mond, you are indeed the most valorous man I’ve ever met, and only about the third stupidest.’