Knight's Shadow

Book 2: The Greatcoats

by Sebastien de Castell

Genres: Fantasy; Epic Fantasy; General Fiction

Synopsis

Following his beloved debut, Traitor's Blade, Sebastien de Castell returns with volume two of his fast-paced fantasy adventure series, inspired by the swashbuckling action and witty banter of The Three Musketeers. Knight's Shadow continues the series with a thrilling and dark tale of heroism and betrayal in a country crushed under the weight of its rulers' corruption.

A few days after the horrifying murder of a duke and his family, Falcio val Mond, swordsman and First Cantor of the Greatcoats, begins a deadly pursuit to capture the killer. But Falcio soon discovers his own life is in mortal danger from a poison administered as a final act of revenge by one of his deadliest enemies. As chaos and civil war begin to overtake the country, Falcio has precious little time left to stop those determined to destroy his homeland.

Release date: March 5, 2015

Publisher: Quercus Publishing

Print pages: 400

Sample

Prologue

If on a winter’s night a traveller like you finds shelter in one of the inns that line the trade roads of Tristia, sitting close to the fire, drinking what is quite likely watered-down ale and doing your best to stay out of the way of the local bully-boys, you might chance to see a Greatcoat wander in. You’ll know him or her by the long leather coat of office, weathered to a deep brown and tempered by a hint of dark red or green or sometimes even blue.

He or she will do their best to blend in with the crowd. They’re good at it – in fact, if you look over there to your left, sitting alone in the shadows you’ll see a second Greatcoat. The one at the door will almost certainly walk over and sit with the first one.

If you sidle over (carefully, now) and listen in to their conversation, you’ll hear snatches of stories about the cases they once judged in the cities, towns and hamlets throughout the countryside. They’ll talk about this Duke or that Lord and which crimes they perpetrated on their people this time. You’ll learn the details of how each case was decided and whether the Greatcoat had to fight a duel in order to get the verdict upheld.

Watch these two long enough and you’ll begin to notice the way that they check out the room every so often. They’ll be gauging the other patrons, looking for potential trouble. Look closer at those coats and you’ll see a faint pattern in the leather: that’ll be the bone plates sewn into the lining, hard enough to withstand arrow, blade or bolt, and yet the coat itself moves as naturally as the one you yourself might be wearing. If you ever got the chance to reach inside, you’d find hidden pockets – some say a hundred of them – all filled with tricks and traps and esoteric pills and powders designed to give them an edge, whether fighting a single man or a mob. And while the swords hidden beneath the coats aren’t fancy, you’d find them well-oiled, well-honed and more than pointy enough to do the job.

Legend has it the Greatcoats began as duellists and assassins-for-hire, until some benevolent King or Queen brought them under the command of the monarchy to ensure that ancient laws were preserved in each of the nine duchies of Tristia. The Dukes, quite naturally, responded to this unwanted intrusion by devising the most painful deaths they could imagine for any Greatcoats their Knights defeated in combat. But for every Greatcoat killed, another would rise up to take the mantle and continue the job, going around the country annoying the nobility by enforcing laws that the nobility found inconvenient. That was until just over a hundred years ago, when a group of the wealthier (and more determined) Dukes hired the Dashini – an order of assassins who never failed to spread corruption, even in a place already as corrupt as Tristia – to provide them with a more enduring means of discouraging dissent. They called it the Greatcoat’s Lament.

I will not bore you with the details, gentle traveller, for they are unfit for conversation between folk of good breeding. Suffice it to say, after the Dashini finished giving the Lament to the last Greatcoat they’d managed to catch, no more came forward to take up the mantle . . . at least, not for nearly a century, not until an overly idealistic young king named Paelis and a foolhardy commoner named Falcio decided to push back against the tide of history and recreate the Greatcoats.

But that’s all done with now. King Paelis is dead and the Greatcoats have been disbanded these last five years or more. The two you are watching risk death and worse any time they attempt to fulfil their traditional duties. So instead they will simply finish up their drinks, pay their tab and wander off into the night. Perhaps you’ll catch a glimpse of their smiles as they reassure each other that the Greatcoat’s Lament is just one of those stories told by travellers in front of a warm fire on a cold night; that even if it had once existed, no one alive today would have the faintest idea of how to inflict it. But they – and you – would be wrong. For you see, I have it on extremely good authority that the Greatcoat’s Lament is very real, and that it is even more painful and terrible than even the most horrifying stories made out. I would tell you more, but unfortunately, the ‘good authority’ I mentioned is me.

My name is Falcio val Mond, one of the last of the King’s Greatcoats, and if you listen very carefully you might still be able to hear me screaming.

Chapter One

The Waiting Game

I can count on one hand the number of times in my adult life when I’ve awakened peacefully and happily, without either fear of imminent death or sufficient annoyance to make me want to murder someone else. The morning four weeks after Patriana, Duchess of Hervor, had poisoned me was not one of those times.

‘He’s dead.’

Despite the fog clogging my head and dulling the sounds in my ears, I recognised Brasti’s voice.

‘He’s not dead,’ said another, slightly deeper voice. That one belonged to Kest.

The light thump-thump of Brasti’s footsteps on the wooden floor of the cottage grew louder. ‘Usually he comes out of it by now. I’m telling you, this time he’s dead. Look: he’s barely breathing.’

A finger prodded at my chest, then my cheek, then my eye.

You might be wondering why I didn’t simply stab Brasti and go back to sleep. First, my rapiers were ten feet away, lying on a bench next to the door of the small cottage we occupied; second, I couldn’t move.

‘Stop poking at him,’ Kest said. ‘Barely breathing still means alive.’

‘Which is another thing,’ Brasti said. ‘Neatha’s supposed to be fatal.’ I imagined him wagging his finger at me. ‘We’re all happy you survived it, Falcio, but this lying about each morning is highly inconvenient behaviour. One might even call it selfish.’

Despite my repeated attempts, my hands refused to reach out and wrap themselves around Brasti’s throat.

The first week after I’d been poisoned, I’d noticed a slight weakness in my limbs – I moved more slowly than usual. Sometimes I’d try to move my hand and it would take a second before it would obey. But instead of getting better, the condition had gradually worsened and I found myself imprisoned in my own body for longer and longer each morning after I awoke.

A hand on my chest pressed down with a great deal of pressure: Brasti was leaning on me. ‘But Kest, I think you have to agree that Falcio is largely dead.’

There was another pause and I knew Kest was considering the matter. The problem with Brasti is that he’s an idiot. He’s handsome and charming, he can outshoot any man or woman with a bow, and he’s an idiot. Oh, you wouldn’t think so at first; he’s a fine conversationalist and uses many words that sound like the sort of words smart people use. He just doesn’t use them in the right context. Or even the right order.

The problem with Kest, though, is that while he is extremely intelligent, he thinks that ‘being philosophical’ requires giving any idea due consideration, even if it’s utterly nonsensical and being uttered by the aforementioned idiot.

‘I suppose,’ Kest said finally, and then redeemed himself marginally by adding, ‘But wouldn’t it be more correct to say he’s somewhat alive?’

More silence. Did I mention that the two fools in question are my best friends, fellow Greatcoats, and the men I was counting on to protect me in case the Lady Trin picked that precise moment to send her Knights after us?

I suppose I should get used to calling her Duchess Trin now. After all, I’d killed her mother, Patriana (yes, the one who’d poisoned me) – in my defence, I was trying to protect the King’s heir at the time. I suspect that’s the real source of Trin’s grievance with me, as the presence of a genuine monarch gets in the way of her scheme to take the throne for herself.

‘He’s still not moving,’ Brasti said. ‘I really think he might be dead this time.’ I felt his hand brush a rather private part of my body and realised he was searching my pockets for money – which proves yet again that hiring a former poacher to be a travelling magistrate had not necessarily been one of the King’s best ideas. ‘We’re out of food, by the way,’ he said. ‘I thought those damned villagers were supposed to be bringing us supplies.’

‘Be grateful they’re letting us hide here in the first place,’ Kest said placidly. ‘Feeding more than a hundred Greatcoats is a heavy burden for a village this small. Besides, they did bring food – from their winter caches in the mountains, just a few minutes ago. The Tailor’s managing distribution.’

‘Then why don’t I hear brats running around screaming and annoying us, asking to borrow our swords – or worse, play with my bows?’

‘Perhaps they heard you complaining? They left their families in the mountains this morning.’

‘Well, that’s something anyway.’

I felt Brasti’s fingers pulling the lid of my right eye back and white light blinded me. Then the fingers went away and the light disappeared.

‘How long until Falcio’s mostly alive and no longer entirely useless? I mean, what happens when Trin’s Knights learn about this? Or Dashini assassins? Or anyone else, for that matter?’ Brasti’s voice was growing more anxious as he spoke. ‘You name any group of people out there who know how to kill a man horribly and I’ll bet you good gold that Falcio’s made an enemy of them. Any one of them could—’

I felt my heart moving faster and faster, and tried to force my breathing to slow down, but panic was beginning to overtake me.

‘Stop talking, Brasti. You’re making him worse.’

‘They’ll come for him, Kest, you know it – they might even be coming now. Are you going to kill every single one of them?’

‘If that is what’s required.’ You can hear a coldness in Kest’s voice when he talks that way.

‘You might be the Saint of Swords now, but you’re still just one man. You can’t fight an army. And what happens if Falcio’s condition gets worse and he just stops breathing? What happens when we’re not here and—?’

I heard the sound of a scuffle and felt the bed shake a bit as someone was pushed up against the wall.

‘Take your Gods-damned hands off me, Kest! Saint or no, I’ll—’

‘I’m scared for him too, Brasti,’ Kest said. ‘We’re all scared.’

‘He’s . . . By all the hells we’ve been to – he’s supposed to be the smart one. How in the name of Saint Laina’s left tit did he let himself get poisoned again?’

‘To save her,’ Kest said. ‘To save Aline.’

There was silence for a few moments and for the first time that morning I couldn’t envision Kest and Brasti’s faces. It was troubling, as if perhaps my hearing had suddenly gone away too. Fortunately, silence is a condition Brasti’s never been able to abide for long.

‘And that’s another thing,’ he said, ‘if he’s so damned brilliant then why is it that all anyone has to do to get him to risk his life for a girl he’s never met before is just name her after his dead wife?’

‘She’s the King’s heir, Brasti, and if you talk about Falcio’s wife again you’ll discover there are worse things than being paralysed.’

‘I’d take the chance if I thought it would bring him out of this,’ Brasti said. ‘Damn it, Kest! He is the smart one. Trin’s got armies and assassins and damned bloody Dukes on her side and we’ve got nothing. How are we supposed to put a thirteen-year-old girl on the throne with Falcio in this condition?’

I felt my eyes begin to flutter some more, and empty grey started flashing to bright white and back again, over and over. The effect was a little disconcerting.

‘I suppose you and I will have to try to be smarter,’ Kest said.

‘And just how do you propose we go about that?’

‘Well, how does Falcio do it?’

There was a long pause, then Brasti started, ‘He . . . well, he figures things out, doesn’t he? You know, there’ll be six things going on, none of which seem all that important, and then all of a sudden he’ll jump up and declare that assassins are coming or a Lord Caravaner must’ve bribed a City Constable or whatever.’

‘Then that’s what you and I need to do,’ Kest said. ‘We need to start figuring those things out before they happen.’

‘How?’

‘Well, what’s happening right now?’

Brasti snorted. ‘Well, Trin’s got five thousand soldiers on her side and the backing of at least two powerful duchies. We’ve got about a hundred Greatcoats and the tepid support of the creaky old Duke of Pulnam. Oh, and right about now she’s probably having a nice breakfast and going over her plans for taking the throne while we sit here starving, hiding out in this shitty little village watching Falcio do his best impression of a corpse. And I am starving.’

There was silence again. I tried to move a finger. I don’t think I succeeded, but now I could feel the rough wool of the blanket on my fingertip. That was a good sign.

‘At least you aren’t having to listen to screaming children,’ Kest said.

‘There’s that.’

I heard the sound of Kest’s footsteps as he approached me and felt a hand on my shoulder. ‘So what do you suppose Falcio would make of all that? What does it all mean?’

‘It means . . .’ There was a long pause before Brasti finally said, ‘Nothing. It’s all just a bunch of unconnected details, none of which have anything to do with the others. Do you suppose that maybe Falcio just pretends to be clever and no one’s caught on yet?’

I wanted to laugh at Brasti’s frustration, then I felt the small muscles at the edges of my mouth twitch, just a bit. Oh, Gods, I’m coming out of it. Move, I told myself. Get out of bed and go and help the Tailor defeat Trin’s army. Put Aline on the throne, and then get out of this business of politics and war and go back to judging land disputes over whose cow farted on whose field, and chasing down the occasional corrupt Knight.

A tightness in my stomach made me aware of how hungry I was and I realised Brasti wasn’t the only one ready for a hearty breakfast. Food, I thought, then figure out how to save the world. I was glad I wouldn’t have to do it while the villagers’ screaming brats ran around wanting to play at being Greatcoats with us, demanding our swords and trying our patience.

Which was odd. Why didn’t the villagers bring their children? There wasn’t much danger to the village – the Tailor had sent out scouts and none had reported sighting anything more than a few handfuls of Trin’s men – not enough to cause us grief. Come to think of it, where were the rest of Trin’s men? They might have been on missions, but surely they’d have been recalled as soon as anyone knew we were here? And the children . . .

‘Swords!’ I shouted.

Well, ‘shouted’ is a bit optimistic, given my tongue was still thick in my throat and I could barely move my lips. My eyes opened, though, which was good.

Brasti ran over to me. ‘Whores? What are you talking about?’

‘Do you suppose he means that woman from Rijou? The one who saved his life?’

‘You might be right,’ Brasti said, awkwardly brushing a hand across my head. ‘Don’t worry, Falcio. We’ll find you another whore just as soon as—’

‘Swords, you damned fools,’ I mumbled. ‘Swords!’

‘Help him up,’ Brasti said. ‘I think he said “hordes”. Maybe we’re about to be attacked.’

Kest put his arm around my shoulders and helped me off the bed and onto my unsteady feet. Damn it, I was moving like an old man.

Brasti picked up my rapiers from the bench and handed them to me. ‘Here. You should probably have your swords ready if we’re going to get into a fight, don’t you think?’

I would have killed both of them, were it not for the fact that I was fairly sure someone else was about to do it for me.

Chapter Two

The Nightmist

I stumbled out of the cottage, barely able to keep a grip on my swords. The sunlight irritated my eyes and turned the row of mud-brick cottages into a red-brown haze the colour of dried blood.

‘What’s going on, Falcio?’ Kest asked.

‘The children,’ I said, almost coherently.

‘They’re not here, didn’t you hear?’ Brasti said.

‘That’s the point – the villagers left their children in the mountain. Why would they do that unless they knew something was coming? We’re about to get hit.’

I stepped on a small rock and lost my balance, but Kest’s hand on my shoulder kept me from falling over. ‘You should go back inside, Falcio, let Brasti and m—’

To my left a villager was puttering about in one of the small front gardens. ‘Where’s the Tailor?’ I asked. My mouth was still largely numb from the paralysis and I probably sounded like something between a simpleton and a madman.

The man looked confused and frightened until Kest translated, ‘He’s asking you where the Tailor is.’

The villager rose and pointed to another cottage about fifty yards away, his hand trembling just a bit. ‘She’s in there. Been there the last day and night with the girl and a couple of them other Greatcoats.’

‘Get your folk,’ I said. ‘Get them out of here.’

‘You all should have left by now,’ he said, his voice a mixture of indignation and anxiety that would have struck me as odd had I had the time to consider it. ‘Ain’t good for us to be seen sheltering Greatcoats.’

‘Where are your children?’ I asked.

‘Safe,’ he said.

I pushed the man out of the way and started running towards the house. I managed about three steps before I fell flat on my face. Kest and Brasti knelt down to help me, but I screamed, ‘Bloody hells, leave me and get to Aline!’

They took me literally, dropping me to the ground and pounding along the path to the other house. As I pushed myself back up to my feet I looked around again, expecting to find enemies on all sides, but all I saw were the same villagers I’d seen before, and here and there, some of the Tailor’s Greatcoats. Could there be enemies hiding amongst them? Most of the men were doing no more than tending to their gardens, as they’d done every time they returned from the mountains.

I hobbled awkwardly after Kest and Brasti and arrived just in time to see the Tailor storm out of the cottage, her steel-grey hair flying in the wind and her craggy features displaying her foul temper. She looked nothing like the mother of a King – I suppose that’s how she’d kept it secret for so long, even after Paelis had died. ‘What in the name of Saint Birgid-who-weeps-rivers are you about, Falcio? We’re trying to make battle plans here.’

I felt a momentary annoyance that she had chosen to exclude us from her strategy sessions, but set that aside, for now at least. ‘The children,’ I panted, ‘the villagers didn’t bring their children . . .’

‘So? Perhaps they got tired of Brasti teaching them to swear.’

‘Your scouts,’ I said, pointing to two Greatcoats who stood nearby. ‘You told me they couldn’t find any of Trin’s forces anywhere for fifty miles.’

The Tailor gave a nasty grin. ‘That little bitch may fancy herself a wolf, but she knows better than to attack us here. We’ve bitten her heels at every encounter. They’ll not try to engage us again unless they want to see more of their men litter the ground.’

‘Saints! Don’t you get it? That’s the point: it’s something else. The villagers have betrayed us!’

The Tailor’s expression soured. ‘Watch yer tongue, boy. I’ve known the people of Phan for more than twenty years. They’re on our side.’

‘And in all those years have you ever known them to leave their children behind in the mountains when there wasn’t any danger coming?’

The anger on the Tailor’s face was replaced by suspicion and she looked around again, then shouted to one of the men tending his garden, ‘You, Cragthen! What are you about?’

The man was in his middle years, balding, with a fringe of brown hair and a short beard. ‘Just looking after my verden roots,’ he said.

The Tailor started walking towards him, pulling a knife from her coat. ‘Then what are you burying in the dirt, Cragthen, when we’re so close to the harvest?’

The man rose to his feet, his eyes flitting between us and other villagers who were beginning to gather round. ‘You weren’t supposed to be here this long – it’s our village, damn you, not yours. We have families to think of. The Duchess Trin—’

The Tailor reached forward with her left hand and grabbed Cragthen by the shirt. ‘What fool thing have you done, Cragthen? You think you’re scared of Trin? Cross me and I’ll give you something to fear that’s a lot worse than an eighteen-year-old whore who beds her uncle for his armies and fancies herself a Queen.’

At first Cragthen looked cowed by the Tailor, but then he managed to pull away and shouted, ‘We have children, damn you!’ as he turned and fled towards the far end of the village.

‘Stop him!’ the Tailor shouted.

It took only moments for two of her Greatcoats to catch up with Cragthen. As they hauled him back he said urgently, ‘Let me go!’ His voice was low but full of terror. ‘Please, please, no! If they see me talking to you they’ll kill her!’

The Tailor bent down to look at what Cragthen had been planting and I joined her. ‘Hells,’ she grunted, looking at the mixture of black earth and a dark yellowish-green powder.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘Nightmist – the damned fool is setting nightmist!’

I looked around at the rest of the villagers, at the other men who had also been busy working their gardens, and saw some were lugging over-full pails from the pump, water spilling over the sides.

‘Don’t let them pour that water on the ground!’ I shouted, but as soon as the village men saw the Greatcoats coming towards them they dumped the contents of their pails onto the freshly turned earth.

‘Too late,’ the Tailor sighed as the first drops of water hit the nightmist and grey-black smoke thick as bog water began to fill the air. Even a handful of the mixture – sulphur and yellowflake and Saints-know-whatever-else goes into it – can fill a hundred yards with smoke so thick you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. The villagers had put down bucketfuls.

I turned to the Tailor. ‘Tell me where Aline is – now!’

‘She went for a walk to see that giant bloody horse of hers,’ she said, pointing down the path. ‘Don’t just stand there wobbling: go!’

Kest and Brasti ran ahead of me, and as I followed, we began to hear the heavy thumping of marching men and the raucous clangour of metal on metal.

Had we guessed what was going on even a few minutes sooner we might have been better prepared, but instead, I had been lying in bed paralysed like a broken old man. Now our enemies were about to launch an attack that could only have one purpose: to kill the daughter of my King.

*

The billowing black fog overtook me before I’d gone ten paces down the path. Though the sun still shone above me and the sky remained clear and blue, down here on the ground the world was shadows painted on top of other shadows.

I pointed my rapiers out in front of me and waved them around like the feelers on an ant, moving in smooth arcs high and low, quiet as I could: I needed to find my enemies before they could find me, and before they found Aline. I longed to call out for her, to hear her voice and know she was alive so that I could make my way to her, but to do so would just make her a target for Trin’s men.

A dreamlike chaos settled over the village: one moment the nightmist would dissipate enough for me to make out figures in the distance, fighting and dying, the next it closed in on me, suffocating me while it revealed only glints of light reflecting from steel swords clashing in the distance like fireflies flitting in the night air.

I hate magic.

‘Falcio!’ Brasti called out.

His voice sounded far away but I’d run only a few feet before I saw him fighting two men dressed all in dark cloth with masks covering their faces. For an instant I froze, thinking, Dashini! Trin has sent the Dashini for us. In my mind I envisioned hundreds of the dark assassins, fighting in pairs to kill us one by one. I had barely survived facing two of them in Rijou, so if Trin had managed to—

‘A little help?’ Brasti shouted, breaking the spell, and I got to him just as one of his opponents swung a warsword down in a vicious arc that would have taken Brasti’s head off if I hadn’t crossed my rapiers above his head and blocked the blow, my still-unsteady legs feeling the weight of my opponent’s attack. Brasti dived and rolled out of the way – a dangerous move when you’re holding a shortsword – but he kicked out with one foot at the back of the man’s knees and drove him to the ground.

The other one turned to me and beckoned teasingly with his sword. ‘Come, Trattari,’ he said, his voice thick and resonant in the mist. ‘Amuse me with your Greatcoat tricks before I break you – or better yet, show me to the one who calls himself the Saint of Swords. I’ll happily take that title from him.’

It wasn’t like a Dashini to bluster in a fight. They say creepy things like, ‘You are tired . . . your eyes wish to close . . . let peace come to you . . .’ – that sort of thing. And a warsword? No, they fought with long, stiletto-like blades, not military weapons. So not Dashini then. Someone else.

I stepped forward and flicked the point of my rapier in his face, but he didn’t try to parry, instead using his forearm to swipe the blade aside. I heard a clang of metal against metal. Aha. That’s a metal vambrace, I thought. You’re wearing armour under that dark grey cloth.

‘Shouldn’t you introduce yourself, Sir Knight?’ I asked.

He took a swing at me with that great big sword of his. I was still moving too slowly and barely leaned back in time to watch it sail by; when I tried a thrust for his right armpit I missed by a good inch, hitting steel plate instead of flesh: I definitely hadn’t fully shaken off the vestiges of my temporary paralysis. Had Kest been there he would have reminded me, in that way he has, that a good swordsman would adjust for the stiffness.

The problem with fighting Knights is that they tend to wear a great deal of metal, which means you either have to bludgeon them to death, which is hard to do with a rapier, or find the gaps in their armour and strike there. The dark grey cloth my opponent was wearing made it harder to find those spots, and the nightmist wasn’t helping either. Brasti and his opponent had already disappeared from view.

‘Hardly sporting,’ I said, goading the Knight by moving clockwise around him, counting on his plate-mail to make it hard for him to turn gracefully. ‘Aren’t Ducal Knights required to wear their tabards and show their colours in combat?’

‘You’d lecture me in honour, Trattari?’ the Knight asked, his tone mocking me, and to add injury to insult, he tried to drive the point of his sword through my belly. I shifted on my heel so it went by me on the left and drove the pommel of my rapier against the flat of his blade, knocking the point down towards the ground. He stepped back before I could take advantage of his lowered guard.

‘Well, I don’t like to brag about honour,’ I said, ‘but I shouldn’t have to point out that I’m not the one sneaking in under cover of nightmist to murder a thirteen-year-old girl. In the dark. Like an assassin. Like a coward.’

I thought that would send him into a rage. I’m usually very good at making Knights want to kill me as quickly as possible. But he just laughed. ‘You see? That’s why you Greatcoats can never become Knights.’

‘Because we don’t kill children?’ I flicked my point at him again but he batted it away with his hand.

‘Because you think honour comes from actions – as if a horse who stamps his feet three times when you show him three apples is a scholar.’ He began attacking me with quick, vicious swings of his warsword, turning the momentum of each attack into the next as I slid and skipped back and forth to avoid the blows. As I stumbled backwards, I was praying to Saint Werta-who-walks-the-waves that I wouldn’t hit a rock or tree root and fall down. I long ago gave up hope of living to an old age but I still had aspirations of dying with slightly more dignity than a Knight’s warsword removing my head while I was stuck on the ground with my arse in the mud.

‘Honour is granted by the Gods and by a man’s Lord,’ the Knight said, continuing his attacks as well as his lecture, ‘not earned from learning some litany of children’s verses. What is sin for you is virtue for me, Trattari.’ His blade came down at an odd angle and I was forced to parry it with both rapiers. The force of his blow nearly knocked them from my hands. ‘Nothing will come from the noblest act of your short life,’ he said. ‘But the Gods’ blessings will come to me when I squeeze the life from that little bitch . . . that . . . bi—’

He stopped talking then, perhaps because the point of my rapier had found the opening of his mouth beneath his mask. I kept pushing the blade until it found the back of his skull and stopped at the steel of his helm. The Knight sank to his knees, his body twitching: not yet dead, but well on his way.

Kest sometimes makes fun of me for talking too much d