Knight's Shadow (13 page)

Vera eyed Valiana suspiciously. ‘Anyone who can read
The Book of the King’s Laws
could know that.’

Valiana frowned. She really could look like the epitome of the arrogant noblewoman when she set her mind to it. ‘Then why did you bother asking?’

‘If you hadn’t known the answer I might have saved myself some time,’ she said.

I looked out at the villagers who’d come ready to fight. I doubted even one of them knew the King’s Laws of Property, or any other laws for that matter. ‘Well, it doesn’t seem to have worked,’ I said. ‘Do you even know why the King wrote the Sixth Law of Property?’

‘So that the Dukes wouldn’t be able to deprive us of what we earn through our labours.’

‘That’s part of it,’ I acknowledged.

‘That’s the only part that matters.’

‘Not to a monarch,’ Valiana said. ‘If the Duke overtaxes your land here, it creates shortages of supplies of food, lumber and other resources for you to trade, and that then causes shortages in other goods, and eventually the whole system falls apart. The reason for the law is to prevent an economic collapse.’

‘Why are you telling me this?’ Vera asked.

‘So that you know that the King wanted you to pay your damned taxes,’ I said.

Vera snorted. ‘You’re funny. When you’re dead I’ll mount your head on a spike and perhaps it’ll help me laugh when I’ve had a hard day working the fields.’

‘He’s not that funny when he’s dying,’ Brasti said. ‘He gets quite preachy.’

I heard the sound of an arrow flying and felt the air shiver near my left cheek as it passed and landed in a tree just behind me. The old man’s arm had finally given out. Before I could react, one of Shuran’s men had brought his blade up and taken a step forward. ‘The penalty for attacking one of the Duke’s envoys is death, old man.’

‘Stop!’ I yelled, pulling my left rapier from its sheath.

‘The Trattari betray us!’ one of the other Knights said, and shifted position, ready to attack me.

A moment later ten Knights were facing the five of us, two of the Knights holding suddenly loaded crossbows, while we were stuck between the sharpened logs the villagers had set all around us.

‘Falcio . . .’ Kest began.

‘I know the odds, damn it. Put down your swords,’ I said to the Knights. ‘This isn’t why we came here, Shuran.’

The Knight-Commander hadn’t drawn his weapon. ‘I agree. That’s why I need you, your men and these villagers to put down their weapons. I can’t have people drawing on the Duke’s own Knights.’

Vera sneered. ‘The incentive for killing all of us is considerably higher if we’re not holding weapons.’

‘Put down your weapons,’ Shuran repeated, ‘or I’ll have no choice but to order my men to fight.’

‘You give that order,’ I said, ‘and I’ll order Brasti to kill you first.’

The old man who had started all this leaned heavily on his bow, apparently unconcerned. ‘Now, see, this is more what you expect with Knights and Greatcoats.’

One of the villagers started spinning a sling.

‘Brasti, keep an eye on that man. Vera, keep your people in check.’

‘Falcio?’ Brasti said.

‘I’m busy.’

‘It’s just that it would be helpful to me if you could let me know who I’m supposed to kill right now.’

‘I’m still trying to work that out.’

A crashing sound came from the woods, nearly setting off the battle right then and there. A thin, awkward-looking young man emerged, out of breath and carrying a rapier in his hand. Few men other than me carry rapiers. I had met this one before.

‘Cairn?’ I asked incredulously.

Guileless brown eyes beneath a mop of brown hair met mine. ‘Falcio?’ He ran up to me and dropped to his knees. ‘First Cantor! I can’t believe it’s you! Here in Carefal! Did you come to find me?’

‘Get up,’ I said. The last time I’d seen Cairn was in Rijou, where he’d proven to be almost as eager to be a Greatcoat as he was unsuited to the role. I could tell things hadn’t changed since then.

‘I merely—’

‘First of all, you’re not a Greatcoat, so you don’t owe me any fealty, and second, Greatcoats don’t bow to anyone.’

Brasti leaned forward and whispered as loudly as he could, ‘Except Dukes, as it turns out, when we want our lips to more comfortably reach their arses.’

‘Shut up, Brasti.’

‘Cairn, is this true?’ Vera asked. ‘Is this man really who he says he is?’

Cairn stood up. ‘I don’t know who he says he is, but I know him to be Falcio val Mond, First Cantor of the Greatcoats.’ The boy reached into his pocket and pulled out a gold coin. ‘He gave me this. I was one of his twelve jurors when he called an end to the Ganath Kalila. This is the Hero of Rijou – the man who inspired our rebellion!’

I winced. Cairn’s voice was all pride mixed with religious fervour and, to me at least, he sounded like a halfwit who’d just discovered a Saint’s face in his cottage cheese. But looking around at the villagers I saw their expressions change, just a little, and understood just how badly they wanted to believe that there were heroes out there coming to save them. For the first time in a long while it looked like they were even willing to believe those heroes might be Greatcoats.

Vera stepped forward until she was less than a foot away and looked into my face as if she were inspecting a coin to see if it had been forged. ‘Well then, “Hero of Rijou”,’ she said, ‘have you come to save us, or to betray us?’

Chapter Twelve

The Trial

Carefal was a large village, as these things go. Perhaps two hundred people lived there in as much comfort as peasant farming ever allowed. It had a long main street, not paved but well enough maintained that a horse and cart could go down it without breaking a wheel. The thatch-roofed homes were modest, but looked reasonably weatherproof. I noticed not one but two churches, one to Coin, who was called Argentus in Aramor, and the other to Love, whom they referred to as Phenia – the two Gods who best represented the simple desires of simple folk. Mostly what struck me about Carefal, though, were the faces of the people lining the street. Men, women, elderly folk and small children all watched us go by and I felt as if we were on parade, except that no one was smiling and waving flags.

When we reached the central square Cairn stood up on the plinth of a stone statue nearly as tall as one of the houses behind it. The figure represented was fat and looked ill-made for war, despite holding a war-axe and being improbably well dressed. I assumed it was meant to be either Duke Isault or one of his predecessors.

‘Friends of Carefal!’ Cairn shouted. ‘You know I am not a man for speeches.’

Responses from the crowd ranged from ‘then shut up!’ to ‘thank the Saints for that’ to ‘since when are you a
man
?’ So apparently Cairn was held in roughly the same regard here as he had been in Rijou. To his credit, he ignored the jibes. ‘There, my friends,’ he said, pointing straight at me, ‘there stands Falcio val Mond, First Cantor of the Greatcoats. There stands the Hero of Rijou!’

For a moment the crowd was silent. Then a small boy said, ‘I thought he was called “Falsio”.’

Then they all went mad.

The people of Carefal swarmed over me. Had Shuran’s Knights had the slightest real concern for my safety they would have attacked, but the Knight-Commander kept his men well back from the crowd. Hands touched me, not always in places I deemed entirely polite, and people shouted my name. Some asked questions that I couldn’t answer because I was too busy being pulled at by others. Eventually, though, the crowd’s voices coalesced into a steady chant of ‘Falsio! Falsio! Freedom for Carefal! Freedom for Carefal!’

Vera and her men began pushing the others out of the way. ‘Enough!’ she shouted. ‘Are you all mad? Can you not see that ten Ducal Knights stand here? Can you not see that this man, this “Falsio” or “Falcio” or whatever he calls himself, has come here
with
them? Will you fawn over this trained dog while our village is seized by the Duke?’

A few of the villagers continued to shout my name as if it were an answer, but eventually they settled down. I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Kest looking at me. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

‘I just thought you might like to know that this is the part where you calm the crowd down before a riot starts and everyone is massacred.’

I turned back to the villagers. Saints, but Kest was right: there was a smouldering need in the way they looked at me. It’d been five years since the King died: five years of gradual decay – the steady, day-by-day loss of faith in one’s rulers and one’s country and ultimately, oneself. Who wouldn’t seek out the first strong voice that made sense to follow? And if the only option for self-worth was reckless and doomed rebellion, well, at least it was something, wasn’t it?

‘My name is Falcio val Mond,’ I said, and resisted the urge to add,
pronounced Fal-key-oh
, ‘and yes, I am the First Cantor of the King’s Greatcoats. I
was
at Rijou—’ The crowd roared. ‘Yes, well, like most stories you’ve heard it’s probably grown substantially more heroic and noble in the retelling.’ That bought me a laugh, thank the Saints. ‘I’m not here to start a war. I’m here to stop one. Those Knights aren’t wearing armour for show. If you attack them, they will fight back. If you overwhelm them, others will come and they’ll kill each and every one of you. And the only heroic thing I or my fellow Greatcoats will be able to do is die right alongside you. Look to your families. Look to your children. There’s nothing noble about falling under the footsteps of an army and leaving the corpses of young ones behind.’

The crowd began to settle down, though the looks of hope and admiration were quickly changing to despair and disgust.

‘I’m curious,’ Dariana said. ‘Is this the same speech you gave in Rijou? Because if it is, I have to say, I think the troubadour told it better.’

‘Falcio’s right,’ Valiana said, turning to the crowd. ‘If you don’t back down now, you’re going to be killed. Every man and woman in your village will die, and for what?’

‘They’ll die too,’ Vera said, pointing at the Knights. ‘And once a few nobles go hungry because there’s no one to harvest the crops, well, let’s just say I think Isault will put his stomach above his pride!’ She drew cheers with that last line.

‘You’re wrong,’ Valiana replied. ‘I know something of the way the Dukes think. They will never allow rebellion to persist in their duchies. Their rule is too precarious for that.’

‘But that’s good, ain’t it?’ the old man with the bow asked.

‘No. It’s not good. The fragility of ducal rule means they can never be seen as weak – they would rather burn their duchies to the ground than lose face in front of their rivals.’

‘Then what’s left for us but suffering to please their egos?’

Some of the peasants looked at me as if I might contradict Valiana’s words. Part of me wanted to: when a tree is rotten to the core, what’s left but to cut it down?

‘The Law,’ I said aloud. ‘What’s left is the Law.’

‘What would you have us do?’ Vera asked. ‘Set down our weapons and starve to death? Is that what your Law gives us to look forward to?’

‘Have you had a bad harvest?’ I asked.

Vera snarled, ‘We’ve had one of the best harvests in ten years,’ she said.

‘Then what—?’

‘They’re taxing us to death!’ she snapped. ‘Your armoured friends over there and their fat Dukes are pushing us to starvation.’

Shuran stepped forward and for a moment Vera looked like she might attack, but blessedly the big Knight held his hands up. ‘If I may?’

Vera nodded acquiescence, but didn’t give an inch. I had to admire her.

‘I believe the dispute has to do with where this town sits.’

‘You mean geographically,’ I asked, ‘or politically?’

‘Both, as it turns out. Carefal lies on the border between Aramor and Luth. There have been . . . well, disagreements as to which duchy it belongs to.’

‘In other words, they both tax us!’ Vera said.

Cairn stepped forward as if he was going to try to make an effort to speak on behalf of the village, but Vera pushed him back. Apparently the glow of my reputation didn’t extend down to him.

Valiana confronted Shuran. ‘You’re saying these people pay taxes twice? There’s no precedent in Ducal law for such a thing.’

‘No,’ Shuran corrected her, ‘after a number of border skirmishes the Dukes of Aramor and Luth came to an understanding; Aramor collects the tax in even years and Luth in the odd.’

‘And both tax us past what is fair,’ Vera said.

‘As it happens, both Aramor and Luth tax at the rate set by the old King: one quarter of the yield.’

‘That’s why you asked us about the King’s Sixth Law of Property,’ I said to Vera.

‘Aye, but that’s not what we’ve been charged. Collector Tespet demanded a full half of our yield this year.’

‘Is that true?’ I asked Shuran.

The Knight looked uncomfortable. ‘There is a legal exemption during times of war. Duke Isault has invoked the exemption this year.’

‘War? What war?’

‘It hasn’t started quite yet, but with some of the radical shifts happening in the political landscape the Duke’s advisors are quite certain that there will be conflict.’

‘What “shifts in the political landscape”?’ I asked.

‘Well, for one thing, you killed the Duchess of Hervor. You turned the people of Rijou against their Duke and ended the Ganath Kalila.’ He looked at Valiana. ‘You also brought down the Ducal Concord’s plans to put Patriana’s daughter on the throne, which—’

‘Does Duke Isault
want
Trin to take the throne?’ Valiana demanded.

Shuran spoke calmly. ‘The Duke wasn’t fully aware of her true nature at the time. Like the other Dukes, he thought that you, my Lady, were the true-born daughter of Duchess Patriana of Hervor and Duke Jillard of Rijou. The true depth of her conspiracy was hidden from almost everyone.’

‘Trin will never sit the throne,’ Valiana said, her hand on the hilt of her sword. ‘Aline will be Queen.’

Shuran turned to me. ‘You yourselves have come to request Aramor’s support against the duchies of the north, so does it not follow that we will soon be at war, and so does the Duke not have the right to gather the resources needed for such a conflict?’

Brasti turned to Kest and whispered theatrically, his voice carrying loud enough for all of us to hear, ‘Is it just me, or does it look like Falcio has pretty much broken the country?’

Kest looked uncomfortable. ‘I . . . Actually, Falcio, it does. A bit.’ He turned to Shuran. ‘Although it’s worth pointing out that the Duke’s actions in over-taxing his people will almost assuredly start a war even if none were coming.’

‘A fair point,’ Shuran said. ‘But now this must be resolved. The people of Carefal cannot simply refuse to pay taxes.’

‘Make us pay if you can!’ Vera said. The crowd cheered. They’d had enough of standing around yakking; they were ready for violence. As with any other large group of people, they vastly overestimated how much good being in a crowd would do them.

Kest and Brasti were looking at me.
Damn it. Why am I the one who always has to drop a noose around his own neck?

‘All right,’ I said at last, ‘the Duke asked me to resolve this, and resolve it I will.’ I held up a hand. ‘Peacefully.’ I turned to Vera. ‘Pick whoever you want to argue your side.’ Turning back to Shuran I asked, ‘Will Tespet represent the Duke’s position?’

‘I suspect he is still too drunk. I can speak for the Duke’s case. Though I make no promise of agreeing to your verdict. You are here as the Duke’s envoy, not as an arbiter of the Law.’

‘I’m here trying to keep the bloodshed to a minimum. We’ll see where this leads, but I suggest you remember that.’

Shuran spread his hands. ‘As you say, let us see where this leads.’

*

I’ve presided over hundreds of trials in my time as a Greatcoat. I’ve listened to disputes over sheep-grazing, contracts of marriage and declarations of war between duchies. I’ve had to enforce verdicts by summoning juries from the townspeople, threatening local rulers with reprisals from the King, and on more occasions than I can count, by duelling a Duke’s champion. Never before have I wanted so badly to slit my own throat.

The townspeople had found a large and surprisingly uncomfortable wooden chair for me to sit in while Vera and Shuran stood in front of me and rehearsed the same arguments they had for the past three hours. It all came down to the same question: did the Duke have the right to impose wartime taxes even when there was no actual war? If he did, what stopped Luth from coming and asking for wartime taxes as well? In fact, it wasn’t entirely unforeseeable that the people of Carefal might find themselves paying taxes to both Aramor and Luth as the two sides fought each other.

Not that Vera’s solution was any more sound. From her perspective, the Duke had voided his right to collect any taxes at all. She came perilously close to demanding that the Duke pay back all the tax he’d taken from them in the previous years.

‘Enough,’ I said at last. ‘I’ll need a few minutes to confer with my fellow Greatcoats.’ I rose from the chair. My backside was sore and I had a pounding headache – not only from the unwavering rancour from each side, but as much from the way this bitter feud illustrated how badly Tristia was coming apart at the seams. Even if I could get Aline on the throne, how on earth could she ever mend this broken country? Duke Isault’s words kept playing themselves over and over in my mind:
she’ll be dead a week after she’s crowned
.

Brasti sensed my discomfort. ‘We’re not going to let them starve these people, are we?’

‘No, but . . . but we do need Isault’s support. We can’t put Aline on the throne without him. Nothing we do here will achieve anything until there’s a monarch on the throne and—’

‘Don’t start up about politics, Falcio. You’ve been letting the Tailor lead you around by the nose for weeks now and it’s got us nowhere. The Duke of Pulnam betrayed us, the Duke of Aramor is manipulating us and now you want us to turn our backs on these people because you’re so desperate to put a thirteen-year-old girl on the throne that you’ve forgotten that the whole point of the Law is to make peoples’ lives better. I like Aline, Falcio, and it really was a miracle beyond any I’ve heard in story or song that you managed to keep her alive during Blood Week. But she’s not my Queen. Not yet.’

‘You swore an oath to King Paelis,’ I started.

‘Yes: I swore to uphold the laws of Tristia.’

‘The law says they have to pay their damned taxes.’

‘Not if it means they starve,’ Dariana said, crossing her arms and leaning against a post. Her expression made it clear she cared little for the outcome but wasn’t going to miss the chance to point out my hypocrisy. ‘What happens if Knights from Luth come calling tomorrow demanding their war levies as well?’

I started to reply, but Kest stopped me. ‘Falcio, have you ever considered that maybe this is what the King had in mind?’

‘This?’ I asked, pointing to the crowd. ‘Armed villagers declaring themselves independent and starting wars they can’t win?’

‘Maybe they can win,’ Kest said. ‘Not now, not today, but in the future. Maybe this is how it starts.’

Kest’s words caught me off guard.
Maybe this is how it starts
. The King had no love for the Ducal system. He spent his life trying to find ways to bring the nobility to heel so that the average man or woman could live their lives in some semblance of freedom. But if he’d wanted chaos and civil war he could have done it when we Greatcoats were at our peak – he chose not to. He’d allowed the Dukes to depose him, rather than have us fight them head on. ‘No,’ I said, ‘he wanted his heir on the throne. Aline—’