That almost made me laugh. I could still recall the dozens, no, hundreds of times I'd tromped all over Aline's feet as she taught me to dance. 'And again,' she'd say, determined to make me a passable partner. I swear I'd sweated more over those lessons than all my years learning to fence.

'I can tell when you're remembering her,' Ethalia said, shaking me from my thoughts.

Surprised, I stared into her eyes, searching for some clue as to her feelings on the subject. I saw no rebuke there, nor resentment. I pondered what to say next, finally settling on what was foremost in my mind. 'Brasti thinks the trouble between you and me is that I can't let go of Aline.'

I expected Ethalia to shake her head or deny it or, as she often did at the things Brasti said, maybe give a little smile and say, 'Such is the wisdom of Brasti Goodbow.' But she did none of those things, just looked past me, past the other patrons and the walls and, it seemed, the very world itself. The musicians, finally recognising the rest of the tavern wasn't pleased at the sudden absence of fast drinking songs, kicked into a blistering version of 'All's the More', to great cheers. Ethalia said something, but I couldn't hear over the din.

'What did you say?' I asked, my hands still on her arms though we weren't dancing any more.

'It's not important. We should-'

'No, tell me.'

She looked up into my eyes. 'I can't be Aline, Falcio. Not even for you.'

'I never asked you to. I would never-'

'I thought it was a sign, at first, that I shared some of her memories of you.'

I was going to ask her what she meant but then I remembered my very first encounter with her, in Rijou during the Ganath Kalila, Jillard's infamous Blood Week, when she'd known Aline's exact final words to me.

'But Aline is always with you, Falcio. She's always there I can feel her pushing at me, demanding that I fight for you, protect you, love you as she would.' Ethalia looked away. 'I can't bear the weight of her. I thought it was natural, something that would fade, but it doesn't. Sometimes she-'

I shook my head, cutting her off. This too smacked of excuses. 'She's not a ghost. She isn't haunting you. This isn't some curse you're under.'

'I don't know what it is. In some way, we are connected through her but no woman could ever fight for you as she did. No woman could ever be who she was. But when the Saint's Fever is upon me it's as if she's there beside me, mocking me, telling me to get up and fight. I never even met her, Falcio, so why is it I feel her presence so?'

There were a hundred things I should have said then the kinds of things Brasti would say; hells, the kinds of things any sensible man would have said. But my guts were twisted in knots and I felt bitter and angry, and I couldn't tell if it was at Ethalia or myself or Aline, or maybe the whole damned world.

Ethalia pulled away suddenly.

'What is it?' I asked, already glancing around the room for whatever threat might be coming for us, thinking it was a mistake to have come down here without my coat and my rapiers.

'It's nothing,' she said, reaching out for me again, but the skin around her eyes had tightened, as if she were about to reach into a fire.

I stepped back, just a hair, and even that small distance made the tension in her face lessen. Whatever illusions I'd allowed myself, the thought that perhaps this was just a problem between two people, two lovers, who could work together to solve it, shattered. My very presence was causing her intense pain, and I could see she knew what I was thinking.

'It's not . . . it's only when you become . . . there's a rage inside you, Falcio, it-'

The music was so cacophonous now that I couldn't think. And the other dancers filling the floor around us were pushing past me, against me, grabbing at me. Be calm, I told myself, but even thinking those words brought pictures to my mind: Saint Birgid, her face battered and bruised, her skin pale from loss of blood; an iron mask, shaped so that the wearer was blind, unable to cry out for help, so that they could be beaten and tortured without fear of being caught.

Be calm? What the fuck is there to be calm about?

I looked around at the people in the tavern. Had someone here been part of it? Were they laughing even now at the memory of it? Of Birgid being tied to the split branches of the tree as they shoved needles into her- No! Birgid didn't undergo the Lament, I did . . .

I forced my breathing to slow down, not by letting go of my anger but by channelling it as if preparing for a duel.

'Falcio?' Ethalia's voice sounded very distant, but even through the haziness of my vision I could tell how much it was hurting her to be this close to me.

'I'm sorry,' I said, turning away.

She grabbed at my arm, her fingers feeling cold and lifeless, like iron shackles closing around me.

'You should get some rest,' I said, shrugging off her grip. 'We need to make for the Sanctuary of Saint Forza at first light.'

CHAPTER TWENTY.

The Sanctuary

We travelled past the border of Baern and into Luth the next day, arriving at the Sanctuary of Saint Forza in the late afternoon. I'd fully expected to find it destroyed it wasn't, but that didn't help us at all.

'I don't understand,' I said for the third time.

The sanctuary was above ground, a small stone edifice made up primarily of columns arranged in a circle with the remains of its roof partly blocking out the sun, though much of it had tumbled to the ground. Ethalia sat cross-legged at its centre, eyes closed in concentration, beads of sweat dripping from her forehead and marking tracks down her face.

'It's been destroyed,' Kest said. 'I'm not a Saint any more but even I can feel something's very wrong here.'

Brasti walked over and inspected the columns. 'It looks fine to me. Is it because of the roof or something?'

'No. The structure itself was no different when I came here.'

'Then what's changed?' I asked.

Allister walked around the perimeter of the small building and finally said, 'Lady Ethalia, may I enter?'

She nodded without opening her eyes. Allister stepped between two columns and walked around the room. 'Here,' he said.

The rest of us joined him. 'What do you see?' I asked.

He kicked aside some pieces of broken stone and plaster from around one of the bases of the column. 'Someone placed these here to cover the marks.'

I knelt down and saw a smear of reddish-brown against the base of the column: blood.

'There's more here, too,' Kest said, from the other side.

'Well, clean it off,' Brasti said, rubbing at one of the marks until it started to disappear.

'Is it making a difference?' I asked Ethalia.

She opened her eyes. 'No. It's . . .' She rose to her feet and came over to where I was kneeling. She reached down and started to press her fingers against the bloodstain, but her hand shot back as if she'd been bitten by a snake. 'It's the blood of a Saint,' she said. 'I'm sure of it.'

Brasti was still busy rubbing it away from one of the columns. 'Well, let's just get rid of it. Problem solved.'

Not having any better ideas, we spent the next hour doing as Brasti had suggested, but it achieved nothing. So that was one more thing we'd learned: apparently the blood of a Saint could be used to permanently desecrate a sanctuary.

'We'd better head out,' Kest said to me, looking at Ethalia. 'This isn't going to work. Our best bet now is to try the chapel inside Castle Aramor. It was rumoured to be a sanctuary once, long ago.'

'Rumoured?' I said. 'How is that going to help Ethalia?' I hated this. All of it. Where was an enemy I could fight? Where were the conspirators we could hunt down? This passive form of assault wasn't something I knew how to deal with. 'All right,' I agreed at last, 'let's go. We can make Aramor by week's end if we don't lose too much time along the way.'

As I was readying my horse, Allister approached me. 'Falcio? I'm sorry if I've been . . . uncouth . . . as regards the Lady Ethalia.'

'Uncouth?'

'I was woken in the middle of the night by a rather strident visitor.'

It took me a moment to puzzle out what he was talking about but then I almost smiled. 'Brasti decided to have a little chat with you, did he?'

Allister grimaced. 'He made certain things clear to me. I had no idea that you and she-'

I waved him off, not because I believed him, because I didn't he'd known; anyone would have known. But Allister and I had never been all that close and I guessed he'd reasoned that since she obviously couldn't bear to be near me, whatever had been between us must be over so why should he not seek her out? Part of me wished I'd been there when Brasti had come for him. Another part of me recognised that as hypocrisy. I had no claim to Ethalia. She wasn't property, and this sort of brotherly code was nothing more than us making decisions for her.

'She's a free woman,' I said at last. 'She has the right to whatever comfort is available to her now.'

That answer appeared to trouble him more than if I'd reiterated Brasti's threat. 'If you don't mind my asking, Falcio, are you all right? You sound . . .'

'He's fine,' Brasti said, coming over and slapping a hand on Allister's shoulder. I saw how hard he gripped him; the clear message was to ignore everything I'd just said and remember that he and Kest were nearby.

I sighed. A better man than me would have said something.

'Falcio's just twisting his guts in a knot like he always does,' Brasti went on. 'It's somewhere between a hobby and a lifelong vocation with him. Soon enough someone will come along and try to kill us and Falcio will be back to normal.'

The clatter of iron-shod horseshoes against the rocky surface of the road interrupted him. Kest and I drew our swords, Allister retrieved his staff and Brasti pulled his horse-bow Insult from the clasps that held it against the back of his saddlebags. He quickly bent it back and strung it before grabbing one of his shorter maple arrows and aiming down the road. 'Ah, see?' he said. 'Here comes someone to lift our spirits now.'

A lone rider raced up the road towards us, coming from the same direction we had. I squinted to see better, but the distance was still too great and the rider was kicking up a good deal of dust. I always envied Brasti at times like this.

'It's a woman,' he said, his tone excessively optimistic. 'Perhaps she saw me at the tavern last night and is now so lovestruck that she's left her husband and family behind, just to come and declare her love for me.'

'No,' Ethalia said, 'she carries great fear inside her. I can feel it from here.'

'She is riding rather quickly,' Kest noted. 'Wait . . . What is she wearing?'

Brasti's eyes narrowed. 'Falcio, that's a greatcoat.'

She was getting closer now and I too could see the stiff brown leather of her coat. Then I noticed Brasti was still aiming for her. 'Brasti? Why are you still-?'

'Because I can make out her face now.' He pulled back harder on the string. 'And I've never seen her before.'

None of us knew the woman who was pulling hard on the horse's reins and very nearly throwing herself to the ground in her rush to kneel in front of us, but we all recognised her coat. The leather was a dark, rich brown, like all those the Tailor had made for the first Greatcoats, but this one was tempered with a hint of green and bore on the right breast the subtle inlay of a long wooden shaft ending in a sharp diamond-head point. The first time I had seen it was the day its owner had received it from King Paelis himself. She'd spoken her oath in a strong, clear voice, despite the tears in her eyes, and her oath had ended with, 'My name is Talia Venire, and I am the King's Spear.'

'Where is Talia?' Brasti asked, his arrow pointed squarely at the woman's chest. At this distance Insult would send the maple shaft flying straight through her heart, regardless of the thickness of the coat's bone plates.

'Please-!' she begged, her voice muffled by the long tangles of black hair covering her face, 'Please! My name is Evi I'm not a Greatcoat-'

'We know that,' I said sternly. 'Now tell us why you are wearing one.' None of us had seen Talia for years; even back in the day I'd barely spoken to her. But though we'd shared no more than a few passing conversations, I remembered her eyes: bright, sharp, darting around at everyone in the room as she walked in, quickly followed by a mischievous smile, as if she'd got us all figured out.

'I . . .' Evi's face became pinched and her eyes filled with tears. 'I stole it.' she whispered. 'I'm sorry it was cold and my father had thrown me out of the house and I-'

'You're lying,' Brasti said, his voice tight. 'Talia would never let her coat out of her sight, and I doubt you're strong enough or stealthy enough to take it from her.'

'Terrorising her isn't going to help,' Ethalia said. She knelt down and reached out a hand, but the woman bent over her knees and covered her head, repeating, 'I'm sorry . . . I'm so sorry . . .'

'Sorry for what?' I asked. 'You sound unnaturally repentant if all you did was steal a coat when you were in need.'

She moaned, a brief string of incomprehensible words, and Allister, losing patience, grabbed the back of her coat and hauled her to her feet, a little roughly for my taste.

'Gently,' I told him. 'We need answers.'

The woman more of a girl, really, now that I could better see her face through the mess of hair, pulled away from Allister and grabbed hold of my arm. 'I'll tell you whatever you want to know, I swear, but we must get away from here. There are men chasing me.'

'You stole one of their horses,' Kest said. It wasn't a question; none of us had needed more than a glance at the big, well-groomed gelding to recognise that this was not the sort of animal a young woman of obviously meagre means could afford.

'I . . . I did.' Evi gripped my arm more tightly. 'But I swear it was only to escape they saw me taking the coat and it was clear that they didn't care about why they started pushing me, forcing me further down the alley, away from the eyes of others in the village . . . I could see they were getting ready to attack me, all of them.' She looked back the way she'd come and said urgently, 'Please, let me go, sirs, lady they'll be here soon. They were going to-'

'Who were these men?' Kest asked. 'How many are there?'

The words tumbled out in a hurry as she was pulling on my arm, as if to drag me with her. 'Four, I think, no, five there was someone in the store buying supplies. One of the men made a joke and the others laughed and I saw that one of the horses hadn't been properly tethered so I took my chance I pushed the one in front of me, really hard, and he stumbled into one of the others, and then I ran as fast as I could and I grabbed the reins and took the horse and rode as fast as I could-'

Kest's eyes narrowed as they do when he's working through the odds of a tactical manoeuvre. 'Your story doesn't make sense. You wouldn't have been able to evade them, not unless they were either very fat and slow or . . .' He stopped and his gaze went to me. 'Unless they wore armour.'

'They were Knights,' Evi said, 'but not proper Knights, hiding their colours so you couldn't see what Duke or Lord they served, only the cold, hard steel of their armour.' She looked up at me, her face a map of all the grief in the wide world. 'I beg you, sir, help me. I don't want to die at the hands of those men for taking a coat.'

'I'm hearing riders in the distance, Falcio.' Brasti said, his arrow still aimed at Evi, even as she held onto me for dear life. 'They're not moving as fast as she was but they'll be here in a minute.'

She pulled at me again. 'Please, we must go. They'll run us down if we stand here.' She pointed up the road. 'I know this road there's a bend, just about fifty yards ahead. We can find cover and-'

'Stay calm,' Ethalia said, again reaching out to the girl, but she clung to me.

Allister, Kest and I exchanged glances. 'We can outride them if we leave now,' Allister said. 'Bring the girl with us and leave her in safer hands, in the next village, perhaps?'

Brasti bristled at that. 'I'm not Gods-damned running if these bastards have-'

I thought about it. 'No, they've seen a woman in a greatcoat and they know she stole one of their horses. I doubt they'll leave it alone. Besides,' I said, pushing Evi off me as gently as I could, 'I imagine Talia will want her coat back.'