None of which is going to help you beat the shit out of these two arseholes. Time to switch tactics.

When Beltran readied his next swing, I kept my cane low, exposing my head, and the guardsman gave a growling laugh and swung for my neck. I ducked down, letting the blade pass harmlessly overhead, and then swung out with the brass-weighted end of the handle against his knee. The shattering sound was music to my ears. I'd broken his kneecap.

Unfortunately, Beltran didn't seem to care.

I've had my knee broken once in my life and even months after the event, the pain of standing on it was almost unbearable. So it should tell you something that Beltran just grinned and kept coming at me, even as the bones crunched in his damaged leg with every step.

And people ask me why I hate magic so much. 'You could at least try to look hurt,' I said, annoyance momentarily overcoming the panic that was starting to set in.

Beltran grinned. 'We are but novices in the path of the God's Needle, Trattari. We've only drunk the blood of two Saints wait until we've had our third.' He lunged towards me, which was a foolish move; even if his broken knee didn't cause him pain, it was still throwing him off-balance. He fell to the side and hit the ground.

Sedge moved in to take his place. 'Once we've killed you, Trattari, we'll be allowed to drink our fill from your woman. I wonder if she'll taste the same.' He licked his lips.

I backed up a bit further; I was near the end of the corridor now, not far from the gallery above the palace foyer. I had to stall. 'Taste the same as whom?' I asked.

'Birgid,' Sedge said.

Beltran had got back to his feet. 'She cried so much you could see the tears dripping from under the mask. Who'd've thought Birgid-who-weeps-rivers was so aptly named?'

Sedge grinned. 'Those tears tasted almost as sweet as the blood. Can you picture it, Trattari?'

'I can,' I replied, and things changed for me then not the way they'd done in the old days of madness, where I would lose control and forget who I was and what I'd done. Instead, the world became sharper, clearer; what mattered now was not the pain in my ankle or the anger in my heart. It wasn't even about what these bastards had done or why, or how'd they'd become the way they were. This was no longer a matter of winning, or even surviving. This was a matter of practicalities. This was physics. I couldn't hurt them, so I had to break them. They weren't men trying to fight me, they were objects moving through space, boulders rolling inexorably towards me. I would either find a way to smash them or I would be crushed under their weight.

The gallery above the grand foyer had a staircase at one end going down, and at the other was a sort of wide interior bridge between the two wings of the palace a relic of some ancient architect's desire for a grand high domed ceiling in the centre of the grand foyer, and the subsequent realisation that guests might not find it convenient to go from their bedchamber down the stairs, along a cold corridor and then up another flight just to get to the privy.

Sedge made a rush for me as he'd done before, arms spread so he could use his heavy shoulders to knock me down and get on top of me. There wasn't the room or the time to dodge so what had to happen next had to be all about timing and fluid motion. You don't beat the ludator by running away. The instant before Sedge slammed into me, I slapped both my free hand and the one holding the cane down against his shoulders and pushed off as hard as I could. My feet left the ground and as the momentum of his charge drove us back a full ten feet, I went over the top of him; I came down on my knees onto his shoulders and sent him face-first to the floor. I felt him try to push himself back up, like a wild horse bucking off an unwanted rider, and then his hands reached about as he tried to grab hold of my legs. When he bucked a second time, I used the momentum to launch myself forward. I landed reasonably well on both feet I was proud of that though I heard something crack in my ankle. I ignored it.

Beltran's shattered knee was making him move like a man drunk beyond measure, but he had worked his way close to us now and his sword was coming in a heavy swing, aimed at my head. I leaned back, letting it pass by, and as I swayed forward again I jammed the end of the cane into his left eye. There was a sickening squishing sound as the soft orb was crushed against the inside of his skull, but I didn't have time to check if that was enough to stop him because I had other problems to deal with: Sedge was coming for me again. Gods, that man is unstoppable! But I hooked his wrist with the crook of the cane and lifted it high overhead, keeping his hand from reaching me even as his body passed by me. As he turned to face me again, I yanked hard on the walking stick, pulling him off-balance and this time as he stumbled to me I rammed the heel of my left hand into the bridge of his nose.

A cracking sound filled the air as the tiny bones broke and a blossom of blood spilled out of his nose, filling the air around my hand as if I'd summoned it by magic. Before the first drop had hit the floor, I had leaned my back against the gallery railing and kicked out with my good right foot. The heel of my boot broke Sedge's jaw and smashed his front teeth. I saw his eyes become unfocused, just for a moment, and whirled the cane around to strike the side of his head.

Maybe I can't make you feel pain, you bastard, but I can keep hitting you until your brain turns to soup in your skull.

'Halt! What's going on here?'

The stick stopped in mid-swing as the owner of the voice behind me caught my weapon in a firm grip and I glanced around to see a man of my height in a guardsman's uniform carrying a mace in his free hand. He pulled hard on the cane, yanking me away from Sedge.

'Hold him!' Sedge called out, already rising to his feet. 'He's an assassin dressed as a Greatcoat come to kill the Ducal Protector!'

I felt the guardsman's shift in weight even before he raised up his mace.

'You idiot,' I shouted at the man, 'do you really think an assassin would come to commit murder armed with a damned walking stick?'

He looked at me, then the cane. 'No one move until I can determine who-'

Whatever he was going to say next was cut off by Beltran's blade passing through his back and out of his belly; the steel tip kept coming towards me, as if Beltran thought he could finish two problems in one thrust. The guard who'd got between us stared at me, his eyes wide with shock and fear. 'I'm . . . sorry,' he said. Then, with greater courage and will than I would have thought possible, this man of no more than twenty years took hold of the end of the sword that had ended his life and raised his other arm, holding the mace out for me. Beltran figured out what was happening and tried to pull his blade back, but the young guard kept his grip on it, ignoring the blade cutting deep into his hand and adding to the blood already spilling out onto the floor.

I took the mace in my free hand and brought it up high. Beltran gave up on his sword and let go in a bid to escape the blow, but the young guard fell back into him and I brought the mace down on Beltran's head with every ounce of strength and fury I had in me. The left side of his skull broke apart, he teetered for just a moment, the muscles in his jaw tightening as if he were about to smile, then finally he fell to the floor.

The cost of that victory was too high: Sedge had regained his senses and, lacking whatever human decency would have demanded he pause, even for an instant, at the mortal wounding of his comrade, he barrelled into me, grasping me around the waist and pushing me hard against the gallery's railing.

I tried bringing the mace back up for a strike but he was ready for it; he took hold of my left wrist and slammed it down against the top of the railing. I screamed from the sudden pain and felt the mace slip from my grip. A moment later I heard the crash as it struck the marble floor below.

'Long way down,' Sedge said, grunting as he started lifting me up.

He was hunched over, his head buried into my side, making it impossible for me to hit him with my elbow anywhere that might have made a difference. I struck him on the back as hard as I could anyway, but he showed no sign of feeling the impact. If I could have hit the back of his neck I might have done more good but I couldn't get to it.

I felt my feet starting to lift off the carpeted floor.

'Goodbye, Trattari,' he said, 'Don't worry about the whore. I'll put the mask on her myself.'

Again and again I struck him with my elbow and the stick, but I couldn't get any leverage. I felt the top of the railing biting into my back as Sedge began to tip me over it. Like an idiot, I looked down and saw the hard marble floor thirty feet below me. I tried to hook my foot between the bars of the railings, but it was too late now; my weight was coming over the top. Within seconds I'd be all the way over. I was left with precisely one option.

Let's see just how well made you are, I told the walking stick, because otherwise this is a stupid way to die.

I flipped the cane over so the curved end was extended. I'd briefly considered trying to hook it to the wooden rail but I wasn't at all confident the railing would hold. Instead, I hitched it to the next best thing: my opponent's neck. As I started to fall, I brought the curved handle down behind Sedge's head and my sudden weight forced it in place with a grip he couldn't hope to break. I was now hanging in the air, clinging to the bottom of the stick, while Sedge stared down at me, mightily confused by his predicament. He tried to pull himself back up so he could get the handle off his neck, but my weight was too great. We were stuck in a strange sort of impasse, though not one that could last.

I'd expected him to just stand there and wait for me to slip down my grip wasn't very secure, after all; try hanging from a stick for a while and you'll see what I mean. But Sedge apparently wasn't content with waiting. 'Let's go and greet the God together,' he said, and started leaning over the edge, obviously preparing to tumble us both to our deaths.

'You give your God my regards,' I grunted, and pulled as hard as I could on the walking stick, the way you might if you were trying to use it as a handhold from which to leap up higher in the air. I didn't, though; instead, I kept my grip and let my weight come back down hard with its full force on Sedge's neck.

I caught the confused look in his eyes an instant before I heard the loud snap of his skull separating from his spinal column. He let out a soft sigh as his legs gave out and his body slumped down, transformed in an instant from my would-be killer to the anchor that tethered me to life. I swung there for a moment, hanging from the broken neck of a man whose eyes were still blinking in incredulity at what had just happened.

Drawing on the final dregs of my strength, fuelled by the absolute determination not to have gone through all that only to slip and fall to my death, I hauled myself up the length of the walking stick an inch at a time until I could grab Sedge's jerkin and with a final grunt I pulled myself up and over the railing.

Falling to my hands and knees on the floor, I croaked, 'I win.'

Then I glanced up and saw Ethalia standing in the hallway, her eyes filled with horror and revulsion. She was looking at me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.

The Remnants

For a little while the only sound was that of my lungs, pumping like a bellows, punctuated by growls that I tried to pretend were just pain and exhaustion demanding to be given voice. Calm down, I urged myself, you're pushing her away.

Ethalia tried to step closer, to come and see to my injuries, but she couldn't; the violence in me was pushing her back as hard as any gale. I was making her sick, quite literally: her lips formed the syllables of my name, but I couldn't hear her over the sound of my own breathing.

Distant calls began to echo through the halls, followed by the sounds of heavy footsteps thumping along the floors below. Ethalia and I looked at each other then, both feeling the same relief: someone else would come and help me. She didn't have to touch me. Ethalia said my name again, and all the sorrow in the world was written in wet tracks down her cheeks.

'Go,' I said, instantly regretting the harshness in my voice. I managed to get the next words out more softly. 'I'll be fine.'

She hesitated, still unwilling to abandon me, but she was the Saint of Mercy now, and I had just killed two men without remorse. Had I hesitated, even for an instant, when I'd taken up the dying guardsman's mace and used it to cave in half of Beltran's skull? Had there been an ounce of mercy in my heart for Sedge when I'd felt the crack of his neck breaking travel down the wooden shaft of the cane to my hand? Not bloody likely.

My vision blurred and Ethalia's form split apart for just a moment, becoming two people. In my dazed state I imagined the other was my wife, Aline, wearing a greatcoat and standing protectively by Ethalia with a sword in each hand, as though promising to guard her for me. I chuckled a little. I don't think Aline had ever held a sword in her life. But my wife had always been a protector, even young as she was, finding ways to keep the people she loved safe and sound. I had let her protect me and it had cost us everything.

For the next few seconds of my life that thought brought me a strange kind of peace. I was a man of the sword now not the best fencer, perhaps, but good enough when the moment called for blades. I fought, I bled, and I did what I had to do without hesitation in order to protect the people I loved. The way Aline had done for me.

So if the price of keeping Ethalia safe was that I must lose her heart? Well, then, all you damned Gods and Saints, you chose the right man for the job.

My vision started to shift from blurry to black. She's safe, I thought. You can pass out now. I had just begun to let my eyes close when I caught sight of the sudden movement of a thick, meaty hand rising up from the floor to grab Ethalia's ankle. She screamed as if she were being burned and began to stumble.

Beltran, blood and viscera still dripping from the side of his head, pulled her towards him as he rose to his knees. 'Not . . . done . . . yet . . . little . . . Saintling,' he said, his shattered jaw filling each word with a ragged glee.

The God's Needle had one hand on Ethalia's ankle and the other on her leg as he dragged her inch by inch to the ground. His knee crunched and crackled where I'd shattered it; his limbs twitched erratically even as he pulled her towards him. A small piece of his skull hung loosely from a flap of skin. He ought to be dead.

Why are you still alive, you thrice-damned monstrosity?

I summoned my final reserve of strength and hurled myself at him, but the result barely got me to my hands and knees. Instead I had to crawl towards him, reaching out and failing to grab his foot I was not impressed that not only was he not dead, he was moving better than I was.

'You should have stabbed him through the heart after you killed Sedge,' I imagined Kest scolding me. 'A man who doesn't feel pain can keep fighting long after others have fallen.' In my defence, when you cave in someone's skull they usually go into shock and die. Beltran was just taking a little longer.

The sounds of boots and shouts grew louder, but not loud enough. They're still too far away, I thought helplessly, scrambling after the madman's leg. They won't make it in time.

Ethalia was trying to push Beltran away, but to no avail. Whatever last thread tethered the madman to this life made him unconcerned about injury or capture.

I sucked in air, trying to find some fuel for my limbs, and I clambered towards Beltran. My hands brushed the floor, looking for a weapon but finding none. Fine, I thought, grabbing the collar of his jerkin and hauling him back, I'll tear your head from your neck with my bare hands if that's what it takes.

He threw an elbow behind that managed to hit me squarely between the eyes, filling my vision with black patches.

Don't pass out, damn it!

I dug my fingers into his hair and pulled, forcing his head back, but he tore away from me and I fell against the railing next to Sedge's body. I shook off the clumps of Beltran's hair and skin. The madman still had hold of Ethalia and now he spun her around and set his hands around her throat and began to squeeze. I grabbed the walking stick that was still hanging from Sedge's neck and swung three times at Beltran's back, striking his shoulder, his kidney and finally the back of his head, and at last Beltran's body spasmed. He was dying quickly now but still he wouldn't let go of Ethalia.

Her eyes had widened as lack of breath forced her mouth open in a desperate attempt to suck air into her lungs. She reached up and dug her fingers into his hands, trying to prise them off her, but Beltran just kept laughing as he squeezed the life from her. Again and again I smashed the end of the cane against his body, but my blows were growing weaker by the second. Both my enemy and I were losing what little strength had remained to us, but I was losing faster.

He turned to me and grinned sickeningly, then stuck out his tongue and bit down hard, severing it from his mouth in a great splatter of blood. 'A kiss goodbye,' he mumbled, his words as mangled as his tongue, and he pulled Ethalia to him in an obscene lover's embrace.

I stopped trying to hit him and in desperation brought the stick down as hard as I could against the gallery railing. The end broke off, leaving me with a shortened, jagged shaft about two feet long, and I drove it into Beltran's side, feeling ribs part as the edge passed through his flesh. A shudder ran through his entire body and his hands around Ethalia's neck no longer held their grip. She pulled them off her and stumbled back, sucking in a long, ragged gasp of air.

I kept both hands around the shaft of the stick and used it like a handle, spinning Beltran around to face me. I was sure I'd torn through at least one vital organ, but I was still determined to make sure he was good and dead this time. But he kept blinking at me, his eyes fluttering like the wings of a butterfly struggling to take flight against a strong wind.

'Who . . . are you?' he mouthed, his gaze soft and confused, as if he had forgotten who I was, who he was, what he had done.

'My name is Falcio val Mond,' I replied. 'I am First Cantor of the Greatcoats. When you get to hell, tell your God who sent you.'

For a moment Beltran looked as if he were about to spit at me, then a thunderous crack sounded in my right ear and a puff of grey-black smoke filled the air between us. Beltran fell forward, his weight driving me down to the floor beneath him. There was a large hole in what was left of his face.

I lay there, the dead man's body on top of me, the smell of him stifling me. My ears were ringing, my throat choking on the smoke. People were moving around us.

None of it made sense to me.

'Are you all right?' a voice asked from very far away, but I didn't answer. My eyes were still fixed on Beltran. Then several hands lifted his body off of me and carried it a few feet away down the hall. The men carrying him were wearing sturdy grey coats.

'Falcio, can you hear me?' I recognised the voice, but I couldn't put a name to it until I turned my head to see Quentis Maren standing over me. The Inquisitor's long wheellock pistol was still in his hand and thin wisps of smoke were seeping from what I now saw were two separate barrels. He could have shot me first if he'd wanted, I thought absently. He could have said I got in the way and no one would have questioned it.

He knelt down and reached out a gloved hand to grab me by the shoulder and haul me to my knees. 'The Church will keep Saint Ethalia safe now,' he said.

I looked into his eyes to see if I believed him.

He looked angry. 'I warned you, First Cantor. You knew these madmen were out there. You knew they were hunting Saints, but you took her from our protection. The Greatcoats are too few and too weak to fight this, Falcio. The Saint of Mercy nearly died because of your arrogance.'

I think I would have preferred it if he'd shot me.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.

The Tongue

It's never a good sign when people debate whether they should move you or not after a fight.

'I could use your body as a medical textbook,' the small, bespectacled doctor who'd introduced herself as Pasquine informed me. I found her derision and lack of sympathy mildly reassuring. Doctors are usually nicer to you if they think you're about to die.

Long grey coats swirled around us on the second-floor gallery as Quentis set his men to securing the hallways while he focused his attentions on convincing Ethalia to accept the protection of the Church. Whether out of loyalty to me or distrust of Quentis, she refused.

I wondered if I was about to find myself facing off against a dozen Inquisitors without so much as a broken cane for a weapon, but the Ducal Protector's own palace guards arrived and I was able to lie back and enjoy the unusual and rewarding experience of watching two different groups of people who generally antagonised me beyond reason threatening each other over questions of jurisdiction.

Quentis left his subordinates to deal with the guardsmen while he bombarded Ethalia with questions of a largely supernatural nature regarding the God's Needles. I took some small measure of satisfaction at his annoyed look when she explained exactly how I'd figured out they were only masquerading palace guards. 'But could you not sense them?' Quentis asked. 'Is there no way to detect their presence?'

'I noticed nothing,' Ethalia replied, 'until the larger man' she gestured to Beltran's body on the floor 'grabbed my ankle, and I was overwhelmed by a sense of . . . wrongness, of . . . the only word I can think of is desecration.'