Despite the precariousness of our situation, I nearly laughed. She's pulling a God's Line on them, I thought proudly. It made sense, after all: if the clerics really did represent the will of the Gods, then surely one girl and a couple of Greatcoats shouldn't be able to kill a dozen or so of their chosen Knights? Aline held out her left fist again and mimed drawing another arrow. Her next words were spoken with deadly calm. 'We planted a thousand black dahlias in the gardens of Castle Aramor a few months ago. I do believe that lilies would go better in this courtyard.'

The leader of the Knights showed no signs of fear as he waved at the thick grey mist with a gauntleted fist. 'You had a thousand archers when Shuran's troops attacked-'

'A thousand?' Brasti interrupted, shouting down at us, 'A thousand? I had less than a hundred archers with me, you arse!'

Buther, his face now as green as his robes, tried to intervene. 'I think we should all calm down, my Lady. You must understand-'

'No, Venerati,' she said loudly, her words overpowering him. She might not have a deep voice, or one that could carry, but there was no denying the force of her next words. 'Through treachery and betrayal you have come for this place, and if I resist you, innocent people will die. So you may have the palace, but know that it is only because I choose to give it to you.'

She took a step towards the Knights. Their leader barked out, 'Crossbows!' and a clump of men on the right flank raised their weapons and aimed the bolts at Aline. 'Do you think you can fire your imaginary bow fast enough to stop them all, little-'

His words were cut off by a scream, strange and distant in the nightmist but whose source I could already see came from amongst the crossbowmen. The others turned, trying to see who had killed their fellow, then another shouted in pain and stumbled back, falling into the others. In the thickening fog they couldn't spot the attacker, who was weaving in and out of their midst.

'You have met the King's Heart and you have met the King's Arrow,' Aline said to the leader of the Knights, then paused to wink at me. 'Best that none of you try the King's Patience.'

Darriana must have returned last night and Aline ordered her to stay hidden for precisely this purpose. I tried to smile back before she turned away, but I couldn't: I was overwhelmed. Whatever these men had expected whatever I had expected Aline was something entirely different. Valiana had trained her these past months, she had nurtured her and helped her to find the strength I hadn't believed she truly had.

'These names you bandy about are those your father gave to his Greatcoats,' Obladias said, his lips pulled thin as he spoke. 'Your father's stature, borrowed by an insolent child long overdue a whipping.'

Say the word, you bastard. Say the word and you'll be the first to see whether the Gods are real or just devices you and your kind use to fill your pockets.

There was a moment when I thought perhaps Obladias would command the Knights to attack, or one of Quentis' Inquisitors would lose their patience, or, hells, maybe Brasti would just fire again, by mistake. But no one broke the stillness. In the thickening mist Obladias' face was starting to take on the hue of his robes, but after a few moments he growled, 'Go. Flee this place but know that the Gods are not done with you.'

'Enjoy the palace,' Aline replied. 'Take care not to damage anything, for there will be a full accounting upon my return.' With that she walked past the Knights and through the crowd of pilgrims as casually as a young girl out for an afternoon stroll.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN.

The Hymn

Once Aline and I were far enough down the road that I had stopped looking behind us, I said, 'You didn't order the captain of the guards to stand his men down in order to keep them safe. You did it to make us look weak.'

'I did,' she admitted, 'but it's more than that. When the clerics see palace guards, they see men who can be turned to their cause by money or by force.'

'But not the Greatcoats,' I said.

'Not the Greatcoats.'

I shook my head in wonder. 'Those clerics had no idea who they were dealing with,' I said. Nor did I, apparently.

I expected Aline to look pleased, but she wasn't. She stopped walking and when she looked at me, her eyes were very far away. 'Falcio, I need you to listen to me now. Those men, those clerics, they're absolutely right. They know exactly who and what they're dealing with.'

'I thought-' She held up a hand and I shut up.

'In a few hours one of them will be seated on the throne of Luth. In a few days Tristia will have a Prelate ruling a Duchy for the first time in six hundred years. The Dukes are wrong to think it won't spread. The Church has money and they'll use it make things better for the common folk for a short while at least. They'll use it to bribe noblemen around the country and things will begin to change really quickly, and soon the country-'

'-the Dukes would never allow it,' I said forcefully, but she was shaking her head.

'The Dukes won't last the year. The lesser nobles are all sick of being stepped on by the Dukes; the clerics will offer the Viscounts and Margraves and Lords greater power and control in exchange for fealty to the Church, and they'll get it. Falcio, all of this? It's just a delaying tactic on my part, to show the clerics and their Knights that they should be afraid of moving too quickly. It's what Valiana would have done: make time so we can find a different way around the problem facing us.'

'We have lot of problems, sweetheart. Which specific one are you talking about?'

She took in a breath and I realised I'd really irritated her. Before I could apologise, she said, 'Falcio, what I'm about to say to you isn't a request, it's an order. We need something beyond a few brave souls with swords, so you, Kest and Brasti are going to take Ethalia to find a functioning sanctuary so that she can come into her power. We need that power, now.'

That's simple enough, I thought. Just tell me to abandon you here as the snakes begin to slither around the nest. I don't fucking think so. 'I'm not sure if anyone's told you this yet, but the Greatcoats don't actually follow the orders of the monarch.'

'You followed my father's commands,' she said, accusingly.

'We liked to think of them more as strongly-worded suggestions.' I raised my hands, not wanting to argue. 'Look, it's a big country, and we don't even know if there is an undesecrated sanctuary left I wouldn't have the first idea where to look.'

A mocking voice answered, 'When did a Trattari ever know where to go without a Bardatti sending him?' Rhyleis, the musician I'd met at the tavern in Baern, was striding towards us. The cocky smile on her face was the perfect match to the swagger of her step.

'I spoke to Rhyleis earlier,' Aline told me, 'and now I want you to listen to her.'

'I do indeed have a tune for you, First Cantor.' She stopped in front of me and reached up with her index finger to trace a line along my jaw. 'Ah, but poor Falcio. You look lovelorn. Are you still chasing after the Saint of Mercy, calling down the moon itself in the hope that it will shine favour upon your desire? Perhaps you should find a companion better suited to your ardour.' She punctuated the last word with a wink.

I was starting to get mildly annoyed with the way everyone felt so comfortable discussing my relationships. 'Lady, did you come with information, or are you asking me out on a date?'

Rhyleis was suddenly downcast, her expression almost heartbreaking in its sincerity, as if, here and now, for the very first time, someone had shattered her heart. Seeing that I wasn't entirely convinced, she seamlessly shifted to a haughtier and substantially more genuine stance. 'You know, in days past when a Bardatti came bearing news, men and women greater than you would fall to their knees begging to hear it sung.' She held out a slim hand as if examining it. 'Rings and chains of gold and silver would have been thrust upon me, in those better days.'

'And yet all you're going to get from me is a thank you.'

She smiled, for the first time looking normal; a moment of her life that was not a performance. 'That will have to suffice, then. Very well, listen as I play you my little tune.'

I looked back up the road at the Duchy that we had just abandoned to the Church, where the Inquisitors would soon be enforcing the new laws that Obladias and his tame clerics were no doubt busy writing. The Saints were dropping like flies, the Greatcoats were nowhere to be found and somewhere out there an opponent who'd planned all of this so carefully was outmatching us at every turn. Even from here I could hear the pilgrims united in song that sounded both exultant and whiny.

'Please don't tell me you're really going to sing it for me,' I said, turning back to Rhyleis, 'because I think that might just be the thing that finally makes me slit my own throat.'

'Silly magistrate,' she chided me. 'That's the news, right there you need to listen for it.'

'Rhyleis, that's enough,' Aline said, apparently done with watching us fence. 'Tell him.'

The musician gave a very impertinent rendition of a bow and said, 'Alas, my Lady, the Bardatti do not do the bidding of Queens and Kings.'

Aline looked up at me. 'Is there anyone in this country who does? Because I'm starting to wonder precisely what power a monarch is supposed to wield.'

Rhyleis gave a second bow, and this one was a lot more sincere. 'That, my Lady, is an excellent question for an heir to the throne to ask.' She gestured up the road to the palace, to the singing pilgrims. 'Do you like the song, Falcio?'

As a general rule, I dislike hymns; they always sound a bit pretentious and you can't dance to them. But I was noticing something odd about this one. Tristian hymns are sung in harmony, with each line a different plea to the Gods, but this one had a strange counter-melody; I hadn't consciously noticed it at first, but now it really stuck out.

Rhyleis had been watching my face. 'I see you have something of an ear,' she said approvingly, as if that suddenly made me more attractive. 'Do you know what it's saying?'

Aline interrupted the show again. 'You know he doesn't, so stop showing off and tell us.'

'The first pair of notes are the Bardatti word for "found",' Rhyleis replied, relenting. 'Nehra sent us searching for undescecrated sanctuaries, so that means one of us has found one. Listen: that descending fourth, up a fifth, then down a sixth? That's the Condate of Verderen.'

I struggled to hear what she was talking about. 'You can name every March and Condate in the country from a sequence of notes?'

'More the sequence of intervals between the notes, actually, but yes. We can specify all the way down to an individual estate if we want to, but it's hard to bury that inside a song without using instrumental lines.'

Aline was tilting her head as she too, listened for the hidden message in the middle harmony line. 'So are you saying there are Bardatti singing amongst the pilgrims?'

Rhyleis laughed at that. 'Of course not! How would we ever get anything done if we had to go around masquerading as pilgrims? No, my Lady, it's much simpler than that: one of us constructs the melody, then sings it a few times here or there, wherever the pilgrims are to be found. They hear it and without even realising, pick up the tune. It spreads quickly when we compose it properly I could tell you which tavern a drunk was patronising by the way he honks along to "The Horse and the Straw".'

'You can really do that?' Aline asked. 'You can change a few notes in a song and others will pick it up and sing it without even realising it?'

'I'm a Bardatti,' Rhyleis replied, as if that answered everything. 'But if you want to hear something really impressive, get Nehra to show you how she can make redlarks spread a tune through the skies.'

It bothered me no end that orders like the Bardatti and the Cogneri had managed to preserve so much of their lore, while we Trattari had to pretty much make it up as we went along. And I still don't like the name, even though I now know it's not the insult people believe it to be.

'How do we know the information is correct?' I asked. 'You want me to race off to the middle of Domaris on the basis of a few notes in a hymn to the Gods?'

'Our new Prelate is an impressive figure, don't you think?' Rhyleis replied, ignoring my question. 'Such a strong voice. I find the deep roll of his consonants particularly fascinating.'

It took me a moment to figure out what she was getting at. 'He's from Domaris?'

'Anyone who isn't deaf could tell you he's from Domaris, Falcio. I'm telling you he's from Verderen. The rise in his vowels might be subtle, but it's a dead giveaway.'

Back when he was pretending to be a humble monk, Obladias had told me some inane story about a man from his estates losing faith in the Gods after the death of his family. If he really was from Verderen, that might well be where this started and where they kept the one remaining sanctuary. It's thin evidence, I thought. Nothing but speculation, rumour, conjecture.

Aline could see the look on my face. 'Falcio, you're going to take Kest and Brasti and the three of you are going to find a way to get Lady Ethalia into the Condate of Verderen. You're going to find a way to get her into that sanctuary and help her find the strength of her Sainthood. If she can stop the madness that's holding Valiana, then we might have a chance.'

'But-'

She gave Rhyleis a meaningful look and the Bardatti took the hint and sauntered down the road for a bit. 'It has to be now, Falcio,' Aline said, looking back at the crowds outside the Palace of Luth. 'It's our only hope: that there's a reason why the enemy fears her so much.'

'I'm not leaving you alone and defenceless,' I said, with as much finality as I could muster. 'Who's going to watch out for you and Valiana the next time-'

'I will,' Darriana said, stepping out from the trees lining the sides the road.

Aline looked annoyed. 'I specifically asked you not to spy on us, Darriana,'

'And I ignored that request.' She locked eyes with me. 'Understand?' The message was as clear as it was simple: Darriana wasn't afraid to ignore royal commands. She'd do whatever it took to keep Aline and Valiana safe. I nodded once by way of reply, and Darri left us.

She glared daggers at me for a moment, then sighed. 'As you can see, there's not much danger of me being left unprotected. I'll have the Tailor and Mateo, too.'

'Don't forget Tommer,' I said. 'He's probably slipped his father's leash by now. I'll bet he's already heading back this way.'

I'd meant it sarcastically, but Aline gave a smile. 'He loves me, or at any rate he thinks he does.' She sounded like a woman of twenty speaking about an eight-year-old's first crush, not as a girl of fourteen, barely older.

'What happened to the half-crazed girl who pulled out her hair and couldn't last another day?' I wondered aloud.

Aline reached out and took my hand, then pressed it against her cheek. 'That girl is hanging on by a thread, Falcio, trying to pretend she can hold the country together, though we both know it isn't true.'

I didn't know what to do or say; Aline had just given voice to my deepest fears.

'I'm sorry,' she said, 'but I need you to know the truth. I have to keep up the act for the others they need someone to believe in right now, but you . . .'

Now it was me reassuring her. 'You've come a long way, Aline, you just need time for the Dukes to see that you-'

'I'll never get the time I need. There's only one person who can save this country and she's trapped behind a mask of iron. You need to find a way to save Valiana before we're all brought to ruin.'

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT.

The Whipping Boy

I was the last one let in on the plan, which made sense, since I never would have agreed to it if I'd known about it first. It didn't help that my damned Inquisitor's coat itched like it was lined with tiny little devils scratching at my skin.

'Do you suppose it's intentional?' Kest asked, tugging at the stiff collar and noting the way I kept scratching the back of my wrist where the cuff was rubbing against it.

'How so?'

'Perhaps the irritation is a form of privation, to make the Cogneri resistant to secular temptations.'

Brasti snorted. 'Those sons of bitches we got the coats from seemed distinctly unsaintly to me.'

We hadn't set out to confront the Inquisitors in fact, we'd spent a good deal of time discussing how we might sneak into Domaris without having to deal with them at all then we came across four of them outside a small church brutalising a congregation of worshippers of the Goddess of Love. The Inquisitors had chosen a particularly demeaning form of punishment to inflict upon them.

'I still don't understand why I have to parade around with this useless device,' Brasti went on, spinning the wheellock around his finger by its trigger guard.

'Inquisitors don't carry bows,' I said. 'And stop playing with the damned thing. If you shoot yourself in the foot you might drop the pistol and break it. We're going to need it soon enough.'