'You seem to have lost your knife,' I said, noting his empty hands.

Undriel smiled, and a thought occurred to me then.

I looked down to see the handle of the short knife extending out of my belly. What had been left of the lovely white field of my shirt was now subsumed by the red.

'Ha,' I said, foolishly. 'Hardly hurts at all.'

Undriel didn't reply, and when I looked at him to see the reason for his silence, I noticed that he too had red roses blossoming on his shirt, where three arrows had buried themselves deep into his chest.

The two of us stood there for hours, although it can't have been more than half a dozen seconds, both determined not to be the first to fall. I thought I was doing a fairly good job of it until my legs went out from underneath me.

'I win,' Undriel said, blood spouting from his open mouth.

I guess what people say about me is true, I thought, as I watched the floor rush up to meet me. I really do make too many enemies.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

The Red and the White.

The world slid beneath me, smooth and sharp, like a tablecloth being yanked from under the dishes, sending us all clanging and crashing to the floor. Even before I hit bottom, the floor softened into a beautiful red river whose currents were pulling me along and under, like a boat taking in too much water. As I drifted along, I gradually left the cacophony of noises behind me until at last only two voices accompanied me on my journey.

'In the name of every Saint who ever lived, Falcio, are you congenitally incapable of actually winning a fight any more?' The voice was male, thin, almost reedy, but it had a mischievous quality that I found oddly charming. 'I wonder perhaps, is this some new form of gallantry you've invented? "Oh, do forgive me, sirrah, for having failed to let you kill me with your blade. Please allow me to stand here and re-open my wounds until I bleed to death"?'

I looked up, or rather, I imagined I looked up to see a man of about thirty years, average height with a bit of a stoop in his posture, keeping pace alongside me as my body listed in the currents. The blood all around me had flowed up from the floor to envelop him in an elegant silk robe too big for his skinny frame. He hadn't bothered to do it up properly, and to my profound horror, I saw that he wasn't wearing any underclothes.

'Haven't I suffered enough of your majesty already?' I groaned.

Paelis, once King of all Tristia, now a corpse these past six years, winked at me. 'You speak of the magnificent royal sceptre with such disdain? No wonder people keep stabbing you.'

'The reason people keep stabbing Falcio is because he insists on pursuing your foolish dream,' said a second voice. This one was feminine, and yet its strength blew me further down the river. I looked over to my right and saw my wife, Aline, walking beside me, her simple white gown constructed from the white marble adorning the palace walls.

'This is new,' I said conversationally.

A disturbance in the river around me became a family of alligators who swam alongside me and clamped their jaws around my arms and legs before dragging me out of the water and dropping me unceremoniously on a hard, flat rock beneath the hot sun.

A table. I've been moved onto a table of some kind. And the light . . . it's a lantern overhead.

'Good,' Aline said. 'At least you haven't lost all sense.'

I coughed, and felt something wet come out from between my lips. That's never a good sign. Of course, hallucinating two dead people who'd never met in life having an argument over your body probably wasn't a good sign either.

King Paelis took mock offence at my thoughts. 'How dare you imply that the royal personage is less than substantial?' He placed his fists on his hips and struck a pose, causing his robe to open further.

'Please don't do that,' I begged.

He ignored my complaint. 'Have you considered that my presence here might be due to some profound spiritual and supernatural event? Perhaps the Gods themselves, concerned for the state of the world, have returned their finest servant that's me, by the way to save it from-'

That next word was something I really wanted to hear, but Aline interrupted. 'He's a hallucination,' she said, then looked archly at the King. 'And not a particularly impressive one, I must say.'

'Dear Lady, if, as you claim, I am nothing more than the product of Falcio's fevered brain, then what does that make you?'

Aline turned to me and reached down her hand to touch my cheek. I could almost make myself believe that I could feel the touch of her fingers against my skin. Almost.

'I'm his reason, of course. I'm the part of him that realises he's lost consciousness, along with far too much blood, and that he was dragged along the floor by Kest and Brasti, the only way they could get him to the infirmary.'

She paused while four eagles gripped their talons around my wrists and ankles and flew me high up into the air before depositing me into their nest. It was a rather uncomfortable nest.

Aline chuckled then. 'You're on a horse-cart, you silly man. It's been several days since you fell. Such an inventive imagination, though. You should have joined the Bardatti instead of the Greatcoats.' She turned to the King. 'I'm the part of him that figures things out when others can't.'

I missed that about her the unshakable confidence in those things she knew to be true.

'You're what makes me believe there's still good in this wretched world,' I said.

'No, my darling, that's his job.' She pointed at Paelis.

'Ah!' said the King, as if he'd just scored the winning point. 'I'm his idealism! His fearless determination to right the world! His keen intellect and-'

'No, that's Aline, too,' I said, letting myself feel the warmth of her breath and smelling the haleweed that she used to rub on her face and neck to keep from burning on sunny days. I wanted to live inside that sweet scent for ever.

'These are false memories you're making for yourself,' Aline warned. 'Haleweed stinks of seven different hells, Falcio, remember? We were farmers.' She held out the fingertips of one perfect hand. 'What farmer ever had hands like these?' Her fingers took hold of a lock of soft hair, a gleaming pale brown, almost blonde, and held it up for me to see. 'In my entire life my hair never once looked this way.'

'Enough!' Paelis bellowed. 'Is a man not allowed to love his wife? Is he not allowed to see the beauty that others' and here he began wagging his finger at her 'even she herself, fail to see?'

That was a mistake. One thing that was absolutely true about Aline was that she never took well to being yelled at. 'And what good will he be to the world like this? Clinging to a past painted bright colours by sorrow and need?' She turned back to me. 'The enemy's way is deception, Falcio. Yours must be truth, no matter how ugly it might look.'

She leaned in closer to me and I could count the freckles on her cheeks now, six on one side, nine on the other. That felt significant somehow.

'Better,' she said. 'But there's more. You can't beat him unless you learn to see what isn't there.'

'How am I supposed to see what isn't-?'

Aline placed her hands in front of her face. Her hair changed colour to the pale white-blonde of Saint Birgid and her hands darkened and melted together, forming an iron mask with neither eyes nor mouth.

'Stop,' I said, reaching out to try and pull the mask away.

'She can't hear you any more,' Paelis said. 'She can't speak. Truth is being buried under deception, faith drowned by fear.' Gently, the King lifted Aline by the shoulders and began guiding her backwards, away from me.

'Step by step, Falcio, it's all being taken away from us.'

A fog the colour of ivory began to envelop them, swallowing them whole. 'Soon there will be only one step left.'

I knew that what I saw and heard was illusion, my mind jumbling memories together as my body struggled against my injuries and yet I knew there had to be some fact, some essential truth to all of this. 'What will they do?' I asked. 'What is the last step?'

The King was gone now, and I could barely see Aline in the fog. A pair of heavy gloved hands reached out, encircling her masked face. With a vicious jerk they twisted, and the sound of her neck snapping became my entire world.

I didn't recognise the voice that I heard next, but the words were spoken with perfect clarity. 'The last step is the same as the first,' he said. 'I will kill Mercy.'

CHAPTER EIGHT.

The Martyrium.

I awoke in darkness. This was neither surprising nor particularly unsettling to me until I realised that the air was heavy, almost stifling, the way it gets at the peak of an unseasonably hot summer.

So why am I so cold?

I reached down to grab at my blankets, but my forearm struck against something hard, just a few inches above me. I ran my finger across the surface. It was rough and flat. Something stung as it caught in the skin of my fingertip.

A sliver?

I tried rolling over, only to find my shoulder caught against the wooden boards above me. Panic set in when I reached out to either side and found them blocked as well.

A coffin . . . I'm in a coffin.

The stories told to frighten children and old men, of warriors injured in battle and believed dead by their comrades, only to wake up buried alive six feet beneath the ground, assailed me and I started to breathe too quickly, using too much air. Already I felt as if I were suffocating, trapped underground. Had they thought I'd lost too much blood? Was my heartbeat too soft or slow? Could Kest and Brasti truly have been foolish enough to think that-?

Brasti.

I bellowed, and the sound of my voice echoed over the surface of the wood around me, 'I'm going to fucking kill you this time you heartless son of a bitch!'

A distant guffaw was followed by the sound of footsteps running towards me and Brasti calling, 'Hang on, hang on, I'm coming . . .'

Blinding candlelight forced me to close my eyes as my prison lifted off of me, and when I opened them again I saw that I hadn't actually been inside a coffin at all Brasti had just removed the lid from one and flipped the rest over top of me.

'It would have come off as soon as you gave it a push,' Brasti scolded. 'And don't shout, either.' He glanced around the room, most of which was cast in shadows. 'You'll wake up Kest and he has no sense of humour lately.'

The doors to the room burst open and Kest strode inside. 'I told you not to pull this prank, Brasti. I warned you what would happen if you did-'

It should tell you something about Kest that I was, at that moment, afraid for Brasti.

'Oh, no! I've angered Saint Kest-of-the-deep-brooding-stares!' Brasti mocked. 'Whatever shall I do?'

This was always Brasti's idea of how best to deal with trauma: turn it into a joke. I had nearly died, so why not stick a coffin over me to remind me I was alive? Kest had lost his Sainthood along with his hand, so why not make fun of him to show it's not the end of the world?

Kest didn't look as if he was finding any of it particularly funny.

'Fine,' Brasti said, grinning as he leaped onto the bed next to mine, 'just pass me my bow and then you can draw that great big stick of yours and we'll find out once and for all who deserves to be the Saint of something-or-other!'

Without breaking stride, Kest picked up Brasti's bow, carried it until he was within four feet of the bed and then tossed it high into the air.

Brasti grinned, his right hand already reaching back into his quiver for an arrow while the other went for the bow in midair but before he could catch it, Kest's left hand was darting out and wrapping around Brasti's fingers in a crushing grip. The bow clattered on the floor. 'What makes you think I need a sword to teach you sense?' Kest asked.

Brasti winced in pain, his knees buckling. 'Stop it, you fool, you'll break my hand!'

'Apologise to Falcio.'

'I was only trying to help!' Brasti said, looking at me pleadingly.

'Trying to help?' I asked. 'That's a stretch, even for you.'

'Come on, Falcio. You nearly lost a duel to a pompous fop of a swordsman, practically everyone hates you and then you managed to almost die for the hundredth time. Did you really want to wake up to the sight of Kest wiping your brow with a soft cloth while whispering sweet, reassuring words to you?'

'Compared to waking up thinking I'd been buried alive?'

Brasti, obviously born without any sense of self-preservation, chortled for a moment before regaining control of himself. 'Come on, admit it! I bet you've never felt more alive than you do right now!'

I sighed, feeling nothing of the kind. 'Let him go, Kest.'

'Really?' Kest asked, his left hand still firmly in control of Brasti's fingers.

I pushed myself to sit up. 'If you break his hand now then how am I going to enjoy the full satisfaction of tearing his fingers off later on?'

'Ah,' Kest said, and let go of him. 'Good point.'

'Now wait a minute, Falcio . . .' Brasti began.

I smiled. 'You'll never know when, Brasti. Maybe tomorrow, maybe ten years from now . . .' I paused for a long moment, then said, 'No, probably tomorrow.'

He hopped off the bed and massaged his hand. 'One day there's going to be a God of Humour and he's going to curse the pair of you as apostates.'

I rose from the bed, feeling every cut and bruise on my body come to wakefulness. My chest and abdomen were covered in bandages. 'How long was I out?'

'Six days,' Kest replied.

'Hells, six days . . .'

'Doctor Histus offered to draw you a diagram of the vital organs in your body and the exact distance by which Undriel's smallsword missed them.'

'Kind of him,' I said. Histus. That explains the poor bandaging, anyway. 'Why didn't Ethalia tend to my wounds?' Then I remembered the circumstances that had got me into this state. 'Saints . . . is Birgid-?'

'Still alive, so far as we know,' Kest replied. 'Ethalia's been working day and night to heal her.' He paused for a moment, then admitted, 'Falcio, Saint Birgid hasn't woken in all that time. Her injuries aren't healing.'

I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to focus and clear the fog from my head so I could concentrate on the matters at hand. Instead, I found myself remembering my first meeting with Birgid how disturbingly beautiful and youthful she'd appeared, glowing with a power that had filled me with both awe and trepidation. Then the images in my mind shifted to how she'd looked when I'd last seen her, just a few days ago, her hair matted and filthy, trapped behind an iron mask, shoulders and arms covered in tiny cuts that were somehow . . . precise. Planned. This was a careful and meticulous kind of cruelty.