She smiled through the dirt on her face and it would have been a nice moment, if we'd had time for such things.

We didn't. 'Tell me what's happened,' I said.

She pushed Brasti aside more firmly, and this time he let her. 'It's better I show you,' she replied, and started walking towards that last bend before the castle.

'Wait,' I said. 'The pilgrims-'

'Oh, there are plenty of pilgrims. Inquisitors, too,' she said, walking away from us. 'They won't bother with us. No one really gives a shit about us any more.'

Darriana's assurances weren't filling me with confidence. I drew my rapiers as she led us to the path up to Castle Aramor. I hadn't had my own weapons in hand since we'd left for the cathedral in the mine; it gave me some small comfort to know that if I had to fight, at least I wouldn't be swinging a damned mace any more.

'I suppose I should tell you to prepare yourself,' Darriana said.

'For what?' I asked, trying to wipe the blinding dust away from my eyes. It was getting thicker the closer we approached. 'You still haven't told us what's waiting for us.'

Ethalia walked next to me, watching Darri. 'She's in pain, but she isn't afraid,' she said quietly. 'It's sorrow . . . loss.'

'Keep out of my head, whore,' Darriana said, quickening her pace, as if to hide the tears I now glimpsed in her eyes.

The clouds of dust kept getting thicker until it became hard to breathe and I could barely see ten feet in front of me. But once we got to the top of the road it no longer mattered: you don't need to be able to see clearly to see what isn't there.

Years ago, when the King was still alive and willing to pay whatever exorbitant price was asked to acquire books for the royal library, Kest and I tried to figure out exactly how many different fencing manuals existed in the world. We got to somewhere in the neighbourhood of two hundred and twenty-six: an impressive number, given that you'd be hard-pressed to find two hundred and twenty-six books on any other subject.

The odd thing, we realised one day, was that while there were any number of texts describing how to fence, we only ever found one book on the specific subject of duelling. Oh, there were no end of treatises on trial by combat, but they all focused on the rules, the weapons, the politessi dan guerita: the 'what to say' and 'how' and 'when'. Only one book, the somewhat depressingly titled You Are Sure to Die, by an obscure author named Sen Errera Bottio, described how to actually fight and win a duel.

Kest's theory was that while fencing masters wanted to show off their skills to get students, no true duellist would wish to reveal his techniques, for fear they might be used against him. As Bottio had developed a painful wasting disease, he'd apparently decided he'd now be quite happy to have someone kill him quickly, rather than slowly fade away.

So each chapter details a different aspect of the mental and physical preparation required for the various duels one might face over the course of a (presumably short) lifetime. The first chapter, 'On The Morning Of Your First Duel', opens with a full description of what to expect the first time you're forced to engage in trial by combat.

It was Bottio who coined the term 'delusor', in the chapter entitled, appropriately enough, 'On the Night Before Your Death', in which he detailed all the different ways an opponent might weaken you in the days and hours leading up to a duel so as to ensure your failure and subsequent death. Bottio believed the most devastating attacks weren't on the body, they were on the mind. He wrote, 'The body can recover from many different wounds, often with surprising speed. The soul, once broken, can never be repaired, and there lies the final target where the skilled delusor will strike and always on the very eve of the fight.'

Bottio was right, I thought as I surveyed the scene in front of us.

For ten years Castle Aramor had been my home. I knew every one of her nine towers, every inch of her battlements. I'd been in every room at one time or another, read most of her books and pissed in every one of her privies. Most days I can't recognise my own face in a mirror, but I could draw Aramor's fortifications, and more accurately than any of the craftsmen who built her.

I loved that place. I had come there seeking to kill a King, and instead become his most devout follower. The Greatcoats had been reborn there, and it was there that I had hoped one day to see my King's daughter take the throne: the physical manifestation of all my foolish dreams.

Maybe that's why I could still visualise it rising high above the endless throngs of pilgrims kneeling on the greensward, singing their hymns of joy into the thick grey clouds of its broken remains, scattered across the earth like a child's toy shattered by a mighty hand.

We had been standing there for just a few seconds before Darriana started wading into the pilgrims. 'Come on,' she beckoned, 'they won't attack us.'

I followed her like a sleepwalker, quite unable to convince myself that what I was seeing was real. I'd seen castles destroyed before, but none so completely. Only one tower still stood among the rubble, the shattered remains of stone and mortar.

Darri led us through the kneeling crowds until we reached the castle's great entrance: the very place where we had waited boldly to dictate terms to the Ducal Council. That had been just a few months before, after the battle of the Black Tabards. It felt like a lifetime ago.

'How was this done?' Kest asked, looking past the ruins and around the periphery. 'I see no siege-engines, no armies.'

'Like this,' Darriana said. She held up a hand and snapped her fingers. 'That's it. Tristia's one true God came and waved his hand and the towers began falling.'

'That's not possible. It would take-'

'Oh, there was a fine speech,' she said, her eyes on me. 'You would have liked it, Falcio. They held a trial, if you can believe it. A fucking trial. That Prelate of theirs Obladias? he came out and declared that the Church had deemed the rule of King's Laws to be corrupt and in violation of God's will. God. Singular.' She pointed to a small patch amongst the ruins that had somehow stayed clear. 'He had his little deity stand right there, listening to hours of testimony from clerics, peasants oh, and you'll love this: fucking Duke Hadiermo, the Iron Duke of Domaris himself, testified that the Dukes themselves were traitors to the country.'

'Why go through the sham of a trial?' Brasti asked.

It was a fair question: why the formality? Why the performance?

'Did the trial follow the Laws of Jurisprudence?' I asked. 'Was everything done according to the rules of evidence?'

'You think anyone cares about that?' Darriana demanded. 'You think anyone but you-?'

'Answer the question,' I said. 'Was this a legal trial or not.'

'Yes! Everything was nice and legal does that make you feel better?'

I didn't bother to answer. I understood Darri's pain I shared it but I didn't have time for it. 'This is how you destroy the Law utterly,' I said to Kest. 'In a trial.'

'What happened next?' Kest asked, and she turned and pointed to the far left side of the ruins. The dust-haze was so thick that what I'd mistaken for the remains of a wooden beam standing on its end turned out to be a tall gibbet. When I squinted, I realised that wasn't a pile of broken stone underneath, but broken bodies. 'Then the executions started.'

Executions- Oh, Saints, no- 'Aline Valiana-' My heart was about to shatter. 'Please, please, tell me you didn't let them come here . . .'

The look on her face was so full of rage I thought she might cut me down there and then. 'Religious zealots were taking the castle of course Valiana and Aline were here. They ordered us to escort them here so they could face the charges.'

I moved closer to the bodies by the gibbet, trying to find them, praying to who knew whom that I wouldn't see them.

'Falcio,' Ethalia said, a hand on my arm, 'they aren't there. They must have escaped.' She turned to Darriana and ordered, 'Stop torturing him.'

'I told you, bitch! Stay out of my head-'

Kest stepped in front of her. 'You don't care about this castle, so if Aline and Valiana aren't dead, why are you so angry with us?'

Darriana let out a breath. 'Your little whore-Saint is right. The Prelate ordered the Inquisitors to bring them to the gibbet. Quentis Maren refused.'

'Quentis Maren refused?' Brasti asked. His voice echoed my own disbelief.

Darriana nodded. 'He gave his own little speech about following the Gods the Blacksmith explained that the Gods Quentis had worshipped were all dead, of course, but the Inquisitor said, "Better to follow a dead God than an evil one."'

'So he helped them escape?'

'We all did.'

I looked at the destruction all around us. 'How was that even possible?'

'And why aren't the pilgrims tearing us apart right now?' Brasti asked. 'Why aren't there soldiers waiting to capture us?'

Darriana gave a bitter smile, devoid of anything resembling joy or hope. 'Because after everything went to seven hells and the first blood was shed, Aline had the bright idea of demanding trial by combat. Apparently that's something the God gives a shit about, because he agreed. So until the duel tomorrow, no one is allowed to touch us.'

'So we run,' Brasti said, looking at me. 'We get everyone the hells out of Tristia.'

'Aline won't run,' Darriana said, 'and neither will Valiana.'

'Why not?' Brasti looked astounded.

Darriana waded out into the pilgrims, then stopped and stood there like a single living tree in the middle of a grey desert. She spread her arms wide and at last I saw that the men and women and children kneeling all around her and singing their hymns were also coughing and choking, and amongst them I now saw the bodies of those who had already succumbed to the clouds of dust rising from the ruins. 'The God has commanded that they remain here and sing his praises until Aline and Valiana return to face his judgment.'

CHAPTER SIXTY.

The Church

With Darriana once again in the lead, we marched through the streets of the city of Aramor, which looked impoverished without its castle looming in the background, winding our way between the two- and three-storey buildings of brick and stone, the shops and homes built one by one over hundreds of years and clinging to the hillside like barnacles to a ship.

A ship that's now drifting to the bottom of the ocean.

What surprised me most was how many people were going about their daily business as if it were a normal day, mostly ignoring us, except for the occasional sneer as we passed. No doubt the Greatcoats had proved to be just what they'd always believed: a fantasy, a feeble joke played upon the people of Tristia by a King who understood nothing of their real struggles. But there were some whose heads turned as we passed, whose eyes followed us as if waiting for some sign that this must be some temporary feint on our part that was going to precede our counter-thrust against the forces arrayed against the country. I avoided their gaze the most. They were the greater fools.

There was no plan, no feint, no counter-attack left to us.

'We're here,' Darriana said, gesturing down a long, narrow alley in the dirty riverside district of Ponte Calliet to a plain wooden door beneath a broken, poorly lettered sign that read The Busted Scales. It was a tavern, of sorts.

The Busted Scales had been our informal gathering place, back in the day the King had provided us with all the space we needed at the castle, but most of us were from poorer backgrounds and didn't feel entirely comfortable in opulent surroundings. Within these dilapidated walls we could talk and drink and tell our stories without ever feeling too grand.

'I'd never even been here before,' Darriana replied. 'Talia and Allister said this was the best place to prepare. They called it "the Greatcoats' church".'

'Well,' Brasti said after a moment, 'it's certainly as close to a church as most of us ever got.'

As I moved to enter, Darriana grabbed my arm. 'You want to know why I'm angry with you?' she snarled. 'Because this is all your fucking fault, Falcio. You should never have filled Valiana's and Aline's heads with all this useless idealism of yours. They should have run the second that monstrosity appeared at Aramor . . .' She stopped for a moment. 'We got them out, but not everyone made it.'

'Who?' I asked.

She pushed open the door. 'See for yourself.'

The light was dim, but I could see Greatcoats sitting around the same old battered tables, tending wounds or talking quietly. Talia and Allister were poring over a torn map and arguing with Nehra and Rhyleis, the Bardatti.

The Tailor sat in a corner, pulling a heavy steel needle through a greatcoat; I recognised it at once as the one the God's Needle had stolen from Harden. It's odd that I remember coats more easily than faces.

Antrim Thomas was kneeling by the old trapdoor to one of our hidden caches of weapons one of Brasti's first innovations, years ago. He'd pulled out a pile of swords and spears and was hauling up a shield. I smiled wryly at that; I remembered the King offering it to one of us once and we'd all made a joke of it; what would a Greatcoat need with a shield?

I caught sight of Mateo Tiller, sitting at a bench changing the bandages on a man's shoulder. It took me a moment to recognise Quentis Maren. 'It turns out our coats aren't quite as good at protection as your own,' he said, seeing me.

I walked over and looked down at the small, almost perfectly round wound. 'You were shot.'

'Apparently being leader of the Order of Inquisitors is insufficient to prevent one's own men trying to kill one on occasion.'

'Tell me about it,' I said.

He laughed, then caught his breath. 'Don't. It hurts.'

Mateo looked up at me and rolled his eyes. 'I offered the man all the alcohol he wants. He keeps refusing.'

'Inquisitors don't drink,' Quentis said. 'It offends the Gods.'

I really wasn't sure how to answer that.

'Oh hells,' he said, catching my expression, 'you mean it's true? I was hoping that the Blacksmith and his devil were just bragging.'

'Sorry,' I said, 'but I'm afraid there's been a change of ownership over our souls.'

'In that case,' Quentis said, motioning for a flask on the table, 'give me that.'

Mateo grinned. 'I knew I was starting to like you, Inquisitor.'

I felt someone at my side. 'Falcio,' Ethalia said softly, and I followed the line of her extended hand to where Aline sat in the shadows with Valiana. I couldn't help myself; I ran to them.

'We're fine, Falcio, let go,' Aline said, struggling to breathe as I crushed her in one arm even as I reached out with my other to take Valiana's hand.

I ignored Aline's protestations for a while, but then I realised how stiff and awkward she was, and guessed she was trying hard trying to hold herself together. Valiana was squeezing my hand, but it felt wrong somehow, sorrowful. Then I felt Ethalia's hand on my shoulder.

'What happened?' I asked.

'Come with me,' Aline said. 'There's still a little time and he'll want to see you.'

She led me into a windowless room at the back of the tavern. It was lit with only a couple of candles and I could barely see anything except for a small figure lying on a pair of tables that had been pushed together in the centre, and a taller figure standing over him.

'Damn you to every hell, I told you to leave us alone!' Jillard, Duke of Rijou, shouted. 'We don't need your sympathy and we don't want your caterwauling Bardatti laments-'

'I've brought Falcio,' Aline said gently, and he stopped his ranting.