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If there was one thing I’d learned in life, it was that honour just gets you into trouble.
Knights are absolutely honourable and prize their honour above all things. Greatcoats, on the other hand, value justice, and tend to have a difficult time understanding how theft, rape and murder all suddenly become honourable pursuits just because a man you swore an oath to asks you to commit them.
He had taken the cocked crossbow from his dead man. Knights don’t normally use bows – they consider them coward’s weapons. And knives are good enough for a soldier’s need, perhaps, but not good enough for a Knight’s honour. In my entire life I’d never seen a Knight who would even touch a crossbow. But Lynniac had lost a fight, and a Knight’s sense of honour could not forgive that.
In the old days, when we were admired, everyone knew that a man or woman who managed to take one from a Magister would be hunted down to the ends of the earth. Nowadays, no one wanted to be seen dead with one. So fame and infamy really weren’t that different after all.
‘But most of the terrible things that happen in this land don’t happen because of evil men, not really. They happen because of people who just don’t know any better. A tax collector who never wonders if this season’s crops might be too small to warrant the silver he has just collected: a family’s entire income. A soldier who never questions why he’s been told to take casks of oil and condemn a mother and her children to a fiery death. And a woman, barely more than a girl, who thinks only about how fine it will be to have a big castle and a pretty throne, and never wonders why so many great
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‘I wonder, Trattari, what prompts a man to stand there, perfectly still, while Death comes to claim him? Is it that you don’t fear Death? Or perhaps that you fear life even more?’
I said that Lorenzo was outstanding with the blade, and he was. He’d likely never been beaten by anyone, ever. Well, I’ve been beaten plenty of times and there’s something to be said for it: it’s how you learn what’s truly at stake. The world isn’t a romantic stage play; it’s not all love or glory. And a swordfight isn’t always about skill or strength; sometimes – maybe even most times – it’s about who’s willing to take a blow just to make sure he delivers a worse one to his opponent.
I was crying, not for any reason I could put into words, but because as much as the mind may grow to disdain the body, the body will always mourn the desecration of the spirit.
A Saint: the ultimate expression of an ideal, in this case, the mastery of the sword.
‘I know what this poison does,’ Valiana said. ‘And I know I’m not that important, so I won’t take up much time—’ ‘Stop it,’ I said. ‘Be important. If … If I give you a name, will you take it?’
‘You don’t have to be the victim of someone else’s story. You can be a Greatcoat. You can be …’ I was reaching for the word when suddenly I understood the one thing I’d been looking for all these years. The one thing I could never find. The one thing even the King couldn’t give me. ‘You can be my answer, Valiana val Mond,’ I said softly. Something warm slipped down my cheeks and I guessed they were my own tears this time. She put a hand on my chest and said to me, ‘My name is Valiana val Mond of the Greatcoats. And I am Falcio val Mond’s daughter, and his answer to the world.’
