I walked over to the wall where the metal pole with the key was hanging and pulled it off.
‘They killed your herd,’ I said to the Fey Horse. ‘They killed all of our herds. Now we have a choice. Dan’ha vath fallatu. We can be one herd and fight together, or we can die alone.’
I put the key into the slot in the cage. The horse started stamping and smashing at the bars again.
‘It’s time to choose,’ I said over the racket. ‘I’m going to open this door. You can attack me and I’ll be dead, and the girl will be too when they come for her. Or you can just run off, and they’ll kill us and eventually find and kill you too. Or you can carry us. None of us can get out of here alive alone, but if you carry us, we can charge the gate and we might – we just might get through alive and into the city.’
The horse slowed her efforts, but she gave no other sign that she was understanding my words. I’m not sure what signs I was hoping for.
‘Open the cage, Falcio, quick! I hear them coming,’ Aline said.
‘Show me you’re going to help us,’ I said to the horse. ‘Dan’ha vath fallatu. Show us we are one herd.’
I could hear shouts. Someone had seen me and there would be guards soon. Hopefully not too many, but I was so weak it would take only one or two at this point. But I still wouldn’t move. But then, slowly, ever so slowly, I saw the horse start to move, almost as if the great beast was shrinking. But she wasn’t, she was just kneeling on the ground. I turned the key in the lock and swung the door open.
‘Get on,’ I told Aline.
She looked at me as if I was mad.
‘Either she’s going to help or it won’t matter one way or the other. Get on.’ I picked her up and placed her on the back of the horse. She didn’t kill the girl, so I took that as a good sign and awkwardly climbed on the beast’s back myself, just as the first pair of guards came through the doors.
I leaned low on the creature’s back. ‘Dan’ha vath fallatu,’ I said, patting the side of her neck. Then I brought my mouth close to her ear and said the only other word I remembered from the storybooks. ‘K’hey,’ I whispered. ‘K’hey, k’hey, k’hey.’ Fly. Fly. Fly.
As the guards reached the entrance to the cage, their swords drawn, I felt the Fey Horse’s muscles bunch beneath us, and the thunder of an angry God exploded through the door as she slammed through the cage door and into the guards, leaving them dead on the ground as we bolted out of the cage and into the night sky.
GENTLE SORROWS
It was like trying to hang on to an earthquake. I was jostled up and off the creature’s back, and only her own twisting movements managed to keep me from falling to the ground. It was worse for Aline.
‘Put your arms through the loops of my coat,’ I shouted as we raced past the entrance of the courtyard, leaving another guard dead beneath the beast’s hooves.
The Fey Horse was utterly merciless with the guards, as if she remembered every cut, every beating, every slight. She probably did.
‘Out!’ I screamed in her ears. ‘We have to get out! You can’t kill every guard in the palace!’
I suspected she understood my meaning if not my words, for she very nearly threw me off then and there.
‘Fine! You can kill them all – you can kill everybody, but the girl will be killed by their swords,’ I screamed. ‘Protect the girl! Protect the foal!’
I don’t know if the horse heard me over the shouting guards, but she did finally break for the far gate. The doors were twelve feet high and made of bars just as strong as those of her cage. I had to hope that the lock on the door was a weak point.
‘Hang on!’ I said to Aline, and knelt low on the horse’s neck as she bolted forward. For a moment I feared she’d run headlong into the gate, but at the last instant she reared on her hind legs and let the momentum carry her as she smashed her hooves into the metal bars of the gate. I saw them bend and sway even as the lock exploded, and just like that we were out. I heard more shouting behind us, and felt the crossbow bolts fly by our ears. At least two landed in the horse’s haunches but, if they hurt her, she showed no sign; she just kept running down the main street. I thanked the Saints that it was late and few people were out to be trampled underneath the beast’s hooves.
We must have travelled at least a mile outside the palace before the horse let me rein her in. Without bridal or stirrups I had to use the meagre strength left in my legs to try and guide her.
‘Where are we going?’ Aline asked as we finally slowed to a walk.
I slipped down from the horse’s back and tried to stretch my legs, but I had to lean against her haunch to keep from falling. ‘I just need to get my bearings,’ I replied. ‘Then we’ll make for one of the smaller city gates and hope we can make our way out through sheer force.’
‘No,’ Aline said.
‘What do you mean, “no”?’
‘It’s the last night of Ganath Kalila,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow at the Teyar Rijou the noble houses will be recognised once again. We’ll go to the Rock; I can stand for my name.’
‘Are you mad? They’ll kill you – they’ll definitely kill me.’
‘The day after the Blood Week is the Day of Mercy. No one can be harmed and no one can be arrested, not unless they attack another first.’
I sighed and looked up at the night sky. ‘Tell me how this ends,’ I asked wearily. ‘Tell me what happens after that.’
‘I can get sanctuary from one of the other noble families – I can even leave the city. But I’ll keep my blood rights, Falcio.’
‘Your blood rights? And what value does that have when the Duke wants you dead?’
‘It’s all I have! It’s all I have left of my mother … of my father …’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I never met Lord Tiarren, but I’m sure he was—’
‘Oh, shut up,’ she cried. ‘You don’t understand anything.’
I relented, and we kept walking. Could the girl be right? Was it really as simple as all that? Even with the Duchess here, could the ritual of Ganath Kalila itself really protect Aline?
The streets were deserted. The last night of the Blood Week was the time to stay indoors, although by this point most of the fights had been fought, most of the murders committed. It’s hard to express how much I hated this place.
‘Hello,’ a female voice said, leaning forward from a street bench in the shadows.
Aline screamed, my rapier came into my hand and the horse leapt towards her, her hooves ready to strike out.
The woman didn’t run; she stood slowly and reached out to the horse’s face as if she had no fear of the beast at all.
‘Dan’ha neta vath fallatu,’ she said softly. ‘I am not of your herd, Mother. But I am no enemy either.’
‘Who are you?’ I demanded, my rapier still pointing at her body.
The woman was beautiful. She was dressed in a white gown that covered her body, shoulders and arms – a gauzy material that shimmered in the moonlight. Her head was partially covered by a kind of hood made from the same cloth, and dark hair spilled out to frame a face that was smooth and soft and smiling gently. It was a face that a man would never forget, and yet it was her voice that made me recognise her.
‘You’re real,’ I said. ‘You came to talk to me in my prison cell. You were at the Duke’s ball.’
The memory made me tighten my grip on my rapier. ‘Who are you, and whom do you serve?’
‘I am the friend in the dark hour,’ she said. ‘I am the breeze against the burning sun. I am the water, freely given, and the wine, lovingly shared. I am the rest after the battle, and the healing after the wound. I am the friend in the dark hour,’ she repeated, ‘and I am here for you, Falcio val Mond.’