Page 70 of The Devils

Another Man’s Poison

‘Saviour’s tits, he’s alive!’

Jakob dreamed of falling.

Of burning.

Of sinking into the deep.

He dreamed of the very end of things, and the cold that comes after.

But even in his dreams there was a niggling ache, and he tried to shift, and the ache became a throb, and it spread from his chest to every extremity.

‘Look! He moved!’

‘How could he move, fool, he must’ve drowned days—’

Jakob gave an upset grunt, but no air moved, and in a sudden panic he twisted over and half-coughed, half-vomited a great rush of raw seawater.

‘Saviour’s tits ! He is alive!’

He flopped back, each cough a crushing stab through his chest, through his side, right down to the tips of his toes.

He could hear birds. Waves slapped on wood.

The stabbing of daylight was agony. But everything was. The light, the darkness, the birds, the voices.

Two figures stood over him. Angels standing in judgement.

‘How can he be alive?’ one whispered.

Not angels, as Jakob’s eyes began to adjust. Fishermen. A young one and an old, enough beard between them to stuff a mattress.

‘That …’ croaked Jakob, ‘is a long story …’

He retched up more seawater, then dropped back and lay there, on the tipping deck, stabbed afresh by each in-breath, a salty rattle on each out. To never breathe again. That was the great hope. One he could never realise.

Still alive. Every time he came to that realisation, it was with the slightest sting of disappointment.

He could smell fish. Because he was lying naked in a heap of them. Netted along with the daily catch. He could almost have laughed, had it not been for the pain.

‘Who rules Troy?’ he whispered.

The young one blinked down at him. ‘Empress Alexia.’

‘Huh.’ Jakob let his head drop back. The deck creaked under him. A couple of white clouds moved against the blue. ‘That’s good.’

He hoped so, at least.

Time would tell.

Jakob of Thorn – once illustrious Grandmaster of the Golden Order, once indomitable Champion of the Emperor of Burgundy, once infamous General-in-Chief of the Livonian Crusade – hobbled hunched through the Hanging Gardens in a borrowed set of fisherman’s second-best rags, sweating and swearing, arms wrapped around himself, trying to take only shallow breaths through his gritted teeth so the half-healed wounds around his lungs wouldn’t cause him any more agony than they did already.

The Basilica was a pale blur through his tears and he stopped before he got there, limping from the road to grind his forehead against the nearest tree trunk. All his too-long life, doggedly shuffling back, even more broken than before, to the scenes of old defeats.

‘You look like I feel.’ Baron Rikard was slumped on a bench, sunning himself like an ancient lizard. There was no trace of the young god who had paraded through the city a few days before, turning the head of everything female from laundry girls to stray cats. His raven-black mane had shrivelled to white wisps. His emerald eyes had turned milky and bloodshot. Skin like new porcelain had sagged to baggy saddle leather. Not that Jakob’s looked much better, puffy and peeling from a few days’ pickling in brine.

‘Duke Michael impaled me,’ grunted Jakob. ‘Twice. Then he dropped a statue on me.’

‘May he rot in hell,’ croaked the baron, cheerfully. ‘Where the three of us will no doubt one day be reunited.’

‘Though how exactly …’ Jakob gasped at a particularly savage sting as he tried to straighten, and quickly thought better of it. ‘The torments of the damned … would differ from my usual mornings … I’ve no idea.’

‘More forks, flames, and, judging by the paintings I’ve seen …’ The baron attempted to waft a hand around, but it was bandaged to a white mitten, and he gave up. ‘Unlikely objects up the anus.’

‘What is it … with paintings of demons … and the anus?’

‘Says more about the painters than the demons, I daresay. Some people pay good money for that.’

‘Paintings of demons?’

‘Unlikely objects up the anus.’

‘One man’s meat …’ Jakob groaned as he lowered himself inch by inch onto the bench beside the baron, legs trembling until he could take it no more and flopped the remaining distance onto his arse. ‘Another’s poison.’

The shape of that familiar smirk could still be recognised on the withered mask of the baron’s face. ‘We were the terrors of our day, you and I. Now look.’

‘No matter how you fight, you can’t beat time. It lays low every Empire, topples every tyrant.’

Baron Rikard’s pink-rimmed, red-streaked, yellow-stained eyes rolled sideways, and all trace of a smile was gone. ‘Did you hear?’

And Jakob felt that familiar sinking. Death never came as a surprise. It had been following him all his life. It just never quite caught him. He wondered about walking away. He wondered about jumping back into the sea. But he had his oaths to consider. He gritted his teeth. Like a man sentenced to a flogging, waiting for the lash to land.

‘Who?’ he asked.

‘Baptiste.’

Jakob winced. That one hurt. Hurt as much as any stabbing he’d endured. He’d known a lot of people who’d died, of course. More or less all of them. But Baptiste always seemed so alive. ‘What happened?’ he whispered.

‘According to Brother Diaz …’ Baron Rikard shrugged. ‘She stuck her neck out.’

‘She never could help doing that.’ Jakob gave a long sigh and looked up to the sky. ‘Always thought I’d go first. But then I think that about everyone. And I’m always wrong.’ He nodded at a walking stick hooked over the back of the bench. ‘Could I borrow that?’

‘By all means.’ Rikard closed his eyes. ‘Next time I move I plan to be carried.’

If little had changed inside the Basilica of the Angelic Visitation in a few centuries, why would it in a few days? Still the countless ranks of benches, the countless crowd of icons, the bitter-sweet tang of old incense, the silence in which each scrape of Jakob’s shuffling sandals, each click of Jakob’s borrowed cane, gave birth to a volley of echoes.

There was one difference, though, at the shrine of the Second Crusade. One of those two empty tombs had been filled, the freshly cut marble of its lid oddly bright among the old heroes. Alex stood nearby, the gold of her circlet, and the jewels on her fingers, and the pearls sewn onto her dress, gleaming by candlelight. As Jakob came close she turned, and saw him, and her eyes went wide.

He paused to catch his breath, leaning on his stick. ‘Well, don’t act like you never saw the dead walk before,’ he said.

‘You’re alive!’

‘Always … ooof,’ as she ran the few steps between them and caught him in a hug, the feeling as she squeezed him like being stabbed fresh, and he lurched back, only by a heroic effort keeping from going down with her on top of him.

‘Sorry!’ She let go, holding her bandaged arm. ‘Ow.’ Her eyes and her neck were ringed with bruises, a scab across the bridge of her nose.

‘The state of we two old warhorses,’ he muttered, still gripping his ribs.

‘You should see the other fucker. Did you lose some of your eyebrow?’

‘My own sacrifice to Saint Natalia’s Flame.’ Jakob put a hand to the mottled burn that had claimed half his eyebrow and some patches of his beard besides.

They trailed off into awkward silence, as Jakob’s conversations generally did, both looking towards the shrine of the Second Crusade. Both looking towards that new tomb.

‘You heard?’ asked Alex, quietly.

‘I did,’ said Jakob.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I.’

Alex cleared her throat. ‘I thought I’d have a statue made.’ She gave a snort of laughter. ‘Imagine her standing there, next to William the Red.’

‘She’d approve.’ Jakob gritted his teeth. ‘Give the place a bit of glamour.’

‘Shame she’s not here, she could likely have done the sculpting herself.’

‘I believe she did do piecework as a mason, for a summer. You should send to the Duke of Milan.’

‘For what?’

‘He’s got a painting of her. You could use it as a reference.’

‘Why does the Duke of Milan have a painting of Baptiste?’

Jakob smiled, just a little. ‘Long story.’ And he cleared his throat, and nodded towards a pair of young women lurking near the lectern. ‘I see you’ve found new handmaidens.’ The brown-haired one was staring up at the icons, eyes wide with wonder. The blonde one had a slyer look, as if guessing what everything might fetch on a fence’s bench.

‘Orphans.’ Alex leaned close to murmur. ‘I found ’em in the poorhouse.’

‘They’ll have a lot to learn.’

‘Less than I did, when we started out from the Holy City.’ Alex sighed. ‘Less than I still do. But at least we’ll understand each other while we’re doing it.’ She beckoned the blonde girl forwards with a bundle in her hands. ‘I’ve got something for you.’ And she started to unwrap it, from what proved to be an old battle flag. ‘I mean, how many men can say they’ve given their lives for me more than once?’

Jakob could guess what was inside from the shape. But even he, who must’ve seen a hundred thousand swords, wasn’t quite prepared for what was revealed when she pulled the last scrap of cloth back.

The leather of the scabbard was polished to a soft sheen with age, chased with silver and set with gems. The hilt was bound in a web of gold wire, the pommel was the sacred wheel, carved from some lustrous stone. No one could’ve doubted at a glance it was a masterwork even more antique than he was.

‘They say the charcoal for the steel came from a fragment of the wheel the Saviour died on,’ murmured Alex.

‘Holy shit …’ Jakob reached out to lay gentle fingers on the scabbard. How could he help it? ‘It’s beautiful. As beautiful as a sword can be.’

‘Belonged to John of Antioch.’

‘Marshal of Troy. He led the armies of Leo the Blind against the elves … in the First Crusade …’ And Jakob gave a grunt of amusement as he saw the gift behind the gift.

‘So you get where I’m going with this.’ Alex stepped a little closer. ‘Everyone says, sooner or later, the elves will come again, and they’ll be hungry. I need a soldier I can trust. A general to lead the new crusade. Who better than a man who fought in most of the others?’

You had to give it to Alex, she’d known exactly how to pitch it. She’d come a long way from that shifty waif he met in the Celestial Palace. He closed his eyes a moment, then snapped them open. ‘I wonder, sometimes, how many swords I’ve carried. How many have been my sword. I helped forge my first, long ago, when I was a boy. An ill-formed thing, but I was so proud of it. Thought I’d never need another.’

Jakob brushed the golden crosspiece with his fingertips. ‘Emperor Odo of Burgundy gave me one after I won him the County of Charolais in a tournament. A work of art, the hilt a dragon’s body in gold, the crosspiece its wings, eyes two little rubies. More jewellery than weapon, but when you buckled it on … you felt like a king .’

Jakob bared his teeth as he wrapped his gnarled knuckles around the sword’s hilt. ‘Then there was the one I carried as the Papal Executioner, verses from the scriptures stamped into the blade. A flat tip, no need for a point, and the balance was all wrong for fighting. Too long. Too heavy. But when you drew it, and stood over the convicted …’ He drew John of Antioch’s sword now, a length of rippled steel sliding from the clasp and catching the candlelight, ‘you felt like a god .’

He heard Alex swallow, and glanced up. He’d somehow forgotten she was there, and now she looked ever so slightly scared. He forced himself to slide the sword away. To hide that beautiful blade.

‘When I first came to Troy, I was a squire no older than you are. Eager for a sight of the elves. Desperate to prove myself to the great warriors.’ He looked to the statue of William the Red and shook his head. ‘To wear a sword like this, to lead an army for an Empress like you, would’ve been more than that boy could’ve dreamed of.’

‘Isn’t that why you should say yes?’

He gave a long sigh as he let his aching fingers relax. ‘That’s why I have to say no.’

Alex shook her head. ‘But we could do so much good .’

‘That’s how it always begins. The just cause. The good fight. Each time, I tell myself it will be different. But for me, as the fight wears on, the good wears off. Before I know it … I’ve made myself a devil. That’s why I swore to serve Her Holiness. That’s why I have to keep my oath.’ And with the bitter regret of a drunk pushing away the bottle, he let his lingering fingertips slip from the gold-wired hilt. ‘John of Antioch was a great hero.’

‘So they say.’

‘And a bloodthirsty traitor.’

‘Eh?’

‘After the First Crusade, he turned on the Emperor and tried to seize the Serpent Throne. Unleashed a civil war that was scarcely better than the elves had been. He caused thousands of deaths, lost, was blinded and banished and died in penury.’

‘Shit. They don’t tell that part of the story.’ Alex wrinkled her nose at the sword. ‘Well, I expect you’d only leave it stuck in a troll or something.’ She handed it to her blonde handmaiden, who was smiling thoughtfully at the jewelled pommel. ‘I’ll be checking that got back where it was supposed to,’ she muttered.

The girl’s curtsey was as clumsy as her smirk was sly. ‘Very sensible, My Lady.’

‘Who’s the joking saint?’ asked Alex.

Jakob found he was looking at that icon beside the shrine, no bigger than his hand. ‘Saint Stephen. Patron of warriors. Protector of the desperate.’

‘Appropriate.’

‘The Templars used to screw his image to the backs of their shields. I had one once, but—’

‘Here.’ As simply as that, Alex unhooked the icon and offered it to him. ‘You’re not bloody leaving empty-handed.’

Jakob glanced about the nave. ‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s this or a dukedom. I believe Nicaea’s available.’ She waved the little picture at the echoing space above, the walls covered in acres of saint’s faces. ‘And I think we’ll still have a few to be getting on with.’

Jakob took one step towards Baptiste’s tomb and laid a hand on the lid. ‘It should’ve been me. Long ago. In the Second Crusade. Then I could’ve been buried here. With the heroes. When I still deserved to be.’

Alex shrugged. ‘Then who would’ve protected me when I was desperate?’

Jakob took the icon from her, in both hands. ‘Perhaps evil men can do good, still.’

‘If they do enough, don’t they become good men?’

‘Maybe,’ said Jakob. ‘Maybe one day.’ Because she wanted to believe it. He wasn’t sure he could.

‘Well, there’s still a grave spare.’ Alex nodded to the one beside Baptiste’s. The last one. ‘I’ll keep it free for you.’ She leaned close to whisper. ‘In case you get lucky.’

Jakob laughed, then. He put one arm around the Empress of Troy and, however much it hurt, he squeezed her tight. ‘Good luck, Alex,’ he said, and as quickly as that let her go, and was limping towards the door.

‘You think I’ll need it?’ she called after him.

He didn’t turn back. ‘We all need it,’ he said.