Page 110 of Play of Shadows
The recalcitrant old rogue rose from the stool and asked haughtily, ‘Oh? You think these dukes and viscounts and margravinas don’t know what happens when you mess with a Greatcoat?’ He turned sideways to the bars, extended his stick as if it were a rapier and made a few shallow thrusts. ‘Why, I’d have his Grace running like a chicken from a wolf around the duelling circle.’ He took a step forward– and losing his balance, quickly brought the stick back down to catch himself. ‘Truth be told, I think the duke just didn’t want the publicity that would’ve come from skewering a retired magistrate in front of half his court. In fact, I have my suspicions that he may have acted in haste earlier and sent that lovely Dashini of his to get me so he’d have an excuse to free you.’
‘You’d better hope that’s true. Virany Chademantaigne would have had your hide for using your rank as a former Greatcoat to wheedle your grandson out of a cell.’
His expression turned solemn, his tone firm. ‘Your grandmother would’ve torn the bars off this place to free you, boy.’
I stared down at the cracks in the floor of my cell. ‘Only because she wouldn’t have believed for a second that I might get myself out.’
‘Because she loved you.’
I let it go. That particular subject could only bring us both pain. Instead, I forced a smile and asked, ‘So, are you going to let me out of here, or did you just come to brag about your days as a Greatcoat?’
But my grandfather was notoriously hard to fool and refused the bait. His eyes, usually so full of mischief and good humour, took on the steady, steely glare he got before a duel began, when he was examining his opponent, separating the mask from the man.
‘Grandfather?’
‘Your grandmotherlovedyou, Damelas,’ he repeated. ‘More than you can imagine.’
‘I’m not—’
‘But she never understood you.’
And there it was. He always did know how to goad me into losing my temper. ‘My grandmother thought I was craven– a coward, a disgrace to the name of our ancestors. And you know what? She was right! She saw it in me from the moment she pulled me from my dying mother’s womb. She tried to talk the cowardice out of me, train it out of me, even beat it out of me, but she always knewexactlywhat I was, Grandfather. It was you who never understood.’
The mark of a skilled fencer is how they react to their opponent’s thrusts and counter-attacks. The mark of a duellist, however, is in the way they ignore the enemy’s feints. My grandfather didn’t show the slightest sign that I’d even spoken.
‘Do you remember when you were six and we enrolled you in that school at the Monastery of Saint Anlas?’
‘Another of your stories?’ I slammed my palms against the bars.‘Has your addled old mind forgotten that you’re standing in a dungeon and I’m imprisoned in a cell?’
‘Then maybe you’ll listen for once.’ He sat back down on the stool, rested his chin on his cane and closed his eyes, lost in remembrances of times past. ‘One of those little monkling bastards– smallest of the lot, as I recall– jumped you outside in the cloister.’
‘They thought I had money because only nobles sent their children to study at the monastery, so the other boys figured I must have something worth taking.’
‘Got to love the spiritually minded, eh? Anyway, the ugly pup– what was his name?’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Tintus Salaco.’
‘Why did you ask if—?’
He dismissed the question. ‘We never told you this, but your grandmother and I spied on you those first few weeks at the school. Couldn’t help ourselves.’ He pinched his leather collar. ‘Wear one of these long enough and people look for ways to get at you through those you love. Anyway, we watched those boys jeering at you and little Tintus in the middle of the circle. Pissant little brat sucker-punched you before anyone had even called the fight to begin.’
‘Schoolyard brawls are woefully lax in their adherence to proper duelling etiquette.’
Paying no attention to my sarcasm, he continued, ‘Exactly. Anyway, there you were, what? A foot taller than Tintus? The grandson of two Greatcoats– and by then your grandmother had taught you a few of the dirty tricks she was famous for. But you—’
‘—ran away,’ I finished for him. ‘Yes, I ran away to cry in my room.’
‘Exactly,’ he repeated.
My head sagged against the bars. ‘And you and Grandmother saw it all? No wonder she kept forcing those damned lessons on me.’
The iron ferrule scraped on the ground and I felt the warmth of my grandfather’s hands enclosing my own fingers. ‘She saw how frightened you were and she didn’t want you to be scared. She didn’t understand the real reason you ran. But I knew. I always knew.’
‘Grandfather, please. . .’
The old man’s hands squeezed around mine. ‘You were afraid– but not of that little wretch’s blows. Even as he laughed and spat on you, calling you every dirty name in the book, that sensitive nature of yours told you he was terrified, practically wetting himself. You’ve always had that talent, Damelas– to see deeper into people, to hear the meanings buried under their words. You knew that if you punched the boy back, the others wouldn’t let you stop until you’d beaten him bloody; that’s just the way children are. So you ran away, Tintus Salaco got to be a hero to his friends and no one else got hurt.’
