The queen of the Antae stood up.
Her back straight as a spear shaft, she lifted her two hands and drew back her veil, and then removed the soft hat with the emblem of royalty around it and laid it gently down on the raised chair so that every man and woman there could see her face.
It was not the queen.
The queen was youthful, golden-haired. Everyone knew. This woman was no longer young, and her hair was a dark brown with grey in it. There was a cold, regal fury in her eyes, though, as she said to the man before her, beyond the intervening mute, ‘You are unmasked, Agila, in treachery. Submit yourself to judgement.’
Pardos was watching the perspiring man named Agila as he lost what remained of his self-control. He could see it happen-the dropping jaw, the gaping, astonished eyes, then the foul, obscene cry of rage.
The unarmed mute was the first to die, being nearest. Agila’s sword swept in a vicious backhand that took the man at an angle across the upper chest, biting deeply into his neck. Agila tore the blade back and free as the man fell, soundlessly, and Pardos saw blood fly through holy space to spatter the clerics, the altar, the holy disk. Agila stepped right over the toppled body and plunged his sword straight into the heart of the woman who had impersonated the queen, balking him.
She screamed as she died, taken by agony, twisting and falling backwards onto the bench beside her chair. One hand clutched at the blade in her breast as if pulling it to herself. Pardos saw Agila rip it back, savagely, slicing her palm open.
There was screaming everywhere by then. The movement to the doors became a frenzied press, near to madness. Pardos saw an apprentice he knew stumble and fall and disappear. He saw Martinian gripping his own wife and Crispin’s mother tightly by the elbows as they entered the frantic press, steering towards the exits with everyone else. Couvry and Radulph were right behind them. Then Couvry moved up, even as Pardos watched, and took Avita Crispina’s other arm, shielding her.
Pardos stayed where he was, on his feet but motionless.
He could never afterwards say exactly why, only that he was watching, that someone had to watch.
And observing in this way-quite close, in fact, a still point amid swirling chaos-Pardos saw the Chancellor, Eudric Goldenhair, step forward from his place near the fallen woman and say in a voice that resonated, ‘Put up your sword, Agila, or it will be taken from you. What you have done is unholy and it is treachery and you will not be allowed to flee, or to live.’
His manner was amazingly calm, Pardos thought. He watched as Agila wheeled swiftly towards the other man. A space had cleared, people were fleeing the sanctuary.
‘Fuck yourself with your dagger, Eudric! You horse-buggered offal! We did this together and you will not disclaim it now. Only a dice roll chose which of us would stand up here. Surrender my sword? Fool! Shall I call in my soldiers to deal with you now?’
‘Call them, liar,’ said the other man. His tone was level, almost grave. The two of them stood less than five paces apart. ‘There will be no reply when you do. My own men have dealt with yours already-in the woods where you thought to post them secretly.’
‘What? You treacherous bastard!’
‘What an amusing thing for you to say, in the circumstances,’ said Eudric. Then he took a quick step backwards and added: ‘Vincelas!’ extremely urgently, as Agila, eyes maddened, clove through the space between them.
There was a walkway overhead, not especially high: a place for musicians to play unseen, or for clerics’ meditation and quiet pacing on days when winter or autumn rains made the outdoors bitter. The arrow that killed Agila, Master of the Antae Horse, came from there. He toppled like a tree, sword clattering on the floor, at the feet of Eudric.
Pardos looked up. There were half a dozen archers on the walkway. As he watched, the four men with drawn swords-Agila’s men-slowly lowered and then dropped their weapons.