“Good thinking,” said Jo. “Let’s go by the harbor on the way, see if the warehouse boat is moored or missing. I didn’t think to check when we were coming in.”
“You’re minding the house,” said Sander, and before she could protest, he lowered his voice and added, “in case she comes back, or Simon, or someone else. I don’t trust neither of our loyal servants, nor should you. Until we know who we can trust, any one of them might be working for Hobbe, and I’d rather not leave the house in their hands.”
Jo bit her lip, and saints pat her pate, her hand had dropped to the hilt of the sword she still wore on her belt. Her mostly leather armor might do fuck-all in a real melee, but right now he was a wee bit jealous of her having something more substantial than a doublet and hose in which to face unknown foes. That said, he wasn’t yet such a ponce that the likes of Hobbe Wurfbain or Braem-fucking-Gruyere would spook him into donning his plate before going down to the goddamn pub—assuming those miserable servants of his had even followed his instructions and brought his armor back from Brouwershaven. No time to worry about that now.
“Be careful,” said Jo as he opened the door, which was, yeah, sound advice in the fairest weather, and it looked like both snow and wind had picked up since he’d gone inside. Never even got the chance to take his wet boots off.
“You, too,” said Sander. “Lock this behind me, and don’t let anyone inside other than Lizzy. And only then if she’s got a damn fine tale to tell.”
II.
Crossing the Visbrug, Sander realized he’d neglected to re-don either the heavy cape or surcoat he’d ditched upon first entering his house, his soft azure doublet scant protection from the wind that now howled through the narrow avenue. Snow was blowing in his eyes, and he hurried down Groenmarkt to where Vleeshouwersstraat cut over Varkenmarkt, which was the long way to the White Horse, but he needed time to think. Vleeshouwersstraat was narrow enough to restrict the snow even as it channeled the wind, and coming out of the alley, he cursed—he’d meant to run by the old harbor, as Jo suggested, but he’d sooner kiss the devil’s cock than retrace his steps now. No matter, he’d go that way on the return, assuming he didn’t find the answers he sought at the tavern. Of course, getting answers required questions, but he’d figure those out just as soon as he was out of the harsh night.
Angling across town, he saw few people on the streets, the wind too stern, the snow too thick—even the militia would be tucked into their gatehouses, he supposed. Which made the fact that a hooded figure had followed him for three turns now all the more obvious. Sander’s hand fell to his waist, but his sword was back at the house, hanging up beside his cloak, and he almost laughed at his folly. He quickened his pace, making for the alley just ahead that cut between the White Horse and the neighboring bakery. The backdoor to the baker’s house lay just inside the alley’s mouth, and he could flatten himself in the doorway, get the drop on this git, sword or no—the day he needed tools to take down a single man was the day he deserved what he got. If it was someone Hobbe had hired, or—
“Graaf!” came from just ahead, and peering through the churning snow, he saw Braem Gruyere had stepped out of the White Horse. Trying to be nonchalant about it, Sander glanced over his shoulder, but his shadow was gone, swallowed by the night city. Goddamn Gruyere. Braem was wearing a sackcloth suit of a considerably poorer cut than the richly colored outfit he had flaunted at court when Sander, Hobbe, and Laurent had stripped the Gruyere brothers of their rightful inheritance. The man looked haggard, which was a rare state for the proud if disenfranchised pretty boy. “We’ve got to talk, Jan.”
“ ’Bout you skulking around my place without invitation?” said Sander. “Wager we do. See, where I come from—”
“Please,” said Braem. How’d Lansloet described him, flustered? That was an understatement; the lad was positively losing his shit. “Everything’s moving too fast. Simon’s been arrested, and they mean to hang him. You need to help.”
“Eh?” Sander squinted, looking for a break in the man’s bullshit. Simon, arrested? “Let’s get inside, have a drink and you tell me all—”
“No!” said Braem. “No, they, they have spies everywhere, we can’t be seen together. For you as well as Simon and I. Come on, let’s go to the south gatehouse, they’re keeping him there, I’ll tell you as we go. Pull your collar up, you won’t need to talk, just listen, please listen.”
“Right,” said Sander, leading the man directly into the alley he had originally made for. Braem seemed less drunk and posturing than usual, which made his raving all the more odd, and—
Shit. Sander sighed, realizing Braem meant to lead him into an ambush. Simon might have truly forgiven Sander and Jo for taking his house and property—maybe—but this sad little dandy had certainly never accepted Count John’s wisdom in awarding the Tieselen estate to Sander. Hell, Sander wouldn’t have let that shit slide if he’d been in the Gruyere brothers’ position, so he should have expected something like this—the only question now was if Simon was in on it. A bad question, a very, very bad question, but one that came to mind now that Sander was being led away from bright lights and witnesses by the shifty Braem.
“The Hooks are behind it,” said Braem, slowing his pace. It was blatant what he was doing, but Sander slowed as well. By the faint light that seeped down into the alley and reflected on the snow, Sander saw that Braem was wearing a sword, not something the man was in the habit of doing but a welcome sight nevertheless—this confirmed the cunt’s intent, and if Braem had a sword, then Sander was never a few quick movements away from having a sword. Sander focused, making the pommel look more and more like her, like his queen, his mistress. It was her, he thought, she’d found him again… but she hadn’t, it was just a plain sword, and he grunted, trying harder to make her appear.
“They’ve been replacing real nobles to put their own… impostors into power.” The words left Braem in a rush, like oats spilling from a cut feedbag. “I thought you were one, which is the whole reason we did what we did, but I see now that you’re not, you can’t be, you’re as real as me or Simon. Impostors, they’re impostors, but not just that, no no, something much worse is afoot. Something too horrible to even… Lord Above, I’ve seen it with my own eyes and I don’t know what to make of it, what to make of all their plotting, all the eels… We need to free Simon and get to my friends, our friends, before they kill him, or you. They’ve done it all wrong, they’ve made it look like Simon’s the killer, that he murdered the kids, but you and I know better, the kids were put out there to set you up, and now that he’s been arrested, we—”
“Shut it, shut it—who arrested Simon?” Sander interrupted, the pieces not fitting together.
“The militia, of course,” said Braem. “But we both know who’s feeding the orders, don’t we? They are, who else? It’s like this…”
Sander had been a breath away from snapping Braem’s neck at the mention of impostors uprooting real nobles, but then Braem saved himself by saying he didn’t suspect Sander. Then Braem had mentioned the murdered kids, and for a minute Sander thought Braem might be telling the truth, that Simon’s reporting the dead kids in the meer turned out to be every bit as bad an idea as Sander had thought, with the lazy militia blaming Simon… but this was just spooky, all this talk of conspiracies, eels, and sundry craziness.
A different Sander might have taken the bait, might have been intrigued by what Braem was ranting about, but Sander was a goddamn graaf, and not a fool one at that. Yet Braem clearly thought he was the sort of nutter who’d buy into inscrutably complicated plots and—
Despite his intention to play it cool, Sander groaned. Simon had betrayed him.
There. Braem was still talking and talking, feeding out his overly complicated line about the militia having arrested Simon, but Sander was no longer listening to his lies, instead turning everything over in his mind. It all fit now, and Sander felt his heart sink at the treachery. Simon wasn’t locked up in the gatehouse, h
e was the plaguebitch who’d been tailing Sander, like as not the same plaguebitch skulking outside Jo’s window all those months back. Like every good lie, there was a grain of truth in Braem’s tale, and the honest kernel here was that the headless kids were planted out there to blame Sander, to get him hanged for murder so his enemies could steal his title and house… Ruthless. Simon had been the one to find the girl, after all, and had called Sander over—he must have thought himself so cunning to plant her out there, to act disgusted by what he’d found.
But Sander had been too sly to report finding the dead girl, or to go out and have a look at the second corpse Simon had told him about, and so the Gruyeres were running a different game now—get Sander to the gatehouse, where some bought militiamen were ready to throw chains on his gullible ass and then execute him as a child-killer.
Not a bad plan, Sander had to admit. The more he thought about it, ignoring Braem’s prattling about eely Hooks and honest Cods and the murdered children, the more Sander realized that Hobbe had no doubt played a hand in the setup—these greedy Gruyeres would roll over and do whatever the count ordered, so long as they had their precious inheritance restored. And after all Sander had done for Simon, too…
“So that’s the long and the short of it,” said Braem, stamping his feet and making a big show of rubbing his hands in his eagerness to be off again. Giving the second man, who yeah, sad to say, was probably Simon, time to circle around to the other end of the alley. Would Simon reveal himself, or was he going to hang back, thinking himself unseen, until they reached the gatehouse? Sure, that was it—if Sander told Braem to fuck off and tried to break away, then Simon would jump in, and they’d cut him down. A dead child-killer was even better than one who’d protest his innocence, after all, and—
Lizzy. Mother of Christ in all her pregnant glory.
The thought of dead kids had brought to mind a certain young woman’s bloody cloak, and Sander felt his disappointment in Simon’s betrayal turn to something harder. One of these two assholes had mistaken her for Jo and murdered her, or maybe they’d sought to have a third headless corpse to hang on Sander’s stoop. Hell, maybe she was just tending house at Voorstraat when they’d broken in, meaning to have a sip of Sander’s wine while he was off at war, and they’d needed to keep her quiet. That would be just like these Gruyere fuckers, too impatient to wait until they’d gotten Sander hanged for crimes he didn’t commit before sticking their grubby hands into his pie…
And what of the other two kids, the ones without heads? Had Braem lured them into an alley like this one and hacked them up for the sole purpose of framing Sander?
Had Simon?
“Jan, please,” said Braem. “Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? We have to go, now, we have to free Simon! I have a friend at the gatehouse who will take him out the side, onto the dock, and once he’s in the boat, we can all go to see my friends. Our friends.”
Some plan! Braem was even dafter than Sander had previously suspected if he thought a scheme like that would appeal to Graaf Tieselen—yes, yes, Braem, let’s go see your mysterious friends this very night, all because of some mad story you’ve spun that’s too stupid to even make sense of. That they would think him to be so utterly foolish, so utterly mad, as to fall for such a line… but that was all right. They’d underestimated him, to say the least, and he tried not to grin as he at last resumed walking, letting Braem lead him through the dark alley.
If Simon was indeed the man who was tailing him earlier, Sander would do just fine; two on one wasn’t even something he’d take a wager on, it’d be good as thieving… but if they’d hired some other muscle, if there were more men waiting, he might have to think on his feet. The end of the alley was coming up, and Sander slowed again, which agitated Braem.
“Hurry!” said Braem. “They only arrested him because you were out of town. You’re their real target, you’re the one they want to replace with… one of them, one of those—”
“Easy, Braem,” said Sander, growing disconcerted by Braem’s intensity and the unexpected development of having some of his suspicions about the dead kids directly confirmed. Then again, a coating of truth helped sweeten the poison lie, didn’t it? If Simon really was following them, Sander would have to drop any pretense at buying their shit and seize his warehouseman—he could beat the truth out of him, if it came to that.
But then why wait? Giving Braem a final chance to come clean while they were still alone might save some serious bloodshed, and so Sander said, “Look, you’re full of shit and we both know it. I won’t fall for it, and—”
“I’m not!” protested Braem, glancing to the mouth of the alley, so close, shining like a slice of moon in the darkness. “Please, listen—”
“No,” said Sander, his bile rising at this caitiff’s denial in the face of an outright calling of his bullshit. “You listen, Braem—I don’t care if that ponce Hobbe put you up to this or if you two set it up yourselves, but if anything’s happened to Lijsbet, then you and Simon—”
“Who? Never mind, it’s not important, what’s important is that we get Simon free—he was never involved, it was all me,” said Braem, his cheeks going dark as the shadows, and Sander felt relief flow through him to hear the admission of guilt. Braem’s voice rose to a desperate cry as he grabbed Sander’s arm and tried to pull him out of the alley. “They showed me things, when they caught me, they told me things and showed me things, and I still haven’t reported in. I knew they were watching her house and I dared not call attention, but we have to stop them, we have to—”
“Shut it,” Sander growled, realizing that Braem’s shouting must be some signal, that he was muffling the footsteps coming from behind them down the black alley, or from the street ahead. “Shut it, now!”
“You don’t trust me, that’s fair, but you trust Simon, so let’s go to him! Now! If you want to protect yourself and Jolanda, Sander—” Sander went cold as the dead at the use of his real name, and Braem froze in mid-sentence, presumably seeing something in Sander’s expression that knocked him clean off his bluff. The shoulder of a figure waiting for them at the end of the narrow passage appeared around the corner, then ducked back. The obviousness of the ambush was simply pitiable, but that didn’t stop a hot burst of excitement from flooding Sander’s heart. Finally, a part of him thought, and the rest had to agree as Braem went on, “That’s right, I know everything, and so do you, don’t you? About what happens when Sander is unmasked for—”
Sander tightened his hand around Braem’s fingers and yanked him backward, the traitor’s feet slipping on a patch of ice and sending him sprawling onto his back. Sander let go of Braem’s hand as soon as the man lost his footing, and before Braem could move or even squeal, Sander raised a foot and stomped his throat. There was a wet cracking noise and ebon liquid ejaculated out of Braem’s mouth, then a shrill, high-pitched whine began to rise from his ruined throat. Sander gave him another stomp, relieved he’d left on his heavy boots instead of changing into something dry but lighter, and Braem went quiet.
The assassin, be he Simon or simply some hired thug, must not have heard, for nobody appeared in the mouth of the alley. Perfect. Sander knelt and drew Braem’s sword. Sander’s sword. He had her now, his pounding heart finally convincing his skeptical mind—it was her. His cold-numb hand instantly warmed at the touch of Glory’s End, and a smile crossed Sander’s face as he advanced. He should go back the way he’d come, try to lose whoever it was waiting for him out there, but his fury at Simon’s betrayal was burning through his arms, his legs—Braem was one thing, that was to be expected, especially since Braem was the older brother and thus had more to gain, just as he’d had more to lose when Sander and Jo usurped the Gruyeres. But to have Simon use Sander in such a craven fashion, to know that the friend for whom he’d made the finest cloak in the land had killed children just to get some dirty groots… it would not stand.
Sander leapt out into the street, the point of Glory’s End already jabbing a
t where he had seen the shadowy figure lurking. There was no one there. Looking up and down Wijnstraat, he saw nothing but white snow gusting through black night, the stuff coming down so thickly that what firelight might have come from the upper-story windows failed to reach the cobbles. There were footprints in the powder, however, and he followed them half a block before he heard voices ahead, militiamen singing the same ruddy song they always did on especially cold nights when they didn’t want the bother of dealing with troublemakers and preferred to warn them off with their off-key caterwauling rather than risk catching any crooks unawares.
Shit on all the saints. Sander quickly doubled back the way he’d come, but didn’t let himself run, staying to the shadows on the southern side of the street. The Graaf Jan Tieselen had fluttered off to roost on some quiet rooftop far above murder and betrayal, and down here in the streets the old Sander did what he did best—he fled, taking a surreptitious route to shake any pursuers. Cutting up ’S Heer Boeijenstraat, he was almost to Grote Markt Square when he heard the squeak of a boot stepping in a snowdrift he’d just passed. Excellent. Never looking over his shoulder, he crossed the empty square, entering the alley to De Waag. As soon as the alley’s shadow fell over him, he stepped into an alcove where the wide corner building met its narrower neighbor. He waited there for a good long while, the sweat beginning to freeze in his whiskers and eyelashes, but no pursuer appeared.
Keeping to the wall, he crept the few paces back to the square and peered into the snowy clearing. Nothing but the statue in the snow, and—
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