by Peter McLean
Luka whispered something in Jochan’s ear and put an arm around his shoulders that was part comforting, part restraining. Luka knew what would happen if Jochan pushed this too far in front of the crew, I realized. He was a clever man, and he had known us both for a very long time. He might not have known the truth of the matter, but he understood all too well what was happening between the Piety brothers.
“Go to bed,” I said again, in the quiet tavern.
“Our own da . . .” Jochan said.
A sob caught in his throat, but he said no more and I gave thanks to Our Lady for that. He slumped against Luka’s chest as his knees buckled. The big man tightened his grip around my brother’s shoulders to keep him from falling on his face and all but dragged him out of the room.
I turned away.
Anne kept a distance between us, perhaps sensing something private between brothers, something painful, and she made sure the others kept their distance too.
I needed some air.
I headed for the front door, which Black Billy hastily unlocked and opened for me without a word. I shouldered past him and stepped out into the freezing-cold darkness of the street, out of sight.
Only then did I allow myself to weep.
I have written of the strongbox in the back of my mind where I keep the horrors locked away, the place where I never go.
Part of that box is called Abingon, but part of it has another name. Part of it is called Da.
THIRTY-TWO
I stayed out in the street until I had myself under control again. Fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes had passed by the time I went back into the tavern, red-eyed and shivering with the cold, and with flakes of snow in my hair. I found the common room empty except for Bloody Anne.
She was sitting at a table in the middle of the room, a bottle of brandy and two glasses on the scarred wood in front of her. She didn’t speak, just lifted the bottle in her hand and raised her eyebrows in a silent invitation.
I locked the door behind me and took the chair across the table from her. She poured for us both and pushed a glass toward me. I drained it in a single swallow, and she poured again. I lifted the glass and stared into the dark amber spirit, avoiding her eyes.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said.
“Then don’t. Just drink.”
“Aye.”
We drank together, neither of us speaking, until the bottle was half empty. It had been like that in the war, sometimes. When we had managed to get our hands on some drink, anyway. At first you think you want to pour out your feelings into the bottle, but you come to realize that you don’t. You just want to drown them, to burn them away with alcohol until it stops hurting.
Anne knew that. She had been there.
It had been like that after Messia, I remembered. We had sacked the city when it fell and we looted what little they had had left. I remembered sharing a bottle with Anne and Kant, in the ruins of the great temple. None of us had said a word all night, just passed the bottle back and forth between us until it was done. After what we did that day, even Kant’s bravado had deserted him. For a little while, at least. There’s a comradeship in that, in drinking together and saying nothing, because no words need to be said.
“I think,” Anne said at last, when the bottle was half gone, “I think I’m in love with Rosie.”
I looked up at her, at the expression on her face. That expression was half joyous, that she had someone she could tell, and half terrified by what she was saying. I nodded.
“That’s good,” I said.
“Be better if she felt the same,” Anne said, and swallowed her drink. “I’m still fucking paying for it.”
I shrugged. “There’s no shame in that.”
“There’s no future in it either, though, is there?”
“Who can say? Perhaps there is.”
Anne nodded and poured again. She could drink, could Bloody Anne, I had to give her that.
“Perhaps,” she said. “She’s got to make a living, I understand that, and time she’s with me is time she’s not with anyone else, earning. I have to . . . cover her lost income, I suppose.”
“That’s between you and Rosie,” I said, “but you don’t have to justify it to me, Anne. If she makes you happy, then it’s good.”
“She does,” Anne admitted. She swallowed her drink and looked at me. “What about Ailsa, Tomas? Does she make you happy?”
I daresay she could have done, if she had ever shown the slightest interest in trying. I was starting to feel things for Ailsa that I knew were foolish and unwise, but knowing that a thing is foolish and doing something to change it are different matters. Ailsa thought nothing of me, I knew that. She was my fancy woman as far as everyone in the crew was concerned, though, including Anne. I didn’t want to lie to her about this, not after she had opened up to me, but I knew I had to.
“She’s a good girl,” I said, and forced a smile I didn’t feel.
“She’s got more to her than I thought at first, I’ll admit that,” Anne said. “I haven’t been kind to her, and I regret that now. She’s no fool, Tomas.”
“That she’s not,” I agreed. I reached for the bottle and poured us both another drink, emptying it. “I don’t enjoy the company of fools.”
Anne laughed and swallowed her drink.
“Your brother must chafe you some,” she said.
I stopped the glass halfway to my lips and bit back a harsh reply that Anne didn’t deserve. Jochan was a fool, I knew that, and Anne certainly wasn’t, so of course she knew it too. I put the glass down again, untouched, and looked at her.
“It’s difficult, sometimes,” I said. “With Jochan. He’s my little brother. Our childhood was . . . difficult too. I looked after him, in my way, as best I could.”
I remembered what Anne had told me about her own youth. What Jochan and I had suffered didn’t compare to that. Not quite, anyway.
“I never meant . . .” Anne started.
She looked embarrassed now, and I didn’t want that.
“No, it’s all right,” I said. “He does chafe me, you’ve the right of that. I . . . I owe Jochan a debt I can never repay, Anne. From the past, from when we were children. I should have done a thing . . . I did do it, but not soon enough, and he suffered for that. He suffered a great deal, and I could have stopped it and I didn’t until it was too late. I’ll always owe him a place at my side, for that. Not at my right hand, no, that’s your place, but a place nonetheless.”
Anne just nodded.
“I’ll get another bottle,” she said.
* * *
• • •
The next morning I had a headache like all the guns of Abingon were firing in the back of my skull. I lay in my bed with an arm over my eyes and suffered it. I had earned that sore head, I knew. I think Anne and me had almost emptied the second bottle before we finally admitted defeat and crawled to our respective blankets. Crawl was right, as well. I still had the splinters in the palms of my hands from dragging myself up the rough wooden stairs to my room on all fours, like an animal.
I groaned and tried to remember where the conversation had gone once the second bottle was open. I know from experience that I’m a quiet drunk, not a talkative one, so I could only hope I hadn’t said anything that I might regret. I didn’t think I had, and even if so I doubted Anne would remember any better than I did.
Snatches of memory floated back to me as I lay there in my sweaty bedding. Anne had opened up to me, I recalled. She was a talkative drunk, which made me think again about what she might say to Rosie of an evening. I’d have to keep that in mind, I knew. She had told me more about what went on in their bed than I had really wanted to know, I remembered now, but I supposed it was no more than any other soldier boasts about their woman.
That made me smile despite the pain in my head, and I forc
ed myself to sit up. Bloody Anne was a good friend, and I’ll not record what she told me that night. Those things were her business, to my mind, and no one else’s.
I made myself have a wash and a piss and put some clothes on, and I made my way unsteadily down the stairs to the tavern. Mika and Hari were sharing breakfast beer and black bread in the common room, and I joined them.
“Late night, boss?” Mika asked.
“Aye,” I said.
Hari picked up his stick and limped off to fetch me a mug of small beer, and I sipped it reluctantly. It would do me good, I knew, but truth be told, it was a struggle.
“Where’s Ailsa?” I asked, after I had choked down half the mug.
“In the kitchen,” Hari said. “She’s got a visitor. That Rosie, from up Chandler’s Narrow. I think they’re friends, like.”
That gave me pause. I was certain by then that Rosie was Ailsa’s contact in the Queen’s Men, and I wondered what business they could have together at that time in the morning.
“I hope Bloody Anne don’t take it ill,” Mika said, and I could see that he had a point there.
Mika could think for himself, as I have written, and that was something I had never even given thought to. Just because Ailsa had shown no interest in me didn’t mean she preferred women, of course, but I had never even considered the possibility until then. I didn’t want to see Anne hurt, I knew that much.
“Course she won’t,” I said, making light of it. “I know my Ailsa, and Anne’s got no worries there.”
The lads gave me a laugh for that, and I excused myself and went through to the kitchen to see for myself.
“Oh, he’s a devil, ain’t he?” Ailsa was saying when I opened the door, and I knew she had heard someone coming and switched to her barmaid’s voice without a second thought.
She giggled, and I gave her a look that said I knew very well what she had done. Rosie was sitting across the table from her, chewing on a hunk of bread.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Oh, you do look rough, you poor thing,” Ailsa said, and laughed her barmaid’s laugh. “You will sit up drinking with other women, my lover, you ought to expect to suffer for it in the morning.”
I closed the door behind me.
“Drinking’s all we were doing,” I said, more for Rosie’s benefit than hers.
“I know that,” Ailsa said in her sharp Dannsburg voice. “Sit down, Tomas. We need to talk business.”
I looked at Rosie, and her gaze was like razors.
THIRTY-THREE
“If you haven’t worked it out for yourself yet,” Ailsa said, “Rosie works for me.”
“Aye,” I said. “I’d just about found my way to that.”
“Well and good,” she said. “Now be quiet and listen, there’s news.”
“There is,” Rosie said. “Ma Aditi’s pure furious with you, Mr. Piety. Her new second had ties to the Golden Chains, and now it’s yours again he’s raising the gods over it. Well, I say he’s her second but I’m not so sure that’s even the lay of things down in the Wheels anymore. From what I hear, Ma Aditi’s a slave to the poppy now, and he’s where her resin comes from. He’s only been with them a couple of months but might be he has more influence over the Gutcutters than she does, these days.”
That made me think. I remembered the man who had been sat at Ma Aditi’s right hand. He was a big brute of a fellow, with the scarred face of a soldier. Someone she had found in Abingon, I had assumed, as he was no one I knew from Ellinburg. How he had ended up her second I still didn’t know, but I suspected that the poppy had a good deal to do with it. I wondered who he was and where his allegiances really lay. To the north, if I was any judge. To Skania.
The Skanians wanted the infrastructure of the city, as I have written, and they wanted its workforce too. Perhaps, it came to me, instead of continuing to fight the Gutcutters as they were fighting me, the Skanians had simply found the means to take them over from within. That would make sense—no general would choose to fight a war on two fronts if he didn’t have to, and if the Skanians had truly taken over the Gutcutters, then that was a lot more soldiers they had at their command.
“And what does she mean to do?” I asked.
Rosie snorted. “Aditi means to smoke her poppy resin and fuck her young lads and get even fatter, the way I hear it. It’s this man of hers you want to be thinking on, Mr. Piety. What he wants is the Chains, and he’s making no secret of it. There’s a good deal of gold to be had from the Chains these days, selling poppy resin to nobles and those who deal down the line and onto the streets. Ruthless bastard he is too, from what I hear. Bloodhands, they call him, though I’ve not managed to hear why.”
I almost fucking choked, and Ailsa’s face told me this was news to her too.
“I beg your pardon?” Ailsa said.
Rosie gave her a blank look, and I realized she wasn’t privy to all of Ailsa’s business after all. So she was just a spy then, and not a Queen’s Man herself. For Anne’s sake, I was glad about that.
“What I said, ma’am. They call him Bloodhands, but—”
“Never mind.” Ailsa cut her off, but her eyes bored into mine across the table and I knew that we were thinking the same thoughts but I wasn’t to speak them in front of Rosie.
Ma Aditi’s new second was Bloodhands, the boss of the Skanians in Ellinburg. Bloodhands, who commanded the loyalty of his men by threatening their children’s lives. Bloodhands, who had murdered a Queen’s Man and sent him back to Dannsburg in four fucking pieces on four separate trade caravans.
I had been sitting at the same table with the cunt, and I hadn’t known him.
“We must take the poppy trade before he does,” Ailsa announced.
I shook my head.
“I’m not doing that,” I said. “Not resin.”
“You sold resin before the war,” she said. “That was how we approached you the first time. Tea taxes alone wouldn’t have done it.”
Fucking approached me? Blackmailed was the word for it, to my mind, and whatever I felt for Ailsa I still took that extremely ill.
“Aye, I did,” I said through clenched teeth. “I sold it to doctors who couldn’t get it any other way, so they could help desperate people who needed it to ease their suffering. I’m not supplying the street trade. Lady’s sake, Ailsa, I’m doing everything I can to stop the fucking street trade.”
“There’s gold to be made,” Rosie said again.
I thumped the flat of my hand down on the table and glared at both of them.
“I don’t give a fuck if there’s gold to be made,” I said. “I’ve got gold, and I can’t spend half of it. Poppy resin is ruining my people. I won’t have it.”
Ailsa ignored me.
“Thank you, Rosie,” she said. “I think it’s time for Tomas and me to speak alone.”
Rosie nodded, dismissed, and got up from the table. We sat in silence while she put her cloak on, and then she was out of the kitchen and the door closed behind her.
“Bloodhands is Aditi’s fucking second?” I said, once we were alone.
“So it would appear,” Ailsa said.
“I was sat at the table with the fucker,” I said. “I could have—”
“But you didn’t,” she interrupted me, “because we didn’t know. Now we do, and we must use that knowledge and move on. By its very nature the battlefield is ever shifting, Tomas, and it’s no good dwelling on what didn’t happen. The poppy trade is what matters now.”
“I’m not having that filth around my people.”
“Not your people, then,” Ailsa said. “Forget the street trade. You’re right; that causes more problems than it solves. The nobility, though, think on that. They know what they’re doing, and they don’t need to turn to crime to feed their habits.”
I put my head in my hands and drew a long
breath. My head was still pounding from last night’s drink and I was struggling to make sense of what Ailsa was saying.
“If you don’t supply them they’ll simply go to someone who will,” she went on. “They’ll go to Bloodhands, and through him to the Skanians. Do you want to put gold in his pockets so he can buy more soldiers and threaten more children?”
“I won’t have it on my streets,” I said. “I won’t have it near working people, nor children either.”
“The nobles,” Ailsa said again. “The nobles who come to the Golden Chains, at least. They expect it, Tomas. They need it.”
“I don’t know anything about the fucking poppy trade,” I said. “Where would I even get poppy resin to sell to them?”
“From me, of course.”
* * *
• • •
It took me two days to come up with a job that I could be confident Jochan would botch, but not badly enough to get himself hurt. By the time I was satisfied with my plan, I didn’t need it anymore. The Gutcutters broke the peace themselves.
Rosie had all but told us that they would, of course, but I hadn’t expected it so soon. This Bloodhands wasn’t a man to take his time, it seemed.
I was in the kitchen at the Tanner’s after closing up for the night. Ailsa and me were having another argument about selling poppy resin through the Golden Chains when Simple Sam burst in on us. Thank the Lady he was too worked up to have overheard anything he shouldn’t have done.
“Boss! Quick!”
I hurried after him into the common room to find a breathless Aunt Enaid leaning heavily on the bar, her fallen stick on the floor at her feet and snow melting from her cloak. Brak was slumped in a chair, his right hand clutching his left shoulder. Blood seeped between his fingers, and his sleeve was soaked with it. He had a long cut on his face too, and burns on both hands.
Jochan was there before me, reeling drunk and shouting.
“What the fuck happened?” he demanded.
“Gutcutters,” Enaid wheezed. “I can’t . . . curse it to the whores, I can’t run on this fucking ankle. They stormed my house, four of them. Brak tried to fight them, bless his silly young heart. They—”