by Peter McLean
“You need to sleep,” she said again, her voice low and soothing.
My knees buckled, and I slumped sideways onto the mattress. She stroked my forehead with her fingertips, and my eyes closed. Her touch lulled me like . . . a charm.
I was dimly aware of her pulling her blankets over me. As sleep took me, I wondered just what hidden skills the Queen’s Men had.
* * *
• • •
When I woke it was to see Ailsa dozing in her chair with a spare blanket wrapped around her. I took care to be still, not wanting to wake her. She was sitting under the window, and the dawn light lit her face in a way that she would never have chosen. Some of her paints and powders had rubbed off in the night, and I could see then that she had a good many more years to her than I had first thought. She had forty, perhaps forty-five years to her, I could see now, and not all of them had been kind. It made sense. I had thought when I first met her that she was too young for the position she held, and she had told me herself that she was a good deal older than she looked. But I didn’t recall her ever telling me that she was a cunning woman.
Perhaps she wasn’t that, not exactly anyway, but she had done something to me the night before. Some sort of magic, I was sure. Truth be told, I was glad that she had. I had been slipping, I knew, starting to lose my way again. Perhaps my battle shock wasn’t the same as Jochan’s, or Cookpot’s, but it was there all the same. Men could react to a thing in different ways, to my mind.
I eased the blankets off me, and Ailsa’s eyes snapped open at once.
“Morning,” I said.
“How do you feel?” she asked me, and it was the Queen’s Man talking to me again now.
“Better,” I said, and it was true. Whatever had started to take hold of me last night had gone, or at least faded away in the night. “What did you do to me?”
“I just helped you to sleep,” she said. “You needed some rest.”
“Was that magic?”
“No,” she said. “No, not in the way you mean it. I’m not a magician, Tomas, nor do I have what you would call the cunning. There are things that can be learned, though. Ways of speaking, rhythms of breathing, and tones of voice that can make a person . . . receptive to suggestions, shall we say.”
I didn’t really understand what she meant, but I couldn’t see that she had reason to lie to me about it. Making a man “receptive to suggestions” had obvious uses when it came to asking questions, after all, and it was common knowledge that the Queen’s Men asked questions on behalf of the crown.
“I see,” I said.
I sat up and swung my feet out of bed. She had taken off my sword belt and boots at some point after I fell asleep, but other than that I was still dressed in the soot-stained clothes I had fallen down in the night before. I had left a fair amount of that soot in her bed, I realized.
“Sorry about your blankets.”
“The washerwoman can see to them,” she said. “Never mind that now. I need to repair my face—go downstairs and see who’s awake. Hopefully your brother is still unconscious, but if not you may need to keep an eye on him this morning.”
“Aye,” I said, biting back my irritation at being dismissed from her room like a servant.
I put my boots on and left her to her paints and powders, buckling on my sword belt as I headed down the stairs. It was early, but Bloody Anne was up, taking the morning watch in the common room.
“Who’s about?” I asked her.
“Borys has the back,” she said. “I let the rest sleep. It seemed to me that as you slaughtered the lot of them at Enaid’s house last night they might not be in a hurry to try again.”
I nodded. I had the same hope. The Gutcutters might have succeeded in destroying my aunt’s house, but it had taken them nine men to do it and we had left no survivors. That wasn’t a good result for them, to my mind, and I doubted that this Bloodhands thought otherwise. He was ruthless, yes, but as the governor had told me he was something like a Queen’s Man himself so he must understand strategy, and when losses were acceptable and when they very much weren’t.
“That’s good,” I said, and took the seat opposite her. “I hope you got some sleep yourself.”
“Aye, some,” Anne said. “I’m working the men on short watches, like we did in the mountains. It’s too cold out there for a man to stand a full watch in the yard and not freeze to death.”
“Aye,” I said.
Bloody Anne knew what she was about. This was sergeant’s work, not Pious Men business now, and Anne had been the best sergeant in our regiment.
The Pious Men are businessmen, but you’ve turned them into soldiers.
I remembered my aunt telling me that, and I knew then that she was right. These were soldiers, every one of them, so why not use them that way? The right man for the right job, always.
“Word will have got round the streets about last night,” I said, after a while. “If you need to go up to Chandler’s Narrow and show Rosie that you’re safe, I’ll understand. Once some of the men are awake I’ll send a bodyguard with you.”
Anne gave me a bleak look.
“I don’t know that she’s been up all night worrying,” she said. “I’m her best customer, but I’m not fooling myself that I’m any more than that to her.”
I shrugged and looked away. I wouldn’t know, and I didn’t want to say the wrong thing.
“Ailsa couldn’t wait to get you in her bed last night,” Anne went on, a bitter note in her voice now. “That must be nice, to have someone who wants you back.”
“She doesn’t,” I said, although I hadn’t meant to. I was supposed to be keeping up a pretense that Ailsa was my fancy woman, after all, but I was sick of lying to the only real friend that I had left. “I slept in her bed, that’s all. She didn’t join me.”
“I thought you two . . . ?”
“No,” I said. “No, but that’s between us, Bloody Anne.”
“Of course.” She surprised me by putting her hand on mine, on the table. Her scar twisted as she formed a wry smile. “Who’d want either of us, Tomas?”
I returned her smile and gave her hand a squeeze. In a different world, perhaps one where Anne liked men and I didn’t regard her almost as a brother, we might have been good for each other. Not in this world, though; we both knew that.
A knock on the front door had us both on our feet and sent my hands to my sword hilts. I shot Anne a questioning look. She frowned and slipped one of her daggers from its sheath and into her sleeve, then got up and went to the door. She pushed back the small sliding hatch that let her see outside, and then her face split into a wide grin and she hastily unlocked the door and threw it open.
Rosie was in her arms a moment later.
“Thank the gods,” Rosie gasped, visibly out of breath. “I just heard what happened. I ran all the way here from Chandler’s Narrow.”
I turned away and found that my eyes were stinging.
THIRTY-SIX
After a week of arguing, I made a deal with Ailsa.
The Gutcutters had caused no more trouble, and according to Luka’s spies they were barricaded in the Wheels awaiting my reprisal for the attack on Aunt Enaid’s house. They could wait, to my mind, although I thought my aunt disagreed on that. Jochan was still in a bad way with the battle shock, drunk every day and barely coherent. That, and I had too many men wounded to be able to move against the Gutcutters yet, whatever Enaid said. Brak was healing slowly, and I had temporarily moved the two of them to the house on Slaughterhouse Narrow where they would be out of my way. Cutter had the guard there, and I didn’t think anyone would get past him easily.
“It won’t do, Tomas,” Ailsa said, yet again. “You have your old businesses back, but that isn’t enough. It won’t be enough for the Skanians to merely control the Gutcutters and their part of the city. They want all of it. They wi
ll come after you again, and still you sit here and do nothing.”
“I know that,” I said, pacing to her window to stare down into the stable yard. “I know that, and I’ve told you that I don’t have the men or the weapons to attack the Wheels. If you want me to expand, I need blasting powder, and flashstones, and men who know how to use them. I need crossbows and bolts and swords, and skilled hands to wield them.”
“Men and swords are easy to come by; military weapons are not. Flashstones are illegal outside of the army.”
“So’s fucking poppy resin!”
“That’s different,” she said, although I couldn’t see how. She sighed and sat down on her bed. “A stalemate is no use to me; I need to drive the Skanians from the city completely.”
“Aye,” I said, “and if you want me to do that for you then I need the fucking weapons to do it with.”
“Then you’ll do what I ask,” she shot back at me. “You’re asking me for a miracle, Tomas. Well, miracles are not free, and this is the price.”
I had been hiring staff, mostly through Fat Luka, and I was about ready to open the Golden Chains again. Ailsa’s price was that I continue the poppy trade through the Chains, selling to the nobility and rich merchants who would be my customers there. She wanted the lever that moved them, of course, and addiction is a strong enough lever to move anyone. With her hand controlling the supply of poppy resin that these powerful people were becoming dependent on, she would gain a great deal of influence in the upper levels of Ellinburg society. I knew that, but that didn’t mean that I liked it. I didn’t like it one fucking little bit, truth be told, but I couldn’t see that I had a choice. It seemed I seldom did, where the Queen’s Men were concerned.
All the same, I couldn’t see any other way to break the deadlock between us. Ailsa owed me nothing. I knew that. Our relationship only stood while we were useful to each other, for all that I would have had it be otherwise. I hated what she represented, it was true, but I had to allow that I was a long way from hating her.
“Aye,” I said at last. “I’ll make a deal with you, then. You bring me the weapons and men that I need to take the fight to Ma Aditi and the Skanians who move her, and I’ll sell your filthy poppy resin for you. Only through the Chains, mind, and only to the rich folk. I’m not having it on my streets, Ailsa. I mean it.”
“Well and good,” she said. She sighed. “You’re a stubborn and difficult man, Tomas Piety.”
I supposed that I was, at that.
“How long?” I asked her.
“To bring you men and swords and crossbows, blasting powder and illegal military weapons? Do you think I have them under my skirts?”
I cleared my throat and turned back to the window. I had been giving too much thought of late to what lay under Ailsa’s skirts, and I knew talk like that wouldn’t help.
“I accept it may take time,” I said.
She laughed. “A week to send a rider to Dannsburg, perhaps two for the wagons to make the return trip with what you ask. No more than that.”
I stared at her and realized she had been making fun of me.
“So simply?” I asked.
“If I want men and weapons, I will have them,” she said. “I have the Queen’s Warrant, Tomas. I can do anything.”
“Not so much of a miracle, then, is it?”
“Is it not miracle enough that the crown is prepared to give you the means to take over almost the entire underworld of Ellinburg? ‘When you are gifted a horse, count not its teeth.’ I believe that is the expression.”
I didn’t know much about horses or their teeth. I could ride one, but that was it. I was no idle noble, to have time on my hands to spend on horse breeding, and I had hired the people who used to look after my racehorse. Again I suspected she was making fun of me, and I didn’t care for it.
“Three weeks, then,” I said, pushing the conversation back to where I wanted it. “In three weeks I’ll have the men and weapons to take the Wheels?”
“Three weeks or thereabouts,” she said. “My rider might be waylaid on the road. There could be a shortage of blasting powder in Dannsburg. We deal mostly in could and might and possibly, as you may recall. Nothing is certain in this life until it is too late, but yes. Plan for three weeks, and be prepared to hold off if required.”
“Aye,” I said, and started to turn to the door.
“Oh, and, Tomas? Have someone run up to Chandler’s Narrow and bring Rosie to me, would you?”
Of course it was Rosie she would give this request to, and Rosie who would no doubt pass it to someone else, some other agent of the Queen’s Men in Ellinburg. That person would set a rider on their way to Dannsburg, and soon enough what I had asked for would arrive. I had no idea who Rosie might speak to, and I wondered if Ailsa herself did. From what I had seen of the Queen’s Men, it wouldn’t have greatly surprised me if she didn’t.
* * *
• • •
The day before Godsday, Old Kurt came calling at the Tanner’s Arms.
He had Billy the Boy with him, and the lad had a bag in his hand.
It was a little after sundown, and snowing outside. The tavern was busy, full of local men drinking away their wages or gambling them on the turn of the dice. That was how life was lived, in the Stink. Godsday was traditionally a day of rest, as I have written. Even where that rule wasn’t strictly observed, the night before was usually the night when men did most of their drinking. The day before Godsday was Coinsday, and it was when working folk who were paid by the week received their wages. A man might give two thirds of his pay to his wife, to keep their house, but the rest was his and it was usually gone by Godsday morning. People are weak, as I had told Ailsa, and the poorer and more oppressed they are, the weaker they become. Working men, above all others, have a weakness for drink.
The Stink was a good place to keep a tavern.
I was sitting at my corner table in the common room, with Simple Sam standing between me and the customers to keep folk away from me. His leg was mostly healed by then, and since the night of the explosion he had taken it upon himself to become my personal bodyguard. I think he felt indebted to me, for bringing him home that night. Sam was a slow lad but a faithful one, and he certainly had a good size to him. No one bothered me without an invitation, not with Sam standing in front of my table.
The job suited him, I had to admit. I believe in putting the right man in the right job, but if a man chooses that job for himself and is suited for it, then I won’t argue with him.
I poured myself another brandy from the bottle on the table in front of me and was just raising the glass when Old Kurt walked into the Tanner’s. Black Billy had the door, and he shot me a look as the old man shambled into the common room, leaning heavily on his stick. I saw the boy beside him, in a hooded cloak that was too big for him and flakes of snow melting off the thick wool around his shoulders. I nodded to Billy to let them in and reached out to tap Sam on the arm.
“Let those two join me,” I said. “And they drink on the house.”
Sam nodded and ushered Kurt and Billy the Boy to my table. A moment later Ailsa was there with mugs of beer for them both, without needing to be asked. She missed nothing, I had to admit, however busy the tavern might be.
“Kurt,” I said. “This is an unexpected pleasure. And, young Billy, how are your studies progressing?”
“Well, Uncle Tomas,” Billy said, pushing his hood back from his head.
He needed a haircut, but the fluff on his upper lip was gone, I noticed, and he had a faint shadow on his jaw that said he had started shaving.
“That’s good,” I said, and caught Kurt’s eye.
The old man had a bleak expression on his face, and I could tell that he wanted to speak to me alone.
“Billy, why don’t you run into the kitchen and see if Hari can find you something to eat?”
<
br /> The lad grinned at me and nodded, and did as I said. He took his beer with him, I noticed, as a grown man would have done. I raised my eyebrows at Old Kurt.
“You’re having him back,” the cunning man said.
“Pardon?”
“You heard me. I can’t handle him no more, and that’s that.”
“Three marks a week and not a copper more, that’s what I told you. I said that price would never go up again whatever he does, and I stand by those words.”
Old Kurt turned and spat on the floor beside his chair.
“You could offer me ten marks a week and I’d turn you down,” he said. “I don’t want him in my house no more. The boy’s fucking possessed, like I told you.”
“And I told you, the boy is holy.”
“No,” Old Kurt said. “He fucking well ain’t.”
He met my stare without blinking, and I saw that he meant it.
“What did he do?” I asked at last.
“I came down one morning and there must have been fifty rats in my parlor,” Kurt said. “Not running around, mind, nor nibbling on nothing. Just sitting there, they was, staring at me with their little ratty eyes. Accusing, like. Billy said it was on account of the rats I nail to my door, and how they didn’t like it when I did that. I allowed that perhaps they didn’t and asked him if he knew how they had got there.”
“And?”
“Well, he didn’t say he had brought them, but then he didn’t say as that he hadn’t either. He just sort of smiled at me. That smile made me feel cold, Mr. Piety, I have to admit. I asked him if he could get rid of them, and he nodded. I went through the back for my morning piss and when I come back . . . when I come back they was all dead. Fifty dead rats lying on my parlor floor and all of them with their backs broken, and your Billy didn’t look like he’d moved an inch. He shouldn’t . . . he shouldn’t ought to be able to do that. Not yet. Maybe not ever.”