by Peter McLean
I wanted to burn the Stables to the ground.
We had to be careful about it, though, I knew that much. Those lads hadn’t hurt anyone, and for all that civilians have a hard time in war I wouldn’t see it happen to them. Those boys had seen enough hardship, to my mind.
This was where the second part of my plan came to life, the part I hadn’t shared with anyone.
THIRTY-NINE
I led my raiding party through the alleys, leaving Dock Road behind us. The Gutcutters would be out in force now, with fires burning the length of their main street, and I wasn’t looking for open battle. Not with only two soldiers and a boy at my back I wasn’t.
I knew the Wheels better than most Stink men did, and I had my da to thank for that if for little enough else. He had worked for Old Kurt when I was a boy, as I have written, and had taken me up there with him. I had been chased by Wheeler lads more times than I could remember, and I had learned those alleys while fleeing for my life. Memories like that stay with a man, it has to be said.
Anne, Borys, and Billy followed me through the narrow ways, keeping quiet and listening to the din of fires being fought on the main street. I led them roughly parallel to Dock Road, through the twisting wynds behind workshops and between tenements. Only once did we stop, when I pointed to the back of a cobbler’s shop and had Billy set it alight from the rear. We hurried on after that, until our alley opened up onto the courtyard behind the Stables.
“Right,” I said. “This is it. This is Ma Aditi’s favorite business, and I want it burned down. But first, there’s work. There are lads in there, and we need to get them out.”
“What lads?” Borys asked.
“Boy whores,” I said. “Young ones. Too fucking young for whoring. We’re getting them out.”
“How?” Anne asked.
I looked at the back of the Stables. There was a single guard outside the back door, leaning against the wall and picking his nose with obvious enthusiasm. With him gone, we could slip inside and up the stairs to the rooms where the boys worked, and lead them out before anyone knew what was happening.
“The man on the door,” I said to Anne. “Can you drop him from here?”
Anne lifted her crossbow and sighted along the bolt, her eyes narrowed against the snow that was blowing into the mouth of the alley.
“Perhaps,” she said. “It’s dark and the angle’s for shit. I can’t make any promises.”
That wasn’t what I wanted to hear. If she missed he would raise the alarm and then it would all be in the shithouse, I knew that much. I was about to speak when Billy beat me to it.
“I can, Uncle Tomas,” he said.
I frowned at him.
“I need him dead, Billy, you understand?” I said. “Fast and quiet, without anyone seeing.”
The lad nodded.
“I know,” he said. “He’ll die.”
Anne and me exchanged a look, but I knew that when Billy said a thing would happen he was always right. If he said he could do this, then . . .
I knew I had to trust him.
“Do it, then,” I said.
Billy narrowed his eyes and stared at the man outside the door. He was maybe thirty yards away, and as Bloody Anne had said the angle was for shit and that was without the dark and the wind and the snow. I couldn’t have made that shot with a crossbow, I knew that much, and if even Anne doubted herself then it was a difficult shot indeed. Billy didn’t have a crossbow, though.
He didn’t need one.
Billy’s fists clenched at his sides, hard and sudden, and he made a sharp hissing noise like he had pushed all the air out of his lungs at once. The man on the door jerked forward, one hand scratching desperately at his throat, then pitched onto his face on the icy cobbles. He kicked once and was still.
I waited for him to rise, but he didn’t. Falling snow settled on his back as he lay there under the glow of the single lantern above the door.
“What did you do, Billy?” I whispered.
“I crushed his lungs and took his breath,” Billy said. “All of it. He don’t need it no more, Uncle Tomas. He’s dead.”
“Aye,” I said. “Aye, that he is.”
We slipped through the shadows to the back door of the Stables. The snow was falling heavier now, already beginning to cover the body of the fallen man. I eased up the latch and opened the door an inch, putting my eye to the gap. There was no one in sight, just a patch of bare wooden floor at the bottom of the stair that led to the upper floor.
The Stables was a tavern, officially, and only a certain few knew what was upstairs. The way up was in the back, and when there were no ships in and no sailors to entertain like there weren’t at the moment, the back was kept curtained off.
I could hear laughter and revelry coming from the common room, but the back of the building was quiet. That was how I had hoped it would be. I eased Remorse out of her scabbard and pushed the door open.
Bloody Anne followed with her crossbow slung and her daggers in her hands, and Billy came behind her. Borys brought up the rear, and he closed the door silently behind us. He could move quiet when he wanted to, for a big man, and I didn’t think anyone had heard us. I made my way up the stairs as softly as I could, trying to figure how long it had been since we had all set off from the Tanner’s Arms.
Jochan would be making slower time than us, I knew. The river path was treacherous in the snow and they would have had to take it carefully, and I was sure they would have met at least some resistance coming that way. I thought I had perhaps ten minutes until they reached the alley beside Old Kurt’s house. They would have to fight again there, I was sure, as that way was always guarded.
Then they’d be out onto Dock Road, only a hundred yards or so north of the Stables. I had to have the place burning by then. I hadn’t explained this part of my plan, as I said. I should have done, I knew that, but I just couldn’t bring myself to speak of it in front of the men. All the same, I knew Jochan would know what to do. Once he saw the flames at the Stables he would know that I had set them, and why. That would bring him running, and his men with him.
We slipped into the corridor at the top of the stairs, and I paused outside the first door. I eased it open and saw the lad inside. He had perhaps twelve years to him, and he was sitting on the bed wearing a pair of tight red velvet britches and nothing else. He looked up at me and showed me a seductive smile that I knew he didn’t feel.
I put a finger to my lips.
“I’m not a customer,” I whispered. “Come on, boy, I’m getting you out of here. Do you have any more clothes?”
His eyes went very wide in his face, and for a moment I thought he might panic and start shouting. Just then Billy popped his head around the door and grinned at the other boy. He gave him a wink and an encouraging wave, and quick as that the lad was off the bed and stuffing his feet into a pair of old boots.
He dragged a patched cloak out of a small chest beside the bed and pulled it around his thin, naked shoulders, and he was as ready as he was going to get. I ushered him quickly out of the room to where Bloody Anne was waiting with as reassuring a smile as her scarred face could manage. She gave the boy a brief, brusque hug and passed him back to Borys, who took him down the stairs and out the back door. Borys stayed outside with the lad, and I went to the next door.
We brought out six boys in all, sending them down to Borys one at a time, before I reached the last room and found one who was working.
The poor little bastard couldn’t have had more than seven or eight years to him. He was facedown on the bed and sobbing, with a naked man grunting away on top of him.
Memories crashed into my head hard enough to make me vomit.
The man’s head whipped around at the sound, his face red and sweaty and outraged at the intrusion. He looked just like my da.
I swung Remorse so hard I nearly to
ok his fucking head clean off.
Blood erupted up the wall and across the ceiling, and the force of my blow made his corpse roll off the bed and hit the floor with a heavy thump. That was bad.
I wiped the sick from my chin with the back of my left wrist and held out a hand to the whimpering boy.
“Come on, lad, quickly now,” I said.
The boy just wept and stared at me with wide, terrified eyes. He was naked and bleeding, and I realized that he was in no state to run. I ripped my cloak off and wrapped him in it, and bundled him over my shoulder.
“It’s all right,” I said. “You have to keep quiet, though, you understand me?”
The lad nodded against my back, still sniffling. I hurried back into the corridor and pushed past Anne and Billy on my way to the stairs.
“Burn it all,” I snarled at Billy the Boy as I passed him, and I found that I was weeping. “Burn it to the cunting ground.”
FORTY
It seemed Billy the Boy had formed his own opinion about what went on in the Stables. The fire that consumed the building was apocalyptic.
I sent Borys back to the Stink with the boys we had rescued, leading them through the alleys behind him. He had the youngest lad cradled in his arms, still wrapped in my cloak. I took Bloody Anne and Billy around to the street to meet the Gutcutters as they came boiling out of the tavern entrance into the swirling, firelit snow, shouting and cursing with blades in their hands.
Anne dropped the first with the bolt from her crossbow, and then they were too close and there was no time for her to reload. Remorse and Mercy took their toll, and Billy the Boy stood back and concentrated with a fierce look on his face, and here and there a man dropped clutching his throat as Billy stole his breath. There were too many of them, though, and even as Anne took a man’s throat out with her dagger two more stepped up to take his place. I gave one Mercy through the ribs and kicked out at another, almost losing my footing on the treacherous, icy cobbles.
“Tomas!”
I heard Jochan’s roar and looked up to see him charging, his bloody axe raised high. I had never been so glad to see my brother in my life. He crashed into the rear of the mob of Gutcutters like a man possessed, like a berserker. The flames from the burning Stables reflected in his eyes, and I knew that he understood all too well why I had done what I had. Cutter slipped into the melee and men died around him, falling back from the evil little blades in his hands while Stefan and Erik fought with the stolid, determined competence of veterans.
I was beginning to think we might just take them all, when a man came out of a house across the street. He put a hand to his mouth and whistled. He whistled a long, shrill note that made my ears first hurt, and then scream. I stumbled back a step and clapped my hands to my head, the Weeping Women tumbling from numb fingers as I sagged to my knees. I could feel hot blood against my palms.
The magic was indiscriminate, though. Gutcutters and Pious Men alike were on their knees in the snow as the Skanian magician walked slowly into the street with his long hair blowing around his face.
Everyone was on their knees except Billy the Boy.
The magician stopped and stared at Billy, a frown creasing his pale brow. Billy stood with the fire at his back, outlining him in flame like the devil Old Kurt had feared him to be. He took a step toward the magician and raised a hand.
“No,” he said. “I won’t.”
The Skanian stumbled back a step, his own hands moving in a complicated sequence in front of him. Something invisible seemed to rush through the air between them, but Billy made a chopping gesture with his left hand and whatever it was dissipated like mist on a summer morning.
“No,” he said again. “I’m going to hurt you now.”
He can mend hurts, Old Kurt had told me, and now he can cause them too.
The magician screamed.
I don’t have the words in me to describe that scream save to liken it to a lamb being slaughtered the slow way, like they did in some of the temples. He clutched his hands to his stomach and doubled over, and blood gushed out from the bottom of his robe and darkened the snow around his feet. He pitched to his face on the ground, vomiting more blood, and his entrails left his body through his arsehole at great speed.
The spell broke at once, and I snatched up Mercy and stabbed the nearest man I could reach before he could react. Bloody Anne threw herself on top of the fellow beside her, and her daggers rose and fell, rose and fell.
Jochan and Cutter made short work of the rest of them, and it was done.
The Stables was a blazing ruin behind us, but I could hear running men, coming closer. Lots of them
“We need to go,” I said. “Right fucking now.”
* * *
• • •
We fled back to the Stink through the alleys, taking wild turns and doubling back on ourselves until I was sure we had shaken off the pursuit. Billy collapsed on the way, ghost pale and shaking like he had contracted the falling sickness. I scooped him up and threw him over my shoulder, and we ran again.
By the time we made it back to the Tanner’s Arms I was exhausted, gasping for breath from the boy’s weight and frozen to the bone under the sweat that covered me. Mail is not a good thing to wear in winter without a cloak to cover it, and mine was still wrapped around the young lad I had rescued. At least, I very much hoped it was. If Borys had lost those lads I vowed I would kill him myself.
Black Billy let us into the Tanner’s with a grin of visible relief as he saw we were all there. Ailsa came bustling over, a worried frown on her face.
“Is young Billy hurt?” she asked, when she saw me carrying him.
“The lad’s exhausted, that’s all,” I said, and I hoped it was true. “He fought hard tonight.”
He had done that all right, and no mistake. I remembered the day after he had healed Hari, and how he had looked near death and slept for a whole day afterward. I wondered what this night’s work had cost him.
“I’ll put him to bed,” Ailsa said, and took the lad from me as though he weighed no more than a newborn.
She disappeared into the back with the unconscious boy, and I sank into a chair and pulled off my frozen mail and leather. Anne brought a coat and wrapped it around my shoulders, and I huddled into it and nodded my thanks to her.
“Where are the boys?” I asked.
“Borys brought them in about twenty minutes ago,” Luka said. “They’re in the kitchen with Hari, eating us out of house and home.”
He smiled when he said it, though, and I nodded. That was good.
Mika came around with brandies for everyone, and he left a couple of bottles on the tables for us. I drank and shivered, and I saw the others doing the same. That night had been harsh work indeed, the sort of work we had done at Messia, and I knew it would have brought back memories for everyone.
“Get Doc Cordin up here tomorrow to have a look at them,” I said, and Mika nodded. “Some of them aren’t in great shape.”
I would worry about what to do with them in the morning. Since the Chains had opened up again I had proper money coming in, and that had allowed me to move some of my hidden gold through the business without anyone raising hard questions about where it had come from. Now that I could spend money, I could do things. If I needed to pay some families to adopt the young lads, to raise them and teach them a trade, then I could do that.
And I would.
I sat back in my chair and swallowed brandy, and poured myself another. There was a tap on the door a while later, and Black Billy slid the hatch aside and peered out. He turned and beckoned to Fat Luka.
“One of yours,” he said.
Luka went to the door and opened it, just a little. I could see him talking to someone outside, but their voices were too low to overhear. A moment later Luka nodded and coin changed hands, and then the door was closed and locked again.
“All the Wheels is in uproar,” he said, a satisfied smile on his plump face. “The traders of Dock Road are shouting why should they pay protection to the Gutcutters if they aren’t protected, and Ma Aditi is in a fury over losing her Stables and her little boys. There’s other talk too, of a powerful man who was supposed to help them and didn’t, or did and failed, or died trying. It’s confused, is that, but word is the Gutcutters have been let down bad by someone.”
I nodded, and thought of their Skanian magician shitting out his own intestines into the gutter as Billy the Boy pulled him inside out with his mind. I thought that might give Bloodhands something to think on, and no mistake.
“Good,” I said. “It’s been a good night’s work for the Pious Men.”
There was a cheer for that, and glasses were raised and brandy downed.
“Fuck a nun, Tomas,” Jochan said, and he started to laugh. “You burned down the fucking Stables! That’s wanted doing for a long time.”
“Aye, it has,” I said. “Too long. I left it too long.”
I met his eyes, and he blinked back a tear and nodded.
“Aye, well, it’s done now and done well,” he said.
I felt like a weight had lifted from my heart, to hear him say that.
FORTY-ONE
A week passed, and I found homes for the Stables boys. Gold opens many doors, after all, and I had gold to spare. The poppy trade was bringing in a fortune, as Ailsa had said it would, and I was flowing my hidden treasury through the Chains by then as well. Taxes were coming in again too, from all the businesses under my protection, and Will the Wencher had turned the house on Chandler’s Narrow into the best and most profitable stew in Ellinburg. It was doing so well, in fact, that I had Sir Eland return there, and put Erik in charge of security at the Golden Chains in his place.
It was a fine morning, cold and crisp and the sun was shining. Anne and I walked the streets of the Stink together, partly to see how the land lay but mostly so that we could be seen. We looked like lords of the manor in our fine coats and doublets, and we had Stefan and three of the new lads with us as a bodyguard. The Gutcutters were still licking their wounds from our attack on Dock Road and the Stables, so that wasn’t strictly necessary, but I had to be seen to be guarded and guarded well. Perhaps I should have brought Jochan along, but Jochan was still stinking drunk from the night before and snoring in his blankets.