Priest of Lies

by Peter McLean

  “Pious Men, to me!” I bellowed.

  The woman, this Lisbeth or whoever she really was, shot a hard look at the door a moment before fists started to bang on it. It rattled in its frame but wouldn’t open, and I swore on Our Lady’s name as I realized that she was holding it closed with the cunning. I tore my coat off at last and hurled it at her, but she evaded it easily enough. Billy was thrashing and struggling against the wall now, his face starting to go blue as he was choked by the grip of whatever magic held him.

  I cursed myself for falling out of the habit of wearing the Weeping Women. That was Ailsa’s influence, and it wasn’t serving me well. Unarmed, trapped in the room, and facing what had to be a Skanian magician, I did the only thing I could think of.

  I charged her.

  Lisbeth spat in my face as I crashed into her and bore her to the floor, using the simple fact of my weight to force her off her feet. Sudden searing pain gripped me, making me scream like an animal. The ceiling hit me in the back a moment later and my vision swam as I stared helplessly down at the assassin. She kept me pinned to the ceiling with the sheer force of her magic, and she was still holding the door closed behind her and Billy against the wall as well, but it seemed that the effort of doing too many things at once meant that she had to choose between them.

  She released Billy the Boy, and that was her mistake.

  The lad fell to his knees on the floor, clutching his throat and gasping as Lisbeth got to her feet and stalked toward him. I heard a crash as someone in the corridor brought an axe down against the door. It shuddered in its frame, but that was a solid oak door and I knew they wouldn’t get through it quickly.

  One look at Billy told me they wouldn’t have to.

  Lisbeth reached into the bodice of her kirtle and her hand came out with a small dagger in it, but it was too late for her. Billy had his breath now, and the haunted look in his unblinking eyes told me the lad was once more among the ruins of Messia.

  He was in Messia after the sack, where men had torn each other apart with their bare hands over half a loaf of stale bread. That was Billy’s childhood, lived among those ruins, and he had survived it alone.

  The sudden flash of power in his eyes gave me the fear and I’ve no shame in admitting that, but by then it was far too late to stop him and I couldn’t truly say that I wanted to. With all that he’d been through, to my mind he was entitled to that rage, to that vengeance.

  All the same, when he spoke his voice was flat and cold and utterly without anger or hurt or any emotion at all.

  It was just like mine was, when I pronounced harsh justice.

  “No,” he said.

  Lisbeth Beck exploded where she stood.

  It’s quite a thing, to see a human body explode. There’s a great deal of blood in a body, after all. Her magic dissipated all at once, and the door flew open just as I found myself falling, splattered in blood, face-first onto the table. I hit with a bone-jarring impact and rolled onto the floor, taking two chairs over with me.

  Jochan was standing in the doorway with his axe in his hand and his mouth open, staring into the room in disbelief. It was like an abattoir in there.

  “What the fuck . . . ?” he whispered.

  I looked at Billy and nodded my thanks to him before turning my eyes on my brother.

  “Get me Fat Luka,” I said. “Right now.”

  * * *

  * * *

  I had sent Billy away to rest and regained my seat at the head of the table by the time Luka came in, but I had made no attempt to wipe the blood off my face. My shirt was spattered with it too, and one sleeve was scorched from the burning lamp oil that had drenched my coat. I must have looked like some devil from Hell, to Luka’s eyes.

  He stared around the dimly lit room, at my still-smoldering coat and the huge spray of blood and torn meat and shattered bone that decorated the walls and floor and ceiling where Lisbeth Beck had been.

  “How the fuck,” I said, my voice falling into that special tone that promised harsh justice, the tone I shared with Billy the Boy, “did this happen?”

  “Lady forgive me,” Luka whispered.

  His fat face had gone the color of curdled milk, as well it might. I had known Luka since we were boys in school together, and I knew he served me well. All the same, it would have felt like justice to kill Fat Luka, right then. He was fortunate, I think, that the Weeping Women were in a chest in my bedroom, half the city away.

  Bloody Anne stepped into the room after Luka and closed the door behind her. There was a hard look on her face, and the blood and viscera on the floor and walls and above her head didn’t seem to be bothering her at all.

  “You brought this woman here, Luka,” I said. “You stood her in front of me.”

  “As I brought the last two,” he said. “Lady’s sake, boss, you can’t think . . . I wouldn’t betray you, you have to know that!”

  I did know that. I knew that, but I was angry, angrier than I like to allow myself to get. I could feel the cold devil inside me, awake and vengeful. I had nearly been assassinated, and in the very heart of my own streets at that. In the Tanner’s Arms itself, where I should be untouchable. If it hadn’t been for Billy the Boy I would be with Our Lady now, it was as simple as that.

  I slammed the flat of my hand down on the table, and Fat Luka cringed. Bloody Anne put her hands on the hilts of her daggers, awaiting my judgment. I knew if I had given the word she would have killed Luka without a second thought.

  “I want blood for this,” I said, holding Fat Luka’s wide-eyed gaze with a murderous glare that brooked no argument. The cold devil in me was awake, and I could tell that Luka knew it. “Not yours, before you piss your britches, but I promise you there will be harsh justice. No one does this to me. No one! You go out there, and you find whoever sent you to this goodwife Lisbeth Beck, and you bring them to me. You will do that, Fat Luka, and you will do it right fucking now. Is that clear?”

  Luka swallowed and nodded. Anne took her hands off her daggers and stepped aside, and he hurried from the room.

  I got to my feet and stared down at the table for a moment, breathing hard.

  “Fuck!” I shouted.

  I picked up the broken lamp and hurled it across the room in a fury. It smashed into the wall, and I clenched my fists until my knuckles ached. I could feel myself losing my way, as I had done before, could feel the shadow of the deeply buried battle shock gathering behind my eyes. In that moment, I understood my brother. I understood his need to find a fight of an evening. The need to hurt someone, anyone, to make the pain go away for a little while.

  Bloody Anne knew what she was seeing, and she took a very careful step toward me.

  She spoke quietly to me. I don’t recall what she said, but she was talking and then I was sitting down again and she was sitting at my right hand, where she belonged. My second, always there to support me, always at my right hand. My shaking fists were on the table in front of me and they slowly opened as Anne just kept on talking, and then her hand was on mine and her callused fingers curled around my palm and squeezed gently, in a way that said she understood.

  I came out of it then, whatever it had been, and I took a slow breath. I looked at her, met her eyes, and knew that words between us were unnecessary. She had been there, at Messia and at Abingon. There were no words needed, for that.

  She understood, and that was enough.

  “Brandy?” she said.

  “Aye.”

  She went to get a bottle and two glasses, and we sat at the table together and drank, and waited.

  When Fat Luka finally came back he was escorted in by Black Billy and my brother, and they were holding a man between them. He was no one, just some Ellinburg man. He was of average height and his hair was sandy and short and dirty, and it had been some days since he had last shaved. His lips were split and bloody, and one of
his eyes was swollen shut. He was no one I knew, and that was good. That made it easier to do what had to be done. The battle shock might have left me, but the cold devil in my heart very much hadn’t, and it demanded its due.

  Bloody Anne put one of her daggers in my hand.

  ELEVEN

  It was late when I got home. I had washed the blood from my face and hands and hair in the kitchen at the Tanner’s Arms, and Hari had lent me a clean shirt and a coat. We had wrapped Billy the Boy in one of Simple Sam’s old cloaks to hide the bloodstains on his clothes. All the same, as soon as she saw me Ailsa knew something had happened. She was sitting in her chair by the hearth in our drawing room when I came in, but I could tell that she knew. She put her embroidery down and looked at me.

  “Was there a raid?” she asked once I had chased the footman and her maid out of the room and closed the door behind them.

  “An assassination attempt,” I said. “A magician, posing as a dockside cunning woman. A Skanian, I can only assume.”

  “What happened?”

  I shrugged. “She nearly killed me, then Billy killed her,” I said. “Then I sent Fat Luka to bring me the man who introduced us to her, and I killed him. It’s been a good day for killing.”

  “With your own hands?”

  “Yes, Ailsa, with my own hands,” I snapped at her. “They attacked me in my place of business. I’m a businessman and I’m a fucking soldier, and I will not have it!”

  “No. Quite,” she said. “I’m not pleased about this.”

  “Do you really fucking think that I am?”

  Her brow furrowed in thought. “Were the City Guard involved?”

  “No, of course not,” I said. “The Pious Men don’t shout for the Guard. My streets, my law. My justice.”

  “Hmmm,” she said, and took up her embroidery hoop again. “We’ll hear about this from Hauer nonetheless, you mark me.”

  “You think he was behind it?”

  “No, this has to have been Skanian work—it has Vhent written all over it. But Vhent has the governor’s ear, and I’ll wager he will bend that ear the first chance he gets.”

  I sighed and poured myself a brandy.

  “Aye, no doubt,” I said.

  I sank into the chair opposite her and sipped my drink, looking at her over the rim of my glass.

  My wife.

  My wife, the Queen’s Man, who had just learned that there had been an attempt on my life a few short hours ago. She pushed the needle through her work and drew the thread after it, stitch after stitch after stitch. Some concern might have been nice, to my mind.

  “Where’s Billy?” she asked, after a moment.

  “Upstairs, asleep,” I said. “It took a lot out of him, fighting that magician. She was strong, I think, this one. Very strong.”

  “But Billy was stronger.”

  “Aye,” I said.

  No, there would be no concern from Ailsa. Not from the woman who had killed over five hundred people in a single afternoon and thought nothing of it, there wouldn’t. Ailsa’s concern was for the crown’s orders, and never mind who got hurt in carrying them out.

  I drank my brandy and stretched my feet out toward the fire, and realized I was still wearing Hari’s shirt. It didn’t matter. I was alive, and comfortable, and drinking expensive brandy in the parlor of the sort of house I could have only dreamed of when I was a lad making my way in life through the alleys of the Stink. If that had cost blood, then what of it?

  Perhaps we weren’t so very different, my wife and me. That was an interesting thought, but one for another day.

  I felt myself dozing, the tension of the day draining out of my body as I finally started to relax. I could hear the fire crackling in the grate, and the wind whistling through the eaves of the house as the night drew in outside. Ailsa’s needle moved through her hoop, stitch after stitch after stitch.

  A pounding on the front door made my eyes open. Time had passed, I didn’t know how much, but Ailsa had turned up the wick of her lamp at some point. A moment later one of the footmen entered the room and presented me with a folded paper.

  “A messenger has come to the house, sir,” he said. “He is in the hall, awaiting a reply. Apparently it is urgent.”

  I blinked sleep from my eyes and took the offered paper, unfolded it, and scanned the hastily scrawled and no doubt drunken writing.

  Piety,

  Heard what happened. I will intervene.

  There must be no more blood spilled between you and the Sons in reprisal.

  Think of the peace!

  Gv. Hauer

  The peace, that was a fucking joke. There was no peace between the Northern Sons and the Pious Men, to my mind. Not anymore there wasn’t.

  I passed the note to Ailsa without comment, and she read it and then cast it idly into the fire. She cleared her throat.

  “I believe we can agree, in principle,” she said.

  I felt the anger quicken in me before I caught the look in her eye and realized her deeper meaning. Ailsa was subtle and no mistake, and I had to admire that about her.

  “Aye,” I said. “Tell him that the response is in agreement.”

  The footman nodded and left the room.

  No blood spilled in reprisal.

  Very well.

  There are a lot of ways to kill a man.

  * * *

  * * *

  Two nights later I was in the west of the city with Borys and Jochan and Bloody Anne, along with Desh and five of the new hired lads who I had put under him. Desh was doing well as an underboss, and I didn’t think it would be long now before he joined us at the table.

  I was standing in a shadowy earthen courtyard behind an unlicensed brothel on the edge of Northern Sons territory, just off Convent Street where it met the docks. The Badger’s Rest, that place was called, and it was a shithole. Inside, the five new lads were shoring up the doors we had broken down on our way in. While they did that, Borys was reassuring the women who worked there that life under the Pious Men would be better than what they were used to. No one wore the bawd’s knot there, and they were dirty and underfed and scared, and a lot of them had bruises that spoke of the harsh treatment they had received. Nobody mistreated whores, not in my crew they didn’t. Not since Grieg, anyway, and everyone remembered how that had ended for him.

  In front of me in the courtyard was the brothel keeper, and a deep hole in the ground.

  The man had around fifty years to him and he was big and fat and brutal looking, with a bald head and a great jut of unshaven jaw that bristled silver in the moonlight. He was of an age to have fought in the war before mine, in Captain Rogan and Aunt Enaid’s war, and he had the look of a veteran about him. He had big, hard hands, that man, and from what I had heard most of the women inside had felt the backs of them on a daily basis.

  Valter, his name was, and to my mind he was a cunt.

  He was also a member of the Northern Sons and in the pay of the Skanians. There was a spade at his feet, and sweat on his face, and fresh blisters on his hands. He had been digging for the last two hours with Anne’s crossbow trained on him.

  “Get in,” I said.

  He looked at me like he thought I was mad.

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Piety?” he said. “I’m not getting in no hole. I’m your prisoner, I understand that, but you’ll ransom me back to Bloodhands and the game will go on.”

  “I’m not playing games,” I said. “Get in.”

  “Fuck off,” he said. “You’re a businessman, same as I am. You know how this works.”

  “Aye, I know how this works,” I said. “I own my streets and Bloodhands owns his, and we joust and skirmish around the edges, and sometimes bodies turn up in alleys. That’s how this fucking works. But you send a foreign assassin into the heart of my business, to ki
ll me with witchcraft? That’s not how this works.”

  He swallowed and shook his head, but I thought he knew what I was talking about.

  “I ain’t getting in that fucking hole,” he said.

  Jochan took up the spade and hit him with it so hard his knees buckled and he fell to the ground, and then the kicking started.

  I let my brother have his way until Valter was insensible, then I held up a hand to tell him it was enough. Together, we rolled him into the grave I had made him dig for himself and we began to fill it in.

  I had promised Hauer that I would spill no blood in reprisal for the attempt on my life, and I am a man of my word. I’m a priest, after all.

  I looked down into the hole in the ground, and I smiled as a clod of wet earth landed on Valter’s unconscious face.

  Not a drop of blood had been spilled.

  TWELVE

  I left Borys there to hold the stew, and Desh and a couple of his new lads to help him do it. A business once taken had to be held, or I knew I wouldn’t keep it long. Borys was ideal for the job. He was older than the other men, as I have written, quiet and thoughtful and almost fatherly in his way. I hoped his presence there would go some way toward reassuring the women that life with the Pious Men in charge would be better than it had been under the Northern Sons.

  The place was on the border between my territory and that belonging to the Sons, which was why I had picked it. That kept my supply lines strong, so Borys couldn’t find himself cut off from help if he needed it. That was the way it was done, just like in the army.

  Ailsa wasn’t expecting me back that night, so I was free to return to the Tanner’s Arms with Jochan and Bloody Anne and the rest of the new lads. They were quiet, those boys, and a couple of them had thoughtful looks on their faces that said they might be having second thoughts about working for me. I made a mental note to have Fat Luka keep an eye on those two.

  This life wasn’t for everyone, I knew that, and those lads especially were young. They weren’t veterans, and perhaps they hadn’t ever seen harsh work before. Bloody Anne was quiet too, though, and she had done harsh work more times than I knew how to count. I could tell there was something on her mind.