Priest of Lies

by Peter McLean

  I frowned over at the door, but Sam was coming back by then. He bent to speak to me.

  “Man’s asking to talk to you, boss,” Sam said. “Him in the barrow, I mean.”

  “Is he now?” I asked. “And why’s that?”

  I didn’t allow begging inside the Tanner’s, it was bad for business, but if this fellow wanted to speak to me personally then I assumed he must have a reason for it. That, or big enough balls to have come asking me for coin, which as I didn’t know him from an open grave would have been something of a misjudgment on his part.

  Sam just shrugged. “He’s asking for Mr. Piety, boss.”

  “Aye, well, I’m here,” I said. “Tell Billy to let him in.”

  Sam nodded, and a moment later the child was struggling his way toward us behind the handbarrow while folk turned to stare. Sam went over to help, and then the man was wheeled up to our table. He looked like shit and he smelled of it too, and his threadbare coat had a dusting of snow on it.

  He looked up at me, haunted eyes in a gaunt, ruined face, and I knew I was looking at a veteran. He had maybe thirty years to him if that, and his life was effectively already over.

  “Mr. Piety,” he said, the voice coming like windblown dust from his burned throat while the young lad behind his barrow stood silent.

  “Do I know you?” I asked him. “From Abingon, perhaps?”

  “I was there,” the man said, “but I don’t think we ever met. Different regiments, I suppose.”

  “Aye,” I said, waiting for him to work his way around to his point.

  “I survived Abingon,” he said, “and I marched home on my own two feet with the other men from my streets. I went home to my wife and my son, this lad here who’s now pushing my barrow. I went home to my little house in the Wheels, and then some cunt blew it up.”

  I swallowed.

  “They blew up my house and the whole street with it, because it was near a factory,” he went on. “They killed my wife. They took my legs and they left my son mute with the horror of seeing his ma die burning in front of him. He dragged me screaming and burned and broken to the cunning man to save my life, and he ain’t said a word since. Do you take my meaning, Mr. Piety?”

  I looked at the fellow in the barrow, and I found that I had no words to say to him.

  “What’s your name?” Jochan asked at last, and that broke the awful silence that had fallen over our table.

  “Wainwright,” the man said. “Yan Wainwright.”

  “Well, Mr. Wainwright,” I said, once I found my voice again, “I’m sorry to hear your story. I’m sure we can find a coin for you.”

  The words were acid in my chest, but I knew I couldn’t own to the bombing of the Wheels. Not to him and not to anyone else outside my family, not ever. Ailsa had gone to great lengths and enormous expense to ensure that that could never be laid at my door, and I couldn’t do anything to endanger that.

  Apparently Jochan felt differently.

  “For the Lady’s sake,” he hissed at me, loud enough for all around the table to hear. “We did this to him, Tomas. We owe him more than a fucking coin!”

  I gave my brother a look like murder, but it was lost on him. I could see the pain in Jochan’s eyes, in the faraway look that he got sometimes, and I knew what he was seeing.

  He was seeing the surgeons’ tents again, back behind the lines at Abingon, was hearing the howls and wails of the maimed, the tortured, the burned. He was hearing the broken men like Yan Wainwright, men who would never truly live again whether they survived or not.

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, fighting the urge to vomit. Wainwright had me fixed with a look that said he was past caring what I did to him, that he’d just wanted to have his say to me at last before he died on the streets of starvation or the cold. My eyes were stinging fiercely, as though the air in the Tanner’s were thick with the smoke of blasting powder.

  “Aye,” I said at last. “Aye, perhaps we do.”

  “I don’t want your coin, Piety,” Wainwright said. “I just wanted you to see what you’ve done.”

  “You don’t want my coin,” I repeated. “You’ll take it, though. For your son.”

  I reached into my pouch and produced a gold crown, and put it on the table in front of him. Wainwright swallowed. A working man didn’t earn a gold crown in a year in Ellinburg. At last he reached out and grabbed it, and clutched it tightly in his filthy, ruined hand.

  He fixed me with a look, and then he very deliberately spat on the table in front of me.

  Simple Sam moved to make something of that, but I held up a hand to tell him to be still. No one said anything while the mute boy turned his crippled father’s handbarrow. He slowly wheeled him out of the Tanner’s Arms and into the merciless cold, with my gold coin clutched in his hand.

  Gold for blood, and what use was that?

  * * *

  * * *

  Jochan took that hard.

  Very hard, to my mind. I cared about the people I knew, whatever my aunt might think, but my brother cared about people he didn’t know and that was a difference between us. That was what broke him in the end.

  Of course, we had to have it out with the Alarian Kings eventually, for what they had done to Desh. Eventually came a week later, when we ambushed them in a snow-swept square between the Wheels and the territory west of there, south of Convent Street. There were ten of us, me and my brother and Bloody Anne included, and eight or nine of them. It was just another fight and I won’t record the details of it here, save to say one thing.

  The fighting was hard and the icy footing treacherous, and several of us ended up on the cobbles wrestling with our opponents with blades in hand. When it was done and the Pious Men were victorious, Jochan got to his feet and stood over the body of the man he had killed. He grinned at me. I looked at my brother, and I could see by the light of the moon that his mouth and chin and all the bottom part of his face was black and wet.

  He was chewing.

  My gaze fell to the corpse at his feet, and then I saw that its throat had been torn out as though by the teeth of a wild animal. Jochan just grinned at me and said nothing.

  That was when I knew that my brother was gone.

  Aunt Enaid was fully supporting me by then, I think having finally realized which side the bread was buttered on. She was the grand matriarch of the Pious Men now, and even Florence and her Flower Girls showed her respect. I could tell she liked that.

  She liked it a good deal less when Anne and me brought Jochan to her door in the dead of night, him all blood around the mouth and grinning and still saying nothing.

  “Oh, my poor foolish boy,” Enaid said, standing there in the doorway in her nightshirt and staring at him in horror. “Oh, what have you done?”

  “You know what he’s done, Auntie,” I said, and I could see in her face that she did. “He can’t be at home, not now, not with his wife barely a week from giving birth.”

  “No,” Enaid said. “No, you’ve the right of that, Tomas. Bring him in.”

  Enaid roused the maid, old Doc Cordin’s granddaughter, from her bed and made her get dressed, then sent her off round to Jochan’s house to be with Hanne in case the baby came early. Jochan was sitting in a chair in Enaid’s parlor by then, staring into space with his chin glistening and sticky red with blood. Brak had joined us in the hall.

  “Go back to bed, boy,” I said to him. “This is family business.”

  He looked from me and Anne to Enaid and back, and cleared his throat.

  “Do what he says, love,” Enaid told him, and that was done.

  I waited for young Brak to head back upstairs, then turned to look at my aunt. Brak was a good lad, and a Pious Man, but he wasn’t blood family. Enaid was, and she was the one I trusted with this, not him.

  “Can you take him in?” I asked.

>   Enaid sighed. “I’ll have to, won’t I?” she said. “I saw this before, in my war. Maybe he’ll come back and maybe he won’t, but until then he’ll be dangerous. Too dangerous to be around his wife and a newborn, as you said. I can make up a bed in the coal cellar. There’s bars on the window, and a strong door with a good lock.”

  I swallowed and nodded. I didn’t want to think about my little brother locked away in a dark cage like an animal, but then I didn’t want to think about what he had done that night, either.

  “It’s for the best, Tomas,” Anne said gently, and I nodded.

  She had the right of that, I knew she did.

  But that didn’t make it any easier.

  TWENTY

  I didn’t sleep that night. I think the only thing that kept me from drinking myself into a stupor to forget it was thinking of Anne and of how she had been with me afterward. She had walked me back to my house, all the way up to Trader’s Row, and all the way there she had spoken to me in a low, soothing voice that somehow kept the battle shock at bay and stopped me from murdering the first stranger I saw. I thought drink might go a way toward undoing her good work so I stayed away from it, but it wasn’t easy.

  “It’s been a bad night,” was all she said to Ailsa when she met us in the hall, and I don’t remember much after that.

  Ailsa had put me to bed, I supposed, or woken the valet and had him do it. Once there I lay awake, twisting in my sweaty blankets and trying to recall the sound of Anne’s voice. Anything to not think about my brother’s bloody face and the bits of human meat stuck between his teeth.

  I got through the night somehow, and come the dawn I needed to see Bloody Anne. I had to tell her, I knew I did, and Lady take the Queen’s Warrant or what Ailsa thought of it. I had to tell Anne what we were doing and why, that it wasn’t just my greed that kept us fighting, my greed that had broken my brother’s mind. She had a right to know, I told myself, but truth be told, I simply couldn’t stand to have her think that of me an hour longer.

  I knew where Anne would have gone after that night, and once I was up and dressed I went straight there, to the house on Chandler’s Narrow.

  Will the Wencher opened the door to me himself, and he nodded a greeting.

  “Morning, boss,” he said. “Anne told me you’d likely be by this morning.”

  Of course she had. Bloody Anne knew me better than I knew myself sometimes, or so it seemed to me. I doubt she’d been expecting me so early, though, and when Will showed me to Rosie’s room the two of them were still abed.

  Will knocked, then put his head around the door, and I heard Anne say something but I couldn’t catch what. A moment later Will nodded and held the door open.

  “She says to go in,” he said, so I did.

  Rosie’s room was set up for whoring, as might be expected, with a big feather bed and a cheap gilt-framed mirror on the wall, lamps with shades of red glass and even a bit of old silk canopy hanging above the bed. It struck me as strange to see Bloody Anne in those surroundings, with her short hair and her scar, sitting up in that feather bed and wearing a linen nightshirt. Rosie was lying beside her, her red hair spread out on the pillow and framing her face. Her eyes were closed, but I didn’t think she was asleep.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I can wait, if . . .”

  Anne shook her head. “No, it’s all right, Tomas,” she said. “If you need to talk, I understand.”

  “I do,” I said, “but not about what you think.”

  “Do you want me to go?” Rosie asked without opening her eyes, and there was no hint of sleep in her voice.

  “No,” I said, before Anne could reply. “No, Rosie, I don’t. I’ve something to tell Bloody Anne this morning, something I should have told her a long time ago. I think you know what that is.”

  Rosie sat up at that and fixed me with a stare.

  “Is that really wise, Mr. Piety?”

  “I don’t give a fuck if it’s wise,” I said. “I’m doing it.”

  “As you will, then,” Rosie said.

  She swung her bare feet out of bed and sat there in her thin shift, watching me. Anne looked from me to Rosie and back again in obvious confusion. I don’t know what words she was expecting me to say, but I do know they weren’t the words she got.

  “What is it, Tomas?” she asked at last.

  “There’s something I have to tell you, something that Rosie already knows, but before I do I have to ask you to swear you won’t tell another soul. Will you do that for me, Bloody Anne? Will you swear it on our friendship and our trust?”

  “I swear,” she said, and she looked worried now.

  “My wife,” I said quietly, “my Ailsa, is a Queen’s Man. She’s a knight, Anne, a knight and a spy and an agent of the crown, and my marriage is a sham for the sake of appearances. I’ve never shared a bed with her, and I never expect to. Ailsa has orders from the crown, to do with things in Ellinburg, and to carry out those orders she needed me, and she needed the Pious Men. Everything I’ve been doing almost for the last two years, everything the Pious Men have been doing, has been on Ailsa’s orders. I work for Ailsa, Anne. I work for the Queen’s Men.”

  Anne stared at me for a long, cold moment, her scar twisting as she clenched her jaw. I knew that look. I had seen Bloody Anne moved to anger before, and that was the look that usually came just before she rammed a dagger into someone. I had never thought to have that look turned on me, and in that moment I feared her.

  “I thought I was working for you,” she said at last, in a flat voice. “For you, my boss and my priest and my friend. The Queen’s Men, Tomas? Haven’t we done enough for the fucking queen? We went to Hell for this queen none of us has ever set eyes on, and some of us are still there. Cookpot, that man Wainwright, your own mad brother, even you, all broken by this queen you still want to serve. Tell me why, Tomas. Give me one good fucking reason why I should even listen, and not just bury my dagger in your neck and ride for the south.”

  She was pure furious, I could see that well enough, and my mouth went dry. I remembered what Ailsa had told me, about the Skanians and why I had to do what she said, but that conversation had been a long time ago and I had trouble finding the words now.

  Rosie rescued me. I had expected her to hold her peace, to keep Anne’s rage away from her, but I had to allow that she had more spine than that.

  “This is vital work,” she said, and now she turned and met Anne’s startled gaze. “There are foreigners in the city, as you know. Magicians, and people who are their version of the Queen’s Men. Men from Skania, who back Bloodhands and his Northern Sons. We are all but at war with Skania already, although this is a secret war that we fight, a war in the shadows, and it has to stay that way. We have to win this war while it remains a secret. The country won’t stand another open conflict, not so soon after Abingon. We’ve neither the men nor the money for it, and if it comes to open battle we will lose. If it comes to open battle it will be Abingon all over again, but it will be us dying of plague and starvation while they smash our walls with cannon, not the other way around. You think you had it bad in Abingon, Anne? Just imagine what it was like to be on the other side. That is why Tomas does what he has been doing, and why it is vital that he continues to do so. In secret, do you understand?”

  Anne could only stare at her woman, her throat working as she swallowed.

  “We,” she said at last. “You keep saying ‘we,’ Rosie.”

  “Aye,” Rosie said, and her chin lifted slightly as she spoke. “I’m not a Queen’s Man, but I work for them. I’ve lied to you about some things, I’ll admit that, but no more than I had to.”

  Anne’s jaw clenched again.

  “What else?” she demanded. “What else have you lied to me about, Rosie?”

  “I truly do love you,” Rosie said. “That was no lie.”

  I reached for the door handle
behind me, opened the door, and slipped out of the room. That was a matter between them, and it wasn’t a conversation I needed to overhear.

  I heard Anne’s voice as I closed the door behind me, raised in hurt and anger, but my hearing had been damaged by cannon in the war and I didn’t catch her words. I sighed and went to sit in the parlor and wait.

  Perhaps an hour or more later Anne came and joined me there, and she was dressed now but her hair was messed up more than it had been and she had a slight smile on her face. I didn’t think the two of them had spent the whole time arguing, and that at least was good.

  “So,” she said, before I could speak. “Now you’re a spy and a killer for the queen, then.”

  “Aye, among other things,” I said. “But consider this—it’s not murder when the queen does it. If I kill you, it’s murder. If the queen has you killed, it’s called justice. That’s just the lay of things, and I know which side of it I’d rather be on. I’m still a businessman, that hasn’t changed, and I’m still a priest too, but sometimes I have to do things in the interest of the crown. You understand why, don’t you, Anne?”

  She sighed and looked at her boots.

  “I do,” she said. “I do now that Rosie’s shouted some sense into me, about that and about doubting her. She . . . I think she really does love me, Tomas.”

  “I think so too,” I said.

  I reached for her hand, but Anne moved away and looked at me.

  “Just answer me this,” she said. “We’re fighting a secret war to stop an open war, and we blew up the Wheels and killed Lady only knows how many people to do it. How does violence prevent violence, Tomas? How does that work?”

  I shook my head. I had no words to answer that.

  “Truth be told, I don’t know,” I said. “They say in the temple that sometimes a man has to balance two evils in his hands, and choose the lighter one. Perhaps that’s what this is. I hope so anyway, but I can’t make you any promises. I’m not a general, Anne; I never have been. I’m just a fucking soldier, and I do what I’m told.”