Priest of Lies

by Peter McLean

“Aye, well, it’s not so different to the army when the blades come out.”

  That it wasn’t, I had to allow.

  Anne hadn’t been an officer, no, but she was a fucking good sergeant and when it came right down to the close work I knew which I’d rather have beside me. All the same, I thought she might be moving past that now. Anne had made command decisions while I had been away, and good ones at that. She had it in her to truly lead men, I realized then, but that was a thought for another day.

  “Where were the Guard in all this?”

  “The fucking who?” Anne growled. “They might as well not exist, not on our streets anyway. They keep the peace around Trader’s Row, of course, and by and large they keep it in the west of the city too. The Blue Bloods are all but wiped out now, and those as still live have bent the knee and joined the Sons. They didn’t have any choice, in the end. Bloodhands captured their boss, and . . . and he fucking flayed him alive, Tomas. The Sons hanged what was left of him from the west gate, red and wet for all to see, and the Guard said nothing of it. The Sons fucking own the west side of Ellinburg now, all of it. The Guard had a hand in that, you mark me.”

  I didn’t like that, not one little bit. I remembered back in the winter, how I had thought Hauer was doing all he could to keep the peace with the men he had. I had respected him for that, for all that I didn’t care for him.

  It seemed that had changed, as Anne had said in her second letter.

  “Does it seem to you, Bloody Anne, that the Guard might be taking sides?”

  “Aye, it fucking does,” she said. “Hauer stands with the Northern Sons now, I’d bet gold on it.”

  I nodded. That was what I thought, too.

  “Aye, well,” I said. “We’re the Pious Men; we don’t need the fucking Guard to fight our battles for us.”

  I stood up then and clasped Anne’s hand.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I couldn’t want for a better second, or a better friend.”

  Anne cleared her throat and examined her boots, and I left the room before I embarrassed her any more. Bloody Anne wasn’t one to boast, I knew that, and it was clear my praise was starting to make her feel uncomfortable.

  I went to find Borys instead, and I sat at a table in the common room with him. The other lads made themselves scarce, obviously seeing that I wanted a word with him in private.

  “About the Badger’s Rest,” I said. “I don’t want you to feel bad about what happened, Borys.”

  “There were twenty of them,” he said, “and just me and three lads. I tried, but . . . it was run or die, in the end. Perhaps I should have—”

  “No,” I interrupted him. “The place was lost, and you’d be no use to me dead. There’s no shame in it.”

  Borys looked away then, and I thought there were tears in his eyes. He certainly looked ashamed, and that pained me. Borys was a good man.

  He was worried about his girls, no doubt, as Anne had said.

  “The lasses will be all right,” I said. “They got by before, under the Sons. They can do it again, until we take the place back. For a little while they can.”

  Anything can be endured for a little while, every soldier knows that.

  “Aye,” Borys said, and wiped his eyes on the back of his sleeve. “You’re right, boss.”

  “Tell me something,” I said, as much to change the subject as anything else. “I’d value your opinion.”

  Borys was a thoughtful man, as I have written, and old enough to have learned how the world worked.

  “What’s that?”

  “The Guard,” I said. “Do you reckon the Sons have bought them?”

  He looked at me for a long moment, and then he nodded.

  “I do,” he said. “I think they’ve been bought, and sooner or later I think they’ll come for us.”

  * * *

  * * *

  I said as much to Ailsa that night, back in our house off Trader’s Row while she sat by the fire in the drawing room and worked at her embroidery.

  It was good to be home, in the house that had finally begun to feel like it was mine at last. Salo had sent a fast rider ahead of our journey home and made sure everything was prepared for us, of course, and when we had finally made it back to the city all our staff were waiting for us. I had been so pleased to see Cook’s round, red face that I actually kissed her on the cheek, which made her turn redder than ever and set the housemaids to giggling.

  It was good to be home with Ailsa, truth be told. We had made faster time on the return trip but still it had taken us several weeks, and without the pressures of Dannsburg hanging over us I liked to think we had grown somewhat closer during that time. She was good company when she wanted to be, and it had been a pleasant journey.

  The house itself didn’t seem half so big or so grand as it had done before I had been to Dannsburg, and I had to wonder how the last few months had changed me. I was an Ellinburg man through and through, and the place was certainly grander than a bricklayer’s son had any right to ever expect to live in.

  This was my home, I knew, not those great walled mansions of the capital. Of course, less than a year before I’d have sworn that the Stink was my home and I didn’t belong in a place like this. It’s strange how fast a man can grow accustomed to a thing.

  “That’s interesting,” Ailsa said, in a tone that told me she wasn’t at all surprised.

  “Aye, it is,” I said. “If Hauer’s finally turned his fucking coat and sided with the Skanians then it’s very interesting indeed. More to the point, what are you going to do about it?”

  She showed me a thin smile then, the razor smile of the lioness.

  “Wait,” she said. “Hauer will hang himself eventually, given enough rope, and we have been passing great coils of that rope to him for quite some time now. Right now I am more concerned with finding those cunning folk, and with who betrayed our secrets to the house of magicians. Someone in your organization can’t be trusted.”

  “Aye,” I said, although it made my heart heavy to say it. I sighed. “I know that.”

  If they didn’t know who the Queen’s Man in Ellinburg was, then how the fuck did they know about us and Billy?

  I remembered asking Ailsa that, back in Dannsburg. As she had told me then, there was only one way they could have known.

  Someone has been talking.

  There was a traitor in my crew, and I meant to find them.

  I would find them, and then there would be harsh justice.

  FORTY-ONE

  The next day I called on my aunt. Jochan was still living with her and not with his wife and infant daughter, although he was no longer confined to the coal cellar. He spent time with Hanne and the baby, as I have written, but only under Enaid’s supervision and only with two armed men attending her at all times.

  My brother was better than he had been, but he wasn’t healed in the mind and that was plain enough to see. Jochan had a faraway look about him now, like he was always staring into the distance even when he stood right in front of me. I didn’t know what to make of that, but I doubted it was anything good.

  He’s a mad bugger, Tomas.

  Anne had said that, and I thought she was right.

  “What do you make of him?” I asked Aunt Enaid.

  I was sitting in her parlor with her, and she had sent Jochan off to the kitchen with Borys and Stefan to find themselves beer and something to eat. I had brought Borys with me quite deliberately, in the hope that his reassuring presence and level head might do my brother some good. Jochan had gone with my lads meekly enough, I had to allow, but again I doubted that was a good thing. The Jochan I knew wasn’t a meek man.

  Enaid shook her head. “It’s battle shock,” she said. “The very bad kind.”

  “Aye, I know that. Will he get better?”

  “Oh, how in the gods’ names do I kno
w?” she snapped at me. “He’s forever at temple, maybe that will help.”

  I sighed, and looked into the fire. Kneeling in the temple doesn’t make you godly any more than standing in a stable makes you a horse, to my mind. Still, if it helped, then who was I to judge? Hanne held to the Harvest Maiden, I knew that, but of course Jochan had been kneeling before the shrine of Our Lady. He was a soldier, and she was a goddess for soldiers and no mistake.

  “Auntie, can I ask you something?” I said.

  I still wasn’t meeting her eye, and I could tell she thought that was queer.

  “Of course you can, that’s what your fat old aunt’s here for.”

  I sighed, watching the flames dance in the grate.

  Someone has been talking.

  I should have gone to Bloody Anne with this, I knew I should. She was my second, not Enaid, but my aunt was real blood family and she was the one person I could absolutely guarantee wasn’t the traitor. I knew Anne wasn’t either, of course I did, but if I had put this before her then I would have made her feel small for not having seen it herself while she had been in charge, and I didn’t want that. Anne was a soldier, as I have written, and politics and betrayals weren’t her stock-in-trade. My aunt, on the other hand, knew how business worked in a way that Anne probably never would.

  “There’s someone in the crew I can’t trust, and I don’t know who it is,” I said at last. “Someone has been talking, to the governor’s men or to agents of the crown, and that talk made its way to Dannsburg ahead of us. Someone told them a secret I wanted kept, about Billy, and he could have died over it. I want to know who that was.”

  Enaid sucked her teeth for a moment and said nothing.

  “Are you absolutely sure about that?” she asked eventually.

  “Aye,” I said. “I fucking am.”

  She nodded and spat into the fire.

  “Well, there’s men in your crew you barely know, even now. Men you made up to the table in a hurry, and I know why you had to do that and I’m not criticizing, but perhaps now it’s time to take a good long look at them all. That arse-fucking pretend knight who Anne’s got running the Chains, do you trust him?”

  I sighed. I hadn’t done for a long while, no, but last year he had changed that. Last year Sir Eland had brought me the head of a man who had tried to buy him. When I clapped him on the shoulder and thanked him for his loyalty he had almost wept with gratitude, to have finally found a place in the world where he belonged. For all his faults, I knew Sir Eland wasn’t the traitor.

  “Aye, I do,” I said. “I didn’t, but then he gave me a reason to and now I do.”

  “Well and good,” my aunt said. “For what it’s worth, so do I. So long as he keeps his fucking hands off my Brak he’s all right by me.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at that. Truth be told, Brak was probably too old to interest Sir Eland anyway. I very much doubted Brak was the one either; Enaid would have murdered him long before I got my hands on him. It wasn’t Fat Luka, obviously. Since that night we had spent reliving our wild youths together in the Tanner’s, and the time we had spent in Dannsburg, we had become firm friends. I knew I could trust Fat Luka with anything, and calm, faithful Borys too. Nor could I imagine it being Mika or Simple Sam or Black Billy. They were uncomplicated men and I understood them and what levers moved them, but I knew I had one man in my crew who I didn’t understand at all. One who had spent more time with my Billy than I was comfortable with, at that.

  “There’s Cutter,” I said.

  “Aye, there is.”

  She said nothing more, just sat there looking at me while I thought it through in my own time. She was nobody’s fool, wasn’t Aunt Enaid, not by a long way she wasn’t.

  “What do you make of him?” I asked her.

  She spat into the fire again and was silent for a long moment.

  “It was Messia he came from, wasn’t it?”

  “Aye, what of it?”

  “He was in Jochan’s crew in the war, Tomas, but in case it escaped your fucking notice Messia was on the other side of the matter. How is it that he wasn’t fighting for them?”

  I had to allow I had wondered that as well.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  “It seems to me,” my aunt said, “that a man who turned his coat once might do it again.”

  I didn’t like it, but I thought she might be right about that.

  “Aye, perhaps,” I said. “Perhaps I need to speak to Cutter.”

  “I think perhaps you fucking do.”

  I got up then and gave her a respectful nod. I tried to remember the last time I had hugged my aunt, and found that I couldn’t. She had all but raised Jochan and me after I had killed Da, but of course she knew nothing of that and Lady willing she never would. I loved her, in my way, but she wasn’t my ma.

  “Thank you,” I said, and turned to leave her parlor.

  “Tomas,” she said, and something in her voice held me.

  “What?”

  “You know the Rite of the Betrayer, don’t you?”

  I paused for a moment. That was an old thing, an old Ellinburg gang custom. I had never had cause to use it nor even to see it done, but I knew what it was. Every businessman in Ellinburg knew what that was.

  “Aye,” I said after a moment. “I know it.”

  “Then you’ll know it’s a fucking ugly thing,” she said. “Be sure, Tomas. Be very sure indeed, before you call a Pious Man a traitor.”

  * * *

  * * *

  I wasn’t sure, but I had suspicions enough to have Cutter brought to me in the back room of the Tanner’s Arms the next day. I had never managed to work out which levers moved Cutter, but it seemed that perhaps someone else had. Hauer, maybe, or some agent of the house of magicians.

  Bloody Anne was with me, and Luka and Billy the Boy and Jochan too. Anne and Luka were on my side of the matter, but I knew Jochan and Billy were Cutter’s friends, or at least the closest thing he had to any. He wasn’t proven guilty yet, so to my mind it was only right that he had people there who might speak for him. That was how I did justice.

  Sam and Borys brought Cutter into the room, both of them looking stern and keeping quiet the way they were supposed to. Cutter had been dragged out of the house on Slaughterhouse Narrow just after dawn and he was in his shirtsleeves, and I had seen to it that his knives had been taken off him. I looked at the confusion on his lean, bearded face and I wondered if I had the right of this after all. Cutter could act as well as any mummer, though, I knew that, and I wasn’t going to let an expression fool me.

  “Cutter,” I said from my seat at the head of the table. “I’ve some questions for you. You’ll answer them, if you’re wise.”

  The man just shrugged, and I saw him shoot Jochan a look. My brother was seated at my left hand, opposite Anne, and he stared at his man with that way he had about him now, as though he was looking a thousand yards behind where Cutter stood.

  “Do what my brother says,” he said.

  “What is it?” Cutter asked, and there was an edge to his voice as he looked at Jochan that I didn’t know how to read.

  “Someone,” I said, “told some people about young Billy. Someone passed information outside our family. Someone nearly got Billy killed, in Dannsburg. Someone can’t be fucking trusted.”

  “Not me,” Cutter said, and he shook his head to make his point. Again, his eyes were on Jochan as he spoke.

  “Who are you, really?” I demanded, and that brought his attention around to me at last. “A soldier who should have been on the other fucking side and wasn’t. A professional murderer. Why should I—”

  “It wasn’t him,” Jochan interrupted me.

  I turned and looked at my brother then. He was still staring, but I knew he was aware of what was happening in that room and of what would happen if thi
s went against Cutter.

  “And how’s that, then?” I asked him.

  “I know Cutter,” he said, and he cleared his throat. “It wasn’t him.”

  “Well, I don’t fucking know him, and I think it was.”

  “You’re wrong, Papa,” Billy said.

  The lad put his hand on my arm then in a way that he had never done before, and when I looked at him I saw the utter conviction on his face. This was Billy the Seer talking, I realized. Billy who was never wrong when he knew a thing. All the same, I wasn’t sure that was enough. There was always a first time for being wrong.

  “Can I say something?” Cutter asked, his voice quiet but carrying in the sudden hush.

  “Aye,” I said.

  “I’ll talk,” he said. He paused to swallow, but I didn’t think it was with fear. “I’ll say my confession to you, Father, although I never did before. But only to you.”

  I frowned. Cutter wasn’t a religious man, so far as I knew, and of all my crew he was the only one, save Billy the Boy, who had never knelt to me to say confession. Cutter was death walking, and now that he was accused he wanted to speak to me alone. Even unarmed as he was, I thought that might not be wise.

  “Not alone,” I said. “You and me and one other of those here, but I’ll let you choose who.”

  That seemed fair, to my mind, and apparently Cutter agreed about that.

  “Jochan, then,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “Aye, as you will.”

  I sent the others out of the room, even Bloody Anne, leaving just me and Jochan and Cutter in the back room of the Tanner’s Arms. There was something in my brother’s face then that I wasn’t sure I understood.

  Cutter took a step forward and knelt before me, which was something he had never done before.

  “I wish to confess, Father,” he said, and now his voice was very quiet.

  I looked down at Cutter, kneeling on the floor at my feet. Perhaps now I might finally learn what I needed to know about him.

  Everyone has a lever that moves them, and everyone has their weakness, too. If you can’t find the lever to move someone, then you find the weakness, and you take hold of it, and you squeeze until they break.