by Peter McLean
It was Gerta’s husband.
“Smash the oppressors!” he bellowed, his face red with fury. “Burn it all!”
He turned then and saw us, fourteen against his sixty or more, and I saw the light of murderous hatred in his eyes.
“It’s the devil Tomas Piety,” he screamed at me. “Murderer! If you want to leave here alive you’ll listen to me, Piety! We demand—”
I stopped listening to him.
I turned and gave Anne the nod she had been waiting for.
She threw back her cloak and raised the loaded crossbow to her shoulder with a fluid ease that spoke of practiced skill. That skill had been honed to a razor edge in the horrors of Messia and of Abingon, and I knew there was no man there before us who was even close to being her equal.
The string slammed forward with a thump as she pressed the lever, and Gerta’s husband flew backward off his crate in a spray of blood with a bolt through his chest.
A shocked hush fell over the mob, and in that sudden quiet my words carried loudly enough to be heard by everyone.
“I don’t negotiate with animals who hang my people and make demands of me on my own streets,” I said. “Does anyone else have any fucking demands they want to make?”
The other lads threw back their cloaks and raised their crossbows now, holding them trained on the mob and ready to deliver a withering volley that would have decimated them in an instant. It seemed that no one else had anything to say.
I have written that I would have order on my streets, whatever it took.
I meant it.
FORTY-SEVEN
I thought perhaps it was time to see about getting another racehorse, for all that Ailsa had just sniffed at the notion. It had been two days since the riot up on Dock Road, and I had spent much of that time thinking about horses.
My da had always loved the track. He wasn’t really a big gambler, but I think there was something about the excitement and the passion in the air there that spoke to him. Perhaps it was a way to chase the drinking man’s thrill, I didn’t really know, but I knew that men who drank often liked to gamble and that the reverse was usually true as well.
Once or twice he had taken me to the races with him, when he had been sober enough. Whatever else he had done to me, on those rare occasions he had actually felt like a father. I hated my da for what he did to me and Jochan, but I cherished those memories all the same, and I’ve loved horse racing ever since. A racehorse meant status and respect in Ellinburg, and those things were important to me.
The aftermath of the riot would take a lot of effort to clean up, and a lot of coin to repair, and I saw that both of those things were provided. Madame Rainer’s eldest son had inherited the factory along with her other businesses, and a couple of days after the riot he came to me to pay his respects and to thank me for what I had done in putting down the trouble and saving as much of his inheritance as I had.
He was a tall, gangling lad with some twenty years to him and a foolish attempt at a beard sprouting from his chin, but he wasn’t a child. He had come to me of his own choice, for one thing, and that was wise of him. That showed that he knew how things worked in Ellinburg, and that he understood respect.
“Thank you again, Mr. Piety,” he said. He shook my hand and gave me an awkward bow, there in the back room of the Tanner’s Arms, while Bloody Anne and Florence Cooper sat at the table and watched him. “I’ll pay my taxes, and I won’t forget how you tried to help my mother.”
“Aye, well and good,” I said. “This is Florence Cooper, and it’s her crew you’ll be paying your taxes to. See that you remember her name, and you show her respect.”
“Yes, sir,” he said, and he gave Florence another bow. “I’ve hired some men to keep the peace with the workers. Big men, with clubs. It won’t happen again.”
“See that it doesn’t,” I said, and with that he was dismissed.
It came to something when factory owners had to hire their own enforcers, but I only had so many blades I could call on, and as Anne had said in the autumn the City Guard might as well not exist in eastern Ellinburg anymore. Hauer was forcing me to live purely by my own resources, trying to overstretch me until I broke.
Well, I wouldn’t fucking break, not for him and not for anyone else either.
Not ever.
I had Matthias Wolf sent to me after that, and I told him to get himself down to the Wheels with Florence and her girls, and to put himself about. He was conspicuous and he was flamboyant and a showman, and people would see him and they would remember his name. I told him to watch and to listen, and I told him to burn the first cunt he heard spreading sedition, without hesitation or fear of reprisal. I told him to do that publicly and in my name, and he nodded and he went to do it.
He might look like a fool, but he wasn’t one, and he knew how this worked.
This was what I needed now, I knew, not racehorses but magic. The Northern Sons had magicians on their side, provided by their Skanian backers, and I needed it to be known that I had magicians of my own. Wolf was a showman, as I say, and when he set to make an example of someone I didn’t think it would go unnoticed.
The cunning is a shocking thing, when you’re not expecting it, an awe-inspiring thing, and that was good. It was time I made my point, to Governor Hauer and to Bloodhands, and the Skanians and their Northern Sons both.
Shock and awe, that was how it would be done.
* * *
* * *
The chance came sooner than I had expected. A week after the riot a messenger came to my house bearing a letter from Bloodhands.
Mr. Piety,
A meeting would be in our mutual interests. You are a reasonable man and a man of business, I understand that. My backers are prepared to put a substantial business deal in front of you, if you will but sit down with us and listen to reason. I will meet you in a place of your choosing, if you will agree to discuss terms.
KV
I showed the note to Ailsa, and she frowned over it for a long moment.
“He knows who I am,” she said. “He must know you will never agree to a deal.”
“Does he, though?” I asked. “Borys sold Billy’s secret to the house of magicians, not the Skanians, and he never knew who you were anyway. None of them do, except Anne. He might have sold the Badger’s Rest back to the Sons as well, I assume to line his pockets enough to let him get out of my crew and make his way out of the city before I caught up with him, but no, I don’t think Bloodhands does know who you are. The Sons have never attacked this house, after all, and if the Skanians knew there was a Queen’s Man here then I think they would have done. This has always just been business between him and me.”
“Perhaps you’re right,” Ailsa said after a long moment. “Perhaps. It’s an enormous gamble, Tomas.”
“I’ve made those before,” I said.
“Yes, you have, and you know my thoughts on that. I could have skinned you alive after what happened at the house of magicians.”
“Aye, well you didn’t and that’s because I was right and it worked,” I said. “I’ve got a feeling, Ailsa. I think Vhent’s days are numbered. The Skanians have the governor in their pay now, so what do they need Vhent for anymore? He was never anything more than their hired man anyway, I’m sure of it. He certainly doesn’t have the Skanian look about him. Besides, everything he’s done so far has failed. If he can’t kill me or buy me very fast indeed, then I think his foreign masters will lose patience with him.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “but all that means is he will kill you the first chance he gets, and what better chance could you give him than a sit-down?”
“A place of my choosing, he said. He’s desperate, Ailsa. Can you fucking imagine what the Skanians will do to him when they decide he’s failed them?”
“Yes, I can,” she said. “I know exactly what they will
do to him, and it’s no worse than he’ll do to you if he can take you alive.”
“He won’t,” I said. “I’ll meet him at the Chains, and I’ve got a plan.”
Ailsa sighed and put down her embroidery. She looked up at me with a rare honesty in her eyes.
“I hope for both our sakes it’s a very good one,” she said.
* * *
* * *
It was.
I brokered the sit-down through Fat Luka, as protocol dictated, but it was obvious that Bloodhands was in a great haste to make this meeting happen, and he agreed to almost everything just to hurry the process along. That in itself made me more and more sure I was right about how little time he thought he had left to him. His only firm demand had been that I left Billy the Boy out of it, and I agreed to that just to get the thing done.
Three nights later the Golden Chains was closed to the public, and I was sitting at a table in the middle of the empty gaming room with Fat Luka standing behind my chair and my brother seated at my right hand. Anne had wanted to come too, of course she had, but as Ailsa had said this was an enormous gamble and if it all went to the whores then someone had to be left to run the Pious Men after I crossed the river. That someone was Anne, to my mind, and that meant she couldn’t be there.
“Is this really going to fucking work, Tomas?” Jochan asked me, clutching his glass so tight in his hand it was a wonder the heavy crystal didn’t shatter under the pressure.
“Aye, it is,” I said, although I wasn’t quite as confident as I made myself sound.
A leader must always sound confident in his decisions; the captain had taught me that. Show any doubt and your men will smell it, and then they’ll start to doubt themselves. Worse than that they’ll start to doubt you, and sooner or later you’ll lose them. No decision can be questioned once it has been made and acted on. The time for debate is well and truly past, at that point. Once the decision is made it’s the fucking right decision and you have to stand by it, come what may.
Jochan gulped his brandy and poured another from the bottle on the table in front of us, and that was his fourth or fifth glass since we had arrived not half an hour before. The liveried serving girl who was waiting by the wall would have to bring us another bottle soon, at the rate he was getting through the stuff.
“I don’t like this, boss,” Sir Eland said from his place by the door that led out to the courtyard and the shithouse beyond. “There’s too many things taken on trust here, for my liking.”
“Aye, I know,” I said.
“You told him to come unarmed but he won’t, nor will his men.”
“Nor have we,” I pointed out.
“It’s a fucking trap, and we’ve backed right into it,” Eland protested. “This place, there’s only one way in or out and they’ll be between you and it. What would the captain have said about that?”
I snorted. I had to allow him that, I supposed. The captain would have said that was tactical suicide and he’d have been right, on the face of it. There was something else the captain had told me about battle, though, and I didn’t think Sir Eland knew that.
Always cheat, always win.
I remembered the captain telling me that, and he’d been right then and he was right now.
“I know what I’m doing,” I said.
“But, boss—”
“Listen to my fucking brother!” Jochan roared at him, lurching to his feet with his face flushed red with sudden rage. “Our Lady speaks to him, and he’s right! He’s always right, so you shut your cocksucking mouth, Eland, or you’ll be sucking on my fucking axe!”
“Peace, Jochan,” I murmured.
I looked up at him until he spat on the floor in Eland’s general direction and sat down again.
Our Lady spoke to me now, did she? That was something I hadn’t known, I had to allow. I wondered where my poor mad brother had got that notion from. Our Lady speaks to no one, to my mind, with the possible exception of Billy the Boy and even that I doubted. Priest I may be, but I’ll confess that I’m a sight less religious than a lot of my men were.
“Peace,” I said again, as Jochan drained his glass and slammed it angrily down onto the table. “Trust me on this.”
Jochan sighed and pushed his hands back through his already wild hair, making himself look even more the madman that I feared he was.
“I do,” he said, and the light of religious fervor in his eyes gave me pause in a way that his rages never had. “I trust you, Tomas. In Our Lady’s name.”
“Aye, in Our Lady’s name,” I had to respond.
Thankfully my guest arrived then and was shown into the gaming room by my guards, sparing me the need to make further conversation with my brother. This was Klaus Vhent, the man folk called Bloodhands. The man who had flayed the head of the Blue Bloods alive and hanged his peeled red corpse from the west gate. He had half a dozen men with him, and I had expected no less. One of them was very tall and very pale, with long white hair pulled back from his face and held in a silver clasp.
That was the look of a Skanian magician, I knew that, and I didn’t have Billy the Boy with me.
That was about as bad as this could have gone.
FORTY-EIGHT
“Mr. Vhent,” I said, giving Bloodhands as cordial a nod as I could manage under the circumstances. “Do take a seat. Be welcome in my place of business.”
He sat across the table from me, a big scarred brute wearing a thick leather doublet under a long black coat and a heavy cloak. He kept that cloak pulled close around him as though he were still feeling the winter cold even in the warmth of the Golden Chains, and it was quite obvious he was hiding weapons under it. His magician stood behind his chair, locking eyes with Fat Luka over our heads. His other five lads kept to their end of the room, each of them marking one of mine in a way that wasn’t even close to being subtle. They had very plainly put themselves between us and the only outside door, and there was no subtlety in the way they did that, either. It seemed that the time for subtlety was passed, as I had suspected it might be.
“Mr. Piety,” he said, and he gave me a nod.
The serving girl came forward with fresh glasses and another brandy bottle, her long blond hair falling forward over her eyes. She poured for each man around the table, left the bottle there between us, and retreated to her place by the wall without a word.
“So, are you here to buy me or to kill me?” I asked him.
Vhent’s mouth curled up at the edges in the suggestion of a smile that was almost lost among the grizzled scars on his cheeks.
“If we’re to speak that plainly, then whichever it takes,” he said. “Do you know who I work for?”
“Aye, you work for the Skanians and whatever they call their version of the Queen’s Men,” I said.
“That’s right,” he said, and I thought there was a flicker of surprise on his face.
Lady willing I had been right about this and he didn’t know who Ailsa was. All this business would be news to Fat Luka and my brother, I knew that, but again to my mind we were past the time of tiptoeing around such things, whatever Ailsa might think about it. It was time for truths now, and either for bargains or for blood.
“So why should I listen to you?” I asked him. “Your masters want the workforce, I know that. They tried to take over the Ellinburg underworld through Ma Aditi and her Gutcutters, and they failed because I stopped them. They tried again by putting you in charge of the Northern Sons, and again there they’ve failed because you failed at it. Now they’ve given up on that and they’ve given up on you, and they’ve dug so deep into their coffers they’ve managed to buy the fucking governor instead. Now they’re trying to raise mobs on the streets while the governor’s bought-and-paid-for City Guard look the other way, and it’s little enough to do with you anymore. You came here to negotiate, but I don’t see you’ve much of anything to negoti
ate with.”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Vhent said. “I didn’t come here to negotiate at all.”
No, I had never thought for one moment that he had.
Blood it was, then.
The glass in my hand exploded, showering razor fragments into my face. I felt Luka’s hands leave the back of my chair as the magician’s power threw him bodily backward across the room and into Sir Eland, dropping the pair of them. Blades were drawn all around us, Vhent’s men and mine, but he had a Skanian magician behind him and Billy the Boy wasn’t there.
Billy the Boy wasn’t there because Vhent knew who he was and what he could do and what he looked like, and that had been his one firm condition to meeting me here on my own territory. He was no fucking fool, wasn’t Vhent.
But then neither was I.
The blond-haired serving girl stepped forward from the wall, and she raised her hands in front of her.
This is Mina, Billy had said. She’s very strong.
He’d had the right of that, I had to allow. The Skanian magician slammed backward across the room and into a wall, spitting curses as the girl drove him before her with the force of her cunning.
“Son of a dog-sucking street scrub,” she whispered as she walked slowly toward where he was pinned to the wall, her hands still held up in front of her and her pretty young mouth twisting into an ugly shape as she spat obscenities that surprised even me. “You leprous pus-licker, you filthy, putrid sheep’s afterbirth, rancid festering fucking . . .”
She passed beyond my hearing then as Vhent lurched to his feet and threw back his cloak, and a moment later he had a shortsword in each hand. The room was already ringing with the sound of steel on steel as Vhent’s men and mine went for each other.
Sit-downs between rival bosses aren’t common, but they do happen sometimes, and the one rule that is always agreed on is that everyone comes unarmed. That’s also the one rule that everyone always ignores or works their way around, just as I had when I had met Grachyev in Dannsburg. Any place where you’re told weapons can’t be carried is always somewhere you’d be well advised to carry a weapon.