by Peter McLean
I kicked the table over and faced Vhent, with Remorse and Mercy in my hands.
“Now we’ll fucking see who owns Ellinburg,” he said.
I supposed we would, at that.
We faced each other, two rival gang bosses with blades in our hands. It never came to this, to bosses dueling each other with steel. That was nonsense from stories, I knew that, not something that ever really happened.
Except it seemed like it was about to.
I’m good with swords. I’m very good, and I’ve no shame in admitting that, but one look at Vhent’s stance told me that he was as well. He was a veteran too, of course he was. Ma Aditi had first met him in Abingon, after all, or so I could only assume. He had a shortsword in each hand the same as I did, and he held them with the same easy confidence with which I held the Weeping Women.
Mina had been my trick, my way to cheat this battle the way the captain would have wanted it, but now she was locked in single combat with the Skanian magician. Vhent was right there in front of me, and all my men were busy fighting his men and no time to spare from anyone.
There was no one left to face him but me, and perhaps it was like something from the stories after all.
We crossed blades once, twice, circling around the overturned table and each of us using both shortswords at once, trying to confuse the other. We even had the same style of fighting, and right then I couldn’t have said which one of us was most skilled at it.
Vhent came at me in a sudden surge that answered that question, one of his blades twisting and binding both of mine in a technique so perfect I wish I’d had the time to admire it. He barged at me with his shoulder and his other sword lunged for my throat, and it was all I could do to throw myself backward out of the way.
I landed on my arse on the floor in an undignified heap, losing Remorse as I fell. His blade thrust into the space I had occupied a fraction of a second before. I lashed out with both my legs, trapping his forward knee and twisting hard to send him sprawling beside me onto the brandy-soaked boards.
One of his swords flew from his hand as he fell, but he just spat a curse and dived on top of me. The hilt of his remaining blade crashed into my temple hard enough to make me see stars. He spat into my face as he pinned me with his meaty forearm and tried to bring his blade up and over to do for me.
“I wish I could have fucking skinned you, Piety,” he snarled, “but this will do.”
I still had Mercy in my left hand, but we were too close for me to get the angle I needed to stab him. The best I could do was slice her along his side, which barely cut the thick leather of his doublet. I brought my knee up between his legs and heaved with my hips instead, sending us rolling into the next table. I could feel his hot breath in my face, smell the rancid scent of his teeth and his sweat as we strained against each other.
This was Klaus Vhent, this was Bloodhands, and I hated him with a passion. I hated him enough to bring out the cold devil in me, the one that had killed my da, but sometimes hatred alone just isn’t enough. Vhent was bigger than me, stronger than me, and every bit as good a fighter as I was. That was me done then, and about to cross the river. I could almost see Our Lady opening Her arms to receive me into the gray lands.
We rolled again and now he was back on top and I was half on my side, clutching his wrist with the only hand I had free. His blade twisted in my grip until the edge was against my cheek and drawing blood in a thin, hot trickle. I kept my chin tucked in hard to my shoulder, the way you have to when you’re fighting on the ground, protecting my neck and throat as best I could, but I knew it wouldn’t do for long. He only had to move my head another inch and I would be done for good and at Our Lady’s side. That blade would be into my neck in the killing place any second, I knew, and I was all out of ways to stop him.
“Pray to your fucking goddess,” he hissed, and he shifted his great weight and he pushed my head back the inch he needed to expose my throat.
His snarling face exploded in a spray of brains and blood and bone.
Sharp, wet, heavy things smashed into my face and almost choked me on the gush of hot, slick fluids. I blinked the filth of a man’s life out of my eyes, and I looked up at my brother. He was standing over Vhent’s corpse with his axe dripping in his hands.
“Our Lady’s name, Her will be done,” he said.
* * *
* * *
“I’m sorry, Mr. Piety,” Mina said to me, afterward. “I can’t do it otherwise, not unless I say them filthy things. It makes me feel dirty to talk like that and I don’t like it but that’s just how it works, for me.”
“It’s all right, lass,” I said. “The cunning’s different for everyone, I understand that. If you need to talk when you work, then you talk, and no one will think ill of you for it. You did well tonight, very well indeed.”
I was drenched in blood and brains and whatever other liquid comes out of a man’s head when an axe splits it in two right over your fucking face. I didn’t feel like I was in any position right then to judge the girl for the words she had said.
“I’ll allow that it worked,” Sir Eland said, “but only fucking just. We’ve three men dead, and another two wounded.”
“Aye,” I said. “Aye, we have, but we’ve fucking killed Bloodhands. That’s a fair trade, and a good night’s work.”
“Is it?” he demanded of me. “Is it fair, boss? Is it really?”
I turned then and I stared at the false knight, and thinking back on it I dread to think how I must have looked. Like some devil from Hell, I could only imagine, dripping with blood and brains as I was. He swallowed, and he dropped his gaze.
“Lady’s sake,” I said, turning away from him to survey the carnage in the room. “This is going to take some fucking cleaning before we can open again.”
I laughed, but it was a cold laugh. A hollow one, with no humor in it.
I felt cold all over, and I knew why that was. The battle shock was coming down on me, of course it was. I had the inside of a man’s head running down my cheeks. There were bodies piled on the floor, and blood everywhere. Someone had broken an oil lamp in the fighting, and one of the carpets was on fire because of it and giving off a thick, acrid smoke.
Against the far wall, a Skanian magician had been torn into five pieces by the fury of a young girl’s twisted mind. His ruptured entrails were spooled across the floor in the considerable space between his pelvis and his rib cage, and the whole mess reeked of shit.
Abingon had smelled like that, of blood and shit, fire and death. It smelled good.
I threw back my head and laughed, and laughed.
It smelled like victory.
FORTY-NINE
It was three days after the sit-down before I was in my right mind again.
The bout of battle shock that had took hold of me was brutal, worse than I’d ever had before.
Ailsa nursed me through those dark days herself, her soothing words and cool hands probably the only things that kept me from hurting myself, or more likely someone else. If I hadn’t loved her before that, then I did by the end of it, and I’ve no shame in admitting that.
On the fourth day she finally let me get out of my bed, at least, although I suspected that was only because she couldn’t turn Bloody Anne away yet again.
Anne was waiting for me in my study, as she had been every morning since that night.
“Lady’s sake, you look like shit,” she said when I came in.
“Thanks,” I muttered, but I had to smile all the same.
Bloody Anne would always tell me the truth; I knew that and I was glad of it. She was my conscience, in some strange way, my view of the world that wasn’t filtered through the eyes of that uncaring cold devil. As always she had the right of it, of course she did. I was unshaven, and wearing a loose robe and slippers like some sort of rich invalid, and I could feel that I still wasn’t qu
ite of calm mind.
I sank into the chair behind my desk with a sigh and looked at her.
“What’s the lay of things?” I asked her.
“It’s hard to say,” Anne confessed. “Matthias Wolf has put the very fear of the gods into the Wheels folk. That’s good enough in itself, I suppose, but I reckon all it means is that those who already hated us now just hate us even more. West of the city . . . oh, the Lady only knows. Sir Eland had Vhent’s body fed to the pigs nice and quiet, and those of his men too, so officially no one knows what happened to him. All the same, it’s known that he went to a sit-down with you and he never came back, and there’s no hiding that.”
What the fuck was she talking about? I don’t hide. I never fucking hide, not from anyone, not anymore. Not since my da.
Never again.
I don’t back down, and I don’t fucking hide!
“I don’t want to fucking hide that,” I shouted at her. “I want it known, Anne. I want it known far and fucking wide what happens to people who cross the Pious Men!”
I was leaning over the desk toward her, I realized, my hands balled into tight fists against the polished wood in front of me. No, I was most definitely not calm of mind yet. I made myself sit back down, forced myself to just breathe, to breathe in the deep, steady rhythm that Ailsa had taught me. That helped some, but it couldn’t take the stench of Abingon out of my nostrils. I don’t know that anything ever will.
“Aye, well, I reckon everyone knows that now,” Anne said.
“Good,” I said. Anne grunted in a way that wasn’t dissent but wasn’t quite agreement either, and I looked up from my hands and met her eyes. “What?”
“Look, Tomas . . .” Anne started, and tailed off.
She was being careful, I realized, very careful indeed about what she said and what opinions she expressed. She was being careful not to rouse my fury, and that made me feel like I had been punched in the guts. She was my best friend, for the Lady’s sake, my only real friend, and she was looking at me the way I had looked at Jochan after that night the previous winter when he had eaten a man’s throat.
“I’m not mad, Bloody Anne,” I said quietly. “I’m not my brother. I’ve had a . . . a bad few days, I’ll allow that, but I’m not mad. A lot of men have battle shock; it’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I know,” Anne said quietly. “I know, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel like I thought it was.”
“Forget it,” I said. “You were going to say something, so say it. I won’t take it ill.”
“It’s Vhent, or Bloodhands or whatever we’re calling him,” Anne said. “You and Jochan killed him, and that’s good, but it’s changed fucking nothing. The Northern Sons are still there. There’s still disorder on the streets, and the governor’s still doing fuck-all about it.”
“Aye, well, he wouldn’t,” I said. “You remember what I told you that morning in Rosie’s room, about the Skanians and the work I do for the crown? Aye, of course you do. Well, those Skanians, the people who owned Bloodhands, I think they own the governor now. I think they worked out that Vhent wasn’t going to beat us, so now they’re trying something new.”
“Fat Luka said as much yesterday,” Anne said. “I think you’re right, and if we’re not fucking careful it’s going to work.”
* * *
* * *
A week after the sit-down, Ailsa finally allowed that I was as recovered as I was likely to get, and she let me dress in proper clothes and visit Ernst the barber to have myself made presentable again. That done I was ready to face the world once more, and a good thing too.
When I returned home I finally felt like myself again. I went and joined Ailsa in the drawing room, where she was waiting for me with a letter in her hand.
“We have an invitation,” Ailsa said, once I was sat down with a drink in my hand.
“Oh?”
“Yes, and I’ve been giving this one quite some thought while you’ve been out. It’s from Hauer.”
I stared at her. Governor Hauer had been doing his utmost all winter to pretend we didn’t exist, and now he sent us a society invitation? That didn’t feel right, to my mind.
“He must want to talk,” I said, “but the last time he wanted to speak to me he just had me arrested. What’s changed?”
“Well, Vhent is gone, of course,” she said, “but as you surmised I think the Skanians were all but done with him anyway. Hauer is their new cat’s-paw, now. I’ve been thinking on it, and I don’t believe he will move against you again until he really means it. No more false arrests, no more mummer’s shows for the people. I think he’s serious now. This is the sort of thing Lord Vogel does.”
“Hauer isn’t Vogel,” I pointed out.
“No, he’s not, but whoever is behind him on the Skanian side quite possibly is, in their terms. If they have found enough gold to buy the governor, then this must have the sanction of their highest levels. Those people will be no fools, Tomas.”
No, I had never thought that they would be.
“So what should we do?”
“We have to accept, of course,” she said. “It’s a reception, not a dinner, twenty or so people, so he can hardly have you assassinated right there and then in front of everyone. He’s not Vogel, as you say. No, I agree he wants to talk, or to threaten, or possibly to put forward an offer of some kind. We have to go, but we shall have to be very careful about it.”
“Aye, that makes sense.” I nodded, for all that I didn’t like it. “Can we get away with bringing Billy with us?”
Ailsa frowned, and looked down once more at the letter of invitation in her hand.
“No, I don’t think so,” she said. “It’s a formal invitation in our names, and only in our names. Vhent knew what Billy can do and that means Hauer knows too, and he won’t take the chance.”
“We could dress Mina up as your maid, perhaps?”
Ailsa shook her head.
“No one brings their own servants to these things, Tomas,” she said. “It’s a nice idea but we’d never get away with it, and I don’t want to risk losing the girl. She’s too useful to waste.”
Aye, that she was. Mina had saved my life at the sit-down with Bloodhands, her and Jochan, and I wouldn’t forget that.
“So we just have to trust him, is that it?”
“I don’t trust Governor Hauer as far as I can spit,” Ailsa said, and that made me smile. That sounded like my Ailsa, that sweet, funny, common girl who didn’t exist. The one I had first fallen for. Surely the lioness didn’t speak like that. “All the same, we’ve little enough choice, but I have a man inside the governor’s hall now. Not a highly placed man, sadly, but one who frequents Chandler’s Narrow nonetheless. Rosie’s girls were able to turn him easily enough, and he now reports to me. From what he’s said I think it’s safe, Tomas, but it’s still a gamble.”
“Aye, well,” I said. “Everything is.”
* * *
* * *
The governor’s reception was a tedious affair, as such things usually are. Jon Lan Barkov was there, him of the ridiculous painting, and Madame Rainer’s son, and a number of other folk who seemed to be possessed of more money than sense or personality. I knew some of them from the Golden Chains, although few still came in now. When Ailsa and me entered the grand room in the governor’s hall the atmosphere became something between awkward and hostile, but no one had the spine to say anything to my face that I would have had to take ill.
I accepted a tall glass of unwanted wine from a liveried footman and Ailsa did the same, and together we began to circulate and play the game of society manners. It was a game, I had come to realize while we were in Dannsburg. It was a vicious, deadly game where barbed insults took the place of daggers, but the damage done could be every bit as bloody.
After ten minutes or so Governor Hauer contrived to p
lace himself beside me under the tall windows.
“How was your riot?” he asked me, the corner of his mouth twitching with an amusement that made we want to stab him right then. “I heard your feral whores didn’t fare too well.”
“Two of the Flower Girls are dead, and another won’t fight again,” I said, “but you know that. Was it your work, or Vhent’s?”
“And how do you suppose it would be my work? It is the governor’s job to keep the peace.”
I turned and leaned close to him.
“I know what you’re doing,” I told him, lowering my voice to be sure that we weren’t overheard. “Withholding the Guard from my streets, trying to turn my own people against me. I know what you’re doing, and it won’t fucking work.”
“Oh?”
“There’s a thing you need to understand, my lord governor, and I don’t think that you do. We’re the Pious Men, and we’re the Flower Girls, and we’re the Headhunters. We survived Messia, and we survived Abingon while you sat here on your arse and drank wine. We are Ellinburg, and we stand together. You can hurt us, you can even make us bleed, but you can never make us fear.”
“Brave words for someone who shot an innocent, unarmed man.”
“Unarmed maybe, not innocent. No more than Vhent was. No more than you are.”
“And what did happen to Vhent?” Hauer demanded. “He’s been missing for over a week.”
“I heard he died suddenly.”
“And what did he die of, exactly?” Hauer hissed, his face flushing with drink and anger.
“An axe,” I said.
He glared at me for a moment, then turned sharply away. I’d thought he might have had more to say about it than that, but it seemed not.