by Peter McLean
Jochan looked at me for a long moment, and then the tears came. He was in my arms a moment later, sobbing incoherently as the battle shock and childhood trauma overcame him once more. I loved my brother, in my way, but there was no way I was putting him in charge of anything. There was one thing he could do for me, though.
An important thing.
‘I’ll want reports,’ I whispered into his ear. ‘Not the sort Enaid will send Anne. Honest ones, you understand? I want the truth of these streets, this city.’
Jochan clapped me on the back like any brother might have done, and he gave me a short nod.
‘Aye,’ he whispered back, and that was done.
*
We were on the road the following day, Bloody Anne and me, Fat Luka and Rosie and Billy the Boy, and we had Oliver and Emil along as extra muscle. I had wanted to bring Black Billy and Simple Sam instead, but Enaid needed them in the Stink and there was nothing to be done about that. The peace with the Northern Sons wasn’t so secure that I could take too much of Anne’s strength out of the city, and I had to accept it. They weren’t my crew any more, and I knew I had to accept that as well.
Billy was sullen about leaving Mina behind, but the lad stayed true to his word and hadn’t told her why we were leaving Ellinburg nor where we were going. I knew I could trust him with the things that mattered, young as he was. Besides, we were riding too hard for him to have spare energy to waste on complaints.
He didn’t look well, and I didn’t think it was just on account of the shit weather and the constant riding. His face still looked too tight, pinched and drawn beneath overly bright eyes. Mina had much the same look about her these days. The pair of them had done since the day of the second battle of the Stink, when they did whatever they had done to that Skanian magician to . . . how had Billy put it? Steal his strength, that was it.
We feasted on that last one before we pulled him apart.
Billy had told me that, and the thought still didn’t sit well in my mind. Truth be told, it made me shudder to think of it. It reminded me of the old sailors’ tales I had heard, of distant lands and cannibals. To my mind it’s not right to feast on another man, but what would I know? I’m no more a cunning man than I am a king, and I know little of such matters. Shortly after that, Billy had been wrong about something for the first time in my memory too, and I wasn’t sure those things were unconnected. I pushed it away for another day, pushed it into the broken strongbox in the back of my mind with all the other things I didn’t want to think about. I concentrated on the plodding rhythm of my horse, and on the road ahead of me.
There were heavy rains most of the way to Dannsburg. The endless fields to either side of us were waterlogged, the road a deeply rutted quagmire beneath our horses’ hooves. We’d brought no baggage with us other than what we could carry for the journey, but I had brought a very great deal of money. As far as I was concerned, we could simply buy whatever we needed once we reached the capital. Speed was the important thing, and I hadn’t wanted to be held to the pace of a wagon. Looking at the state of the road I was glad of that, however wet I was.
Even so, what with the constant rain and Luka and Billy’s inexpert horsemanship, the journey took us nine days all told. When we finally crested the last hill and saw the walls and banners of Dannsburg ahead of us in the grey distance, I thought Fat Luka might weep with relief. He really wasn’t built for long periods in the saddle, it had to be said.
Dannsburg itself seemed much as I remembered it. The hundreds of royal banners flew all across the city, their bright red hanging dark and wet in the rain. I had expected to see them raised at half-staff as a sign of respect for our late queen, but it appeared not.
The heavily armoured City Guard who manned the gates were brusque and efficient as they worked the line of folk waiting to pass through the walls, but there were no black sashes of mourning over their red surcoats where I had thought to see them.
‘What’s the lay of things in the city?’ I asked a guard captain as he rode past.
He gave me a strange look.
‘Well enough,’ he said, and turned away to make an end of it.
I was wet and filthy and I didn’t look like a lord that day, nor a city governor neither. I looked and sounded like the commoner I was, and the likes of me didn’t hold conversations with guard captains. Not in Dannsburg we didn’t, anyway. The relentless rain showed no mercy, soaking through my already sodden cloak and coat. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to be dry.
I paid the gate tax for our party without complaint. I didn’t want to arouse the notice that showing the Queen’s Warrant would have entailed, not just to save a few coins that I could easily afford.
You should use it sparingly, Ailsa had told me, and I knew she’d had the right of that.
We were admitted at last, and we rode through the gatehouse tunnel under the massive city wall and into Dannsburg itself. I glanced up as I rode, and I was dismayed by what I saw. The gate was in poor repair, to speak lightly of it, and the city walls themselves didn’t look much better. I spotted cracks in the masonry in a number of places, and patches of crumbling mortar. That didn’t bode well for how the governing council had been prioritising public spending since the war ended.
Bloody Anne was looking around herself with interest, having never seen the capital before. The rest of them had been there with me the previous year, save for Rosie, but I had a feeling she might have been Dannsburg born. She looked bored, if anything.
The wide cobbled street was glistening wet in the rain but every bit as busy as I remembered it, a bustle of carts and wagons and folk afoot. Trade and commerce don’t stop for a bit of rain, not if folk want to eat, they don’t, but I had thought the death of a queen might at least slow them some.
‘It’s busy,’ I thought aloud. ‘I had thought perhaps—’
‘No,’ Rosie cut me off.
I turned and glanced at her, and I caught the flinty look in her eyes.
Whore she might have been, on the surface at least, but she had the eyes of a killer.
The streets were teeming with people. The City Guard were everywhere, clothed in their casual brutality, and save for the weather, nothing seemed to have changed from how I remembered it.
In Our Lady’s name, I thought, they don’t know. It’s been what now – three, maybe four weeks? – since the queen died, and they don’t know. None of them do.
I wondered how that could possibly be, until the slow, steady rhythm of my horse’s hooves on the cobbled street lulled me to the understanding of it. They didn’t know because Lord Vogel didn’t want them to know, and in Dannsburg Lord Vogel’s will was law.
‘No, of course not,’ I said at last, and Rosie nodded. ‘Let’s not talk about it in public.’
That could have been a fuck-up and no mistake.
A Queen’s Man, a real Queen’s Man, would have known at once, of course. Again I felt like I was groping my way blindfolded down a corridor full of deadfalls when I should have known where each and every trap lay. I was woefully unprepared for this world Ailsa had thrown me into, and I didn’t care for it.
‘Where are we going, boss?’ Fat Luka asked, interrupting my thoughts.
If ever a man had looked so miserable in a saddle or so keen to be out of one then I’ve never seen it. I thought briefly of Ailsa’s house, and felt a fool for doing so.
‘An inn,’ I said. ‘You remember the Bountiful Harvest?’
‘Where we had that sit-down with Grachyev last year? Aye.’
I nodded, and turned my horse that way. I’ve a good memory for city streets, if I say so myself.
‘Who’s Grachyev?’ Anne asked.
I nudged my horse closer to hers so we could speak quietly and not be overheard. In Dannsburg someone is always listening; I remembered that well enough.
‘A businessman,’ I said. ‘He’s a big man here, the boss of the only crew in the city, and he owns that inn. His crew’s a front for the family, no
t that he knows it. We’ll get rooms there.’
Anne raised an eyebrow at that, but said no more.
We left our horses with the inn’s stablehands and carried our saddlebags inside. The Bountiful Harvest was in a wealthy part of the city, and it was very respectable and very expensive. The innkeeper took one look at us, sodden and travel-stained and dirty as we were, and he shook his head.
‘We’re full,’ he said, although the half-empty stables had told me they obviously weren’t.
‘My name is Tomas Piety,’ I told him. ‘From Ellinburg. I am a personal friend of Mr Grachyev.’
I wasn’t, of course. I had only met the man once, and that briefly, but Grachyev’s second was Iagin and Iagin was a Queen’s Man. If he knew his job, then as soon as the summons was sent, my name would have been left with every inn their crew owned in Dannsburg, which was virtually every inn the city had.
The innkeeper’s face turned the colour of spoilt milk, and I saw that Iagin knew his job very well indeed.
‘Of course, Mr Piety,’ he flustered. ‘Forgive me, I didn’t know you. Rooms and meals and hot baths for Mr Grachyev’s friends, of course, at once.’
I nodded and put ten gold crowns down on the counter in front of him one after the other, watching his eyes widen when he saw them. Those coins would pay for our board and lodging for a year or more, and much besides. Also, of course, they would pay for the innkeeper’s silence, and, I hoped, his loyalty.
They say the Queen’s Warrant opens all doors, and I’m sure that’s true. In my experience though, money and respect and influence do it just as well, and more importantly, they do it quieter.
Gold, power, influence.
Those are the levers that move the world.
Chapter 4
Once I had eaten and shaved and taken a much-needed bath, I opened my saddlebags and changed into clothes that were somewhat dryer than the ones I had taken off, if not by much. Luka had the room next to mine, and once I was dressed and had the Weeping Women once again buckled around my waist, I banged on his door. The weight of the twin blades Remorse and Mercy hanging heavy in their scabbards at my hips was reassuring.
‘We’re going out,’ I called.
I heard Luka groan.
‘Aye, boss,’ he said, at last.
I had to present myself at the house of law immediately, I knew that, and I wanted Luka with me. His saddle sores would just have to suffer a little longer. I left the others to rest, and met Luka in the common room of the inn.
‘Is there any chance we could hire a carriage?’ he asked.
I looked at the way he was walking, and I felt a rare moment of pity.
‘Aye, I suppose so,’ I said.
Fat men and riding don’t mix for any length of time, especially not in the wet, and with the size of him I thought his poor horse would be as glad of the rest as he was.
I had the innkeeper arrange a carriage for us, and by that point I was glad to be out of the saddle and the rain myself. We sat in relative comfort as the carriage took us across the city to the forbidding stone bulk of the house of law.
It was still raining, and the huge royal banners hung sodden and lifeless from the heights. I presented myself to the guards on the gate. They were stone-faced, unwelcoming. I thought these ones might at least have a rough idea that something had happened. There must have been a great deal of comings and goings at the house of law over the last few weeks, and if they didn’t know exactly why, then at least they couldn’t have missed that.
The time for subtle and silent was past.
‘My name is Tomas Piety,’ I told them. ‘I’m expected.’
They snapped to attention, and admitted Fat Luka and me into the echoing stone hall. I was still wearing the Weeping Women, I realised, but it seemed that the prohibition against carrying weapons in the house of law didn’t extend to the Queen’s Men themselves.
Of course it didn’t. We were above the law, that was the whole point.
A liveried attendant came hurrying out of an antechamber and led us deeper into the building. I had only been there once before, to a reception Lord Vogel had hosted the previous summer. He’d had a man murdered after dinner, I remembered.
Lord Lan Andronikov, that had been his name. Ailsa had forced his own wife to inform on him, for all that the woman was supposedly her friend. She had locked poor Lady Lan Andronikov in a room and withheld the poppy pipe she was hopelessly dependant on, until her own miserable addiction broke her. It was fair to say that the house of law held no happy memories for me, or in all likelihood for anyone else either.
The attendant led us up a narrow stair and into a long hall lined with doors. Some were open, and as we passed I could see folk bent over desks in what were obviously offices of some sort, their quills scratching against paper as letters were written and entries recorded in ledgers. From the end of the corridor I could hear raised voices.
That door was open too, and I saw that Iagin was in there shouting at three men and a woman who I didn’t know. He was giving them a bollocking that any sergeant would have been proud of, and I don’t think I would have wanted to be on the receiving end of it.
Iagin himself looked much as I remembered him from the sit-down with Grachyev, a man somewhere close to his sixtieth year, with thinning grey hair and a heavy white moustache that all but covered his mouth. The anger was plain to see on his face, and I wasn’t sorry when the attendant kept walking and led us around a corner to a closed door at the end of the corridor.
There he stopped and tapped lightly on the heavy oak. I heard a muffled voice from inside, then the door was open and we were being ushered in.
The office was large but plainly furnished, the desk less impressive than my own had been in the governor’s hall back in Ellinburg. That didn’t matter. The only thing in that room that mattered was the man who sat behind the desk, upright in his chair in a plain black coat. He was tall and lean and white-haired, and at that moment quite possibly the most powerful man in the country.
He was certainly the most feared.
‘Lord Vogel,’ I said, and offered him a stiff bow.
Luka did the same beside me, but said nothing. Vogel regarded us in silence for a moment.
‘Tomas,’ he said. ‘Good. You, close the door.’
Luka did as he was told and Vogel waved us into the two chairs across the desk from him. They were plainly made too, and not designed for comfort. Nothing in that room was.
The silence stretched until I felt the need to fill it.
‘I apologise for the delay, Provost Marshal,’ I said. ‘The weather on the road—’
‘Quite,’ Vogel interrupted. ‘You did well, in Ellinburg. Ailsa was right about you.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ I said.
I’m not one to go grovelling to those who think themselves above me, but this was different. There was something about Lord Vogel, something made of razors and hate that had me feeling cold all the way down to my boots. No sane man would ever cross Dieter Vogel, or show him anything but the greatest of respect. The devil himself, I’d thought him once, and I saw nothing in his soulless eyes to make me change my mind on that now that I worked for him.
‘Tell me what you saw, when you arrived in the city,’ he said.
‘Nothing out of the way,’ I said. ‘I take it the news isn’t widely known.’
‘Indeed not,’ he said. ‘Tell me why not.’
He was always testing, was Vogel, probing with his questions as though he were trying to find the limits of my intellect. I didn’t care for it, but he was my boss so that was just the lay of things and nothing to be done about it.
‘If the people don’t know then it’s because you don’t want them to know,’ I said.
I had given this a great deal of thought while I was in my bath at the Bountiful Harvest, and I thought I had worked my way around to the answer.
‘Obviously. Go on.’
‘You’re worried about the succession,’ I said.
‘The Princess Crown Royal is the heir, but she’s too young to rule in her own name so you need a regent. The Prince Consort is the obvious choice, but it can’t be that simple or it’d be done by now. Someone killed the queen and you don’t know who, so the whole royal household is under suspicion. Including him.’
The ghost of a smile touched Vogel’s thin lips.
‘Very good,’ he said. ‘The whole royal household is, as you say, very much under suspicion. I have a good number of them here now, being questioned. Not the prince, of course, that would be going too far. For the moment, anyway.’
‘He must know his own wife is dead,’ I said.
‘Of course he does. He, the princess and their immediate body servants are sequestered within the palace. The queen is officially indisposed with illness, as are her family. Court functions continue to run surprisingly well without them, thanks to your lady wife. She’s very good at this sort of thing, you know.’
‘Aye, that she is,’ I said.
So the late queen’s husband and the heir to the throne were effectively under house arrest, then, while Ailsa ran court society for them. Most of their servants were being tortured right now somewhere in the depths of this very building, that was what he was telling me.
Vogel was in a cold fury, I realised, and anyone and everyone was under suspicion.
I was back in Dannsburg and no mistake.
*
Thanks be to Our Lady, my interview with Lord Vogel didn’t last long. He’d said his piece, it seemed, and a few moments later Iagin entered the room and took me and Luka away with him.
Iagin and me hadn’t exactly got on the last time we’d met, but that had been mostly down to brandy and us not really trusting each other. Now that we could both be sure we were on the same side I found him genial enough.
‘The Old Man’s chewing the fucking walls,’ he told me as he led Luka and me down a back stair. ‘The whole fucking house of law has been in uproar for weeks. I’m glad you’re here, Tomas. Ailsa’s busy holding society together at the palace, but there’s only so long we can pretend the queen’s got the shits or whatever bollocks it’s supposed to be. I’ve been running the whole fucking circus for weeks and I could use some help. That tit Grachyev’s starting to wonder where I am.’