by Peter McLean
‘Aye,’ I said, and took a breath to steady myself. ‘Tell me something, Ailsa. Do you know Sabine?’
‘The woman from Varnburg? No, not at all. Heinrich, my predecessor in Ellinburg, stood witness when I was initiated. I was only introduced to her yesterday.’
‘Iagin told me something about her, and I don’t know if it’s true or not.’
‘And what was that?’
I glanced at her. I had only brought the matter up to change the subject, but now I wondered if I should tell her or not. Ailsa was very close to Vogel, I knew, and she probably told him everything any one of us said in her hearing. That was the same way I’d had Fat Luka watch the other Pious Men for me, I realised suddenly, and tell me who had said what. Perhaps Vogel and me weren’t so very different in the way we did business after all. That was an interesting thought, but one for another time. Either way, I thought she needed to know.
‘Iagin said she’s the Old Man’s wife,’ I said at last.
Ailsa’s face stayed very still.
‘Did he, now?’
‘Aye,’ I said, and I wondered if perhaps I might have just made a mistake.
If I had got Iagin in the shit with Vogel then I would have to tell him, I realised, and risk losing the only one of the Queen’s Men I truly thought of as an ally. Apart from Ailsa herself, of course.
‘How extraordinary,’ Ailsa said. ‘It’s not impossible, I suppose. They’re of an age, give or take. You remember how he hosts dinners, I’m sure, and he’s never actually said that his wife was dead, for all that I had assumed she must be. Well, this is going to be interesting.’
‘Aye,’ I said again, and decided against telling her the other thing that Iagin had told me about Sabine.
If she had truly been Provost Marshal before Vogel then there had to be a good reason why she wasn’t any more, and I was absolutely certain the Old Man wouldn’t want anyone poking at that particular sore.
We passed the rest of the journey to the house of law in silence, but I could almost hear Ailsa’s mind working as she thought over what I had told her. I could only hope that hadn’t been foolish of me.
Chapter 21
Once we were within the house of law, Ailsa left me with a pair of stone-faced attendants. I watched her glide away down a corridor without a word or so much as a backwards glance, and could only assume that the mummery and ritual she had spoken of was about to begin.
The attendants took the Weeping Women from me, and I knew better than to protest. That done, a black silk hood was placed over my head and laced tight behind my neck. The thing made it difficult to breathe and impossible to see, and I gave thanks to Our Lady that I’d had the sense not to get drunk the previous night, however much I had wanted to. Being led down unfamiliar corridors in choking darkness was bad enough as it was, without enduring it with a brandy headache as well.
We went down a long stair, below ground but not into the reeking embrace of the cells. This was some other undercroft of the house of law, then, nowhere I had been before. Our footsteps echoed on stone in a way that told me the passage we walked down was narrow and low-ceilinged. I thought of the sappers’ tunnels at Abingon, and forced the memory away with all the ruthlessness I could muster.
Breathe, I thought. Just breathe.
Lady, but that was easier said than done.
Just breathe.
I’ve never cared for enclosed spaces, and after Abingon I cared for them a great deal less than I had done before. I could almost feel the rock above my head crumbling, showering grit on my shoulders with every muffled roar of the cannon. The memories loomed like pregnant horrors in the darkness, swollen with the ghosts of the dead. I thought I could hear the men’s picks working somewhere ahead of me, never knowing if at any moment we might break through into one of the enemy’s counter-tunnels and be forced to meet them knife to knife in the stifling darkness.
There just wasn’t enough fucking air to breathe, and the hood was sucking against my mouth as I struggled in the confinement. My palms were sweating, and I was having to fight very hard not to panic. Confinement. The tunnels. Oh, in Our Lady’s name, no. I remembered the time when our sappers had breached an enemy tunnel. We had gone at them in the stifling sweaty darkness even as they came at us. Knives, knives in both hands and grit and earth showering us with every barrage as we tore and hacked at each other in the confined space. Stab and hack and pray and scream, that was tunnel warfare. Burrowing animals, tearing each other to pieces in the darkness.
Battle shock, it’s just battle shock. Breathe, damn you!
A door banged open in front of me.
‘Let him come forth,’ said a voice, and I recognised it as Vogel’s.
I was pushed stumbling into the room, and the door slammed shut behind me. There was utter silence other than my own ragged breathing and the pounding of my heart.
Breathe!
The darkness was total in the confines of the hood. I took another step, unsteady on my feet until I felt a hand on my arm. Something dug into the back of my wrist, the sharpness of a silver ring.
Sabine, I thought.
‘Sit him.’
I was turned around by thin, cold hands, then pushed into a chair. Hard wood met the arse of my britches with a slap that surprised me; the seat of the chair was higher than I would have expected, and once I was seated my feet barely touched the floor. It was purposefully designed to be disorientating, I realised, like everything else.
Metal scraped on metal, a harsh shriek in the dark.
‘You have the shears, Mother Ruin?’
‘Always, Father Secrets.’ That was Sabine’s voice, I was sure of it.
‘Speak unto those assembled of the purpose of the shears.’
‘Shears cut. Sever the ties, sever the bonds. Sever the flesh, should the word be denied.’ Hands grasped my shoulders suddenly, making me startle. ‘Sever the tongue, should secrets be told, pierce the eyes, should the word be denied.’
I swallowed.
Mummery, I told myself. It’s just some mummery in the name of tradition.
No doubt that was true. All the same I suddenly needed to piss very badly indeed, and I’ve no shame in admitting that.
‘And shall this one deny the word? I shall hear the counsel of the Knights of the Rose Throne. What say you, Mother Ruin?’
Again the scream of unoiled metal on metal, and in my mind I could see a pair of monstrous shears opening around the sides of my neck ready to snip off my head like the boggart with its long, twisted fingers.
That’s just in stories, stupid stories for children. The boggart isn’t real.
No, of course it wasn’t, but Vogel and Sabine and the rest of the Queen’s Men very much were, and in that moment I was utterly at their mercy.
There’s nothing to truly fear in it.
‘I think not, Father Secrets,’ she said. ‘Mother Ruin has looked into his eyes, and thought him faithful. I will stand by him.’
I remembered how Sabine had stared at me over her glass of wine like blood, and I wondered if that had been a part of this strange test. Perhaps she had some sort of second sight, like my Billy had. That was a horrifying thought.
It’s just mummery. Breathe, damn you!
‘Sister Deceit, what say you?’
‘He will not, Father Secrets.’ I startled as I realised that was Ailsa speaking. ‘I stand by him, as his wife within the family.’
‘Brother Betrayal, what say you?’
‘He will do his part,’ said Konrad. ‘I have seen him work, and I stand by him.’
‘Brother Truth?’
‘He’s all right by me,’ said Iagin. ‘I’ll stand.’
‘Sister Torment?’
‘I rather like him, actually,’ said Ilse. ‘I stand with him.’
‘Understand this, Sir Tomas.’ That was Vogel again, and now his voice was sharp with command. ‘When Mother Ruin cuts the ties that bind your hood she cuts all ties. You foreswear family and business a
nd place and home and past and love, in service of the Rose Throne. Only one love remains, that which you have made within the family. Bow your head to Mother Ruin and accept your place as a Knight of the Rose Throne, or remain forever in the darkness. What say you?’
I would have bet a gold crown to a clipped copper that if I had refused him at that point, my ‘forever’ could have been measured in seconds.
‘Aye, Father Secrets,’ I said, getting a feel for the way this game was to be played. It really wasn’t so very different to the sort of gang rituals I was used to, and again that surprised me. ‘I bow my head.’
I leaned forward, and I felt a sharp tug at the back of my neck. Sabine’s shears, in truth far smaller than I had imagined them to be in my fear, cut through the ties at the back of my hood until she was able to lift it clear of my head.
Flickering torchlight lit the room from flaming sconces on the stone walls, making smoke drift above those gathered around the table. Torches make for shit lights, by and large, which is probably why someone invented lamps, but they’re nothing if not dramatic. Vogel sat at the table’s head, opposite me, and he wore a long black mask of stiffened leather shaped to make him look like the devil I had first thought him to be. Ailsa sat at his right hand and Iagin at his left, with Ilse beside him. Konrad was beside Ailsa, and both he and Ilse had a vacant chair beside them. Every one of the Queen’s Men was masked, although theirs were plain, smooth and faceless and somehow all the more horrifying for it. I was at the foot of the table in what was obviously Sabine’s rightful place.
‘Stand,’ she hissed in my ear, and I did as I was told.
The others remained seated but now all those blank, emotionless masks turned to face me. The silence stretched until I wanted to scream just to fill it.
Breathe, just breathe . . .
At last Vogel stood, his chair scraping on the bare stone floor as he shoved it away. Sabine was still behind me and I couldn’t see her, but I wasn’t prepared to bet she didn’t have a weapon of some sort held very close to my back.
‘Mother Ruin and those of the family here gathered have spoken for you, and sworn to stand with you,’ Vogel said. ‘You will repeat the words of the Royal Oath after me, and it shall bind you forevermore, heart and soul and life and death, to the service of the Rose Throne. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, Father Secrets,’ I said.
Vogel spoke the words of the oath then, and I repeated them after him.
‘I, Sir Tomas of Ellinburg, do solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that I will serve Our Sovereign Lady Her Majesty the Queen or her regent in the office of a Knight of the Rose Throne, without favour or affection, malice or ill will; and that I will foreswear all past ties of family or business or home, save those made within the embrace of the Knights of the Rose Throne; that I will to the full extent of the power vested in me cause the peace to be kept and preserved, and prevent all offences against the person and properties of Her Majesty and those of the Rose Throne; and that I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties thereof faithfully according to law and the word of the Provost Marshal. So do I swear.’
‘So does he swear before the family,’ murmured the assembled Queen’s Men, ‘and may the word never be denied.’
‘So do you swear before Mother Ruin,’ Sabine said from behind me, ‘and may the word never be denied.’
‘So do you swear before Father Secrets,’ said Vogel, ‘and may the word never be denied.’
He looked up at me then, and I could feel the razor of his smile opening behind his mask.
‘Choose a seat at the table,’ he said.
The only two vacant seats were beside Konrad and Ilse. I took the one beside Ilse, as much so as I didn’t have to look at her as anything else.
‘Good choice,’ she murmured as I sat, and I wondered what that meant.
Vogel reached up then and removed his mask, and the others began to do the same. I chanced a look at Sabine, and saw that her mask was a mirror image of the one Vogel himself had worn, her devil no less hideous than his own.
‘Welcome to the family,’ she said.
She placed her mask on the table and took her place at its foot, in a normal chair now and not the strange high seat I had been pushed into. Now she sat in the seat that was forever vacant at Vogel’s dinner table, the hostess’ seat, the place reserved for the matriarch of a household. She might not be Provost Marshal any more, but she quite clearly stood higher than any of the rest of them save Vogel himself. The rest of us, I corrected myself. I was a Queen’s Man in truth now, and I knew there could never be any going back on that. It was widely known that the only way to leave the service of the Queen’s Men was in death.
‘It just remains to give you a name,’ Ailsa said.
Vogel looked at me for a long moment, then showed me the razor edge of his smile once more.
‘Brother Blade,’ he said.
Chapter 22
‘I haven’t been so fucking scared since we tried to undermine the walls at Abingon,’ I confessed to Anne, and threw back another brandy.
‘What was it like?’
I looked at her, and shook my head.
‘Get knighted and take the oath and you’ll find out,’ I said, and immediately regretted it. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you, Bloody Anne. It’s a private thing, a family thing. You understand that, don’t you?’
‘Aye,’ she said. ‘I can respect that.’
I nodded and poured her another brandy, emptying the bottle. We were alone in the private dining room of the Bountiful Harvest, Fat Luka and Rosie having both retired some hours before. Billy was with Ailsa, and I still wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but the lad had been so pleased to be invited to her house for supper that again I hadn’t been able to find it in me to refuse him.
Sister Deceit.
No, I wouldn’t believe that. If she didn’t want to see him then she could easily have avoided it, and she had nothing to gain from it save his company.
All the same, there was reason to the names we had. I had seen that well enough.
Ailsa was the false face, the one who worked behind her veils of gold and lace. Konrad, who had sent his own sister to the cells, and Our Lady only knew who else before her, was Brother Betrayal. That made sense enough. Iagin, the one who sold our stories on the streets with his smiles and promises, was Brother Truth, for the truth we wanted people to hear, and Sister Torment for the torturer spoke for itself. Vogel was Father Secrets for all the things he heard and kept to himself, and I the soldier was now Brother Blade.
Mother Ruin, though, that I struggled with. There was a tale behind that name, I was sure, although I doubted I would ever hear what it was.
‘Did they hurt you?’
I blinked, Anne’s voice disturbing my thoughts.
‘No, no, not really. They just frightened the piss out of me. It’s part of it, I suppose, the same way I cut Desh’s hand while you lot all glared at him like death come calling and waited to see if he’d blink. To see if the man will back down, show fear, any of the things we don’t want. It’s not really much different.’
‘Don’t you think it should be?’
I shrugged, and reached for another bottle.
‘I don’t know, Bloody Anne. The more I see of how it is, working for the crown, the more it looks just the same as what I’m used to.’
‘These aren’t gangsters, Tomas.’
‘Aren’t they? I’m struggling to see much of a difference, save we’ve the law on our side, and that only because we fucking write it.’
‘Aye, well, I wouldn’t know,’ Anne said. She drained her glass and thumped it down on the table. ‘I’m going to bed, Rosie will be waiting up for me.’
I nodded and watched her go, then sat and stared into my glass for a long time. I was right, I knew I was, whatever Bloody Anne might think on the matter. She hadn’t been there, and I had. The Queen’s Men worked exactly like an underworld crew did,
and I wasn’t sure what that meant. Perhaps it didn’t mean anything, but they were certainly nothing like I had ever imagined a secret order of the knighthood to be.
Oh, what would I know? I thought. What does a poor commoner like me know about knights and nobles?
I downed my drink and stood up, and made my way somewhat unsteadily through to the common room of the inn. The innkeeper caught my attention just as I was about to start up the stairs.
‘Oh, Sir Tomas?’ he called. ‘I have a letter for you.’
I held out a hand and he passed me the folded and sealed paper, and I carried it up to my room with me. Once there I examined the seal. Some arms I didn’t recognise were sunk deep into thick red wax. I broke it with my thumbnail and unfolded the paper.
It was a society invitation, I realised, the first one I had ever received addressed purely to me and not simply including me as Ailsa’s husband. It was amazing the difference a knighthood made.
Look at me, Ma, I thought. I’m invited to a ball in Dannsburg.
*
‘Oh gods be good, really?’ Ailsa said. ‘Give it to me.’
I frowned and passed her the invitation. It had been pure chance that I happened to encounter her in the house of law the next morning, but as it turned out Our Lady had been smiling on me that day.
I don’t even want to think what would have happened had I been foolish enough to accept that invitation, which, truth be told, I probably would have done otherwise. I greatly dislike balls and society functions even to this day, but something about receiving that invitation in my own name had spoken to my vanity and my pride. Perhaps it had been intended to, I really wouldn’t know.
‘No, absolutely not,’ Ailsa said as she folded the invitation and tucked it into her pouch. ‘The idiot!’
‘Who is he anyway, this Baron Lan Drunov?’
‘No one of any real consequence,’ Ailsa said. ‘He’s quite wealthy but not enough to make up for only being a baron, and no longer young enough to still hope to make a better place for himself in society through a fortunate marriage. No, I think Baron Lan Drunov will remain a bachelor for the rest of his life, which I imagine can now be counted in days.’