by Peter McLean
I blinked at her in surprise. ‘What? Why?’
‘A ball, Tomas? A ball ? The city is in mourning for our beloved queen and will remain so for quite some time. To throw a ball now, nameday or not, is utter idiocy!’
‘I see,’ I said, and suddenly I did.
In Dannsburg, you show respect to the crown.
Perhaps this Baron Lan Drunov never got that note, but somehow I doubted it.
‘He’s trying to make himself look big,’ I said, and laughed. ‘Only a baron, as you say, and not quite wealthy enough to make up for it, but if he throws the only social function there fucking is this month then he thinks all the people he wishes he could mix with every day will come just for something for do. The tit’s probably invited the fucking Princess Crown Royal.’
I was joking, of course, but the colour visibly drained from Ailsa’s face.
‘Oh, my gods,’ she whispered. ‘You might be right.’
She grabbed my arm and almost dragged me down the corridor and up a flight of stairs to the floor where Vogel’s office was. She knocked once and went in without waiting to be asked.
‘My apologies, Provost Marshal,’ she said as Vogel looked up at us from the stacks of neatly ordered papers on his desk, ‘but I think this might be important.’
She took the invitation out of her pouch and handed it to him.
Vogel scanned the now slightly crumpled paper, and looked up at me. His eyes narrowed.
‘Have you sent a response?’
‘No, sir,’ I said. ‘Not yet.’
‘Good,’ Vogel said. ‘Do you know who else is invited?’
Ailsa cleared her throat. ‘Not yet, sir, but Tomas said, in jest I admit, that Lan Drunov might have sent an invitation to the palace. I fear he may be right.’
I saw Vogel’s jaw twitch, but no more than that.
‘I see,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Well, we have a day ahead of ourselves, if so.’
He dismissed us then, and the two of us took lunch together in the mess at the house of law. I couldn’t help but keep stealing glances at Ailsa while we were eating, remembering the time we had lived together as man and wife in Ellinburg.
Lady, but she was beautiful.
Fool, fool.
‘Did you have a pleasant time with Billy last night?’ I asked at last, for want of anything else to say.
Ailsa smiled at me, that special smile that I thought only I ever saw. The one that actually looked genuine.
I wished I could tell for sure.
Sister Deceit.
Fucking fool.
‘Oh, I did,’ she said. ‘He’s grown so tall, Tomas!’
‘Aye,’ I said, ‘that he has.’
He’d grown gaunt and tight in the face too, the same way Mina had, and overly bright in the eyes, but it seemed Ailsa wasn’t going to mention that.
I wondered if she had even noticed.
The conversation faltered then, until the door opened and Iagin walked in.
‘Seems you were right, Tomas,’ he said. ‘That fucking idiot sent an invitation to the palace.’
‘Oh dear,’ Ailsa said.
‘Right, so she’s not happy, then,’ I said. ‘What’s the word from the Old Man, Iagin?’
‘We arrest him tonight. Our little princess has a new toy she wants to play with.’
Chapter 23
Arresting the likes of Baron Lan Drunov was our bread and beer by then, and I won’t record the details of it here. Suffice to say we broke into his house that night, Iagin and me and Bloody Anne and some of our boys, and we dragged him out of his bed and back to the house of law with us. The interesting thing happened two days later, in the early evening.
Our little princess has a new toy she wants to play with, Iagin had told me, and I soon learned what he meant. Apparently the crown had some time ago commissioned the construction of a massive new siege cannon, larger than any we had used at Abingon. Quite why, or how anyone was paying for it, were questions best not asked. All the same, I was given to understand that the monstrous thing was now complete and awaiting its first live firing.
Perhaps I was being naïve, but I didn’t see it coming at the time.
At sundown that day we were outside the city walls, on what is now called Cannon Hill, to the north of the city. The hill had some other name in those days, but I can’t remember what it was. Half the fucking court was there, and Ailsa and Iagin and Konrad and me.
The cannon was truly enormous, and I knew it had taken a great number of men and oxen to drag the thing up there onto the hilltop that morning. It had a barrel diameter of twenty inches or more, and it must have been fifteen feet long at least. The barrel was made from great bars of iron hooped with black iron rings, all fused together into one huge mass of hatred and destruction. I couldn’t even imagine what it must have weighed, much less cost.
It would have been almost impossible to move under battlefield conditions and it was utterly stupid, but it seemed that the Princess Crown Royal was well pleased with it. She was seated under a black silk canopy atop tiers of hastily constructed wooden benches, commanding a view along the length of the cannon and out into the open farmland beyond.
‘Lady’s sake, Ailsa,’ I whispered to her, ‘this is ridiculous.’
‘It’s Her Highness’ will,’ Ailsa said, and turned away to make an end of it.
Her Highness’ will, I thought. That was all it took, to move this many men and beasts, drovers and carpenters and soldiers and all the other people who must have been sweating blood for the last two days to make this mummer’s show happen because Her Highness fucking willed it.
That was what royalty could do, even with only twelve years to them.
‘Tomas,’ Iagin said, appearing at my elbow. ‘Come on, let’s get a drink.’
There were tents all around the tiers of raised seating, taverners and vintners and folk who were cooking meat on sticks over open fires to sell to the assembled crowd of nobility. Pedlars always appear from nowhere at any event like this, like flies around a carcass. I let Iagin lead me to a tavern tent where we bought mugs of strong beer for a few coppers.
‘I’m seeing it, Iagin,’ I murmured to him, ‘but I still don’t quite believe it.’
‘What part are you struggling with?’
‘The cost of it all,’ I admitted. ‘The sheer fucking waste.’
‘The Old Man thinks it’s worth it.’
‘Aye, to keep Her Highness happy, perhaps. What does her royal father the Prince Regent make of all this, I wonder?’
‘He’s not here,’ Iagin said, and I frowned for a moment before I realised he was right.
‘No, he ain’t, is he? Shouldn’t he be?’
Iagin’s huge moustache twitched as he smirked at me. ‘Should he? That would depend on who you ask.’
I supposed it would, at that.
‘Aye, well,’ I said, and took a swallow of my beer. ‘How long?’
‘Not long,’ Iagin said. ‘We ought to take our seats.’
I followed him to the tiers of benches, and we climbed up half a dozen or so rows to find our places beside Ailsa.
‘Where’s the Old Man?’ I asked, as Iagin took a drink and wiped beer from his huge moustache with the back of his hand.
‘With the princess,’ Ailsa said. ‘With the Prince Regent deciding not to join her, he thought she would benefit from a fatherly arm to lean on.’
‘This was her fucking idea,’ Iagin muttered, but I didn’t think Ailsa heard him.
Had the Prince Regent truly decided not to join her, I wondered, or had he been prevented from doing so? He might be back under house arrest again, for all I knew. By that point it really wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that he was.
The sun was setting by then, and before I had finished my beer a fanfare of trumpets sounded. We all turned and craned our necks to look up at the royal box, where the Princess Crown Royal was now up on her feet. Lord Vogel was standing beside her, I noted, wearing the most
severe mourning clothes a man could commission. He rested a hand on the princess’ shoulder as she spoke in a voice that quivered with the drugs coursing through her young veins.
‘My loyal subjects,’ she began, ‘a time of change is a difficult thing. The death of Her Majesty our royal mother has shocked the realm, but it is my duty and my honour to assure all those here gathered that the crown remains resolute in the face of our enemies. I assure you all, the Rose Throne stands like a rock in the tempest, unassailable and unbreakable.’
I looked up at her, standing there with Vogel’s hand resting on her shoulder in a fatherly manner, and I wondered if the little lass had ever known a time of change before in her life. Probably not, I thought.
‘And so,’ the princess went on, ‘in memory of my beloved late mother and in celebration of her noble martial prowess, this evening you, my most loyal courtiers, shall be the first to witness the awesome power of our new cannon. This weapon was my mother’s dream, and it stands today as her legacy and her eternal gift to our great nation that remains forever above all others!’
‘Good speech,’ I murmured.
‘It ought to be,’ Iagin whispered in my ear. ‘I wrote it myself. Her Highness has a good memory for words, I have to give her that.’
I nodded. I hadn’t really thought she was speaking her own phrases.
‘Before we begin, there is just one more thing,’ the princess said, and the sudden venom in her voice was plain to hear. ‘Bring him forth.’
‘Oh gods, she’s gone off-script,’ Iagin whispered.
Baron Lan Drunov was brought out between two of the Palace Guard, their usual red surcoats replaced with black ones on which the white rose of the royal house stood out stark as moonlight. The poor bastard was still in the same now-stained nightshirt he had been wearing when we dragged him out of his house two days ago, and his bare feet were wet and dirty from the muddy grass underfoot.
A hush descended over the assembled nobles and hangers-on. Even the taverners ceased crying their wares, and I thought that was wise of them. It seemed the cannon itself had been prepared and loaded before we arrived, and had simply been waiting for this moment.
‘This man, the Baron Lan Drunov, has disgraced the dignity of my royal mother, our late and beloved queen,’ the princess continued, and her voice carried like the bolt from a crossbow in the sudden quiet, far louder than it had any natural right to be. ‘In this time of solemn mourning he has sought to hold a ball, for his own aggrandisement and benefit. The Rose Throne is not amused.’
A wooden frame was dragged forward and erected around the gaping maw of the cannon, and the guards tied Lan Drunov to it so that his back was against that awful circle of death.
I swallowed.
I had seen something like this once before, at Abingon, but never at anything like this scale. A cannon a quarter of the size would have done the same job, an eighth the size even, but it seemed that the crown had a statement to make.
It made no difference, I knew. There’s a stage at which the thing is guaranteed, and any more is just wastage, unnecessary and pointless. I looked at the massive cannon, and it seemed to me then that the Princess Crown Royal had elevated pointless wastage almost to an art form.
‘For such disrespect to my royal mother’s memory,’ the princess went on, her voice rising in a spitting fury until she was almost screaming the words, ‘I have decreed that the Baron Lan Drunov be wiped from this earth leaving no trace, not even his hair! Obliterate him!’
The princess resumed her seat then with Vogel’s assistance, and we turned our attention back to the imposing bulk of the cannon. The nightmare played out exactly how might be expected, from there. His lands, title and fortune would be forfeit to the crown after this, of course. Those formally executed are expunged from the records, as opposed to the traitors who simply disappear, and their heirs inherit nothing. The public execution of wealthy criminals, dissenters and idiots was a powerful tool of statecraft, everyone knew that. It was also a very fine source of income for the crown’s coffers.
Our little princess has a new toy she wants to play with.
That was probably closer to the truth. The first was cruel but calculated, nonetheless. That was basically business, simply on a greater scale. This, though, this was sheer wilfulness, wild and unpredictable.
I knew which I would rather face.
Once the baron was secured, the guards withdrew and the cannon crew stepped up, and they too wore black tabards instead of the usual red of the army. I winced as the crew chief lit his long firing pole from a proffered torch, and touched it to the top of the cannon where the priming powder had been laid in the bowl.
It caught with a flash, and a moment later the cannon fired.
The noise was like nothing I had ever heard before, like all the guns of Abingon firing at once, fit to shatter the sky. Flame and smoke roared, like dragons and death and destruction. I had known it was coming and yet still I wanted to throw myself under the benches, to tear at the ground with my hands and dig myself a hole to hide in like a terrified animal. Anything to get away from the noise, the smoke, the concussive blast of hot air that washed over us.
Not again! Lady have mercy, not again!
Baron Lan Drunov was red mist in the air, and it was done.
Breathe, just breathe.
Think. Think of anything else, anything at all.
Dannsburg, you’re in Dannsburg.
Not Abingon, that’s done.
That’s done, and you survived it.
Breathe!
The cost of this, in time and gold, manpower and powder, was staggering. The sheer waste of it, to blast a single fool into pieces. To do what Billy or Mina could have done with a thought, with a gesture.
That wasn’t the point, I realised. The point was that with enough money and men and foundries and powder, they could do it. The arts of the cannon foundry coupled with the alchemical mixing of the blasting powder and the gold to pay for it all could reproduce the effects of magic. I thought of the house of magicians then, of their vast wealth and great learning, and I wondered what they might truly be capable of. It was no wonder Vogel wanted them under his thumb.
Think of that, think of anything.
Anything but Abingon.
Anything but that.
Please, anything but that.
Chapter 24
It was late when we returned to the house of law, and some quirk of Our Lady’s sense of humour contrived to place me alone in the mess with Sabine. She hadn’t been up there on the hill with us, so far as I had noticed anyway, but it was plain that she knew what had taken place that night.
‘How did you find Her Highness’ demonstration, Tomas?’ she asked me, a smile playing across her thin lips as she regarded me over the rim of her wine glass.
We were standing beside the table that served as an open bar, and her pale fingers were wrapped around the stem of the glass in her hand in a way that drew attention to her long, black-lacquered nails.
‘Wasteful,’ I said, before I’d had time to think better of it. ‘I’ve never seen so expensive an execution.’
‘We don’t have executions here,’ she said, and I remembered Ailsa saying much the same thing to me once before. ‘Not for traitors, we don’t. The gallows are for street scum, for vagrants and murderers and petty thieves. People whose peers might be discouraged by such things, yes; those we hang in public. Political enemies, however, no. Martyrdom can be a powerful thing, Tomas, and we strongly discourage it. We prevent it, in fact. Those whose deaths might become a rallying flag to others never truly die, not really. They just disappear. And then there are the third type: the fools. Baron Lan Drunov was a fool, and he was given a fool’s death. An amusement, you might call it. Were you not entertained?’
I remembered the Lord Lan Yetrov and his bear pit, and his idea of what people found entertaining.
‘Not particularly,’ I said.
Sabine laughed then, and that surprised
me.
‘I like you, Tomas,’ she said. ‘You are an honest man, and honest men are rare creatures indeed in the house of law. Come, sit with me.’
She’ll try to seduce you, Iagin had warned me. She always does.
‘Aye, if you want,’ I said, but I was wary as I followed her from the table with its bottles and glasses and over to the end of the room that was set with couches and chairs.
I took a chair, and she settled on a couch across from me. There was a low table between us, but still she felt too close for comfort. She kicked her feet up onto the fabric beside her, showing me the tall heels of her shoes and a flash of pale ankle below her black skirts.
Don’t even fucking think about it. She’s untouchable.
She was fucking alarming, as far as I was concerned, and I was thinking about anything but that. I don’t think I had ever missed Ailsa so much in my life as I did at that moment, but she was away with Vogel going over whatever plots they were putting together between them.
Mother Ruin.
Again I wondered where that name had come from. If I ever found out, I was sure I wouldn’t like the answer.
‘Would you like me to read your cards?’ she asked suddenly.
‘My what?’ I said.
‘Your cards, Tomas. Your future.’
She reached into the pouch she wore at her overly tight belt and withdrew a black velvet drawstring bag. Her long-nailed fingers dipped into it and pinched out a fat deck of cards.
Too fat a deck, to my mind. The packs that normal folk played their gambling games with held fifty or so cards, but hers looked to be eighty with ease. That could only mean one thing.
‘Witch cards,’ I whispered.
‘There’s no witchcraft in painted pasteboard, but call it what you will.’
‘You’re a cunning woman?’
She laughed at that, and tipped her glass of wine like blood into her mouth in one long smooth swallow. She set the glass down on the table in front of her and raised one finely shaped eyebrow.
‘And if I were?’
I shrugged. ‘There’s no shame in it. My own lad has the cunning in him, and his woman too. It’s a surprise, that’s all.’