by Peter McLean
I frowned at that, and wondered what the fuck Billy the Boy had said or done to Sir Eland that night, while Anne and the men were whoring. Whatever it was, Sir Eland seemed to be of the mind that it had been my doing. Billy seemed to have frightened some honesty into him anyway, and that was good. Whether it would last remained to be seen.
I nodded slowly and fixed him with a look.
“I appreciate your words, Sir Eland,” I said, “and I hope you get that chance soon.”
He sighed and got up.
“I’ll prove it to you somehow,” he said again.
He turned away then and left the Tanner’s Arms, alone.
I circulated after that, shaking hands and listening to what people had to say for themselves while Hari played dice with a couple of local men at another table. I heard nothing new, by and large, but folk appreciated being listened to. There wasn’t enough work to go around, I heard, and some of their neighbors were going hungry. They’d like to help, of course they would, but they had families of their own to feed, surely I understood that.
The streets weren’t as safe as they had been before the war, when the Pious Men were running things properly. I heard that as well, and I knew it was meant to curry my favor. There was still disease. They weren’t ill, oh no, not them, so no need to be throwing them out of the tavern, but they’d heard of people who were. No one they knew, though, of course, but they’d heard things.
Sometime in the middle of the evening when trade had all but died and I was sitting at a corner table with Mika, Ailsa came over to speak to me.
“Quiet night,” I said.
She nodded, still wearing her barmaid’s face for the sake of the remaining men in the common room.
“There’s sickness in the streets again, so I heard,” she told me. “The plague had all but burned itself out these last few weeks, but people are saying how maybe it’s coming back again. A lad on Sailcloth Row come down with a case of the boils, and there’s all but panic. Folk don’t want to mix too much, if you take my meaning, Mr. Piety.”
I frowned at that.
“The plague we had doesn’t give you boils,” I said. “The lad’s probably just been washing in bad water.”
“Or he’s caught the pox off some street scrub,” Mika put in, and immediately looked like he wished he hadn’t. “Begging your pardon, Ailsa.”
“I hope that’s true, sir,” she said, and gave me a look that said she knew very well that it was.
The plague was all but gone from Ellinburg, and thank Our Lady for that, but folk were bound to still be nervous at the first sign of disease of any sort. It was the same sort of nervousness they got at the first sign of magic too, and that made me think of something.
“Have you seen Billy the Boy tonight?” I asked her.
“He’s away in the back, with some of the lads,” she said. “Luka’s been telling them all about how the lad’s going off to learn to be a great magician, and now they can’t get enough of looking at him. I’ve never seen so many men look so impressed about something that weren’t a horse or a woman.”
Luka was good at this sort of thing, I was coming to realize, very good indeed. He was good at making people see what I wanted them to see and in the right way, a way that meant them never getting around to thinking there might be a different way to see a thing. They’d had a word for that in the army, but I couldn’t remember what it was. This was the same sort of thing, to my mind, and it seemed Fat Luka had the knack for it.
“That was skillfully done,” she whispered to me in her own voice.
She was right, it had been well done. I had chosen very well, giving that task to Luka.
The right man for the right job, always.
She gave me a knowing tip of the head and sauntered off back behind her bar.
It was only later that night, when I was lying in my blankets trying to sleep, that I realized I had never spoken to Ailsa about Billy’s magic.
Not even once.
TWENTY
I spent the next morning thinking on what I had heard the night before. A lot of it had been what folk thought I wanted to hear, I knew that, but some of it hadn’t. The streets really weren’t safe at night, and there was nothing like enough work to go around and keep everyone fed. Those things were true enough, and I knew I needed to do something about them.
Finding work for all those people was out of my reach, at the moment anyway, but the other thing wasn’t. To my mind the Pious Men streets weren’t safe because there were crews other than the Pious Men operating on them. That was something I could change, and it suited me well enough to do so. If I needed to do other things later, to feed and employ people, I would need gold to do them.
Ailsa would have gold, or at least access to it, and of course there was the fortune I still had bricked up in the back of the small storeroom from the last time I had worked for the Queen’s Men. That was the problem in front of me, of course. I hadn’t been able to spend much of that gold back then and I couldn’t spend any of it now, not without facing too many hard questions about where it had come from.
I needed to get some of my businesses back, push some of the gold through them to make it look like it had been earned in commerce and honest crime rather than the queen’s money, dirty money that I should never have taken. Then things could be different. There was little enough I could move through the Tanner’s Arms, after all, not with trade how it was at the moment.
I thought on what I had owned, where each business was in relation to the Tanner’s, and how I needed to consolidate my strength into one area to keep it defensible. I wanted the Golden Chains back, but that was out of the question for now. The Chains was a gambling house, a very private one, where only the wealthiest of the city were welcome. The place made a fortune, but I knew it was guarded hard and I didn’t have the strength yet to take it. That and it was almost on Trader’s Row, too far away from my other businesses.
That brought the decision down to a simple one. There was another boardinghouse I had owned, in Slaughterhouse Narrow. That one was an actual boardinghouse, not a thinly disguised stew, a legitimate place that mostly took in traveling slaughtermen and the laborers and skinners who followed them. It wasn’t the Chains, but it made money well enough. If I started with that one, I could use the Chandler’s Narrow house as a staging point, with an easy supply line back to the Tanner’s if needed. I had learned a thing or two in the army, I realized, even if I hadn’t much appreciated it at the time.
Jochan was happy with the idea when I told him, and Bloody Anne still looked preoccupied but she nodded agreement anyway. The three of us were in the back room, having our council of war while Luka kept the door and listened in.
That was good. He’d need to know what the plan was anyway, so he could explain to the lads why it was a good one that would see everyone make money and not get hurt in the process. He knew his job, did Fat Luka, and if I hadn’t quite explained to Jochan and Anne what that job was then I think they had mostly worked their way around to figuring it out for themselves by then.
“Slaughterhouse Narrow it is, then,” Jochan said, and his face twisted into a savage grin that put me in mind of a wild animal. “We’ll make it a fucking slaughterhouse all right, Tomas. These pricks think they can steal from us? Well, they fucking can’t!”
“Well said, brother,” I said. “Well said.”
I tasked Jochan with picking the men for the job, and Luka with putting some fire in their bellies. I kept Anne back for a moment as the two men left the room.
“I have to ask you something, and I hope you won’t take it ill,” I said.
“Go on.”
“When you went to Chandler’s Narrow the other night, did you talk much with Rosie? Afterward, perhaps?”
Anne shrugged. “Some,” she said, looking uncomfortable.
“Did you tell her about B
illy the Boy?”
“I . . . I might have done,” she said. “I was drunk and happy and scared, Tomas. I can’t rightly remember what I said. Why do you ask?”
“No matter,” I said, shrugging it off as a casual thing, but I had learned something.
Rosie hadn’t just been a messenger—she was actually working for Ailsa and the Queen’s Men. That might matter or it might not, but it was a good thing to know. It stood to reason that Ailsa wouldn’t be alone, not in a nest of vipers like ours. Oh, I was sure she could take care of herself and then some, but she had to have some way of passing information back to Dannsburg. No spy works truly alone, I had learned that much in the army. Of course she had someone else attached to my business, and now that I knew who it was I felt a little bit more secure. Once you know who the spy is, you’re halfway to controlling the flow of information.
I’d have to keep a close eye on Rosie from Chandler’s Narrow from now on.
* * *
• • •
We went that night. Ten of us rallied at the Chandler’s Narrow house, slipping through the darkened streets between the Tanner’s and the stew two and three at a time until we were all together. Everyone had their leather and mail on, and weapons hidden under their cloaks. Sir Eland was ready and waiting for us in the parlor of the boardinghouse. He was wearing his stolen armor, with his long sword hanging at his belt.
Jochan and I disagreed over this, but I had made it his business to pick the men for the job and he had chosen Sir Eland as one of them, so I had to let it pass. I still didn’t trust the false knight and I wouldn’t until he gave me a reason to, but Jochan didn’t know him the way I did and he didn’t know about the words we had exchanged in the Tanner’s Arms the previous night. All he saw was a fighting man with good harness and a keen blade and nothing better to do with his night.
Truth be told, I think Sir Eland was getting bored at Chandler’s Narrow. Women didn’t interest him, and to hear him tell it there had only been three fights, all of which he had ended in seconds with his usual arrogant ease. Will’s version of events differed slightly, but not enough that I had to make something of it. Nothing was ever as easy as Sir Eland made it sound to people who hadn’t been there to see, and that was another reason I still didn’t trust him, but he had done what was needed all the same and that was good. So was the house, I had to admit.
The house at Chandler’s Narrow was spotless, in fact, well repaired and all the furniture polished while the women walked around clean and well dressed. Will admitted to me that he had sunk all the money I had given him into the business, but when I offered to cover his expenses he shook his head.
“I’d like to think we were partners now,” he said. “I’ve made my investment, and I think a quarter of the returns for me would be a fair deal on that.”
I looked at him for a long moment. Will the Woman was more shrewd than perhaps I had given him credit for, I realized. He said he had run a bawdy house before the war and I believed him, but now he was talking about moving out of working for me and into working with me, and they were very different things. That showed ambition, and ambition is always to be admired.
Within reason.
“We’ll see,” I said. “If you can show me you’ve taken five marks by next Godsday and turned at least a mark profit on it, you can keep a quarter of that profit. Any less and I’ll cover your expense but take all your profits. Does that sound fair, Will the Woman?”
He nodded.
“That sounds fair,” he said. “Do me a favor, though, boss?”
“What’s that?”
“Stop calling me ‘the Woman.’ Your brother, Jochan, came up with that name and I’ve never cared for it. Maybe I wept when I done hard things, but who hasn’t? It ain’t only women who weep.”
I nodded. He was right about that. All the same, names were given, not chosen, and they weren’t always given kindly. That was the way of soldiers, and he knew that as well as I did.
“Will the Wencher, then. Does that suit you better?”
He snorted.
“I’ll take what I can get,” he said. “Suits me now, I suppose.”
It did, at that.
Jochan hadn’t picked Grieg for that night’s work, and I thought that was wise. I doubted he was welcome at Chandler’s Narrow at the moment. I spoke to Will about that while I was there, and he agreed to make it right with the girl that Grieg had hurt. The crew had already made it right with Grieg, with their boots by the sound of things, and I didn’t think he’d be doing it again.
That done, I gathered the crew together in the parlor. Jochan and Bloody Anne were both there, and Sir Eland and Fat Luka and Nik the Knife and the others.
“You know what we’re doing and why,” I said. “Slaughterhouse Narrow belongs to the Pious Men, and we’re taking it back. The slaughterhouse itself is at the bottom of the narrow. We’ll go around the side and up the steps there toward the boardinghouse. It’ll be dark behind the slaughter yard, so watch your footing.”
“And it fucking stinks,” Jochan added with a grin. “I hope none of you ladies have a dainty nose.”
There were a few halfhearted laughs, but that was it. Men were checking weapons and mail, preparing to fight and kill for me, and few were in the mood for humor. I caught Luka’s eye and looked at Jochan. Luka gave me a nod. He would keep an eye on my brother, that nod said.
We headed out, me and Jochan at the front and Bloody Anne keeping the rear of our column with Sir Eland beside her. Our route led us down Chandler’s Narrow to the main street, then through the shadows of an alley and into the darkness behind the slaughterhouse. Jochan had been right, to be fair; the stench was appalling even by the standards of the Stink. I heard someone gagging, and a muffled thump as someone else hit them to tell them to shut up.
Slaughterhouse Narrow itself led up the hill between two tenement buildings, the steps steep and in utter darkness at that time of night. The blank sides of the buildings loomed over us, robbing us even of moonlight. I felt my way along the damp wall beside me, aiming for the dim glow of a single lantern that hung outside the entrance to the boardinghouse in the small courtyard. As I climbed I realized I could see a shadow under that lantern where a shadow shouldn’t be.
I stopped and put a hand on Jochan’s arm to hold him.
“There’s someone on the door,” I whispered, right close into his ear.
Jochan looked, nodded. He turned and picked a man out of our group, one of his own old crew who I had only ever heard called Cutter. This fellow was lean and wiry, dark haired and bearded, and he hardly ever spoke. He slipped through the men and joined Jochan and me at the front. Jochan pointed to the shadow under the lantern and made a hand gesture that I didn’t recognize, some sign cant of their crew. Cutter nodded. He had a shortsword hidden under his cloak, but he ignored that and produced two small knives from his belt. He held them backward, to my mind, one in each hand with the top under his thumb and the flat of the blade against the inside of his wrist. When he lowered his hands, the knives were invisible.
I watched as he slipped past us and up the steps. He stumbled drunkenly, although he wasn’t drunk.
“Fuckin’ steps,” he slurred, loud enough to be heard. “I fucking hate these . . . fucking steps.”
The shadow under the lantern moved, became the shape of a man.
“Who’s that?”
“Wha’? I’m fucking lost, pal. How d’you get to fucking Trader’s Row from here? I gotta . . . got a woman waiting for me and I can’t . . . fucking find the place.”
The man who should have been on the door laughed and pointed, half turning away from Cutter to indicate the way up through the narrow. Cutter moved fast, his hands crossing the sides of the man’s neck in a blur of movement and steel. Blood sprayed black in the dim light, and Cutter lowered the dead man silently to the cobbles.
“Thanks, pal, you’re . . . you’re a pal,” he said, and stumbled on a few steps farther for the benefit of anyone listening.
That done, he crouched down at the edge of the light and beckoned us on.
I didn’t know this Cutter but it seemed that he had his talents, for all that he hadn’t really made any friends among the men. We hurried to join him. A man on the door meant they were expecting trouble, but after what we had done at Chandler’s Narrow that wasn’t a surprise. I searched the blood-slick body and came up with a key, and I smiled.
“I’m first in,” Jochan whispered. “I’m always first in.”
I nodded. I remembered Kant from my old crew, who I had killed with my own hand before we even reached Ellinburg. He had always been first too, leading his squad with his mace in hand, crushing and bludgeoning and forcing his way forward. Bludgeon and force, that was how Kant the Cunt had made his way in the world, and I couldn’t think that my brother Jochan was much different. Still, it was good, for now.
We’d do this the same way as last time, then. What had worked once would work again, to my mind. I gave Jochan the key and stepped aside as he unlocked the door to the boardinghouse.
“The fuck are you—” someone started, and Jochan’s axe rose and fell.
He charged into the house with Sir Eland and the others at his back. I kept Bloody Anne with me in the narrow until they were all inside, and then we dragged the dead body farther into the shadows and followed a minute later.
There were five of them already dead in the main room, and I could hear fighting from upstairs and in the back. Too much fighting. Nik the Knife was slumped on the floor with his back against the wall, white as a sheet and clutching his stomach.
“How bad is it?” Anne asked him.
