Priest of Bones

by Peter McLean

  That or they had been told.

  Rogan looked at them all, counting heads and not liking what he saw. I could tell he was wondering what might have happened if I hadn’t been released. Riots are ugly things, and far from unknown in Ellinburg.

  If that gave Rogan something to think on, then that was good.

  Business in Ellinburg is one tenth violence to nine tenths posturing, and it was in everybody’s interest to bring down the ratio of violence. Blood is bad for business, everyone understood that, but all the same sometimes it’s necessary. The threat of it, at least, can be a strong bargaining tool.

  Bloody Anne stepped forward from the crowd and clasped my arm as I walked down the steps from the governor’s hall. We shook hands in that manner, each holding the other’s wrist in the traditional greeting between second and boss. I squeezed her arm for a moment and nodded to her in appreciation.

  I wondered who had taught her that.

  Ailsa, I assumed, or possibly Fat Luka.

  I looked over her shoulder, and my eyes found Jochan in the crowd. He knew that Anne stood above him in the Pious Men, and if he hadn’t fully accepted that truth before, then now there was no way he could avoid it any longer. She had publicly greeted me as my second, and I had returned the greeting in front of too many people for it to be undone.

  That might make trouble later, but I knew it had needed to be done. Anne had obviously known that too, or more likely Ailsa had.

  I walked out into the square with Anne at my side and accepted claps on the shoulder and pats on the arm from my men. Only Jochan hung back, a brooding hurt in his eyes that I knew I wouldn’t be able to ignore for long.

  Luka had brought the fine carriage we had hired the previous night, and I can only think that we made a lordly sight as I stepped up into it with Anne and Jochan behind me. Luka got in after us and closed the door behind him. He thumped on the roof, and the carriage driver flicked his reins, and then we were moving. I sat back against the padded leather bench and sighed.

  “Well done,” I told them. “Bringing the common people with you was a good touch, and not one that the governor will be able to ignore.”

  “They came by themselves,” Anne said. “Perhaps Luka put the word around, but we didn’t force anyone.”

  I nodded. That was good, better than I had expected, in fact.

  Luka just smiled and said nothing.

  He had removed his mummer’s beard and shaved at some point in the night, I noticed, and his eyes crinkled in his smooth, plump face. I would have bet good silver that he had been behind the enthusiasm of the common folk, and I wondered how much that had cost me. Still, it was coin well spent, to my mind, if only to see the look on Rogan’s face.

  “How are the men?” I asked Anne.

  “There was some grief for Grieg,” she said, “although in truth less than there might have been before word got around about what he did in Chandler’s Narrow back in the spring.”

  I nodded. Grieg had lost a lot of friends over that, I knew, and never recovered them. Now he had crossed the river that was between him and Our Lady, to my mind.

  “Aye,” I said, and left it there.

  “The foreign witch has some of them worried,” she went on, “but Cutter proved that witches can die like everyone else, so it isn’t panic. Mostly they’re just glad to see you released unharmed.”

  “Everyone fucking loves you, Tomas,” Jochan said, but he was looking at his boots as he said it, and I couldn’t read the expression on his face.

  * * *

  • • •

  When we got back to the Tanner’s Arms I found Aunt Enaid there waiting for me, with Brak beside her. Ailsa was behind the bar, and there was a hostile tension in the air between the two women that I could feel the moment I walked into the tavern.

  Mika and Black Billy led the boys in a cheer when I walked in, and I grinned and sketched a mock bow that got a laugh.

  “The Golden Chains is ours again,” I said to my aunt, and got another cheer for my trouble.

  My aunt was not cheering.

  “I hear you’re quite the hero,” Enaid said. “The local boy who stood up to the villainous outsiders and won. What a load of fucking horseshit!”

  The room went quiet when she shouted at me, and I narrowed my eyes as I met my aunt’s piercing one-eyed glare.

  “Of course it’s horseshit, Auntie,” I said. “Horseshit makes things grow, and the legend of the Pious Men is even now growing, out there on our streets. That’s good.”

  “Is it?” she snapped. “Is it good, Tomas? The Pious Men are businessmen, but you’ve turned them into soldiers. A pitched fucking battle on the streets, with crossbows? On the edge of Trader’s Row, of all places? How’s the governor supposed to take that?”

  My aunt was giving me a telling in front of almost my entire crew, and I couldn’t let that pass.

  I slammed the flat of my hand down onto the table in front of her to shut her up. I leaned over her, and I spoke quietly but in a voice that I knew the whole room could hear.

  “He’ll take it with his taxes and keep his nose out of my business, like he always has,” I said. “Do not, my dear aunt, tell me how to run my business. Don’t ever do that.”

  I stood up and straightened my coat, and I walked across a tavern that was utterly silent.

  I went upstairs to my room, and Ailsa followed.

  She closed the door behind her and stood there looking at me as I stripped off my coat. It was stained and damp from the cells, and it smelled of shit. I tossed it on the floor and turned to face her in my shirtsleeves.

  “What was that all about?” she demanded in her sharp, Dannsburg voice.

  Just then I would have welcomed common, funny, flirty Ailsa, but it seemed I was getting the other one. I was getting Ailsa the Queen’s Man whether I wanted her or not.

  I met her dark eyes and had to admit that I did want her. There was no fooling myself on that score any longer, however far out of the question it might be. Ridiculous, I knew, but there it was.

  “I can’t have my aunt give me a telling in front of the men, you understand that,” I said. “I have—”

  “Certain expectations to meet, yes, I grasp that,” she interrupted. “Why was she giving you a telling, I mean? I thought that old harridan was part of your operation, before the war?”

  “Aye, she was,” I said. I sat down in the chair and sighed. “Things are different now, Ailsa. Before the war . . . Aye. The Pious Men were businessmen, as she said. Jochan and me, her and Alfread and Donnalt and the others. Me and Jochan were the violent ones, when we had to be, and that wasn’t often. Since we came back things have changed, and not to her liking.”

  “Your business was built on violence,” she said.

  “No, it wasn’t,” I said. “It was built on the threat of violence, and the capability for it, but very seldom the reality of it. In Ellinburg it is enough to be seen as violent, as potentially violent. People are weak, Ailsa, and the poorer and more oppressed they are, the weaker they become. When I gave up bricklaying and became a businessman, me and my brother and two friends walked into this tavern and we made them an offer. We offered to protect them from having their business burned down, in exchange for a weekly tax. They paid. So did the baker, so did the chandler, so did the cobbler. Soon half the Stink was paying us to protect them.”

  “To protect them from yourselves, yes, I understand that,” she said. “And when someone else threatened them?”

  “Aye, then we did what we had said we would do. Protection is protection, after all. The Gutcutters were a new outfit then as well, down in the Wheels, and when they sent lads down the river path to try their luck in the Stink, we showed them how unwise that was. Twice that happened, no more, and then a border was drawn up and everyone went back to doing business in their own neighborhoods and leaving
each other alone. That was just how it worked. When I had enough money I came in here and I told the owner I was buying his tavern, and he didn’t refuse me. No violence was done. It wasn’t necessary, do you see what I’m saying?”

  “That the past was glorious, that the sun always shone, and you were firm but fair and you never really hurt anyone,” Ailsa said, the sarcasm dripping like venom from her beautiful lips. “Yes, Tomas, I know very well what you’re saying and it’s about as true as the face I gave Bloody Anne last night. The past is as scarred and bitter and ugly as your second is, and you know it.”

  That was going too far.

  I was on my feet in a moment, my hand around Ailsa’s throat as I forced her back against the wall.

  “Don’t you ever insult Anne like that,” I hissed in her face. “Don’t you fucking dare!”

  I felt the unmistakable pressure of steel against the inside of my thigh, in the killing place.

  “It would be very wise of you to take your hands off me, and never put them back,” Ailsa said.

  We stood there for a moment, me with my hand around her throat and her with a dagger I hadn’t even known she had, held a whisker away from taking my life. She had me at the disadvantage there, I had to admit.

  I let go and took a step backward, and Ailsa made her blade disappear again.

  You can hide a dagger very well indeed, behind enough lace.

  I remembered her telling me that once, but it seemed a barmaid’s apron served well enough. I had underestimated her, and I wouldn’t make that mistake again.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I slept for a few hours after Ailsa stalked out of my room, making up for the fitful night I had spent in the cells. When I woke I shaved with the cold water in my washbasin, uncomfortable but better than wearing that mustache any longer. By the time I went back downstairs my aunt had left, for which I was glad. I didn’t want more harsh words between us, but I could see no other way it would have gone that day. I had a late breakfast in the kitchen with Hari, who fussed around me as though being taken in by the Guard and released the next day were some great event. Perhaps it was, to him. I had no idea where Hari was from or what he had done before the war, and I was happy to keep it that way. He was a Pious Man now, to my mind, and that was all that mattered. The past was the past, and it was best for everyone to leave it there. Some things in the past didn’t want looking at too closely, I knew that all too well.

  When I returned to the common room, Ailsa was there waiting for me.

  “You look brighter for some sleep, my poor lovely,” she said, wearing her barmaid’s face in front of the other men in there.

  No one would ever have guessed we had been moments from killing each other just a few hours before.

  “I feel it,” I admitted, and it was true.

  I leaned closer to her, hiding my thoughts behind a smile. She smiled back up at me and ran a flirtatious hand along my arm until Mika looked away and Simple Sam went bright red and left the room.

  “I’m sorry if I spoke harshly to you before,” I murmured. “Not enough sleep, and after a fight . . . no one’s quite themselves.”

  “Oh, don’t you worry, my handsome,” she said. “It takes more than hard words to upset Ailsa.”

  I thought perhaps a hand around the throat might do it, though, and I felt bad about that now. All the same, if I had pressed it I knew she would have killed me and disappeared without a backward glance, and no one would ever have found her even if they had been of a mind to look. I had to remind myself who I was dealing with here.

  Do what your father says or the Queen’s Men will come and take you away.

  This was a Queen’s Man right here, her hand lying seductively on my arm, and I knew she was one of the most dangerous people I had ever met in my life.

  “Aye,” I said, and cleared my throat. “We’ll say no more about it, then.”

  “Let’s not,” she whispered, her own accent cutting me across the face sharp as a whip.

  “I can take the bar, boss,” Luka volunteered. “If you two want to, you know, have some time.”

  I looked at him for a moment and nodded. Fat Luka was a good deal cleverer than I had ever given him credit for before the war, I had to admit. He saw things that other men didn’t, and he knew how to use the things he saw, and that made him useful. It made him dangerous too, in his way, but I knew I could trust him.

  “That sounds good,” I said, and caught Ailsa’s eye.

  She giggled on cue and let me chase her up the stairs to my room.

  “What?” she said once we were alone.

  “Ailsa, I’ve said I’m sorry and I meant it,” I said. “Let’s not have harsh words between us.”

  “That’s done,” she said dismissively. “There’s something on your mind, though.”

  “Aye, there is,” I admitted. “Hauer is suspicious. He thinks I’ve done too much too fast, and he’s right. I was thinking on it in the night, and he knows me, Ailsa. He knows that my instinct would have been to consolidate, the way I told you I was planning to, but I didn’t. I went all out, and he’ll know that idea didn’t come from me. He doesn’t know who you are but he knows you came to me, and I think he suspects that you’re still here.”

  Ailsa frowned, and for a moment she looked much older.

  “That is not acceptable,” she said.

  “No, I know,” I said. “There’s more too, although it’s more my problem than yours. My brother. Anne openly declared herself my second this morning, in front of half the Stink. That’s how it is and it’s well and good, but Jochan’s taken it ill. I haven’t seen him since we got back, and come tonight I daresay I’ll have to send the lads out to pour him home from some tavern somewhere. He’ll make trouble, if I’m not careful.”

  “Then be careful,” Ailsa said. “Your brother is your problem, not mine, but the governor worries me.”

  I nodded. I had given this a lot of thought during my night in the cells.

  “I need to fuck something up,” I said. “If I do something rash, something poorly planned that fails, then Hauer will know you weren’t behind it. That would work, but I also can’t be seen to look a fool when I’m just now winning the common folk over to my side.”

  Ailsa smiled at me then, a smile that was neither the barmaid’s nor that of the Dannsburg aristocrat. It was truly beautiful, that smile. For one brief moment, I thought perhaps I had seen her real face.

  “Well, that’s simple, then,” she said, and all at once the aristocrat was back. “Put your brother in charge of something, and let nature take its course.”

  I stared at her.

  Of course, I could see the sense in her words. Everything Jochan touched with an unguided hand went to the whores, just about. Could I hang him out like that, though? Could I give him a job just to watch him fail, because it would put the governor’s mind at ease?

  I knew I had to. This was war, and in war sometimes sacrifices have to be made. Again I felt my respect for Ailsa growing. She had the ruthlessness of a businessman, I had to allow. I liked that about her.

  I liked it a lot.

  I wouldn’t see Jochan get hurt, of course, but people knew what he was like and I knew he could fail without making me lose face. It would still be a failure for the Pious Men, though, and no crew with a Queen’s Man backing them would ever make mistakes. Yes, it made sense, for all that it left a bad taste in my mouth.

  “Perhaps that’s the answer,” I admitted.

  * * *

  • • •

  Jochan rolled into the Tanner’s late that evening, after we had closed. I was in the middle of saying a few words to the men in memory of Grieg.

  My brother was stinking drunk, as I had expected, but I had sent Fat Luka out to find him an hour earlier and Luka had at least brought him home unbloodied. Jochan shoved his way through the circle of men
in front of me, reeking of brandy and vomit, and he leered at me with mad eyes.

  “Grieg was a cunt!” he shouted. “Fuck him. Fuck anyone who hits whores.”

  “We’ve covered that,” I said. “He said his confession and we made it right with him, in our way.”

  “We kicked the fucking piss out of him,” Jochan slurred, and laughed. “Fucking right we did.”

  “We did, and now that’s done,” I said. “Grieg has crossed the river. May he sleep in peace.”

  “May he sleep in peace,” the men echoed.

  “May he fucking rot,” Jochan muttered, but Luka was steering him away toward the door behind me now, and I don’t think anyone else heard.

  I turned to Bloody Anne to say something, I don’t remember what, when Jochan suddenly lurched around in the doorway, almost dragging Luka back with him.

  “That’s another fucking thing!” he bellowed, his words so thick with drink he was barely intelligible. “You fucking . . . your own fucking brother, Tomas. We always stuck together, didn’t we? We fucking used to, anyway. When Da was . . . when . . .”

  “Go to bed, Jochan,” I said, lowering my voice into the tone that always got through to him whatever state he was in. He didn’t want to argue with that tone, I knew, and he really didn’t want to bring up our da in front of everyone. That wouldn’t have been fucking wise. “Go and sleep it off, before you say something you’ll regret.”

  He glared at me, his bloodshot eyes wide and staring in his face. No one spoke. Anne was by my side, and I didn’t think that was helping. This was about that morning, I knew it was, and how Anne and me had greeted each other in front of hundreds of the common folk from our streets. This was about him feeling betrayed, although if he couldn’t see why he wasn’t suitable to be my second, then I wasn’t sure I knew how to explain it to him.

  It was about all that, and about the past. About Da.