Priest of Bones

by Peter McLean

  “I will.”

  Again the priest tried to turn toward the windows.

  “Thunder,” I hissed at him. “Continue.”

  The whispering in the congregation behind us was getting louder, more urgent. I shot Jochan a look over my shoulder, and I could see the grim smile form on his face as he worked out what was happening. His eyes gleamed in the light of the candles, mad with battle shock but seeming now to welcome the thunder of the explosions, to embrace it as I did.

  Another roar, and now the flames had reached the great waterwheels themselves. The wheels might have been wet but the gantries that held them weren’t, and they burned. Oh, how they burned! I watched in fascination as the first wheel pitched forward and fell into the river in a great cloud of steam.

  “Since . . . since it is your intention to enter into marriage,” Father Goodman stammered, “join your hands, and declare your consent before the gods and this temple.”

  I reached out and took Ailsa’s hand in mine.

  “I, Tomas,” I said, “take you, Ailsa, to be my wife. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad. I will love you and honor you for all the days of my life, for I am an honorable man, as no one here gathered will deny.”

  A sixth explosion rocked the Wheels, sending another great cloud of fire and smoke up into the sky. A rippling line of smaller explosions followed, racing down the length of a street and tearing houses apart as they went. The warehouse at the end of the row went up with a roar, and I thought perhaps the fires had found the Gutcutters’ own hidden cache of blasting weapons. The flames spread in the wind like the wings of devils.

  All was death and destruction, and Ailsa squeezed my hand.

  “I, Ailsa, take you, Tomas, to be my husband. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad. I will love you and honor you all for the days of my life, for I am an honorable woman, as no one here gathered will deny.”

  The sounds of shouting could be heard through the thick stone walls of the temple now, of screams and running feet and ringing bells even up here on Trader’s Row. A fire like that was to be feared indeed, and there would be panic spreading on the streets.

  The smoke reached up to touch the heavens, and below it the Wheels had become Hell.

  Father Goodman was white as a fresh linen shirt above his black robes now, but my brother held him pinned with a stare that brooked no argument.

  “You have declared your consent before the temple,” the priest said, his voice trembling in fear of what was happening outside his walls. “May the gods in their goodness strengthen your consent and fill you both with their blessings. What the gods have joined, no man may divide. May you both walk in righteousness until the end of your days.”

  With that we were married, and all the Wheels was burning bright as though in celebration of our union. It was done.

  All of it.

  FORTY-NINE

  It was the custom in Ellinburg to hold a party after a wedding, and we held ours in the Tanner’s Arms. The grand house could wait until the next day.

  The common room was packed with all the Pious Men and everyone who could be spared from the businesses. So many people from the streets of the Stink came to pay their respects that Sam and Black Billy were serving beer out in the street. Ailsa wasn’t working behind the bar, of course, not on her wedding day. Not ever again, in fact, not now that she was to be a lady of society once more.

  I was standing there laughing, with a full glass of brandy in my hand and my arm around my new wife’s waist, surrounded by my family and my closest friends. My brother was making a fool of himself, drunkenly trying to give a speech while standing on a table and waving a bottle around in his hand.

  That was when the City Guard arrived.

  Captain Rogan himself shouldered his way into the Tanner’s with ten armed and armored men behind him and a look like murder on his face.

  “Tomas Piety,” he growled.

  I turned to face him, and so did the better part of two hundred other folk. I think that was when Rogan began to wonder if perhaps he had miscalculated.

  “Captain Rogan, what a pleasure,” I said. “Have you come to wish me well on my wedding day?”

  “I’ve come to take you in,” he said. “I mean it, this time.”

  “You want to take me to see the widow, Captain?” I asked, my voice quiet and flat but sounding loud in the sudden hush. “On what charge?”

  “What charge?” Rogan spat. “Half the fucking Wheels is on fire! Blasting weapons were used, flashstones and the gods only know how many barrels of powder. There are whole streets gone! I can’t let that pass, not in my city.”

  “I’ll allow that I’m sure you can’t, Captain,” I said. “However, I have spent the afternoon getting married, in the Great Temple of All Gods. The Most Reverend Father Goodman officiated, with all my family and friends around me as everyone will tell you. All of them. The Pious Men had no hand in this terrible thing, Captain, I can assure you of that. They were all at my wedding.”

  Captain Rogan had ten men with him and I had half the Stink with me, and he couldn’t prove a fucking thing. Everyone was quite drunk and in a celebratory mood, but a crowd that size with drink inside them can turn ugly very quickly, and an ugly crowd can fast become a riot. I knew no one there would see their prince dragged off in chains. Not on his wedding day they wouldn’t.

  No one.

  I could see that Captain Rogan knew it too.

  “One day, Piety,” he said. “One day I’ll fucking have you for this.”

  “For something perhaps, Captain, but not for this,” I assured him.

  That got a laugh from the crowd, and that laugh turned into some ugly looks pointed at the Guard. Rogan finally decided that he could count after all, and he ordered his men to withdraw. They turned and trooped back out of the Tanner’s with jeers following them down the street, and Ailsa gave me an approving look. I raised my glass and bade Jochan continue with his speech.

  I never did see Captain Larn and his men again, but the company of army sappers had served me well.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ailsa and me moved into our splendid new house the next day, as man and wife.

  Luka was directing the unpacking, not that either of us had brought much with us from the Tanner’s Arms. We hadn’t needed to. Ailsa must have been keeping Pawl the tailor and his ’prentice boy in full-time work all by herself, what with the amount of new clothes that were waiting for us in the chests and wardrobes in our bedrooms.

  Two bedrooms, I had to accept that. Adjoining to be sure, for the sake of appearances, but we wouldn’t be sharing a bed. That didn’t surprise me, and truth be told, it didn’t sadden me either. Ailsa was clever and fine to look at and she could be good company, when she chose to be, but I didn’t know her. I still felt . . . something, I supposed, for her, but I couldn’t rightly have said what.

  Respect, I supposed. Fascination too, I won’t lie about that, but it was the sort of fascination you might feel toward a lioness seen in a traveling menagerie. You admire the power and the grace of the lioness, yes, but no sane man would choose to lie down with her. I remembered thinking how she had the ruthlessness of a businessman and how much I admired that, but this had been something more than business.

  Much more.

  The attack on the Wheels had been Ailsa’s idea, and the timing to coincide with our wedding had been Ailsa’s plan. Captain Larn and his men had been utterly ruthless in their efficiency. They were professionals indeed. I had been able to see that even while I said my wedding vows.

  The Wheels was a burned and blackened wasteland of devastation.

  I had no idea how many had died in the explosions and the fires that resulted from them, but I had no doubt that it was a lot. Too many, to my mind. The blasts had been targeted at the factories and the businesses,
and it had been Godsday when those places should have been empty. All the same, fires spread quickly in a timber-and-daub city like most of Ellinburg was, even in late winter. No businessman would have done that.

  The butcher’s bill for our wedding day was horrific.

  I had finally got Ailsa alone late the previous night, after the party had died down and we had retired upstairs to keep up the appearance of consummating our marriage. Once the bedroom door was closed she had just smiled at me.

  “The Skanians will have been hurt by that,” she had said.

  I would allow that they probably had been, but not so much as the people of the Wheels had. The Gutcutters were all but wiped out, from what Luka’s spies told me, and that was good, but the slaughter had been on a scale larger than I had ever imagined.

  The Pious Men are businessmen, but you’ve turned them into soldiers.

  I remembered my aunt telling me that, and she had been right. And when specialists had been needed, and weapons that only the army should have, then real soldiers had been found, and they had been used.

  This wasn’t business, I knew that. I was still fighting a war, for all that it was now a hidden one.

  I watched Ailsa, wearing her fine new kirtle as she bustled around our fine new house directing her new servants as though she had no cares in the world, and truth be told, I wasn’t sorry that we wouldn’t be sharing a bed that night.

  There had been a time when I had thought I was falling in love with Ailsa, but I realized now that I had been wrong about that.

  If we cannot stop this infiltration, there will be another war and we will lose. There will be another Abingon, right here in our own country.

  Ailsa had told me that, and she had swayed me to her cause with those words, but when I thought of how the Wheels had looked that morning I wondered if perhaps Abingon hadn’t followed me home after all.

  I have written that those were my streets and my people, and that I wouldn’t see them reduced to the smoking rubble and rotting corpses that we had left behind us in the south. Perhaps I had spared the Stink from that fate, but it seemed to me now that I had done that only at the cost of the Wheels.

  I had brought the horrors of Abingon to the Wheels myself, in the service of the crown.

  No, on balance I didn’t think that I wanted to lie down with the lioness any more.

  Not at all.

  Late that evening, after we had dined and most of the servants had retired to wherever they went, Ailsa and me were sitting in our parlor. She called it the drawing room, for no reason that I understood, and apparently I was to call it that as well. I couldn’t draw to save my life, and I only hoped that I wouldn’t be expected to try.

  A hearty fire crackled in the grate, and we were making light conversation about nothing in particular while I drank brandy and she worked at some embroidery. The big house was quiet around us, and I found that I was already missing the noise and rude camaraderie of the Tanner’s Arms. I heard a thump on the front door and made to rise, but Ailsa lifted a hand.

  “Footman,” she hissed at me. “The steward will come to us if it is important.”

  I nodded and sat back in my chair once more, feeling something of a fool. I had no idea how to live in a big house, with servants.

  I heard one of the footmen open the door, then some muffled conversation coming from the hall. A minute or so later the parlor door opened and our steward coughed politely.

  “Mr. Piety, there is a gentleman here to see you. He gives his name as Cutter.”

  The steward’s tone in itself was enough to tell me what he thought of that. I hadn’t seen Cutter since the day before the wedding, but I had a fair idea of where he had been. I nodded and waved a hand in what I thought was a suitably noble gesture.

  “Show him in,” I said.

  The steward coughed again, this time in a way that said I shouldn’t be receiving the likes of Cutter in the parlor or drawing room or whatever the fuck it was called, not in front of my lady wife, but he had the grace to do as he was told.

  Cutter strolled in with a big wooden box in his hands.

  “Evening, boss,” he said.

  I nodded to him.

  “Cutter,” I said.

  “Brought you a wedding gift, ain’t I?” he said.

  He dumped the box down on the finely inlaid table in front of us that held our drinks, and stood back with an expressionless look on his bearded face. I reached out and flicked back the hinged lid of the box.

  “Well done,” I said. “You’ll forgive me if I don’t mount it over the fireplace.”

  Cutter snorted.

  “I’ll get rid of it,” he said. “Just thought you’d want to see.”

  “Aye,” I said. “My thanks, Cutter. You’ve done well.”

  “Right,” he said, and nodded. “I’ll feed it to the pigs then, now that you’ve seen it.”

  He picked up his box again and left with it under his arm.

  The box that contained Ma Aditi’s head.

  FIFTY

  With the Gutcutters crushed and Ma Aditi dead, all of eastern Ellinburg was mine. I would have been happier if someone had brought me Bloodhands’s head, truth be told, but I settled for what I had.

  No one could tell me what had happened to the Skanian leader who had pretended to be Aditi’s second. Captain Larn and his men had done their evil work and vanished like wraiths the way sappers do, never to be seen again. Cutter had been the only one of my crew to go with them, the night before the wedding. I think he was the only one they respected, and after the raid on the factory that didn’t surprise me. There was something about Cutter that could give nightmares to the hardest of men.

  When I questioned him about it in the Tanner’s Arms a few nights later, he just shrugged.

  “We killed all that was there,” he said. “Set the charges and hid. Lit them at the appointed time and legged it. If he ain’t dead, then he weren’t there.”

  “Be happy, Tomas,” Jochan grinned at me. “That fat boy-fucking whoremonger has finally been kicked across the river where she belongs.”

  I nodded.

  “Aye, she has at that,” I had to agree.

  Ma Aditi wouldn’t be mourned by anyone I knew, that was for sure. Least of all not by the boys I had rescued from the Stables.

  They were doing well, so I heard, going to school and starting to learn the trades of their adopted parents. That was costing me a pretty penny but it was coin well spent, to my mind. In a way I felt like I was finally paying back an old debt, one I owed to my own little brother.

  All the same there was great hardship in the Wheels now. The Gutcutters were gone, or close as made no difference, but so were a lot of people’s jobs and even their homes. Many more than I had bargained for.

  I broke open my treasury in the back of the Tanner’s to make that right. It was a simple thing now, with the Gutcutters gone, to ride into the Wheels like a conquering prince. I came with open hands and I offered protection, and jobs, and the coin to rebuild what had been taken away from them.

  They received me like a savior.

  All but Old Kurt, anyway. I had seen him, once, standing at the end of the alley between Dock Road and the river path. I had ridden past on my black mare with ten men around me, and I had caught sight of the cunning man out of the corner of my eye. He had lifted a dead rat by its tail and held it up toward me, and the look on his face had been unreadable.

  I didn’t think Old Kurt regarded me as any kind of savior at all, but to my mind that was a conversation we didn’t need to have.

  A month after the wedding, the Pious Men streets stretched from the bottom of the Stink up through the Wheels and across the docks beyond, all the way to the northern wall of the city. All of that was mine now, and the people of those streets were my people.

  I reckoned that might gi
ve Bloodhands and the Skanians something to think about.

  * * *

  • • •

  Two months after my wedding, there was to be a spring ball held at the governor’s hall. All the great and the good of Ellinburg were invited, which meant all those of us who had lots of money. That was the definition of what passed for society in Ellinburg, after all. There was no way that Governor Hauer could overlook Ailsa and me when he was sending out his invitations, much as I was sure he would have liked to.

  We arrived outside his hall in a grand carriage, in our most fashionable finery, where we were met by his footmen. The fact that our own “footmen” that night were scarred and uncouth and heavily armed drew no comment, as though the governor’s staff had been prepared in advance for what sort of guest I was. I dare say that they had been, at that.

  We were ushered into the hall and this time I was allowed to climb the great staircase, with Ailsa on my arm in a beautiful dark green gown with diamonds at her throat. There was no servant’s stair this time, not for Tomas Piety there wasn’t.

  Not anymore.

  I was a man of consequence now, a wealthy businessman wed to a noble lady. Even though Ailsa was obviously of Alarian descent and no one seemed to have actually heard of her, she was unmistakably from an aristocratic Dannsburg family. That carried a lot of weight out here in the provinces.

  That alone was enough to secure our place in what passed for Ellinburg society. The open secret that I was the owner of the Golden Chains didn’t hurt, either. That had enough of my wealthy patrons looking sideways at me in the fear that I might mention poppy resin in polite company to ensure that we were treated with nothing but cordiality and respect.

  There was a ballroom on the main floor of the governor’s hall. It was grand enough, to my eye, but obviously not to Ailsa’s. She looked around herself with barely concealed disdain, and wafted a feathered ivory fan in front of her face. That fan had cost more than a carpenter in the Stink made in a month.