by Peter McLean
“She’s a lady of the Dannsburg court,” I said. “A very respectable lady. You would do well to remember that.”
Hauer met my flat stare and swallowed. He was close to crossing a line with me here, and I could tell he knew it. Ailsa was my wife, after all, painful sham though that may be. To openly disrespect her to my face would be a step too far. I wouldn’t be able to let it pass if he did that.
“A lady of the court,” he repeated, and I nodded slowly.
If anyone remembered there had been an Alarian barmaid working in one of my taverns last year, well, who was to say they were one and the same woman? The Ailsa I had married was nothing like the funny, flirty, common girl who had worked in the Tanner’s Arms. She was a master of the false face, as I have written, and for all intents and purposes those were two totally different women.
None of my crew would say otherwise.
Not ever.
* * *
* * *
Hauer let me go after that, having no other option bar throwing me in the cells without charge. He couldn’t do that without facing dire consequences, and he knew it. I had spent a night in the cells back in the winter, and when I had finally been released Bloody Anne had been waiting for me with some two hundred folk from my streets around her. A mob like that rioting on Trader’s Row would have been disastrous for Hauer.
But it was Ailsa who was waiting for me that day, in our carriage with two of the footmen and Desh for muscle. Our house was barely ten minutes’ walk from the governor’s hall, but of course I was in my shirtsleeves and how would that have looked? I stepped up into the carriage with her and thumped on the roof to get the coachman moving.
“What happened?” she asked me.
I looked sideways at Desh and gave my head a tiny shake.
“I’m well,” I said. “A misunderstanding about business, that’s all.”
She nodded and held her peace.
We stayed silent until we were back in our parlor or drawing room or whatever it was called and the door was closed behind us.
“Hauer knows,” I said.
“He can’t do.”
I sighed and poured myself a brandy. I offered Ailsa one, but she shook her head.
“No, perhaps not,” I allowed, “but he suspects something. He knows very well that what happened in the Wheels was my doing.”
“Of course he does, he’s not a complete idiot. The important thing is that he can’t prove anything, so it doesn’t matter.”
“No, but he’s still picking at it like a scab, and he’s started asking questions about you,” I said. “I don’t like it.”
“I don’t like anything Governor Hauer does, but everything in its time. What of his association with the Skanians?”
“I brought it up, in a roundabout way,” I said. “He knows who Vhent works for, I’m sure of it.”
Ailsa nodded.
“I agree,” she said, “and that will be his downfall. However much they’re paying him, he must realize that Dannsburg will notice what he’s doing eventually and send . . . well, someone like me, to put a stop to it. He clearly intends to make himself rich enough to flee the country before that happens. He’s a fool if he thinks there is anywhere in the world he could run to that is beyond the reach of the Queen’s Men, but that’s beside the point. What he doesn’t know is that I’m already here, and two steps ahead of him. I won’t see Vhent rebuild the Skanian hold in Ellinburg, whatever it takes. Destroying the Gutcutters was only the first step, Tomas. These Northern Sons now control most of the west side of the city, and we need to drive them out. It’s time to ready the knives.”
I could only stare at her as the realization sank in.
She wanted more bloodshed.
Even after the Wheels, she still wanted more. I remembered how it had been at Messia, after the sack, the starving people living like animals among the ruins. I remembered Abingon, the fires and the choking dust, plague and the bloody flux. I remembered the screams of the wounded and the inhuman howls that came from the surgeons’ tents loud enough to be heard even over the endless pounding of the cannon.
I felt cold then, cold to my bones.
Was my war never going to end?
FIVE
The next morning found me in the Tanner’s Arms, sharing breakfast with Bloody Anne. She was living in my old room above the tavern by then, and the Tanner’s was still the Pious Men’s main seat of power. Ailsa wanted me to distance myself, so I tried to keep business out of our home as much as I could. In truth, that morning I had mostly wanted to distance myself from her.
Billy had spent most of the previous day with Cutter up at Slaughterhouse Narrow, and I could tell Ailsa was displeased about that. About that, and about my brother coming uninvited to breakfast, about me being arrested and about Hauer’s suspicions and the Northern Sons and how they had taken over western Ellinburg, and more other things than I knew how to count. Once again we had ended the day with shouting, so the next morning I had made sure to be up and out of the house before I was subjected to another inedible breakfast.
I broke bread with Anne instead in the comfortable surroundings of the Tanner’s, in the heart of the Stink. That was where I belonged, I knew that, however much money I had now. Not up on Trader’s Row with the rich folk and their servants and their society manners. Here, among my own people, that was home.
“What’s the lay of things?” I asked Anne. “In general, I mean.”
She put down her mug of small beer and shrugged.
“A lot has changed, but a lot hasn’t,” she said. “There’s still poverty down in the Wheels. We’ve got perhaps half the factories running again, but tensions are high.”
I nodded. They would be. A lot of Wheelers had died in the bombings, leaving the workforce sorely depleted. With the lack of work in the Stink I had been filling jobs in the newly reopened factories with Stink men wherever I could. Folk from the Stink and folk from the Wheels don’t get on, and they never have done. Wheelers and Stinkers, that was what they called each other, and there was no love between them.
“Aye,” I said. “It’s to be expected, but the Wheels is mine now. These are all my streets, from the south of the Stink all the way north to the docks, and the people need to get used to that and learn to work together.”
Bloody Anne sucked her teeth, her long scar twisting the corner of her mouth into a scowl.
“It’ll get ugly before it gets better,” she said.
“Be that as it may. How’re the men?”
“Well enough. Luka’s doing everything he can to keep the streets happy, even with the horror stories folk are hearing from the west of the city. In a way, that helps us. The Northern Sons rule their streets through terror, so folk are hearing, and they know you don’t. The worse the Sons are to their people, the better we look in comparison, and Fat Luka’s been making the most of that. Will the Wencher is still turning a small fortune up at Chandler’s Narrow, and you know how successful the Chains is. Everyone’s well paid, so there’s no discontent in the crew. Even Sir Eland is behaving himself.”
“Aye,” I said. “That’s good. You’re doing well, Anne.”
She looked at me then, and I couldn’t read her face.
“It’s doing itself,” she said. “I’m a soldier, not a businesswoman. I’m your second, aye, but this isn’t what I know how to do. I thought . . . I thought perhaps your aunt might take more of a hand in the running of the business side of things.”
“She’ll have to, soon,” I said. “Bloodhands and his Northern Sons need teaching a lesson, and that’s exactly what you know how to do.”
“We’ll stop once Aditi is done, you told me,” Bloody Anne said. “You said that we’d be a ruling garrison, not a fighting force. That’s what we’ve been for the last six months, and business is the best I’ve ever seen it. That means it works, Tomas. H
aven’t we fought enough?”
“Have we?” I challenged her. “Have we, when there are still foreign witches in the city?”
I had used Anne’s fear of witchcraft against her once before, to sway her to my way of thinking, and to my mind what had worked once would work again. Bloody Anne was my best friend and it was low of me to manipulate her like that, I knew, but sometimes when you lead you have to do things you might not be proud of. You have to know the levers that move a person and be prepared to use them, and I knew how to move Anne.
“They’re with Bloodhands, then?”
“Yes, Anne, they are,” I said.
That was only an educated guess, but magicians had been a big part of the Skanian strength when they had backed the Gutcutters and I couldn’t see that it would be different now. Things would have been so much simpler, I thought, if I could have told Anne the truth. She had no great loyalty to the crown, I was sure, but if I could just have explained the lay of things to her the way Ailsa had explained them to me, then I was sure she would see the necessity of what I was doing. There were a number of things I wished I could have told Bloody Anne.
Ailsa wouldn’t hear of it.
I had never got to the bottom of why but she didn’t seem to have a high opinion of Anne, and I thought that was unwise of her. Be that as it may, she had sworn me to secrecy under the Queen’s Warrant and I couldn’t break that oath. An oath sworn under the warrant was as binding as one sworn to Her Majesty in person, Ailsa had explained to me. To break such an oath would be to declare yourself a traitor to the crown and to hang for it.
All Anne could do was nod. She didn’t like it, I could see she didn’t, but Anne wanted the Skanian magicians out of the city every bit as much as I did even if she didn’t know who they really were.
“How’s high society?” she asked me.
I snorted, and she smiled to say she was making mischief.
“Tell me this, Bloody Anne,” I said. “Would you eat eggs mixed with fish and grit for breakfast?”
She laughed at that, as I had hoped, and the tension passed.
Truth be told, society had its merits, for all that Ailsa chafed me. The house off Trader’s Row was comfortable, palatial in fact compared to what I was used to, and, as Anne had said, incomes were the best they had ever been. I had been thinking I might buy myself another racehorse, to replace the one that had been taken from me while I had been away at war. Owning a racehorse was a symbol of status, of course, and I had certain expectations to meet. The people of my streets saw me as their prince, and a prince looked and acted a certain way. He had certain interests, too, and the racetrack was one of those. Most of the common folk were keen gamblers, and to their minds the owners of the horses they wagered on were rich beyond their dreams. It had been one of the best days of my life, the day I had bought that horse.
I remembered my aunt telling me how it had been nobbled in a fixed race while I had been fighting in the south, and how Doc Cordin said it had broken a leg and they’d cut its throat. I hadn’t let that pass. The Gutcutters had done that, or the Skanians had, and on my wedding day I had shown them what I thought of it. All the same I missed that fucking horse, and I wanted another one. More to the point, I wanted what it represented.
Respect, power, authority. Those are the levers that move me.
* * *
* * *
When I returned home I found that Ailsa had gone shopping with her lady’s maid in tow, and taken faithful Borys with her as her bodyguard. Desh had the door, and he welcomed me home with a respectful nod.
“Morning, boss,” he said.
“Aye,” I said.
The young Alarian was a good lad, I thought. He couldn’t have had more than seventeen or eighteen years to him and he wasn’t a Pious Man, not yet, but he showed promise. He was from Hull Patcher’s Row in the depths of the poorest part of the Stink, and he was just young enough to have missed being conscripted for the war. He had grown up on Pious Men streets, though, knowing who we were and what we did. When I had been recruiting new men he had been among the first to take my coin. I thought perhaps Desh might well have spent most of his life wanting to be a Pious Man.
“Where’s Billy?” I asked him.
“In the kitchen, boss,” he said.
I nodded and went in there. Billy the Boy was always hungry, as growing lads usually are, and he had worked hard to build a friendship with our undercook. She was a plump lass with maybe twenty years to her, and when I walked in she was kneading dough with her sleeves rolled up and flour to her elbows. Billy was sitting at the long kitchen table where the servants took their meals, a pastry in his hand and crumbs on his chin.
“. . . do make me laugh, master Billy,” she was saying. “And that Mr. Jochan so rough and handsome, and him from the same streets as me too! Oh, but a girl could—”
She stopped with a gasp when she saw me standing in the kitchen door.
“Don’t mind me, Hanne,” I said. “I’m just here for the lad. And one of those pastries, if there’s one going.”
Hanne blushed bright red, to be spoken to by the master of the house. Cook herself was nowhere to be seen and I supposed she was probably at the market with one of the housemen, buying fresh produce for our dinner.
“Oh, Mr. Piety sir, wouldn’t you rather sit in the drawing room?” she asked.
“No, I really wouldn’t,” I said, and smiled to take the sting out of my words.
It was hot in the kitchen but it smelled good, and even though Ailsa was out I still wasn’t easy with formality. I sat on the bench beside Billy and nodded my thanks as Hanne set a fresh pastry and a mug of beer down in front of me with her strong, floury hands. She seemed a good woman, I thought.
“I can put in a word, if you like,” I said. “With my brother, I mean.”
Hanne’s blush deepened to the color of an overripe plum, and she giggled and stumbled over her words.
“Oh, no, Mr. Piety, don’t bother him on my account. I’m sorry, and I didn’t mean to speak above my station, as it were.”
I held my peace to spare the poor lass any further embarrassment, and I took a swig of beer. Truth be told, I didn’t even know if Jochan wanted a woman. He was rarely sober enough, to my mind, and when he was he seemed happy enough to visit the house on Chandler’s Narrow. It came to me then that it had been nearly two years since I last lay with a woman, and the realization surprised me.
That had been during the war, of course, when I had been a priest in the army and had had my pick of the camp followers. Since coming back to Ellinburg I had been first too busy, then too enthralled by Ailsa, then too wary of her, and finally married to her in an unwanted and loveless union. I sighed and picked up my pastry, but I found my appetite had gone. I owned a stew, for Our Lady’s sake; I could have a woman any time I wanted one. I didn’t, though, not like that. Running whores was one thing; lying with them when you were their boss was quite another. That didn’t seem right.
“Uncle Tomas?” Billy said, bringing me back to myself.
I looked at the lad.
“Aye?”
“Aren’t you going to eat that?”
I smiled as I saw that Billy had finished his pastry and was now looking hopefully at mine. I didn’t want it anymore, so I gave it to him and contented myself with beer instead.
There might be a lesson in that somewhere, I thought.
SIX
“You spent a lot of time with Cutter yesterday,” I said.
Billy nodded and wiped crumbs from his chin with the back of his hand.
“Yes, Uncle Tomas.”
“I’m surprised you found enough common ground with him to talk for so long,” I said. “He’s not a talkative man, so far as I’ve seen.”
“He talks, when he wants to,” Billy said. “He didn’t have anyone to talk to, is all. He told me stories.”
“Did he now?” There was something about Cutter that worried me, but I couldn’t have rightly said what. Yes, he was a killer, but then so were most of my crew. So was I, for that matter. It was something more than that, something strange about the fellow. Even Bloody Anne admitted he gave her the fear, and that was a rare enough thing by itself. “What sort of stories, Billy?”
“He told me about when he was a boy, in Messia,” Billy said. “That’s where he’s from too, like me.”
I nodded slowly. I hadn’t known that. Jochan said he’d met Cutter in Messia during the war and I had no reason to doubt him, but if that was his home then he should have been fighting for the enemy, not for us. Billy hadn’t been, to be sure, but then he had only had twelve years to him at the time. He had been far too young to be conscripted, but Cutter hadn’t.
“That’s interesting,” I said. “Did he talk about the war, at all?”
Billy shook his head. “No,” he said. “No one really does, do they, Uncle Tomas?”
I had to allow that he was right about that.
“No,” I admitted.
“Can I go and see him again tomorrow?”
I wasn’t sure I wanted that to happen, but I couldn’t think of a sensible reason why not, and young Billy was looking at me with a hopeful expression on his face that I was finding hard to refuse.
“Aye, well,” I had to say at last, “I suppose there’s no harm in it. Be sure and take someone with you again, though.”
“I will,” Billy said, and that was settled.
I got up and left him to pester Hanne for another pastry. I strolled into the parlor to get myself a brandy and found that Ailsa had returned from her shopping trip, and she had a visitor.
“Mr. Piety,” Rosie said by way of greeting.
I nodded to her and poured myself a drink.
“What brings you here, Rosie?”
