by Peter McLean
“Where do we hit them?”
“Convent Street,” I said at once. “That runs west from the docks to the foot of the hill, and they’ve the bulk of their warehouses along there. I want them burned down.”
“Aye, we can do that,” she said. “I assume you’re not joining us?”
“I wish I could,” I said, and I realized that I meant it. Anne wasn’t the only one who was growing tired of inactivity. “I have a society reception to host this evening.”
Anne snorted.
“What fun. Leave it to me,” she said.
I knew I could. Bloody Anne was the best second I could have asked for.
* * *
* * *
Ailsa was already dressed for the evening when I returned home. She was waiting in the parlor in a flowing gown of russet silk with her thick, glossy black hair pinned up between ivory combs.
“How were the races?” she asked me as I poured myself a brandy.
“Good,” I said. I gave the footman a look, and he left the room and closed the door behind him to give us our privacy. “I gave the Skanians something to think on, and Lady willing they’ll be thinking on it so hard they won’t see the attack coming tonight.”
“And you kept your distance?”
“Yes, Ailsa, I did,” I said. “Princes don’t lead from the front, I know.”
“Mmmm,” she said. “We may need to rethink that.”
That made me look up. “How so?”
“There’s a thing that needs doing, and I don’t want to trust it to Anne or gods forbid to your brother.”
Ailsa thought even less of Jochan than she did of Anne, and there at least I thought she was right. Jochan was rarely sober, and his battle shock was so deep-seated it could overtake him at a moment’s notice, leading to sudden rages or incoherence and no way to predict it. He was my brother and I loved him, in my way, but I knew I couldn’t rely on him.
“Tell me,” I said.
“The common folk, the workers,” she said. “How much attention do we pay them, truly? Are they just pieces on our game board?”
I blinked at her in confusion. I paid attention to my people, the folk from my streets who paid their taxes to me and showed me respect. A prince should do no less, to my mind. Other folk, folk from the west of the city, for example, no. No, I didn’t pay them any mind.
“I have to get dressed for this fucking reception in a minute,” I said. “Whatever you’re working your way around to saying, say it now.”
“Do you know how many cunning folk there are in this city?”
“No, of course not,” I said. “Apart from our Billy I know Old Kurt, from the Wheels, but that’s all. One person in ten thousand has it in them to learn the cunning, so they say, if that. Maybe he’s the only one in Ellinburg.”
“He isn’t. Not at all he isn’t. I need you to do something for me. You’re recruiting men, and I support that, but I need you to focus on the cunning folk. Find out who they are. Find them, and bring them to our side. From what I hear there are a number of them at large in the city. Not openly, like your Old Kurt, but just getting on with their lives. I want them, and that means you’re going to go out and get them.”
When Ailsa said I want in that tone of voice, she always got what she wanted. One way or another she did. I frowned for a moment but nodded. This had something to do with Rosie’s visit, I was sure. Whatever her reasons, this felt like orders from Dannsburg itself.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said, and changed the subject. “I thought I might wear my priest’s robes tonight.”
“Gods, no,” she said. “Save the religion for the common folk and the easily led. Tonight you must be the businessman. The valet has already laid suitable clothes out in your room for you. Now hurry up, they’ll be here in an hour.”
NINE
The grand dining room had been set for the occasion: the big formal room at the back of the house that we rarely used. I had the head of the long table, of course, and Ailsa its foot as custom and manners dictated. Our guests were seated between us. There were twelve of them in all, tedious factory owners and ridiculous minor aristocrats. And Governor Hauer, of course. He was seated at my right hand in the place of honor, although it was no secret that we weren’t friends. It was less than a week since he’d had me arrested, after all.
The forms of society had to be obeyed, so Ailsa told me, and there had been no way for us to host this reception without inviting Hauer. I had known that, but I hadn’t expected him to accept. Whether Ailsa had or not I really couldn’t say, but I think it was what she had hoped for. Be that as it may, there he was sitting in my dining room, drinking my wine and filling his fat face with my roast goose and suckling pig.
Conversation at my end of the table was subdued, as might be expected. There wasn’t a guest there who didn’t know who I was and what I did, and many of them either paid me protection through their businesses or smoked my poppy resin at the Golden Chains, or both. Everyone was very polite and very guarded around me. At the other end of the table Ailsa was keeping up a lively conversation and acting the perfect hostess. She knew how to do this sort of thing, and I really didn’t.
“Do you think this uncommon heat will last, Mr. Piety?” asked the lady seated to my left.
I couldn’t remember her name, but I knew she owned a pair of mills in the Wheels that had recently been reopened. She had paid her taxes to Ma Aditi a year ago, and now she paid them to me.
“I hadn’t given it much thought,” I said.
She looked as though she expected me to say more, but how I was supposed to know the minds of the weather gods was beyond me. I was a priest of Our Lady of Eternal Sorrows, not the Stormlord, and men die in all weathers.
“I believe not, Madame Rainer,” the fellow next to the governor said. “The ships’ captains bring word of cooler weather at sea than of late.”
This one at least I knew—Jon Lan Barkov, who seemed to do nothing in particular but who had a great deal of money all the same. He also had a great fondness for the poppy, and he was a regular at the Chains.
“That’s good to know,” I said, for want of anything better.
This pointless talk about nothing chafed me, as I dare say it did them. What they wanted to know, what they all wanted to know, was why I had been arrested and whether it was likely to affect them and their businesses. The governor’s presence at my right hand was easing their minds about that some, as I suspected Ailsa had intended it to.
I labored through the meal until the sweet had been cleared away and the ladies were preparing to withdraw to the parlor. I would be expected to entertain the men at table with brandy and conversation, of course, but it looked like I might be spared that when a footman hurried into the room and bent to speak quietly in my ear.
“One of the governor’s men is here, sir,” he whispered. “An urgent message.”
I nodded.
“Show him in,” I said, and turned to Hauer. “It seems you have business that won’t keep, Lord Governor.”
Hauer frowned and turned in his chair. He was already drunk, I noticed.
“What?” he demanded of the nervous-looking messenger who was being admitted to the dining room.
The man whispered to the governor, whose flushed face darkened by the moment as he listened. Eventually he dismissed his man and got to his feet.
“I fear I must excuse myself,” he said, fixing me with a steady glare even as he swayed slightly on his feet. “Something of an emergency has arisen.”
“Oh?” I asked.
“Half of Convent Street is on fire, Piety,” he growled.
He turned and stormed out of the room without even bidding Ailsa a good evening or thanking her for her hospitality, which even I knew was almost unforgivably rude. A shocked hush descended over the table at the governor’s lack of manners,
but Ailsa rescued the situation with her usual grace.
“Such terrible news,” she said. “I completely understand the lord governor’s haste to be about his urgent duties.”
With those waters smoothed, she rose and ushered the ladies out with her, leaving me at the table with Lan Barkov and five other men I barely knew. I motioned to the nearest footman to pour brandies.
“It seems the uncommon heat will last tonight,” I said. “On Convent Street, at least.”
* * *
* * *
It was late by the time the last of our guests finally took themselves out of my house and off home to their beds. I had resorted to a game of cards to keep the men happy, and if one wasn’t supposed to play cards at the dining table then I didn’t care, nor did they seem to. They had all drunk a good deal of my brandy by then, and in their cups they had become even more tedious company than they had been while sober.
Still, I hadn’t been drinking half so heavily as my guests had, and I had cleared a neat pile of silver from the card game by the time they left. That was small enough consolation for so dreary an evening, but the news from Convent Street pleased me. I had known I could rely on Anne.
“That went well, I thought,” Ailsa said when I joined her in the drawing room.
Withdrawing room, I realized at last. That finally made sense and put my mind at rest that I’d not be asked to take up a sketching book after all. It was a small matter, and one that made me feel something of a fool after the fact, but all the same it impressed further on me how much I didn’t know about Ailsa’s way of life. What things were called in polite company, how to entertain society guests and to make pointless conversation, all those things were still mysteries to me. I understood business, and tactics, and how to lead men. Those things were a sight more important, to my mind.
“Anne’s crew did what we wanted,” I said, “and while the governor was sat at my right hand, at that. There’s no way I can be implicated.”
“Yes,” Ailsa said. “Yes, very good, but the other matter is more important now.”
I frowned at that, and again I wondered exactly what orders she had received, and who had sent them.
“Aye, well,” I said. “I’ll have to talk to Fat Luka about it, if no one else. I don’t know who these hidden cunning folk are, but I’ll wager he can find out.”
Ailsa didn’t argue about that, which surprised me. She had more time for Luka than she did for Anne or my brother, I knew. Perhaps she sensed a kindred spirit, there. Had his life been different, I thought, Fat Luka might just have made a Queen’s Man himself.
“Very well, and I know there’s no point telling you to keep it from Anne, but no one else,” she said. “Not unless you absolutely have to.”
That seemed fair, so I nodded and left her to it. I had been drinking wine with the meal because you were supposed to but I don’t care for wine, and I had had enough of brandy. I wandered through to the kitchen to draw myself a mug of beer from the big barrel that was kept there.
I found Jochan in there, with his britches round his ankles, vigorously fucking Hanne the undercook over the kitchen table.
He looked round as the door opened and grinned at me.
“Don’t mind me,” I said.
The poor lass went crimson with embarrassment, but Jochan wasn’t showing any signs of stopping so I drew myself a tankard from the barrel and left them to it. Soldiers think little of that sort of thing. There’s nowhere to be alone among the tents, after all. If a man wants to lie with a camp follower or a comrade, then that’s his affair, but there’s no use him expecting privacy while he does it.
I stood in the yard behind the house with my beer in my hand, content to just enjoy the cool of the summer night. Jochan joined me a few minutes later, still lacing his britches.
“I came calling an hour ago, but your man said you still had guests, and he put me in the kitchen to wait,” he said. “Me and the lass got to talking, and that.”
“Mostly that, from what I saw,” I said, and he laughed.
“Aye, well,” he said. “Some silver pennies got rid of the rest of your kitchen staff, and they were coins fucking well spent. I like a big lass, you know that.”
He laughed again, and for a moment there it was almost like having my brother back.
“What word from Convent Street?” I asked him.
“Only six guards and we killed the fucking lot of them,” he said, and there was a sudden savage light in his eyes. “Three warehouses are in ashes.”
I nodded. The moment had passed, and now all I could see in Jochan’s eyes was a reflection of the fires of Abingon.
“Aye,” I said. “That’s good work, well done.”
There would be more of it to come, I knew.
Much more, and soon.
TEN
There was, at that. A great deal more.
As the summer heat broke and cold autumn winds began to gust down the streets of Ellinburg, my men continued to fight the hidden war against the Skanians in the alleys and factories of the city. Three months had passed, and the fighting had turned ugly. The raid on Convent Street might have gone well, but Bloodhands had wasted no time in striking back. The uneasy truce of the previous nine months was in the shithouse now and no mistake. This wasn’t open warfare, not yet, but it was close to it. Too many men on both sides had been knifed behind taverns and dumped in alleyways, or simply found floating in the river.
I was seldom home now, but this time Ailsa had no complaints on the matter. Not now that I was being useful to her again, she didn’t. Young Billy was away a lot too. He was still spending most of his days with Cutter at Slaughterhouse Narrow, and for all that I wasn’t keen on the idea I was too busy to give it much thought. Not today he wasn’t, though. Today I would need him.
Although I had kept myself away from the actual violence, I did the queen’s bidding in secret. Fat Luka’s spies and silver had turned up two cunning folk in the last couple of months, a pair of nondescript women who plied their trades of herb lore and midwifery in the west of the city.
Neither was wealthy, and when I offered to change that they came to my side willingly enough. Life on the streets controlled by the Skanians through their Northern Sons was harsh, I knew that, and Luka had used that fact to help talk them over to my side. That, and silver. Katrin the herbalist lived in the Stink now, where I had set her up with a small shop of her own.
Gerta the midwife had stayed in her house on the west side of the city, where she provided Luka with regular information on the movements of the Northern Sons and their murderous agents in exchange for his coin. Gerta especially played a dangerous game there, but she played it willingly enough. I heard from Fat Luka that she had personally witnessed children being taken away from their families by Bloodhands’s agents, to be held hostage and guarantee the loyalty of their fathers. She had heard what happened to those children if Bloodhands decided someone had crossed him, too. Aye, winning Gerta to my side had been done easily enough. Ailsa was pleased, and that was good.
Now Luka had found another one, up in the docks this time.
Luka had arranged to bring her to the Tanner’s Arms that afternoon for me to meet, and as with the other two, I had brought Billy the Boy to meet her with me. I know nothing of magic or the cunning or whatever you wanted to call it, but Billy had known almost at a glance that Gerta and Katrin both had the talent. I wanted him to look at this woman too before I offered her anything. She wouldn’t have been the first fraud in search of silver that we had uncovered. There had been harsh justice for those as thought they could cheat me.
I was sitting at the head of the table in the back room of the Tanner’s Arms, with Billy at my right hand. Only three of the lamps on the table were lit, keeping the room mostly in shadow. There was a knock at the door, and then Fat Luka opened it and stepped inside with a woman beside him.
She attempted a shaky curtsey, and I gave her a short nod in return. Billy just sat staring at her in that intense way he had about him. She had perhaps thirty years to her, at a guess, with long, light brown hair bound up at the back of her head. Her kirtle and cloak had both seen better days, and she wore no jewelry. This one obviously wasn’t wealthy either.
“Thank you, Luka, you can leave us,” I said. “Lisbeth, take a seat.”
Fat Luka stepped back out into the corridor and closed the door behind him, and Lisbeth Beck seated herself at the long table. She looked from me to Billy and back again, and cleared her throat.
“Thank you for coming,” I said, although I was sure she wouldn’t have been given a great deal of choice in the matter. “Do you know who I am?”
“I know,” she said, and swallowed.
I nodded slowly. She was from the docks, and I had expected no less. The docks had belonged to the Headhunters before the war, but the Headhunters hadn’t come home and we had. The docks belonged to the Pious Men now.
“Do you know why you’re here?”
“I’ve got a little bit of the cunning in me, sir, I always have had,” she said. “I know that’s why I’m here.”
I glanced at Billy. He nodded, but there was a frown on his face.
“What?” I asked him.
“More than a little bit,” he said. “Much more.”
I smiled at her, indulgent of her reticence. “Are you being shy with me, Lisbeth?”
“No, I am not,” she said.
The lamp nearest to me exploded, throwing broken glass and burning oil in my face. I flung an arm up to protect my eyes just in time, yelling in shock and pain. Billy flew out of his seat and slammed back against the wall behind him. Some invisible force held him pinned there, the pressure crushing the breath from him. I lurched to my feet, struggling to free myself from my burning coat.
