by Peter McLean
“Charmed,” Lady Reiter said, turning a smile on me that managed to be warm, welcoming, promising, avaricious, and utterly ruthless all at once.
I bowed over her extended hand as manners dictated, and indicated toward Ailsa, as was only wise under the circumstances.
“You know my wife, of course,” I said.
“Of course,” Lady Reiter said, and all the warmth, welcome, and promise fell out of her smile at once.
That left her only avarice and ruthlessness, her true face, but at least we both knew the lay of things between us and that was good.
“Have you seen our host yet?” I asked Bakrylov.
He smiled.
“Lord Vogel is famous for keeping his guests waiting,” he said. “Privilege of being the Lord Chief Judiciar, I suppose.”
“I suppose so,” I said. “It must be otherwise a very joyless occupation.”
Bakrylov laughed at that, more than it warranted to my mind, and clapped me on the shoulder.
“It really is good to see you again,” he said. “You must find a way to let me try to win that crown back off you later. After dinner, perhaps?”
“I’m sure we’ll think of something,” I said, but just then the final pair of guests arrived and we turned to greet them.
Lord and Lady Lan Andronikov were much as I remembered them from the court reception—he had perhaps forty-five years to him, was weak-chinned and overdressed even in this company. His wife blinked vaguely around her as though unsure of where she was, the pupils visibly too large in her eyes.
“Ah, the brave and noble Lan Andronikovs,” Major Bakrylov said, and offered them possibly the least sincere bow I had ever seen in my life.
I knew very well what a hotheaded young officer such as Bakrylov made of conscription-dodgers like Lan Andronikov, and it was plain that the older man did as well. He visibly flushed at the major’s mockery and turned away as he took a glass from a footman’s tray. I’m no courtier like Ailsa and I never will be, but it was plain enough even to my eye that Vogel seemed to have selected from all of Dannsburg society the dinner guests he could be most assured would hate each other. Why a man would choose to do that I wasn’t sure, but I had a suspicion.
This sort of thing was Fat Luka’s bread and beer, of course, and I wished then that I had him there with me that night. Even without his counsel, it seemed to me that people who violently dislike each other are more likely to fall to hard words than those who get along, and when hard words are spoken, truths come out that otherwise would stay buried in polite company.
Dieter Vogel was a subtle man, I realized. Subtle, and very, very dangerous.
* * *
* * *
Dinner itself was a strained affair, as might be expected. Lord Vogel had finally joined us just before his steward sounded a gong and opened the doors that led into a formal dining room. There we had been seated according to a plan of particular cruelty.
Lan Yetrov was seated at Vogel’s right hand, which put him to my left, and I had Lady Lan Andronikov to my right, and neither of those things were to my liking. Ailsa was on the other side of the table, at Vogel’s left hand, with Major Bakrylov, Lord Lan Andronikov, and Lady Lan Yetrov beside her, the last opposite Lady Reiter, who was on my side of the table.
I sipped my soup and considered Vogel’s seating plan in the way that Ailsa had taught me. He had put Lan Yetrov in the place of honor, no doubt to spite Lan Andronikov, and sat me beside him to annoy both of us. Ailsa had his left hand, which further insulted Lan Andronikov, and he had seated the man opposite his own wife where he had no choice but to see the state of her. Also, he was next to the major, who clearly loathed him. Lady Lan Yetrov, the social climber who had married for money, was seated by the vacant foot of the table opposite the fancy whore, which spoke for itself.
The only good thing to be found was that I had the major opposite me, which was no doubt intended to cause dissent over what had happened at Abingon. In fairness, it probably would have done if we hadn’t already found the beginnings of an unlikely friendship over our wager at Lan Yetrov’s house. I found a new depth of appreciation for just how unpleasant Vogel was, but what this really told me was that Lord Lan Andronikov’s days were numbered.
He’s said some extremely unwise things recently, Ailsa had told me at the court reception. I thought those things might be on their way to catching up with him, however rich he was.
I wondered if he could see it too.
The soup bowls were cleared away and the fish course brought out, and Lan Yetrov continued to bray self-importantly at Lord Vogel while Ailsa engaged the rest of the table in light conversation about nothing. I met Bakrylov’s eye over the table, and he winked at me in a way that said he too could see exactly what was happening. I ate my herb-crusted pike in silence until I was distracted by a low moan from my right.
“Are you well, my lady?” I asked, turning to Lady Lan Andronikov.
She had a sheen of sweat on her powdered brow, I noticed, and her hand trembled slightly as she raised her glass.
“Quite well, thank you, Father Piety,” she said, but her tongue darted over her dry lips like a nervous animal as she spoke.
We had barely been in the house of law for three hours by then, and already the woman was looking in quite some need. I’d had no idea that poppy addiction could get so bad, but of course none of the addicts I had encountered in the Stink had had anything like her money to devote to their vices. I chanced a look across the table at her husband but he was intent on his food, and obviously choosing not to see what was quite literally right in front of him.
After the fish was done a troupe of minstrels entered the room, their lutes and pipes in their hands. They played for our entertainment for what seemed to me a very long time. The music was nothing I knew, far from the bawdy marching songs and soldier’s laments that I was familiar with. When it was over at last I joined in the polite applause around the table with little enthusiasm and hoped they wouldn’t come back. The music of society people, it seemed, was no more to my taste than any of the rest of it.
Finally it was time for the meat course, roast suckling pig and minted lamb and a number of crispy capons. Lord Vogel kept a good kitchen, I had to allow, for all that it didn’t seem to be designed for the pleasure of his guests. At the foot of the table, either side of the strangely vacant place setting, Lady Reiter and Lady Lan Yetrov were ignoring each other in sullen silence. Lord Lan Yetrov was still trying to ingratiate himself with our host, while Ailsa chattered amiably to the major and Lord Lan Andronikov about the politics of war, which of course caused the pair’s simmering hatred of each other to threaten to boil over at any minute. The meat course went on for a very long time.
I ate in silence, watching and learning.
There was an artistry to this sort of social manipulation, I came to realize, and Ailsa and Vogel were quite obviously allies in what they did. Once the meat was done a singer entered the room, accompanied by a lone piper, and I realized we were to have yet more entertainment inflicted on us. She had a good voice, I’ll give her that, but her song was both very, very long and sung in a foreign language that I didn’t know. When it was over at last and the singer had left the dining room, Lady Lan Andronikov made to rise.
“I wonder if I might be briefly excused,” she said, and I could see that her legs were quivering slightly beneath her magnificent gown.
“Absolutely not,” Vogel said, without so much as looking up. “My pastry chef is about to bring out his masterpiece. I would hate for you to offend him.”
Lady Lan Andronikov sagged back into her seat beside me and drained her wine in a long, shuddering swallow that spoke of growing desperation. She managed to knock the empty glass over with her trembling hand as she set it down.
“For the gods’ sakes,” her husband hissed at her across the table, his voice unexpectedly loud as b
oth Ailsa and Vogel stopped their conversations at exactly the right moment.
Lan Andronikov turned red with embarrassment, and his wife stifled a sob.
The sweet was brought out during a moment of awful silence, and then Ailsa resumed her chatter as though nothing had happened. At one point while we were eating I saw Vogel break off his conversation with Lan Yetrov while the other man was in midsentence and lean over to whisper something in Ailsa’s ear. She just gave a short nod in return, and whatever that had been about it was obviously done.
By the time the sweet was finally cleared away we had been in the house of law for some six hours or more and Lady Lan Andronikov had developed the frantic look of a trapped rabbit. It was late by then, well after midnight, and when Vogel finally announced that the ladies should withdraw from the table I thought she might weep with gratitude.
Ailsa rose and led the other three women from the room, her hand firm on Lady Lan Andronikov’s shaking arm.
“Come to the red drawing room with me, my dear,” I heard her say as they passed. “Perhaps I may be able to find you something that might help your discomfort.”
Could and might and possibly, I thought. Such were the promises of the Queen’s Men.
That left me in the dining room with Vogel, Major Bakrylov, Lan Andronikov, and Lan Yetrov. Vogel gestured to a footman, and the long drapes at the end of the room were drawn back and tall windows opened to give us access to a wide terrace where brandy was being served under the stars. I accepted a glass and strolled outside into the warm summer night with the major beside me.
“Thank the gods that’s over,” he murmured in my ear.
“Aye,” I said. “Not the easiest evening I’ve sat through.”
We were at the far end of the terrace, away from the other men, when Major Bakrylov put his hand on my arse and leaned close as though he meant to kiss me.
“Come upstairs with me,” he whispered. I coughed and took a step backward, more surprised than anything else. “Oh come, Piety, us tired old soldiers have to stick together, remember? You can’t tell me you never did, in the tents at least.”
“I never did,” I said.
He snorted and drained his brandy with a practiced flick of his wrist.
“I suppose it’s because you’re a priest, is it?”
I shook my head. “No, it’s not that. Our Lady doesn’t much care who we lie with, so long as both are willing. I mean no offense; I just don’t like men in that way, that’s all.”
“Ah well,” he said, and smiled. “My mistake. You don’t know what you’re missing, old boy.”
He sauntered off inside then, and I saw that apart from a couple of footmen I was alone on the terrace with Lan Yetrov and Lord Vogel.
It came to me that perhaps I should have gone upstairs with the major after all.
THIRTY-FOUR
“Are you ready to apologize for your insult, Piety?” Lan Yetrov demanded, striding toward me across the terrace with his hand instinctively reaching for the sword he wasn’t wearing.
Behind him, Lord Vogel stood watching us with a glass in his hand. His face was expressionless, unreadable.
“And what insult might that be, my lord Lan Yetrov?”
“You know very well what!”
His face was flushed with wine, with money and arrogance and Vogel’s favor, and I very much wanted to put my fist through it. I wouldn’t do that, though, any more than I had agreed to meet him in the dueling circle when he had tried to call me out at court. He simply wasn’t worth my while.
“I’m afraid not,” I said. “You seem to have slipped my mind.”
“You fucker,” he hissed. “You ignorant lout! This is war, Piety!”
“No, it isn’t,” I said. “War is cannon, and corpses. This is a fool talking to me when I’d much rather he fucked off.”
He grabbed me by the front of my doublet and leaned very close to me, his lips drawn back from his teeth in spluttering fury. I’ve killed men for less, but with the Provost Marshal of the Queen’s Men standing not ten feet away and Ailsa nowhere in sight I didn’t know how far I could take this. I could bear insults, if I had to.
“I promise you, you wretched, common little provincial oik, I will see the end of you,” Lan Yetrov snarled in my face. “I will see the end of you, and then I will have my special way with your dirty, up-jumped tea monkey wife until her arse is bleeding, do you underst—”
I slammed my knee up into his balls so hard it was a wonder they didn’t come out of his mouth. I’ve never been as good with my fists as Jochan was, but then you don’t have to be, not if you fight dirty enough.
Lan Yetrov hit the floor like a sack of turnips dropped from a tower. He sucked in a single, hideous wheeze of breath before he vomited his entire dinner and several bottles’ worth of wine onto the fine marble tiles in front of him.
I stamped on his guts once, twice, three times, then booted him in the side of the head. The last kick threw him over onto his back and knocked him out, and that was done. I could bear insults to myself if I had to, but I wasn’t hearing talk like that about Ailsa.
“That took you longer than I expected,” Vogel said, and there was no hint of emotion in his voice.
“My apologies, Lord Vogel,” I said, “but I won’t hear my wife spoken about like that.”
“Quite,” he said, and now he showed me a thin smile like the edge of a razor.
He turned to the footmen standing impassively behind him.
“Lord Lan Yetrov has made a drunken disgrace of himself and passed out on my terrace,” he said. “Take him to his carriage, round up his whore of a wife, and throw them both out. I won’t have drunkenness in the house of law.”
“Sir,” one of the footmen said.
He sounded like a soldier, to my mind. He and his fellow took Lan Yetrov by the armpits and dragged him off the terrace and back through the dining room. They had both just stood there and watched me kick the piss out of the man, but the Lord Chief Judiciar said he was drunk so that was how it was and that was how it would stay.
Vogel turned back to me, and now we were truly alone on the terrace.
“Did you understand this evening, Mr. Piety?”
I shrugged.
“Some of it,” I said. “Probably not all of it.”
“Tell me what you saw.”
“Lan Andronikov’s in disgrace, that was plain enough,” I said. “His wife’s a ruin of addiction, but I don’t think that’s much of a secret. Lan Yetrov is attempting to climb the social ladder, and he’s making a horse’s arse of it. Lady Reiter’s a fancy whore and that’s no secret at all.”
“And the major?”
I shrugged. “He may or may not like men, but that’s beside the point. Either he’s a fool, which I doubt, or he was trying to get me away from you before this happened, or to distract me so I didn’t notice something else. I suspect it was the last and if so then it worked, and that means he’s one of your crew.”
“Hmmm,” Vogel said. “Ailsa was right, you’re not an idiot.”
“Who am I talking to?” I asked quietly. “The Lord Chief Judiciar or the Provost Marshal?”
“Which do you think? This is the house of law, after all.”
“And that could mean either thing,” I said. “Is this where policies of law are decided and taxes set?”
“No,” he said. “That happens at court, between the queen’s advisers and the governing council.”
“So what do you do here then, in this house of law?” I asked, although by then I was certain I knew the answer.
“I ask questions, Mr. Piety, and I see that they are answered.”
I met his razor smile, and I nodded. I knew what sort of man this was. I had seen men put to the question before and I remembered asking questions myself, after the attack on the Chandler’s Narrow house. I
remembered how I had got my answers to those questions. We understood each other, or so I thought at the time.
“This is the home of the Queen’s Men, then,” I said.
“Among other things,” he allowed.
I picked up a bottle of brandy from the tray the footman had left standing on a bench, and refilled my glass. Vogel hadn’t touched his, I noticed.
“You’ve gone to some trouble to get me alone tonight. Is this about the Skanians?”
“Not tonight,” he said. “This is an entirely different matter, one of personal importance to me.”
“What, then?”
“You’re to do something for me, Piety,” he said. “Directly for me. Ailsa does not need to know, unless you wish her to. Tell her if you will, or don’t. I will leave that to your judgment.”
I blinked at that.
“And what’s that, then?”
“This boy of yours, this Billy. I understand you have taken him as a son. I believe that the magicians will want to keep him, and I do not want that to happen. I oppose anything that the magicians want. In truth I wish someone would rid me of them, and that cursed university, too.” He paused for a moment to take a very small sip of his drink. “That aside, your boy is too useful a talent to allow them to dissect him as well. You have my personal permission to prevent that. Do what you need to do. Iagin will provide men and supplies from Grachyev’s criminal organization, if they are required, and the Guard will look the other way if they have to, but ensure that you take the boy back to Ellinburg with you.”
