by Peter McLean
That was how business was done, the same way it was in Ellinburg.
Another messenger came that day, bearing a new letter from Bloody Anne. With the way the roads were I had no way of knowing if she would have received my reply to the last one by the time she wrote it, but it seemed things had taken an ill turn at home.
My dearest Tomas,
It pains me to have to write to you again so soon but I find I have to bear hard news. The sickness has reached our doors, and more and more of our extended family are suffering from illness. It seems our friend is not the friend we had thought. There have been no deaths within the close family, but many more distant relations are sadly lamented.
The weather in the city has become intolerable, although your brother has been stalwart in spreading the sickness among those with whom we are not friends.
Please tell me you will return soon; your dear aunt and I miss you so very much.
Your loving little sister,
Anne
Things in Ellinburg were fast going to the whores then, that was what she was telling me. The governor had quite plainly turned his back on law and order, although it sounded like Jochan was leading a counterattack against the Northern Sons and their Skanian backers. If things were that bad at home, then I knew there was no way I could risk Lan Yetrov making even more trouble for us with Hauer. I couldn’t help Anne fight the Skanians from Dannsburg, but there was one thing I could do, and it was plain what that was.
Lan Yetrov had to die.
* * *
* * *
We stayed low for a couple of days after that, until Fat Luka came to me and said that the maid he had found and bribed in Lan Yetrov’s household had got my message to the lady of the house. She was willing to talk.
I had thought she might be.
It was a gamble, of course, but most things in this life are. If she was truly loyal to Lan Yetrov, which I doubted, then she would betray me and there would be hard times ahead. If, on the other hand, she was a woman both grasping for money and at the same time sick of being raped up the arse by her cruel cunt of a husband, then this could be a mutually beneficial arrangement.
“She’ll meet you,” Luka said, “but she can’t be seen here, and obviously you can’t go to her house without her husband hearing of it. There are inns and taverns, of course, but inns and taverns are full of eyes and ears. Everyone in this fucking city is watching everyone else. We could ask Grachyev to arrange something, but—”
But then Vogel would hear of it. I didn’t think I wanted that, not yet.
“No, no, fuck that, this isn’t Grachyev’s affair and I’m into him for one favor as it is. We need some real neutral ground for this, outside of prying eyes. Give me a moment.”
I pulled paper and quill and ink from the writing desk and scratched a note.
My esteemed Sasura,
This will sound strange, but I assure you the matter is purely business and there is no impropriety toward your daughter. I need to meet privately with a woman on neutral ground, and I wonder if I could beg the use of your house for an hour? I would welcome your presence at our meeting, for your advice and guidance.
Your most respectful son-by-law,
Tomas
I folded and sealed the paper and passed it to Fat Luka.
“Get that to Ailsa’s father,” I said.
Luka blinked at me, but he had the sense not to say anything.
That was how I got an old pirate back into the life.
* * *
* * *
A day later I received a note from Ailsa’s father.
My beloved son-by-law,
I believe you are leading me back astray in my old age, and I think that I like it. Arrange your meeting for my house this Queensday afternoon, when I know my wife will be out with her friends. She need not and must not know of this.
With my greatest regards,
Your sasura
I had no idea where Ailsa’s mother went on Queensday afternoons, but that was perfect. My mother-by-law hated me, after all, and she was hardly likely to accept me receiving a married woman at her house. Sasura, on the other hand, quite clearly understood when business was just business.
Come that Queensday afternoon I was sitting in his study drinking his brandy with him when a footman showed Lady Lan Yetrov in. She looked cowed and broken, and she lacked the skill with paint and powder to completely hide the black eye she was sporting. She walked with difficulty too, I noted, and when she sat it was with a wince of pain. Lan Yetrov had obviously taken his rage at me out on her, which only made me hate him all the more.
“My Lady Lan Yetrov,” I said, “I thank you for coming. It’s no secret that your husband and I are not friends.”
She laughed, a strangely brittle sound in the comfortable quiet of Sasura’s study.
“Your man had the disgusting temerity to suggest that I might enjoy being a widow,” she said. “I can scarce believe the disrespect you have shown to my husband and me.”
Her tone was full of righteous indignation, but she had come to see me all the same.
She wanted rid of that cunt and she wanted his money, that was plain enough, but she was sat in front of a man she didn’t know and I could see that she was picking her words with great care.
“That you might,” I said. “You would be wealthy, and free, and with time you might finally heal from what he’s been doing to you.”
“I love my husband,” Lady Lan Yetrov said, but there was a dead and despairing look in her eyes as she spoke.
Ailsa’s father leaned forward and put a reassuring hand over hers.
“I am very old,” he said, when she tried to pull away. “I do not want to fuck you. I’m too old for that, so listen to me. No one in this room is a listener for the crown or a friend to your husband. No one here will tell your husband what you say of him. Tomas is my son-by-law, and he has a reason to want you to be free. You don’t need to know what that reason is; you just need to tell us some things, and we will help you.”
“What things?” she asked, and there was no mistaking the quiver of hope in her voice. “What could you possibly want to know from me?”
“Just simple things,” I said. “Who the captain of your household guard is and what levers move him. Who we need to bribe to get access to your estate at night. Who keeps your husband’s prize bear, that sort of thing.”
Lady Lan Yetrov looked at us both for a long time, my father-by-law and me. Then she started to talk, and I to listen.
She told me everything I needed to know, everything that I needed to tell Luka and Leonov in order to ensure that the wheels of revenge could begin to turn. Eventually it was done, and Lady Lan Yetrov accepted a small glass of brandy. Her hands were trembling, I noticed, and there were tears on her cheeks. Whether they were tears of guilt and remorse or of relief and joy, I really couldn’t have said.
Truth be told, I didn’t really care.
THIRTY-SEVEN
With that in motion, it was high time we visited the house of magicians. Ailsa was already waiting for me, on the morning of the appointed day.
“How does this work?” I asked her, when I came down the stairs and met her in the hall, still buttoning my coat. “Do we need to make an appointment or something?”
“Absolutely not,” she said. “They will see me, and they will especially want to see Billy.”
“They’re not keeping him,” I said at once. “I found Fischer’s journal, remember, and he was talking about how his crew cut Katrin and Gerta open to study them. Billy doesn’t leave our fucking sight in that place, you hear me?”
“Tomas, do you honestly think I would let that happen to my Billy?”
I looked at her, at my lioness, and I found that I had no answer to give her. I most sincerely hoped not, of course I did, but
was I really sure about it? I had to allow that I had a place in my heart for Ailsa, but I couldn’t let myself forget who and what she was. Her and Billy had grown close, yes, but if Vogel had ordered her to hand the lad over to the magicians she still might just have done it. I wouldn’t like to bet either way on that.
We were both dressed in finery as befitted our station in Dannsburg, but all the same I buckled the Weeping Women over my coat. I refused to hear any argument about that. These fuckers had magic, or so they said, and I didn’t, but I had good steel and the skill to use it. I wasn’t walking into their nest of vipers without at least some way to defend myself. I was fortunate that the wearing of swords was back in fashion in Dannsburg, so at least no one would make too much fuss about it. The house of magicians wasn’t the house of law, after all, and they couldn’t forbid it. The fact that mine were real weapons and not dress blades would hopefully not be noticed.
“Aye, well,” I said at last. “You can’t blame me for worrying about the lad.”
“No, of course I can’t,” she said. “He’s every bit as much my son as he is yours, and I worry for him too. The house of magicians is . . . a strange place.”
“In what way?”
I had a suspicion about the house of magicians but precious few facts to go on. I could still turn out to be wrong, and that was worrying me.
I’m not afraid of what I can see, of what I can fight. If I can fight it, then perhaps I can kill it, however long the odds might be. I’m afraid of the things that I can’t see. Disease, and magic; those, I fear.
“Oh, don’t sound so scared; there’s no magic about it,” she said. “It’s just a building, very similar to the house of law, in fact. The things that go on there, though, those are different. Magicians scry the stars and they practice alchemy, and some say they have terrible powers and they call up demons from Hell and make pacts with them.”
“And what about you? Do you say those things?”
“I really don’t know,” Ailsa said. “I don’t know whether I believe in demons.”
“Nor do I,” I said. “Priest I may be, but that’s a matter for mystics and I’m not that. I know one thing I do believe in, though, and that’s evil men. I very strongly believe in them, and I think we’re about to meet some.”
“Perhaps we are,” Ailsa allowed. “Human vivisection is an ugly thing.”
That was putting it lightly, to my mind, but I wondered if it was really so very different to the way that questions were asked in the house of law. Was cutting people open to study what was inside them any worse than putting them to the question? That was a philosophical question, I supposed, and this was no time for philosophy.
“Aye, well,” I said. “Is Billy ready?”
“Yes, Papa,” he said from behind me.
I didn’t startle, and I pride myself on that, but I hadn’t heard him come down the stairs and I had no idea how long the lad had been there. Cutter’s training had changed Billy, I realized. He moved like the knifeman now, silent and purposeful. If he’d had the mind to he could have cut my throat before I knew anything was wrong.
“Right, well and good,” I said. “Let’s get this fucking done, then.”
* * *
* * *
The three of us rode our carriage across Dannsburg to the house of magicians, with two footmen on the carriage itself and three of Ailsa’s household guard around us on horseback. The place lay in the northern reach of the city, near the university and the great library. As we arrived, I saw it was constructed much like the house of law as Ailsa had said, although as well as the royal standard on the roof there was another banner flying. This one was dark blue, with a single seven-pointed star picked out on it in white. It was the only other banner I had seen since I had been in Dannsburg, and it said a lot about the power of the house of magicians that they could fly their own colors within that sea of red.
Two guards flanked the massive double doors, both in full plate armor and closed great helms, and wearing dark blue surcoats with the same white star sewn on them. They had halberds in their hands and long, heavy war swords hanging from their belts.
“Who the fuck are they?” I asked as the carriage drew up outside.
“Guard of the Magi,” Ailsa said. “The private army of the house of magicians. They’re just soldiers like any others, but they like to pretend they’re something special because of who they work for. There are considerably more of them than we are comfortable with.”
“They must be fucking hot in all that lot,” I muttered, as I climbed out of the carriage into the summer sun and handed Ailsa down after me. “Guard of the sweaty, maybe.”
She smiled at that and smoothed her skirts while Billy jumped down after us.
“I’ll do the talking,” she murmured, and approached the overly armored guards with an easy confidence that told them she was court nobility born and bred.
“I am the Lady Ailsa Piety,” she told them, “and these are my husband and my son. We are expected within.”
“No, you’re not,” one of the guards said, his voice muffled by his cumbersome helmet. “No one is, today.”
Ailsa reached into her purse and produced the thick piece of folded leather that contained the seal of the Queen’s Warrant. She held it up and showed it to the guardsman.
“I really am,” she said.
The man snapped to attention so hard he almost dropped his halberd.
“Ma’am,” he said.
A moment later the doors were open and we were being ushered inside. It seemed that even the Guard of the Magi had a healthy respect for the Queen’s Men, and that was good. All the same, it surprised me that she showed the warrant so openly.
But then this was Dannsburg, I had to remind myself, and things were done differently here. The Queen’s Men didn’t even officially exist, everyone knew that, but of course everyone also knew very well that they did. What had she called it?
Plausible deniability, that was it.
And who would be such a fool, in a city where everyone informed on everyone else, to go spreading tales of the Queen’s Men and who had said what, and when? No, that wasn’t going to happen. People had disappeared for less, I was sure.
Dannsburg, as I have written, was not like Ellinburg.
Not one little bit it wasn’t.
Still, that was a thought for another day. The hall within the house of magicians was much what I had come to expect in Dannsburg, high-ceilinged and galleried and all of polished marble and gilded wrought iron. A man hurried out of an antechamber to greet us, his velvet livery all blue and white and bearing the seven-pointed star of the house of magicians over his heart.
“Lady Piety, such an honor,” he said, bowing obsequiously to us both. “Father Piety, young master Billy. Welcome, welcome to the house of magicians.”
The heavy double doors thumped closed behind us, and I heard a lock turn. I had to allow that I didn’t feel very fucking welcome.
Ailsa again produced the Queen’s Warrant and showed it to him.
“Go away, and bring me somebody who matters,” she said.
The liveried nobody visibly paled as he looked at the warrant in her hand.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
He scurried away and down a corridor, leaving us standing alone in the great echoing hall.
“Shouldn’t there be some footmen or something?” I whispered to Ailsa. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this alone in Dannsburg.”
“This is the house of magicians,” she replied, speaking quietly out of the side of her mouth. “They find it difficult to retain servants.”
I couldn’t imagine why.
After a few minutes the man in livery returned, from upstairs this time, and now he had what I assumed to be an actual magician with him. The magician descended the great marble stair with the attendant behind him, his l
ong, flowing blue robes trailing down the polished stone steps after him. He was short and plump and pale of face, and he wore his black hair cropped close to his skull and his beard long and oiled and luxurious against his chest. I could see the toes of dainty, pointed velvet slippers poking out from under his robe with each step he took.
I hated him on sight.
“Lady Piety, Father Piety,” the flunky said, “allow me to present the learned magus Absolom Greuv.”
“A pleasure, Magus,” Ailsa said, in a tone that meant the exact opposite.
She dipped him a curtsey so small I could barely see it, and I could tell that wasn’t lost on him.
“Lady Piety,” he said. “I see you have finally seen fit to answer our summons.”
“The roads are slow at this time of year,” Ailsa said, although they weren’t.
“I’m sure they are,” he said.
It seemed no one was going to bring up the spy that the magicians had had in our house for the last month and more, then, or ask what had become of him. That was good. I knew we could win the game of “who officially knows what” if we had to, but it would be better if it wasn’t played at all, to my mind. It seemed that Fischer had been expendable, as far as the house of magicians was concerned. I remembered the whip scars on his back, and I wasn’t overly surprised about that. It seemed that magicians were not benign masters.
We were still standing in the hall without drinks in our hands, and from what I had learned of how hospitality worked in Dannsburg, that seemed to me like it might be deliberately rude. I looked at this magus who still hadn’t so much as acknowledged me, and then looked at Billy.
“Are you thirsty, lad?” I asked him.
“Yes, Papa,” Billy said.
“Aye,” I said, and if perhaps my tone was somewhat blunt, then I am a blunt man, and I make no apology for that. “So am I.”
“Forgive me, where are my manners?” the magician said.
