by Peter McLean
When I first opened the letter I’d thought Vogel was talking about Ailsa, and that had scared me more than I would have expected. The cold rage had finally died within me sometime after I forgave Mina, but I was still a long way from being able to see past what Ailsa had done. And yet, when I read those words, a dread had gripped my heart until I realised the truth. I wondered why that was.
Still, those were thoughts for another day. There were more pressing things to think on that night.
The queen was dead.
I sipped my brandy and let that sink in.
The Princess Crown Royal was heir to the throne, I knew that much. I had seen her once, very briefly, at a court reception in Dannsburg the previous year. She’d had eleven years to her at the time, I remembered Ailsa telling me, and although I didn’t know when her nameday was she couldn’t have reached her age of legal majority yet. She would still take the throne, of course, but the law said she couldn’t be crowned or rule in her own right until she had thirteen years to her. That meant a regent, then.
Had the queen had a husband? I realised I had no idea, and there my ignorance shamed me. A Queen’s Man I might be, but Ailsa had given me the warrant in what felt at the time very much like a battlefield promotion. I’d had no training, nor been formally brought into the knighthood. There were a great number of things that a Queen’s Man should know that I still had no idea about.
I swallowed the end of my drink and left the study, and walked down the corridor to the library to look it up. The most recent copy of Peerage of the Realm I could find had been printed five years ago, but according to that there was a husband by the name of Wilhelm who was father to the Princess Crown Royal. He was styled Prince Consort, apparently. Assuming he was still alive, that meant he would become regent until his daughter was of age. The princess had been the royal couple’s only offspring at the time the book was written, I noted, and as our late queen had been past her fortieth year at the time of the birth I suspected there had been no more children after her.
I may not know much about such things, but that the royal house had only a single direct heir seemed troubling to me. Perhaps the queen had married late in life or their majesties had struggled to conceive, I really wouldn’t know, but I knew it made that little girl’s life the most precious thing in the country right then. I could only hope Lord Vogel and his organisation would protect her better than they had the queen.
I was angry, I realised. Not angry that the queen was dead, as such, for I’d had no great love for this royal woman I had never set eyes on. She had condemned me and nearly everyone I knew to the Hell that was Abingon, after all, and that was a hard thing to forgive. No, it was more the simple fact that it had happened when the organisation I served, the Queen’s Men, existed primarily to ensure that such a thing was impossible. Someone, I thought, had fucked up very badly.
That, or there were traitors in the royal palace.
I stood in the library and thought on that for a moment, and I remembered how Borys had betrayed me and the Pious Men the previous year. I remembered what I had done to Borys, and I could only wonder what Vogel would do to any traitors he uncovered in Dannsburg.
That was a thought to keep a man awake at night and no mistake.
I pushed the notion away and returned to my study to pen a reply to Vogel’s letter.
My esteemed uncle,
I am greatly saddened to learn of Mother’s death. I shall inform those younger members of the family who are closest to me, and as soon as my seat here is in safe hands we will make haste to join you at home.
Your loyal nephew,
Tomas
That looked about right, as far as I understood how such things were supposed to be phrased. Rosie would have known better than I did, but she was away in the house on Chandler’s Narrow and the hour was late by then. She would probably be with Anne, and I didn’t want to disturb them that night. I heated wax over the flame of the lamp and closed the letter with the governor’s seal, then rang for a footman to take it to Caelyn. She would be gone by first light, I was sure.
I was surprised to find Billy still in the drawing room when I returned to get another brandy before retiring for the night. Mina had presumably gone to bed, but the lad was sitting there waiting up for me.
‘Something’s happened,’ he said at once. ‘What is it? Is it word of Mama?’
I sighed.
‘No, lad,’ I said. ‘No, it’s not that. I’m sure your ma’s well, wherever she may be.’
It was hard to keep the bitterness out of my voice, but I tried for Billy’s sake. He still loved Ailsa as a mother, I knew that, and it would be ill done of me to speak badly of her to him.
‘There’s something, though,’ he said, and I could tell he wasn’t going to let it pass.
‘Aye, there is,’ I said.
I crossed to the side table and refilled my glass, then sat in a chair across from him and fixed him with a look.
‘What is it, Papa?’ he asked again.
‘It’s business, Billy,’ I said after a moment. ‘The other sort, I mean.’
‘Dannsburg business.’
‘Aye, lad, it’s that.’
I made a decision then, one that I will remember for the rest of my life. I told him, and thus included him in those closest, and in what that would mean in the times to come.
I may never forgive myself for that.
‘You’re my son, Billy. You’re my family. I know I can trust you with this. You know what I do, don’t you? Aside from the governorship, I mean. Aside from the Pious Men.’
‘You work for the queen,’ Billy said at once.
‘That I do,’ I said. ‘It’s . . . more complicated than that, but aye, I work for the queen. Well, here’s the lay of things. The queen is dead, Billy. That’s what the messenger came to tell me, but you can’t breathe a word of that to anyone. Do you understand me? No one, not even Mina. Tomorrow I’ll tell Bloody Anne and Fat Luka, and in a week or two someone will come to Ellinburg from the capital and then they’ll be governor here instead of me. I won’t be governor any more because I have to go back to Dannsburg, and I’ll be taking Anne and Luka and Rosie with me. Do you want to come with us?’
‘Yes, Papa,’ he said at once, and never for a moment did he hesitate in his answer. ‘Me and Mina, we’ll both come.’
‘You can’t tell Mina,’ I said again. ‘I’m sorry, lad, but she can’t come, and there it is.’
‘But Papa, she’s got nowhere else to go!’
‘I know, and I won’t see her out on the street. If I’m to be replaced as governor then we’ll have to move back to the house anyway. She can stay there while we’re away. Salo and Cook will look after her.’
‘It’s not fair,’ Billy muttered, in the way that only those in their teen years do.
‘I know, son,’ I said. ‘Few things are, in this life.’
*
The next morning I sent out runners to bring Fat Luka and Bloody Anne and Rosie to me at the governor’s hall. It seemed strange to be holding a council of war with them there in my study instead of at the long table in the back room of the Tanner’s Arms, but that wasn’t my place any more. That was Anne’s table now, not mine.
I had made her head of the Pious Men when I became governor of Ellinburg, lacking enough hours in the day to do both myself. She had done very well indeed in the months since then, and the peace with the Northern Sons and the Alarian Kings had held throughout the winter and into the beginning of the warm months. Luka had brokered that peace, to be sure, but it was Anne who had enforced it.
She made a good boss, I thought now as I looked at her across the wide expanse of my desk. I could only hope I had made as good a governor.
‘How’s business going, Bloody Anne?’ I asked her.
She sipped tea from a shallow bowl and looked at me over the rim for a long moment. I had never seen Anne drink tea before. She was guarded around me now, as might be expected. She was the biggest un
derworld player in the city, and I was the city governor. We were still friends, of course we were, but I thought perhaps the nature of that friendship had changed some since I had been her boss in the Pious Men. Rosie sat quiet beside her, the bawd’s knot proudly displayed on her shoulder in yellow cord as she watched and listened.
Anne sucked her teeth for a moment while she considered her answer, making the long puckered scar on her face twist and pull the corner of her mouth up into a bitter half-smile.
‘Well enough,’ she said, at last. ‘I made your aunt my second. Mika is underboss of the Stink now, and Black Billy his second. Florence Cooper runs the Wheels with Jutta as hers.’
I nodded.
‘Aye, I heard,’ I said. ‘Any trouble on your streets?’
‘No,’ she said shortly, and that was all she said on the subject.
There had been trouble of course, after that first strike I had put down the previous year, but Anne had suppressed it with ruthless efficiency and that was good. She never had been one to boast of her deeds, not even when we fought together back in the war.
I looked at her and Fat Luka and Rosie, and nodded slowly.
Bring your chiefs of staff, that was what Vogel’s letter had meant.
Well, that was those three, to my mind, and I wasn’t going into the nest of vipers that was Dannsburg without Billy’s magic beside me either. My aunt was Anne’s second in the Pious Men now, so it would be up to her to run the business while Anne was away. There especially I thought she had chosen wisely. Admittedly, the last time Aunt Enaid had run the Pious Men she had lost all our businesses to Bloodhands and his Skanian-backed Gutcutters, but I knew she had more than proved herself since then. During the battles of the Stink for one, and since then too. During the troubles Anne said she hadn’t had.
Florence Cooper was better suited to the job, perhaps, and certainly more ruthless, but she ran her own crew and had done even before the war. She was an independent woman, our Florence. Once given power, if only for a little while, I didn’t think she would be eager to give it back again afterwards. Aunt Enaid put the family first, always, but Florence perhaps wouldn’t, and despite their friendship Anne had seen that.
She was no one’s fool, was Bloody Anne.
‘I have something to tell you all,’ I said, after a long moment of silence. ‘Something sealed to crown secrecy under the Queen’s Warrant. I’ve told my Billy but no one else and it’s to stay that way, do you understand me?’
The three of them nodded, and I told them what Vogel’s letter had said. Luka winced as he listened, but he held his peace. Anne and Rosie just sat quiet until I was finished.
‘What does this mean for us?’ Anne asked.
‘A new governor will be here in a week or two, to take over from me,’ I said. ‘Rosie, Luka, you’ve that long to set things in order here and make sure business carries on without you, then you’re coming to Dannsburg with me and Billy. Anne, I’d like you to join us as well, but that’s your choice.’
‘In case you need people killed when we get there, you mean,’ Anne said.
No, she was no one’s fool at all.
Chapter 3
It was ten days before the new governor arrived in Ellinburg.
Her name was Schulz, and she was a career bureaucrat from Dannsburg. I found little enough to like in the woman, but she had been appointed by Vogel himself so I could only assume she had at least a rough notion of how this worked. At least she’d had the sense to come on horseback with her guards and leave her baggage train to follow behind rather than riding in a carriage, so she understood urgency if nothing else.
‘It seems you leave me the city in good order, Governor Piety,’ she said as we finally finished going over the books of record in my study.
‘Aye, well, Governor Schulz, I was only ever interim governor here but I’ve run things as best I could.’
She nodded, and showed me a smile that I thought a touch condescending.
‘I’m sure you have,’ she said.
I found that I was glad to leave the governor’s hall. It was an overlarge and uncomfortable building, and noisy with the constant comings and goings of guardsmen and messengers and city officials and suchlike. Salo had reopened the house off Trader’s Row and we had moved back there two days ago, Billy and Mina and me.
The governor’s hall was vacant for Schulz to do with as she willed, and I wished her well of it.
When our meeting was done I got to my feet and offered her the chair behind the desk, in a symbolic handing over of power. She took my meaning, and she too stood and she shook my hand before she sat down behind the desk and rather fussily repositioned the inkwell.
‘Oh, Mr Piety, one more thing,’ she said.
I was Mr Piety now, I noticed, not Governor, already removed from my position.
‘What’s that, then?’
‘Our mutual superior in Dannsburg sends you his respects. He asked me to assure you that I will continue the tradition of the governors of Ellinburg of working in partnership with the Pious Men.’
Schulz was one of Vogel’s in truth, then, not just some lackey of the governing council. Not a full Queen’s Man, I was sure, or she would have been needed in the capital the same as I was, but she had certainly risen high enough in the organisation to know how things worked. Vogel was assuring me that it was safe to take Bloody Anne away from the business, I understood that, and that meant he wanted her in Dannsburg every bit as much as I did.
Which meant he knew that she existed and who she was, what her skills were and why I would want her with me. Fat Luka had worked for the Queen’s Men long before he worked for me, I had learned, since before the war, in fact, and who knew what information he and Rosie between them still passed to the capital.
Everyone is watched by someone.
Ailsa had told me that, once, and I knew it was true.
‘That’s good of you,’ I made myself say. ‘My thanks.’
‘I assure you, Mr Piety,’ she said, ‘I’m only following orders.’
Aye, well, weren’t we all?
*
That done, I paid a call on my brother to say farewell before we had to leave for Dannsburg. The maid I had hired for Hanne showed me into the parlour where her mistress was resting, the babe asleep in a crib beside her chair. Hanne looked tired, I thought, but then, new mothers usually did. There was a greyness to her face, though, and something in her once-smiling eyes that spoke of a quiet despair.
We exchanged pleasantries for a moment, but I barely knew the woman and she was plainly terrified of me. A year ago she had been my undercook at the house off Trader’s Row, after all. That was before my brother had accidentally got her pregnant in a meaningless fuck over the kitchen table while I was hosting a dinner party for Governor Hauer and a number of factory owners and pointless minor aristocrats who I didn’t know. Jochan had astonished me by marrying her, and now she was my sister-by-law, but I could see that we both knew where Jochan’s heart truly lay.
‘You’ll be wanting your brother, I’m sure, Mr Piety,’ she said after a moment. ‘He’s in his study with his . . . friend. You’ll forgive me if I don’t get up, but I don’t like to leave her, as it were.’
She turned a doting smile on her baby, and the bleakness left her face for a moment. She loved the child, that was plain to see, and I supposed that was good even if nothing else about their marriage was.
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Don’t trouble yourself, I know the way.’
Truth be told, I was glad to be free of the formalities of society life, if only for a little while, and not having to be escorted by a footman felt like a blessing. I left her there in the parlour and crossed the hall to the opposite door.
I knocked, and heard a muffled and clearly drunken response from within.
Jochan’s study was a drinking room, as might be expected. It was a long time since my brother had studied anything but the bottom of a bottle. There was a desk in there but it looked seldom use
d, and the room stank of brandy.
Cutter was with him, as I had expected. They were seated together on a padded settle like the lovers they were. I felt for Hanne in that moment, but it was what it was and none of my business, in Our Lady’s eyes.
‘Brother,’ I said. ‘Cutter.’
‘Hello, Tomas,’ he said. ‘Come in, have a drink with us.’
Jochan was slurring slightly, and he showed me a drunken grin as he spoke.
Cutter just lowered his gaze and turned his face away. He was hideously scarred from the battle with the Skanian magician the previous winter, one of his eyes gone and covered by a black leather patch. That whole side of his face was a mass of knotted, burned scar tissue where the beard didn’t grow any more. It was only thanks to Billy and Mina’s cunning and the later crude ministrations of Doc Cordin that he lived at all.
‘Boss,’ Cutter said quietly.
‘Aye,’ I said, for want of anything better, and looked at my brother. ‘Jochan, I just wanted to let you know I’m going away for a while, and I’m taking Bloody Anne and Fat Luka with me. Our aunt’s in charge until Anne gets back.’
Of course Anne had chosen to come too. I had never really been in any doubt about that.
‘Fuck a nun, Tomas,’ Jochan said, ‘I know you don’t fucking trust me. Just say it and have done with it.’
‘It’s not that,’ I said. ‘I do trust you, Jochan. I trust you with my heart, and with the past. You know that, or at least I hope you do. You’re a warrior, but you’re not a leader. You’re just not, and that’s all there is to it. Anne is, and so is Enaid.’
Jochan turned and spat into the fireplace, and Cutter gave me a look I wasn’t sure I knew how to read.
‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Please, if you do nothing else, support Aunt Enaid. When we were little she took us in when we needed her the most, Jochan. She fucking raised us. Support her now.’
