by Peter McLean
‘Perhaps not,’ I admitted, ‘but you’ll have to leave this house eventually. A crossbow bolt from an alley, a dagger in a crowd. A cunning lad, from absolutely fucking anywhere. There are a lot of ways to die, Reiter.’
‘And there are a lot of ways to live, Piety,’ he countered. ‘There are a lot of ways to not be Dieter Vogel’s lapdog. Will you choose one of them?’
‘Will you give up the bombers?’ I asked him, putting the full force of my blunt Ellinburg accent into the question. ‘Because finding them is my fucking job. Who bombed my inn this morning?’
‘I honestly have no idea,’ Reiter said, and for all that it pained me, I believed him again.
He was innocent, to my mind, and curse it to Our Lady’s name but I couldn’t help but actually like the fellow. Truth be told, I would have far preferred things if he had been my boss instead of Vogel, but that was not the hand Our Lady had dealt me in this life.
Fuck.
*
‘Get your little rats out on the street and turn them loose,’ I told Fat Luka when I returned to the Bountiful Harvest from the archmagus’ house. ‘I want to know who bombed my fucking inn. Grease palms, spend all the money you need to. That’s what it’s fucking for, and the house of law has more than enough of it.’
‘Aye, boss,’ Luka said, ‘but if it wasn’t Reiter I’d lay odds it was one of his fellows.’
‘So would I,’ I said, ‘but I want to know which one. I want to know who, and where they live and what they do outside the house of magicians, and more to the point I want to know who they live with.’
I had been ready to blow up Archmagus Nikolai Reiter’s house, and it had never crossed my mind that he might have children, or even a wife, for that matter. That shamed me, I had to allow, and it wasn’t a mistake I would make again. It’s a thing I have noticed about myself, about powerful people in general. We might see an enemy, and move against them, but we seldom see those around them. Their wives or husbands, their mothers or fathers or children.
No one is ever simply an enemy, a lone faceless thing to be fought and killed. That was what was drilled into us in the army, to be sure, but that didn’t make it true. Every enemy soldier in any conflict has a family back home, people who love them and depend on them, but the army doesn’t want you thinking of the enemy’s family when you ram a spear through his guts. No, just advance, and kill and kill and kill again. They’re enemies, so fuck them. Form the shield wall and push and stab and push and stab, and trample the bloody corpses beneath your boots.
They’re not people, just enemies. Fuck them all, no consequences. There are no weeping widows, no lost, homeless orphans. Just enemies. Push and stab and push and stab as the cannons roar and the skies darken with smoke and blood.
‘Boss? Are you feeling all right?’
Luka’s words came to me through the haze of battle shock, and I realised that my hands were shaking badly where they rested on the table in the private dining room of the Bountiful Harvest.
‘Aye,’ I said, and hid my hands beneath the table as quickly as I could without making it too obvious. ‘Aye, I’m well, Luka.’
Breathe, I thought. Just breathe.
I wasn’t well, I knew that. I had been planning to kill four children that night, even if I hadn’t known it at the time. I wasn’t well at all. I don’t think I would ever have been able to forgive myself if I had gone through with my original mad plan of revenge against the house of magicians.
I was too deep in the Queen’s Men for my own health, I realised, but right then I couldn’t see my way clear of it.
‘Aye, that’s good,’ Luka said. ‘If you say so.’
He didn’t believe me, I could see that plain enough in his fleshy face, and he was fucking right not to.
I wasn’t all right, and the battle shock was only part of it. Everything was falling apart, I could see that plain as day.
Ailsa’s words came back to me again: Ill-informed and ignorant people are easier to suppress and control.
She had told me that when she forced the governorship of Ellinburg on me, and now the thought sent a shiver down my spine. I knew what Lord Vogel was doing. I remembered Sabine inciting the violence at the lynching I had witnessed, and I had no doubt at all that it had been on his orders. Vogel had instigated war against the house of magicians and the university and all the wealth of knowledge and learning that they stood for.
I could see what he was doing, and I didn’t like it one little fucking bit.
Chapter 39
The next afternoon saw me at Sasura’s house. Queensday afternoon was bright and sunny, if cold, and my carriage drew up at the gates of his estate with the light of the low winter sun stabbing through the windows and into my eyes. The guards on the gates exchanged hard looks with my footmen, and I couldn’t help thinking how much Dannsburg had changed since the previous year. The place had always been full of eyes and ears, suspicions and informers, but now it seemed everyone looked at everyone else with an open hostility and that was new.
The tensions between the house of law and house of magicians had the population at boiling point. Students of the university had been rioting in the streets just that morning, in solidarity with their colleagues at the house of magicians. The Guard had been sent in, I knew that much, but not what the outcome had been.
‘I’m Sir Tomas,’ I said to the man who came to the window of my carriage with his hand on the hilt of his sword. ‘I’m expected.’
He consulted a paper for a moment, then nodded.
‘That you are, sir,’ he allowed, and motioned to his men to open the gates.
Ailsa’s parents were simply retired merchants, so far as society was concerned anyway, and even their security was like this. None of their wealthy neighbours thought anything of it, of course, because theirs was even stricter. That was what Dannsburg had come to, in those days.
We were ushered through the gates into the grassy expanse at the front of the grand old house, and I left Oliver and Emil with the coachman and allowed myself to be escorted alone to the front door. The house was crawling with ivy and still had windows in the old style, the little leaded diamonds of glass in the casements. Here, perhaps alone in all of Dannsburg, I felt I was truly safe. A footman admitted me at the door and showed me down the hall to Sasura’s study.
The footman knocked, and opened the door at a muffled response from within.
‘Your guest, sir,’ he said.
I stepped past him into the comfortable room with its magnificent Alarian carpet, and I bowed low to my father-by-law as was only respectful. Sasura took two steps forward and swept me into an embrace as the footman closed the door behind me.
‘Tomas, it is good to see you,’ he said.
‘And you, Sasura,’ I replied, and I meant it.
Whatever differences there might be between Ailsa and me, her father was a man I had the greatest of respect for. He was Alarian, obviously, with some seventy or more years to him. His longish white hair was pulled back from his brow in a severe topknot, the way I remembered it, and his magnificent white beard and great curling moustache were still reassuringly the same. As ever he was dressed in the Dannsburg style, in a fine doublet and coat.
‘Brandy!’ he announced with a broad grin. ‘I know you are a man who enjoys brandy in the afternoon, a man after my own heart.’
‘My thanks,’ I said, and he opened the finely carved cupboard that contained a great number of glasses and bottles.
Brandy was my sasura’s passion, one he had allowed himself to indulge greatly since his retirement. He poured for us both, and took one of the comfortable chairs away from his imposing desk while waving me into another.
‘So,’ he said after he had taken a generous sip of his drink. ‘What can I do for you, my beloved son-by-law? I would be overjoyed to think this is purely a social call, but I feel I know you well enough by now that somehow I doubt that.’
‘Aye, well,’ I said, and I looked at him over my
glass. ‘Not entirely, I have to allow. Tell me, Sasura, what do you know of the house of magicians and their power in Dannsburg?’
He drank again, and took his time before he answered.
‘I know they are greatly out of favour with the house of law. There is talk, albeit unsubstantiated to the best of my knowledge, that they somehow had something to do with the death of our beloved queen. That they are in league with the Skanian menace, no less. There have been riots in the streets, and there have been lynchings. These are things that you already know, I am sure.’
I nodded. They would have been rather hard to miss, after all.
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘And I know the magicians and their supporters are fighting back. Their Guard of the Magi have had more than one scuffle with the City Guard, and some of the riots are turning into pitched battles between supporters of the two houses.’
Sasura shrugged. ‘Such is the nature of mobs,’ he said. ‘It is sad, but the human animal is essentially tribal. Those who support the magicians and the university find themselves at odds with the common folk who support the house of law. It is to be expected.’
‘Someone bombed my inn yesterday morning,’ I said.
He startled at that, and I could tell that was something he hadn’t known. Of course the accusations against the house of magicians were almost certainly horseshit, I knew that, and that wasn’t why I was there at all. We had started those rumours ourselves, for Our Lady’s sake, for all that that didn’t mean they hadn’t bombed my inn in retaliation. That wasn’t what I was interested in.
‘By the Many-Headed God!’ he swore. ‘Was anyone hurt?’
‘No, thank Our Lady,’ I replied, ‘but I think it was only a warning, this time. Do you think the magicians would have done that?’
‘There have been lynchings,’ he repeated idly, sipping his brandy as he spoke, ‘but I doubt they would resort to random acts of public terrorism in retribution. They have no reason to target you in particular, a simple businessman from Ellinburg, now have they?’
His eyebrow raised slightly when he said it, and I felt a lead weight begin to form in my stomach. Sasura was a very shrewd man, as I have written, which was a big part of why I liked him so much. Ailsa was adamant her parents had no idea what she did, and therefore by extension no idea what I did, but I was truly beginning to doubt that. I swallowed my brandy and looked at my father-by-law with a new respect, and I began to wonder if once again we were working our way around the edges of something here.
‘It would seem unlikely on the surface of it, I agree,’ I said.
‘It would,’ he replied, and reached for the brandy.
He refilled my glass, emptying the bottle, then stood and turned away to get a fresh one from the cupboard. That way his back was almost completely turned to me when he spoke.
‘Tomas,’ he said quietly. ‘If I say two words to you now, all I need you to do is to say whether you know what I mean or not. If not, we will never speak of this again, is that agreed?’
‘Aye, Sasura,’ I said, frowning at his back. ‘That’s clear enough. Say your words.’
‘Mother Ruin,’ he almost whispered.
I choked on my brandy, and I suppose that told him all he needed to know.
‘Yes,’ I said, once I had my breath.
He took his time opening the new brandy bottle and filling his glass. At length he turned to face me, and he gave me a grave look.
‘So Ailsa gave you the Queen’s Warrant, then,’ he said. ‘I had suspected it, but I couldn’t know for sure. I still remember when Sabine gave me mine.’
I looked back at him, and felt my hands trying to shake. Of all the ways I had seen this afternoon going, this had never been one of them. My sasura had been a Queen’s Man? He couldn’t have been. He wasn’t now, that was for certain, or Ailsa and me would both have known of it.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said, after a long pause that probably made me look something of a fool.
‘Sabine,’ he said. ‘You’ve met her, yes?’
‘Aye,’ I said carefully, completely unsure how to proceed with this unexpected conversation.
‘What I tell you now, I have to ask you on your honour and our family ties that this stays utterly between you and me. My daughter can never know of this, or may the Many-Headed God forbid, my wife.’
‘I understand,’ I said. ‘On my honour, Sasura. On our family, I swear it.’
He looked at me for a long moment, then he nodded slowly and sat down again.
‘Sabine seduced me,’ he said. ‘Oh, long ago. Not so long after I moved my business from Alaria to Dannsburg, in fact. Before Ailsa was born. I was a very successful young smuggler whose ships ran the poppy winds, and the Queen’s Men wanted the poppy trade. Of course they did, and Sabine was Provost Marshal in those days. To my shame I was a married man, but . . . oh, Tomas, oh, you should have seen her in those days. I was weak. She seduced me, and then she recruited me. I carried the warrant and I fucked Sabine for ten years, and my wife never knew of any of it. Then she met Dieter Vogel, and she recruited him. They were in love within weeks, and she left me for him. Vogel didn’t want me around after that, for all that I accepted her decision, and he talked her around to his way of thinking. I think I am possibly the only Queen’s Man in history to have been allowed to retire honourably, under an oath of silence and a pending death warrant should I ever break it. But since you too carry the Queen’s Warrant, well . . . There it is. That is my secret, and my eternal shame. I hope that you can forgive me.’
I wasn’t sure that I could, in that moment.
‘Ailsa truly doesn’t know?’
‘Truly,’ he said. ‘It would break her heart to know that I was ever unfaithful to her honoured mother, and even more so to learn how she in her turn earned her current position.’
I stared at him.
‘You put her forward for the job? For this? You introduced her to the Queen’s Men, fucking seriously?’
I was angry with him now. I didn’t want to be, but I found I couldn’t help myself. I loved the old man, in my way, but to push your own daughter into a life like this wasn’t something I could imagine any father doing in his right mind.
‘She was perfect for it, Tomas,’ he said. ‘A born actress and diplomat. That was what we were, in those days. Now . . . now I think it may be different. Since Vogel became Provost Marshal I think the Queen’s Men are a different type of organisation to the one I once served. I have many regrets in life, but choosing my daughter’s path without her knowledge is chief among them.’
‘Oh, it’s different now,’ I said, in a flat tone. ‘We are spies and killers and torturers. We lie to our own people, and set them against one another to forward the political agenda that best suits us. That’s the life you introduced your daughter to.’
I gave him a hard look that I regret to this day.
My sasura began to weep, and I immediately felt like an utter shit. The gods only knew he had done what he had thought was best for his daughter’s future at the time. He had found a way for her to achieve a knighthood and a position at court and in society, to better her social standing in Dannsburg far above anything she could have hoped for as a second-generation immigrant with no noble blood.
But just look how that had turned out.
‘I didn’t know,’ he said. ‘Vogel had only just taken over when Ailsa came of age. I thought she could have the life that I had wanted. I didn’t know what he would turn the service into.’
I gulped my brandy and poured us both another, and Sasura drank gratefully with tears streaking down his face and into his beard.
‘You didn’t know,’ I said after a long moment, and I sighed. ‘No, of course you didn’t. I understand that and I apologise, Sasura. I’m sure it was a fine life once, the honour and the glamour of protecting the realm from within the shadows. The knighthood, and the social position that comes with it. But now . . . now it’s something else, and even I am only just coming to see exa
ctly what.’
‘I thank you, my son-by-law,’ Sasura said, and he wiped his face with a silk pocket square and poured more brandy, his hand trembling slightly as he did so.
I found I didn’t have it in me to hold what he had done against him. His relations with his wife forty and more years ago were his own business and nothing I needed to know about, and I thought he’d truly only had Ailsa’s best interests at heart when he had proposed her to whoever had inducted her into the Queen’s Men and arranged for her to be given her knighthood. We drank together in companionable silence for a few minutes until he had composed himself, and then I ventured the question I really wanted to hear the answer to.
‘Why did Sabine stand down as Provost Marshal?’ I asked him.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I had retired by then. Something between her and Vogel, I can only assume. I have spent the last thirty years trying to put the matter behind me. All I know is this: do not trust Dieter Vogel. Ever.’
I met his tear-filled eyes, and swallowed my brandy.
That, I thought, sounded like extremely fucking good advice.
*
I had to report the bombing to Lord Vogel, of course. I went that evening, after my meeting with Sasura. I had probably drunk too much brandy for that to be what you might call an entirely good idea, but it needed doing and after what Ailsa’s father had told me I was feeling far from well disposed toward the Provost Marshal that night. Even less so than usual.
‘Yesterday morning?’ he said, as he narrowed his eyes at me across his desk in his austere office in the house of law. ‘And you only tell me now, Tomas?’
‘I’ve been making my own enquiries, Provost Marshal,’ I said, ‘but so far I have not uncovered any leads. My investigation focused on Archmagus Nikolai Reiter, but I have now satisfied myself of his innocence.’
‘Hmmm,’ Vogel said, and that could have meant absolutely anything.
He looked at me for a long time, and once more I felt myself going cold down to my boots. There was just something about Vogel, something utterly soulless that could have sucked the heart out of the most passionate of men. I wondered what my brother would have made of him, and decided that no good could ever come out of that meeting. He frightened the living fuck out of me, that was for certain, and I’ve no shame in admitting that.
