Priest of Gallows

by Peter McLean

  There are few men in the world I would fear to face with swords, as I have written before. I fear the things I can’t see. Disease, and magic, those I fear.

  There’s another thing I can’t see, though, and that’s power.

  Dieter Vogel was the most powerful man in the country at that moment, and I was well aware that he could do absolutely fucking anything he liked and the law be damned. That I feared, and I’ve no shame in admitting that either, but that doesn’t mean that I liked it.

  ‘I’m asking for guidance, sir,’ I said after a moment.

  I hated myself for it, for sounding weak in front of him, but he had a way of making you need to say something just to fill the silence. That was a skill I had used myself in the back rooms of Ellinburg, I had to allow, but he could have given me lessons in it. He looked up at me, and he showed me the cutting edge of his razorblade smile. What he said was not what I had been expecting to hear.

  ‘Your operation in Dannsburg is obviously compromised,’ he said. ‘The magicians know who you are; we knew that would be a consequence of sending you to them, and it is possible that they have learned where you live. But even if it wasn’t them who struck at your base of operations, then all the same someone did, and that doesn’t help us in any way. I’ll have to put Konrad on it now, I suppose. Take some leave, Tomas. You’ve earned it after that business with the Arch High Priest, anyway. Go back to Ellinburg for a while and oversee things in your own city. Go tomorrow, before the winter snows come and close the roads. Governor Schulz is a trusted ally of the house of law but she doesn’t carry the warrant, and she would benefit from the guidance of someone who does. Leave somebody of yours here; I’ll send for you if I need you back.’

  Go away, that was what he was telling me. He was telling me that I had fucked up, and he was giving my problems to Konrad to un-fuck until he needed me for something he was sure I wouldn’t fuck up again.

  Or was he?

  Perhaps he was worried that I was starting to lift rocks that he didn’t want lifting, and looking at what was underneath them.

  Assume we know everything, and you’ll never be caught out in a lie that might hang you.

  Did he know where I had been that afternoon, and who I had spoken to? Now that I knew who Sasura had once been, that seemed more and more likely. There was no way he wasn’t watched, and I remembered how concerned he had seemed to be about his own footmen eavesdropping on his conversations the first time I had met him. That made a lot more sense, now that I knew the details of his past in the Queen’s Men.

  I could only hope I hadn’t got the old rogue in trouble by going to his house, but then we were family now so I supposed that could be explained away to a point. Even so, if Vogel even suspected what he had told me it was no wonder I was being effectively kicked out of the city in disgrace.

  I knew one thing, though: if Vogel ever learned that I was starting to suspect what I was, I would swing from the hangman’s rope.

  There was no doubt about that at all.

  Chapter 40

  We were on the road the next morning, Bloody Anne and Rosie and me, Billy and Oliver and Emil. I had left Fat Luka at the Bountiful Harvest to mind my affairs in Dannsburg, and Beast to mind him. I didn’t think any of us were that sorry to be leaving the capital by then, and the bombing of the inn had made it an even easier decision to make than it would have been anyway.

  ‘I can see Mina again!’ Billy had exclaimed when I told them we were going home, and I saw the wry smile cross Anne’s face and make her long scar twitch with amusement.

  It would be well to stay away from their bedroom door of a night for the first few weeks, I thought. Young love was a powerful thing, after all. I remembered some lasses I had known when I was a young lad growing up in the Stink, and I knew just how he felt. Even so, that only made me think of the Princess Crown Royal and the young Grand Duke of Varnburg, and their betrothal, which had been publicly announced the morning we left the city.

  We had departed a scene of celebration, a carefully orchestrated display of public joy and patriotism. There had only been two bombings that morning, that I heard of, and barely twenty of the common folk dead. That was counted as a good day, in those times we lived in.

  No, on balance I wasn’t sorry to be leaving Dannsburg at all.

  We rode for Ellinburg, and every mile we put between us and Dannsburg felt like a cleansing. It was a long journey and I won’t record the details of it here, as truthfully nothing of great note happened on the road, but suffice it to say that nine days later we rode into Ellinburg as the early winter sleet was starting to turn into snow. We had sent Emil ahead on our fastest horse to let our people know we were coming, so when I returned to the house off Trader’s Row I was welcomed by Salo and Cook with open arms. The fire was burning in the drawing room, there was brandy on a tray and hot food and hot baths both waiting, vying for my immediate attention after the long ride. I very much needed both. Probably it was the soldier in me, but I chose the food first. Billy chose Mina.

  He had thrown himself into Mina’s arms the moment he was through the door, and I hadn’t seen either of them since. It didn’t take a great degree of cleverness to know what they were doing, filthy from the road though he was.

  That made me smile. Anne and Rosie had taken themselves off to Chandler’s Narrow to have some time together, and Oliver and Emil had headed down to the Tanner’s Arms to see the other lads and pay their respects to my aunt. All seemed well, but of course it fucking well wasn’t.

  No, no, it was very much not well at all.

  I put my knife down for a moment and rubbed my temples, and took another sip of brandy. I was alone in the small dining room save for a single footman who insisted on hovering over my left shoulder even though I had sent the other servants out of the room at the first opportunity I had got. This wasn’t Ailsa’s household now but mine, and formality made me deeply uncomfortable. It still does, to be fair, even now. I think it’s something you have to grow up with, to ever be truly comfortable with, and eating outnumbered by servants is something I greatly dislike.

  ‘My lord, are you well?’ the footman asked.

  To my shame I had absolutely no idea what his name was. Salo had changed some of the staff while I had been in the capital, as was his prerogative as my steward, and I had never seen this man who was watching me eat before in my life.

  ‘Aye,’ I said after a moment. ‘Rich food, that’s all. It’s a struggle for the stomach after a week and more on hard rations while travelling.’

  The food was rich, at that. Cook had obviously been unsure whether I would be returning alone or with my lady wife, and she had prepared a meal far more to Ailsa’s tastes than mine. I watched the thick sauce congealing on my meat, and found my appetite had quite deserted me.

  ‘You finish this if you want it,’ I said to the plainly astonished footman, and rose to my feet. ‘I’m going to take a bath.’

  The bathwater was tepid by then, but I decided it would do. Otherwise the maids would have had to heat more water in the kitchen and the housemen lug it up two flights of stairs in buckets to the wooden tub that had been brought up to my bedroom, and I didn’t want that. I really wasn’t easy living with servants, being waited on hand and foot. Not without Ailsa, anyway. That had been her world, not mine. I honestly had no idea why I had a valet at all, other than because Ailsa had said that I should, but to dismiss the man now and take his job away when he had done nothing wrong seemed harsh, so I resolved to keep him on even though his purpose utterly escaped me.

  Without my lady wife there by my side to guide me, I simply didn’t know how to live in a big house with servants. It had been different at the governor’s hall. There I had been too busy to worry about such things, and with the constant comings and goings of messengers and officials and the City Guard, it had felt more like an army camp than a residence anyway, and I was used to those. This was different.

  This felt like wealthy, upper-class civ
ilian life, and I didn’t know how to live that.

  I settled into the lukewarm bathwater and sighed as I felt the grime of the road begin to lift from my skin. Was that what I was now, a wealthy knight with no idea of how to be one? No, no, of course I wasn’t. I was a Queen’s Man, and I always would be. Unlike my sasura, I would never be allowed an honourable discharge. No one was, except for him and his rather exceptional circumstances. I had just been hung on the wall, as it were, like a sword hung over the fireplace after the war, put away until you needed to use it again. Until next time.

  Brother Blade.

  For some reason I thought then of the ancient sword that hung over the fireplace in Old Kurt’s hovel down in the Wheels. The sword of a king, or so he said anyway. That was so much horseshit, I was sure, but I had believed it when I was a little lad. Ah, memories. Childhood memories, to be sure. Memories of a more innocent time, when I had still believed in the romantic stories of kings and queens and valiant knights in shining armour. When I had still believed in happy endings.

  Vogel hadn’t let me go, I knew that much.

  He never, ever fucking would.

  *

  I took my leisure the next day, recovering from the long ride, but that evening I rode down to the Tanner’s Arms. I knew the Pious Men weren’t my crew any more, but nonetheless I needed to see them. Ellinburg was my home, after all, and I had founded the Pious Men there. Well, me and my brother had together, I supposed, but to my mind they had always been my operation. Jochan was more brawn than brain and I didn’t think even he would have disputed that.

  Riding down the road to the Tanner’s felt like old times, like coming home. Now I wasn’t the city governor any more, or even the head of the Pious Men, I could finally go out alone, without guards crowded around me. I could have been any mounted traveller with his hooded cloak pulled close around him against the encroaching winter cold. There were already flakes of snow in the air and almost everyone I passed was cowled. No one gave me a second look, and that was the whole point. That was how the Queen’s Men worked. Everyone who matters in Dannsburg might know one when they see one, but even there, that’s a vanishingly small percentage of the population. No other fucker does. In Ellinburg I could be completely anonymous, and I found that I liked it.

  I hitched my horse to the public rail outside the Tanner’s and pushed the door open, and stepped into home.

  I could almost have wept, in that moment. Simple Sam was standing in front of my old table, his massive arms crossed in front of his barrel chest, keeping people away from Bloody Anne, who was sitting in my old seat and having an earnest conversation with my aunt. Hari was behind the bar, off his stick now and hopefully healed at last, and Jochan was roaring drunk and telling war stories to a group of customers gathered around him by the fireplace.

  I pushed my hood back and met Sam’s gaze, and saw his eyes widen in shock.

  ‘Boss!’ he said.

  It hurt, but I had to shake my head.

  ‘I’m not the boss here any more, Sam, lad,’ I said. ‘Anne is, you know that. I’ll talk to her when she’s done, if she’s the time to see me.’

  It was important that I didn’t do anything to undermine Bloody Anne. I had put her in charge of the Pious Men when I became governor of Ellinburg and I had no mind to change that now I was back, as my presence here was surely only temporary. I was a Queen’s Man now, and nothing could ever go back to how it had been before. Change, as I had told her. My world had changed beyond all recognition, and there was no coming back from that.

  I knew that, and I needed the Pious Men to understand it too.

  I gave Sam a pat on the arm and walked over to the bar. Hari looked astonished to see me too, but he was possessed of slightly more wit than Sam was and he simply nodded a greeting.

  ‘Mr Piety,’ he said, the brandy bottle already in his hand. ‘Usual?’

  ‘Aye,’ I said, ‘although you can call me Tomas now. Sir Tomas, if you’re feeling formal, although I couldn’t give a fuck either way. I’m not your boss any more.’

  ‘You’re a knight?’ Hari blurted, and immediately looked like he wished he hadn’t. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound like it couldn’t happen and that. Just a surprise, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Oh, I do, Hari,’ I said, and I picked up my glass of brandy and stared into it. ‘It is very definitely a surprise.’

  I swallowed the brandy in one long gulp and put the glass back down on the bar for Hari to fill again. My brother still hadn’t noticed me. I had to speak to him, I supposed, but in a way I wasn’t sure that I wanted to. Our relationship had become what you might call strained before I went to Dannsburg, and I wasn’t sure if Cutter even still lived. He had done back in the spring, when I said my farewells, but injuries like that can have a lasting ill-effect. I supposed he must do, as Jochan would surely have said something in his letters if not, but then again, you could never be sure. Some things can be too painful to commit to paper, I of all people should know that. If Cutter had gone to the grey lands while I was away then I doubted that Jochan would have any love left for me in his heart. He had his wife and child, aye, but I knew his heart truly belonged to his Yoseph. My brother was a complicated and conflicted man.

  A few minutes later Sam came over and touched my shoulder.

  ‘She’ll see you, boss,’ he said. ‘Mr Piety, I mean.’

  ‘Call me Tomas,’ I said, and clapped him on the shoulder to tell him that all was well between us.

  Sam was a good lad, if a little slow of wit. I followed him back to the corner table that had always been where I had held my court, and I gave Bloody Anne a nod.

  ‘Mind if I join you?’ I asked.

  ‘For the Lady’s sake, Tomas,’ Anne said, and kicked a chair out from under the table for me to sit on. ‘This is ridiculous. You’re the fucking king here, and you’re doing me honour when I’m no cunt’s idea of a princess.’

  ‘No, Anne, I’m not,’ I said as I sat down opposite her. ‘I told all the Pious Men that I took the warrant, and then I became the fucking city governor, and then I left the city for the best part of a year. I’m not their king any more, and I don’t have the time to be. I passed the crown to you, so see that you wear it well. What did my aunt have to say for herself ? What’s the lay of things in the city?’

  Anne blew out her cheeks as she sighed, making her scar writhe across her face. ‘Well enough, to be fair, apart from the fucking magicians turning up, although they don’t seem to be actually bothering anyone, from what Enaid tells me,’ she said. ‘The peace with the new Northern Sons has held, by and large, and it seems that business has been good. She’s had to break a few heads to keep it that way, aye, but you know your aunt.’

  I did at that. Aunt Enaid had probably been more terrifying as head of the Pious Men than Anne herself, but she wasn’t the sort of leader I wanted running the crew long-term. I had stepped back, aye, but I had also become a Queen’s Man. We controlled our assets strategically with a view to their potential future deployment, the same way Iagin had controlled Grachyev’s crew. The same way Ailsa had controlled me, in the beginning. Our Lady help me, I was truly becoming one of those people.

  I thought of a moment in some possible future where I gave Anne the Queen’s Warrant, as Ailsa had to me, and I felt my hands tremble on the table. No, I thought. As Our Lady was my witness, I would never do that to my best friend.

  I promised myself again, I would never do that to Anne.

  It might sound grand, I know, to those who have never experienced such a thing. Ailsa had told me once that the Queen’s Warrant was an official license to do absolutely anything, with the full and unconditional backing and funding of the crown. It meant you were above the law, that you were utterly untouchable.

  Aye, it meant that.

  It also meant you were at Lord Vogel’s beck and call, night and day, obliged to do whatever he said, however fucking hideous it might be. It meant you fed people to the horror beneath
the house of law who called herself Ilse. It meant hangings, and disappearances, and knives in the dark. It meant riots and lynchings on the streets of Dannsburg, because they suited Lord Vogel’s agenda. It meant a Prince Regent found swinging from a chandelier with shit-stained britches, and a devil on the regent’s throne holding the leash of an insane witch-queen.

  No, no, I would never involve Anne in that more than I already had. That wasn’t something you did to someone you loved. Ailsa had done it to me, aye, and that told me all I needed to know about our marriage. I couldn’t . . . I still couldn’t shake my infatuation with her, but by then I had accepted that she did not love me the way I did her. Or at all, in fact.

  I swallowed brandy and pushed that thought into the broken strongbox in the back of my mind with all the other things I didn’t want to think about, and I showed Anne a wry grin that I didn’t feel.

  ‘Is she still fucking Brak?’ I asked, for want of anything else to say.

  ‘Who, your aunt? Aye, far as I know. They’re still living together so I assume so. His shoulder never truly healed, though, so he’s barely got the use of his left arm even now.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s his arm she’s interested in,’ I said, and Anne snorted laughter.

  This was what I needed, I realised, not maudlin thoughts about my wife but coarse soldiers’ banter with my best friend.

  She made some jest then; I don’t remember what but I’m sure it was a good deal cruder than mine had been, and I threw my head back and laughed loud, and that was when Jochan finally noticed me.

  ‘Fuck a nun, Tomas Piety!’ he roared.

  He was across the common room in six running steps, and a moment later he had dragged me out of my chair and hauled me into an embrace that frankly astonished me.