Priest of Gallows

by Peter McLean

  I may have had the carriage, I may have had the clothes, but I still sounded like a commoner from the Stink and there was nothing to be done about that. My accent was so strongly Ellinburg that no one in the capital would ever truly mistake me for a noble, and I found myself tiring of the reactions that brought.

  ‘Her parlour is the second door on the left off the hall, where she sits and works at her embroidery hoop,’ I said. ‘Her bedroom is on the third floor at the end of the corridor. It has lilac-painted walls and a big mirror on the washstand. She keeps her underthings in the third drawer of the armoire, and she sleeps naked.’

  I was making that last bit up, of course, having not the faintest idea what, if anything, my lady wife wore to bed or where she kept her smallclothes, but then of course he wouldn’t know either. The rest of it was true enough, although I had only set foot in her bedroom once and that only to talk. It had the desired effect, though, and a hot blush crawled up the young guard’s face. Ailsa was an extremely attractive woman, after all, and I couldn’t think he had failed to notice that.

  ‘I can’t just—’ he started, but I cut him off with a look.

  ‘I’m her husband,’ I said again. ‘What more do you want to know, how she likes to fuck?’

  He went crimson. I glared at him until he stepped back and nodded sharply to the men on the gates, and a moment later my carriage swept into the grassy expanse before the house.

  I stepped down and marched to the front door as two of her men hurried to catch up with me. I went in without knocking.

  ‘Sir!’ the startled footman in the hall said, but I pushed past him and into the drawing room without a word.

  ‘Tomas, what a pleasant surprise,’ Ailsa exclaimed, and sharply waved the footman away. ‘He’s my husband, for the gods’ sakes. Leave us alone.’

  The door closed, and she gave me the most extraordinary look.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I need to speak to you.’

  ‘Yes, yes, evidently,’ Ailsa said. ‘Whatever is it, Tomas, that causes you to barge in here unannounced in the middle of the afternoon?’

  So I told her. I told her about the princess and about Billy, and about our visit to the palace. I told her what they had said to each other, and most of all I told her what Billy had told me in the carriage on our way back to the Bountiful Harvest.

  ‘Gods be good,’ Ailsa said, when I was done.

  She surprised me by pouring herself a brandy, which she hardly ever did. She offered me one too, and I accepted it gratefully.

  ‘Aye,’ I said. ‘I think she frightened the piss out of him, and Billy isn’t one to get the fear easily.’

  ‘No, no, he isn’t,’ Ailsa mused as she sipped her brandy and stared into the fire. ‘Billy is more likely to give people the fear than to suffer from it.’

  That, I had to allow, was the goddess’ honest truth.

  ‘I don’t know what to do with it,’ I confessed. ‘I just thought the house of law should know.’

  ‘Oh, yes, absolutely,’ Ailsa said, and she smiled at me.

  That was the special smile, the one I thought only I ever saw. That was the real Ailsa, Ailsa the barmaid. My Ailsa. That was Chandari Shapoor smiling at me, my sasura’s daughter, not Ailsa the Queen’s Man. Not Sister Deceit. That was the woman I had fallen in love with, the woman I had married. I smiled back, and sipped my brandy.

  ‘Well, there it is,’ I said. ‘So long as we keep her on her medication I suppose all will be well. I’m worried about Billy, though, and what he said about him and Mina.’

  ‘It sounds like he can control it,’ Ailsa said. ‘He’s a remarkably strong young man, Tomas, given what he has been through. I think he takes after his adoptive father, there.’

  She met my eyes, and I felt warm inside. Fool I may have been, but I loved her.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  Ailsa fussed with one of the papers on the pile beside her chair for a moment.

  ‘Actually, Tomas, as you’re here,’ she said, and to my astonishment she sounded slightly nervous. ‘My father is coming to visit for tea on Queensday afternoon, while my mother is out with her friends. Well, I say tea, but he’ll no doubt drink my brandy cupboard dry while he’s here. Anyway, I wondered . . . I wondered whether you would like to join us? You and Billy, I mean. He is Papa’s grandson, after all. I thought perhaps it would be nice if they met. Oh, I know I should have sent a proper invitation, but we are married, and—’

  ‘I’d love to,’ I said, and I meant it.

  Oh Lady, but I loved her.

  *

  I rode back to the Bountiful Harvest an hour or so later, my carriage rattling along the cobbled streets. I was dozing on the padded bench in the back of the carriage, my thoughts a confused mixture of Ailsa and Billy and the princess, of Skanian invasion and young love, when my coachman brought us to a jolting stop that jarred me awake just as we were about to turn onto Coronation Avenue, one of the main roads that cut through the heart of Dannsburg.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked the coachman, leaning out of the window to call up to him on his box.

  ‘Unrest, sir,’ he said. ‘Stay inside!’

  I could hear Oliver and Emil talking urgently to each other on the backboard of the carriage. A moment later the protest marched past down the main road we had been about to turn onto, a great mob of robed students and other supporters of the house of magicians, many of them waving wooden placards with slogans painted on them. They were too far away from me for me to be able to read their words, but I doubted they were anything that it was wise to be saying in Dannsburg in those days. Just being out on the streets in any sort of force, showing any sort of dissent, was deeply fucking unwise in itself. To be protesting on behalf of the house of magicians or the university was lunacy bordering on suicide, and yet there they were.

  A moment later a trumpet sounded, and then it seemed that the very earth itself began to shake under us.

  The cavalry charge swept down Coronation Avenue and smashed into the marching students like the very hammer of the Stormlord Himself. The onslaught of men and horses was unstoppable, a tidal wave of martial-red cavalry twill and horseflesh that bore men and women to the ground and crushed them beneath their hooves. Sabres flashed bright in the low sun of late afternoon, blood spraying across the windows and doors of the townhouses that lined the avenue as the army carried out their bloody butchery right there in the heart of our own capital city. I counted some twenty blue uniforms of the Sea Guard among their number, and it seemed that Lord Vogel and the Dowager Duchess of Varnburg had cemented their alliance in blood.

  A great grey charger reared, her rider brandishing his sabre high like one of the huge statues on the Royal Mall, and I recognised Major Bakrylov as his horse came down on some poor unfortunate bastard and his sabre rose and fell, rose and fell.

  Civil order was being returned to Dannsburg.

  Chapter 49

  We made it back to the Bountiful Harvest through the back streets in the end, my coachman navigating a path through the byways of Dannsburg that avoided the carnage taking place on Coronation Avenue.

  ‘What the fuck is going on out there?’ Anne demanded the moment I walked into the common room of the inn.

  She was wearing her mail and leather, I noticed, and had obviously been ready to go out and wade into the chaos if she needed to.

  ‘It’s all right, Anne,’ I told her, although I was no longer remotely sure that it was. ‘The army has been sent in to restore order on the streets, that’s all.’

  ‘That’s all ?’ Anne echoed. ‘The fucking army, Tomas?’

  ‘Those are the times we live in,’ I said.

  ‘Sir Tomas,’ the innkeeper said, looking pale and sweaty with understandable nerves. It wasn’t so very long since someone had bombed his establishment, after all. ‘What should we do?’

  ‘Have your boys lock the doors and the stable gates, and pour me a brandy,’ I said. ‘I dare say Anne will take one too.’r />
  ‘I will, at that,’ she said. ‘Lady’s sake, Tomas, what the fuck is going on?’

  ‘Dannsburg is going face-first into the shithouse, that’s what’s going on,’ I said quietly. ‘The Skanians murdered our queen, and no one seems to give a fuck about it when they can fight among themselves instead.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s quite true any more,’ Anne said. ‘I’ve seen anti-Skanian graffiti on the walls recently, a lot of it. I’ve heard talk too, about how they can’t be allowed to get away with the queen’s murder. About war, maybe.’

  Of course she had. We had started that talk, and maybe it was agents of the Queen’s Men writing on walls as well. It honestly wouldn’t have surprised me at that point. I swallowed brandy and didn’t reply.

  ‘What are we going to do, Tomas?’ she asked.

  ‘Our jobs,’ I said.

  *

  And that was what we did, but in truth I’m not sure my heart was in the work. I was, it came to me, waiting for Queensday to come around. I had told Billy that he was going to meet Ailsa’s father, his new grandfather, and he was almost bursting with excitement and impatience. If I’m completely honest, I didn’t feel much different myself.

  Thankfully we only had three days to wait, and in truth Anne and Rosie and Beast took care of most of the work between them anyway. Come Queensday afternoon our carriage took Billy and me to Ailsa’s house. At least I was expected this time, so there was no fuss with the guards at the gate. Billy jumped down and all but ran across the grass to the front door, and I followed with a smile on my face.

  He knew the way, of course, as we had both lived in that house with Ailsa one summer, and he was at the drawing room door by the time I managed to catch up with him. I put a restraining hand on his arm before he could fling the door open.

  ‘Remember what I told you, lad,’ I said. ‘You’re to show him the utmost respect. Older Alarians can be quite formal. Best behaviour, now.’

  ‘Yes, Papa,’ he said.

  Sasura had never struck me as a particularly stern man, but I had no idea how he was around young people and I didn’t want to risk Billy accidentally offending him. Of course, I needn’t have worried about that.

  ‘Tomas,’ he greeted me with a broad smile when the footman opened the door and showed us inside. ‘And this must be young Billy.’

  ‘Grandfather,’ Billy said, and he made the low bow of utmost respect that I had taught him.

  ‘Oh, there is no need for that with me,’ Sasura said, and he swept Billy into an embrace that made the lad grin from ear to ear. ‘My grandson. Oh, at last, my grandson.’

  I looked across the room to meet Ailsa’s eyes, and I think hers were as wet as mine were.

  We spent a pleasant afternoon there, I have to allow. Very pleasant indeed. Sasura and me both drank far too much brandy between us, and Ailsa indulged us with no scolding and Billy sat adoringly at his grandfather’s feet and listened to his tall tales of heroism on the high seas.

  After the way I had grown up, it had always been a dream of mine to be part of a proper family. Wife, son, grandfather. It was perfect. I smiled at Ailsa, now seated beside me on the settle while Billy in his turn regaled Sasura with his tales of Messia and of Mina, of his short life and its many experiences, and Sasura endured it all with a patience that made me love the old man even more. Ailsa put her hand on mine, and I turned mine to hold hers, and we met each other’s eyes.

  Lady, but I loved her.

  Eventually she got up and took Billy to the kitchens to find him something to eat, and I looked at my sasura and raised my glass to him.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said, once we were alone together. ‘I know he’s not your blood any more than he is mine, but this has meant the world to him. And to me. I appreciate it, Sasura.’

  ‘As do I, my son-by-law,’ Sasura said. ‘I have longed for a grandson for a very long time. It seems Chandari has finally obliged me, and made an old man very happy.’

  ‘She loves him as her own, I think,’ I said.

  Sasura looked at me then, and I thought a cloud crossed his face.

  ‘My daughter is a complicated woman, Tomas,’ he said.

  I wondered what he meant by that, but just then we were interrupted by Ailsa returning with Billy and a plate of spiced pastries. We ate, and we made merry together, and the matter didn’t come up again.

  *

  A week after the cavalry charge on Coronation Avenue the house of magicians effectively surrendered. They didn’t have much choice, by that point, if they wanted to remain in existence at all. The army had all but exterminated the Guard of the Magi, and the remaining magicians weren’t fighters. Archmagus Reiter himself sent a letter to the house of law offering terms.

  Vogel smiled his razor smile as he showed it to me.

  ‘He has omitted to offer one vital thing,’ the Provost Marshal said. ‘Himself.’

  ‘Sir,’ I said, and frowned as I scanned the contents of Reiter’s letter. ‘Is that really necessary? This gives us everything we want, and effectively places the house of magicians under the control of the house of law.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t give us quite everything,’ Vogel said. ‘I want an example. We may not execute traitors here, or make martyrs, but sometimes we do make examples. Of men like the archmagus, in particular. Arrest him.’

  I sighed. I should have known it would come to this. Perhaps it would have been kinder to have blown his house up after all, rather than see him sent down to Ilse. I respected the archmagus, as I have written, and in truth I rather liked the man.

  I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties thereof faithfully according to law and the word of the Provost Marshal.

  Vogel’s word was the law, I knew that well enough by then.

  ‘Aye, sir,’ I said.

  We went that night, Beast and Bloody Anne and me, Oliver and Emil, and we ripped Archmagus Reiter out of his modest, middle-class townhouse while his children screamed and his wife wept and his servants hid. I hardened my heart to the work and I did it, as I had sworn an oath to do.

  We delivered him to the house of law at about the third hour of the morning, where he was taken below by stone-faced guards. The date of his public execution was set for a week’s time, on Coinsday at noon. It seemed the Provost Marshal was expecting a celebratory atmosphere. A nice family day out at the executions, then a night of drinking and merrymaking and say confession for it all in the morning. How very Dannsburg, I thought, and the thought was a bitter one.

  Anne and me spent the intervening time mopping up pockets of resistance in the city, remaining groups of militant students and suchlike, and I won’t record the details here. The work was bloody, and repetitive, and so routine by now that I found little of interest in it. Konrad seemed to be enjoying it greatly, however, and I found my dislike of the man deepening by the day.

  When Coinsday came around I found myself under the walls of the castle, where the city gallows stood. There was a huge turnout of the general populace, as Iagin had promised there would be, and he and Ailsa and I sat together in the tiered wooden seating that was reserved for the nobility. I saw First Councillor Markova there, and we exchanged cordial nods, for all that I hadn’t bothered attending council for weeks. I think she knew who I really was, by then, and what that meant I must have done, but she was wise and had never mentioned it. As I had said to Ailsa, she knew which side her bread was buttered on.

  I craned my neck to look up at the royal box, where the Princess Crown Royal sat with Vogel at her side as her regent, her doll’s face impassive. I thought again of what Billy had told me about her, and I suppressed a shudder.

  ‘It’s a nice day,’ Ailsa said idly beside me.

  It was, to be fair, and although it was still cold, there were the first signs of spring in the air. The great clock in the tower on the far side of the square said it was ten minutes before noon. The hangman was on the platform now, checking the mechanism of his trapdoor. He
was a man in late middle age and he wore the customary black cap of his trade, and drab black clothes.

  You could have passed him in the market and, without his cap, had no idea of how he made his way in the world. There was something sinister about that, I thought, about a man who earned his living through executing people and yet looked just like anyone else. It was the same way that Ilse had unsettled me when we first met, but then I supposed the same could be said of any one of the Queen’s Men. I thought of how I had torn Archmagus Reiter away from his family in the middle of the night and dragged him off to the house of law, and then gone drinking the next night and mixed with normal folk who never gave me a second glance. That was just how it worked, I supposed, how it had always worked, but just because something has always been a certain way doesn’t make it right.

  I sighed and watched as the archmagus was led onto the platform. He didn’t look to have been tortured, which I supposed was something, but then we had no questions left to ask him. We were killing him for the sheer sake of it, as Lord Vogel had said, to make an example. Quite of what, or to who, I really couldn’t have said.

  The gallows are for street scum, for vagrants and murderers and petty thieves.

  I remembered Sabine telling me that. The deliberate insult, not just to the person of the archmagus, but to the entire house of magicians, was plain as day. Reiter wore his formal magician’s robes, and he kept his face impassive as the hangman put the noose around his neck and adjusted it.

  Up in the royal box, the Princess Crown Royal rose to her feet.

  ‘Let this be a lesson,’ she said, her voice carrying well as the crowd fell silent. ‘I will have order in my city, I will have order in my realm, and I will have vengeance on Skania !’

  ‘What?’ Iagin whispered beside me. ‘What the fuck is she talking about? I didn’t write that!’

  A great cheer erupted in the square.

  ‘Oh gods,’ Ailsa said. ‘I think she just declared war.’

  The princess raised her hands and silence fell once more.

  ‘I shall address you all from the royal balcony, tomorrow at the third hour after noon. Now, in the name of the Rose Throne, let justice be done.’