Priest of Gallows

by Peter McLean

  I shook my head, and she winced in understanding.

  I could hear the princess’ words coming in through the open glass doors.

  ‘. . . my mother’s memory, in this most difficult time of looming war,’ she was saying, and I recognised Iagin’s phrasing in her prepared speech. ‘Know that the Rose Throne stands resolute, a rock in the tempest that no foreign aggression will ever assail.’

  Perhaps we had got away with it. Perhaps she didn’t need her medication as much as the house of law thought she did.

  ‘She’s on script,’ Iagin said approvingly.

  ‘So far,’ Vogel replied.

  ‘She’s off her medication,’ I said. ‘For a week at least.’

  Iagin stared at me, a frown of concern crossing his face. Vogel didn’t even react, not so much as a blink.

  ‘We will fight them, as we fought in the south and were victorious,’ the princess went on. ‘Our great nation will stand, as it always has, until the end of time. Our solidarity is unshakeable, and our martial prowess unstoppable!’

  Ailsa shot me a stricken look. She was obviously also praying all would be well, but after what I had told her Billy had said, I don’t think either of us really believed it even then.

  ‘The enemy,’ the princess pronounced, and now she was leaning forward with both hands gripping the ornate stone balustrade in front of her, ‘the subhuman filth of the Skanian animals will be crushed beneath the might of the Rose Throne’s cannon!’

  ‘Er . . .’ Iagin said. ‘Oh gods, she’s going her own way.’

  ‘My lord,’ Ailsa said.

  ‘I know,’ Vogel said, his mouth set in a hard, grim line.

  ‘Fire will rain from the sky upon them. I command it!’ the princess bellowed, and her voice carried far further across the hushed parade ground than any of us would have believed possible.

  Her voice seemed to boom like thunder, a voice that couldn’t possibly have come from a twelve-year-old throat. A voice not even a sergeant like Bloody Anne could have carried. It was like listening to a living goddess. I could only imagine the uncontrolled cunning coursing through her young veins, boosting that voice into the roar that came from her savagely twisted lips. Overhead, storm clouds began to gather. A truly horrible thought struck me just then.

  She shouldn’t be like that, Billy had told me. She’s wrong.

  ‘Am I not your queen? Cannot I command the fire and the lightning, if I but order it?’

  There’s too much of her, Billy had said. She shouldn’t be like that. When Mina and me stole the strength of that Skanian magician, we got a bit like that.

  I remembered how exhausted Billy had been after barely an hour in her company. The princess had had no training in the cunning whatsoever, but she obviously had considerable natural talent. What if stealing another magician’s strength was just something she was able to do?

  She’s very, very strong.

  She could have been stealing the strength of her royal mother for years, and not even known it. All that power, bottled up inside her with nowhere to go.

  ‘My lord, she hasn’t been medicated for—’

  ‘I said, I know,’ Vogel snarled, and Ailsa fell silent.

  ‘What the fuck do we do?’ Iagin asked.

  ‘I don’t think there’s anything we can do, unless you want to be the one who shoots our future queen in the back,’ Ailsa said quietly.

  ‘I am pain! I am suffering!’ the princess raged, and all along the tall buildings that lined the mall, windows shattered and blew in before the force of her inhuman voice.

  The skies darkened overhead and thunder rolled in the distance.

  ‘I am your queen!’

  The first bolt of lightning slammed down from the sky into the packed crowd, tearing people apart before our horrified eyes.

  ‘They will die!’ she howled, and a grand building collapsed in a huge cloud of choking dust. ‘All shall worship me, or die screaming!’

  It was dark as dusk now as the heavens boiled with the force of her uncontrolled rage. The Princess Crown Royal was a cunning woman the like of which I had never even heard tell, and Billy wasn’t there to help us. I looked at her, and in honesty I was glad of that. I didn’t think even Billy and Mina between them could have stood against her in that moment, in the apotheosis of her madness.

  ‘Maggots!’ she shrieked. ‘Cowards! Throw yourselves at the enemy guns! Stop their barrels with your bodies if need be! Fight for your country, for your queen!’

  The princess raised her hands, and in that awful moment all I could see was Mina. A blonde girl in her teen years, spitting obscenities and tearing men limb from limb with the cunning.

  ‘Get down!’ I yelled, battlefield instinct taking over my senses, and I threw myself at Ailsa and bore her to the carpet as Vogel and Iagin hastily took cover at my sudden word of command.

  Our Lady be merciful, if anything happened to Ailsa I would never be able to live with myself. The tall glass windows exploded, hurling razor shards of broken glass across the room. I raised myself up enough to see out of the shattered hole where the windows had been a moment before.

  Fire blazed from the princess’ hands, washing across the parade ground with a ferocity I had never seen from Billy even when he had burned the Stables. People were dying in their hundreds down there, and the panic in the packed space only led to more deaths as people trampled each other underfoot in their terrified stampede to get away from the horror their queen-in-waiting had become.

  She raised her hands once more and lightning slashed from her fingers, lancing into the crowd and taking lives wherever it hit.

  ‘Defy me and perish!’ she screamed. ‘I am pain! I am—’

  She stuttered, took a shuddering step forward and for a moment I thought someone had shot her after all. She looked . . . I don’t rightly know how to describe it. She looked bright.

  Something . . . I don’t know. I don’t understand the cunning, or magic, or witchcraft, or whatever the fuck you want to call it. I’ve seen enough of it to know that I fear it, but I don’t understand it and I’m not sure I ever want to.

  She turned to face us then, in that last awful moment, and I will never forget what I saw. There was light pouring out of her, out of her eyes and her mouth and even her fucking nostrils, blinding white lightning firelight like stars and cannon fire and . . . I don’t know how to explain it.

  She shone. She shone so bright even I could see it.

  I don’t know. I don’t know what I saw, and I think I was the only one looking. Ailsa still had her face pressed to the floor under me, and Vogel was behind an overturned table, and I don’t rightly remember where Iagin was. I dare say it doesn’t matter. What I saw was this: I saw a princess, the Princess Crown Royal herself, who would have been our queen in a few short months, catch fire.

  She threw her arms upwards and lightning and fire roared from her hands and blew a great chunk out of the façade of the royal palace. I couldn’t have said for sure, but I would have bet gold that those had been the windows of her mother’s own apartments.

  Burn, you witch!

  ‘I am pain!’ the princess shrieked. ‘Burn!’

  I stared as she too started to burn, immolating in a pyre of white flame. Her cunning had roared up out of wherever it came from and overwhelmed her, as Billy had warned that it might. It had unleashed itself on the unsuspecting and innocent populace below, and then it turned on her and consumed her utterly.

  This was not a power to be trusted, that was clear enough.

  Was this what the future held for my Billy, I had to ask myself ? For Billy and Mina both? No, I thought, not if I could help it.

  The princess turned slowly on the balcony, the flames eating through her and lighting her from within until the blackened skeleton could be clearly seen. Still she turned, fire and lightning lashing out in all directions from her unholy form, until at last the flame of life burned away and she collapsed onto the balcony, a tiny mummified corpse of ch
arred misery.

  There was pandemonium outside.

  Sister Galina burst into the room while we were still watching the panicked populace trample each other in the parade ground below.

  ‘Father Tomas, thank Our Lady I found you!’ she panted. ‘Did you see it? A miracle! Did you see our Holy Princess? She ascended, Father! She ascended to Our Lady’s Grace on a pillar of fire before our very eyes!’

  There were tears streaming down her cheeks, and the fanatical gleam of religious ecstasy shone in her eyes as she sank to her knees before me and clutched my right hand in both of hers.

  ‘Oh, blessed day! She martyred herself to lead our nation to a holy war from heaven itself! Blessed be the Ascended Martyr!’

  ‘Praise be to Our Lady of Eternal Sorrows, and blessed be the Ascended Martyr,’ I said, and Sister Galina broke down in floods of tears once more.

  I just had to sound like I meant it, after all, and I could do that. That’s why they made me a priest in the first place.

  Iagin stared at me, and I met his eyes.

  ‘That,’ he said softly, ‘is fucking perfect.’

  *

  ‘This is a crisis,’ Vogel told us that evening, back in the house of law. ‘The princess openly declared war, and then publicly immolated on her own royal balcony. We have no queen. Half the population are already holding her up as a martyr to the cause, an ascended saint, and the other half have simply given up. Those are the half we must turn. Bring them into the embrace of religion if that’s what it takes, but we can have no defeatism in the city.’

  I looked at the Provost Marshal, and I felt my stomach slowly turn over. Who, exactly, I wondered, had killed Doctor Almanov? Men he owed gambling money to, I had thought, but now I wasn’t so sure. Vogel had actually told us to send for Almanov himself, and had seemed unsure of the man’s name. Had that been an act? Had he told us to bring him a man he well knew was dead, to cover his tracks? Had he done that knowing it didn’t matter, knowing we would be too late? The Princess Crown Royal was always going to have been a liability, and the thought of her on the throne had horrified me. I imagined it had horrified Lord Vogel just as much, but would he truly have risked starting a war just to remove her?

  Aye, I thought, he probably would. He would, if it put him where he wanted to be.

  ‘The Grand Duke,’ I ventured.

  ‘Yes, he is the Crown Prince now and we must seat him on the Rose Throne immediately, but he is ten years old, Tomas,’ Vogel said. ‘I am the regent of the crown, and it seems I must endure that burden for three more years, at least.’

  At least, I thought. And then what will happen? A poisoning, a riding accident, a second cousin toddler on the throne with you as their regent?

  This was never going to end, was it? Vogel would see an infant on the throne before he gave up that regency.

  Dieter Vogel had claimed the Rose Throne, and it looked like there was nothing anyone could do to stop him.

  I would fucking see about that.

  ‘My lord Provost Marshal,’ I started, but he cut me dead with a look.

  ‘We must use what we have, Tomas,’ Vogel said. ‘Adapt and move on. If we are to have war, then let it be a holy war. Nobody fights like the fanatic, the zealot, after all.’

  I heard his words, but I wasn’t really listening. I would do anything in my power to stop the coming war, but now Vogel seemed to welcome it. I felt cold all the way to my boots as the battle shock came down on me like thunderclouds and despair.

  War.

  Abingon.

  Disease and bad water, rotting wounds and the bloody flux. Soldiers dead in their thousands, bloated corpses and fattened crows. The endless, murderous thunder of the cannon firing night and day until the noise drives you so mad you don’t know your own name any more.

  Our Lady save me, not again.

  Please, not again.

  No, I vowed then. No. I would not allow it to happen.

  There are a lot of ways to not be Dieter Vogel’s lapdog, Archmagus Reiter had told me.

  The Ten of Swords means back-stabbing and treachery, Billy had told me, defeat and betrayal – but he had never said whose defeat, nor who would be doing the betraying. Now, there was a thought.

  Vogel met my eyes then, and showed me his razor smile.

  ‘Blessed be the Ascended Martyr,’ he said. ‘May She lead us to victory.’

  There is a reckoning coming, Provost Marshal, I thought. And when it comes, it will come hard.

  And that was a promise, in Our Lady’s name.

  Tomas Piety will return in

  PRIEST OF CROWNS

  the final book in

  The War for the Rose Throne series

  Acknowledgements

  So here ends book three of the War for the Rose Throne, a quartet originally planned to be a trilogy. I owe a debt of gratitude to my wonderful editor Jo Fletcher of Jo Fletcher Books, for helping me reshape Priest of Gallows into a book in its own right and not just the first half of the book it was initially supposed to be. I’d also like to thank my copy-editor, Ian Critchley, for knowing all the grammar rules that I don’t.

  Thanks are as always due to my marvellous agent, Jennie Goloboy at DMLA, who has been a true champion of this series and a rock of sanity in some rather trying times. Jennie remains my guiding hand, cheerleader and saviour in too many ways to count. Thank you.

  I’d also like to thank Katie Anderson for continuing to produce such beautiful covers and Milly and Ella at Quercus for their tireless promotional work. Shout-outs also to all at Absolute Write, Fantasy-Faction, Sci-Fi Bulletin, and everyone else for all the terrific reviews.

  I also have to give thanks for the music of Ronnie James Dio. See how we shine.

  Finally, and above all others, the greatest thanks are for Diane. I don’t know how you put up with me sometimes. I really don’t. Love you.

  Peter McLean

  Norfolk, UK

  March 2021

  About the Author

  Peter McLean was born in London, the son of a bank manager and an English teacher, and went to school in the shadow of Norwich Cathedral, where he spent most of his time making up stories. He grew up alternating dingy nightclubs with studying martial arts and practical magic before settling to a career in corporate IT. His first novels were the noir urban fantasy Burned Man series. Priest of Gallows is the third in the War for the Rose Throne quartet, following Priest of Bones and Priest of Lies. The final book about Tomas Piety will be Priest of Crowns.

  You will find Peter McLean on Instagram and Twitter (@PeteMC666), on Facebook (@PeterMcLeanAuthor) and at his website, https://talonwraith.com.

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