Mocking was Major Bakrylov’s normal demeanour, so I didn’t take it ill. If anything, the sincere half could be considered a compliment, coming from him.
I forced down a gulp of small beer and tried not to throw up on his boots.
‘What do you want?’ I asked, and if that was somewhat blunt then he didn’t react to it.
I am a blunt man, after all, knight and councillor though I may have been, and I think Bakrylov was used to that by then.
‘There’s been another riot,’ he said. ‘Another of the learned magi was lynched last night, his carriage overrun by an angry mob on its return from one of the city’s finer brothels.’
‘So?’
‘So I’ve been put in charge of stopping it,’ he said. ‘Curfew obviously isn’t working, so something more drastic is required. I thought I ought to let you know that we both serve the same house, Sir Tomas. Although I don’t carry the warrant, I’ve been around long enough to know how this works. Plans within plans, and nobody knows what anybody else is doing save the Old Man himself. I don’t want you thinking me an enemy of the people and planting one of your blades in my back.’
‘I’d guessed, and I wouldn’t do that,’ I said, and realised that I meant it. ‘Not without a direct order, anyway. Why, though? Why you?’
‘I’m a war hero,’ Bakrylov said once more. ‘People trust in heroes. They understand heroes, or at least they think they do. No one understands the magi, so no one trusts them. Simple people can easily be made to distrust learning, and fear of the unknown is a powerful tool. So the Old Man told me, and I dare say he’s right.’
Ill-informed and ignorant people are easier to suppress and control.
‘But you’re army, not City Guard,’ I said. ‘Or is this some sort of undercover mission?’
‘No, absolutely not,’ Bakrylov said. ‘What’s the use of a hero in disguise? This is the complete opposite of undercover. Vogel has used his legal authority as Lord Chief Judiciar and publicly sent in the army to quell the unrest.’
I paused for a moment to let the implications of that sink in.
Vogel had sent in the army.
In Dannsburg itself.
In Our Lady’s name, civil wars had been started by less.
‘The army,’ I said, and for a moment I was honestly lost for words. ‘He’s sent in the army?’
To stop riots that we had started ourselves, but of course I had no way of knowing if Bakrylov knew that so I didn’t say it.
‘Yes,’ Bakrylov said. ‘We will be putting down any and all unrest from the house of magicians until peace and civil order is restored to Dannsburg.’
Of course it was the house of magicians they would be targeting, and never mind those who had carried out the lynchings and started the riots. The house of magicians was the rival of the house of law, that was known well enough, so it would be against them that the army’s wrath would be turned.
I found a new appreciation of Lord Vogel’s skills as I realised exactly what he had done here. He had used the queen’s death at the hands of the Skanians to implicate his greatest political rivals in the atrocity, and then created enough civil unrest to give him just cause to bring in the army and exterminate them.
That was one thing, I supposed, but I would much prefer the army to be on the walls of Varnburg and Dannsburg awaiting the imminent Skanian threat. That, to me, was more important than the house of magicians and their university and their theatre, but it seemed the house of law thought differently about that.
‘Gods, you look terrible,’ Bakrylov said, unexpectedly. ‘Late night?’
‘I suppose it was,’ I said, although I didn’t even remember going to bed so had no idea what time it had been.
‘Mmmm,’ he said, and that could have meant anything.
‘What?’ I snapped.
‘I hear they are holding elections for a new presiding head of the governing council,’ he said. ‘It seems that First Councillor Lan Letskov has disappeared. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Sir Tomas?’
‘I am seldom at the council,’ I said.
‘You were there yesterday.’
‘What if I was?’ I snarled at him. I felt like shit, and this war criminal lording it over me was the last thing I needed right then. ‘I carry the Queen’s Warrant, Bakrylov. What if I fucking was?’
He laughed, and surprised me by clapping me on the shoulder.
‘Oh, very good, old boy,’ he said. ‘Defiance, we like that.’
We like that? I looked at him, and narrowed my eyes. Exactly who was he speaking for here?
There are factions, even within the Queen’s Men.
I wondered then exactly how deep into the whole circus Major Bakrylov truly was.
*
I went out with Bakrylov again that night, partly to make up for my harsh words and partly because I was intrigued by what he had said that morning. Factions indeed, and I wanted to know whose side he was truly on.
I didn’t find out, as he was wearing his armour of mockery and jest once more and didn’t open up to me at all. I could tell after five minutes back in the Jolly Joker that I would get no serious words out of him that night, whatever I said.
For all of that, we had a pleasant enough evening together, and once more I saw Doctor Almanov in there, playing cards with a table of men who I didn’t know. I watched him out of casual interest, having given up on getting anything but mirth from the major, and it seemed to me that he was losing heavily. The good doctor was sweating in his brocade coat, and although I couldn’t see well from where I was sitting, I thought a couple of his opponents at the card table had the look of the sort of men you wouldn’t want to owe money to if you valued
