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
