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.’
The hangman pulled his lever, and Archmagus Reiter dropped to his death.
He, at least, would be spared what was to come.
*
Vogel summoned us all to the house of law immediately after the hanging, which was hardly surprising under the circumstances. I shared a carriage there with Ailsa, who was looking decidedly worried.
‘He’s going to be in an absolute fury,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t want war with Skania any more than anyone else does. Gods, Tomas, what are we going to do?’
‘Can’t we make it look like it didn’t happen, like the fire at the funeral?’
She shook her head sadly.
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ she said. ‘You heard the crowd’s reaction. We might not want war but the idiot people apparently very much do. It will be all over the city by now, and there will be tens of thousands of people under the balcony tomorrow, baying for blood in the name of national pride and the murder of their late queen. All they want is revenge, Tomas, and that ghastly child has just promised it to them.’
To my intense surprise, Vogel was not in a rage. I suppose he had realised there was simply no point. Instead he was planning already.
‘Damage limitation,’ he said, once we had assembled in his office. ‘Iagin, you need to start work on her speech immediately. Make sure no timescales are given. We need space to calm this down before we end up with a total catastrophe on our hands. We can even benefit from it, if we do this properly.’
‘I don’t see how,’ I said, before I could think better of it.
‘Simple manipulation,’ Vogel said. ‘If you want to unite your core supporters, you give them someone to be better than, someone to look down upon. But if you want to unite an entire nation, you give them someone to hate. Make sure that is the Skanians, Iagin.’
‘Aye, boss,’ Iagin said.
‘Ailsa, go to the palace and start preparations for tomorrow’s balcony appearance. Sabine, Tomas, Konrad, get out among the populace and gauge the mood. I fear I know what you will find, but if there is any opposition to this then I want it encouraged.’
We got to work.
Chapter 50
I
