Ailsa murmured something non-committal, and craned her neck to look out of the window as we passed a clock tower.
‘Gods be good, it’s past the second hour of the afternoon,’ she said. ‘She’s due on the balcony in less than an hour.’
It was no wonder I was hungry, then.
‘What of it?’ I asked.
‘We must pray Almanov is at work in the palace where he should be,’ she said. ‘If the princess needs an adjustment to her medication before she appears in public she will need it soon.’
‘Why wouldn’t he be?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ailsa snapped, and then let out a sigh. ‘As I say, I’m sure I’m worrying about nothing.’
She was worried, I could tell. Worried about the Princess Crown Royal making her first solo address to the public, no doubt, not where this fool of a doctor may or may not be. After the business with the house of magicians it was only natural to worry. About everything. Dannsburg was still unstable, the barrel of powder my sasura had spoken of, and I was sure the least thing could set the hostilities off again if we weren’t very fucking careful about it.
We were admitted at the side gate after only a cursory stop, and the carriage rattled up the long drive to the stables by the palace’s west wing. Minutes later we were in the administrative heart of the palace itself, and Ailsa led me and Beast through the maze of corridors at a pace that said she could have run through them blindfolded. I suspected that perhaps she could, at that. This was her domain, this world of politics and councils and aristocratic power. I might be a member of the governing council but that was a sham of convenience and we all knew it. After two flights of stairs and more turns and doors than I could count, she stopped and rapped on a door that looked the same as the last thirty or so we had passed.
‘Doctor Almanov?’ she called out. ‘Doctor, are you in there? It’s Ailsa.’
As ever with the Queen’s Men, no family name was needed, no title. She was Ailsa, and in the royal palace of Dannsburg that was enough. There was no answer. She tried the handle and hissed in annoyance to find it locked.
‘My picks are in my pouch, and I left the blasted thing in the carriage,’ she muttered.
‘Beast,’ I said.
He kicked the door in without difficulty or hesitation, his massive boot smashing lock and frame alike as he almost took the thing off its hinges. Ailsa was a subtle woman, and sometimes the subtlety of lockpicks is called for. Sometimes, though, sometimes things just need kicking down. Every soldier knows that.
Beast surged through the shattered door like some monster from a children’s tale, and I followed with Remorse in my hand. The room was empty. There was a desk and chair, and rows and rows of shelves lined with bottles and jars and beakers. There were phials in wooden racks, and a long, fire-scarred wooden bench covered in things that looked to my untrained eyes suspiciously like the tools of the alchemist’s trade. There was no bed in there, though, and no sign of clothes or personal effects.
‘Doesn’t he live here?’ I asked.
Ailsa shook her head in annoyance.
‘No, this is just where he works. Where he’s supposed to be, at this time of day.’
She ran a fingertip grimly over the wooden surface of the desk, and held it up to show me. Her rich brown skin was grey with dust.
‘Fuck, he hasn’t been here in days,’ I said. ‘Maybe longer.’
‘A week at least, I would say,’ she said. ‘The doctor is a very tidy man. Gods, Tomas.’
‘Where does he live?’ I asked her.
She gave me an address, and I cursed.
‘That’s halfway across the fucking city,’ I said. ‘I’ll go ahorse, your carriage is too slow. Beast, with me.’
We hurriedly retraced our steps to the stable yard, where I commandeered two fast horses and the grooms to saddle them. We were on our way ten minutes later.
I had a feeling this wouldn’t wait.
*
The doctor’s house was locked too, and for all that his front door was sturdier than that of his office, it still didn’t stop Beast for long. Some of the neighbours were no doubt already sending their sons and daughters running to bring the City Guard, but I didn’t care. I had the Queen’s Warrant and I could kick in any door in Dannsburg I fucking well liked.
It stank in that house.
If the doctor was truly a tidy man, as Ailsa had said, then something had gone horribly wrong. The hall of the modest townhouse was dusty, just as his office had been, and I could hear the buzzing of flies from upstairs.
‘Check the ground floor,’ I told Beast.
I drew Remorse anyway and headed cautiously up the stairs. The smell got worse as I climbed, and by the time I reached the landing the flies were thick in the air. The reek was coming from the door at the end of the corridor. I took a breath and pushed it open, but by then I was fairly sure I knew what I was going to find.
I was right.
Doctor Almanov was sprawled on his bed in his nightshirt, caked in black blood and flies. He was very, very dead, and by my reckoning had been for at least a week. He had been stabbed repeatedly, by the looks of things, and he had voided himself onto his mattress in the moment of his death. The combination of old shit and rotting flesh made me gag, and I turned away before I vomited. It seemed the good doctor’s gambling debts had finally caught up with him.
Beast was halfway up the stairs, his face completely impassive. The smell didn’t seem to be bothering him, but after what he had been through in the slave pits before I found him I supposed that it probably wouldn’t.
‘Back door was unlocked,’ he
