‘About now, would be my guess.’
True enough, the newly announced Prince Regent strode out a moment later, in the immaculate crimson and white dress uniform of a cavalry general. His chest was a constellation of medals that I couldn’t possibly imagine had been earned in combat, and he wore a wide black sash of mourning across the whole affair. At his side was the Princess Crown Royal.
The little girl was swathed in black from head to toe, in a huge gown of midnight silk brocade. Her blonde hair was covered with a black silk cap, making her look like something between a nun and a wealthy child’s porcelain doll. Even at that distance the effect was strangely disturbing.
‘That the princess?’ Anne rasped in my ear, and I nodded. ‘Fuck, she looks like a handful.’
Odious child, I remembered Ailsa saying, although to me she just looked like a sad and overwhelmed little girl.
‘Aye, perhaps,’ I replied, keeping my voice low. ‘We’ll have to see, I suppose.’
The Prince Regent was speaking now, giving some address that no one more than twenty yards deep in the crowd could possibly have heard. I realised it didn’t matter in the slightest what he was saying, anyway. He was there, that was all that mattered; he was seen, and he was addressing the crowd, and he looked the part. Those who couldn’t hear, which was virtually everyone, would be told tomorrow what he had said. If that didn’t match the words heard by those at the front then what did it matter? The truth is so easily drowned by the words of the majority that it counts for little, in my experience.
The prince spoke for a good long while, and I’ve no idea what he said. Once he was done the crowd erupted in cheers, and the Princess Crown Royal stepped forwards to the rail of the balcony. I thought her father startled somewhat when she did that, but she didn’t speak and even if she had, no one would have heard her over the cheering anyway. She just stood there, her pale hands resting on the stone balustrade, staring out over the crowd.
I cheered as loud as I could and Anne and Luka followed my example, encouraging those around us into a greater frenzy of adoration for what remained of the royal family. That was how succession was handled, in Dannsburg.
After that there was nothing more, and the Prince Regent waved to the crowd once more and then turned and put a tentative hand on his daughter’s shoulder and led her back inside the palace. The footmen followed and took the lanterns with them, and with that, it was over.
‘Well, that’s done,’ Anne said beside me, and it seemed she had no more words to say on the subject.
It was a mummer’s show, pure and simple, but I had come to realise and even accept the necessity of such things. People were leaving all around us, the human tide flowing thick and slow as treacle towards the parade ground gates. It would take hours for those closest to the palace to get out, I was sure, and if there wasn’t at least one fight along the way it would be a miracle. When you cram that many people together in one place, whatever the occasion, there always is. A jostled shoulder, the wrong foot trod on in the crush, that was all it took. I tightened my grip on Billy’s hand and looked around me.
Three of the Palace Guard were working their way slowly through the crowds towards us, and I didn’t think that was an accident.
‘Just keep still,’ I said, for all that I made it sound easier than it was.
Luka’s bulk helped, to be sure, and Anne’s sharp elbows and sharper looks helped clear a small space around us, but all the same we struggled to hold our place in the crush. The three guardsmen reached us in the end, and I saw that the one who led them was the sergeant who had been guarding the private gate that morning.
That guard sergeant is on my payroll, Ailsa had told me.
‘Mr Piety?’ he asked me, making it sound like a question, but I was sure he remembered me. Ailsa had introduced us for a reason, after all.
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘These are with me.’
He frowned at Anne and Luka and Billy, and shook his head.
‘You’re invited, but only you and one other. Lady Ailsa wants you.’
Billy’s head snapped up at that, and the look of hope in his eyes drove sense from my head. I’d wanted Anne with me, of course I had. I’d said before we left the inn that if this happened, then Billy was to stay with Luka and Anne was to come with me, but he’d heard now and I was struggling to find a way to refuse him.
I want to see Mama.
I knew he did, the poor lad, and I found that I didn’t have it in me to say no. I had lost my own ma so young, and I didn’t want Billy to have to go through the same pain of loss that I had.
I had no idea what was about to happen and I’d wanted Anne’s daggers with me in case it was anything ill, but it came to me then that Billy was even more dangerous than Anne was.
In his way he was, anyway.
‘Aye,’ I said at last, and squeezed the lad’s hand. ‘Me and our Billy here, then. She’ll want to see him, I’m sure.’
I had no idea if that was true, of course, but Billy smiled fit to burst and I could only pray that it was.
‘Should we wait?’ Luka asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘You two head back. If . . . well, Leonov will know how to get to me, if need be.’
Luka just nodded at that. Leonov was Iagin’s right-hand man in Grachyev’s organisation, and he was almost certainly on
