I squeezed Anne’s arm, bid her goodnight and let the guard sergeant and his men clear a path through the crowd for Billy and me.
We headed for the palace, and whatever was awaiting us within.
Chapter 12
It took a while to get there even with the three guardsmen forging through the crowd ahead of us, but once we were in sight of the nearest entrance another three came forward into the press of bodies to help clear the way. I was aware of heads turning in the crowd to watch us pass, obviously wondering who we might be. I was well dressed but not conspicuously so, and Billy was much the same. We could have been any reasonably well-to-do merchant and his son, but no more than that. But middling merchants don’t get invited into the palace, do they? It seemed that the affair could have been handled a sight more subtly than it had been, but perhaps that was the point. Perhaps the Queen’s Men liked to keep the populace always in doubt, always wondering if the middling merchant they knew might be someone with hidden connections, someone they had to watch and worry about. In all honesty it wouldn’t have surprised me, in Dannsburg.
At last we were ushered inside and a set of heavy doors swung closed behind us, shutting out the constant noise of the crowd. It was cool and quiet in the marble hall within, and there Ailsa was waiting for us.
‘Mama!’ Billy exclaimed.
He broke free of my hand and ran to her, and wrapped his arms around her in a great hug. It came to me then that he was slightly taller than her, now.
‘Hello, Billy,’ Ailsa said, and she returned his hug with a warmth that I desperately wanted to believe was genuine.
‘I missed you, Mama,’ Billy said, his face buried in her neck as he held her.
‘I’ve missed you too,’ she said, but she was looking at me over his shoulder as she said it and I wondered exactly how to take that.
Don’t be a fool, I told myself.
‘Ailsa,’ I said, giving her a nod.
She stepped back from Billy’s embrace, but allowed him to continue holding her hand like a lad half his age might have done. He had perhaps fifteen or so years to him by then, no one was really sure, but we were the only parents he had known since he had escaped the horrors of Messia as a ragged orphan child. I knew it meant a lot to him, to have a family again. It meant a lot to me too. The war had hurt Billy, I knew that as well, hurt him in the mind where it didn’t show. In some ways he was much younger than his years, and I knew I had to remember that. If he could take some comfort from holding Ailsa’s hand and calling her Ma then I wished him well of it.
‘Come, Tomas,’ she said. ‘You are expected.’
I’d had a feeling that I might be.
Ailsa led me deeper into the palace, Billy still clinging to her hand as we walked. There were Palace Guard everywhere but they paid us no mind, their eyes seeming to look straight through us as though we didn’t exist. Perhaps it was best, for a guardsman, to pretend never to see the comings and goings of the Queen’s Men. It was certainly safer, I was sure. Word had no doubt got around about the six of their number who had simply disappeared one night and not been seen again. Soldiers gossip like no one else, after all, but beyond that there was no reaction to our presence.
Dannsburg, I had to remind myself, was nothing at all like Ellinburg. Dannsburg was like nowhere else I had even heard of, and the palace was the strangest place of all.
We ascended a sweeping stair and walked the length of a corridor, the stone underfoot giving way to smooth polished wood and then thick carpets. We were nearing the private apartments of the royal family, I realised, and still not a single guard moved to intercept us. Ailsa’s face was obviously known by everyone in the palace by then and I suspected mine would be soon too. She stopped and opened a door that led into a well-appointed study. I had been expecting to find the Prince Regent sitting there behind the desk, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Lord Vogel was waiting for us instead.
‘Come in, both of you,’ he said. ‘And who’s this young man?’
If I have to talk to some people, people that I work with, then you keep absolutely quiet, do you understand me?
Billy had obviously remembered my words and he said nothing, although I knew very well that Vogel already knew exactly who he was. Lord Vogel knew everything; I had already made my peace with that fact, for all that I didn’t like it.
‘This is my son, Billy,’ I said. ‘Our son.’
Ailsa nodded shortly, but said nothing.
‘The child magician,’ Vogel said. ‘The magician’s bane, to be precise. Aren’t you, boy?’
Addressed directly, Billy had no choice but to answer.
‘What does that mean?’ he asked.
‘Means you killed a magus,’ I said. ‘Last year, Billy. You remember.’
‘Yes, Papa,’ he said.
‘Yes indeed,’ said Vogel. ‘Welcome to the royal palace, young Billy.’
Billy shuffled his feet and drew a bit closer to Ailsa, and said nothing.
‘Billy, this is Lord Vogel, the Lord Chief Judiciar,’ Ailsa said. ‘He’s a very important man.’
Billy looked up at Vogel then, and for an awful moment I was worried he was going to make one of his prophetic announcements. That, I thought, could have been very unfortunate.
‘It went
