He shouted that last at me, then grabbed up one of the brandy bottles from the table and gulped from its neck like a madman. Like my brother would have done.
I waited a moment until he started to choke and go red in the face, then I took the bottle from his hand and put it back on the table. I poured myself a glass from one of the other bottles, and sipped from it while I waited for him to get himself back under control.
‘What, then?’ I asked, once he had wiped the tears from his eyes. ‘There’s obviously something.’
‘You’ve absolutely no idea, have you? Gods, you must be new here.’
‘I’m not from Dannsburg,’ I said. ‘Until recently I was the lord governor of Ellinburg, away to the east. Before that I was a soldier, and I was a priest. Whatever you’re not telling me, I’d lay odds I heard worse during the war.’
‘The war,’ the prince said, and he shook his head as he lifted up the sides of his loose jacket to display his medals. ‘Look at this lot, Tomas. Look at all this shit. You think I was ever in a war?’
‘I wouldn’t know, Highness,’ I said.
‘Of course I bloody wasn’t,’ he sneered. ‘Wars were for my father, and my brother, and they both died there. It’s all for show. It’s all just cheap gilding on a brass candlestick like everything else. That’s all this regency is too, I know that. My dear late wife was a queen, but I’ll never be a king.’
‘You don’t have to be, sir,’ I said, trying to reassure him. It seemed to me that the Prince Regent was a deeply insecure man without his regal wife beside him. ‘You just have to look like one. We will do the rest. A year, maybe two, then your daughter can take the throne in her own right, and—’
Apparently that was exactly the wrong thing to say.
The Prince Regent lurched to his feet with a bellow of rage and snatched up his bottle again. He swayed there for a moment, one side of his great waxed moustache drooping where he’d rubbed it, then he turned and hurled the bottle across the room and into the fireplace. The glass shattered and blue flames leaped in the grate as the brandy caught, filling the room with the stink of burning spirits.
‘My fucking daughter!’ he screamed at me, then his knees buckled and he sagged back into his chair like a broken man.
‘Highness,’ I reminded him quietly, ‘I am a priest. If there’s something you wish to confess in confidence before the gods, Our Lady will hear your words.’
The prince looked at me for a long moment, then he slumped off his chair and onto his knees in front of me, and he bowed his head.
He began to talk, and I to listen.
Chapter 13
It was late by the time I left the Prince Regent’s chambers. A liveried aide informed me that Ailsa had taken Billy back to the Bountiful Harvest some time ago, and that I had a visitor waiting downstairs for me. I just nodded at her and let her lead me down to a ground-floor antechamber. I didn’t know where Vogel was, and in all truth I was glad of that. I had no desire to see him again that night. The prince’s words were still turning around and around in my head, and I was struggling to think about anything else.
‘Tomas,’ Anne said as she got up from her chair in the small room they had put her in. ‘Is everything all right?’
I wondered how the fuck she had got into the palace, until I remembered what I had said to Fat Luka about Leonov knowing how to reach me if need be. She had obviously got worried when Ailsa had brought Billy back without me, and decided to come and find me for herself, whatever Ailsa must have said about it. I wondered how hard she’d had to lean on Luka and he in turn on Leonov to make that happen, but it didn’t matter. She was there, and that was the main thing.
Bloody Anne was the best second a man could want. She would never leave me behind enemy walls, I knew that. Even then, for all that I worked for them at the time, I think that my instincts were telling me that the grand institutions of Dannsburg, the palace and the house of law, consisted mostly of enemy walls.
‘Aye, all’s well, Anne,’ I said after a moment, although it absolutely wasn’t. ‘Thank you for coming. I appreciate it.’
She gave me a short nod, and held her peace.
I turned to the aide, who was still waiting at my elbow. ‘Perhaps you could show us out,’ I said, having no clear idea where in the vast palace we were by then.
She led us down a long corridor to a door that let out onto the wide space of the now empty parade ground, and all the way there Anne kept quiet as she marched at my side. She could tell something was wrong, I knew she could, but Anne always had known when to keep her mouth shut.
Eventually we were ushered out into the cool night air, and we crossed the parade ground together in silence until we reached the gates. A pair of uniformed sentries let us out onto the street.
‘I want a drink,’ I said. ‘Right now.’
Anne just nodded in understanding and together we walked away from the palace, heading south towards the river. No one of quality went south of the river in Dannsburg, Ailsa had told me once, and that was good. That was exactly what I wanted that night. Not the Bountiful Harvest, not Ailsa or Luka or even Billy. I wanted to find the sort of filthy sink tavern that felt like home and get drunk with my best friend Bloody Anne, like old times, like when we had been in
