‘I see,’ I said.
Not half an hour past I had watched this man I was having a drink with send his own sister down to the cells.
I swallowed brandy and tried not to think about it. The fellow we had arrested with her had been difficult, until eventually I’d had to have Bloody Anne march him out of the palace with his arm twisted to breaking point behind his back and the tip of one of her daggers pressed into the base of his spine. I had no idea who he was – the arrest warrant had been for Lady Dennan, and for anyone she’d had with her. Perhaps he was innocent, I wouldn’t know.
By that point I knew it really didn’t matter one way or the other.
Vogel was purging the palace, that much had become clear to me. Although nobody had come out and actually said as much, it didn’t take a great degree of cleverness to see what was happening.
Lady Lan Delanov’s confession and subsequent trial had been enough to exonerate the Prince Regent and the Princess Crown Royal, and therefore ensure the succession, but that was all. Vogel had taken the opportunity to have a couple of highly placed nuisances removed while he was about it, but he hadn’t stopped there.
Now anyone who had ever so much as breathed a word against the throne or its servants was being gradually removed on one pretext or another. So too, I thought, was everyone who appeared to be close to the Prince Regent. New faces filled their roles, loyal faces, and that loyalty was first and foremost to the house of law.
That was well and good, I supposed, but I couldn’t see how it was the most important thing we should be doing. Not by a long way.
I looked over Konrad’s shoulder at Bloody Anne, who was busy pouring herself another drink from one of the bottles on the side table. We were in what I could only think of as the sergeant’s mess, although the Queen’s Men had no notion of rank. Those who carried the warrant seemed to have the social standing of colonels, from what I could tell of how Dannsburg society worked, but the facilities here were more suited to common soldiers than high-ranking officers. Lord Vogel didn’t believe in luxury or comfort. Not unless he was using it to lure the unwary into a trap, anyway, as he had at the dinner party he had thrown the previous year where Lord Lan Andronikov had disappeared.
‘I’ll have another with you,’ I said, to get Anne’s attention.
She looked up at me and nodded, a small nod that said she knew I wanted to talk but not in front of Konrad. Bloody Anne and me knew each other so well it was like we could read each other’s minds, sometimes. We couldn’t, of course – neither of us knew anything of the cunning, nor much wanted to – but at times like that it almost felt like it.
‘I need to see the Old Man,’ Konrad said, and I thought perhaps he had taken the hint.
He put his glass down and left the room, leaving the two of us alone together.
‘Lady’s sake, Tomas,’ Anne said, once the door was closed behind him. ‘Who is that cunt?’
I shrugged. ‘A Queen’s Man,’ I said.
‘He arrested his own sister.’
‘Aye, apparently so.’
‘And is that what you want, Tomas? To be part of this, to be someone like him?’
I sighed and took the drink she offered me.
‘It’s what I’ve got, Anne,’ I said. ‘I’ve got a war to prevent, and this is the only way I’ll ever have power enough to stand a chance of doing it.’
‘What if it was your brother, Tomas?’ she asked, and her eyes were hard as they met mine. ‘What if they ordered you to arrest Jochan?’
‘You know I’d never fucking do that,’ I said.
‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ I snapped at her. ‘My loyalty is to family first and it always will be, whatever oath they make me swear. And what about you, Bloody Anne?’
‘What about me?’
‘Your Rosie,’ I said, and I could feel myself getting angry with her now even though I didn’t want to. ‘Your woman. She worked for the Queen’s Men long before either of us knew her. What if I fell out of Vogel’s favour? What if your Rosie came to you one night and said, “We have to arrest Tomas,” what would you do then?’
Anne studied me for a long moment, then she drained her glass and turned away.
‘Oi,’ I said. ‘I want an answer to that.’
‘Tomas,’ Anne said, her back still turned to me. ‘Don’t do this.’
‘Don’t do what, ask awkward questions you don’t want to think about the answers to?’
‘Fuck your questions,’ Anne growled. ‘Don’t do this. The Queen’s Men, I mean. Just . . . just don’t.’
‘Bit fucking late for that,’ I said. ‘This is what I am, now.’
‘Aye,’ Anne said. ‘It looks like it is.’
Chapter 18
Arguing with Bloody Anne had left a sour taste in my mouth, and I hadn’t wanted to go back to the Bountiful Harvest that night. Anne was my conscience in a way, as I have written before, and her words had discomforted me more than I truly wanted to admit to myself. When I left the house of law I went out into the city instead, alone. That would have been unthinkable in Ellinburg, where I had been the city governor, of course, but here it was different.
It was dark by then but still the streets of Dannsburg had more City Guard on them than I had ever seen before, and crime was virtually non-existent. North of the river it was, anyway, and no one seemed to much care what happened south of it.
