I remembered the battle of the Stink, and how that had ended once I had the massed population behind me.
Aye, the common folk had power through their sheer weight of numbers, but only if they had someone to lead them. When I became the governor of Ellinburg I had shown them the other side of that coin and no fucking mistake. I oppressed them with an iron boot because the crown had told me to, and they had no one left to stand up and tell me ‘no’. That was how business worked.
This was no different, I realised. In Dannsburg the Queen’s Men had the biggest iron boot anyone had ever seen, and they had it pressed to the throat of the general population until any and everyone bowed down at the mere sight of the Queen’s Warrant. Without credible leaders, the working classes were easy pickings for the insidious power of the Queen’s Men.
The key to every door in Dannsburg.
It was that, all right. There was no one in Dannsburg who would refuse the authority of the Queen’s Warrant. No one save for traitors, anyway, and traitors could be killed on sight.
That was a self-fulfilling prophecy, of course. Obey, or die.
That was the power of a god indeed.
Vogel was removing those potential leaders one by one, and he wasn’t finished yet. By then I was prepared to go along with anything, absolutely anything to unite the country and stop the coming war.
Fucking, fucking fool.
*
The place was called the Spring of Mercy, and it was a public baths.
I had Bloody Anne and Oliver and Emil with me that night, and we were dressed in our best finery but we wore our weapons out in plain sight. The Spring of Mercy was owned by Grachyev, because of course it fucking was. I had cleared this with Iagin in advance, and we were expected.
That was good.
The place was in a rich part of the city, facing onto a grand square with fountains and a stone plinth that held a great bronze statue of some cavalry general on a rearing horse. I had no idea who he was, or had been, but the thing was impressive, nonetheless. The bath house itself was no less impressive, with a wide façade faced with columns that supported a heavy portico over the double doors of the entrance.
There were two men on those doors, ushers or attendants or whatever you were supposed to call them in polite society, but guards are guards and they were quite plainly that. They were Grachyev’s men, though, or more likely Iagin’s, and we were waved inside without a second thought.
We walked in like gangsters, like we owned the fucking place, all swagger and weapons and attitude. In business as well as in battle, an approach always has to be tailored to the terrain, to the place and the time, the job or the mission at hand.
This was the right approach for the right time.
There were hostesses here too, pretty ones and lots of them, and boys that I supposed you’d call hosts. Footmen holding trays of drinks sweated through their fancy livery in the steaming humidity.
The Spring of Mercy was frequented by the very rich and the very nervous, and, looking back on it after what we found in there, I realised that these were people who knew they were doing awful wrong and yet who still tittered to each other about it behind their towels and their wine glasses.
They were cunts, the lot of them.
The bath house itself was a small part of the business, I discovered, but even so there were people there who really didn’t want to be seen. Although we strode past the steaming green marble pools with their cavorting naked bodies without a glance, I knew there were folk in there who would be begging their political contacts for clemency and anonymity the next morning.
The Queen’s Men don’t officially exist, no, but everyone who matters in Dannsburg knows one when they see one. In Dannsburg the Queen’s Men are the big bad wolf that will fucking eat you up, and there’s no joking about that.
Heads turned to watch us as we marched through the bathing rooms. I heard sudden hushed and urgent conversations, but I let it pass. The baths and the whores and who was fucking who weren’t important. It was the gaming rooms I was interested in, and they were at the back of the building. There was a huge, stone-faced man on the door between the baths and the back room, and perhaps he hadn’t got the note about what was happening that night.
Not that he could read anyway, I was sure.
‘Let us in,’ I said.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘My name is Tomas Piety,’ I said.
‘So what?’ he said.
He looked like he was going to make something of it, of me and my cadre of heavily armed thugs wanting to come through his door, but if he truly didn’t recognise us then he was only doing his job and I could respect that. He had the look of a veteran about him, and I would have hated to have to kill him over something that wasn’t his fault.
Of course, I didn’t have to.
‘Perhaps someone failed to give you our descriptions,’ I said. ‘I am Tomas Piety, from Ellinburg, and this is my second, Bloody Anne. We’re those friends of Iagin’s you were told to expect, and told to welcome. I don’t feel welcome.’
‘Iagin’s . . . oh, shit. Sorry, boss,’ the man said, as realisation dawned on him who we were.
He stepped smartly aside and held the door open for us.
Connections, power, influence. Those open doors too, and with a lot less alarm being caused than waving the warrant about when it wasn’t absolutely necessary.
Me and Bloody Anne and Emil and Oliver walked in there with all the authority of Mr Grachyev’s name, and that underwritten by the power of what I carried in my pouch.
Perhaps I
