‘I know, and I won’t see her out on the street. If I’m to be replaced as governor then we’ll have to move back to the house anyway. She can stay there while we’re away. Salo and Cook will look after her.’
‘It’s not fair,’ Billy muttered, in the way that only those in their teen years do.
‘I know, son,’ I said. ‘Few things are, in this life.’
*
The next morning I sent out runners to bring Fat Luka and Bloody Anne and Rosie to me at the governor’s hall. It seemed strange to be holding a council of war with them there in my study instead of at the long table in the back room of the Tanner’s Arms, but that wasn’t my place any more. That was Anne’s table now, not mine.
I had made her head of the Pious Men when I became governor of Ellinburg, lacking enough hours in the day to do both myself. She had done very well indeed in the months since then, and the peace with the Northern Sons and the Alarian Kings had held throughout the winter and into the beginning of the warm months. Luka had brokered that peace, to be sure, but it was Anne who had enforced it.
She made a good boss, I thought now as I looked at her across the wide expanse of my desk. I could only hope I had made as good a governor.
‘How’s business going, Bloody Anne?’ I asked her.
She sipped tea from a shallow bowl and looked at me over the rim for a long moment. I had never seen Anne drink tea before. She was guarded around me now, as might be expected. She was the biggest underworld player in the city, and I was the city governor. We were still friends, of course we were, but I thought perhaps the nature of that friendship had changed some since I had been her boss in the Pious Men. Rosie sat quiet beside her, the bawd’s knot proudly displayed on her shoulder in yellow cord as she watched and listened.
Anne sucked her teeth for a moment while she considered her answer, making the long puckered scar on her face twist and pull the corner of her mouth up into a bitter half-smile.
‘Well enough,’ she said, at last. ‘I made your aunt my second. Mika is underboss of the Stink now, and Black Billy his second. Florence Cooper runs the Wheels with Jutta as hers.’
I nodded.
‘Aye, I heard,’ I said. ‘Any trouble on your streets?’
‘No,’ she said shortly, and that was all she said on the subject.
There had been trouble of course, after that first strike I had put down the previous year, but Anne had suppressed it with ruthless efficiency and that was good. She never had been one to boast of her deeds, not even when we fought together back in the war.
I looked at her and Fat Luka and Rosie, and nodded slowly.
Bring your chiefs of staff, that was what Vogel’s letter had meant.
Well, that was those three, to my mind, and I wasn’t going into the nest of vipers that was Dannsburg without Billy’s magic beside me either. My aunt was Anne’s second in the Pious Men now, so it would be up to her to run the business while Anne was away. There especially I thought she had chosen wisely. Admittedly, the last time Aunt Enaid had run the Pious Men she had lost all our businesses to Bloodhands and his Skanian-backed Gutcutters, but I knew she had more than proved herself since then. During the battles of the Stink for one, and since then too. During the troubles Anne said she hadn’t had.
Florence Cooper was better suited to the job, perhaps, and certainly more ruthless, but she ran her own crew and had done even before the war. She was an independent woman, our Florence. Once given power, if only for a little while, I didn’t think she would be eager to give it back again afterwards. Aunt Enaid put the family first, always, but Florence perhaps wouldn’t, and despite their friendship Anne had seen that.
She was no one’s fool, was Bloody Anne.
‘I have something to tell you all,’ I said, after a long moment of silence. ‘Something sealed to crown secrecy under the Queen’s Warrant. I’ve told my Billy but no one else and it’s to stay that way, do you understand me?’
The three of them nodded, and I told them what Vogel’s letter had said. Luka winced as he listened, but he held his peace. Anne and Rosie just sat quiet until I was finished.
‘What does this mean for us?’ Anne asked.
‘A new governor will be here in a week or two, to take over from me,’ I said. ‘Rosie, Luka, you’ve that long to set things in order here and make sure business carries on without you, then you’re coming to Dannsburg with me and Billy. Anne, I’d like you to join us as well, but that’s your choice.’
‘In case you need people killed when we get there, you mean,’ Anne said.
No, she was no one’s fool at all.
Chapter 3
It was ten days before the new governor arrived in Ellinburg.
Her name was Schulz, and she was a career bureaucrat from Dannsburg. I found little enough to like in the woman, but she had been appointed by Vogel himself so I could only assume she had at least a rough notion of how this worked. At least she’d had the sense to come on horseback with her guards and leave her baggage train to follow behind rather than riding in a carriage, so she understood urgency if nothing else.
‘It seems you leave me the city in good order, Governor Piety,’ she said as we finally finished going over the books of record in my study.
‘Aye, well, Governor Schulz, I was only ever interim governor here but I’ve run things as best I could.’
She nodded, and showed me a smile that I thought a touch condescending.
‘I’m sure you
