I found that I was glad to leave the governor’s hall. It was an overlarge and uncomfortable building, and noisy with the constant comings and goings of guardsmen and messengers and city officials and suchlike. Salo had reopened the house off Trader’s Row and we had moved back there two days ago, Billy and Mina and me.
The governor’s hall was vacant for Schulz to do with as she willed, and I wished her well of it.
When our meeting was done I got to my feet and offered her the chair behind the desk, in a symbolic handing over of power. She took my meaning, and she too stood and she shook my hand before she sat down behind the desk and rather fussily repositioned the inkwell.
‘Oh, Mr Piety, one more thing,’ she said.
I was Mr Piety now, I noticed, not Governor, already removed from my position.
‘What’s that, then?’
‘Our mutual superior in Dannsburg sends you his respects. He asked me to assure you that I will continue the tradition of the governors of Ellinburg of working in partnership with the Pious Men.’
Schulz was one of Vogel’s in truth, then, not just some lackey of the governing council. Not a full Queen’s Man, I was sure, or she would have been needed in the capital the same as I was, but she had certainly risen high enough in the organisation to know how things worked. Vogel was assuring me that it was safe to take Bloody Anne away from the business, I understood that, and that meant he wanted her in Dannsburg every bit as much as I did.
Which meant he knew that she existed and who she was, what her skills were and why I would want her with me. Fat Luka had worked for the Queen’s Men long before he worked for me, I had learned, since before the war, in fact, and who knew what information he and Rosie between them still passed to the capital.
Everyone is watched by someone.
Ailsa had told me that, once, and I knew it was true.
‘That’s good of you,’ I made myself say. ‘My thanks.’
‘I assure you, Mr Piety,’ she said, ‘I’m only following orders.’
Aye, well, weren’t we all?
*
That done, I paid a call on my brother to say farewell before we had to leave for Dannsburg. The maid I had hired for Hanne showed me into the parlour where her mistress was resting, the babe asleep in a crib beside her chair. Hanne looked tired, I thought, but then, new mothers usually did. There was a greyness to her face, though, and something in her once-smiling eyes that spoke of a quiet despair.
We exchanged pleasantries for a moment, but I barely knew the woman and she was plainly terrified of me. A year ago she had been my undercook at the house off Trader’s Row, after all. That was before my brother had accidentally got her pregnant in a meaningless fuck over the kitchen table while I was hosting a dinner party for Governor Hauer and a number of factory owners and pointless minor aristocrats who I didn’t know. Jochan had astonished me by marrying her, and now she was my sister-by-law, but I could see that we both knew where Jochan’s heart truly lay.
‘You’ll be wanting your brother, I’m sure, Mr Piety,’ she said after a moment. ‘He’s in his study with his . . . friend. You’ll forgive me if I don’t get up, but I don’t like to leave her, as it were.’
She turned a doting smile on her baby, and the bleakness left her face for a moment. She loved the child, that was plain to see, and I supposed that was good even if nothing else about their marriage was.
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Don’t trouble yourself, I know the way.’
Truth be told, I was glad to be free of the formalities of society life, if only for a little while, and not having to be escorted by a footman felt like a blessing. I left her there in the parlour and crossed the hall to the opposite door.
I knocked, and heard a muffled and clearly drunken response from within.
Jochan’s study was a drinking room, as might be expected. It was a long time since my brother had studied anything but the bottom of a bottle. There was a desk in there but it looked seldom used, and the room stank of brandy.
Cutter was with him, as I had expected. They were seated together on a padded settle like the lovers they were. I felt for Hanne in that moment, but it was what it was and none of my business, in Our Lady’s eyes.
‘Brother,’ I said. ‘Cutter.’
‘Hello, Tomas,’ he said. ‘Come in, have a drink with us.’
Jochan was slurring slightly, and he showed me a drunken grin as he spoke.
Cutter just lowered his gaze and turned his face away. He was hideously scarred from the battle with the Skanian magician the previous winter, one of his eyes gone and covered by a black leather patch. That whole side of his face was a mass of knotted, burned scar tissue where the beard didn’t grow any more. It was only thanks to Billy and Mina’s cunning and the later crude ministrations of Doc Cordin that he lived at all.
‘Boss,’ Cutter said quietly.
‘Aye,’ I said, for want of anything better, and looked at my brother. ‘Jochan, I just wanted to let you know I’m going away for a while, and I’m taking Bloody Anne and Fat Luka with me. Our aunt’s in charge until Anne gets back.’
Of course Anne had chosen to come too. I had never really been in any doubt about that.
‘Fuck a nun, Tomas,’ Jochan said, ‘I know you don’t fucking trust me. Just say it and have done with it.’
‘It’s not that,’ I said. ‘I do trust you, Jochan. I trust you with my heart, and with the past. You know that, or at least I hope you do. You’re a warrior, but you’re not
