‘What the fuck did you do?’ I asked him quietly.
‘I just wanted to show him, Papa,’ Billy said. ‘Wanted to show him the cunning. What I can do.’
‘Aye, you can set fires,’ I said. ‘You can fucking well put them out too. I’ve seen you do it. What happened?’
‘I . . . I couldn’t,’ Billy said, and he started to cry. ‘It got away from me. Should have set it in the grate, not . . . not there. I don’t know. It was too much. It just got away from me. I’m sorry, Papa!’
I glared at him.
‘I should box your ears for showing off, Billy Piety,’ I told him, but of course I didn’t really mean it. I’d have no more hit my Billy than I would have done my own ma. ‘Don’t ever fucking do that again. Oh, come here, lad.’
I pulled him into an embrace, and held him as he shivered and wept into my shoulder, and across the green the inn burned to the ground.
I’d had fifteen gold crowns with me and I gave them all to the innkeeper to make it right with him. That was far too much, as no one had actually died, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that I had failed. I had failed as the father of a truly extraordinary lad, and if that cost me gold then so be it.
I deserved it, and let that be a lesson.
*
Coming back to Dannsburg was depressing. I missed the sea, but most of all I found the oppressive presence of the City Guard almost overwhelming. They were everywhere, and even the Dowager Duchess of Varnburg struggled to get her guardsmen admitted to the city. Grand Duchess she might be, but it was only when I threatened the senior captain of the gate with the authority of the house of law that we were finally allowed through, with much bowing and apologising. That was the power of the Queen’s Men, in Dannsburg at least.
Security in the capital was obviously much tighter than it had been when I left, and it seemed that a great deal could change in two months. I abandoned the duchess to make her own arrangements in the city for her entourage, and reported to the house of law at once. That wasn’t optional, I knew that.
Lord Vogel was not best pleased by her presence, to speak lightly of it.
‘The Grand Duchess?’
He glared at me across his desk, his pale eyes unblinking.
‘There was no way around it, sir,’ I said. ‘Not unless we wanted to send in the army and take Varnburg by force. I made the decision that putting up with the duchess was preferable to civil war.’
‘Only just, I assure you,’ Vogel said. ‘You did the right thing, Tomas, but it’s blasted inconvenient. That woman is a pain in the arse.’
I almost laughed, to hear the great and feared Lord Vogel speak like that, but I managed to restrain myself. I didn’t think laughing at Vogel was what you might call a good idea.
‘Yes, sir,’ I said instead, and changed the subject. ‘If I may, it seems security has been very much tightened while I’ve been away these last two months.’
‘Yes, I need to talk to you about that,’ Vogel said. ‘Something is about to happen, and when it does we will need every one of those extra guardsmen. I have only waited this long because I wanted you back in the city before I act. I’ll speak to you all in the morning, but I suggest you get a good night’s sleep tonight, Tomas. You’re going to be busy for the next few weeks.’
With that I was dismissed, and I left his office and closed the door behind me.
I walked down the corridor and saw Iagin’s office door was open. He was sitting at his desk behind a huge pile of papers, his pen scratching furiously across the sheet before him. I knocked on the open door and waited until his head came up.
‘Tomas, you’re back,’ he said, rather unnecessarily. ‘Good, the Old Man’s been getting impatient. You brought the boy with you, I take it?’
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘And his mother, sadly.’
Iagin’s huge moustache twitched as he tried not to laugh.
‘I’d say I’m surprised, but I’m not,’ he said. ‘That bloody woman is almost impossible to gainsay.’
‘I noticed,’ I said. ‘What’s the Old Man up to?’
Iagin shrugged. ‘He doesn’t tell me everything,’ he said. ‘I dare say we’ll find out in the morning.’
I supposed we would, at that.
That done I returned to my rooms at the Bountiful Harvest and had an early supper with Fat Luka and Bloody Anne and the others. Luka was full of tales from the last two months, of how the City Guard had been increasing in numbers almost by the week. There wasn’t quite a curfew, not yet, but hard questions were being asked of anyone out after dark and it seemed that disappearances were at an all-time high.
There was a storm coming, anyone could see that.
I lingered in the private dining room with Bloody Anne once the others had retired for the night, and regarded her over the rim of my brandy glass.
‘What do you think is going on?’ I asked her.
She shrugged.
‘How the fuck do I know? You’re the Queen’s Man, Tomas. You tell me.’
Aye, I was the Queen’s Man but Anne was shrewder than perhaps she knew herself, and I valued her opinion.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘but there’s something. Vogel said a thing was about to happen, and that we’d need every one of those guardsmen. He can’t be expecting a Skanian attack or there’d be soldiers on the streets and cannon on the walls, so it’s not that. What, then?’
‘You want my
