None of it did. The narrative had been given to them, by Iagin and his network of voices. By Brother Truth. That was the truth they had heard, and they ate it up like fresh bread. Logic, reason, those are things a mob cannot, will not, hear.
‘Queenkiller!’
The magician voided himself, shit falling from under his robes to splatter onto the baying crowd below. I knew then that he was dying, but the mob’s fury was not.
‘Dirty bastard!’
‘Queenkiller!’
‘Hoist him!’
‘Fucking Queenkiller!’
The magus gave a last kick and hung lifeless from the rope, his body twisting in the wind. It was done, and over. And just beginning.
That was when the City Guard finally appeared. The mob began to scatter as guardsmen waded into them with clubs in their hands, knocking people down indiscriminately around them.
The grey-haired woman stood among them, and she paused for a moment to meet my eyes.
I gave Sabine a nod before she vanished into the crowd.
Chapter 33
After Sabine kindled that first spark, the wildfire took hold. Dannsburg was like a barrel of powder, as Ailsa’s father had told me the previous year, just waiting for a spark to set it off. Well, now that spark had been struck and no mistake.
Even Vogel’s newly expanded City Guard were hard pressed to keep the queen’s peace on the streets, but he seemed well enough pleased despite that.
‘There was a riot outside the house of magicians today,’ Iagin told me, three nights later in the mess at the house of law. ‘Two of the Guard of the Magi were killed. The Old Man’s rubbing his hands together, I can tell you.’
I thought of the Guard of the Magi with their plate armour and great helms, their halberds and heavy war swords.
‘How many of the populace died?’ I asked him.
He frowned. ‘I didn’t see a final body count,’ he admitted after a moment. ‘Twenty, maybe. I don’t know.’
I swallowed my brandy and poured another. Vogel spent the lives of the common folk like copper pennies to get to his enemies in the house of magicians, and he seemed to think nothing of it.
‘And the Skanian merchants still in the city, and their families?’
‘Four lynchings so far, that I know of. Seven shops burned down. Most of them have already fled the city walls, although where they’ll go is anyone’s guess. Their only ships back home sail from Varnburg, and they won’t be welcome at the city gates there.’
I sighed and turned to look at him. They would starve outside the walls of Varnburg, we both knew that. It seemed Lord Vogel had reached some sort of accord with the Dowager Duchess, and a messenger had already been sent to her city’s governor with orders to admit no Skanian refugees nor accept their ships into her harbour. Iagin’s face was composed, his heavy moustache unruffled, but there was something in his face that made me think perhaps he was troubled by what we were doing. The lines seemed deeper around his unblinking blue eyes, the creases more pronounced on his broad forehead.
‘I saw Sabine in the crowd, that first day, urging them on,’ I said. ‘She’s good at this sort of thing.’
‘Aye, that she is,’ Iagin said, and swallowed his brandy. ‘Mother Ruin. I’m going back to my office, I’ve got work to do.’
He was halfway to the door when I spoke.
‘Iagin,’ I said, and he stopped and turned to look at me.
‘What?’
He looked irritated now, and I thought better of it.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Let me know if you need any help.’
‘I’ve got this under control,’ he said, and clumped off down the corridor.
Too soon, I told myself, and immediately wondered for what. What exactly was I thinking?
There are factions, Tomas, even within the Queen’s Men.
Ailsa had told me that the previous year, and I still wasn’t sure what she had meant by it, but I thought Iagin had the makings of an ally should I ever need one. The three of us, I thought, might stand against Ilse and Konrad and Sabine if it came to it.
If it comes to what, you fucking fool?
I pinched the bridge of my nose between finger and thumb and let out a long sigh. This world of intrigues wasn’t my natural environment. I was a soldier and businessman, for Our Lady’s sake. Politics was a foreign country to me, and I would have been quite happy for it to stay that way, but it seemed that wasn’t going to be the case.
Rosie had told me that morning that I had a social engagement to attend at the palace tomorrow. A formal introduction, she had called it, one that had to be witnessed by as much of Dannsburg high society as possible. Apparently that included me, ridiculous though that felt, but then I supposed I was a knight now. I was a knight, and more to the point I was a Queen’s Man. A proper one now, not just some poor fool Ailsa had given a battlefield promotion to when we had both half expected to die the next day. No, I was in the life for true now, and it was well known that the only way to leave the service of the Rose Throne was in death.
So, a formal introduction it was, the beginning of one of the slow social dances that could put arses on thrones in the fullness of time. The young Grand Duke of Varnburg was to be introduced to the Princess Crown Royal as a suitor, with a view to betrothal, and I was to be there to witness it.
*
‘I have reached an accommodation with the Dowager Duchess of Varnburg,’ Lord Vogel told me quietly the next morning as we waited together in an anteroom at
