Jochan turned and spat into the fireplace, and Cutter gave me a look I wasn’t sure I knew how to read.
‘I’m leaving tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Please, if you do nothing else, support Aunt Enaid. When we were little she took us in when we needed her the most, Jochan. She fucking raised us. Support her now.’
Jochan looked at me for a long moment, and then the tears came. He was in my arms a moment later, sobbing incoherently as the battle shock and childhood trauma overcame him once more. I loved my brother, in my way, but there was no way I was putting him in charge of anything. There was one thing he could do for me, though.
An important thing.
‘I’ll want reports,’ I whispered into his ear. ‘Not the sort Enaid will send Anne. Honest ones, you understand? I want the truth of these streets, this city.’
Jochan clapped me on the back like any brother might have done, and he gave me a short nod.
‘Aye,’ he whispered back, and that was done.
*
We were on the road the following day, Bloody Anne and me, Fat Luka and Rosie and Billy the Boy, and we had Oliver and Emil along as extra muscle. I had wanted to bring Black Billy and Simple Sam instead, but Enaid needed them in the Stink and there was nothing to be done about that. The peace with the Northern Sons wasn’t so secure that I could take too much of Anne’s strength out of the city, and I had to accept it. They weren’t my crew any more, and I knew I had to accept that as well.
Billy was sullen about leaving Mina behind, but the lad stayed true to his word and hadn’t told her why we were leaving Ellinburg nor where we were going. I knew I could trust him with the things that mattered, young as he was. Besides, we were riding too hard for him to have spare energy to waste on complaints.
He didn’t look well, and I didn’t think it was just on account of the shit weather and the constant riding. His face still looked too tight, pinched and drawn beneath overly bright eyes. Mina had much the same look about her these days. The pair of them had done since the day of the second battle of the Stink, when they did whatever they had done to that Skanian magician to . . . how had Billy put it? Steal his strength, that was it.
We feasted on that last one before we pulled him apart.
Billy had told me that, and the thought still didn’t sit well in my mind. Truth be told, it made me shudder to think of it. It reminded me of the old sailors’ tales I had heard, of distant lands and cannibals. To my mind it’s not right to feast on another man, but what would I know? I’m no more a cunning man than I am a king, and I know little of such matters. Shortly after that, Billy had been wrong about something for the first time in my memory too, and I wasn’t sure those things were unconnected. I pushed it away for another day, pushed it into the broken strongbox in the back of my mind with all the other things I didn’t want to think about. I concentrated on the plodding rhythm of my horse, and on the road ahead of me.
There were heavy rains most of the way to Dannsburg. The endless fields to either side of us were waterlogged, the road a deeply rutted quagmire beneath our horses’ hooves. We’d brought no baggage with us other than what we could carry for the journey, but I had brought a very great deal of money. As far as I was concerned, we could simply buy whatever we needed once we reached the capital. Speed was the important thing, and I hadn’t wanted to be held to the pace of a wagon. Looking at the state of the road I was glad of that, however wet I was.
Even so, what with the constant rain and Luka and Billy’s inexpert horsemanship, the journey took us nine days all told. When we finally crested the last hill and saw the walls and banners of Dannsburg ahead of us in the grey distance, I thought Fat Luka might weep with relief. He really wasn’t built for long periods in the saddle, it had to be said.
Dannsburg itself seemed much as I remembered it. The hundreds of royal banners flew all across the city, their bright red hanging dark and wet in the rain. I had expected to see them raised at half-staff as a sign of respect for our late queen, but it appeared not.
The heavily armoured City Guard who manned the gates were brusque and efficient as they worked the line of folk waiting to pass through the walls, but there were no black sashes of mourning over their red surcoats where I had thought to see them.
‘What’s the lay of things in the city?’ I asked a guard captain as he rode past.
He gave me a strange look.
‘Well enough,’ he said, and turned away to make an end of it.
I was wet and filthy and I didn’t look like a lord that day, nor a city governor neither. I looked and sounded like the commoner I was, and the likes of me didn’t hold conversations with guard captains. Not in Dannsburg we didn’t, anyway. The relentless rain showed no mercy, soaking through my already sodden cloak and coat. I had almost forgotten what it felt like to be dry.
I paid the gate tax for our party without complaint. I didn’t want to arouse the notice that showing the Queen’s Warrant would have entailed, not just to save a few coins that I could easily afford.
You should use it sparingly, Ailsa had told me,
