‘That’s not the point,’ Anne said. ‘Who knows what they get up to in that house of magicians of theirs? I don’t trust them.’
‘Alchemy, mostly,’ I told her. ‘The making of blasting powder, which is their most useful talent. Other than that, I think they just stare at the stars and do . . . I don’t know. Debate philosophy or some bollocks, probably.’
Anne just grunted, her brow creasing in thought. Maybe she wanted to go back to Ellinburg and see for herself, but I couldn’t allow it.
With Vogel’s grip on Dannsburg turned into a stranglehold, I was too busy to be without Anne now. She was my chief enforcer, my strong right arm. I had Oliver and Emil and Beast for simple muscle, yes, but Bloody Anne was a force of nature with a keen tactical mind, and I wouldn’t be without her for anything. She was clever too, if uneducated, but then clever and educated are very different things. Either way, I valued her opinions. Those four, and Luka running intelligence and Rosie as my secretary, were my core operation. And Billy, of course. Billy was my secret weapon, the winning card I kept tucked up my sleeve for when I might need him. Not that that had turned out well with my plans for the young Grand Duke of Varnburg, I had to allow.
I was becoming more and more worried about Billy, truth be told. He was young, and I could tell that his prolonged separation from Mina was troubling him. I had proposed finding him a different tutor, perhaps one who would challenge him more, but he had given me a look that told me all I needed to know about his opinions on that. Academic learning was never going to be a pleasure for Billy, I knew that, no more than it had been for me. Nonetheless he continued to fill the great black tome Old Kurt had given him, fill it with incomprehensible notes of his own making on the cunning and what he was . . . I don’t know. Teaching himself, I suppose. Discovering, perhaps.
In my darkest moments, I found myself dreading to think what he had discovered now. I remembered the tale of the rats, and how he had given Old Kurt the fear. Billy was no ordinary boy, and that was Our Lady’s honest truth.
Still, the gears of the complex machine that was the Queen’s Men kept turning. We were all busy with surveillance and arrest warrants, all save for Sabine anyway. She was still active in the city, stirring up hatred against the house of magicians. From what I had seen on the streets of Dannsburg, it was working well enough.
Mother Ruin.
Oh, she was that all right. Sabine was a rabble-rouser who could give Old Kurt lessons in how it was done, I had seen that much. She was one who could tell people not to sleep with a foot out of the blankets or the boggart would get them, that there was a Skanian under the bed and best report their neighbours for anything suspicious, and they would believe her. There was something about Mother Ruin that made folk follow her.
‘Aye, alchemy and bollocks sounds about right,’ Anne said at last, but she had taken her good time about it and that wasn’t like her.
Sober, Anne had always been taciturn and terse, but I knew from experience that she was a talkative drunk. She was drunk now, but all the same getting words out of her was much harder than it should have been. I wondered why that was.
‘What’s on your mind?’ I asked her, and refilled her glass.
‘What’s on my mind?’ Anne said, and with those words she seemed to come to life. ‘There’s martial law in our own fucking capital city, that’s what’s on my mind, Tomas. Folk need a permit to be on the streets after dark, and even during the day the Guard want to know your business, and where you’re going and why, and who you’re seeing when you get there.’
‘These are troubled times,’ I said, knowing even as I spoke that those troubles had been manufactured by the very house I served.
‘Aye, they are,’ she snapped. ‘There are constant fucking street skirmishes between the City Guard and the Guard of the Magi, and the people themselves are splitting into factions. Say your neighbour went to the university. Now you’re questioning why, and what she learned there, and what she intends to do with that knowledge. Use the library? What for? That’s not to be trusted, is it? You should have learned a trade and stuck to it like normal people. Been to the theatre recently? That’s cause for suspicion too now, apparently. What’s that for, and what do they say there? Anyone with any learning to them, any possible ties to the house of magicians, is starting to fear for their safety in the face of the mob. So what do they do? They band together, of course they do. It’s only fucking natural, isn’t it? So now we’ve two mobs instead of one. We’re on the brink of fucking civil war, that’s what’s on my mind !’
‘It won’t come to that,’ I assured her, although I was nowhere near as confident as I forced myself to sound.
‘What about the Skanians?’ Anne demanded, and as she reached for the brandy bottle it seemed she had well and truly found her voice again. ‘Why aren’t we hearing about them these days? We’re just fighting each other, and no one’s talking about the real threat any more.’
I remembered saying something similar to Ailsa myself, back in the summer.
‘Aye, well,’ I said, and I took the bottle from her hand and poured myself another as well. ‘I’ve my own thoughts about that. Official line is, the Skanians are backing the house of magicians.’
Anne gave me a level look.
‘And you believe that, do you?’
