We were admitted at last, and we rode through the gatehouse tunnel under the massive city wall and into Dannsburg itself. I glanced up as I rode, and I was dismayed by what I saw. The gate was in poor repair, to speak lightly of it, and the city walls themselves didn’t look much better. I spotted cracks in the masonry in a number of places, and patches of crumbling mortar. That didn’t bode well for how the governing council had been prioritising public spending since the war ended.
Bloody Anne was looking around herself with interest, having never seen the capital before. The rest of them had been there with me the previous year, save for Rosie, but I had a feeling she might have been Dannsburg born. She looked bored, if anything.
The wide cobbled street was glistening wet in the rain but every bit as busy as I remembered it, a bustle of carts and wagons and folk afoot. Trade and commerce don’t stop for a bit of rain, not if folk want to eat, they don’t, but I had thought the death of a queen might at least slow them some.
‘It’s busy,’ I thought aloud. ‘I had thought perhaps—’
‘No,’ Rosie cut me off.
I turned and glanced at her, and I caught the flinty look in her eyes.
Whore she might have been, on the surface at least, but she had the eyes of a killer.
The streets were teeming with people. The City Guard were everywhere, clothed in their casual brutality, and save for the weather, nothing seemed to have changed from how I remembered it.
In Our Lady’s name, I thought, they don’t know. It’s been what now – three, maybe four weeks? – since the queen died, and they don’t know. None of them do.
I wondered how that could possibly be, until the slow, steady rhythm of my horse’s hooves on the cobbled street lulled me to the understanding of it. They didn’t know because Lord Vogel didn’t want them to know, and in Dannsburg Lord Vogel’s will was law.
‘No, of course not,’ I said at last, and Rosie nodded. ‘Let’s not talk about it in public.’
That could have been a fuck-up and no mistake.
A Queen’s Man, a real Queen’s Man, would have known at once, of course. Again I felt like I was groping my way blindfolded down a corridor full of deadfalls when I should have known where each and every trap lay. I was woefully unprepared for this world Ailsa had thrown me into, and I didn’t care for it.
‘Where are we going, boss?’ Fat Luka asked, interrupting my thoughts.
If ever a man had looked so miserable in a saddle or so keen to be out of one then I’ve never seen it. I thought briefly of Ailsa’s house, and felt a fool for doing so.
‘An inn,’ I said. ‘You remember the Bountiful Harvest?’
‘Where we had that sit-down with Grachyev last year? Aye.’
I nodded, and turned my horse that way. I’ve a good memory for city streets, if I say so myself.
‘Who’s Grachyev?’ Anne asked.
I nudged my horse closer to hers so we could speak quietly and not be overheard. In Dannsburg someone is always listening; I remembered that well enough.
‘A businessman,’ I said. ‘He’s a big man here, the boss of the only crew in the city, and he owns that inn. His crew’s a front for the family, not that he knows it. We’ll get rooms there.’
Anne raised an eyebrow at that, but said no more.
We left our horses with the inn’s stablehands and carried our saddlebags inside. The Bountiful Harvest was in a wealthy part of the city, and it was very respectable and very expensive. The innkeeper took one look at us, sodden and travel-stained and dirty as we were, and he shook his head.
‘We’re full,’ he said, although the half-empty stables had told me they obviously weren’t.
‘My name is Tomas Piety,’ I told him. ‘From Ellinburg. I am a personal friend of Mr Grachyev.’
I wasn’t, of course. I had only met the man once, and that briefly, but Grachyev’s second was Iagin and Iagin was a Queen’s Man. If he knew his job, then as soon as the summons was sent, my name would have been left with every inn their crew owned in Dannsburg, which was virtually every inn the city had.
The innkeeper’s face turned the colour of spoilt milk, and I saw that Iagin knew his job very well indeed.
‘Of course, Mr Piety,’ he flustered. ‘Forgive me, I didn’t know you. Rooms and meals and hot baths for Mr Grachyev’s friends, of course, at once.’
I nodded and put ten gold crowns down on the counter in front of him one after the other, watching his eyes widen when he saw them. Those coins would pay for our board and lodging for a year or more, and much besides. Also, of course, they would pay for the innkeeper’s silence, and, I hoped, his loyalty.
They say the Queen’s Warrant opens all doors, and I’m sure that’s true. In my experience though, money and respect and influence do it just as well, and more importantly, they do it quieter.
Gold, power, influence.
Those are the levers that move the world.
Chapter 4
Once I had eaten and shaved and taken a much-needed bath, I opened my saddlebags and changed into clothes that were somewhat dryer than the ones I had taken off, if not by much. Luka had the room next to mine, and once I was dressed and had the Weeping Women once again buckled around my waist, I banged on his door. The weight of the twin blades Remorse and Mercy hanging heavy in their scabbards at my hips was reassuring.
‘We’re going out,’ I called.
I heard Luka groan.
‘Aye, boss,’ he said, at last.
I had to present myself at the house of law immediately, I knew that, and I wanted Luka with me. His saddle sores would just have to suffer a little longer. I left the
