To my shame I had absolutely no idea what his name was. Salo had changed some of the staff while I had been in the capital, as was his prerogative as my steward, and I had never seen this man who was watching me eat before in my life.
‘Aye,’ I said after a moment. ‘Rich food, that’s all. It’s a struggle for the stomach after a week and more on hard rations while travelling.’
The food was rich, at that. Cook had obviously been unsure whether I would be returning alone or with my lady wife, and she had prepared a meal far more to Ailsa’s tastes than mine. I watched the thick sauce congealing on my meat, and found my appetite had quite deserted me.
‘You finish this if you want it,’ I said to the plainly astonished footman, and rose to my feet. ‘I’m going to take a bath.’
The bathwater was tepid by then, but I decided it would do. Otherwise the maids would have had to heat more water in the kitchen and the housemen lug it up two flights of stairs in buckets to the wooden tub that had been brought up to my bedroom, and I didn’t want that. I really wasn’t easy living with servants, being waited on hand and foot. Not without Ailsa, anyway. That had been her world, not mine. I honestly had no idea why I had a valet at all, other than because Ailsa had said that I should, but to dismiss the man now and take his job away when he had done nothing wrong seemed harsh, so I resolved to keep him on even though his purpose utterly escaped me.
Without my lady wife there by my side to guide me, I simply didn’t know how to live in a big house with servants. It had been different at the governor’s hall. There I had been too busy to worry about such things, and with the constant comings and goings of messengers and officials and the City Guard, it had felt more like an army camp than a residence anyway, and I was used to those. This was different.
This felt like wealthy, upper-class civilian life, and I didn’t know how to live that.
I settled into the lukewarm bathwater and sighed as I felt the grime of the road begin to lift from my skin. Was that what I was now, a wealthy knight with no idea of how to be one? No, no, of course I wasn’t. I was a Queen’s Man, and I always would be. Unlike my sasura, I would never be allowed an honourable discharge. No one was, except for him and his rather exceptional circumstances. I had just been hung on the wall, as it were, like a sword hung over the fireplace after the war, put away until you needed to use it again. Until next time.
Brother Blade.
For some reason I thought then of the ancient sword that hung over the fireplace in Old Kurt’s hovel down in the Wheels. The sword of a king, or so he said anyway. That was so much horseshit, I was sure, but I had believed it when I was a little lad. Ah, memories. Childhood memories, to be sure. Memories of a more innocent time, when I had still believed in the romantic stories of kings and queens and valiant knights in shining armour. When I had still believed in happy endings.
Vogel hadn’t let me go, I knew that much.
He never, ever fucking would.
*
I took my leisure the next day, recovering from the long ride, but that evening I rode down to the Tanner’s Arms. I knew the Pious Men weren’t my crew any more, but nonetheless I needed to see them. Ellinburg was my home, after all, and I had founded the Pious Men there. Well, me and my brother had together, I supposed, but to my mind they had always been my operation. Jochan was more brawn than brain and I didn’t think even he would have disputed that.
Riding down the road to the Tanner’s felt like old times, like coming home. Now I wasn’t the city governor any more, or even the head of the Pious Men, I could finally go out alone, without guards crowded around me. I could have been any mounted traveller with his hooded cloak pulled close around him against the encroaching winter cold. There were already flakes of snow in the air and almost everyone I passed was cowled. No one gave me a second look, and that was the whole point. That was how the Queen’s Men worked. Everyone who matters in Dannsburg might know one when they see one, but even there, that’s a vanishingly small percentage of the population. No other fucker does. In Ellinburg I could be completely anonymous, and I found that I liked it.
I hitched my horse to the public rail outside the Tanner’s and pushed the door open, and stepped into home.
I could almost have wept, in that moment. Simple Sam was standing in front of my old table, his massive arms crossed in front of his barrel chest, keeping people away from Bloody Anne, who was sitting in my old seat and having an earnest conversation with my aunt. Hari was behind the bar, off his stick now and hopefully healed at last, and Jochan was roaring drunk and telling war stories to a group of customers gathered around him by the fireplace.
I pushed my hood back and met Sam’s gaze, and saw his eyes widen in shock.
‘Boss!’ he said.
It hurt, but I had to shake my head.
‘I’m not the boss here any more, Sam, lad,’ I said. ‘Anne is, you know that. I’ll talk to her when she’s done, if she’s the time to see me.’
It was important that I didn’t do anything to undermine Bloody Anne. I had put her in charge of the Pious Men when I became governor of Ellinburg and I had
