Jochan was a violent man, I knew that, violent and unpredictable, but after our shared childhood I knew that he held wife-beaters in the same contempt that I did. His reaction to what Grieg had done that night in Chandler’s Narrow was enough to reassure me of that.
My brother was a good man, in his way, and I loved him in mine.
Aye, I loved my brother.
Chapter 41
The next day I received a letter from Fat Luka. It couldn’t have been written more than a day or two after we left Dannsburg, by my estimation. He had no scribe or secretary to write his letters for him in the way that I had had Rosie, and I struggled to decipher his childish, barely schooled writing.
Boss,
Found Lady Lan Yetrov like you wanted. Rich widow now, something at the university. Patron? Don’t know what that means. She pays for stuff, and they all love her there. Deep in with magicians so she’s keeping her fucking head down right now. Will try and get a sit-down with her when things calm down a bit. Pitched battle between City Guard and Guard of the Magi yesterday after the princess’ betrothal was announced. Think the City Guard got the better of it but it was close, and hard to call. Iagin is spinning yarns all across the city about the magicians’ treachery. Don’t like the look of the weather.
Luka
The fool wrote so much in plain that I could only thank Our Lady that the letter hadn’t been intercepted on the road, but I had to remind myself that Fat Luka wasn’t a Queen’s Man or even an educated man. He was clever, though.
I took his letter through to my study, and sat down behind my desk to pen a reply.
Luka,
I fear the weather in Dannsburg is worsening and will continue to do so. Save the Lady for the summer, and don’t trouble her now. If the winter storms in the city become severe enough to cause concern for your safety, I advise you and your friend to forge out onto the West Road, however bad the conditions appear. Spend the gold I left you, shelter in a village if you need to until the road opens and you are able to return home.
Do not, my dear friend, disappear in that city.
Tomas
The fucking last thing I wanted at the moment was Luka associating with a known patron of the university, and therefore by association an ally of the house of magicians. For one thing he was my friend, and I didn’t want to see him hauled down to the cells and Ilse, but for another I really, really didn’t want Vogel finding out I had asked Luka to make contact with the Lady Lan Yetrov.
That, I thought, wouldn’t have been good for anyone’s health.
I sealed the letter and rang a bell to summon a footman to fetch a houseboy and give him a silver mark to pay a messenger to ride it to Dannsburg, all the while frustrated that there wasn’t some centralised way to send letters between cities. A wagon full of sacks of mail would have been a great deal more cost effective than messengers riding a two-week round trip to deliver a single letter, but then I supposed that while so many people still couldn’t read and write there was no demand for it. Perhaps the university could change that. Perhaps one day we could have a university in every city, even in Ellinburg, but I supposed that was a thought for another day.
I sat back behind my desk and stared up at the ceiling, trying to imagine the Lady Lan Yetrov as a patron of the university. I had always suspected she was a lot more intelligent than was suggested by the vapid society front she had presented in her abusive husband’s presence, no doubt at his insistence, but still I had never suspected her passions leaned towards academia. Music or the arts, perhaps, but this was a surprise, nonetheless.
I was still gazing up at my moulded plaster ceiling rose when a footman rapped on the study door.
‘My lord, your—’ he began, before he was shoved aside by a familiar figure leaning heavily on a stick.
‘Aunt,’ she said, and closed the door in his face.
‘Auntie,’ I said, and rose to give Aunt Enaid the short bow of familial respect.
‘Oh, fuck off with your knighthood and your Dannsburg airs and graces, Tomas Piety,’ she said, and lowered herself into one of the chairs across from my desk without waiting to be asked. ‘What the living holy fuck do you think you’re doing?’
Ah, yes, my aunt was here to see me and no mistake.
‘In what way, Auntie?’ I asked, as I sat once more.
She may have had well over sixty years to her but all the same I was grateful for the expanse of oak between us. My aunt had been good with a mace during her war, and I could still remember the switchings she had dealt out in my youth. She might be fat now but she was still strong with it, and there was no doubt about that.
I rose once more and crossed to the cupboard, where I poured glasses of brandy for us both. She said nothing as I put hers before her and retreated behind my desk with mine. And ‘retreated’ was how it felt, as well. This woman had been almost my mother since I’d had only twelve years to me, and although she wasn’t my ma I felt I owed her a similar level of respect.
‘In what way,’ she mused, as she did when she was working up to delivering the sort of bollocking that could have come from the very gods themselves. ‘Let me think about that for a moment, Tomas Piety. You take the crown’s gold in secret. You allow the Pious Men to become an instrument of the Queen’s Men. You get my Brak crippled.
