‘What is it, anyway?’ Luka asked.
I could only shrug.
‘Don’t know until I speak to him, but he can wait till the morning for all of me. Travelling at this time of year, we’ve all narrowly avoided frostbite. I’m not going out in the cold again tonight. He can fucking well wait until I’ve warmed up and had a proper kip in a real bed.’
Luka looked at me then, and I saw the calculating expression on his face. Luka was a very, very clever man, I had to remind myself. I thought perhaps I should watch what I said about the Provost Marshal in front of Fat Luka. I included him in the very small circle of people I called real friends, but all the same I had to wonder. He had worked for the Queen’s Men since before the war, I reminded myself, and they had paid him to watch me while they had paid me to watch Governor Hauer. I had to wonder how much I could truly trust him, especially in Dannsburg.
That was a sobering thought.
I thought I could trust him. I was sure I could trust him, for Our Lady’s sake. And yet . . . aye, and yet. This was Dannsburg, where no one trusted anyone and the eyes and ears of the Queen’s Men were everywhere. It wasn’t Luka’s city the way it was Rosie’s, no. He was Ellinburg born the same as me. We had even been at school together, after all. But he had worked for the Queen’s Men before he worked for me, and worked for them while he worked for me, and he had never said anything of it. I suppose that meant he was trustworthy as an agent, one who could keep a cover and not betray his employer, but . . . but. Aye, fucking but. Who was his fucking employer now? Me, or Vogel? I only wished I could know for sure.
I looked at Fat Luka, and I smiled and poured us both another drink. I had to admit to myself that I really didn’t know. Suspicion on suspicion, and I had only been back in Dannsburg for twelve hours, if that. This city was poison and no mistake. It was ruin and I could feel what it was doing to me, but right then I couldn’t see my way clear of it.
I hated to admit it but Dannsburg was starting to feel more like home than Ellinburg did. Aye, that first night I had walked into the Tanner’s Arms I thought I had come home, but the changed dynamics of the Pious Men and the furious argument I had had with my aunt the next day when we almost came to violence between us made me question that. I had given up my position in Ellinburg and I had done it willingly, in the service of the Queen’s Men. I couldn’t be two things at once, I realised, and if I was to be a Queen’s Man in truth then, although it pained me to admit it, Dannsburg had to be where I set my heart.
Dannsburg, the city of lies and whispers and treachery. Aye, that probably suited me better than the blunt honesty of Ellinburg, these days. Was that Our Lady’s plan for me? Would I always be torn between the two, and longing for Varnburg and the clean majesty of the sea that I could never have? That was a philosophical question, I supposed, and I was too drunk for philosophy.
‘You got a woman yet?’ I asked Fat Luka, to steer the conversation away from the painful places I didn’t want to go.
Of course he had, some widow from south of the river whose name I don’t remember, and then I had to listen to an hour’s worth of lewd bedtime stories that I didn’t really want to hear, but it was better than thinking about the other thing.
About what Lord Vogel was going to tell me the next morning.
Chapter 43
I reported to Vogel’s office the next morning, and what he told me wasn’t what I had been expecting to hear.
I don’t know what I had been expecting, but it wasn’t this. I suppose I had been steeling myself for some assignment of violence, someone else to arrest or kill. I was Brother Blade, after all, but then he had Konrad to do that sort of thing for him now and I knew that Konrad took far more delight in that kind of work than I ever could. No, this was something different. Something I would never have seen coming in a thousand years.
‘You have been voted into a seat on the governing council, Sir Tomas,’ he said, and he showed me his razor smile. ‘Congratulations, Councillor.’
I could only stare at him.
‘Fucking how?’ I could only say. ‘I never even stood for election. I don’t know how to stand for election to be on the governing council.’
‘Of course you did,’ he said smoothly. ‘Iagin saw to that shortly after Councillor Yanakov unfortunately passed away, and his sudden death naturally triggered an election in the North Ward of the city. You stood, on a platform of staunch support of the house of law and stern opposition to the insidious sedition of the house of magicians, and you won by a landslide. Congratulations, as I say. Your first
