Again I paused, to allow the two sides of buffoons to reverse their previous opinions of me. I was having fun already, and I was only just starting.
‘War,’ I said, and I paused again to let the word hang ominously in the air. ‘I am a soldier. I have seen war. I was at Messia, and I was at Abingon, and I rode home to tell the tales of it. I have seen city walls, walls far mightier than ours, crumble into dust before the relentless onslaught of the cannon.’
They knew I was a knight, of course, and with those words now they thought me the martial sort that they supposed led cavalry charges. That lent me gravitas when speaking of matters of war, and more to the point it deflected any suspicions that I might have been the other sort of knight, the sort who made up the Queen’s Men. Also, for many of them the only cannon they had ever seen fired was probably that monstrosity the Princess Crown Royal had unleashed atop Cannon Hill, the day she had vaporised the Baron Lan Drunov. They feared cannon well enough after that, and with good reason. I spoke, and they believed me to be noble born and a war hero both, although I was neither of those things.
I told them no lies, but as Our Lady is my witness, I’m good at this shit, if I say so myself.
I deliberately didn’t speak to them of siege. Those who have not fought, as most of these almost certainly hadn’t, always assume that cities are taken through frontal assault. They thought the reality was the thunder of cannon and the charge of armoured lances, a day or two of heroic violence that they could romanticise and admire from a safe distance. They didn’t want to hear about the weapons of starvation and disease. They didn’t want to hear about the grinding months of attrition and tedium and slow suffering, of hunger and the bloody flux, for all that nine times out of ten those are the true takers of cities.
‘Sir Tomas, I—’ someone protested, but I cut him down with a soldier’s glare.
Be outrageous, if you need to be, but make an impression.
Oh, I could be outrageous when I wanted to be.
‘Our walls are shit!’ I proclaimed, earning a startled raising of eyebrows from First Councillor Lan Letskov. ‘If the Skanians come in force, as they may well do in the wake of the assassination of our noble queen, our walls will fall and we will die. I propose a requisition of one million gold crowns from the treasury, to be paid to the guild of masons to expand our fortifications, strengthen our walls, and make our country great again!’
I had to shout those last words over the increasing uproar, but one thing was for certain: they would fucking well remember me now, all right.
Chapter 44
‘A million gold crowns?’ Anne laughed, when we were back in the Bountiful Harvest that afternoon with brandies in our hands. ‘Does the treasury even have a million gold crowns?’
‘How the fuck would I know?’ I said, and clinked my glass against hers. ‘Make them remember you, the Old Man said, and I reckon I did that this morning.’
‘Aye, I should think you did, and then some,’ Anne said. ‘They’ll remember you as the madman who wants to beggar the realm on his first day in office, to build walls against a threat half of them don’t even believe exists.’
‘Aye, well, more fool them,’ I said.
I knew the story that the magicians had killed the queen was utter horseshit, and I knew Vogel had only come up with it to seize an opportunity to hurt his political rivals in the house of magicians and deflect attention away from how woefully unprepared for another war we really were.
I remembered the Skanians that the Pious Men had fought in Ellinburg, and Bloodhands and his attempt to infiltrate my city. More than anything I remembered their magicians, who very much did know magic even if ours apparently didn’t. If the Skanians invaded with our defences in their current state we were just fucked and there was no other way to look at it. If I was truly a councillor now, if there was any way in Our Lady’s name I could get that funding, I realised I would do it. I had been making it up as I went along in the council chamber, simply wanting to say something outrageous enough to make sure they remembered me, but the more I thought about it, the more I knew I was right. If I had the power to make this happen now, then I fucking well would.
We needed to be funding the military, building defences, recruiting troops. If Skania came at us now it would be Abingon all over again. Ailsa had told me that shortly after I first met her, and she had been right then and she was right now. It would be Abingon again but this time we would be on the losing side, and I wouldn’t see that happen. Not on my watch, I wouldn’t.
I couldn’t see that happen, not again.
For Our Lady’s sake, not again. Never again.
My hand shook hard enough that I spilled brandy on the table, and Anne looked at me with sudden concern.
‘Tomas?’ she said, gently putting her hard, callused hand over mine. ‘It’s all right, Tomas. I’m here.’
‘Aye,’ I said, and took a shaky breath. ‘Aye, I know you are, Anne, and I thank you for it. I had a . . . a bad moment, that’s all. They come and go.’
‘I know,’ she said, and she reached for the bottle and topped up my spilled drink. ‘It’s been a big day. Your first day as a member of the governing council, and you gave a speech I don’t think anyone will forget in a hurry.’
‘I hope they won’t,’ I said, and I
