I didn’t want this job, none of it. The Queen’s Men or the governing fucking council or any of it, but if I was stuck with it, then I was going to try my hardest to do some good with it. I wanted . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what it was, what had changed, but I felt in that moment that if a man is given power at a national level then he should use it to save lives, not take them. I very, very much doubted Lord Vogel would have agreed with me, but that was just another item to chalk up on the increasingly long list of points on which we differed.
While we fought a common enemy in the Skanians I supposed that was just something I had to accept.
*
I had an unexpected visitor that evening, a man I had almost forgotten about.
Major Bakrylov of the Queen’s Own Fifth was a young fellow with maybe twenty-seven or so years to him, and he wore a dark-red coat cut in the military style and the customary bristling side whiskers of a cavalry officer. He had tried to seduce me at a dinner Lord Vogel had thrown, the dinner where Lord Lan Andronikov had disappeared, but he was a decent enough fellow for all that. He liked to gamble, I remembered, and he could lose a bet and laugh about it afterwards, which was more than most men could. I had taken a gold crown off him at Lan Yetrov’s bear bait, and he had thought nothing of it. He was also, I was reasonably certain, on the payroll of the Queen’s Men.
‘Major, a pleasure to see you,’ I said, when Rosie showed him into my office in the private dining room of the Bountiful Harvest, and I found I actually meant it.
I liked the man, for all that I knew what he had done in the war.
‘Sir Tomas,’ he said. ‘My congratulations on your recent considerable social elevation.’
I wasn’t sure if he was referring to the knighthood or my appointment to the governing council, or perhaps both, but that didn’t matter. What he really meant was, ‘You are senior to me in the Queen’s Men.’
I nodded in return, and waved him to a seat and offered him the brandy bottle that stood on the table beside my glass.
‘To what do I owe this pleasant surprise?’ I asked him as he poured himself a generous measure.
‘Oh, I know, I know,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have come uninvited. I should have left a calling card, and all that old-fashioned shit like our parents did, but come on, Piety. Us old soldiers have to stick together, and all that.’
Like our parents did? We couldn’t have grown up more differently, Bakrylov and me.
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Something like that. It’s not slipped your mind that I’m married and don’t care for men in that way, has it, Major Bakrylov? I wouldn’t want us to have another embarrassing misunderstanding.’
I still didn’t know if he truly preferred men or if that had just been a clever ruse to distract me from Lan Andronikov’s murder that night, but I supposed that was beside the point.
‘Oh, don’t play the fool, man,’ he said, and knocked back his brandy with a flick of the wrist. ‘That was merely a bit of fun; you’re far too old for me anyway. I wondered if you fancied a night out gambling?’
I blinked at him in surprise. Not at the too old, as I had ten years on him at least, but at the sudden social invitation. There had to be a reason for this, but I couldn’t for the life of me think what it might be.
The major met my eyes, and I had the distinct sense that there was something he wanted to talk to me about away from anyone else who had anything to do with the family, even my own crew.
‘I must admit it’s been a while since I had a game of cards,’ I said at last.
I confess I prefer dice to cards, common though that might make me, but very early in our marriage Ailsa had informed me that all gentlemen played cards. Dice were for conscripts and criminals, apparently, which was probably why I preferred them, on account of having been both of those things. Still, she had made me learn cards, and I’d found that I had quite the knack for it.
‘Oh, do say yes, old boy,’ he said, and I could tell this wasn’t another unwanted advance. There was definitely something he wanted to tell me in the utmost confidence.
‘Aye, why not?’
We went off out together, the major and me with Oliver and Emil along for muscle. Bakrylov took us maybe two or three streets away from the inn to a gaming house he knew. We were breaking curfew, of course we were, but then we were two wealthy gentlemen with bodyguards, and although it would never be admitted in public, it was widely known that curfew truly only applied to the working classes and anyone who might possibly be suspected of supporting the house of magicians. I had the Queen’s Warrant in my pouch, if it came to it, and I suspected that Bakrylov knew that. Either way, our privilege protected us from the City Guard, and we weren’t challenged on the streets.
The place was called the Jolly Joker, and it was a fine old place indeed. The main room was warmly lit by two blazing fireplaces and numerous lamps and candelabras, and bards played at either end of the long space. The multiple tables were busy with richly dressed clientele with cards in their hands, stacks of wooden counters on the tables in front of them and glasses of wine and brandy set before them. I wondered if this place had belonged to Grachyev, and therefore now to Iagin, and decided that it almost certainly had.
If Bakrylov wanted to get away from the family he had picked
