It looked like I would have to do this the old-fashioned way, then, the gangster way, and simply swagger it out afterwards. And I could do that, I realised suddenly.
The Queen’s Warrant is an official license to do absolutely anything, with the full and unconditional backing and funding of the crown. It means that I am above the law. I am utterly untouchable.
Ailsa had told me that, and I knew then that I needed to heed those words. I am utterly untouchable, those were the words I needed to remember. Fuck taking his house by force, I realised, when I could see him in the chambers of the governing council tomorrow through the simple act of turning up for once. That wasn’t something I was in the habit of doing, but I believed I could make an exception on this occasion. I carried the Queen’s Warrant and there was nothing I couldn’t do in Dannsburg, however fucking outrageous it might seem.
All the same, we couldn’t just murder people in the street. Some degree of subterfuge had to be maintained, but I had the perfect cover to do it. Lord Vogel had seen to that.
‘No, fuck this,’ I said. ‘It’s not going to happen. We can’t take them in open battle.’
‘What are you going to do, then, boss?’ Oliver asked.
‘I’ll see him at work in the morning,’ I said.
Ailsa had as good as told me this was going to happen, of course.
Lord Vogel wants one of them killed, and sitting members of the governing council are notoriously difficult to get close to unless one is also a councillor, she had told me.
I realised then what she had meant, and what Vogel had been doing all along. I had been placed on the governing council purely to kill First Councillor Lan Letskov, and to replace him as the house of law’s puppet. Well, the latter wasn’t going to happen but we would have to see about the former, I supposed.
Anyway, I spent a fitful night thinking on it, and what it would mean for the future. Aleksander Lan Letskov had done me no harm save to fall in love with my wife, and fool that I was, I had to allow that I had done the same thing. All the same, by the time I finally fell asleep I knew what had to be done. It was for the greater good, I told myself, and I hold to that now. With war looming it was imperative that the governing council stood with us, and was led by one of our people.
After the morning’s session of the council, which consisted mostly of back and forth arguing over the terms of the guild of masons’ contract for the rebuilding of the city walls and a conspicuous ignoring of the civil unrest that still raged in the city, First Councillor Lan Letskov adjourned the meeting. He was a man past his sixtieth year, after all, and by then he seemed to be in quite some need.
I followed him to the privy.
‘My lord First Councillor,’ I said to his back as he relieved himself with a groan of satisfaction into one of the bowls.
He half turned to face me, his cock in his hands, a look of horror on his face as I drew Remorse.
‘Sir Tomas, no. If you want the podium that badly, then . . .’
‘Dieter Vogel sends his regards,’ I said, and I rammed Remorse through his chest.
He crumpled at my feet, and with that I supposed it was done.
The First Councillor was dead, and no one would ever question why or how. That was simply how Dannsburg worked. Vogel would manipulate the vote to see Markova elected into his position, and no one would argue with that either.
I thought about that, as I watched First Councillor Lan Letskov’s blood pool around him on the privy floor. That was how much power Vogel already had, and I didn’t think I was at all comfortable with it.
I wiped Remorse clean on Lan Letskov’s coat and sheathed her at my side. I lingered in the privy to take a piss myself, because as every soldier knows you should never turn down the opportunity to eat, sleep or take a piss, as you never know when the chance may come again. That done, I returned to my seat in the council chamber. By then Beast and Oliver would have used my name and the notes of permission I had signed for them to get inside the council building and spirit Lan Letskov’s body away. I sat and awaited the First Councillor’s return as though nothing had happened. He had disappeared, and that was all there was to it.
If there’s one thing the Queen’s Men teach you, it’s sheer audacity. The knowledge that you can do a thing, anything, and there will be no repercussions, is something it takes a while to get used to.
But by then I think I was starting to.
Chapter 46
Bakrylov came to see me again the next morning.
I hadn’t been expecting his visit, and if I’m honest I wasn’t really in any fit state to receive him. I had drunk myself into oblivion the night before, after I had assassinated First Councillor Lan Letskov in broad daylight and walked away from it as though nothing had happened, which of course it officially hadn’t. He had disappeared, and nothing more needed to be said about that.
Such was the life of the Queen’s Men.
‘Bakrylov,’ I greeted him in the common room of the Bountiful Harvest, and if I looked half as rough as I felt then he did a good job of hiding his reaction.
‘Sir Tomas,’ he said, and sketched me
