Billy the Boy seemed happy enough to move back into the Tanner’s Arms, and he took to Ailsa immediately. Once word reached him that she was my woman, he took to calling her Auntie.
For all that that caused some merriment among the crew, she didn’t seem to mind it any. I was glad about that. I remembered walking along the river path with Anne and Billy on our way to Old Kurt’s house, back in the spring. It had seemed to me at the time that we might almost have been a family, and I remembered that I had thought then that perhaps it would be no bad thing. Not with Anne, no, but with Ailsa I thought it might well be a different matter. I was being a fool there, I knew that, but still the thought lingered.
Aunt and Uncle, I would take that if it was offered.
Hari and Billy renewed their friendship, largely based on pastries though it may have been, and a few days passed merrily enough. Jochan still worried me, but there was little enough I could do about that. He would come out of it or he wouldn’t, I supposed. Fat Luka was away a lot, out in the streets doing what he did best.
“The Gutcutters are laid in for a siege,” he told me one night, sharing my table in the Tanner’s while Simple Sam loomed in front of us and kept flapping ears away. “I think they don’t understand why there’s been no reprisal for Enaid’s house. Some of them say it’s because you’re too weak to strike back, but the prevailing word is otherwise. I’ve paid well for that word, and so far it’s working. Our man Gregor sits at Ma Aditi’s left hand, and he whispers in her ear whatever I tell him to.”
I remembered that man from our sit-down with the Gutcutters, sitting there in his purple shirt and whispering to her as Luka said. Whether or not Bloodhands listened to him remained to be seen. I nodded.
“Well and good,” I said, “but it won’t do forever, will it?”
“No, boss, it won’t,” Luka said. “Is there any word on the . . . the thing we talked about?”
“It’s coming,” I said, and I hoped that was true.
Ailsa might well like to deal in could and might and possibly, but I preferred cold certainties. I needed those weapons and men, and I needed them soon. It had been over a week now since I had made my deal with Ailsa and sent a boy to fetch Rosie to her, so I could only hope that her rider had already reached Dannsburg. All being well there were wagons rolling up the West Road toward us even as we spoke, laden with trained men and army weapons.
If not, then there would be hard times ahead. Luka’s gold could only keep the Gutcutters sitting tight for so long, and if they came at us again I knew we would be sorely pressed. They had blasting weapons and I didn’t, and through Bloodhands they had the backing of the Skanians.
If the Skanians had had one magician then I daresay they had another. I didn’t have a magician, but to my mind perhaps I had something else. I had Billy the Boy, and from what Old Kurt had told me I thought that might be a good thing.
It may seem harsh, to use a boy so young in battle, but he had fought and killed men in Abingon, and before that. We had found him as an orphan in Messia, but he was alive and unharmed and that meant he had fought there too, alone among the ruins. He’d have been dead if he hadn’t.
Billy the Boy was a soldier, in his way, and he was of age now. Aye, if it came to it, Billy would fight. Whether his cunning was strong enough to defeat a Skanian magician was another matter, of course. I remembered the one we had faced in the Golden Chains and how flames had sprung from his fingertips like living things. I remembered how Grieg had burned and then simply exploded before my eyes. Could Billy really stand up against that?
The boy’s fucking possessed, Old Kurt had said. Whether it’s your goddess or some devil from Hell is another question.
If those weapons didn’t arrive soon, I would take whichever I could get.
Another week went by, and I knew it wouldn’t keep any longer.
Luka’s spies reported that the Gutcutters were restless, and nothing that his man said could keep them in fear of us now. I had sat too long without acting, and I knew that I couldn’t wait for Ailsa’s men. I had to do something, and at once.
“Word is, they’ll try us tomorrow,” Luka told me that morning. “Something to test our defenses. Bloodhands has Aditi’s ear, and he controls her poppy supply. I don’t know where he’s getting it from so I can’t cut it off, but he has more say over her now than my man does.”
I would have bet good gold that Bloodhands was getting that resin from his Skanian masters the same way I was getting mine from Ailsa, but I couldn’t tell Luka about that. He certainly wasn’t getting it through the Golden Chains, I knew that much. We were open for business again by then, but the membership list was small and select and drawn only from the upper class of Ellinburg, such as it was. And Captain Rogan, of course. I had had to honor that agreement, although all he did was play cards and lose money. Rogan wasn’t the type to smoke the poppy, whereas Ma Aditi very much was.
I was sitting with Luka and Bloody Anne at my table in the common room, keeping our voices low although we weren’t open for the day yet. I hadn’t invited Jochan to this council of war. He was my brother, yes, but he was still too far gone from himself to have been of much use at the planning table.
“Very well,” I said. “Then we hit them tonight, while they’re busy planning for tomorrow. That should put them off the idea.”
“Boss,” Luka said, and shifted his bulk in his seat the way he did when he was about to say something he thought I might take ill. “I don’t know that we can. The new men are untried, and I don’t trust a one of them, not yet. Sam’s only just fit, and Brak’s still useless with his shoulder. We could swap out Cutter and Sir Eland for a couple of the new lads just for a night, I suppose, but you need four to hold the Tanner’s and that still only leaves us . . .”
His brow furrowed as he tried to figure it, and I cut him off.
“I know how many men I’ve got, Fat Luka,” I said. “You’re right, it’s not enough for a frontal assault on the Wheels and that’s not what I’m suggesting.”
I turned to Bloody Anne and noted the thoughtful expression on her face.
“You remember the road from Messia, when we were ahead of the main march of the regiment and we caught up with the enemy baggage train?” I said. “Well, the captain didn’t have us attempt to storm it, did he? That would have been madness, and the captain was no fool. Small raiding parties, coming in the night from all directions, that was how we did it. Hit and run and hit again, until they thought we had ten times the numbers that we did. Do you remember that, Bloody Anne?”
She nodded.
“Aye,” she said. “I remember.”
“Well and good,” I said. “What worked once will work again, to my mind.”
Anne nodded, and even Fat Luka started to smile.
“Who, and where?” Anne asked me.
I trusted Sir Eland enough to have him running security at the Golden Chains now, where his airs and graces could be put to good use, while Will the Wencher was breaking in a couple of the new lads for me in his place up at Chandler’s Narrow. That was good and Eland needed to stay there, but Cutter was wasted babysitting a boardinghouse full of harmless slaughtermen and skinners.
“Jochan, with Stefan and Erik,” I said. “Leave Sir Eland where he is, but take Cutter and put him with Jochan’s crew. Some of the new boys can look after Slaughterhouse Narrow for a bit. Me, with you and Borys. Mika, Billy, and Luka with Sam to hold the Tanner’s.”
“Which Billy?” Luka asked.
I blinked at him.
“Black Billy, you fool. The door’s his, and he won’t want anyone else taking it. Billy the Boy . . .” I paused for a moment, and remembered my thoughts of the previous week. “Aye, I’ll take Billy the Boy with me.”
Anne gave me a look, but I ignored that.
“A bit of experience will do him good,” Luka said.
I nodded, but that wasn’t what I had meant.
Not at all.