I sent them out the next night, as I had said. It seemed strange to send a raid off and not be with them, but then this wasn’t Abingon anymore. This was Ellinburg, and in Ellinburg I was a prince. Princes don’t lead raiding parties, and they don’t crawl under waterwheels in freezing temperatures to smash weaving looms with hammers.
The Stables had been different. I had been lacking men, then, and that had been personal. This was just business, and I had good men to take care of business for me. Cutter had briefed his crew in short, hard sentences that left even Captain Larn in no doubt as to who was in charge. Larn might be a career officer but Cutter was a professional murderer, and this sort of work was his bread and beer.
They headed out in a silent column, in leather but without their mail, wrapped in old cloaks that they could throw away before they went into the water. I saw Anne watching them leave from across the tavern, and once the door was closed behind them she came and sat with me.
“Rather them than us, I have to say,” she admitted. “It’s fucking freezing out there.”
It was, but sappers are hardy men and once they had done the job there would be no shortage of good cloth in the factory to dry themselves on and wrap around them until they got their warmth back. This late there would be no one there but Gutcutter guards, so their instructions were simple.
Kill everyone, break everything.
That would cripple the factory, enrage the guild of mercers, and turn the workers against the Gutcutters. That last was important, to my mind. From what Ailsa had told me, a large part of the Skanians’ plan involved gathering the street-level support of the workers of Ellinburg. Put them out of work, and where would that leave their loyalties? Not to the Gutcutters, that was for certain.
I knew it would mean hardship for some in the Wheels, but if everything went to plan that would only be for a short while. Anything can be endured for a little while, every soldier knows that, and they weren’t my people. Not yet, anyway.
“Aye,” I agreed. “It’s harsh work, but it wants doing.”
“Does it?” Anne asked me. “I thought we’d be done, once you had the Stink back.”
I didn’t need Anne starting on me the way that Enaid had, but just then Fat Luka joined us at the table and showed Anne a wide smile.
“That’s a lovely coat, Anne,” he said, nodding to her latest purchase that hung draped around her shoulders.
It was, at that.
“What of it?”
He shrugged. “Nothing, nothing. I’m just observing that you’ve bought yourself a very nice coat. You’ll have bought that with money you earned in the Pious Men, I don’t doubt. I saw that Rosie had a new necklace around her throat too, a fine piece of goldwork. I’d be surprised if she bought that for herself, or accepted it as a gift from anyone but you.”
Anne scowled and said nothing.
“That money you’re spending comes from the business, and the more businesses we have, the more money we all make, isn’t that right, Tomas?”
“It is,” I allowed.
Luka was right, of course, but I was surprised all the same.
If anyone starts disagreeing with me or questioning my orders, I want you to explain to them why they’re wrong.
I had told Fat Luka that, back in the spring, but I’d never thought to see him argue the point with Bloody Anne. Luka was a good man, and he took his job very seriously. He could be persuasive too, I knew that. Very persuasive indeed.
“I know,” Anne said, and swallowed her brandy. “It’s just . . . it’s more violence, Tomas. More killing. I thought once we had your old streets back we’d be more like a ruling garrison than a fighting force, that’s all.”
The Pious Men are businessmen, but you’ve turned them into soldiers.
“We will be,” I promised her. “We will be, once Aditi is done. I can’t share the city with her, Anne, not anymore. You’ve seen what sort of businesses she runs, and the sort of men her backers have brought against us. The foreign witches.”
That was cheap of me, I knew. I hated having to manipulate Anne, of all people, but the crown’s will had to be served and if that meant doing things that I didn’t like, then so be it. That was the lighter of the two evils balanced in my hands. It was cheap of me, but it worked. Anne’s jaw tightened at the very word, and she gave me a sharp nod.
When you lead, you have to know the levers that move a person.
Cutter and his men came back an hour before sunrise. I was waiting up, with Ailsa and Black Billy for company, and we had kept the fire burning high. I had thought it would be welcome, later. The others had long since gone to their beds, save for Stefan, who had the watch out back.
There was a soft rap on the door and Billy looked through the sliding hatch, then opened the lock and let them in. Cutter and his crew filed into the room, and I counted them all back safe. They were bedraggled and damp and frozen, and they smelled bad from the river water, but they were all back and that was the important thing. Captain Larn had a look on his face that told me he had done things that night that he had never done before.
A professional officer he might have been, and a sapper too, but I’d have bet good silver that he had never met a man quite like Cutter before. I knew that I hadn’t. Sappers were brave men, and they had done some of the harshest work in Abingon. Undermining the walls to set charges, fighting in the stifling confines of narrow, crumbling tunnels, that was the stuff of nightmares.
But so was Cutter, to my mind.
The man seemed to have no emotions, no desires, no soul. I still had no idea what levers moved Cutter, but if you wanted someone killed quietly and without anyone seeing, then he was the right man for the job.
Black Billy locked the door behind them and they started stripping off sodden leather and ruined wool in front of the fire. They huddled around the warmth in fresh, dry blankets, shivering.
“It’s done,” Cutter said, and he spat on the floor to show me what he thought of that.
“How many were they?” I asked.
Cutter frowned.
“Ten, twelve. Dunno. All dead. Smashed the looms like you said, broke the gears and spindles and threw the hammers in the river afterward. Place is fucked.”
That was all he had to say, and he made that plain by walking away to warm himself in front of the fire with the other men. The sappers made room for him there, and I noticed they left a respectful distance around him that spoke of a quiet, underlying fear. When sappers fear a man, that man is to be feared indeed.
I wondered again exactly where Cutter had come from, and how he had ended up in Jochan’s crew.
Ailsa took my arm and ushered me through to the kitchen.
“You did well not to go with them,” she told me, using her own voice now that we were alone. “You need to distance yourself now, Tomas, and you need to do it at once.”
I frowned at her.
“Distance myself? How do you mean that?”
“This is a war fought on two fronts,” she said. “On the streets, yes, but also in the arena of politics. You have men enough to fight in the streets; you don’t need to join them anymore. What you don’t have is anyone you can put in front of the governor and the nobility. You’ll need to do that yourself.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” I asked. “I don’t move in their circles.”
“Then start,” she said. “You’re a rich man now, Tomas. You need to enter society.”
“Has Ellinburg got society?”
“Not particularly, but it’s a place to begin. Governor Hauer is a bloated warthog of a creature who thinks he is thrice the man he is, but obviously his position has connections to Dannsburg. Attend a reception here, a ball there, at which I shall dazzle and you shall intrigue, and before you know it we will be in the capital and you will find the ears of more important men.”
“I see,” I said. “And how would I go about that?”
“The important thing is that you remove yourself from the immediate business of the Pious Men before things start exploding all over the Wheels,” she said. “There will be no coming back from that, if you or your family are implicated in the resulting carnage. We need to move fast. We will need a house, of course. Something grand, off Trader’s Row. And obviously we shall have to marry.”
I stared at her in astonishment.
“Marry?”
“Yes, of course,” she said. “I am a lady of court, or at least I am when I choose to be. I can hardly be seen to entertain a provincial bachelor out of wedlock. If I were to produce a husband, though, with mysterious wealth and connections to industry, then yes. That would be entirely acceptable.”
“I see,” I said again. Marry Ailsa? The idea wasn’t without its obvious charms, I had to admit, but I hadn’t expected this. “I need to think about this.”
“No, you don’t,” she said. “You just need to do it. We’re already doing it, in fact. One of my representatives completed the lease of a suitable house yesterday. Servants are being hired, and furnishings purchased. The date of the wedding has been set.”
“Now wait a minute,” I started to say, but she cut me off with a look.
“I don’t have a minute,” she said. “I have the Queen’s Warrant, Tomas, and you will do what I tell you. I can’t keep those sappers forever, and we have to hit the Skanians soon. You cannot be implicated in that if you are to become a respectable member of society. Which you will.”
There was a first time for everything, I supposed.
Ailsa started to explain exactly what she meant about us getting married, about timing, and about how people needed to be able to prove they had been in a certain place at a certain time, and I felt a grim smile form on my face.
Oh, yes, she was a Queen’s Man all right. If I had ever met anyone more dangerous than Cutter, I realized, it was Ailsa.