“Reckon I’d better gather my warriors.”
“The best you have, and plenty of them. If we lose, you get nothing.”
“I’ll empty the North o’ men!” growled Stour. “A host that hasn’t been seen since the days of Skarling Hoodless, how’s that?”
“And, while on Union soil, their best behaviour?”
“The good folk of Midderland will hardly guess the wolves are among ’em.”
“All I could ask and more.” She turned towards the staircase. Towards her husband. Towards safety.
“I’m guessing the Young Lion doesn’t know about this?” called Stour.
“There are things decent men will not do, but some of them must be done. That’s why he has me.”
“And when he finds out?”
“I daresay he will be upset, but… by then the North will be yours.”
“And the Union yours.”
And its new king and queen would have bigger concerns.
Stour grinned. “I like your husband. He’s got a lot of heart. But do you know the thing I’m getting to admire most about him?” He turned and swung in one slick motion, sword flashing in the sunlight, and struck the dummy’s head from its straw-stuffed shoulders, battered helmet clattering away into a corner. “His taste in women.”
Questions
They’d worked on his hand.
The bruises on his face and the cut above his eye were faded. Probably happened when they blew up Curnsbick’s engine. But the hand was more recent.
There was nothing artful about it. Smashed with a hammer, maybe. One of those hammers with teeth that butchers use to make meat tender. It looked like he was wearing a big, red, floppy glove. It looked like mincemeat moulded into the shape of a hand by a bored butcher. It certainly didn’t look like a hand that would be attempting to kill any kings again soon. Or doing anything much ever.
“You know they’ve barely started,” said Vick.
His red-stained eyes crept across to her.
“What they’ve done there…” She glanced down at that mess on the end of his arm. “Is just to show you they mean business. That’s a handshake. If I’m not happy with your answers, well…” She leaned forward to whisper, “I hear Old Sticks has taken a personal interest in your interrogation.”
He swallowed, the lump on his throat shifting.
“And once Old Sticks gets out the instruments…” She gave a long, soft whistle. “You’ll be begging for them to shake the other hand.”
“I told ’em everything I know,” he croaked out.
“Everyone does. But they might’ve missed something. You might’ve missed something. Something you didn’t even realise mattered.”
“Will it make any difference?”
“It might.” To her, at least. For him, there was no help. His Majesty’s Inquisition tended away from leniency when it came to attempted regicide. “Who planned it?”
“The Weaver…” he croaked.
Vick narrowed her eyes. “Risinau?”
“Never met him.” He shrugged as if lifting his shoulders took all the strength he had. “That’s what they told me.”
“Who told you?” His head was slipping sideways, eyelids fluttering. Vick snapped her fingers in front of his face. “Who told you?”
“The Burners. Judge.”
Just the sort of bloody theatrics the woman was infamous for. “Judge put you up to this?”
“Judge gave me the chance. I didn’t need no putting up.” He worked himself taller. A touch of pride to his backbone. A spark of fire in his eye. “My wife worked in a mill in the Three Farms. Always worried about the machinery. I told her not to, but she always worried. Foreman would make her work late some days. Asleep on her feet, but we needed that job. One day she stumbled, and the buckle on the drive belt caught her. They said it snatched her off her feet like the hand of Euz. Flung her twenty strides into the ceiling so hard she broke one of the beams. Hardly had a bone in her body wasn’t shattered. Her head then looked worse’n my hand now.” He spat the words, tears starting to gather in his eyes. “So I got no regrets! The Weaver gave me the chance. Strike a blow for the common man! Our blow might’ve missed the mark, but it won’t be the last.”
“Oh, don’t be too hard on yourself,” said Vick. “Your blow didn’t miss everyone. It killed dozens of honest folk who’d come to watch an engine toddle across some fields on a summer morning! What about those poor bastards, eh? What about their wives and husbands and fathers and children? We’ve all got sad stories, arsehole!”
“Sacrifices have to be made! Would’ve been worth it, if His fucking Majesty didn’t have that Eater watching him.”
Vick frowned. She’d had a sense something had been cut from the reports. “Eater?”
“We had the knights beaten! Then that little nothing-looking bastard… he killed Turmer. Killed ’em all. Flung ’em about like they were straw.”
She remembered what Shenkt had done to those two Practicals, on the quay in Westport. Big men, tossed like dolls.
“But it don’t matter what devil deals you strike.” The prisoner nodded to himself, a strange little smile quivering on his lips. “Don’t matter how many Eaters you bring, or how many soldiers you hire, or how many folk have to die. There’s a Great Change coming.”
Vick gave a weary sigh. “Where’s Judge?”
“A Great Change.” His bloodshot eyes had drifted beyond her, gazing into the bright future, maybe. “And all the owners, and the bankers, and the kings, and the magi shall be swep” away!
She remembered what Vitari had told her, in that shack on the Westport waterfront. That the Union was Bayaz’s tool, the banks and the Inquisition his puppets, that she was already dancing to his tune. She didn’t like the thought that there might be some hidden world beneath this one. A world of Eaters, and magi, and secret powers. As if she swam out on a lake, seeing the ripples on the surface, never guessing there were hidden deeps below, ruled over by who knew what unknowable monsters. She shook the worry off. She had to stick to what could be touched, explained, offered up in evidence. “Where’s Risinau?” she growled.
“The House of the Maker will open!” he barked in a broken voice. “And those that were first will be last, and the last first!”
She thought about smashing her fist down on that mess of a hand while she screamed the questions in his face. But he had no answers. None that helped her, anyway. She got up and left him ranting, as mad as any of the cut-price prophets in Westport’s Temple Square.
“The gates shall be laid wide and Euz shall come again! And all shall be set right! You hear? A Great Change is—”
She pulled the door shut and clipped his voice back to a muffled burble. A Practical stood outside, arms folded.
“His Eminence wants you,” came hissing from his mask. “Right now.”
Vick strode past the eternally disapproving secretary, between the two towering Practicals and into the Arch Lector’s office, the door shutting behind her with a final-sounding click. Time for some answers, maybe. Or at least for some questions.