Tales of the Old World (37 page)

Grenner rapped the side of the cask on the cart. “All the way from
Bretonnia?” he asked. “Why? We make wine in the Empire.”

The diminutive wineseller looked mock-shocked. “Not like zis!” he exclaimed.
“Zis, she is grown under zer sun of Bordeleaux, the vines viz no frost, no
fungus—ze finest wine, rich and complex, a subtle bouquet viz afternotes of
cherries and oak…”

Grenner held up a hand to stop him. “I meant transport’s expensive. How can
you make money on one cartload?”

The Bretonnian shook his head sadly. “Monsieur, I do not know eizzer. My
buyer, who supplies ze houses of Bretonnians in Altdorf, I find ’e is dead of
the plague since four months. I cannot find my customers, so I must sell in ze
market like a—a—a peddler.”

Grenner nodded, studying the casks, turning thoughts over in his mind. There
had been trouble with Bretonnians the summer before, and rumours said there
might be more trouble next year. Not to mention the business with Schmidt. He
thumped one of the barrels and it shook solidly. “Open it. I want to check.”

“Check?” The merchant looked puzzled. “Check what?”

“That there’s wine inside, not something else.”

The man’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“Just open it.”

“But zat would ruin ze wine!” The short man’s hands were raised beseechingly.
There was silence for a moment. “Maybe I draw you off a cup?” he suggested.

Grenner shrugged acceptance, and the Bretonnian filled a metal beaker from
the spigot at the base of the barrel. The liquid flowed deep and red. Grenner
took it, sniffed and swigged, looked contemplative.

“Well?” The little man’s eyebrows raised into questions.

Grenner looked at him. “You say this is the finest wine in Bretonnia?”

“Oui, m’sieur.”

“Stick to making cheese and seducing married women. This stuffs swill.” He
put down the cup, to greet Johansen as he walked over. “You get anything?”

“Non-guild workers doing repairs.”

“Suspicious?”

Johansen scratched his unshaved chin. “Maybe. If the work’s urgent there may
be no guild men available, given the time of year. But the order must have come
from the city council, and the local guilds get all those contracts.”

Grenner pushed open the door of the Black Goat. “The Konigsplatz will be
packed with people this evening. If the statues are unsafe and there aren’t any
local masons to do the work, then…” He let the sentence trail off as he slumped
into a seat by his regular table. Johansen pulled out a chair and sat.

“What did you get?” he asked.

“Bretonnian with a flimsy story, selling what he said was expensive wine from
a market-stall. Big barrels of the stuff.”

“Barrels, right. Did you see the wine?”

“I tried a cup. It tasted like fruity tar. Ho, Frau Kolner, how are you this
morning?”

“As concerned about the size of your bar-bill as I was last night,” the
landlady said. “Don’t settle yourselves. I have a letter for you.”

Johansen reached out but she gave it to Grenner, who smirked at his colleague
as he snapped the seal and unfolded the paper.

“What is it?” Johansen asked.

“Hoffmann. He guessed we’d come back here. Breakfast is cancelled, we’re to
get back on the streets. Hunger sharpens the mind, he says.”

“Sarcastic old sod.”

“There’s more. We report to him at noon. Alchemics should have analysed the
explosion by then. And meanwhile he’s got us an interview with the Elector.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“So much for your appointment with your tailor.” Johansen swiped a
half-finished mug of beer from a neighbouring table and swigged it. “Let’s
go.”

Grand Prince Valmir von Raukov, the Elector Count of Ostland, sat upright in
his four-poster bed. A tray lay beside him, hot breakfast scents rising from it:
sausages and kippers. In a chair on the other side of the bed a tall man in the
grand prince’s house uniform sat, not saying a word, his hand never leaving the
pommel of his sword.

“Can you think of anyone who’d want you dead, your Highness?” Grenner asked
from where he and Johansen stood at the end of the bed. He knew how scruffy and
tired they must look compared to the opulence of the prince’s bedroom. They
ought to be in dress uniform, scrubbed and shaved, answering questions instead
of asking them.

“Of course people want me dead. I’m an Elector, for Sigmar’s sake. It’s not
my job to be liked. You know that.” The prince regarded them from under bushy
eyebrows and chewed bacon. “No, nobody has threatened me lately beyond the usual
cranks—correct, Alexis?” The man in the chair nodded, his eyes never leaving
the Palisades officers.

“So you know of no reason why—”

The prince raised a hand. “Captain, if I knew anything useful I would tell
you now. I’m not oblivious to danger, I have people like Alexis who monitor my
enemies’ activities. If we knew anything we would tell you.”

Grenner stared ahead, but in the corner of his eye he saw Alexis move,
shifting position. Perhaps, he thought, he’s uncomfortable at his master’s
words. He wanted to ask more, but knew better than to pose heavy-handed
questions of an Elector.

“Perhaps,” the prince continued, “what you should be asking is why the Seven
Stars was blown up if I wasn’t there? The assassins would surely have checked I
was in the building before they set the fuse.”

“Why would they have thought you would be there?” Grenner asked.

“Because that is my habit,” the prince said. “I usually stay till morning.
Last night I returned home early because I received word my wife was ill. Yet
they blew up the inn all the same. Captain, either I wasn’t the intended victim,
or the bombers had an informant who misled them, by accident or on purpose.
There’s the next piece of your puzzle.”

“Thank you, your highness. We’ll look into it.” Grenner felt disdain but
masked it. He hated it when officials did his job for him, particularly when
they did it better. “Can you tell us who your companion was?”

The prince shrugged. “Her privacy makes few odds now. Her name was Anastasia
Kuster. I met her in the Street of a Hundred Taverns a few months ago, when I
was—I was dressed plainly, let’s just say that. She’s an honest girl, works in
a glove-shop. A little scatterbrained but works hard. She’s originally from
Ostland, a northerner like myself. When I’m in Altdorf we meet once or twice a
week.”

“Might your wife have had something to do with the explosion?”

“My wife?” The prince snorted. “If I die, she loses everything: her title,
her status, her palace, her income, the lot. She’s terrified by the thought of
my death. Her relatives too, they all ride on my coat-tails. None of them would
do anything to harm me.”

“Hell has no fury like a scorned woman,” Johansen said.

“Scorned? She doesn’t love me. We married because it was politically
advantageous to link our families. If I want warmth and emotion and life in a
woman, I’ll go to—I went to Anastasia.”

“Yet you returned home because your wife was ill,” Grenner said.

“She is heavy with my son. It would not have been seemly for the boy to be
born while I was away from the house.”

“Are you sure it’s a boy, your highness?” Johansen said. Grenner flinched. It
was a flip remark, inappropriate and irreverent. Such things were dangerous.

The prince regarded them from under heavy brows, and did not smile. “It had
better be.” His tone was cold.

Grenner’s heart dropped. Lower ranks should know their place, and Johansen’s
remark had crossed the line. They’d get no more useful information here. “Thank
you for your time, your highness,” he said. “We will report anything—”

The prince’s cough stopped him. “Not so fast. I have questions too. Were any
bodies recovered?”

Grenner snapped back to attention. “No, sir. The place was an inferno. It’s
almost certain that everybody was cremated in seconds.”

“Not everybody,” the prince said. “The inn’s cellarman survived.”

“What?” said Grenner. “We weren’t told.”

Across the room, Alexis sat forward in his chair. “Hans Kellerman was in the
stableyard,” he said. “The blast blew him twenty feet and broke his every bone.”

“He’s alive?” Johansen asked.

“No, he died three hours later. But I was able to ask him some questions
first. The Shallyan priests had given him herbs to numb the pain and he was
almost coherent.”

“What did he say?”

Alexis glanced at the prince, who gave a slight nod. He turned back. “A few
things. He told me there were four other people staying in the inn, but nobody
of consequence. Just before the explosion he heard someone leave the inn, but
didn’t see who. And one of the cellar keys had gone missing a few days earlier,
and he suspected Anastasia, who had taken things bef—”

The prince coughed and Alexis stopped talking abruptly, sliding back in his
chair under his master’s glare. The prince turned to the Palisades officers.

“That will be all,” he said.

“Thank you for your time, your highness,” Grenner said, bowed and backed out
of the room, Johansen beside him. He made sure they were twenty feet down the
empty corridor before speaking. “I hate dealing with nobs,” he said. “Humourless
sods.”

“This one not as stuck-up as most, though,” Johansen said. “What do you
reckon? Did he get his mistress up the spout, she was blackmailing him, and he
hired someone to blow up the inn to get rid of her?”

“I know you can be thick as a brick sometimes,” Grenner said, “and that may
explain why you never get anywhere with Frau Kolner, but did you really not
notice?”

“Notice what?”

Grenner let out a sigh. “He didn’t kill her. He was in love with her.”

“You should have pushed him for more information about the girl.”

Grenner turned on him. “Don’t tell me how to ask questions. That’s my job.
You almost got us thrown out of an audience with an Elector with your
ridiculous…” He stopped, pressing a hand against his eyes. “Sorry. Sorry, Karl.
I didn’t mean that. It’s just… I’m tired and stressed.”

Johansen put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “That goes for both of us. And
it’ll get worse before it gets better. Still, come midnight we’ll be laughing
about this and toasting the new year, eh?”

“I bloody hope so.” Grenner said dryly. “Right. How many glove-shops are
there in Altdorf?”

There were six, but they got lucky with the second one. Anastasia hadn’t come
to work that day, the glove-maker’s wife told them, and hadn’t sent word that
she was ill. But it had happened before, and besides it was Hexensnacht, so they
weren’t worried. Grenner turned on his charm and got the girl’s address in two
minutes.

“Fast work,” Johansen observed as they left the shop.

“New personal best,” Grenner said. Inside he felt distant, distracted, as if
there was a layer of wool between his thoughts and his actions. The bright cold
sunlight made him feel cold, reminding him of too much beer and not enough rest
the night before. His feet were heavy. He hoped there’d be no need for fast
reactions or swordplay today.

The girl’s lodgings were close to the city’s north wall, decorated with the
fripperies a rich lover buys for his fancy, or a girl not used to luxury buys
for herself. Anastasia wasn’t there and the bed had not been slept in. They
searched the place with a swift thoroughness born of long practice.

“She was an Ulrican,” Johansen said, holding up a silver wolf-head.
“Interesting. She could read, too,” Grenner said, holding up a ragged,
leather-bound book. He leafed through the pages. “Any good?”

“Hardly Detlef Sierck. What’s that?” A piece of paper fluttered down from
between the pages. Grenner picked it up. “Address.”

“One she wanted to hide.”

“Wouldn’t she memorise it?”

“The prince said she was scatterbrained.”

“Oh yeah.” Grenner peered at the scrawled writing. “It’s in the docks.
Warehouse district.”

“Probably a glove wholesaler, knowing your luck.”

“My luck?” Grenner looked askance. “Explain that to me on the way there, Herr
Not-been-kissed-for-a-month.”

The warehouse on Weidendamm was old but the lock on its wide doors was new.
Grenner tested its inner workings with a bent piece of metal while Johansen kept
watch. Technically, as Palisades officers, they could enter and search any
building, but dockers’ understanding of the finer points of the law was often
shockingly bad.

“So we’re here because we found this address in the effects of an Elector’s
mistress, right?” Johansen said.

“Right.”

“Why do we think this is a good lead?”

Grenner stopped his picking and looked up. “It’s our only lead. Plus we’re
seeing Hoffmann in an hour and he’ll want to know what we’ve been doing.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Shut up. I’m concentrating.”

“We could claim addled wits from lack of sleep.”

“Shut up.”

“Face it, this is half-arsed.”

Grenner stood up, put the lockpick back in his pocket, and kicked the door
hard. The wood around the lock splintered and the door swung inwards.

“Subtle,” Johansen said.

“Subtlety is over-rated. Come on.”

The air inside was cold and dark and their breath hung in the faint shafts of
sunlight. The floor underfoot was hard earth. A figure lay slumped and twisted a
few feet in front of the door. The rest of the warehouse was bare.

Grenner went to the body. “Girl. Twenties. Pretty. Last night’s party frock.
Neck broken. Want to bet she’s Anastasia?”

Johansen peered at the dead girl’s face. “Does she remind you of anyone?”

“No,” Grenner said, squinting. “Who were you thinking of?”

“I don’t know.” Johansen studied the corpse for a moment, then squatted and
ran his hands over the ground, gathering a thin powder onto his fingertips. He
sniffed them. “Gunpowder,” he said. “There’s the imprint of a barrel in the
earth too.”