Priest of Bones Read online

  Praise for Priest of Bones

  “Fans of Daniel Polansky’s Low Town books, Mark Lawrence’s Prince of Thorns, or dare I say Blackwing will find a number of similar themes.”

  —Ed McDonald, author of Blackwing

  “Priest of Bones is a fresh and compelling take on grimdark fantasy and has done something I haven’t before seen in the genre. Mashing together soldiers, gangsters, magic, and war into a heady mix that is a hulking big brother to The Lies of Locke Lamora, this is the first in an unmissable series.”

  —Anna Stephens, author of Godblind

  “A charismatic and very moreish book with solid prose and a strong voice. Priest of Bones is a story of organized crime with shades of The Godfather. It sounds grim and dark . . . and it is . . . but our priest of bones is quite the humanitarian for a ruthless crime lord. With high-tempo action, it’s just very fun to read.”

  —Mark Lawrence, author of Red Sister

  “Priest of Bones is a fast-paced fantasy filled with magic and combat, but with the intrigue and strategy of a crime thriller. McLean writes soldiers and their experience of returning from war like someone who has been there. There is excellent character development throughout; I’d follow the Piety brothers through any story.”

  —Michael Mammay, author of Planetside

  “Managing to be exciting, narratively taut, and a commentary on the terrible things war and violence do to people is no mean feat, but Peter McLean manages it with Priest of Bones. I wish I had written this.”

  —RJ Barker, author of Blood of Assassins

  “Absolutely sensational . . . The prose is smooth and easy to follow, and that combined with a flowing story, an even pace, and a rising tempo results in one of those books that you could easily read in one go. All in all, Priest of Bones is Low Fantasy at its finest, and I wouldn’t hesitate to call it the Fantasy Debut of the Year.”

  —BookNest

  “Priest of Bones is built on the voice of Tomas Piety, and from the very get-go you know the kind of man he is . . . If violence and planning, honor among thieves and treachery among lawmen, blood and profanity and spies and explosions are your thing, Priest of Bones is the book for you. Get it. Read it. Wait impatiently for the sequel.”

  —J. C. Nelson, author of The Reburialists

  Praise for the Novels of Peter McLean

  “Peter McLean’s debut novel is an absolute gem that hits the ground running—a gritty, grungy, funny, sweary noir thriller with added demons.”

  —Dave Hutchinson, author of Europe in Autumn and Europe at Midnight

  “Snarky, pacy, and hellishly fun.”

  —Francis Knight, author of the Rojan Dizon series

  “Chock-full of sweary gangsters, snark and deadpan humor, thrills and spills, and genuinely terrifying moments, this is smart and fun storytelling.”

  —Edward Cox, author of the Relic Guild series

  ACE

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Peter McLean

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  ACE is a registered trademark and the A colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: McLean, Peter, 1972– author.

  Title: Priest of bones / Peter McLean.

  Description: First edition. | New York : ACE, 2018.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2017046914 | ISBN 9780451490216 | ISBN 9780451490223 (ebook)

  Subjects: | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR6113.C543 P75 2018 | DDC 823/.92—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017046914

  First Edition: October 2018

  Cover design by Katie Anderson

  Cover art: Image of sword by Jelena Jovanovic / Arcangel; Desolate street by Slava Gerj / Shutterstock

  Map by Cortney Skinner

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Diane.

  Always.

  CONTENTS

  Praise for Peter McLean

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map

  Dramatis Personae

  PART ONECHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  PART TWOCHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  If you must break the law, do it to seize power.

  —JULIUS CAESAR

  DRAMATIS PERSONAE

  THE PIETY FAMILY

  TOMAS PIETY: An army priest, a veteran, and a businessman. Leader of the Pious Men. Your narrator.

  JOCHAN PIETY: His younger brother, a very disturbed man.

  ENAID PIETY: Their loving aunt, sister to their da. A spinster of some sixty years. She had been a soldier in the last war, and
she took no shit from anyone.

  TOMAS’S CREW

  BLOODY ANNE: A sergeant, a good soldier, and a loyal friend. Anne always had preferred the close work; that was how she got her name in the first place.

  SIR ELAND: A false knight with the eyes of a weasel. Not a man you’d trust.

  KANT: A corporal and a psychopath. Kant the Cunt, the crew called him, but never to his face.

  BRAK: Kant’s second, a young thug of some twenty years. He was only tough when he had the big man in front of him.

  COOKPOT: A cook, a forager, and a thief. Cookpot had grown up in Ellinburg, but he didn’t know how business was done any more than Simple Sam did.

  FAT LUKA: Another Ellinburg man. If he had managed to stay fat on army rations then it was just his natural shape and he’d be fat for life.

  SIMPLE SAM: A slow lad but a faithful one, and he certainly had a good size to him.

  BLACK BILLY: Black Billy was proud of his arms, and rightly so. Good with his fists too.

  BILLY THE BOY: An orphan of twelve years, touched by the goddess. A very strange young man.

  GRIEG: A conscript with some unpleasant habits.

  NIK THE KNIFE: Not such a bad fellow, despite his name. Nik was well liked in the crew.

  STEFAN: A soldier. There was little more to be said about Stefan.

  BORYS: A thoughtful, older man who said little. He could move quiet when he wanted to, for a big man.

  ERIK: He was good at the close work, was Erik.

  Three other ruffians whose names are not recorded here

  JOCHAN’S CREW

  WILL THE WOMAN: We called him that because every time Will kills a man he weeps afterward, but he’s killed so many men it ain’t funny no more.

  HARI: Not a natural soldier, but a man of hidden talents.

  MIKA: He could think for himself, could Mika, which is more than some of the lads could.

  CUTTER: A professional murderer with a mysterious past.

  GANNA: A shithead.

  THEIR FRIENDS, ACQUAINTANCES, AND ENEMIES IN ELLINBURG

  GOVERNOR HAUER: The city governor of Ellinburg. A frugal man, or so he let it be thought. Overly fond of wine.

  CAPTAIN ROGAN: Captain of the City Guard. A hard man and a ruthless bully, but he was greedy and he had his vices.

  AILSA: An Alarian barmaid. Among other things.

  ROSIE: A whore with a heart of secrets.

  DOC CORDIN: A barber-surgeon. He had always been a better surgeon than he was a barber.

  THE MOTHER SUPERIOR: Head of the convent of the Mother of Blessed Redemption. Can’t take a joke.

  SISTER JESSICA: A nun at the convent. Good with a halberd.

  OLD KURT: People called Old Kurt a cunning man, and that had two meanings.

  ERNST: A barber.

  PAWL: A tailor.

  GEORG: A baker.

  DESH: An Alarian lad from Hull Patcher’s Row. As far back as he could remember, he always wanted to be a Pious Man.

  CAPTAIN LARN: A career army officer and a pain in the arse.

  MA ADITI: A gangster and an enemy, the head of the Gutcutters down in the Wheels.

  GREGOR: A gangster who sits at Ma Aditi’s left hand.

  BLOODHANDS: A very, very scary man.

  PART ONE

  ONE

  After the war we came home.

  Sixty-five thousand battle-shocked, trained killers came home to no jobs, no food, and the plague. What the fuck did Her Majesty think was going to happen?

  “Drink up, lads,” I said. “It’s on the house now.”

  “That it is,” Bloody Anne said as she threw the innkeeper out the door and locked it behind him.

  He had wanted silver, for food and beer barely worth half a clipped copper. That was no way to welcome the returning heroes, to my mind, and it seemed Anne had agreed with me about that. She’d given him a good kicking for his trouble.

  “That’s done then,” she said.

  Bloody Anne was my sergeant. Her hair was shorter than mine, and she had a long, puckered scar that ran from the corner of her left eye down almost to the tip of her jaw, twisting the corner of her mouth into a permanent sneer. Nobody messed with Bloody Anne, not if they knew what was good for them.

  “You drinking?” I asked, offering her a tankard.

  “What do you think?”

  She had a gravelly voice that had been roughened by the smoke of blasting powder and too many years of shouting orders. No amount of beer would soften that voice, but that didn’t stop her trying every chance she got. We sat at a table together, and she took the cup from me and drained half of it in a single swallow.

  A couple of the lads were dragging the innkeeper’s daughter up some splintery wooden stairs while the others tapped a fresh cask. Kant grinned at me from those stairs, his hand already thrust down the front of the girl’s kirtle. I shook my head to tell him no. I don’t hold with rape, and I wasn’t allowing it, not in my crew.

  I’m a priest, after all.

  Over Anne’s shoulder, I watched Kant ignore me and drag the girl up onto the landing and out of sight. Those were the times we lived in.

  All the same, there were limits.

  I got to my feet and shoved the table away from me, spilling our wooden tankards of warm beer across the sawdust-covered floor of the inn.

  “Oi,” Anne complained.

  “Kant!” I shouted.

  Kant stuck his head back around the rough plaster arch at the top of the stairs.

  “What?”

  “Let the girl go,” I said.

  “Good one, boss.”

  He grinned, showing me his shit-colored teeth.

  Bloody Anne turned in her seat and saw what was going on.

  “Enough, Corporal,” she growled at him, but he ignored her.

  It made me angry, that he thought he could ignore Anne like that. She was a sergeant and he was only a corporal, although that sort of thing didn’t matter much anymore. Kant was a head taller than me and maybe thirty pounds heavier, but I didn’t care. I knew that didn’t matter either, and more to the point Kant knew it too. There was a devil in me, and all my crew knew it.

  “No,” I said, letting my voice fall into the flat tone that warned of harsh justice to come.

  “You’re joking,” Kant said, but he sounded uncertain now.

  “Come here, Kant,” I said. “You too, Brak.”

  Spring rain blew against the closed shutters, loud in a room that had otherwise plunged into nervous silence. A smoky fire crackled in the grate. Kant and his fellow would-be rapist came back down the stairs, leaving the girl crying in a heap on the top step. She had maybe sixteen or seventeen years to her, no more than that, putting her at barely half my age.

  I could feel Anne and the rest of my crew looking at me. Men set down their tankards and bottles to watch. Even Fat Luka put his cup down, and it took a lot to stop him drinking. The crew knew something had been ill done, and when something was ill done in my eyes, there was always harsh justice.

  Bloody Anne was giving me a wary look now. Sir Eland the false knight just stood there sneering at everyone like he always did, but he was watching too. Billy the Boy was halfway to drunk already, but then he was only twelve so I supposed I had to let him off not being able to hold his beer. Grieg and Cookpot and Black Billy and the others just watched.

  I met Kant’s eyes and pointed at a spot on the boards in front of me.

  “Come here,” I said. “Right now.”

  A log popped in the grate, making Simple Sam jump. Kant glared at me but he came, and Brak followed in his wake like a little boat trailing behind a war galleon.

  “Would you like someone to fuck, Kant?” I asked him.

  Kant was bigger than me, huge and ugly. Kant the Cunt, the crew called him, but never t
o his face. His chain-mail byrnie strained across his massive barrel chest over a jerkin of boiled leather. The scars on his face stood out livid and red as he started to get angry right back at me. I remembered how he had earned those scars at Abingon, forcing his way through the breach in the west wall when the citadel fell. Kant had led his squad over a mound of corpses, and never mind the archers waiting for them. He had taken an arrow through the cheek for his trouble. He had kept fighting, had Kant, spitting blood and teeth as he swung his mace into this head, that shoulder, those balls, crushing and bludgeoning and forcing his way forward. Bludgeon and force, that was how Kant the Cunt made his way in the world.

  Kant was a war hero.

  But then so was I.

  “Course I want someone to fuck,” Kant said. “Who don’t?”

  “You want to fuck, Kant?” I asked him again, and this time my voice went soft and quiet.

  All the crew had been with me long enough to know what that tone meant. That tone meant the devil was awake and there was harsh justice coming for sure, and soon. Kant was drunk, though, not booze drunk but rape drunk, power drunk, and I knew he wasn’t going to take a telling. Not this time.

  “Yeah, I fucking do,” he said.

  I didn’t like Kant. I never had liked Kant, truth be told, but Kant was a good soldier. In Abingon I had needed good soldiers. Now I needed good men, and the Lady only knows the two ain’t necessarily the same thing.

  “Come here,” I said again. “If you want to fuck, come here and fuck me.”

  I held Kant’s gaze. I wouldn’t have put it past him, under other circumstances. If I had been some other man, some peasant lad, I doubted Kant would have been picky. A hole was a hole as far as he was concerned, and if he could stick his cock in it then it made him happy.

  “Tomas . . .” Anne started to say, but it was too late for that and I think she knew it.

  The Weeping Women hung heavy on my hips. They were a matched pair of beautifully crafted shortswords that I had looted from a dead colonel after the last battle of Abingon. I had named them Remorse and Mercy.