Best Served Cold

It seemed a little gold could spare a lot of blood.

Musselia could not be captured without an indefinite siege, this was well known. It had once been a great fortress of the New Empire, and its inhabitants placed great pride in their ancient walls. Too much pride in walls, perhaps, and not enough gold in the pockets of their defenders. It was for a sum almost disappointing that Benna arranged for a small side gate to be left unlocked.

Even before Faithful and his men had taken possession of the defences, and long before the rest of the Thousand Swords spilled out into the city to begin the sack, Benna was leading Monza through the darkened streets. Him leading her was unusual enough in itself.

"Why did you want to be at the front?"

"You'll see."

"Where are we going?"

"To get our money back. Plus interest."

Monza frowned as she hurried after him. Her brother's surprises tended always to have a sting in them. Through a narrow archway in a narrow street. A cobbled courtyard inside, lit by two flickering torches. A Kantic man in simple travelling clothes stood beside a canvas-covered cart, horse hitched and ready. Monza did not know him, but he knew Benna, coming forwards, hands out, his smile gleaming in the darkness.

"Benna, Benna. It is good to see you!" They embraced like old comrades.

"And you, my friend. This is my sister, Monzcarro."

The man bowed to her. "The famous and fearsome. An honour."

"Somenu Hermon," said Benna, smiling wide. "Greatest merchant of Musselia."

"No more than a humble trader, like any other. There are only a few last… things… to move. My wife and children have already left."

"Good. That makes this much easier."

Monza frowned at her brother. "What's going—"

Benna snatched her dagger from her belt and stabbed Hermon overhand in his face. It happened so fast that the merchant was still smiling as he fell.

Monza drew her sword on an instinct, staring into the shadows around the courtyard, out into the street, but all was quiet.

"What the hell have you done?" she snarled at him. He was up on the cart, ripping back the canvas, a mad, eager look on his face. He fumbled open the lid of a box underneath, delved inside and let coins slowly drop with the jingling rattle of falling money.

Gold.

She hopped up beside him. More gold than she had ever seen at once. With a sickly widening of her eyes she realised there were more boxes. She pushed the canvas back with trembling hands. Many more.

"We're rich!" squeaked Benna. "We're rich!"

"We were already rich." She was looking down at her knife stuck through Hermon's eye, blood black in the lamplight. "Did you have to kill him?"

He stared at her as if she had gone mad. "Rob him and leave him alive? He would have told people we had the money. This way we're safe."

"Safe? This much gold is the opposite of safe, Benna!"

He frowned, as though he was hurt by her. "I thought you'd be pleased. You of all people, who slaved in the dirt for nothing." As though he was disappointed in her. "This is for us. For us, do you understand?" As though he was disgusted with her. "Mercy and cowardice are the same, Monza! I thought you knew that."

What could she do? Unstab Hermon's face?

It seemed a little gold could cost a lot of blood.

His Plan of Attack

The southernmost range of the Urval Mountains, the spine of Styria, all shadowy swales and dramatic peaks bathed in golden evening light, marched boldly southwards, ending at the great rock into which Ospria itself was carved. Between the city and the hill on which the headquarters of the Thousand Swords had been pitched, the deep and verdant valley was patched with wild flowers in a hundred colours. The Sulva wound through its bottom and away towards the distant sea, touched by the setting sun and turned the orange of molten iron.

Birds twittered in the olive trees of an ancient grove, grasshoppers chirped in the waving long grass, the wind kissed at Cosca's face and made the feather on his hat, held gently in one hand, heroically thrash and flutter. Vineyards were planted on the slopes to the north of the city, green rows of vines on the dusty hillsides that drew Cosca's eye and made his mouth water with an almost painful longing. The best vintages in the Circle of the World were trampled out on that very ground…

"Sweet mercy, a drink," he mouthed.

"Beautiful," breathed Prince Foscar.

"You never before looked upon fair Ospria, your Highness?"

"I had heard stories, but…"

"Breathtaking, isn't she?" The city was built upon four huge shelves cut into the cream-coloured rock of the steep hillside, each one surrounded by its own smooth wall, crammed with lofty buildings, stuffed with a tangle of roofs, domes, turrets. The ancient Imperial aqueduct curved gracefully down from the mountains to meet its outermost rampart, fifty arches or more, the tallest of them twenty times the height of a man. The citadel clung impossibly to the highest crag, four great towers picked out against the darkening azure sky. The lamps were being lit in the windows as the sun sank, the outline of the city dusted with pinprick points of light. "There can be no other place quite like this one."

A pause. "It seems almost a shame to spoil it with fire and sword," observed Foscar.

"Almost, your Highness. But this is war, and those are the tools available."

Cosca had heard that Count Foscar, now Prince Foscar following his brother's mishap in a famous Sipanese brothel, was a boyish, callow, weak-nerved youth, and was therefore pleasantly impressed by what he had seen thus far. The lad was fresh-faced, true, but every man begins young, and he seemed thoughtful rather than weak, sober rather than bloodless, polite rather than limp. A young man very much like Cosca himself had been at that age. Only the absolute reverse in every particular, of course.

"They appear to be most powerful fortifications…" murmured the prince, scanning the towering walls of the city with his eyeglass.

"Oh, indeed. Ospria was the furthest outpost of the New Empire, built as a bastion to hold back the restless Baolish hordes. Parts of the walls have been standing firm against the savage for more than five hundred years."

"Then will Duke Rogont not simply retreat behind them? He does seem prone to avoid battle whenever possible…"

"He'll give battle, your Highness," said Andiche.

"He must," rumbled Sesaria, "or we'll just camp in his pretty valley and starve him out."

"We outnumber him three to one or more," whined Victus.

Cosca could not but agree. "Walls are only useful if one expects help, and no help is coming to the League of Eight now. He must fight. He will fight. He is desperate." If there was one thing he understood, it was desperation.

"I must confess I have some… concerns." Foscar nervously cleared his throat. "I understood that you always hated my father with a passion."

"Passion. Hah." Cosca dismissed it with a wave. "As a young man I let my passion lead me by the nose, but I have learned numerous harsh lessons in favour of a cool head. I and your father have had our disagreements but I am, above all else, a mercenary. To let my personal feelings reduce the weight of my purse would be an act of criminal unprofessionalism."

"Hear, hear." Victus wore an unsightly leer. Even more so than usual.

"Why, my own three closest captains," and Cosca took them in with a theatrical sweep of his hat, "betrayed me utterly and put Murcatto in my chair. They fucked me to their balls, as they say in Sipani. To their balls, your Highness. If I had a taste for vengeance, it would be on these three heaps of human shit." Then Cosca chuckled, and they chuckled, and the vaguely uncomfortable atmosphere was swiftly dispelled. "But we can all be useful to each other, and so I have forgiven them everything, and your father too. Vengeance brings no man a brighter tomorrow, and when placed on the scales of life, does not outweigh a single… scale. You need not worry on that score, Prince Foscar, I am all business. Bought and paid for, and entirely your man."

"You are generosity itself, General Cosca."

"I am avarice itself, which is not quite the same, but will do in a pinch. Now, perhaps, for dinner. Would any of you gentlemen care for a drink? We came by a crate of a very fine vintage in a manor house upstream only yesterday, and—"

"It might be best if we were to discuss our strategy before the levity begins." Colonel Rigrat's shrill voice was as a file applied directly to Cosca's sensitive back teeth. He was a sharp-faced, sharp-voiced, sharply self-satisfied man in his late thirties and a well-pressed uniform, previously General Ganmark's second in command and now Foscar's. Presumably the military brains behind the Talinese operation, such as they were. "Now, while everyone still has their wits close to hand."

"Believe me, young man," though he was neither young, nor yet a man as far as Cosca was concerned, "my wits and I are not easily parted. You have a plan in mind?"

"I do!" Rigrat produced his baton with a flourish. Friendly loomed out from under the nearest olive tree, hands moving to his weapons. Cosca sent him melting back into the shadows with the faintest smile and shake of his head. No one else even noticed.

Cosca had been a soldier all his life, of a kind, and had yet to understand what the purpose of a baton truly was. You could not kill a man with one, or even look like you might. You could not hammer in a tent peg, cook a good side of meat or even pawn it for anything worthwhile. Perhaps they were intended for scratching those hard-to-reach places in the small of the back? Or stimulating the anus? Or perhaps simply for marking a man out as a fool? For that purpose, he reflected as Rigrat pointed self-importantly towards the river with his baton, they served admirably.

"There are two fords across the Sulva! Upper… and lower! The lower is much the wider and more reliable crossing." The colonel indicated the point where the dirty stripe of the Imperial road met the river, glimmering water flaring out in the gently sloping bottom of the valley. "But the upper, perhaps a mile upstream, should also be usable at this time of year."

"Two fords, you say?" It was a fact well known there were two damn fords. Cosca himself had crossed in glory by one when he came into Ospria to be toasted by Grand Duchess Sefeline and her subjects, and fled by another just after the bitch had tried to poison him. Cosca slid his battered flask from his jacket pocket. The one that Morveer had flung at him back in Sipani. He unscrewed the cap.

Rigrat gave him a sharp glance. "I thought we agreed that we would drink once we had discussed strategy."

"You agreed. I just stood here." Cosca closed his eyes, took a deep breath, tilted up the flask and took a long swallow, then another, felt the coolness fill his mouth, wash at his dry throat. A drink, a drink, a drink. He gave a happy sigh. "Nothing like a drink of an evening."

"May I continue?" hissed Rigrat, riddled with impatience.

"Of course, my boy, take your time."

"The day after tomorrow, at dawn, you will lead the Thousand Swords across the lower ford—"

"Lead? From the front, do you mean?"

"Where else would a commander lead from?"

Cosca exchanged a baffled glance with Andiche. "Anywhere else. Have you ever been at the front of a battle? The chances of being killed there really are very high."

"Extremely high," said Victus.

Rigrat ground his teeth. "Lead from what position pleases you, but the Thousand Swords will cross the lower ford, supported by our allies from Etrisani and Cesale. Duke Rogont will have no choice but to engage you with all his power, hoping to crush your forces while you are still crossing the river. Once he is committed, our Talinese regulars will break from hiding and cross the upper ford. We will take the enemy in the flank, and—" He snapped his baton into his waiting palm with a smart crack.

"You'll hit them with a stick?"

Rigrat was not amused. Cosca had to wonder whether he ever had been. "With steel, sir, with steel! We will rout them utterly and put them to flight, and thus put an end to the troublesome League of Eight!"

There was a long pause. Cosca frowned at Andiche, and Andiche frowned back. Sesaria and Victus shook their heads at one another. Rigrat tapped his baton impatiently against his leg. Prince Foscar cleared his throat once more, nervously pushed his chin forwards. "Your opinion, General Cosca?"

"Hmm." Cosca gloomily shook his head, eyeing the sparkling river with the weightiest of frowns. "Hmm. Hmm. Hmmmm."

"Hmmm." Victus tapped his pursed lips with one finger.

"Humph." Andiche puffed out his cheeks.

"Hrrrrrm." Sesaria's unconvinced voice throbbed at a deeper pitch.

Cosca removed his hat, scratched his head and placed it back with a flick at the feather. "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm—"

"Are we to take it that you disapprove?" asked Foscar.

"I somehow let slip my misgivings? Then I cannot in good conscience suppress them. I am not convinced that the Thousand Swords are well suited to the task you have assigned."

"Not convinced," said Andiche.

"Not well suited," said Victus.

Sesaria was a silent mountain of reluctance.

"Have you not been well paid for your services?" demanded Rigrat.

Cosca chuckled. "Of course, and the Thousand Swords will fight, you may depend on that!"

"They will fight, every man!" asserted Andiche.

"Like devils!" added Victus.

"But it is how they are to be made to fight best that concerns me as their captain general. They have lost two leaders in a brief space." He hung his head as if he regretted the fact, and had in no way benefited hugely himself.

"Murcatto, then Faithful." Sesaria sighed as if he had not been one of the prime agents in the changes of command.

"They have been relegated to support duties."

"Scouting," lamented Andiche.

"Clearing the flanks," growled Victus.

"Their morale is at a terribly low ebb. They have been paid, but money is never the best motivation for a man to risk his life." Especially a mercenary, it needed hardly to be said. "To throw them into a pitched mкlйe against a stubborn and desperate enemy, toe to toe… I'm not saying they might break, but… well…" Cosca winced, scratching slowly at his neck. "They might break."

"I hope this is not an example of your notorious reluctance to fight," sneered Rigrat.

"Reluctance… to fight? Ask anyone, I am a tiger!" Victus snorted snot down his chin but Cosca ignored him. "This is a question of picking the right tool for the task. One does not employ a rapier to cut down a stubborn tree. One employs an axe. Unless one is a complete arse." The young colonel opened his mouth to retort but Cosca spoke smoothly over him. "The plan is sound, in outline. As one military man to another I congratulate you upon it unreservedly." Rigrat paused, unbalanced, not sure if he was being taken for a fool or not, though he most obviously was.

"But it would be wiser counsel for your regular Talinese troops—tried and tested recently in Visserine, then Puranti, committed to their cause, used to victory and with the very firmest of morale—to cross the lower ford and engage the Osprians, supported by your allies of Etrisani and Cesale, and so forth." He waved his flask towards the river, a far more useful implement to his mind than a baton, since a baton makes no man drunk. "The Thousand Swords would be far better deployed concealed upon the high ground. Waiting to seize the moment! To drive across the upper ford, with dash and vigour, and take the enemy in the rear!"

"Best place to take an enemy," muttered Andiche. Victus sniggered.

Cosca finished with a flourish of his flask. "Thus, your earthy courage and our fiery passion are used where they are best suited. Songs will be sung, glory will be seized, history will be made, Orso will be king…" He gave Foscar a gentle bow. "And yourself, your Highness, in due course."

Foscar frowned towards the fords. "Yes. Yes, I see. The thing is, though—"

"Then we are agreed!" Cosca flung an arm around his shoulders and guided him back towards the tent. "Was it Stolicus who said great men march often in the same direction? I believe it was! Let us march now towards dinner, my friends!" He pointed one finger back towards the darkening mountains, where Ospria glimmered in the sunset. "I swear, I am so hungry I could eat a city!" Warm laughter accompanied him back into the tent.

Politics

Shivers sat there frowning, and drank.

Duke Rogont's great dining hall was the grandest room he'd ever got drunk in by quite a stretch. When Vossula told him Styria was packed with wonders it was this type of thing, rather than the rotting docks of Talins, that Shivers had in mind. It must've had four times the floor of Bethod's great hall in Carleon and a ceiling three times as high or more. The walls were pale marble with stripes of blue-black stone through it, all fretted with veins of glitter, all carved with leaves and vines, all grown up and crept over with ivy so the real plants and the sculpted tangled together in the dancing shadows. Warm evening breezes washed in through open windows wide as castle gates, made the orange flames of a thousand hanging lamps flicker and sway, striking a precious gleam from everything.

A place of majesty and magic, built by gods for the use of giants.

Shame the folk gathered there fell a long way short of either. Women in gaudy finery, brushed, jewelled and painted to look younger, or thinner, or richer than they were. Men in bright-coloured jackets who wore lace at their collars and little gilded daggers at their belts. They looked at him first with mild disdain on their powdered faces, like he was made of rotting meat. Then, once he'd turned the left side of his face forwards, with a sick horror that gave him three parts grim satisfaction and one part sick horror of his own.

Always at every feast there's some stupid, ugly, mean bastard got a big score to settle with no one in particular, drinks way too much and makes the night a worry for everyone. Seemed tonight it was him, and he was taking to the part with a will. He hawked up phlegm and spat it noisily across the gleaming floor.

A man at the next table in a yellow coat with long tails to it looked round, the smallest sneer on his puffed-up lips. Shivers leaned towards him, grinding the point of his knife into the polished table-top. "Something to say to me, piss-coat?" The man paled and turned back to his friends without a word. "Bunch o' bastard cowards," Shivers growled into his quickly emptying wine-cup, good and loud enough to be heard three tables away. "Not a single bone in the whole fucking crowd!"

He thought about what the Dogman might've made of this crew of tittering dandies. Or Rudd Threetrees. Or Black Dow. He gave a grim snort to think of it, but his laughter choked off short. If there was a joke, it was on him. Here he was, in the midst of 'em, after all, leaning on their charity without a friend to his name. Or so it seemed.

He scowled towards the high table, up on a raised dais at the head of the room. Rogont sat in the midst of his most favoured guests, grinning around as though he was a star shining from the night sky. Monza sat beside him. Hard to tell from where Shivers was, specially with everything smeared up with anger and too much wine, but he thought he saw her laughing. Enjoying herself, no doubt, without her one-eyed errand boy to drag her down.

He was a fine-looking bastard, the Prince of Prudence. Had both his eyes, anyway. Shivers would've liked to break his smooth, smug face open. With a hammer, like Monza had broken Gobba's head. Or just with his fists. Crush it in his hands. Pound it to red splinters. He gripped his knife trembling tight, spinning out a whole mad story of how he'd go about it. Picking over all the bloody details, shifting them about until they made him look as big a man as possible, Rogont wailing for mercy and pissing himself, twisting it into crazy shapes where Monza wanted him more'n ever at the end of it. And all the while he watched the two of 'em through one twitching, narrowed eye.

He goaded himself with the notion they were laughing at him, but he knew that was foolishness. He didn't matter enough to laugh at, and that made him stew hotter than ever. He was still clinging to his pride, after all, like a drowning man to a twig way too small to keep him afloat. He was a maimed embarrassment, after he'd saved her life how many times? Risked his life how many times? And after all the bloody steps he'd climbed to get to the top of this bastard mountain too. Might've hoped for something better'n scorn at the end of it.

He jerked his knife from the split wood. The knife Monza had given him the first day they met. Back when he had both his eyes and a lot less blood on his hands. Back when he had it in mind to leave killing behind him, and be a good man. He could hardly remember what that had felt like.

Monza sat there frowning, and drank.

She hadn't much taste for food lately, had less for ceremony, and none at all for tonguing arses, so Rogont's banquet of the doomed came close to a nightmare. Benna had been the one for feasting, form and flattery. He would have loved this—pointing, laughing, slapping backs with the worst of them. If he'd found a moment clear of soaking up the flattery of people who despised him, he would have leaned over, and touched her arm with a soothing hand, and whispered in her ear to grin and take it. Baring her teeth in a rictus snarl was about as close as she could come.

She had a bastard of a headache, pulsing away down the side where the coins were screwed, and the genteel rattle of cutlery might as well have been nails hammered into her face. Her guts seemed to have been cramping up ever since she left Faithful drowned on the millwheel. It was the best she could do not to turn to Rogont and spew, and spew, and spew all over his gold-embroidered white coat.

He leaned towards her with polite concern. "Why so glum, General Murcatto?"

"Glum?" She swallowed the rising acid enough to speak. "Orso's army are on their way."

Rogont turned his wine glass slowly round and round by the stem. "So I hear. Ably assisted by your old mentor Nicomo Cosca. The scouts of the Thousand Swords have already reached Menzes Hill, overlooking the fords."

"No more delays, then."

"It would appear not. My designs on glory will soon be ground into the dust. As such designs often are."

"You sure the night before your own destruction is the best time to celebrate?"

"The day after might be too late."

"Huh." True enough. "Perhaps you'll get a miracle."

"I've never been a great believer in divine intervention."

"No? What are they here for, then?" Monza jerked her head towards a knot of Gurkish just below the high table, dressed in the white robes and skullcaps of the priesthood.

The duke peered down at them. "Oh, their help goes well beyond the spiritual. They are emissaries of the Prophet Khalul. Duke Orso has his allies in the Union, the backing of their banks. I must find friends of my own. And even the Emperor of Gurkhul kneels before the Prophet."

"Everyone kneels to someone, eh? I guess Emperor and Prophet can console each other after their priests bring news of your head on a spike."

"They'll soon get over it. Styria is a sideshow to them. I daresay they're already preparing the next battlefield."

"I hear the war never ends." She drained her glass and slung it rattling back across the wood. Maybe they pressed the best wine in the world in Ospria, but it tasted of vomit to her. Everything did. Her life was made of sick. Sick and frequent, painful, watery shits. Raw-gummed, saw-tongued, rough-toothed, sore-arsed. A horse-faced servant in a powdered wig flowed around her shoulder and let fall a long stream of wine into the empty glass, as though flourishing the bottle as far above her as possible would make it taste better. He retreated with consummate ease. Retreat was the speciality down in Ospria, after all. She reached for the glass again. The most recent smoke had stopped her hand shaking, but nothing more.

So she prayed for mindless, shameful, stupefying drunkenness to swarm over and blot out the misery.

She let her eyes crawl over Ospria's richest and most useless citizens. If you really looked for it, the banquet had an edge of shrill hysteria. Drinking too much. Talking too fast. Laughing too loud. Nothing like a dash of imminent annihilation to lower the inhibitions. The one consolation of Rogont's coming rout was that a good number of these fools would lose everything along with him.

"You sure I should be up here?" she grunted.

"Someone has to be." Rogont glanced sideways at the girlish Countess Cotarda of Affoia without great enthusiasm. "The noble League of Eight, it seems, has become a League of Two." He leaned close. "And to be entirely honest I'm wondering if it's not too late for me to get out of it. The sad fact is I'm running short of notable guests."

"So I'm an exhibit to stiffen your wilting prestige, am I?"

"Exactly so. A perfectly charming one, though. And those stories about my wilting are all scurrilous rumours, I assure you." Monza couldn't find the strength even to be irritated, let alone amused, and settled for a weary snort. "You should eat something." He gestured at her untouched plate with his fork. "You look thin."

"I'm sick." That and her right hand hurt so badly she could scarcely hold the knife. "I'm always sick."

"Really? Something you ate?" Rogont forked meat into his mouth with all the relish of a man likely to live out the week. "Or something you did?"

"Maybe it's just the company."

"I wouldn't be at all surprised. My Aunt Sefeline was always revolted by me. She was a woman much prone to nausea. You remind me of her in a way. Sharp mind, great talents, will of iron, but a weaker stomach than might have been expected."

"Sorry to disappoint you." The dead knew she disappointed herself enough.

"Me? Oh, quite the reverse, I assure you. We are none of us made from flint, eh?"

If only. Monza gagged down more wine and scowled at the glass. A year ago, she'd had nothing but contempt for Rogont. She remembered laughing with Benna and Faithful over what a coward he was, what a treacherous ally. Now Benna was dead, she'd murdered Faithful and she'd run to Rogont for shelter like a wayward child to her rich uncle. An uncle who couldn't even protect himself, in this case. But he was far better company than the alternative. Her eyes were dragged reluctantly towards the bottom of the long table on the right, where Shivers sat alone.

The hard fact was he sickened her. It was an effort just to stand beside him, let alone touch him. It was far more than the simple ugliness of his maimed face. She'd seen enough that was ugly, and done enough too, to have no trouble at least pretending to be comfortable around it. It was the silences, when before she couldn't shut him up. They were full of debts she couldn't pay. She'd see that skewed, dead ruin of an eye and remember him whispering at her, It should've been you. And she'd know it should have been. When he did talk he said nothing about doing the right thing anymore, nothing about being a better man. Maybe it should have pleased her to have won that argument. She'd tried hard enough. But all she could think was that she'd taken a halfway decent man and somehow made a halfway evil one. She wasn't only rotten herself, she rotted everything she touched.

Shivers sickened her, and the fact she was disgusted when she knew she should have been grateful only sickened her even more.

"I'm wasting time," she hissed, more at her glass than anyone else.

Rogont sighed. "We all are. Just passing the ugly moments until our ignominious deaths in the least horrible manner we can find."

"I should be gone." She tried to make a fist of her gloved hand, but the pain only made her weaker now. "Find a way… find a way to kill Orso." But she was so tired she could hardly find the strength to say it.

"Revenge? Truly?"

"Revenge."

"I would be crushed if you were to leave."

She could hardly be bothered to take care what she said. "Why the hell would you want me?"

"I, want you?" Rogont's smile slipped for a moment. "I can delay no longer, Monzcarro. Soon, perhaps tomorrow, there will be a great battle. One that will decide the fate of Styria. What could be more valuable than the advice of one of Styria's greatest soldiers?"

"I'll see if I can find you one," she muttered.

"And you have many friends."

"Me?" She couldn't think of a single one alive.

"The people of Talins love you still." He raised his eyebrows at the gathering, some of them still glowering at her with scant friendliness. "Less popular here, of course, but that only serves to prove the point. One man's villain is another's hero, after all."

"They think I'm dead in Talins, and don't care into the bargain." She hardly cared herself.

"On the contrary, agents of mine are in the process of making the citizens well aware of your triumphant survival. Bills posted at every crossroads dispute Duke Orso's story, charge him with your attempted murder and proclaim your imminent return. The people care deeply, believe me, with that bottomless passion common folk sometimes have for great figures they have never met, and never will. If nothing else, it turns them further against Orso, and gives him difficulties at home."

"Politics, eh?" She drained her glass. "Small gestures, when war is knocking at your gates."

"We all make the gestures we can. But in war and politics both you are still an asset to be courted." His smile was back now, and broader than ever. "Besides, what extra reason should a man require to keep cunning and beautiful women close at hand?"

She scowled sideways. "Fuck yourself."

"When I must." He looked straight back at her. "But I'd much rather have help."

You look almost as bitter as I feel."

"Eh?" Shivers prised his scowl from the happy couple. "Ah." There was a woman talking to him. "Oh." She was very good to look at, so much that she seemed to have a glow about her. Then he saw everything had a glow. He was drunk as shit.

She seemed different from the rest, though. Necklace of red stones round her long neck, white dress that hung loose, like the ones he'd seen black women wearing in Westport, but she was very pale. There was something easy in the way she stood, no stiff manners to her. Something open in her smile. For a moment, it almost had him smiling with her. First time in a while.

"Is there space here?" She spoke Styrian with a Union accent. An outsider, like him.

"You want to sit… with me?"

"Why not, do you carry the plague?"

"With my luck I wouldn't be surprised." He turned the left side of his face towards her. "This seems to keep most folk well clear o' me by itself, though."

Her eyes moved over it, then back, and her smile didn't flicker. "We all have our scars. Some of us on the outside, some of us—"

"The ones on the inside don't take quite such a toll on the looks, though, eh?"

"I've found that looks are overrated."

Shivers looked her slowly up and down, and enjoyed it. "Easy for you to say, you've plenty to spare."

"Manners." She puffed out her cheeks as she looked round the hall. "I'd despaired of finding any among this crowd. I swear, you must be the only honest man here."

"Don't count on it." Though he was grinning wide enough. There was never a bad time for flattery from a fine-looking woman, after all. He had his pride. She held out one hand to him and he blinked at it. "I kiss it, do I?"

"If you like. It won't dissolve."

It was soft and smooth. Nothing like Monza's hand—scarred, tanned, callused as any Named Man's. Even less like her other one, twisted as a nettle root under that glove. Shivers pressed his lips to the woman's knuckles, caught a giddy whiff of scent. Like flowers, and something else that made the breath sharpen in his throat.

"I'm, er… Caul Shivers."

"I know."

"You do?"

"We've met before, though briefly. Carlot dan Eider is my name."

"Eider?" Took him a moment to place it. A half-glimpsed face in the mist. The woman in the red coat, in Sipani. Prince Ario's lover. "You're the one that Monza—"

"Beat, blackmailed, destroyed and left for dead? That would be me." She frowned up towards the high table. "Monza, is it? Not only first-name terms, but an affectionate shortening. The two of you must be very close."

"Close enough." Nowhere near as close as they had been, though, in Visserine. Before they took his eye.

"And yet she sits up there, with the great Duke Rogont, and you sit down here, with the beggars and the embarrassments."

Like she knew his own thoughts. His fury flickered up again and he tried to steer the talk away from it. "What brings you here?"

"After the carnage in Sipani I had no other choices. Duke Orso is doubtless offering a pretty price for my head. I've spent the last three months expecting every person I passed to stab me, poison me, throttle me, or worse."

"Huh. I know that feeling."

"Then you have my sympathy."

"The dead know I could do with some."

"You can have all mine, for what that's worth. You're just as much a piece in this sordid little game as I am, no? And you've lost even more than I. Your eye. Your face."

She didn't seem to move, but she seemed to keep getting closer. Shivers hunched his shoulders. "I reckon."

"Duke Rogont is an old acquaintance. A somewhat unreliable man, though undoubtedly a handsome one."

"I reckon," he managed to grate out.

"I was forced to throw myself upon his mercy. A hard landing, but some succour, for a while. Though it seems he has found a new diversion now."

"Monza?" The fact he'd been thinking it himself all night didn't help any. "She ain't like that."

Carlot dan Eider gave a disbelieving snort. "Really? Not a treacherous, murdering liar who'll use anyone and anything to get her way? She betrayed Nicomo Cosca, no, and stole his chair? Why do you think Duke Orso tried to kill her? Because it was his chair she was planning to steal next." The drink had made him half-stupid, he couldn't think of a thing to say to it. "Why not use Rogont to get her way? Or is she in love with someone else?"

"No," he growled. "Well… how would I know—fucking no! You've got it twisted!"

She touched one hand to her pale chest. "I have it twisted? There's a reason why they call her the Snake of Talins! A snake loves nothing but itself!"

"You'd say anything. She used you in Sipani. You hate her!"

"I'd shed no tears over her corpse, that's true. The man who put a blade in her could have my gratitude and more besides. But that doesn't make me a liar." She was halfway to whispering in his ear. "Monzcarro Murcatto, the Butcher of Caprile? They murdered children there." He could almost feel her breath on him, his skin tingling with having her so near, anger and lust all mangled hot together. "Murdered! In the streets! She wasn't even faithful to her brother, from what I hear—"

"Eh?" Shivers wished he'd drunk less, the hall was getting some spin to it.

"You didn't know?"

"Know what?" An odd mix of curiosity, and fear, and disgust creeping up on him.

Eider laid one hand on his arm, close enough that he caught another waft of scent—sweet, dizzying, sickening. "She and her brother were lovers." She purred the last word, dragging it out long.

"What?" His scarred cheek was burning like he'd been slapped.

"Lovers. They used to sleep together, like husband and wife. They used to fuck each other. It's no kind of secret. Ask anyone. Ask her."

Shivers found he could hardly breathe. He should've known it. Few things made sense now had tripped him at the time. He had known it, maybe. But still he felt tricked. Betrayed. Laughed at. Like a fish tickled from a stream and left choking. After all he'd done for her, after all he'd lost. The rage boiled up in him so hot he could hardly keep hold of himself.

"Shut your fucking mouth!" He flung Eider's hand off. "You think I don't see you goading me?" He was up from his bench somehow, standing over her, hall tipping around him, blurred lights and faces swaying. "You take me for a fool, woman? D'you set me at nothing?"

Instead of cringing back she came forwards, pressing against him almost, eyes seeming big as dinner plates. "Me? You've made no sacrifices for me! Am I the one who's cut you off? Am I the one who sets you at nothing?"

Shivers' face was on fire. The blood was battering at his skull, so hard it felt like it might pop his eye right out. Except it was burned out already. He gave a strangled sort of a yelp, throat closed up with fury. He staggered back, since it was that or throttle her, lurched straight into a servant, knocking his silver tray from his hands, glasses falling, bottle shattering, wine spraying.

"Sir, I most humbly—"

Shivers' left fist thudded into his ribs and twisted him sideways, right crunched into the man's face before he could fall. He bounced off the wall and sprawled in the wreckage of his bottles. There was blood on Shivers' fist. Blood, and a white splinter between his fingers. A piece of tooth. What he wanted, more'n anything, was to kneel over this bastard, take his head in his hands and smash it against the beautiful carvings on the wall until his brains came out. He almost did it.

But instead he made himself turn. Made himself turn and stumble away.

Time crawled.

Monza lay on her side, back to Shivers, at the very edge of the bed. Keeping as much space between them as she possibly could without rolling onto the floor. The first traces of dawn were creeping from between the curtains now, turning the room dirty grey. The wine was wearing through and leaving her more nauseous, weary, hopeless than ever. Like a wave washing up on a dirty beach that you hope will wash it clean, but only sucks back out and leaves a mass of dead fish behind it.

She tried to think what Benna would have said. What he'd have done, to make her feel better. But she couldn't remember what his voice had sounded like anymore. He was leaking away, and taking the best of her with him. She thought of him a boy, long ago, small and sickly and helpless. Needing her to take care of him. She thought of him a man, laughing, riding up the mountain to Fontezarmo. Still needing her to take care of him. She knew what colour his eyes had been. She knew there had been creases at their corners, from smiling often. But she couldn't see his smile.

Instead the faces that came to her in all their bloodied detail were the five men she'd killed. Gobba, fumbling at Friendly's garrotte with his great bloated, ruined hands. Mauthis, flapping around on his back like a puppet, gurgling pink foam. Ario, hand to his neck as black blood spurted from him. Ganmark, grinning up at her, stuck through the back with Stolicus' outsize sword. Faithful, drowned and dripping, dangling from his waterwheel, no worse than her.

The faces of the five men she'd killed, and of the two she hadn't. Eager little Foscar, barely even a man himself. And Orso, of course. Grand Duke Orso, who'd loved her like a daughter.

Monza, Monza, what would I do without you…

She tore the blankets back and swung her sweaty legs from the bed, dragged her trousers on, shivering though it was too hot, head pounding with worn-out wine.

"What you doing?" came Shivers' croaky voice.

"Need a smoke." Her fingers were trembling so badly she could hardly turn the lamp up.

"Maybe you should be smoking less, think of that?"

"Thought of it." She fumbled with the lump of husk, wincing as she moved her ruined fingers. "Decided against."

"It's the middle of the night."

"Go to sleep, then."

"Shitty fucking habit." He was sitting up on the side of the bed, broad back to her, head turned so he was frowning out of the corner of his one good eye.

"You're right. Maybe I should take up knocking servants' teeth out instead." She picked up her knife and started hacking husk into the bowl of the pipe, scattering dust. "Rogont wasn't much impressed, I can tell you that."

"Wasn't long ago you weren't much impressed with him, as I recall. Seems your feelings about folk change with the wind, though, don't it?"

Her head was splitting. She'd no wish to talk to him, let alone argue. But it's at times like those people bite each other hardest. "What's eating at you?" she snapped, knowing full well already and not wanting to hear about it either.

"What d'you think?"

"You know what, I've my own problems."

"You leaving me, is what!"

She'd have jumped at the chance. "Leaving you?"

"Tonight! Down with the shit while you sat up there lording it with the Duke of Delay!"

"You think I was in charge of the fucking seating?" she sneered at him. "He put me there to make him look good, is all."

There was a pause. He turned his head away from her, shoulders hunching. "Well. I guess looking good ain't something I can help with these days."

She twitched—awkward, annoyed. "Rogont can help me. That's all. Foscar's out there, with Orso's army. Foscar's out there…" And he had to die, whatever the costs.

"Vengeance, eh?"

"They killed my brother. I shouldn't have to explain it to you. You know how I feel."

"No. I don't."

She frowned. "What about your brother? Thought you said the Bloody-Nine killed him? I thought—"

"I hated my fucking brother. Folk called him Skarling reborn, but the man was a bastard. He'd show me how to climb trees, and fish, nick me under the chin and laugh when our father was there. When he was gone, he used to kick me 'til I couldn't breathe. He said I'd killed our mother. All I did was be born." His voice was hollow, no anger left in it. "When I heard he was dead, I wanted to laugh, but I cried instead because everyone else was. I swore vengeance on his killer and all the rest 'cause, well, there's a form to be followed, ain't there? Wouldn't want to fall short. But when I heard the Bloody-Nine nailed my bastard of a brother's head up, I didn't know whether I hated the man for doing it, or hated that he'd robbed me o' the chance, or wanted to kiss him for the favour like you'd kiss… a brother, I guess…"

For a moment she was about to get up, go to him, put her hand on his shoulder. Then his one eye moved towards her, cold and narrow. "But you'd know all about that, I reckon. Kissing your brother."

The blood pounded suddenly behind her eyes, worse than ever. "What my brother was to me is my fucking business!" She realised she was stabbing at him with the knife, tossed it away across the table. "I'm not in the habit of explaining myself. I don't plan to start with the men I hire!"

"That's what I am to you, is it?"

"What else would you be?"

"After what I've done for you? After what I've lost?"

She flinched, hands trembling worse than ever. "Well paid, aren't you?"

"Paid?" He leaned towards her, pointing at his face. "How much is my eye worth, you evil cunt?"

She gave a strangled growl, jerked up from the chair, snatched up the lamp, turned her back on him and made for the door to the balcony.

"Where you going?" His voice had turned suddenly wheedling, as if he knew he'd stepped too far.

"Clear of your self-pity, bastard, before I'm sick!" She ripped the door open and stepped out into the cold air.

"Monza—" He was sitting slumped on the bed, the saddest sort of look on his face. On the half of it that still worked, anyway. Broken. Hopeless. Desperate. Fake eye pointing off sideways. He looked as if he was about to weep, to fall down, to beg to be forgiven.

She slammed the door shut. It suited her to have an excuse. She preferred the passing guilt of turning her back on him to the endless guilt of facing him. Much, much preferred it.

The view from the balcony might well have been among the most breathtaking in the world. Ospria dropped away below, a madman's maze of streaky copper roofs, each one of the four tiers of the city surrounded by its own battlemented walls and towers. Tall buildings of old, pale stone crowded tight behind them, narrow-windowed and striped with black marble, pressed in alongside steeply climbing streets, crooked alleys of a thousand steps, deep and dark as the canyons of mountain streams. A few early lights shone from scattered windows, flickering dots of sentries' torches moved on the walls. Beyond them the valley of the Sulva was sunk in the shadows of the mountains, only the faintest glimmer of the river in its bottom. At the summit of the highest hill on the other side, against the dark velvet of the sky, perhaps the pinpricks of the campfires of the Thousand Swords.

Not a place for anyone with a fear of heights.

But Monza had other things on her mind. All that mattered was to make nothing matter, and as fast as she could. She crabbed down into the deepest corner, hunched jealously over her lamp and her pipe like a freezing man over a last tongue of fire. She gripped the mouthpiece in her teeth, lifted the rattling hood with trembling hands, leaned forwards—

A sudden gust came up, swirled into the corner, whipped her greasy hair in her eyes. The flame fluttered and went out. She stayed there, frozen, staring at the dead lamp in achy confusion, then sweaty disbelief. Her face went slack with horror as the implications fumbled their way into her thumping head.

No flame. No smoke. No way back.

She sprang up, took a step towards the parapet and flung the lamp out across the city with all her strength. She tilted her head back, taking a great breath, grabbed the parapet, rocked forwards and screamed her lungs out. Screamed her hatred at the lamp as it tumbled down, at the wind that had blown it out, at the city spread out below her, at the valley beyond it, at the world and everyone in it.

In the distance, the angry sun was beginning to creep up behind the mountains, staining the sky around their darkened slopes with blood.

No More Delays

Cosca stood before the mirror, making the final adjustments to his fine lace collar, turning his five rings so the jewels faced precisely outwards, adjusting each bristle of his beard to his satisfaction. It had taken him an hour and a half, by Friendly's calculation, to make ready. Twelve passes of the razor against the sharpening strap. Thirty-one movements to trim away the stubble. One tiny nick left under his jaw. Thirteen tugs of the tweezers to purge the nose hairs. Forty-five buttons done up. Four pairs of hooks and eyes. Eighteen straps to tighten and buckles to fasten.

"And all is ready. Master Friendly, I wish you to take the post of first sergeant of the brigade."

"I know nothing about war." Nothing except that it was madness, and threw him out of all compass.

"You need know nothing. The role would be to keep close to me, to keep silent but sinister, to support and follow my lead where necessary and most of all to watch my back and yours. The world is full of treachery, my friend! The odd bloody task too, and on occasion to count out sums of money paid and received, to take inventory of the numbers of men, weapons and sundries at our disposal…"

That was, to the letter, what Friendly had done for Sajaam, in Safety then outside it. "I can do that."

"Better than any man alive, I never doubt! Could you begin by fastening this buckle for me? Bloody armourers. I swear they only put it there to vex me." He jerked his thumb at the side strap on his gilded breastplate, stood tall and held his breath, sucking in his gut as Friendly tugged it closed. "Thank you, my friend, you are a rock! An anchor! An axle of calm about which I madly spin. Whatever would I do without you?"

Friendly did not understand the question. "The same things."

"No, no. Not the same. Though we are not long acquainted, I feel there is… an understanding between us. A bond. We are much alike, you and I."

Friendly sometimes felt he feared every word he had to speak, every new person and every new place. Only by counting everything and anything could he claw by his fingernails from morning to night. Cosca, by sharp contrast, drifted effortlessly through life like blossom on the wind. The way that he could talk, smile, laugh, make others do the same seemed like magic as surely as when Friendly had seen the Gurkish woman Ishri form from nowhere. "We are nothing alike."

"You see my point exactly! We are entire opposites, like earth and air, yet we are both… missing something… that others take for granted. Some part of that machinery that makes a man fit into society. But we each miss different cogs on the wheel. Enough that we may make, perhaps, between the two of us, one half-decent human."

"One whole from two halves."

"An extraordinary whole, even! I have never been a reliable man—no, no, don't try to deny it." Friendly had not. "But you, my friend, are constant, clear-sighted, single-minded. You are… honest enough… to make me more honest."

"I've spent most of my life in prison."

"Where you did more to spread honesty among Styria's most dangerous convicts than all the magistrates in the land, I do not doubt!" Cosca slapped Friendly on his shoulder. "Honest men are so very rare, they are often mistaken for criminals, for rebels, for madmen. What were your crimes, anyway, but to be different?"

"Robbery the first time, and I served seven years. When they caught me again there were eighty-four counts, with fourteen murders."

Cosca cocked an eyebrow. "But were you truly guilty?"

"Yes."

He frowned for a moment, then waved it away. "Nobody's perfect. Let's leave the past behind us." He gave his feather a final flick, jammed his hat onto his head at its accustomed rakish angle. "How do I look?"

Black pointed knee-boots set with huge golden spurs in the likeness of bull's heads. Breastplate of black steel with golden adornments. Black velvet sleeves slashed with yellow silk, cuffs of Sipanese lace hanging at the wrists. A sword with flamboyant gilded basketwork and matching dagger, slung ridiculously low. An enormous hat, its yellow feather threatening to brush the ceiling. "Like a pimp who lost his mind in a military tailor's."

Cosca broke out in a radiant grin. "Precisely the look I was aiming at! So to business, Sergeant Friendly!" He strode forwards, flung the tent flap wide and stepped through into the bright sunlight.

Friendly stuck close behind. It was his job, now.

The applause began the moment he stepped up onto the big barrel. He had ordered every officer of the Thousand Swords to attend his address, and here they were indeed; clapping, whooping, cheering and whistling to the best of their ability. Captains to the fore, lieutenants crowding further back, ensigns clustering at the rear. In most bodies of fighting men these would have been the best and brightest, the youngest and highest born, the bravest and most idealistic. This being a brigade of mercenaries, they were the polar opposite. The longest serving, the most steeped in vice, the slyest back-stabbers, most practised grave-robbers and fastest runners, the men with fewest illusions and most betrayals under their belts. Cosca's very own constituency, in other words.

Sesaria, Victus and Andiche lined up beside the barrel, all three clapping gently, the biggest, blackest crooks of the lot. Unless you counted Cosca himself, of course. Friendly stood not far behind, arms tightly folded, eyes darting over the crowd. Cosca wondered if he was counting them, and decided it was a virtual certainty.

"No, no! No, no! You do me too much honour, boys! You shame me with your fond attentions!" And he waved the adulation down, fading into an expectant silence. A mass of scarred, pocked, sunburned and diseased faces turned towards him, waiting. As hungry as a gang of bandits. They were one.

"Brave heroes of the Thousand Swords!" His voice rang out into the balmy morning. "Well, let us say brave men of the Thousand Swords, at least. Let us say men, anyway!" Scattered laughter, a whoop of approval. "My boys, you all know my stamp! Some of you have fought beside me… or at any rate in front." More laughter. "The rest of you know my… spotless reputation." And more yet. "You all know that I, above all, am one of you. A soldier, yes! A fighter, of course! But one who would much prefer to sheathe his weapon." And he gave a gentle cough as he adjusted his groin. "Than draw his blade!" And he slapped the hilt of his sword to widespread merriment.

"Let it never be said that we are not masters and journeymen of the glorious profession of arms! As much so as any lapdog at some noble's boots! Men strong of sinew!" And he slapped Sesaria's great arm. "Men sharp of wits!" And he pointed at Andiche's greasy head. "Men hungry for glory!" He jerked his thumb towards Victus. "Let it never be said we will not brave risks for our rewards! But let the risks be kept as lean as possible, and the rewards most hearty!" Another swell of approval.

"Your employer, the young Prince Foscar, was keen that you carry the lower ford and meet the enemy head on in pitched battle…" Nervous silence. "But I declined! Though you are paid to fight, I told him, you are far keener on the pay than the fighting!" A rousing cheer. "We'll wet our boots higher up, therefore, and with considerably lighter opposition! And whatever occurs today, however things may seem, you may always depend upon it that I have your… best interests closest to my own heart!" And he rubbed his fingers against his thumb to an even louder cheer.

"I will not insult you by calling for courage, for steadfastness, for loyalty and honour! All these things I already know you possess in the highest degree!" Widespread laughter. "So to your units, officers of the Thousand Swords, and await my order! May Mistress Luck be always at your side and mine! She is drawn, after all, to those who least deserve her! May darkness find us victorious! Uninjured! And above all—rich!"

There was a rousing cheer. Shields and weapons, mailed and plated arms, gauntleted fists shaken in the air.

"Cosca!"

"Nicomo Cosca!"

"The captain general!"

He hopped smiling down from his barrel as the officers began to disperse, Sesaria and Victus going with them to make their regiments—or their gangs of opportunists, criminals and thugs—ready for action. Cosca strolled away towards the brow of the hill, the beautiful valley opening out before him, shreds of misty cloud clinging to the hollows in its sides. Ospria looked proudly down on all from her mountain, fairer than ever by daylight, all cream-coloured stone banded with blue-black stripes of masonry, roofs of copper turned pale green by the years or, on a few buildings recently repaired, shining brilliantly in the morning glare.

"Nice speech," said Andiche. "If your taste runs to speeches."

"Most kind. Mine does."

"You've still got the trick of it."

"Ah, my friend, you have seen captain generals come and go. You well know there is a happy time, after a man is elevated to command, in which he can say and do no wrong in the eyes of his men. Like a husband in the eyes of his new wife, just following the marriage. Alas, it cannot last. Sazine, myself, Murcatto, ill-fated Faithful Carpi, our tides all flowed out with varying speed and left each one of us betrayed or dead. And so shall mine again. I will have to work harder for my applause in future."

Andiche split a toothy grin. "You could always appeal to the cause."

"Hah!" Cosca lowered himself into the captain general's chair, set out in the dappled shade of a spreading olive tree with a fine view of the glittering fords. "My curse on fucking causes! Nothing but big excuses. I never saw men act with such ignorance, violence and self-serving malice as when energised by a just cause." He squinted at the rising sun, brilliant in the bright blue sky. "As we will no doubt witness, in the coming hours…"

Rogont drew his sword with a faint ring of steel.

"Free men of Ospria! Free men of the League of Eight! Great hearts!"

Monza turned her head and spat. Speeches. Better to move fast and hit hard than waste time talking about it. If she'd found herself with time for a speech before a battle she would have reckoned she'd missed her moment, pulled back and looked for another. It took a man with a bloated sense of himself to think his words might make all the difference.

So it was no surprise that Rogont had his all well worked out.

"Long have you followed me! Long have you waited for the day you would prove your mettle! My thanks for your patience! My thanks for your courage! My thanks for your faith!" He stood in his stirrups and raised his sword high above his head. "Today we fight!"

He cut a pretty picture, there was no denying that. Tall, strong and handsome, dark curls stirred by the breeze. His armour was studded with glittering gems, steel polished so bright it was almost painful to look at. But his men had made an effort too. Heavy infantry in the centre, well armoured under a forest of polearms or clutching broadswords in their gauntleted fists, shields and blue surcoats all stitched with the white tower of Ospria. Light infantry on the wings, all standing to stiff attention in studded leather, pikes kept carefully vertical. Archers too, steel-capped flatbowmen, hooded longbowmen. A detachment of Affoians on the far right slightly spoiled the pristine organisation, weapons mismatched and their ranks a little skewed, but still a good stretch neater than any men Monza had ever led.

And that was before she turned to the cavalry lined up behind her, a gleaming row in the shadow of the outermost wall of Ospria. Every man noble of birth and spirit, horses in burnished bardings, helmets with sculpted crests, lances striped, polished and ready to be steeped in glory. Like something out of a badly written storybook.

She snorted some snot from the back of her nose, and spat again. In her experience, and she had plenty, clean men were the keenest to get into battle and the keenest to get clear of it.

Rogont was busy cranking up his rhetoric to new heights. "We stand now upon a battlefield! Here, in after years, men will say heroes fought! Here, men will say the fate of Styria was decided! Here, my friends, here, on our own soil! In sight of our own homes! Before the ancient walls of proud Ospria!" Enthusiastic cheering from the companies drawn up closest to him. She doubted the rest could hear a word of it. She doubted most could even see him. For those that could, she doubted the sight of a shiny speck in the distance would do much for their morale.

"Your fate is in your own hands!" Their fate had been in Rogont's hands, and he'd frittered it away. Now it was in Cosca's and Foscar's, and it was likely to be a bloody one.

"Now for freedom!" Or at best a better-looking brand of tyranny.

"Now for glory!" A glorious place in the mud at the bottom of the river.

Rogont jerked on the reins with his free hand and made his chestnut charger rear, lashing at the air with its front hooves. The effect was only slightly spoiled by a few heavy clods of shit that happened to fall from its rear end at the same moment. It sped off past the massed ranks of infantry, each company cheering Rogont as he passed, lifting their spears in unison and giving a roar. It might have been an impressive sight. But Monza had seen it all before, with grim results. A good speech wasn't much compensation for being outnumbered three to one.

The Duke of Delay trotted up towards her and the rest of his staff, the same gathering of heavily decorated and lightly experienced men she'd made fools of in the baths at Puranti, arrayed for battle now rather than the parade ground. Safe to say they hadn't warmed to her. Safe to say she didn't care.

"Nice speech," she said. "If your taste runs to speeches."

"Most kind." Rogont turned his horse and drew it up beside her. "Mine does."

"I'd never have guessed. Nice armour too."

"A gift from the young Countess Cotarda." A knot of ladies had gathered to observe at the top of the slope in the shade of the city walls. They sat side-saddle in bright dresses and twinkling jewels, as if they were expecting to attend a wedding rather than a slaughter. Cotarda herself, milk-pale in flowing yellow silks, gave a shy wave and Rogont returned it without much vigour. "I think her uncle has it in mind that we might marry. If I live out the day, of course."

"Young love. My heart is all aglow."

"Damp down your sentimental soul, she's not at all my type. I like a woman with a little… bite. Still, it is a fine armour. An impartial observer might mistake me for some kind of hero."

"Huh. ‘Desperation bakes heroes from the most rotten flour,' Farans wrote."

Rogont blew out a heavy sigh. "We are running short of time for this particular loaf to rise."

"I thought that talk about you having trouble rising was all scurrilous rumours…" There was something familiar about one of the ladies in Countess Cotarda's party, more simply dressed than the others, long-necked and elegant. She turned her head and then her horse, began to ride down the grassy slope towards them. Monza felt a cold twinge of recognition. "What the hell is she doing here?"

"Carlot dan Eider? You know her?"

"I know her." If punching someone in the face in Sipani counted.

"An old… friend." He said the word in a way that implied more than that. "She came to me in peril of her life, begging for protection. Under what circumstances could I possibly refuse?"

"If she'd been ugly?"

Rogont shrugged with a faint rattling of steel. "I freely admit it, I'm every bit as shallow as the next man."

"Far shallower, your Excellency." Eider nudged her horse up close to them, and gracefully inclined her head. "And who is this? The Butcher of Caprile! I thought you were but a thief, blackmailer, murderer of innocents and keen practiser of incest! Now it seems you are a soldier too."

"Carlot dan Eider, such a surprise! I thought this was a battle but now it smells more like a brothel. Which is it?"

Eider raised one eyebrow at the massed regiments. "Judging by all the swords I'd guess… the former? But I suppose you'd be the expert. I saw you at Cardotti's and I see you here, equally comfortable dressed as warrior or whore."

"Strange how it goes, eh? I wear the whore's clothes and you do the whore's business."

"Perhaps I should turn my hand to murdering children instead?"

"For pity's sake, enough!" snapped Rogont. "Am I doomed to be always surrounded by women, showing off? Have the two of you not noticed I have a battle to lose? All I need now is for that vanishing devil Ishri to spring out of my horse's arse and give me my death of shock to complete the trio! My Aunt Sefeline was the same, always trying to prove she had the biggest cock in the chamber! If all your purpose is to posture, the two of you can get that done behind the city walls and leave me out here to ponder my downfall alone."

Eider bowed her head. "Your Excellency, I would hate to intrude. I am here merely to wish you the best of fortune."

"Sure you wouldn't care to fight?" snapped Monza at her.

"Oh, there are other ways of fighting than bloody in the mud, Murcatto." She leaned from her saddle and hissed it. "You'll see!"

"Your Excellency!" A shrill call, soon joined by others, a ripple of excitement spreading through the horsemen. One of Rogont's officers was pointing over the river, towards the ridge on the far side of the valley. There was movement there against the pale sky. Monza nudged her horse towards it, sliding out a borrowed eyeglass and scanning across the ridge.

A scattering of horsemen came first. Outriders, officers and standard-bearers, banners held high, white flags carrying the black cross of Talins, the names of battles stitched along their edges in red and silver thread. It hardly helped that a good number of the victories she'd had a hand in herself. A wide column of men tramped into view behind them, marching steadily down the brown stripe of the Imperial road towards the lower ford, spears shouldered.

The foremost regiment stopped and began to spread out about a half-mile from the water. Other columns began to spill from the road, forming battle lines across the valley. There was nothing clever about the plan, as far as she could see.

But they had the numbers. They didn't need to be clever.

"The Talinese have arrived," murmured Rogont, pointlessly.

Orso's army. Men she'd fought alongside this time last year, led to victory at Sweet Pines. Men Ganmark had led until Stolicus fell on him. Men Foscar was leading now. That eager young lad with the fluff moustache who'd laughed with Benna in the gardens of Fontezarmo. That eager young lad she'd sworn to kill. She chewed her lip as she moved the eyeglass across the dusty front ranks, more men and more flooding over the hill behind them.

"Regiments from Etrisani and Cesale on their right wing, some Baolish on their left." Ragged-marching men in fur and heavy chain mail, savage fighters from the hills and the mountains in the far east of Styria.

"The great majority of Duke Orso's regular troops. But where, oh where, are your comrades of the Thousand Swords?"

Monza nodded up towards Menzes Hill, a green lump speckled with olive groves above the upper ford. "I'd bet my life they're there, behind the brow. Foscar will cross the lower ford in strength and give you no choice but to meet him head on. Once you're committed, the Thousand Swords will cross the upper ford unopposed and take you in the flank."

"Very likely. What would be your advice?"

"You should've turned up to Sweet Pines on time. Or Musselia. Or the High Bank."

"Alas, I was late for those battles then. I am extremely late for them now."

"You should have attacked long before this. Taken a gamble as they marched down the Imperial road from Puranti." Monza frowned at the valley, the great number of soldiers on both sides of the river. "You have the smaller force."

"But the better position."

"To get it you gave up the initiative. Lost your chance at surprise. Trapped yourself. The general with the smallest numbers is well advised to stay always on the offensive."

"Stolicus, is it? I never had you down for book learning."

"I know my business, Rogont, books and all."

"My epic thanks to you and your friend Stolicus for explaining my failures. Perhaps one of you might furnish an opinion on how I might now achieve success?"

Monza let her eyes move over the landscape, judging the angles of the slopes, the distances from Menzes Hill to the upper ford, from the upper to the lower, from the striped walls of the city to the river. The position seemed better than it was. Rogont had too much ground to cover and not enough men for the job.

"All you can do now is the obvious. Hit the Talinese with all your archers as they cross, then all your foot as soon as their front ranks touch dry land. Keep the cavalry here to at least hold up the Thousand Swords when they show. Hope to break Foscar quickly, while his feet are in the river, then turn to the mercenaries. They won't stick if they see the game's against them. But breaking Foscar…" She watched the great body of men forming up into lines as wide as the wide ford, more columns belching from the Imperial road to join them. "If Orso thought you had a chance at it he'd have picked a commander more experienced and less valuable. Foscar's got more than twice your numbers on his own, and all he has to do is hold you." She peered up the slope. The Gurkish priests sat observing the battle not far from the Styrian ladies, their white robes bright in the sunlight, their dark faces grim. "If the Prophet sent you a miracle, now might be the time."

"Alas, he sent only money. And kind words."

Monza snorted. "You'll need more than kind words to win today."

"We'll need," he corrected, "since you fight beside me. Why do you fight beside me, by the way?"

Because she was too tired and too sick to fight alone anymore. "Seems I can't resist pretty men in lots of trouble. When you held all the cards I fought for Orso. Now look at me."

"Now look at us both." He took in a long breath, and gave a happy sigh.

"What the hell are you so pleased about?"

"Would you rather I despaired?" Rogont grinned at her, handsome and doomed. Maybe the two went together. "If the truth be known, I'm relieved the waiting is over, whatever odds we face. Those of us who carry great responsibilities must learn patience, but I have never had much taste for it."

"That's not your reputation."

"People are more complicated than their reputations, General Murcatto. You should know that. We will settle our business here, today. No more delays." He twitched his horse away to confer with one of his aides, and left Monza slumped in her saddle, arms limp across the bow, frowning up towards Menzes Hill.

She wondered if Nicomo Cosca was up there, squinting towards them through his eyeglass.

Cosca squinted through his eyeglass towards the mass of soldiery on the far side of the river. The enemy, though he held no personal rancour towards them. The battlefield was no place for rancour. Blue flags carrying the white tower of Ospria fluttered above them, but one larger than the others, edged with gold. The standard of the Duke of Delay himself. Horsemen were scattered about it, a group of ladies too, by the look of things, ridden out to watch the battle, all in their best. Cosca fancied he could even see some Gurkish priests, though he could not imagine what their interest might be. He wondered idly whether Monzcarro Murcatto was there. The notion of her sitting side-saddle in floating silks fit for a coronation gave him a brief moment of amusement. The battlefield was most definitely a place for amusement. He lowered his eyeglass, took a swig from his flask and happily closed his eyes, feeling the sun flicker through the branches of the old olive trees.

"Well?" came Andiche's rough voice.

"What? Oh, you know. Still forming up."

"Rigrat sends word the Talinese are beginning their attack."

"Ah! So they are." Cosca sat forwards, training his eyeglass on the ridge to his right. The front ranks of Foscar's foot were close to the river now, spread out across the flower-dotted sward in orderly lines, the hard dirt of the Imperial road invisible beneath that mass of men. He could faintly hear the tramping of their feet, the disembodied calls of their officers, the regular thump, thump of their drums floating on the warm air, and he waved one hand gently back and forth in time. "Quite the spectacle of military splendour!"

He moved his round window on the world down the road to the glittering, slow-flowing water, across it to the far bank and up the slope. The Osprian regiments were deploying to meet them, perhaps a hundred strides above the river. Archers had formed a long line behind them on higher ground, kneeling, making ready their bows. "Do you know, Andiche… I have a feeling we will shortly witness some bloodshed. Order the men forwards, up behind us here. Fifty strides, perhaps, beyond the brow of the hill."

"But… they'll be seen. We'll lose the surprise—"

"Shit on the surprise. Let them see the battle, and let the battle see them. Give them a taste for it."

"But General—"

"Give the orders, man. Don't fuss."

Andiche turned away, frowning, and beckoned over one of his sergeants. Cosca settled back with a satisfied sigh, stretched his legs out and crossed one highly polished boot over the other. Good boots. How long had it been since he'd last worn good boots? The front rank of Foscar's men were in the river. Wading forwards with grim determination, no doubt, up to their knees in cold water, looking without relish at the considerable body of soldiers drawn up in good order on the high ground to their front. Waiting for the arrows to start falling. Waiting for the charge to come. An unenviable task, forcing that ford. He had to admit to being damn pleased he had talked his way clear of it.

He raised Morveer's flask and wet his lips, just a little.

Shivers heard the faint cries of the orders, the rattling rush of a few hundred shafts loosed together. The first volley went up from Rogont's archers, black splinters drifting, and rained down on the Talinese as they waded on through the shallows.

Shivers shifted in his saddle, rubbed gently at his itching scar as he watched the lines twist and buckle, holes opening up, flags drooping. Some men slowing, wanting to get back, others moving faster, wanting to press on. Fear and anger, two sides to the same coin. No one's favourite job, trying to march tight over bad terrain while men shoot arrows at you. Stepping over corpses. Friends, maybe. The horrible chance of it, knowing a little gust might be the difference between an arrow in the earth by your boot or an arrow through your face.

Shivers had seen battles enough, of course. A lifetime of 'em. He'd watched them play out or listened to the sounds in the distance, waiting to hear the call and take his own part, fretting on his chances, trying to hide his fear from those he led and those he followed. He remembered Black Well, running through the mist, heart pounding, startling at shadows. The Cumnur, where he'd screamed the war cry with five thousand others as they thundered down the long slope. Dunbrec, where he'd followed Rudd Threetrees in a charge against the Feared, damn near given his life to hold the line. The battle in the High Places, Shanka boiling up out of the valley, mad Easterners trying to climb the wall, fighting back to back with the Bloody-Nine, stand or die. Memories sharp enough to cut himself on—the smells, the sounds, the feel of the air on his skin, the desperate hope and mad anger.

He watched another volley go up, watched the great mass of Talinese coming on through the water, and felt nothing much but curious. No kinship with either side. No sorrow for the dead. No fear for himself. He watched men dropping under the hail of fire, and he burped, and the mild burning up his throat gave him a sight more worry than if the river had suddenly flooded and washed every one of those bastards down there out to the ocean. Drowned the fucking world. He didn't care a shit about the outcome. It wasn't his war.

Which made him wonder why he was ready to fight in it, and more'n likely on the losing side.

His eye twitched from the brewing battle to Monza. She clapped Rogont on the shoulder and Shivers felt his face burn like he'd been slapped. Each time they spoke it stung at him. Her black hair blew back for a moment, showed him the side of her face, jaw set hard. He didn't know if he loved her, or wanted her, or just hated that she didn't want him. She was the scab he couldn't stop picking, the split lip he couldn't stop biting at, the loose thread he couldn't stop tugging 'til his shirt came all to pieces.

Down in the valley the front rank of the Talinese had worse troubles, floundering from the river and up onto the bank, lost their shape from slogging across the ford under fire. Monza shouted something at Rogont, and he called to one of his men. Shivers heard the cries creep up from the slopes below. The order to charge. The Osprian foot lowered their spears, blades a glittering wave as they swung down together, then began to move. Slow at first, then quicker, then breaking into a jog, pouring away from the archers, still loading and firing fast as they could, down the long slope towards the sparkling water, and the Talinese trying to form some kind of line on the bank.

Shivers watched the two sides come together, merge. A moment later he heard the contact, faint on the wind. That rattling, clattering, jangling din of metal, like a hailstorm on a lead roof. Roars, wails, screams from nowhere floating with it. Another volley fell among the ranks still struggling through the water. Shivers watched it all, and burped again.

Rogont's headquarters was quiet as the dead, everyone staring down towards the ford, mouths and eyes wide, faces pale and reins clenched tight with worry. The Talinese had flatbowmen of their own ready now, sent a wave of bolts up from the water, flying flat and hissing among the archers. More'n one fell. Someone started squealing. A rogue bolt thudded into the turf not far from one of Rogont's officers, made his horse startle and near dumped him from the saddle. Monza urged her own mount a pace or two forwards, standing in the stirrups to get a better view, borrowed armour gleaming dully in the morning sun. Shivers frowned.

One way or another, he was here for her. To fight for her. Protect her. Try to make things right between them. Or maybe just hurt her like she'd hurt him. He closed his fist, nails digging into his palm, knuckles sore from knocking that servant's teeth out. They weren't done yet, that much he knew.

All Business

The upper ford was a patch of slow-moving water, sparkling in the morning sun as it broke up in the shallows. A faint track led from the far bank between a few scattered buildings, then through an orchard and up the long slope to a gate in the black-banded outermost wall of Ospria. All seemingly deserted. Rogont's foot were mostly committed to the savage fight at the lower ford. Only a few small units hung back to guard the archers, loading and firing into the mass of men in the midst of the river as fast as they possibly could.

The Osprian cavalry were waiting in the shadow of the walls as a last reserve, but too few, and too far away. The Thousand Swords' path to victory appeared unguarded. Cosca stroked gently at his neck. In his judgement, now was the perfect moment to attack.

Andiche evidently agreed. "Getting hot down there. Should I tell the men to mount up?"

"Let's not trouble them quite yet. It's still early."

"You sure?"

Cosca turned to look evenly back at him. "Do I look unsure?" Andiche puffed out his pitted cheeks, then stomped off to confer with some of his own officers. Cosca stretched out, hands clasped behind his head, and watched the battle slowly develop. "What was I saying?"

"A chance to leave all this behind," said Friendly.

"Ah yes! I had the chance to leave all this behind. Yet I chose to come back. Change is not a simple thing, eh, Sergeant? I entirely see and understand the pointlessness and waste of it all, yet I do it anyway. Does that make me worse or better than the man who does it thinking himself ennobled by a righteous cause? Or the man who does it for his own profit, without the slightest grain of thought for right or wrong? Or are we all the same?"

Friendly only shrugged.

"Men dying. Men maimed. Lives destroyed." He might as well have been reciting a list of vegetables for all the emotion he felt. "I have spent half my life in the business of destruction. The other half in the dogged pursuit of self-destruction. I have created nothing. Nothing but widows, orphans, ruins and misery, a bastard or two, perhaps, and a great deal of vomit. Glory? Honour? My piss is worth more, that at least makes nettles grow." But if his aim was to prick his own conscience into wakefulness it still slumbered on regardless. "I have fought in many battles, Sergeant Friendly."

"How many?"

"A dozen? A score? More? The line between battle and skirmish is a fuzzy one. Some of the sieges dragged on, with many engagements. Do those count as one, or several?"

"You're the soldier."

"And even I don't have the answers. In war, there are no straight lines. What was I saying?"

"Many battles."

"Ah, yes! Many! And though I have tried always to avoid becoming closely involved in the fighting, I have often failed. I am fully aware of what it's like in the midst of that mкlйe. The flashing blades. Shields cloven and spears shattered. The crush, the heat, the sweat, the stink of death. The tiny heroics and the petty villainies. Proud flags and honourable men crushed underfoot. Limbs lopped off, showers of blood, split skulls, spilled guts, and all the rest." He raised his eyebrows. "Reasonable to suppose some drownings too, under the circumstances."

"How many, would you say?"

"Difficult to be specific." Cosca thought of the Gurkish drowning in the channel at Dagoska, brave men swept out to sea, their corpses washed up on every tide, and gave a long sigh. "Still, I find I can watch without much sentiment. Is it ruthlessness? Is it the fitting detachment of command? Is it the configuration of the stars at my birth? I find myself always sanguine in the face of death and danger. More so than at any other time. Happy when I should be horrified, fearful when I should be calm. I am a riddle, to be sure, even to myself. I am a back-to-front man, Sergeant Friendly!" He laughed, then chuckled, then sighed, then was silent. "A man upside down and inside out."

"General." Andiche was leaning over him again, lank hair hanging.

"What, for pity's sake? I am trying to philosophise!"

"The Osprians are fully engaged. All their foot are tackling Foscar's troops. They've no reserves but a few horse."

Cosca squinted down towards the valley. "I see that, Captain Andiche. We all quite clearly see that. There is no need to state the obvious."

"Well… we'll sweep those bastards away, no trouble. Give me the order and I'll see to it. We'll get no easier chance."

"Thank you, but it looks dreadfully hot out there now. I am quite comfortable where I am. Perhaps later."

"But why not—"

"It amazes me, that after so long on campaign, the whole business of the chain of command still confounds you! You will find it far less worrisome if, rather than trying to anticipate my orders, you simply wait for me to give them. It really is the simplest of military principles."

Andiche scratched his greasy head. "I understand the concept."

"Then act according to it. Find a shady spot, man, take the weight from your feet. Stop running to nowhere. Take a lesson from my goat. Do you see her fussing?"

The goat lifted her head from the grass between the olive trees for a moment, and bleated.

Andiche put his hands on his hips, winced, stared down at the valley, up at Cosca, frowned at the goat, then turned away and walked off, shaking his head.

"Everyone rushing, rushing, Sergeant Friendly, do we get no peace? Is a quiet moment out of the sun really too much to ask? What was I saying?"

Why isn't he attacking?"

When Monza had seen the Thousand Swords easing onto the brow of the hill, the tiny shapes of men, horses, spears black against the blue morning sky, she'd known they were about to charge. To splash happily across the upper ford and take Rogont's men in the flank, just the way she'd said they would. Just the way she'd have done. To put a bloody end to the battle, to the League of Eight, to her hopes, such as they were. No man was quicker to pluck the easy fruit than Nicomo Cosca, and none quicker to wolf it down than the men she used to lead.

But the Thousand Swords only sat there, in plain view, on top of Menzes Hill, and waited. Waited for nothing. Meanwhile Foscar's Talinese struggled on the banks of the lower ford, at push of pike with Rogont's Osprians, water, ground and slope all set against them, arrows raining down on the men behind the front line with punishing regularity. Bodies were carried by the current, limp shapes washing up on the bank of the river, bobbing in the shallows below the ford.

Still the Thousand Swords didn't move.

"Why show himself in the first place, if he doesn't mean to come down?" Monza chewed at her lip, not trusting it. "Cosca's no fool. Why give away the surprise?"

Duke Rogont only shrugged. "Why complain about it? The longer he waits, the better for us, no? We have enough to worry on with Foscar."

"What's he up to?" Monza stared up at the mass of horsemen ranged across the crest of the hill, beside the olive grove. "What's that old bastard about?"

Colonel Rigrat whipped his well-lathered horse between the tents, sending idle mercenaries scattering, and reined the beast in savagely not far away. He slid from the saddle, nearly fell, tore his boot from the stirrup and stormed up, ripping off his gloves, face flushed with sweaty fury. "Cosca! Nicomo Cosca, damn you!"

"Colonel Rigrat! A fine morning, my young friend! I hope all is well?"

"Well? Why are you not attacking?" He stabbed one finger down towards the river, evidently having misplaced his baton. "We are engaged in the valley! Most hotly engaged!"

"Why, so you are." Cosca rocked forwards and rose smoothly from the captain general's chair. "Perhaps it would be better if we were to discuss this away from the men. Not good form, to bicker. Besides, you're scaring my goat."

"What?"

Cosca patted the animal gently on the back as he passed. "She's the only one who truly understands me. Come to my tent. I have fruit there! Andiche! Come join us!"

He strode off, Rigrat blustering after, Andiche falling into puzzled step behind. Past Nocau, on guard before the flap with his great scimitar drawn, and into the cool, dim interior of the tent, draped all around with the victories of the past. Cosca ran the back of his hand affectionately down one swathe of threadbare cloth, edges blackened by fire. "The flag that hung upon the walls of Muris, during the siege… was it truly a dozen years ago?" He turned to see Friendly sidle through the flap after the others and lurk near the entrance. "I brought it down from the highest parapet with my own hand, you know."

"After you tore it from the hand of the dead hero who was up there first," said Andiche.

"Whatever is the purpose of dead heroes, if not to pass on stolen flags to more prudent fellows in the rank behind?" He snatched the bowl of fruit from the table and shoved it under Rigrat's nose. "You look ill, Colonel. Have a grape."

The man's trembling face was rapidly approaching grape colour. "Grape? Grape?" He lashed at the flap with his gloves. "I demand that you attack at once! I flatly demand it!"

"Attack." Cosca winced. "Across the upper ford?"

"Yes!"

"According to the excellent plan you laid out to me last night?"

"Yes, damn it! Yes!"

"In all honesty, nothing would please me more. I love a good attack, ask anyone, but the problem is… you see…" Pregnant silence stretched out as he spread his hands wide. "I took such an enormous sum of money from Duke Rogont's Gurkish friend not to."

Ishri came from nowhere. Solidified from the shadows at the edges of the tent, slid from the folds in the ancient flags and strutted into being. "Greetings," she said. Rigrat and Andiche both stared at her, equally stunned.

Cosca peered up at the gently flapping roof of the tent, tapping at his pursed lips with one finger. "A dilemma. A moral quandary. I want so badly to attack, but I cannot attack Rogont. And I can scarcely attack Foscar, when his father has also paid me so handsomely. In my youth I jerked this way and that just as the wind blew me, but I am trying earnestly to change, Colonel, as I explained to you the other evening. Really, in all good conscience, the only thing I can do is sit here." He popped a grape into his mouth. "And do nothing."

Rigrat gave a splutter and made a belated grab for his sword, but Friendly's big fist was already around the hilt, knife gleaming in his other hand. "No, no, no." The colonel froze as Friendly slid his sword carefully from its sheath and tossed it across the tent.

Cosca snatched it from the air and took a couple of practice swipes. "Fine steel, Colonel, I congratulate you on your choice of blades, if not of strategy."

"You were paid by both? To fight neither?" Andiche was smiling ear to ear as he draped one arm around Cosca's shoulders. "My old friend! Why didn't you tell me? Damn, but it's good to have you back!"

"Are you sure?" Cosca ran him smoothly through the chest with Rigrat's sword, right to the polished hilt. Andiche's eyes bulged, his mouth dropped open and he dragged in a great long wheeze, his pockmarked face twisted, trying to scream. But all that came out was a gentle cough.

Cosca leaned close. "You think a man can turn on me? Betray me? Give my chair to another for a few pieces of silver, then smile and be my friend? You mistake me, Andiche. Fatally. I may make men laugh, but I'm no clown."

The mercenary's coat glistened with dark blood, his trembling face had turned bright red, veins bulging in his neck. He clawed weakly at Cosca's breastplate, bloody bubbles forming on his lips. Cosca let go the hilt, wiped his hand on Andiche's sleeve and shoved him over. He fell on his side, spitted, gave a gentle groan and stopped moving.

"Interesting." Ishri squatted over him. "I am rarely surprised. Surely Murcatto is the one who stole your chair. You let her go free, no?"

"On reflection, I doubt the facts of my betrayal quite match the story. But in any case, a man can forgive all manner of faults in beautiful women that in ugly men he finds entirely beyond sufferance. And if there's one thing I absolutely cannot abide, it's disloyalty. You have to stick at something in your life."

"Disloyalty?" screeched Rigrat, finally finding his voice. "You'll pay for this, Cosca, you treacherous—"

Friendly's knife thumped into his neck and out, blood showered across the floor of the tent and spattered the Musselian flag that Sazine had taken the day the Thousand Swords were formed.

Rigrat fell to his knees, one hand clutched to his throat, blood pouring down the sleeve of his jacket. He flopped forwards onto his face, trembled for a moment, then was still. A dark circle bloomed out through the material of the groundsheet and merged with the one already creeping from Andiche's corpse.

"Ah," said Cosca. He had been planning to ransom Rigrat back to his family. It did not seem likely now. "That was… ungracious of you, Friendly."

"Oh." The convict frowned at his bloody knife. "I thought… you know. Follow your lead. I was being first sergeant."

"Of course you were. I take all the blame myself. I should have been more specific. I have ever suffered from… unspecificity? Is that a word?"

Friendly shrugged. So did Ishri.

"Well." Cosca scratched gently at his neck as he looked down at Rigrat's body. "An annoying, pompous, swollen-headed man, from what I saw. But if those were capital crimes I daresay half the world would hang, and myself first to the gallows. Perhaps he had many fine qualities of which I was unaware. I'm sure his mother would say so. But this is a battle. Corpses are a sad inevitability." He crossed to the tent flap, took a moment to compose himself, then clawed it desperately aside. "Some help here! For pity's sake, some help!"

He hurried back to Andiche's body and squatted beside it, knelt one way and then another, found what he judged to be the most dramatic pose just as Sesaria burst into the tent.

"God's breath!" as he saw the two corpses, Victus bundling in behind, eyes wide.

"Andiche!" Cosca gestured at Rigrat's sword, still where he had left it. "Run through!" He had observed that people often state the obvious when distressed.

"Someone get a surgeon!" roared Victus.

"Or better yet a priest." Ishri swaggered across the tent towards them. "He's dead."

"What happened?"

"Colonel Rigrat stabbed him."

"Who the hell are you?"

"Ishri."

"He was a great heart!" Cosca gently touched Andiche's staring-eyed, gape-mouthed, blood-spattered face. "A true friend. He stepped before the thrust."

"Andiche did?" Sesaria did not look convinced.

"He gave his life… to save mine." Cosca's voice almost croaked away to nothing at the end, and he dashed a tear from the corner of his eye. "Thank the Fates Sergeant Friendly moved as quickly as he did or I'd have been done for too." He beat at Andiche's chest, fist squelching on his warm, blood-soaked coat. "My fault! My fault! I blame myself!"

"Why?" snarled Victus, glaring down at Rigrat's corpse. "I mean, why did this bastard do it?"

"My fault!" wailed Cosca. "I took money from Rogont to stay out of the battle!"

Sesaria and Victus exchanged a glance. "You took money… to stay out?"

"A huge amount of money! There will be shares by seniority, of course." Cosca waved his hand as though it was a trifle now. "Danger pay for every man, in Gurkish gold."

"Gold?" rumbled Sesaria, eyebrows going up as though Cosca had pronounced a magic word.

"But I would sink it all in the ocean for one minute longer in my old friend's company! To hear him speak again! To see him smile. But never more. Forever…" Cosca swept off his hat, laid it gently over Andiche's face and hung his head. "Silent."

Victus cleared his throat. "How much gold are we talking about, exactly?"

"A… huge… quantity." Cosca gave a shuddering sniff. "As much again as Orso paid us to fight on his behalf."

"Andiche dead. A heavy price to pay." But Sesaria looked as if he perceived the upside.

"Too heavy a price. Far too heavy." Cosca slowly stood. "My friends… could you bring yourselves to make arrangements for the burial? I must observe the battle. We must stumble on. For him. There is one consolation, I suppose."

"The money?" asked Victus.

Cosca slapped down a hand on each captain's shoulder. "Thanks to my bargain we will not need to fight. Andiche will be the only casualty the Thousand Swords suffer today. You could say he died for all of us. Sergeant Friendly!" And Cosca turned and pushed past into the bright sunlight. Ishri glided silently at his elbow.

"Quite the performance," she murmured. "You really should have been an actor rather than a general."

"There's not so much air between the two as you might imagine." Cosca walked to the captain general's chair and leaned on the back, feeling suddenly tired and irritable. Considering the long years he had dreamed of taking revenge for Afieri, it was a disappointing pay-off. He was in terrible need of a drink, fumbled for Morveer's flask, but it was empty. He frowned down into the valley. The Talinese were engaged in a desperate battle perhaps half a mile wide at the bank of the lower ford, waiting for help from the Thousand Swords. Help that would never come. They had the numbers, but the Osprians were still holding their ground, keeping the battle narrow, choking them up in the shallows. The great mкlйe heaved and glittered, the ford crawling with men, bobbing with bodies.

Cosca gave a long sigh. "You Gurkish think there's a point to it all, don't you? That God has a plan, and so forth?"

"I've heard it said." Ishri's black eyes flicked from the valley to him. "And what do you think God's plan is, General Cosca?"

"I have long suspected that it might be to annoy me."

She smiled. Or at least her mouth curled up to show sharp white teeth. "Fury, paranoia and epic self-centredness in the space of a single sentence."

"All the fine qualities a great military leader requires…" He shaded his eyes, squinting off to the west, towards the ridge behind the Talinese lines. "And here they are. Perfectly on schedule." The first flags were showing there. The first glittering spears. The first of what appeared to be a considerable body of men.

The Fate of Styria

Up there." Monza's gloved forefinger, and her little finger too, of course, pointed towards the ridge.

More soldiers were coming over the crest, a mile or two to the south of where the Talinese had first appeared. A lot more. It seemed Orso had kept a few surprises back. Reinforcements from his Union allies, maybe. Monza worked her sore tongue around her sour mouth and spat. From faint hopes to no hopes. A small step, but one nobody ever enjoys taking. The leading flags caught a gust of wind and unfurled for a moment. She peered at them through her eyeglass, frowned, rubbed her eye and peered again. There was no mistaking the cockleshell of Sipani.

"Sipanese," she muttered. Until a few moments ago, the world's most neutral men. "Why the hell are they fighting for Orso?"

"Who says they are?" When she turned to Rogont, he was smiling like a thief who'd whipped the fattest purse of his career. He spread his arms out wide. "Rejoice, Murcatto! The miracle you asked for!"

She blinked. "They're on our side?"

"Most certainly, and right in Foscar's rear! And the irony is that it's all your doing."

"Mine?"

"Entirely yours! You remember the conference in Sipani, arranged by that preening mope the King of the Union?"

The great procession through the crowded streets, the cheering as Rogont and Salier led the way, the jeering as Ario and Foscar followed. "What of it?"

"I had no more intention of making peace with Ario and Foscar than they had with me. My only care was to talk old Chancellor Sotorius over to my side. I tried to convince him that if the League of Eight lost then Duke Orso's greed would not end at Sipani's borders, however neutral they might be. That once my young head was off, his ancient one would be next on the block."

More than likely true. Neutrality was no better defence against Orso than it was against the pox. His ambitions had never stopped at one river or the next. One reason why, until the moment he'd tried to kill her, he'd made Monza such a fine employer.

"But the old man clung to his cherished neutrality, tight as a captain to the wheel of his sinking ship, and I despaired of dislodging him. I am ashamed to admit I began to despair entirely, and was seriously considering fleeing Styria for happier climes." Rogont closed his eyes and tilted his face towards the sun. "And then, oh, happy day, oh, serendipity…" He opened them and looked straight at her. "You murdered Prince Ario."

Black blood pumping from his pale throat, body tumbling through the open window, fire and smoke as the building burned. Rogont grinned with all the smugness of a magician explaining the workings of his latest trick.

"Sotorius was the host. Ario was under his protection. The old man knew Orso would never forgive him for the death of his son. He knew the doom of Sipani was sounded. Unless Orso could be stopped. We came to an agreement that very night, while Cardotti's House of Leisure was still burning. In secret, Chancellor Sotorius brought Sipani into the League of Nine."

"Nine," muttered Monza, watching the Sipanese host march steadily down the gentle hillside towards the fords, and Foscar's almost undefended rear.

"My long retreat from Puranti, which you thought so ill-advised, was intended to give him time to prepare. I backed willingly into this little trap so I could play the bait in a greater one."

"You're cleverer than you look."

"Not difficult. My aunt always told me I looked a dunce."

She frowned across the valley at the motionless host on top of Menzes Hill. "What about Cosca?"

"Some men never change. He took a very great deal of money from my Gurkish backers to keep out of the battle."

It suddenly seemed she didn't understand the world nearly as well as she'd thought. "I offered him money. He wouldn't take it."

"Imagine that, and negotiation so very much your strong point. He wouldn't take the money from you. Ishri, it seems, talks more sweetly. ‘War is but the pricking point of politics. Blades can kill men, but only words can move them, and good neighbours are the surest shelter in a storm.' I quote from Juvens' Principles of Art. Flim-flam and superstition mostly, but the volume on the exercise of power is quite fascinating. You should read more widely, General Murcatto. Your book-learning is narrow in scope."

"I came to reading late," she grunted.

"You may enjoy the full use of my library, once I've butchered the Talinese and conquered Styria." He smiled happily down towards the bottom of the valley, where Foscar's army were in grave danger of being surrounded. "Of course, if Orso's troops had a more seasoned leader today than the young Prince Foscar, things might have been very different. I doubt a man of General Ganmark's abilities would have fallen so completely into my trap. Or even one of Faithful Carpi's long experience." He leaned from his saddle and brought his self-satisfied smirk a little closer. "But Orso has suffered some unfortunate losses in the area of command, lately."

She snorted, turned her head and spat. "So glad to be of help."

"Oh, I couldn't have done it without you. All we need do is hold the lower ford until our brave allies of Sipani reach the river, crush Foscar's men between us, and Duke Orso's ambitions will be drowned in the shallows."

"That all?" Monza frowned towards the water. The Affoians, an untidy red-brown mass on the neglected far right of the battle, had been forced back from the bank. No more than twenty paces of churned-up mud, but enough to give the Talinese a foothold. Now it looked as if some Baolish had waded through the deeper water upstream and got around their flank.

"It is, and it appears that we are already well on our way to… ah." Rogont had seen it too. "Oh." Men were beginning to break from the fighting, struggling up the hillside towards the city.

"Looks as if your brave allies of Affoia have tired of your hospitality."

The mood of smug jubilation that had swept through Rogont's headquarters when the Sipanese appeared was fading rapidly as more and more dots crumbled from the back of the bulging Affoian lines and began to scatter in every direction. Above them the companies of archers grew ragged as bowmen looked nervously up towards the city. No doubt they weren't keen to get closer acquainted with the men they'd been shooting arrows down at for the last hour.

"If those Baolish bastards break through they'll take your people in the flank, roll your whole line up. It'll be a rout."

Rogont chewed at his lip. "The Sipanese are less than half an hour away."

"Excellent. They'll turn up just in time to count our corpses. Then theirs."

He glanced nervously back towards the city. "Perhaps we should retire to our walls—"

"You haven't the time to disengage from that mess. Even as skilled a withdrawer as you are."

The duke's face had lost its colour. "What do we do?"

It suddenly seemed she understood the world perfectly. Monza drew her sword with a faint ringing of steel. A cavalry sword she'd borrowed from Rogont's armoury—simple, heavy and murderously well-sharpened. His eyes rolled down to it. "Ah. That."

"Yes. That."

"I suppose there comes a time when a man must truly cast prudence to one side." Rogont set his jaw, muscles working on the side of his head. "Cavalry. With me…" His voice died to a throaty croak.

A loud voice to a general, Farans wrote, is worth a regiment.

Monza stood in her stirrups and screamed at the top of her lungs. "Form the horse!"

The duke's staff began to screech, point, wave their swords. Mounted men drew in all around, forming up in long ranks. Harnesses rattled, armour clanked, lances clattered against each other, horses snorted and pawed at the ground. Men found their places, tugged their restless mounts around, cursed and bellowed, strapped on helmets and slapped down visors.

The Baolish were breaking through in earnest, boiling out of the widening gaps in Rogont's shattered right wing like the rising tide through a wall of sand. Monza could hear their shrill war cries as they streamed up the slope, see their tattered banners waving, the glitter of metal on the move. The lines of archers above them dissolved all at once, men tossing away their bows and running for the city, mixed up with fleeing Affoians and a few Osprians who were starting to think better of the whole business. It had always amazed her how quickly an army could come apart once the panic started to spread. Like pulling out the keystone of a bridge, the whole thing, so firm and ordered one minute, could be nothing but ruins the next. They were on the brink of that moment of collapse now, she could feel it.

Monza felt a horse pull up beside her and Shivers met her eye, axe in one hand, reins and a heavy shield in the other. He hadn't bothered with armour. Just wore the shirt with the gold thread on the cuffs. The one she'd picked out for him. The one that Benna might have worn. It didn't seem to suit him much now. Looked like a crystal collar on a killing dog.

"Thought maybe you'd headed back North."

"Without all that money you owe me?" His one eye shifted down into the valley. "Never yet turned my back on a fight."

"Good. Glad to have you." It was true enough, at that moment. Whatever else, he had a handy habit of saving her life. She'd already looked away by the time she felt him look at her. And by that time, it was time to go.

Rogont raised his sword, and the noon sun caught the mirror-bright blade and struck flashing fire from it. Just like in the stories.

"Forward!"

Tongues clicked, heels kicked, reins snapped. Together, as if they were one animal, the great line of horsemen started to move. First at a walk, horses stirring, snorting, jerking sideways. The ranks twisted and flexed as eager men and mounts broke ahead. Officers bellowed, bringing them back into formation. Faster they moved, and faster, armour and harness clattering, and Monza's heart beat faster with them. That tingling mix of fear and joy that comes when the thinking's done and there's nothing left but to do. The Baolish had seen them, were struggling to form some kind of line. Monza could see their snarling faces in the moments when the world held still, wild-haired men in tarnished chain mail and ragged fur.

The lances of the horsemen around her began to swing down, points gleaming, and they broke into a trot. The breath hissed cold in Monza's nose, sharp in her dry throat, burned hot in her chest. Not thinking about the pain or the husk she needed for it. Not thinking about what she'd done or what she'd failed to do. Not thinking about her dead brother or the men who'd killed him. Just gripping with all her strength to her horse and to her sword. Just staying fixed on the scattering of Baolish on the slope in front of her, already wavering. They were tired out and ragged from fighting in the valley, running up the hill. And a few hundred tons of horseflesh bearing down on a man could tax his nerve at the best of times.

Their half-formed line began to crumble.

"Charge!" roared Rogont. Monza screamed with him, heard Shivers bellowing beside her, shouts and wails from every man in the line. She dug her heels in hard and her horse swerved, righted itself, sprang down the hill at a bone-cracking gallop. Hooves thudded at the ground, mud and grass flicked and flew, Monza's teeth rattled in her head. The valley bounced and shuddered around her, the sparkling river rushed up towards her. Her eyes were full of wind, she blinked back wet, the world turned to a blurry, sparkling smear then suddenly, mercilessly sharp again. She saw the Baolish scattering, flinging down weapons as they ran. Then the cavalry were among them.

A horse ahead of the pack was impaled on a spear, shaft bending, shattering. It took spearman and rider with it, tumbling over and over down the slope, straps and harness flailing in the air.

She saw a lance take a running man in the back, rip him open from his arse to his shoulders and send the corpse reeling. The fleeing Baolish were spitted, hacked, trampled, broken.

One was flung spinning from the chest of a horse in front, chopped across the back with a sword, clattered shrieking against Monza's leg and was broken apart under the hooves of Rogont's charger.

Another dropped his spear, turning away, his face a pale blur of fear. She swung her sword down, felt the jarring impact up her arm as the heavy blade stoved his helmet deep in with a hollow clonk.

Wind rushed in her ears, hooves pounded. She was screaming still, laughing, screaming. Cut another man down as he tried to run, near taking his arm off at the shoulder and sending blood up in a black gout. Missed another with a full-blooded sweep and only just kept her saddle as she was twisted round after her sword. Righted herself just in time, clinging to the reins with her aching hand.

They were through the Baolish now, had left their torn and bloody corpses in their wake. Shattered lances were flung aside, swords were drawn. The slope levelled off as they plunged on, closer to the river, the ground spotted with Affoian bodies. The battle was a tight-packed slaughter ahead, brought out in greater detail now, more and more Talinese crossing the ford, adding their weight to the mindless press on the banks. Polearms waved and glittered, blades flashed, men struggled and strained. Over the wind and her own breath Monza could hear it, like a distant storm, metal and voices mangled together. Officers rode behind the lines, screaming vainly, trying to bring some trace of order to the madness.

A fresh Talinese regiment had started to push through the gap the Baolish had made on the far right—heavy infantry, well armoured. They'd wheeled and were pressing at the end of the Osprian line, the men in blue straining to hold them off but sorely outnumbered now, more men coming up from the river every moment and forcing the gap wider.

Rogont, shining armour streaked with blood, turned in his saddle and pointed his sword towards them, screamed something no one could hear. It hardly mattered. There was no stopping now.

The Talinese were forming a wedge around a white battle flag, black cross twisting in the wind, an officer at the front stabbing madly at the air as he tried to get them ready to meet the charge. Monza wondered briefly whether she'd ever met him. Men knelt, a mass of glittering armour at the point of the wedge, bristling with polearms, waving and rattling further back, half still caught up with the Osprians, tangled together every which way, a thicket of blades.

Monza saw a cloud of bolts rise from the press in the ford. She winced as they flickered towards her, held her breath for no reason that made any sense. Held breath won't stop an arrow. Rattle and whisper as they showered down, clicking into turf, pinging from heavy armour, thudding into horseflesh.

A horse took a bolt in the neck, twisted, went over on its flank. Another careered into it and its rider came free of the saddle, thrashing at the air, his lance tumbling down the hillside, digging up clods of black soil. Monza wrenched her horse around the wreckage. Something rattled off her breastplate and spun up into her face. She gasped, rolling in her saddle, pain down her cheek. Arrow. The flights had scratched her. She opened her eyes to see an armoured man clutching at a bolt in his shoulder, jolting, jolting, then tumbling sideways, dragged clanking after his madly galloping horse, foot still caught in one stirrup. The rest of them plunged on, horses flowing round the fallen or over them, leaving them trampled.

She'd bitten her tongue somewhere. She spat blood, digging her spurs in again and forcing her mount on, lips curled right back, wind rushing cold at her mouth.

"We should've stuck to farming," she whispered. The Talinese came pounding up to meet her.

Shivers never had understood where the eager fools came from in every battle, but there were always enough of the bastards to make a show. These ones drove their horses straight for the white flag, at the point of the wedge where the spears were well set. The front horse checked before it got there, skidded and reared, rider just clinging on. The horse behind crashed into it and sent beast and man both onto the gleaming points, blood and splinters flying. Another bucked behind, pitching its rider forwards over its head and tumbling into the muck where the front rank gratefully stabbed at him.

Calmer-headed horsemen broke to the sides, flowing round the wedge like a stream round a rock and into its softer flanks where the spears weren't set. Squealing soldiers clambered over each other as the riders bore down, fighting to be anywhere but the front, spears wobbling at all angles.

Monza went left and Shivers followed, his eye fixed on her. Up ahead a couple of horses jumped the milling front rank and into the midst, riders lashing about with swords and maces. Others crashed into the scrambling men, crushing them, trampling them, sending them spinning, screaming, begging, driving through 'em towards the river. Monza chopped some stumbling fool down as she passed and was into the press, hacking away with her sword. A spearman jabbed at her and caught her in the backplate, near tore her from the saddle.

Black Dow's words came to mind—there's no better time to kill a man than in a battle, and that goes double when he's on your own side. Shivers gave his horse the spurs and urged it up beside Monza, standing tall in his stirrups, bringing his axe up high above her head. His lips curled back. He swung it down with a roar and right into the spearman's face, burst it wide open and sent his corpse tumbling. He heaved the axe all the way over to the other side and it crashed into a shield and left a great dent in it, knocked the man who held it under the threshing hooves of the horse beside. Might've been one of Rogont's people, but it was no time to be thinking on who was who.

Kill everyone not on a horse. Kill anyone on a horse who got in his way.

Kill everyone.

He screamed his war cry, the one he'd used outside the walls of Adua, when they scared the Gurkish off with screams alone. The high wail, out of the icy North, though his voice was cracked and creaking now. He laid about him, hardly looking what he was chopping at, axe blade clanking, banging, thudding, voices crying, blubbering, screeching.

A broken voice roared in Northern. "Die! Die! Back to the mud, fuckers!" His ears were full of mindless roar and rattle. A shifting sea of jabbing weapons, squealing shields, shining metal, bone shattered, blood spattered, furious, terrified faces washing all round him, squirming and wriggling, and he hacked and chopped and split them like a mad butcher going at a carcass.

His muscles were throbbing hot, his skin was on fire to the tips of his fingers, damp with sweat in the burning sun. Forwards, always forwards, part of the pack, towards the water, leaving a bloody path of broken bodies, dead men and dead horses behind them. The battle opened up and he was through, men scattering in front of him. He spurred his horse between two of them, jolting down the bank and into the shallow river. He hacked one between the shoulders as they fled then chopped deep into the other's neck on the backswing, sent him spinning into the water.

There were riders all round him now, splashing into the ford, hooves sending up showers of bright spray. He caught a glimpse of Monza, still ahead, horse struggling through deeper water, sword blade twinkling as it went up and cut down. The charge was spent. Lathered horses floundered in the shallows. Riders leaned down, chopping, barking, soldiers stabbed back at them with spears, cut at their legs and their mounts with swords. A horseman floundered desperately in the water, crest of his helmet skewed while men battered at him with maces, knocking him this way and that, leaving great dents in his heavy armour.

Shivers grunted as something grabbed him round the stomach, was bent back, shirt ripping. He flailed with his elbow but couldn't get a good swing. A hand clutched at his head, fingers dug at the scarred side of his face, nails scraping at his dead eye. He roared, kicked, squirmed, tried to swing his left arm but someone had hold of that too. He let go his shield, was dragged back, off his horse and down, twisting into the shallows, rolling sideways and up onto his knees.

A young lad in a studded leather jacket was right next to him in the river, wet hair hanging round his face. He was staring down at something in his hand, something flat and glinting. Looked like an eye. The enamel that'd been in Shivers' face until a moment before. The boy looked up, and they stared at each other. Shivers felt something beside him, ducked, wind on his wet hair as his own shield swung past his head. He spun, axe following him in a great wide circle and thudding deep into someone's ribs, blood showering out. It bent him sideways and snatched him howling off his feet, flung him splashing down a stride or two away.

When he turned, the lad was coming at him with a knife. Shivers twisted sideways, managed to catch his forearm and hold it. They staggered, tangled together, went over, cold water clutching. The knife nicked Shivers' shoulder but he was far bigger, far stronger, rolled out on top. They wrestled and clawed, snorting in each other's faces. He let the axe shaft drop through his fist until he was gripping it right under the blade, the lad caught his wrist with his free hand, water washing around his head, but he didn't have the strength to stop it. Shivers gritted his teeth, twisted the axe until the heavy blade slid up across his neck.

"No," whispered the boy.

The time to say no was before the battle. Shivers pushed with all his weight, growling, moaning. The lad's eyes bulged as the metal bit slowly into his throat, deeper, deeper, the red wound opening wider and wider. Blood squirted out in sticky spurts, down Shivers' arm, over his shirt, into the river and washed away. The lad trembled for a moment, red mouth wide open, then he went limp, staring at the sky.

Shivers staggered up. His rag of a shirt was trapping him, heavy with blood and water. He tore it off, hand so clumsy from gripping his shield hard as murder that he clawed hair from his chest while he did it. He stared about, blinking into the ruthless sun. Men and horses thrashed in the glittering river, blurred and smeary. He bent down and jerked his axe from the boy's half-severed neck, leather twisted round the grip finding the grooves in his palm like a key finds its lock.

He sloshed on through the water on foot, looking for more. Looking for Murcatto.

The dizzy surge of strength the charge had given her was fading fast. Monza's throat was raw from screaming, her legs were aching from gripping her horse. Her right hand was a crooked mass of pain on the reins, her sword arm burned from fingers to shoulder, the blood pounded behind her eyes. She twisted about, not sure anymore which was east or west. It hardly mattered now.

In war, Verturio wrote, there are no straight lines.

There were no lines at all down in the ford, just horsemen and soldiers all tangled up into a hundred murderous, mindless little fights. You could hardly tell friend from enemy and, since no one was checking too closely, there wasn't much difference between the two. Your death could come from anywhere.

She saw the spear, but too late. Her horse shuddered as the point sank into its flank just beside her leg. Its head twisted, one eye rolling wild, foam on its bared teeth. Monza clung to the saddle-bow as it lurched sideways, spear rammed deeper, her leg hot with horse blood. She gave a helpless shriek as she went over, feet still in the stirrups, sword tumbling from her hand as she clutched at nothing. Water hit her in the side, the saddle dug her in the stomach and drove her breath out.

She was under, head full of light, bubbles rushing round her face. Cold clutched at her, and cold fear too. She thrashed her way up for a moment, out of the darkness and suddenly into the glare, the sound of battle crashing at her ears again. She gasped in a breath, shipped some water, coughed it out, gasped in another. She clawed at the saddle with her left hand, tried to drag herself free, but her leg was trapped under her horse's thrashing body.

Something cracked against her forehead and she was under for a moment, dizzy, floppy. Her lungs were burning, her arms were made of mud. Fought her way up again, but weaker this time, only far enough to snatch one breath. Blue sky reeling, shreds of white cloud, like the sky as she tumbled down from Fontezarmo.

The sun flickered at her, searing bright along with her whooping breath, then blurred and sparkling with muffled gurgles as the river washed over her face. No strength left to twist herself out of the water. Was this what Faithful's last moments had been like, drowned on the mill-wheel?

Here was justice.

A black shape blotted out the sun. Shivers, seeming ten feet tall as he stood over her. Something gleamed bright in the socket of his blinded eye. He lifted one boot slowly clear of the river, frowning hard, water trickling from the edges of the sole and into her face. For a moment she was sure he was going to plant that foot on her neck and push her under. Then it splashed down beside her. She heard him growling, straining at the corpse of her horse. She felt the weight across her leg release a little, then a little more. She squirmed, groaned, breathed in water and coughed it out, finally dragged her leg free and floundered up.

She trembled on hands and knees, up to her elbows in the river, babbling water sparkling and flickering in front of her, drips falling from her wet hair. "Shit," she whispered, every breath shuddering in her sore ribs. "Shit." She needed a smoke.

"They're coming," came Shivers' voice. She felt his hand rammed into her armpit, dragging her up. "Get a blade."

She staggered under the weight of wet clothes and wet armour to a bobbing corpse caught on a rock. A heavy mace with a metal shaft was still hanging by its strap from his wrist, and she dragged it free with fumbling fingers, pulled a long knife from his belt.

Just in time. An armoured man was bearing down on her, planting his feet carefully, peering at her with hard little eyes over the top of his shield, sword beaded with wet sticking out sideways. She backed off a step or two, pretending to be finished. Didn't take much pretending. As he took another step she came at him. Couldn't have called it a spring. More of a tired half-dive, hardly able to shove her feet through the water fast enough to keep up with the rest of her body.

She swung at him mindlessly with the mace and it clanged off his shield, made her arm sing to the shoulder. She grunted, wrestled with him, stabbed at him with her knife, but it caught the side of his breastplate and scraped off harmless. The shield barged into her and sent her stumbling. She saw one swing of his sword coming and just had the presence of mind to duck it. She flailed with the mace and caught air, reeled off balance, hardly any strength left, gulping for air. His sword went up again.

She saw Shivers' mad grin behind him, a flash as the red blade of his axe caught the sun. It split the man's armoured shoulder down to his chest with a heavy thud, sent blood spraying in Monza's face. She reeled away, ears full of his gargling shriek, nose full of his blood, trying to scrape her eyes clear on the back of one hand.

First thing she saw was another soldier, open helmet with a bearded face inside, stabbing with a spear. She tried to twist away but it caught her hard in the chest, point shrieked down her breastplate, sent her toppling, head snapping forwards. She was on her back in the ford and the soldier stumbled past, floundering into a crack in the river bed, sending water showering in her eyes. She fought her way up to one knee, bloody hair tangled across her face. He turned, lifting the spear to stab at her again. She twisted round and rammed the knife between two plates of armour, into the side of his knee right to the crosspiece.

He bent down over her, eyes bulging, opened his mouth wide to scream. She snarled as she jerked the mace up and smashed it into the bottom of his jaw. His head snapped back, blood and teeth and bits of teeth flew high. He seemed to stay there for a moment, hands dangling, then she clubbed his stretched-out throat with the mace, sprawled on top of him as he fell, rolled about in the river and came up spitting.

There were men around her still, but none of them fighting. Standing or sitting in their saddles, staring about. Shivers stood watching her, axe hanging from one hand. For some reason he was stripped half-naked, his white skin dashed and spattered with red. The enamel was gone from his eye and the bright metal ball behind it gleamed in the socket with the midday sun, dewy with beads of wet.

"Victory!" She heard someone scream. Blurry, quivering, wet-eyed, she saw a man on a brown horse, in the midst of the river, standing in his stirrups, shining sword held high. "Victory!"

She took a wobbling step towards Shivers and he dropped his scarred axe, caught her as she fell. She clung on to him, right arm around his shoulder, left dangling, still just gripping the mace, if only because she couldn't make the fingers open.

"We won," she whispered at him, and she felt herself smiling.

"We won," he said, squeezing her tight, half-lifting her off her feet.

"We won."

Cosca lowered his eyeglass, blinked and rubbed his eyes, one half-blind from being shut for the best part of the hour, the other half-blind from being jammed into the eyepiece for the same period. "Well, there we are." He shifted uncomfortably in the captain general's chair. His trousers had become wedged in the sweaty crack of his arse and he wriggled as he tugged them free. "God smiles on results, do you Gurkish say?"

Silence. Ishri had melted away as swiftly as she had appeared. Cosca swivelled the other way, towards Friendly. "Quite the show, eh, Sergeant?"

The convict looked up from his dice, frowned down into the valley and said nothing. Duke Rogont's timely charge had plugged the gaping hole in his lines, crushed the Baolish, driven deep into the Talinese ranks and left them broken. Not at all what the Duke of Delay was known for. In fact, Cosca was oddly pleased to perceive the audacious hand, or perhaps the fist, of Monzcarro Murcatto all over it.

The Osprian infantry, the threat on their right wing extinguished, had blocked off the eastern bank of the lower ford entirely. Their new Sipanese allies had well and truly joined the fray, won a brief engagement with Foscar's surprised rearguard and were close to sealing off the western bank. A good half of Orso's army—or of those that were not now scattered dead on the slopes, on the banks downstream or floating face down out to sea—were trapped hopelessly in the shallows between the two, and were laying down their arms. The other half were fleeing, dark specks scattered across the green slopes on the valley's western side. The very slopes down which they had so proudly marched but a few short hours ago, confident of victory. Sipanese cavalry moved in clumps around their edges, armour gleaming in the fierce noon sun, rounding up the survivors.

"All done now, though, eh, Victus?"

"Looks that way."

"Everyone's favourite part of a battle. The rout." Unless you were in it, of course. Cosca watched the tiny figures spilling from the fords, spreading out across the trampled grass, and had to shake off a sweaty shiver at the memory of Afieri. He forced the carefree grin to stay on his face. "Nothing like a good rout, eh, Sesaria?"

"Who'd have thought it?" The big man slowly shook his head. "Rogont won."

"Grand Duke Rogont would appear to be a most unpredictable and resourceful gentleman." Cosca yawned, stretched, smacked his lips. "One after my own heart. I look forward to having him as an employer. Probably we should help with the mopping up." The searching of the dead. "Prisoners to be taken and ransomed." Or murdered and robbed, depending on social station. "Unguarded baggage that should be confiscated, lest it spoil in the open air." Lest it be plundered or burned before they could get their gauntlets on it.

Victus split a toothy grin. "I'll make arrangements to bring it all in from the cold."

"Do so, brave Captain Victus, do so. I declare the sun is on its way back down and it is past time the men were on the move. I would be ashamed if, in after times, the poets said the Thousand Swords were at the Battle of Ospria… and did nothing." Cosca smiled wide, and this time with feeling. "Lunch, perhaps?"

To the Victors…

Black dow used to say the only thing better'n a battle was a battle then a fuck, and Shivers couldn't say he disagreed. Seemed she didn't either. She was waiting there for him, after all, when he stalked into the darkened room, bare as a baby, stretched out on the bed, her hands behind her head and one long, smooth leg pointing out towards him.

"What kept you?" she asked, rocking her hips from one side to the other.

Time was he'd reckoned himself a quick thinker but the only thing moving fast right then was his cock. "I was…" He was having trouble thinking much beyond the patch of dark hair between her legs, his anger all leaked away like beer from a broken jar. "I was… well…" He kicked the door shut and walked slowly to her. "Don't matter much, does it?"

"Not much." She slipped off the bed, started undoing his borrowed shirt, going about it as if it was something they'd arranged.

"Can't say I was expecting… this." He reached out, almost scared to touch her in case he found he was dreaming it. Ran his fingertips down her bare arms, skin rough with gooseflesh. "Not after last time we spoke."

She pushed her fingers into his hair and pulled his head down towards her, breath on his face. She kissed his neck, then his chin, then his mouth. "Shall I go?" She sucked gently at his lips again.

"Fuck, no," his voice hardly more'n a croak.

She had his belt open now, dug inside and pulled his cock free, started working at it with one hand while his trousers sagged slowly down, catching on his knees, belt buckle scraping on the floor.

Her lips were cool on his chest, on his stomach, her tongue tickled his belly. Her hand slid under his fruits, cold and ticklish, and he squirmed, gave a womanly kind of a squeak. He heard a quiet slurp as she wrapped her lips around him and he stood there, bent over some, knees weak and trembling and his mouth hanging open. Her head started bobbing slowly in and out, and he moved his hips in time without thinking, grunting to himself like a pig got the swill.

Monza wiped her mouth on the back of her arm, squirmed her way onto the bed, pulling him after, kissing at her neck, at her breastbone, nipping at her chest, growling to himself like a dog got the bone.

She brought her knee up and flipped him over onto his back. He frowned, left side of his face all in darkness, right side full of shadows from the shifting lamplight, running his fingertips gently along the scars on her ribs. She slapped his hand away. "Told you. I fell down a mountain. Get your trousers off."

He wriggled eagerly free of them, got them tangled around his ankles. "Shit, damn, bastard—Ah!" He finally kicked them off and she shoved him down onto his back, clambered on top of him, one of his hands sliding up her thigh, wet fingers working between her legs. She stayed there a while, crouched over him, growling in his face and feeling his breath coming quick back at her, grinding her hips against his hand, feeling his prick rubbing up against the inside of her thigh—

"Ah, wait!" He wriggled away, sitting up, winced as he fiddled with the skin at the end of his cock. "Got it. Go!"

"I'll tell you when to go." She worked her way forwards on her knees, finding the spot and then nudging her cunt against him softly, gently, not in and not out, halfway between.

"Oh." He wriggled his way up onto his elbows, straining vainly up against her.

"Ah." She leaned down over him, her hair tickling his face, and he smiled, snapped his teeth at it.

"Oh-urgh." She pushed her thumb into his mouth, dragged his head sideways and he sucked at it, bit at it, catching her wrist, licking at her hand, then her chin, then her tongue.

"Ah." She started to push down on him, smiling herself, grunting in her throat and him grunting back at her.

"Oh."

She had the root of his cock in one hand, rubbing herself against the end of it, not in and not out, always halfway between. She had the other round the back of Shivers' head, holding his face against her tits while he gathered them up, squeezed them, bit at them.

Her fingers worked under his jaw, thumb-tip sliding ever so gently onto his ruined cheek, tickling, teasing, scratching. He felt a sudden stab of fury, snatched hold of her wrist, hard, twisted it round, twisted her off him and onto her knees, twisted her arm behind her, face pushed down into the sheet, making her gasp.

He was grunting something in Northern and even he didn't know what. He felt a burning need to hurt her. Hurt himself. He tangled his free hand in her hair and shoved her head hard against the wall, growling and whimpering at her from behind while she groaned, gasped, mouth wide open, hair across her face fluttering with her breath. He still had her arm twisted behind her and her hand curled round, gripping his wrist hard while he gripped hers, dragging him down over her.

Uh, uh, their mindless grunting. Creak, creak, the bed moaning along with them. Squelch, squelch, his skin slapping hard against her arse.

Monza worked her hips against him a few more times, and with each one he gave a little hoot, head back, veins standing from his stretched-out neck. With each one she gave a snarl through gritted teeth, muscles all clenched aching tight, then slowly going soft. She stayed there for a moment, hunched over, limp as wet leaves, hard breath catching in the back of her throat. She winced and he shivered as she ground herself against him one last time. Then she slid off, gathered up a handful of sheet and wiped herself on it.

He lay there on his back, sweaty chest rising and falling fast, arms spread out wide, staring at the gilded ceiling. "So this is what victory feels like. If I'd known I'd have taken some gambles sooner."

"No, you wouldn't. You're the Duke of Delay, remember?"

He peered down at his wet cock, nudged it to one side, then the other. "Well, some things it's best to take your time with…"

Shivers prised his fingers open, scuffed, scabbed, scratched and clicking from gripping his axe all the long day. They left white marks across her wrist, turning slowly pink. He rocked back on his haunches, body sagging, aching muscles loose, heaving in air. His lust all spent and his rage spent with it. For now.

Her necklace of red stones rattled as she rolled over towards him. Onto her back, tits flattened against her ribs, the knobbles of her hip bones sticking sharp from her stomach, of her collarbones sticking sharp from her shoulders. She winced, working her hand around, rubbing at her wrist.

"Didn't mean to hurt you," he grunted, lying badly, and not much caring either.

"Oh, I'm nothing like that delicate. And you can call me Carlot." She reached up and brushed his lips gently with a fingertip. "I think we know each other well enough for that…"

Monza clambered off the bed and walked to the desk, legs weak and aching, feet flapping against the cool marble. The husk lay on it, beside the lamp. The knife blade gleamed, the polished stem of the pipe shone. She sat down in front of it. Yesterday she wouldn't have been able to keep her trembling hands away from it. Today, even with a legion of fresh aches, cuts, grazes from the battle, it didn't call to her half so loud. She held her left hand up, knuckles starting to scab over, and frowned at it. It was firm.

"I never really thought I could do it," she muttered.

"Eh?"

"Beat Orso. I thought I might get three of them. Four, maybe, before they killed me. Never thought I'd live this long. Never thought I could actually do it."

"And now one would say the odds favour you. How quickly hope can flicker into life once more." Rogont drew himself up before the mirror. A tall one, crusted with coloured flowers of Visserine glass. She could hardly believe, watching him pose, that she'd once been every bit as vain. The hours she'd wasted preening before the mirror. The fortunes she and Benna had spent on clothes. A fall down a mountain, a body scarred, a hand ruined and six months living like a hunted dog seemed to have cured her of that, at least. Perhaps she should've suggested the same remedy to Rogont.

The duke lifted his chin in a regal gesture, chest inflated. He frowned, sagged, pressed at a long scratch just below his collarbone. "Damn it."

"Nick yourself on your nail-file, did you?"

"A savage sword-cut like this could easily have been the death of a lesser man, I'll have you know! But I braved it, without complaint, and fought on like a tiger, blood streaming, streaming I say, down my armour! I am beginning to suspect it could even leave a mark."

"No doubt you'll wear it with massive pride. You could have a hole cut in all your shirts to display it to the public."

"If I didn't know better I'd suspect I was being mocked. You do realise, if things unfold according to my plans—and they have so far, I might observe—you will soon be directing your sarcasm at the King of Styria. I have already, in fact, commissioned my crown, from Zoben Casoum, the world-famous master jeweller of Corontiz—"

"Cast from Gurkish gold, no doubt."

Rogont paused for a moment, frowning. "The world is not as simple as you think, General Murcatto. A great war rages."

She snorted. "You think I missed that? These are the Years of Blood."

He snorted back. "The Years of Blood are only the latest skirmish. This war began long before you or I were born. A struggle between the Gurkish and the Union. Or between the forces that control them, at least, the church of Gurkhul and the banks of the Union. Their battlefields are everywhere, and every man must pick his side. The middle ground contains only corpses. Orso stands with the Union. Orso has the backing of the banks. And so I have my… backers. Every man must kneel to someone."

"Perhaps you didn't notice. I'm not a man."

Rogont's smile broke out again. "Oh, I noticed. It was the second thing that attracted me to you."

"The first?"

"You can help me unite Styria."

"And why should I?"

"A united Styria… she could be as great as the Union, as great as the Empire of Gurkhul. Greater, even! She could free herself from their struggle, and stand alone. Free. We have never been closer! Nicante and Puranti fall over themselves to re-enter my good graces. Affoia never left them. Sotorius is my man, with certain trifling concessions to Sipani, no more than a few islands and the city of Borletta—"

"And what do the citizens of Borletta have to say to it?"

"Whatever I tell them to say. They are a changeable crowd, as you discovered when they scrambled to offer you their beloved Duke Cantain's head. Muris bowed to Sipani long ago, and Sipani now bows to me, in name at least. The power of Visserine is broken. As for Musselia, Etrea and Caprile, well. You and Orso between you, I suspect, have quite crushed their independent temper out of them."

"Westport?"

"Details, details. Part of the Union or of Kanta, depending on who you ask. No, it is Talins that concerns us now. Talins is the key in the lock, the hub of the wheel, the missing piece in my majestic jigsaw."

"You love to listen to your own voice, don't you?"

"I find it talks a lot of good sense. Orso's army is scattered, and with it his power is vanished, like smoke on the wind. He has ever resorted first to the sword, as certain others are wont to do, in fact…" He raised his brows significantly at her, and she waved him on. "He finds, now his sword is broken, that he has no friends to sustain him. But it will not be enough to destroy Orso. I need someone to replace him, someone to guide the troublesome citizens of Talins into my gracious fold."

"Let me know when you find the right shepherd."

"Oh, I already have. Someone of skill, cunning, matchless resilience and fearsome reputation. Someone loved in Talins far more than Orso himself. Someone he tried to kill, in fact… for stealing his throne…"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "I didn't want his throne then. I don't want it now."

"But since it is there for the taking… what comes once you have your revenge? You deserve to be remembered. You deserve to shape the age." Benna would have said so, and Monza had to admit that part of her was enjoying the flattery. Enjoying being so close to power again. She'd been used to both, and it had been a long time since she'd had a taste of either. "Besides, what better revenge could you have than making Orso's greatest fear come to pass?" That struck a fine note with her, and Rogont gave her a sly grin to show he knew it. "Let me be honest. I need you."

Let me be honest. I need you." That rested easily on Shivers' pride, and she gave him a sly smile to show she knew it. "I scarcely have a friend left in all the wide Circle of the World."

"Seems you've a knack for making new ones."

"It's harder than you'd think. To be always the outsider." He didn't need to be told that after the few months he'd had. She didn't lie, from what he could tell, just led the truth by the nose whichever way it suited her. "And sometimes it can be hard to tell your friends from your enemies."

"True enough." He didn't need to be told that either.

"I daresay where you come from loyalty is considered a noble quality. Down here in Styria, a man has to bend with the wind." Hard to believe anyone who smiled so sweetly could have anything dark in mind. But everything was dark to him now. Everything had a knife hidden in it. "Your friends and mine General Murcatto and Grand Duke Rogont, for example." Carlot's two eyes drifted up to his one. "I wonder what they're about, right now?"

"Fucking!" he barked at her, the fury boiling out of him so sharp she flinched away, like she was expecting him to smash her head into the wall. Maybe he nearly did. That or smash his own. But her face soon smoothed out and she smiled some more, like murderous rage was her favourite quality in a man.

"The Snake of Talins and the Worm of Ospria, all stickily entwined together. Well matched, that treacherous pair. Styria's greatest liar and Styria's greatest murderer." She gently traced the scar on his chest with one fingertip. "What comes once she has her revenge? Once Rogont has raised her up and dangled her like a child's toy for the people of Talins to stare at? Will you have a place when the Years of Blood are finally ended? When the war is over?"

"I don't have a place anywhere without a war. That much I've proved."

"Then I fear for you."

Shivers snorted. "I'm lucky to have you watching my back."

"I wish I could do more. But you know how the Butcher of Caprile solves her problems, and Duke Rogont has scant regard for honest men…"

I have nothing but the highest regard for honest men, but fighting stripped to the waist? It's so…" Rogont grimaced as though he'd tasted off milk. "Clichй. You wouldn't catch me doing it."

"What, fighting?"

"How dare you, woman, I am Stolicus reborn! You know what I mean. Your Northern accomplice, with the…" Rogont waved a lazy hand at the left side of his face. "Eye. Or lack thereof."

"Jealous, already?" she muttered, sick at even coming near the subject.

"A little. But it's his jealousy that concerns me. This is a man much prone to violence."

"It's what I took him on for."

"Perhaps the time has come to lay him off. Mad dogs savage their owner more often than their owner's enemies."

"And their owner's lovers first of all."

Rogont nervously cleared his throat. "We certainly would not want that. He seems firmly attached to you. When a barnacle is firmly attached to the hull of a ship, it is sometimes necessary to remove it with a sudden, unexpected and… decisive force."

"No!" Her voice stabbed out far sharper than she'd had in mind. "No. He's saved my life. More than once, and risked his life to do it. Just yesterday he did it, and today have him killed? No. I owe him." She remembered the smell as Langrier pushed the brand into his face, and she flinched. It should've been you. "No! I'll not have him touched."

"Think about it." Rogont padded slowly towards her. "I understand your reluctance, but you must see it's the safe thing to do."

"The prudent thing?" she sneered at him. "I'm warning you. Leave him be."

"Monzcarro, please understand, it's your safety I'm—Oooof!" She sprang up from the chair, kicking his foot away, caught his arm as he lurched onto his knees and twisted his wrist behind his shoulder blade, forced him down until she was squatting over his back, his face squashed against the cool marble.

"Didn't you hear me say no? If it's sudden, unexpected and decisive force I want…" She twisted his hand a little further and he squeaked, struggled helplessly. "I can manage it myself."

"Yes! Ah! Yes! I quite clearly see that!"

"Good. Don't bring him up again." She let go of his wrist and he lay there for a moment, breathing hard. He wriggled onto his back, rubbing gently at his hand, looking up with a hurt frown as she straddled his stomach.

"You didn't have to do that."

"Maybe I enjoyed doing it." She looked over her shoulder. His cock was half-hard, nudging at the back of her leg. "I'm not sure you didn't."

"Now that you mention it… I must confess I rather relish being looked down on by a strong woman." He brushed her knees with his fingertips, ran his hands slowly up the insides of her scarred thighs to the top, and then gently back down. "I don't suppose… you could be persuaded… to piss on me, at all?"

Monza frowned. "I don't need to go."

"Perhaps… some water, then? And afterwards—"

"I think I'll stick to the pot."

"Such a waste. The pot will not appreciate it."

"Once it's full you can do what you like with it, how's that?"

"Ugh. Not at all the same thing."

Monza slowly shook her head as she stepped off him. "A pretend grand duchess, pissing on a would-be king. You couldn't make it up."

Enough." Shivers was covered with bruises, grazes, scratches. A bastard of a gash across his back, just where it was hardest to scratch. Now his cock was going soft they were all niggling at him again in the sticky heat, stripping his patience. He was sick of talking round and round it, when it was lying between 'em, plain as a rotting corpse in the bed. "You want Murcatto dead, you can out and say it."

She paused, mouth half-open. "You're surprisingly blunt."

"No, I'm about as blunt as you'd expect for a one-eyed killer. Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why do you need her dead so bad? I'm an idiot, but not that big an idiot. I don't reckon a woman like you is drawn to my pretty face. Nor my sense of humour neither. Maybe you want yourself some revenge for what we did to you in Sipani. Everyone likes revenge. But that's just part of it."

"No small part…" She let one fingertip trail slowly up his leg. "As far as being drawn to you, I was always more interested in honest men than pretty faces, but I wonder… can I trust you?"

"No. If you could I wouldn't be much suited to the task, would I?" He caught hold of her trailing finger and twisted it towards him, dragged her wincing face close. "What's in it for you?"

"Ah! There's a man in the Union! The man I work for, the one who sent me to Styria in the first place, to spy on Orso!"

"The Cripple?" Vitari had said the name. The man who stood behind the King of the Union.

"Yes! Ah! Ah!" She squealed as he twisted her finger further, then he let it go and she snatched it back, holding it to her chest, bottom lip stuck out at him. "You didn't have to do that."

"Maybe I enjoyed doing it. Go on."

"When Murcatto made me betray Orso… she made me betray the Cripple too. Orso I can live with as an enemy, if I must—"

"But not this Cripple?"

She swallowed. "No. Not him."

"A worse enemy than the great Duke Orso, eh?"

"Far worse. Murcatto is his price. She threatens to rip apart all his carefully woven plans to bring Talins into the Union. He wants her dead." The smooth mask had slipped and she had this look, shoulders slumped, staring down wide-eyed at the sheet. Hungry, and sick, and very, very scared. Shivers liked seeing it. Might've been the first honest look he'd seen since he landed in Styria. "If I can find a way to kill her, I get my life," she whispered.

"And I'm your way."

She looked back up at him, and her eyes were hard. "Can you do it?"

"I could've done it today." He'd thought of splitting her head with his axe. He'd thought of planting his boot on her face and shoving her under the water. Then she'd have had to respect him. But instead he'd saved her. Because he'd been hoping. Maybe he still was… but hoping had made a fool of him. And Shivers was good and sick of looking the fool.

How many men had he killed? In all those battles, skirmishes, desperate fights up in the North? Just in the half-year since he came to Styria, even? At Cardotti's, in the smoke and the madness? Among the statues in Duke Salier's palace? In the battle just a few hours back? It might've been a score. More. And women among 'em. He was steeped in blood, deep as the Bloody-Nine himself. Didn't seem likely that adding one more to the tally would cost him a place among the righteous. His mouth twisted.

"I could do it." It was plain as the scar on his face that Monza cared nothing for him. Why should he care anything for her? "I could do it easily."

"Then do it." She crept forwards on her hands and knees, mouth half-open, pale tits hanging heavy, looking him right in his one eye. "For me." Her nipples brushed against his chest, one way then the other as she crawled over him. "For you." Her necklace of blood-red stones clicked gently against his chin. "For us."

"I'll need to pick my moment." He slid his hand down her back and up onto her arse. "Caution first, eh?"

"Of course. Nothing done well is ever… rushed."

His head was full of her scent, sweet smell of flowers mixed with the sharp smell of fucking. "She owes me money," he growled, the last objection.

"Ah, money. I used to be a merchant, you know. Buying. Selling." Her breath was hot on his neck, on his mouth, on his face. "And in my long experience, when people begin to talk prices, the deal is already done." She nuzzled at him, lips brushing the mass of scar down his cheek. "Do this thing for me, and I promise you'll get all you could ever spend." The cool tip of her tongue lapped gently at the raw flesh round his metal eye, sweet and soothing. "I have an arrangement… with the Banking House… of Valint and Balk…"

So Much for Nothing

Silver gleamed in the sunlight with that special, mouth-watering twinkle that somehow only money has. A whole strongbox full of it, stacked in plain sight, drawing the eyes of every man in the camp more surely than if a naked countess had been sprawled suggestively upon the table. Piles of sparking, sparkling coins, freshly minted. Some of the cleanest currency in Styria, pressed into some of its grubbiest hands. A pleasing irony. The coins carried the scales on one side, of course, traditional symbol of Styrian commerce since the time of the New Empire. On the other, the stern profile of Grand Duke Orso of Talins. An even more pleasing irony, to Cosca's mind, that he was paying the men of the Thousand Swords with the face of the man they had but lately betrayed.

In a pocked and spattered, squinting and scratching, coughing and slovenly line the soldiers and staff of the first company of the first regiment of the Thousand Swords passed by the makeshift table to receive their unjust deserts. They were closely supervised by the chief notary of the brigade and a dozen of its most reliable veterans, which was just as well, because during the course of the morning Cosca had witnessed every dispiriting trick imaginable.

Men approached the table on multiple occasions in different clothes, giving false names or those of dead comrades. They routinely exaggerated, embellished or flat-out lied in regards to rank or length of service. They wept for sick mothers, children or acquaintances. They delivered a devastating volley of complaints about food, drink, equipment, runny shits, superiors, the smell of other men, the weather, items stolen, injuries suffered, injuries given, perceived slights on non-existent honour and on, and on, and on. Had they demonstrated the same audacity and persistence in combat that they did in trying to prise the slightest dishonest pittance from their commander they would have been the greatest fighting force of all time.

But First Sergeant Friendly was watching. He had worked for years in the kitchens of Safety, where dozens of the world's most infamous swindlers vied daily with each other for enough bread to survive, and so he knew every low trick, con and stratagem practised this side of hell. There was no sliding around his basilisk gaze. The convict did not permit a single shining portrait of Duke Orso to be administered out of turn.

Cosca shook his head in deep dismay as he watched the last man trudge away, the unbearable limp for which he had demanded compensation miraculously healed. "By the Fates, you would have thought they'd be glad of the bonus! It isn't as if they had to fight for it! Or even steal it themselves! I swear, the more you give a man, the more he demands, and the less happy he becomes. No one ever appreciates what he gets for nothing. A pox on charity!" He slapped the notary on the shoulder, causing him to scrawl an untidy line across his carefully kept page.

"Mercenaries aren't all they used to be," grumbled the man as he sourly blotted it.

"No? To my eye they seem very much as violent-tempered and mean-spirited as ever. ‘Things aren't what they used to be' is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things used to be better, they invariably mean they were better for them, because they were young, and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave."

"So everything stays the same?" asked the notary, looking sadly up.

"Some men get better, some get worse." Cosca heaved a weighty sigh. "But on the grand scale, I have observed no significant changes. How many of our heroes have we paid now?"

"That's all of Squire's company, of Andiche's regiment. Well, Andiche's regiment that was."

Cosca put a hand over his eyes. "Please, don't speak of that brave heart. His loss still stabs at me. How many have we paid?"

The notary licked his fingers, flipped over a couple of crackling leaves of his ledger, started counting the entries. "One, two, three—"

"Four hundred and four," said Friendly.

"And how many persons in the Thousand Swords?"

The notary winced. "Counting all ancillaries, servants and tradesmen?"

"Absolutely."

"Whores too?"

"Counting them first, they're the hardest workers in the whole damned brigade!"

The lawyer squinted skywards. "Er…"

"Twelve thousand, eight hundred and nineteen," said Friendly.

Cosca stared at him. "I've heard it said a good sergeant is worth three generals, but you may well be worth three dozen, my friend! Thirteen thousand, though? We'll be here tomorrow night still!"

"Very likely," grumbled the notary, flipping over the page. "Crapstane's company of Andiche's regiment will be next. Andiche's regiment… as was… that is."

"Meh." Cosca unscrewed the cap of the flask Morveer had thrown at him in Sipani, raised it to his lips, shook it and realised it was empty. He frowned at the battered metal bottle, remembering with some discomfort the poisoner's sneering assertion that a man never changes. So much discomfort, in fact, that his need for a drink was sharply increased. "A brief interlude, while I obtain a refill. Get Crapstane's company lined up." He stood, grimacing as his aching knees crunched into life, then cracked a smile. A large man was walking steadily towards him through the mud, smoke, canvas and confusion of the camp.

"Why, Master Shivers, from the cold and bloody North!" The Northman had evidently given up on fine dressing, wearing a leather jack and rough-spun shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows. His hair, neat as any Musselian dandy's when Cosca first laid eyes upon the man, had grown back to an unkempt tangle, heavy jaw fuzzed with a growth between beard and stubble. None of it did anything to disguise the mass of scar covering one side of his face. It would take more than hair to hide that. "My old partner in adventure!" Or murder, as was in fact the case. "You have a twinkle in your eye." Literally he did, for bright metal in the Northman's empty socket was catching the noon sun and shining with almost painful brightness. "You look well, my friend, most well!" Though he looked, in fact, a mutilated savage.

"Happy face, happy heart." The Northman showed a lopsided smile, burned flesh shifting only by the smallest margin.

"Quite so. Have a smile for breakfast, you'll be shitting joy by lunch. Were you in the battle?"

"That I was."

"I thought as much. You have never struck me as a man afraid to roll up his sleeves. Bloody, was it?"

"That it was."

"Some men thrive on blood, though, eh? I daresay you've known a few who were that way."

"That I have."

"And where is your employer, my infamous pupil, replacement and predecessor, General Murcatto?"

"Behind you," came a sharp voice.

He spun about. "God's teeth, woman, but you haven't lost the knack of creeping up on a man!" He pretended at shock to smother the sentimental welling-up that always accompanied her appearance, and threatened to make his voice crack with emotion. She had a long scratch down one cheek, some bruising on her face, but otherwise looked well. Very well. "My joy to see you alive knows no bounds, of course." He swept off his hat, feather drooping apologetically, and kneeled in the dirt in front of her. "Say you forgive me my theatrics. You see now I was thinking only of you all along. My fondness for you is undiminished."

She snorted at that. "Fondness, eh?" More than she could ever know, or he would ever tell her. "So this pantomime was for my benefit? I may swoon with gratitude."

"One of your most endearing features was always your readiness to swoon." He cranked himself back up to standing. "A consequence of your sensitive, womanly heart, I suppose. Walk with me, I have something to show you." He led her off through the trees towards the farmhouse, its whitewashed walls gleaming in the midday sun, Friendly and Shivers trailing them like bad memories. "I must confess that, as well as doing you a favour, and the sore temptation of placing my boot in Orso's arse at long last, there were some trifling issues of personal gain to consider."

"Some things never change."

"Nothing ever does, and why should it? A considerable quantity of Gurkish gold was on offer. Well, you know it was, you were the first to offer it. Oh, and Rogont was kind enough to promise me, in the now highly likely event that he is crowned King of Styria, the Grand Duchy of Visserine."

He was deeply satisfied by her gasp of surprise. "You? Grand fucking Duke of Visserine?"

"I probably won't use the word fucking on my decrees, but otherwise, correct. Grand Duke Nicomo sounds rather well, no? After all, Salier is dead."

"That much I know."

"He had no heirs, not even distant ones. The city was plundered, devastated by fire, its government collapsed, much of the populace fled, killed or otherwise taken advantage of. Visserine is in need of a strong and selfless leader to restore her to her glories."

"And instead they'll have you."

He allowed himself a chuckle. "But who better suited? Am I not a native of Visserine?"

"A lot of people are. You don't see them helping themselves to its dukedom."

"Well, there's only one, and it's mine."

"Why do you even want it? Commitments? Responsibilities? I thought you hated all that."

"I always thought so, but my wandering star led me only to the gutter. I have not had a productive life, Monzcarro."

"You don't say."

"I have frittered my gifts away on nothing. Self-pity and self-hatred have led me by unsavoury paths to self-neglect, self-injury and the very brink of self-destruction. The unifying theme?"

"Yourself?"

"Precisely so. Vanity, Monza. Self-obsession. The mark of infancy. I need, for my own sake and those of my fellow men, to be an adult. To turn my talents outwards. It is just as you always tried to tell me—the time comes when a man has to stick. What better way than to commit myself wholeheartedly to the service of the city of my birth?"

"Your wholehearted commitment. Alas for the poor city of Visserine."

"They'll do better than they did with that art-thieving gourmand."

"Now they'll have an all-thieving drunk."

"You misjudge me, Monzcarro. A man can change."

"I thought you just said nothing ever does?"

"Changed my mind. And why not? In one day I bagged myself a fortune, and one of the richest dukedoms in Styria too."

She shook her head in combined disgust and amazement. "And all you did was sit here."

"Therein lies the real trick. Anyone can earn rewards." Cosca tipped his head back, smiled up at the black branches and the blue sky beyond them. "Do you know, I think it highly unlikely that ever in history has one man gained so much for doing absolutely nothing. But I am hardly the only one to profit from yesterday's exploits. Grand Duke Rogont, I daresay, is happy with the outcome. And you are a great stride nearer to your grand revenge, are you not?" He leaned close to her. "Speaking of which, I have a gift for you."

She frowned at him, ever suspicious. "What gift?"

"I would hate to spoil the surprise. Sergeant Friendly, could you take your ex-employer and her Northern companion into the house, and show her what we found yesterday? For her to do with as she pleases, of course." He turned away with a smirk. "We're all friends now!"

In here." Friendly pushed the low door creaking open. Monza gave Shivers a look. He shrugged back. She ducked under the lintel and into a dim room, cool after the sun outside, with a ceiling of vaulted brick and patches of light across a dusty stone floor. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom she saw a figure wedged into the furthest corner. He shuffled forwards, chain between his ankles rattling faintly, and criss-cross shadows from the grubby window panes fell across one half of his face.

Prince Foscar, Duke Orso's younger son. Monza felt her whole body stiffen.

It seemed he'd finally grown up since she last saw him, running from his father's hall in Fontezarmo, wailing that he wanted no part in her murder. He'd lost the fluff on his top lip, gained a bloom of bruises ringing one eye and swapped the apologetic look for a fearful one. He stared at Shivers, then at Friendly as they stepped through into the room behind her. Not two men to give a prisoner hope, on the whole. He met Monza's eye, finally, reluctantly, with the haunted look of a man who knows what's coming.

"It's true then," he whispered. "You're alive."

"Unlike your brother. I stabbed him through his throat then threw him out of the window." The sharp knobble in Foscar's neck bobbed up and down as he swallowed. "I had Mauthis poisoned. Ganmark run through with a ton of bronze. Faithful's stabbed, slashed, drowned and hung from a waterwheel. Still turning on it, for all I know. Gobba was lucky. I only smashed his hands, and his knees, and his skull to bonemeal with a hammer." The list gave her grim nausea rather than grim satisfaction, but she forced her way through it. "Of the seven men who were in that room when they murdered Benna, there's just your father left." She slid the Calvez from its sheath, the gentle scraping of the blade as ugly as a child's scream. "Your father… and you."

The room was close, stale. Friendly's face was empty as a corpse's. Shivers leaned back against the wall beside her, arms folded, grinning.

"I understand." Foscar came closer. Small, unwilling steps, but towards her still. He stopped no more than a stride away, and sank to his knees. Awkwardly, since his hands were tied behind him. The whole time his eyes were on hers. "I'm sorry."

"You're fucking sorry?" she squeezed through gritted teeth.

"I didn't know what was going to happen! I loved Benna!" His lip trembled, a tear ran down the side of his face. Fear, or guilt, or both. "Your brother was like… a brother to me. I would never have wanted… that, for either of you. I'm sorry… for my part in it." He'd had no part in it. She knew that. "I just… I want to live!"

"So did Benna."

"Please." More tears trickled, leaving glistening trails down his cheeks. "I just want to live."

Her stomach churned, acid burning her throat and washing up into her watering mouth. Do it. She'd come all this way to do it, suffered all this and made all those others suffer just so she could do it. Her brother would have had no doubts, not then. She could almost hear his voice.

Do what you have to. Conscience is an excuse. Mercy and cowardice are the same.

It was time to do it. He had to die.

Do it now.

But her stiff arm seemed to weigh a thousand tons. She stared at Foscar's ashen face. His big, wide, helpless eyes. Something about him reminded her of Benna. When he was young. Before Caprile, before Sweet Pines, before they betrayed Cosca, before they joined up with the Thousand Swords, even. When she'd wanted just to make things grow. Long ago, that boy laughing in the wheat.

The point of the Calvez wobbled, dropped, tapped against the floor.

Foscar took a long, shuddering breath, closed his eyes, then opened them again, wet glistening in the corners. "Thank you. I always knew you had a heart… whatever they said. Thank—"

Shivers' big fist crunched into his face and knocked him on his back, blood bubbling from his broken nose. He got out a shocked splutter before the Northman was on top of him, hands closing tight around his throat.

"You want to fucking live, eh?" hissed Shivers, teeth bared in a snarling grin, the sinews squirming in his forearms as he squeezed tighter and tighter. Foscar kicked helplessly, struggled silently, twisted his shoulders, face turning pink, then red, then purple. Shivers dragged up Foscar's head with both his hands, lifted it towards him, close enough to kiss, almost, then rammed it down against the stone flags with a sharp crack. Foscar's boots jerked, the chain between them rattling. Shivers worked his head to one side then the other as he shifted his hands around Foscar's neck for a better grip, tendons standing stark from their scabbed backs. He dragged him up again, no hurry, and rammed his head back down with a dull crunch. Foscar's tongue lolled out, one eyelid flickering, black blood creeping down from his hairline.

Shivers growled something in Northern, words she couldn't understand, lifted Foscar's head, smashed it down with all the care of a stonemason getting the details right. Again, and again. Monza watched, her mouth half-open, still holding weakly onto her sword, doing nothing. Not sure what she could do, or should do. Whether to stop him or help him. Blood dashed the rendered walls and the stone flags in spots and spatters. Over the pop and crackle of shattering bone she could hear a voice. Benna's voice, she thought for a minute, still whispering at her to do it. Then she realised it was Friendly, calmly counting the number of times Foscar's skull had been smashed into the stones. He got up to eleven.

Shivers lifted the prince's mangled head once more, hair all matted glistening black, then he blinked, and let it drop.

"Reckon that's got it." He came slowly up to standing, one boot planted on either side of Foscar's corpse. "Heh." He looked at his hands, looked around for something to wipe them on, ended up rubbing them together, smearing black streaks of blood dry brown to his elbows. "One more to the good." He looked sideways at her with his one eye, corner of his mouth curled up in a sick smile. "Six out o' seven, eh, Monza?"

"Six and one," Friendly grunted to himself.

"All turning out just like you hoped."

She stared down at Foscar, flattened head twisted sideways, crossed eyes goggling up at the wall, blood spreading out across the stone floor in a black puddle from his broken skull. Her voice seemed to come from a long way off, reedy thin. "Why did you—"

"Why not?" whispered Shivers, coming close. She saw her own pale, scabbed, pinched-in face reflected, bent and twisted in that dead metal ball of an eye. "What we came here for, ain't it? What we fought for all the day, down in the mud? I thought you was all for never turning back? Mercy and cowardice the same and all that hard talk you gave me. By the dead, Chief." He grinned, the mass of scar across his face squirming and puckering, his good cheek all dotted with red. "I could almost swear you ain't half the evil bitch you pretend to be."

Shifting Sands

With the greatest of care not to attract undue attention, Morveer insinuated himself into the back of Duke Orso's great audience chamber. For such a vast and impressive room, it numbered but a few occupants. Perhaps a function of the difficult circumstances in which the great man found himself. Having catastrophically lost the most important battle in the history of Styria was bound to discourage visitors. Still, Morveer had always been drawn to employers in difficult circumstances. They tended to pay handsomely.

The Grand Duke of Talins was without doubt still a majestic presence. He sat upon a gilded chair, on a high dais, all in sable velvet trimmed with gold, and frowned down with regal fury over the shining helmets of half a dozen no less furious guardsmen. He was flanked by two men who could not have been more polar opposites. On the left a plump, ruddy-faced old fellow stood with a respectful but painful-looking bend to his hips, gold buttons about his chubby throat fastened to the point of uncomfortable tightness and, indeed, considerably beyond. He had ill-advisedly attempted to conceal his utter and obvious baldness by combing back and forth a few sad strands of wiry grey hair, cultivated to enormous length for this precise purpose. Orso's chamberlain. On the right, a curly-haired young man slouched with unexpected ease in travel-stained clothes, resting upon what appeared to be a long stick. Morveer had the frustrating sensation of having seen him somewhere before, but could not place him, and his relationship to the duke was, for now, a slightly worrying mystery.

The only other occupant of the chamber had his well-dressed back to Morveer, prostrate upon one knee on the strip of crimson carpet, clutching his hat in one hand. Even from the very back of the hall the gleaming sheen of sweat across his bald patch was most evident.

"What help from my son-in-law," Orso was demanding in stentorian tones, "the High King of the Union?"

The voice of the ambassador, for it appeared to be none other, had the whine of a well-whipped dog expecting further punishment. "Your son-in-law sends his earnest regrets—"

"Indeed? But no soldiers! What would he have me do? Shoot his regrets at my enemies?"

"His armies are all committed in our unfortunate Northern wars, and a revolt in the city of Rostod causes further difficulties. The nobles, meanwhile, are reluctant. The peasantry are again restless. The merchants—"

"The merchants are behind on their payments. I see. If excuses were soldiers he would have sent a mighty throng indeed."

"He is beset by troubles—"

"He is beset? He is? Are his sons murdered? Are his soldiers butchered? Are his hopes all in ruins?"

The ambassador wrung his hands. "Your Excellency, he is spread thin! His regrets have no end, but—"

"But his help has no beginning! High King of the Union! A fine talker, and a goodly smile when the sun is up, but when the clouds come in, look not for shelter in Adua, eh? My intervention on his behalf was timely, was it not? When the Gurkish horde clamoured at his gates! But now I need his help… forgive me, Father, I am spread thin. Out of my sight, bastard, before your master's regrets cost you your tongue! Out of my sight, and tell the Cripple that I see his hand in this! Tell him I will whip the price from his twisted hide!" The grand duke's furious screams echoed out over the hurried footsteps of the ambassador, edging backwards as quickly as he dared, bowing profusely and sweating even more. "Tell him I will be revenged!"

The ambassador genuflected his way past Morveer, and the double doors were heaved booming shut upon him.

"Who is that skulking at the back of the chamber?" Orso's voice was no more reassuring for its sudden calmness. Quite the reverse.

Morveer swallowed as he processed down the blood-red strip of carpet. Orso's eye held a look of the most withering command. It reminded Morveer unpleasantly of his meeting with the headmaster of the orphanage, when he was called to account for the dead birds. His ears burned with shame and horror at the memory of that interview, more even than his legs burned at the memory of his punishment. He swept out his lowest and most sycophantic bow, unfortunately spoiling the effect by rapping his knuckles against the floor in his nervousness.

"This is one Castor Morveer, your Excellency," intoned the chamberlain, peering down his bulbous nose.

Orso leaned forwards. "And what manner of a man is Castor Morveer?"

"A poisoner."

"Master … Poisoner," corrected Morveer. He could be as obsequious as the next man, when it was required, but he flatly insisted on his proper title. Had he not earned it, after all, with sweat, danger, deep wounds both physical and emotional, long study, short mercy and many, many painful reverses?

"Master, is it?" sneered Orso. "And what great notables have you poisoned to earn the prefix?"

Morveer permitted himself the faintest of smiles. "Grand Duchess Sefeline of Ospria, your Excellency. Count Binardi of Etrea, and both his sons, though their boat subsequently sank and they were never found. Ghassan Maz, Satrap of Kadir, and then, when further problems presented themselves, his successor Souvon-yin-Saul. Old Lord Isher, of Midderland, he was one of mine. Prince Amrit, who would have been heir to the throne of Muris—"

"I understood he died of natural causes."

"What could be a more natural death for a powerful man than a dose of Leopard Flower administered into the ear by a dangling thread? Then Admiral Brant, late of the Murisian fleet, and his wife. His cabin boy too, alas, who happened by, a young life cut regrettably short. I would hate to prevail upon your Excellency's valuable time, the list is long indeed, most distinguished and… entirely dead. With your permission I will add only the most recent name upon it."

Orso gave the most minute inclination of his head, sneering no longer, Morveer was pleased to note. "One Mauthis, head of the Westport office of the Banking House of Valint and Balk."

The duke's face had gone blank as a stone slab. "Who was your employer for that last?"

"I make it a point of professionalism never to mention the names of my employers… but I believe these are exceptional circumstances. I was hired by none other than Monzcarro Murcatto, the Butcher of Caprile." His blood was up now, and he could not resist a final flourish. "I believe you are acquainted."

"Some… what," whispered Orso. The duke's dozen guards stirred ominously as if controlled directly by their master's mood. Morveer became aware that he might have gone a flourish too far, felt his bladder weaken and was forced to press his knees together. "You infiltrated the offices of Valint and Balk in Westport?"

"Indeed," croaked Morveer.

Orso glanced sideways at the man with the curly hair. "I congratulate you on the achievement. Though it has been the cause of some considerable discomfort to me and my associates. Pray explain why I should not have you killed for it."

Morveer attempted to pass it off with a vivacious chuckle, but it died a slow death in the chilly vastness of the hall. "I… er… had no notion, of course, that you were in any way to be discomfited. None. Really, it was all due to a regrettable failing, or indeed a wilful oversight, deliberate dishonesty, a lie, even, on the part of my cursed assistant that I took the job in the first place. I should never have trusted that greedy bitch…" He realised he was doing himself no good by blaming the dead. Great men want living people to hold responsible, that they might have them tortured, hanged, beheaded and so forth. Corpses offer no recompense. He swiftly changed tack. "I was but the tool, your Excellency. Merely the weapon. A weapon I now offer for your own hand to wield, as you see fit." He bowed again, even lower this time, muscles in his rump, already sore from climbing the cursed mountainside to Fontezarmo, trembling in their efforts to prevent him from pitching on his face.

"You seek a new employer?"

"Murcatto proved as treacherous towards me as she did towards your illustrious Lordship. The woman is a snake indeed. Twisting, poisonous and… scaly," he finished lamely. "I was lucky to escape her toxic clutches with my life, and now seek redress. I am prepared to seek it most earnestly, and will not be denied!"

"Redress would be a fine thing for us all," murmured the man with the curly hair. "News of Murcatto's survival spreads through Talins like wildfire. Papers bearing her face on every wall." A fact, Morveer had seen them as he passed through the city. "They say you stabbed her through the heart but she lived, your Excellency."

The duke snorted. "Had I stabbed her, I would never have aimed for her heart. Without doubt her least vulnerable organ."

"They say you burned her, drowned her, cut her into quarters and tossed them from your balcony, but she was stitched back together and lived again. They say she killed two hundred men at the fords of the Sulva. That she charged alone into your ranks and scattered them like chaff on the wind."

"The stamp of Rogont's theatrics," hissed the duke through gritted teeth. "That bastard was born to be an author of cheap fantasies rather than a ruler of men. We will hear next that Murcatto has sprouted wings and given birth to the second coming of Euz!"

"I wouldn't be at all surprised. Bills are posted on every street corner proclaiming her an instrument of the Fates, sent to deliver Styria from your tyranny."

"Tyrant, now?" The duke barked a grim chuckle. "How quickly the wind shifts in the modern age!"

"They say she cannot be killed."

"Do… they… indeed?" Orso's red-rimmed eyes swivelled to Morveer. "What do you say, poisoner?"

"Your Excellency," and he plunged down into the lowest of bows once more, "I have fashioned a successful career upon the principle that there is nothing that lives that cannot be deprived of life. It is the remarkable ease of killing, rather than the impossibility of it, that has always caused me astonishment."

"Do you care to prove it?"

"Your Excellency, I humbly entreat only the opportunity." Morveer swept out another bow. It was his considered opinion that one could never bow too much to men of Orso's stamp, though he did reflect that persons of huge ego were a great drain on the patience of bystanders.

"Then here it is. Kill Monzcarro Murcatto. Kill Nicomo Cosca. Kill Countess Cotarda of Affoia. Kill Duke Lirozio of Puranti. Kill First Citizen Patine of Nicante. Kill Chancellor Sotorius of Sipani. Kill Grand Duke Rogont, before he can be crowned. Perhaps I will not have Styria, but I will have revenge. On that you can depend."

Morveer had been warmly smiling as the list began. By its end he was smiling no longer, unless one could count the fixed rictus he maintained across his trembling face only by the very greatest of efforts. It appeared his bold gambit had spectacularly oversucceeded. He was forcibly reminded of his attempt to discomfort four of his tormentors at the orphanage by placing Lankam salts in the water, which had ended, of course, with the untimely deaths of all the establishment's staff and most of the children too.

"Your Excellency," he croaked, "that is a significant quantity of murder."

"And some fine names for your little list, no? The rewards will be equally significant, on that you can rely, will they not, Master Sulfur?"

"They will." Sulfur's eyes moved from his fingernails to Morveer's face. Different-coloured eyes, Morveer now noticed, one green, one blue. "I represent, you see, the Banking House of Valint and Balk."

"Ah." Suddenly, and with profound discomfort, Morveer placed the man. He had seen him talking with Mauthis in the banking hall in Westport but a few short days before he had filled the place with corpses. "Ah. I really had not the slightest notion, you understand…" How he wished now that he had not killed Day. Then he could have noisily denounced her as the culprit and had something tangible with which to furnish the duke's dungeons. Fortunately, it seemed Master Sulfur was not seeking scapegoats. Yet.

"Oh, you were but the weapon, as you say. If you can cut as sharply on our behalf you have nothing to worry about. And besides, Mauthis was a terrible bore. Shall we say, if you are successful, the sum of one million scales?"

"One… million?" muttered Morveer.

"There is nothing that lives that cannot be deprived of life." Orso leaned forwards, eyes fixed on Morveer's face. "Now get about it!"

Night was falling when they came to the place, lamps lit in the grimy windows, stars spilled out across the soft night sky like diamonds on a jeweller's cloth. Shenkt had never liked Affoia. He had studied there, as a young man, before he ever knelt to his master and before he swore never to kneel again. He had fallen in love there, with a woman too rich, too old and far too beautiful for him, and been made a whining fool of. The streets were lined not only with old pillars and thirsty palms, but with the bitter remnants of his childish shame, jealousy, weeping injustice. Strange, that however tough one's skin becomes in later life, the wounds of youth never close.

Shenkt did not like Affoia, but the trail had led him here. It would take more than ugly memories to make him leave a job half-done.

"That is the house?" It was buried in the twisting backstreets of the city's oldest quarter, far from the thoroughfares where the names of men seeking public office were daubed on the walls along with their great qualities and other, less complimentary words and pictures. A small building, with slumping lintels and a slumping roof, squeezed between a warehouse and a leaning shed.

"That's the house." The beggar's voice was soft and stinking as rotten fruit.

"Good." Shenkt pressed five scales into his scabby palm. "This is for you." He closed the man's fist around the money then held it with his own. "Never come back here." He leaned closer, squeezed harder. "Not ever."

He slipped across the cobbled street, over the wall before the house. His heart was beating unusually fast, sweat prickling his scalp. He crept across the overgrown front garden, old boots finding the silent spaces between the weeds, and to the lighted window. Reluctant, almost afraid, he peered through. Three children sat on a worn red carpet beside a small fire. Two girls and a boy, all with the same orange hair. They were playing with a brightly painted wooden horse on wheels. Clambering onto it, pushing each other around on it, pushing each other off it, to faint squeals of amusement. He squatted there, fascinated, and watched them.

Innocent. Unformed. Full of possibilities. Before they began to make their choices, or had their choices made for them. Before the doors began to close, and sent them down the only remaining path. Before they knelt. Now, for this briefest spell, they could be anything.

"Well, well. What have we here?"

She was crouching above him on the low roof of the shed, her head on one side, a line of light from a window across the way cutting hard down her face, strip of spiky red hair, red eyebrow, narrowed eye, freckled skin, corner of a frowning mouth. A chain hung gleaming down from one fist, cross of sharpened metal swinging gently on the end of it.

Shenkt sighed. "It seems you have the better of me."

She slid from the wall, dropped to the dirt and thumped smoothly down on her haunches, chain rattling. She stood, tall and lean, and took a step towards him, raising her hand.

He breathed in, slow, slow.

He saw every detail of her face: lines, freckles, faint hairs on her top lip, sandy eyelashes crawling down as she blinked.

He could hear her heart beating, heavy as a ram at a gate.

Thump… thump… thump…

She slid her hand around his head, and they kissed. He wrapped his arms about her, pressed her thin body tight against him, she tangled her fingers in his hair, chain brushing against his shoulders, dangling metal knocking lightly against the backs of his legs. A long, gentle, lingering kiss that made his body tingle from his lips to his toes.

She broke away. "It's been a while, Cas."

"I know."

"Too long."

"I know."

She nodded towards the window. "They miss you."

"Can I…"

"You know you can."

She led him to the door, into the narrow hallway, unbuckling the chain from her wrist and slinging it over a hook, cross-shaped knife dangling. The oldest girl dashed out from the room, stopped dead when she saw him.

"It's me." He edged slowly towards her, his voice strangled. "It's me." The other two children came out from the room, peering around their sister. Shenkt feared no man, but before these children, he was a coward. "I have something for you." He reached into his coat with trembling fingers.

"Cas." He held out the carved dog, and the little boy with his name snatched it from his hand, grinning. "Kande." He put the bird in the cupped hands of the littlest girl, and she stared dumbly at it. "For you, Tee," and he offered the cat to the oldest girl.

She took it. "No one calls me that anymore."

"I'm sorry it's been so long." He touched the girl's hair and she flinched away, he jerked his hand back, awkward. He felt the weight of the butcher's sickle in his coat as he moved, and he stood sharply, took a step back. The three of them stared up at him, carved animals clutched in their hands.

"To bed now," said Shylo. "He'll still be here tomorrow." Her eyes were on him, hard lines across the freckled bridge of her nose. "Won't you, Cas?"

"Yes."

She brushed their complaints away, pointed to the stairs. "To bed." They filed up slowly, step by step, the boy yawning, the younger girl hanging her head, the other complaining that she wasn't tired. "I'll come sing to you later. If you're quiet until then, maybe your father will even hum the low parts." The youngest of the two girls smiled at him, between the banisters at the top of the stairs, until Shylo pushed him into the living room and shut the door.

"They got so big," he muttered.

"That's what they do. Why are you here?"

"Can't I just—"

"You know you can, and you know you haven't. Why are you…" She saw the ruby on his forefinger and frowned. "That's Murcatto's ring."

"She lost it in Puranti. I nearly caught her there."

"Caught her? Why?"

He paused. "She has become involved… in my revenge."

"You and your revenge. Did you ever think you might be happier forgetting it?"

"A rock might be happier if it was a bird, and could fly from the earth and be free. A rock is not a bird. Were you working for Murcatto?"

"Yes. So?"

"Where is she?"

"You came here for that?"

"That." He looked towards the ceiling. "And them." He looked her in the eye. "And you."

She grinned, little lines cutting into the skin at the corners of her eyes. It took him by surprise, how much he loved to see those lines. "Cas, Cas. For such a clever bastard you're a stupid bastard. You always look for all the wrong things in all the wrong places. Murcatto's in Ospria, with Rogont. She fought in the battle there. Any man with ears knows that."

"I didn't hear."

"You don't listen. She's tight with the Duke of Delay, now. My guess is he'll be putting her in Orso's place, keep the people of Talins alongside when he reaches for the crown."

"Then she'll be following him. Back to Talins."

"That's right."

"Then I will follow them. Back to Talins." Shenkt frowned. "I could have stayed there these past weeks, and simply waited for her."

"That's what happens if you're always chasing things. Works better if you wait for what you want to come to you."

"I was sure you'd have found another man by now."

"I found a couple. They didn't stick." She held out her hand to him. "You ready to hum?"

"Always." He took her hand, and she pulled him from the room, and through the door, and up the stairs.