Best Served Cold

Rogont of Ospria was late to the field at Sweet Pines, but Salier of Visserine still enjoyed the weight of numbers and was too proud to retreat. Especially when the enemy was commanded by a woman. He fought, he lost, he ended up retreating anyway, and left the city of Caprile defenceless. Rather than face a certain sack, the citizens opened their gates to the Serpent of Talins in the hope of mercy.

Monza rode in, but most of her men she left outside. Orso had made allies of the Baolish, convinced them to fight with the Thousand Swords under their ragged standards. Fierce fighters, but with a bloody reputation. Monza had a bloody reputation of her own, and that only made her trust them less.

"I love you."

"Of course you do."

"I love you, but keep the Baolish out of town, Benna."

"You can trust me."

"I do trust you. Keep the Baolish out of town."

She rode three hours as the sun went down, back to the rotting battlefield at Sweet Pines, to dine with Duke Orso and learn his plans for the close of the season.

"Mercy for the citizens of Caprile, if they yield to me entirely, pay indemnities and acknowledge me their rightful ruler."

"Mercy, your Excellency?"

"You know what it is, yes?" She knew what it was. She had not thought he did. "I want their land, not their lives. Dead men cannot obey. You have won a famous victory here. You shall have a great triumph, a procession through the streets of Talins."

That would please Benna, at least. "Your Excellency is too kind."

"Hah. Few would agree with that."

She laughed as she rode back in the cool dawn, and Faithful laughed beside her. They talked of how rich the soil was, on the banks of the Capra, watching the good wheat shift in the wind.

Then she saw the smoke above the city, and she knew.

The streets were full of dead. Men, women, children, young and old. Birds gathered on them. Flies swarmed. A confused dog limped along beside their horses. Nothing else living showed itself. Empty windows gaped, empty doorways yawned. Fires still burned, whole rows of houses nothing but ash and tottering chimney stacks.

Last night, a thriving city. This morning, Caprile was hell made real.

It seemed Benna had not been listening. The Baolish had begun it, but the rest of the Thousand Swords—drunk, angry, fearing they would miss out on the easy pickings—had eagerly joined in. Darkness and dark company make it easy for even half-decent men to behave like animals, and there were few half-decent men among the scum Monza commanded. The boundaries of civilisation are not the impregnable walls civilised men take them for. As easily as smoke on the wind, they can dissolve.

Monza flopped down from her horse and puked Duke Orso's fine breakfast over the rubbish-strewn cobbles.

"Not your fault," said Faithful, one big hand on her shoulder.

She shook him off. "I know that." But her rebellious guts thought otherwise.

"It's the Years of Blood, Monza. This is what we are."

Up the steps to the house they'd taken, tongue rough with sick. Benna lay on the bed, fast asleep, husk pipe near one hand. She dragged him up, made him squawk, cuffed him one way and the other.

"Keep them out of town, I told you!" And she forced him to the window, forced him to look down into the bloodstained street.

"I didn't know! I told Victus… I think…" He slid to the floor, and wept, and her anger leaked away and left her empty. Her fault, for leaving him in charge. She could not let him shoulder the blame. He was a good man, and sensitive, and would not have borne it well. There was nothing she could do but kneel beside him, and hold him, and whisper soothing words while the flies buzzed outside the window.

"Orso wants to give us a triumph…"

Soon afterwards the rumours spread. The Serpent of Talins had ordered the massacre that day. Had urged the Baolish on and screamed for more. The Butcher of Caprile, they called her, and she did not deny it. People would far rather believe a lurid lie than a sorry string of accidents. Would far rather believe the world is full of evil than full of bad luck, selfishness and stupidity. Besides, the rumours served a purpose. She was more feared than ever, and fear was useful.

In Ospria they denounced her. In Visserine they burned her image. In Affoia and Nicante they offered a fortune to any man who could kill her. All around the Azure Sea they rang out the bells to her shame. But in Etrisani they celebrated. In Talins they lined the streets to chant her name, to shower her with flower petals. In Cesale they raised a statue in her honour. A gaudy thing, smothered with gold leaf that soon peeled. She and Benna, as they never looked, seated on great horses, frowning boldly towards a noble future.

That was the difference between a hero and a villain, a soldier and a murderer, a victory and a crime. Which side of a river you called home.

Return of the Native

Monza was far from comfortable.

Her legs ached, her arse was chafed raw from riding, her shoulder had stiffened up again so she was constantly twisting her head to one side like a demented owl in a futile attempt to loosen it. Whenever one source of sweaty agony would ease for a moment, another would flare up to plug the gap. Her prodding joke of a little finger seemed attached to a cord of cold pain, tightening relentlessly right to her elbow if she tried to use the hand. The sun was merciless in the clear blue sky, making her squint, niggling at the headache leaking from the coins that held her skull together. Sweat tickled her scalp, ran down her neck, gathered in the scars Gobba's wire had left and made them itch like fury. Her crawling skin was prickly, clammy, sticky. She cooked in her armour like offal in a can.

Rogont had her dressed up like some simpleton's notion of the Goddess of War, an unhappy collision of shining steel and embroidered silk that offered the comfort of full plate and the protection of a nightgown. It might all have been made to measure by Rogont's own armourer, but there was a lot more room for chest in her gold-chased breastplate than there was a need for. This, according to the Duke of Delay, was what people wanted to see.

And enough of them had turned out for the purpose.

Crowds lined the narrow streets of Talins. They squashed into windows and onto roofs to catch a glimpse of her. They packed into the squares and gardens in dizzying throngs, throwing flowers, waving banners, boiling over with hope. They shouted, bellowed, roared, squealed, clapped, stamped, hooted, competing with each other to be the first to burst her skull with their clamour. Sets of musicians had formed at street corners, would strike up martial tunes as she came close, brassy and blaring, clanging away behind her, merging with the off-key offering of the next impromptu band to form a mindless, murderous, patriotic din.

It was like the triumph after her victory at Sweet Pines, only she was older and even more reluctant, her brother was rotting in the mud instead of basking in the glory and her old enemy Rogont was at her back rather than her old friend Orso. Perhaps that was what history came down to, in the end. Swapping one sharp bastard for another was the best you could hope for.

They crossed the Bridge of Tears, the Bridge of Coins, the Bridge of Gulls, looming carvings of seabirds glaring angrily down at the procession as it crawled past, brown waters of the Etris sluggishly churning beneath them. Each time she rounded a corner another wave of applause would break upon her. Another wave of nausea. Her heart was pounding. Every moment, she expected to be killed. Blades and arrows seemed more likely than flowers and kind words, and far more deserved. Agents of Duke Orso, or his Union allies, or a hundred others with a private grudge against her. Hell, if she'd been in the crowd and seen some woman ride past dressed like this, she'd have killed her on general principle. But Rogont must have spread his rumours well. The people of Talins loved her. Or loved the idea of her. Or had to look like they did.

They chanted her name, and her brother's name, and the names of her victories. Afieri. Caprile. Musselia. Sweet Pines. The High Bank. The fords of the Sulva too. She wondered if they knew what they were cheering for. Places she'd left trails of corpses behind her. Cantain's head rotting on the gates of Borletta. Her knife in Hermon's eye. Gobba, hacked to pieces, pulled apart by rats in the sewers beneath their feet. Mauthis and his clerks with their poisoned ledgers, poisoned fingers, poisoned tongues. Ario and all his butchered revellers at Cardotti's, Ganmark and his slaughtered guards, Faithful dangling from the wheel, Foscar's head broken open on the dusty floor. Corpses by the cartload. Some of it she didn't regret, some of it she did. But none of it seemed like anything to cheer about. She winced up towards the happy faces at the windows. Maybe that was where she and these folk differed.

Maybe they just liked corpses, so long as they weren't theirs.

She glanced over her shoulder at her so-called allies, but they hardly gave her comfort. Grand Duke Rogont, the king-in-waiting, smiling to the crowds from a knot of watchful guards, a man whose love would last exactly as long as she was useful. Shivers, steel eye glinting, a man who'd turned under her tender touch from likeable optimist to maimed murderer. Cosca winked back at her—the world's least reliable ally and most unpredictable enemy, and he could still prove to be either one. Friendly… who knew what went on behind those dead eyes?

Further back rode the other surviving leaders of the League of Eight. Or Nine. Lirozio of Puranti, fine moustaches bristling, who'd slipped nimbly back into Rogont's camp after the very briefest of alliances with Orso. Countess Cotarda, her watchful uncle never far behind. Patine, First Citizen of Nicante, with his emperor's bearing and his ragged peasant's clothes, who had declined to share in the battle at the fords but seemed more than happy to share in the victory. There were even representatives of cities she'd sacked on Orso's behalf—citizens of Musselia and Etrea, a sly-eyed young niece of Duke Cantain's who'd suddenly found herself Duchess of Borletta, and appeared to be greatly enjoying the experience.

People she'd thought of as her enemies for so long she was having trouble making the adjustment, and by the looks on their faces when her eyes met theirs, so were they. She was the spider they had to suffer in their larder to rid them of their flies. And once the flies are dealt with, who wants a spider in their salad?

She turned back, sweaty shoulders prickling, tried to fix her eyes ahead. They passed along the endless curve of the seafront, gulls sweeping, circling, calling above. All the way her nose was full of that rotten salt tang of Talins. Past the boatyards, the half-finished hulls of two great warships sitting on the rollers like the skeletons of two beached and rotted whales. Past the rope-makers and the sail-weavers, the lumber-yards and the wood-turners, the brass-workers and the chain-makers. Past the vast and reeking fish-market, its flaking stalls empty, its galleries quiet for the first time maybe since the victory at Sweet Pines last emptied the buildings and filled the streets with savagely happy crowds.

Behind the multicoloured splatters of humanity the buildings were smothered with bills, as they had been in Talins more or less since the invention of the press. Old victories, warnings, incitements, patriotic bluster, endlessly pasted over by the new. The latest set carried a woman's face—stern, guiltless, coldly beautiful. Monza realised with a sick turning of her guts that it was meant to be hers, and beneath it, boldly printed: Strength, Courage, Glory. Orso had once told her that the way to turn a lie into the truth was to shout it often enough, and here was her self-righteous face, repeated over and over, plastered torn and dog-eared across the salt-stained walls. On the side of the next crumbling faзade another set of posters, badly drawn and smudgily printed, had her awkwardly holding high a sword, beneath the legend: Never Surrender, Never Relent, Never Forgive. Daubed across the bricks above them in letters of streaky red paint tall as a man was one simple word:

Vengeance.

Monza swallowed, less comfortable than ever. Past the endless docks where fishing vessels, pleasure vessels, merchant vessels of every shape and size, from every nation beneath the sun, stirred on the waves of the great bay, cobwebs of rigging spotted with sailors up to watch the Snake of Talins take the city for her own.

Just as Orso had feared she would.

Cosca was entirely comfortable.

It was hot, but there was a soothing breeze wafting off the glittering sea, and one of his ever-expanding legion of new hats was keeping his eyes well shaded. It was dangerous, the crowd very likely containing more than one eager assassin, but for once there were several more hated targets than himself within easy reach. A drink, a drink, a drink, of course, that drunkard's voice in his head would never be entirely silent. But it was less a desperate scream now than a grumpy murmur, and the cheering was very definitely helping to drown it out.

Aside from the vague smell of seaweed it was just as it had been in Ospria, after his famous victory at the Battle of the Isles. When he had stood tall in his stirrups at the head of the column, acknowledging the applause, holding his hands up and shouting, "Please, no!" when he meant, "More, more!" It was Grand Duchess Sefeline, Rogont's aunt, who had basked in his reflected glory then, mere days before she tried to have him poisoned. Mere months before the tide of battle turned against her and she was poisoned herself. That was Styrian politics for you. It made him wonder, just briefly, why he was getting into it.

"The settings change, the people age, the faces swap one with another, but the applause is just the same—vigorous, infectious and so very short-lived."

"Uh," grunted Shivers. It seemed to be most of the Northman's conversation, now, but that suited Cosca well enough. In spite of occasional efforts to change, he had always vastly preferred talking to listening.

"I always hated Orso, of course, but I find little pleasure in his fall." A towering statue of the fearsome Duke of Talins could be seen down a side street as they passed. Orso had ever been a keen patron to sculptors, provided they used him as their subject. Scaffolding had been built up its front, and now men clustered around the face, battering its stern features away gleefully with hammers. "So soon, yesterday's heroes are shuffled off. Just as I was shuffled off myself."

"Seems you've shuffled back."

"My point precisely! We all are washed with the tide. Listen to them cheer for Rogont and his allies, so recently the most despicable slime on the face of the world." He pointed out the fluttering papers pasted to the nearest wall, on which Duke Orso was displayed having his face pushed into a latrine. "Only peel back this latest layer of bills and I'll wager you'll find others denouncing half this procession in the filthiest ways imaginable. I recall one of Rogont shitting onto a plate and Duke Salier tucking into the results with a fork. Another of Duke Lirozio trying to mount his horse. And when I say ‘mount'…"

"Heh," said Shivers.

"The horse was not impressed. Dig through a few layers more and—I blush to admit—you'll find some condemning me as the blackest-hearted rogue in the Circle of the World, but now…" Cosca blew an extravagant kiss towards some ladies on a balcony, and they smiled, pointed, showed every sign of regarding him as their delivering hero.

The Northman shrugged. "People got no weight to 'em down here. Wind blows 'em whatever way it pleases."

"I have travelled widely," if fleeing one war-torn mess after another qualified, "and in my experience people are no heavier elsewhere." He unscrewed the cap from his flask. "Men can have all manner of deeply held beliefs about the world in general that they find most inconvenient when called upon to apply to their own lives. Few people let morality get in the way of expediency. Or even convenience. A man who truly believes in a thing beyond the point where it costs him is a rare and dangerous thing."

"It's a special kind o' fool takes the hard path just 'cause it's the right one."

Cosca took a long swallow from his flask, winced and scraped his tongue against his front teeth. "It's a special kind of fool who can even tell the right path from the wrong. I've certainly never had that knack." He stood in his stirrups, swept off his hat and waved it wildly in the air, whooping like a boy of fifteen. The crowds roared their approval back. Just as if he was a man worth cheering for. And not Nicomo Cosca at all.

So quietly that no one could possibly have heard, so softly that the notes were almost entirely in his mind, Shenkt hummed.

"Here she is!"

The pregnant silence gave birth to a storm of applause. People danced, threw up their arms, cheered with hysterical enthusiasm. People laughed and wept, celebrated as if their own lives might be changed to any significant degree by Monzcarro Murcatto being given a stolen throne.

It was a tide Shenkt had often observed in politics. There is a brief spell after a new leader comes to power, however it is achieved, during which they can do no wrong. A golden period in which people are blinded by their own hopes for something better. Nothing lasts forever, of course. In time, and usually with alarming speed, the leader's flawless image grows tarnished with their subjects' own petty disappointments, failures, frustrations. Soon they can do no right. The people clamour for a new leader, that they might consider themselves reborn. Again.

But for now they cheered Murcatto to the heavens, so loud that, even though he had seen it all a dozen times before, Shenkt almost allowed himself to hope. Perhaps this would be a great day, the first of a great era, and he would be proud in after years to have had his part in it. Even if his part had been a dark one. Some men, after all, can only play dark parts.

"The Fates." Beside him, Shylo's lip curled up with scorn. "What does she look like? A fucking gold candlestick. A gaudy figurehead, gilded up to hide the rot."

"I think she looks well." Shenkt was glad to see her still alive, riding a black horse at the head of the sparkling column. Duke Orso might have been all but finished, his people hailing a new leader, his palace at Fontezarmo surrounded and under siege. None of that made the slightest difference. Shenkt had his work, and he would see it through to the end, however bitter. Just as he always did. Some stories, after all, are only suited to bitter endings.

Murcatto rode closer, eyes fixed ahead in an expression of the most bloody-minded resolve. Shenkt would have liked very much to step forwards, to brush the crowds aside, to smile, to hold out his hand to her. But there were altogether too many onlookers, altogether too many guards. The moment was coming when he would greet her, face to face.

For now he stood, as her horse passed by, and hummed.

So many people. Too many to count. If Friendly tried, it made him feel strange. Vitari's face jumped suddenly from the crowd, beside her a gaunt man with short, pale hair and a washed-out smile. Friendly stood in the stirrups but a waving banner swept across his sight and they were gone. A thousand other faces in a blinding tangle. He watched the procession instead.

If this had been Safety, and Murcatto and Shivers had been convicts, Friendly would have known without doubt from the look on the Northman's face that he wanted to kill her. But this was not Safety, more was the pity, and there were no rules here that Friendly understood. Especially once women entered the case, for they were a foreign people to him. Perhaps Shivers loved her, and that look of hungry rage was what love looked like. Friendly knew they had been fucking in Visserine, he had heard them at it enough, but then he thought she might have been fucking the Grand Duke of Ospria lately, and had no idea what difference that might make. Here was the problem.

Friendly had never really understood fucking, let alone love. When he came back to Talins, Sajaam had sometimes taken him to whores, and told him it was a reward. It seemed rude to turn down a reward, however little he wanted it. To begin with he had trouble keeping his prick hard. Even later, the most enjoyment he ever got from the messy business was counting the number of thrusts before it was all over.

He tried to settle his jangling nerves by counting the hoofbeats of his horse. It seemed best that he avoid embarrassing confusions, keep his worries to himself and let things take the course they would. If Shivers did kill her, after all, it meant little enough to Friendly. Probably lots of people wanted to kill her. That was what happened when you made yourself conspicuous.

Shivers was no monster. He'd just had enough.

Enough of being treated like a fool. Enough of his good intentions fucking him in the arse. Enough of minding his conscience. Enough worrying on other people's worries. And most of all enough of his face itching. He grimaced as he dug at his scars with his fingernails.

Monza was right. Mercy and cowardice were the same. There were no rewards for good behaviour. Not in the North, not here, not anywhere. Life was an evil bastard, and gave to those who took what they wanted. Right was on the side of the most ruthless, the most treacherous, the most bloody, and the way all these fools cheered for her now was the proof of it. He watched her riding slowly up at the front, on her black horse, black hair stirring in the breeze. She'd been right about everything, more or less.

And he was going to murder her, pretty much just for fucking someone else.

He thought of stabbing her, cutting her, carving her ten different ways. He thought of the marks on her ribs, of sliding a blade gently between them. He thought of the scars on her neck, and how his hands would fit just right against them to throttle her. He guessed it would be good to be close to her one last time. Strange, that he should've saved her life so often, risked his own to do it, and now be thinking out the best way to put an end on it. It was like the Bloody-Nine told him once—love and hate have just a knife's edge between 'em.

Shivers knew a hundred ways to kill a woman that'd all leave her just as dead. It was where and when that were the problems. She was watchful all the time, now, expecting knives. Not from him, maybe, but from somewhere. There were plenty of 'em aimed at her besides his, no doubt. Rogont knew it, and was careful with her as a miser with his hoard. He needed her to bring all these people over to his side, always had men watching. So Shivers would have to wait, and pick his time. But he could show some patience. It was like Carlot said. Nothing done well is ever… rushed.

"Keep closer to her."

"Eh?" None other than the great Duke Rogont, ridden up on his blind side. It took an effort for Shivers not to smash his fist right into the man's sneering, handsome face.

"Orso still has friends out there." Rogont's eyes jumped nervously over the crowds. "Agents. Assassins. There are dangers everywhere."

"Dangers? Everyone seems so happy, though."

"Are you trying to be funny?"

"Wouldn't know how to begin." Shivers kept his face so slack Rogont couldn't tell whether he was being mocked or not.

"Keep closer to her! You are supposed to be her bodyguard!"

"I know what I am." And Shivers gave Rogont his widest grin. "Don't worry yourself on that score." He dug his horse's flanks and urged on ahead. Closer to Monza, just like he'd been told. Close enough that he could see her jaw muscles clenched tight on the side of her face. Close enough, almost, that he could have pulled out his axe and split her skull.

"I know what I am," he whispered. He was no monster. He'd just had enough.

The procession finally came to an end in the heart of the city, the square before the ancient Senate House. The mighty building's roof had collapsed centuries ago, its marble steps cracked and rooted with weeds. The carvings of forgotten gods on the colossal pediment had faded to a tangle of blobs, perches for a legion of chattering gulls. The ten vast pillars that supported it looked alarmingly out of true, streaked with droppings, stuck with flapping fragments of old bills. But the mighty relic still dwarfed the meaner buildings that had flourished around it, proclaiming the lost majesty of the New Empire.

A platform of pitted blocks thrust out from the steps and into the sea of people crowding the square. At one corner stood the weathered statue of Scarpius, four times the height of a man, holding out hope to the world. His outstretched hand had broken off at the wrist several hundred years ago and, in what must have been the most blatant piece of imagery in Styria, no one had yet bothered to replace it. Guardsmen stood grimly before the statue, on the steps, at the pillars. They wore the cross of Talins on their coats but Monza knew well enough they were Rogont's men. Perhaps Styria was meant to be one family now, but soldiers in Osprian blue might not have been well received here.

She slid from her saddle, strode down the narrow valley through the crowds. People strained against the guardsmen, calling to her, begging for blessings. As though touching her might do them any good. It hadn't done much to anyone else. She kept her eyes ahead, always ahead, jaw aching from being clenched tight, waiting for the blade, the arrow, the dart that would be the end of her. She'd happily have killed for the sweet oblivion of a smoke, but she was trying to cut back, on the killing and the smoking both.

Scarpius towered over her as she started up the steps, peering down out of the corners of his lichen-crusted eyes as if to say, Is this bitch the best they could do? The monstrous pediment loomed behind him, and she wondered if the hundred tons of rock balanced on those pillars might finally choose that moment to crash down and obliterate the entire leadership of Styria, herself along with them. No small part of her hoped that it would, and bring this sticky ordeal to a swift end.

A gaggle of leading citizens—meaning the sharpest and the greediest—had clustered nervously in the centre of the platform, sweating in their most expensive clothes, looking hungrily towards her like geese at a bowl of crumbs. They bowed as she and Rogont came closer, heads bobbing together in a way that suggested they'd been rehearsing. That somehow made her more irritated than ever.

"Get up," she growled.

Rogont held his hand out. "Where is the circlet?" He snapped his fingers. "The circlet, the circlet!"

The foremost of the citizens looked like a bad caricature of wisdom—all hooked nose, snowy beard and creaky deep voice under a green felt hat like an upended chamber pot. "Madam, my name is Rubine, nominated to speak for the citizens."

"I am Scavier." A plump woman whose azure bodice exposed a terrifying immensity of cleavage.

"And I am Grulo." A tall, lean man, bald as an arse, not quite shouldering in front of Scavier but very nearly.

"Our two most senior merchants," explained Rubine.

It carried little weight with Rogont. "And?"

"And, with your permission, your Excellency, we were hoping to discuss some details of the arrangements—"

"Yes? Out with it!"

"As regards the title, we had hoped perhaps to steer away from nobility. Grand duchess smacks rather of Orso's tyranny."

"We hoped…" ventured Grulo, waving a vulgar finger-ring, "something to reflect the mandate of the common people."

Rogont winced at Monza, as though the phrase "common people" tasted of piss. "Mandate?"

"President elect, perhaps?" offered Scavier. "First citizen?"

"After all," added Rubine, "the previous grand duke is still, technically… alive."

Rogont ground his teeth. "He is besieged two dozen miles away in Fontezarmo like a rat in his hole! Only a matter of time before he is brought to justice."

"But you understand the legalities may prove troublesome—"

"Legalities?" Rogont spoke in a furious whisper. "I will soon be King of Styria, and I mean to have the Grand Duchess of Talins among those who crown me! I will be king, do you understand? Legalities are for other men to worry on!"

"But, your Excellency, it might not be seen as appropriate—"

For a man with a reputation for too much patience, Rogont's had grown very short over the last few weeks. "How appropriate would it be if I was to, say, have you hanged? Here. Now. Along with every other reluctant bastard in the city. You could argue the legalities to each other while you dangle."

The threat floated between them for a long, uncomfortable moment. Monza leaned towards Rogont, acutely aware of the vast numbers of eyes fixed upon them. "What we need here is a little unity, no? I've a feeling hangings might send the wrong message. Let's just get this done, shall we? Then we can all lie down in a dark room."

Grulo carefully cleared his throat. "Of course."

"A long conversation to end where we began!" snapped Rogont. "Give me the damn circlet!"

Scavier produced a thin golden band. Monza turned slowly to face the crowd.

"People of Styria!" Rogont roared behind her. "I give you the Grand Duchess Monzcarro of Talins!" There was a slight pressure as he lowered the circlet onto her head.

And that simply she was raised to the giddy heights of power.

With a faint rustling, everyone knelt. The square was left silent, enough that she could hear the birds flapping and squawking on the pediment above. Enough that she could hear the spatters as some droppings fell not far to her right, daubing the ancient stones with spots of white, black and grey.

"What are they waiting for?" she muttered to Rogont, doing her best not to move her lips.

"Words."

"Me?"

"Who else?"

A wave of dizzy horror broke over her. By the look of the crowd, she might easily have been outnumbered five thousand to one. But she had the feeling that, for her first action as head of state, fleeing the platform in terror might send the wrong message. So she stepped slowly forwards, as hard a step as she'd ever taken, struggling to get her tumbling thoughts in order, dig up words she didn't have in the splinter of time she did. She passed through Scarpius' great shadow and out into the daylight, and a sea of faces opened up before her, tilted up towards her, wide-eyed with hope. Their scattered muttering dropped to nervous whispering, then to eerie silence. She opened her mouth, still hardly knowing what might come out of it.

"I've never been one…" Her voice was a reedy squeak. She had to cough to clear it, spat the results over her shoulder then realised she definitely shouldn't have. "I've never been one for speeches!" That much was obvious. "Rather get right to it than talk about it! Born on a farm, I guess. We'll deal with Orso first! Rid ourselves of that bastard. Then… well… then the fighting's over." A strange kind of murmur went through the kneeling crowd. No smiles, exactly, but some faraway looks, misty eyes, a few heads nodding. She was surprised by a longing tug in her own chest. She'd never really thought before that she'd wanted the fighting to end. She'd never known much else.

"Peace." And that needy murmur rippled across the square again. "We'll have ourselves a king. All Styria, marching one way. An end to the Years of Blood." She thought of the wind in the wheat. "Try to make things grow, maybe. Can't promise you a better world because, well, it is what it is." She looked down awkwardly at her feet, shifted her weight from one leg to another. "I can promise to do my best at it, for what that's worth. Let's aim at enough for everyone to get by, and see how we go." She caught the eye of an old man, staring at her with teary-eyed emotion, lip quivering, hat clasped to his chest.

"That's all!" she snapped.

Any normal person would have been lightly dressed on a day so sticky warm, but Murcatto, with characteristic contrariness, had opted for full and, as it happened, ludicrously flamboyant armour. Morveer's only option, therefore, was to take aim at her exposed face. Still, a smaller target only presented the greater and more satisfying challenge for a marksman of his sublime skills. He took a deep breath.

To his horror she shifted at the crucial moment, looking down at the platform, and the dart missed her face by the barest whisker and glanced from one of the pillars of the ancient Senate House behind her.

"Damn it!" he hissed around the mouthpiece of his blowpipe, already fumbling in his pocket for another dart, removing its cap, sliding it gently into the chamber.

It was a stroke of ill fortune of the variety that had tormented Morveer since birth that, just as he was applying his lips to the pipe, Murcatto terminated her incompetent rhetoric with a perfunctory, "That's all!" The crowd broke into rapturous applause, and his elbow was jogged by the enthusiastic clapping of a peasant beside the deep doorway in which he had secreted himself.

The lethal missile went well wide of its target and vanished into the heaving throng beside the platform. The man whose wild gesticulations had been responsible for his wayward aim looked about, his broad, greasy face puckering with suspicion. He had the appearance of a labourer, hands like rocks, the flame of human intellect barely burning behind his piggy eyes.

"Here, what are you—"

Curse the proletariat, Morveer's attempt was now quite foiled. "My profound regrets, but could I prevail upon you to hold this for just a moment?"

"Eh?" The man stared down at the blowpipe pressed suddenly into his callused hands. "Ah!" As Morveer jabbed him in the wrist with a mounted needle. "What the hell?"

"Thank you ever so much." Morveer reclaimed the pipe and slid it into one of his myriad of concealed pockets along with the needle. It takes the vast majority of men a great deal of time to become truly incensed, usually following a predictable ritual of escalating threats, insults, posturing, jostling and so forth. Instantaneous action is entirely foreign to them. So the elbow-jogger was only now beginning to look truly angry.

"Here!" He seized Morveer by the lapel. "Here…" His eyes took on a faraway look. He wobbled, blinked, his tongue hung out. Morveer took him under the arms, gasped at the sudden dead weight as the man's knees collapsed, and wrestled him to the ground, suffering an unpleasant twinge in his back as he did so.

"He alright?" someone grunted. Morveer looked up to see a half-dozen not dissimilar men frowning down at him.

"Altogether too much beer!" Morveer shouted over the noise, adding a false little chuckle. "My companion here has become quite inebriated!"

"Inebri-what?" said one.

"Drunk!" Morveer leaned close. "He was so very, very proud to have the great Serpent of Talins as the mistress of our fates! Are not we all?"

"Aye," one muttered, utterly confused but partially mollified. "Course. Murcatto!" he finished lamely, to grunts of approval from his simian comrades.

"Born among us!" shouted another, shaking his fist.

"Oh, absolutely so. Murcatto! Freedom! Hope! Deliverance from coarse stupidity! Here we are, friend!" Morveer grunted with effort as he wriggled the big man, now a big corpse, into the shadows of the doorway. He winced as he arched his aching back. Then, since the others were no longer paying attention, he slid away into the crowds, boiling with resentment all the way. It really was insufferable that these imbeciles should cheer so very enthusiastically for a woman who, far from being born among them, had been born on a patch of scrub on the very edge of Talinese territory where the border was notoriously flexible. A ruthless, scheming, lying, apprentice-seducing, mass-murdering, noisily fornicating peasant thief without a filigree shred of conscience, whose only qualifications for command were a sulky manner, a few victories against incompetent opposition, the aforementioned propensity to swift action, a fall down a mountain and the accident of a highly attractive face.

He was forced to reflect once again, as he had so often, that life was rendered immeasurably easier for the comely.

The Lion's Skin

A lot had changed since Monza last rode up to Fontezarmo, laughing with her brother. Hard to believe it was only a year ago. The darkest, maddest, most bloody year in a life made of them. A year that had taken her from dead woman to duchess, and might well still shove her back the other way.

It was dusk instead of dawn, the sun sinking behind them in the west as they climbed the twisting track. To either side of it, wherever the ground was anything close to flat, men had pitched tents. They sat in front of them in lazy groups by the flickering light of campfires—eating, drinking, mending boots or polishing armour, staring slack-faced at Monza as she clattered past.

She'd had no honour guard a year ago. Now a dozen of Rogont's picked men followed eagerly as puppies wherever she went. It was a surprise they didn't all try to tramp into the latrine after her. The last thing the king-in-waiting wanted was for her to get pushed off a mountain again. Not before she'd had the chance to help crown him, anyway. It was Orso she'd been helping to his crown twelve months ago, and Rogont her bitter enemy. For a woman who liked to stick, she'd slid around some in four seasons.

Back then she'd had Benna beside her. Now it was Shivers. That meant no talk at all, let alone laughter. His face was just a hard black outline, blind eye gleaming with the last of the fading light. She knew he couldn't see a thing through it, but still she felt like it was always fixed right on her. Even though he scarcely spoke, still he was always saying, It should've been you.

There were fires burning at the summit. Specks of light on the slopes, a yellow glow behind the black shapes of walls and towers, smudges of smoke hanging in the deep evening sky. The road switched back once more, then petered away altogether at a barricade made from three upended carts. Victus sat there on a field chair, warming his hands at a campfire, his collection of stolen chains gleaming round his neck. He grinned as she reined up her horse, and flourished out an absurd salute.

"The Grand Duchess of Talins, here in our slovenly camp! Your Excellency, we're all shame! If we'd had more time to prepare for your royal visit, we'd have done something about all the dirt." And he spread his arms wide at the sea of churned-up mud, bare rock, broken bits of crate and wagon scattered around the mountainside.

"Victus. The embodiment of the mercenary spirit." She clambered down from her saddle, trying not to let the pain show. "Greedy as a duck, brave as a pigeon, loyal as a cuckoo."

"I always modelled myself on the nobler birds. Afraid you'll have to leave the horses, we'll be going by trench from here. Duke Orso's a most ungracious host—he's taken to shooting catapults at any of his guests who show themselves." He sprang up, slapping dust from the canvas he'd been sitting on, then holding one ring-encrusted hand out towards it. "Perhaps I could have some of the lads carry you up?"

"I'll walk."

He gave her a mocking leer. "And a fine figure you'll appear, I've no doubt, though I would've thought you could've stretched to silk, given your high station."

"Clothes don't make the person, Victus." She gave his jewellery a mocking leer of her own. "A piece of shit is still a piece of shit, however much gold you stick on it."

"Oh, how we've missed you, Murcatto. Follow on, then."

"Wait here," she snapped at Rogont's guards. Having them behind her all the time made her look weak. Made her look like she needed them.

Their sergeant winced. "His Excellency was most—"

"Piss on his Excellency. Wait here."

She creaked down some steps made of old boxes and into the hillside, Shivers at her shoulder. The trenches weren't much different from the ones they'd dug around Muris, years ago—walls of hard-packed earth held back by odds and ends of timber, with that same smell of sickness, mould, damp earth and boredom. The trenches they'd lived in for the best part of six months, like rats in a sewer. Where her feet had started to rot, and Benna got the running shits so bad he lost a quarter of his weight and all his sense of humour. She even saw a few familiar faces as they threaded their way through ditch, tunnel and dugout—veterans who'd been fighting with the Thousand Swords for years. She nodded to them just as she used to when she was in charge, and they nodded back.

"You sure Orso's inside?" she called to Victus.

"Oh, we're sure. Cosca spoke to him, first day."

Monza didn't draw much comfort from that idea. When Cosca started talking to an enemy he usually ended up richer and on the other side. "What did those two bastards have to say to each other?"

"Ask Cosca."

"I will."

"We've got the place surrounded, don't worry about that. Trenches on three sides." Victus slapped the earth beside them. "If you can trust a mercenary to do one thing, it's dig himself a damn good hole to hide in. Then there's pickets down in the woods at the bottom of the cliff." The woods where Monza had slid to a halt in the rubbish, broken to pulp, groaning like the dead in hell. "And a wide selection of Styria's finest soldiery further out. Osprians, Sipanese, Affoians, in numbers. All set on seeing our old employer dead. There ain't a rat getting out without our say-so. But then if Orso wanted to run, he could've run weeks ago. He didn't. You know him better than anyone, don't you? You reckon he'll try and run now?"

"No," she had to admit. He'd sooner die, which suited her fine. "How about us getting in?"

"Whoever designed the bastard place knew what they were doing. Ground around the inner ward's way too steep to try anything."

"I could've told you that. North side of the outer ward's your best chance at an assault, then try the inner wall from there."

"Our very thoughts, but there's a gulf between thinking and doing, specially when high walls are part of the case. No luck yet." Victus clambered up on a box and beckoned to her. Between two wicker screens, beyond a row of sharpened stakes pointing up the broken slope, she could see the nearest corner of the fortress. One of the towers was on fire, its tall roof fallen in leaving only a cone of naked beams wreathed in flames, notches of battlements picked out in red and yellow, black smoke belching into the dark blue sky. "We set that tower to burning," he pointed proudly towards it, "with a catapult."

"Beautiful. We can all go home."

"Something, ain't it?" He led them through a long dugout smelling of damp and sour sweat, men snoring on pallets down both sides. " ‘Wars are won not by one great action,' " intoning the words like a bad actor, " ‘but many small chances.' Weren't you always telling us that? Who was it? Stalicus?"

"Stolicus, you dunce."

"Some dead bastard. Anyway, Cosca's got a plan, but I'll let him tell you himself. You know how the old man loves to put on a show." Victus stopped at a hollow in the rock where four trenches came together, sheltered by a roof of gently flapping canvas and lit by a single rustling torch. "The captain general said he'd be along. Feel free to make use of the facilities while you wait." Facilities which amounted to dirt. "Unless there's anything else, your Excellency?"

"Just one more thing." He flinched in surprise as her spit spattered softly across his eye. "That's from Benna, you treacherous little fuck."

Victus wiped his face, eyes creeping shiftily to Shivers, then back to her. "I didn't do nothing you wouldn't have done. Nothing your brother wouldn't have done, that's certain. Nothing you didn't both do to Cosca, and you owed him more than I owed you—"

"That's why you're wiping your face instead of trying to hold your guts in."

"You ever think you might have brought this on yourself? Big ambitions mean big risks. All I've done is float with the current—"

Shivers took a sudden step forwards. "Off you float, then, 'fore you get your throat cut." Monza realised he had a knife out in one big fist. The one she'd given him the first day they met.

"Whoah there, big man." Victus held up his palms, rings glittering. "I'm on my way, don't worry." He made a big show of turning and strutting off into the night. "You two need to work on your tempers," wagging one finger over his shoulder. "No point getting riled up over every little thing. That'll only end in blood, believe me!"

It wasn't so hard for Monza to believe. Everything ended in blood, whatever she did. She realised she was left alone with Shivers, something she'd spent the last few weeks avoiding like the rot. She knew she should say something, take some sort of step towards making things square with him. They had their problems, but at least he was her man, rather than Rogont's. She might have need of someone to save her life in the coming days, and he was no monster, however he might look.

"Shivers." He turned to her, knife still clutched tight, steel blade and steel eye catching the torch flame and twinkling the colours of fire. "Listen—"

"No, you listen." He bared his teeth, taking a step towards her.

"Monza! You came!" Cosca emerged from one of the trenches, arms spread wide. "And with my favourite Northman!" He ignored the knife and shook Shivers warmly by his free hand, then grabbed Monza's shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks. "I haven't had a chance to congratulate you on your speech. Born on a farm. A nice touch. Humble. And talk of peace. From you? It was like seeing a farmer express his hopes for famine. Even this old cynic couldn't help but be moved."

"Fuck yourself, old man." But she was secretly glad she didn't have to find the hard words now.

Cosca raised his brows. "You try and say the right thing—"

"Some folk don't like the right thing," said Shivers in his gravelly whisper, sliding his knife away. "You ain't learned that yet?"

"Every day alive is a lesson. This way, comrades! Just up ahead we can get a fine view of the assault."

"You're attacking? Now?"

"We tried in daylight. Didn't work." It didn't look like darkness was working any better. There were wounded men lining the next trench—grimaces, groans, bloody bandages. "Wherever is my noble employer, his Excellency Duke Rogont?"

"In Talins." And Monza spat into the dirt. There was plenty of it for the purpose. "Preparing for his coronation."

"So soon? He is aware Orso's still alive, I suppose, and by all indications will be for some time yet? Isn't there a saying about selling the lion's skin before he's killed?"

"I've mentioned it. Many times."

"I can only imagine. The Serpent of Talins, counselling caution to the Duke of Delay. Sweet irony!"

"Some good it's done. He's got every carpenter, clothier and jeweller in the city busy at the Senate House, making it ready for the ceremony."

"Sure the bloody place won't fall in on him?"

"We can hope," muttered Shivers.

"It will bring to mind proud shadows of Styria's Imperial past, apparently," said Monza.

Cosca snorted. "That or the shameful collapse of Styria's last effort at unity."

"I've mentioned that too. Many times."

"Ignored?"

"Getting used to it."

"Ah, hubris! As a long-time sufferer myself I quickly recognise the symptoms."

"You'll like this one, then." Monza couldn't stop herself sneering. "He's importing a thousand white songbirds from distant Thond."

"Only a thousand?"

"Symbol of peace, apparently. They'll be released over the crowd when he rises to greet them as King of Styria. And admirers from all across the Circle of the World—counts, dukes, princes and the God of the fucking Gurkish too for all I know—will applaud his gigantic opinion of himself, and fall over themselves to lick his fat arse."

Cosca raised his brows. "Do I detect a souring of relations between Talins and Ospria?"

"There's something about crowns that makes men act like fools."

"One takes it you've mentioned that too?"

"Until my throat's sore, but surprisingly enough, he doesn't want to hear it."

"Sounds quite the event. Shame I won't be there."

Monza frowned. "You won't?"

"Me? No, no, no. I'd only lower the tone. There are concerns about some shady deal done for the Dukedom of Visserine, would you believe."

"Never."

"Who knows how these far-fetched rumours get started? Besides, someone needs to keep Duke Orso company."

She worked her tongue sourly round her mouth and spat again. "I hear the two of you have been chatting already."

"No more than small talk. Weather, wine, women, his impending destruction, you know the sort of thing. He said he would have my head. I replied I quite understood his enthusiasm, as I find it hugely useful myself. I was firm yet amusing throughout, in fact, while he was, in all honesty, somewhat peevish." Cosca waved one long finger around. "The siege, possibly, has him out of sorts."

"Nothing about you changing sides, then?"

"Perhaps that would have been his next topic, but we were somewhat interrupted by some flatbow fire and an abortive assault upon the walls. Perhaps it will come up when we next take tea together?"

The trench opened into a dugout mostly covered with a plank ceiling, almost too low to stand under. Ladders leaned against the right-hand wall, ready for men to climb and join the attack. A good three score of armed and armoured mercenaries knelt ready to do just that. Cosca went bent over between their ranks, slapping backs.

"Glory, boys, glory, and a decent pay-off!"

Their frowns turned to grins, they tapped their weapons against their shields, their helmets, their breastplates, sending up an approving rattle.

"General!"

"The captain general!"

"Cosca!"

"Boys, boys!" He chuckled, thumping arms, shaking hands, giving out lazy salutes. All as far from her style of command as could've been. She'd had to stay cold, hard, untouchable, or there would have been no respect. A woman can't afford the luxury of being friendly with the men. So she'd let Benna do the laughing for her. Probably why the laughter had been thin on the ground since Orso killed him.

"And up here is my little home from home." Cosca led them up a ladder and into a kind of shed built from heavy logs, lit by a pair of flickering lamps. There was a wide opening in one wall, the setting sun casting its last glare over the dark, flat country to the west. Narrow windows faced towards the fortress. A stack of crates took up one corner, the captain general's chair sat in another. Beside it a table was covered with a mess of scattered cards, half-eaten sweetmeats and bottles of varying colour and fullness. "How goes the fight?"

Friendly sat cross-legged, dice between his knees. "It goes."

Monza moved to one of the narrow windows. It was almost night, now, and she could barely see any sign of the assault. Perhaps the odd flicker of movement at the tiny battlements, the odd glint of metal in the light of the bonfires scattered across the rocky slopes. But she could hear it. Vague shouting, faint screaming, clattering metal, floating indistinctly on the breeze.

Cosca slid into the battered captain general's chair and rattled the bottles by putting his muddy boots up on the table. "We four, together again! Just like Cardotti's House of Leisure! Just like Salier's gallery! Happy times, eh?"

There was the creaking swoosh of a catapult released and a blazing missile sizzled overhead, shattered against the great foremost tower of the fortress, sending up a gout of flame, shooting out arcs of glittering embers. The dull flare illuminated ladders against the stonework, tiny figures crawling up them, steel glimmering briefly then fading back into the black.

"You sure this is the best time for jokes?" Monza muttered.

"Unhappy times are the best for levity. You don't light candles in the middle of the day, do you?"

Shivers was frowning up the slope towards Fontezarmo. "You really think you've a chance of carrying those walls?"

"Those? Are you mad? They're some of the strongest in Styria."

"Then why—"

"Bad form to just sit outside and do nothing. They have ample stocks of food, water, weapons and, worst of all, loyalty. They might last months in there. Months during which Orso's daughter, the Queen of the Union, might prevail upon her reluctant husband to send aid." Monza wondered whether the king learning that his wife preferred women would make any difference…

"How's watching your men fall off a wall going to help?" asked Shivers.

Cosca shrugged. "It will wear down the defenders, deny them rest, keep them guessing and distract them from any other efforts we might make."

"Lot of corpses for a distraction."

"Wouldn't be much of a distraction without them."

"How do you get men to climb the ladders for that?"

"Sazine's old method."

"Eh?"

Monza remembered Sazine displaying the money to the new boys, all laid out in sparkling stacks. "If the walls fall, a thousand scales to the first man on the battlements, a hundred each to the next ten who follow him."

"Provided they survive to collect the bounty," Cosca added. "If the task's impossible, they'll never collect, and if they do, well, you achieved the impossible for two thousand scales. It ensures a steady flow of willing bodies up the ladders, and has the added benefit of weeding the bravest men out of the company to boot."

Shivers looked even more baffled. "Why would you want to do that?"

" ‘Bravery is the dead man's virtue,' " Monza muttered. " ‘The wise commander never trusts it.' "

"Verturio!" Cosca slapped one leg. "I do love an author who can make death funny! Brave men have their uses but they're damned unpredictable. Worrying to the herd. Dangerous to bystanders."

"Not to mention potential rivals for command."

"Altogether safest to cream them off," and Cosca mimed the action with a careless flick of two fingers. "The moderately cowardly make infinitely better soldiers."

Shivers shook his head in disgust. "You people got a pretty fucking way of making war."

"There is no pretty way of making war, my friend."

"You said a distraction," cut in Monza.

"I did."

"From what?"

There was a sudden fizzing sound and Monza saw fire out of the corner of her eye. A moment later the heat of it washed across her cheek. She spun, the Calvez already part-drawn. Ishri was draped across the crates behind them, sprawled out lazily as an old cat in the sun, head back, one long, thin, bandaged leg dangling from the edge of the boxes and swinging gently back and forth.

"Can't you ever just say hello?" snapped Monza.

"Where would be the fun in that?"

"Do you have to answer every question with another?"

Ishri pressed one hand to her bandaged chest, black eyes opening wide. "Who? Me?" She rolled something between her long finger and thumb, a little black grain, and flicked it with uncanny accuracy into the lamp beside Shivers. It went up with a flash and sizzle, cracking the glass hood and spraying sparks. The Northman stumbled away, cursing, flicking embers off his shoulder.

"Some of the men have taken to calling it Gurkish sugar." Cosca smacked his lips. "Sounds sweeter, to my ear, than Gurkish fire."

"Two dozen barrels," murmured Ishri, "courtesy of the Prophet Khalul."

Monza frowned. "For a man I've never met he likes us a lot."

"Better yet…" The dark-skinned woman slithered from the boxes like a snake, waves running through her body from shoulders down to hips as if she had no bones in her, arms trailing after. "He hates your enemies."

"No better basis for an alliance than mutual loathing." Cosca watched her contortions with an expression stuck between distrust and fascination. "It's a brave new age, my friends. Time was you had to dig for months, hundreds of strides of mine, tons of wood for props, fill it up with straw and oil, set it on fire, run like merry hell, then half the time it wouldn't even bring the walls down. This way, all you need do is sink a shaft deep enough, pack the sugar in, strike a spark and—"

"Boom," sang Ishri, up on her toes and stretching to her fingertips.

"Ker-blow," returned Cosca. "It's how everyone's conducting sieges these days, apparently, and who am I to ignore a trend…" He flicked dust from his velvet jacket. "Sesaria's a genius at mining. He brought down the bell tower at Gancetta, you know. Somewhat before schedule, admittedly, and a few men did get caught in the collapse. Did I ever tell you—"

"If you bring the wall down?" asked Monza.

"Well, then our men pour through the breach, overwhelm the stunned defenders and the outer ward will be ours. From the gardens within we'll have level ground to work with and room to bring our numbers to bear. Carrying the inner wall should be a routine matter of ladders, blood and greed. Then storm the palace and, you know, keep it traditional. I'll get my plunder and you'll get—"

"My revenge." Monza narrowed her eyes at the jagged outline of the fortress. Orso was in there, somewhere. Only a few hundred strides away. Perhaps it was the night, the fire, the heady mixture of darkness and danger, but some of that old excitement was building in her now. That fierce fury she'd felt when she hobbled from the bone-thief's crumbling house and into the rain. "How long until the mine's ready?"

Friendly looked up from his dice. "Twenty-one days and six hours. At the rate they're going."

"A shame." Ishri pushed out her bottom lip. "I so love fireworks. But I must go back to the South."

"Tired of our company already?" asked Monza.

"My brother was killed." Her black eyes showed no sign of emotion. "By a woman seeking vengeance."

Monza frowned, not sure if she was being mocked or not. "Those bitches find a way of doing damage, don't they?"

"But always to the wrong people. My brother is the lucky one, he is with God. Or so they tell me. It is the rest of my family that suffer. We must work the harder now." She swung herself smoothly down onto the ladder, let her head fall sideways. Uncomfortably far, until it was resting on the top rung. "Try not to get yourselves killed. I do not intend that my hard work here be wasted."

"Your wasted work will be my first concern when they cut my throat." Nothing but silence. Ishri was gone.

"Looks like you've run out of brave men," came Shivers' croak.

Cosca sighed. "We didn't have many to begin with." The remnants of the assault were scrambling back down the rocky mountainside in the flickering light of the fires above. Monza could just make out the last ladder toppling down, perhaps a dot or two flailing as they fell from it. "But don't worry. Sesaria's still digging. Just a matter of time until Styria stands united." He slid a metal flask from his inside pocket and unscrewed the cap. "Or until Orso sees sense, and offers me enough to change sides again."

She didn't laugh. Perhaps she wasn't meant to. "Maybe you should try sticking to one side or the other."

"Why ever would anyone do that?" Cosca raised his flask, took a sip and smacked his lips in satisfaction. "It's a war. There is no right side."

Preparation

Regardless of the nature of a great event, the key to success is always preparation. For three weeks, all Talins had been preparing for the coronation of Grand Duke Rogont. Meanwhile, Morveer had been preparing for an attempt to murder him and his allies. So much work had been put into both schemes that, now the day for their consummation had finally arrived, Morveer almost regretted that the success of one could only mean the spectacular failure of the other.

In all honesty, he had been having little success achieving even the smallest part of Duke Orso's immensely ambitious commission to murder no fewer than six heads of state and a captain general. His abortive attempt on the life of Murcatto the day of her triumphant return to Talins, resulting in nothing more than at least one poisoned commoner and a sore back, had been but the first of several mishaps.

Gaining entrance to one of Talins' finest dressmakers through a loose rear window, he had secreted a lethal Amerind thorn within the bodice of an emerald-green gown meant for Countess Cotarda of Affoia. Alas, Morveer's expertise in dressmaking was most limited. Had Day been there she would no doubt have pointed out that the garment was twice too large for their waifish victim. The countess emerged resplendent at a soirйe that very evening, her emerald-green gown a sensation. Morveer afterwards discovered, much to his chagrin, that the exceedingly large wife of one of Talins' leading merchants had also commissioned a green gown from that dressmaker, but was prevented from attending the event by a mysterious illness. She swiftly deteriorated and, alas, expired within hours.

Five nights later, after an uncomfortable afternoon spent hiding inside a heap of coal and breathing through a tube, he had succeeded in loading Duke Lirozio's oysters with spider venom. Had Day been with him in the kitchen she might have suggested they aim for a more basic foodstuff, but Morveer could not resist the most noteworthy dish. The duke, alas, had felt queasy after a heavy lunch and took only a little bread. The shellfish were administered to the kitchen cat, now deceased.

The following week, posing once more as the Purantine wine-merchant Rotsac Reevrom, he insinuated himself into a meeting to discuss trade levies chaired by Chancellor Sotorius of Sipani. During the meal he struck up lively conversation with one of the ancient statesman's aides on the subject of grapes and was able, much to his delight, deftly to brush the top of Sotorius' withered ear with a solution of Leopard Flower. He had sat back with great enthusiasm to observe the rest of the meeting, but the chancellor had steadfastly refused to die, showing, in fact, every sign of being in the most rude health. Morveer could only assume that Sotorius observed a morning routine not dissimilar to his own, and possessed immunities to who knew how many agents.

But Castor Morveer was not a man to be put off by a few reverses. He had suffered many in life, and saw no reason to alter his formula of commendable stoicism simply because the task seemed impossible. With the coronation almost upon him, he had therefore chosen to focus on the principal targets: Grand Duke Rogont and his lover, Morveer's hated ex-employer, now the Grand Duchess of Talins, Monzcarro Murcatto.

It would have been a rank understatement to say that no expense had been spared to ensure the coronation lived long in Styria's collective memory. The buildings enclosing the square had all been freshly painted. The stone platform where Murcatto had administered her fumbling speech, and where Rogont planned to soak up the adulation of his subjects as King of Styria, had been surfaced with gleaming new marble and adorned with a gilded rail. Workmen crawled on ropes and scaffolds across the looming frontage of the Senate House, garlanding the ancient stonework with fresh-cut white flowers, transforming the sullen edifice into a mighty temple to the Grand Duke of Ospria's vanity.

Working in dispiriting solitude, Morveer had appropriated the clothes, toolbox and documentation of a journeyman carpenter who had arrived in the city looking for piecework, and hence would be missed by nobody. Yesterday he had infiltrated the Senate House in this ingenious disguise to reconnoitre the scene and formulate a plan. While doing so, just as a bonus, he had carried out some challenging jointing work to a balustrade with almost conspicuous skill. Truly, he was a loss to carpentry, but he had in no way lost sight of the fact that his primary profession remained murder. Today he had returned to execute his audacious scheme. And to execute Grand Duke Rogont, both together.

"Afternoon," he grunted to one of the guards as he passed through the vast doorway along with the rest of the labourers returning from lunch, crunching carelessly at an apple with the surly manner he had often observed in common men on their way to labour. Caution first, always, but when attempting to fool someone, supreme confidence and simplicity was the approach that bore the ripest fruit. He excited, in fact, no attention whatsoever from the guards, either at the gate or at the far end of the vestibule. He stripped the core of his apple and tossed it into his workbox, with only the faintest maudlin moment spent reflecting on how much Day would have enjoyed it.

The Senate House was open to the sky, the great dome having collapsed long centuries ago. Three-quarters of the tremendous circular space was filled with concentric arcs of seating, enough for two thousand or more of the world's most honoured spectators. Each marble step was lower than the one behind, so that they formed a kind of theatre, with a space before them where the senators of old had once risen to make their grand addresses. A round platform had been built there now, of inlaid wood painted in meticulous detail with gilded wreaths of oak leaves about a gaudy golden chair.

Great banners of vividly coloured Suljuk silk hung down the full height of the walls, some thirty strides or more, at a cost Morveer hardly dared contemplate, one for each of the great cities of Styria. The azure cloth of Ospria, marked with the white tower, had pride of place, directly behind the central platform. The cross of Talins and the cockleshell of Sipani flanked it upon either side. Arranged evenly about the rest of the circumference were the bridge of Puranti, the red banner of Affoia, the three bees of Visserine, the six rings of Nicante, and the giant flags of Muris, Etrisani, Etrea, Borletta and Caprile besides. No one, it seemed, was to be excluded from the proud new order, whether they desired membership or not.

The whole space crawled with men and women hard at work. Tailors plucked at the hangings and the miles of white cushions provided for the comfort of the most honoured guests. Carpenters sawed and hammered at the platform and the stairways. Flower-sellers scattered the unused floor with a carpet of white blossom. Chandlers carefully positioned their waxen wares in endless rows, teetered on ladders to reach a hundred sconces. All overseen by a regiment of Osprian guardsmen, halberds and armour buffed to mirror brightness.

For Rogont to choose to be crowned here, in the ancient heart of the New Empire? The arrogance was incalculable, and if there was one quality Morveer could not abide, it was arrogance. Humility, after all, cost nothing. He concealed his profound disgust and made his way nonchalantly down the steps, affecting the self-satisfied swagger of the working commoner, weaving through the other tradesmen busy among the curving banks of seating.

At the back of the great chamber, perhaps ten strides above the ground, were two small balconies in which, he believed, scribes had once recorded the debates beneath. Now they were adorned by two immense portraits of Duke Rogont. One showed him stern and manful, heroically posed with sword and armour. The other depicted his Excellency in pensive mood, attired as a judge, holding book and compass. The master of peace and war. Morveer could not suppress a mocking smirk. Up there, in one of those two balconies, would be the fitting spot from which to shoot a dart lethal enough to deflate that idiot's swollen head and puncture his all-vaulting ambitions. They were reached by narrow stairways from a small, unused chamber, where records had been kept in ancient—

He frowned. Though it stood open, a heavy door, thick oak intricately bound and studded with polished steel, had been installed across the entrance of the anteroom. He in no way cared for such an alteration at this late stage. Indeed his first instinct was simply to place caution first and quietly depart, as he had often done before when circumstances appeared to shift. But men did not secure their place in history with caution alone. The venue, the challenge, the potential rewards were too great to let slip on account of a new door. History was breathing upon his neck. For tonight only his name would be audacity.

He strode past the platform, where a dozen decorators were busily applying gilt paint, and to the door. He swung it one way then the other, lips pursed discerningly as if checking the smooth workings of its hinges. Then, with the swiftest and least conspicuous of glances to ensure he was unobserved, he slipped through.

There were neither windows nor lamps within, the only light in the vaulted chamber crept through the door or down the two coiling stairways. Empty boxes and barrels were scattered in disorderly heaps about the walls. He was just deciding which balcony to choose as his shooting position when he heard voices approaching the door. He slid quickly on his side into the narrow space behind a stack of crates, squeaked as he picked up a painful splinter in his elbow, remembered his workbox just in time and fished it after him with one foot. A moment later the door squealed open and scraping boots entered the room, men groaning as though under a dolorous load.

"By the Fates, it's heavy!"

"Set it here!" A noisy clatter and squeal of metal on stone. "Bastard thing."

"Where's the key?"

"Here."

"Leave it in the lock."

"And what, pray, is the purpose of a lock with the key in it?"

"To present no obstacle, idiot. When we bring the damn case out there in front of three thousand people, and his Excellency tells us to open it up, I don't want to be looking at you and asking where the key is, and you find you dropped the fucker somewhere. See what I mean?"

"You've a point."

"It'll be safer in here, in a barred room with a dozen guards at the door, than in your dodgy pockets."

"I'm convinced." There was a gentle rattle of metal. "There. Satisfied?"

Several sets of footsteps clattered away. There was the heavy clunk of the door being swung shut, the clicking of locks turned, the squealing of a bar, then silence. Morveer was sealed into a room with a dozen guards outside. But that alone struck no fear into a man of his exceptional fortitude. When the vital moment came, he would lower a cord from one of the balconies and hope to slip away while every eye was focused on Rogont's spectacular demise. With the greatest of care to avoid any further splinters, he wriggled out from behind the crates.

A large case had been placed in the centre of the floor. A work of art in itself, fashioned from inlaid wood, bound with bands of filigree silver, glimmering in the gloom. Plainly it contained something of great importance to the coming ceremony. And since chance had provided him the key…

He knelt, turned it smoothly in the lock and with gentle fingers pushed back the lid. It took a great deal to impress a man of Morveer's experience, but now his eyes widened, his jaw dropped and sweat prickled at his scalp. The yellow sheen of gold almost warmed his skin, yet there was something more in his reaction than appreciation of the beauty, the symbolic significance or even the undoubted value of the object before him. Something teasing at the back of his mind…

Inspiration struck like lightning, making every hair upon his body suddenly stand tall. An idea of such scintillating brilliance, yet such penetrating simplicity, that he found himself almost in fear of it. The magnificent daring, the wonderful economy, the perfectly fitting irony. He only wished Day had lived to appreciate his genius.

Morveer triggered the hidden catch in his workman's box and removed the tray carrying the carpenter's equipment, revealing the carefully folded silken shirt and embroidered jacket in which he would make his escape. His true tools lay beneath. He carefully pulled on the gloves—lady's gloves of the finest calfskin, for they offered the least resistance to the dextrous operation of his fingers—and reached for the brown glass jar. He reached for it with some trepidation, for it contained a contact venom of his own devising which he called Preparation Number Twelve. There would be no repetition of his error with Chancellor Sotorius, for this was a poison so deadly that not even Morveer himself could develop the slightest immunity to it.

He carefully unscrewed the cap—caution first, always—and, taking up an artist's brush, began to work.

Rules of War

Cosca crept down the tunnel, knees and back aching fiercely from bending almost double, snatched breath echoing on the stale air. He had become far too accustomed to no greater exertions than sitting around and working his jaw over the last few weeks. He swore a silent oath to take exercise every morning, knowing full well he would never keep it even until tomorrow. Still, it was better to swear an oath and never follow through than not even to bother with the oath. Wasn't it?

His trailing sword scratched soil from the dirt walls with every step. Should have left the bloody thing behind. He peered down nervously at the glittering trail of black powder that snaked off into the shadows, holding his flickering lamp as far away as possible, for all it was made of thick glass and weighty cast iron. Naked flames and Gurkish sugar made unhappy companions in a confined space.

He saw flickering light ahead, heard the sounds of someone else's laboured breath, and the narrow passageway opened out into a chamber lit by a pair of guttering lamps. It was no bigger than a good-sized bedroom, walls and ceiling of scarred rock and hard-packed earth, held up by a web of suspect-looking timbers. More than half the room, or the cave, was taken up by large barrels. A single Gurkish word was painted on the side of each one. Cosca's Kantic did not extend far beyond ordering a drink, but he recognised the characters for fire. Sesaria was a great dark shape in the gloom, long ropes of grey hair hanging about his face, beads of sweat glistening on his black skin as he strained at a keg.

"It's time," said Cosca, his voice falling flat in the dead air under the mountain. He straightened up with great relief, was hit with a dizzy rush of blood to the head and stumbled sideways.

"Watch!" screeched Sesaria. "What you're doing with that lamp, Cosca! A spark in the wrong place and the pair of us'll be blown to heaven!"

"Don't let that worry you." He regained control of his feet. "I'm not a religious man, but I very much doubt anyone will be letting either of us near heaven."

"Blown to hell, then."

"A much stronger possibility."

Sesaria grunted as he ever so gingerly shifted the last of the barrels up tight to the rest. "All the others out?"

"They should be back in the trenches by now."

The big man wiped his hands on his grimy shirt. "Then we're ready, General."

"Excellent. These last few days have positively crawled. It's a crime, when you think about how little time we get, that a man should ever be bored. When you're lying on your deathbed, I expect you regret those weeks wasted more than your worst mistakes."

"You should have said if you had nothing pressing. We could have used your help digging."

"At my age? The only place I'll be moving soil is on the latrine. And even that's a lot more work than it used to be. What happens now?"

"I hear it only gets harder."

"Very good. I meant with the mine."

Sesaria pointed to the trail of black powder, grains gleaming in the lamplight, stopping well short of the nearest keg. "That leads to the entrance to the mine." He patted a bag at his belt. "We join it up to the barrels, leave plenty of extra at the end to make sure it takes. We get to the mouth of the tunnel, we set a spark to one end, then—"

"The fire follows it all the way to the barrels and… how big will the explosion be?"

Sesaria shook his head. "Never seen a quarter as much powder used at one time. That and they keep mixing it stronger. This new stuff… I have a worry it might be too big."

"Better a grand gesture than a disappointing one."

"Unless it brings the whole mountain down on us."

"It could do that?"

"Who knows what it'll do?"

Cosca considered the thousands of tons of rock above their heads without enthusiasm. "It's a little late for second thoughts. Victus has his picked men ready for the assault. Rogont will be king tonight, and he's expecting to honour us with his majestic presence at dawn, and very much inside the fortress so he can order the final attack. I'm damned if I'm going to spend my morning listening to that fool whine at me. Especially with a crown on."

"You think he'll wear it, day to day?"

Cosca scratched thoughtfully at his neck. "Do you know, I've no idea. But it's somewhat beside the point."

"True." Sesaria frowned at the barrels. "Doesn't seem right, somehow. You dig a hole, you touch a torch to some dust, you run and—"

"Pop," said Cosca.

"No need for thinking. No need for courage. No way to fight, if you're asking me."

"The only good way to fight is the one that kills your enemy and leaves you with the breath to laugh. If science can simplify the process, well, so much the better. Everything else is flimflam. Let's get started."

"I hear my captain general and obey." Sesaria pulled the bag from his belt, bent down and started carefully tipping powder out, joining the trail up to the barrels. "Got to think about how you'd feel, though, haven't you?"

"Have you?"

"One moment you're going about your business, the next you're blasted to bits. Never get to even look your killer in his face."

"No different from giving others the orders. Is killing a man with powder any worse than getting someone else to stab him with a spear? When exactly did you last look a man in the face?" Not when he'd happily helped stab Cosca in the back at Afieri, that was sure.

Sesaria sighed, powder trickling out across the ground. "True, maybe. But sometimes I miss the old days, you know. Back when Sazine was in charge. Seemed like a different world, then. A more honest world."

Cosca snorted. "You know as well as I do there wasn't a dirty trick this side of hell Sazine would have balked at using. That old miser would have blown the world up if he thought a penny would fall out."

"Daresay you've the truth of it. Doesn't seem fair, though."

"I never realised you were such an enthusiast for fair."

"It's no deal-breaker, but I'd rather win a fair fight than an unfair one." He upended the bag, the last powder sliding out and leaving a glittering heap right against the side of the nearest barrel. "Leaves a better taste, somehow, fighting by some kind of rules."

"Huh." Cosca clubbed him across the back of the head with his lamp, sending up a shower of sparks and knocking Sesaria sprawling on his face. "This is war. There are no rules." The big man groaned, shifted, struggled weakly to push himself up. Cosca leaned down, raised the lamp high and bashed him on the skull again with a crunching of breaking glass, knocked him flat, embers sizzling in his hair. A little closer to the powder than was comfortable, perhaps, but Cosca had always loved to gamble.

He had always loved triumphant rhetoric too, but time was a factor. So he turned for the shadowy passageway and hurried down it. A dozen cramped strides and he was already breathing hard again. A dozen more and he thought he caught the faintest glimmer of daylight up the tunnel. He knelt down, chewing at his lip. He was far from sure how fast the trail would burn once it was lit.

"Good thing I always loved to gamble…" He carefully began to unscrew the broken cage around the lamp. It was stuck.

"Shit." He strained at it, fingers slipping, but it must have got bent when he clubbed Sesaria. "Bastard thing!" He shifted his grip, growled as he twisted with all his force. The top popped off suddenly, he fumbled both halves, the lamp dropped, he tried to catch it, missed, it hit the floor, bounced, guttered and went out, sinking the passageway into inky darkness.

"Fucking… shit!" His only option was to retrace his steps and get one of the lamps from the end of the tunnel. He took a few steps, one hand stretched out in front of him, fishing in the black. A beam caught him right in the face, snapped his head back, mouth buzzing, salty with blood. "Gah!"

He saw light, shook his throbbing head, strained into the darkness. Lamplight, catching the grain of the props, the stones and roots in the walls, making the snaking trail of powder glisten. Lamplight, and unless he had completely lost his bearings, it was coming from where he had left Sesaria.

Bringing his sword seemed suddenly to have been a stroke of genius. He slid it gently from its sheath with a reassuring ring of metal, had to work his elbow this way and that in the narrow space to get it pointing forwards, accidentally stuck the ceiling with the point and caused a long rivulet of soil to pour gently down onto his bald patch. All the while the light crept closer.

Sesaria appeared around the bend, lamp in one big fist, a line of blood creeping down his forehead. They faced one other for a moment, Cosca crouching, Sesaria bent double.

"Why?" grunted the big man.

"Because I make a point of never letting a man betray me twice."

"I thought you were all business."

"Men change."

"You killed Andiche."

"Best moment of the last ten years."

Sesaria shook his head, as much puzzled as angry and in pain. "Murcatto was the one took your chair, not us!"

"Entirely different matter. Women can betray me as often as they please."

"You always did have a blind spot for that mad bitch."

"I'm an incurable romantic. Or maybe I just never liked you."

Sesaria slid a heavy knife out in his free hand. "You should've stabbed me back there."

"I'm glad I didn't. Now I get to use another clever line."

"Don't suppose you'd consider putting that sword away and fighting knife to knife?"

Cosca gave a cackle. "You're the one who likes things fair. I tried to kill you by clubbing you from behind then blowing you up, remember? Stabbing you with a sword will give me no sleepless nights." And he lunged.

In such a confined space, being a big man was a profound disadvantage. Sesaria almost entirely filled the narrow tunnel, which made him, fortunately, more or less impossible to miss. He managed to steer the clumsy jab away with his knife, but it still pricked him in the shoulder. Cosca pulled back for another thrust, squawked as he caught his knuckles on the earth wall. Sesaria swung his heavy lamp at him and Cosca flopped away, slipped and went over on one knee. The big man scrambled forwards, raising the knife. His fist scraped on the ceiling, bringing down a shower of earth, his knife thudded deep into a beam above. He mouthed some curse in Kantic, wincing as he struggled to drag the blade free. Cosca righted himself and made another clumsy lunge. Sesaria's eyes bulged as the point punctured his shirt and slid smoothly through his chest.

"There!" Cosca snarled in his face. "Do you get… my point?"

Sesaria lurched forwards, groaning bloody drool, face locked in a desperate grimace, the blade sliding inexorably through him until the hilt got tangled with his sticky shirt. He seized hold of Cosca and toppled over, bearing him down on his back, the pommel of the sword digging savagely into his stomach and driving all his breath out in a creaking, "Oooooooof."

Sesaria curled back his lips to show red teeth. "You call… that … a clever line?" He smashed his lamp down into the trail of powder beside Cosca's face. Glass shattered, flame leaped up, there was a fizzling pop as the powder caught, the heat of it near to burning Cosca's cheek. He struggled with Sesaria's great limp body, struggled to untwist his fingers from the gilded basketwork of his sword, desperately tried to wrestle the big corpse sideways. His nose was full of the acrid reek of Gurkish sugar, snapping sparks moving off slowly down the passage.

He finally dragged himself free, clambered up and ran for the entrance, breath wheezing in his chest, one hand trailing along the dirt wall, knocking against the props. An oval of daylight appeared, wobbled steadily closer. He gave vent to a foolish giggle as he wondered whether it would be this moment or the next that saw the rock he was tottering through a mile in the sky. He burst out into open air.

"Run!" he screeched at no one, flinging his hands wildly around. "Run!" He pounded down the hillside, tripped, fell, rolled head over heels, bounced painfully from a rock, struggled up and carried on scrambling in a cloud of dust, loose stones clattering around him. The wicker shields that marked the nearest trench crept closer and he charged towards them, screaming madly at the top of his voice. He flung himself onto his face, slid along in the dirt, crashed between two screens and headlong down into the trench in a shower of loose soil.

Victus stared at him as he struggled to right himself. "What the—"

"Take cover!" wailed Cosca. All around him armour rattled as men shrank down into their trenches, raised their shields over their heads, clapped their gauntleted hands over their ears, squeezed their eyes tight shut in anticipation of an explosion to end the world. Cosca jammed himself back against the hard-packed earth, teeth squeezed together, clasping his hands around his skull.

The silent moments stretched out.

Cosca prised one eye open. A bright-blue butterfly fluttered heedlessly down, circled widdershins around the cowering mercenaries and came peacefully to rest on the blade of a spear. Victus himself had his helmet pushed right down over his face. Now he slowly tipped it back to display an expression of some confusion.

"What the hell happened? Is the fuse lit? Where's Sesaria?"

A sudden image formed in Cosca's mind of the trail of powder sputtering out, of Victus' men creeping into the murky darkness, lamps raised, their light falling across Sesaria's corpse, impaled on a sword with unmistakable gilded basketwork. "Erm…"

The very faintest of tremors touched the earth at Cosca's back. A moment later there was a thunderous detonation, so loud that it sent pain lancing through his head. The world went suddenly, entirely silent but for a faint, high-pitched whine. The earth shook. Wind ripped and eddied along the trench, tearing at his hair and nearly dragging him over. A cloud of choking dust filled the air, nipping at his lungs and making him cough. Gravel rained down from the sky, he gasped as he felt it sting at his arms, at his scalp. He cowered like a man caught out in a hurricane, every muscle tensed. For how long, he was not sure.

Cosca opened his eyes, dumbly uncurled his aching limbs and got weakly to his feet. The world was a ghost-place of silent fog. The land of the dead, surely, men and equipment no more than phantoms in the murk. The mist began to clear. He rubbed at his ears but the whining continued. Others got up, staring around, faces caked with grey dirt. Not far away someone lay still in a puddle in the bottom of a trench, his helmet stoved in by a chunk of rock, steered by the fickle Fates directly onto his head. Cosca peered over the lip of the trench, blinked up towards the summit of the mountain, straining through the gradually settling dust.

"Oh." The wall of Fontezarmo appeared undamaged, the outline of towers and battlements still very much present against the lead-white sky. A vast crater had been blown from the rock, but the great round tower directly above it still clung stubbornly to the edge, even slightly overhanging empty space. It seemed for a moment to be perhaps the most crushing anticlimax of Cosca's life, and there had been many.

Then, in dreamlike silence and with syrupy slowness, that central tower leaned, buckled, fell in on itself and collapsed into the yawning crater. A huge section of wall to either side of it was dragged after, all folding up and dissolving into rubble under its own weight. A man-made landslide of hundreds of tons of stone rolled, bounced, crashed down towards the trenches.

"Ah," said Cosca, silently.

For a second time men flung themselves on their faces, covered their heads, prayed to the Fates or whichever of a range of gods and spirits they did or did not believe in for deliverance. Cosca stayed standing, staring fascinated as a giant chunk of masonry perhaps ten tons in weight hurtled down the slope directly towards him, bouncing, spinning, flinging pieces of stone high into the air, all without the slightest sound but for perhaps a vague crunching, like footsteps on gravel. It came to an eventual stop no more than ten strides distant, rocked gently to one side and the other, and was still.

A second cloud of dust had plunged the trench into choking gloom, but as it gradually faded Cosca could see the vast breach left in the outer wall of Fontezarmo, no fewer than two hundred strides across, the crater beneath it now choked with settling rubble. A second tower at its edge leaned at an alarming angle, like a drunken man peering over a cliff, ready at any moment to topple into emptiness.

He saw Victus stand beside him, raise his sword and scream. The word didn't sound much louder than if he had spoken it.

"Charge."

Men clambered, somewhat dazed, from the trenches. One took a couple of wobbling steps and fell on his face. Others stood there, blinking. Still others began to head uncertainly uphill. More followed, and soon there were a few hundred men scrambling through the rubble towards the breach, weapons and armour shining dully in the watery sun.

Cosca was left alone in the trench with Victus, both of them coated with grey dust.

"Where's Sesaria?" The words thudding dully through the whine in Cosca's ears.

His own voice was a weird burble. "He wasn't behind me?"

"No. What happened?"

"An accident. An accident… as we came out." It wasn't difficult to force out a tear, Cosca was covered head to toe in knocks and bruises. "I dropped my lamp! Dropped it! Set off the trail of powder halfway down!" He seized Victus by his fluted breastplate. "I told him to run with me, but he stayed! Stayed… to put it out."

"He stayed?"

"He thought he could save us both!" Cosca put one hand over his face, voice choked with emotion. "My fault! All my fault. He truly was the best of us." He wailed it at the sky. "Why? Why? Why do the Fates always take the best?"

Victus' eyes flickered down to Cosca's empty scabbard, then back up to the great crater in the hillside, the yawning breach above it. "Dead, eh?"

"Blown to hell," whispered Cosca. "Baking with Gurkish sugar can be a dangerous business." The sun had come out. Above them, Victus' men were clambering up the sides of the crater and into the breach in a twinkling tide, apparently entirely unopposed. If any defenders had survived the blast, they were in no mood to fight. It seemed the outer ward of Fontezarmo was theirs. "Victory. At least Sesaria's sacrifice was not in vain."

"Oh, no." Victus looked sideways at him through narrowed eyes. "He'd have been proud."

One Nation

The echoing grumble of the crowd on the other side of the doors grew steadily louder, and the churning in Monza's guts grew with it. She tried to rub away the niggling tension under her jaw. It did no good.

But there was nothing to do except wait. Her entire role in tonight's grand performance was to stand there with a straight face and look like the highest of nobility, and Talins' best dressmakers had done all the hard work in making that ludicrous lie seem convincing. They'd given her long sleeves to cover the scars on her arms, a high collar to cover the scars on her neck, gloves to render her ruined hand presentable. They'd been greatly relieved they could keep her neckline low without horrifying Rogont's delicate guests. It was a wonder they hadn't cut a great hole out of the back to show her arse—it was about the only other patch of her skin without a mark across it.

Nothing could be seen that might spoil the perfection of Duke Rogont's moment of history. No sword, certainly, and she missed the weight of it like a missing limb. She wondered when was the last time she'd stepped out without a blade in easy reach. Not in the meeting of the Council of Talins she'd attended the day after being lifted to her new station.

Old Rubine had suggested she had no need to wear a sword in the chamber. She replied she'd worn one every day for twenty years. He'd politely pointed out that neither he nor his colleagues carried arms, though they were all men and hence better suited. She asked him what she'd use to stab him with if she left her sword behind. No one was sure whether she was joking or not. But they didn't ask again.

"Your Excellency." One of the attendants had oozed over and now offered her a silky bow. "Your Grace," and another to Countess Cotarda. "We are about to begin."

"Good," snapped Monza. She faced the double doors, shifted her shoulders back and her chin up. "Let's get this fucking pantomime over with."

She had no time to spare. Every waking moment of the last three weeks—and she'd scarcely slept since Rogont jammed the circlet on her head—she'd spent struggling to drag the state of Talins out of the cesspit she'd fought so hard to shove it into.

Keeping in mind Bialoveld's maxim—any successful state is supported by pillars of steel and gold—she'd dug out every cringing bureaucrat she could find who wasn't besieged in Fontezarmo along with their old master. There'd been discussions about the Talinese army. There wasn't one. Discussions about the treasury. It was empty. The system of taxation, the maintenance of public works, the preservation of security, the administration of justice, all dissolved like cake in a stream. Rogont's presence, or that of his soldiers anyway, was all that was keeping Talins from anarchy.

But Monza had never been put off by a wind in the wrong direction. She'd always had a knack for reckoning a man's qualities, and picking the right one for a given job. Old Rubine was pompous as a prophet, so she made him high magistrate. Grulo and Scavier were the two most ruthless merchants in the city. She didn't trust either, so she made them joint chancellors, and set each one to dream up new taxes, compete in their collection while keeping one jealous eye on the other.

Already they were wringing money from their unhappy colleagues, and already Monza had spent it on arms.

Three long days into her unpromising rule, an old sergeant called Volfier had arrived in the city, a man almost laughably hardbitten, and nearly as scarred as she was. Refusing to surrender, he'd led the twenty-three survivors of his regiment back from the rout at Ospria and all the way across Styria with arms and honour intact. She could always use a man that bloody-minded, and set him to rounding up every veteran in the city. Paying work was thin on the ground and he already had two companies of volunteers, their glorious charge to escort the tax collectors and make sure not a copper went missing.

She'd marked Duke Orso's lessons well. Gold, to steel, to more gold—such was the righteous spiral of politics. Resistance, apathy and scorn from all quarters only made her shove harder. She took a perverse satisfaction in the apparent impossibility of the task, the work pushed the pain to one side, and the husk with it, and kept her sharp. It had been a long, long time since she'd made anything grow.

"You look… very beautiful."

"What?" Cotarda had glided up silently beside her and was offering a nervous smile. "Oh. Likewise," grunted Monza, barely even looking.

"White suits you. They tell me I'm too pale for white." Monza winced. Just the kind of mindless twittering she had no stomach for tonight. "I wish I was like you."

"Some time in the sun would do it."

"No, no. Brave." Cotarda looked down at her pale fingers, twisting them together. "I wish I was brave. They tell me I'm powerful. One would have thought being powerful would mean one need not be scared of anything. But I'm afraid all the time. Especially at events." The words spilled out of her to Monza's mounting discomfort. "Sometimes I can't move for the weight of it. All the fear. I'm such a disappointment. What can I do about that? What would you do?"

Monza had no intention of discussing her own fears. That would only feed them. But Cotarda blathered on regardless.

"I've no character at all, but where does one get character from? Either you have it or you don't. You have. Everyone says you have. Where did you get it? Why don't I have any? Sometimes I think I'm cut out of paper, just acting like a person. They tell me I'm an utter coward. What can I do about that? Being an utter coward?"

They stared at each other for a long moment, then Monza shrugged. "Act like you're not."

The doors were pulled open.

Musicians somewhere out of sight struck up a stately refrain as she and Cotarda stepped out into the vast bowl of the Senate House. Though there was no roof, though the stars would soon show in the blue-black sky above, it was hot. Hot, and clammy as a tomb, and the perfumed stink of flowers caught at Monza's tight throat and made her want to retch. Thousands of candles burned in the darkness, filling the great arena with creeping shadows, making gilt glimmer, gems glitter, turning the hundreds upon hundreds of smiling faces that soared up on all sides into leering masks. Everything was outsize—the crowd, the rustling banners behind them, the venue itself. Everything was overdone, like a scene from a lurid fantasy.

A hell of a lot of effort just to watch one man put on a new hat.

The audience were a varied lot. Styrians made up the bulk, rich and powerful men and women, merchants and minor nobility from across the land. A smattering of famous artists, diplomats, poets, craftsmen, soldiers—Rogont wanted no one excluded who might reflect some extra glory onto him. Guests from abroad occupied most of the better seats, down near the front, come to pay their respects to the new King of Styria, or to try to wangle some advantage from his elevation, at least. There were merchant captains of the Thousand Isles with golden hoops through their ears. There were heavy-bearded Northmen, bright-eyed Baolish. There were natives of Suljuk in vivid silks, a pair of priestesses from Thond where they worshipped the sun, heads shaved to yellow stubble. There were three nervous-seeming Aldermen of Westport. The Union, unsurprisingly, was notable by its utter absence, but the Gurkish delegation had willingly spread out to fill their space. A dozen ambassadors from the Emperor Uthman-ul-Dosht, heavy with gold. A dozen priests from the Prophet Khalul, in sober white.

Monza walked through them all as if they weren't there, shoulders back, eyes fixed ahead, the cold sneer on her mouth she'd always worn when she was most terrified. Lirozio and Patine approached with equal pomposity down a walkway opposite. Sotorius waited by the chair that was the golden centrepiece of the entire event, leaning heavily on a staff. The old man had sworn he'd be consigned to hell before he walked down a ramp.

They reached the circular platform, gathering under the expectant gaze of several thousand pairs of eyes. The five great leaders of Styria who'd enjoy the honour of crowning Rogont, all dressed with a symbolism that a mushroom couldn't have missed. Monza was in pearly white, with the cross of Talins across her chest in sparkling fragments of black crystal. Cotarda wore Affoian scarlet. Sotorius had golden cockleshells around the hem of his black gown, Lirozio the bridge of Puranti on his gilded cape. They were like bad actors representing the cities of Styria in some cheap morality play, except at vast expense. Even Patine had shed any pretence at humility, and swapped his rough-spun peasant cloth for green silk, fur and sparkling jewels. Six rings were the symbol of Nicante, but he must have been sporting nine at the least, one with an emerald the size of Friendly's dice.

At close quarters, none of them looked particularly pleased with their role. Like a group who'd agreed, while blind drunk, to jump into the freezing sea in the morning but now, with the sober dawn, were thinking better of it.

"Well," grunted Monza, as the musicians brought their piece to an end and the last notes faded. "Here we are."

"Indeed." Sotorius swept the murmuring crowd with rheumy eyes. "Let us hope the crown is large. Here comes the biggest head in Styria."

An ear-splitting fanfare blasted out from behind. Cotarda flinched, stumbled, would've fallen if Monza hadn't seized her elbow on an instinct. The doors at the very back of the hall were opened, and as the blaring sound of trumpets faded a strange singing began, a pair of voices, high and pure, floating out over the audience. Rogont stepped smiling through into the Senate House, and his guests broke out into well-organised applause.

The king-in-waiting, all in Osprian blue, looked about him with humble surprise as he began to descend the steps. All this, for me? You shouldn't have! When of course he'd planned every detail himself. Monza wondered for a moment, and not for the first time, whether Rogont would turn out to be a far worse king than Orso might've been. No less ruthless, no more loyal, but a lot more vain, and less sense of humour every day. He pressed favoured hands in his, laying a generous palm on a lucky shoulder or two as he passed. The unearthly singing serenaded him as he came through the crowd.

"Can I hear spirits?" muttered Patine, with withering scorn.

"You can hear boys with no balls," replied Lirozio.

Four men in Osprian livery unlocked a heavy door behind the platform and passed inside, came out shortly afterwards struggling under the weight of an inlaid case. Rogont made a swift pass around the front row, pressing the hands of a few chosen ambassadors, paying particular attention to the Gurkish delegation and stretching the applause to breaking point. Finally he mounted the steps to the platform, smiling the way the winner of a vital hand of cards smiles at his ruined opponents. He held his arms out to the five of them. "My friends, my friends! The day is finally here!"

"It is," said Sotorius, simply.

"Happy day!" sang Lirozio.

"Long hoped for!" added Patine.

"Well done?" offered Cotarda.

"My thanks to you all." Rogont turned to face his guests, silenced their clapping with a gentle motion of his hands, swept his cloak out behind him, lowered himself into his chair and beckoned Monza over. "No congratulations from you, your Excellency?"

"Congratulations," she hissed.

"As graceful as always." He leaned closer, murmuring under his breath. "You did not come to me last night."

"Other commitments."

"Truly?" Rogont raised his brows as though amazed that anything could possibly be more important than fucking him. "I suppose a head of state has many demands upon her time. Well." He waved her scornfully away.

Monza ground her teeth. At that moment, she would've been more than willing to piss on him.

The four porters set down their burden behind the throne, one of them turned the key in the lock and lifted the lid with a showy flourish. A sigh went up from the crowd. The crown lay on purple velvet inside. A thick band of gold, set all around with a row of darkly gleaming sapphires. Five golden oak leaves sprouted from it, and at the front a larger sixth curled about a monstrous, flashing diamond, big as a chicken's egg. So large Monza felt a strange desire to laugh at it.

With the expression of a man about to clear a blocked latrine with his hand, Lirozio reached into the case and grasped one of the golden leaves. A resigned shrug of the shoulders and Patine did the same. Then Sotorius and Cotarda. Monza took hold of the last in her gloved right fist, poking little finger looking no better for being sheathed in white silk. She glanced across the faces of her supposed peers. Two forced smiles, a slight sneer and an outright scowl. She wondered how long it would take for these proud princes, so used to being their own masters, to tire of this less favourable arrangement.

By the look of things, the yoke was already starting to chafe.

Together, the five of them lifted the crown and took a few lurching steps forwards, Sotorius having to awkwardly negotiate the case, dragging each other clumsily about by the priceless symbol of majesty. They made it to the chair, and between them raised the crown high over Rogont's head. They paused there for a moment, as if by mutual agreement, perhaps wondering if there was still some way out of this. The whole great space was eerily silent, every man and woman holding their breath. Then Sotorius gave a resigned nod, and together the five of them lowered the crown, seated it carefully on Rogont's skull and stepped away.

Styria, it seemed, was one nation.

Its king rose slowly from the chair and spread his arms wide, palms open, staring straight ahead as though he could see right through the ancient walls of the Senate House and into a brilliant future.

"Our fellow Styrians!" he bellowed, voice ringing from the stones. "Our humble subjects! And our friends from abroad, all welcome here!" Mostly Gurkish friends, but since the Prophet had stretched to such a large diamond for his crown… "The Years of Blood are at an end!" Or they soon would be, once Monza had spilled Orso's. "No longer will the great cities of our proud land struggle one against the other!" That remained to be seen. "But will stand as brothers eternal, bound willingly by happy ties of friendship, of culture, of common heritage. Marching together!" In whatever direction Rogont dictated, presumably. "It is as if… Styria wakes from a nightmare. A nightmare nineteen years long. Some among us, I am sure, can scarcely remember a time without war." Monza frowned, thinking of her father's plough turning the black earth.

"But now… the wars are over! And all of us won! Every one of us." Some won more than others, it needed hardly to be said. "Now is the time for peace! For freedom! For healing!" Lirozio noisily cleared his throat, wincing as he tugged at his embroidered collar. "Now is the time for hope, for forgiveness, for unity!" And abject obedience, of course. Cotarda was staring at her hand. Her pale palm was mottled pink, almost deep enough to match her scarlet dress. "Now is the time for us to forge a great state that will be the envy of the world! Now is the time—" Lirozio had started to cough, beads of sweat showing on his ruddy face. Rogont frowned furiously sideways at him. "Now is the time for Styria to become—" Patine bent forwards and gave an anguished groan, lips curled back from his teeth.

"One nation…" Something was wrong, and everyone was beginning to see it. Cotarda lurched backwards, stumbled. She caught the gilded railing, chest heaving, and sank to the floor with a rustling of red silk. The audience gave a stunned collective gasp.

"One nation…" whispered Rogont. Chancellor Sotorius sank trembling to his knees, one pink-stained hand clutching at his withered throat. Patine was crouched on all fours now, face bright red, veins bulging from his neck. Lirozio toppled onto his side, back to Monza, his breath a faint wheeze. His right arm stretched out behind him, the twitching hand blotched pink. Cotarda's leg kicked faintly, then she was still. All the while the crowd stayed silent. Transfixed. Not sure if this was some demented part of the show. Some awful joke. Patine sagged onto his face. Sotorius fell backwards, spine arched, heels of his shoes squeaking against the polished wood, then flopped down limp.

Rogont stared at Monza and she stared back, as frozen and helpless as she had been when she watched Benna die. He opened his mouth, raised one hand towards her, but no breath moved. His forehead, beneath the fur-trimmed rim of the crown, had turned angry red.

The crown. They all had touched the crown. Her eyes rolled down to her gloved right hand. All except her.

Rogont's face twisted. He took one step, his ankle buckled and he pitched onto his face, bulging eyes staring sightlessly off to the side. The crown popped from his skull, bounced once, rolled across the inlaid platform to its edge and clattered to the floor below. Someone in the audience gave a single, ear-splitting scream.

There was the whoosh of a counterweight falling, a rattle of wood, and a thousand white songbirds were released from cages concealed around the edge of the chamber, rising up into the clear night air in a beautiful, twittering storm.

It was just as Rogont had planned.

Except that of the six men and women destined to unite Styria and bring an end to the Years of Blood, only Monza was still alive.

All Dust

Shivers took more'n a little satisfaction in the fact Grand Duke Rogont was dead. Maybe it should've been King Rogont, but it didn't matter much which you called him now, and that thought tickled Shivers' grin just a bit wider.

You can be as great a man as you please while you're alive. Makes not a straw of difference once you go back to the mud. And it only takes a little thing. Might happen in a silly moment. An old friend of Shivers' fought all seven days at the battle in the High Places and didn't get a nick. Scratched himself on a thorn leaving the valley next morning, got the rot in his hand, died babbling a few nights after. No point to it. No lesson. Except watch out for thorns, maybe.

But then a noble death like Rudd Threetrees won for himself, leading the charge, sword in his fist as the life left him—that was no better. Maybe men would sing a song about it, badly, when they were drunk, but for him who died, death was death, same for everyone. The Great Leveller, the hillmen called it. Lords and beggars made equal.

All of Rogont's grand ambitions were dirt. His power was mist, blown away on the dawn breeze. Shivers, no more'n a one-eyed killer, not fit to lick the king-in-waiting's boots clean yesterday, this morning was the better man by far. He was still casting a shadow. If there was a lesson, it was this—you have to take what you can while you still have breath. The earth holds no rewards but darkness.

They rode from the tunnel and into the outer ward of Fontezarmo, and Shivers gave a long, soft whistle.

"They done some building work."

Monza nodded. "Some knocking down, at least. Seems the Prophet's gift did the trick."

It was a fearsome weapon, this Gurkish sugar. A great stretch of the walls on their left had vanished, a tower tilted madly at the far end, cracks up its side, looking sure to follow the rest down the mountain any moment. A few leafless shrubs clung to the ragged cliff-edge where the walls had been, clawing at empty air. Shivers reckoned there'd been gardens, but the flaming shot the catapults had been lobbing in the last few weeks had turned 'em mostly to burned-up bramble, split tree-stump and scorched-out mud, all smeared down and puddle-pocked by last night's rain.

A cobbled way led through the midst of this mess, between a half-dozen stagnant fountains and up to a black gate, still sealed tight. A few twisted shapes lay round some wreckage, bristling with arrows. Dead men round a torched ram. Scanning along the battlements above, Shivers' practised eye picked out spears, bows, armour twinkling. Seemed the inner wall was still firm held, Duke Orso no doubt tucked in tight behind it.

They rode around a big heap of damp canvas weighted down with stones, patches of rainwater in the folds. As Shivers passed he saw there were boots sticking out of one end, a few pairs of dirty bare feet, all beaded up with wet.

Seemed one of Volfier's lads was a fresh recruit, went pale when he saw them dead men. Strange, but seeing him all broken up just made Shivers wonder when he got so comfortable around a corpse or two. To him they were just bits of the scenery now, no more meaning than the broken tree-stumps. It was going to take more'n a corpse or two to spoil his good mood that morning.

Monza reined her horse in and slid from the saddle. "Dismount," grunted Volfier, and the rest followed her.

"Why do some of 'em have bare feet?" The boy was still staring at the dead.

"Because they had good boots," said Shivers. The lad looked down at his own foot-leather, then back to those wet bare feet, then put one hand over his mouth.

Volfier clapped the boy on the back and made him start, gave Shivers a wink while he did it. Seemed baiting the new blood was the same the world over. "Boots or no boots, don't make no difference once they've killed you. Don't worry, boy, you get used to it."

"You do?"

"If you're lucky," said Shivers, "you'll live long enough."

"If you're lucky," said Monza, "you'll find another trade first. Wait here."

Volfier gave her a nod. "Your Excellency." And Shivers watched her pick her way around the wreckage and off.

"Get on top of things in Talins?" he muttered.

"Hope so," grunted the scarred sergeant. "Got the fires put out, in the end. Made us a deal with the criminals in the Old Quarter they'd keep an eye on things there for a week, and we wouldn't keep an eye for a month after."

"Coming to something when you're looking to thieves to keep order."

"It's a topsy-turvy world alright." Volfier narrowed his eyes at the inner wall. "My old master's on the other side o' that. A man I fought my whole life for. Never had any riots when he was in charge."

"Wish you were with him?"

Volfier frowned sideways. "I wish we'd won at Ospria, then the choice wouldn't have come up. But then I wish my wife hadn't fucked the baker while I was away in the Union on campaign three years ago. Wishing don't change nothing."

Shivers grinned, and tapped at his metal eye with a fingernail. "That there is a fact."

Cosca sat on his field chair, in the only part of the gardens that was still anything like intact, and watched his goat grazing on the wet grass. There was something oddly calming about her gradual, steady progress across the last remaining bit of lawn. The wriggling of her lips, the delicate nibbling of her teeth, the tiny movements that by patient repetition would soon shave that lawn down to stubble. He stuck a fingertip in his ear and waggled it around, trying to clear the faint ringing that still lurked at the edge of his hearing. It persisted. He sighed, raised his flask, heard footsteps crunching on gravel and stopped. Monza was walking towards him. She looked beyond tired, shoulders hunched, mouth twisted, eyes buried in dark pits.

"Why the hell do you have a goat?"

Cosca took a slow swig from his flask, grimaced and took another. "Noble beast, the goat. She reminds me, in your absence, to be tenacious, single-minded and hard-working. You have to stick at something in your life, Monzcarro." The goat looked up, and bleated in apparent agreement. "I hope you won't take offence if I say you look tired."

"Long night," she muttered, and Cosca judged it to be a tremendous understatement.

"I'm sure."

"The Osprians pulled out of Talins. There was a riot. Panic."

"Inevitable."

"Someone spread a rumour that the Union fleet was on its way."

"Rumours can do more damage than the ships themselves."

"The crown was poisoned," she muttered.

"The leaders of Styria, consumed by their own lust for power. There's a message in there, wouldn't you say? Murder and metaphor combined. The poisoner-poet responsible has managed to kill a chancellor, a duke, a countess, a first citizen and a king, and teach the world an invaluable lesson about life all in one evening. Your friend and mine, Morveer?"

She spat. "Maybe."

"I never thought that pedantic bastard had such a sense of humour."

"Forgive me if I don't laugh."

"Why did he spare you?"

"He didn't." Monza held up her gloved right hand. "My glove did."

Cosca could not help a snort of laughter. "Just think, one could say that by crushing your right hand, Duke Orso and his cohorts saved your life! The ironies pile one upon the other!"

"I might wait for a more settled moment to enjoy them."

"Oh, I'd enjoy them now. I've wasted years waiting for more settled moments. In my experience they never come. Only look around you. The Affoians almost all deserted before daybreak. The Sipanese are already splitting into factions, falling back south—to fight each other, would be my guess. The army of Puranti were so keen to get their civil war under way they actually started killing each other in the trenches. Victus had to break it up! Victus, stopping a fight, can you imagine? Some of the Osprians are still here, but only because they haven't a clue what else to do. The lot of them, running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Which I suppose they are. You know, I'm eternally amazed at just how quickly things can fall apart. Styria was united for perhaps the length of a minute and now is plunged into deeper chaos than ever. Who knows who'll seize power, and where, and how much? It seems an end may have been called to the Years of Blood…" and Cosca stuck his chin out and gave his neck a scratch, "somewhat prematurely."

Monza's shoulders seemed to slump a little lower. "The ideal situation for a mercenary, no?"

"You'd have thought. But there's such a thing as too much chaos, even for a man like me. I swear, the Thousand Swords are the most coherent and orderly body of troops left up here. Which should give you some idea of the utter disorder that has struck your allies." He stretched his legs out in front of him, one boot crossed over the other. "I thought I might take the brigade down towards Visserine, and press my claims there. I very much doubt Rogont will be honouring our agreement now—"

"Stay," she said, and fixed her eyes on his.

"Stay?"

"Stay."

There was a long pause while they watched each other. "You've no right to ask me that."

"But I am asking. Help me."

"Help… you? It's coming to something when I'm anyone's best hope. What of your loyal subjects, the good people of Talins? Is there no help to be had there?"

"They aren't as keen for a battle as they were for a parade. They won't lift a finger in case they get Orso back in charge and he hangs every man of them."

"The fickle movements of power, eh? You've raised no soldiers while you had the throne? That hardly seems your style."

"I raised what I could, but I can't trust them here. Not against Orso. Who knows which way they'll jump?"

"Ah, divided loyalties. I have some experience with them. An unpredictable scenario." Cosca stuck his finger in his other ear, to no greater effect. "Have you considered the possibility of… perhaps… leaving it be?"

She looked at him as if he was speaking in a foreign tongue. "What?"

"I myself have left a thousand tasks unfinished, unstarted or outright failed across the whole breadth of the Circle of the World. In the end, they bother me considerably less than my successes."

"I'm not you."

"No doubt a cause of constant regret for us both. But still. You could forget about revenge. You could compromise. You could… be merciful."

"Mercy and cowardice are the same," she growled, narrow eyes fixed on the black gate at the far end of the blasted gardens.

Cosca gave a sad smile. "Are they indeed?"

"Conscience is an excuse not to do what needs doing."

"I see."

"No use weeping about it. That's how the world is."

"Ah."

"The good get nothing extra. When they die they turn to shit like the rest of us. You have to keep your eyes ahead, always ahead, fight one battle at a time. You can't hesitate, no matter the costs, no matter the—"

"Do you know why I always loved you, Monza?"

"Eh?" Her eyes flickered to him, surprised.

"Even after you betrayed me? More, after you betrayed me?" Cosca leaned slowly towards her. "Because I know you don't really believe any of that rubbish. Those are the lies you tell yourself so you can live with what you've done. What you've had to do."

There was a long pause. Then she swallowed as though she was about to puke. "You always said I had a devil in me."

"Did I? Well, so do we all." He waved a hand. "You're no saint, that much we know. A child of a bloody time. But you're nothing like as dark as you make out."

"No?"

"I pretend to care for the men, but in truth I don't give a damn whether they live or die. You always did care, but you pretend not to give a damn. I never saw you waste one man's life. And yet they like me better. Hah. There's justice. You always did the right thing by me, Monza. Even when you betrayed me, it was better than I deserved. I've never forgotten that time in Muris, after the siege, when you wouldn't let the slavers have those children. Everyone wanted to take the money. I did. Faithful did. Even Benna. Especially Benna. But not you."

"Only gave you a scratch," she muttered.

"Don't be modest, you were ready to kill me. These are ruthless times we live in, and in ruthless times, mercy and cowardice are entire opposites. We all turn to shit when we die, Monza, but not all of us are shit while we're alive. Most of us are." His eyes rolled to heaven. "God knows I am. But you never were."

She blinked at him for a moment. "Will you help me?"

Cosca raised his flask again, realised it was empty and screwed the cap back on. The damn thing needed filling far too often. "Of course I'll help you. There was never the slightest question in my mind. I have already organised the assault, in fact."

"Then—"

"I just wanted to hear you ask. I must say I am surprised you did, though. The mere idea that the Thousand Swords would do the hard work of a siege, have one of the richest palaces in Styria at their mercy and walk away without a scrap of booty? Have you lost your reason? I couldn't prise these greedy bastards away with a spade. We're attacking at dawn tomorrow, with or without you, and we'll be picking this place clean. More than likely my boys will have the lead off the roofs by lunchtime. Rule of Quarters, and all that."

"And Orso?"

"Orso is yesterday's man." Cosca sat back and patted his goat fondly on her flank. "Do as you please with him."

The Inevitable

The dice came up two and one.

Three years ago today, Sajaam bought Friendly's freedom from Safety. Three years he had been homeless. He had followed three people, two men and one woman, all across Styria and back. In that time, the place he had hated least was the Thousand Swords, and not just because it had a number in its name, though that was, of course, a good start.

There was order, here, up to a point. Men had given tasks with given times to do them, knew their places in the big machine. The company was all neatly quantified in the notary's three ledgers. Number of men under each captain, length of service, amount of pay, times reported, equipment hired. Everything could be counted. There were rules, up to a point, explicit and implied. Rules about drinking, gambling and fighting. Rules about use of whores. Rules about who sat where. Who could go where, and when. Who fought and who did not. And the all-important Rule of Quarters, controlling the declaration and assignment of booty, enforced with eagle-eyed discipline.

When rules were broken there were fixed punishments, understood by all. Usually a number of lashes of the whip. Friendly had watched a man whipped for pissing in the wrong place, yesterday. It did not seem such a crime, but Victus had explained to everyone, you start off pissing where you please, then you shit where you please, then everyone dies of the plague. So it had been three lashes. Two and one.

Friendly's favourite place was the mess. There was a comforting routine to mealtimes that put him in mind of Safety. The frowning cooks in their stained aprons. The steam from the great pots. The rattle and clatter of knives and spoons. The slurp and splutter of lips, teeth, tongues. The line of jostling men, all asking for more than their share and never getting it.

The men who would be in the scaling parties this morning got two extra meatballs and an extra spoon of soup. Two and one. Cosca had said it was one thing to get poked off a ladder with a spear, but he could not countenance a man falling off from hunger.

"We'll be attacking within the hour," he said now.

Friendly nodded.

Cosca took a long breath, pushed it out through his nose and frowned around him. "Ladders, mainly." Friendly had watched them being made, over the last few days. Twenty-one of them. Two and one. Each had thirty-one rungs, except for one, which had thirty-two. One, two, three. "Monza will be going with them. She wants to be the first to Orso. Entirely determined. She's set firm on vengeance."

Friendly shrugged. She always had been.

"In all honesty, I worry for her."

Friendly shrugged. He was indifferent.

"A battle is a dangerous place."

Friendly shrugged. That seemed obvious.

"My friend, I want you to stick near her, in the fighting. Make sure no harm comes to her."

"What about you?"

"Me?" Cosca slapped Friendly on his shoulder. "The only shield I need is the universally high regard in which men hold me."

"You sure?"

"No, but I'll be where I always am. Well behind the fighting with my flask for company. Something tells me she'll need you more. There are enemies still, out there. And Friendly…"

"Yes?"

"Watch closely and take great care. The fox is most dangerous when at bay—that Orso will have some deadly tricks in store, well…" and he puffed out his cheeks, "it's inevitable. Watch out, in particular… for Morveer."

"Alright." Murcatto would have him and Shivers watching her. A party of three, as it had been when they killed Gobba. Two watching one. He wrapped the dice up and slid them down into his pocket. He watched the steam rise as the food was ladled out. Listened to the men grumbling. Counted the complaints.

The washed-out grey of dawn was turning to golden daylight, sun creeping over the battlements at the top of the wall they'd all have to climb, its gaptoothed shadow slowly giving ground across the ruined gardens.

They'd be going soon. Shivers shut his eye and grinned into the sun. Tipped his head back and stuck his tongue out. It was getting colder as the year wore down. Felt almost like a fine summer morning in the North. Like mornings he'd fought great battles in. Mornings he'd done high deeds, and a few low ones too.

"You seem happy enough," came Monza's voice, "for a man about to risk his life."

Shivers opened his eye and turned his grin on her. "I've made peace with myself."

"Good for you. That's the hardest war of all to win."

"Didn't say I won. Just stopped fighting."

"I'm starting to think that's the only victory worth a shit," she muttered, almost to herself.

Ahead of them, the first wave of mercenaries were ready to go, stood about their ladders, big shields on their free arms, twitchy and nervous, which was no surprise. Shivers couldn't say he much fancied their job. They weren't making the least effort to hide what they had planned. Everyone knew what was coming, on both sides of the wall.

Close round Shivers, the second wave were getting ready too. Giving blades a last stroke with the whetstone, tightening straps on armour, telling a last couple of jokes and hoping they weren't the last they ever told. Shivers grinned, watching them at it. Rituals he'd seen a dozen times before and more. Felt almost like home.

"You ever have the feeling you were in the wrong place?" he asked. "That if you could just get over the next hill, cross the next river, look down into the next valley, it'd all… fit. Be right."

Monza narrowed her eyes at the inner walls. "All my life, more or less."

"All your life spent getting ready for the next thing. I climbed a lot of hills now. I crossed a lot of rivers. Crossed the sea even, left everything I knew and came to Styria. But there I was, waiting for me at the docks when I got off the boat, same man, same life. Next valley ain't no different from this one. No better anyway. Reckon I've learned… just to stick in the place I'm at. Just to be the man I am."

"And what are you?"

He looked down at the axe across his knees. "A killer, I reckon."

"That all?"

"Honestly? Pretty much." He shrugged. "That's why you took me on, ain't it?"

She frowned at the ground. "What happened to being an optimist?"

"Can't I be an optimistic killer? A man once told me—the man who killed my brother, as it goes—that good and evil are a matter of where you stand. We all got our reasons. Whether they're decent ones all depends on who you ask, don't it?"

"Does it?"

"I would've thought you'd say so, of all people."

"Maybe I would've, once. Now I'm not so sure. Maybe those are just the lies we tell ourselves, so we can live with what we've done."

Shivers couldn't help himself. He burst out laughing.

"What's funny?"

"I don't need excuses, Chief, that's what I'm trying to tell you. What's the name for it, when a thing's bound to happen? There's a word for it, ain't there, when there's no stopping something? No avoiding it, whatever you try to do?"

"Inevitable," said Monza.

"That's it. The inevitable." Shivers chewed happily on the word like a mouthful of good meat. "I'm happy with what's done. I'm happy with what's coming."

A shrill whistle cut through the air. All together, with a rattling of armour, the first wave knelt in parties of a dozen and took up their long ladders between them. They started to jog forwards, in piss-poor order if Shivers was honest, slipping and sliding across the slimy gardens. Others followed after, none too eager, sharpshooters with flatbows aiming to keep the archers on the walls busy. There were a few grunts, some calls of "steady" and the rest, but a quiet rush, on the whole. It wouldn't have seemed right, really, giving your war cry while you ran at a wall. What do you do when you get there? You can't keep shouting all the way up a ladder.

"There they go." Shivers stood, lifted his axe and shook it above his head. "Go on! Go on, you bastards!"

They made it halfway across the gardens before Shivers heard a floating shriek of, "Fire!" A moment later a clicking rattle from the walls. Bolts flitted down into the charging men. There were a couple of screams, sobs, a few boys dropped, but most kept pressing forwards, faster'n ever now. Mercenaries with bows of their own knelt, sent a volley back, pinging from battlements or flying right over.

The whistle went again and the next wave started forwards, the men who'd drawn the happy task of climbing. Light-armoured mostly, so they'd move nice and nimble. The first party had made it to the foot of the walls, were starting to raise their ladder. One of 'em dropped with a bolt in his neck, but the rest managed to push the thing the whole way. Shivers watched it swing over and clatter into the parapet. Other ladders started going up. More movement at the top of the walls, men leaning out with rocks and chucking them down. Bolts fell among the second wave, but most of 'em were getting close to the walls now, crowding round, starting to climb. There were six ladders up, then ten. The next one fell apart when it hit the battlements, bits of wood dropping on the shocked boys who'd raised it. Shivers had to chuckle.

More rocks dropped. A man tumbled from halfway up a ladder, his legs folding every which way underneath him, started shrieking away. There was plenty of shouting all round now, and no mistake. Some defenders on a tower roof upended a big vat of boiling water into the faces of a party trying to raise a ladder below. They made a hell of a noise, ladder toppling, running about clutching their heads like madmen.

Bolts and arrows hissed up and down each way. Stones tumbled, bounced. Men fell at the walls, or on their way to 'em. Others started crawling back through the mud, were dragged back, arms over the shoulders of comrades happy for an excuse to get clear. Mercenaries hacked about madly as they got to the top of the ladders, more'n one poked off by waiting spearmen, taking the quick way back down.

Shivers saw someone at the battlements upending a pot onto a ladder and the men climbing it. Someone else came up with a torch, set light to it, and the whole top half went up in flames. Oil, then. Shivers watched it burn, a couple of the men on it too. After a moment they toppled off, took some others with 'em, more screams. Shivers slid his axe through the loop over his shoulder. Best place for it when you're trying to climb. Unless you slip and it cuts your head off, of course. That thought made him chuckle again. Couple of men around him were frowning, he was chuckling that much, but he didn't care, the blood was pumping fast now. They just made him chuckle more.

Looked like some of the mercenaries had made it to the parapet over on the right. He saw blades twinkling at the battlements. More men pressed up behind. A ladder covered in soldiers was shoved away from the wall with poles. It teetered for a moment, upright, like the best stilt-show in the world. The poor bastards near the top wriggled, clutching at nothing, then it slowly toppled over and mashed them all into the cobbles.

They were up on the left too, just next to the gatehouse. Shivers saw men fighting their way up some steps onto the roof. Five or six of the ladders were down, two were still burning up against the wall, sending up plumes of dark smoke, but most of the rest were crawling with climbing soldiers from top to bottom. Couldn't have been too many men on the defence, and weight of numbers was starting to tell.

The whistle went again and the third wave started to move, heavier-armoured men who'd follow the first up the ladders and press on into the fortress.

"Let's go," said Monza.

"Right y'are, Chief." Shivers took a breath and started jogging.

The bows were more or less silenced now, only a few bolts still flitting from arrow-loops in the towers. So it was a happier journey than the folks before had taken, just a morning amble through the corpses scattered across the blasted gardens and over to one of the middle ladders. A couple of men and a sergeant were stood at the foot, boots up on the first rung, gripping it tight. The sergeant slapped each man as he began to climb.

"Up you go now, lads, up you go! Fast but steady! No loitering! Get up and kill those fuckers! You too, bastard—Oh. Sorry, your… er… Excellency?"

"Just hold it steady." And Monza started climbing.

Shivers followed, hands sliding on the rough uprights, boots scraping on the wood, breath hissing through his smile as his muscles worked up an ache. He kept his eyes fixed on the wall in front. No point looking anywhere else. If an arrow came? Nothing you could do. If some bastard dropped a rock on you, or a pot of boiling water? Nothing you could do. If they pushed the ladder off? Shitty luck, alright, but looking out for it would only slow you down and make it the more likely. So he kept on, breathing hard through his clenched teeth.

Soon enough he got to the top, hauled himself over. Monza was there on the walkway, sword already drawn, looking down into the inner ward. He could hear fighting, but not near. There were a few dead men scattered on the walkway, from both sides. A mercenary propped against the stonework had an arm off at the elbow, rope lashed around his shoulder to stop the blood, moaning, "It fell off the edge, it fell off the edge," over and over. Shivers didn't reckon he'd last 'til lunch, but he guessed that meant more lunch for everyone else. You have to look at the sunny side, don't you? That's what being an optimist is all about.

He swung his shield off his back and slid his arm through the straps. He pulled his axe out, spun the grip round in his fist. Felt good to do it. Like a smith getting his hammer out, ready for the good work to start. There were more gardens down below, planted on steps cut from the summit of the mountain, nowhere near so battered as the ones further out. Buildings towered over the greenery on three sides. A mass of twinkling windows and fancy stonework, domes and turrets sprouting from the top, crusted with statues and glinting prongs. Didn't take a great mind to spot Orso's palace, which was just as well, 'cause Shivers knew he didn't have a great mind. Just a bloody one.

"Let's go," said Monza.

Shivers grinned. "Right behind you, Chief."

The trenches that riddled the dusty mountainside were empty. The soldiers who had occupied them had dispersed, gone back to their homes, or to play their own small roles in the several power struggles set off by the untimely deaths of King Rogont and his allies. Only the Thousand Swords remained, swarming hungrily around Duke Orso's palace like maggots around a corpse. Shenkt had seen it all before. Loyalty, duty, pride—fleeting motivations on the whole, which kept men smugly happy in good weather but soon washed away when the storm came. Greed, though? On greed you can always rely.

He walked on up the winding track, across the battle-scarred ground before the walls, over the bridge, the looming gatehouse of Fontezarmo drawing steadily closer. A single mercenary sat slouched on a folding chair outside the open gate, spear leaning against the wall beside him.

"What's your business?" Asked with negligible interest.

"Duke Orso commissioned me to kill Monzcarro Murcatto, now the Grand Duchess of Talins."

"Hilarious." The guard pulled his collars up around his ears and settled back against the wall.

Often, the last thing men believe is the truth. Shenkt pondered that as he passed through the long tunnel and into the outer ward of the fortress. The rigidly ordered beauty of Duke Orso's formal gardens was entirely departed, along with half the north wall. The mercenaries had made a very great mess of the place. But that was war. There was much confusion. But that was war also.

The final assault was evidently well under way. Ladders stood against the inner wall, bodies scattered in the blasted gardens around their bases. Orderlies wandered among them, offering water, fumbling with splints or bandages, moving men onto stretchers. Shenkt knew few would survive who could not even crawl by themselves. Still, men always clung to the smallest sliver of hope. It was one of the few things to admire in them.

He came to a silent halt beside a ruined fountain and watched the wounded struggling against the inevitable. A man slipped suddenly from behind the broken stonework and almost ran straight into him. An unremarkable balding man, wearing a worn studded-leather jerkin.

"Gah! My most profound apologies!"

Shenkt said nothing.

"You are… are you… that is to say… here to participate in the assault?"

"In a way."

"As am I, as am I. In a way." Nothing could have been more natural than a mercenary fleeing the fighting, but something did not tally. He was dressed like a thug, this man, but he spoke like a bad writer. His nearest hand flapped around as though to distract attention from the other, which was clearly creeping towards a concealed weapon. Shenkt frowned. He had no desire to draw undue attention. So he gave this man a chance, just as he always did, wherever possible.

"We both have our work, then. Let us delay each other no longer."

The stranger brightened. "Absolutely so. To work."

Morveer gave a false chuckle, then realised he had accidentally strayed into using his accustomed voice. "To work," he grunted in an unconvincing commoner's baritone.

"To work," the man echoed, his bright eyes never wavering.

"Right. Well." Morveer sidestepped the stranger and walked on, allowing his hand to come free of his mounted needle and drop, inconspicuous, to his side. Without doubt the fellow had been possessed of an unusual manner, but had Morveer's mission been to poison every person with an unusual manner he would never have been halfway done. Fortunately his mission was only to poison seven of the most important persons in the nation, and it was one at which he had only lately achieved spectacular success.

He was still flushed by the sheer scale of his achievement, the sheer audacity of its execution, the unparalleled success of his plan. He was beyond doubt the greatest poisoner ever and had become, indisputably, a great man of history. How it galled him that he could never truly share his grand achievement with the world, never enjoy the adulation his triumph undoubtedly deserved. Oh, if the doubting headmaster at the orphanage could have only witnessed this happy day, he would have been forced to concede that Castor Morveer was indeed prize-winning material! If his wife could have seen it, she would have finally understood him, and never again complained about his unusual habits! If his infamous one-time teacher, Moumah-yin-Bek, could only have been there, he would have finally acknowledged that his pupil had forever eclipsed him. If Day had been alive, she would no doubt have given that silvery giggle in acknowledgement of his genius, smiled her innocent smile and perhaps touched him gently, perhaps even… But now was not the time for such fancies. There had been compelling reasons for poisoning all four of them, so Morveer would have to settle for his own congratulations.

It appeared that his murder of Rogont and his allies had quite eliminated any standards at the siege of Fontezarmo. It was not an overstatement to say that the outer ward of the fortress was scarcely guarded at all. He knew Nicomo Cosca for a bloated balloon of braggadocio, a committed drunkard and a rank incompetent to boot, but he had supposed the man would make some provision for security. This was almost disappointingly effortless.

Though the fighting upon the wall seemed largely to have ceased—the gate to the inner ward was now in the hands of the mercenaries and stood wide—the sound of combat still emanated vaguely from the gardens beyond. An utterly distasteful business; he was pleased that he would have no occasion to stray near it. It appeared the Thousand Swords had captured the citadel and Duke Orso's doom was inevitable, but the thought gave Morveer no particular discomfort. Great men come and go, after all. He had a promise of payment from the Banking House of Valint and Balk, and that went beyond any one man, any one nation. That was deathless.

Some wounded had been laid out on a patch of scraggy grass, in the shadow of a tree to which a goat had, inexplicably, been tethered. Morveer grimaced, tiptoed between them, lip wrinkled at the sight of bloody bandages, of ripped and spattered clothing, of torn flesh—

"Water…" one of them whispered at him, clutching at his ankle.

"Always it's water!" Tearing his leg free. "Find your own!" He hurried through an open doorway and into the largest tower in the outer ward where, he was reliably informed, the constable of the fortress had once had his quarters, and Nicomo Cosca now had his.

He slipped through the gloom of narrow passageways, barely lit by arrow-loops. He crept up a spiral staircase, back hissing against the rough stone wall, tongue pressed into the roof of his mouth. The Thousand Swords were as slovenly and easily fooled as their commander, but he was fully aware that fickle chance might deflate his delight at any moment. Caution first, always.

The first floor had been made a storeroom, filled with shadowy boxes. Morveer crept on. The second floor held empty bunks, no doubt previously utilised by the defenders of the fortress. Twice more around the spiralling steps, he softly tweaked a door open with a finger and applied his eye to the crack.

The circular room beyond contained a large, curtained bed, shelves with many impressive-looking books, writing desk and chests for clothes, an armour stand with suit of polished plate upon it, a sword-rack with several blades, a table with four chairs and a deck of cards, and a large, inlaid cupboard with glasses upon the top. On a row of pegs beside the bed hung several outrageous hats, crystal pins gleaming, gilt bands glinting, a rainbow of different-coloured feathers fluttering in the breeze from an open window. This, without doubt, was the chamber Cosca had taken for his own. No other man would dare to affect such absurd headgear, but for the moment, there was no sign of the great drunkard. Morveer slid inside and eased the door shut behind him. He crossed on silent tiptoes to the cupboard, nimbly avoiding collision with a covered milking-bucket that sat beneath, and with gentle fingers teased open the doors.

Morveer allowed himself the smallest of smiles. Nicomo Cosca would, no doubt, have considered himself a wild and romantic maverick, unfettered by the bonds of routine. In fact he was predictable as the stars, as dully regular as the tide. Most men never change, and a drunk is always a drunk. The chief difficulty appeared to be the spectacular variety of bottles he had collected. There was no way to be certain from which he would drink next. Morveer had no alternative but to poison the entire collection.

He pulled his gloves on, carefully slid the Greenseed solution from his inside pocket. It was lethal only when swallowed, and the timing of its effect varied greatly with the victim, but it gave off only the very slightest fruity odour, entirely undetectable when mingled with wine or spirits. He took careful note of the position of each bottle, the degree to which the cork was inserted, then twisted each free, carefully let fall a drop from his pipette into the neck, replacing cork and bottle precisely as they had been prior to his arrival. He smiled as he poisoned bottles of varying sizes, shapes, colours. This was work as mundane as the poisoned crown had been inspired, but no less noble for that. He would blow through the room like a zephyr of death, undetected, and bring a fitting end to that repulsive drunkard. One more report of Nicomo Cosca's death, and one more only. Few people indeed would consider that anything other than an entirely righteous and public-spirited—

He froze in place. There were footsteps on the stairs. He swiftly pushed the cork back into the final bottle, slid it carefully into position and darted through a narrow doorway into the darkness of a small cell, some kind of—

He wrinkled his nose as he was assailed by a powerful reek of urine. Harsh Mistress Fortune never missed an opportunity to demean him. He might have known he would stumble into a latrine as his hiding place. He had now only to hope that Cosca was not taken with a sudden urge to void his bowels…

The battle on the walls appeared to have been settled, and with relatively little difficulty. No doubt the battle continued in the inner ward beyond, through the rich staterooms and echoing marble halls of Duke Orso's palace. But from Cosca's vantage point atop the constable's tower he could not see a blow of it. And even if he could have, what difference? When you've seen one fortress stormed…

"Victus, my friend!"

"Uh?" The last remaining senior captain of the Thousand Swords lowered his eyeglass and gave Cosca his usual suspicious squint.

"I rather suspect the day is ours."

"I rather suspect you're right."

"The two of us can do no more good up here, even if we could see anything."

"You speak true, as ever." Cosca took that for a joke. "It's all inevitable now. Nothing left but to divide the loot." Victus absently stroked the many chains around his neck. "My favourite part of any siege."

"Cards, then?"

"Why ever not?"

Cosca slapped his eyeglass closed and led the way back down the winding stair to the chamber he had taken for his own. He strode to the cabinet and snatched the inlaid doors open. The many-coloured bottles greeted him like a crowd of old friends. Ah, a drink, a drink, a drink. He took down a glass, pulled the cork from the nearest bottle with a gentle thwop.

"Drink, then?" he called over his shoulder.

"Why ever not?"

There was still fighting, but nothing you could call an organised defence. The mercenaries had swept the walls clean, driven the defenders out of the gardens and were even now breaking into the towers, into the buildings, into the palace. More of them boiled up the ladders every moment, desperate not to miss out on the plunder. No one fought harder or moved faster than the Thousand Swords when they could smell booty.

"This way." She hurried towards the main gate of the palace, retracing the steps she'd taken the day they killed her brother, past the circular pool, two bodies floating face down in the shadow of Scarpius' pillar. Shivers followed, that strange smile on his scarred face he'd been wearing all day. They passed an eager clump of men clustered around a doorway, eyes all shining with greed, a couple of them swinging axes at the lock, door wobbling with each blow. They scrambled over each other as it finally came open, screaming, shouting, elbowing to get past. Two of them wrestled each other to the ground, fighting over what they hadn't even stolen yet.

Further on a pair of mercenaries had a servant in a gold-trimmed jacket sitting on the side of a fountain, his shocked face smeared with blood. One would slap him and scream, "Where's the fucking money?" Then the other would do the same. Back and forth his head went. "Where's the fucking money, where's the fucking money, where's the fucking money…"

A window burst open in a shower of torn lead and broken glass and an antique cabinet tumbled out onto the cobbles, scattering splinters. A whooping mercenary ran past, arms heaped with glinting material. Curtains, maybe. Monza heard a scream, whipped about, saw someone plummet from an upstairs window and headfirst into the garden, drop bonelessly over. She heard shrieking from somewhere. Sounded like a woman's voice, but it was hard to tell when it was that desperate. There was shouting, screaming, laughing everywhere. She swallowed her sickness, tried not to think that she'd made this happen. That this was where her vengeance had led. All she could do was keep her eyes ahead, hope to find Orso first.

Find him and make him pay.

The studded palace doors were still locked, but the mercenaries had found a way round, smashed through one of the great arched windows to one side. Someone must have cut himself in the rush to get in and get rich—there was blood smeared on the windowsill. Monza eased through, boots crunching on broken glass, dropped down into a grand dining room beyond. She'd eaten there once, she realised, Benna beside her, laughing, Faithful too. Orso, Ario, Foscar, Ganmark had all been there, a whole crowd of other officers. It occurred to her that pretty much every guest from that night was dead. The room hadn't fared much better.

It was like a field after the locusts come through. They'd carried off half the paintings, slashed up the rest for the sake of it. The two huge vases beside the fireplace were too big to lift, so they'd smashed them and taken the gilt handles. They'd torn the hangings down, stolen all the plates apart from the ones broken to fragments across the polished floor. Strange, how men are almost as happy to break a thing as steal it, at a time like that. They were still rooting around, ripping drawers from cupboards, chiselling sconces from the walls, dismantling the place for anything worth one bit. One fool had a chair balanced on the bare table and was straining up to reach the chandelier. Another was busy with a knife, trying to prise the crystal doorknobs loose.

A pock-faced mercenary grinned at her, fists bursting with gilded cutlery. "I got spoons!" he shouted. Monza shoved him out of the way and he tripped, his treasure scattering, other men pouncing on it like ducks on stray crumbs. She pushed through the open doorway, out into a marble hall, Shivers at her shoulder. Sounds of fighting echoed down it. Wails and yells, metal scraping, wood crashing, from everywhere and nowhere. She squinted both ways into the gloom, trying to get her bearings, sweat tickling at her scalp.

"This way." They passed a vast sitting room, men inside slashing the upholstery of some antique chairs, as if Orso kept his gold in his cushions. The next door was being kicked in by an eager crowd. One man took an arrow in his neck as they broke it open, others poured in past him, whooping, weapons clashed on the other side. Monza kept her eyes ahead, thoughts fixed on Orso. She pushed on up a flight of steps, teeth gritted, hardly feeling the ache in her legs.

Onto a dim gallery at one end of a high, vaulted chamber, its barrelled ceiling crusted with gilded leaves. The whole wall was a great organ, a range of polished pipes sprouting from carved wood, a stool drawn up before the keyboard for the player. Down below, beyond a delicately worked wooden rail, there was a music room. Mercenaries shrieked with laughter, battering a demented symphony from the instruments as they broke them apart.

"We're close," she whispered over her shoulder.

"Good. Time to get this over with, I reckon."

Her very thoughts. She crept towards the tall door in the far wall. "Orso's chambers are up this way."

"No, no." She frowned over her shoulder. Shivers stood there, grinning, his metal eye shining in the half-light. "Not that."

She felt a cold feeling creeping up her back. "What, then?"

"You know what." His smile widened, scars twisting, and he stretched his neck out one way, then the other.

She dropped into a fighting crouch just in time. He snarled as he came at her, axe flashing across. She lurched into the stool and upended it, nearly fell, mind still catching up. His axe thudded into the organ pipes, struck a mad clanging note from them. He wrenched the blade free, leaving a great wound behind in the thin metal. He sprang at her again but the shock had faded now and cold anger leaked in to fill the gap.

"You one-eyed cocksucker!" Not clever, perhaps, but from the heart. She lunged at him but he caught the Calvez on his shield, swung his axe, and she only just hopped away in time, the heavy blade crashing into the organ's surround and sending splinters flying. She dropped back, watchful, keeping her distance. She'd about as much chance of parrying that weight of steel as she did of playing sweet music on that organ.

"Why?" she snarled at him, point of the Calvez moving in little circles. She didn't care a shit about his reasons, really. Just playing for time, looking for an opening.

"Maybe I got sick o' your scorn." He nudged forwards behind his shield and she backed off again. "Or maybe Eider offered me more'n you."

"Eider?" She spat laughter in his face. "There's your problem! You're a fucking idiot!" She lunged on the last word, trying to catch him off guard, but he wasn't fooled, knocked her jabs calmly away with his shield.

"I'm the idiot? I saved you how many times? I gave up my eye! So you could sneer at me with that empty bastard Rogont? You treat me like a fucking fool and still expect my loyalty, and I'm the idiot?" Hard to argue with most of that, now it was stuck under her nose. She should've listened to Rogont, let him put Shivers down, but she'd let guilt get in the way. Mercy might be brave, like Cosca said, but it seemed it wasn't always clever. Shivers shuffled at her and she gave ground again, fast running out of it.

"You should've seen this coming," he whispered, and she reckoned he had a point. It had been coming a long time. Since she fucked Rogont. Since she turned her back on Shivers. Since he lost his eye in the cells under Salier's palace. Maybe it had been coming from the first moment they met. Before, even. Always.

Some things are inevitable.

Thus the Whirligig…

Shivers' axe clanged into the pipes again. He didn't know what the hell they were for but they made a bastard of a racket. Monza had already dodged away though, weighing her sword, narrowed eyes fixed on his. More'n likely he should've just axed her in the back of the skull and put an end to it. But he wanted her to know who'd done it, and why. Needed her to know.

"You don't have to do this," she hissed at him. "You could still walk away."

"I thought the dead could do the forgiving," he said, circling to cut off her space.

"I'm offering you a chance, Shivers. Back to the North, no one would chase you."

"They're free to fucking try, but I reckon I'll stay a little longer. A man has to stick at something, don't he? I've got my pride, still."

"Shit on your pride! You'd be selling your arse in the alleys of Talins if it wasn't for me!" True, more'n likely. "You knew the risks. You chose to take my money." True too. "I made no promises to you and I broke none!" True and all. "That bitch Eider won't give you a scale!"

Hard to argue with most of that, maybe, but it was too late to go back now, and besides, an axe in the head is the last word in any argument. "We'll see." Shivers eased towards her, shield leading the way. "But this ain't about money. This is about… vengeance. Thought you'd understand that."

"Shit on your vengeance!" She snatched up the stool and flung it at him, underhand. He got his shield in the way and knocked it spinning over the balcony, but she pressed in fast behind it. He managed to catch her sword on the haft of his axe, blade scraping down and just holding on the studs in the wood. She ended up close, pressed against him almost, snarling, point of her sword waving near his good eye.

She spat in his face, made him flinch, threw an elbow and caught him under the jaw, knocked his head sideways. She pulled her sword back for a thrust but he lashed at her first. She dodged, the axe hacked into the railing and broke a great chunk of wood from it. He twisted away, knowing her sword would be coming, felt the steel slide through his shirt and leave a line of hot pain across his stomach as it whipped out. She stumbled towards him, off balance. He shifted his weight, growled as he swung his shield round with all his strength and all his rage behind it. It hit her square in the face, snapped her head about and sent her reeling into the pipes with a dull clang, back of her skull leaving a great dent. She bounced off and pitched over on her back on the wooden floor, sword clattering from her hand.

He stared at her for a moment, blood whacking at his skull, sweat tickling his scarred face. A muscle twitched in her neck. Not a thick neck. He could've stepped up and cut her head off easy as chopping logs. His fingers worked nervously round the grip of his axe at the thought. She coughed out blood, groaned, shook her head. She started to roll over, eyes glassy, dragged herself up onto hands and knees. She reached out woozily for the grip of her sword.

"No, no." He stepped up close and kicked it into the corner.

She flinched, turned her head away from him, started crawling slowly after the blade, breathing hard, blood from her nose pit-pattering on the wooden floor. He followed, standing over her, talking. Strange, that. The Bloody-Nine had told him once—if you mean to kill, you kill, you don't talk about it—and it was advice he'd always tried to stick to. He could've killed her easily as crushing a beetle, but he didn't. He wasn't sure if he was talking to stretch the moment out or talking to put the moment off. But he was talking, still.

"Let's not pretend like you're the injured party in all this! You've killed half o' Styria so you could get your way! You're a scheming, lying, poisoning, murdering, treacherous, brother-fucking cunt. Aren't you! I'm doing the right thing. S'all about where you stand and that. I'm no monster. So maybe my reasons ain't the noblest. Everyone's got their reasons. The world'll still be better for one less o' you!" He wished his voice hadn't been down to a croak, because that was a fact. "I'm doing the right thing!" A fact, and he wanted her to admit it. She owed him that. "Better for one less o' you!" He leaned down over her, lips curling back, heard footsteps hammering up to his side, turned—

Friendly rammed into him full-tilt and took him off his feet. Shivers snarled, caught him round the back with his shield arm, but the best he could do was drag the convict with him. They plunged through the railing with a snapping of wood and went tumbling out into empty air.

Nicomo Cosca came into view, whipping off his hat and flinging it theatrically across the room, where it presumably missed its intended peg since Morveer saw it tumble to the floor not far from the latrine door behind which he had concealed himself. His mouth twisted into a triumphant sneer in the pungent darkness. The old mercenary held in his hand a metal flask. The very one Morveer himself had tossed at Cosca as an offhand insult in Sipani. The wretched old drunk must have gone back and collected it afterwards, no doubt hoping to lick out the barest trickle of grog. How hollow now did his promise seem never to drink again? So much for man's ability to change. Morveer had expected little better, of course, from the world's leading expert on empty bravado, but Cosca's almost pitiable level of debasement surprised even him.

The sound of the cabinet being opened reached his ear. "Just must fill this up." Cosca's voice, though he was out of sight. Metal clinked.

Morveer could just observe the weasel-like visage of his companion. "How can you drink that piss?"

"I have to drink something, don't I? It was recommended to me by an old friend, now, alas, dead."

"Do you have any old friends who aren't dead?"

"Only you, Victus. Only you."

A rattling of glass and Cosca swaggered through the narrow strip to which Morveer's vision was reduced, his flask in one hand, a glass and bottle in the other. It was a distinctive purple vessel, which Morveer clearly remembered poisoning but a few moments ago. It seemed he had engineered another fatal irony. Cosca would be responsible for his own destruction, as he had been so often before. But this time with a fitting finality. He heard the rustling, snapping sound of cards being shuffled.

"Five scales a hand?" came Cosca's voice. "Or shall we play for honour?"

Both men burst out laughing. "Let's make it ten."

"Ten it is." Further shuffling. "Well, this is civilised. Nothing like cards while other men fight, eh? Just like old times."

"Except no Andiche, no Sesaria and no Sazine."

"Aside from that," conceded Cosca. "Now then. Will you deal, or shall I?"

Friendly growled as he dragged himself clear of the wreckage. Shivers was a few strides away, on the other side of the heap of broken wood and ivory, twisted brass and tangled wire that was all that remained of Duke Orso's harpsichord. The Northman rolled onto his knees, shield still on his arm, axe still gripped in his other fist, blood running down the side of his face from a cut just above his gleaming metal eye.

"You counting fuck! I was going to say my quarrel ain't with you. But now it is."

They slowly stood, together, watching each other. Friendly slid his knife from its sheath, his cleaver out from his jacket, the worn grips smooth and familiar in his palms. He could forget about all the chaos in the gardens, now, all the madness in the palace. One man against one man, the way it used to be, in Safety. One and one. The plainest arithmetic he could ask for.

"Right, then," said Friendly, and he grinned.

"Right, then," hissed Shivers through gritted teeth.

One of the mercenaries who had been breaking the room apart took a half-step towards them. "What the hell is—"

Shivers leaped the wreckage in one bound, axe a shining arc. Friendly dropped away to the right, ducking underneath it, the wind of it snatching at his hair. His cleaver caught the edge of Shivers' shield, the corner of the blade squealed off and dug into the Northman's shoulder. Not hard enough to do more than cut him, though. Shivers twisted round fast, axe flashing down. Friendly slid around it, heard it crash into the wreckage beside him. He stabbed with his knife but the Northman already had his shield in the way, twisted it, jerking the blade out of Friendly's fist, sending it clattering across the polished floor. He hacked with his cleaver but Shivers pressed close and caught Friendly's elbow against his shoulder, the blade flapping at the blind side of his face and leaving him a bloody nick under his ear.

Friendly took a half-step back, cleaver going out for a sideways sweep, not giving Shivers room to use his axe. He charged forwards behind his shield instead, caught Friendly's flailing cleaver against it and lifted him, growling like a mad dog. Friendly punched at his side, struggling to get a good fist around that big circle of wood, but Shivers had more weight and all the momentum. Friendly was bundled through the door, frame thudding against his shoulder, shield digging into his chest, gaining pace all the time. His boots kicked at the floor, then the floor was gone and he was falling. The back of his head hit stone, he jolted, bounced, tumbling over and over, grunting and wheezing, light and darkness spinning round him. Stairs. Falling down stairs, and the worst of it was he couldn't even count them.

He growled again as he slowly picked himself up at the bottom. He was in a long kitchen, a vaulted cellar lit by small windows, high up. Left leg, right shoulder, back of his head all throbbing, blood on his cheek, one sleeve torn back and a long raw scrape down his forearm, blood on his trouser leg where he must have cut himself on his own cleaver as he fell. But everything still moved.

Shivers stood at the top of a flight of fourteen steps, two times seven, a big black shape with light twinkling from one eye. Friendly beckoned to him.

"Down you come."

She kept crawling. That was all she could do. Drag herself one stride at a time. Keep both eyes ahead, on the hilt of the Calvez in the corner. Crawl, and spit blood, and will the room to stay still. All the slow way her back was itching, tingling, waiting for Shivers' axe to hack into it and give her the ugly ending she deserved.

At least the one-eyed bastard had stopped talking now.

Monza's hand closed around the hilt and she rolled over, snarling, waving the blade out in front of her like a coward might wave a torch into the night. There was no one there. Only a ragged gap in the railing at the edge of the gallery.

She wiped her bloody nose on her gloved hand, came up slowly to her knees. The dizziness was fading now, the roar in her ears had quieted to a steady thump, her face a throbbing mass, everything feeling twice the size it should have. She shuffled to the shattered balustrade and peered down. The three mercenaries who'd been busy destroying the room were still at it, stood staring down at a shattered harpsichord under the gallery. Still no sign of Shivers, still no clue what had happened. But there were other things on Monza's mind.

Orso.

She clenched her aching jaw, crossed to the far door and heaved it open. Down a gloomy corridor, the noise of fighting steadily growing louder. She edged out onto a wide balcony. Above her the great dome was painted with a sky touched by a rising sun, seven winged women brandishing swords. Aropella's grand fresco of the Fates bearing destinies to earth. Below her the two great staircases swept upwards, carved from three different colours of marble. At their top were the double doors, inlaid with rare woods in the pattern of lions' faces. There, in front of those doors, she'd stood beside Benna for the last time, and told him she loved him.

Safe to say things had changed.

On the round mosaic floor of the hall below, and on the wide marble steps, and on the balcony above, a furious battle was being fought. Men from the Thousand Swords struggled to the death with Orso's guards, three score or more of them, a boiling, flailing mass. Swords crashed on shields, maces staved in armour, axes rose and fell, spears jabbed and thrust. Men roared with fury, blubbered with pain, fought and died, hacked down where they stood. The mercenaries were mad on the promise of plunder and the defenders had nowhere to run to. Mercy looked in short supply on both sides. A couple of men in Talinese uniform were kneeling on the balcony not far from her, cranking flatbows. As one of them stood to shoot he caught an arrow in his chest, fell back, coughing, eyes wide with surprise, spattering blood over a fine statue behind him.

Never fight your own battles, Verturio wrote, if someone else is willing to fight them for you. Monza eased carefully back into the shadows.

The cork came out with that sucking pop that was Cosca's favourite noise in all the world. He leaned across the table with the bottle and sloshed some of the syrupy contents into Victus' glass.

"Thanks," he grunted. "I think."

To put it politely, Gurkish grape spirit was not to everyone's taste. Cosca had developed if not a love for it then certainly a tolerance, when employed to defend Dagoska. In fact he had developed a powerful tolerance for anything containing alcohol, and Gurkish grape spirit contained a very great deal at a most reasonable cost. The very thought of that gloriously repulsive burned-vomit taste was making his mouth flood with saliva. A drink, a drink, a drink.

He unscrewed the cap of his own flask, shifted in the captain general's chair, fondly stroking the battered wood of one of its arms. "Well?"

Victus' thin face radiated suspicion, causing Cosca to reflect that no man he had ever met had a shiftier look to his eyes. They slid to his cards, to Cosca's cards, to the money between them, then slithered back to Cosca. "Alright. Doubles it is." He tossed some coins into the centre of the table with that delightful jingle that somehow only hard currency can make. "What are you carrying, old man?"

"Earth!" Cosca smugly spread his cards out.

Victus flung his own hand down. "Bloody earth! You always did have the luck of a demon."

"And you the loyalty of one." Cosca showed his teeth as he swept the coins towards him. "I shouldn't worry, the boys will be bringing us plenty more silver in due course. Rule of Quarters, and all that."

"At this rate I'll have lost all my share to you before they get here."

"We can hope." Cosca took a sip from his flask and grimaced. For some reason it tasted even more sour than usual. He wrinkled his lips, sucked his gums, then forced another acrid mouthful down and half-screwed the cap back on. "Now! I am deeply in need of a shit." He slapped the table with one hand and stood. "No tampering with the deck while I'm away, you hear?"

"Me?" Victus was all injured innocence. "You can trust me, General."

"Of course I can." Cosca began to walk, his eyes fixed on the dark crack down the edge of the doorway to the latrine, judging the distances, back prickling as he pictured where Victus was sitting. He twisted his wrist, felt his throwing-knife drop into his waiting palm. "Just like I could trust you at Afieri—" He spun about, and froze. "Ah."

Victus had somehow produced a small flatbow, loaded, and now aimed with impressive steadiness at Cosca's heart. "Andiche took a sword-thrust for you?" he sneered. "Sesaria sacrificed himself? I knew those two bastards, remember! What kind of a fucking idiot do you take me for?"

Shenkt sprang through the shattered window and dropped silently down into the hall beyond. An hour ago it must have been a grand dining room indeed, but the Thousand Swords had already stripped it of anything that might raise a penny. Only fragments of glass and plate, slashed canvases in shattered frames and the shells of some furniture too big to move remained. Three little flies chased each other in geometric patterns through the air above the stripped table. Near them two men were arguing while a boy perhaps fourteen years old watched nervously.

"I told you I had the fucking spoons!" a pock-faced man screamed at one with a tarnished breastplate. "But that bitch knocked me down and I lost 'em! Why didn't you get nothing?"

" 'Cause I was watching the door while you got something, you fucking—"

The boy raised a silent finger to point at Shenkt. The other two abandoned their argument to stare at him. "Who the hell are you?" demanded the spoon-thief.

"The woman who made you lose your cutlery," asked Shenkt. "Murcatto?"

"Who the hell are you, I asked?"

"No one. Only passing through."

"That so?" He grinned at his fellows as he drew his sword. "Well, this room's ours, and there's a toll."

"There's a toll," hissed the one with the breastplate, in a tone no doubt meant to be intimidating.

The two of them spread out, the boy reluctantly following their lead. "What have you got for us?" asked the first.

Shenkt looked him in the eye as he came close, and gave him a chance. "Nothing you want."

"I'll be the judge of that." His gaze settled on the ruby ring on Shenkt's forefinger. "What about that?"

"It isn't mine to give."

"Then it's ours to take." They closed in, the one with the pocked face prodding at Shenkt with his sword. "Hands behind your head, bastard, and get on your knees."

Shenkt frowned. "I do not kneel."

The three zipping flies slowed, drifting lazily, then hanging almost still.

Slowly, slowly, the spoon-thief's hungry leer turned into a snarl.

Slowly, slowly, his arm drifted back for a thrust.

Shenkt stepped around his sword, the edge of his hand sank deep into the thief's chest then tore back out. A great chunk of rib and breastbone was ripped out with it, flew spinning through the air to embed itself deep in the ceiling.

Shenkt brushed the sword aside, seized the next man by his breastplate and flung him across the room, his head crumpling against the far wall, blood showering out under such pressure it made a great star of spatters across the gilded wallpaper from floor to ceiling. The flies were sucked from their places by the wind of his passing, dragged through the air in mad spirals. The ear-splitting bang of his skull exploding joined the hiss of blood spraying from his friend's caved-in chest and all over the gaping boy as time resumed its normal flow.

"The woman who made your friend lose his cutlery." Shenkt flicked the few drops of blood from his hand. "Murcatto?"

The boy nodded dumbly.

"Which way did she go?"

His wide eyes rolled towards the far door.

"Good." Shenkt would have liked to be kind. But then this boy might have run and brought more men, and there would have been further entanglements. Sometimes you must take one life to spare more, and when those times come, sentiment helps nobody. One of his old master's lessons that Shenkt had never forgotten. "I am sorry for this."

With a sharp crack, his forefinger sank up to the knuckle in the boy's forehead.

They smashed their way through the kitchens, both doing their level worst to kill each other. Shivers hadn't planned on this but his blood was boiling now. Friendly was in his fucking way, and had to be got out of it, simple as that. It had become a point of pride. Shivers was better armed, he had the reach, he had the shield. But Friendly was slippery as an eel and patient as winter. Backing off, dropping away, forcing nothing, giving no openings. All he had was his cleaver, but Shivers knew he'd killed enough men with that alone, and didn't plan on adding his name to the list.

They tangled again, Friendly weaving round an axe-blow and darting in close, hacking with the cleaver. Shivers stepped into it, caught it on his shield then charged on, sent Friendly stumbling back against a table, metal rattling. Shivers grinned, until he saw the table was covered with knives. Friendly snatched up a blade, arm going back to throw. Shivers dropped down behind his shield, felt the thud as the knife buried itself in the wood. He peered over the edge, saw another spinning at him. It bounced from the metal rim and flashed up into Shivers' face, left him a burning scratch across the cheek. Friendly whipped up another knife.

Shivers weren't about to crouch there and be target practice. He roared as he rushed forwards, shield leading the way. Friendly leaped back, rolled across the table, Shivers' axe just missed him, leaving a great wound in the wood and sending knives jumping in the air. He followed while the convict was off balance, punching away with the edge of his shield, swinging wild with his axe, skin burning, sweat tickling, one eye bulging wild, growling through gritted teeth. Plates shattered, pans scattered, bottles broke, splinters flew, a jar of flour burst open and filled the air with blinding dust.

Shivers left a trail of waste through that kitchen the Bloody-Nine himself might've been proud to make, but the convict dodged and danced, nipped and slashed with knife and cleaver, always just out of reach. All Shivers had to show for his fury by the time they'd done their ugly dance the length of the long room was a bleeding cut on his own arm and a reddening mark on the side of Friendly's face where he'd caught him with his shield.

The convict stood ready and waiting, a couple of steps up the flight leading out, knife and cleaver hanging by his sides, sheen of sweat across his flat chunk of face, skin bloody and battered from a dozen different little cuts and kicks, plus a fall off a balcony and a tumble down some stairs, of course. But Shivers hadn't landed nothing telling on him yet. He didn't look halfway to being finished.

"Come 'ere, you tricky fucker!" Shivers hissed, arm aching shoulder to fingers from swinging his axe. "Let's put an end to you."

"You come here," Friendly grunted back at him. "Let's put an end to you."

Shivers shrugged his shoulders, shook out his arms, wiped blood off his forehead on the back of his sleeve, twisted his neck one way then the other. "Right… you… fucking are!" And he came on again. He didn't need asking twice.

Cosca frowned down at his knife. "If I said I was just going to peel an orange with it, any chance you'd believe me?"

Victus grinned, causing Cosca to reflect that no man he had ever met had a shiftier smile. "Doubt I'll believe another word you say. But don't worry. You won't be saying many more."

"Why is it that men pointing loaded flatbows always feel the need to gloat, rather than simply letting fly?"

"Gloating's fun." Victus reached for his glass, smirking eyes never leaving Cosca, glinting point of the flatbow bolt steady as stone, and quickly tossed back his spirit in one swallow. "Yeuch." He stuck his tongue out. "Damn, that stuff is sour."

"Sweeter than my situation," muttered Cosca. "I suppose now the captain general's chair will be yours." A shame. He'd only just got used to sitting in it again himself.

Victus snorted. "Why would I want the fucking thing? Hasn't done much good for the arses on it up to now, has it? Sazine, you, the Murcattos, Faithful Carpi, and you again. Each one ended up dead or close to it, and all the while I've stood behind, and got a lot richer than a nasty little bastard like me deserves." He winced, put one hand on his stomach. "No, I'll find some new idiot to sit there, I think, and make me richer'n ever." He grimaced again. "Ah, shit on that stuff. Ah!" He staggered up from his chair, clutching the edge of the table, a thick vein bulging from his forehead. "What've you done to me, you old bastard?" He squinted over, flatbow suddenly wobbling.

Cosca flung himself forwards. The trigger clicked, the bowstring twanged, the bolt clattered against the plaster just to his left. He rolled up beside the table with a whoop of triumph, raising his knife. "Hah hah—"

Victus' bow bashed him in the face, just above his eye. "Gurgh!" Cosca's vision was suddenly filled with light, his knees wobbling wildly. He clutched at the table, waved his knife at nothing. "Sfup." Hands closed around his throat. Hands crusted with heavy rings. Victus' pink face loomed up before his, spit spluttering from his twisted mouth.

Cosca's boots went out from under him, the room flipped over, his head crashed into the table. And all was dark.

The battle under the dome was over, and between the two sides they'd made quite a mess of Orso's cherished rotunda. The glittering mosaic floor and the sweeping steps above it were strewn with corpses, scattered with fallen weapons, dashed and spattered, pooled and puddled with dark blood.

The mercenaries had won—if a dozen of them left standing counted as a victory. "Help me!" one of the wounded was screeching. "Help me!" But his fellows had other things on their minds.

"Get these fucking things open!" The one taking charge was Secco, the corporal who'd been on guard when she rode into the Thousand Swords' camp only to find Cosca there ahead of her. He dragged a dead Talinese soldier out of the way of the lion-head doors and dumped the corpse down the stairs. "You! Find an axe!"

Monza frowned. "Orso'll have more men in there for sure. We'd better wait for help."

"Wait? And split the takings?" Secco gave her a withering sneer. "Fuck yourself, Murcatto, you don't give us orders no more! Get it open!" Two men started battering away with axes, splinters of veneer flying. The rest of the survivors jostled dangerously close behind them, breathless with greed. It seemed the doors had been made to impress guests, not keep out armies. They shuddered, loosening on their hinges. A few more blows and one axe broke clean through, a great chunk of wood splintering away. Secco whooped in triumph as he rammed his spear into the gap, levering the bar on the other side out of its brackets. He fumbled with the ragged edge, pulling the doors wide.

Squealing like children on a feast day, tangled up with each other, drunk on blood and avarice, the mercenaries spilled through into the bright hall where Benna died. Monza knew it was a bad idea to follow. She knew Orso might not even be in there, and if he was, he'd be ready.

But sometimes you have to grasp the nettle.

She dashed round the doorframe after them, keeping low. An instant later she heard the rattling of flatbows. The mercenary in front of her fell and she had to duck around him. Another tumbled backwards, clutching at a bolt in his chest. Boots hammered, men bellowed, the grand room with its great windows and its paintings of history's winners wobbled around her as she ran. She saw figures in full armour, glimpses of steel shining. Orso's closest guards.

She saw Secco jabbing away at one with his spear, the blade scraping uselessly off heavy plate. She heard a loud bonk as a mercenary smashed in a helmet with a big mace, then a scream as he was cut down himself, chopped near in half across the back with a two-handed sword, blood jumping. Another bolt snatched a man from his feet as he charged in and sent him sprawling backwards. Monza crouched, setting her shoulder under the edge of a marble table and heaved it over, a vase that had been on top shattering across the floor. She ducked down behind it, flinched as a flatbow bolt glanced off the stone and clattered away.

"No!" she heard someone shout. "No!" A mercenary flashed past her, running for the door he'd burst through with such enthusiasm a moment before. There was the sound of a bowstring and he stumbled, a bolt sticking from his back, tottered another step and fell, slid along on his face. He tried to push himself up, coughed blood, then sagged down. He died looking right at her.

This was what you got for being greedy. And here she was, wedged in behind a table and all out of friends, more than likely next.

"Grasp the fucking nettle," she cursed at herself.

Friendly backed up the last of the steps, his boots suddenly striking echoes as a wide space opened up behind him. A great round room under a dome painted with winged women, seven lofty archways leading in. Statues looked down from the walls, sculptures in relief, hundreds of pairs of eyes following him as he moved. The defenders must have made a stand here, there were bodies scattered across the floor and up the two curving staircases. Cosca's mercenaries and Orso's guards mixed up together. All on the same side, now. Friendly thought he could hear fighting echoing from somewhere above, but there was still plenty of fight for him down here.

Shivers stepped out from the archway. His hair was dark with blood on one side, plastered to his skull, scarred face streaked red. He was covered with nicks and grazes, right sleeve ripped wide, blood running down his arm. But Friendly hadn't been able to put in that final blow. The Northman still had his axe in one fist, ready to fight, shield criss-crossed with gouges. He nodded as his one eye moved slowly around the room.

"Lot o' corpses," he whispered.

"Forty-nine," said Friendly. "Seven times seven."

"Fancy that. We add you, we'll make fifty."

He threw himself forwards, feinting high then swinging his axe in a great low, ankle-chopping sweep. Friendly jumped it, cleaver coming down towards the Northman's head. Shivers jerked his shield up in time and the blade clanged from its dented boss, sending a jolt up Friendly's arm right to his shoulder. He stabbed at Shivers' side as he passed, got his arm tangled with the haft of the axe as it swung back, but still left the Northman a long cut down his ribs. Friendly spun, raising his cleaver to finish the job, got Shivers' elbow in his throat before he could bring it down, staggered back, near tripping over a corpse.

They faced each other again, Shivers bent over, teeth bared, arm pressed to his wounded side, Friendly coughing as he fought to get his breath and his balance back both at once.

"Another?" whispered Shivers.

"One more," croaked Friendly.

They went at each other again, their snatched breath, squeaking boots, grunting and growling, the scrape of metal on metal, the clang of metal on stone, all echoing from the marble walls and the painted ceiling, as though men were fighting to the death all around them. They chopped, hacked, spat, kicked, stabbed at each other, jumping over bodies, stumbling over weapons, boots slipping and squeaking in black blood on polished stone.

Friendly jerked away from a clumsy axe-swing that hit the wall and sent chips of marble spinning, found he was backing up the steps. They were both tiring now, slowing. A man can only fight, sweat, bleed for so long. Shivers came after him, breathing hard, shield up in front.

Backing up steps is a bad enough idea when they're not scattered with bodies. Friendly was so busy watching Shivers he put his boot down on a corpse's hand, twisted his ankle. Shivers saw it, jabbed with his axe. Friendly couldn't get his leg out of the way in time and the blade tore a gash out of his calf, half-dragged him over. Shivers growled as he lifted his axe high. Friendly lurched forwards, slashed Shivers' forearm with his knife, left a red-black wound, blood running. The Northman grunted, fumbled his axe, the heavy weapon clattering down beside them. Friendly chopped at his skull with the cleaver but Shivers got his shield arm in the way, the two of them getting tangled, the blade only slitting Shivers' scalp, blood bubbling from the wound, pattering over them both. The Northman grabbed Friendly's shoulder with his bloody hand, dragging him close, good eye bulging with crazy rage, steel eye spattered shining red, lips twisted in a mad snarl as he tipped his head backwards.

Friendly drove his knife into Shivers' thigh, felt the metal slide in to the hilt. Shivers gave a kind of squeal, pain and fury together. His forehead smashed into Friendly's mouth with a sick crunch. The hall reeled around, the steps hit Friendly in the back, his skull cracked against marble. He saw Shivers loom over him, thought it would be a good idea to bring the cleaver up. Before he could do it, Shivers rammed his shield down, metal rim clanging against stone. Friendly felt the two bones in his forearm break, cleaver dropping from his numb fingers and clattering down the steps.

Shivers reached down, specks of pink spit flicking from his clenched teeth with each moaning breath, fist closing around the grip of his axe. Friendly watched him do it, feeling no more than a mild curiosity. Everything was bright and blurry, now. He saw the scar on the Northman's thick wrist, in the shape of a number seven. Seven was a good number, today, just as it had been the first day they met. Just as it always was.

"Excuse me." Shivers froze for a moment, his one eye sliding sideways. He reeled around, axe coming after. A man stood behind him, a lean man with pale hair. It was hard to see what happened. The axe missed, Shivers' shield shattered in a tangle of flying wood, he was snatched off his feet and sent tumbling across the chamber. He crashed into the far wall with a gurgle, bounced off and rolled slowly down the opposite set of steps, flopping over once, twice, three times, and lying still at the bottom.

"Three times," gurgled Friendly through his split lips.

"Stay," said the pale man, stepping around him and off up the stairway. It was not so difficult to obey. Friendly had no other plans. He spat a lump of tooth out of his numb mouth, and that was all. He lay there, blinking slowly, staring up at the winged women on the ceiling.

Seven of them, with seven swords.

A rapid spectrum of emotions had swept over Morveer during the past few moments. Triumphant delight, as he had seen Cosca drink from his flask and all unknowing doom himself. Horror and a pointless search for a hiding place as the old mercenary declared his intention to visit the latrine. Curiosity, as he then saw Victus produce a loaded flatbow from beneath the table and train it on his general's back. Triumph once again as he watched Victus consume his own fatal measure of spirit. Finally he was forced to clamp one hand over his mouth to smother his amusement as the poisoned Cosca flung himself clumsily at his poisoned opponent and the two men wrestled, fell to the floor and lay still in a final embrace.

The ironies positively piled one upon the next. Most earnestly they had attempted to kill each other, never realising that Morveer had already done both their jobs for them.

With the smile still on his face he slid his mounted needle from its hidden pocket within the lining of his mercenary's jerkin. Caution first, always. In case any trace of life remained in either of the two murderous old mercenaries, the lightest prick with this shining splinter of metal, coated with his own Preparation Number Twelve, would extinguish it for good and to the general benefit of the world. Morveer carefully eased the latrine door open with the gentlest of creaks, and on pointed toes crept out into the room beyond.

The table was tipped over on its side, coins and cards widely scattered. Cosca lay on his back beside it, left hand hanging nerveless, his flask not far away. Victus was draped on top of him, small flatbow still gripped in one fist, the clasp at its end spotted with red blood. Morveer knelt beside the deceased, hooked his free hand under Victus' corpse and with a grunting effort rolled it off.

Cosca's eyes were closed, his mouth open, blood streaked his cheek from a wound on his forehead. His skin was waxy pale with the unmistakable sheen of death.

"A man can change, eh?" sneered Morveer. "So much for your promises!"

To his tremendous shock, Cosca's eyes snapped suddenly open.

To his even more tremendous shock, an indescribably awful pain lanced up through his stomach. He took in a great shuddering breath and gave vent to an unearthly howl. Looking down, he perceived that the old mercenary had driven a knife into his groin. Morveer's breath whooped in again. Desperately he raised his arm.

There was a faint slapping sound as Cosca seized his wrist and wrenched it sharply sideways, causing the needle to sink into Morveer's neck. There was a pregnant pause. They remained frozen, a human sculpture, the knife still in Morveer's groin, the needle in his neck, gripped by his hand, gripped by Cosca's hand. Cosca frowned up. Morveer stared down. His eyes bulged. His body trembled. He said nothing. What could one possibly say? The implications were crushingly obvious. Already the most potent poison of which he was aware, carried swiftly from neck to brain, was causing his extremities to become numb.

"Poisoned the grape spirit, eh?" hissed Cosca.

"Fuh," gurgled Morveer, unable now to form words.

"Did you forget I promised you never to drink again?" The old mercenary released the knife, reached across the floor with his bloody hand, retrieved his flask, spun the cap off with a practised motion and tipped it up. White liquid splashed out across the floor. "Goat's milk. I hear it's good for the digestion. The strongest thing I've had since we left Sipani, but it would hardly do to let everyone know it. I have a certain reputation to uphold here. Hence all the bottles."

Cosca shoved Morveer over. The strength was rapidly fading from his limbs and he was powerless to resist. He flopped limp across Victus' corpse. He could scarcely feel his neck. The agony in his groin had faded to a dull throb. Cosca looked down at him.

"Didn't I promise you I'd stop? What kind of a man do you take me for, that I'd break my word?"

Morveer had no breath left to speak, let alone scream. The pain was fading in any case. He wondered, as he often had, how his life might have differed had he not poisoned his mother, and doomed himself to life in the orphanage. His vision was clouding, blurring, growing dark.

"I need to thank you. You see, Morveer, a man can change, given the proper encouragement. And your scorn was the very spur I needed."

Killed by his own agent. It was the way so many great practitioners of his profession ended their lives. And on the eve of his retirement, too. He was sure there was an irony there somewhere…

"Do you know the best thing about all this?" Cosca's voice boomed in his ears, Cosca's grin swam above him. "Now I can start drinking again."

One of the mercenaries was pleading, blubbering, begging for his life. Monza sat against the cold marble slab of the tabletop and listened to him, breathing hard, sweating hard, weighing the Calvez in her hand. It would be little better than useless against the heavy armour of Orso's guards, even if she'd fancied taking on that many at once. She heard the damp squelch of a blade rammed into flesh and the pleading was cut off in a long scream and a short gurgle.

Not really a sound to give anyone confidence.

She peered round the edge of the table. She counted seven guards still standing, one ripping his spear free of a dead mercenary's chest, two turning towards her, heavy swords ready, one working an axe from Secco's split skull. Three were kneeling, busily cranking flatbows. Behind them stood the big round table on which the map of Styria was still unrolled. On the map was a crown, a ring of sparkling gold sprouting with gem-encrusted oak leaves, not unlike the one that had killed Rogont and his dream of Styria united. Beside the crown, dressed in black and with his iron-shot black hair and beard as neatly groomed as ever, stood Grand Duke Orso.

He saw her, and she saw him, and the anger boiled up, hot and comforting. One of his guards slipped a bolt into his flatbow and levelled it at her. She was about to duck behind the slab of marble when Orso held out one arm.

"Wait! Stop." That same voice that she had never disobeyed in eight hard years. "Is that you, Monzcarro?"

"Damn right it is!" she snarled back. "Get ready to fucking die!" Though it looked as if she might be going first.

"I've been ready for some time," he called out softly. "You've seen to that. Well done! My hopes are all in ruins, thanks to you."

"You needn't thank me!" she called. "It was Benna I did it for!"

"Ario is dead."

"Hah!" she barked back. "That's what happens when I stab a worthless cunt in the neck and throw him from a window!" A flurry of twitches crawled up Orso's cheek. "But why pick him out? There was Gobba, and Mauthis, and Ganmark, and Faithful—I've slaughtered the whole crowd! Everyone who was in this room when you murdered my brother!"

"And Foscar? I've heard no word since the defeat at the fords."

"You can stop listening!" Said with a glee she hardly felt. "Skull smashed to pulp on a farmhouse floor!"

The anger had all gone from Orso's face and it hung terribly slack. "You must be happy."

"I'm not fucking sad, I'll tell you that!"

"Grand Duchess Monzcarro of Talins." Orso tapped two fingers slowly against his palm, the sharp snaps echoing off the high ceiling. "I congratulate you on your victory. You have what you wanted after all!"

"What I wanted?" For a moment she could hardly believe what she was hearing. "You think I wanted this? After the battles I fought for you? The victories I won for you?" She was near shrieking, spitting with fury. She ripped her glove off with her teeth and shook her mutilated hand at him. "I fucking wanted this? What reason did we give you to betray us? We were loyal to you! Always!"

"Loyal?" Orso gave a disbelieving gasp of his own. "Crow your victory if you must, but don't crow your innocence to me! We both know better!"

All three flatbows were loaded and levelled now. "We were loyal!" she screamed again, voice cracking.

"Can you deny it? That Benna met with malcontents, revolutionaries, traitors among my ungrateful subjects? That he promised them weapons? That he promised you would lead them to glory? Claim my place? Usurp me! Did you think I would not learn of it? Did you think I would stand idly by?"

"What the… you fucking liar!"

"Still you deny it? I would not believe it myself when they told me! My Monza? Closer to me than my own children? My Monza, betray me? With my own eyes I saw him! With my own eyes!" The echoes of his voice slowly faded, and left the hall almost silent. Only the gentle clanking of the four armoured men as they edged ever so slowly towards her. She could only stare, the realisation creeping slowly through her.

We could have our own city, Benna had said. You could be the Duchess Monzcarro of… wherever. Of Talins, had been his thought. We deserve to be remembered. He'd planned it himself, alone, and given her no choice. Just as he had when he betrayed Cosca. It's better this way. Just as he had when he took Hermon's gold. This is for us.

He'd always been the one with the big plans.

"Benna," she mouthed. "You fool."

"You didn't know," said Orso quietly. "You didn't know, and now we are come to this. Your brother doomed himself, and both of us, and half of Styria besides." A sad little chuckle bubbled out of him. "Just when I think I know it all, life always finds a way to surprise me. You're late, Shenkt." His eyes flicked to the side. "Kill her."

Monza felt a shadow fall across her, lurched around. A man had stolen up while they spoke, his soft work boots making not the slightest sound. Now he stood over her, close enough to touch. He held out his hand. There was a ring in his palm. Benna's ruby ring.

"I believe this is yours," he said.

A pale, lean face. Not old, but deeply lined, with harsh cheekbones and eyes hungry bright in bruised sockets. Monza's eyes went wide, the chill shock of recognition washing over her like ice water.

"Kill her!" shouted Orso.

The newcomer smiled, but it was like a skull's smile, never touching his eyes. "Kill her? After all the effort I went to keeping her alive?"

The colour had drained from her face. Indeed she looked almost as pale as she had done when he first found her, broken amongst the rubbish on the slopes of Fontezarmo. Or when she'd first woken after he pulled the stitches, and stared down in horror at her own scarred body.

"Kill her?" he asked again. "After I carried her from the mountain? After I mended her bones and stitched her back together? After I protected her from your hirelings in Puranti?"

Shenkt turned his hand over and let the ring fall, and it bounced once and tinkled down spinning on the floor beside her twisted right hand. She did not thank him, but he had not expected thanks. It was not for her thanks that he had done it.

"Kill them both!" screamed Orso.

Shenkt was always surprised by how treacherous men could be over trifles, yet how loyal they could be when their lives were forfeit. These last few guards still fought to the death for Orso, even though his day was clearly done. Perhaps they could not comprehend that a man so great as the Grand Duke of Talins might die like any other, and all his power so easily turn to dust. Perhaps for some men obedience became a habit they could not question. Or perhaps they came to define themselves by their service to a master, and chose to take the short step into death as part of something great, rather than walk the long, hard road of life in insignificance.

If so, then Shenkt would not deny them. Slowly, slowly, he breathed in.

The drawn-out twang of the flatbow string throbbed deep in his ears. He stepped out of the path of the first bolt, let it drift under his raised arm. The aim of the next was good, right for Murcatto's throat. He plucked it from the air between finger and thumb as it crawled past, set it carefully down on a polished table as he crossed the room. He took up an idealised bust of one of Orso's forebears from beside it—his grandfather, Shenkt suspected, the one who had himself been a mercenary. He flung it at the nearest flatbowman, just in the process of lowering his bow, puzzled. It caught him in the stomach, sank deep into his armour, folded him in half in a cloud of stone chips and tore him off his feet towards the far wall, legs and arms stretched out in front of him, his bow spinning high into the air.

Shenkt hit the nearest man on the helmet and stove it deep into his shoulders, blood spraying from the crumpled visor, axe dropping slowly from his twisting hand. The next had an open helm, the look of surprise just forming as Shenkt's fist drove a dent into his breastplate so deep that it bent his backplate out with a groan of twisted metal. He sprang to the table, marble floor splitting under his boots as he came down. The nearest of the two remaining archers slowly raised his flatbow as though to use it as a shield. Shenkt's hand split it in half, string flailing, tore the man's helmet off and sent it hurtling up into the ceiling, his body tumbling sideways, spraying blood, to crumple against the wall in a shower of plaster. Shenkt seized hold of the other archer and tossed him out of one of the high windows, sparkling fragments tumbling down, bouncing, spinning, breaking apart, deep clangour of shattering glass making the air hum.

The last but one had his sword raised, flecks of spit floating from his twisted lips as he gave his war cry. Shenkt caught him by the wrist, hurled him upside-down across the room and into his final comrade. They were mangled together, a tangle of dented armour, crashed into a set of shelves, gilded books ripped open, loose papers spewing into the air, gently fluttering down as Shenkt breathed out, and let time find its course again.

The spinning flatbow fell, bounced from the tiles and clattered away into a corner. Grand Duke Orso stood just where he had before, beside the round table with its map of Styria, the sparkling crown sitting in its centre. His mouth fell open.

"I never leave a job half-done," said Shenkt. "But I was never working for you."

Monza got to her feet, staring at the bodies tangled, scattered, twisted about the far end of the hall. Papers fluttered down like autumn leaves, from a bookcase shattered around a mass of bloody armour, cracks lancing out through the marble walls all about it.

She stepped around the upended table. Past the bodies of mercenaries and guards. Over Secco's corpse, his smeared brains gleaming in one of the long stripes of sunlight from the high windows.

Orso watched her come in silence, the great painting of him proudly claiming victory at the Battle of Etrea looming ten strides high over his shoulder. The little man and his outsized myth.

The bone-thief stood back, hands spattered with blood to the elbow, watching them. She didn't know what he had done, or how, or why. It didn't matter now.

Her boots crunched on broken glass, on splintered wood, ripped paper, shattered pottery. Everywhere black spots of blood were scattered and her soles soaked them up and left bloody footprints behind her. Like the bloody trail she'd left across Styria, to come here. To stand on the spot where they killed her brother.

She stopped, a sword's length away from Orso. Waiting, she hardly knew what for. Now the moment had come, the moment she'd strained for with every muscle, endured so much pain, spent so much money, wasted so many lives to reach, she found it hard to move. What would come after?

Orso raised his brows. He picked up the crown from the table with exaggerated care, the way a mother might pick up a newborn baby. "This was to be mine. This almost was mine. This is what you fought for, all those years. And this is what you kept from me, in the end." He turned it slowly around in his hands, the jewels sparkling. "When you build your life around only one thing, love only one person, dream only one dream, you risk losing everything at a stroke. You built your life around your brother. I built mine around a crown." He gave a heavy sigh, pursed his lips, then tossed the circle of gold aside and watched it rattle round and round on the map of Styria. "Now look at us. Both equally wretched."

"Not equally." She lifted the scuffed, notched, hard-used blade of the Calvez. The blade she'd had made for Benna. "I still have you."

"And when you have killed me, what will you live for then?" His eyes moved from the sword to hers. "Monza, Monza… what will you do without me?"

"I'll think of something."

The point punctured his jacket with a faint pop, slid effortlessly through his chest and out of his back. He gave a gentle grunt, eyes widening, and she slid the blade free. They stood there, opposite each other, for a moment.

"Oh." He touched one finger to dark cloth and it came away red. "Is that all?" He looked up at her, puzzled. "I was expecting… more."

He crumpled all at once, knees dropping against the polished floor, then he toppled forwards and the side of his face thumped damply against the marble beside her boot. The one eye she could see rolled slowly towards her, and the corner of his mouth twitched into a smile. Then he was still.

Seven out of seven. It was done.

Seeds

It was a winter's morning, cold and clear, and Monza's breath smoked on the air.

She stood outside the chamber where they killed her brother. On the terrace they threw her from. Her hands resting on the parapet they'd rolled her off. Above the mountainside that had broken her apart. She felt that nagging ache still up the bones of her legs, across the back of her gloved hand, down the side of her skull. She felt that prickling need for the husk-pipe that she knew would never quite fade. It was far from comfortable, staring down that long drop towards the tiny trees that had snatched at her as she fell. That was why she came here every morning.

A good leader should never be comfortable, Stolicus wrote.

The sun was climbing, now, and the bright world was full of colour. The blood had drained from the sky and left it a vivid blue, white clouds crawling high above. To the east, the forest crumbled away into a patchwork of fields—squares of fallow green, rich black earth, golden-brown stubble. Her fields. Further still and the river met the grey sea, branching out in a wide delta, choked with islands. Monza could just make out the suggestion of tiny towers there, buildings, bridges, walls. Great Talins, no bigger than her thumbnail. Her city.

That idea still seemed a madman's ranting.

"Your Excellency." Monza's chamberlain lurked in one of the high doorways, bowing so low he almost tongued the stone. The same man who'd served Orso for fifteen years, had somehow come through the sack of Fontezarmo unscathed, and now had made the transition from master to mistress with admirable smoothness. Monza had stolen Orso's city, after all, his palace, some of his clothes, even, with a few adjustments. Why not his retainers too? Who knew their jobs better?

"What is it?"

"Your ministers are here. Lord Rubine, Chancellor Grulo, Chancellor Scavier, Colonel Volfier and… Mistress Vitari." He cleared his throat, looking somewhat pained. "Might I enquire whether Mistress Vitari has a specific title yet?"

"She handles those things no one with a specific title can."

"Of course, your Excellency."

"Bring them in."

The heavy doors were swung open, faced with beaten copper engraved with twisting serpents. Not the works of art Orso's lion-face veneers had been, perhaps, but a great deal stronger. Monza had made sure of that. Her five visitors strutted, strode, bustled and shuffled through, their footsteps echoing around the chill marble of Orso's private audience hall. Two months in, and still she couldn't think of it as hers.

Vitari came first, with much the same dark clothes and smirk she'd worn when Monza first met her in Sipani. Volfier was next, walking stiffly in his braided uniform. Scavier and Grulo competed with each other to follow him. Old Rubine laboured along at the rear, bent under his chain of office, taking his time getting to the point, as always.

"So you still haven't got rid of it." Vitari frowned at the vast portrait of Orso gazing down from the far wall.

"Why would I? Reminds me of my victories, and my defeats. Reminds me where I came from. And that I have no intention of going back."

"And it is a fine painting," observed Rubine, looking sadly about. "Precious few remain."

"The Thousand Swords are nothing if not thorough." The room had lost almost everything not nailed down or carved into the mountainside. Orso's vast desk still crouched grimly at the far end, if somewhat wounded by an axe as someone had searched in vain for hidden compartments. The towering fireplace, held up by monstrous marble figures of Juvens and Kanedias, had proved impossible to remove and now contained a few flaming logs, failing utterly to warm the cavernous interior. The great round table too was still in place, the same map unrolled across it. As it had been the last day that Benna lived, but stained now in one corner with a few brown spots of Orso's blood.

Monza walked to it, wincing at a niggle through her hip, and her ministers gathered around the table in a ring just as Orso's ministers had. They say history moves in circles. "The news?"

"Good," said Vitari, "if you love bad news. I hear the Baolish have crossed the river ten thousand strong and invaded Osprian territory. Muris has declared independence and gone to war with Sipani, again, while Sotorius' sons fight each other in the streets of the city." Her finger waved over the map, carelessly spreading chaos across the continent. "Visserine remains leaderless, a plundered shadow of her former glory. There are rumours of plague in Affoia, of a great fire in Nicante. Puranti is in uproar. Musselia is in turmoil."

Rubine tugged unhappily at his beard. "Woe is Styria! They say Rogont was right. The Years of Blood are at an end. The Years of Fire are just beginning. In Westport, the holy men are proclaiming the end of the world."

Monza snorted. "Those bastards proclaim the end of the world whenever a bird shits. Anywhere without calamities?"

"Talins?" Vitari glanced around the room. "Though I hear the palace at Fontezarmo did suffer some light looting recently. And Borletta."

"Borletta?" It wasn't much more than a year since Monza had told Orso, in this very hall, how she'd thoroughly looted that very city. Not to mention spiked its ruler's head above the gates.

"Duke Cantain's young niece foiled a plot by the nobles of the city to depose her. Apparently, she made such a fine speech they all threw aside their swords, fell to their knees and swore undying fealty to her on the spot. Or that's the story they're telling, at any rate."

"Making armed men fall to their knees is a neat trick, however she managed it." Monza remembered how Rogont won his great victory. Blades can kill men, but only words can move them, and good neighbours are the surest shelter in a storm. "Do we have such a thing as an ambassador?"

Rubine looked around the table. "I daresay one could be produced."

"Produce one and send him to Borletta, with a suitable gift for the persuasive duchess and… offers of our sisterly affection."

"Sisterly… affection?" Vitari looked like she'd found a turd in her bed. "I didn't think that was your style."

"My style is whatever works. I hear good neighbours are the surest shelter in a storm."

"Them and good swords."

"Good swords go without saying."

Rubine was looking deeply apologetic. "Your Excellency, your reputation is not… all it might be."

"It never has been."

"But you are widely blamed for the death of King Rogont, Chancellor Sotorius and their comrades in the League of Nine. Your lone survival was…"

Vitari smirked at her. "Damnably suspicious."

"In Talins that only makes you better loved, of course. But elsewhere… if Styria were not so deeply divided, it would undoubtedly be united against you."

Grulo frowned across at Scavier. "We need someone to blame."

"Let's put the blame where it belongs," said Monza, "this once. Castor Morveer poisoned the crown, on Orso's instructions, no doubt. Let it be known. As widely as possible."

"But, your Excellency…" Rubine had moved from apologetic to abject. "No one knows the name. For great crimes, people must blame great figures."

Monza's eyes rolled up. Duke Orso smirked triumphantly at her from the painting of a battle he was never at. She found herself smirking back. Fine lies beat tedious truths every time.

"Inflate him, then. Castor Morveer, death without a face, most infamous of Master Poisoners. The greatest and most subtle murderer in history. A poisoner-poet. A man who could slip into the best-guarded building in Styria, murder its monarch and four of its greatest leaders and away unnoticed like a night breeze. Who is safe from the very King of Poisons? Why, I was lucky to escape with my life."

"Poor innocent that you are." Vitari slowly shook her head. "Rubs me wrong to heap fame on that slime of a man."

"I daresay you live with worse."

"Dead men make poor scapegoats."

"Oh, come now, you can breathe some life into him. Bills at every corner, proclaiming his guilt in this heinous crime and offering, let's say, a hundred thousand scales for his head."

Volfier was looking more worried by the moment. "But… he is dead, isn't he?"

"Buried with the rest when we filled in the trenches. Which means we'll never have to pay. Hell, make it two hundred thousand, then we look rich at the same time."

"And looking rich is almost as useful as being it," said Scavier, frowning at Grulo.

"With the tale I'll get told, the name of Morveer will be spoken with hushed awe when we're long dead and gone." Vitari smiled. "Mothers will scare their children with it."

"No doubt he's grinning in his grave at the thought," said Monza. "I hear you unpicked a little revolt, by the way."

"I wouldn't insult the term by applying it to those amateurs. The fools put up bills advertising their meetings! We knew already, but bills? In plain sight? You ask me, they deserve the death penalty just for stupidity."

"Or there is exile," offered Rubine. "A little mercy makes you look just, virtuous and powerful."

"And I could do with a touch of all three, eh?" She thought about it for a moment. "Fine them heavily, publish their names, parade them naked before the Senate House, then… set them free."

"Free?" Rubine raised his thick white eyebrows.

"Free?" Vitari raised her thin orange ones.

"How just, virtuous and powerful does that make me? Punish them harshly, we give their friends a wrong to avenge. Spare them, we make resistance seem absurd. Watch them. You said yourself they're stupid. If they plan more treason they'll lead us to it. We can hang them then."

Rubine cleared his throat. "As your Excellency commands. I will have bills printed detailing your mercy to these men. The Serpent of Talins forbears to use her fangs."

"For now. How are the markets?"

A hard smile crossed Scavier's soft face. "Busy, busy, morning until night. Traders have come to us fleeing the chaos in Sipani, in Ospria, in Affoia, all more than willing to pay our dues if they can bring in their cargoes unmolested."

"The granaries?"

"The harvest was good enough to see us through the winter without riots, I hope." Grulo clicked his tongue. "But much of the land towards Musselia still lies fallow. Farmers driven out when Rogont's conquering forces moved through, foraging. Then the Thousand Swords left a sweep of devastation almost all the way to the banks of the Etris. The farmers are always the first to suffer in hard times."

A lesson Monza hardly needed to be taught. "The city is full of beggars, yes?"

"Beggars and refugees." Rubine tugged his beard again. He'd tug the bastard out if he told many more sad tales. "A sign of the times—"

"Give the land away, then, to anyone who can yield a crop, and pay us tax. Farmland without farmers is nothing more than mud."

Grulo inclined his head. "I will see to it."

"You're quiet, Volfier." The old veteran stood there, glaring at the map and grinding his teeth.

"Fucking Etrisani!" he burst out, bashing his sword-hilt with one big fist. "I mean, sorry, that is, my apologies, your Excellency, but… those bastards!"

Monza grinned. "More trouble on the border?"

"Three farms burned out." Her grin faded. "The farmers missing. Then the patrol who went looking for them was shot at from the woods, one man killed, two wounded. The rest pursued, but mindful of your orders left off at the border."

"They're testing you," said Vitari. "Angry because they were Orso's first allies."

Grulo nodded. "They gave up everything in his cause and hoped to reap a golden harvest when he became king."

Volfier slapped angrily at the table's edge. "Bastards think we're too weak to stop 'em!"

"Are we?" asked Monza.

"We've three thousand foot and a thousand horse, all armed, drilled, all good men seen action before."

"Ready to fight?"

"Only give the word, they'll prove it!"

"What about the Etrisanese?"

"All bluster," sneered Vitari. "A second-rate power at the best of times, and their best was long ago."

"We have the advantage in numbers and quality," growled Volfier.

"Undeniably, we have just cause," said Rubine. "A brief sortie across the border to teach a sharp lesson—"

"We have the funds for a more significant campaign," said Scavier. "I already have some ideas for financial demands that might leave us considerably enriched—"

"The people will support you," cut in Grulo. "And indemnities will more than cover the expense!"

Monza frowned at the map, frowned in particular at those spots of blood in the corner. Benna would have counselled caution. Would have asked for time to think out a plan… but Benna was a long time dead, and Monza's taste had always been to move fast, strike hard and worry about the plans afterwards. "Get your men ready to march, Colonel Volfier. I've a mind to take Etrisani under siege."

"Siege?" muttered Rubine.

Vitari grinned sideways. "It's when you surround a city and force its surrender."

"I am aware of the definition!" snapped the old man. "But caution, your Excellency, Talins has but lately come through the most painful of upheavals—"

"I have only the greatest respect for your knowledge of the law, Rubine," said Monza, "but war is my department, and believe me, once you go to war, there is nothing worse than half measures."

"But what of making allies—"

"No one wants an ally who can't protect what's theirs. We need to demonstrate our resolve, or the wolves will all be sniffing round our carcass. We need to bring these dogs in Etrisani to heel."

"Make them pay," hissed Scavier.

"Crush them," growled Grulo.

Volfier was grinning wide as he saluted. "I'll have the men mustered and ready within the week."

"I'll polish up my armour," she said, though she kept it polished anyway. "Anything else?" The five of them stayed silent. "My thanks, then."

"Your Excellency." They bowed each in their own ways, Rubine with the frown of weighty doubts, Vitari with the slightest, lingering smirk.

Monza watched them file out. She might have liked to put aside the sword and make things grow. The way she'd wanted to long ago, after her father died. Before the Years of Blood began. But she'd seen enough to know that no battle is ever the last, whatever people might want to believe. Life goes on. Every war carries within it the seeds of the next, and she planned to be good and ready for the harvest.

Get out your plough, by all means, Farans wrote, but keep a dagger handy, just in case.

She frowned at the map, left hand straying down to rest on her stomach. It was starting to swell. Three months, now, since her blood had come. That meant it was Rogont's child. Or maybe Shivers'. A dead man's child or a killer's, a king's or a beggar's. All that really mattered was that it was hers.

She walked slowly to the desk, dropped into the chair, pulled the chain from her shirt and turned the key in the lock. She took out Orso's crown, the reassuring weight between her palms, the reassuring pain in her right hand as she lifted it and placed it carefully on the papers scattered across the scuffed leather top. Gold gleamed in the winter sun. The jewels she'd had prised out, sold to pay for weapons. Gold, to steel, to more gold, just as Orso always told her. Yet she found she couldn't part with the crown itself.

Rogont had died unmarried, without heirs. His child, even his bastard, would have a good claim on his titles. Grand Duke of Ospria. King of Styria, even. Rogont had worn the crown, after all, even if it had been a poisoned one, and only for a vainglorious instant. She felt the slightest smile at the corner of her mouth. When you lose all you have, you can always seek revenge. But if you get it, what then? Orso had spoken that much truth. Life goes on. You need new dreams to look to.

She shook herself, snatched the crown up and slid it back inside the desk. Staring at it wasn't much better than staring at her husk-pipe, wondering whether or not to put the fire to it. She was just turning the key in the lock as the doors were swung open and her chamberlain grazed the floor again with his face.

"And this time?"

"A representative of the Banking House of Valint and Balk, your Excellency."

Monza had known they were coming, of course, but they were no more welcome for that. "Send him in."

For a man from an institution that could buy and sell nations, he didn't look like much. Younger than she'd expected, with a curly head of hair, a pleasant manner and an easy grin. That worried her more than ever.

The bitterest enemies come with the sweetest smiles. Verturio. Who else?

"Your Excellency." He bowed almost as low as her chamberlain, which took some doing.

"Master…?»

"Sulfur. Yoru Sulfur, at your service." He had different-coloured eyes, she noticed as he drew closer to the desk—one blue, one green.

"From the Banking House of Valint and Balk."

"I have the honour of representing that proud institution."

"Lucky you." She glanced around the great chamber. "I'm afraid a lot of damage was done in the assault. Things are more… functional than they were in Orso's day."

His smile only widened. "I noticed a little damage to the walls on my way in. But functional suits me perfectly, your Excellency. I am here to discuss business. To offer you, in fact, the full backing of my employers."

"I understand you came often to my predecessor, Grand Duke Orso, to offer him your full backing."

"Quite so."

"And now I have murdered him and stolen his place, you come to me."

Sulfur did not even blink. "Quite so."

"Your backing moulds easily to new situations."

"We are a bank. Every change must be an opportunity."

"And what do you offer?"

"Money," he said brightly. "Money to fund armies. Money to fund public works. Money to return glory to Talins, and to Styria. Perhaps even money to render your palace less… functional."

Monza had left a fortune in gold buried near the farm where she was born. She preferred to leave it there still. Just in case. "And if I like it sparse?"

"I feel confident that we could lend political assistance also. Good neighbours, you know, are the surest shelter in a storm." She did not like his choice of words, so soon after she'd used them herself, but he went smoothly on. "Valint and Balk have deep roots in the Union. Extremely deep. I do not doubt we could arrange an alliance between you and their High King."

"An alliance?" She didn't mention that she'd very nearly consummated an alliance of a different kind with the King of the Union, in a gaudy bedchamber at Cardotti's House of Leisure. "Even though he's married to Orso's daughter? Even though his sons may have a claim on my dukedom? A better claim than mine, many would say."

"We strive always to work with what we find, before we strive to change it. For the right leader, with the right backing, Styria is there for the taking. Valint and Balk wish to stand with the victor."

"Even though I broke into your offices in Westport and murdered your man Mauthis?"

"Your success in that venture only demonstrates your great resourcefulness." Sulfur shrugged. "Men are easily replaced. The world is full of them."

She tapped thoughtfully at the top of her desk. "Strange that you should come here, making such an offer."

"How so?"

"Only yesterday I had a very similar visit from a representative of the Prophet of Gurkhul, offering his… backing."

That gave him a moment's pause. "Whom did he send?"

"A woman called Ishri."

Sulfur's eyes narrowed by the smallest fraction. "You cannot trust her."

"But I can trust you, because you smile so sweetly? So did my brother, and he lied with every breath."

Sulfur only smiled the more. "The truth, then. Perhaps you are aware that the Prophet and my employers stand on opposite sides of a great struggle."

"I've heard it mentioned."

"Believe me when I say you would not wish to find yourself on the wrong side."

"I'm not sure I wish to find myself on either side." She slowly settled back into her chair, faking comfort when she felt like a fraud at a stolen desk. "But never fear. I told Ishri the price of her support was too high. Tell me, Master Sulfur, what price will Valint and Balk ask for their help?"

"No more than what is fair. Interest on their loans. Preference in their business dealings and those of their partners and associates. That you refuse to deal with the Gurkish and their allies. That you act, when my employers request, in concert with the forces of the Union—"

"Only whenever your employers request?"

"Perhaps once or twice in your lifetime."

"Or perhaps more, as you see fit. You want me to sell Talins to you and thank you for the privilege. You want me to kneel at your vault door and beg for favours."

"You over-dramatise—"

"I do not kneel, Master Sulfur."

It was his turn to pause at her choice of words. But only for a moment. "May I be candid, your Excellency?"

"I'd like to see you try."

"You are new to the ways of power. Everyone must kneel to someone. If you are too proud to take our hand of friendship, others will."

Monza snorted, though behind her scorn her heart was pounding. "Good luck, to them and to you. May your hand of friendship bring them happier results than it brought to Orso. I believe Ishri was going to start looking for friends in Puranti. Perhaps you should go to Ospria first, or Sipani, or Affoia. I'm sure you'll find someone in Styria to take your money. We're famous for our whores."

Sulfur's grin twitched even wider. "Talins owes great debts to my employers."

"Orso owes great debts to them, you can ask him for your money back. I believe he was thrown out with the kitchen waste, but you should find him if you dig, down there at the bottom of the cliff. I'll happily lend you a trowel for the purpose."

Still he smiled, but there was no missing his threat. "It would be a shame if you left us no choice but to yield to the rage of Queen Terez, and let her seek vengeance for her father's death."

"Ah, vengeance, vengeance." Monza gave him a smile of her own. "I don't startle at shadows, Master Sulfur. I'm sure Terez talks a grand war, but the Union is spread thin. They have enemies both North and South and inside their borders too. If your High King's wife wants my little chair, well, she can come and fight me for it. But I rather suspect his August Majesty has other worries."

"I do not think you realise the dangers that fill the dark corners of the world." There was no good humour in Sulfur's huge grin now. "Why, even as we speak you sit here… alone." It had become a hungry leer, filled with sharp, white teeth. "So very, very fragile."

She blinked, as if baffled. "Alone?"

"You are mistaken." Shenkt had walked up in utter silence until he stood, unobserved, right at Sulfur's shoulder, close as his shadow. Valint and Balk's representative spun about, took a shocked step back and stood frozen, as though he'd turned to see the dead breathing in his ear.

"You," he whispered.

"Yes."

"I thought—"

"No."

"Then… this is your doing?"

"I have had my hand in it." Shenkt shrugged. "But chaos is the natural state of things, for men pull always in their own directions. It is those who want the world to march all the same way that give themselves the challenge."

The different-coloured eyes swivelled to Monza, and back. "Our master will not—"

"Your master," said Shenkt. "I have none, anymore, remember? I told him I was done. I always give a warning when I can, and here is yours. Get you gone. Return, you will not find me in a warning mood. Go back, and tell him you serve. Tell him I used to serve. We do not kneel."

Sulfur slowly nodded, then his mouth slipped back into the smirk he wore when he came in. "Die standing, then." He turned to Monza, gave his graceful bow once more. "You will hear from us." And he strutted easily from the room.

Shenkt raised his brows as Sulfur disappeared from sight. "He took it well."

She didn't feel like laughing. "There's a lot you're not telling me."

"Yes."

"Who are you, really?"

"I have been many things. An apprentice. An ambassador. A solver of stubborn problems, and a maker of them. Today, it seems, I am a man who settles other people's scores."

"Cryptic shit. If I want riddles I can visit a fortune-teller."

"You're a grand duchess. You could probably get one to come to you."

She nodded towards the doors. "You knew him."

"I did."

"You had the same master?"

"Once. Long ago."

"You worked for a bank?"

He gave his empty smile. "In a manner of speaking. They do far more than count coins."

"So I'm beginning to see. And now?"

"Now, I do not kneel."

"Why have you helped me?"

"Because they made Orso, and I break whatever they have made."

"Revenge," she murmured.

"Not the best of motives, but good outcomes can flow from evil motives, still."

"And the other way about."

"Of course. You brought the Duke of Talins all his victories, and so I had been watching you, thinking to weaken him by killing you. As it happened, Orso tried to do it himself. So I mended you instead, thinking to persuade you to kill Orso and take his place. But I underestimated your determination, and you slipped away. As it happened, you set about trying to kill Orso…"

She shifted, somewhat uncomfortably, in her ex-employer's chair. "And took his place."

"Why dam a river that already flows your way? Let us say we have helped each other." And he gave his skull's grin one more time. "We all of us have our scores to settle."

"In settling yours, it seems you have made me some powerful enemies."

"In settling yours, it seems you have plunged Styria into chaos."

That was true enough. "Not quite my intention."

"Once you choose to open the box, your intentions mean nothing. And the box is yawning wide as a grave now. I wonder what will spill from it? Will righteous leaders rise from the madness to light the way to a brighter, fairer Styria, a beacon for all the world? Or will we get ruthless shadows of old tyrants, treading circles in the bloody footsteps of the past?" Shenkt's bright eyes did not leave hers. "Which will you be?"

"I suppose we'll see."

"I suppose we will." He turned, his footfalls making not the slightest sound, and pulled the doors silently shut behind him, leaving her alone.

All Change

You need not do this, you know."

"I know." But Friendly wanted to do it.

Cosca squirmed in his saddle with frustration. "If only I could make you see how the world out here… swarms with infinite possibilities!" He had been trying to make Friendly see it the entire way from the unfortunate village where the Thousand Swords were camped. He had failed to realise that Friendly saw it with perfect, painful clarity already. And he hated it. As far as he was concerned, fewer possibilities was better. And that meant infinite was far, far too many for comfort.

"The world changes, alters, is born anew and presents a different face each day! A man never knows what each moment will bring!"

Friendly hated change. The only thing he hated more was not knowing what each moment might bring.

"There are all manner of pleasures to sample out here."

Different men take pleasure in different things.

"To lock yourself away from life is… to admit defeat!"

Friendly shrugged. Defeat had never scared him. He had no pride.

"I need you. Desperately. A good sergeant is worth three generals."

There was a long moment of silence while their horses' hooves crunched on the dry track.

"Well, damn it!" Cosca took a swig from his flask. "I have made every effort."

"I appreciate it."

"But you are resolved?"

"I am."

Friendly's worst fear had been that they might not let him back in. Until Murcatto had given him a document with a great seal for the authorities of the city of Musselia. It detailed his convictions as an accomplice in the murders of Gobba, Mauthis, Prince Ario, General Ganmark, Faithful Carpi, Prince Foscar and Grand Duke Orso of Talins, and sentenced him to imprisonment for life. Or until such time as he desired to be released. Friendly was confident that would be never. It was the only payment he had asked for, the best gift he had ever been given, and sat now neatly folded in his inside pocket, just beside his dice.

"I will miss you, my friend, I will miss you."

"And I you."

"But not so much I can persuade you to remain in my company?"

"No."

For Friendly, this was a homecoming long anticipated. He knew the number of trees on the road leading to the gate, the warmth welling up in his chest as he counted them off. He stood eagerly in his stirrups, caught a tingling glimpse of the gatehouse, a looming corner of dark brickwork above the greenery. Hardly architecture to fill most convicted men with joy, but Friendly's heart leaped at the sight of it. He knew the number of bricks in the archway, had been waiting for them, longing for them, dreaming of them for so long. He knew the number of iron studs on the great doors, he knew—

Friendly frowned as the track curved about to face the gate. The doors stood open. A terrible foreboding crowded his joy away. What could be more wrong in a prison than that its doors should stand open and unlocked? That was not part of the grand routine.

He slid from his horse, wincing at the pain in his stiff right arm, still healing even though the splints were off. He walked slowly to the gate, almost scared to look inside. A ragged-looking man sat on the steps of the hut where the guards should have been watching, all alone.

"I've done nothing!" He held up his hands. "I swear!"

"I have a letter signed by the Grand Duchess of Talins." Friendly unfolded the treasured document and held it out, still hoping. "I am to be taken into custody at once."

The man stared at him for a moment. "I'm no guard, friend. Just using the hut to sleep in."

"Where are the guards?"

"Gone."

"Gone?"

"With riots in Musselia I reckon no one was paying 'em, so… they up and left."

Friendly felt a cold prickle of horror on the back of his neck. "The prisoners?"

"They got free. Most of 'em ran right off. Some of 'em waited. Shut 'emselves into their own cells at night, only imagine that!"

"Only imagine," said Friendly, with deep longing.

"Didn't know where to run to, I guess. But they got hungry, in the end. Now they've gone too. There's no one here."

"No one?"

"Only me."

Friendly looked up the narrow track to the archway in the rocky hillside. All empty. The halls were silent. The circle of sky still looked down into the old quarry, maybe, but there was no rattling of bars as the prisoners were locked up safe and sound each night. No comforting routine, enfolding their lives as tightly as a mother holds her child. No more would each day, each month, each year be measured out into neat little parcels. The great clock had stopped.

"All change," whispered Friendly.

He felt Cosca's hand on his shoulder. "The world is all change, my friend. We all would like to go back, but the past is done. We must look forwards. We must change ourselves, however painful it may be, or be left behind."

So it seemed. Friendly turned his back on Safety, clambered dumbly up onto his horse. "Look forwards." But to what? Infinite possibilities? He felt panic gripping him. "Forwards all depends on which way you face. Which way should I face now?"

Cosca grinned as he turned his own mount about. "Making that choice is what life is. But if I may make a suggestion?"

"Please."

"I will be taking the Thousand Swords—or those who have not retired on the plunder of Fontezarmo, at least, or found regular employment with the Duchess Monzcarro—down towards Visserine to help me press my claims on Salier's old throne." He unscrewed the cap of his flask. "My entirely righteous claims." He took a swig and burped, blasting Friendly with an overpowering reek of strong spirits. "A title promised me by the King of Styria, after all. The city is in chaos, and those bastards need someone to show them the way."

"You?"

"And you, my friend, and you! Nothing is more valuable to the ruler of a great city than an honest man who can count."

Friendly took one last longing look back, the gatehouse already disappearing into the trees. "Perhaps they'll start it up again, one day."

"Perhaps they will. But in the meantime I can make noble use of your talents in Visserine. I have entirely rightful claims. Born in the city, you know. There'll be work there. Lots of… work."

Friendly frowned sideways. "Are you drunk?"

"Ludicrously, my friend, quite ludicrously so. This is the good stuff. The old grape spirit." Cosca took another swig and smacked his lips. "Change, Friendly… change is a funny thing. Sometimes men change for the better. Sometimes men change for the worse. And often, very often, given time and opportunity…" He waved his flask around for a moment, then shrugged. "They change back."

Happy Endings

Few days after they'd thrown him in there, they'd set up a gallows just outside. He could see it from the little window in his cell, if he climbed up on the pallet and pressed his face to the bars. A man might wonder why a prisoner would go to all that trouble to taunt himself, but somehow he had to. Maybe that was the point. It was a big wooden platform with a crossbeam and four neat nooses. Trapdoors in the floor so they only had to kick a lever to snap four necks at a go, easy as snapping twigs. Quite a thing. They had machines for planting crops, and machines for printing paper, and it seemed they had machines for killing folk too. Maybe that's what Morveer had meant when he spouted off about science, all those months ago.

They'd hanged a few men right after the fortress fell. Some who'd worked for Orso, given some offence someone needed vengeance for. A couple of the Thousand Swords as well, must've stepped onto some dark ground indeed, since there weren't many rules to break during a sack. But no one had swung for a long time now. Seven weeks, or eight. Maybe he should've counted the days, but what difference would counting 'em have made? It was coming, of that much he was sure.

Every morning when the first light crept into the cell and Shivers woke, he wondered if that would be the morning they'd hang him.

Sometimes he wished he hadn't turned on Monza. But only because it had come out the way it had. Not because he regretted any part of what he'd done. Probably his father wouldn't have approved of it. Probably his brother would've sneered and said he expected no better. No doubt Rudd Threetrees would've shook his head, and said justice would come for it. But Threetrees was dead, and justice with him. Shivers' brother had been a bastard with a hero's face, and his sneers meant nothing no more. And his father had gone back to the mud and left him to work out his own way of doing things. So much for the good men, and the right thing too.

From time to time he wondered whether Carlot dan Eider got away from the mess his failure must've left her in, or whether the Cripple caught up with her. He wondered whether Monza got to kill Orso, and whether it had been all she hoped for. He wondered who that bastard had been who came out of nowhere and knocked him across the hall. Didn't seem likely he'd ever find out the answers now. But that's how life is. You don't always get all the answers.

He was up at the window when he heard keys rattling down the corridor, and he almost smiled at the relief of knowing it was time. He hopped down from his pallet, right leg still stiff where Friendly had stuck his knife in it, stood up tall and faced the metal gate.

He hadn't thought she'd come herself, but he was glad she had. Glad for the chance to look her in the eye one more time, even if they had the jailer and a half-dozen guards for company. She looked well, no doubt of that, not so gaunt as she used to, nor so hard. Clean, smooth, sleek and rich. Like royalty. Hard to believe she ever had aught to do with him.

"Well, look at you," he said. "Grand Duchess Monzcarro. How the hell did you come out o' this mess so fine?"

"Luck."

"There you go. Never had much myself." The jailer unlocked the gate and pushed it squealing open. Two of the guards came in, snapped manacles shut round Shivers' wrists. He didn't see much purpose in making a fight of it. Would've been just an embarrassment all round. They marched him out into the corridor to face her.

"Quite the trip we've been on, ain't it, Monza, you and I?"

"Quite the trip," she said. "You lost yourself, Shivers."

"No. I found myself. You going to hang me now?" He didn't feel much joy at the thought, but not much sorrow either. Better'n rotting in that cell, he reckoned.

She watched him for a long moment. Blue eyes, and cold. Looked at him like she did the first time they met. Like nothing he could do would surprise her. "No."

"Eh?" Hadn't been expecting that. Left him disappointed, almost. "What, then?"

"You can go."

He blinked. "I can what?"

"Go. You're free."

"Didn't think you still cared."

"Who says I ever did? This is for me, not you. I've had enough vengeance."

Shivers snorted. "Well, who'd have fucking thought it? The Butcher of Caprile. The Snake of Talins. The good woman, all along. I thought you didn't have much use for the right thing. I thought mercy and cowardice were the same."

"Mark me down a coward, then. That I can live with. Just don't ever come back here. My cowardice has limits." She twisted the ring off her finger. The one with the big, blood-red ruby in it, and tossed it in the dirty straw at his feet. "Take it."

"Alright." He bent down and dug it out of the muck, wiped it on his shirt. "I ain't proud." Monza turned and walked away, towards the stairway, towards the lamplight spilling from it. "So that's how this ends, is it?" he called after her. "That's the ending?"

"You think you deserve something better?" And she was gone.

He slid the ring onto his little finger and watched it sparkle. "Something worse."

"Move, then, bastard," snarled one of the guards, waving a drawn sword.

Shivers grinned back. "Oh, I'm gone, don't you worry on that score. I've had my fill of Styria."

He smiled as he stepped out of the darkness of the tunnel and onto the bridge that led away from Fontezarmo. He scratched at his itching face, took in a long breath of cold, free air. All things considered, and well against the run of luck, he reckoned he'd come out alright. Might be he'd lost an eye down here in Styria. Might be he was leaving no richer than when he'd stepped off the boat. But he was a better man, of that he'd no doubt. A wiser man. Used to be he was his own worst enemy. Now he was everyone else's.

He was looking forward to getting back to the North, finding some work that suited him. Maybe he'd make a stop in Uffrith, pay his old friend Vossula a little visit. He set off down the mountain, away from the fortress, boots crunching in the grey dust.

Behind him, the sunrise was the colour of bad blood.