Best Served Cold

Orbit

Benna Murcatto Saves a Life

The sunrise was the colour of bad blood. It leaked out of the east and stained the dark sky red, marked the scraps of cloud with stolen gold. Underneath it the road twisted up the mountainside towards the fortress of Fontezarmo—a cluster of sharp towers, ash-black against the wounded heavens. The sunrise was red, black and gold.

The colours of their profession.

“You look especially beautiful this morning, Monza.”

She sighed, as if that was an accident. As if she hadn’t spent an hour preening herself before the mirror. “Facts are facts. Stating them isn’t a gift. You only prove you’re not blind.” She yawned, stretched in her saddle, made him wait a moment longer. “But I’ll hear more.”

He noisily cleared his throat and held up one hand, a bad actor preparing for his grand speech. “Your hair is like to… a veil of shimmering sable!”

“You pompous cock. What was it yesterday? A curtain of midnight. I liked that better, it had some poetry to it. Bad poetry, but still.”

“Shit.” He squinted up at the clouds. “Your eyes, then, gleam like piercing sapphires, beyond price!”

“I’ve got stones in my face, now?”

“Lips like rose petals?”

She spat at him, but he was ready and dodged it, the phlegm clearing his horse and falling on the dry stones beside the track. “That’s to make your roses grow, arsehole. You can do better.”

“Harder every day,” he muttered. “That jewel I bought looks wonderful well on you.”

She held up her right hand to admire it, a ruby the size of an almond, catching the first glimmers of sunlight and glistening like an open wound. “I’ve had worse gifts.”

“It matches your fiery temper.”

She snorted. “And my bloody reputation.”

“Piss on your reputation! Nothing but idiots’ chatter! You’re a dream. A vision. You look like…” He snapped his fingers. “The very Goddess of War!”

“Goddess, eh?”

“Of War. You like it?”

“It’ll do. If you can kiss Duke Orso’s arse half so well, we might even get a bonus.”

Benna puckered his lips at her. “I love nothing more of a morning than a faceful of his Excellency’s rich, round buttocks. They taste like… power.”

Hooves crunched on the dusty track, saddles creaked and harnesses rattled. The road turned back on itself, and again. The rest of the world dropped away below them. The eastern sky bled out from red to butchered pink. The river crept slowly into view, winding through the autumn woods in the base of the steep valley. Glittering like an army on the march, flowing swift and merciless towards the sea. Towards Talins.

“I’m waiting,” he said.

“For what?”

“My share of the compliments, of course.”

“If your head swells any further it’ll fucking burst.” She twitched her silken cuffs up. “And I don’t want your brains on my new shirt.”

“Stabbed!” Benna clutched one hand to his chest. “Right here! Is this how you repay my years of devotion, you heartless bitch?”

“How dare you presume to be devoted to me, peasant? You’re like a tick devoted to a tiger!”

“Tiger? Hah! When they compare you to an animal they usually pick a snake.”

“Better than a maggot.”

“Whore.”

“Coward.”

“Murderer.”

She could hardly deny that one. Silence settled on them again. A bird trilled from a thirsty tree beside the road.

Benna’s horse drew gradually up beside hers, and ever so gently he murmured, “You look especially beautiful this morning, Monza.”

That brought a smile to the corner of her mouth. The corner he couldn’t see. “Well. Facts are facts.”

She spurred round one more steep bend, and the outermost wall of the citadel thrust up ahead of them. A narrow bridge crossed a dizzy ravine to the gatehouse, water sparkling as it fell away beneath. At the far end an archway yawned, welcoming as a grave.

“They’ve strengthened the walls since last year,” muttered Benna. “I wouldn’t fancy trying to storm the place.”

“Don’t pretend you’d have the guts to climb the ladder.”

“I wouldn’t fancy telling someone else to storm the place.”

“Don’t pretend you’d have the guts to give the orders.”

“I wouldn’t fancy watching you tell someone else to storm the place.”

“No.” She leaned gingerly from her saddle and frowned down at the plummeting drop on her left. Then she peered up at the sheer wall on her right, battlements a jagged black edge against the brightening sky. “It’s almost as if Orso’s worried someone might try to kill him.”

“He’s got enemies?” breathed Benna, eyes round as saucers with mock amazement.

“Only half of Styria.”

“Then… we’ve got enemies?”

“More than half of Styria.”

“But I’ve tried so hard to be popular…” They trotted between two dour-faced soldiers, spears and steel caps polished to a murderous glint. Hoofbeats echoed in the darkness of the long tunnel, sloping gradually upwards. “You have that look, now.”

“What look?”

“No more fun today.”

“Huh.” She felt the familiar frown gripping her face. “You can afford to smile. You’re the good one.”

It was a different world beyond the gates, air heavy with lavender, shining green after the grey mountainside. A world of close-clipped lawns, of hedges tortured into wondrous shapes, of fountains throwing up glittering spray. Grim guardsmen, the black cross of Talins stitched into their white surcoats, spoiled the mood at every doorway.

“Monza…”

“Yes?”

“Let’s make this the last season on campaign,” Benna wheedled. “The last summer in the dust. Let’s find something more comfortable to do. Now, while we’re young.”

“What about the Thousand Swords? Closer to ten thousand now, all looking to us for orders.”

“They can look elsewhere. They joined us for plunder and we’ve given them plenty. They’ve no loyalty beyond their own profit.”

She had to admit the Thousand Swords had never represented the best of mankind, or even the best of mercenaries. Most of them were a step above the criminal. Most of the rest were a step below. But that wasn’t the point. “You have to stick at something in your life,” she grunted.

“I don’t see why.”

“That’s you all over. One more season and Visserine will fall, and Rogont will surrender, and the League of Eight will be just a bad memory. Orso can crown himself King of Styria, and we can melt away and be forgotten.”

“We deserve to be remembered. We could have our own city. You could be the noble Duchess Monzcarro of… wherever—”

“And you the fearless Duke Benna?” She laughed at that. “You stupid arse. You can scarcely govern your own bowels without my help. War’s a dark enough trade, I draw the line at politics. Orso crowned, then we retire.”

Benna sighed. “I thought we were mercenaries. Cosca never stuck to an employer like this.”

“I’m not Cosca. And anyway, it’s not wise to say no to the Lord of Talins.”

“You just love to fight.”

“No. I love to win. Just one more season, then we can see the world. Visit the Old Empire. Tour the Thousand Isles. Sail to Adua and stand in the shadow of the House of the Maker. Everything we talked about.” Benna pouted, just as he always did when he didn’t get his way. He pouted, but he never said no. It scratched at her, sometimes, that she always had to make the choices. “Since we’ve clearly only got one pair of balls between us, don’t you ever feel the need to borrow them yourself?”

“They look better on you. Besides, you’ve got all the brains. It’s best they stay together.”

“What do you get from the deal?”

Benna grinned at her. “The winning smile.”

“Smile, then. For one more season.” She swung down from her saddle, jerked her sword belt straight, tossed the reins at the groom and strode for the inner gatehouse. Benna had to hurry to catch up, getting tangled with his own sword on the way. For a man who earned his living from war, he’d always been an embarrassment where weapons were concerned.

The inner courtyard was split into wide terraces at the summit of the mountain, planted with exotic palms and even more heavily guarded than the outer. An ancient column said to come from the palace of Scarpius stood tall in the centre, casting a shimmering reflection in a round pool teeming with silvery fish. The immensity of glass, bronze and marble that was Duke Orso’s palace towered around it on three sides like a monstrous cat with a mouse between its paws. Since the spring they’d built a vast new wing along the northern wall, its festoons of decorative stonework still half-shrouded in scaffolding.

“They’ve been building,” she said.

“Of course. How could Prince Ario manage with only ten halls for his shoes?”

“A man can’t be fashionable these days without at least twenty rooms of footwear.”

Benna frowned down at his own gold-buckled boots. “I’ve no more than thirty pairs all told. I feel my shortcomings most keenly.”

“As do we all,” she muttered. A half-finished set of statues stood along the roofline. Duke Orso giving alms to the poor. Duke Orso gifting knowledge to the ignorant. Duke Orso shielding the weak from harm.

“I’m surprised he hasn’t got one of the whole of Styria tonguing his arse,” whispered Benna in her ear.

She pointed to a partly chiselled block of marble. “That’s next.”

“Benna!”

Count Foscar, Orso’s younger son, rushed around the pool like an eager puppy, shoes crunching on fresh-raked gravel, freckled face all lit up. He’d made an ill-advised attempt at a beard since Monza had last seen him but the sprinkling of sandy hairs only made him look more boyish. He might have inherited all the honesty in his family, but the looks had gone elsewhere. Benna grinned, threw one arm around Foscar’s shoulders and ruffled his hair. An insult from anyone else, from Benna it was effortlessly charming. He had a knack of making people happy that always seemed like magic to Monza. Her talents lay in the opposite direction.

“Your father here yet?” she asked.

“Yes, and my brother too. They’re with their banker.”

“How’s his mood?”

“Good, so far as I can tell, but you know my father. Still, he’s never angry with you two, is he? You always bring good news. You bring good news today, yes?”

“Shall I tell him, Monza, or—”

“Borletta’s fallen. Cantain’s dead.”

Foscar didn’t celebrate. He hadn’t his father’s appetite for corpses. “Cantain was a good man.”

That was a long way from the point, as far as Monza could see. “He was your father’s enemy.”

“A man you could respect, though. There are precious few of them left in Styria. He’s really dead?”

Benna blew out his cheeks. “Well, his head’s off, and spiked above the gates, so unless you know one hell of a physician…”

They passed through a high archway, the hall beyond dim and echoing as an emperor’s tomb, light filtering down in dusty columns and pooling on the marble floor. Suits of old armour stood gleaming to silent attention, antique weapons clutched in steel fists. The sharp clicking of boot heels snapped from the walls as a man in a dark uniform paced towards them.

“Shit,” Benna hissed in her ear. “That reptile Ganmark’s here.”

“Leave it be.”

“There’s no way that cold-blooded bastard’s as good with a sword as they say—”

“He is.”

“If I was half a man, I’d—”

“You’re not. So leave it be.”

General Ganmark’s face was strangely soft, his moustaches limp, his pale grey eyes always watery, lending him a look of perpetual sadness. The rumour was he’d been thrown out of the Union army for a sexual indiscretion involving another officer, and crossed the sea to find a more broad-minded master. The breadth of Duke Orso’s mind was infinite where his servants were concerned, provided they were effective. She and Benna were proof enough of that.

Ganmark nodded stiffly to Monza. “General Murcatto.” He nodded stiffly to Benna. “General Murcatto. Count Foscar, you are keeping to your exercises, I hope?”

“Sparring every day.”

“Then we will make a swordsman of you yet.”

Benna snorted. “That, or a bore.”

“Either one would be something,” droned Ganmark in his clipped Union accent. “A man without discipline is no better than a dog. A soldier without discipline is no better than a corpse. Worse, in fact. A corpse is no threat to his comrades.”

Benna opened his mouth but Monza talked over him. He could make an arse of himself later, if he pleased. “How was your season?”

“I played my part, keeping your flanks free of Rogont and his Osprians.”

“Stalling the Duke of Delay?” Benna smirked. “Quite the challenge.”

“No more than a supporting role. A comic turn in a great tragedy, but one appreciated by the audience, I hope.”

The echoes of their footsteps swelled as they passed through another archway and into the towering rotunda at the heart of the palace. The curving walls were vast panels of sculpture showing scenes from antiquity. Wars between demons and magi, and other such rubbish. High above, the great dome was frescoed with seven winged women against a stormy sky—armed, armoured and angry-looking. The Fates, bringing destinies to earth. Aropella’s greatest work. She’d heard it had taken him eight years to finish. Monza never got over how tiny, weak, utterly insignificant this space made her feel. That was the point of it.

The four of them climbed a sweeping staircase, wide enough for twice as many to walk abreast. “And where have your comic talents taken you?” she asked Ganmark.

“Fire and murder, to the gates of Puranti and back.”

Benna curled his lip. “Any actual fighting?”

“Why ever would I do that? Have you not read your Stolicus? ‘An animal fights his way to victory—’ ”

“ ‘A general marches there,’ ” Monza finished for him. “Did you raise many laughs?”

“Not for the enemy, I suppose. Precious few for anyone, but that is war.”

“I find time to chuckle,” threw in Benna.

“Some men laugh easily. It makes them winning dinner companions.” Ganmark’s soft eyes moved across to Monza’s. “I note you are not smiling.”

“I will. Once the League of Eight are finished and Orso is King of Styria. Then we can all hang up our swords.”

“In my experience swords do not hang comfortably from hooks. They have a habit of finding their way back into one’s hands.”

“I daresay Orso will keep you on,” said Benna. “Even if it’s only to polish the tiles.”

Ganmark did not give so much as a sharp breath. “Then his Excellency will have the cleanest floors in all of Styria.”

A pair of high doors faced the top of the stairs, gleaming with inlaid wood, carved with lions’ faces. A thick-set man paced up and down before them like a loyal old hound before his master’s bedchamber. Faithful Carpi, the longest-serving captain in the Thousand Swords, the scars of a hundred engagements marked out on his broad, weathered, honest face.

“Faithful!” Benna seized the old mercenary’s big slab of a hand. “Climbing a mountain, at your age? Shouldn’t you be in a brothel somewhere?”

“If only.” Carpi shrugged. “But his Excellency sent for me.”

“And you, being an obedient sort… obeyed.”

“That’s why they call me Faithful.”

“How did you leave things in Borletta?” asked Monza.

“Quiet. Most of the men are quartered outside the walls with Andiche and Victus. Best if they don’t set fire to the place, I thought. I left some of the more reliable ones in Cantain’s palace with Sesaria watching over them. Old-timers, like me, from back in Cosca’s day. Seasoned men, not prone to impulsiveness.”

Benna chuckled. “Slow thinkers, you mean?”

“Slow but steady. We get there in the end.”

“Going in, then?” Foscar set his shoulder to one of the doors and heaved it open. Ganmark and Faithful followed. Monza paused a moment on the threshold, trying to find her hardest face. She looked up and saw Benna smiling at her. Without thinking, she found herself smiling back. She leaned and whispered in his ear.

“I love you.”

“Of course you do.” He stepped through the doorway, and she followed.

Duke Orso’s private study was a marble hall the size of a market square. Lofty windows marched in bold procession along one side, standing open, a keen breeze washing through and making the vivid hangings twitch and rustle. Beyond them a long terrace seemed to hang in empty air, overlooking the steepest drop from the mountain’s summit.

The opposite wall was covered with towering panels, painted by the foremost artists of Styria, displaying the great battles of history. The victories of Stolicus, of Harod the Great, of Farans and Verturio, all preserved in sweeping oils. The message that Orso was the latest in a line of royal winners was hard to miss, even though his great-grandfather had been a usurper, and a common criminal besides.

The largest painting of them all faced the door, ten strides high at the least. Who else but Grand Duke Orso? He was seated upon a rearing charger, his shining sword raised high, his piercing eye fixed on the far horizon, urging his men to victory at the Battle of Etrea. The painter seemed to have been unaware that Orso hadn’t come within fifty miles of the fighting.

But then fine lies beat tedious truths every time, as he had often told her.

The Duke of Talins himself sat crabbed over a desk, wielding a pen rather than a sword. A tall, gaunt, hook-nosed man stood at his elbow, staring down as keenly as a vulture waiting for thirsty travellers to die. A great shape lurked near them, in the shadows against the wall. Gobba, Orso’s bodyguard, fat-necked as a great hog. Prince Ario, the duke’s eldest son and heir, lounged in a gilded chair nearer at hand. He had one leg crossed over the other, a wine glass dangling carelessly, a bland smile balanced on his blandly handsome face.

“I found these beggars wandering the grounds,” called Foscar, “and thought I’d commend them to your charity, Father!”

“Charity?” Orso’s sharp voice echoed around the cavernous room. “I am not a great admirer of the stuff. Make yourselves comfortable, my friends, I will be with you shortly.”

“If it isn’t the Butcher of Caprile,” murmured Ario, “and her little Benna too.”

“Your Highness. You look well.” Monza thought he looked an indolent cock, but kept it to herself.

“You too, as ever. If all soldiers looked as you did, I might even be tempted to go on campaign myself. A new bauble?” Ario waved his own jewel-encrusted hand limply towards the ruby on Monza’s finger.

“Just what was to hand when I was dressing.”

“I wish I’d been there. Wine?”

“Just after dawn?”

He glanced heavy-lidded towards the windows. “Still last night as far as I’m concerned.” As if staying up late was a heroic achievement.

“I will.” Benna was already pouring himself a glass, never to be outdone as far as showing off went. Most likely he’d be drunk within the hour and embarrass himself, but Monza was tired of playing his mother. She strolled past the monumental fireplace held up by carven figures of Juvens and Kanedias, and towards Orso’s desk.

“Sign here, and here, and here,” the gaunt man was saying, one bony finger hovering over the documents.

“You know Mauthis, do you?” Orso gave a sour glance in his direction. “My leash-holder.”

“Always your humble servant, your Excellency. The Banking House of Valint and Balk agrees to this further loan for the period of one year, after which they regret they must charge interest.”

Orso snorted. “As the plague regrets the dead, I’ll be bound.” He scratched out a parting swirl on the last signature and tossed down his pen. “Everyone must kneel to someone, eh? Make sure you extend to your superiors my infinite gratitude for their indulgence.”

“I shall do so.” Mauthis collected up the documents. “That concludes our business, your Excellency. I must leave at once if I mean to catch the evening tide for Westport—”

“No. Stay a while longer. We have one other matter to discuss.”

Mauthis’ dead eyes moved towards Monza, then back to Orso. “As your Excellency desires.”

The duke rose smoothly from his desk. “To happier business, then. You do bring happy news, eh, Monzcarro?”

“I do, your Excellency.”

“Ah, whatever would I do without you?” There was a trace of iron grey in his black hair since she’d seen him last, perhaps some deeper lines at the corners of his eyes, but his air of complete command was impressive as ever. He leaned forwards and kissed her on both cheeks, then whispered in her ear, “Ganmark can lead soldiers well enough, but for a man who sucks cocks he hasn’t the slightest sense of humour. Come, tell me of your victories in the open air.” He left one arm draped around her shoulders and guided her, past the sneering Prince Ario, through the open windows onto the high terrace.

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. Below, at the very bottom of a dizzy drop, the river wound through the wooded valley, autumn leaves pale green, burned orange, faded yellow, angry red, light glinting silver on fast-flowing water. To the east, the forest crumbled away into a patchwork of fields—squares of fallow green, rich black earth, golden crop. 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.

She narrowed her eyes against the stiff breeze, pushed some stray hair out of her face. “I never tire of this view.”

“How could you? It’s why I built this damn place. Here I can keep one eye always on my subjects, as a watchful parent should upon his children. Just to make sure they don’t hurt themselves while they play, you understand.”

“Your people are lucky to have such a just and caring father,” she lied smoothly.

“Just and caring.” Orso frowned thoughtfully towards the distant sea. “Do you think that is how history will remember me?”

Monza thought it incredibly unlikely. “What did Bialoveld say? ‘History is written by the victors.’ ”

The duke squeezed her shoulder. “All this, and well read into the bargain. Ario is ambitious enough, but he has no insight. I’d be surprised if he could read to the end of a signpost in one sitting. All he cares about is whoring. And shoes. My daughter Terez, meanwhile, weeps most bitterly because I married her to a king. I swear, if I had offered great Euz as the groom she would have whined for a husband better fitting her station.” He gave a heavy sigh. “None of my children understand me. My great-grandfather was a mercenary, you know. A fact I do not like to advertise.” Though he told her every other time they met. “A man who never shed a tear in his life, and wore on his feet whatever was to hand. A low-born fighting man, who seized power in Talins by the sharpness of his mind and sword together.” More by blunt ruthlessness and brutality, the way Monza had heard the tale. “We are from the same stock, you and I. We have made ourselves, out of nothing.”

Orso had been born to the wealthiest dukedom in Styria and never done a hard day’s work in his life, but Monza bit her tongue. “You do me too much honour, your Excellency.”

“Less than you deserve. Now tell me of Borletta.”

“You heard about the battle on the High Bank?”

“I heard you scattered the League of Eight’s army, just as you did at Sweet Pines! Ganmark says Duke Salier had three times your number.”

“Numbers are a hindrance if they’re lazy, ill-prepared and led by idiots. An army of farmers from Borletta, cobblers from Affoia, glass-blowers from Visserine. Amateurs. They camped by the river, thinking we were far away, scarcely posted guards. We came up through the woods at night and caught them at sunrise, not even in their armour.”

“I can see Salier now, the fat pig, waddling from his bed to run!”

“Faithful led the charge. We broke them quickly, captured their supplies.”

“Turned the golden cornfields crimson, I was told.”

“They hardly even fought. Ten times as many drowned trying to swim the river as died fighting. More than four thousand prisoners. Some ransoms were paid, some not, some men were hanged.”

“And few tears shed, eh, Monza?”

“Not by me. If they were so keen to live, they could’ve surrendered.”

“As they did at Caprile?”

She stared straight back into Orso’s black eyes. “Just as they did at Caprile.”

“Borletta is besieged, then?”

“Fallen already.”

The duke’s face lit up like a boy’s on his birthday. “Fallen? Cantain surrendered?”

“When his people heard of Salier’s defeat, they lost hope.”

“And people without hope are a dangerous crowd, even in a republic.”

“Especially in a republic. A mob dragged Cantain from the palace, hanged him from the highest tower, opened the gates and threw themselves on the mercy of the Thousand Swords.”

“Hah! Slaughtered by the very people he laboured to keep free. There’s the gratitude of the common man, eh, Monza? Cantain should have taken my money when I offered. It would have been cheaper for both of us.”

“The people are falling over themselves to become your subjects. I’ve given orders they should be spared, where possible.”

“Mercy, eh?”

“Mercy and cowardice are the same,” she snapped out. “But you want their land, not their lives, no? Dead men can’t obey.”

Orso smiled. “Why can my sons not mark my lessons as you have? I entirely approve. Hang only the leaders. And Cantain’s head above the gates. Nothing encourages obedience like a good example.”

“Already rotting, with those of his sons.”

“Fine work!” The Lord of Talins clapped his hands, as though he never heard such pleasing music as the news of rotting heads. “What of the takings?”

The accounts were Benna’s business, and he came forwards now, sliding a folded paper from his chest pocket. “The city was scoured, your Excellency. Every building stripped, every floor dug up, every person searched. The usual rules apply, according to our terms of engagement. Quarter for the man that finds it, quarter for his captain, quarter for the generals,” and he bowed low, unfolding the paper and offering it out, “and quarter for our noble employer.”

Orso’s smile broadened as his eyes scanned down the figures. “My blessing on the Rule of Quarters! Enough to keep you both in my service a little longer.” He stepped between Monza and Benna, placed a gentle hand on each of their shoulders and led them back through the open windows. Towards the round table of black marble in the centre of the room, and the great map spread out upon it. Ganmark, Ario and Faithful had already gathered there. Gobba still lurked in the shadows, thick arms folded across his chest. “What of our one-time friends and now our bitter enemies, the treacherous citizens of Visserine?”

“The fields round the city are burned up to the gates, almost.” Monza scattered carnage across the countryside with a few waves of her finger. “Farmers driven off, livestock slaughtered. It’ll be a lean winter for fat Duke Salier, and a leaner spring.”

“He will have to rely on the noble Duke Rogont and his Osprians,” said Ganmark, with the faintest of smiles.

Prince Ario snickered. “Much talk blows down from Ospria, always, but little help.”

“Visserine is poised to drop into your lap next year, your Excellency.”

“And with it the heart is torn from the League of Eight.”

“The crown of Styria will be yours.”

The mention of crowns teased Orso’s smile still wider. “And we have you to thank, Monzcarro. I do not forget that.”

“Not only me.”

“Curse your modesty. Benna has played his part, and our good friend General Ganmark, and Faithful too, but no one could deny this is your work. Your commitment, your single-mindedness, your swiftness to act! You shall have a great triumph, just as the heroes of ancient Aulcus did. You shall ride through the streets of Talins and my people will shower you with flower petals in honour of your many victories.” Benna was grinning, but Monza couldn’t join him. She’d never had much taste for congratulations. “They will cheer far louder for you, I think, than they ever will for my own sons. They will cheer far louder even than they do for me, their rightful lord, to whom they owe so much.” It seemed that Orso’s smile slipped, and his face looked tired, and sad, and worn without it. “They will cheer, in fact, a little too loudly for my taste.”

There was the barest flash of movement at the corner of her eye, enough to make her bring up her hand on an instinct.

The wire hissed taut around it, snatching it up under her chin, crushing it chokingly tight against her throat.

Benna started forwards. “Mon—” Metal glinted as Prince Ario stabbed him in the neck. He missed his throat, caught him just under the ear.

Orso carefully stepped back as blood speckled the tiles with red. Foscar’s mouth fell open, wine glass dropping from his hand, shattering on the floor.

Monza tried to scream, but only spluttered through her half-shut windpipe, made a sound like a honking pig. She fished at the hilt of her dagger with her free hand but someone caught her wrist, held it fast. Faithful Carpi, pressed up tight against her left side.

“Sorry,” he muttered in her ear, pulling her sword from its scabbard and flinging it clattering across the room.

Benna stumbled, gurgling red drool, one hand clutched to the side of his face, black blood leaking out between white fingers. His other hand fumbled for his sword while Ario watched him, frozen. He drew a clumsy foot of steel before General Ganmark stepped up and stabbed him, smoothly and precisely—once, twice, three times. The thin blade slid in and out of Benna’s body, the only sound the soft breath from his gaping mouth. Blood shot across the floor in long streaks, began to leak out into his white shirt in dark circles. He tottered forwards, tripped over his own feet and crashed down, half-drawn sword scraping against the marble underneath him.

Monza strained, every muscle trembling, but she was held helpless as a fly in honey. She heard Gobba grunting with effort in her ear, his stubbly face rubbing against her cheek, his great body warm against her back. She felt the wire cut slowly into the sides of her neck, deep into the side of her hand, caught fast against her throat. She felt the blood running down her forearm, into the collar of her shirt.

One of Benna’s hands crawled across the floor, reaching out for her. He lifted himself an inch or two, veins bulging from his neck. Ganmark leaned forwards and calmly ran him through the heart from behind. Benna quivered for a moment, then sagged down and was still, pale cheek smeared with red. Dark blood crept out from under him, worked its way along the cracks between the tiles.

“Well.” Ganmark leaned down and wiped his sword on the back of Benna’s shirt. “That’s that.”

Mauthis watched, frowning. Slightly puzzled, slightly irritated, slightly bored. As though examining a set of figures that wouldn’t quite add.

Orso gestured at the body. “Get rid of that, Ario.”

“Me?” The prince’s lip curled.

“Yes, you. And you can help him, Foscar. The two of you must learn what needs to be done to keep our family in power.”

“No!” Foscar stumbled away. “I’ll have no part of this!” He turned and ran from the room, his boots slapping against the marble floor.

“That boy is soft as syrup,” muttered Orso at his back. “Ganmark, help him.”

Monza’s bulging eyes followed them as they dragged Benna’s corpse out through the doors to the terrace, Ganmark grim and careful at the head end, Ario cursing as he daintily took one boot, the other smearing a red trail after them. They heaved Benna up onto the balustrade and rolled him off. Like that he was gone.

“Ah!” squawked Ario, waving one hand. “Damn it! You scratched me!”

Ganmark stared back at him. “I apologise, your Highness. Murder can be a painful business.”

The prince looked around for something to wipe his bloody hands on. He reached for the rich hangings beside the window.

“Not there!” snapped Orso. “That’s Kantic silk, at fifty scales a piece!”

“Where, then?”

“Find something else, or leave them red! Sometimes I wonder if your mother told the truth about your paternity, boy.” Ario wiped his hands sulkily on the front of his shirt while Monza stared, face burning from lack of air. Orso frowned over at her, a blurred black figure through the wet in her eyes, the hair tangled across her face. “Is she still alive? Whatever are you about, Gobba?”

“Fucking wire’s caught on her hand,” hissed the bodyguard.

“Find another way to be done with her, then, lackwit.”

“I’ll do it.” Faithful pulled the dagger from her belt, still pinning her wrist with his other hand. “I really am sorry.”

“Just get to it!” growled Gobba.

The blade went back, steel glinting in a shaft of light. Monza stomped down on Gobba’s foot with all the strength she had left. The bodyguard grunted, grip slipping on the wire, and she dragged it away from her neck, growling, twisting hard as Carpi stabbed at her.

The blade went well wide of the mark, slid in under her bottom rib. Cold metal, but it felt burning hot, a line of fire from her stomach to her back. It slid right through and the point pricked Gobba’s gut.

“Gah!” He let go the wire and Monza whooped in air, started shrieking mindlessly, lashed at him with her elbow and sent him staggering. Faithful was caught off guard, fumbled the knife as he pulled it out of her and sent it spinning across the floor. She kicked at him, missed his groin and caught his hip, bent him over. She snatched at a dagger on his belt, pulled it from its sheath, but her cut hand was clumsy and he caught her wrist before she could ram the blade into him. They wrestled with it, teeth bared, gasping spit in each other’s faces, lurching back and forth, their hands sticky with her blood.

“Kill her!”

There was a crunch and her head was full of light. The floor cracked against her skull, slapped her in the back. She spat blood, mad screams guttering to a long drawn croak, clawing at the smooth floor with her nails.

“Fucking bitch!” The heel of Gobba’s big boot cracked down on her right hand and sent pain lancing up her forearm, tore a sick gasp from her. His boot crunched again across her knuckles, then her fingers, then her wrist. At the same time Faithful’s foot was thudding into her ribs, over and over, making her cough and shudder. Her shattered hand twisted, turned sideways on. Gobba’s heel crashed down and crushed it flat into the cold marble with a splintering of bone. She flopped back, hardly able to breathe, the room turning over, history’s painted winners grinning down.

“You stabbed me, you dumb old bastard! You stabbed me!”

“You’re hardly even cut, fathead! You should’ve kept a hold on her!”

“I should stab the useless pair of you!” hissed Orso’s voice. “Just get it done!”

Gobba’s great fist came down, dragged Monza up by her throat. She tried to grab at him with her left hand but all her strength had leaked out through the hole in her side, the cuts in her neck. Her clumsy fingertips only smeared red traces across his stubbly face. Her arm was dragged away, twisted sharply behind her back.

“Where’s Hermon’s gold?” came Gobba’s rough voice. “Eh, Murcatto? What did you do with the gold?”

Monza forced her head up. “Lick my arse, cocksucker.” Not clever, perhaps, but from the heart.

“There never was any gold!” snapped Faithful. “I told you that, pig!”

“There’s this much.” One by one, Gobba twisted the battered rings from her dangling fingers, already bloating, turning angry purple, bent and shapeless as rotten sausages. “Good stone, that,” he said, peering at the ruby. “Seems a waste of decent flesh, though. Why not give me a moment with her? A moment’s all it would take.”

Prince Ario tittered. “Speed isn’t always something to be proud of.”

“For pity’s sake!” Orso’s voice. “We’re not animals. Off the terrace and let us be done. I am late for breakfast.”

She felt herself dragged, head lolling. Sunlight stabbed at her. She was lifted, limp boots scraping on stone. Blue sky turning. Up onto the balustrade. The breath scraped at her nose, shuddered in her chest. She twisted, kicked. Her body, struggling vainly to stay alive.

“Let me make sure of her.” Ganmark’s voice.

“How sure do we need to be?” Blurry through the bloody hair across her eyes she saw Orso’s lined face. “I hope you understand. My great-grandfather was a mercenary. A low-born fighting man, who seized power by the sharpness of his mind and sword together. I cannot allow another mercenary to seize power in Talins.”

She meant to spit in his face, but all she did was blow bloody drool down her own chin. “Fuck yourse—”

Then she was flying.

Her torn shirt billowed and flapped against her tingling skin. She turned over, and over, and the world tumbled around her. Blue sky with shreds of cloud, black towers at the mountain top, grey rock face rushing past, yellow-green trees and sparkling river, blue sky with shreds of cloud, and again, and again, faster, and faster.

Cold wind ripped at her hair, roared in her ears, whistled between her teeth along with her terrified breath. She could see each tree, now, each branch, each leaf. They surged up towards her. She opened her mouth to scream—

Twigs snatched, grabbed, lashed at her. A broken branch knocked her spinning. Wood cracked and tore around her as she plunged down, down, and crashed into the mountainside. Her legs splintered under her plummeting weight, her shoulder broke apart against firm earth. But rather than dashing her brains out on the rocks, she only shattered her jaw against her brother’s bloody chest, his mangled body wedged against the base of a tree.

Which was how Benna Murcatto saved his sister’s life.

She bounced from the corpse, three-quarters senseless, and down the steep mountainside, over and over, flailing like a broken doll. Rocks, and roots, and hard earth clubbed, punched, crushed her, as if she was battered apart with a hundred hammers.

She tore through a patch of bushes, thorns whipping and clutching. She rolled, and rolled, down the sloping earth in a cloud of dirt and leaves. She tumbled over a tree root, crumpled on a mossy rock. She slid slowly to a stop, on her back, and was still.

“Huuuurrrrhhh…”

Stones clattered down around her, sticks and gravel. Dust slowly settled. She heard wind, creaking in the branches, crackling in the leaves. Or her own breath, creaking and crackling in her broken throat. The sun flickered through black trees, jabbing at one eye. The other was dark. Flies buzzed, zipping and swimming in the warm morning air. She was down with the waste from Orso’s kitchens. Sprawled out helpless in the midst of the rotten vegetables, and the cooking slime, and the stinking offal left over from the last month’s magnificent meals. Tossed out with the rubbish.

“Huuurrhhh…”

A jagged, mindless sound. She was embarrassed by it, almost, but couldn’t stop making it. Animal horror. Mad despair. The groan of the dead, in hell. Her eye darted desperately around. She saw the wreck of her right hand, a shapeless, purple glove with a bloody gash in the side. One finger trembled slightly. Its tip brushed against torn skin on her elbow. The forearm was folded in half, a broken-off twig of grey bone sticking through bloody silk. It didn’t look real. Like a cheap theatre prop.

“Huurrhhh…”

The fear had hold of her now, swelling with every breath. She couldn’t move her head. She couldn’t move her tongue in her mouth. She could feel the pain, gnawing at the edge of her mind. A terrible mass, pressing up against her, crushing every part of her, worse, and worse, and worse.

“Huurhh… uurh…”

Benna was dead. A streak of wet ran from her flickering eye and she felt it trickle slowly down her cheek. Why was she not dead? How could she not be dead?

Soon, please. Before the pain got any worse. Please, let it be soon.

“Uurh… uh… uh.”

Please, death.

I

TALINS

“To have a good enemy, choose a friend: he knows where to strike”

Diane de Poitiers

Jappo Murcatto never said why he had such a good sword, but he knew well how to use it. Since his son was by five years his younger child and sickly too, from a tender age he passed on the skill to his daughter. Monzcarro had been her father’s mother’s name, in the days when her family had pretended at nobility. Her own mother had not cared for it in the least, but since she had died giving birth to Benna that scarcely mattered.

Those were peaceful years in Styria, which were as rare as gold. At ploughing time Monza would hurry behind her father while the blade scraped through the dirt, weeding any big stones from the fresh black earth and throwing them into the wood. At reaping time she would hurry behind her father while his scythe-blade flashed, gathering the cut stalks into sheaves.

“Monza,” he would say, smiling down at her, “what would I do without you?”

She helped with the threshing and tossed the seed, split logs and drew water. She cooked, swept, washed, carried, milked the goat. Her hands were always raw from some kind of work. Her brother did what he could, but he was small, and ill, and could do little. Those were hard years, but they were happy ones.

When Monza was fourteen, Jappo Murcatto caught the fever. She and Benna watched him cough, and sweat, and wither. One night her father seized Monza by her wrist, and stared at her with bright eyes.

“Tomorrow, break the ground in the upper field, or the wheat won’t rise in time. Plant all you can.” He touched her cheek. “It’s not fair that it should fall to you, but your brother is so small. Watch over him.” And he was dead.

Benna cried, and cried, but Monza’s eyes stayed dry. She was thinking about the seed that needing planting, and how she would do it. That night Benna was too scared to sleep alone, and so they slept together in her narrow bed, and held each other for comfort. They had no one else now.

The next morning, in the darkness, Monza dragged her father’s corpse from the house, through the woods behind and rolled it into the river. Not because she had no love in her, but because she had no time to bury him.

By sunrise she was breaking the ground in the upper field.

Land of Opportunity

First thing Shivers noticed as the boat wallowed in towards the wharves, it was nothing like as warm as he’d been expecting. He’d heard the sun always shone in Styria. Like a nice bath, all year round. If Shivers had been offered a bath like this he’d have stayed dirty, and probably had a few sharp words to say besides. Talins huddled under grey skies, clouds bulging, a keen breeze off the sea, cold rain speckling his cheek from time to time and reminding him of home. And not in a good way. Still, he was set on looking at the sunny side of the case. Probably just a shitty day was all. You get ’em everywhere.

There surely was a seedy look about the place, though, as the sailors scuttled to make the boat fast to the dock. Brick buildings lined the grey sweep of the bay, narrow windowed, all squashed in together, roofs slumping, paint peeling, cracked-up render stained with salt, green with moss, black with mould. Down near the slimy cobbles the walls were plastered over with big papers, slapped up at all angles, ripped and pasted over each other, torn edges fluttering. Faces on them, and words printed. Warnings, maybe, but Shivers weren’t much of a reader. Specially not in Styrian. Speaking the language was going to be enough of a challenge.

The waterfront crawled with people, and not many looked happy. Or healthy. Or rich. There was quite the smell. Or to be more precise, a proper reek. Rotten salt fish, old corpses, coal smoke and overflowing latrine pits rolled up together. If this was the home of the grand new man he was hoping to become, Shivers had to admit to being more’n a touch disappointed. For the briefest moment he thought about paying over most of what he had left for a trip straight back home to the North on the next tide. But he shook it off. He was done with war, done with leading men to death, done with killing and all that went along with it. He was set on being a better man. He was going to do the right thing, and this was where he was going to do it.

“Right, then.” He gave the nearest sailor a cheery nod. “Off I go.” He got no more’n a grunt in return, but his brother used to tell him it was what you gave out that made a man, not what you got back. So he grinned like he’d got a merry send-off, strode down the clattering gangplank and into his brave new life in Styria.

He’d scarcely taken a dozen paces, staring up at looming buildings on one side, swaying masts on the other, before someone barged into him and near knocked him sideways.

“My apologies,” Shivers said in Styrian, keeping things civilised. “Didn’t see you there, friend.” The man kept going, didn’t even turn. That prickled some at Shivers’ pride. He had plenty of it still, the one thing his father had left him. He hadn’t lived through seven years of battles, skirmishes, waking with snow on his blanket, shit food and worse singing so he could come down here and get shouldered.

But being a bastard was crime and punishment both. Let go of it, his brother would’ve told him. Shivers was meant to be looking on the sunny side. So he took a turn away from the docks, down a wide road and into the city. Past a clutch of beggars on blankets, waving stumps and withered limbs. Through a square where a great statue stood of a frowning man, pointing off to nowhere. Shivers didn’t have a clue who he was meant to be, but he looked pretty damn pleased with himself. The smell of cooking wafted up, made Shivers’ guts grumble. Drew him over to some kind of stall where they had sticks of meat over a fire in a can.

“One o’ them,” said Shivers, pointing. Didn’t seem much else needed saying, so he kept it simple. Less chance of mistakes. When the cook told him the price he near choked on his tongue. Would’ve got him a whole sheep in the North, maybe even a breeding pair. The meat was half fat and the rest gristle. Didn’t taste near so good as it had smelled, but by that point it weren’t much surprise. It seemed most things in Styria weren’t quite as advertised.

The rain had started up stronger now, flitting down into Shivers’ eyes as he ate. Not much compared to storms he’d laughed through in the North, but enough to damp his mood a touch, make him wonder where the hell he’d rest his head tonight. It trickled from mossy eaves and broken gutters, turned the cobbles dark, made the people hunch and curse. He came from the close buildings and onto a wide river bank, all built up and fenced in with stone. He paused a moment, wondering which way to go.

The city went on far as he could see, bridges upstream and down, buildings on the far bank even bigger than on this side—towers, domes, roofs, going on and on, half-shrouded and turned dreamy grey by the rain. More torn papers flapping in the breeze, letters daubed over ’em too with bright coloured paint, streaks running down to the cobbled street. Letters high as a man in places. Shivers peered over at one set, trying to make some sense of it.

Another shoulder caught him, right in the ribs, made him grunt. This time he whipped round snarling, little meat stick clutched in his fist like he might’ve clutched a blade. Then he took a breath. Weren’t all that long ago Shivers had let the Bloody-Nine go free. He remembered that morning like it was yesterday, the snow outside the windows, the knife in his hand, the rattle as he’d let it fall. He’d let the man who killed his brother live, passed up revenge, all so he could be a better man. Step away from blood. Stepping away from a loose shoulder in a crowd was nothing to sing about.

He forced half a smile back on and walked the other way, up onto the bridge. Silly thing like the knock of a shoulder could leave you cursing for days, and he didn’t want to poison his new beginning ’fore it even got begun. Statues stood on either side, staring off above the water, monsters of white stone streaky with bird droppings. People flooded past, one kind of river flowing over the other. People of every type and colour. So many he felt like nothing in the midst of ’em. Bound to have a few shoulders catch you in a place like this.

Something brushed his arm. Before he knew it he’d grabbed someone round the neck, was bending him back over the parapet twenty strides above the churning water, gripping his throat like he was strangling a chicken. “Knock me, you bastard?” he snarled in Northern. “I’ll cut your fucking eyes out!”

He was a little man, and he looked bloody scared. Might’ve been a head shorter’n Shivers, and not much more than half his weight. Getting over the first red flush of rage, Shivers realised this poor fool had barely even touched him. No malice in it. How come he could shrug off big wrongs then lose his temper over nothing? He’d always been his own worst enemy.

“Sorry, friend,” he said in Styrian, and meaning it too. He let the man slither down, brushed the crumpled front of his coat with a clumsy hand. “Real sorry about that. Little… what do you call it… mistake is all. Sorry. Do you want…” Shivers found he was offering the stick, one last shred of fatty meat still clinging to it. The man stared. Shivers winced. ’Course he didn’t want that. Shivers hardly wanted it himself. “Sorry…” The man turned and dashed off into the crowd, looking once over his shoulder, scared, like he’d just survived being attacked by a madman. Maybe he had. Shivers stood on the bridge, frowned down at that brown water churning past. Same sort of water they had in the North, it had to be said.

Seemed being a better man might be harder work than he’d thought.

The Bone-Thief

When her eyes opened, she saw bones.

Bones long and short, thick and thin, white, yellow, brown. Covering the peeling wall from floor to ceiling. Hundreds of them. Nailed up in patterns, a madman’s mosaic. Her eyes rolled down, sore and sticky. A tongue of fire flickered in a sooty hearth. On the mantelpiece above, skulls grinned emptily at her, neatly stacked three high.

Human bones, then. Monza felt her skin turn icy cold.

She tried to sit up. The vague sense of numb stiffness flared into pain so suddenly she nearly puked. The darkened room lurched, blurred. She was held fast, lying on something hard. Her mind was full of mud, she couldn’t remember how she’d got here.

Her head rolled sideways and she saw a table. On the table was a metal tray. On the tray was a careful arrangement of instruments. Pincers, pliers, needles and scissors. A small but very businesslike saw. A dozen knives at least, all shapes and sizes. Her widening eyes darted over their polished blades—curved, straight, jagged edges cruel and eager in the firelight. A surgeon’s tools?

Or a torturer’s?

“Benna?” Her voice was a ghostly squeak. Her tongue, her gums, her throat, the passages in her nose, all raw as skinned meat. She tried to move again, could scarcely lift her head. Even that much effort sent a groaning stab through her neck and into her shoulder, set off a dull pulsing up her legs, down her right arm, through her ribs. The pain brought fear with it, the fear brought pain. Her breath quickened, shuddering and wheezing through her sore nostrils.

Click, click.

She froze, silence prickling at her ears. Then a scraping, a key in a lock. Frantically now she squirmed, pain bursting in every joint, ripping at every muscle, blood battering behind her eyes, thick tongue wedged into her teeth to stop herself screaming. A door creaked open and banged shut. Footsteps on bare boards, hardly making a sound, but each one still a jab of fear in her throat. A shadow reached out across the floor—a huge shape, twisted, monstrous. Her eyes strained to the corners, nothing she could do but wait for the worst.

A figure came through the doorway, walked straight past her and over to a tall cupboard. A man no more than average height, in fact, with short fair hair. The misshapen shadow was caused by a canvas sack over one shoulder. He hummed tunelessly to himself as he emptied it, placing each item carefully on its proper shelf, then turning it back and forth until it faced precisely into the room.

If he was a monster, he seemed an everyday sort of one, with an eye for the details.

He swung the doors gently shut, folded his empty bag once, twice, and slid it under the cupboard. He took off his stained coat and hung it from a hook, brushed it down with a brisk hand, turned and stopped dead. A pale, lean face. Not old, but deeply lined, with harsh cheekbones and eyes hungry bright in bruised sockets.

They stared at each other for a moment, both seeming equally shocked. Then his colourless lips twitched into a sickly smile.

“You are awake!”

“Who are you?” A terrified scratch in her dried-up throat.

“My name is not important.” He spoke with the trace of a Union accent. “Suffice it to say I am a student of the physical sciences.”

“A healer?”

“Among other things. As you may have gathered, I am an enthusiast, chiefly, for bones. Which is why I am so glad that you… fell into my life.” He grinned again, but it was like the skulls’ grins, never touching his eyes.

“How did…” She had to wrestle with the words, jaw stiff as rusted hinges. It was like trying to talk with a turd in her mouth, and hardly better tasting. “How did I get here?”

“I need bodies for my work. They are sometimes to be found where I found you. But I have never before found one still alive. I would judge you to be a spectacularly lucky woman.” He seemed to think about it for a moment. “It would have been luckier still if you had not fallen in the first place but… since you did—”

“Where’s my ’rother? Where’s Benna?”

“Benna?”

Memory flooded back in a blinding instant. Blood pumping from between her brother’s clutching fingers. The long blade sliding through his chest while she watched, helpless. His slack face, smeared with red.

She gave a croaking scream, bucked and twisted. Agony flashed up every limb and made her squirm the more, shudder, retch, but she was held fast. Her host watched her struggle, waxy face empty as a blank page. She sagged back, spitting and moaning as the pain grew worse and worse, gripping her like a giant vise, steadily tightened.

“Anger solves nothing.”

All she could do was growl, snatched breaths slurping through her gritted teeth.

“I imagine you are in some pain, now.” He pulled open a drawer in the cupboard and took out a long pipe, bowl stained black. “I would try to get used to it, if you can.” He stooped and fished a hot coal from the fire with a set of tongs. “I fear that pain will come to be your constant companion.”

The worn mouthpiece loomed at her. She’d seen husk-smokers often enough, sprawling like corpses, withered to useless husks themselves, caring for nothing but the next pipe. Husk was like mercy. A thing for the weak. For the cowardly.

He smiled his dead-man’s smile again. “This will help.”

Enough pain makes a coward of anyone.

The smoke burned at her lungs and made her sore ribs shake, each choke sending new shocks to the tips of her fingers. She groaned, face screwing up, struggling again, but more weakly, now. One more cough, and she lay limp. The edge was gone from the pain. The edge was gone from the fear and the panic. Everything slowly melted. Soft, warm, comfortable. Someone made a long, low moan. Her, maybe. She felt a tear run down the side of her face.

“More?” This time she held the smoke as it bit, blew it tickling out in a shimmering plume. Her breath came slower, and slower, the surging of blood in her head calmed to a gentle lapping.

“More?” The voice washed over her like waves on the smooth beach. The bones were blurred now, glistening in haloes of warm light. The coals in the grate were precious jewels, sparkling every colour. There was barely any pain, and what there was didn’t matter. Nothing did. Her eyes flickered pleasantly, then even more pleasantly drifted shut. Mosaic patterns danced and shifted on the insides of her eyelids. She floated on a warm sea, honey sweet…

Back with us?” His face flickered into focus, hanging limp and white as a flag of surrender. “I was worried, I confess. I never expected you to wake, but now that you have, it would be a shame if—”

“Benna?” Monza’s head was still floating. She grunted, tried to work one ankle, and the grinding ache brought the truth back, crushed her face into a hopeless grimace.

“Still sore? Perhaps I have a way to lift your spirits.” He rubbed his long hands together. “The stitches are all out, now.”

“How long did I sleep?”

“A few hours.”

“Before that?”

“Just over twelve weeks.” She stared back, numb. “Through the autumn, and into winter, and the new year will soon come. A fine time for new beginnings. That you have woken at all is nothing short of miraculous. Your injuries were… well, I think you will be pleased with my work. I know I am.”

He slid a greasy cushion from under the bench and propped her head up, handling her as carelessly as a butcher handles meat, bringing her chin forwards so she could look down at herself. So there was no choice but to. Her body was a lumpy outline under a coarse grey blanket, three leather belts across chest, hips and ankles.

“The straps are for your own protection, to prevent you rolling from the bench while you slept.” He hacked out a sudden chuckle. “We wouldn’t want you breaking anything, would we? Ha… ha! Wouldn’t want to break anything.” He unbuckled the last of the belts, took the blanket between thumb and forefinger while she stared down, desperate to know, and desperate not to know at once.

He whipped it away like a showman displaying his prize exhibit.

She hardly recognised her own body. Stark naked, gaunt and withered as a beggar’s, pale skin stretched tight over ugly knobbles of bone, stained all over with great black, brown, purple, yellow blooms of bruise. Her eyes darted over her own wasted flesh, steadily widening as she struggled to take it in. She was slit all over with red lines. Dark and angry, edged with raised pink flesh, stippled with the dots of pulled stitches. There were four, one above the other, following the curves of her hollow ribs on one side. More angled across her hips, down her legs, her right arm, her left foot.

She’d started to tremble. This butchered carcass couldn’t be her body. Her breath hissed through her rattling teeth, and the blotched and shrivelled ribcage heaved in time. “Uh…” she grunted. “Uh…”

“I know! Impressive, eh?” He leaned forwards over her, following the ladder of red marks on her chest with sharp movements of his hand. “The ribs here and the breastbone were quite shattered. It was necessary to make incisions to repair them, you understand, and to work on the lung. I kept the cutting to the minimum, but you can see that the damage—”

“Uh…”

“The left hip I am especially pleased with.” Pointing out a crimson zigzag from the corner of her hollow stomach down to the inside of her withered leg, surrounded on both sides by trails of red dots. “The thighbone, here, unfortunately broke into itself.” He clicked his tongue and poked a finger into his clenched fist. “Shortening the leg by a fraction, but, as luck would have it, your other shin was shattered, and I was able to remove the tiniest section of bone to make up the difference.” He frowned as he pushed her knees together, then watched them roll apart, feet flopping hopelessly outwards. “One knee slightly higher than the other, and you won’t stand quite so tall but, considering—”

“Uh…”

“Set, now.” He grinned as he squeezed gently at her shrivelled legs from the tops of her thighs down to her knobbly ankles. She watched him touching her, like a cook kneading at a plucked chicken, and hardly felt it. “All quite set, and the screws removed. A wonder, believe me. If the doubters at the academy could see this now they wouldn’t be laughing. If my old master could see this, even he—”

“Uh…” She slowly raised her right hand. Or the trembling mockery of a hand that dangled from the end of her arm. The palm was bent, shrunken, a great ugly scar where Gobba’s wire had cut into the side. The fingers were crooked as tree roots, squashed together, the little one sticking out at a strange angle. Her breath hissed through gritted teeth as she tried to make a fist. The fingers scarcely moved, but the pain still shot up her arm and made bile burn the back of her throat.

“The best I could do. Small bones, you see, badly damaged, and the tendons of the little finger were quite severed.” Her host seemed disappointed. “A shock, of course. The marks will fade… somewhat. But really, considering the fall… well, here.” The mouthpiece of the husk-pipe came towards her and she sucked on it greedily. Clung to it with her teeth as if it was her only hope. It was.

He tore a tiny piece from the corner of the loaf, the kind you might feed birds with. Monza watched him do it, mouth filling with sour spit. Hunger or sickness, there wasn’t much difference. She took it dumbly, lifted it to her lips, so weak that her left hand trembled with the effort, forced it between her teeth and down her throat.

Like swallowing broken glass.

“Slowly,” he murmured, “very slowly, you have eaten nothing but milk and sugar-water since you fell.”

The bread caught in her craw and she retched, gut clamping up tight around the knife-wound Faithful had given her.

“Here.” He slid his hand round her skull, gentle but firm, lifted her head and tipped a bottle of water to her lips. She swallowed, and again, then her eyes flicked towards his fingers. She could feel unfamiliar lumps there, down the side of her head. “I was forced to remove several pieces of your skull. I replaced them with coins.”

“Coins?”

“Would you rather I had left your brains exposed? Gold does not rust. Gold does not rot. An expensive treatment, of course, but if you had died, I could always have recouped my investment, and since you have not, well… I consider it money well spent. Your scalp will feel somewhat lumpy, but your hair will grow back. Such beautiful hair you have. Black as midnight.”

He let her head fall gently back against the bench and his hand lingered there. A soft touch. Almost a caress.

“Normally I am a taciturn man. Too much time spent alone, perhaps.” He flashed his corpse-smile at her. “But I find you… bring out the best in me. The mother of my children is the same. You remind me of her, in a way.”

Monza half-smiled back, but in her gut she felt a creeping of disgust. It mingled with the sickness she was feeling every so often, now. That sweating need.

She swallowed. “Could I—”

“Of course.” He was already holding the pipe out to her.

Close it.”

“It won’t close!” she hissed, three of the fingers just curling, the little one still sticking out straight, or as close to straight as it ever came. She remembered how nimble-fingered she used to be, how sure, and quick, and the frustration and the fury were sharper even than the pain. “They won’t close!”

“For weeks you have been lying here. I did not mend you so you could smoke husk and do nothing. Try harder.”

“Do you want to fucking try?”

“Very well.” His hand closed relentlessly around hers and forced the bent fingers into a crunching fist. Her eyes bulged from her head, breath whistling too fast for her to scream.

“I doubt you understand how much I am helping you.” He squeezed tighter and tighter. “One cannot grow without pain. One cannot improve without it. Suffering drives us to achieve great things.” The fingers of her good hand plucked and scrabbled uselessly at his fist. “Love is a fine cushion to rest upon, but only hate can make you a better person. There.” He let go of her and she sagged back, whimpering, watched her trembling fingers come gradually halfway open, scars standing out purple.

She wanted to kill him. She wanted to shriek every curse she knew. But she needed him too badly. So she held her tongue, sobbed, gasped, ground her teeth, smacked the back of her head against the bench.

“Now, close your hand.” She stared into his face, empty as a fresh-dug grave. “Now, or I must do it for you.”

She growled with the effort, whole arm throbbing to the shoulder. Gradually, the fingers inched closed, the little one still sticking straight. “There, you fucker!” She shook her numb, knobbly, twisted fist under his nose. “There!”

“Was that so hard?” He held the pipe out to her and she snatched it from him. “You need not thank me.”

36nd we will see if you can take the—”

She squealed, knees buckling, would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her.

“Still?” He frowned. “You should be able to walk. The bones are knitted. Pain, of course, but… perhaps a fragment within one of the joints, still. Where does it hurt?”

“Everywhere!” she snarled at him.

“I trust this is not simply your stubbornness. I would hate to open the wounds in your legs again unnecessarily.” He hooked one arm under her knees and lifted her without much effort back onto the bench. “I must go for a while.”

She clutched at him. “You’ll be back soon?”

“Very soon.”

His footsteps vanished down the corridor. She heard the front door click shut, the sound of the key scraping in the lock.

“Son of a fucking whore.” And she swung her legs down from the bench. She winced as her feet touched the floor, bared her teeth as she straightened up, growled softly as she let go of the bench and stood on her own feet.

It hurt like hell, and it felt good.

She took a long breath, gathered herself and began to waddle towards the far side of the room, pains shooting through her ankles, knees, hips, into her back, arms held out wide for balance. She made it to the cupboard and clung to its corner, slid open the drawer. The pipe lay inside, a jar of bubbly green glass beside it with some black lumps of husk in the bottom. How she wanted it. Her mouth was dry, her palms sticky with sick need. She slapped the drawer closed and hobbled back to the bench. Everything was still pierced with cold aches, but she was getting stronger each day. Soon she’d be ready. But not yet.

Patience is the parent of success, Stolicus wrote.

Across the room, and back, growling through her clenched teeth. Across the room and back, lurching and grimacing. Across the room and back, whimpering, wobbling, spitting. She leaned against the bench, long enough to get her breath.

Across the room and back again.

37he mirror had a crack across it, but she wished it had been far more broken.

Your hair is like a curtain of midnight!

Shaved off down the left side of her head, grown back to a scabby stubble. The rest hung lank, tangled and greasy as old seaweed.

Your eyes gleam like piercing sapphires, beyond price!

Yellow, bloodshot, lashes gummed to clumps, rimmed red-raw in sockets purple-black with pain.

Lips like rose petals?

Cracked, parched, peeling grey with yellow scum gathered at the corners. There were three long scabs across her sucked-in cheek, sore brown against waxy white.

You look especially beautiful this morning, Monza…

On each side of her neck, withered down to a bundle of pale cords, the red scars left by Gobba’s wire. She looked like a woman just dead of the plague. She looked scarcely better than the skulls stacked on the mantelpiece.

Beyond the mirror, her host was smiling. “What did I tell you? You look well.”

The very Goddess of War!

“I look a fucking carnival curiosity!” she sneered, and the ruined crone in the mirror sneered back at her.

“Better than when I found you. You should learn to look on the happy side of the case.” He tossed the mirror down, stood and pulled on his coat. “I must leave you for the time being, but I will be back, as I always am. Continue working the hand, but keep your strength. Later I must cut into your legs and establish the cause of your difficulty in standing.”

She forced a sickly smile onto her face. “Yes. I see.”

“Good. Soon, then.” He threw his canvas bag over his shoulder. His footsteps creaked down the corridor, the lock closed. She counted slowly to ten.

Off the bench and she snatched up a pair of needles and a knife from the tray. She limped to the cupboard, ripped open the drawer, stuffed the pipe into the pocket of the borrowed trousers hanging from her hip bones, the jar with it. She lurched down the hall, boards creaking under bare feet. Into the bedroom, grimacing as she fished the old boots from under the bed, grunting as she pulled them on.

Out into the corridor again, her breath hissing with effort, and pain, and fear. She knelt down by the front door, or at least lowered herself by creaking degrees until her burning knees were on the boards. It was a long time since she’d worked a lock. She fished and stabbed with the needles, twisted hand fumbling.

“Turn, you bastard. Turn.”

Luckily the lock wasn’t good. The tumblers caught, turned with a satisfying clatter. She grabbed the knob and hauled the door open.

Night, and a hard one. Cold rain lashed an overgrown yard, rank weeds edged with the slightest glimmer of moonlight, crumbling walls slick with wet. Beyond a leaning fence bare trees rose up, darkness gathered under their branches. A rough night for an invalid to be out of doors. But the chill wind whipping at her face, the clean air in her mouth, felt almost like being alive again. Better to freeze free than spend another moment with the bones. She ducked out into the rain, hobbled across the garden, nettles snatching at her. Into the trees, between their glistening trunks, and she struck away from the track and didn’t look back.

Up a long slope, bent double, good hand dragging at the muddy ground, pulling her on. She grunted at each slipping footfall, every muscle screeching at her. Black rain dripped from black branches, pattered on fallen leaves, crept through her hair and plastered it across her face, crept through her stolen clothes and stuck them to her sore skin.

“One more step.”

She had to make some distance from the bench, and the knives, and that slack, white, empty face. That face, and the one in the mirror.

“One more step… one more step… one more step.”

The black ground lurched past, her hand trailing against the wet mud, the tree roots. She followed her father as he pushed the plough, long ago, hand trailing through the turned earth for stones.

What would I do without you?

She knelt in the cold woods beside Cosca, waiting for the ambush, her nose full of that damp, crisp smell of trees, her heart bursting with fear and excitement.

You have a devil in you.

She thought of whatever she needed to so she could keep going, memories rushing on ahead of her clumsy boots.

Off the terrace and let us be done.

She stopped, stood bent over, shuddering smoky breaths into the wet night. No idea how far she’d come, where she’d started, where she was going. For now, it hardly mattered.

She wedged her back against a slimy tree-trunk, prised at her belt buckle with her good hand, shoved at it with the side of the other one. It took her a teeth-gritted age to finally get the damn thing open. At least she didn’t have to pull her trousers down. They sagged off her bony arse and down her scarred legs under their own weight. She paused a moment, wondering how she’d get them back up.

One battle at a time, Stolicus wrote.

She grabbed a low branch, slick with rain, lowered herself under it, right hand cradled against her wet shirt, bare knees trembling.

“Come on,” she hissed, trying to make her knotted bladder unclench. “If you need to go, just go. Just go. Just—”

She grunted with relief, piss spattering into the mud along with the rain, trickling down the hillside. Her right leg was burning worse than ever, wasted muscles quivering. She winced as she tried to move her hand down the branch, shift her weight to her other leg. In a sick instant one foot flew out from under her and she went over backwards, breath whooping in, reason all blotted out by the dizzy memory of falling. She bit her tongue as her head cracked down in the mud, slid a stride or two, flailed to a stop in a wet hollow full of rotting leaves. She lay in the tapping rain, trousers tangled round her ankles, and wept.

It was a low moment, no doubt of that.

She bawled like a baby. Helpless, heedless, desperate. Her sobs racked her, choked her, made her mangled body shake. She didn’t know the last time she’d cried. Never, maybe. Benna had done the weeping for both of them. Now all the pain and fear of a dozen black years and more came leaking out of her screwed-up face. She lay in the mud, and tortured herself with everything she’d lost.

Benna was dead, and everything good in her was dead with him. The way they made each other laugh. That understanding that comes from a life together, gone. He’d been home, family, friend and more, all killed at once. All snuffed out carelessly as a cheap candle. Her hand was ruined. She held the aching, mocking remnant of it to her chest. The way she used to draw a sword, use a pen, firmly shake a hand, all crushed under Gobba’s boot. The way she used to walk, run, ride, all scattered broken down the mountainside under Orso’s balcony. Her place in the world, ten years’ work, built with her own sweat and blood, struggled for, sweated for, vanished like smoke. All she’d worked for, hoped for, dreamed of.

Dead.

She worked her belt back up, dead leaves dragged up with it, and fumbled it shut. A few last sobs, then she snorted snot down, wiped the rest from under her nose on her cold hand. The life she’d had was gone. The woman she’d been was gone. What they’d broken could never be mended.

But there was no point weeping about it now.

She knelt in the mud, shivering in the darkness, silent. These things weren’t just gone, they’d been stolen from her. Her brother wasn’t just dead, he’d been murdered. Slaughtered like an animal. She forced her twisted fingers closed until they made a trembling fist.

“I’ll kill them.”

She made herself see their faces, one by one. Gobba, the fat hog, lounging in the shadows. A waste of decent flesh. Her face twitched as she saw his boot stomp down across her hand, felt the bones splinter. Mauthis, the banker, his cold eyes staring down at her brother’s corpse. Inconvenienced. Faithful Carpi. A man who’d walked beside her, eaten beside her, fought beside her, year upon year. I really am sorry. She saw his arm go back, ready to stab her through, felt the wound niggling at her side, pressed at it through her wet shirt, dug her fingers into it back and front until it burned like fury.

“I’ll kill them.”

Ganmark. She saw his soft, tired face. Flinched as his sword punched through Benna’s body. That’s that. Prince Ario, lounging in his chair, wine glass dangling. His knife cut Benna’s neck open, blood bubbling between his fingers. She made herself see each detail, remember each word said. Foscar, too. I’ll have no part of this. But that changed nothing.

“I’ll kill them all.”

And Orso, last. Orso, who she’d fought for, struggled for, killed for. Grand Duke Orso, Lord of Talins, who’d turned on them over a rumour. Murdered her brother, left her broken for nothing. For a fear they’d steal his place. Her jaw ached, her teeth were clenched so hard. She felt his fatherly hand on her shoulder and her shivering flesh crawled. She saw his smile, heard his voice echoing in her pounding skull.

What would I do without you?

Seven men.

She dragged herself up, chewing at her sore lip, and lurched off through the dark trees, water trickling from her sodden hair and down her face. The pain gnawed through her legs, her sides, her hand, her skull, but she bit down hard and forced herself on.

“I’ll kill them… I’ll kill them… I’ll kill them…”

It hardly needed to be said. She was done with crying.

The old track was grown over, almost past recognition. Branches thrashed at Monza’s aching body. Brambles snatched at her burning legs. She crept through a gap in the overgrown hedgerow and frowned down at the place where she’d been born. She wished she’d been able to make the stubborn soil bear a crop as well as it bloomed thorn and nettle now. The upper field was a patch of dead scrub. The lower was a mass of briar. The remains of the mean farmhouse peered sadly over from the edge of the woods, and she peered sadly back.

It seemed that time had given both of them a kicking.

She squatted, gritting her teeth as her withered muscles stretched around her crooked bones, listening to a few birds cawing at the sinking sun, watching the wind twitch the wild grass and snatch at the nettles. Until she was sure the place was every bit as abandoned as it looked. Then she gently worked the life back into her battered legs and limped for the buildings. The house where her father died was a tumbled-down shell and a rotted beam or two, its outline so small it was hard to believe she could ever have lived there. She, and her father, and Benna too. She turned her head and spat into the dry dirt. She hadn’t come here for bitter-sweet remembrances.

She’d come for revenge.

The shovel was where she’d left it two winters ago, blade still bright under some rubbish in the corner of the roofless barn. Thirty strides into the trees. Hard to imagine how easily she’d taken those long, smooth, laughing steps as she waddled through the weeds, spade dragging behind her. Into the quiet woods, wincing at every footfall, broken patterns of sunlight dancing across the fallen leaves as the evening wore down.

Thirty strides. She hacked the brambles away with the edge of the shovel, finally managed to drag the rotten tree-trunk to one side and began to dig. It would’ve been some task with both her hands and both her legs. As she was now, it was a groaning, sweating, teeth-grinding ordeal. But Monza had never been one to give up halfway, whatever the costs. You have a devil in you, Cosca used to tell her, and he’d been right. He’d learned it the hard way.

Night was coming on when she heard the hollow clomp of metal against wood. She scraped the last soil away, prised the iron ring from the dirt with broken fingernails. She strained, growled, stolen clothes stuck cold to her scarred skin. The trapdoor came open with a squealing of metal and a black hole beckoned, a ladder half-seen in the darkness.

She worked her way down, painstakingly slow since she’d no interest in breaking any more bones. She fumbled in the black until she found the shelf, wrestled with the flint in her bad joke of a hand and finally got the lamp lit. Light flared out weakly around the vaulted cellar, glittering along the metal edges of Benna’s precautions, sitting safe, just as they’d left them.

He always had liked to plan ahead.

Keys hung from a row of rusted hooks. Keys to empty buildings, scattered across Styria. Places to hide. A rack along the left-hand wall bristled with blades, long and short. She opened a chest beside it. Clothes, carefully folded, never worn. She doubted they’d even fit her wasted body now. She reached out to touch one of Benna’s shirts, remembering him picking out the silk for it, caught sight of her own right hand in the lamplight. She snatched up a pair of gloves, threw one away and shoved the maimed thing into the other, wincing as she worked the fingers, the little one still sticking out stubbornly straight.

Wooden boxes were stacked at the back of the cellar, twenty of them all told. She hobbled to the nearest one and pushed back the lid. Hermon’s gold glittered at her. Heaps of coins. A small fortune in that box alone. She touched her fingertips gingerly to the side of her skull, felt the ridges under her skin. Gold. There’s so much more you can do with it than just hold your head together.

She dug her hand in and let coins trickle between her fingers. The way you somehow have to if you find yourself alone with a box of money. These would be her weapons. These, and…

She let her gloved hand trail across the blades on the rack, stopped and went back one. A long sword of workmanlike grey steel. It didn’t have much in the way of ornamental flourishes, but there was a fearsome beauty about it still, to her eye. The beauty of a thing fitted perfectly to its purpose. It was a Calvez, forged by the best swordsmith in Styria. A gift from her to Benna, not that he’d have known the difference between a good blade and a carrot. He’d worn it for a week then swapped it for an over-priced length of scrap metal with stupid gilt basketwork.

The one he’d been trying to draw when they killed him.

She curled her fingers round the cold grip, strange in her left hand, and slid a few inches of steel from the sheath. It shone bright and eager in the lamplight. Good steel bends, but never breaks. Good steel stays always sharp and ready. Good steel feels no pain, no pity and, above all, no remorse.

She felt herself smile. The first time in months. The first time since Gobba’s wire hissed tight around her neck.

Vengeance, then.

Fish out of Water

The cold wind swept in from the sea and gave the docks of Talins a damn good blasting. Or a damn bad one, depending how well dressed you were. Shivers weren’t that well dressed at all. He pulled his thin coat tight round his shoulders, though he might as well not have bothered, for all the good it did him. He narrowed his eyes and squinted miserably into the latest gust. He was earning his name today, alright. He had been for weeks.

He remembered sitting warm by the fire, up in the North in a good house in Uffrith, with a belly full of meat and a head full of dreams, talking to Vossula about the wondrous city of Talins. He remembered it with some bitterness, because it was that bloody merchant, with his dewy eyes and his honey tales of home, who’d talked him into this nightmare jaunt to Styria.

Vossula had told him that the sun always shone in Talins. That was why Shivers had sold his good coat before he set off. Didn’t want to end up sweating, did he? Seemed now, as he shivered like a curled-up autumn leaf only just still clinging to its branch, that Vossula had been doing some injury to the truth.

Shivers watched the restless waves chew at the quay, throwing icy spray over the few rotting skiffs stirring at their rotting wharves. He listened to the hawsers creaking, to the ill seabirds croaking, to the wind making a loose shutter rattle, to the grunts and grumbles of the men around him. All of ’em huddled on the docks for the sniff of a chance at work, and there’d never been in one place such a crowd of sad stories. Grubby and gaunt, ragged clothes and pinched-in faces. Desperate men. Men just like Shivers, in other words. Except they’d been born here. He’d been stupid enough to choose this.

He slid the last hard heel of bread from his inside pocket as carefully as a miser breaking out his hoard, took a nibble from the end, making sure to taste every crumb of it. Then he caught the man nearest to him staring, licking his pale lips. Shivers felt his shoulders slump, broke some off and handed it over.

“Thanks, friend,” as he wolfed it down.

“No bother,” said Shivers, though he’d spent hours chopping logs for it. Quite a lot of painful bother, in fact. The rest of ’em were all looking now, big sad eyes like pups needed feeding. He threw up his hands. “If I had bread for everyone, why the fuck would I be stood here?”

They turned away grumbling. He snorted cold snot up and spat it out. Aside from some stale bread it was the only thing to have passed his lips that morning, and going in the wrong direction. He’d come with a pocketful of silver, and a faceful of smiles, and a swelling chestful of happy hope. Ten weeks in Styria, and all three of those were emptied to the bitter dregs.

Vossula had told him the people of Talins were friendly as lambs, welcomed foreigners like guests. He’d found nothing but scorn, and a lot of folk keen to use any rotten trick to relieve him of his dwindling money. They weren’t just handing out second chances on the street corners here. No more’n they had been in the North.

A boat had come in now, was tying off at the quay, fishers scurrying over and around it, hauling at ropes and cursing at sailcloth. Shivers felt the rest of the desperate perking up, wondering if there might be a shift of work for one of ’em. He felt a dismal little flare of hope in his own chest, however hard he tried to keep it down, and stood up keen on tiptoes to watch.

Fish slid from the nets onto the dockside, squirming silver in the watery sun. It was a good, honest trade, fishing. A life on the salty brine where no sharp words are spoken, all men set together against the wind, plucking the shining bounty from the sea, and all that. A noble trade, or so Shivers tried to tell himself, in spite of the stink. Any trade that’d have him seemed pretty noble about then.

A man weathered as an old gatepost hopped down from the boat and strutted over, all self-importance, and the beggars jostled each other to catch his eye. The captain, Shivers guessed.

“Need two hands,” he said, pushing his battered cap back and looking those hopeful, hopeless faces over. “You, and you.”

Hardly needed saying Shivers weren’t one of ’em. His head sagged along with the rest as he watched the lucky pair hurrying back to the boat after its captain. One was the bastard he gave his bread to, didn’t so much as look round, let alone put in a word for him. Maybe it was what you gave out that made a man, not what you got back, like Shivers’ brother used to say, but getting back’s a mighty good thing to stop you starving.

“Shit on this.” And he started after them, picking his way between the fishers sorting their flapping catch into buckets and barrows. Wearing the friendliest grin he could muster, he walked up to where the captain was busying himself on the deck. “Nice boat you got here,” he tried, though it was a slimy tub of shit far as he could see.

“And?”

“Would you think of taking me on?”

“You? What d’you know about fish?”

Shivers was a proven hand with axe, blade, spear and shield. A Named Man who’d led charges and held lines across the North and back. Who’d taken a few bad wounds and given out a lot of worse. But he was set on doing better’n that, and he was clinging to the notion tight as a drowning man to driftwood.

“I used to fish a lot, when I was a boy. Down by the lake, with my father.” His bare feet crunching in the shingle. The light glistening on the water. His father’s smile, and his brother’s.

But the captain didn’t come over nostalgic. “Lake? Sea-fishing’s what we do, boy.”

“Sea-fishing, I’ve got to say, I’ve had no practice at.”

“Then why you wasting my bloody time? I can get plenty of Styrian fishers for my measure, the best hands, all with a dozen years at sea.” He waved at the idle men lining the dock, looked more like they’d spent a dozen years in an ale-cup. “Why should I give work to some Northern beggar?”

“I’ll work hard. Had some bad luck is all. I’m just asking for a chance.”

“So are we all, but I’m not hearing why I should be the one to give it you.”

“Just a chance is—”

“Away from my boat, you big pale bastard!” The captain snatched up a length of rough wood from the deck and had himself a step forwards, as if he was set to beat a dog. “Get off, and take your bad luck with you!”

“I may be no kind of fisher, but I’ve always had a talent for making men bleed. Best put that stick down before I make you fucking eat it.” Shivers gave a look to go with the warning. A killing look, straight out of the North. The captain faltered, stopped, stood there grumbling. Then he tossed his stick away and started shouting at one of his own people.

Shivers hunched his shoulders and didn’t look back. He trudged to the mouth of an alley, past the torn bills pasted on the walls, the words daubed over ’em. Into the shadows between the crowded buildings, and the sounds of the docks went muffled at his back. It had been the same story with the smiths, and with the bakers, and with every damn trade in this damn city. There’d even been a cobbler who’d looked like a good enough sort until he told Shivers to fuck himself.

Vossula had said there was work everywhere in Styria, all you had to do was ask. It seemed, for reasons he couldn’t fathom, that Vossula had been lying out of his arse the whole way. Shivers had asked him all kinds of questions. But it occurred to him now, as he sank down on a slimy doorstep with his worn-out boots in the gutter and some fish-heads for company, he hadn’t asked the one question he should’ve. The one question staring him in the face ever since he got here.

Tell me, Vossula—if Styria’s such a slice of wonder, why the hell are you up here in the North?

“Fucking Styria,” he hissed in Northern. He had that pain behind his nose meant he was close to weeping, and he was that far gone he was scarcely even shamed. Caul Shivers. Rattleneck’s son. A Named Man who’d faced death in all weathers. Who’d fought beside the biggest names in the North—Rudd Threetrees, Black Dow, the Dogman, Harding Grim. Who’d led the charge against the Union near the Cumnur. Who’d held the line against a thousand Shanka at Dunbrec. Who’d fought seven days of murder up in the High Places. He almost felt a smile tugging at his mouth to think of the wild, brave times he’d come out alive from. He knew he’d been shitting himself the whole way, but what happy days those seemed now. Least he hadn’t been alone.

He looked up at the sound of footsteps. Four men were ambling into the alley from the docks, the way he’d come. They had that sorry look men can get when they’ve got mischief in mind. Shivers hunched into his doorway, hoping whatever mischief they were planning didn’t include him.

His heart took a downward turn as they gathered in a half-circle, standing over him. One had a bloated-up red nose, the kind you get from too much drinking. Another was bald as a boot-toe, had a length of wood held by his leg. A third had a scraggy beard and a mouthful of brown teeth. Not a pretty set of men, and Shivers didn’t reckon they had anything pretty in mind.

The one at the front grinned down, a nasty-looking bastard with a pointed rat-face. “What you got for us?”

“I wish I’d something worth the taking. But I’ve not. You might as well just go your way.”

Rat Face frowned at his bald mate, annoyed they might get nothing. “Your boots, then.”

“In this weather? I’ll freeze.”

“Freeze. See if I care a shit. Boots, now, before we give you a kicking for the sport of it.”

“Fucking Talins,” mouthed Shivers under his breath, the ashes of self-pity in his throat suddenly flaring up hot and bloody. It gnawed at him to come this low. Bastards had no use for his boots, just wanted to make themselves feel big. But it’d be a fool’s fight four against one, and with no weapon handy. A fool’s choice to get killed for some old leather, however cold it was.

He crouched down, muttering as he started to pull his boots off. Then his knee caught Red Nose right in his fruits and doubled him over with a breathy sigh. Surprised himself as much as he did them. Maybe going barefoot was more’n his pride would stretch to. He smashed Rat Face on the chin, grabbed him by the front of his coat and rammed him back into one of his mates, sent them sprawling over together, yelping like cats in a rainstorm.

Shivers dodged the bald bastard’s stick as it came down and shrugged it off his shoulder. The man came stumbling past, off balance, mouth wide open. Shivers planted a punch right on the point of his hanging chin and snapped his head up, then hooked his legs away with one boot, sent him squawking onto his back and followed him down. Shivers’ fist crunched into his face—two, three, four times, and made a right mess of it, spattering blood up the arm of Shivers’ dirty coat.

He scrambled away, leaving Baldy spitting teeth into the gutter. Red Nose was still curled up wailing with his hands between his legs. But the other two had knives out now, sharp metal glinting. Shivers crouched, fists clenched, breathing hard, eyes flicking from one of ’em to the other and his anger wilting fast. Should’ve just given his boots over. Probably they’d be prising them off his cold, dead feet in a short and painful while. Bloody pride, that rubbish only did a man harm.

Rat Face wiped blood from under his nose. “Oh, you’re a dead man now, you Northern fuck! You’re good as a—” His leg suddenly went from underneath him and he fell, shrieking, knife bouncing from his hand.

Someone slid out of the shadows behind him. Tall and hooded, sword held loose in a pale left fist, long, thin blade catching such light as there was in the alley and glinting murder. The last of the boot-thieves still standing, the one with the shitty teeth, stared at that length of steel with eyes big as a cow’s, his knife looking a piss-poor tool all of a sudden.

“You might want to run for it.” Shivers frowned, caught off guard. A woman’s voice. Brown Teeth didn’t need telling twice. He turned and sprinted off down the alley.

“My leg!” Rat Face was yelling, clutching at the back of his knee with one bloody hand. “My fucking leg!”

“Stop whining or I’ll slit the other one.”

Baldy was lying there, saying nothing. Red Nose had finally fought his way moaning to his knees.

“Want my boots, do you?” Shivers took a step and kicked him in the fruits again, lifted him up and put him back down mewling on his face. “There’s one of ’em, bastard!” He watched the newcomer, blood swoosh-swooshing behind his eyes, not sure how he came through that without getting some steel in his guts. Not sure if he might not still. This woman didn’t have the look of good news. “What d’you want?” he growled at her.

“Nothing you’ll have trouble with.” He could see the corner of a smile inside her hood. “I might have some work for you.”

A big plate of meat and vegetables in some kind of gravy, slabs of doughy bread beside. Might’ve been good, might not have been, Shivers was too busy ramming it into his face to tell. Most likely he looked a right animal, two weeks unshaved, pinched and greasy from dossing in doorways, and not even good ones. But he was far past caring how he looked, even with a woman watching.

She still had her hood up, though they were out of the weather now. She stayed back against the wall, where it was dark. She tipped her head forwards when folk came close, tar-black hair hanging across one cheek. He’d worked out a notion of her face anyway, in the moments when he could drag his eyes away from his food, and he reckoned it was a good one.

Strong, with hard bones in it, a fierce line of jaw and a lean neck, a blue vein showing up the side. Dangerous, he reckoned, though that wasn’t such a clever guess since he’d seen her slit the back of a man’s knee with small regret. Still, there was something in the way her narrow eyes held him that made him nervous. Calm and cold, as if she’d already got his full measure, and knew just what he’d do next. Knew better’n he did. She had three long marks down one cheek, old cuts still healing. She had a glove on her right hand, and scarcely used it. A limp too he’d noticed on the way here. Caught up in some dark business, maybe, but Shivers didn’t have so many friends he could afford to be picky. Right then, anyone who fed him had the full stretch of his loyalty.

She watched him eat. “Hungry?”

“Somewhat.”

“Long way from home?”

“Somewhat.”

“Had some bad luck?”

“More’n my share. But I made some bad choices, too.”

“The two go together.”

“That is a fact.” He tossed knife and spoon clattering down onto the empty plate. “I should’ve thought it through.” He wiped up the gravy with the last slice of bread. “But I’ve always been my own worst enemy.” They sat facing each other in silence as he chewed it. “You’ve not told me your name.”

“No.”

“Like that, is it?”

“I’m paying, aren’t I? It’s whatever way I say it is.”

“Why are you paying? A friend of mine…” He cleared his throat, starting to doubt whether Vossula had been any kind of friend. “A man I know told me to expect nothing for free in Styria.”

“Good advice. I need something from you.”

Shivers licked at the inside of his mouth and it tasted sour. He had a debt to this woman, now, and he wasn’t sure what he’d have to pay. By the look of her, he reckoned it might cost him dear. “What do you need?”

“First of all, have a bath. No one’s going to deal with you in that state.”

Now the hunger and the cold were gone, they’d left a bit of room for shame. “I’m happier not stinking, believe it or not. I got some fucking pride left.”

“Good for you. Bet you can’t wait to get fucking clean, then.”

He worked his shoulders around, uncomfortable. He had this feeling like he was stepping into a pool with no idea how deep it might be. “Then what?”

“Not much. You go into a smoke-house and ask for a man called Sajaam. You say Nicomo demands his presence at the usual place. You bring him to me.”

“Why not do that yourself?”

“Because I’m paying you to do it, fool.” She held up a coin in her gloved fist. Silver glinted in the firelight, design of weighing scales stamped into the bright metal. “You bring Sajaam to me, you get a scale. You decide you still want fish, you can buy yourself a barrelful.”

Shivers frowned. For some fine-looking woman to come out of nowhere, more’n likely save his life, then make him a golden offer? His luck had never been anywhere near that good. But eating had only reminded him how much he used to enjoy doing it. “I can do that.”

“Good. Or you can do something else, and get fifty.”

“Fifty?” Shivers’ voice was an eager croak. “This a joke?”

“You see me laughing? Fifty, I said, and if you still want fish you can buy your own boat and have change for some decent tailoring, how’s that?”

Shivers tugged somewhat shamefacedly at the frayed edge of his coat. With that much he could hop the next boat back to Uffrith and kick Vossula’s skinny arse from one end of the town to the other. A dream that had been his one source of pleasure for some time. “What do you want for fifty?”

“Not much. You go into a smoke-house and ask for a man called Sajaam. You say Nicomo demands his presence at the usual place. You bring him to me.” She paused for a moment. “Then you help me kill a man.”

It was no surprise, if he was honest with himself for once. There was only one kind of work that he was really good at. Certainly only one kind that anyone would pay him fifty scales for. He’d come here to be a better man. But it was just like the Dogman had told him. Once your hands are bloody, it ain’t so easy to get ’em clean.

Something poked his thigh under the table and he near jumped out of his chair. The pommel of a long knife lay between his legs. A fighting knife, steel crosspiece gleaming orange, its sheathed blade in the woman’s gloved hand.

“Best take it.”

“I didn’t say I’d kill anyone.”

“I know what you said. The blade’s just to show Sajaam you mean business.”

He had to admit he didn’t much care for a woman surprising him with a knife between his thighs. “I didn’t say I’d kill anyone.”

“I didn’t say you did.”

“Right then. Just as long as you know.” He snatched the blade from her and slid it down inside his coat.

The knife pressed against his chest as he walked up, nuzzling at him like an old lover back for more. Shivers knew it was nothing to be proud of. Any fool can carry a knife. But even so, he wasn’t sure he didn’t like the weight of it against his ribs. Felt like being someone again.

He’d come to Styria looking for honest work. But when the purse runs empty, dishonest work has to do. Shivers couldn’t say he’d ever seen a place with a less honest look about it than this one. A heavy door in a dirty, bare, windowless wall, with a big man standing guard on each side. Shivers could tell it in the way they stood—they had weapons, and were right on the edge of putting ’em to use. One was a dark-skinned Southerner, black hair hanging around his face.

“Need something?” he asked, while the other gave Shivers the eyeball.

“Here to see Sajaam.”

“You armed?” Shivers slid out the knife, held it up hilt first, and the man took it off him. “With me, then.” The hinges creaked as the door swung open.

The air was thick on the other side, hazy with sweet smoke. It scratched at Shivers’ throat and made him want to cough, prickled at his eyes and made them water. It was dim and quiet, too sticky warm for comfort after the nip outside. Lamps of coloured glass threw patterns across the stained walls—green, and red, and yellow flares in the murk. The place was like a bad dream.

Curtains hung about, dirty silk rustling in the gloom. Folk sprawled on cushions, half-dressed and half-asleep. A man lay on his back, mouth wide open, pipe dangling from his hand, trace of smoke still curling from the bowl. A woman was pressed against him, on her side. Both their faces were beaded with sweat, slack as corpses. Looked like an uneasy cross between delight and despair, but tending towards the latter.

“This way.” Shivers followed his guide through the haze and down a shadowy corridor. A woman leaning in a doorway watched him pass with dead eyes, saying nothing. Someone was grunting somewhere, “Oh, oh, oh,” almost bored.

Through a curtain of clicking beads and into another big room, less smoky but more worrying. Men were scattered about it, an odd mix of types and colours. Judging by their looks, all used to violence. Eight were sitting at a table strewn with glasses, bottles and small money, playing cards. More lounged about in the shadows. Shivers’ eye fell right away on a nasty-looking hatchet in easy reach of one, and he didn’t reckon it was the only weapon about. A clock was nailed up on the wall, innards dangling, swinging back and forth, tick, tock, tick, loud enough to set his nerves jangling even worse.

A big man sat at the head of the table, the chief’s place if this had been the North. An old man, face creased like leather past its best. His skin was oily dark, short hair and beard dusted with iron grey. He had a gold coin he was fiddling with, flipping it across his knuckles from one side of his hand back to the other. The guide leaned down to whisper in his ear, then handed across the knife. His eyes and the eyes of the others were on Shivers, now. A scale was starting to seem a small reward for the task, all of a sudden.

“You Sajaam?” Louder than Shivers had in mind, voice squeaky from the smoke.

The old man’s smile was a yellow curve in his dark face. “Sajaam is my name, as all my sweet friends will confirm. You know, you can tell an awful lot about a man from the style of weapon he carries.”

“That so?”

Sajaam slid the knife from its sheath and held it up, candlelight glinting on steel. “Not a cheap blade, but not expensive either. Fit for the job, and no frills at the edges. Sharp, and hard, and meaning business. Am I close to the mark?”

“Somewhere round it.” It was plain he was one of those who loved to prattle on, so Shivers didn’t bother to mention that it weren’t even his knife. Less said, sooner he could be on his way.

“What might your name be, friend?” Though the friend bit didn’t much convince.

“Caul Shivers.”

“Brrrr.” Sajaam shook his big shoulders around like he was cold, to much chuckling from his men. Easily tickled, by the look of things. “You are a long, long way from home, my man.”

“Don’t I fucking know it. I’ve a message for you. Nicomo demands your presence.”

The good humour drained from the room quick as blood from a slit throat. “Where?”

“The usual place.”

“Demands, does he?” A couple of Sajaam’s people were moving away from the walls, hands creeping in the shadows. “Awfully bold of him. And why would my old friend Nicomo send a big white Northman with a blade to talk to me?” It came to Shivers about then that, for reasons unknown, the woman might’ve landed him right in the shit. Clearly she weren’t this Nicomo character. But he’d swallowed his fill of scorn these last few weeks, and the dead could have him before he tongued up any more.

“Ask him yourself. I didn’t come here to swap questions, old man. Nicomo demands your presence in the usual place, and that’s all. Now get off your fat black arse before I lose my temper.”

There was a long and ugly pause, while everyone had a think about that.

“I like it,” grunted Sajaam. “You like that?” he asked one of his thugs.

“It’s alright, I guess, if that style o’ thing appeals.”

“On occasion. Large words and bluster and hairy-chested manliness. Too much gets boring with great speed, but a little can sometimes make me smile. So Nicomo demands my presence, does he?”

“He does,” said Shivers, no choice but to let the current drag him where it pleased, and hope to wash up whole.

“Well, then.” The old man tossed his cards down on the table and slowly stood. “Let it never be said old Sajaam reneged on a debt. If Nicomo is calling… the usual place it is.” He pushed the knife Shivers had brought through his belt. “I’ll keep hold of this though, hmmm? Just for the moment.”

It was late when they got to the place the woman had showed him and the rotten garden was dark as a cellar. Far as Shivers could tell it was empty as one too. Just torn papers twitching on the night air, old news hanging from the slimy bricks.

“Well?” snapped Sajaam. “Where’s Cosca?”

“Said she’d be here,” Shivers muttered, half to himself.

“She?” His hand was on the hilt of the knife. “What the hell are you—”

“Over here, you old prick.” She slid out from behind a tree-trunk and into a scrap of light, hood back. Now Shivers saw her clearly, she was even finer-looking than he’d thought, and harder-looking too. Very fine, and very hard, with a sharp red line down the side of her neck, like the scars you see on hanged men. She had this frown—brows drawn in hard, lips pressed tight, eyes narrowed and fixed in front. Like she’d decided to break a door down with her head, and didn’t care a shit for the results.

Sajaam’s face had gone slack as a soaked shirt. “You’re alive.”

“Still sharp as ever, eh?”

“But I heard—”

“No.”

Didn’t take long for the old man to scrape himself together. “You shouldn’t be in Talins, Murcatto. You shouldn’t be within a hundred miles of Talins. Most of all, you shouldn’t be within a hundred miles of me.” He cursed in some language Shivers didn’t know, then tipped his face back towards the dark sky. “God, God, why could you not have sent me an honest life to lead?”

The woman snorted. “Because you haven’t the guts for it. That and you like money too much.”

“All true, regrettably.” They might’ve talked like old friends, but Sajaam’s hand hadn’t left the knife. “What do you want?”

“Your help killing some men.”

“The Butcher of Caprile needs my help killing, eh? As long as none of them are too close to Duke Orso—”

“He’ll be the last.”

“Oh, you mad bitch.” Sajaam slowly shook his head. “How you love to test me, Monzcarro. How you always loved to test us all. You’ll never do it. Never, not if you wait until the sun burns out.”

“What if I could, though? Don’t tell me it hasn’t been your fondest wish all these years.”

“All these years when you were spreading fire and murder across Styria in his name? Happy to take his orders and his coin, lick his arse like a puppy dog with a new bone? Is it those years you mean? I don’t recall you offering your shoulder for me to weep upon.”

“He killed Benna.”

“Is that so? The bills said Duke Rogont’s agents got you both.” Sajaam was pointing out some old papers stirring on the wall behind her shoulder. A woman’s face on ’em, and a man’s. Shivers realised, and with a sharp sinking in his gut, the woman’s face was hers. “Killed by the League of Eight. Everyone was so very upset.”

“I’m in no mood for jokes, Sajaam.”

“When were you ever? But it’s no joke. You were a hero round these parts. That’s what they call you when you kill so many people the word murderer falls short. Orso gave the big speech, said we all had to fight harder than ever to avenge you, and everyone wept. I am sorry about Benna. I always liked the boy. But I made peace with my devils. You should do the same.”

“The dead can forgive. The dead can be forgiven. The rest of us have better things to do. I want your help, and I’m owed. Pay up, bastard.”

They frowned at each other for a long moment. Then the old man heaved up a long sigh. “I always said you’d be the death of me. What’s your price?”

“A point in the right direction. An introduction here or there. That’s what you do, now, isn’t it?”

“I know some people.”

“Then I need to borrow a man with a cold head and a good arm. A man who won’t get flustered at blood spilled.”

Sajaam seemed to think about that. Then he turned his head and called over his shoulder. “You know a man like that, Friendly?”

Footsteps scraped out of the darkness from the way Shivers had come. Seemed there’d been someone following them, and doing it well. The woman slid into a fighting crouch, eyes narrowed, left hand on her sword hilt. Shivers would’ve reached for a weapon too, if he’d had one, but he’d sold all his own in Uffrith and given the knife over to Sajaam. So he settled for a nervous twitching of his fingers, which wasn’t a scrap of use to anyone.

The new arrival trudged up, stooped over, eyes down. He was a half-head or more shorter than Shivers but had a fearsome solid look to him, thick neck wider than his skull, heavy hands dangling from the sleeves of a heavy coat.

“Friendly,” Sajaam was all smiles at the surprise he’d pulled, “this is an old friend of mine, name of Murcatto. You’re going to work for her a while, if you have no objection.” The man shrugged his weighty shoulders. “What did you say your name was, again?”

“Shivers.”

Friendly’s eyes flickered up, then back to the floor, and stayed there. Sad eyes and strange. Silence for a moment.

“Is he a good man?” asked Murcatto.

“This is the best man I know of. Or the worst, if you stand on his wrong side. I met him in Safety.”

“What had he done to be locked in there with the likes of you?”

“Everything and more.”

More silence. “For a man called Friendly, he’s not got much to say.”

“My very thoughts when I first met him,” said Sajaam. “I suspect the name was meant with some irony.”

“Irony? In a prison?”

“All kinds of people end up in prison. Some of us even have a sense of humour.”

“If you say so. I’ll take some husk as well.”

“You? More your brother’s style, no? What do you want husk for?”

“When did you start asking your customers why they want your goods, old man?”

“Fair point.” He pulled something from his pocket, tossed it to her and she snatched it out of the air.

“I’ll let you know when I need something else.”

“I shall tick off the hours! I always swore you’d be the death of me, Monzcarro.” Sajaam turned away. “The death of me.”

Shivers stepped in front of him. “My knife.” He didn’t understand the fine points of what he’d heard, but he could tell when he was caught up in something dark and bloody. Something where he was likely to need a good blade.

“My pleasure.” Sajaam slapped it back into Shivers’ palm, and it weighed heavy there. “Though I advise you to find a larger blade if you plan on sticking with her.” He glanced round at them, slowly shaking his head. “You three heroes, going to put an end to Duke Orso? When they kill you, do me a favour? Die quickly and keep my name out of it.” And with that cheery thought he ambled off into the night.

When Shivers turned back, the woman called Murcatto was looking him right in the eye. “What about you? Fishing’s a bastard of a living. Almost as hard as farming, and even worse-smelling.” She held out her gloved hand and silver glinted in the palm. “I can still use another man. You want to take your scale? Or you want fifty more?”

Shivers frowned down at that shining metal. He’d killed men for a lot less, when he thought about it. Battles, feuds, fights, in all settings and all weathers. But he’d had reasons, then. Not good ones, always, but something to make it some kind of right. Never just murder, blood bought and paid for.

“This man we’re going to kill… what did he do?”

“He got me to pay fifty scales for his corpse. Isn’t that enough?”

“Not for me.”

She frowned at him for a long moment. That straight-ahead look that was already giving him the worries, somehow. “So you’re one of them, eh?”

“One o’ what?”

“One of those men that like reasons. That need excuses. You’re a dangerous crowd, you lot. Hard to predict.” She shrugged. “But if it helps. He killed my brother.”

Shivers blinked. Hearing those words, from her mouth, brought that day right back somehow, sharper than he’d remembered it for years. Seeing his father’s grey face, and knowing. Hearing his brother was killed, when he’d been promised mercy. Swearing vengeance over the ashes in the long hall, tears in his eyes. An oath he’d chosen to break, so he could walk away from blood and be a better man.

And here she was, out of nowhere, offering him another chance at vengeance. He killed my brother. Felt as if he would’ve said no to anything else. But maybe he just needed the money.

“Shit on it, then,” he said. “Give me the fifty.”

Six and One

The dice came up six and one. The highest dice can roll and the lowest. A fitting judgement on Friendly’s life. The pit of horror to the heights of triumph. And back.

Six and one made seven. Seven years old, when Friendly committed his first crime. But six years later that he was first caught, and given his first sentence. When they first wrote his name in the big book, and he earned his first days in Safety. Stealing, he knew, but he could hardly remember what he stole. He certainly could not remember why. His parents had worked hard to give him all he needed. And yet he stole. Some men are born to do wrong, perhaps. The judges had told him so.

He scooped the dice up, rattled them in his fist, then let them free across the stones again, watched them as they tumbled. Always that same joy, that anticipation. Dice just thrown can be anything until they stop rolling. He watched them turning, chances, odds, his life and the life of the Northman. All the lives in the great city of Talins turning with them.

Six and one.

Friendly smiled, a little. The odds of throwing six and one a second time were one in eighteen. Long odds, some would say, looking forward into the future. But looking into the past, as he was now, there was no chance of any other numbers. What was coming? Always full of possibilities. What was past? Done, and hardened, like dough turned to bread. There was no going back.

“What do the dice say?”

Friendly glanced up as he gathered the dice with the edge of his hand. He was a big man, this Shivers, but with none of that stringiness tall men sometimes get. Strong. But not like a farmer, or a labourer. Not slow. He understood the work. There were clues, and Friendly knew them all. In Safety, you have to reckon the threat a man poses in a moment. Reckon it, and deal with it, and never blink.

A soldier, maybe, and fought in battles, by his scars, and the set of his face, and the look in his eye as they waited to do violence. Not comfortable, but ready. Not likely to run or get carried away. They are rare, men that keep a sharp head when the trouble starts. There was a scar on his thick left wrist that, if you looked at it a certain way, was like the number seven. Seven was a good number today.

“Dice say nothing. They are dice.”

“Why roll ’em, then?”

“They are dice. What else would I do with them?”

Friendly closed his eyes, closed his fist around the dice and pressed them to his cheek, feeling their warm, rounded edges against his palm. What numbers did they hold for him now, waiting to be released? Six and one again? A flicker of excitement. The odds of throwing six and one for a third time were three hundred and twenty-four to one. Three hundred and twenty-four was the number of cells in Safety. A good omen.

“They’re here,” whispered the Northman.

There were four of them. Three men and a whore. Friendly could hear the vague tinkling of her night-bell on the chill air, one of the men laughing. They were drunk, shapeless outlines lurching down the darkened alley. The dice would have to wait.

He sighed, wrapped them carefully in their soft cloth, once, twice, three times, and he tucked them up tight, safe into the darkness of his inside pocket. He wished that he was tucked up tight, safe in the darkness, but things were what they were. There was no going back. He stood and brushed the street scum from his knees.

“What’s the plan?” asked Shivers.

Friendly shrugged. “Six and one.”

He pulled his hood up and started walking, hunched over, hands thrust into his pockets. Light from a high window cut across the group as they came closer. Four grotesque carnival masks, leering with drunken laughter. The big man in the centre had a soft face with sharp little eyes and a greedy grin. The painted woman tottered on her high shoes beside him. The man on the left smirked across at her, lean and bearded. The one on the right was wiping a tear of happiness from his grey cheek.

“Then what?” he shrieked through his gurgling, far louder than there was a need for.

“What d’you think? I kicked him ’til he shat himself.” More gales of laughter, the woman’s falsetto tittering a counterpoint to the big man’s bass. “I said, Duke Orso likes men who say yes, you lying—”

“Gobba?” asked Friendly.

His head snapped round, smile fading from his soft face. Friendly stopped. He had taken forty-one steps from the place where he rolled the dice. Six and one made seven. Seven times six was forty-two. Take away the one…

“Who’re you?” growled Gobba.

“Six and one.”

“What?” The man on the right made to shove Friendly away with a drunken arm. “Get out of it, you mad fu—”

The cleaver split his head open to the bridge of his nose. Before his mate on the left’s mouth had fallen all the way open, Friendly was across the road and stabbing him in the body. Five times the long knife punched him through the guts, then Friendly stepped back and slashed his throat on the backhand, kicked his legs away and brought him tumbling to the cobbles.

There was a moment’s pause as Friendly breathed out, long and slow. The first man had the single great wound yawning in his skull, a black splatter of brains smeared over his crossed eyes. The other had the five stab wounds in his body, and blood pouring from his cut throat.