"Why?" she grunted, suspicious.

" 'A captain looks first to the comfort of his men, then to his own,' Stolicus said."

"Who's he?" asked Benna.

"Stolicus? Why, the greatest general of history!" Monza stared blankly at him. "An emperor of old. The most famous of emperors."

"What's an emperor?" asked Benna.

Cosca raised his brows. "Like a king, but more so. You should read this." He slid something from a pocket and pressed it into Monza's hand. A small book, with a red cover scuffed and scarred.

"I will." She opened it and frowned at the first page, waiting for him to go.

"Neither of us can read," said Benna, before Monza could shut him up.

Cosca frowned, twisting one corner of his waxed moustache between finger and thumb. Monza was waiting for him to tell them to go back to the farm, but instead he lowered himself slowly and sat cross-legged beside them. "Children, children." He pointed at the page. "This here is the letter 'A.'"

Fogs and Whispers Sipani smelled of rot and old salt water, of coal smoke, shit and piss, of fast living and slow decay. Made Shivers feel like puking, though the smell mightn't have mattered so much if he could've seen his hand before his face. The night was dark, the fog so thick that Monza, walking close enough to touch, weren't much more than a ghostly outline. His lamp scarcely lit ten cobbles in front of his boots, all shining with cold dew. More than once he'd nearly stepped straight off into water. It was easily done. In Sipani, water was hiding round every corner.

Angry giants loomed up, twisted, changed to greasy buildings and crept past. Figures charged from the mist like the Shanka did at the Battle of Dunbrec, then turned out to be bridges, railings, statues, carts. Lamps swung on poles at corners, torches burned by doorways, lit windows glowed, hanging in the murk, treacherous as marsh-lights. Shivers would set his course by one set, squinting through the mist, only to see a house start drifting. He'd blink, and shake his head, the ground shifting dizzily under his boots. Then he'd realise it was a barge, sliding past in the water beside the cobbled way, bearing its lights off into the night. He'd never liked cities, fog or salt water. The three together were like a bad dream.

"Bloody fog," Shivers muttered, holding his lamp higher, as though that helped. "Can't see a thing."

"This is Sipani," Monza tossed over her shoulder. "City of Fogs. City of Whispers."

The chill air was full of strange sounds, alright. Everywhere the slap, slop of water, the creaking of ropes as rowing boats squirmed on the shifting canals. Bells tolling in the darkness, folk calling out, all kinds of voices. Prices. Offers. Warnings. Jokes and threats spilling over each other. Dogs barked, cats hissed, rats skittered, birds croaked. Snatches of music, lost in the mist. Ghostly laughter fluttered past on the other side of the seething water, lamps bobbing through the gloom as some revel wended into the night from tavern, to brothel, to gambling den, to smoke-house. Made Shivers' head spin, and left him sicker than ever. Felt like he'd been sick for weeks. Ever since Westport.

Footsteps echoed from the darkness and Shivers pressed himself against the wall, right hand on the haft of the hatchet tucked in his coat. Men loomed up and away, brushing past him. Women too, one holding a hat to her piled-up hair as she ran. Devil faces, smeared with drunken smiles, reeling past in a flurry and gone into the night, mist curling behind their flapping cloaks.

"Bastards," hissed Shivers after them, letting go his axe and peeling himself away from the sticky wall. "Lucky I didn't split one of 'em."

"Get used to it. This is Sipani. City of Revels. City of Rogues."

Rogues were in long supply, alright. Men slouched around steps, on corners, beside bridges, dishing out hard looks. Women too, black outlines in doorways, lamps glowing behind, some of 'em hardly dressed in spite of the cold. "A scale!" one called at him from a window, letting one thin leg dangle in the murk. "For a scale you get the night of your life! Ten bits then! Eight!"

"Selling themselves," Shivers grunted.

"Everyone's selling themselves," came Monza's muffled voice. "This is-"

"Yes, yes. This is fucking Sipani."

Monza stopped and he nearly walked into her. She pushed her hood back and squinted at a narrow doorway in a wall of crumbling brickwork. "This is it."

"You take a man to all the finest places, eh?"

"Maybe later you'll get the tour. For now we've got business. Look dangerous."

"Right y'are, Chief." Shivers stood up tall and fixed his hardest frown. "Right y'are."

She knocked, and not long after the door wobbled open. A woman stared out from a dim-lit hallway, long and lean as a spider. She had a way of standing, hips loose and tilted to one side, arm up on the doorframe, one thin finger tapping at the wood. Like the fog was hers, and the night, and them too. Shivers brought his lamp up a touch closer. A hard, sharp face with a knowing smile, spattered with freckles, short red hair sprouting all ways from her head.

"Shylo Vitari?" asked Monza.

"You'll be Murcatto, then."

"That's right."

"Death suits you." She narrowed her eyes at Shivers. Cold eyes, with a hint of a cruel joke in 'em. "Who's your man?"

He spoke for himself. "Name's Caul Shivers, and I'm not hers."

"No?" She grinned at Monza. "Whose is he, then?"

"I'm my own."

She gave a sharp laugh at that. Seemed everything about her had an edge on it. "This is Sipani, friend. Everyone belongs to someone. Northman, eh?"

"That a problem?"

"Got tossed down a flight of stairs by one once. Haven't been entirely comfortable around them since. Why Shivers?"

She caught him off balance with that one. "What?"

"Up in the North, the way I heard it, a man earns his name. Great deeds done, and all that. Why Shivers?"

"Er..." The last thing he needed was to look the fool in front of Monza. He was still hoping to make it back into her bed at some point. "Because my enemies shiver with fear when they face me," he lied.

"That so?" Vitari stood back from the door, giving him a mocking grin as he ducked under the low lintel. "You must have some cowardly bloody enemies."

"Sajaam says you know people here," said Monza as the woman led them into a narrow sitting room, barely lit by some smoky coals on a grate.

"I know everyone." She took a steaming pot off the fire. "Soup?"

"Not me," said Shivers, leaning against the wall and folding his arms over his chest. He'd been a lot more careful about hospitality since he met Morveer.

"Nor me," said Monza.

"Suit yourselves." Vitari poured a mug out for herself and sat, folding one long leg over the other, pointed toe of her black boot rocking backwards and forwards.

Monza took the only other chair, wincing a touch as she lowered herself into it. "Sajaam says you can get things done."

"And just what is it that the two of you need doing?"

Monza glanced across at Shivers, and he shrugged back at her. "I hear the King of the Union is coming to Sipani."

"So he is. Seems he's got it in mind that he's the great statesman of the age." Vitari smiled wide, showing two rows of clean, sharp teeth. "He's going to bring peace to Styria."

"Is he now?"

"That's the rumour. He's brought together a conference to negotiate terms, between Grand Duke Orso and the League of Eight. He's got all their leaders coming-those who are still alive, at least, Rogont and Salier at the front. He's got old Sotorius to play host-neutral ground here in Sipani, is the thinking. And he's got his brothers-in-law on their way, to speak for their father."

Monza craned forwards, eager as a buzzard at a carcass. "Ario and Foscar both?"

"Ario and Foscar both."

"They're going to make peace?" asked Shivers, and soon regretted saying anything. The two women each gave him their own special kind of sneer.

"This is Sipani," said Vitari. "All we make here is fog."

"And that's all anyone will be making at this conference, you can depend on that." Monza eased herself back into her chair, scowling. "Fogs and whispers."

"The League of Eight is splitting at the seams. Borletta fallen. Cantain dead. Visserine will be under siege when the weather breaks. No talk's going to change that."

"Ario will sit, and smirk, and listen, and nod. Scatter a little trail of hopes that his father will make peace. Right up until Orso's troops appear outside the walls of Visserine."

Vitari lifted her cup again, narrow eyes on Monza. "And the Thousand Swords alongside them."

"Salier and Rogont and all the rest will know that well enough. They're no fools. Misers and cowards, maybe, but no fools. They're only playing for time to manoeuvre."

"Manoeuvre?" asked Shivers, chewing on the strange word.

"Wriggle," said Vitari, showing him her teeth again. "Orso won't make peace, and the League of Eight aren't looking for it. The only man who's come here hoping for anything but fog is his August Majesty, but they say he's got a talent for self-deception."

"Comes with the crown," said Monza, "but he's nothing to me. Ario and Foscar are my business. What will they be about, other than feeding lies to their brother-in-law?"

"There's going to be a masked ball in honour of the king and queen at Sotorius' palace on the first night of the conference. Ario and Foscar will be there."

"That'll be well guarded," said Shivers, doing his best to keep up. Didn't help that he thought he could hear a child crying somewhere.

Vitari snorted. "A dozen of the best-guarded people in the world, all sharing a room with their bitterest enemies? There'll be more soldiers than at the Battle of Adua, I'll be bound. Hard to think of a spot where the brothers would be less vulnerable."

"What else, then?" snapped Monza.

"We'll see. I'm no friend of Ario's, but I know someone who is. A close, close friend."

Monza's black brows drew in. "Then we should be talking to-"

The door creaked suddenly open and Shivers spun round, hatchet already halfway out.

A child stood in the doorway. A girl maybe eight years old, dressed in a too-long shift with bony ankles and bare feet sticking out the bottom, red hair poking from her head in a tangled mess. She stared at Shivers, then Monza, then Vitari with wide blue eyes. "Mama. Cas is crying."

Vitari knelt down and smoothed the little girl's hair. "Never you mind, baby, I hear. Try and soothe him. I'll be up soon as I can, and sing to you all."

"Alright." The girl gave Shivers another look, and he pushed his axe away, somewhat shamefaced, and tried to make a grin. She backed off and pulled the door shut.

"My boy's got a cough," said Vitari, her voice with its hard edge again. "One gets ill, then they all get ill, then I get ill. Who'd be a mother, eh?"

Shivers lifted his brows. "Can't say I've got the equipment."

"Never had much luck with family," said Monza. "Can you help us?"

Vitari's eyes flickered over to Shivers, and back. "Who else you got along with you?"

"A man called Friendly, as muscle."

"Good, is he?"

"Very," said Shivers, thinking of the two men hacked bloody on the streets of Talins. "Bit strange, though."

"You need to be in this line of work. Who else?"

"A poisoner and his assistant."

"A good one?"

"According to him. Name of Morveer."

"Gah!" Vitari looked as if she'd the taste of piss in her mouth. "Castor Morveer? That bastard's about as trustworthy as a scorpion."

Monza looked back, hard and level. "Scorpions have their uses. Can you help us, I asked?"

Vitari's eyes were two slits, shining in the firelight. "I can help you, but it'll cost. If we can get the job done, something tells me I won't be welcome in Sipani anymore."

"Money isn't a problem. Just as long as you can get us close. You know someone who can help with that?"

Vitari drained her mug, then tossed the dregs hissing onto the coals. "Oh, I know all kinds of people."

The Arts of Persuasion It was early, and the twisting streets of Sipani were quiet. Monza hunched in a doorway, coat wrapped tight around her, hands wedged under her armpits. She'd been hunched there for an hour at least, steadily getting colder, breathing fog into the foggy air. The edges of her ears and her nostrils tingled unpleasantly. It was a wonder the snot hadn't frozen in her nose. But she could be patient. She had to be.

Nine-tenths of war is waiting, Stolicus wrote, and she felt he'd called it low.

A man wheeled past a barrow heaped with straw, tuneless whistling deadened by the thinning mist, and Monza's eyes slid after him until he became a murky outline and was gone. She wished Benna was with her.

And she wished he'd brought his husk pipe with him.

She shifted her tongue in her dry mouth, trying to push the thought out of her mind, but it was like a splinter under her thumbnail. The painful, wonderful bite at her lungs, the taste of the smoke as she let it curl from her mouth, her limbs growing heavy, the world softening. The doubt, the anger, the fear all leaking away...

Footsteps clapped on wet flagstones and a pair of figures rose out of the gloom. Monza stiffened, fists clenching, pain flashing through her twisted knuckles. A woman in a bright red coat edged with gold embroidery. "Hurry up!" Snapped in a faint Union accent to a man lumbering along behind with a heavy trunk on one shoulder. "I do not mean to be late again-"

Vitari's shrill whistle cut across the empty street. Shivers slid from a doorway, loomed up behind the servant and pinned his arms. Friendly came out of nowhere and sank four heavy punches into his gut before he could even shout, sent him to the cobbles blowing vomit.

Monza heard the woman gasp, caught a glimpse of her wide-eyed face as she turned to run. Before she'd gone a step Vitari's voice echoed out of the gloom ahead. "Carlot dan Eider, unless I'm much mistaken!"

The woman in the red coat backed towards the doorway where Monza was standing, one hand held up. "I have money! I can pay you!"

Vitari sauntered out of the murk, loose and easy as a mean cat in her own garden. "Oh, you'll pay alright. I must say I was surprised when I learned Prince Ario's favourite mistress was in Sipani. I heard you could hardly be dragged from his bedchamber." Vitari herded her towards the doorway and Monza backed off, into the dim corridor, wincing at the sharp pains through her legs as she started to move.

"Whatever the League of Eight are paying, I'll-"