"For a man of notoriously fickle loyalties, I find your attachment to a woman who once betrayed you... perplexing."

"So do I. But I've always been an unpredictable bastard. Perhaps I'm changing my ways. Perhaps I've made a solemn vow to be sober, loyal and diligent in all my dealings from now on."

Vitari snorted. "That'll be the day."

"And how long do we wait?" demanded Morveer.

"I suppose you'll know when I say you can leave."

"And suppose... I choose... to leave before?"

"You're nothing like as clever as you think you are." Cosca held his eye. "But you're cleverer than that."

"Everyone be calm," snarled Vitari, in the most uncalming voice imaginable.

"I don't take orders from you, you pickled remnant!"

"Maybe I need to teach you how-"

The warehouse door banged open and two figures burst through. Cosca whipped his sword from his stick, Vitari's chain rattled, Day had produced a small flatbow from somewhere and levelled it at the doorway. But the new arrivals were not representatives of the authorities. They were none other than Shivers and Monza, both wet through, stained with dirt and soot and panting for breath as though they had been pursued through half the streets of Sipani. Perhaps they had.

Cosca grinned. "You need only mention her name and up she springs! Master Morveer was just now discussing how we should divide your money if it turned out you were burned to a cinder in the shell of Cardotti's."

"Sorry to disappoint you," she croaked.

Morveer gave Cosca a deadly glare. "I am by no means disappointed, I assure you. I have a vested interested in your survival to the tune of many thousands of scales. I was simply considering... a contingency."

"Best to be prepared," said Day, lowering the bow and sucking the juice from her orange.

"Caution first, always."

Monza lurched across the warehouse floor, one bare foot dragging, jaw muscles clenched tight against evident pain. Her clothes, which had not left too much to the imagination in the first instance, were badly ripped. Cosca could see a long red scar up one thin thigh, more across her shoulder, down her forearm, pale and prickly with gooseflesh. Her right hand was a mottled, bony claw, pressed against her hip as though to keep it out of sight.

He felt an unexpected stab of dismay at the sight of those marks of violence. Like seeing a painting one had always admired wilfully defaced. A painting one had secretly hoped to own, perhaps? Was that it? He shrugged his coat off and held it out to her as she came past him. She ignored it.

"Do we gather you are less than satisfied with tonight's endeavours?" asked Morveer.

"We got Ario. It could've been worse. I need some dry clothes. We leave Sipani right away." She limped up the steps, torn skirts dragging in the dust behind her, and shouldered past Morveer. Shivers swung the warehouse door shut and leaned against it, head back.

"That is one stone-hearted bitch," muttered Vitari as she watched her go.

Cosca pursed his lips. "I always said she had a devil in her. But of the two, her brother was the truly ruthless one."

"Huh." Vitari turned back into the kitchen. "It was a compliment."

Monza managed to shut the door and make it a few steps into her room before her insides clenched up as if she'd been punched in the guts. She retched so hard she could hardly breathe, a long string of bitter drool dangling from her lip and spattering against the boards.

She shivered with revulsion, started trying to twist her way out of the whore's clothes. Her flesh crept at the touch of them, her guts cramped at the rotten canal stink of them. Numb fingers wrestled with hooks and eyes, clawed at buttons and buckles. Gasping and grunting, she tore the damp rags off and flung them away.

She caught sight of herself in the mirror, in the light of the one lamp. Hunched like a beggar, shivering like a drunk, red scars standing out from white skin, black hair hanging lank and loose. A drowned corpse, standing. Just about.

You're a dream. A vision. The very Goddess of War!

She was doubled over by another stab of sickness, stumbled to her chest and started dragging fresh clothes on with trembling hands. The shirt had been one of Benna's. For a moment it was almost like having his arms around her. As close as she could ever get, now.

She sat on the bed, her own arms clamped around herself, bare feet pressed together, rocking back and forth, willing the warmth to spread. Another rush of nausea dragged her up and had her spitting bile. Once it passed she shoved Benna's shirt down behind her belt, bent to drag her boots on, grimacing at the cold aches through her legs.

She delved her hands into the washbasin and threw cold water on her face, started to scrape away the traces of paint and powder, the smears of blood and soot, digging at her ears, at her hair, at her nose.

"Monza!" Cosca's voice outside the door. "We have a distinguished visitor."

She pulled the leather glove back over her twisted joke of a hand, winced as she worked her bent fingers into it. She took a long, shuddering breath, then slid the Calvez out from under her mattress and into the clasp on her belt. It made her feel better just having it there. She pulled the door open.

Carlot dan Eider stood in the middle of the warehouse floor, gold thread gleaming in her red coat, watching Monza as she came down the steps, trying not to limp, Cosca following after.

"What in hell happened? Cardotti's is still burning! The city's in uproar!"

"What happened?" barked Monza. "Why don't you tell me what happened? His August fucking Majesty was where Foscar was supposed to be!"

The black scab on Eider's neck shifted as she swallowed. "Foscar wouldn't go. He said he had a headache. So Ario took his brother-in-law along in his place."

"And he happened to bring a dozen Knights of the Body with him," said Cosca. "The king's own bodyguards. As well as a far greater volume of guests than anyone anticipated. The results were not happy. For anyone."

"Ario?" muttered Eider, face pale.

Monza stared into her eyes. "Deader than fuck."

"The king?" she almost whispered.

"Alive. When I left him. But the building did tend to burn down after that. Maybe they got him out."

Eider looked at the floor, rubbing at one temple with her gloved hand. "I'd hoped you might fail."

"No such luck."

"There will be consequences now. You do a thing like this, there are consequences. Some you see coming, and some you don't." She held out one hand. "My antidote."

"There isn't one."

"I kept my side of the bargain!"

"There was no poison. Just a jab with a dry needle. You're free."

Eider barked despairing laughter at her. "Free? Orso won't rest until he's fed me to his dogs! Perhaps I can keep ahead of him, but I'll never keep ahead of the Cripple. I let him down, and put his precious king in harm's way. He won't let that pass. He never lets anything pass. Are you happy now?"

"You talk as if there was a choice. Orso and the rest die, or I do, and that's all. Happy isn't part of the sum." Monza shrugged as she turned away. "You'd better start running."

"I sent a letter."

She stopped, then turned back. "Letter?"

"Earlier today. To Grand Duke Orso. It was written in some passion, so I forget exactly what was said. The name Shylo Vitari was mentioned, though. And the name Nicomo Cosca."

Cosca waved it away with one hand. "I've always had a lot of powerful enemies. I consider it a point of pride. Listing them makes excellent dinner conversation."

Eider turned her sneer from the old mercenary back to Monza. "Those two names, and the name of Murcatto as well."

Monza frowned. "Murcatto."

"How much of a fool do you take me for? I know who you are, and now Orso will know too. That you're alive, and that you killed his son, and that you had help. A petty revenge, perhaps, but the best I could manage."

"Revenge?" Monza nodded slowly. "Well. Everyone's at it. It would've been better if you hadn't done that." The Calvez rattled gently as she rested her hand on its hilt.

"Why, will you kill me for it? Hah! I'm good as dead already!"

"Then why should I bother? You're not on my list. You can go." Eider stared at her for a moment, mouth slightly open as though she was about to speak, then she snapped it shut and turned for the door. "Aren't you going to wish me luck?"

"What?"

"The way I see it, your best hope now is that I kill Orso."

Ario's one-time mistress paused in the doorway. "Some fucking chance of that!" And she was gone.

IV.

VISSERINE.

"War without fire is as worthless as sausages without mustard"

Henry V T he Thousand Swords fought for Ospria against Muris. They fought for Muris against Sipani. They fought for Sipani against Muris, then for Ospria again. Between contracts, they sacked Oprile on a whim. A month later, judging they had perhaps not been thorough enough, they sacked it again, and left it in smouldering ruins. They fought for everyone against no one, and no one against everyone, and all the while they hardly did any fighting at all.

But robbery and plunder, arson and pillage, rape and extortion, yes.

Nicomo Cosca liked to surround himself with the curious that he might seem strange and romantic. A nineteen-year-old swordswoman inseparable from her younger brother seemed to qualify, so he kept them close. At first he found them interesting. Then he found them useful. Then he found them indispensable.

He and Monza would spar together in the cold mornings-the flicker and scrape of steel, the hiss and smoke of snatched breath. He was stronger, and she quicker, and so they were well matched. They would taunt each other, and spit at each other, and laugh. Men from the company would gather to watch them, laugh to see their captain bested by a girl half his age, often as not. Everyone laughed, except Benna. He was no swordsman.

He had a trick for numbers, though, and he took charge of the company's books, and then the buying of the stocks, and then the management and resale of the booty and the distribution of the proceeds. He made money for everyone, and had an easy manner, and soon was well loved.

Monza was a quick study. She learned what Stolicus wrote, and Verturio, and Bialoveld, and Farans. She learned all that Nicomo Cosca had to teach. She learned tactics and strategy, manoeuvre and logistics, how to read the ground and how to read an enemy. She learned by watching, then she learned by doing. She learned all the arts and all the sciences that were of use to the soldier.

"You have a devil in you," Cosca told her, when he was drunk, which was not rarely. She saved his life at Muris, then he saved hers. Everyone laughed, except Benna, again. He was no lifesaver.

Old Sazine died of an arrow, and the captains of the companies that made up the Thousand Swords voted Nicomo Cosca to the captain general's chair. Monza and Benna went with him. She carried Cosca's orders. Then she told him what his orders should be. Then she gave orders while he was passed out drunk and pretended they were his. Then she stopped pretending they were his, and no one minded because her orders were better than his would have been, even had he been sober.

As the months passed and turned to years, he was sober less and less. The only orders he gave were in the tavern. The only sparring he did was with a bottle. When the Thousand Swords had picked one part of the country clean and it came time to move on, Monza would search for him through the taverns, and the smoke-houses, and the brothels, and drag him back.

She hated to do it, and Benna hated to watch her do it, but Cosca had given them a home and they owed him, so she did it still. As they wended their way to camp in the dusk, him stumbling under the weight of drink, and her stumbling under the weight of him, he would whisper in her ear.

"Monza, Monza. What would I do without you?"

Vengeance, Then General ganmark's highly polished cavalry boots click-clicked against the highly polished floor. The chamberlain's shoes squeak-squeaked along behind. The echoes of both snap-snapped from the glittering walls and around the great, hollow space, their hurry setting lazy dust motes swirling through bars of light. Shenkt's own soft work boots, scuffed and supple from long use, made no sound whatsoever.

"Upon entering the presence of his Excellency," the chamberlain's words frothed busily out, "you advance towards him, without undue speed, looking neither right nor left, your eyes tilted down towards the ground and at no point meeting those of his Excellency. You stop at the white line upon the carpet. Not before the line and under no circumstances beyond it but precisely at the line. You then kneel-"

"I do not kneel," said Shenkt.

The chamberlain's head rotated towards him like an affronted owl's. "Only the heads of state of foreign powers are excepted! Everyone must-"

"I do not kneel."

The chamberlain gasped with outrage, but Ganmark snapped over him. "For pity's sake! Duke Orso's son and heir has been murdered! His Excellency does not give a damn whether a man kneels if he can bring him vengeance. Kneel or not, as it suits you." Two white-liveried guardsmen lifted their crossed halberds to let them pass, and Ganmark shoved the double doors wide open.

The hall beyond was dauntingly cavernous, opulent, grand. Fit for the throne room of the most powerful man in Styria. But Shenkt had stood in greater rooms, before greater men, and had no awe left in him. A thin red carpet stretched away down the mosaic floor, a white line at its lonely end. A high dais rose beyond it, a dozen men in full armour standing guard in front. Upon the dais was a golden chair. Within the chair was Grand Duke Orso of Talins. He was dressed all in black, but his frown was blacker yet.

A strange and sinister selection of people, three score or more, of all races, sizes and shapes, knelt before Orso and his retinue in a wide arc. They carried no weapons now, but Shenkt guessed they usually carried many. He knew some few of them by sight. Killers. Assassins. Hunters of men. Persons in his profession, if the whitewasher could be said to be in the same profession as the master painter.

He advanced towards the dais, without undue speed, looking neither right nor left. He passed through the half-circle of assorted murderers and stopped precisely at the line. He watched General Ganmark stride past the guards and up the steps to the throne, lean to whisper in Orso's ear while the chamberlain took up a disapproving pose at his other elbow.

The grand duke stared at Shenkt for a long moment and Shenkt stared back, the hall cloaked all the while in that oppressive silence that only great spaces can produce. "So this is he. Why is he not kneeling?"

"He does not kneel, apparently," said Ganmark.

"Everyone else kneels. What makes you special?"

"Nothing," said Shenkt.

"But you do not kneel."

"I used to. Long ago. No more."

Orso's eyes narrowed. "And what if a man tried to make you?"

"Some have tried."

"And?"

"And I do not kneel."

"Stand, then. My son is dead."

"You have my sorrow."

"You do not sound sorrowful."

"He was not my son."

The chamberlain nearly choked on his tongue, but Orso's sunken eyes did not deviate. "You like to speak the truth, I see. Blunt counsel is a valuable thing to powerful men. You come to me with the highest recommendations."