"You'd need a twisted sense of humour to make laughs o' this."

Cosca scratched at his neck as he looked towards the walls of Visserine, rising up black out of the thickening rain. "I must confess, for now I'm failing to see the funny side."

You could tell from the lights there was an ugly press at the gate, and it got no prettier the closer they came. Folk were coming out from time to time-old men, young men, women carrying children, gear packed up on mules or on their backs, cartwheels creaking round through the sticky mud. Folk were coming out, easing nervous through the angry crowd, but there weren't many being let the other way. You could feel the fear, heavy on the air, and the thicker they all crowded the worse it got.

Shivers swung down from his horse, stretched his legs and made sure he loosened his sword in its sheath.

"Alright." Under her hood, Monza's hair was stuck black to the side of her scowling face. "I'll get us in."

"You are absolutely convinced that we should enter?" demanded Morveer.

She gave him a long look. "Orso's army can't be more than two days behind us. That means Ganmark. Faithful Carpi too, maybe, with the Thousand Swords. Wherever they are is where we need to be, and that's all."

"You are my employer, of course. But I feel duty-bound to point out that there is such a thing as being too determined. Surely we can devise a less perilous alternative to trapping ourselves in a city that will soon be surrounded by hostile forces."

"We'll do no good waiting out here."

"No good will be done if we are all killed. A plan too brittle to bend with circumstance is worse than no-" She turned before he'd finished and made off towards the archway, shoving her way between the bodies. "Women," Morveer hissed through gritted teeth.

"What about them?" growled Vitari.

"Present company entirely excepted, they are prone to think with heart rather than head."

"For what she's paying she can think with her arse for all I care."

"Dying rich is still dying."

"Better'n dying poor," said Shivers.

Not long after, a half-dozen guards came shoving through the crowd, herding folk away with their spears, clearing a muddy path to the gate. An officer came frowning with 'em, Monza just behind his shoulder. No doubt she'd sown a few coins, and this was the harvest.

"You six, with the cart there." The officer pointed a gloved finger at Shivers and the rest. "You're coming in. You six and no one else."

There were some angry mutters from the rest stood about the gate. Somebody gave the cart a kick as it started moving. "Shit on this! It ain't right! I paid my taxes to Salier all my life, and I get left out?" Someone snatched at Shivers' arm as he tried to lead his horse after. A farmer, from what he could tell in the torchlight and the spitting rain, even more desperate than most. "Why should these bastards be let through? I've got my family to-"

Shivers smashed his fist into the farmer's face. He caught him by his coat as he fell and dragged him up, followed the first punch with another, knocked him sprawling on his back in the ditch by the road. Blood bubbled down his face, black in the dusk as he tried to push himself up. You start some trouble, it's best to start it and finish it all at once. A bit of sharp violence can save you a lot worse down the line. That's the way Black Dow would've handled it. So Shivers stepped forwards quick, planted his boot on the man's chest and shoved him back into the mud.

"Best stay where y'are." A few others stood behind, dark outlines of men, a woman with two children around her legs. One lad looking straight at him, bent over like he was thinking of doing something about it all. The farmer's son, maybe. "I do this shit for a living, boy. You feel a pressing need to lie down?"

The lad shook his head. Shivers took hold of his horse's bridle again, clicked his tongue and made for the archway. Not too fast. Good and ready in case anyone was fool enough to test him. But they were already back to shouting before he'd got a stride or two, calling out how they were special, why they should be let in while the rest were left to the wolves. A man getting his front teeth knocked out was nothing to cry about in all this. Those that hadn't seen far worse guessed they'd be seeing it soon enough, and all their care was to make sure they weren't on the sharp end of it. He followed the others, blowing on his skinned knuckles, under the archway and into the darkness of the long tunnel.

Shivers tried to remember what the Dogman had told him, a hundred years ago it seemed now, back in Adua. Something about blood making more blood, and it not being too late to be better'n that. Not too late to be a good man. Rudd Threetrees had been a good man, none better. He'd stuck to the old ways all his life, never took the easy path, if he thought it was the wrong one. Shivers was proud to say he'd fought beside the man, called him chief, but in the end, what had Threetrees' honour got him? A few misty-eyed mentions around the fire. That, and a hard life, and a place in the mud at the end of it. Black Dow had been as cold a bastard as Shivers ever knew. A man who never faced an enemy if he could take him in the back, burned villages without a second thought, broke his own oaths and spat on the results. A man as merciful as the plague, and with a conscience the size of a louse's cock. Now he sat in Skarling's chair with half the North at his feet and the other half feared to say his name.

They came out from the tunnel and into the city. Water spattered from broken gutters and onto worn cobbles. A wet procession of men, women, mules, carts, waiting to get out, watching them as they tramped the other way. Shivers tipped his head back, eyes narrowed against the rain flitting down into his face as they went under a great tower, soaring up into the black night. Must've been three times the height of the tallest thing in Carleon, and it weren't even the biggest one around.

He glanced sideways at Monza, the way he'd got so good at doing. She had her usual frown, eyes fixed right ahead, light from passing torches shifting across the hard bones in her face. She set her mind to a thing, and did whatever it took. Shit on conscience and consequences both. Vengeance first, questions later.

He moved his tongue around in his mouth and spat. The more he saw, the more he saw she was right. Mercy and cowardice were the same. No one was giving prizes for good behaviour. Not here, not in the North, not anywhere. You want a thing, you have to take it, and the greatest man is the one that snatches most. Maybe it would've been nice if life was another way.

But it was how it was.

Monza was stiff and aching, just like always. She was angry and tired, just like always. She needed a smoke, worse than ever. And just to sprinkle some spice on the evening, she was getting wet, cold and saddle-sore besides.

She remembered Visserine as a beautiful place, full of twinkling glass and graceful buildings, fine food, laughter and freedom. She'd been in a rare good mood when she last visited, true, in a warm summer rather than a chill spring, with no one but Benna looking to her for leadership and no four men she had to kill.

But even so, the place was a long way from the bright pleasure garden of her memory.

Where there was a lamp burning the shutters were closed tight, light just leaking out around the edges, catching the little glass figures in their niches above the doors and making them twinkle. Household spirits, a tradition from long ago, before the time of the New Empire even, put there to bring prosperity and drive off evil. Monza wondered what good those chunks of glass would be when Orso's army broke through into the city. Not much. The streets were thick with fear, the sense of threat so heavy it seemed to stick to Monza's clammy skin and make the hairs on her neck prickle.

Not that Visserine wasn't crawling with people. Some were running, making for docks or gates. Men and women with packs, everything they could save on their backs, children in tow, elders shuffling behind. Wagons rattled along stacked with sacks and boxes, with mattresses and chests of drawers, with all manner of useless junk that would no doubt end up abandoned, lining one road or another out of Visserine. A waste of time and effort, trying to save anything but your lives at a time like this.

You chose to run, you'd best run fast.

But there were plenty who'd chosen to run into the city for refuge, and found to their great dismay it was a dead end. They lined the streets in places. They filled the doorways, huddled under blankets against the rain. They crammed the shadowy arcades of an empty market in their dozens, cowering as a column of soldiers tramped past, armour beaded up with moisture, gleaming by torchlight. Sounds came echoing through the murk. Crashes of breaking glass or tearing wood. Angry shouts, or fearful. Once or twice an outright scream.

Monza guessed a few of the city's own people were making an early start on the sacking. Settling a score or two, or snatching a few things they'd always envied while the eyes of the powerful were fixed on their own survival. This was one of those rare moments when a man could get something for free, and there'd be more and more taking advantage of it as Orso's army gathered outside the city. The stuff of civilisation, already starting to dissolve.

Monza felt eyes following her and the rest of the merry band as they rode slowly through the streets. Fearful eyes, suspicious eyes, and the other kind-trying to judge if they were soft enough or rich enough to be worth robbing. She kept the reins in her right hand, for all it hurt her to tug at them, so her left could rest on her thigh, close to the hilt of her sword. The only law in Visserine now was at the edge of a blade. And the enemy hadn't even arrived yet.

I have seen hell, Stolicus wrote, and it is a great city under siege.

Up ahead the road passed under a marble arch, a long rivulet of water spattering from its high keystone. A mural was painted on the wall above. Grand Duke Salier sat enthroned at the top, optimistically depicted as pleasantly plump rather than massively obese. He held one hand up in blessing, a heavenly light radiating from his fatherly smile. Beneath him an assortment of Visserine's citizens, from the lowest to the highest, humbly enjoyed the benefits of his good governance. Bread, wine, wealth. Under them, around the top of the archway, the words charity, justice, courage were printed in gold letters high as a man. Someone with an appetite for truth had managed to climb up there and daub over them in streaky red, greed, torture, cowardice.

"The arrogance of that fat fucker Salier." Vitari grinned sideways at her, orange hair black-brown with rain. "Still, I reckon he's made his last boast, don't you?"

Monza only grunted. All she could think about as she looked into Vitari's sharp-boned face was how far she could trust her. They might be in the middle of a war, but the greatest threats were still more than likely from within her own little company of outcasts. Vitari? Here for the money-ever a risky motivation since there's always some bastard with deeper pockets. Cosca? How can you trust a notoriously treacherous drunk you once betrayed yourself? Friendly? Who knew how the hell that man's mind worked?

But they were all tight as family beside Morveer. She stole a glance over her shoulder, caught him frowning at her from the seat of his cart. The man was poison, and the moment he could profit by it he'd murder her easily as crushing a tick. He was already suspicious of the choice to come into Visserine, but the last thing she wanted was to share her reasoning. That Orso would have Eider's letter by now. Would have offered a king's ransom of Valint and Balk's money for her death and got half the killers in the Circle of the World scouring Styria hoping to put her head in a bag. Along with the heads of anyone who'd helped her, of course.

The chances were high they'd be safer in the middle of a battle than outside it.

Shivers was the only one she could even halfway trust. He rode hunched over, big and silent beside her. His babble had been quite the irritation in Westport, but now it had dried up, strange to say, it had left a gap. He'd saved her life, in foggy Sipani. Monza's life wasn't all it had been, but a man saving it still raised him a damn sight higher in her estimation.

"You're quiet, all of a sudden."

She could hardly see his face in the darkness, just the hard set of it, shadows in his eye sockets, in the hollows under his cheeks. "Don't reckon I've much to say."

"Never stopped you before."

"Well. I'm starting to see all kinds o' things different."

"That so?"

"You might think it comes easy to me, but it's an effort, trying to stay hopeful. An effort that don't ever seem to pay off."

"I thought being a better man was its own reward."

"I guess it ain't reward enough for all the work. In case you hadn't noticed, we're in the middle of a war."

"Believe me, I know what a war looks like. I've been living in one most of my life."

"Well, what are the odds o' that? Me too. From what I've seen, and I've seen plenty, a war ain't really the place for bettering yourself. I'm thinking I might try it your way, from now on."

"Pick out a god and praise him! Welcome to the real world!" She wasn't sure she didn't feel a twinge of disappointment though, for all her grinning. Monza might have given up on being a decent person long ago, but somehow she liked the idea that she could have pointed one out. She pulled on her reins and eased her horse up, the cart clattering to a halt behind her. "We're here."

The place she and Benna had bought in Visserine was an old one, built before the city had good walls, and rich men each took their own care to guard what was theirs. A stone tower-house on five storeys, hall and stables to one side, with slit windows on the ground floor and battlements on the high roof. It stood big and black against the dark sky, a very different beast from the low brick-and-timber houses that crowded in close around it. She lifted the key to the studded door, then frowned. It was open a crack, light gathering on the rough stone down its edge. She put her finger to her lips and pointed towards it.

Shivers raised one big boot and kicked it shuddering open, wood clattering on the other side as something was barged out of the way. Monza darted in, left hand on the hilt of her sword. The kitchen was empty of furniture and full of people. Grubby and tired-looking, every one of them staring at her, shocked and fearful, in the light of one flickering candle. The nearest, a stocky man with one arm in a sling, stumbled up from an empty barrel and caught hold of a length of wood.

"Get back!" he screamed at her. A man in a dirty farmer's smock took a stride towards her, waving a hatchet.

Shivers stepped around Monza's shoulder, ducking under the lintel and straightening up, big shadow shifting across the wall behind him, his heavy sword drawn and gleaming down by his leg. "You get back."

The farmer did as he was told, scared eyes fixed on that length of bright metal. "Who the hell are you?"

"Me?" snapped Monza. "This is my house, bastard."

"Eleven of them," said Friendly, slipping through the doorway on the other side.

As well as the two men there were two old women and a man even older, bent right over, gnarled hands dangling. There was a woman about Monza's age, a baby in her arms and two little girls sat near her, staring with big eyes, like enough to be twins. A girl of maybe sixteen stood by the empty fireplace. She had a rough-forged knife out that she'd been gutting a fish with, her other arm across a boy, might've been ten or so, pushing him behind her shoulder.

Just a girl, looking out for her little brother.

"Put your sword away," Monza said.

"Eh?"

"No one's getting killed tonight."

Shivers raised one heavy brow at her. "Now who's the optimist?"

"Lucky for you I bought a big house." The one with his arm in a sling looked like the head of the family, so she fixed her eye on him. "There's room for all of us."

He let his club drop. "We're farmers from up the valley, just looking for somewhere safe. Place was like this when we found it, we didn't steal nothing. We'll be no trouble-"

"You'd better not be. This all of you?"

"My name's Furli. That's my wife-"

"I don't need your names. You'll stay down here, and you'll stay out of our way. We'll be upstairs, in the tower. You don't come up there, you understand? That way no one gets hurt."

He nodded, fear starting to mix with relief. "I understand."

"Friendly, get the horses stabled, and that cart off the street." Those farmers' hungry faces-helpless, weak, needy-made Monza feel sick. She kicked a broken chair out of the way then started up the stairs, winding into the darkness, her legs stiff from a day in the saddle. Morveer caught up with her on the fourth landing, Cosca and Vitari just behind him, Day at the back, a trunk in her arms. Morveer had brought a lamp with him, light pooling on the underside of his unhappy face.

"Those peasants are a decided threat to us," he murmured. "A problem easily solved, however. It will hardly be necessary to utilise the King of Poisons. A charitable contribution of a loaf of bread, dusted with Leopard Flower of course, and they would cease to-"

"No."

He blinked. "If your intention is to leave them at liberty down there, I must most strongly protest at-"

"Protest away. Let's see if I care a shit. You and Day can take that room." As he turned to peer into the darkness, Monza snatched the lamp out of his hand. "Cosca, you're on the second floor with Friendly. Vitari, seems like you get to sleep alone next door."

"Sleeping alone." She kicked some fallen plaster away across the boards. "Story of my life."

"I will to my cart, then, and bring my equipment into the Butcher of Caprile's hostel for displaced peasantry." Morveer was shaking his head with disgust as he turned for the stairs.

"Do that," snapped Monza at his back. She loitered for a moment, until she'd heard his boots scrape down a few flights and out of earshot. Until, apart from Cosca's voice burbling away endlessly to Friendly downstairs, it was quiet on the landing. Then she followed Day into her room and gently pushed the door closed. "We need to talk."

The girl had opened her trunk and was just getting a chunk of bread out of it. "What about?"

"The same thing we talked about in Westport. Your employer."

"Picking at your nerves, is he?"

"Don't tell me he isn't picking at yours."

"Every day for three years."

"Not an easy man to work for, I reckon." Monza took a step into the room, holding the girl's eye. "Sooner or later a pupil has to step out from her master's shadow, if she's ever going to become the master herself."

"That why you betrayed Cosca?"

That gave Monza a moment's pause. "More or less. Sometimes you have to take a risk. Grasp the nettle. But then you've got much better reasons even than I had." Said offhand, as though it was obvious.

Day's turn to pause. "What reasons?"

Monza pretended to be surprised. "Well... because sooner or later Morveer will betray me, and go over to Orso." She wasn't sure of it, of course, but it was high time she guarded herself against the possibility.

"That so?" Day wasn't smiling any longer.

"He doesn't like the way I do things."

"Who says I like the way you do things?"

"You don't see it?" Day only narrowed her eyes, food, for once, forgotten in her hand. "If he goes to Orso, he'll need someone to blame. For Ario. A scapegoat."

Now she got the idea. "No," she snapped. "He needs me."

"How long have you been with him? Three years, did you say? Managed before, didn't he? How many assistants do you think he's had? See a lot of them around, do you?"

Day opened her mouth, blinked, then thoughtfully shut it.

"Maybe he'll stick, and we'll stay a happy family and part friends. Most poisoners are good sorts, when you get to know them." Monza leaned down close to whisper. "But when he tells you he's going over to Orso, don't say I didn't warn you."

She left Day frowning at her chunk of bread, slipped quietly through the door and brushed it shut with her fingertips. She peered down the stairwell, but there was no sign of Morveer, only the handrail spiralling down into the shadows. She nodded to herself. The seed was planted now, she'd have to see what sprouted from it. She pushed her tired legs up the narrow steps to the top of the tower, through the creaking door and into the high chamber under the roof, faint sound of rain drumming above.

The room where she and Benna had spent a happy month together, in the midst of some dark years. Away from the wars. Laughing, talking, watching the world from the wide windows. Pretending at how life might have been if they'd never taken up warfare, and somehow made it rich some other way. She found she was smiling, despite herself. The little glass figure still gleamed in its niche above the door. Their household spirit. She remembered Benna grinning over his shoulder as he pushed it up there with his fingertips.