“Bah. Luck has deserted Visserine. Orso would never negotiate, even if I could give him back his son alive, and you have put well and truly paid to that possibility. We are left with suicide.” He gestured at a huge, dark-framed effort, a half-naked soldier offering his sword to his defeated general. Presumably so they could make the last sacrifice that honour demanded. That was where honour got a man. “To plunge the mighty blade into my bared breast, as did the fallen heroes of yesteryear!”
The next canvas featured a smirking wine merchant leaning on a barrel and holding a glass up to the light. Oh, a drink, a drink, a drink. “Or poison? Deadly powders in the wine? Scorpion in the bedsheets? Asp down one’s undergarments?” Salier grinned round at them. “No? Hang myself? I understand men often spend, when they are hanged.” And he flapped his hands away from his groin in demonstration, as though they had been in any doubt as to his meaning. “Sounds like more fun than poison, anyway.” The duke sighed and stared glumly at a painting of a woman surprised while bathing. “Let us not pretend I have the courage for such exploits. Suicide, that is, not spending. That I still manage once a day, in spite of my size. Do you still manage it, Cosca?”
“Like a fucking fountain,” he drawled, not to be outdone in vulgarity.
“But what to do?” mused Salier. “What to-”
Monza stepped in front of him. “Help me kill Ganmark.” Cosca felt his brows go up. Even beaten, bruised and with the enemy at the gates, she could not wait to draw the knives again. Ruthlessness, single-mindedness and commitment indeed.
“And why ever would I wish to do that?”
“Because he’ll be coming for your collection.” She had always had a knack for tickling people where they were most ticklish. Cosca had seen her do it often. To him, among others. “Coming to box up all your paintings, and your sculptures, and your jars, and ship them back to Fontezarmo to adorn Orso’s latrines.” A nice touch, his latrines. “Ganmark is a connoisseur, like yourself.”
“That Union cocksucker is nothing like me!” Anger suddenly flared red across the back of Salier’s neck. “A common thief and braggart, a degenerate man-fucker, tramping blood across the sweet soil of Styria as though its mud were not fit for his boots! He can have my life, but he’ll never have my paintings! I will see to it!”
“I can see to it,” hissed Monza, stepping closer to the duke. “He’ll come here, when the city falls. He’ll rush here, keen to secure your collection. We can be waiting, dressed as his soldiers. When he enters,” she snapped her fingers, “we drop your portcullis, and we have him! You have him! Help me.”
But the moment had passed. Salier’s veneer of heavy-lidded carelessness had descended again. “These are my two favourites, I do believe,” gesturing, all nonchalance, towards two matching canvases. “Parteo Gavra’s studies of the woman. They were intended always as a pair. His mother, and his favourite whore.”
“Mothers and whores,” sneered Monza. “A curse on fucking artists. We were talking of Ganmark. Help me!”
Salier blew out a tired sigh. “Ah, Monzcarro, Monzcarro. If only you had sought my help five seasons ago, before Sweet Pines. Before Caprile. Even last spring, before you spiked Cantain’s head above his gate. Even then, the good we could have done, the blows we could have struck together for freedom. Even-”
“Forgive me if I’m blunt, your Excellency, but I spent the night being beaten like a sack of meat.” Monza’s voice cracked slightly on the last word. “You ask for my opinion. You’ve lost because you’re too weak, too soft and too slow, not because you’re too good. You fought alongside Orso happily enough when you shared the same goals, and smiled happily enough at his methods, as long as they brought you more land. Your men spread fire, rape and murder when it suited you. No love of freedom then. The only open hand the farmers of Puranti had from you back in those days was the one that crushed them flat. Play the martyr if you must, Salier, but not with me. I feel sick enough already.”
Cosca felt himself wincing. There was such a thing as too much truth, especially in the ears of powerful men.
The duke’s eyes narrowed. “Blunt, you say? If you spoke to Orso in such a manner it is small wonder he threw you down a mountain. I almost wish I had a long drop handy. Tell me, since candour seems the fashion, what did you do to anger Orso so? I thought he loved you like a daughter? Far more than his own children, not that any of those three ever were so very lovable-fox, shrew and mouse.”
Her bruised cheek twitched. “I became too popular with his people.”
“Yes. And?”
“He was afraid I might steal his throne.”
“Indeed? And I suppose your eyes were never turned upon it?”
“Only to keep him in it.”
“Truly?” Salier grinned sideways at Cosca. “It would hardly have been the first chair your loyal claws tore from under its owner, would it?”
