“Here.” Langrier was holding Benna’s ring out to her, big stone gleaming the colour of blood. “Doesn’t suit me anyway.”
Monza snatched it from her hand, twisted it onto her finger. “What? Give me back what you stole in the first place and think that makes us even?”
“Look, I’m sorry about your man’s eye and the rest, but it isn’t about you, understand? Someone’s a threat to my city, I have to find out how. I don’t like it, it’s just what has to be done. Don’t pretend you haven’t done worse. I don’t expect we’ll ever share any jokes. But for now, while we’ve got this task to be about, we’ll need to put it behind us.”
Monza kept her silence as she dressed. It was true enough. She’d done worse, alright. Watched it done, anyway. Let it be done, which was no better. She buckled on the breastplate, must’ve come from some lean young officer and fitted her well enough, pulled the last strap through. “I need something to kill Ganmark with.”
“Once we get to the garden you can have a blade, not-”
Monza saw a hand close around the grip of Langrier’s dagger. She started to turn, surprised. “Wha-” The point slid out of the front of her neck. Shivers’ face loomed up beside hers, white and wasted, bandages bound tight over one whole side of it, a pale stain through the cloth where his eye used to be. His left arm slid around Langrier’s chest from behind and drew her tight against him. Tight as a lover.
“It ain’t about you, understand?” He was almost kissing at her ear as blood began to run from the point of the knife and down her neck in a thick black line. “You take my eye, I’ve got to take your life.” She opened her mouth, and her tongue flopped out, and blood started to trickle from the tip of it and down her chin. “I don’t like it.” Her face turned purple, eyes rolling up. “Just what has to be done.” Her legs kicked, her boot heels clattering against the boards as he lifted her up in the air. “Sorry about your neck.” The blade ripped sideways and opened her throat up wide, black blood showering out across the bedclothes, spraying up the wall in an arc of red spots.
Shivers let her drop and she crumpled, sprawling face down as if her bones had turned to mud, another gout of blood spurting sideways. Her boots moved, toes scraping. One set of nails scratched at the floor. Shivers took a long breath in through his nose, then he blew it out, and he looked up at Monza, and he smiled. A friendly little grin, as if they’d shared some private joke that Langrier just hadn’t got.
“By the dead but I feel better for that. Ganmark’s in the city, did she say?”
“Uh.” Monza couldn’t speak. Her skin was flushed and burning.
“Then I reckon we got work ahead of us.” Shivers didn’t seem to notice the rapidly spreading slick of blood creep between his toes, around the sides of his big bare feet. He dragged the sack up and peered inside. “Armour in here, then? Guess I’d better get dressed, eh, Chief? Hate to arrive at a party in the wrong clothes.”
–
T he garden at the centre of Salier’s gallery showed no signs of imminent doom. Water trickled, leaves rustled, a bee or two floated lazily from one flower to another. White blossom occasionally filtered down from the cherry trees and dusted the well-shaved lawns.
Cosca sat cross-legged and worked the edge of his sword with a whetstone, metal softly ringing. Morveer’s flask pressed into his thigh, but he felt no need for it. Death was at the doorstep, and so he was at peace. His blissful moment before the storm. He tipped his head back, eyes closed, sun warm on his face, and wondered why he could never feel this way unless the world was burning down around him.
Calming breezes washed through the shadowy colonnades, through doorways into hallways lined with paintings. Through one open window Friendly could be seen, in the armour of a Talinese guardsman, counting every soldier in Nasurin’s colossal painting of the Second Battle of Oprile. Cosca grinned. He tried always to be forgiving of other men’s foibles. He had enough of his own, after all.
Perhaps a half-dozen of Salier’s guards had remained, disguised as soldiers from Duke Orso’s army. Men loyal enough to die beside their master at the last. He snorted as he ran the whetstone once more down the edge of his sword. Loyalty had always sat with honour, discipline and self-restraint on his list of incomprehensible virtues.
“Why so happy?” Day sat beside him on the grass, a flatbow across her knees, chewing at her lip. The uniform she wore must have come from some dead drummer-boy, it fit her well. Very well. Cosca wondered if it was wrong of him to find something peculiarly alluring about a pretty girl in a man’s clothes. He wondered furthermore if she might be persuaded to give a comrade-in-arms… a little help sharpening his weapon before the fighting started? He cleared his throat. Of course not. But a man could dream.
