A gaggle of leading citizens – meaning the sharpest and the greediest – had clustered nervously in the centre of the platform, sweating in their most expensive clothes, looking hungrily towards her like geese at a bowl of crumbs. They bowed as she and Rogont came closer, heads bobbing together in a way that suggested they’d been rehearsing. That somehow made her more irritated than ever.
‘Get up,’ she growled.
Rogont held his hand out. ‘Where is the circlet?’ He snapped his fingers. ‘The circlet, the circlet!’
The foremost of the citizens looked like a bad caricature of wisdom – all hooked nose, snowy beard and creaky deep voice under a green felt hat like an upended chamber pot. ‘Madam, my name is Rubine, nominated to speak for the citizens.’
‘I am Scavier.’ A plump woman whose azure bodice exposed a terrifying immensity of cleavage.
‘And I am Grulo.’ A tall, lean man, bald as an arse, not quite shouldering in front of Scavier but very nearly.
‘Our two most senior merchants,’ explained Rubine.
It carried little weight with Rogont. ‘And?’
‘And, with your permission, your Excellency, we were hoping to discuss some details of the arrangements—’
‘Yes? Out with it!’
‘As regards the title, we had hoped perhaps to steer away from nobility. Grand duchess smacks rather of Orso’s tyranny.’
‘We hoped . . .’ ventured Grulo, waving a vulgar finger-ring, ‘something to reflect the mandate of the common people.’
Rogont winced at Monza, as though the phrase ‘common people’ tasted of piss. ‘Mandate?’
‘President elect, perhaps?’ offered Scavier. ‘First citizen?’
‘After all,’ added Rubine, ‘the previous grand duke is still, technically . . . alive.’
Rogont ground his teeth. ‘He is besieged two dozen miles away in Fontezarmo like a rat in his hole! Only a matter of time before he is brought to justice.’
‘But you understand the legalities may prove troublesome—’
‘Legalities?’ Rogont spoke in a furious whisper. ‘I will soon be King of Styria, and I mean to have the Grand Duchess of Talins among those who crown me! I will be king, do you understand? Legalities are for other men to worry on!’
‘But, your Excellency, it might not be seen as appropriate—’
For a man with a reputation for too much patience, Rogont’s had grown very short over the last few weeks. ‘How appropriate would it be if I was to, say, have you hanged? Here. Now. Along with every other reluctant bastard in the city. You could argue the legalities to each other while you dangle.’
The threat floated between them for a long, uncomfortable moment. Monza leaned towards Rogont, acutely aware of the vast numbers of eyes fixed upon them. ‘What we need here is a little unity, no? I’ve a feeling hangings might send the wrong message. Let’s just get this done, shall we? Then we can all lie down in a dark room.’
Grulo carefully cleared his throat. ‘Of course.’
‘A long conversation to end where we began!’ snapped Rogont. ‘Give me the damn circlet!’
Scavier produced a thin golden band. Monza turned slowly to face the crowd.
‘People of Styria!’ Rogont roared behind her. ‘I give you the Grand Duchess Monzcarro of Talins!’ There was a slight pressure as he lowered the circlet onto her head.
And that simply she was raised to the giddy heights of power.
With a faint rustling, everyone knelt. The square was left silent, enough that she could hear the birds flapping and squawking on the pediment above. Enough that she could hear the spatters as some droppings fell not far to her right, daubing the ancient stones with spots of white, black and grey.
‘What are they waiting for?’ she muttered to Rogont, doing her best not to move her lips.
‘Words.’
‘Me?’
‘Who else?’
A wave of dizzy horror broke over her. By the look of the crowd, she might easily have been outnumbered five thousand to one. But she had the feeling that, for her first action as head of state, fleeing the platform in terror might send the wrong message. So she stepped slowly forwards, as hard a step as she’d ever taken, struggling to get her tumbling thoughts in order, dig up words she didn’t have in the splinter of time she did. She passed through Scarpius’ great shadow and out into the daylight, and a sea of faces opened up before her, tilted up towards her, wide-eyed with hope. Their scattered muttering dropped to nervous whispering, then to eerie silence. She opened her mouth, still hardly knowing what might come out of it.
‘I’ve never been one . . .’ Her voice was a reedy squeak. She had to cough to clear it, spat the results over her shoulder then realised she definitely shouldn’t have. ‘I’ve never been one for speeches!’ That much was obvious. ‘Rather get right to it than talk about it! Born on a farm, I guess. We’ll deal with Orso first! Rid ourselves of that bastard. Then . . . well . . . then the fighting’s over.’ A strange kind of murmur went through the kneeling crowd. No smiles, exactly, but some faraway looks, misty eyes, a few heads nodding. She was surprised by a longing tug in her own chest. She’d never really thought before that she’d wanted the fighting to end. She’d never known much else.
‘Peace.’ And that needy murmur rippled across the square again. ‘We’ll have ourselves a king. All Styria, marching one way. An end to the Years of Blood.’ She thought of the wind in the wheat. ‘Try to make things grow, maybe. Can’t promise you a better world because, well, it is what it is.’ She looked down awkwardly at her feet, shifted her weight from one leg to another. ‘I can promise to do my best at it, for what that’s worth. Let’s aim at enough for everyone to get by, and see how we go.’ She caught the eye of an old man, staring at her with teary-eyed emotion, lip quivering, hat clasped to his chest.
‘That’s all!’ she snapped.
Any normal person would have been lightly dressed on a day so sticky warm, but Murcatto, with characteristic contrariness, had opted for full and, as it happened, ludicrously flamboyant armour. Morveer’s only option, therefore, was to take aim at her exposed face. Still, a smaller target only presented the greater and more satisfying challenge for a marksman of his sublime skills. He took a deep breath.
To his horror she shifted at the crucial moment, looking down at the platform, and the dart missed her face by the barest whisker and glanced from one of the pillars of the ancient Senate House behind her.
‘Damn it!’ he hissed around the mouthpiece of his blowpipe, already fumbling in his pocket for another dart, removing its cap, sliding it gently into the chamber.
It was a stroke of ill fortune of the variety that had tormented Morveer since birth that, just as he was applying his lips to the pipe, Murcatto terminated her incompetent rhetoric with a perfunctory, ‘That’s all!’ The crowd broke into rapturous applause, and his elbow was jogged by the enthusiastic clapping of a peasant beside the deep doorway in which he had secreted himself.
The lethal missile went well wide of its target and vanished into the heaving throng beside the platform. The man whose wild gesticulations had been responsible for his wayward aim looked about, his broad, greasy face puckering with suspicion. He had the appearance of a labourer, hands like rocks, the flame of human intellect barely burning behind his piggy eyes.
‘Here, what are you—’
Curse the proletariat, Morveer’s attempt was now quite foiled. ‘My profound regrets, but could I prevail upon you to hold this for just a moment?’
‘Eh?’ The man stared down at the blowpipe pressed suddenly into his calloused hands. ‘Ah!’ As Morveer jabbed him in the wrist with a mounted needle. ‘What the hell?’
‘Thank you ever so much.’ Morveer reclaimed the pipe and slid it into one of his myriad of concealed pockets along with the needle. It takes the vast majority of men a great deal of time to become truly incensed, usually following a predictable ritual of escalating threats, insults, posturing, jostling and so
forth. Instantaneous action is entirely foreign to them. So the elbow-jogger was only now beginning to look truly angry.
‘Here!’ He seized Morveer by the lapel. ‘Here . . .’ His eyes took on a faraway look. He wobbled, blinked, his tongue hung out. Morveer took him under the arms, gasped at the sudden dead weight as the man’s knees collapsed, and wrestled him to the ground, suffering an unpleasant twinge in his back as he did so.
‘He alright?’ someone grunted. Morveer looked up to see a half-dozen not dissimilar men frowning down at him.
‘Altogether too much beer!’ Morveer shouted over the noise, adding a false little chuckle. ‘My companion here has become quite inebriated!’
‘Inebri-what?’ said one.
‘Drunk!’ Morveer leaned close. ‘He was so very, very proud to have the great Serpent of Talins as the mistress of our fates! Are not we all?’
‘Aye,’ one muttered, utterly confused but partially mollified. ‘’Course. Murcatto!’ he finished lamely, to grunts of approval from his simian comrades.
‘Born among us!’ shouted another, shaking his fist.
‘Oh, absolutely so. Murcatto! Freedom! Hope! Deliverance from coarse stupidity! Here we are, friend!’ Morveer grunted with effort as he wriggled the big man, now a big corpse, into the shadows of the doorway. He winced as he arched his aching back. Then, since the others were no longer paying attention, he slid away into the crowds, boiling with resentment all the way. It really was insufferable that these imbeciles should cheer so very enthusiastically for a woman who, far from being born among them, had been born on a patch of scrub on the very edge of Talinese territory where the border was notoriously flexible. A ruthless, scheming, lying, apprentice-seducing, mass-murdering, noisily fornicating peasant thief without a filigree shred of conscience, whose only qualifications for command were a sulky manner, a few victories against incompetent opposition, the aforementioned propensity to swift action, a fall down a mountain and the accident of a highly attractive face.
He was forced to reflect once again, as he had so often, that life was rendered immeasurably easier for the comely.
The Lion’s Skin
A lot had changed since Monza last rode up to Fontezarmo, laughing with her brother. Hard to believe it was only a year ago. The darkest, maddest, most bloody year in a life made of them. A year that had taken her from dead woman to duchess, and might well still shove her back the other way.
It was dusk instead of dawn, the sun sinking behind them in the west as they climbed the twisting track. To either side of it, wherever the ground was anything close to flat, men had pitched tents. They sat in front of them in lazy groups by the flickering light of campfires – eating, drinking, mending boots or polishing armour, staring slack-faced at Monza as she clattered past.
She’d had no honour guard a year ago. Now a dozen of Rogont’s picked men followed eagerly as puppies wherever she went. It was a surprise they didn’t all try to tramp into the latrine after her. The last thing the king-in-waiting wanted was for her to get pushed off a mountain again. Not before she’d had the chance to help crown him, anyway. It was Orso she’d been helping to his crown twelve months ago, and Rogont her bitter enemy. For a woman who liked to stick, she’d slid around some in four seasons.
Back then she’d had Benna beside her. Now it was Shivers. That meant no talk at all, let alone laughter. His face was just a hard black outline, blind eye gleaming with the last of the fading light. She knew he couldn’t see a thing through it, but still she felt like it was always fixed right on her. Even though he scarcely spoke, still he was always saying, It should’ve been you.
There were fires burning at the summit. Specks of light on the slopes, a yellow glow behind the black shapes of walls and towers, smudges of smoke hanging in the deep evening sky. The road switched back once more, then petered away altogether at a barricade made from three upended carts. Victus sat there on a field chair, warming his hands at a campfire, his collection of stolen chains gleaming round his neck. He grinned as she reined up her horse, and flourished out an absurd salute.
‘The Grand Duchess of Talins, here in our slovenly camp! Your Excellency, we’re all shame! If we’d had more time to prepare for your royal visit, we’d have done something about all the dirt.’ And he spread his arms wide at the sea of churned-up mud, bare rock, broken bits of crate and wagon scattered around the mountainside.
‘Victus. The embodiment of the mercenary spirit.’ She clambered down from her saddle, trying not to let the pain show. ‘Greedy as a duck, brave as a pigeon, loyal as a cuckoo.’
‘I always modelled myself on the nobler birds. Afraid you’ll have to leave the horses, we’ll be going by trench from here. Duke Orso’s a most ungracious host – he’s taken to shooting catapults at any of his guests who show themselves.’ He sprang up, slapping dust from the canvas he’d been sitting on, then holding one ring-encrusted hand out towards it. ‘Perhaps I could have some of the lads carry you up?’
‘I’ll walk.’
He gave her a mocking leer. ‘And a fine figure you’ll appear, I’ve no doubt, though I would’ve thought you could’ve stretched to silk, given your high station.’
‘Clothes don’t make the person, Victus.’ She gave his jewellery a mocking leer of her own. ‘A piece of shit is still a piece of shit, however much gold you stick on it.’
‘Oh, how we’ve missed you, Murcatto. Follow on, then.’
‘Wait here,’ she snapped at Rogont’s guards. Having them behind her all the time made her look weak. Made her look like she needed them.
Their sergeant winced. ‘His Excellency was most—’
‘Piss on his Excellency. Wait here.’
She creaked down some steps made of old boxes and into the hillside, Shivers at her shoulder. The trenches weren’t much different from the ones they’d dug around Muris, years ago – walls of hard-packed earth held back by odds and ends of timber, with that same smell of sickness, mould, damp earth and boredom. The trenches they’d lived in for the best part of six months, like rats in a sewer. Where her feet had started to rot, and Benna got the running shits so bad he lost a quarter of his weight and all his sense of humour. She even saw a few familiar faces as they threaded their way through ditch, tunnel and dugout – veterans who’d been fighting with the Thousand Swords for years. She nodded to them just as she used to when she was in charge, and they nodded back.
‘You sure Orso’s inside?’ she called to Victus.
‘Oh, we’re sure. Cosca spoke to him, first day.’
Monza didn’t draw much comfort from that idea. When Cosca started talking to an enemy he usually ended up richer and on the other side. ‘What did those two bastards have to say to each other?’
‘Ask Cosca.’
‘I will.’
‘We’ve got the place surrounded, don’t worry about that. Trenches on three sides.’ Victus slapped the earth beside them. ‘If you can trust a mercenary to do one thing, it’s dig himself a damn good hole to hide in. Then there’s pickets down in the woods at the bottom of the cliff.’ The woods where Monza had slid to a halt in the rubbish, broken to pulp, groaning like the dead in hell. ‘And a wide selection of Styria’s finest soldiery further out. Osprians, Sipanese, Affoians, in numbers. All set on seeing our old employer dead. There ain’t a rat getting out without our say-so. But then if Orso wanted to run, he could’ve run weeks ago. He didn’t. You know him better than anyone, don’t you? You reckon he’ll try and run now?’
‘No,’ she had to admit. He’d sooner die, which suited her fine. ‘How about us getting in?’
‘Whoever designed the bastard place knew what they were doing. Ground around the inner ward’s way too steep to try anything.’
‘I could’ve told you that. North side of the outer ward’s your best chance at an assault, then try the inner wall from there.’
‘Our very thoughts, but there’s a gulf between thinking and doing, specially when high walls are part of the case. No luck
yet.’ Victus clambered up on a box and beckoned to her. Between two wicker screens, beyond a row of sharpened stakes pointing up the broken slope, she could see the nearest corner of the fortress. One of the towers was on fire, its tall roof fallen in leaving only a cone of naked beams wreathed in flames, notches of battlements picked out in red and yellow, black smoke belching into the dark blue sky. ‘We set that tower to burning,’ he pointed proudly towards it, ‘with a catapult.’
‘Beautiful. We can all go home.’
‘Something, ain’t it?’ He led them through a long dugout smelling of damp and sour sweat, men snoring on pallets down both sides. ‘ “Wars are won not by one great action,” ’ intoning the words like a bad actor, ‘ “but many small chances.” Weren’t you always telling us that? Who was it? Stalicus?’
‘Stolicus, you dunce.’
‘Some dead bastard. Anyway, Cosca’s got a plan, but I’ll let him tell you himself. You know how the old man loves to put on a show.’ Victus stopped at a hollow in the rock where four trenches came together, sheltered by a roof of gently flapping canvas and lit by a single rustling torch. ‘The captain general said he’d be along. Feel free to make use of the facilities while you wait.’ Facilities which amounted to dirt. ‘Unless there’s anything else, your Excellency?’
‘Just one more thing.’ He flinched in surprise as her spit spattered softly across his eye. ‘That’s from Benna, you treacherous little fuck.’
Victus wiped his face, eyes creeping shiftily to Shivers, then back to her. ‘I didn’t do nothing you wouldn’t have done. Nothing your brother wouldn’t have done, that’s certain. Nothing you didn’t both do to Cosca, and you owed him more than I owed you—’