Cosca finished with a flourish of his flask. “Thus, your earthy courage and our fiery passion are used where they are best suited. Songs will be sung, glory will be seized, history will be made, Orso will be king…” He gave Foscar a gentle bow. “And yourself, your Highness, in due course.”
Foscar frowned towards the fords. “Yes. Yes, I see. The thing is, though-”
“Then we are agreed!” Cosca flung an arm around his shoulders and guided him back towards the tent. “Was it Stolicus who said great men march often in the same direction? I believe it was! Let us march now towards dinner, my friends!” He pointed one finger back towards the darkening mountains, where Ospria glimmered in the sunset. “I swear, I am so hungry I could eat a city!” Warm laughter accompanied him back into the tent.
Politics
Shivers sat there frowning, and drank.
Duke Rogont’s great dining hall was the grandest room he’d ever got drunk in by quite a stretch. When Vossula told him Styria was packed with wonders it was this type of thing, rather than the rotting docks of Talins, that Shivers had in mind. It must’ve had four times the floor of Bethod’s great hall in Carleon and a ceiling three times as high or more. The walls were pale marble with stripes of blue-black stone through it, all fretted with veins of glitter, all carved with leaves and vines, all grown up and crept over with ivy so the real plants and the sculpted tangled together in the dancing shadows. Warm evening breezes washed in through open windows wide as castle gates, made the orange flames of a thousand hanging lamps flicker and sway, striking a precious gleam from everything.
A place of majesty and magic, built by gods for the use of giants.
Shame the folk gathered there fell a long way short of either. Women in gaudy finery, brushed, jewelled and painted to look younger, or thinner, or richer than they were. Men in bright-coloured jackets who wore lace at their collars and little gilded daggers at their belts. They looked at him first with mild disdain on their powdered faces, like he was made of rotting meat. Then, once he’d turned the left side of his face forwards, with a sick horror that gave him three parts grim satisfaction and one part sick horror of his own.
Always at every feast there’s some stupid, ugly, mean bastard got a big score to settle with no one in particular, drinks way too much and makes the night a worry for everyone. Seemed tonight it was him, and he was taking to the part with a will. He hawked up phlegm and spat it noisily across the gleaming floor.
A man at the next table in a yellow coat with long tails to it looked round, the smallest sneer on his puffed- up lips. Shivers leaned towards him, grinding the point of his knife into the polished table-top. “Something to say to me, piss-coat?” The man paled and turned back to his friends without a word. “Bunch o’ bastard cowards,” Shivers growled into his quickly emptying wine-cup, good and loud enough to be heard three tables away. “Not a single bone in the whole fucking crowd!”
He thought about what the Dogman might’ve made of this crew of tittering dandies. Or Rudd Threetrees. Or Black Dow. He gave a grim snort to think of it, but his laughter choked off short. If there was a joke, it was on him. Here he was, in the midst of ’em, after all, leaning on their charity without a friend to his name. Or so it seemed.
He scowled towards the high table, up on a raised dais at the head of the room. Rogont sat in the midst of his most favoured guests, grinning around as though he was a star shining from the night sky. Monza sat beside him. Hard to tell from where Shivers was, specially with everything smeared up with anger and too much wine, but he thought he saw her laughing. Enjoying herself, no doubt, without her one-eyed errand boy to drag her down.
He was a fine-looking bastard, the Prince of Prudence. Had both his eyes, anyway. Shivers would’ve liked to break his smooth, smug face open. With a hammer, like Monza had broken Gobba’s head. Or just with his fists. Crush it in his hands. Pound it to red splinters. He gripped his knife trembling tight, spinning out a whole mad story of how he’d go about it. Picking over all the bloody details, shifting them about until they made him look as big a man as possible, Rogont wailing for mercy and pissing himself, twisting it into crazy shapes where Monza wanted him more’n ever at the end of it. And all the while he watched the two of ’em through one twitching, narrowed eye.
He goaded himself with the notion they were laughing at him, but he knew that was foolishness. He didn’t matter enough to laugh at, and that made him stew hotter than ever. He was still clinging to his pride, after all, like a drowning man to a twig way too small to keep him afloat. He was a maimed embarrassment, after he’d saved her life how many times? Risked his life how many times? And after all the bloody steps he’d climbed to get to the top of this bastard mountain too. Might’ve hoped for something better’n scorn at the end of it.
He jerked his knife from the split wood. The knife Monza had given him the first day they met. Back when he had both his eyes and a lot less blood on his hands. Back when he had it in mind to leave killing behind him, and be a good man. He could hardly remember what that had felt like.
Monza sat there frowning, and drank.
She hadn’t much taste for food lately, had less for ceremony, and none at all for tonguing arses, so Rogont’s banquet of the doomed came close to a nightmare. Benna had been the one for feasting, form and flattery. He would have loved this-pointing, laughing, slapping backs with the worst of them. If he’d found a moment clear of soaking up the flattery of people who despised him, he would have leaned over, and touched her arm with a soothing hand, and whispered in her ear to grin and take it. Baring her teeth in a rictus snarl was about as close as she could come.
She had a bastard of a headache, pulsing away down the side where the coins were screwed, and the genteel rattle of cutlery might as well have been nails hammered into her face. Her guts seemed to have been cramping up ever since she left Faithful drowned on the millwheel. It was the best she could do not to turn to Rogont and spew, and spew, and spew all over his gold-embroidered white coat.
He leaned towards her with polite concern. “Why so glum, General Murcatto?”
“Glum?” She swallowed the rising acid enough to speak. “Orso’s army are on their way.”
Rogont turned his wine glass slowly round and round by the stem. “So I hear. Ably assisted by your old mentor Nicomo Cosca. The scouts of the Thousand Swords have already reached Menzes Hill, overlooking the fords.”
“No more delays, then.”
“It would appear not. My designs on glory will soon be ground into the dust. As such designs often are.”
“You sure the night before your own destruction is the best time to celebrate?”
“The day after might be too late.”
“Huh.” True enough. “Perhaps you’ll get a miracle.”
“I’ve never been a great believer in divine intervention.”
“No? What are they here for, then?” Monza jerked her head towards a knot of Gurkish just below the high table, dressed in the white robes and skullcaps of the priesthood.
The duke peered down at them. “Oh, their help goes well beyond the spiritual. They are emissaries of the Prophet Khalul. Duke Orso has his allies in the Union, the backing of their banks. I must find friends of my own. And even the Emperor of Gurkhul kneels before the Prophet.”
“Everyone kneels to someone, eh? I guess Emperor and Prophet can console each other after their priests bring news of your head on a spike.”
“They’ll soon get over it. Styria is a sideshow to them. I daresay they’re already preparing the next battlefield.”
“I hear the war never ends.” She drained her glass and slung it rattling back across the wood. Maybe they pressed the best wine in the world in Ospria, but it tasted of vomit to her. Everything did. Her life was made of sick. Sick and frequent, painful, watery shits. Raw-gummed, saw-tongued, rough-toothed, sore-arsed. A horse-faced servant in a powdered wig flowed around her shoulder and let fall a long stream of wine into the empty glass, as
