“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 callused 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
