peering over a cliff, ready at any moment to topple into emptiness.
He saw Victus stand beside him, raise his sword and scream. The word didn’t sound much louder than if he had spoken it.
“Charge.”
Men clambered, somewhat dazed, from the trenches. One took a couple of wobbling steps and fell on his face. Others stood there, blinking. Still others began to head uncertainly uphill. More followed, and soon there were a few hundred men scrambling through the rubble towards the breach, weapons and armour shining dully in the watery sun.
Cosca was left alone in the trench with Victus, both of them coated with grey dust.
“Where’s Sesaria?” The words thudding dully through the whine in Cosca’s ears.
His own voice was a weird burble. “He wasn’t behind me?”
“No. What happened?”
“An accident. An accident… as we came out.” It wasn’t difficult to force out a tear, Cosca was covered head to toe in knocks and bruises. “I dropped my lamp! Dropped it! Set off the trail of powder halfway down!” He seized Victus by his fluted breastplate. “I told him to run with me, but he stayed! Stayed… to put it out.”
“He stayed?”
“He thought he could save us both!” Cosca put one hand over his face, voice choked with emotion. “My fault! All my fault. He truly was the best of us.” He wailed it at the sky. “Why? Why? Why do the Fates always take the best?”
Victus’ eyes flickered down to Cosca’s empty scabbard, then back up to the great crater in the hillside, the yawning breach above it. “Dead, eh?”
“Blown to hell,” whispered Cosca. “Baking with Gurkish sugar can be a dangerous business.” The sun had come out. Above them, Victus’ men were clambering up the sides of the crater and into the breach in a twinkling tide, apparently entirely unopposed. If any defenders had survived the blast, they were in no mood to fight. It seemed the outer ward of Fontezarmo was theirs. “Victory. At least Sesaria’s sacrifice was not in vain.”
“Oh, no.” Victus looked sideways at him through narrowed eyes. “He’d have been proud.”
One Nation
The echoing grumble of the crowd on the other side of the doors grew steadily louder, and the churning in Monza’s guts grew with it. She tried to rub away the niggling tension under her jaw. It did no good.
But there was nothing to do except wait. Her entire role in tonight’s grand performance was to stand there with a straight face and look like the highest of nobility, and Talins’ best dressmakers had done all the hard work in making that ludicrous lie seem convincing. They’d given her long sleeves to cover the scars on her arms, a high collar to cover the scars on her neck, gloves to render her ruined hand presentable. They’d been greatly relieved they could keep her neckline low without horrifying Rogont’s delicate guests. It was a wonder they hadn’t cut a great hole out of the back to show her arse-it was about the only other patch of her skin without a mark across it.
Nothing could be seen that might spoil the perfection of Duke Rogont’s moment of history. No sword, certainly, and she missed the weight of it like a missing limb. She wondered when was the last time she’d stepped out without a blade in easy reach. Not in the meeting of the Council of Talins she’d attended the day after being lifted to her new station.
Old Rubine had suggested she had no need to wear a sword in the chamber. She replied she’d worn one every day for twenty years. He’d politely pointed out that neither he nor his colleagues carried arms, though they were all men and hence better suited. She asked him what she’d use to stab him with if she left her sword behind. No one was sure whether she was joking or not. But they didn’t ask again.
“Your Excellency.” One of the attendants had oozed over and now offered her a silky bow. “Your Grace,” and another to Countess Cotarda. “We are about to begin.”
“Good,” snapped Monza. She faced the double doors, shifted her shoulders back and her chin up. “Let’s get this fucking pantomime over with.”
She had no time to spare. Every waking moment of the last three weeks-and she’d scarcely slept since Rogont jammed the circlet on her head-she’d spent struggling to drag the state of Talins out of the cesspit she’d fought so hard to shove it into.
Keeping in mind Bialoveld’s maxim- any successful state is supported by pillars of steel and gold — she’d dug out every cringing bureaucrat she could find who wasn’t besieged in Fontezarmo along with their old master. There’d been discussions about the Talinese army. There wasn’t one. Discussions about the treasury. It was empty. The system of taxation, the maintenance of public works, the preservation of security, the administration of justice, all dissolved like cake in a stream. Rogont’s presence, or that of his soldiers anyway, was all that was keeping Talins from anarchy.
But Monza had never been put off by a wind in the wrong direction. She’d always had a knack for reckoning a man’s qualities, and picking the right one for a given job. Old Rubine was pompous as a prophet, so she made him high magistrate. Grulo and Scavier were the two most ruthless merchants in the city. She didn’t trust either, so she made them joint chancellors, and set each one to dream up new taxes, compete in their collection while keeping one jealous eye on the other.
Already they were wringing money from their unhappy colleagues, and already Monza had spent it on arms.
Three long days into her unpromising rule, an old sergeant called Volfier had arrived in the city, a man almost laughably hardbitten, and nearly as scarred as she was. Refusing to surrender, he’d led the twenty-three survivors of his regiment back from the rout at Ospria and all the way across Styria with arms and honour intact. She could always use a man that bloody-minded, and set him to rounding up every veteran in the city. Paying work was thin on the ground and he already had two companies of volunteers, their glorious charge to escort the tax collectors and make sure not a copper went missing.
She’d marked Duke Orso’s lessons well. Gold, to steel, to more gold-such was the righteous spiral of politics. Resistance, apathy and scorn from all quarters only made her shove harder. She took a perverse satisfaction in the apparent impossibility of the task, the work pushed the pain to one side, and the husk with it, and kept her sharp. It had been a long, long time since she’d made anything grow.
“You look… very beautiful.”
“What?” Cotarda had glided up silently beside her and was offering a nervous smile. “Oh. Likewise,” grunted Monza, barely even looking.
“White suits you. They tell me I’m too pale for white.” Monza winced. Just the kind of mindless twittering she had no stomach for tonight. “I wish I was like you.”
“Some time in the sun would do it.”
“No, no. Brave.” Cotarda looked down at her pale fingers, twisting them together. “I wish I was brave. They tell me I’m powerful. One would have thought being powerful would mean one need not be scared of anything. But I’m afraid all the time. Especially at events.” The words spilled out of her to Monza’s mounting discomfort. “Sometimes I can’t move for the weight of it. All the fear. I’m such a disappointment. What can I do about that? What would you do?”
Monza had no intention of discussing her own fears. That would only feed them. But Cotarda blathered on regardless.
“I’ve no character at all, but where does one get character from? Either you have it or you don’t. You have. Everyone says you have. Where did you get it? Why don’t I have any? Sometimes I think I’m cut out of paper, just acting like a person. They tell me I’m an utter coward. What can I do about that? Being an utter coward?”
They stared at each other for a long moment, then Monza shrugged. “Act like you’re not.”
The doors were pulled open.
Musicians somewhere out of sight struck up a stately refrain as she and Cotarda stepped out into the vast bowl of the Senate House. Though there was no roof, though the stars would soon show in the blue-black sky above, it was hot. Hot, and clammy as a tomb, and the perfumed stink of flowers caught at Monza’s tight throat and
