him, knees buckling. The man staggered, guiding his master slowly to the floor.
“Sir? Sir?”
An atmosphere of breathless fascination seemed to have gripped the whole hall, teetering on the brink of fear. Monza edged closer, peering over a velvet-clad shoulder. Mauthis’ starting eyes met hers, and they stared straight at each other. His face was stretched tight, skin turning red, fibres of muscle standing rigid. One quivering arm raised up towards her, one bony finger pointing.
“Muh,” he mouthed. “Muh… Muh…”
His eyes rolled back and he started to dance, legs flopping, back arching, jerking madly around on the marble tiles like a landed fish. The men about him stared down, horrified. One of them was doubled up by a sudden coughing fit. People were shouting all over the banking hall.
“Help!”
“Over here!”
“Somebody!”
“Some air, I said!”
A clerk lurched up from his desk, chair clattering over, hands at his throat. He staggered a few steps, face turning purple, then crashed down, a shoe flying off one kicking foot. One of the clerks beside Mauthis was on his knees, fighting for breath. A woman gave a piercing scream.
“By the dead-” came Shivers’ voice.
Pink foam frothed from the banker’s wide-open mouth. His thrashing settled to a twitching. Then to nothing. His body sagged back, empty eyes goggling up over Monza’s shoulder, towards the grinning busts ranged round the walls.
Two dead. Five left.
“Plague!” somebody shrieked, and as if a general had roared for the charge on a battlefield, the place was plunged instantly into jostling chaos. Monza was nearly barged over as one of the merchants who’d been talking to Mauthis turned to run. Shivers stepped up and gave him a shove, sent him sprawling on top of the banker’s corpse. A man with skewed eyeglasses clutched at her, bulging eyes horribly magnified in his pink face. She punched on an instinct with her right hand, gasped as her twisted knuckles jarred against his cheek and sent a jolt of pain to her shoulder, chopped at him with the heel of her left and knocked him over backwards.
No plague spreads quicker than panic, Stolicus wrote, or is more deadly.
The veneer of civilisation was peeled suddenly away. The rich and self-satisfied were transformed into animals. Those in the way were flung aside. Those that fell were given no mercy. She saw a fat merchant punch a well-dressed lady in the face and she collapsed with a squeal, was kicked to the wall, wig twisted across her bloody face. She saw an old man huddled on the floor, trampled by the mob. A strongbox banged down, silver coins spilling, ignored, kicked across the floor by milling shoes. It was like the madness of a rout. The screaming and the jostling, the swearing and the stink of fear, the scattering of bodies and broken junk.
Someone shoved at her and she lashed out with an elbow, felt something crunch, spots of blood on her cheek. She was caught up by the crush like a twig in a river, jabbed at, twisted, torn and tangled. She was carried snarling through the doorway and into the street, feet scarcely touching the ground, people pressing, thrashing, wriggling up against her. She was swept sideways, slipped from the steps, twisted her leg on the cobbles and lurched against the wall of the bank.
She felt Shivers grab her by the elbow and half-lead, half-carry her off. A couple of the bank’s guards stood, trying ineffectually to stem the flow of panic with the hafts of their halberds. There was a sudden surge in the crowd and Monza was carried back. Between flailing arms she saw a man quivering on the ground, coughing red foam onto the cobbles. A wall of horrified, fascinated faces twitched and bobbed as people fought to get away from him.
Monza felt dizzy, mouth sour. Shivers strode beside her, breathing fast through his nose, glancing back over his shoulder. They rounded the corner of the bank and made for the crumbling house, the maddened clamour fading behind them. She saw Morveer, standing at a high window like a wealthy patron enjoying the theatre from his private box. He grinned down, and waved with one hand.
Shivers growled something in his own tongue as he heaved the heavy door open and Monza came after him. She snatched up the Calvez and made straight for the stairs, taking them two at a time, hardly noticing the burning in her knees.
Morveer still stood by the window when she got there, his assistant cross-legged on the table, munching her way through half a loaf of bread. “There seems to be quite the ruckus down in the street!” The poisoner turned into the room, but his smile vanished as he saw Monza’s face. “What? He’s alive?”
“He’s dead. Dozens of them are.”
Morveer’s eyebrows went up by the slightest fraction. “An establishment of that nature, the books will be in constant movement around the building. I could not take the risk that Mauthis would end up working from another. What do I never take, Day?”
“Chances. Caution first, always.” Day tore off another mouthful of bread, and mumbled around it. “That’s why we poisoned them all. Every ledger in the place.”
“This isn’t what we agreed,” Monza growled.
“I rather think it is. Whatever it takes, you told me, no matter who gets killed along the way. Those are the only terms under which I work. Anything else allows for misunderstandings.” Morveer looked somewhat puzzled, somewhat amused. “I am well aware that some individuals are uncomfortable with wholesale murder, but I certainly never anticipated that you, Monzcarro Murcatto, the Serpent of Talins, the Butcher of Caprile, would be one. You need not worry about the money. Mauthis will cost you ten thousand, as we agreed. The rest are free of-”
“It’s not a question of money, fool!”
“Then what is the question? I undertook a piece of work, as commissioned by you, and was successful, so how can I be at fault? You say you never had in mind any such result, and did not undertake the work yourself, so how can you be at fault? The responsibility seems to drop between us, then, like a turd straight from a beggar’s arse and into an open sewer, to be lost from sight forever and cause nobody any further discomfort. An unfortunate misunderstanding, shall we say? An accident? As if a sudden wind blew up, and a great tree fell, and caught every little insect in that place and squashed… them… dead!”
“Squashed ’em,” chirped Day.
“If your conscience nags at you-”
Monza felt a stab of anger, gloved hand gripping the sword’s scabbard painfully hard, twisted bones clicking as they shifted. “Conscience is an excuse not to do what needs doing. This is about keeping control. We’ll stick to one dead man at a time from now on.”
“Will we indeed?”
She took a sudden stride into the room and the poisoner edged away, eyes flickering nervously down to her sword, then back. “Don’t test me. Not ever. One… at a time… I said.”
Morveer carefully cleared his throat. “You are the client, of course. We will proceed as you dictate. There really is no cause to get angry.”
“Oh, you’ll know if I get angry.”
He gave a pained sigh. “What is the tragedy of our profession, Day?”
“No appreciation.” His assistant popped the last bit of crust into her mouth.
“ Precisely so. Come, we will take a turn about the city while our employer decides which name on her little list next merits our attentions. The atmosphere in here feels somewhat tainted by hypocrisy.” He marched out with an air of injured innocence. Day looked up from under her sandy lashes, shrugged, stood, brushed crumbs from the front of her shirt, then followed her master.
Monza turned back to the window. The crowds had mostly broken up. Groups of nervous city watch had appeared, blocking off the street before the bank, keeping a careful distance from the still shapes sprawled out on the cobbles. She wondered what Benna would’ve said to this. Told her to calm down, most likely. Told her to think it through.
She grabbed a chest with both hands and snarled as she flung it across the room. It smashed into the wall, sending lumps of plaster flying, clattered down and sagged open, clothes spilling out across the floor.
Shivers stood there in the doorway, watching her. “I’m done.”
