“Why?” she grunted, suspicious.
“ ‘A captain looks first to the comfort of his men, then to his own,’ Stolicus said.”
“Who’s he?” asked Benna.
“Stolicus? Why, the greatest general of history!” Monza stared blankly at him. “An emperor of old. The most famous of emperors.”
“What’s an emperor?” asked Benna.
Cosca raised his brows. “Like a king, but more so. You should read this.” He slid something from a pocket and pressed it into Monza’s hand. A small book, with a red cover scuffed and scarred.
“I will.” She opened it and frowned at the first page, waiting for him to go.
“Neither of us can read,” said Benna, before Monza could shut him up.
Cosca frowned, twisting one corner of his waxed moustache between finger and thumb. Monza was waiting for him to tell them to go back to the farm, but instead he lowered himself slowly and sat cross-legged beside them. “Children, children.” He pointed at the page. “This here is the letter ‘A.’”
Fogs and Whispers
Sipani smelled of rot and old salt water, of coal smoke, shit and piss, of fast living and slow decay. Made Shivers feel like puking, though the smell mightn’t have mattered so much if he could’ve seen his hand before his face. The night was dark, the fog so thick that Monza, walking close enough to touch, weren’t much more than a ghostly outline. His lamp scarcely lit ten cobbles in front of his boots, all shining with cold dew. More than once he’d nearly stepped straight off into water. It was easily done. In Sipani, water was hiding round every corner.
Angry giants loomed up, twisted, changed to greasy buildings and crept past. Figures charged from the mist like the Shanka did at the Battle of Dunbrec, then turned out to be bridges, railings, statues, carts. Lamps swung on poles at corners, torches burned by doorways, lit windows glowed, hanging in the murk, treacherous as marsh- lights. Shivers would set his course by one set, squinting through the mist, only to see a house start drifting. He’d blink, and shake his head, the ground shifting dizzily under his boots. Then he’d realise it was a barge, sliding past in the water beside the cobbled way, bearing its lights off into the night. He’d never liked cities, fog or salt water. The three together were like a bad dream.
“Bloody fog,” Shivers muttered, holding his lamp higher, as though that helped. “Can’t see a thing.”
“This is Sipani,” Monza tossed over her shoulder. “City of Fogs. City of Whispers.”
The chill air was full of strange sounds, alright. Everywhere the slap, slop of water, the creaking of ropes as rowing boats squirmed on the shifting canals. Bells tolling in the darkness, folk calling out, all kinds of voices. Prices. Offers. Warnings. Jokes and threats spilling over each other. Dogs barked, cats hissed, rats skittered, birds croaked. Snatches of music, lost in the mist. Ghostly laughter fluttered past on the other side of the seething water, lamps bobbing through the gloom as some revel wended into the night from tavern, to brothel, to gambling den, to smoke-house. Made Shivers’ head spin, and left him sicker than ever. Felt like he’d been sick for weeks. Ever since Westport.
Footsteps echoed from the darkness and Shivers pressed himself against the wall, right hand on the haft of the hatchet tucked in his coat. Men loomed up and away, brushing past him. Women too, one holding a hat to her piled-up hair as she ran. Devil faces, smeared with drunken smiles, reeling past in a flurry and gone into the night, mist curling behind their flapping cloaks.
“Bastards,” hissed Shivers after them, letting go his axe and peeling himself away from the sticky wall. “Lucky I didn’t split one of ’em.”
“Get used to it. This is Sipani. City of Revels. City of Rogues.”
Rogues were in long supply, alright. Men slouched around steps, on corners, beside bridges, dishing out hard looks. Women too, black outlines in doorways, lamps glowing behind, some of ’em hardly dressed in spite of the cold. “A scale!” one called at him from a window, letting one thin leg dangle in the murk. “For a scale you get the night of your life! Ten bits then! Eight!”
“Selling themselves,” Shivers grunted.
“Everyone’s selling themselves,” came Monza’s muffled voice. “This is-”
“Yes, yes. This is fucking Sipani.”
Monza stopped and he nearly walked into her. She pushed her hood back and squinted at a narrow doorway in a wall of crumbling brickwork. “This is it.”
“You take a man to all the finest places, eh?”
“Maybe later you’ll get the tour. For now we’ve got business. Look dangerous.”
“Right y’are, Chief.” Shivers stood up tall and fixed his hardest frown. “Right y’are.”
She knocked, and not long after the door wobbled open. A woman stared out from a dim-lit hallway, long and lean as a spider. She had a way of standing, hips loose and tilted to one side, arm up on the doorframe, one thin finger tapping at the wood. Like the fog was hers, and the night, and them too. Shivers brought his lamp up a touch closer. A hard, sharp face with a knowing smile, spattered with freckles, short red hair sprouting all ways from her head.
“Shylo Vitari?” asked Monza.
“You’ll be Murcatto, then.”
“That’s right.”
“Death suits you.” She narrowed her eyes at Shivers. Cold eyes, with a hint of a cruel joke in ’em. “Who’s your man?”
He spoke for himself. “Name’s Caul Shivers, and I’m not hers.”
“No?” She grinned at Monza. “Whose is he, then?”
“I’m my own.”
She gave a sharp laugh at that. Seemed everything about her had an edge on it. “This is Sipani, friend. Everyone belongs to someone. Northman, eh?”
“That a problem?”
“Got tossed down a flight of stairs by one once. Haven’t been entirely comfortable around them since. Why Shivers?”
She caught him off balance with that one. “What?”
“Up in the North, the way I heard it, a man earns his name. Great deeds done, and all that. Why Shivers?”
“Er…” The last thing he needed was to look the fool in front of Monza. He was still hoping to make it back into her bed at some point. “Because my enemies shiver with fear when they face me,” he lied.
“That so?” Vitari stood back from the door, giving him a mocking grin as he ducked under the low lintel. “You must have some cowardly bloody enemies.”
“Sajaam says you know people here,” said Monza as the woman led them into a narrow sitting room, barely lit by some smoky coals on a grate.
“I know everyone.” She took a steaming pot off the fire. “Soup?”
“Not me,” said Shivers, leaning against the wall and folding his arms over his chest. He’d been a lot more careful about hospitality since he met Morveer.
“Nor me,” said Monza.
“Suit yourselves.” Vitari poured a mug out for herself and sat, folding one long leg over the other, pointed toe of her black boot rocking backwards and forwards.
Monza took the only other chair, wincing a touch as she lowered herself into it. “Sajaam says you can get things done.”
“And just what is it that the two of you need doing?”
Monza glanced across at Shivers, and he shrugged back at her. “I hear the King of the Union is coming to Sipani.”
“So he is. Seems he’s got it in mind that he’s the great statesman of the age.” Vitari smiled wide, showing two rows of clean, sharp teeth. “He’s going to bring peace to Styria.”
“Is he now?”
