“Dagoska?” Eider’s voice had a note of strange terror in it now. “No! I’ve done everything he asked! Everything! Why would he-”
“Oh, I don’t work for the Cripple anymore.” Vitari leaned in close. “I’ve gone freelance.”
The woman in the red coat stumbled back over the threshold and into the corridor. She turned and saw Monza waiting, gloved hand slack on the pommel of her sword. She stopped dead, ragged breath echoing from the damp walls. Vitari shut the door behind them, latch dropping with a final-sounding click.
“This way.” She gave Eider a shove and she nearly fell over her own coat-tails. “If it please you.” Another shove as she found her feet and she sprawled through the doorway on her face. Vitari dragged her up by one arm and Monza followed them slowly into the room beyond, jaw clenched tight.
Like her jaw, the room had seen better days. The crumbling plaster was stained with black mould, bubbling up with damp, the stale air smelled of rot and onions. Day leaned back in one corner, a carefree smile on her face as she buffed a plum the colour of a fresh bruise against her sleeve. She offered it to Eider.
“Plum?”
“What? No!”
“Suit yourself. They’re good though.”
“Sit.” Vitari shoved Eider into the rickety chair that was the only furniture. Usually a good thing, getting the only seat. But not now. “They say history moves in circles but who’d ever have thought we’d meet like this again? It’s enough to bring tears to our eyes, isn’t it? Yours, anyway.”
Carlot dan Eider didn’t look like crying any time soon, though. She sat upright, hands crossed in her lap. Surprising composure, under the circumstances. Dignity, almost. She was past the first flush of youth, but a most striking woman still, and everything carefully plucked, painted and powdered to make the best show of it. A necklace of red stones flashed around her throat, gold glittered on her long fingers. She looked more like a countess than a mistress, as out of place in the rotting room as a diamond ring in a rubbish heap.
Vitari prowled slowly around the chair, leaning down to hiss in her ear. “You’re looking well. Always did know how to land on your feet. Quite the tumble, though, isn’t it? From head of the Guild of Spicers to Prince Ario’s whore?”
Eider didn’t even flinch. “It’s a living. What do you want?”
“Just to talk.” Vitari’s voice purred low and husky as a lover’s. “Unless we don’t get the answers we want. Then I’ll have to hurt you.”
“No doubt you’ll enjoy that.”
“It’s a living.” She punched Ario’s mistress suddenly in the ribs, hard enough to twist her in the chair. She doubled up, gasping, and Vitari leaned over her, bringing her fist up again. “Another?”
“No!” Eider held her hand up, teeth bared, eyes flickering round the room then back to Vitari. “No… ah… I’ll be helpful. Just… just tell me what you need to know.”
“Why are you down here, ahead of your lover?”
“To make arrangements for the ball. Costumes, masks, all kinds of-”
Vitari’s fist thumped into her side in just the same spot, harder than the first time, the sharp thud echoing off the damp walls. Eider whimpered, arms wrapped around herself, took a shuddering breath then coughed it out, face twisted with pain. Vitari leaned down over her like a black spider over a bound-up fly. “I’m losing patience. Why are you here?”
“Ario’s putting on… another kind of celebration… afterwards. For his brother. For his brother’s birthday.”
“What kind of celebration?”
“The kind for which Sipani is famous.” Eider coughed again, turned her head and spat, a few wet specks settling across the shoulder of her beautiful coat.
“Where?”
“At Cardotti’s House of Leisure. He’s hired the whole place for the night. For him, and for Foscar, and for their gentlemen. He sent me here to make the arrangements.”
“He sent his mistress to hire whores?”
Monza snorted. “Sounds like Ario. What arrangements?”
“To find entertainers. To make the place ready. To make sure it’s safe. He… trusts me.”
“More fool him.” Vitari chuckled. “I wonder what he’d do if he knew who you really worked for, eh? Who you really spy for? Our mutual friend at the House of Questions? Our crippled friend from his Majesty’s Inquisition? Keeping an eye on Styrian business for the Union, eh? You must have trouble remembering who you’re supposed to betray from week to week.”
Eider glowered back at her, arms still folded around her battered ribs. “It’s a living.”
“A dying, if Ario learns the truth. One little note is all it would take.”
“What do you want?”
Monza stepped from the shadows. “I want you to help us get close to Ario, and to Foscar. I want you to let us into Cardotti’s House of Leisure on the night of this celebration of yours. When it comes to arranging the entertainments, I want you to hire who we say, when we say, how we say. Do you understand?”
Eider’s face was very pale. “You mean to kill them?” No one spoke, but the silence said plenty. “Orso will guess I betrayed him! The Cripple will know I betrayed him! There aren’t two worse enemies in the Circle of the World! You might as well kill me now!”
“Alright.” The blade of the Calvez rang gently as she drew it. Eider’s eyes went wide.
“Wait-”
Monza reached out, resting the glinting point of the sword in the hollow between Eider’s collarbones, and gently pushed. Ario’s mistress arched back over the chair, hands opening and closing helplessly.
“Ah! Ah!” Monza twisted her wrist, steel flashing as the slender blade tilted one way and the other, the point grinding, digging, screwing ever so slowly into Eider’s neck. A line of dark blood trickled from the wound it made and crept down her breastbone. Her squealing grew more shrill, more urgent, more terrified. “No! Ah! Please! No!”
“No?” Monza held her there, pinned over the back of the chair. “Not quite ready to die after all? Not many of us are, when it comes to the moment.” She slid the Calvez free and Eider rocked forwards, touching one trembling fingertip to her bloody neck, breath coming in ragged gasps.
“You don’t understand. It isn’t just Orso! It isn’t just the Union! They’re both backed by the bank. By Valint and Balk. Owned by the bank. The Years of Blood are no more than a sideshow to them. A skirmish. You’ve no idea whose garden you’re pissing in-”
“Wrong.” Monza leaned down and made Eider shrink back. “I don’t care. There’s a difference.”
“Now?” asked Day.
“Now.”
The girl’s hand darted out and pricked Eider’s ear with a glinting needle. “Ah!”
Day yawned as she slipped the splinter of metal into an inside pocket. “Don’t worry, it’s slow-working. You’ve got at least a week.”
“Until what?”
“Until you get sick.” Day took a bite out of her plum and juice ran down her chin. “Bloody hell,” she muttered, catching it with a fingertip.
“Sick?” breathed Eider.
“Really, really sick. A day after that you’ll be deader than Juvens.”
“Help us, you get the antidote, and at least the chance to run.” Monza rubbed the blood from the point of Benna’s sword with gloved thumb and forefinger. “Try and tell anyone what we’re planning, here or in the Union, Orso, or Ario, or your friend the Cripple, and…” She slid the blade back into its sheath and slapped the hilt home with a sharp snap. “One way or another, Ario will be short one mistress.”
Eider stared round at them, one hand still pressed to her neck. “You evil bitches.”
Day gave the plum pit a final suck then tossed it away. “It’s a living.”
“We’re done.” Vitari dragged Ario’s mistress to her feet by one elbow and started marching her towards the door.
Monza stepped in front of them. “What will you be telling your battered manservant, when he comes round?”
“That… we were robbed?”
