“My own worst fucking enemy,” he forced through his gritted teeth.
“Ario’s dead,” Monza drawled in his ear. Shivers dropped his sword, grabbed hold of her. “What’re you-” He threw her out of the window, heard her choking shriek as she started falling. He tore his shield from his arm and flung it at the two men as they ran down the corridor towards him, climbed up on the window ledge and jumped.
Smoke washed and billowed around him. The rushing air tore at his hair, his stinging eyes, his open mouth. He hit the water feet first and it dragged him down. Bubbles rushed in the blackness. The cold gripped him, almost forced him to suck in a breath of water. He hardly knew which way was up, flailing about, struck his head on something.
A hand grabbed him under the jaw, pulled at it, his face burst into the night and he gasped in cold air and cold water. He was dragged along through the canal, choking on the smoke he’d breathed, on the water he’d breathed, on the stink of the rotten water he was breathing now. He thrashed and jerked, wheezing, gasping.
“Still, you bastard!”
A shadow fell across his face, his shoulder scraped on stone. He fished around and his hand closed on an old iron ring, enough to hold his head above the water while he coughed up a lungful of canal. Monza was pressed to him, treading water, arm around his back, holding him tight. Her quick, scared, desperate breathing and his own hissed out together, merged with the slapping of the water and echoed under the arch of a bridge.
Beyond its black curve he could see the back of Cardotti’s House of Leisure, the fire shooting high into the sky above the buildings around it, flames crackling and roaring, showers of sparks fizzing and popping, ash and splinters flying, smoke pouring up in a black-brown cloud. Light flickered and danced on the water and across one half of Monza’s pale face-red, orange, yellow, the colours of fire.
“Shit,” he hissed, shivering at the cold, at the aching lag-end of battle, at what he’d done back there in the madness. He felt tears burning at his eyes. Couldn’t stop himself crying. He started to shake, to sob, only just managing to keep his grip on the ring. “Shit
… shit… shit…”
“Shhh.” Monza’s hand clapped over his mouth. Footsteps snapped against the road above, shouted voices echoing back and forth. They shrank back together, pressing against the slimy stonework. “Shhh.” Few hours ago he’d have given a lot to be pressed up against her like this. Somehow, right then, he didn’t feel much in the way of romance, though.
“What happened?” she whispered.
Shivers couldn’t even look at her. “I’ve no fucking idea.”
What Happened
Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, skulked in the shadows and watched the warehouse. All seemed quiet, shutters dark in their rotting frames. No vengeful mob, no clamour of guards. His instincts told him simply to walk off into the night, and pay no further mind to Monzcarro Murcatto and her mad quest for vengeance. But he needed her money, and his instincts had never been worth a runny shit. He shrank back into the doorway as a woman in a mask ran down the lane, skirts held up, giggling. A man chased after her. “Come back! Kiss me, you bitch!” Their footsteps clattered away.
Cosca strutted across the street as if he owned it, into the alley behind the warehouse, then plastered himself to the wall. He sidled up to the back door. He slid the sword from his cane with a faint ring of steel, blade coldly glittering in the night. The knob turned, the door crept open. He eased his way through into the darkness “Far enough.” Metal kissed his neck. Cosca opened his hand and let the sword clatter to the boards.
“I am undone.”
“Cosca, that you?” The blade came away. Vitari, pressed into the shadows behind the door.
“Shylo, you changed? I much preferred the clothes you had at Cardotti’s. More… ladylike.”
“Huh.” She pushed past him and down the dark passageway. “That underwear, such as it was, was torture.”
“I shall have to content myself with seeing it in my dreams.”
“What happened at Cardotti’s?”
“What happened?” Cosca bent over stiffly and fished his sword up between two fingers. “I believe the word ‘bloodbath’ would fit the circumstances. Then it caught fire. I must confess… I made a quick exit.” He was, in truth, disgusted with himself for having fled and saved his own worthless skin. But the decided habits of a whole life, especially a wasted life, were hard to change. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”
“The King of the Union happened.”
“The what?” Cosca remembered the man in white, with the mask like the rising sun. The man who had not looked very much like Foscar. “Aaaaaah. That would explain all the guards.”
“What about your entertainers?”
“Hugely expendable. None of them have shown their faces here?”
Vitari shook her head. “Not so far.”
“Then, I would guess, they are largely, if not entirely, expended. So it always is with mercenaries. Easily hired, even more easily discharged and never missed once they are gone.”
Friendly sat in the darkened kitchen, hunched over the table, rolling his dice gently in the light from a single lamp. A heavy and extremely threatening cleaver gleamed on the wood beside it.
Cosca came close, pointing to the dice. “Three and four, eh?”
“Three and four.”
“Seven. A most ordinary score.”
“Average.”
“May I?”
Friendly looked sharply up at him. “Yes.”
Cosca gathered the dice and gently rolled them back. “Six. You win.”
“That’s my problem.”
“Really? Losing is mine. What happened? No trouble in the gaming hall?”
“Some.”
There was a long streak of half-dried blood across the convict’s neck, dark in the lamplight. “You’ve got something… just here,” said Cosca.
Friendly wiped it off, looked down at his red-brown fingertips with all the emotion of an empty sink. “Blood.”
“Yes. A lot of blood, tonight.” Now Cosca was back to something approaching safety, the giddy rush of danger was starting to recede, and all the old regrets crowded in behind it. His hands were shaking again. A drink, a drink, a drink. He wandered through the doorway into the warehouse.
“Ah! The ringmaster for tonight’s circus of murder!” Morveer leaned against the rail of the stairs, sneering down, Day not far behind, her dangling hands slowly peeling an orange.
“Our poisoners! I’m sorry to see you made it out alive. What happened?”
Morveer’s lip curled still further. “Our allotted role was to remove the guards on the top floor of the building. That we accomplished with absolute speed and secrecy. We were not asked to remain in the building thereafter. Indeed we were ordered not to. Our employer does not entirely trust us. She was concerned that there be no indiscriminate slaughter.”
Cosca shrugged. “Slaughter, by its very definition, would not appear to discriminate.”
“Either way, your responsibility is over. I doubt anyone will object if you take this, now.”
Morveer flicked his wrist and something sparkled in the darkness. Cosca snatched it from the air on an instinct. A metal flask, liquid sloshing inside. Just like the one he used to carry. The one he sold… where was it now? That sweet union of cold metal and strong liquor lapped at his memory, brought the spit flooding into his dry mouth. A drink, a drink, a drink He was halfway through unscrewing the cap before he stopped himself. “It would seem a sensible life lesson never to swallow gifts from poisoners.”
“The only poison in there is the same kind you have been swallowing for years. The same kind you will never
