Kneel or not, as it suits you.” Two white-liveried guardsmen lifted their crossed halberds to let them pass, and Ganmark shoved the double doors wide open.
The hall beyond was dauntingly cavernous, opulent, grand. Fit for the throne room of the most powerful man in Styria. But Shenkt had stood in greater rooms, before greater men, and had no awe left in him. A thin red carpet stretched away down the mosaic floor, a white line at its lonely end. A high dais rose beyond it, a dozen men in full armour standing guard in front. Upon the dais was a golden chair. Within the chair was Grand Duke Orso of Talins. He was dressed all in black, but his frown was blacker yet.
A strange and sinister selection of people, three score or more, of all races, sizes and shapes, knelt before Orso and his retinue in a wide arc. They carried no weapons now, but Shenkt guessed they usually carried many. He knew some few of them by sight. Killers. Assassins. Hunters of men. Persons in his profession, if the whitewasher could be said to be in the same profession as the master painter.
He advanced towards the dais, without undue speed, looking neither right nor left. He passed through the half-circle of assorted murderers and stopped precisely at the line. He watched General Ganmark stride past the guards and up the steps to the throne, lean to whisper in Orso’s ear while the chamberlain took up a disapproving pose at his other elbow.
The grand duke stared at Shenkt for a long moment and Shenkt stared back, the hall cloaked all the while in that oppressive silence that only great spaces can produce. “So this is he. Why is he not kneeling?”
“He does not kneel, apparently,” said Ganmark.
“Everyone else kneels. What makes you special?”
“Nothing,” said Shenkt.
“But you do not kneel.”
“I used to. Long ago. No more.”
Orso’s eyes narrowed. “And what if a man tried to make you?”
“Some have tried.”
“And?”
“And I do not kneel.”
“Stand, then. My son is dead.”
“You have my sorrow.”
“You do not sound sorrowful.”
“He was not my son.”
The chamberlain nearly choked on his tongue, but Orso’s sunken eyes did not deviate. “You like to speak the truth, I see. Blunt counsel is a valuable thing to powerful men. You come to me with the highest recommendations.”
Shenkt said nothing.
“That business in Keln. I understand that was your work. All of that, your work alone. It is said that the things that were left could hardly be called corpses.”
Shenkt said nothing.
“You do not confirm it.”
Shenkt stared into Duke Orso’s face, and said nothing.
“You do not deny it, though.”
More nothing.
“I like a tight-lipped man. A man who says little to his friends will say less than nothing to his enemies.”
Silence.
“My son is murdered. Thrown from the window of a brothel like rubbish. Many of his friends and associates, my citizens, were also killed. My son-in-law, his Majesty the King of the Union, no less, only just escaped the burning building with his life. Sotorius, the half-corpse Chancellor of Sipani who was their host, wrings his hands and tells me he can do nothing. I am betrayed. I am bereaved. I am… embarrassed. Me!” he screamed suddenly, making the chamber ring, and every person in it flinch.
Every person except Shenkt. “Vengeance, then.”
“Vengeance!” Orso smashed the arm of his chair with his fist. “Swift and terrible.”
“Swift I cannot promise. Terrible-yes.”
“Then let it be slow, and grinding, and merciless.”
“It may be necessary to cause some harm to your subjects and their property.”
“Whatever it takes. Bring me their heads. Every man, woman or child involved in this, to the slightest degree. Whatever is necessary. Bring me their heads.”
“Their heads, then.”
“What will be your advance?”
“Nothing.”
“Not even-”
“If I complete the job, you will pay me one hundred thousand scales for the head of the ringleader, and twenty thousand for each assistant to a maximum of one quarter of a million. That is my price.”
“A very high one!” squeaked the chamberlain. “What will you do with so much money?”
“I will count it and laugh, while considering how a rich man need not answer the questions of idiots. You will find no employer, anywhere, unsatisfied with my work.” Shenkt moved his eyes slowly to the half-circle of scum at his back. “You can pay less to lesser men, if you please.”
“I will,” said Orso. “If one of them should find the killers first.”
“I would accept no other arrangement, your Excellency.”
“Good,” growled the duke. “Go, then. All of you, go! Bring… me… revenge!”
“You are dismissed!” screeched the chamberlain. There was a rustling, rattling, clattering as the assassins rose to leave the great chamber. Shenkt turned and walked back down the carpet towards the great doors, without undue speed, looking neither right nor left.
One of the killers blocked his path, a dark-skinned man of average height but wide as a door, lean slabs of muscle showing through the gap in his brightly coloured shirt. His thick lip curled. “You are Shenkt? I expected more.”
“Pray to whatever god you believe in that you never see more.”
“I do not pray.”
Shenkt leaned close, and whispered in his ear. “I advise you to start.”
A lthough a large room by most standards, General Ganmark’s study felt cluttered. An oversized bust of Juvens frowned balefully from above the fireplace, his stony bald spot reflected in a magnificent mirror of coloured Visserine glass. Two monumental vases loomed either side of the desk almost to shoulder height. The walls were crowded with canvases in gilded frames, two of them positively vast. Fine paintings. Far too fine to be squeezed.
“A most impressive collection,” said Shenkt.
“That one is by Coliere. It would have burned in the mansion in which I found it. And these two are Nasurins, that by Orhus.” Ganmark pointed them out with precise jabs of his forefinger. “His early period, but still. Those vases were made as tribute to the first Emperor of Gurkhul, many hundreds of years ago, and somehow found their way to a rich man’s house outside Caprile.”
“And from there to here.”
“I try to rescue what I can,” said Ganmark. “Perhaps when the Years of Blood end, Styria will still have some few treasures worth keeping.”
“Or you will.”
“Better I have them than the flames. The campaign season begins, and I will be away to Visserine in the morning, to take the city under siege. Skirmishes, sacks and burnings. March and counter-march. Famine and pestilence, naturally. Maim and murder, of course. All with the awful randomness of a stroke from the heavens. Collective punishment. Of everyone, for nothing. War, Shenkt, war. And to think I once dreamed of being an
