He moved his tongue around in his mouth and spat. The more he saw, the more he saw she was right. Mercy and cowardice were the same. No one was giving prizes for good behaviour. Not here, not in the North, not anywhere. You want a thing, you have to take it, and the greatest man is the one that snatches most. Maybe it would’ve been nice if life was another way.
But it was how it was.
Monza was stiff and aching, just like always. She was angry and tired, just like always. She needed a smoke, worse than ever. And just to sprinkle some spice on the evening, she was getting wet, cold and saddle-sore besides.
She remembered Visserine as a beautiful place, full of twinkling glass and graceful buildings, fine food, laughter and freedom. She’d been in a rare good mood when she last visited, true, in a warm summer rather than a chill spring, with no one but Benna looking to her for leadership and no four men she had to kill.
But even so, the place was a long way from the bright pleasure garden of her memory.
Where there was a lamp burning the shutters were closed tight, light just leaking out around the edges, catching the little glass figures in their niches above the doors and making them twinkle. Household spirits, a tradition from long ago, before the time of the New Empire even, put there to bring prosperity and drive off evil. Monza wondered what good those chunks of glass would be when Orso’s army broke through into the city. Not much. The streets were thick with fear, the sense of threat so heavy it seemed to stick to Monza’s clammy skin and make the hairs on her neck prickle.
Not that Visserine wasn’t crawling with people. Some were running, making for docks or gates. Men and women with packs, everything they could save on their backs, children in tow, elders shuffling behind. Wagons rattled along stacked with sacks and boxes, with mattresses and chests of drawers, with all manner of useless junk that would no doubt end up abandoned, lining one road or another out of Visserine. A waste of time and effort, trying to save anything but your lives at a time like this.
You chose to run, you’d best run fast.
But there were plenty who’d chosen to run into the city for refuge, and found to their great dismay it was a dead end. They lined the streets in places. They filled the doorways, huddled under blankets against the rain. They crammed the shadowy arcades of an empty market in their dozens, cowering as a column of soldiers tramped past, armour beaded up with moisture, gleaming by torchlight. Sounds came echoing through the murk. Crashes of breaking glass or tearing wood. Angry shouts, or fearful. Once or twice an outright scream.
Monza guessed a few of the city’s own people were making an early start on the sacking. Settling a score or two, or snatching a few things they’d always envied while the eyes of the powerful were fixed on their own survival. This was one of those rare moments when a man could get something for free, and there’d be more and more taking advantage of it as Orso’s army gathered outside the city. The stuff of civilisation, already starting to dissolve.
Monza felt eyes following her and the rest of the merry band as they rode slowly through the streets. Fearful eyes, suspicious eyes, and the other kind-trying to judge if they were soft enough or rich enough to be worth robbing. She kept the reins in her right hand, for all it hurt her to tug at them, so her left could rest on her thigh, close to the hilt of her sword. The only law in Visserine now was at the edge of a blade. And the enemy hadn’t even arrived yet.
I have seen hell, Stolicus wrote, and it is a great city under siege.
Up ahead the road passed under a marble arch, a long rivulet of water spattering from its high keystone. A mural was painted on the wall above. Grand Duke Salier sat enthroned at the top, optimistically depicted as pleasantly plump rather than massively obese. He held one hand up in blessing, a heavenly light radiating from his fatherly smile. Beneath him an assortment of Visserine’s citizens, from the lowest to the highest, humbly enjoyed the benefits of his good governance. Bread, wine, wealth. Under them, around the top of the archway, the words charity, justice, courage were printed in gold letters high as a man. Someone with an appetite for truth had managed to climb up there and daub over them in streaky red, greed, torture, cowardice.
“The arrogance of that fat fucker Salier.” Vitari grinned sideways at her, orange hair black-brown with rain. “Still, I reckon he’s made his last boast, don’t you?”
Monza only grunted. All she could think about as she looked into Vitari’s sharp-boned face was how far she could trust her. They might be in the middle of a war, but the greatest threats were still more than likely from within her own little company of outcasts. Vitari? Here for the money-ever a risky motivation since there’s always some bastard with deeper pockets. Cosca? How can you trust a notoriously treacherous drunk you once betrayed yourself? Friendly? Who knew how the hell that man’s mind worked?
But they were all tight as family beside Morveer. She stole a glance over her shoulder, caught him frowning at her from the seat of his cart. The man was poison, and the moment he could profit by it he’d murder her easily as crushing a tick. He was already suspicious of the choice to come into Visserine, but the last thing she wanted was to share her reasoning. That Orso would have Eider’s letter by now. Would have offered a king’s ransom of Valint and Balk’s money for her death and got half the killers in the Circle of the World scouring Styria hoping to put her head in a bag. Along with the heads of anyone who’d helped her, of course.
The chances were high they’d be safer in the middle of a battle than outside it.
Shivers was the only one she could even halfway trust. He rode hunched over, big and silent beside her. His babble had been quite the irritation in Westport, but now it had dried up, strange to say, it had left a gap. He’d saved her life, in foggy Sipani. Monza’s life wasn’t all it had been, but a man saving it still raised him a damn sight higher in her estimation.
“You’re quiet, all of a sudden.”
She could hardly see his face in the darkness, just the hard set of it, shadows in his eye sockets, in the hollows under his cheeks. “Don’t reckon I’ve much to say.”
“Never stopped you before.”
“Well. I’m starting to see all kinds o’ things different.”
“That so?”
“You might think it comes easy to me, but it’s an effort, trying to stay hopeful. An effort that don’t ever seem to pay off.”
“I thought being a better man was its own reward.”
“I guess it ain’t reward enough for all the work. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in the middle of a war.”
“Believe me, I know what a war looks like. I’ve been living in one most of my life.”
“Well, what are the odds o’ that? Me too. From what I’ve seen, and I’ve seen plenty, a war ain’t really the place for bettering yourself. I’m thinking I might try it your way, from now on.”
“Pick out a god and praise him! Welcome to the real world!” She wasn’t sure she didn’t feel a twinge of disappointment though, for all her grinning. Monza might have given up on being a decent person long ago, but somehow she liked the idea that she could have pointed one out. She pulled on her reins and eased her horse up, the cart clattering to a halt behind her. “We’re here.”
The place she and Benna had bought in Visserine was an old one, built before the city had good walls, and rich men each took their own care to guard what was theirs. A stone tower-house on five storeys, hall and stables to one side, with slit windows on the ground floor and battlements on the high roof. It stood big and black against the dark sky, a very different beast from the low brick-and-timber houses that crowded in close around it. She lifted the key to the studded door, then frowned. It was open a crack, light gathering on the rough stone down its edge. She put her finger to her lips and pointed towards it.
Shivers raised one big boot and kicked it shuddering open, wood clattering on the other side as something was barged out of the way. Monza darted in, left hand on the hilt of her sword. The kitchen was empty of furniture and full of people. Grubby and tired-looking, every one of them staring at her, shocked and fearful, in the light of one flickering candle. The nearest, a stocky man with one arm in a sling, stumbled up from an empty barrel and caught hold of a length of wood.
“Get back!” he screamed at her. A man in a dirty farmer’s smock took a stride towards her, waving a hatchet.
