“Well, because…” He was not sure why. “I flatly refuse to go through the trouble of instructing another!”
Vitari’s irritating grin had grown wider. “Fine. You need your girl and I need my money. You want to cry about it or work on a way in? I still say boat down the river to the north wall, then rope and grapple to the roof.”
Morveer squinted unhopefully towards the sheer stonework. “You can truthfully secure a grapple up there?”
“I could get a grapple through a fly’s arse. It’s you getting the boat into position that worries me.”
He was not about to be outdone. “I challenge you to find a more accomplished oarsman! I could hold a boat steady in a deluge twice as fierce, but it will not be needful. I can drive a hook into that stonework and anchor the boat against those rocks all night.”
“Good for you.”
“Good. Excellent.” His heart was beating with considerable urgency at the argument. He might not have liked the woman, but her competence was in no doubt. Given the circumstances he could not have selected a more suitable companion. A most handsome woman, too, in her own way, and no doubt every bit as firm a disciplinarian as the sternest nurse at the orphanage had been…
Her eyes narrowed. “I hope you’re not going to make the same suggestion you made last time we worked together.”
Morveer bristled. “There will be no repetition of that whatsoever, I can assure you!”
“Good. Because I’d still rather fuck a hedgehog.”
“You made your preferences quite clear on that occasion!” he answered shrilly, then moved with all despatch to shift the topic. “There is no purpose in delay. Let us find a vessel appropriate to our needs.” He took one last look down as he slithered back into the attic, and paused. “Who’s this now?” A single figure was striding boldly towards the palace gates. Morveer felt his heart sink even lower. There was no mistaking the flamboyant gait. “ Cosca. Whatever is that horrible old drunkard about?”
“Who knows what goes through that scabby head?”
The mercenary strode towards the guards quite as if it was his palace rather than Duke Salier’s, waving one arm. Morveer could just hear his voice in between the sighing of the wind, but had not the slightest notion of the words. “What are they saying?”
“You can’t read lips?” Vitari muttered.
“No.”
“Nice to find there’s one subject you’re not the world’s greatest expert on. The guards are challenging him.”
“Of course!” That much was clear from the halberds lowered at Cosca’s chest. The old mercenary swept off his hat and bowed low.
“He is replying… my name is Nicomo Cosca… famed soldier of fortune… and I am here…” She lowered the eyeglass, frowning.
“Yes?”
Vitari’s eyes slid towards him. “And I am here for dinner.”
Darkness
Utter dark. Monza opened her eyes wide, squinted and stared, and saw nothing but fizzing, tingling blackness. She wouldn’t have been able to see her hand before her face. But she couldn’t move her hand there anyway, or anywhere else.
They’d chained her to the ceiling by her wrists, to the floor by her ankles. If she hung limp, her feet just brushed the clammy stones. If she stretched up on tiptoe, she could ease the throbbing ache through her arms, through her ribs, through her sides, a merciful fraction. Soon her calves would start to burn, though, worse and worse until she had to ease back down, teeth gritted, and swing by her skinned wrists. It was agonising, humiliating, terrifying, but the worst of it was, she knew-this was as good as things were going to get.
She wasn’t sure where Day was. Probably she’d blinked those big eyes, shed a single fat tear and said she knew nothing, and they’d believed her. She had the sort of face that people believed. Monza never had that sort of face. But then she probably didn’t deserve one. Shivers was struggling somewhere in the inky black, metal clinking as he twisted at his chains, cursing in Northern, then Styrian. “Fucking Styria. Fucking Vossula. Shit. Shit.”
“Stop!” she hissed at him. “Might as well… I don’t know… keep your strength.”
“Strength going to help us, you reckon?”
She swallowed. “Couldn’t hurt.” Couldn’t help. Nothing could.
“By the dead, but I need to piss.”
“Piss, then,” she snapped into the darkness. “What’s the difference?”
A grunt. The sound of liquid spattering against stone. She might’ve joined him if her bladder hadn’t been knotted up tight with fear. She pushed up on her toes again, legs aching, wrists, arms, sides burning with every breath.
“You got a plan?” Shivers’ words sank away and died on the buried air.
“What fucking plan do you think I’d have? They think we’re spies in their city, working for the enemy. They’re sure of it! They’re going to try and get us to talk, and when we don’t have anything to say they want to hear, they’re going to fucking kill us!” An animal growl, more rattles. “You think they didn’t plan for you struggling?”
“What d’you want me to do?” His voice was strangled, shrill, as if he was on the verge of sobbing. “Hang here and wait for them to start cutting us?”
“I…” She felt the unfamiliar thickness of tears at the back of her own throat. She didn’t have the shadow of an idea of a way clear of this. Helpless. How could you get more helpless than chained up naked, deep underground, in the pitch darkness? “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I don’t know.”
There was the clatter of a lock turning and Monza jerked her head up, skin suddenly prickling. A door creaked open and light stabbed at her eyes. A figure came down stone steps, boots scraping, a torch flickering in his hand. Another came behind him.
“Let’s see what we’re doing, shall we?” A woman’s voice. Langrier, the one who’d caught them in the first place. The one who’d knocked Monza down the stairs and taken her ring. The other one was Pello, with the moustache. They were both dressed like butchers, stained leather aprons and heavy gloves. Pello went around the room, lighting torches. They didn’t need torches, they could’ve had lamps. But torches are that bit more sinister. As if, at that moment, Monza needed scaring. Light crept out across rough stone walls, slick with moisture, splattered with green moss. There were a couple of tables about, heavy cast-iron implements on them. Unsubtle-looking implements.
She’d felt better when it was dark.
Langrier bent over a brazier and got it lit, blowing patiently on the coals, orange glow flaring across her soft face with each breath.
Pello wrinkled his nose. “Which one of you pissed?”
“Him,” said Langrier. “But what’s the difference?” Monza watched her slide a few lengths of iron into the furnace, and felt her throat close up tight. She looked sideways at Shivers, and he looked back at her, and said nothing. There was nothing to say. “More than likely they’ll both be pissing soon enough.”
“Alright for you, you don’t have to mop it up.”
“I’ve mopped up worse.” She looked at Monza, and her eyes were bored. No hate in them. Not much of anything. “Give them some water, Pello.”
The man offered a jug. She would’ve liked to spit in his face, scream obscenities, but she was thirsty, and it was no time for pride. So she opened her mouth and he stuck the spout in it, and she drank, and coughed, and drank, and water trickled down her neck and dripped to the cold flags between her bare feet.
Langrier watched her get her breath back. “You see, we’re just people, but I have to be honest, that’s probably the last kindness you’ll be getting out of us if you’re not helpful.”
“It’s a war, boy.” Pello offered the jug to Shivers. “A war, and you’re on the other side. We don’t have the
