ushered them into a long hallway, a strip of gold-embroidered carpet beckoning them down the centre, many- coloured marble gleaming in the light from huge windows. Vast and brooding oils crowded the opposite wall in long procession, gilt frames glittering.
“This hall is given over to the Midderland masters, of course,” Salier observed. There was a snarling portrait of bald Zoller, a series of Kings of the Union-Harod, Arnault, Casimir, and more. One might have thought they all shat molten gold, they looked so smug. Salier paused a moment before a monumental canvas of the death of Juvens. A tiny, bleeding figure lost in an immensity of forest, lightning flaring across a lowering sky. “Such brushwork. Such colouring, eh, Cosca?”
“Astounding.” Though one daub looked much like another to his eye.
“The happy days I have spent in profound contemplation of these works. Seeking the hidden meanings in the minds of the masters.” Cosca raised his brows at Monza. More time in profound contemplation of the campaign map and less on dead painters and perhaps Styria would not have found itself in the current fix.
“Sculptures from the Old Empire,” murmured the duke as they passed through a wide doorway and into a second airy gallery, lined on both sides with ancient statues. “You would not believe the cost of shipping them from Calcis.” Heroes, emperors, gods. Their missing noses, missing arms, scarred and pitted bodies gave them a look of wounded surprise. The forgotten winners of ten centuries ago, reduced to confused amputees. Where am I? And for pity’s sake, where are my arms?
“I have been wondering what to do,” said Salier suddenly, “and would value your opinion, General Murcatto. You are renowned across Styria and beyond for your ruthlessness, single-mindedness and commitment. Decisiveness has never been my greatest talent. I am too prone to think on what is lost by a certain course of action. To look with longing at all those doors that will be closed, rather than the possibilities presented by the one that I must open.”
“A weakness in a soldier,” said Monza.
“I know it. I am a weak man, perhaps, and a poor soldier. I have relied on good intentions, fair words and righteous causes, and it seems I and my people now will pay for it.” Or for that and his avarice, betrayals and endless warmongering, at least. Salier examined a sculpture of a muscular boatman. Death poling souls to hell, perhaps. “I could flee the city, by small boat in the hours of darkness. Down the river and away, to throw myself upon the mercy of my ally Grand Duke Rogont.”
“A brief sanctuary,” grunted Monza. “Rogont will be next.”
“True. And a man of my considerable dimensions, fleeing? Terribly undignified. Perhaps I could surrender myself to your good friend General Ganmark?”
“You know what would follow.”
Salier’s soft face turned suddenly hard. “Perhaps Ganmark is not so utterly bereft of mercy as some of Orso’s other dogs have been?” Then he seemed to sink back down, face settling into the roll of fat under his chin. “But I daresay you are right.” He peered significantly sideways at a statue that had lost its head some time during the last few centuries. “My fat head on a spike would be the best that I could hope for. Just like good Duke Cantain and his sons, eh, General Murcatto?”
She looked evenly back at him. “Just like Cantain and his sons.” Heads on spikes, Cosca reflected, were still as fashionable as ever.
Around a corner and into another hall, still longer than the first, walls crowded with canvases. Salier clapped his hands. “Here hang the Styrians! Greatest of our countrymen! Long after we are dead and forgotten, their legacy will endure.” He paused before a scene of a bustling marketplace. “Perhaps I could bargain with Orso? Curry favour by delivering to him a mortal enemy? The woman who murdered his eldest son and heir, perhaps?”
Monza did not flinch. She never had been the flinching kind. “The best of luck.”
“Bah. Luck has deserted Visserine. Orso would never negotiate, even if I could give him back his son alive, and you have put well and truly paid to that possibility. We are left with suicide.” He gestured at a huge, dark- framed effort, a half-naked soldier offering his sword to his defeated general. Presumably so they could make the last sacrifice that honour demanded. That was where honour got a man. “To plunge the mighty blade into my bared breast, as did the fallen heroes of yesteryear!”
The next canvas featured a smirking wine merchant leaning on a barrel and holding a glass up to the light. Oh, a drink, a drink, a drink. “Or poison? Deadly powders in the wine? Scorpion in the bedsheets? Asp down one’s undergarments?” Salier grinned round at them. “No? Hang myself? I understand men often spend, when they are hanged.” And he flapped his hands away from his groin in demonstration, as though they had been in any doubt as to his meaning. “Sounds like more fun than poison, anyway.” The duke sighed and stared glumly at a painting of a woman surprised while bathing. “Let us not pretend I have the courage for such exploits. Suicide, that is, not spending. That I still manage once a day, in spite of my size. Do you still manage it, Cosca?”
“Like a fucking fountain,” he drawled, not to be outdone in vulgarity.
“But what to do?” mused Salier. “What to-”
Monza stepped in front of him. “Help me kill Ganmark.” Cosca felt his brows go up. Even beaten, bruised and with the enemy at the gates, she could not wait to draw the knives again. Ruthlessness, single-mindedness and commitment indeed.
“And why ever would I wish to do that?”
“Because he’ll be coming for your collection.” She had always had a knack for tickling people where they were most ticklish. Cosca had seen her do it often. To him, among others. “Coming to box up all your paintings, and your sculptures, and your jars, and ship them back to Fontezarmo to adorn Orso’s latrines.” A nice touch, his latrines. “Ganmark is a connoisseur, like yourself.”
“That Union cocksucker is nothing like me!” Anger suddenly flared red across the back of Salier’s neck. “A common thief and braggart, a degenerate man-fucker, tramping blood across the sweet soil of Styria as though its mud were not fit for his boots! He can have my life, but he’ll never have my paintings! I will see to it!”
“I can see to it,” hissed Monza, stepping closer to the duke. “He’ll come here, when the city falls. He’ll rush here, keen to secure your collection. We can be waiting, dressed as his soldiers. When he enters,” she snapped her fingers, “we drop your portcullis, and we have him! You have him! Help me.”
But the moment had passed. Salier’s veneer of heavy-lidded carelessness had descended again. “These are my two favourites, I do believe,” gesturing, all nonchalance, towards two matching canvases. “Parteo Gavra’s studies of the woman. They were intended always as a pair. His mother, and his favourite whore.”
“Mothers and whores,” sneered Monza. “A curse on fucking artists. We were talking of Ganmark. Help me!”
Salier blew out a tired sigh. “Ah, Monzcarro, Monzcarro. If only you had sought my help five seasons ago, before Sweet Pines. Before Caprile. Even last spring, before you spiked Cantain’s head above his gate. Even then, the good we could have done, the blows we could have struck together for freedom. Even-”
“Forgive me if I’m blunt, your Excellency, but I spent the night being beaten like a sack of meat.” Monza’s voice cracked slightly on the last word. “You ask for my opinion. You’ve lost because you’re too weak, too soft and too slow, not because you’re too good. You fought alongside Orso happily enough when you shared the same goals, and smiled happily enough at his methods, as long as they brought you more land. Your men spread fire, rape and murder when it suited you. No love of freedom then. The only open hand the farmers of Puranti had from you back in those days was the one that crushed them flat. Play the martyr if you must, Salier, but not with me. I feel sick enough already.”
Cosca felt himself wincing. There was such a thing as too much truth, especially in the ears of powerful men.
The duke’s eyes narrowed. “Blunt, you say? If you spoke to Orso in such a manner it is small wonder he threw you down a mountain. I almost wish I had a long drop handy. Tell me, since candour seems the fashion, what did you do to anger Orso so? I thought he loved you like a daughter? Far more than his own children, not that any of those three ever were so very lovable-fox, shrew and mouse.”
Her bruised cheek twitched. “I became too popular with his people.”
“Yes. And?”
“He was afraid I might steal his throne.”
“Indeed? And I suppose your eyes were never turned upon it?”
“Only to keep him in it.”
“Truly?” Salier grinned sideways at Cosca. “It would hardly have been the first chair your loyal claws tore
