“Uh.” Monza couldn’t speak. Her skin was flushed and burning.
“Then I reckon we got work ahead of us.” Shivers didn’t seem to notice the rapidly spreading slick of blood creep between his toes, around the sides of his big bare feet. He dragged the sack up and peered inside. “Armour in here, then? Guess I’d better get dressed, eh, Chief? Hate to arrive at a party in the wrong clothes.”
The garden at the centre of Salier’s gallery showed no signs of imminent doom. Water trickled, leaves rustled, a bee or two floated lazily from one flower to another. White blossom occasionally filtered down from the cherry trees and dusted the well-shaved lawns.
Cosca sat cross-legged and worked the edge of his sword with a whetstone, metal softly ringing. Morveer’s flask pressed into his thigh, but he felt no need for it. Death was at the doorstep, and so he was at peace. His blissful moment before the storm. He tipped his head back, eyes closed, sun warm on his face, and wondered why he could never feel this way unless the world was burning down around him.
Calming breezes washed through the shadowy colonnades, through doorways into hallways lined with paintings. Through one open window Friendly could be seen, in the armour of a Talinese guardsman, counting every soldier in Nasurin’s colossal painting of the Second Battle of Oprile. Cosca grinned. He tried always to be forgiving of other men’s foibles. He had enough of his own, after all.
Perhaps a half-dozen of Salier’s guards had remained, disguised as soldiers from Duke Orso’s army. Men loyal enough to die beside their master at the last. He snorted as he ran the whetstone once more down the edge of his sword. Loyalty had always sat with honour, discipline and self-restraint on his list of incomprehensible virtues.
“Why so happy?” Day sat beside him on the grass, a flatbow across her knees, chewing at her lip. The uniform she wore must have come from some dead drummer-boy, it fit her well. Very well. Cosca wondered if it was wrong of him to find something peculiarly alluring about a pretty girl in a man’s clothes. He wondered furthermore if she might be persuaded to give a comrade-in-arms… a little help sharpening his weapon before the fighting started? He cleared his throat. Of course not. But a man could dream.
“Perhaps something is wrong in my head.” He rubbed a blemish from the steel with his thumb. “Getting out of bed.” Metal rang. “A day of honest work.” Whetstone scraped. “Peace. Normality. Sobriety.” He held the sword up to the light and watched the metal gleam. “These are the things that terrify me. Danger, by contrast, has long been my only relief. Eat something. You’ll need your strength.”
“I’ve no appetite,” she said glumly. “I’ve never faced certain death before.”
“Oh, come, come, don’t say such a thing.” He stood, brushed the blossom from the captain’s insignia on the sleeves of his stolen uniform. “If there is one thing I have learned in all my many last stands, it is that death is never certain, only… extremely likely.”
“Truly inspirational words.”
“I try. Indeed I do.” Cosca slapped his sword into its sheath, picked up Monza’s Calvez and ambled away towards the statue of The Warrior. His Excellency Duke Salier stood in its muscular shadow, arrayed for a noble death in a spotless white uniform festooned with gold braid.
“How did it end like this?” he was musing. The very same question Cosca had so often asked himself, while sucking the last drop from one cheap bottle or another. Waking baffled in one unfamiliar doorway, or another. Carrying out one hateful, poorly paid act of violence. Or another. “How did it end… like this?”
“You underestimated Orso’s venomous ambition and Murcatto’s ruthless competence. Don’t feel too badly, though, we’ve all done it.”
Salier’s eyes rolled sideways. “The question was intended to be rhetorical. But you are right, of course. It seems I have been guilty of arrogance, and the penalty will be harsh. No less than everything. But who could have expected a young woman would win one unlikely victory over us after another? How I laughed when you made her your second, Cosca. How we all laughed when Orso gave her command. We were already planning our triumphs, dividing his lands between us. Our chuckles are become sobs now, eh?”
“I find chuckles have a habit of doing so.”
“I suppose that makes her a very great soldier and me a very poor one. But then I never aspired to be a soldier, and would have been perfectly happy as merely a grand duke.”
“Now you are nothing, instead, and so am I. Such is life.”
“Time for one last performance, though.”
“For both of us.”
The duke grinned back. “A pair of dying swans, eh, Cosca?”
“A brace of old turkeys, maybe. Why aren’t you running, your Excellency?”
“I must confess I am wondering myself. Pride, I think. I have spent my life as the Grand Duke of Visserine, and insist on dying the same way. I refuse to be simply fat Master Salier, once of importance.”
“Pride, eh? Can’t say I ever had much of the stuff.”
“Then why aren’t you running, Cosca?”
“I suppose…” Why was he not running? Old Master Cosca, once of importance, who always kept his last thought for his own skin? Foolish love? Mad bravery? Old debts to pay? Or simply so that merciful death could spare him from further shame? “But look!” He pointed to the gate. “Only think of her and she appears.”
She wore a Talinese uniform, hair gathered up under a helmet, jaw set hard. Just like a serious young officer, clean-shaven this morning and keen to get stuck into the manly business of war. If Cosca had not known, he swore he would never have guessed. A tiny something in the way she walked, perhaps? In the set of her hips, the length of her neck? Again, the women in men’s clothes. Did they have to torture him so?
“Monza!” he called. “I was worried you might not make it!”
“And leave you to die gloriously alone?” Shivers came behind her wearing breastplate, greaves and helmet stolen from a big corpse out near the breach. Bandages stared accusingly from one blind eyehole. “From what I can hear, they’re at the palace gate already.”
“So soon?” Salier’s tongue darted over his plump lips. “Where is Captain Langrier?”
“She ran. Seems glory didn’t appeal.”
“Is there no loyalty left in Styria?”
“I never noticed any before.” Cosca tossed the Calvez over in its scabbard and Monza snatched it smartly from the air. “Unless you count each man for himself. Is there any plan, besides wait for Ganmark to come calling?”
“Day!” She pointed up to the narrower windows on the floor above. “I want you up there. Drop the portcullis once we’ve had a try at Ganmark. Or once he’s had a try at us.”
The girl looked greatly relieved to be put at least temporarily out of harm’s way, though Cosca feared it would be no more than temporary. “Once the trap’s sprung. Alright.” She hurried off towards one of the doorways.
“We wait here. When Ganmark arrives we tell him we’ve captured Grand Duke Salier. We bring your Excellency close, and then… you realise we may well all die today?”
The duke smiled weakly, jowls trembling. “I am not a fighter, General Murcatto, but nor am I a coward. If I am to die, I might as well spit from my grave.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” said Monza.
“Oh, nor me,” Cosca threw in. “Though a grave’s a grave, spit or no. You are quite sure he’ll come?”
“He’ll come.”
“And when he does?”
“Kill,” grunted Shivers. Someone had given him a shield and a heavy studded axe with a long pick on the reverse. Now he took a brutal-looking practice swipe with it.
Monza’s neck shifted as she swallowed. “I guess we just wait and see.”
“Ah, wait and see.” Cosca beamed. “My kind of plan.”
A crash came from somewhere in the palace, distant shouting, maybe even the faint clash and clatter of
