hit the ceiling, roaring as he swung the big lump of metal. It hit its previous owner in the forehead with a meaty crunch, stove his skull in, spattered the ceiling with spots of blood.
He heard a scream behind, twisted round. The woman sprang through the door, a short blade in each hand. Monza’s kicking leg tripped her as she struggled out from under the dying swordsman. Happy chance, the woman’s scream switching from fury to shock as she blundered into Shivers’ arms, fumbling one of her knives. He grabbed her other wrist as he went down under her, on top of the maceman’s corpse, his head smacking against the side of the fireplace and leaving him blinded for a moment.
He kept his grip on her wrist, felt her nails tearing at his bandages. They growled stupidly at each other, her hair hanging down and tickling at him, tongue stuck between her teeth with the effort as she tried to push the blade into his neck with all her weight. Her breath smelled of lemons. He wrenched himself round and punched her under the jaw, snapped her head up, teeth sinking deep into her tongue.
Same moment the sword hacked clumsily into her arm, the point almost catching Shivers’ shoulder, making him jerk back. Monza’s white face behind her, eyes hardly focused. The woman howled, tried to drag herself free. Another fumbling sword blow caught the top of her head with the flat and knocked her sideways. Monza floundered into the wall, tripped over the bed, almost stabbing herself as the sword clattered from her hand. Shivers twisted the blade from the woman’s limp grip and stabbed her under the jaw right to the hilt, blood spraying out across Monza’s shirt and up the wall.
He kicked himself free of the tangle of limbs, scrabbling up the mace, pulling his knife from the dead swordsman’s back and pushing it into his belt, stumbling for the door. The corridor outside was empty. He grabbed Monza’s wrist and dragged her up. She was staring down at herself, soaked with the woman’s blood.
“Wha… wha…”
He pulled her limp arm over his shoulder and hauled her through the door, bundled her down the stairs, her boots clattering against the treads. Out through the open back door into sunlight. She tottered a step and blew thin vomit down the wall. Groaned and heaved again. He pushed the haft of the mace up his sleeve, the bloody head in his fist, ready to let it drop if he needed to. He realised he was sniggering again as he did it. Couldn’t see why. Still nothing funny. Quite the opposite, far as he could tell. Still laughing, though.
Monza took a drunken step or two, bent almost double. “I got stop smoking,” she muttered, spitting bile.
“’Course. Just as soon as my eye grows back.” He grabbed her elbow, pulled her after him towards the end of the alley, folk moving in the sunlit street. He paused at the corner, took a quick look both ways, then dragged her arm around his shoulder again, and away.
A side from the three corpses, the room was empty. Shenkt padded to the window, stepping carefully around the slick of blood across the boards, and peered out. Of Murcatto and the one-eyed Northman there was no sign. But it was better they should escape than someone else should find them before he did. That he would not allow. When Shenkt took on a job, he always saw it through.
He squatted down, forearms resting on his knees, hands dangling. He had hardly made a worse mess of Malt and his seven friends than Murcatto and her Northman had of these three. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, the bed, all spattered and smeared with red. One man lay by the fireplace, his skull roundly pulped. The other was face down, the back of his shirt ripped with stab-wounds, soaked through with blood. The woman had a yawning gash in her neck.
Lucky Nim, he presumed. It seemed her luck had deserted her.
“Just Nim, then.”
Something gleamed in the corner, by the wall. He stooped and picked it up, held it to the light. A golden ring with a large, blood-red ruby. Far too fine a ring for any of these scum to wear. Murcatto’s ring, even? Still warm from her finger? He slid it onto his own, then took hold of Nim’s ankle and dragged her corpse up onto the bed, humming to himself as he stripped it bare.
Her right leg had a patch of scaly rash across the thigh, so he took the left instead, cut it free, buttock and all, with three practised movements of his butcher’s sickle. He popped the bone from the hip joint with a sharp twist of his wrists, took the foot off with two jerks of the curved blade, wrapped her belt around the neatly butchered leg to hold it folded and slid it into his bag.
A rump steak, then, thick-cut and pan-fried. He always carried a special mix of Suljuk four-spice with him, crushed to his taste, and the oil native to the region around Puranti had a wonderful nutty flavour. Then salt, and crushed pepper. Good meat was all in the seasoning. Pink in the centre, but not bloody. Shenkt had never been able to understand people who liked their meat bloody, the notion disgusted him. Onions sizzling alongside. Perhaps then dice the shank and make stew, with roots and mushrooms, a broth from the bones, a dash of that old Muris vinegar to give it…
“Zing.”
He nodded to himself, carefully wiped the sickle clean, shouldered the bag, turned for the door and… stopped.
He had passed a baker’s earlier, and thought what fine, crusty, new-baked loaves they had in the window. The smell of fresh bread. That glorious scent of honesty and simple goodness. He would very much have liked to be a baker, had he not been… what he was. Had he never been brought before his old master. Had he never followed the path laid out for him, and had he never rebelled against it. How well that bread would be, he now thought, sliced and thickly smeared with a coarse pate. Perhaps with a quince jelly, or some such, and a good glass of wine. He drew his knife again and went in through Lucky Nim’s back for her liver.
After all, it was no use to her now.
Heroic Efforts, New Beginnings
The rain stopped, and the sun came out over the farmland, a faint rainbow stretching down from the grey heavens. Monza wondered if there was an elf-glade where it touched the ground, the way her father used to tell her. Or if there was just shit, like everywhere else. She leaned from her saddle and spat into the wheat.
Elf shit, maybe.
She pushed her wet hood back and scowled to the west, watching the showers roll off towards Puranti. If there was any justice they’d dump a deluge on Faithful Carpi and the Thousand Swords, their outriders probably no more than a day’s ride behind. But there was no justice, and Monza knew it. The clouds pissed where they pleased.
The damp winter wheat was spattered with patches of red flowers, like smears of blood across the tawny country. It would be ready to harvest soon, except there’d be no one here to do the reaping. Rogont was doing what he was best at-pulling back, and the farmers were taking everything they could carry and pulling back with him towards Ospria. They knew the Thousand Swords were coming, and knew better than to be there when they did. There were no more infamous foragers in the world than the men Monza used to lead.
Forage, Farans wrote, is robbery so vast that it transcends mere crime, and enters the arena of politics.
She’d lost Benna’s ring. She kept fussing at her middle finger with her thumb, endlessly disappointed to find it wasn’t there. A pretty piece of rock hadn’t changed the fact Benna was dead. But still it felt as if she’d lost some last little part of him she’d managed to cling on to. One of the last little parts of herself worth keeping.
She was lucky a ring was all she’d lost back in Puranti, though. She’d been careless, and it had nearly been the end of her. She had to stop smoking. Make a new beginning. Had to, and yet she was smoking more than ever. Each time she woke from sweet oblivion she told herself it would have to be the last, but a few hours later and she’d be sweating desperation from every pore. Waves of sick need, like an incoming tide, each one higher than the last. Each one resisted took a heroic effort, and Monza was no hero, however the people of Talins might once have cheered for her. She’d thrown her pipe away, then in a sticky panic bought another. She wasn’t sure how many times she’d hidden the dwindling lump of husk down at the bottom of one bag or another. But she’d found there’s a
