Vitari prowled slowly around the chair, leaning down to hiss in her ear. "You're looking well. Always did know how to land on your feet. Quite the tumble, though, isn't it? From head of the Guild of Spicers to Prince Ario's whore?"
Eider didn't even flinch. "It's a living. What do you want?"
"Just to talk." Vitari's voice purred low and husky as a lover's. "Unless we don't get the answers we want. Then I'll have to hurt you."
"No doubt you'll enjoy that."
"It's a living." She punched Ario's mistress suddenly in the ribs, hard enough to twist her in the chair. She doubled up, gasping, and Vitari leaned over her, bringing her fist up again. "Another?"
"No!" Eider held her hand up, teeth bared, eyes flickering round the room then back to Vitari. "No… ah… I'll be helpful. Just… just tell me what you need to know."
"Why are you down here, ahead of your lover?"
"To make arrangements for the ball. Costumes, masks, all kinds of—"
Vitari's fist thumped into her side in just the same spot, harder than the first time, the sharp thud echoing off the damp walls. Eider whimpered, arms wrapped around herself, took a shuddering breath then coughed it out, face twisted with pain. Vitari leaned down over her like a black spider over a bound-up fly. "I'm losing patience. Why are you here?"
"Ario's putting on… another kind of celebration… afterwards. For his brother. For his brother's birthday."
"What kind of celebration?"
"The kind for which Sipani is famous." Eider coughed again, turned her head and spat, a few wet specks settling across the shoulder of her beautiful coat.
"Where?"
"At Cardotti's House of Leisure. He's hired the whole place for the night. For him, and for Foscar, and for their gentlemen. He sent me here to make the arrangements."
"He sent his mistress to hire whores?"
Monza snorted. "Sounds like Ario. What arrangements?"
"To find entertainers. To make the place ready. To make sure it's safe. He… trusts me."
"More fool him." Vitari chuckled. "I wonder what he'd do if he knew who you really worked for, eh? Who you really spy for? Our mutual friend at the House of Questions? Our crippled friend from his Majesty's Inquisition? Keeping an eye on Styrian business for the Union, eh? You must have trouble remembering who you're supposed to betray from week to week."
Eider glowered back at her, arms still folded around her battered ribs. "It's a living."
"A dying, if Ario learns the truth. One little note is all it would take."
"What do you want?"
Monza stepped from the shadows. "I want you to help us get close to Ario, and to Foscar. I want you to let us into Cardotti's House of Leisure on the night of this celebration of yours. When it comes to arranging the entertainments, I want you to hire who we say, when we say, how we say. Do you understand?"
Eider's face was very pale. "You mean to kill them?" No one spoke, but the silence said plenty. "Orso will guess I betrayed him! The Cripple will know I betrayed him! There aren't two worse enemies in the Circle of the World! You might as well kill me now!"
"Alright." The blade of the Calvez rang gently as she drew it. Eider's eyes went wide.
"Wait—"
Monza reached out, resting the glinting point of the sword in the hollow between Eider's collarbones, and gently pushed. Ario's mistress arched back over the chair, hands opening and closing helplessly.
"Ah! Ah!" Monza twisted her wrist, steel flashing as the slender blade tilted one way and the other, the point grinding, digging, screwing ever so slowly into Eider's neck. A line of dark blood trickled from the wound it made and crept down her breastbone. Her squealing grew more shrill, more urgent, more terrified. "No! Ah! Please! No!"
"No?" Monza held her there, pinned over the back of the chair. "Not quite ready to die after all? Not many of us are, when it comes to the moment." She slid the Calvez free and Eider rocked forwards, touching one trembling fingertip to her bloody neck, breath coming in ragged gasps.
"You don't understand. It isn't just Orso! It isn't just the Union! They're both backed by the bank. By Valint and Balk. Owned by the bank. The Years of Blood are no more than a sideshow to them. A skirmish. You've no idea whose garden you're pissing in—"
"Wrong." Monza leaned down and made Eider shrink back. "I don't care. There's a difference."
"Now?" asked Day.
"Now."
The girl's hand darted out and pricked Eider's ear with a glinting needle. "Ah!"
Day yawned as she slipped the splinter of metal into an inside pocket. "Don't worry, it's slow-working. You've got at least a week."
"Until what?"
"Until you get sick." Day took a bite out of her plum and juice ran down her chin. "Bloody hell," she muttered, catching it with a fingertip.
"Sick?" breathed Eider.
"Really, really sick. A day after that you'll be deader than Juvens."
"Help us, you get the antidote, and at least the chance to run." Monza rubbed the blood from the point of Benna's sword with gloved thumb and forefinger. "Try and tell anyone what we're planning, here or in the Union, Orso, or Ario, or your friend the Cripple, and…" She slid the blade back into its sheath and slapped the hilt home with a sharp snap. "One way or another, Ario will be short one mistress."
Eider stared round at them, one hand still pressed to her neck. "You evil bitches."
Day gave the plum pit a final suck then tossed it away. "It's a living."
"We're done." Vitari dragged Ario's mistress to her feet by one elbow and started marching her towards the door.
Monza stepped in front of them. "What will you be telling your battered manservant, when he comes round?"
"That… we were robbed?"
Monza held out her gloved hand. Eider's face fell even further. She unclasped her necklace and dropped it into Monza's palm, then followed it with her rings. "Convincing enough?"
"I don't know. You seem like the kind of woman to put up a struggle." Monza punched her in the face. She squawked, stumbled, would've fallen if Vitari hadn't caught her. She looked up, blood leaking from her nose and her split lip, and for an instant she had this strange expression. Hurt, yes. Afraid, of course. But more angry than either one. Like the look Monza had herself, maybe, when they threw her from the balcony.
"Now we're done," she said.
Vitari yanked at Eider's elbow and dragged her out into the hallway, towards the front door, their footsteps scraping against the grubby boards. Day gave a sigh, then pushed herself away from the wall and brushed plaster-dust from her backside. "Nice and neat."
"No thanks to your master. Where is he?"
"I prefer employer, and he said there were some errands he had to run."
"Errands?"
"That a problem?"
"I paid for the master, not the dog."
Day grinned. "Woof, woof. There's nothing Morveer can do that I can't."
"That so?"
"He's getting old. Arrogant. That rope burning through was nearly the death of him, in Westport. I wouldn't want any carelessness like that to interfere with your business. Not for what you're paying. No one worse to have next to you than a careless poisoner."
"You'll get no argument from me on that score."
Day shrugged. "Accidents happen all the time in our line of work. Especially to the old. It's a young person's trade, really." She sauntered out into the corridor, passed Vitari stalking back the other way. The look of glee was long gone from her sharp face, and the swagger with it. She lifted one black boot and shoved the chair angrily away into one corner.
"There's our way in, then," she said.
"Seems so."
"Just what I promised you."
"Just what you promised."
"Ario and Foscar, both together, and a way to get to them."