The onlookers had stopped yelling obscenities, cooing and gasping instead, eyes locked hungrily on the fighters, caught between wanting to press forwards to see, and press back when the weapons were swung. They felt something on the air in the courtyard. Like the weight of the sky before a great storm. Genuine, murderous rage.
The band had more than got the trick of the battle music, the fiddle stabbing as Shivers slashed with the sword, drum booming whenever Greylock heaved his great club, adding significantly to the near-unbearable tension.
Quite clearly they were trying to kill each other, and Cosca had not the ghost of a notion how to stop them. He winced as the club crashed into Shivers' shield again and nearly knocked him off his feet. He glanced worriedly up towards the stained-glass windows high above the yard.
Something told him they were going to leave more than two corpses behind tonight.
The corpses of the two guards lay beside the door. One was sitting up, staring at the ceiling. The other lay on his face. They hardly looked dead. Just sleeping. Monza slapped her own face, tried to shake the husk out of her head. The door wobbled towards her and a hand in a black glove reached out and grabbed the knob. Damn it. She needed to do that. She stood there, swaying, waiting for the hand to let go.
"Oh." It was her hand. She turned it and the door came suddenly open. She fell through, almost pitched on her face. The room swam around her, walls flowing, melting, streaming waterfalls. Flames crackled, sparkling crystal in a fireplace. One window was open and music floated in, men shouting from down below. She could see the sounds, happy smears curling in around the glass, reaching across the changing space between, tickling at her ears.
Prince Ario lay on the bed, stark naked, body white on the rumpled cover, legs and arms spread out wide. His head turned towards her, the spray of feathers on his mask making long shadows creep across the glowing wall behind.
"More?" he murmured, taking a lazy swallow from a wine bottle.
"I hope we haven't… tired you out… already." Monza's own voice seemed to boom out of a faraway bucket as she padded towards the bed, a ship tossing on a choppy red sea of soft carpet.
"I daresay I can rise to the occasion," said Ario, fumbling with his cock. "You seem to have the advantage of me, though." He waved a finger at her. "Too many clothes."
"Uh." She shrugged the fur from her shoulders and it slithered to the floor.
"Gloves off." He swatted with his hand. "Don't care for them."
"Nor me." She pulled them off, tickling at her forearms. Ario was staring at her right hand. She held it up in front of her eyes, blinked at it. There was a long, pink scar down her forearm, the hand a blotchy claw, palm squashed, fingers twisted, little one sticking out stubbornly straight.
"Ah." She'd forgotten about that.
"A crippled hand." Ario wriggled eagerly down the bed towards her, his cock and the feathers sprouting from his head waggling from side to side with the movements of his hips. "How terribly… exotic."
"Isn't it?" The memory of Gobba's boot crunching down across it flashed through her mind and snatched her into the cold moment. She felt herself smile. "No need for this." She took hold of the feathers and plucked the mask from his head, tossed it away into the corner.
Ario grinned at her, pink marks around his eyes where the mask had sat. She felt the glow of the husk leaking from her mind as she stared into his face. She saw him stabbing her brother in the neck, heaving him off the terrace, complaining at being cut. And here he was, before her now. Orso's heir.
"How rude." He clambered up from the bed. "I must teach you a lesson."
"Or maybe I'll teach you one."
He came closer, so close that she could smell his sweat. "Bold, to bandy words with me. Very bold." He reached out and ran one finger up her arm. "Few women are as bold as that." Closer, and he slipped his other hand into the slit in her skirts, up her thigh, squeezing at her arse. "I almost feel as if I know you."
Monza took hold of the corner of her mask with her ruined right hand as Ario drew her closer still. "Know me?" She slid her other fist gently behind her back, found the grip of one of the knives. "Of course you know me."
She pulled her mask away. Ario's smile lingered for a moment longer as his eyes flickered over her face. Then they went staring wide.
"Somebody—!"
A hundred scales on this next throw!" Crescent Moon bellowed, holding the dice up high. The room grew quiet as people turned to watch.
"A hundred scales." It meant nothing to Friendly. None of it was his money, and money only interested him as far as counting it went. Losses and gains were exactly the same.
Crescent Moon rattled the dice in his hand. "Come on, you shits!" The man flung them recklessly across the table, bouncing and tumbling.
"Five and six."
"Hah!" Moon's friends whooped, chuckled, slapped him on the back as though he had achieved something fine by throwing one number instead of another.
The one with the mask like a ship threw his arms in the air. "Have that!"
The one with the fox mask made an obscene gesture.
The candles seemed to have grown uncomfortably bright. Too bright to count. The room was very hot, close, crowded. Friendly's shirt was sticking to him as he scooped up the dice and tossed them gently back. A few gasps round the table. "Five and six. House wins." People often forgot that any one score is just as likely as any other, even the same score. So it was not entirely a shock that Crescent Moon lost his sense of perspective.
"You cheating bastard!"
Friendly frowned. In Safety he would have cut a man who spoke to him like that. He would have had to, so that others would have known not to try. He would have started cutting him and not stopped. But they were not in Safety now, they were outside. Control, he had been told. He made himself forget the warm handle of his cleaver, pressing into his side. Control. He only shrugged. "Five and six. The dice don't lie."
Crescent Moon grabbed hold of Friendly's wrist as he began to sweep up the counters. He leaned forwards and poked him in the chest with a drunken finger. "I think your dice are loaded."
Friendly felt his face go slack, the breath hardly moving in his throat, it had constricted so painfully tight. He could feel every drop of sweat tickling at his forehead, at his back, at his scalp. A calm, cold, utterly unbearable rage seared through every part of him. "You think my dice are what?" he could barely whisper.
Poke, poke, poke. "Your dice are liars."
"My dice… are what?" Friendly's cleaver split the crescent mask in half and the skull underneath it wide open. His knife stabbed the man with the ship over his face through his gaping mouth and the point emerged from the back of his head. Friendly stabbed him again, and again, squelch, squelch, the grip of the blade turning slippery. A woman gave a long, shrill scream.
Friendly was vaguely aware that everyone in the hall was gaping at him, four times three times four of them, or more, or less. He flung the dice table over, sending glasses, counters, coins flying. The man with the fox mask was staring, eyes wide inside the eyeholes, spatters of dark brains across his pale cheek.
Friendly leaned forwards into his face. "Apologise!" he roared at the very top of his lungs. "Apologise to my fucking dice!"
Somebody—!"
Ario's cry turned to a breathy wheeze of an in-breath. He stared down, and she did too. Her knife had gone in the hollow where his thigh met his body, just beside his wilting cock, and was buried in him to the grip, blood running out all over her fist. For the shortest moment he gave a hideous, high-pitched shriek, then the point of Monza's other knife punched in under his ear and slid out of the far side of his neck.