"Shhh." Monza's hand clapped over his mouth. Footsteps snapped against the road above, shouted voices echoing back and forth. They shrank back together, pressing against the slimy stonework. "Shhh." Few hours ago he'd have given a lot to be pressed up against her like this. Somehow, right then, he didn't feel much in the way of romance, though.
"What happened?" she whispered.
Shivers couldn't even look at her. "I've no fucking idea."
What Happened
Nicomo cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, skulked in the shadows and watched the warehouse. All seemed quiet, shutters dark in their rotting frames. No vengeful mob, no clamour of guards. His instincts told him simply to walk off into the night, and pay no further mind to Monzcarro Murcatto and her mad quest for vengeance. But he needed her money, and his instincts had never been worth a runny shit. He shrank back into the doorway as a woman in a mask ran down the lane, skirts held up, giggling. A man chased after her. "Come back! Kiss me, you bitch!" Their footsteps clattered away.
Cosca strutted across the street as if he owned it, into the alley behind the warehouse, then plastered himself to the wall. He sidled up to the back door. He slid the sword from his cane with a faint ring of steel, blade coldly glittering in the night. The knob turned, the door crept open. He eased his way through into the darkness—
"Far enough." Metal kissed his neck. Cosca opened his hand and let the sword clatter to the boards.
"I am undone."
"Cosca, that you?" The blade came away. Vitari, pressed into the shadows behind the door.
"Shylo, you changed? I much preferred the clothes you had at Cardotti's. More… ladylike."
"Huh." She pushed past him and down the dark passageway. "That underwear, such as it was, was torture."
"I shall have to content myself with seeing it in my dreams."
"What happened at Cardotti's?"
"What happened?" Cosca bent over stiffly and fished his sword up between two fingers. "I believe the word ‘bloodbath' would fit the circumstances. Then it caught fire. I must confess… I made a quick exit." He was, in truth, disgusted with himself for having fled and saved his own worthless skin. But the decided habits of a whole life, especially a wasted life, were hard to change. "Why don't you tell me what happened?"
"The King of the Union happened."
"The what?" Cosca remembered the man in white, with the mask like the rising sun. The man who had not looked very much like Foscar. "Aaaaaah. That would explain all the guards."
"What about your entertainers?"
"Hugely expendable. None of them have shown their faces here?"
Vitari shook her head. "Not so far."
"Then, I would guess, they are largely, if not entirely, expended. So it always is with mercenaries. Easily hired, even more easily discharged and never missed once they are gone."
Friendly sat in the darkened kitchen, hunched over the table, rolling his dice gently in the light from a single lamp. A heavy and extremely threatening cleaver gleamed on the wood beside it.
Cosca came close, pointing to the dice. "Three and four, eh?"
"Three and four."
"Seven. A most ordinary score."
"Average."
"May I?"
Friendly looked sharply up at him. "Yes."
Cosca gathered the dice and gently rolled them back. "Six. You win."
"That's my problem."
"Really? Losing is mine. What happened? No trouble in the gaming hall?"
"Some."
There was a long streak of half-dried blood across the convict's neck, dark in the lamplight. "You've got something… just here," said Cosca.
Friendly wiped it off, looked down at his red-brown fingertips with all the emotion of an empty sink. "Blood."
"Yes. A lot of blood, tonight." Now Cosca was back to something approaching safety, the giddy rush of danger was starting to recede, and all the old regrets crowded in behind it. His hands were shaking again. A drink, a drink, a drink. He wandered through the doorway into the warehouse.
"Ah! The ringmaster for tonight's circus of murder!" Morveer leaned against the rail of the stairs, sneering down, Day not far behind, her dangling hands slowly peeling an orange.
"Our poisoners! I'm sorry to see you made it out alive. What happened?"
Morveer's lip curled still further. "Our allotted role was to remove the guards on the top floor of the building. That we accomplished with absolute speed and secrecy. We were not asked to remain in the building thereafter. Indeed we were ordered not to. Our employer does not entirely trust us. She was concerned that there be no indiscriminate slaughter."
Cosca shrugged. "Slaughter, by its very definition, would not appear to discriminate."
"Either way, your responsibility is over. I doubt anyone will object if you take this, now."
Morveer flicked his wrist and something sparkled in the darkness. Cosca snatched it from the air on an instinct. A metal flask, liquid sloshing inside. Just like the one he used to carry. The one he sold… where was it now? That sweet union of cold metal and strong liquor lapped at his memory, brought the spit flooding into his dry mouth. A drink, a drink, a drink—
He was halfway through unscrewing the cap before he stopped himself. "It would seem a sensible life lesson never to swallow gifts from poisoners."
"The only poison in there is the same kind you have been swallowing for years. The same kind you will never stop swallowing."
Cosca lifted the flask. "Cheers." He upended it and let the spirit inside spatter over the warehouse floor, then tossed it clattering away into a corner. He made sure he noted where it ended up, though, in case there was a trickle left inside. "No sign of our employer?" he called to Morveer. "Or her Northern puppy?"
"None. We should give some consideration to the possibility that there may never be any."
"He's right." Vitari was a black shape in the lamplit doorway to the kitchen. "Chances are good they're dead. What do we do then?"
Day looked at her fingernails. "I, for one, will weep a river."
Morveer had other plans. "We should have a scheme for dividing such money as Murcatto has here—"
"No," said Cosca, for some reason intensely irritated at the thought. "I say we wait."
"This place is not safe. One of the entertainers could have been captured by the authorities, could even now be divulging its location."
"Exciting, isn't it? I say we wait."
"Wait if you please, but I—"
Cosca whipped his knife out in one smooth motion. The blade whirred shining through the darkness and thumped, vibrating gently, into the wood no more than a foot or two from Morveer's face. "A little gift of my own."
The poisoner raised one eyebrow at it. "I do not appreciate drunks throwing knives at me. What if your aim had been off?"
Cosca grinned. "It was. We wait."
"For a man of notoriously fickle loyalties, I find your attachment to a woman who once betrayed you… perplexing."
"So do I. But I've always been an unpredictable bastard. Perhaps I'm changing my ways. Perhaps I've made a solemn vow to be sober, loyal and diligent in all my dealings from now on."
Vitari snorted. "That'll be the day."
"And how long do we wait?" demanded Morveer.
"I suppose you'll know when I say you can leave."
"And suppose… I choose… to leave before?"
"You're nothing like as clever as you think you are." Cosca held his eye. "But you're cleverer than that."
"Everyone be calm," snarled Vitari, in the most uncalming voice imaginable.
"I don't take orders from you, you pickled remnant!"