Ario's one-time mistress paused in the doorway. "Some fucking chance of that!" And she was gone.
IV
VISSERINE
"War without fire is as worthless as sausages without mustard"
The Thousand Swords fought for Ospria against Muris. They fought for Muris against Sipani. They fought for Sipani against Muris, then for Ospria again. Between contracts, they sacked Oprile on a whim. A month later, judging they had perhaps not been thorough enough, they sacked it again, and left it in smouldering ruins. They fought for everyone against no one, and no one against everyone, and all the while they hardly did any fighting at all.
But robbery and plunder, arson and pillage, rape and extortion, yes.
Nicomo Cosca liked to surround himself with the curious that he might seem strange and romantic. A nineteen-year-old swordswoman inseparable from her younger brother seemed to qualify, so he kept them close. At first he found them interesting. Then he found them useful. Then he found them indispensable.
He and Monza would spar together in the cold mornings—the flicker and scrape of steel, the hiss and smoke of snatched breath. He was stronger, and she quicker, and so they were well matched. They would taunt each other, and spit at each other, and laugh. Men from the company would gather to watch them, laugh to see their captain bested by a girl half his age, often as not. Everyone laughed, except Benna. He was no swordsman.
He had a trick for numbers, though, and he took charge of the company's books, and then the buying of the stocks, and then the management and resale of the booty and the distribution of the proceeds. He made money for everyone, and had an easy manner, and soon was well loved.
Monza was a quick study. She learned what Stolicus wrote, and Verturio, and Bialoveld, and Farans. She learned all that Nicomo Cosca had to teach. She learned tactics and strategy, manoeuvre and logistics, how to read the ground and how to read an enemy. She learned by watching, then she learned by doing. She learned all the arts and all the sciences that were of use to the soldier.
"You have a devil in you," Cosca told her, when he was drunk, which was not rarely. She saved his life at Muris, then he saved hers. Everyone laughed, except Benna, again. He was no lifesaver.
Old Sazine died of an arrow, and the captains of the companies that made up the Thousand Swords voted Nicomo Cosca to the captain general's chair. Monza and Benna went with him. She carried Cosca's orders. Then she told him what his orders should be. Then she gave orders while he was passed out drunk and pretended they were his. Then she stopped pretending they were his, and no one minded because her orders were better than his would have been, even had he been sober.
As the months passed and turned to years, he was sober less and less. The only orders he gave were in the tavern. The only sparring he did was with a bottle. When the Thousand Swords had picked one part of the country clean and it came time to move on, Monza would search for him through the taverns, and the smoke-houses, and the brothels, and drag him back.
She hated to do it, and Benna hated to watch her do it, but Cosca had given them a home and they owed him, so she did it still. As they wended their way to camp in the dusk, him stumbling under the weight of drink, and her stumbling under the weight of him, he would whisper in her ear.
"Monza, Monza. What would I do without you?"
Vengeance, Then
General ganmark's highly polished cavalry boots click-clicked against the highly polished floor. The chamberlain's shoes squeak-squeaked along behind. The echoes of both snap-snapped from the glittering walls and around the great, hollow space, their hurry setting lazy dust motes swirling through bars of light. Shenkt's own soft work boots, scuffed and supple from long use, made no sound whatsoever.
"Upon entering the presence of his Excellency," the chamberlain's words frothed busily out, "you advance towards him, without undue speed, looking neither right nor left, your eyes tilted down towards the ground and at no point meeting those of his Excellency. You stop at the white line upon the carpet. Not before the line and under no circumstances beyond it but precisely at the line. You then kneel—"
"I do not kneel," said Shenkt.
The chamberlain's head rotated towards him like an affronted owl's. "Only the heads of state of foreign powers are excepted! Everyone must—"
"I do not kneel."
The chamberlain gasped with outrage, but Ganmark snapped over him. "For pity's sake! Duke Orso's son and heir has been murdered! His Excellency does not give a damn whether a man kneels if he can bring him vengeance. Kneel or not, as it suits you." Two white-liveried guardsmen lifted their crossed halberds to let them pass, and Ganmark shoved the double doors wide open.
The hall beyond was dauntingly cavernous, opulent, grand. Fit for the throne room of the most powerful man in Styria. But Shenkt had stood in greater rooms, before greater men, and had no awe left in him. A thin red carpet stretched away down the mosaic floor, a white line at its lonely end. A high dais rose beyond it, a dozen men in full armour standing guard in front. Upon the dais was a golden chair. Within the chair was Grand Duke Orso of Talins. He was dressed all in black, but his frown was blacker yet.
A strange and sinister selection of people, three score or more, of all races, sizes and shapes, knelt before Orso and his retinue in a wide arc. They carried no weapons now, but Shenkt guessed they usually carried many. He knew some few of them by sight. Killers. Assassins. Hunters of men. Persons in his profession, if the whitewasher could be said to be in the same profession as the master painter.
He advanced towards the dais, without undue speed, looking neither right nor left. He passed through the half-circle of assorted murderers and stopped precisely at the line. He watched General Ganmark stride past the guards and up the steps to the throne, lean to whisper in Orso's ear while the chamberlain took up a disapproving pose at his other elbow.
The grand duke stared at Shenkt for a long moment and Shenkt stared back, the hall cloaked all the while in that oppressive silence that only great spaces can produce. "So this is he. Why is he not kneeling?"
"He does not kneel, apparently," said Ganmark.
"Everyone else kneels. What makes you special?"
"Nothing," said Shenkt.
"But you do not kneel."
"I used to. Long ago. No more."
Orso's eyes narrowed. "And what if a man tried to make you?"
"Some have tried."
"And?"
"And I do not kneel."
"Stand, then. My son is dead."
"You have my sorrow."
"You do not sound sorrowful."
"He was not my son."
The chamberlain nearly choked on his tongue, but Orso's sunken eyes did not deviate. "You like to speak the truth, I see. Blunt counsel is a valuable thing to powerful men. You come to me with the highest recommendations."
Shenkt said nothing.
"That business in Keln. I understand that was your work. All of that, your work alone. It is said that the things that were left could hardly be called corpses."
Shenkt said nothing.
"You do not confirm it."
Shenkt stared into Duke Orso's face, and said nothing.
"You do not deny it, though."
More nothing.
"I like a tight-lipped man. A man who says little to his friends will say less than nothing to his enemies."