Cosca clung to the big man’s arm while the misty street tipped around. “From that list, I have… experience?”

“I’ll take one of four, if he needs money too. You need money, don’t you, old man?”

“Shit, yes. But not as much as I need a drink.”

“Do the job right and we’ll see.”

“I accept.” He found he was standing tall, looking down at Monza now, chin held high. “We should have a Paper of Engagement, just like the old days. Written in swirly script, with all the accoutrements, the way Sajaam used to write them. Signed with red ink and… where can a man find a notary this time of night?”

“Don’t worry. I’ll take your word.”

“You must be the only person in Styria who would ever say that to me. But as you please.” He pointed decisively down the street. “This way, my man, and try to keep up.” He boldly stepped forwards, his leg buckled and he squawked as Friendly caught him.

“Not that way,” came the convict’s slow, deep voice. He slid one hand under Cosca’s arm and half-led him, half-carried him in the opposite direction.

“You are a gentleman, sir,” muttered Cosca.

“I am a murderer.”

“I see no reason why a man cannot be both…” Cosca strained to focus on Vitari, loping along up ahead, then at the side of Friendly’s heavy face. Strange companions. Outsiders. Those no one else would find a use for. He watched Monza walking, the purposeful stride he remembered from long ago turned slightly crooked. Those who were willing to cross Grand Duke Orso. And that meant madmen, or those with no choices. Which was he?

The answer was in easy reach. There was no reason a man could not be both.

Left Out

Friendly’s knife flashed and flickered, twenty strokes one way and twenty the other, grazing the whetstone with a sharpening kiss. There was little worse than a blunt knife and little better than a sharp one, so he smiled as he tested the edge and felt that cold roughness against his fingertip. The blade was keen.

“Cardotti’s House of Leisure is an old merchant’s palace,” Vitari was saying, voice chilly calm. “Wood-built, like most of Sipani, round three sides of a courtyard with the Eighth Canal right at its rear.”

They had set up a long table in the kitchen at the back of the warehouse, and the six of them sat about it now. Murcatto and Shivers, Day and Morveer, Cosca and Vitari. On the table stood a model of a large wooden building on three sides of a courtyard. Friendly judged that it was one thirty-sixth the size of the real Cardotti’s House of Leisure, though it was hard to be precise, and he liked very much to be precise.

Vitari’s fingertip trailed along the windows on one side of the tiny building. “There are kitchens and offices on the ground floor, a hall for husk and another for cards and dice.” Friendly pressed his hand to his shirt pocket and was comforted to feel his own dice nuzzling against his ribs. “Two staircases in the rear corners. On the first floor thirteen rooms where guests are entertained—”