Monza could just hear Friendly’s whisper, “Eight… five… four… three…”

Those three followed now, glittering households trailing them like the wake behind three ducks. Junior partners in the League. Lirozio, the Duke of Puranti, defiant in elaborate armour and even more elaborate moustaches. The young Countess Cotarda of Affoia—a pasty girl whose pale yellow silks weren’t helping her complexion, her uncle and first advisor, some said her first lover, hovering close at her shoulder. Patine came last, First Citizen of Nicante—his hair left wild, dressed in sackcloth with a knotted rope for a belt, to show he was no better than the lowest peasant in his care. The rumour was he wore silken undergarments and slept on a golden bed, and with no shortage of company. So much for the humility of the powerful.

Cosca was already looking to the next chapter in the procession of greatness. “By the Fates. Who are these young gods?”

They were a magnificent pair, there was no denying that. They rode identical greys with effortless confidence, arrayed in matching white and gold. Her snowy gown clung to her impossibly tall and slender form and spread out behind her, fretted with glittering thread. His gilded breastplate was polished to a mirror-glare, simple crown set with a single stone so big Monza could almost see its facets glittering a hundred strides distant.

“How incredibly fucking regal,” she sneered.

“One can almost smell the majesty,” threw in Cosca. “I would kneel if I thought my knees could bear it.”

“His August Majesty, the High King of the Union.” Vitari’s voice was greasy with irony. “And his queen, of course.”

“Terez, the Jewel of Talins. She sparkles brightly, no?”

“Orso’s daughter,” Monza forced out through clenched teeth. “Ario and Foscar’s sister. Queen of the Union, and a royal cunt into the bargain.”

Even though he was a foreigner on Styrian soil, even though Union ambitions were treated with the greatest suspicion here, even though his wife was Orso’s daughter, the crowd found themselves cheering louder for a foreign king than they had for their own geriatric chancellor.

The people far prefer a leader who appears great, Bialoveld wrote, to one who is.

“Hardly the most neutral of mediators, you’d think.” Cosca puffed his cheeks out thoughtfully. “Bound so tight to Orso and his brood you can hardly see the light between them. Husband, and brother, and son-in-law to Talins?”

“No doubt he considers himself above such earthly considerations.” Monza’s lip curled as she watched the royal pair approach. It looked as if they’d ridden from the pages of a lurid storybook and out into the drab and slimy city by accident. Wings on their horses were all they needed to complete the fantasy. It was a wonder someone hadn’t glued some on. Terez wore a great necklace of huge stones, flashing so brilliantly in the sun they were painful to look at.

Vitari was shaking her head. “How many jewels can you pile on one woman?”

“Not many more without burying the bitch,” growled Monza. The ruby that Benna had given her seemed a child’s trinket by comparison.