Your Excellency! Your sons… are dead…

A sudden shriek split the silence. “Murderers! Scum! Orso’s bastards!” Some limbs flailed down in the crowd below, someone trying to break through the cordon of soldiers. “You’re a curse on Styria!” There was a swell of angry mutterings, a nervous ripple spread out through the onlookers. Sotorius might have called himself neutral, but the people of Sipani had no love for Orso or his brood. They knew when he broke the League of Eight, they’d be next. Some men always want more.

A couple of the mounted gentlemen drew steel. Metal gleamed at the edge of the crowd, there was a thin scream. Foscar was almost standing in the carriage, staring off into the heaving mass of people. Ario pulled him down and slouched back in his seat, careless eyes fixed on his fingernails.

The disturbance was finished. The carriage rattled off, gentlemen finding their formation again, soldiers in the livery of Talins tramping behind. The last of them passed under the roof of the warehouse, and off down the avenue.

“And the show is over,” sighed Cosca, pushing himself from the railing and making for the door that led to the stairs.

“I wish it could’ve gone on forever,” sneered Vitari as she turned away.

“One thousand eight hundred and twelve,” said Friendly.

Monza stared at him. “What?”

“People. In the parade.”

“And?”

“One hundred and five stones in the queen’s necklace.”

“Did I fucking ask?”

“No.” Friendly followed the others back to the stairs.

She stood there alone, frowning into the stiffening wind for a moment longer, glaring off up the avenue as the crowd began to disperse, her fist and her jaw still clenched aching tight.

“Monza.” Not alone. When she turned her head, Shivers was looking her in the eye, and from closer than she’d have liked. He spoke as if finding the words was hard work. “Seems like we haven’t… I don’t know. Since Westport… I just wanted to ask—”

“Best if you don’t.” She brushed past him and away.

Cooking up Trouble

Nicomo Cosca closed his eyes, licked his smiling lips, breathed in deep through his nose in anticipation and raised the bottle. A drink, a drink, a drink. The familiar promise of the tap of glass against his teeth, the cooling wetness on his tongue, the soothing movement of his throat as he swallowed… if only it hadn’t been water.

He had crept from his sweat-soaked bed and down to the kitchen in his clammy nightshirt to hunt for wine. Or any old piss that could make a man drunk. Something to make his dusty bedroom stop shaking like a carriage gone off the road, banish the ants he felt were crawling all over his skin, sponge away his pounding headache, whatever the costs. Shit on change, and Murcatto’s vengeance too.

He had hoped that everyone would be in bed, and squirmed with trembling frustration when he had seen Friendly at the stove, making porridge for breakfast. Now, though, he had to admit, he was strangely glad to have found the convict here. There was something almost magical about Friendly’s aura of calmness. He had the utter confidence to stay silent and simply not care what anyone thought. Enough to take Cosca a rare step towards calmness himself. Not silence, though. Indeed he had been talking, virtually uninterrupted, since the first light began to creep through the chinks in the shutters and turn to dawn.