“Ah.” She’d forgotten about that.

“A crippled hand.” Ario wriggled eagerly down the bed towards her, his cock and the feathers sprouting from his head waggling from side to side with the movements of his hips. “How terribly… exotic.”

“Isn’t it?” The memory of Gobba’s boot crunching down across it flashed through her mind and snatched her into the cold moment. She felt herself smile. “No need for this.” She took hold of the feathers and plucked the mask from his head, tossed it away into the corner.

Ario grinned at her, pink marks around his eyes where the mask had sat. She felt the glow of the husk leaking from her mind as she stared into his face. She saw him stabbing her brother in the neck, heaving him off the terrace, complaining at being cut. And here he was, before her now. Orso’s heir.

“How rude.” He clambered up from the bed. “I must teach you a lesson.”

“Or maybe I’ll teach you one.”

He came closer, so close that she could smell his sweat. “Bold, to bandy words with me. Very bold.” He reached out and ran one finger up her arm. “Few women are as bold as that.” Closer, and he slipped his other hand into the slit in her skirts, up her thigh, squeezing at her arse. “I almost feel as if I know you.”

Monza took hold of the corner of her mask with her ruined right hand as Ario drew her closer still. “Know me?” She slid her other fist gently behind her back, found the grip of one of the knives. “Of course you know me.”

She pulled her mask away. Ario’s smile lingered for a moment longer as his eyes flickered over her face. Then they went staring wide.

“Somebody—!”

A hundred scales on this next throw!” Crescent Moon bellowed, holding the dice up high. The room grew quiet as people turned to watch.

“A hundred scales.” It meant nothing to Friendly. None of it was his money, and money only interested him as far as counting it went. Losses and gains were exactly the same.

Crescent Moon rattled the dice in his hand. “Come on, you shits!” The man flung them recklessly across the table, bouncing and tumbling.

“Five and six.”

“Hah!” Moon’s friends whooped, chuckled, slapped him on the back as though he had achieved something fine by throwing one number instead of another.

The one with the mask like a ship threw his arms in the air. “Have that!”

The one with the fox mask made an obscene gesture.

The candles seemed to have grown uncomfortably bright. Too bright to count. The room was very hot, close, crowded. Friendly’s shirt was sticking to him as he scooped up the dice and tossed them gently back. A few gasps round the table. “Five and six. House wins.” People often forgot that any one score is just as likely as any other, even the same score. So it was not entirely a shock that Crescent Moon lost his sense of perspective.