“Shhh.” Monza’s hand clapped over his mouth. Footsteps snapped against the road above, shouted voices echoing back and forth. They shrank back together, pressing against the slimy stonework. “Shhh.” Few hours ago he’d have given a lot to be pressed up against her like this. Somehow, right then, he didn’t feel much in the way of romance, though.

“What happened?” she whispered.

Shivers couldn’t even look at her. “I’ve no fucking idea.”

What Happened

Nicomo Cosca, infamous soldier of fortune, skulked in the shadows and watched the warehouse. All seemed quiet, shutters dark in their rotting frames. No vengeful mob, no clamour of guards. His instincts told him simply to walk off into the night, and pay no further mind to Monzcarro Murcatto and her mad quest for vengeance. But he needed her money, and his instincts had never been worth a runny shit. He shrank back into the doorway as a woman in a mask ran down the lane, skirts held up, giggling. A man chased after her. “Come back! Kiss me, you bitch!” Their footsteps clattered away.

Cosca strutted across the street as if he owned it, into the alley behind the warehouse, then plastered himself to the wall. He sidled up to the back door. He slid the sword from his cane with a faint ring of steel, blade coldly glittering in the night. The knob turned, the door crept open. He eased his way through into the darkness—

“Far enough.” Metal kissed his neck. Cosca opened his hand and let the sword clatter to the boards.

“I am undone.”

“Cosca, that you?” The blade came away. Vitari, pressed into the shadows behind the door.

“Shylo, you changed? I much preferred the clothes you had at Cardotti’s. More… ladylike.”

“Huh.” She pushed past him and down the dark passageway. “That underwear, such as it was, was torture.”

“I shall have to content myself with seeing it in my dreams.”

“What happened at Cardotti’s?”

“What happened?” Cosca bent over stiffly and fished his sword up between two fingers. “I believe the word ‘bloodbath’ would fit the circumstances. Then it caught fire. I must confess… I made a quick exit.” He was, in truth, disgusted with himself for having fled and saved his own worthless skin. But the decided habits of a whole life, especially a wasted life, were hard to change. “Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

“The King of the Union happened.”

“The what?” Cosca remembered the man in white, with the mask like the rising sun. The man who had not looked very much like Foscar. “Aaaaaah. That would explain all the guards.”

“What about your entertainers?”

“Hugely expendable. None of them have shown their faces here?”

Vitari shook her head. “Not so far.”

“Then, I would guess, they are largely, if not entirely, expended. So it always is with mercenaries. Easily hired, even more easily discharged and never missed once they are gone.”

Friendly sat in the darkened kitchen, hunched over the table, rolling his dice gently in the light from a single lamp. A heavy and extremely threatening cleaver gleamed on the wood beside it.