“Who knows what goes through that scabby head?”

The mercenary strode towards the guards quite as if it was his palace rather than Duke Salier’s, waving one arm. Morveer could just hear his voice in between the sighing of the wind, but had not the slightest notion of the words. “What are they saying?”

“You can’t read lips?” Vitari muttered.

“No.”

“Nice to find there’s one subject you’re not the world’s greatest expert on. The guards are challenging him.”

“Of course!” That much was clear from the halberds lowered at Cosca’s chest. The old mercenary swept off his hat and bowed low.

“He is replying… my name is Nicomo Cosca… famed soldier of fortune… and I am here…” She lowered the eyeglass, frowning.

“Yes?”

Vitari’s eyes slid towards him. “And I am here for dinner.”

Darkness

Utter dark. Monza opened her eyes wide, squinted and stared, and saw nothing but fizzing, tingling blackness. She wouldn’t have been able to see her hand before her face. But she couldn’t move her hand there anyway, or anywhere else.

They’d chained her to the ceiling by her wrists, to the floor by her ankles. If she hung limp, her feet just brushed the clammy stones. If she stretched up on tiptoe, she could ease the throbbing ache through her arms, through her ribs, through her sides, a merciful fraction. Soon her calves would start to burn, though, worse and worse until she had to ease back down, teeth gritted, and swing by her skinned wrists. It was agonising, humiliating, terrifying, but the worst of it was, she knew—this was as good as things were going to get.

She wasn’t sure where Day was. Probably she’d blinked those big eyes, shed a single fat tear and said she knew nothing, and they’d believed her. She had the sort of face that people believed. Monza never had that sort of face. But then she probably didn’t deserve one. Shivers was struggling somewhere in the inky black, metal clinking as he twisted at his chains, cursing in Northern, then Styrian. “Fucking Styria. Fucking Vossula. Shit. Shit.”

“Stop!” she hissed at him. “Might as well… I don’t know… keep your strength.”

“Strength going to help us, you reckon?”

She swallowed. “Couldn’t hurt.” Couldn’t help. Nothing could.

“By the dead, but I need to piss.”

“Piss, then,” she snapped into the darkness. “What’s the difference?”

A grunt. The sound of liquid spattering against stone. She might’ve joined him if her bladder hadn’t been knotted up tight with fear. She pushed up on her toes again, legs aching, wrists, arms, sides burning with every breath.

“You got a plan?” Shivers’ words sank away and died on the buried air.

“What fucking plan do you think I’d have? They think we’re spies in their city, working for the enemy. They’re sure of it! They’re going to try and get us to talk, and when we don’t have anything to say they want to hear, they’re going to fucking kill us!” An animal growl, more rattles. “You think they didn’t plan for you struggling?”