“She ran. Seems glory didn’t appeal.”

“Is there no loyalty left in Styria?”

“I never noticed any before.” Cosca tossed the Calvez over in its scabbard and Monza snatched it smartly from the air. “Unless you count each man for himself. Is there any plan, besides wait for Ganmark to come calling?”

“Day!” She pointed up to the narrower windows on the floor above. “I want you up there. Drop the portcullis once we’ve had a try at Ganmark. Or once he’s had a try at us.”

The girl looked greatly relieved to be put at least temporarily out of harm’s way, though Cosca feared it would be no more than temporary. “Once the trap’s sprung. Alright.” She hurried off towards one of the doorways.

“We wait here. When Ganmark arrives we tell him we’ve captured Grand Duke Salier. We bring your Excellency close, and then… you realise we may well all die today?”

The duke smiled weakly, jowls trembling. “I am not a fighter, General Murcatto, but nor am I a coward. If I am to die, I might as well spit from my grave.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” said Monza.

“Oh, nor me,” Cosca threw in. “Though a grave’s a grave, spit or no. You are quite sure he’ll come?”

“He’ll come.”

“And when he does?”

“Kill,” grunted Shivers. Someone had given him a shield and a heavy studded axe with a long pick on the reverse. Now he took a brutal-looking practice swipe with it.

Monza’s neck shifted as she swallowed. “I guess we just wait and see.”

“Ah, wait and see.” Cosca beamed. “My kind of plan.”

A crash came from somewhere in the palace, distant shouting, maybe even the faint clash and clatter of steel. Monza worked her left hand nervously around the hilt of the Calvez, hanging drawn beside her leg.

“Did you hear that?” Salier’s soft face was pale as butter beside her. His guards, scattered about the garden fingering their borrowed weapons, looked hardly more enthusiastic. But that was the thing about facing death, as Benna had often pointed out. The closer it gets, the worse an idea it seems. Shivers didn’t look like he had any doubts. Hot iron had burned them out of him, maybe. Cosca neither, his happy grin widening with each moment. Friendly sat cross-legged, rolling his dice across the cobbles.

He looked up at her, face blank as ever. “Five and four.”

“That a good thing?”

He shrugged. “It’s nine.” Monza raised her brows. A strange group she’d gathered, surely, but when you have a half-mad plan you need men at least half-mad to see it through.

Sane ones might be tempted to look for a better idea.

Another crash, and a thin scream, closer this time. Ganmark’s soldiers, working their way through the palace towards the garden at its centre. Friendly threw his dice once more, then gathered them up and stood, sword in hand. Monza tried to stay still, eyes fixed on the open doorway ahead, the hall lined with paintings beyond it, beyond that the archway that led into the rest of the palace. The only way in.