“Why the Fates chose you for saving I will never guess, but you should have thanked them kindly and slunk away into obscurity. Let us not pretend you and your brother did not deserve precisely what you received.”

“Fuck yourself! I didn’t deserve that!” But even as she said it, she had to wonder. “My brother didn’t!”

Ganmark snorted. “No one is quicker to forgive a handsome man than I, but your brother was a vindictive coward. A charming, greedy, ruthless, spineless parasite. A man of the very lowest character imaginable. The only thing that lifted him from utter worthlessness, and utter inconsequence, was you.” He sprang at her with lethal speed and she reeled away, fell against a cherry tree with a grunt and stumbled back through the shower of white blossom. He could surely have spitted her but he stayed still as a statue, sword at the ready, smiling faintly as he watched her thrash her way clear.

“And let us face the facts, General Murcatto. You, for all your undeniable talents, have hardly been a paragon of virtue. Why, there must be a hundred thousand people with just reasons to fling your hated carcass from that terrace!”

“Not Orso. Not him!” She came low, jabbing sloppily at his hips, wincing as he flicked her sword aside and jarred the grip in her twisted palm.

“If that’s a joke, it’s not a funny one. Quibble with the judge, when the sentence is self-evidently more than righteous?” He placed his feet with all the watchful care of an artist applying paint to a canvas, steering her back onto the cobbles. “How many deaths have you had a hand in? How much destruction? You are a bandit! A glorified profiteer! You are a maggot grown fat on the rotting corpse of Styria!” Three more blows, rapid as a sculptor’s hammer on his chisel, snapping her sword this way and that in her aching grip. “Did not deserve, you say to me, did not deserve? That excuse for a right hand is embarrassing enough. Pray do not shame yourself further.”

She made a tired, pained, clumsy lunge. He deflected it disdainfully, already stepping around her and letting her stumble past. She expected his sword in her back; instead she felt his boot thud into her arse and send her sprawling across the cobbles, Benna’s sword bouncing from her numb fingers one more time. She lay there a moment, panting for breath, then slowly rolled over, came up to her knees. There hardly seemed much point standing. She’d be back here soon enough, once he ran her through. Her right hand throbbed, trembled. The shoulder of her stolen uniform was dark with blood, the fingers of her left hand were dripping with it.

Ganmark flicked his wrist, whipped the head from a flower and into his waiting palm. He lifted it to his face and breathed in deep. “A beautiful day, and a good place to die. We should have finished you up at Fontezarmo, along with your brother. But now will do.”