“What the hell have you done?” she snarled at him. He was up on the cart, ripping back the canvas, a mad, eager look on his face. He fumbled open the lid of a box underneath, delved inside and let coins slowly drop with the jingling rattle of falling money.

Gold.

She hopped up beside him. More gold than she had ever seen at once. With a sickly widening of her eyes she realised there were more boxes. She pushed the canvas back with trembling hands. Many more.

“We’re rich!” squeaked Benna. “We’re rich!”

“We were already rich.” She was looking down at her knife stuck through Hermon’s eye, blood black in the lamplight. “Did you have to kill him?”

He stared at her as if she had gone mad. “Rob him and leave him alive? He would have told people we had the money. This way we’re safe.”

“Safe? This much gold is the opposite of safe, Benna!”

He frowned, as though he was hurt by her. “I thought you’d be pleased. You of all people, who slaved in the dirt for nothing.” As though he was disappointed in her. “This is for us. For us, do you understand?” As though he was disgusted with her. “Mercy and cowardice are the same, Monza! I thought you knew that.”

What could she do? Unstab Hermon’s face?

It seemed a little gold could cost a lot of blood.

His Plan of Attack

The southernmost range of the Urval Mountains, the spine of Styria, all shadowy swales and dramatic peaks bathed in golden evening light, marched boldly southwards, ending at the great rock into which Ospria itself was carved. Between the city and the hill on which the headquarters of the Thousand Swords had been pitched, the deep and verdant valley was patched with wild flowers in a hundred colours. The Sulva wound through its bottom and away towards the distant sea, touched by the setting sun and turned the orange of molten iron.

Birds twittered in the olive trees of an ancient grove, grasshoppers chirped in the waving long grass, the wind kissed at Cosca’s face and made the feather on his hat, held gently in one hand, heroically thrash and flutter. Vineyards were planted on the slopes to the north of the city, green rows of vines on the dusty hillsides that drew Cosca’s eye and made his mouth water with an almost painful longing. The best vintages in the Circle of the World were trampled out on that very ground…

“Sweet mercy, a drink,” he mouthed.

“Beautiful,” breathed Prince Foscar.

“You never before looked upon fair Ospria, your Highness?”

“I had heard stories, but…”

“Breathtaking, isn’t she?” The city was built upon four huge shelves cut into the cream-coloured rock of the steep hillside, each one surrounded by its own smooth wall, crammed with lofty buildings, stuffed with a tangle of roofs, domes, turrets. The ancient Imperial aqueduct curved gracefully down from the mountains to meet its outermost rampart, fifty arches or more, the tallest of them twenty times the height of a man. The citadel clung impossibly to the highest crag, four great towers picked out against the darkening azure sky. The lamps were being lit in the windows as the sun sank, the outline of the city dusted with pinprick points of light. “There can be no other place quite like this one.”