Monza frowned. “I don’t need to go.”

“Perhaps… some water, then? And afterwards—”

“I think I’ll stick to the pot.”

“Such a waste. The pot will not appreciate it.”

“Once it’s full you can do what you like with it, how’s that?”

“Ugh. Not at all the same thing.”

Monza slowly shook her head as she stepped off him. “A pretend grand duchess, pissing on a would-be king. You couldn’t make it up.”

Enough.” Shivers was covered with bruises, grazes, scratches. A bastard of a gash across his back, just where it was hardest to scratch. Now his cock was going soft they were all niggling at him again in the sticky heat, stripping his patience. He was sick of talking round and round it, when it was lying between ’em, plain as a rotting corpse in the bed. “You want Murcatto dead, you can out and say it.”

She paused, mouth half-open. “You’re surprisingly blunt.”

“No, I’m about as blunt as you’d expect for a one-eyed killer. Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why do you need her dead so bad? I’m an idiot, but not that big an idiot. I don’t reckon a woman like you is drawn to my pretty face. Nor my sense of humour neither. Maybe you want yourself some revenge for what we did to you in Sipani. Everyone likes revenge. But that’s just part of it.”

“No small part…” She let one fingertip trail slowly up his leg. “As far as being drawn to you, I was always more interested in honest men than pretty faces, but I wonder… can I trust you?”

“No. If you could I wouldn’t be much suited to the task, would I?” He caught hold of her trailing finger and twisted it towards him, dragged her wincing face close. “What’s in it for you?”

“Ah! There’s a man in the Union! The man I work for, the one who sent me to Styria in the first place, to spy on Orso!”

“The Cripple?” Vitari had said the name. The man who stood behind the King of the Union.

“Yes! Ah! Ah!” She squealed as he twisted her finger further, then he let it go and she snatched it back, holding it to her chest, bottom lip stuck out at him. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Maybe I enjoyed doing it. Go on.”

“When Murcatto made me betray Orso… she made me betray the Cripple too. Orso I can live with as an enemy, if I must—”

“But not this Cripple?”

She swallowed. “No. Not him.”

“A worse enemy than the great Duke Orso, eh?”

“Far worse. Murcatto is his price. She threatens to rip apart all his carefully woven plans to bring Talins into the Union. He wants her dead.” The smooth mask had slipped and she had this look, shoulders slumped, staring down wide-eyed at the sheet. Hungry, and sick, and very, very scared. Shivers liked seeing it. Might’ve been the first honest look he’d seen since he landed in Styria. “If I can find a way to kill her, I get my life,” she whispered.