Nothing could be seen that might spoil the perfection of Duke Rogont’s moment of history. No sword, certainly, and she missed the weight of it like a missing limb. She wondered when was the last time she’d stepped out without a blade in easy reach. Not in the meeting of the Council of Talins she’d attended the day after being lifted to her new station.

Old Rubine had suggested she had no need to wear a sword in the chamber. She replied she’d worn one every day for twenty years. He’d politely pointed out that neither he nor his colleagues carried arms, though they were all men and hence better suited. She asked him what she’d use to stab him with if she left her sword behind. No one was sure whether she was joking or not. But they didn’t ask again.

“Your Excellency.” One of the attendants had oozed over and now offered her a silky bow. “Your Grace,” and another to Countess Cotarda. “We are about to begin.”

“Good,” snapped Monza. She faced the double doors, shifted her shoulders back and her chin up. “Let’s get this fucking pantomime over with.”

She had no time to spare. Every waking moment of the last three weeks—and she’d scarcely slept since Rogont jammed the circlet on her head—she’d spent struggling to drag the state of Talins out of the cesspit she’d fought so hard to shove it into.

Keeping in mind Bialoveld’s maxim—any successful state is supported by pillars of steel and gold—she’d dug out every cringing bureaucrat she could find who wasn’t besieged in Fontezarmo along with their old master. There’d been discussions about the Talinese army. There wasn’t one. Discussions about the treasury. It was empty. The system of taxation, the maintenance of public works, the preservation of security, the administration of justice, all dissolved like cake in a stream. Rogont’s presence, or that of his soldiers anyway, was all that was keeping Talins from anarchy.

But Monza had never been put off by a wind in the wrong direction. She’d always had a knack for reckoning a man’s qualities, and picking the right one for a given job. Old Rubine was pompous as a prophet, so she made him high magistrate. Grulo and Scavier were the two most ruthless merchants in the city. She didn’t trust either, so she made them joint chancellors, and set each one to dream up new taxes, compete in their collection while keeping one jealous eye on the other.

Already they were wringing money from their unhappy colleagues, and already Monza had spent it on arms.

Three long days into her unpromising rule, an old sergeant called Volfier had arrived in the city, a man almost laughably hardbitten, and nearly as scarred as she was. Refusing to surrender, he’d led the twenty-three survivors of his regiment back from the rout at Ospria and all the way across Styria with arms and honour intact. She could always use a man that bloody-minded, and set him to rounding up every veteran in the city. Paying work was thin on the ground and he already had two companies of volunteers, their glorious charge to escort the tax collectors and make sure not a copper went missing.