“Cards, then?”

“Why ever not?”

Cosca slapped his eyeglass closed and led the way back down the winding stair to the chamber he had taken for his own. He strode to the cabinet and snatched the inlaid doors open. The many-coloured bottles greeted him like a crowd of old friends. Ah, a drink, a drink, a drink. He took down a glass, pulled the cork from the nearest bottle with a gentle thwop.

“Drink, then?” he called over his shoulder.

“Why ever not?”

There was still fighting, but nothing you could call an organised defence. The mercenaries had swept the walls clean, driven the defenders out of the gardens and were even now breaking into the towers, into the buildings, into the palace. More of them boiled up the ladders every moment, desperate not to miss out on the plunder. No one fought harder or moved faster than the Thousand Swords when they could smell booty.

“This way.” She hurried towards the main gate of the palace, retracing the steps she’d taken the day they killed her brother, past the circular pool, two bodies floating face down in the shadow of Scarpius’ pillar. Shivers followed, that strange smile on his scarred face he’d been wearing all day. They passed an eager clump of men clustered around a doorway, eyes all shining with greed, a couple of them swinging axes at the lock, door wobbling with each blow. They scrambled over each other as it finally came open, screaming, shouting, elbowing to get past. Two of them wrestled each other to the ground, fighting over what they hadn’t even stolen yet.

Further on a pair of mercenaries had a servant in a gold-trimmed jacket sitting on the side of a fountain, his shocked face smeared with blood. One would slap him and scream, “Where’s the fucking money?” Then the other would do the same. Back and forth his head went. “Where’s the fucking money, where’s the fucking money, where’s the fucking money…”

A window burst open in a shower of torn lead and broken glass and an antique cabinet tumbled out onto the cobbles, scattering splinters. A whooping mercenary ran past, arms heaped with glinting material. Curtains, maybe. Monza heard a scream, whipped about, saw someone plummet from an upstairs window and headfirst into the garden, drop bonelessly over. She heard shrieking from somewhere. Sounded like a woman’s voice, but it was hard to tell when it was that desperate. There was shouting, screaming, laughing everywhere. She swallowed her sickness, tried not to think that she’d made this happen. That this was where her vengeance had led. All she could do was keep her eyes ahead, hope to find Orso first.

Find him and make him pay.

The studded palace doors were still locked, but the mercenaries had found a way round, smashed through one of the great arched windows to one side. Someone must have cut himself in the rush to get in and get rich—there was blood smeared on the windowsill. Monza eased through, boots crunching on broken glass, dropped down into a grand dining room beyond. She’d eaten there once, she realised, Benna beside her, laughing, Faithful too. Orso, Ario, Foscar, Ganmark had all been there, a whole crowd of other officers. It occurred to her that pretty much every guest from that night was dead. The room hadn’t fared much better.