“They’ve been building,” she said.

“Of course. How could Prince Ario manage with only ten halls for his shoes?”

“A man can’t be fashionable these days without at least twenty rooms of footwear.”

Benna frowned down at his own gold-buckled boots. “I’ve no more than thirty pairs all told. I feel my shortcomings most keenly.”

“As do we all,” she muttered. A half-finished set of statues stood along the roofline. Duke Orso giving alms to the poor. Duke Orso gifting knowledge to the ignorant. Duke Orso shielding the weak from harm.

“I’m surprised he hasn’t got one of the whole of Styria tonguing his arse,” whispered Benna in her ear.

She pointed to a partly chiselled block of marble. “That’s next.”

“Benna!”

Count Foscar, Orso’s younger son, rushed around the pool like an eager puppy, shoes crunching on fresh-raked gravel, freckled face all lit up. He’d made an ill-advised attempt at a beard since Monza had last seen him but the sprinkling of sandy hairs only made him look more boyish. He might have inherited all the honesty in his family, but the looks had gone elsewhere. Benna grinned, threw one arm around Foscar’s shoulders and ruffled his hair. An insult from anyone else, from Benna it was effortlessly charming. He had a knack of making people happy that always seemed like magic to Monza. Her talents lay in the opposite direction.

“Your father here yet?” she asked.

“Yes, and my brother too. They’re with their banker.”

“How’s his mood?”

“Good, so far as I can tell, but you know my father. Still, he’s never angry with you two, is he? You always bring good news. You bring good news today, yes?”

“Shall I tell him, Monza, or—”

“Borletta’s fallen. Cantain’s dead.”

Foscar didn’t celebrate. He hadn’t his father’s appetite for corpses. “Cantain was a good man.”

That was a long way from the point, as far as Monza could see. “He was your father’s enemy.”

“A man you could respect, though. There are precious few of them left in Styria. He’s really dead?”

Benna blew out his cheeks. “Well, his head’s off, and spiked above the gates, so unless you know one hell of a physician…”

They passed through a high archway, the hall beyond dim and echoing as an emperor’s tomb, light filtering down in dusty columns and pooling on the marble floor. Suits of old armour stood gleaming to silent attention, antique weapons clutched in steel fists. The sharp clicking of boot heels snapped from the walls as a man in a dark uniform paced towards them.

“Shit,” Benna hissed in her ear. “That reptile Ganmark’s here.”

“Leave it be.”

“There’s no way that cold-blooded bastard’s as good with a sword as they say—”

“He is.”

“If I was half a man, I’d—”

“You’re not. So leave it be.”

General Ganmark’s face was strangely soft, his moustaches limp, his pale grey eyes always watery, lending him a look of perpetual sadness. The rumour was he’d been thrown out of the Union army for a sexual indiscretion involving another officer, and crossed the sea to find a more broad-minded master. The breadth of Duke Orso’s mind was infinite where his servants were concerned, provided they were effective. She and Benna were proof enough of that.