The cleaver split his head open to the bridge of his nose. Before his mate on the left’s mouth had fallen all the way open, Friendly was across the road and stabbing him in the body. Five times the long knife punched him through the guts, then Friendly stepped back and slashed his throat on the backhand, kicked his legs away and brought him tumbling to the cobbles.

There was a moment’s pause as Friendly breathed out, long and slow. The first man had the single great wound yawning in his skull, a black splatter of brains smeared over his crossed eyes. The other had the five stab wounds in his body, and blood pouring from his cut throat.

“Good,” said Friendly. “Six and one.”

The whore started screaming, spots of dark blood across one powdered cheek.

“You’re a dead man!” roared Gobba, taking a stumbling step back, fumbling a bright knife from his belt. “I’ll kill you!” But he did not come on.

“When?” asked Friendly, blades hanging loose from his hands. “Tomorrow?”

“I’ll—”

Shivers’ stick cracked down on the back of Gobba’s skull. A good blow, right on the best spot, crumpling his knees easily as paper. He flopped down, slack cheek thumping against the cobbles, knife clattering from his limp fist, out cold.

“Not tomorrow. Not ever.” The woman’s shriek sputtered out. Friendly turned his eyes on her. “Why aren’t you running?” She fled into the darkness, teetering on her high shoes, whimpering breath echoing down the street, her night-bell jangling after.

Shivers frowned down at the two leaking corpses in the road. The two pools of blood worked their way along the cracks between the cobblestones, touched, mingled and became one. “By the dead,” he muttered in his Northern tongue.

Friendly shrugged. “Welcome to Styria.”

Bloody Instructions

Monza stared down at her gloved hand, lips curled back hard from her teeth, and flexed the three fingers that still worked—in and out, in and out, gauging the pattern of clicks and crunches that came with every closing of her fist. She felt oddly calm considering that her life, if you could call it a life, was balanced on a razor’s edge.

Never trust a man beyond his own interests, Verturio wrote, and the murder of Grand Duke Orso and his closest was no one’s idea of an easy job. She couldn’t trust this silent convict any further than she could trust Sajaam, and that was about as far as she could piss. She had a creeping feeling the Northman was halfway honest, but she’d thought that about Orso, with results that had hardly been happy. It would’ve been no great surprise to her if they’d brought Gobba in smiling, ready to drag her back to Fontezarmo so they could drop her down the mountain a second time.

She couldn’t trust anyone. But she couldn’t do it alone.

Hurried footsteps scuffled up outside. The door banged open and three men came through. Shivers was on the right, Friendly on the left. Gobba hung between them, head dangling, an arm over each of their shoulders, his boot-toes scraping through the sawdust scattered across the ground. So it seemed she could trust the pair of them this far, at least.