Seven villains for Monza to wreak vengeance on felt like a good number, and so it seemed like a good idea as well that there should be seven heroes (and I’m using “hero” and “villain” in their loosest possible senses, of course). I filled as many of those roles as I thought was reasonable with characters readers might already have met in the First Law because, although I wanted the book to stand alone, I also wanted there to be some reward and feeling of continuation for people who’d read the trilogy. The book split naturally into seven parts, in each of which Monza and her motley group of helpers visits a different city and tries to kill the next man on the list. I tried to make each effort different in nature, and in some way to reflect the character both of the target and the city that the events takes place in, and also for the scale of the plots and the numbers of people involved to steadily grow, so that hopefully the tone of each part is different enough to keep the reader interested. I then approached each part separately, planning it in detail before writing it, and to some degree letting the overall story develop as it seemed appropriate in each part. I try to plan pretty carefully in advance, but at the same time, you have to give the plot a bit of room to squirm around as new ideas come to you and the characters take on firmer personalities.

Monza Murcatto is a brilliantly intriguing character. Who or what were your inspirations in creating her?

It’s always difficult to say exactly where the ideas for characters come from, since often the basic idea will just seem to be there in your head when you begin but the details only develop as you write the book and get a sense of how they talk, think, and behave. The First Law had been a very male set of books, and so I wanted to try my hand at a female main character. I’d always been fascinated by renaissance Italy, the complex and treacherous politics of feuding city-states, the mixture of terrible destruction and wild creativity, the poisonous popes, the intriguing merchants, the rampaging mercenaries, and so I took that as my inspiration for setting. The book was intended to be a fantasy thriller, and I wanted my central character to have one foot in the underworld but the other in the political world. A mercenary general seemed perfect—as well as having the ideal skill set for a revenger. I also felt that, since the leadership of mercenary companies tended to be pretty fluid and more based on merit than birth or tradition, a female mercenary leader was believable, and not without historical precedent. Then it was a case of thinking about what characteristics such a woman would need to have to succeed in such a male-dominated sphere as war. Some personal capacity for violence was clearly important, but ruthlessness, intelligence, dedication, and superhuman single-mindedness seemed even more so. An acid sense of humor wouldn’t hurt either. Then it was a question of seeing whether I could make such a character in any way sympathetic to the reader.