“Bastards,” hissed Shivers after them, letting go his axe and peeling himself away from the sticky wall. “Lucky I didn’t split one of ’em.”

“Get used to it. This is Sipani. City of Revels. City of Rogues.”

Rogues were in long supply, alright. Men slouched around steps, on corners, beside bridges, dishing out hard looks. Women too, black outlines in doorways, lamps glowing behind, some of ’em hardly dressed in spite of the cold. “A scale!” one called at him from a window, letting one thin leg dangle in the murk. “For a scale you get the night of your life! Ten bits then! Eight!”

“Selling themselves,” Shivers grunted.

“Everyone’s selling themselves,” came Monza’s muffled voice. “This is—”

“Yes, yes. This is fucking Sipani.”

Monza stopped and he nearly walked into her. She pushed her hood back and squinted at a narrow doorway in a wall of crumbling brickwork. “This is it.”

“You take a man to all the finest places, eh?”

“Maybe later you’ll get the tour. For now we’ve got business. Look dangerous.”

“Right y’are, Chief.” Shivers stood up tall and fixed his hardest frown. “Right y’are.”

She knocked, and not long after the door wobbled open. A woman stared out from a dim-lit hallway, long and lean as a spider. She had a way of standing, hips loose and tilted to one side, arm up on the doorframe, one thin finger tapping at the wood. Like the fog was hers, and the night, and them too. Shivers brought his lamp up a touch closer. A hard, sharp face with a knowing smile, spattered with freckles, short red hair sprouting all ways from her head.

“Shylo Vitari?” asked Monza.

“You’ll be Murcatto, then.”

“That’s right.”

“Death suits you.” She narrowed her eyes at Shivers. Cold eyes, with a hint of a cruel joke in ’em. “Who’s your man?”

He spoke for himself. “Name’s Caul Shivers, and I’m not hers.”

“No?” She grinned at Monza. “Whose is he, then?”

“I’m my own.”

She gave a sharp laugh at that. Seemed everything about her had an edge on it. “This is Sipani, friend. Everyone belongs to someone. Northman, eh?”

“That a problem?”

“Got tossed down a flight of stairs by one once. Haven’t been entirely comfortable around them since. Why Shivers?”

She caught him off balance with that one. “What?”

“Up in the North, the way I heard it, a man earns his name. Great deeds done, and all that. Why Shivers?”

“Er…” The last thing he needed was to look the fool in front of Monza. He was still hoping to make it back into her bed at some point. “Because my enemies shiver with fear when they face me,” he lied.

“That so?” Vitari stood back from the door, giving him a mocking grin as he ducked under the low lintel. “You must have some cowardly bloody enemies.”

“Sajaam says you know people here,” said Monza as the woman led them into a narrow sitting room, barely lit by some smoky coals on a grate.