The company was far from warming him. Shylo Vitari crouched in the darkness, her head a spiky outline with the night sky behind, one eye shut, her eyeglass to the other. Behind them in the city, fires burned. War might be good for a poisoner's business, but Morveer had always preferred to keep it at arm's length. Considerably beyond, in fact. A city under siege was no place for a civilised man. He missed his orchard. He missed his good goose-down mattress. He attempted to shift the collars of his coat even higher around his ears, and transferred his attention once again to the palace of Grand Duke Salier, brooding on its long island in the midst of the fast-flowing Visser.

'Why ever a man of my talents should be called upon to survey a scene of this nature is entirely beyond me. I am no general.'

'Oh no. You're a murderer on a much smaller scale.'

Morveer frowned sideways. 'As are you.'

'Surely, but I'm not the one complaining.'

'I resent being dropped into the centre of a war.'

'It's Styria. It's spring. Of course there's a war. Let's just come up with a plan and get back out of the night.'

'Huh. Back to Murcatto's charitable institution for the housing of displaced agricultural workers, do you mean? The stench of self-righteous hypocrisy in that place causes my bile to rise.'

Vitari blew into her cupped hands. 'Better than out here.'

'Is it? Downstairs, the farmer's brats wail into the night. Upstairs, our employer's profoundly unsubtle erotic adventures with our barbarian companion keep the floorboards groaning at all hours. I ask you, is there anything more unsettling than the sound of other . . . people . . . fucking?'

Vitari grinned. 'You've got a point there. They'll have that floor in before they're done.'

'They'll have my skull in before that. I ask you, is an iota of professionalism too much to ask for?'

'Long as she's paying, who cares?'

'I care if her carelessness leads to my untimely demise, but I suppose we must make do.'

'Less whining and more work, then, maybe? A way in.'

'A way in, because the noble leaders of Styrian cities are trusting folk, always willing to welcome uninvited guests into their places of residence . . .'

Morveer moved his eyeglass carefully across the front of the sprawling building, rising up sheer from the frothing waters of the river. For the home of a renowned aesthete, it was an edifice of minimal architectural merit. A confusion of ill-matched styles awkwardly mashed together into a jumble of roofs, turrets, cupolas, domes and dormers, its single tower thrusting up into the heavens. The gatehouse was comprehensively fortified, complete with arrow loops, bartizans, machicolations and gilded portcullis facing the bridge into the city. A detachment of fifteen soldiers were gathered there in full armour.

'The gate is far too well guarded, the front elevation far too visible to climb, either to roof or window.'

'Agreed. The only spot we'd have a chance of getting in without being seen is the north wall.'

Morveer swung his eyeglass towards the narrow northern face of the building, a sheer expanse of mossy grey stone pierced by darkened stained-glass windows and with a begargoyled parapet above. Had the palace been a ship sailing upriver, that would have been its prow, and fast-flowing water foamed with particular energy around its sloping base. 'Unobserved, perhaps, but also the most difficult to reach.'

'Scared?' Morveer lowered his eyeglass with some irritation to see Vitari grinning at him.

'Let us say rather that I am dubious as to our chances of success. Though I confess I feel some warmth at the prospect of your plunging from a rope into the frothing river, I am far from attracted by the prospect of following you.'

'Why not just say you're scared?'

Morveer refused to rise to such ham-fisted taunting. It had not worked in the orphanage; it would most certainly not work now. 'We would require a boat, of course.'

'Shouldn't be too hard to find something upriver.'

He pursed his lips as he weighed the benefits. 'The plan would have the added advantage of providing a means of egress, an aspect of the venture by which Murcatto seems decidedly untroubled. Once Ganmark has been put paid to, we might hope to reach the roof, still disguised, and back down the rope to the boat. Then we could simply float out to sea and-'

'Look at that.' Vitari pointed at a group moving briskly along the street below, and Morveer trained his eyeglass upon them. Perhaps a dozen armoured soldiers marched on either side of two stumbling figures, entirely naked, hands bound behind them. A woman and a large man.

'Looks like they've caught some spies,' said Vitari. 'Bad luck for them.'

One of the soldiers jabbed the man with the butt of his spear and knocked him over in the road, bare rump sticking into the air. Morveer chuckled. 'Oh yes, indeed, even among Styrian prisons, the dungeons beneath Salier's palace enjoy a black reputation.' He frowned through the eyeglass. 'Wait, though. The woman looks like-'

'Murcatto. It's fucking them!'

'Can nothing run smoothly?' Morveer felt a mounting sense of horror he had in no way expected. Stumbling along at the back in her nightshirt, hands bound behind her, was Day. 'Curse it all! They have my assistant!'

'Piss on your assistant. They have our employer! That means they have my pay!'

Morveer could do nothing but grind his teeth as the prisoners were herded across the bridge and into the palace, the heavy gates tightly sealed behind them. 'Damn it! The tower-house is no longer safe! We cannot return there!'

'An hour ago you couldn't stand the thought of going back to that den of hypocrisy and erotic adventure.'

'But my equipment is there!'

'I doubt it.' Vitari nodded her spiky head towards the palace. 'It'll be with all the boxes they carried in there.'

Morveer slapped petulantly at the bare rafter by his head, winced as he took a splinter in his forefinger and was forced to suck it. 'Damn and shitting blast!'

'Calm, Morveer, calm.'

'I am calm!' The sensible thing to do was undeniably to find a boat, to float silently up to Duke Salier's palace, then past it and out to sea, writing off his losses, return to the orchard and train another assistant, leaving Murcatto and her imbecile Northman to reap the consequences of their stupidity. Caution first, always, but . . .

'I cannot leave my assistant behind in there,' he barked. 'I simply cannot!'

'Why?'

'Well, because . . .' He was not sure why. 'I flatly refuse to go through the trouble of instructing another!'

Vitari's irritating grin had grown wider. 'Fine. You need your girl and I need my money. You want to cry about it or work on a way in? I still say boat down the river to the north wall, then rope and grapple to the roof.'

Morveer squinted unhopefully towards the sheer stonework. 'You can truthfully secure a grapple up there?'

'I could get a grapple through a fly's arse. It's you getting the boat into position that worries me.'

He was not about to be outdone. 'I challenge you to find a more accomplished oarsman! I could hold a boat steady in a deluge twice as fierce, but it will not be needful. I can drive a hook into that stonework and anchor the boat against those rocks all night.'

'Good for you.'

'Good. Excellent.' His heart was beating with considerable urgency at the argument. He might not have liked the woman, but her competence was in no doubt. Given the circumstances he could not have selected a more suitable companion. A most handsome woman, too, in her own way, and no doubt every bit as firm a disciplinarian as the sternest nurse at the orphanage had been . . .

Her eyes narrowed. 'I hope you're not going to make the same suggestion you made last time we worked together.'

Morveer bristled. 'There will be no repetition of that whatsoever, I can assure you!'

'Good. Because I'd still rather fuck a hedgehog.'

'You made your preferences quite clear on that occasion!' he answered shrilly, then moved with all despatch to shift the topic. 'There is no purpose in delay. Let us find a vessel appropriate to our needs.' He took one last look down as he slithered back into the attic, and paused. 'Who's this now?' A single figure was striding boldly towards the palace gates. Morveer felt his heart sink even lower. There was no mistaking the flamboyant gait. 'Cosca. What ever is that horrible old drunkard about?'

'Who knows what goes through that scabby head?'

The mercenary strode towards the guards quite as if it was his palace rather than Duke Salier's, waving one arm. Morveer could just hear his voice in between the sighing of the wind, but had not the slightest notion of the words. 'What are they saying?'

'You can't read lips?' Vitari muttered.

'No.'

'Nice to find there's one subject you're not the world's greatest expert on. The guards are challenging him.'

'Of course!' That much was clear from the halberds lowered at Cosca's chest. The old mercenary swept off his hat and bowed low.

'He is replying . . . my name is Nicomo Cosca . . . famed soldier of fortune . . . and I am here . . .' She lowered the eyeglass, frowning.

'Yes?'

Vitari's eyes slid towards him. 'And I am here for dinner.'

Darkness Utter dark. Monza opened her eyes wide, squinted and stared, and saw nothing but fizzing, tingling blackness. She wouldn't have been able to see her hand before her face. But she couldn't move her hand there anyway, or anywhere else.

They'd chained her to the ceiling by her wrists, to the floor by her ankles. If she hung limp, her feet just brushed the clammy stones. If she stretched up on tiptoe, she could ease the throbbing ache through her arms, through her ribs, through her sides, a merciful fraction. Soon her calves would start to burn, though, worse and worse until she had to ease back down, teeth gritted, and swing by her skinned wrists. It was agonising, humiliating, terrifying, but the worst of it was, she knew this was as good as things were going to get.

She wasn't sure where Day was. Probably she'd blinked those big eyes, shed a single fat tear and said she knew nothing, and they'd believed her. She had the sort of face that people believed. Monza never had that sort of face. But then she probably didn't deserve one. Shivers was struggling somewhere in the inky black, metal clinking as he twisted at his chains, cursing in Northern, then Styrian. 'Fucking Styria. Fucking Vossula. Shit. Shit.'

'Stop!' she hissed at him. 'Might as well . . . I don't know . . . keep your strength.'

'Strength going to help us, you reckon?'

She swallowed. 'Couldn't hurt.' Couldn't help. Nothing could.

'By the dead, but I need to piss.'

'Piss, then,' she snapped into the darkness. 'What's the difference?

A grunt. The sound of liquid spattering against stone. She might've joined him if her bladder hadn't been knotted up tight with fear. She pushed up on her toes again, legs aching, wrists, arms, sides burning with every breath.

'You got a plan?' Shivers' words sank away and died on the buried air.

'What fucking plan do you think I'd have? They think we're spies in their city, working for the enemy. They're sure of it! They're going to try and get us to talk, and when we don't have anything to say they want to hear, they're going to fucking kill us!' An animal growl, more rattles. 'You think they didn't plan for you struggling?'

'What d'you want me to do?' His voice was strangled, shrill, as if he was on the verge of sobbing. 'Hang here and wait for them to start cutting us?'

'I . . .' She felt the unfamiliar thickness of tears at the back of her own throat. She didn't have the shadow of an idea of a way clear of this. Helpless. How could you get more helpless than chained up naked, deep underground, in the pitch darkness? 'I don't know,' she whispered. 'I don't know.'

There was the clatter of a lock turning and Monza jerked her head up, skin suddenly prickling. A door creaked open and light stabbed at her eyes. A figure came down stone steps, boots scraping, a torch flickering in his hand. Another came behind him.

'Let's see what we're doing, shall we?' A woman's voice. Langrier, the one who'd caught them in the first place. The one who'd knocked Monza down the stairs and taken her ring. The other one was Pello, with the moustache. They were both dressed like butchers, stained leather aprons and heavy gloves. Pello went around the room, lighting torches. They didn't need torches, they could've had lamps. But torches are that bit more sinister. As if, at that moment, Monza needed scaring. Light crept out across rough stone walls, slick with moisture, splattered with green moss. There were a couple of tables about, heavy cast-iron implements on them. Unsubtle-looking implements.

She'd felt better when it was dark.

Langrier bent over a brazier and got it lit, blowing patiently on the coals, orange glow flaring across her soft face with each breath.

Pello wrinkled his nose. 'Which one of you pissed?'

'Him,' said Langrier. 'But what's the difference?' Monza watched her slide a few lengths of iron into the furnace, and felt her throat close up tight. She looked sideways at Shivers, and he looked back at her, and said nothing. There was nothing to say. 'More than likely they'll both be pissing soon enough.'

'Alright for you, you don't have to mop it up.'

'I've mopped up worse.' She looked at Monza, and her eyes were bored. No hate in them. Not much of anything. 'Give them some water, Pello.'

The man offered a jug. She would've liked to spit in his face, scream obscenities, but she was thirsty, and it was no time for pride. So she opened her mouth and he stuck the spout in it, and she drank, and coughed, and drank, and water trickled down her neck and dripped to the cold flags between her bare feet.

Langrier watched her get her breath back. 'You see, we're just people, but I have to be honest, that's probably the last kindness you'll be getting out of us if you're not helpful.'

'It's a war, boy.' Pello offered the jug to Shivers. 'A war, and you're on the other side. We don't have the time to be gentle.'

'Just give us something,' said Langrier. 'Just a little something I can give to my colonel, then we can leave you be, for now, and we'll all be a lot happier.'

Monza looked her right in the eye, unwavering, and did her best to make her believe. 'We're not with Orso. The opposite. We're here-'

'You had his uniforms, didn't you?'

'Only so we could drop in with them if they broke into the city. We're here to kill Ganmark.'

'Orso's Union general?' Pello raised his brows at Langrier and she shrugged back.

'It's either what she said, or they're spies, working with the Talinese. Here to assassinate the duke, maybe. Now which of those seems the more likely?'

Pello sighed. 'We've been in this game a long time, and the obvious answer, nine times out of ten, is the right one.'

'Nine times out of ten.' Langrier spread her hands in apology. 'So you might have to do better than that.'

'I can't do any fucking better,' Monza hissed through gritted teeth, 'that's all I-'

Langrier's gloved fist thudded suddenly into her ribs. 'The truth!' Her other fist into Monza's other side. 'The truth!' A punch in the stomach. 'The truth! The truth! The truth!' She sprayed spit in Monza's face as she screamed it, knocking her back and forth, the sharp thumps and Monza's wheezing grunts echoing dully from the damp walls of the place.

She couldn't do any of the things her body desperately needed to do bring her arms down, or fold up, or fall over, or breathe even. She was helpless as a carcass on a hook. When Langrier got tired of pounding the guts out of her she shuddered silently for a moment, eyes bulging, every muscle cramped up bursting tight, creaking back and forth by her wrists. Then she coughed watery puke into her armpit, heaved half a desperate, moaning breath in and drooled out some more. She dropped limp as a wet sheet on a drying line, hair tangled across her face, heard that she was whimpering like a beaten dog with every shallow breath but couldn't stop it and didn't care.

She heard Langrier's boots scraping over to Shivers. 'So she's a fucking idiot, that's proven. Let's give you a chance, big man. I'll start with something simple. What's your name?'

'Caul Shivers,' voice high and tight with fear.

'Shivers.' Pello chuckled.

'Northerners. Who dreams up all these funny names? What about her?'