'A much stronger possibility.'

Sesaria grunted as he ever so gingerly shifted the last of the barrels up tight to the rest. 'All the others out?'

'They should be back in the trenches by now.'

The big man wiped his hands on his grimy shirt. 'Then we're ready, General.'

'Excellent. These last few days have positively crawled. It's a crime, when you think about how little time we get, that a man should ever be bored. When you're lying on your deathbed, I expect you regret those weeks wasted more than your worst mistakes.'

'You should have said if you had nothing pressing. We could have used your help digging.'

'At my age? The only place I'll be moving soil is on the latrine. And even that's a lot more work than it used to be. What happens now?'

'I hear it only gets harder.'

'Very good. I meant with the mine.'

Sesaria pointed to the trail of black powder, grains gleaming in the lamplight, stopping well short of the nearest keg. 'That leads to the entrance to the mine.' He patted a bag at his belt. 'We join it up to the barrels, leave plenty of extra at the end to make sure it takes. We get to the mouth of the tunnel, we set a spark to one end, then-'

'The fire follows it all the way to the barrels and . . . how big will the explosion be?'

Sesaria shook his head. 'Never seen a quarter as much powder used at one time. That and they keep mixing it stronger. This new stuff . . . I have a worry it might be too big.'

'Better a grand gesture than a disappointing one.'

'Unless it brings the whole mountain down on us.'

'It could do that?'

'Who knows what it'll do?'

Cosca considered the thousands of tons of rock above their heads without enthusiasm. 'It's a little late for second thoughts. Victus has his picked men ready for the assault. Rogont will be king tonight, and he's expecting to honour us with his majestic presence at dawn, and very much inside the fortress so he can order the final attack. I'm damned if I'm going to spend my morning listening to that fool whine at me. Especially with a crown on.'

'You think he'll wear it, day to day?'

Cosca scratched thoughtfully at his neck. 'Do you know, I've no idea. But it's somewhat beside the point.'

'True.' Sesaria frowned at the barrels. 'Doesn't seem right, somehow. You dig a hole, you touch a torch to some dust, you run and-'

'Pop,' said Cosca.

'No need for thinking. No need for courage. No way to fight, if you're asking me.'

'The only good way to fight is the one that kills your enemy and leaves you with the breath to laugh. If science can simplify the process, well, so much the better. Everything else is flimflam. Let's get started.'

'I hear my captain general and obey.' Sesaria pulled the bag from his belt, bent down and started carefully tipping powder out, joining the trail up to the barrels. 'Got to think about how you'd feel, though, haven't you?'

'Have you?'

'One moment you're going about your business, the next you're blasted to bits. Never get to even look your killer in his face.'

'No different from giving others the orders. Is killing a man with powder any worse than getting someone else to stab him with a spear? When exactly did you last look a man in the face?' Not when he'd happily helped stab Cosca in the back at Afieri, that was sure.

Sesaria sighed, powder trickling out across the ground. 'True, maybe. But sometimes I miss the old days, you know. Back when Sazine was in charge. Seemed like a different world, then. A more honest world.'

Cosca snorted. 'You know as well as I do there wasn't a dirty trick this side of hell Sazine would have balked at using. That old miser would have blown the world up if he thought a penny would fall out.'

'Daresay you've the truth of it. Doesn't seem fair, though.'

'I never realised you were such an enthusiast for fair.'

'It's no deal-breaker, but I'd rather win a fair fight than an unfair one.' He upended the bag, the last powder sliding out and leaving a glittering heap right against the side of the nearest barrel. 'Leaves a better taste, somehow, fighting by some kind of rules.'

'Huh.' Cosca clubbed him across the back of the head with his lamp, sending up a shower of sparks and knocking Sesaria sprawling on his face. 'This is war. There are no rules.' The big man groaned, shifted, struggled weakly to push himself up. Cosca leaned down, raised the lamp high and bashed him on the skull again with a crunching of breaking glass, knocked him flat, embers sizzling in his hair. A little closer to the powder than was comfortable, perhaps, but Cosca had always loved to gamble.

He had always loved triumphant rhetoric too, but time was a factor. So he turned for the shadowy passageway and hurried down it. A dozen cramped strides and he was already breathing hard again. A dozen more and he thought he caught the faintest glimmer of daylight up the tunnel. He knelt down, chewing at his lip. He was far from sure how fast the trail would burn once it was lit.

'Good thing I always loved to gamble . . .' He carefully began to unscrew the broken cage around the lamp. It was stuck.

'Shit.' He strained at it, fingers slipping, but it must have got bent when he clubbed Sesaria. 'Bastard thing!' He shifted his grip, growled as he twisted with all his force. The top popped off suddenly, he fumbled both halves, the lamp dropped, he tried to catch it, missed, it hit the floor, bounced, guttered and went out, sinking the passageway into inky darkness.

'Fucking . . . shit!' His only option was to retrace his steps and get one of the lamps from the end of the tunnel. He took a few steps, one hand stretched out in front of him, fishing in the black. A beam caught him right in the face, snapped his head back, mouth buzzing, salty with blood. 'Gah!'

He saw light, shook his throbbing head, strained into the darkness. Lamplight, catching the grain of the props, the stones and roots in the walls, making the snaking trail of powder glisten. Lamplight, and unless he had completely lost his bearings, it was coming from where he had left Sesaria.

Bringing his sword seemed suddenly to have been a stroke of genius. He slid it gently from its sheath with a reassuring ring of metal, had to work his elbow this way and that in the narrow space to get it pointing forwards, accidentally stuck the ceiling with the point and caused a long rivulet of soil to pour gently down onto his bald patch. All the while the light crept closer.

Sesaria appeared around the bend, lamp in one big fist, a line of blood creeping down his forehead. They faced one other for a moment, Cosca crouching, Sesaria bent double.

'Why?' grunted the big man.

'Because I make a point of never letting a man betray me twice.'

'I thought you were all business.'

'Men change.'

'You killed Andiche.'

'Best moment of the last ten years.'

Sesaria shook his head, as much puzzled as angry and in pain. 'Murcatto was the one took your chair, not us!'

'Entirely different matter. Women can betray me as often as they please.'

'You always did have a blind spot for that mad bitch.'

'I'm an incurable romantic. Or maybe I just never liked you.'

Sesaria slid a heavy knife out in his free hand. 'You should've stabbed me back there.'

'I'm glad I didn't. Now I get to use another clever line.'

'Don't suppose you'd consider putting that sword away and fighting knife to knife?'

Cosca gave a cackle. 'You're the one who likes things fair. I tried to kill you by clubbing you from behind then blowing you up, remember? Stabbing you with a sword will give me no sleepless nights.' And he lunged.

In such a confined space, being a big man was a profound disadvantage. Sesaria almost entirely filled the narrow tunnel, which made him, fortunately, more or less impossible to miss. He managed to steer the clumsy jab away with his knife, but it still pricked him in the shoulder. Cosca pulled back for another thrust, squawked as he caught his knuckles on the earth wall. Sesaria swung his heavy lamp at him and Cosca flopped away, slipped and went over on one knee. The big man scrambled forwards, raising the knife. His fist scraped on the ceiling, bringing down a shower of earth, his knife thudded deep into a beam above. He mouthed some curse in Kantic, wincing as he struggled to drag the blade free. Cosca righted himself and made another clumsy lunge. Sesaria's eyes bulged as the point punctured his shirt and slid smoothly through his chest.

'There!' Cosca snarled in his face. 'Do you get . . . my point?'

Sesaria lurched forwards, groaning bloody drool, face locked in a desperate grimace, the blade sliding inexorably through him until the hilt got tangled with his sticky shirt. He seized hold of Cosca and toppled over, bearing him down on his back, the pommel of the sword digging savagely into his stomach and driving all his breath out in a creaking, 'Oooooooof.'

Sesaria curled back his lips to show red teeth. 'You call . . . that . . . a clever line?' He smashed his lamp down into the trail of powder beside Cosca's face. Glass shattered, flame leaped up, there was a fizzling pop as the powder caught, the heat of it near to burning Cosca's cheek. He struggled with Sesaria's great limp body, struggled to untwist his fingers from the gilded basketwork of his sword, desperately tried to wrestle the big corpse sideways. His nose was full of the acrid reek of Gurkish sugar, snapping sparks moving off slowly down the passage.

He finally dragged himself free, clambered up and ran for the entrance, breath wheezing in his chest, one hand trailing along the dirt wall, knocking against the props. An oval of daylight appeared, wobbled steadily closer. He gave vent to a foolish giggle as he wondered whether it would be this moment or the next that saw the rock he was tottering through a mile in the sky. He burst out into open air.

'Run!' he screeched at no one, flinging his hands wildly around. 'Run!' He pounded down the hillside, tripped, fell, rolled head over heels, bounced painfully from a rock, struggled up and carried on scrambling in a cloud of dust, loose stones clattering around him. The wicker shields that marked the nearest trench crept closer and he charged towards them, screaming madly at the top of his voice. He flung himself onto his face, slid along in the dirt, crashed between two screens and headlong down into the trench in a shower of loose soil.

Victus stared at him as he struggled to right himself. 'What the-'

'Take cover!' wailed Cosca. All around him armour rattled as men shrank down into their trenches, raised their shields over their heads, clapped their gauntleted hands over their ears, squeezed their eyes tight shut in anticipation of an explosion to end the world. Cosca jammed himself back against the hard-packed earth, teeth squeezed together, clasping his hands around his skull.

The silent moments stretched out.

Cosca prised one eye open. A bright-blue butterfly fluttered heedlessly down, circled widdershins around the cowering mercenaries and came peacefully to rest on the blade of a spear. Victus himself had his helmet pushed right down over his face. Now he slowly tipped it back to display an expression of some confusion.

'What the hell happened? Is the fuse lit? Where's Sesaria?'

A sudden image formed in Cosca's mind of the trail of powder sputtering out, of Victus' men creeping into the murky darkness, lamps raised, their light falling across Sesaria's corpse, impaled on a sword with unmistakable gilded basketwork. 'Erm . . .'

The very faintest of tremors touched the earth at Cosca's back. A moment later there was a thunderous detonation, so loud that it sent pain lancing through his head. The world went suddenly, entirely silent but for a faint, high-pitched whine. The earth shook. Wind ripped and eddied along the trench, tearing at his hair and nearly dragging him over. A cloud of choking dust filled the air, nipping at his lungs and making him cough. Gravel rained down from the sky, he gasped as he felt it sting at his arms, at his scalp. He cowered like a man caught out in a hurricane, every muscle tensed. For how long, he was not sure.

Cosca opened his eyes, dumbly uncurled his aching limbs and got weakly to his feet. The world was a ghost-place of silent fog. The land of the dead, surely, men and equipment no more than phantoms in the murk. The mist began to clear. He rubbed at his ears but the whining continued. Others got up, staring around, faces caked with grey dirt. Not far away someone lay still in a puddle in the bottom of a trench, his helmet stoved in by a chunk of rock, steered by the fickle Fates directly onto his head. Cosca peered over the lip of the trench, blinked up towards the summit of the mountain, straining through the gradually settling dust.

'Oh.' The wall of Fontezarmo appeared undamaged, the outline of towers and battlements still very much present against the lead-white sky. A vast crater had been blown from the rock, but the great round tower directly above it still clung stubbornly to the edge, even slightly overhanging empty space. It seemed for a moment to be perhaps the most crushing anticlimax of Cosca's life, and there had been many.

Then, in dreamlike silence and with syrupy slowness, that central tower leaned, buckled, fell in on itself and collapsed into the yawning crater. A huge section of wall to either side of it was dragged after, all folding up and dissolving into rubble under its own weight. A man-made landslide of hundreds of tons of stone rolled, bounced, crashed down towards the trenches.

'Ah,' said Cosca, silently.

For a second time men flung themselves on their faces, covered their heads, prayed to the Fates or whichever of a range of gods and spirits they did or did not believe in for deliverance. Cosca stayed standing, staring fascinated as a giant chunk of masonry perhaps ten tons in weight hurtled down the slope directly towards him, bouncing, spinning, flinging pieces of stone high into the air, all without the slightest sound but for perhaps a vague crunching, like footsteps on gravel. It came to an eventual stop no more than ten strides distant, rocked gently to one side and the other, and was still.

A second cloud of dust had plunged the trench into choking gloom, but as it gradually faded Cosca could see the vast breach left in the outer wall of Fontezarmo, no fewer than two hundred strides across, the crater beneath it now choked with settling rubble. A second tower at its edge leaned at an alarming angle, like a drunken man peering over a cliff, ready at any moment to topple into emptiness.

He saw Victus stand beside him, raise his sword and scream. The word didn't sound much louder than if he had spoken it.

'Charge.'

Men clambered, somewhat dazed, from the trenches. One took a couple of wobbling steps and fell on his face. Others stood there, blinking. Still others began to head uncertainly uphill. More followed, and soon there were a few hundred men scrambling through the rubble towards the breach, weapons and armour shining dully in the watery sun.

Cosca was left alone in the trench with Victus, both of them coated with grey dust.

'Where's Sesaria?' The words thudding dully through the whine in Cosca's ears.

His own voice was a weird burble. 'He wasn't behind me?'

'No. What happened?'

'An accident. An accident . . . as we came out.' It wasn't difficult to force out a tear, Cosca was covered head to toe in knocks and bruises. 'I dropped my lamp! Dropped it! Set off the trail of powder halfway down!' He seized Victus by his fluted breastplate. 'I told him to run with me, but he stayed! Stayed . . . to put it out.'

'He stayed?'

'He thought he could save us both!' Cosca put one hand over his face, voice choked with emotion. 'My fault! All my fault. He truly was the best of us.' He wailed it at the sky. 'Why? Why? Why do the Fates always take the best?'

Victus' eyes flickered down to Cosca's empty scabbard, then back up to the great crater in the hillside, the yawning breach above it. 'Dead, eh?'

'Blown to hell,' whispered Cosca. 'Baking with Gurkish sugar can be a dangerous business.' The sun had come out. Above them, Victus' men were clambering up the sides of the crater and into the breach in a twinkling tide, apparently entirely unopposed. If any defenders had survived the blast, they were in no mood to fight. It seemed the outer ward of Fontezarmo was theirs. 'Victory. At least Sesaria's sacrifice was not in vain.'

'Oh, no.' Victus looked sideways at him through narrowed eyes. 'He'd have been proud.'

One Nation The echoing grumble of the crowd on the other side of the doors grew steadily louder, and the churning in Monza's guts grew with it. She tried to rub away the niggling tension under her jaw. It did no good. But there was nothing to do except wait. Her entire role in tonight's grand performance was to stand there with a straight face and look like the highest of nobility, and Talins' best dressmakers had done all the hard work in making that ludicrous lie seem convincing. They'd given her long sleeves to cover the scars on her arms, a high collar to cover the scars on her neck, gloves to render her ruined hand presentable. They'd been greatly relieved they could keep her neckline low without horrifying Rogont's delicate guests. It was a wonder they hadn't cut a great hole out of the back to show her arse it was about the only other patch of her skin without a mark across it.

Nothing could be seen that might spoil the perfection of Duke Rogont's moment of history. No sword, certainly, and she missed the weight of it like a missing limb. She wondered when was the last time she'd stepped out without a blade in easy reach. Not in the meeting of the Council of Talins she'd attended the day after being lifted to her new station.

Old Rubine had suggested she had no need to wear a sword in the chamber. She replied she'd worn one every day for twenty years. He'd politely pointed out that neither he nor his colleagues carried arms, though they were all men and hence better suited. She asked him what she'd use to stab him with if she left her sword behind. No one was sure whether she was joking or not. But they didn't ask again.

'Your Excellency.' One of the attendants had oozed over and now offered her a silky bow. 'Your Grace,' and another to Countess Cotarda. 'We are about to begin.'

'Good,' snapped Monza. She faced the double doors, shifted her shoulders back and her chin up. 'Let's get this fucking pantomime over with.'

She had no time to spare. Every waking moment of the last three weeks and she'd scarcely slept since Rogont jammed the circlet on her head she'd spent struggling to drag the state of Talins out of the cesspit she'd fought so hard to shove it into.

Keeping in mind Bialoveld's maxim any successful state is supported by pillars of steel and gold she'd dug out every cringing bureaucrat she could find who wasn't besieged in Fontezarmo along with their old master. There'd been discussions about the Talinese army. There wasn't one. Discussions about the treasury. It was empty. The system of taxation, the maintenance of public works, the preservation of security, the administration of justice, all dissolved like cake in a stream. Rogont's presence, or that of his soldiers anyway, was all that was keeping Talins from anarchy.

But Monza had never been put off by a wind in the wrong direction. She'd always had a knack for reckoning a man's qualities, and picking the right one for a given job. Old Rubine was pompous as a prophet, so she made him high magistrate. Grulo and Scavier were the two most ruthless merchants in the city. She didn't trust either, so she made them joint chancellors, and set each one to dream up new taxes, compete in their collection while keeping one jealous eye on the other.

Already they were wringing money from their unhappy colleagues, and already Monza had spent it on arms.

Three long days into her unpromising rule, an old sergeant called Volfier had arrived in the city, a man almost laughably hardbitten, and nearly as scarred as she was. Refusing to surrender, he'd led the twenty-three survivors of his regiment back from the rout at Ospria and all the way across Styria with arms and honour intact. She could always use a man that bloody-minded, and set him to rounding up every veteran in the city. Paying work was thin on the ground and he already had two companies of volunteers, their glorious charge to escort the tax collectors and make sure not a copper went missing.

She'd marked Duke Orso's lessons well. Gold, to steel, to more gold such was the righteous spiral of politics. Resistance, apathy and scorn from all quarters only made her shove harder. She took a perverse satisfaction in the apparent impossibility of the task, the work pushed the pain to one side, and the husk with it, and kept her sharp. It had been a long, long time since she'd made anything grow.

'You look . . . very beautiful.'

'What?' Cotarda had glided up silently beside her and was offering a nervous smile. 'Oh. Likewise,' grunted Monza, barely even looking.

'White suits you. They tell me I'm too pale for white.' Monza winced. Just the kind of mindless twittering she had no stomach for tonight. 'I wish I was like you.'