"Wait! Stop." That same voice that she had never disobeyed in eight hard years. "Is that you, Monzcarro?"
"Damn right it is!" she snarled back. "Get ready to fucking die!" Though it looked as if she might be going first.
"I've been ready for some time," he called out softly. "You've seen to that. Well done! My hopes are all in ruins, thanks to you."
"You needn't thank me!" she called. "It was Benna I did it for!"
"Ario is dead."
"Hah!" she barked back. "That's what happens when I stab a worthless cunt in the neck and throw him from a window!" A flurry of twitches crawled up Orso's cheek. "But why pick him out? There was Gobba, and Mauthis, and Ganmark, and Faithful—I've slaughtered the whole crowd! Everyone who was in this room when you murdered my brother!"
"And Foscar? I've heard no word since the defeat at the fords."
"You can stop listening!" Said with a glee she hardly felt. "Skull smashed to pulp on a farmhouse floor!"
The anger had all gone from Orso's face and it hung terribly slack. "You must be happy."
"I'm not fucking sad, I'll tell you that!"
"Grand Duchess Monzcarro of Talins." Orso tapped two fingers slowly against his palm, the sharp snaps echoing off the high ceiling. "I congratulate you on your victory. You have what you wanted after all!"
"What I wanted?" For a moment she could hardly believe what she was hearing. "You think I wanted this? After the battles I fought for you? The victories I won for you?" She was near shrieking, spitting with fury. She ripped her glove off with her teeth and shook her mutilated hand at him. "I fucking wanted this? What reason did we give you to betray us? We were loyal to you! Always!"
"Loyal?" Orso gave a disbelieving gasp of his own. "Crow your victory if you must, but don't crow your innocence to me! We both know better!"
All three flatbows were loaded and levelled now. "We were loyal!" she screamed again, voice cracking.
"Can you deny it? That Benna met with malcontents, revolutionaries, traitors among my ungrateful subjects? That he promised them weapons? That he promised you would lead them to glory? Claim my place? Usurp me! Did you think I would not learn of it? Did you think I would stand idly by?"
"What the… you fucking liar!"
"Still you deny it? I would not believe it myself when they told me! My Monza? Closer to me than my own children? My Monza, betray me? With my own eyes I saw him! With my own eyes!" The echoes of his voice slowly faded, and left the hall almost silent. Only the gentle clanking of the four armoured men as they edged ever so slowly towards her. She could only stare, the realisation creeping slowly through her.
We could have our own city, Benna had said. You could be the Duchess Monzcarro of… wherever. Of Talins, had been his thought. We deserve to be remembered. He'd planned it himself, alone, and given her no choice. Just as he had when he betrayed Cosca. It's better this way. Just as he had when he took Hermon's gold. This is for us.
He'd always been the one with the big plans.
"Benna," she mouthed. "You fool."
"You didn't know," said Orso quietly. "You didn't know, and now we are come to this. Your brother doomed himself, and both of us, and half of Styria besides." A sad little chuckle bubbled out of him. "Just when I think I know it all, life always finds a way to surprise me. You're late, Shenkt." His eyes flicked to the side. "Kill her."
Monza felt a shadow fall across her, lurched around. A man had stolen up while they spoke, his soft work boots making not the slightest sound. Now he stood over her, close enough to touch. He held out his hand. There was a ring in his palm. Benna's ruby ring.
"I believe this is yours," he said.
A pale, lean face. Not old, but deeply lined, with harsh cheekbones and eyes hungry bright in bruised sockets. Monza's eyes went wide, the chill shock of recognition washing over her like ice water.
"Kill her!" shouted Orso.
The newcomer smiled, but it was like a skull's smile, never touching his eyes. "Kill her? After all the effort I went to keeping her alive?"
The colour had drained from her face. Indeed she looked almost as pale as she had done when he first found her, broken amongst the rubbish on the slopes of Fontezarmo. Or when she'd first woken after he pulled the stitches, and stared down in horror at her own scarred body.
"Kill her?" he asked again. "After I carried her from the mountain? After I mended her bones and stitched her back together? After I protected her from your hirelings in Puranti?"
Shenkt turned his hand over and let the ring fall, and it bounced once and tinkled down spinning on the floor beside her twisted right hand. She did not thank him, but he had not expected thanks. It was not for her thanks that he had done it.
"Kill them both!" screamed Orso.
Shenkt was always surprised by how treacherous men could be over trifles, yet how loyal they could be when their lives were forfeit. These last few guards still fought to the death for Orso, even though his day was clearly done. Perhaps they could not comprehend that a man so great as the Grand Duke of Talins might die like any other, and all his power so easily turn to dust. Perhaps for some men obedience became a habit they could not question. Or perhaps they came to define themselves by their service to a master, and chose to take the short step into death as part of something great, rather than walk the long, hard road of life in insignificance.
If so, then Shenkt would not deny them. Slowly, slowly, he breathed in.
The drawn-out twang of the flatbow string throbbed deep in his ears. He stepped out of the path of the first bolt, let it drift under his raised arm. The aim of the next was good, right for Murcatto's throat. He plucked it from the air between finger and thumb as it crawled past, set it carefully down on a polished table as he crossed the room. He took up an idealised bust of one of Orso's forebears from beside it—his grandfather, Shenkt suspected, the one who had himself been a mercenary. He flung it at the nearest flatbowman, just in the process of lowering his bow, puzzled. It caught him in the stomach, sank deep into his armour, folded him in half in a cloud of stone chips and tore him off his feet towards the far wall, legs and arms stretched out in front of him, his bow spinning high into the air.
Shenkt hit the nearest man on the helmet and stove it deep into his shoulders, blood spraying from the crumpled visor, axe dropping slowly from his twisting hand. The next had an open helm, the look of surprise just forming as Shenkt's fist drove a dent into his breastplate so deep that it bent his backplate out with a groan of twisted metal. He sprang to the table, marble floor splitting under his boots as he came down. The nearest of the two remaining archers slowly raised his flatbow as though to use it as a shield. Shenkt's hand split it in half, string flailing, tore the man's helmet off and sent it hurtling up into the ceiling, his body tumbling sideways, spraying blood, to crumple against the wall in a shower of plaster. Shenkt seized hold of the other archer and tossed him out of one of the high windows, sparkling fragments tumbling down, bouncing, spinning, breaking apart, deep clangour of shattering glass making the air hum.
The last but one had his sword raised, flecks of spit floating from his twisted lips as he gave his war cry. Shenkt caught him by the wrist, hurled him upside-down across the room and into his final comrade. They were mangled together, a tangle of dented armour, crashed into a set of shelves, gilded books ripped open, loose papers spewing into the air, gently fluttering down as Shenkt breathed out, and let time find its course again.
The spinning flatbow fell, bounced from the tiles and clattered away into a corner. Grand Duke Orso stood just where he had before, beside the round table with its map of Styria, the sparkling crown sitting in its centre. His mouth fell open.