‘Whatever are you drinking?’
‘Goat’s milk. Somewhat sour, but wondrous for the digestion. Come, friends – and enemies, of course, for there is nothing more valuable to a powerful man than a good enemy – take a turn with me.’ He struggled from his chair with much grunting, tossed his glass away and led them briskly across the tiled floor, one plump hand waving in time to the music. ‘How is your companion, the Northman?’
‘Still in very great pain,’ murmured Monza, looking in some herself.
‘Yes . . . well . . . a terrible business. Such is war, such is war. Captain Langrier tells me there were seven of you. The blonde woman with the child’s face is with us, and your man, the quiet one who brought the Talinese uniforms and has apparently been counting every item in my larder since the crack of dawn this morning. One does not need his uncanny facility with numbers to note that two of your band are still . . . at large.’
‘Our poisoner and our torturer,’ said Cosca. ‘A shame, it’s so hard to find good ones.’
‘Fine company you keep.’
‘Hard jobs mean hard company. They’ll be out of Visserine by now, I daresay.’ They would be halfway to being out of Styria by now, if they had any sense, and Cosca was far from blaming them.
‘Abandoned, eh?’ Salier gave a grunt. ‘I know the feeling. My allies have abandoned me, my soldiers, my people. I am distraught. My sole remaining comfort is my paintings.’ One fat finger pointed to a deep archway, heavy doors standing open and bright sunlight spilling through.
Cosca’s trained eye noted a deep groove in the stonework, metal points gleaming in a wide slot in the ceiling. A portcullis, unless he was much mistaken. ‘Your collection is well protected.’
‘Naturally. It is the most valuable in Styria, long years in the making. My great-grandfather began it.’ Salier ushered them into a long hallway, a strip of gold-embroidered carpet beckoning them down the centre, many-coloured marble gleaming in the light from huge windows. Vast and brooding oils crowded the opposite wall in long procession, gilt frames glittering.
‘This hall is given over to the Midderland masters, of course,’ Salier observed. There was a snarling portrait of bald Zoller, a series of Kings of the Union – Harod, Arnault, Casimir, and more. One might have thought they all shat molten gold, they looked so smug. Salier paused a moment before a monumental canvas of the death of Juvens. A tiny, bleeding figure lost in an immensity of forest, lightning flaring across a lowering sky. ‘Such brushwork. Such colouring, eh, Cosca?’
‘Astounding.’ Though one daub looked much like another to his eye.
‘The happy days I have spent in profound contemplation of these works. Seeking the hidden meanings in the minds of the masters.’ Cosca raised his brows at Monza. More time in profound contemplation of the campaign map and less on dead painters and perhaps Styria would not have found itself in the current fix.
‘Sculptures from the Old Empire,’ murmured the duke as they passed through a wide doorway and into a second airy gallery, lined on both sides with ancient statues. ‘You would not believe the cost of shipping them from Calcis.’ Heroes, emperors, gods. Their missing noses, missing arms, scarred and pitted bodies gave them a look of wounded surprise. The forgotten winners of ten centuries ago, reduced to confused amputees. Where am I? And for pity’s sake, where are my arms?
‘I have been wondering what to do,’ said Salier suddenly, ‘and would value your opinion, General Murcatto. You are renowned across Styria and beyond for your ruthlessness, single-mindedness and commitment. Decisiveness has never been my greatest talent. I am too prone to think on what is lost by a certain course of action. To look with longing at all those doors that will be closed, rather than the possibilities presented by the one that I must open.’
‘A weakness in a soldier,’ said Monza.
‘I know it. I am a weak man, perhaps, and a poor soldier. I have relied on good intentions, fair words and righteous causes, and it seems I and my people now will pay for it.’ Or for that and his avarice, betrayals and endless warmongering, at least. Salier examined a sculpture of a muscular boat-man. Death poling souls to hell, perhaps. ‘I could flee the city, by small boat in the hours of darkness. Down the river and away, to throw myself upon the mercy of my ally Grand Duke Rogont.’
‘A brief sanctuary,’ grunted Monza. ‘Rogont will be next.’
‘True. And a man of my considerable dimensions, fleeing? Terribly undignified. Perhaps I could surrender myself to your good friend General Ganmark?’
‘You know what would follow.’
Salier’s soft face turned suddenly hard. ‘Perhaps Ganmark is not so utterly bereft of mercy as some of Orso’s other dogs have been?’ Then he seemed to sink back down, face settling into the roll of fat under his chin. ‘But I daresay you are right.’ He peered significantly sideways at a statue that had lost its head some time during the last few centuries. ‘My fat head on a spike would be the best that I could hope for. Just like good Duke Cantain and his sons, eh, General Murcatto?’
She looked evenly back at him. ‘Just like Cantain and his sons.’ Heads on spikes, Cosca reflected, were still as fashionable as ever.
Around a corner and into another hall, still longer than the first, walls crowded with canvases. Salier clapped his hands. ‘Here hang the Styrians! Greatest of our countrymen! Long after we are dead and forgotten, their legacy will endure.’ He paused before a scene of a bustling marketplace. ‘Perhaps I could bargain with Orso? Curry favour by delivering to him a mortal enemy? The woman who murdered his eldest son and heir, perhaps?’
Monza did not flinch. She never had been the flinching kind. ‘The best of luck.’
‘Bah. Luck has deserted Visserine. Orso would never negotiate, even if I could give him back his son alive, and you have put well and truly paid to that possibility. We are left with suicide.’ He gestured at a huge, dark-framed effort, a half-naked soldier offering his sword to his defeated general. Presumably so they could make the last sacrifice that honour demanded. That was where honour got a man. ‘To plunge the mighty blade into my bared breast, as did the fallen heroes of yesteryear!’
The next canvas featured a smirking wine merchant leaning on a barrel and holding a glass up to the light. Oh, a drink, a drink, a drink. ‘Or poison? Deadly powders in the wine? Scorpion in the bedsheets? Asp down one’s undergarments?’ Salier grinned round at them. ‘No? Hang myself? I understand men often spend, when they are hanged.’ And he flapped his hands away from his groin in demonstration, as though they had been in any doubt as to his meaning. ‘Sounds like more fun than poison, anyway.’ The duke sighed and stared glumly at a painting of a woman surprised while bathing. ‘Let us not pretend I have the courage for such exploits. Suicide, that is, not spending. That I still manage once a day, in spite of my size. Do you still manage it, Cosca?’
‘Like a fucking fountain,’ he drawled, not to be outdone in vulgarity.
‘But what to do?’ mused Salier. ‘What to—’
Monza stepped in front of him. ‘Help me kill Ganmark.’ Cosca felt his brows go up. Even beaten, bruised and with the enemy at the gates, she could not wait to draw the knives again. Ruthlessness, single-mindedness and commitment indeed.
‘And why ever would I wish to do that?’
‘Because he’ll be coming for your collection.’ She had always had a knack for tickling people where they were most ticklish. Cosca had seen her do it often. To him, among others. ‘Coming to box up all your paintings, and your sculptures, and your jars, and ship them back to Fontezarmo to adorn Orso’s latrines.’ A nice touch, his latrines. ‘Ganmark is a connoisseur, like yourself.’
‘That Union cocksucker is nothing like me!’ Anger suddenly flared red across the back of Salier’s neck. ‘A common thief and braggart, a degenerate man-fucker, tramping blood across the sweet soil of Styria as though its mud were not fit for his boots! He can have my life, but he’ll never have my paintings! I will see to it!’
‘I
can see to it,’ hissed Monza, stepping closer to the duke. ‘He’ll come here, when the city falls. He’ll rush here, keen to secure your collection. We can be waiting, dressed as his soldiers. When he enters,’ she snapped her fingers, ‘we drop your portcullis, and we have him! You have him! Help me.’
But the moment had passed. Salier’s veneer of heavy-lidded carelessness had descended again. ‘These are my two favourites, I do believe,’ gesturing, all nonchalance, towards two matching canvases. ‘Parteo Gavra’s studies of the woman. They were intended always as a pair. His mother, and his favourite whore.’
‘Mothers and whores,’ sneered Monza. ‘A curse on fucking artists. We were talking of Ganmark. Help me!’
Salier blew out a tired sigh. ‘Ah, Monzcarro, Monzcarro. If only you had sought my help five seasons ago, before Sweet Pines. Before Caprile. Even last spring, before you spiked Cantain’s head above his gate. Even then, the good we could have done, the blows we could have struck together for freedom. Even—’
‘Forgive me if I’m blunt, your Excellency, but I spent the night being beaten like a sack of meat.’ Monza’s voice cracked slightly on the last word. ‘You ask for my opinion. You’ve lost because you’re too weak, too soft and too slow, not because you’re too good. You fought alongside Orso happily enough when you shared the same goals, and smiled happily enough at his methods, as long as they brought you more land. Your men spread fire, rape and murder when it suited you. No love of freedom then. The only open hand the farmers of Puranti had from you back in those days was the one that crushed them flat. Play the martyr if you must, Salier, but not with me. I feel sick enough already.’
Cosca felt himself wincing. There was such a thing as too much truth, especially in the ears of powerful men.
The duke’s eyes narrowed. ‘Blunt, you say? If you spoke to Orso in such a manner it is small wonder he threw you down a mountain. I almost wish I had a long drop handy. Tell me, since candour seems the fashion, what did you do to anger Orso so? I thought he loved you like a daughter? Far more than his own children, not that any of those three ever were so very lovable – fox, shrew and mouse.’
Her bruised cheek twitched. ‘I became too popular with his people.’
‘Yes. And?’
‘He was afraid I might steal his throne.’
‘Indeed? And I suppose your eyes were never turned upon it?’
‘Only to keep him in it.’
‘Truly?’ Salier grinned sideways at Cosca. ‘It would hardly have been the first chair your loyal claws tore from under its owner, would it?’
‘I did nothing!’ she barked. ‘Except win his battles, make him the greatest man in Styria. Nothing!’
The Duke of Visserine sighed. ‘I have a fat body, Monzcarro, not a fat head, but have it your way. You are all innocence. Doubtless you handed out cakes at Caprile as well, rather than slaughter. Keep your secrets if you please. Much good may they do you now.’
Cosca narrowed his eyes against the sudden glare as they stepped out of an open doorway, through an echoing arcade and into the pristine garden at the centre of Salier’s gallery. Water trickled in pools at its corners. A pleasant breeze made the new flowers nod, stirred the leaves of the topiary, plucked specks of blossom from Suljuk cherry trees, no doubt torn from their native soil and brought across the sea for the amusement of the Duke of Visserine.
A magnificent sculpture towered over them in the midst of a cobbled space, twice life-size or more, carved from perfectly white, almost translucent marble. A naked man, lean as a dancer and muscular as a wrestler, one arm extended and with a bronze sword, turned dark and streaked with green, thrust forwards in the fist. As if directing a mighty army to storm the dining room. He had a helmet pushed back on the top of his head, a frown of stern command on his perfect features.
‘The Warrior,’ murmured Cosca, as the shadow of the great blade fell across his eyes, the glare of sunlight blazing along its edge.
‘Yes, by Bonatine, greatest of all Styrian sculptors, and this perhaps his greatest work, carved at the height of the New Empire. It originally stood on the steps of the Senate House in Borletta. My father took it as an indemnity after the Summer War.’
‘He fought a war?’ Monza’s split lip curled. ‘For this?’
‘Only a small one. But it was worth it. Beautiful, is it not?’
‘Beautiful,’ Cosca lied. To the starving man, bread is beautiful. To the homeless man, a roof is beautiful. To the drunkard, wine is beautiful. Only those who want for nothing else need find beauty in a lump of rock.
‘Stolicus was the inspiration, I understand, ordering the famous charge at the Battle of Darmium.’
Monza raised an eyebrow. ‘Leading a charge, eh? You’d have thought he’d have put some trousers on for work like that.’
‘It’s called artistic licence,’ snapped Salier. ‘It’s a fantasy, one can do as one pleases.’
Cosca frowned. ‘Really? I always felt a man makes more points worth making if he steers always close to the truth . . .’
Hurried boot heels cut him off and a nervous-looking officer rushed across the garden, face touched with sweat, a long smear of black mud down the left side of his jacket. He came to one knee on the cobbles, head bowed.
‘Your Excellency.’
Salier did not even look at him. ‘Speak, if you must.’
‘There has been another assault.’
‘So close to breakfast time?’ The duke winced as he placed a hand on his belly. ‘A typical Union man, this Ganmark, he has no more regard for mealtimes than you did, Murcatto. With what result?’
‘The Talinese have forced a second breach, towards the harbour. We drove them back, but with heavy losses. We are greatly outnumbered—’
‘Of course you are. Order your men to hold their positions as long as possible.’
The colonel licked his lips. ‘And then . . . ?’
‘That will be all.’ Salier did not take his eyes from the great statue.
‘Your Excellency.’ The man retreated towards the door. And no doubt to a heroic, pointless death at one breach or another. The most heroic deaths of all were the pointless ones, Cosca had always found.
‘Visserine will soon fall.’ Salier clicked his tongue as he stared up at the great image of Stolicus. ‘How profoundly . . . depressing. Had I only been more like this.’
‘Thinner waisted?’ murmured Cosca.
‘I meant warlike, but while we are wishing, why not a thin waist too? I thank you for your . . . almost uncomfortably honest counsel, General Murcatto. I may have a few days yet to make my decision.’ To delay the inevitable at the cost of hundreds of lives. ‘In the meantime, I hope the two of you will remain with us. The two of you, and your three friends.’
‘Your guests,’ asked Monza, ‘or your prisoners?’
‘You have seen how my prisoners are treated. Which would be your choice?’
Cosca took a deep breath, and scratched slowly at his neck. A choice that more or less made itself.
Vile Jelly
Shivers’ face was near healed. Faint pink stripe left across his forehead, through his brow, across his cheek. More’n likely it would fade altogether in a few days more. His eye still ached a bit, but he’d kept his looks alright. Monza lay in the bed, sheet round her waist, skinny back turned towards him. He stood a moment, grinning, watching her ribs shift gently as she breathed, patches of shadow between them shrinking and growing. Then he padded from the mirror across to the open window, looking out. Beyond it the city was burning, fires lighting up the night. Strange thing though, he wasn’t sure which city, or why he was there. Mind was moving slowly. He winced, rubbing at his cheek.
‘Hurts,’ he grunted. ‘By the dead it hurts.’
‘Oh, that hurts?’ He whipped round, stumbling back against the wall. Fenris the Feared loomed over him, bald head brushing the ceiling, half his body tattooed with tiny letters, the rest all cased in black metal, face writhing like boiling porridge.
/> ‘You’re . . . you’re fucking dead!’
The giant laughed. ‘I’ll say I’m fucking dead.’ He had a sword stuck right through his body, the hilt above one hip, point of the blade sticking out under his other arm. He jerked one massive thumb at the blood dripping from the pommel and scattering across the carpet. ‘I mean, this really hurts. Did you cut your hair? I liked you better before.’
Bethod pointed to his smashed-in head, a twisted mess of blood, brains, hair, bone. ‘Shuth uth, the pair o’ youth.’ He couldn’t speak right because his mouth was all squashed in on itself. ‘Thith ith whath hurts lookth like!’ He gave the Feared a pointless shove. ‘Why couldn’t you win, you thtupid half-devil bathtard?’
‘I’m dreaming,’ Shivers said to himself, trying to think his way through it, but his face was throbbing, throbbing. ‘I must be dreaming.’
Someone was singing. ‘I . . . am made . . . of death!’ Hammer banging on a nail. ‘I am the Great Leveller!’ Bang, bang, bang, each time sending a jolt of pain through Shivers’ face. ‘I am the storm in the High Places!’ The Bloody-Nine hummed to himself as he cut the corpse of Shivers’ brother into bits, stripped to the waist, body a mass of scars and twisted muscle all daubed-up with blood. ‘So you’re the good man, eh?’ He waved his knife at Shivers, grinning. ‘You need to fucking toughen up, boy. You should’ve killed me. Now help me get his arms off, optimist.’
‘The dead know I don’t like this bastard any, but he’s got a point.’ Shivers’ brother’s head peered down at him from its place nailed to Bethod’s standard. ‘You need to toughen up. Mercy and cowardice are the same. You reckon you could get this nail out?’
The Great Leveller Page 34