Best Served Cold

by Джо Аберкромби

  No plague spreads quicker than panic, Stolicus wrote, or is more deadly.

  The veneer of civilisation was peeled suddenly away. The rich and self-satisfied were transformed into animals. Those in the way were flung aside. Those that fell were given no mercy. She saw a fat merchant punch a well-dressed lady in the face and she collapsed with a squeal, was kicked to the wall, wig twisted across her bloody face. She saw an old man huddled on the floor, trampled by the mob. A strongbox banged down, silver coins spilling, ignored, kicked across the floor by milling shoes. It was like the madness of a rout. The screaming and the jostling, the swearing and the stink of fear, the scattering of bodies and broken junk.

  Someone shoved at her and she lashed out with an elbow, felt something crunch, spots of blood on her cheek. She was caught up by the crush like a twig in a river, jabbed at, twisted, torn and tangled. She was carried snarling through the doorway and into the street, feet scarcely touching the ground, people pressing, thrashing, wriggling up against her. She was swept sideways, slipped from the steps, twisted her leg on the cobbles and lurched against the wall of the bank.

  She felt Shivers grab her by the elbow and half-lead, half-carry her off. A couple of the bank’s guards stood, trying ineffectually to stem the flow of panic with the hafts of their halberds. There was a sudden surge in the crowd and Monza was carried back. Between flailing arms she saw a man quivering on the ground, coughing red foam onto the cobbles. A wall of horrified, fascinated faces twitched and bobbed as people fought to get away from him.

  Monza felt dizzy, mouth sour. Shivers strode beside her, breathing fast through his nose, glancing back over his shoulder. They rounded the corner of the bank and made for the crumbling house, the maddened clamour fading behind them. She saw Morveer, standing at a high window like a wealthy patron enjoying the theatre from his private box. He grinned down, and waved with one hand.

  Shivers growled something in his own tongue as he heaved the heavy door open and Monza came after him. She snatched up the Calvez and made straight for the stairs, taking them two at a time, hardly noticing the burning in her knees.

  Morveer still stood by the window when she got there, his assistant cross-legged on the table, munching her way through half a loaf of bread. “There seems to be quite the ruckus down in the street!” The poisoner turned into the room, but his smile vanished as he saw Monza’s face. “What? He’s alive?”

  “He’s dead. Dozens of them are.”

  Morveer’s eyebrows went up by the slightest fraction. “An establishment of that nature, the books will be in constant movement around the building. I could not take the risk that Mauthis would end up working from another. What do I never take, Day?”

  “Chances. Caution first, always.” Day tore off another mouthful of bread, and mumbled around it. “That’s why we poisoned them all. Every ledger in the place.”

  “This isn’t what we agreed,” Monza growled.

  “I rather think it is. Whatever it takes, you told me, no matter who gets killed along the way. Those are the only terms under which I work. Anything else allows for misunderstandings.” Morveer looked somewhat puzzled, somewhat amused. “I am well aware that some individuals are uncomfortable with wholesale murder, but I certainly never anticipated that you, Monzcarro Murcatto, the Serpent of Talins, the Butcher of Caprile, would be one. You need not worry about the money. Mauthis will cost you ten thousand, as we agreed. The rest are free of-”

  “It’s not a question of money, fool!”

  “Then what is the question? I undertook a piece of work, as commissioned by you, and was successful, so how can I be at fault? You say you never had in mind any such result, and did not undertake the work yourself, so how can you be at fault? The responsibility seems to drop between us, then, like a turd straight from a beggar’s arse and into an open sewer, to be lost from sight forever and cause nobody any further discomfort. An unfortunate misunderstanding, shall we say? An accident? As if a sudden wind blew up, and a great tree fell, and caught every little insect in that place and squashed… them… dead!”

  “Squashed ’em,” chirped Day.

  “If your conscience nags at you-”

  Monza felt a stab of anger, gloved hand gripping the sword’s scabbard painfully hard, twisted bones clicking as they shifted. “Conscience is an excuse not to do what needs doing. This is about keeping control. We’ll stick to one dead man at a time from now on.”

  “Will we indeed?”

  She took a sudden stride into the room and the poisoner edged away, eyes flickering nervously down to her sword, then back. “Don’t test me. Not ever. One… at a time… I said.”

  Morveer carefully cleared his throat. “You are the client, of course. We will proceed as you dictate. There really is no cause to get angry.”

  “Oh, you’ll know if I get angry.”

  He gave a pained sigh. “What is the tragedy of our profession, Day?”

  “No appreciation.” His assistant popped the last bit of crust into her mouth.

  “ Precisely so. Come, we will take a turn about the city while our employer decides which name on her little list next merits our attentions. The atmosphere in here feels somewhat tainted by hypocrisy.” He marched out with an air of injured innocence. Day looked up from under her sandy lashes, shrugged, stood, brushed crumbs from the front of her shirt, then followed her master.

  Monza turned back to the window. The crowds had mostly broken up. Groups of nervous city watch had appeared, blocking off the street before the bank, keeping a careful distance from the still shapes sprawled out on the cobbles. She wondered what Benna would’ve said to this. Told her to calm down, most likely. Told her to think it through.

  She grabbed a chest with both hands and snarled as she flung it across the room. It smashed into the wall, sending lumps of plaster flying, clattered down and sagged open, clothes spilling out across the floor.

  Shivers stood there in the doorway, watching her. “I’m done.”

  “No!” She swallowed. “No. I still need your help.”

  “Standing up and facing a man, that’s one thing… but this-”

  “The rest will be different. I’ll see to it.”

  “Nice, clean murders? I doubt it. You set your mind to killing, it’s hard to pick the number of the dead.” Shivers slowly shook his head. “Morveer and his fucking like might be able to step away from it and smile, but I can’t.”

  “So what?” She walked slowly to him, the way you might walk to a skittish horse, trying to stop it bolting with your eyes. “Back to the North with fifty scales for the journey? Grow your hair and go back to bad shirts and blood on the snow? I thought you had pride. I thought you wanted to be better than that.”

  “That’s right. I wanted to be better.”

  “You can be. Stick. Who knows? Maybe you can save some lives, that way.” She laid her left hand gently on his chest. “Steer me down the righteous path. Then you can be good and rich at once.”

  “I’m starting to doubt a man can be both.”

  “Help me. I have to do this… for my brother.”

  “You sure? The dead are past helping. Vengeance is for you.”

  “For me then!” She forced her voice to drop soft again. “There’s nothing I can do to change your mind?”

  His mouth twisted. “Going to toss me another five, are you?”

  “I shouldn’t have done that.” She slid her hand up, traced the line of his jaw, trying to judge the right words, pitch the right bargain. “You didn’t deserve it. I lost my brother, and he’s all I had. I don’t want to lose someone else…” She let it hang in the air.

  There was a strange look in Shivers’ eye, now. Part angry, part hungry, part ashamed. He stood there silent for a long moment, and she felt the muscles clenching and unclenching on the side of his face.

  “Ten thousand,” he said.

  “Six.”

  “Eight.”

  “Done.” She let her hand fall, and they stared at ea
ch other. “Get packed, we leave within the hour.”

  “Right.” He slunk guiltily out of the door without meeting her eye and left her there, alone.

  And that was the trouble with good men. Just so damned expensive.

  III

  SIPANI

  “The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness”.

  Joseph Conrad

  Not two weeks later, men came over the border looking to even the tally, and they hanged old Destort and his wife, and burned the mill. A week after that his sons set out for vengeance, and Monza took down her father’s sword and went with them, Benna snivelling along behind. She was glad to go. She had lost the taste for farming.

  They left the valley to settle a score, and for two years they did not stop. Others joined them, men who had lost their work, their farms, their families. Before too long it was them burning crops, breaking into farmhouses, taking what they could find. Before too long it was them doing the hangings. Benna grew up quickly, and sharpened to a merciless edge. What other choice? They avenged killings, then thefts, then slights, then the rumours of slights. There was war, so there was never any shortage of wrongs to avenge.

  Then, at the end of summer, Talins and Musselia made peace with nothing gained on either side but corpses. A man with a gold-edged cloak rode into the valley with soldiers behind him and forbade reprisals. Destort’s sons and the rest split up, took their spoils with them, went back to what they had been doing before the madness started or found new madness to take a hand in. By then, Monza’s taste for farming had grown back.

  They made it as far as the village.

  A vision of martial splendour stood at the edge of the broken fountain in a breastplate of shining steel, a sword hilt set with glinting gemstones at his hip. Half the valley had gathered to listen to him speak.

  “My name is Nicomo Cosca, captain of the Company of the Sun-a noble brotherhood fighting with the Thousand Swords, greatest mercenary brigade in Styria! We have a Paper of Engagement from the young Duke Rogont of Ospria and are looking for men! Men with experience of war, men with courage, men with a love of adventure and a taste for money! Are any of you sick of grubbing in the mud for a living? Do any of you hope for something better? For honour? For glory? For riches? Join us!”

  “We could do that,” Benna hissed.

  “No,” said Monza, “I’m done with fighting.”

  “There will be little fighting!” shouted Cosca, as if he could guess her thoughts. “That I promise you! And what there is you will be well paid for thrice over! A scale a week, plus shares of booty! And there will be plenty of booty, lads, believe me! Our cause is just… or just enough, and victory is a certainty.”

  “We could do that!” hissed Benna. “You want to go back to tossing mud? Broken down tired every night and dirt under your fingernails? I won’t!”

  Monza thought of the work she would have just to clear the upper field, and how much she might make from doing it. A line had formed of men keen to join the Company of the Sun, beggars and farmers mostly. A black-skinned notary took their names down in a ledger.

  Monza shoved past them.

  “I am Monzcarro Murcatto, daughter of Jappo Murcatto, and this is my brother Benna, and we are fighters. Can you find work for us in your company?”

  Cosca frowned at her, and the black-skinned man shook his head. “We need men with experience of war. Not women and boys.” He tried to move her away with his arm.

  She would not be moved. “We’ve experience. More than these scrapings.”

  “I’ve work for you,” said one of the farmers, made bold by signing his mark on the paper. “How about you suck my cock?” He laughed at that. Until Monza knocked him down in the mud and made him swallow half his teeth with the heel of her boot.

  Nicomo Cosca watched this methodical display with one eyebrow slightly raised. “Sajaam, the Paper of Engagement. Does it specify men, exactly? What is the wording?”

  The notary squinted at a document. “Two hundred cavalry and two hundred infantry, those to be persons well equipped and of quality. Persons is all it says.”

  “And quality is such a vague term. You, girl! Murcatto! You are hired, and your brother too. Make your marks.”

  She did so, and so did Benna, and as simply as that they were soldiers of the Thousand Swords. Mercenaries. The farmer clutched at Monza’s leg.

  “My teeth.”

  “Pick through your shit for them,” she said.

  Nicomo Cosca, famed soldier of fortune, led his new hirings from the village to the sound of a merry pipe, and they camped under the stars that night, gathered round fires in the darkness, talking of making it rich in the coming campaign.

  Monza and Benna huddled together with their blanket around their shoulders. Cosca came out of the murk, firelight glinting on his breastplate. “Ah! My war-children! My lucky mascots! Cold, eh?” He swept his crimson cloak off and tossed it down to them. “Take this. Might keep the frost from your bones.”

  “What d’you want for it?”

  “Take it with my compliments, I have another.”

  “Why?” she grunted, suspicious.

  “ ‘A captain looks first to the comfort of his men, then to his own,’ Stolicus said.”

  “Who’s he?” asked Benna.

  “Stolicus? Why, the greatest general of history!” Monza stared blankly at him. “An emperor of old. The most famous of emperors.”

  “What’s an emperor?” asked Benna.

  Cosca raised his brows. “Like a king, but more so. You should read this.” He slid something from a pocket and pressed it into Monza’s hand. A small book, with a red cover scuffed and scarred.

  “I will.” She opened it and frowned at the first page, waiting for him to go.

  “Neither of us can read,” said Benna, before Monza could shut him up.

  Cosca frowned, twisting one corner of his waxed moustache between finger and thumb. Monza was waiting for him to tell them to go back to the farm, but instead he lowered himself slowly and sat cross-legged beside them. “Children, children.” He pointed at the page. “This here is the letter ‘A.’”

  Fogs and Whispers

  Sipani smelled of rot and old salt water, of coal smoke, shit and piss, of fast living and slow decay. Made Shivers feel like puking, though the smell mightn’t have mattered so much if he could’ve seen his hand before his face. The night was dark, the fog so thick that Monza, walking close enough to touch, weren’t much more than a ghostly outline. His lamp scarcely lit ten cobbles in front of his boots, all shining with cold dew. More than once he’d nearly stepped straight off into water. It was easily done. In Sipani, water was hiding round every corner.

  Angry giants loomed up, twisted, changed to greasy buildings and crept past. Figures charged from the mist like the Shanka did at the Battle of Dunbrec, then turned out to be bridges, railings, statues, carts. Lamps swung on poles at corners, torches burned by doorways, lit windows glowed, hanging in the murk, treacherous as marsh-lights. Shivers would set his course by one set, squinting through the mist, only to see a house start drifting. He’d blink, and shake his head, the ground shifting dizzily under his boots. Then he’d realise it was a barge, sliding past in the water beside the cobbled way, bearing its lights off into the night. He’d never liked cities, fog or salt water. The three together were like a bad dream.

  “Bloody fog,” Shivers muttered, holding his lamp higher, as though that helped. “Can’t see a thing.”

  “This is Sipani,” Monza tossed over her shoulder. “City of Fogs. City of Whispers.”

  The chill air was full of strange sounds, alright. Everywhere the slap, slop of water, the creaking of ropes as rowing boats squirmed on the shifting canals. Bells tolling in the darkness, folk calling out, all kinds of voices. Prices. Offers. Warnings. Jokes and threats spilling over each other. Dogs barked, cats hissed, rats skittered, birds croaked. Snatches of music, lost in the mist.
Ghostly laughter fluttered past on the other side of the seething water, lamps bobbing through the gloom as some revel wended into the night from tavern, to brothel, to gambling den, to smoke-house. Made Shivers’ head spin, and left him sicker than ever. Felt like he’d been sick for weeks. Ever since Westport.

  Footsteps echoed from the darkness and Shivers pressed himself against the wall, right hand on the haft of the hatchet tucked in his coat. Men loomed up and away, brushing past him. Women too, one holding a hat to her piled-up hair as she ran. Devil faces, smeared with drunken smiles, reeling past in a flurry and gone into the night, mist curling behind their flapping cloaks.

  “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.”