Best Served Cold

by Джо Аберкромби

  “Happy face, happy heart.” The Northman showed a lopsided smile, burned flesh shifting only by the smallest margin.

  “Quite so. Have a smile for breakfast, you’ll be shitting joy by lunch. Were you in the battle?”

  “That I was.”

  “I thought as much. You have never struck me as a man afraid to roll up his sleeves. Bloody, was it?”

  “That it was.”

  “Some men thrive on blood, though, eh? I daresay you’ve known a few who were that way.”

  “That I have.”

  “And where is your employer, my infamous pupil, replacement and predecessor, General Murcatto?”

  “Behind you,” came a sharp voice.

  He spun about. “God’s teeth, woman, but you haven’t lost the knack of creeping up on a man!” He pretended at shock to smother the sentimental welling-up that always accompanied her appearance, and threatened to make his voice crack with emotion. She had a long scratch down one cheek, some bruising on her face, but otherwise looked well. Very well. “My joy to see you alive knows no bounds, of course.” He swept off his hat, feather drooping apologetically, and kneeled in the dirt in front of her. “Say you forgive me my theatrics. You see now I was thinking only of you all along. My fondness for you is undiminished.”

  She snorted at that. “Fondness, eh?” More than she could ever know, or he would ever tell her. “So this pantomime was for my benefit? I may swoon with gratitude.”

  “One of your most endearing features was always your readiness to swoon.” He cranked himself back up to standing. “A consequence of your sensitive, womanly heart, I suppose. Walk with me, I have something to show you.” He led her off through the trees towards the farmhouse, its whitewashed walls gleaming in the midday sun, Friendly and Shivers trailing them like bad memories. “I must confess that, as well as doing you a favour, and the sore temptation of placing my boot in Orso’s arse at long last, there were some trifling issues of personal gain to consider.”

  “Some things never change.”

  “Nothing ever does, and why should it? A considerable quantity of Gurkish gold was on offer. Well, you know it was, you were the first to offer it. Oh, and Rogont was kind enough to promise me, in the now highly likely event that he is crowned King of Styria, the Grand Duchy of Visserine.”

  He was deeply satisfied by her gasp of surprise. “You? Grand fucking Duke of Visserine?”

  “I probably won’t use the word fucking on my decrees, but otherwise, correct. Grand Duke Nicomo sounds rather well, no? After all, Salier is dead.”

  “That much I know.”

  “He had no heirs, not even distant ones. The city was plundered, devastated by fire, its government collapsed, much of the populace fled, killed or otherwise taken advantage of. Visserine is in need of a strong and selfless leader to restore her to her glories.”

  “And instead they’ll have you.”

  He allowed himself a chuckle. “But who better suited? Am I not a native of Visserine?”

  “A lot of people are. You don’t see them helping themselves to its dukedom.”

  “Well, there’s only one, and it’s mine.”

  “Why do you even want it? Commitments? Responsibilities? I thought you hated all that.”

  “I always thought so, but my wandering star led me only to the gutter. I have not had a productive life, Monzcarro.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “I have frittered my gifts away on nothing. Self-pity and self-hatred have led me by unsavoury paths to self-neglect, self-injury and the very brink of self-destruction. The unifying theme?”

  “Yourself?”

  “Precisely so. Vanity, Monza. Self-obsession. The mark of infancy. I need, for my own sake and those of my fellow men, to be an adult. To turn my talents outwards. It is just as you always tried to tell me-the time comes when a man has to stick. What better way than to commit myself wholeheartedly to the service of the city of my birth?”

  “Your wholehearted commitment. Alas for the poor city of Visserine.”

  “They’ll do better than they did with that art-thieving gourmand.”

  “Now they’ll have an all-thieving drunk.”

  “You misjudge me, Monzcarro. A man can change.”

  “I thought you just said nothing ever does?”

  “Changed my mind. And why not? In one day I bagged myself a fortune, and one of the richest dukedoms in Styria too.”

  She shook her head in combined disgust and amazement. “And all you did was sit here.”

  “Therein lies the real trick. Anyone can earn rewards.” Cosca tipped his head back, smiled up at the black branches and the blue sky beyond them. “Do you know, I think it highly unlikely that ever in history has one man gained so much for doing absolutely nothing. But I am hardly the only one to profit from yesterday’s exploits. Grand Duke Rogont, I daresay, is happy with the outcome. And you are a great stride nearer to your grand revenge, are you not?” He leaned close to her. “Speaking of which, I have a gift for you.”

  She frowned at him, ever suspicious. “What gift?”

  “I would hate to spoil the surprise. Sergeant Friendly, could you take your ex-employer and her Northern companion into the house, and show her what we found yesterday? For her to do with as she pleases, of course.” He turned away with a smirk. “We’re all friends now!”

  * * *

  “In here.” Friendly pushed the low door creaking open. Monza gave Shivers a look. He shrugged back. She ducked under the lintel and into a dim room, cool after the sun outside, with a ceiling of vaulted brick and patches of light across a dusty stone floor. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom she saw a figure wedged into the furthest corner. He shuffled forwards, chain between his ankles rattling faintly, and criss-cross shadows from the grubby window panes fell across one half of his face.

  Prince Foscar, Duke Orso’s younger son. Monza felt her whole body stiffen.

  It seemed he’d finally grown up since she last saw him, running from his father’s hall in Fontezarmo, wailing that he wanted no part in her murder. He’d lost the fluff on his top lip, gained a bloom of bruises ringing one eye and swapped the apologetic look for a fearful one. He stared at Shivers, then at Friendly as they stepped through into the room behind her. Not two men to give a prisoner hope, on the whole. He met Monza’s eye, finally, reluctantly, with the haunted look of a man who knows what’s coming.

  “It’s true then,” he whispered. “You’re alive.”

  “Unlike your brother. I stabbed him through his throat then threw him out of the window.” The sharp knobble in Foscar’s neck bobbed up and down as he swallowed. “I had Mauthis poisoned. Ganmark run through with a ton of bronze. Faithful’s stabbed, slashed, drowned and hung from a waterwheel. Still turning on it, for all I know. Gobba was lucky. I only smashed his hands, and his knees, and his skull to bonemeal with a hammer.” The list gave her grim nausea rather than grim satisfaction, but she forced her way through it. “Of the seven men who were in that room when they murdered Benna, there’s just your father left.” She slid the Calvez from its sheath, the gentle scraping of the blade as ugly as a child’s scream. “Your father… and you.”

  The room was close, stale. Friendly’s face was empty as a corpse’s. Shivers leaned back against the wall beside her, arms folded, grinning.

  “I understand.” Foscar came closer. Small, unwilling steps, but towards her still. He stopped no more than a stride away, and sank to his knees. Awkwardly, since his hands were tied behind him. The whole time his eyes were on hers. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re fucking sorry?” she squeezed through gritted teeth.

  “I didn’t know what was going to happen! I loved Benna!” His lip trembled, a tear ran down the side of his face. Fear, or guilt, or both. “Your brother was like… a brother to me. I would never have wanted… that, for either of you. I’m sorry… for my part in it.” He’d had no part in it. She knew that. “I just… I want to live!”

  “So
did Benna.”

  “Please.” More tears trickled, leaving glistening trails down his cheeks. “I just want to live.”

  Her stomach churned, acid burning her throat and washing up into her watering mouth. Do it. She’d come all this way to do it, suffered all this and made all those others suffer just so she could do it. Her brother would have had no doubts, not then. She could almost hear his voice.

  Do what you have to. Conscience is an excuse. Mercy and cowardice are the same.

  It was time to do it. He had to die.

  Do it now.

  But her stiff arm seemed to weigh a thousand tons. She stared at Foscar’s ashen face. His big, wide, helpless eyes. Something about him reminded her of Benna. When he was young. Before Caprile, before Sweet Pines, before they betrayed Cosca, before they joined up with the Thousand Swords, even. When she’d wanted just to make things grow. Long ago, that boy laughing in the wheat.

  The point of the Calvez wobbled, dropped, tapped against the floor.

  Foscar took a long, shuddering breath, closed his eyes, then opened them again, wet glistening in the corners. “Thank you. I always knew you had a heart… whatever they said. Thank-”

  Shivers’ big fist crunched into his face and knocked him on his back, blood bubbling from his broken nose. He got out a shocked splutter before the Northman was on top of him, hands closing tight around his throat.

  “You want to fucking live, eh?” hissed Shivers, teeth bared in a snarling grin, the sinews squirming in his forearms as he squeezed tighter and tighter. Foscar kicked helplessly, struggled silently, twisted his shoulders, face turning pink, then red, then purple. Shivers dragged up Foscar’s head with both his hands, lifted it towards him, close enough to kiss, almost, then rammed it down against the stone flags with a sharp crack. Foscar’s boots jerked, the chain between them rattling. Shivers worked his head to one side then the other as he shifted his hands around Foscar’s neck for a better grip, tendons standing stark from their scabbed backs. He dragged him up again, no hurry, and rammed his head back down with a dull crunch. Foscar’s tongue lolled out, one eyelid flickering, black blood creeping down from his hairline.

  Shivers growled something in Northern, words she couldn’t understand, lifted Foscar’s head, smashed it down with all the care of a stonemason getting the details right. Again, and again. Monza watched, her mouth half-open, still holding weakly onto her sword, doing nothing. Not sure what she could do, or should do. Whether to stop him or help him. Blood dashed the rendered walls and the stone flags in spots and spatters. Over the pop and crackle of shattering bone she could hear a voice. Benna’s voice, she thought for a minute, still whispering at her to do it. Then she realised it was Friendly, calmly counting the number of times Foscar’s skull had been smashed into the stones. He got up to eleven.

  Shivers lifted the prince’s mangled head once more, hair all matted glistening black, then he blinked, and let it drop.

  “Reckon that’s got it.” He came slowly up to standing, one boot planted on either side of Foscar’s corpse. “Heh.” He looked at his hands, looked around for something to wipe them on, ended up rubbing them together, smearing black streaks of blood dry brown to his elbows. “One more to the good.” He looked sideways at her with his one eye, corner of his mouth curled up in a sick smile. “Six out o’ seven, eh, Monza?”

  “Six and one,” Friendly grunted to himself.

  “All turning out just like you hoped.”

  She stared down at Foscar, flattened head twisted sideways, crossed eyes goggling up at the wall, blood spreading out across the stone floor in a black puddle from his broken skull. Her voice seemed to come from a long way off, reedy thin. “Why did you-”

  “Why not?” whispered Shivers, coming close. She saw her own pale, scabbed, pinched-in face reflected, bent and twisted in that dead metal ball of an eye. “What we came here for, ain’t it? What we fought for all the day, down in the mud? I thought you was all for never turning back? Mercy and cowardice the same and all that hard talk you gave me. By the dead, Chief.” He grinned, the mass of scar across his face squirming and puckering, his good cheek all dotted with red. “I could almost swear you ain’t half the evil bitch you pretend to be.”

  Shifting Sands

  With the greatest of care not to attract undue attention, Morveer insinuated himself into the back of Duke Orso’s great audience chamber. For such a vast and impressive room, it numbered but a few occupants. Perhaps a function of the difficult circumstances in which the great man found himself. Having catastrophically lost the most important battle in the history of Styria was bound to discourage visitors. Still, Morveer had always been drawn to employers in difficult circumstances. They tended to pay handsomely.

  The Grand Duke of Talins was without doubt still a majestic presence. He sat upon a gilded chair, on a high dais, all in sable velvet trimmed with gold, and frowned down with regal fury over the shining helmets of half a dozen no less furious guardsmen. He was flanked by two men who could not have been more polar opposites. On the left a plump, ruddy-faced old fellow stood with a respectful but painful-looking bend to his hips, gold buttons about his chubby throat fastened to the point of uncomfortable tightness and, indeed, considerably beyond. He had ill-advisedly attempted to conceal his utter and obvious baldness by combing back and forth a few sad strands of wiry grey hair, cultivated to enormous length for this precise purpose. Orso’s chamberlain. On the right, a curly-haired young man slouched with unexpected ease in travel-stained clothes, resting upon what appeared to be a long stick. Morveer had the frustrating sensation of having seen him somewhere before, but could not place him, and his relationship to the duke was, for now, a slightly worrying mystery.

  The only other occupant of the chamber had his well-dressed back to Morveer, prostrate upon one knee on the strip of crimson carpet, clutching his hat in one hand. Even from the very back of the hall the gleaming sheen of sweat across his bald patch was most evident.

  “What help from my son-in-law,” Orso was demanding in stentorian tones, “the High King of the Union?”

  The voice of the ambassador, for it appeared to be none other, had the whine of a well-whipped dog expecting further punishment. “Your son-in-law sends his earnest regrets-”

  “Indeed? But no soldiers! What would he have me do? Shoot his regrets at my enemies?”

  “His armies are all committed in our unfortunate Northern wars, and a revolt in the city of Rostod causes further difficulties. The nobles, meanwhile, are reluctant. The peasantry are again restless. The merchants-”

  “The merchants are behind on their payments. I see. If excuses were soldiers he would have sent a mighty throng indeed.”

  “He is beset by troubles-”

  “ He is beset? He is? Are his sons murdered? Are his soldiers butchered? Are his hopes all in ruins?”

  The ambassador wrung his hands. “Your Excellency, he is spread thin! His regrets have no end, but-”

  “But his help has no beginning! High King of the Union! A fine talker, and a goodly smile when the sun is up, but when the clouds come in, look not for shelter in Adua, eh? My intervention on his behalf was timely, was it not? When the Gurkish horde clamoured at his gates! But now I need his help… forgive me, Father, I am spread thin. Out of my sight, bastard, before your master’s regrets cost you your tongue! Out of my sight, and tell the Cripple that I see his hand in this! Tell him I will whip the price from his twisted hide!” The grand duke’s furious screams echoed out over the hurried footsteps of the ambassador, edging backwards as quickly as he dared, bowing profusely and sweating even more. “Tell him I will be revenged!”

  The ambassador genuflected his way past Morveer, and the double doors were heaved booming shut upon him.

  “Who is that skulking at the back of the chamber?” Orso’s voice was no more reassuring for its sudden calmness. Quite the reverse.

  Morveer swallowed as he processed down the blood-red strip of carpet. Orso’s eye held a look
of the most withering command. It reminded Morveer unpleasantly of his meeting with the headmaster of the orphanage, when he was called to account for the dead birds. His ears burned with shame and horror at the memory of that interview, more even than his legs burned at the memory of his punishment. He swept out his lowest and most sycophantic bow, unfortunately spoiling the effect by rapping his knuckles against the floor in his nervousness.

  “This is one Castor Morveer, your Excellency,” intoned the chamberlain, peering down his bulbous nose.

  Orso leaned forwards. “And what manner of a man is Castor Morveer?”

  “A poisoner.”

  “ Master… Poisoner,” corrected Morveer. He could be as obsequious as the next man, when it was required, but he flatly insisted on his proper title. Had he not earned it, after all, with sweat, danger, deep wounds both physical and emotional, long study, short mercy and many, many painful reverses?

  “Master, is it?” sneered Orso. “And what great notables have you poisoned to earn the prefix?”

  Morveer permitted himself the faintest of smiles. “Grand Duchess Sefeline of Ospria, your Excellency. Count Binardi of Etrea, and both his sons, though their boat subsequently sank and they were never found. Ghassan Maz, Satrap of Kadir, and then, when further problems presented themselves, his successor Souvon-yin-Saul. Old Lord Isher, of Midderland, he was one of mine. Prince Amrit, who would have been heir to the throne of Muris-”

  “I understood he died of natural causes.”

  “What could be a more natural death for a powerful man than a dose of Leopard Flower administered into the ear by a dangling thread? Then Admiral Brant, late of the Murisian fleet, and his wife. His cabin boy too, alas, who happened by, a young life cut regrettably short. I would hate to prevail upon your Excellency’s valuable time, the list is long indeed, most distinguished and… entirely dead. With your permission I will add only the most recent name upon it.”