The Great Leveller: Best Served Cold, The Heroes and Red Country

by Joe Abercrombie

  The convict looked away from his porridge for just a moment. ‘I’ve hardly said a word.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Morveer’s morning repast was arranged upon the small table in his small bedchamber, once perhaps an upstairs storeroom in an abandoned warehouse in an insalubrious district of Sipani, a city he had always despised. Refreshment consisted of a misshapen bowl of cold oatmeal, a battered cup of steaming tea, a chipped glass of sour and lukewarm water. Beside them, in a neat row, stood seventeen various vials, bottles, jars and tins, each filled with its own pastes, liquids or powders in a range of colours from clear, to white, through dull buff to the verdant blue of the scorpion oil.

  Morveer reluctantly spooned in a mouthful of mush. While he worked it around his mouth with scant relish, he removed the stoppers from the first four containers, slid a glinting needle from its packet, dipped it in the first and pricked the back of his hand. The second, and the same. The third, and the fourth, and he tossed the needle distastefully away. He winced as he watched a tiny bead of blood well from one of the prick-marks, then dug another spoonful from the bowl and sat back, head hanging, while the wave of dizziness swept over him.

  ‘Damn Larync!’ Still, it was far preferable that he should endure a tiny dose and a little unpleasantness every morning, than that a large dose, administered by malice or misadventure, should one day burst every blood vessel in his brain.

  He forced down another mouthful of salty slop, opened the tin next in line, scooped out a tiny pinch of Mustard Root, held one nostril closed and snorted it up the other. He shivered as the powder burned at his nasal passages, licked at his teeth as his mouth turned unpleasantly numb. He took a mouthful of tea, found it unexpectedly scalding as he swallowed and nearly coughed it back up.

  ‘Damn Mustard Root!’ That he had employed it against targets with admirable efficacy on several occasions gave him no extra love for consuming the blasted stuff himself. Quite the opposite. He gargled a mouthful of water in a vain attempt to sluice away the acrid taste, knowing full well that it would be creeping from the back of his nose for hours to come.

  He lined up the next six receptacles, unscrewed, uncorked, uncapped them. He could have swallowed their contents one at a time, but long years of such breakfasts had taught him it was better to dispose of them all at once. So he squirted, flicked and dripped the appropriate amounts into his glass of water, mixed them carefully with his spoon, gathered himself and forced it back in three ugly swallows.

  Morveer set the glass down, wiped the tears from under his eyes and gave vent to a watery burp. He felt a momentary nudge of nausea, but it swiftly calmed. He had been doing this every morning for twenty years, after all. If he was not accustomed to it by—

  He dived for the window, flung the shutters open and thrust his head through just in time to spray his meagre breakfast into the rotten alley beside the warehouse. He gave a bitter groan as he slumped back, dashed the burning snot from his nose and picked his way unsteadily to the wash-stand. He scooped water from the basin and rubbed it over his face, stared at his reflection in the mirror as moisture dripped from his brows. The worst of it was that he would now have to force more oatmeal into his rebellious guts. One of the many unappreciated sacrifices he was forced to make, simply in order to excel.

  The other children at the orphanage had never appreciated his special talents. Nor had his master, the infamous Moumah-yin-Bek. His wife had not appreciated him. His many apprentices had not. And now it seemed his latest employer, also, had no appreciation for his selfless, for his discomforting, for his – no, no, it was no exaggeration – heroic efforts on her behalf. That dissolute old wineskin Nicomo Cosca was afforded greater respect than he.

  ‘I am doomed,’ he murmured disconsolately. ‘Doomed to give, and give, and get nothing in return.’

  A knock at the door, and Day’s voice. ‘You ready?’

  ‘Soon.’

  ‘They’re getting everyone together downstairs. We need to be off to Cardotti’s. Lay the groundwork. The importance of preparation and all that.’ It sounded as if she was talking with her mouth full. It would, in fact, have been a surprise had she not been.

  ‘I will catch up with you!’ He heard her footsteps moving off. There, at least, was one person with the requisite admiration for his magisterial skills, who rendered him the fitting respect, exceeded his lofty expectations. He was coming to rely on her a great deal, he realised, both practically and emotionally. More than was cautious, perhaps.

  But even a man of Morveer’s extraordinary talents could not manage everything himself. He gave a long sigh, and turned from the mirror.

  The entertainers, or the killers, for they were both, were scattered around the warehouse floor. Twenty-five of them, if Friendly counted himself. The three Gurkish dancers sat crossed-legged – two with their ornate cat-face masks pushed up on their oiled black hair. The last had her mask down, eyes glistening darkly behind the slanted eyeholes, rubbing carefully at a curved dagger. The band were already dressed in smart black jackets and tights striped grey and yellow, their silvered masks in the shape of musical notes, practising a jig they had finally managed to play half-decently.

  Shivers stood nearby in a stained leather tunic with balding fur on the shoulders, a big round wooden shield on his arm and a heavy sword in the other hand. Greylock loomed opposite, an iron mask covering his whole face, a great club set with iron studs in his fists. Shivers was talking fast in Northern, showing how he was going to swing his sword, how he wanted Greylock to react, practising the show they would put on.

  Barti and Kummel, the acrobats, wore tight-fitting chequered motley, arguing with each other in the tongue of the Union, one of them passionately waving a short stabbing sword. The Incredible Ronco watched from behind a mask painted vivid red, orange and yellow, like dancing flames. Beyond him the three jugglers were filling the air with a cascade of shining knives, flashing and flickering in the half-darkness. Others lounged against crates, sat cross-legged on the floor, capered about, sharpened blades, tinkered with costumes.

  Friendly hardly recognised Cosca himself, dressed in a velvet coat heavy with silver embroidery, a tall hat on his head and a long black cane in his hand with a heavy golden knob on the end. The rash on his neck was disguised with powder. His greying moustaches were waxed to twinkling curves, his boots were polished to a glistening shine, his mask was crusted with splinters of sparkling mirror, but his eyes sparkled more.

  He swaggered towards Friendly with the smirk of a ringmaster at a circus. ‘My friend, I hope you are well. My thanks again for your ear this morning.’

  Friendly nodded, trying not to grin. There was something almost magical about Cosca’s aura of good humour. He had the utter confidence to talk, and talk, and know he would be listened to, laughed with, understood. It almost made Friendly want to talk himself.

  Cosca held something out. A mask in the shape of a pair of dice, showing double one with eyeholes where the spots should have been. ‘I hoped you might do me the favour of minding the dice table tonight.’

  Friendly took the mask from him with a trembling hand. ‘I would like that very much.’

  Their mad crew wound through the twisting streets as the morning mists were clearing – down grey alleys, over narrow bridges, through hazy, rotting gardens and along damp tunnels, footfalls hollow in the gloom. The treacherous water was never far off, Shivers wrinkling his nose at the salt stink of the canals.

  Half the city was masked and in costume, and it seemed they all had something to celebrate. Folk who weren’t invited to the great ball in honour of Sipani’s royal visitors had their own revels planned, and a lot of ’em were getting started good and early. Some hadn’t gone too wild with their costumes – holiday coats and dresses with a plain mask around their eyes. Some had gone wild, then further still – huge trousers, high shoes, gold and silver faces locked up in animal snarls and madman grins. Put Shivers in mind of the Bloody-Nine’s face when he fought
in the circle, devil smile spattered with blood. That did nothing for his nerves. Didn’t help he was wearing fur and leather like he used to in the North, carrying a heavy sword and shield not much different from ones he’d used in earnest. A crowd poured past all covered in yellow feathers, masks with great beaks, squawking like a flock of crazy seagulls. That did nothing for his nerves either.

  Off in the mist, half-glimpsed round corners and across hazy squares, there were stranger shapes still, their hoots and warbles echoing down the wooden alleyways. Monsters and giants. Made Shivers’ palms itch, thinking of the way the Feared rose out of the mist up at Dunbrec, bringing death with him. These were just silly bastards on stilts, of course, but still. You put a mask on a person, something weird happens. Changes the way they act along with the way they look. Sometimes they don’t seem like people at all no more, but something else.

  Shivers wouldn’t have liked the flavour of it even if they hadn’t been planning murder. Felt like the city was built on the borders of hell and devils were spilling out into the streets, mixing with the everyday and no one acting like there was much special about it. He had to keep reminding himself that, of all the strange and dangerous-seeming crowds, his was much the strangest and most dangerous they were likely to happen across. If there were devils in the city, he was one of the worst. Wasn’t actually that comforting a thought, once it’d taken root.

  ‘This way, my friends!’ Cosca led them across a square planted with four clammy, leafless trees and a building loomed up from the gloom – a large wooden building on three sides of a courtyard. The same building that had been sitting on the kitchen table at the warehouse the last few days. Four well-armed guards were frowning around a gate of iron bars, and Cosca sprang smartly up the steps towards them, heels clicking. ‘A fine morning to you, gentlemen!’

  ‘Cardotti’s is closed today,’ the nearest growled back, ‘and tonight too.’

  ‘Not to us.’ Cosca took in the mismatched troupe with a sweep of his cane. ‘We are the entertainers for this evening’s private function, selected and hired especially for the purpose by Prince Ario’s consort, Carlot dan Eider. Now open that gate quick sharp, we have a great deal of preparation to attend to. In we come, my children, and don’t dally! People must be entertained!’

  The yard was bigger’n Shivers had been expecting, and a lot more of a disappointment too, since this was supposed to be the best brothel in the world. A stretch of mossy cobbles with a couple of rickety tables and chairs, painted in flaking gilt. Lines were strung from upstairs windows, sheets flapping sluggishly as they dried. A set of wine-barrels were badly stacked in one corner. A bent old man was sweeping with a worn-out broom, a fat woman was giving what might’ve been some underwear a right thrashing on a washboard. Three skinny women sat about a table, bored. One had an open book in her hand. Another frowned at her nails as she worked ’em with a file. The last slouched in her chair, watching the entertainers file in while she blew smoke from a little clay chagga pipe.

  Cosca sighed. ‘There’s nothing more mundane, or less arousing, than a whorehouse in the daytime, eh?’

  ‘Seems not.’ Shivers watched the jugglers find a space over in one corner and start to unpack their tools, gleaming knives among ’em.

  ‘I’ve always thought it must be a fine enough life, being a whore. A successful one, at any rate. You get the days off, and when finally you are called upon to work you can get most of it done lying down.’

  ‘Not much honour in it,’ said Shivers.

  ‘Shit at least makes flowers grow. Honour isn’t even that useful.’

  ‘What happens when you get old, though, and no one wants you no more? Seems to me all you’re doing is putting off the despair and leaving a pack of regrets behind you.’

  Below Cosca’s mask, his smile had a sad twist. ‘That’s all any of us are doing, my friend. Every business is the same, and ours is no different. Soldiering, killing, whatever you want to call it. No one wants you when you get old.’ He strutted past Shivers and into the courtyard, cane flicking backwards and forwards with each stride. ‘One way or another, we’re all of us whores!’ He snatched a fancy cloth from a pocket, waved it at the three women as he passed and gave a bow. ‘Ladies. A most profound honour.’

  ‘Silly old cock,’ Shivers heard one of them mutter in Northern, before she went back to her pipe. The band were already tuning up, making almost as sour a whine as when they were actually playing.

  Two tall doorways led from the yard – left to the gaming hall, right to the smoking hall, from those to the two staircases. His eyes crept up the ivy-covered wall, herringbone planks of weather-darkened wood, to the row of narrow windows on the first floor. Rooms for the entertainment of guests. Higher still, to bigger windows of coloured glass, just under the roofline. The Royal Suite, where the most valued visitors were welcomed. Where they planned to welcome Prince Ario and his brother Foscar in a few hours.

  ‘Oy.’ A touch on his shoulder, and he turned, and stood blinking.

  A tall woman stood behind him, a shining black fur draped around her shoulders, long black gloves on her long arms, black hair scraped over to one side and hanging soft and smooth across her white face. Her mask was scattered with chips of crystal, eyes gleaming through the narrow slots and set on him.

  ‘Er . . .’ Shivers had to make himself look away from her chest, the shadow between her tits drawing his eyes like a bear’s to a beehive. ‘Something I can . . . you know . . .’

  ‘I don’t know, is there?’ Her painted lips twisted up at one corner, part sneer and part smile. Seemed as if there was something familiar about that voice. Through the slit in her skirts he could just see the end of a long pink scar on her thigh.

  ‘Monza?’ he whispered.

  ‘Who else as fine as this would have anything to say to the likes of you?’ She eyed him up and down. ‘This brings back memories. You look almost as much of a savage as when I first met you.’

  ‘That’s the idea, I reckon. You look, er . . .’ He struggled for the word.

  ‘Like a whore?’

  ‘A damn pricey one, maybe.’

  ‘I’d hate to look a cheap one. I’m headed upstairs, to wait for our guests. All goes well, I’ll see you at the warehouse.’

  ‘Aye. If all goes well.’ Shivers’ life had a habit of not going well. He frowned up at those stained-glass windows. ‘You going to be alright?’

  ‘Oh, I can handle Ario. I’ve been looking forward to it.’

  ‘I know, but, I’m just saying . . . if you need me closer—’

  ‘Stick your tiny mind to keeping things under control down here. Let me worry about me.’

  ‘I’m worried enough that I can spare some.’

  ‘Thought you were an optimist,’ she tossed over her shoulder as she walked away.

  ‘Maybe you talked me out of it,’ he muttered at her back. He didn’t like it much when she spoke to him that way, but he liked it a lot better’n when she wouldn’t speak to him at all. He saw Greylock glowering at him as he turned, and stabbed an angry finger at the big bastard. ‘Don’t just stand there! Let’s get this damn fake circle marked out, ’fore we get old!’

  Monza was a long way from comfortable as she teetered through the gambling hall, Cosca beside her. She wasn’t used to the high shoes. She wasn’t used to the draught around her legs. Corsets were torture at the best of times, and it hardly helped that this one had two of the bones removed and replaced with long, thin knives, the points up between her shoulder blades and the grips hidden in the small of her back. Her ankles, and her knees, and her hips were already throbbing. The notion of a smoke tickled at the back of her mind, just like always, but she forced it away. She’d endured enough pain, these past few months. A little more was a light price to pay if it got her close to Ario. Close enough to stick a blade in his sneering face. The thought alone put some swagger back into her step.

  Carlot dan Eider waited for them at the end of the room, standing with regal
superiority between two card tables covered with grey sheets, wearing a red dress fit for an empress of legend.

  ‘Will you look at the two of us?’ sneered Monza as she came close. ‘A general dressed like a whore and a whore dressed like a queen. Everyone’s pretending to be someone else tonight.’

  ‘That’s politics.’ Ario’s mistress frowned over at Cosca. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘Magister Eider, what a delightful and unexpected honour.’ The old mercenary bowed as he swept his hat off, exposing his scabrous, sweat-beaded bald patch. ‘I never dreamed the two of us would meet again.’

  ‘You!’ Eider stared coldly back at him. ‘I might have known you’d be caught up in this. I thought you died in Dagoska!’

  ‘So did I, but it turned out I was only very, very drunk.’

  ‘Not so drunk you couldn’t fumble your way to betraying me.’

  The old mercenary shrugged. ‘It’s always a crying shame when honest people are betrayed. When it happens to the treacherous, though, one cannot avoid a certain sense of . . . cosmic justice.’ Cosca grinned from Eider, to Monza, and back. ‘Three people as loyal as us all on one side? I can hardly wait to see how this turns out.’

  Monza’s guess was that it would turn out bloody. ‘When will Ario and Foscar get here?’

  ‘When Sotorius’ grand ball begins to break up. Midnight, or just before.’

  ‘We’ll be waiting.’

  ‘The antidote,’ snapped Eider. ‘I’ve done my part.’

  ‘You’ll get it when I get Ario’s head on a plate. Not before.’

  ‘What if something goes wrong?’