Best Served Cold

by Джо Аберкромби

  There was a sudden burst of high laughter. Day, perched on the cart next to Morveer, a half-eaten apple in her hand. Shivers hadn’t heard much laughter in a while, and it drew him like a moth to flame.

  “What’s funny?” he asked, starting to grin along at the joke.

  She leaned towards him, swaying with the cart. “I was just wondering, when you fell off your chair like a turtle tipped over, if you soiled yourself.”

  “I was of the opinion you probably did,” said Morveer, “but doubted we could have smelled the difference.”

  Shivers’ smile was stillborn. He remembered sitting in that orchard, frowning across the table, trying to look dangerous. Then he’d felt twitchy, then dizzy. He’d tried to lift his hand to his head, found he couldn’t. He’d tried to say something about it, found he couldn’t. Then the world tipped over. He didn’t remember much else.

  “What did you do to me?” He lowered his voice. “Sorcery?”

  Day sprayed bits of apple as she burst out laughing. “Oh, this just gets better.”

  “And I said he would be an uninspiring travelling companion.” Morveer chuckled. “ Sorcery. I swear. It’s like one of those stories.”

  “Those big, thick, stupid books! Magi and devils and all the rest!” Day was having herself quite the snigger. “Stupid stories for children!”

  “Alright,” said Shivers. “I think I get it. I’m slow as a fucking trout in treacle. Not sorcery. What, then?”

  Day smirked. “Science.”

  Shivers didn’t much care for the sound of it. “What’s that? Some other kind of magic?”

  “No, it most decidedly is not,” sneered Morveer. “Science is a system of rational thought devised to investigate the world and establish the laws by which it operates. The scientist uses those laws to achieve an effect. One which might easily appear magical in the eyes of the primitive.” Shivers struggled with all the long Styrian words. For a man who reckoned himself clever, Morveer had a fool’s way of talking, seemed meant to make the simple difficult. “Magic, conversely, is a system of lies and nonsense devised to fool idiots.”

  “Right y’are. I must be the stupidest bastard in the Circle of the World, eh? It’s a wonder I can hold my own shit in without paying mind to my arse every minute.”

  “The thought had occurred.”

  “There is magic,” grumbled Shivers. “I’ve seen a woman call up a mist.”

  “Really? And how did it differ from ordinary mist? Magic coloured? Green? Orange?”

  Shivers frowned. “The usual colour.”

  “So a woman called, and there was mist.” Morveer raised one eyebrow at his apprentice. “A wonder indeed.” She grinned, teeth crunching into her apple.

  “I’ve seen a man marked with letters, made one half of him proof against any blade. Stabbed him myself, with a spear. Should’ve been a killing blow, but didn’t leave a mark.”

  “Ooooooh!” Morveer held both hands up and wiggled his fingers like a child playing ghost. “Magic letters! First, there was no wound, and then… there was no wound? I recant! The world is stuffed with miracles.” More tittering from Day.

  “I know what I’ve seen.”

  “No, my mystified friend, you think you know. There is no such thing as magic. Certainly not here in Styria.”

  “Just treachery,” sang Day, “and war, and plague, and money to be made.”

  “Why did you favour Styria with your presence, anyway?” asked Morveer. “Why not stay in the North, swaddled in the magic mists?”

  Shivers rubbed slowly at the side of his neck. Seemed a strange reason, now, and he felt even more of a fool saying it. “I came here to be a better man.”

  “Starting from where you are, I hardly think that would prove too difficult.”

  Shivers had some pride still, and this prick’s sniggering was starting to grate on it. He’d have liked to just knock him off his cart with an axe. But he was trying to do better, so he leaned over instead and spoke in Northern, nice and careful. “I think you’ve got a head full of shit, which is no surprise because your face looks like an arse. You little men are all the same. Always trying to prove how clever y’are so you’ve something to be proud of. But it don’t matter how much you laugh at me, I’ve won already. You’ll never be tall.” And he grinned right round his face. “Seeing across a crowded room will always be a dream to you.”

  Morveer frowned. “And what is that jabber supposed to mean?”

  “You’re the fucking scientist. You work it out.”

  Day snorted with high laughter until Morveer caught her with a hard glance. She was still smiling, though, as she stripped the apple core to the pips and tossed it away. Shivers dropped back and watched the empty fields slither by, turned earth half-frozen with a morning frost. Made him think of home. He gave a sigh, and it smoked out against the grey sky. The friends Shivers had made in his life had all been fighters. Carls and Named Men, comrades in the line, most back in the mud, now, one way or another. He reckoned Friendly was the closest thing he’d get to that in the midst of Styria, so he gave his horse a nudge in the flanks and brought it up next to the convict.

  “Hey.” Friendly didn’t say a word. He didn’t even move his head to show he’d heard. Silence stretched out. Looking at that brick wall of a face it was hard to picture the convict a bosom companion, chuckling away at his jokes. But a man’s got to clutch at some hope, don’t he? “You were a soldier, then?”

  Friendly shook his head.

  “But you fought in battles?”

  And again.

  Shivers ploughed on as if he’d said yes. Not much other choice, now. “I fought in a few. Charged in the mist with Bethod’s Carls north of the Cumnur. Held the line next to Rudd Threetrees at Dunbrec. Fought seven days in the mountains with the Dogman. Seven desperate days, those were.”

  “Seven?” asked Friendly, one heavy brow twitching with interest.

  “Aye,” sighed Shivers. “Seven.” The names of those men and those places meant nothing to no one down here. He watched a set of covered carts coming the other way, men with steel caps and flatbows in their hands frowning at him from their seats. “Where did you learn to fight, then?” he asked, the smear of hope at getting some decent conversation drying out quick.

  “In Safety.”

  “Eh?”

  “Where they put you when they catch you for a crime.”

  “Why keep you safe after that?”

  “They don’t call it Safety because you’re safe there. They call it Safety because everyone else is safe from you. They count out the days, months, years they’ll keep you. Then they lock you in, deep down, where the light doesn’t go, until the days, months, years have all rubbed past, and the numbers are all counted down to nothing. Then you say thank you, and they let you free.”

  Sounded like a barbaric way of doing things to Shivers. “You do a crime in the North, you pay a gild on it, make it right. That, or if the chieftain decides, they hang you. Maybe put the bloody cross in you, if you’ve done murders. Lock a man in a hole? That’s a crime itself.”

  Friendly shrugged. “They have rules there that make sense. There’s a proper time for each thing. A proper number on the great clock. Not like out here.”

  “Aye. Right. Numbers, and that.” Shivers wished he’d never asked.

  Friendly hardly seemed to hear him. “Out here the sky is too high, and every man does what he pleases when he likes, and there are no right numbers for anything.” He was frowning off towards Westport, still just a sweep of hazy buildings round the cold bay. “Fucking chaos.”

  * * *

  They got to the city walls about midday, and there was already a long line of folk waiting to get in. Soldiers stood about the gate, asking questions, going through a pack or a chest, poking half-hearted at a cart with their spear-butts.

  “The Aldermen have been nervous since Borletta fell,” said Morveer from his seat. “They are checking everyone who enters. I will do the talking.” Shiv
ers was happy enough to let him, since the prick loved the sound of his own voice so much.

  “Your name?” asked the guard, eyes infinitely bored.

  “Reevrom,” said the poisoner, with a massive grin. “A humble merchant from Puranti. And these are my associates-”

  “Your business in Westport?”

  “Murder.” An uncomfortable silence. “I hope to make a veritable killing on the sale of Osprian wines! Yes, indeed, I hope to make a killing in your city.” Morveer chuckled at his own joke and Day tittered away beside him.

  “This one doesn’t look like the kind we need.” Another guard was frowning up at Shivers.

  Morveer kept chuckling. “Oh, no need to worry on his account. The man is practically a retard. Intellect of a child. Still, he is good for shifting a barrel or two. I keep him on out of sentiment as much as anything. What am I, Day?”

  “Sentimental,” said the girl.

  “I have too much heart. Always have had. My mother died when I was very young, you see, a wonderful woman-”

  “Get on with it!” someone called from behind them.

  Morveer took hold of the canvas sheet covering the back of the wagon. “Do you want to check-”

  “Do I look like I want to, with half of Styria to get through my bloody gate? On.” The guard waved a tired hand. “Move on.”

  The reins snapped, the cart rolled into the city of Westport, and Murcatto and Friendly rode after. Shivers came last, which seemed about usual lately.

  Beyond the walls it was crushed in tight as a battle, and not much less frightening. A paved road struck between high buildings, bare trees planted on either side, crammed with a shuffling tide of folk every shape and colour. Pale men in sober cloth, narrow-eyed women in bright silks, black-skinned men in white robes, soldiers and sell-swords in chain mail and dull plate. Servants, labourers, tradesmen, gentlemen, rich and poor, fine and stinking, nobles and beggars. An awful lot of beggars. Walkers and riders came surging up and away in a blur, horses and carts and covered carriages, women with a weight of piled-up hair and an even greater weight of jewellery, carried past on teetering chairs by pairs of sweating servants.

  Shivers had thought Talins was rammed full with strange variety. Westport was way worse. He saw a line of animals with great long necks being led through the press, linked by thin chains, tiny heads swaying sadly about on top. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, but when he opened them the monsters were still there, heads bobbing over the milling crowd, not even remarked upon. The place was like a dream, and not the pleasant kind.

  They turned down a narrower way, hemmed in by shops and stalls. Smells jabbed at his nose one after another-fish, bread, polish, fruit, oil, spice and a dozen others he’d no idea of-and they made his breath catch and his stomach lurch. Out of nowhere a boy on a passing cart shoved a wicker cage in Shivers’ face and a tiny monkey inside hissed and spat at him, near knocking him from his saddle in surprise. Shouts battered at his ears in a score of different tongues. A kind of a chant came floating up over the top of it, louder and louder, strange but beautiful, made the hairs on his arms bristle.

  A building with a great dome loomed over one side of a square, six tall turrets sprouting from its front wall, golden spikes gleaming on their roofs. It was from there the chanting was coming. Hundreds of voices, deep and high together, mingling into one.

  “It’s a temple.” Murcatto had dropped back beside him, her hood still up, not much more of her face showing than her frown.

  If Shivers was honest, he was more’n a bit feared of her. It was bad enough that he’d watched her break a man apart with a hammer and give every sign of enjoying it. But he’d had this creeping feeling afterwards, when they were bargaining, that she was on the point of stabbing him. Then there was that hand she always kept a glove on. He couldn’t remember ever being scared of a woman before, and it made him shamed and nervous at once. But he could hardly deny that, apart from the glove, and the hammer, and the sick sense of danger, he liked the looks of her. A lot. He wasn’t sure he didn’t like the danger a bit more than was healthy too. All added up to not knowing what the hell to say from one moment to the next.

  “Temple?”

  “Where the Southerners pray to God.”

  “God, eh?” Shivers’ neck ached as he squinted up at those spires, higher than the tallest trees in the valley where he was born. He’d heard some folk down South thought there was a man in the sky. A man who’d made the world and saw everything. Had always seemed a mad kind of a notion, but looking at this Shivers weren’t far from believing it himself. “Beautiful.”

  “Maybe a hundred years ago, when the Gurkish conquered Dawah, a lot of Southerners fled before them. Some crossed the water and settled here, and they raised up temples in thanks for their salvation. Westport is almost as much a part of the South as it’s a part of Styria. But then it’s part of the Union too, since the Aldermen finally had to pick a side, and bought the High King his victory over the Gurkish. They call this place the Crossroads of the World. Those that don’t call it a nest of liars, anyway. There are people settled here from across the Thousand Isles, from Suljuk and Sikkur, from Thond and the Old Empire. Northmen even.”

  “Anything but those stupid bastards.”

  “Primitives, to a man. I hear some of them grow their hair long like women. But they’ll take anyone here.” Her gloved finger pointed out a long row of men on little platforms at the far end of the square. A strange bloody crowd, even for this place. Old and young, tall and short, fat and bony, some with strange robes or headgear, some half-naked and painted, one with bones through his face. A few had signs behind ’em in all kinds of letters, beads or baubles hanging. They danced and capered, threw their arms up, stared at the sky, dropped on their knees, wept, laughed, raged, sang, screamed, begged, all blathering away over each other in more languages than Shivers had known about.

  “Who the hell are these bastards?” he muttered.

  “Holy men. Or madmen, depending who you ask. Down in Gurkhul, you have to pray how the Prophet tells you. Here each man can worship as he pleases.”

  “They’re praying?”

  Murcatto shrugged. “More like they’re trying to convince everyone else that they know the best way.”

  People stood watching ’em. Some nodding along with what they were saying. Some shaking their heads, laughing, shouting back even. Some just stood there, bored. One of the holy men, or the madmen, started screaming at Shivers as he rode past in words he couldn’t make a smudge of sense from. He knelt, stretching out his arms, beads round his neck rattling, voice raw with pleading. Shivers could see it in his red-rimmed eyes-he thought this was the most important thing he’d ever do.

  “Must be a nice feeling,” said Shivers.

  “What must?”

  “Thinking you know all the answers…” He trailed off as a woman walked past with a man on a lead. A big, dark man with a collar of shiny metal, carrying a sack in either hand, his eyes kept on the ground. “You see that?”

  “In the South most men either own someone or are owned themselves.”

  “That’s a bastard custom,” muttered Shivers. “I thought you said this was part o’ the Union, though.”

  “And they love their freedom over in the Union, don’t they? You can’t make a man a slave there.” She nodded towards some more, being led past meek and humble in a line. “But if they pass through no one’s freeing them, I can tell you that.”

  “Bloody Union. Seems those bastards always want more land. There’s more of ’em than ever in the North. Uffrith’s full of ’em, since the wars started up again. And what do they need more land for? You should see that city they’ve got already. Makes this place look a village.”

  She looked sharply across at him. “Adua?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Aye. I fought the Gurkish there. Got me this mark.” And he pulled back his sleeve to show the scar on
his wrist. When he looked back she had an odd look in her eye. You might almost have called it respect. He liked seeing it. Been a while since anyone looked at him with aught but contempt.

  “Did you stand in the shadow of the House of the Maker?” she asked.

  “Most of the city’s in the shadow of that thing one time o’ day or another.”

  “What was it like?”

  “Darker’n outside it. Shadows tend to be, in my experience.”

  “Huh.” The first time Shivers had seen anything close to a smile on her face, and he reckoned it suited her. “I always said I’d go.”

  “To Adua? What’s stopping you?”

  “Six men I need to kill.”

  Shivers puffed out his cheeks. “Ah. That.” A surge of worry went through him, and he wondered afresh just why the hell he’d ever said yes. “I’ve always been my own worst enemy,” he muttered.

  “Stick with me, then.” Her smile had widened some. “You’ll soon have worse. We’re here.”

  Not all that heartening, as a destination. A narrow alley, dim as dusk. Crumbling buildings crowded in, shutters rotten and peeling, sheets of plaster cracking away from damp bricks. He led his horse after the cart and through a dim archway while Murcatto swung the creaking doors shut behind them and shot the rusted bolt. Shivers tethered his horse to a rotting post in a yard strewn with weeds and fallen tiles.

  “A palace,” he muttered, staring up towards the square of grey sky high above, the walls all round coated with dried-up weeds, the shutters hanging miserable from their hinges. “Once.”

  “I took it for the location,” said Murcatto, “not the decor.”

  They made for a gloomy hall, empty doorways leading into empty chambers. “Lot of rooms,” said Shivers.

  Friendly nodded. “Twenty-two.”

  Their boots thump, thumped on the creaking staircase as they made their way up through the rotten guts of the building.

  “How are you going to begin?” Murcatto was asking Morveer.

  “I already have. Letters of introduction have been sent. We have a sizeable deposit to entrust to Valint and Balk tomorrow morning. Sizeable enough to warrant the attention of their most senior officer. I, my assistant and your man Friendly will infiltrate the bank disguised as a merchant and his associates. We will meet with-then seek out an opportunity to kill-Mauthis.”