Best Served Cold

by Джо Аберкромби

  One of the guards stepped round the pillar, his back to Shivers, and then another. They were no more than arm’s length away, between him and her. He could almost have reached out and touched their backplates.

  “Where you staying?”

  “With some friends, near the fountain on Lord Sabeldi Street, but I’m new in the city, and,” she gave a hopeless laugh, “I’ve quite misplaced it.”

  One of the guards pushed back his helmet. “I’ll say you have. Other side of town, that.”

  “I swear I’ve been wandering the city for hours.” She began to move away, drawing the men gently after her. Another guard appeared, and another. All four now, with their backs still to Shivers. He held his breath, heart thumping so loud it was a wonder none of them could hear it. “If one of you gentlemen could point me in the right direction I’d be so grateful. Stupid of me, I know.”

  “No, no. Confusing place, Westport.”

  “’Specially at night.”

  “I get lost here myself, time to time.” The men laughed, and Monza laughed along, still drawing ’em on. Her eye caught Shivers’ just for an instant, and they looked right at each other, and then she was gone round the next pillar, and the guards too, and their eager chatter drifted away. He closed his eyes, and slowly breathed out. Just as well he weren’t the only man around with a weakness for women.

  He swung himself up onto the square base of the pillar, slid the rope around it and under his rump, hooked it to make a loop. No idea what the count was now, just knew he had to get up there fast. He set off, gripping the stone with his knees and the edges of his boots, sliding the loop of rope up, then dragging it tight while he shifted his legs and set ’em again.

  It was a trick his brother taught him, when he was a lad. He’d used it to climb the tallest trees in the valley and steal eggs. He remembered how they’d laughed together when he kept falling off near the bottom. Now he was using it to help kill folk, and if he fell off he’d be dead himself. Safe to say life hadn’t turned out quite the way he’d hoped.

  Still, he went up quick and smooth. Just like climbing a tree, except no eggs at the end of it and less chance of bark-splinters in your fruits. Hard work, though. He was sweating through by the time he made it up the pillar and still had the hardest part to go. He worked one hand into the mess of stonework at the top, unhooked the rope with the other and dragged it over his shoulder. Then he pulled himself up, fingers and toes digging holds out among the carvings, breath hissing, arms burning. He slipped one leg over a sculpture of a woman’s frowning face and sat there, high above the lane, clinging to a pair of stone leaves and hoping they were stronger than the leafy kind.

  He’d been in some better spots, but you had to look on the sunny side. It was the first time he’d had a woman’s face between his legs in a while. He heard a hiss from across the lane, picked out Day’s black shape on the roof. She pointed down. The next patrol were on their way.

  “Shit.” He pressed himself tight to the stonework, trying to look like rock himself, hands tingling raw from gripping the hemp, hoping no one chose that moment to look up. They clattered by underneath and he let out a long hiss of air, heart pounding in his ears louder than ever. He waited for them to move off round the corner of the building, getting his breath back for the last stretch.

  The spikes further along the walls were mounted on poles, could spin round and round. Impossible to get over. At the tops of the pillars, though, they were mortared to the stone. He took his gloves out-heavy smith’s gloves-and pulled them on, then he reached up and worked his hands tight around two spikes, took a deep breath. He let go with his legs and swung free, drew himself up, staring a touch cross-eyed at the iron points in front of his face. Just like pulling yourself into the branches, except for the chance of taking your eye out, of course. Be nice to come out of this with both his eyes.

  He swung one way, then heaved himself back the other and got one boot up on top. He twisted himself round, felt the spikes scrape against his thick jerkin, digging at his chest as he dragged himself over.

  And he was up.

  * * *

  Seventy-eight… seventy-nine… eighty…” Friendly’s lips moved by themselves as he watched Shivers roll over the parapet and onto the roof of the bank.

  “He made it,” whispered Day, voice squeaky with disbelief.

  “And in good time too.” Morveer chuckled softly. “Who would have thought he would climb… like an ape.”

  The Northman stood, a darker shape against the dark night sky. He pulled the big flatbow off his back and started to fiddle with it. “Let’s hope he doesn’t shoot like an ape,” whispered Day.

  Shivers took aim. Friendly heard the soft click of the bowstring. A moment later he felt the bolt thud into his chest. He snatched hold of the shaft, frowning down. It hardly hurt at all.

  “A happy circumstance that it has no point.” Morveer unhooked the wire from the flights. “We would do well to avoid any further mishaps, and your untimely death would seem to qualify.”

  Friendly tossed the blunt bolt away and tied the rope off to the end of the wire.

  “You sure that thing will take his weight?” muttered Day.

  “Suljuk silk cord,” said Morveer smugly. “Light as down but strong as steel. It would take all three of us simultaneously, and no one looking up will see a thing.”

  “You hope.”

  “What do I never take, my dear?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  The black cord hissed through Friendly’s hands as Shivers started reeling the wire back in. He watched it creep out across the space between the roofs, counting the strides. Fifteen and Shivers had the other end. They pulled it tight between them, then Friendly looped it through the iron ring they’d bolted to the roof timbers and began to knot it, once, twice, three times.

  “Are you entirely sure of that knot?” asked Morveer. “There is no place in the plan for a lengthy drop.”

  “Twenty-eight strides,” said Friendly.

  “What?”

  “The drop.”

  A brief pause. “That is not helpful.”

  A taut black line linked the two buildings. Friendly knew it was there, and still he could hardly see it in the darkness.

  Day gestured towards it, curls stirred by the breeze. “After you.”

  * * *

  Morveer fumbled his way over the balustrade, breathing hard. In truth, the trip across the cord had not been a pleasant excursion by any stretch of the imagination. A chilly wind had blown up halfway and set his heart to hammering. There had been a time, during his apprenticeship to the infamous Moumah-yin-Bek, when he had executed such acrobatic exertions with a feline grace, but he suspected it was dwindling rapidly into his past along with a full head of hair. He took a moment to compose himself, wiped chill sweat from his forehead, then realised Shivers was sitting there, grinning at him.

  “Is there some manner of a joke?” demanded Morveer.

  “Depends what makes you laugh, I reckon. How long will you be in there?”

  “Precisely as long as I need to be.”

  “Best move quicker than you did across that rope, then. You might still be climbing in when they open the place tomorrow.” The Northman was still smiling as he slipped over the parapet and back across the cord, swift and sure for all his bulk.

  “If there is a God, he has cursed me through my acquaintance.” Morveer gave only the briefest consideration to the notion of cutting the knot while the primitive was halfway across, then crept away down a narrow lead channel between low-pitched slopes of slate towards the centre of the building. The great glass roof glowed ahead of him, faint light glittering through thousands of distorting panes. Friendly squatted beside it, already unwinding a second length of cord from around his waist.

  “Ah, the modern age.” Morveer knelt beside Day, pressing his hands gently to the expanse of glass. “What will they think of next?”

  “I feel blessed to live in such exciting times.�
�

  “So should we all, my dear.” He carefully peered down into the bank’s interior. “So should we all.” The hallway was barely lit, a single lamp burning at each end, bringing a precious gleam to the gilt frames of the huge paintings but leaving the doorways rich with shadow. “Banks,” he whispered, a ghost of a smile on his face, “always trying to economise.”

  He pulled out his glazing tools and began to prise away the lead with pliers, lifting each piece of glass out carefully with blobs of putty. The brilliance of his dexterity was quite undimmed by age, and it took him mere moments to remove nine panes, to snip the lead latticework with pincers and peel it back to leave a diamond-shaped hole ample for his purposes.

  “Perfect timing,” he murmured. The light from the guard’s lantern crept up the panelled walls of the hallway, brought a touch of dawn to the dark canvases. His footsteps echoed as he passed by underneath them, giving vent to a booming yawn, his long shadow stretching out over the marble tiles. Morveer applied the slightest blast of air to his blowpipe.

  “Gah!” The guard clapped a hand to the top of his head and Morveer ducked away from the window. There were footsteps below, a scuffling, a gurgle, then the loud thump and clatter of a toppling body. On peering back through the aperture the guard was plainly visible, spreadeagled on his back, lit lamp on its side by one outstretched hand.

  “Excellent,” breathed Day.

  “Naturally.”

  “However much we talk about science, it always seems like magic.”

  “We are, one might say, the wizards of the modern age. The rope, if you please, Master Friendly.” The convict tossed one end of the silken cord over, the other still knotted around his waist. “You are sure you can take my weight?”

  “Yes.” There was indeed a sense of terrible strength about the silent man that lent even Morveer a level of confidence. With the rope secured by a knot of his own devising, he lowered first one soft shoe and then the other into the diamond-shaped opening. He worked his hips through, then his shoulders, and he was inside the bank.

  “Lower away.” And down he drifted, as swiftly and smoothly as if lowered by a machine. His shoes touched the tiles and he slipped the knot with a jerk of his wrist, slid silently into a shadowy doorway, loaded blow-gun ready in one hand. He was expecting but the single guard within the building, but one should never become blinded by expectations.

  Caution first, always.

  His eyes rolled up and down the darkened hallway, his skin tingling with the excitement of the work under way. There was no movement. Only silence so complete it seemed almost a pressure against his prickling ears.

  He looked up, saw Day’s face at the gap and beckoned gently to her. She slid through as nimbly as a circus performer and glided down, their equipment folded around her body in a bandolier of black cloth. When her feet touched the ground she slipped free of the rope and crouched there, grinning.

  He almost grinned back, then stopped himself. It would not do to let her know the warm admiration for her talents, judgement and character that had developed during their three years together. It would not do to let her even suspect the depth of his regard. It was when he did so that people inevitably betrayed his trust. His time in the orphanage, his apprenticeship, his marriage, his working life-all were scattered with the most poignant betrayals. Truly his heart bore many wounds. He would keep matters entirely professional, and thus protect them both. Him from her, and her from herself.

  “Clear?” she hissed.

  “As an empty squares board,” he murmured, standing over the stricken guard, “and all according to plan. What do we most despise, after all?”

  “Mustard?”

  “And?”

  “Accidents.”

  “Correct. There are no such things as happy ones. Get his boots.”

  With considerable effort they manoeuvred him down the hallway to his desk and into his chair. His head flopped back and he began to snore, long moustache fluttering gently around his lips.

  “Ahhhhh, he sleeps like a babe. Props, if you please.”

  Day handed him an empty spirits bottle and Morveer placed it carefully on the tiles beside the guard’s boot. She passed him a half-full bottle, and he removed the stopper and sloshed a generous measure down the front of the guard’s studded leather jerkin. Then he placed it carefully on its side by his dangling fingers, spirits leaking out across the tiles in an acrid puddle.

  Morveer stepped back and framed the scene with his hands. “The tableau… is prepared. What employer does not suspect his nightwatchman of partaking, against his express instructions, of a measure or two after dark? Observe the slack features, the reek of strong spirits, the loud snoring. Ample grounds, upon his discovery at dawn, for his immediate dismissal. He will protest his innocence, but in the total absence of any evidence”-he rummaged through the guard’s hair with his gloved fingers and plucked the spent needle from his scalp-“no further suspicions will be aroused. All perfectly as normal. Except it will not be normal, will it? Oh no. The silent halls of the Westport office… of the Banking House of Valint and Balk… will conceal a deadly secret.” He blew out the flame of the guard’s lantern, sinking them into deeper darkness. “This way, Day, and do not dither.”

  They crept together down the hallway, a pair of silent shadows, and stopped beside the heavy door to Mauthis’ office. Day’s picks gleamed as she bent down to work the lock. It only took a moment for her to turn the tumblers with a meaty clatter, and the door swung silently open.

  “Poor locks for a bank,” as she slid her picks away.

  “They put the good locks where the money is.”

  “And we’re not here to steal.”

  “Oh no, no, we are rare thieves indeed. We leave gifts behind us.” He padded around Mauthis’ monstrous desk and swung the heavy ledger open, taking care not to move it so much as a hair from its position. “The solution, if you please.”

  She handed him the jar, full almost to the brim with thin paste, and he carefully twisted the cork out with a gentle thwop. He used a fine paintbrush for the application. The very tool for an artist of his incalculable talents. The pages crackled as he turned them, giving a flick of the brush to the corners of each and every one.

  “You see, Day? Swift, smooth and precise, but with every care. With every care, most of all. What kills most practitioners of our profession?”

  “Their own agents.”

  “ Precisely so.” With every care, therefore, he swung the ledger closed, its pages already close to dry, slid the paintbrush away and pressed the cork back into the jar.

  “Let’s go,” said Day. “I’m hungry.”

  “Go?” Morveer’s smile widened. “Oh no, my dear, we are far from finished. You must still earn your supper. We have a long night’s work ahead of us. A very long… night’s… work.”

  * * *

  “Here.”

  Shivers nearly jumped clean over the parapet, he was that shocked, lurched round, heart in his mouth. Murcatto crouched behind, grinning, breath leaving a touch of smoke about her shadowy face.

  “By the dead but you gave me a scare!” he hissed.

  “Better than what those guards would’ve given you.” She crept to the iron ring and tugged at the knot. “You made it up there, then?” More’n a touch of surprise in her voice.

  “You ever doubt I’d do it?”

  “I thought you’d break your skull, if you even got high enough to fall.”

  He tapped his head with a finger. “Least vulnerable part o’ me. Shake our friends off?”

  “Halfway to bloody Lord Sabeldi Street, I did. If I’d known they’d be that easily led I’d have hooked them in the first place.”

  Shivers grinned. “Well, I’m glad you hooked ’em in the end, or they’d most likely have hooked me.”

  “Couldn’t have that. We’ve still got a lot of work to do.” Shivers wriggled his shoulders, uncomfortable. It was easy to forget at times that the work they were about was k
illing a man. “Cold, eh?”

  He snorted. “Where I come from, this is a summer day.” He dragged the cork from the bottle and held it out to her. “This might help keep you warm.”

  “Well, that’s very thoughtful of you.” She took a long swallow, and he watched the thin muscles in her neck shifting.

  “I’m a thoughtful man, for one out of a gang of hired killers.”

  “I’ll have you know that some hired killers are very nice people.” She took another swig, then handed the bottle back. “None of this crew, of course.”

  “Hell, no, we’re shits to a man. Or woman.”

  “They’re in there? Morveer and his little echo?”

  “Aye, a while now, I reckon.”

  “And Friendly with them?”

  “He’s with them.”

  “Morveer say how long he’d be?”

  “Him, tell me anything? I thought I was the optimist.”

  They crouched in cold silence, close together by the parapet, looking across at the dark outline of the bank. For some reason he felt very nervy. Even more than you’d expect going about a murder. He stole a sideways glance at her, then didn’t look away quite quick enough when she looked at him.

  “Not much for us to do but wait and get colder, then,” she said.

  “Not much, I reckon. Unless you want to cut my hair any shorter.”

  “I’d be scared to get the scissors out in case you tried to strip.”

  That brought a laugh from him. “Very good. Reckon that earns you another pull.” He held out the bottle.

  “I’m quite the humorist, for a woman who hires killers.” She came closer to take it. Close enough to give him a kind of tingle in the side that was near her. Close enough that he could feel the breath in his throat all of a sudden, coming quick. He looked away, not wanting to make a fool of himself any more than he’d been doing the last couple of weeks. Heard her tip the bottle, heard her drink. “Thanks again.”