Best Served Cold

by Джо Аберкромби

  “What the fuck are you after?” Shivers hissed in his ear.

  “Vengeance!” Greylock dealt him a knee in the side then flung him off.

  Shivers stumbled away, finding his balance, picking his brains for some slight he’d given the man. “Vengeance? For what, you mad bastard?”

  “For Uffrith!” He slapped his great foot down, feinting, and Shivers hopped back, peering over the top of his shield.

  “Eh? No one got killed there!”

  “You sure?”

  “A couple o’ men down on the docks, but-”

  “My brother! No more’n fourteen years old!”

  “I had no part o’ that, you great turd! Black Dow did them killings!”

  “Black Dow ain’t before me now, and I swore to my mother I’d make someone pay. You’d a big enough part for me to knock it out o’ you, fucker!” Shivers gave a girlish kind of squeak as he ducked back from another great sweep, heard men cheering around him, as keen for blood as the watchers might be at a real duel.

  Vengeance, then. A double-edged blade if ever there was one. You never could tell when that bastard was going to cut you. Shivers stood, blood creeping down the side of his face from a knock he took just before, and all he could think was how fucking unfair it was. He’d tried to do the right thing, just the way his brother had always told him he should. He’d tried to be a better man. Hadn’t he? This was where good intentions put you. Right in the shit.

  “But I just… I done my best!” he bellowed in Northern.

  Greylock sent spit spinning through the mouth-hole of his mask. “So did my brother!” He came on, club coming down in a blur. Shivers ducked round it, jerked his shield up hard and smashed the rim under the big man’s jaw, sent him staggering back, spluttering blood.

  Shivers still had his pride. That much he’d kept for himself. He was damned if he was going to be put in the mud by some great thick bastard who couldn’t tell a good man from a bad. He felt the fury boiling up his throat, the way it used to back home in the North, when the battle was joined and he was in the thick of it.

  “Vengeance, is it?” he screamed. “I’ll show you fucking vengeance!”

  * * *

  Cosca winced as Shivers caught a blow on his shield and staggered sideways. He snarled something extremely angry-sounding in Northern, lashed at the air with his sword and missed Greylock by no more than the thickness of a finger, almost chopping deep into the onlookers on the backswing and making them shuffle nervously away.

  “Amazing stuff!” someone frothed. “It looks almost real! I must hire them for my daughter’s wedding…”

  It was true, the Northmen were mounting a good show. Rather too good. They circled warily, eyes fixed on each other, one of them occasionally jabbing forwards with foot or weapon. The furious, concentrated caution of men who knew the slightest slip could mean death. Shivers had his hair matted to the side of his face with blood. Greylock had a long scratch through the leather on his chest and a cut under his chin where the shield-rim had cracked him.

  The onlookers had stopped yelling obscenities, cooing and gasping instead, eyes locked hungrily on the fighters, caught between wanting to press forwards to see, and press back when the weapons were swung. They felt something on the air in the courtyard. Like the weight of the sky before a great storm. Genuine, murderous rage.

  The band had more than got the trick of the battle music, the fiddle stabbing as Shivers slashed with the sword, drum booming whenever Greylock heaved his great club, adding significantly to the near-unbearable tension.

  Quite clearly they were trying to kill each other, and Cosca had not the ghost of a notion how to stop them. He winced as the club crashed into Shivers’ shield again and nearly knocked him off his feet. He glanced worriedly up towards the stained-glass windows high above the yard.

  Something told him they were going to leave more than two corpses behind tonight.

  * * *

  The corpses of the two guards lay beside the door. One was sitting up, staring at the ceiling. The other lay on his face. They hardly looked dead. Just sleeping. Monza slapped her own face, tried to shake the husk out of her head. The door wobbled towards her and a hand in a black glove reached out and grabbed the knob. Damn it. She needed to do that. She stood there, swaying, waiting for the hand to let go.

  “Oh.” It was her hand. She turned it and the door came suddenly open. She fell through, almost pitched on her face. The room swam around her, walls flowing, melting, streaming waterfalls. Flames crackled, sparkling crystal in a fireplace. One window was open and music floated in, men shouting from down below. She could see the sounds, happy smears curling in around the glass, reaching across the changing space between, tickling at her ears.

  Prince Ario lay on the bed, stark naked, body white on the rumpled cover, legs and arms spread out wide. His head turned towards her, the spray of feathers on his mask making long shadows creep across the glowing wall behind.

  “More?” he murmured, taking a lazy swallow from a wine bottle.

  “I hope we haven’t… tired you out… already.” Monza’s own voice seemed to boom out of a faraway bucket as she padded towards the bed, a ship tossing on a choppy red sea of soft carpet.

  “I daresay I can rise to the occasion,” said Ario, fumbling with his cock. “You seem to have the advantage of me, though.” He waved a finger at her. “Too many clothes.”

  “Uh.” She shrugged the fur from her shoulders and it slithered to the floor.

  “Gloves off.” He swatted with his hand. “Don’t care for them.”

  “Nor me.” She pulled them off, tickling at her forearms. Ario was staring at her right hand. She held it up in front of her eyes, blinked at it. There was a long, pink scar down her forearm, the hand a blotchy claw, palm squashed, fingers twisted, little one sticking out stubbornly straight.

  “Ah.” She’d forgotten about that.

  “A crippled hand.” Ario wriggled eagerly down the bed towards her, his cock and the feathers sprouting from his head waggling from side to side with the movements of his hips. “How terribly… exotic.”

  “Isn’t it?” The memory of Gobba’s boot crunching down across it flashed through her mind and snatched her into the cold moment. She felt herself smile. “No need for this.” She took hold of the feathers and plucked the mask from his head, tossed it away into the corner.

  Ario grinned at her, pink marks around his eyes where the mask had sat. She felt the glow of the husk leaking from her mind as she stared into his face. She saw him stabbing her brother in the neck, heaving him off the terrace, complaining at being cut. And here he was, before her now. Orso’s heir.

  “How rude.” He clambered up from the bed. “I must teach you a lesson.”

  “Or maybe I’ll teach you one.”

  He came closer, so close that she could smell his sweat. “Bold, to bandy words with me. Very bold.” He reached out and ran one finger up her arm. “Few women are as bold as that.” Closer, and he slipped his other hand into the slit in her skirts, up her thigh, squeezing at her arse. “I almost feel as if I know you.”

  Monza took hold of the corner of her mask with her ruined right hand as Ario drew her closer still. “Know me?” She slid her other fist gently behind her back, found the grip of one of the knives. “Of course you know me.”

  She pulled her mask away. Ario’s smile lingered for a moment longer as his eyes flickered over her face. Then they went staring wide.

  “Somebody-!”

  * * *

  A hundred scales on this next throw!” Crescent Moon bellowed, holding the dice up high. The room grew quiet as people turned to watch.

  “A hundred scales.” It meant nothing to Friendly. None of it was his money, and money only interested him as far as counting it went. Losses and gains were exactly the same.

  Crescent Moon rattled the dice in his hand. “Come on, you shits!” The man flung them recklessly across the table, bouncing and tumbling.

  �
��Five and six.”

  “Hah!” Moon’s friends whooped, chuckled, slapped him on the back as though he had achieved something fine by throwing one number instead of another.

  The one with the mask like a ship threw his arms in the air. “Have that!”

  The one with the fox mask made an obscene gesture.

  The candles seemed to have grown uncomfortably bright. Too bright to count. The room was very hot, close, crowded. Friendly’s shirt was sticking to him as he scooped up the dice and tossed them gently back. A few gasps round the table. “Five and six. House wins.” People often forgot that any one score is just as likely as any other, even the same score. So it was not entirely a shock that Crescent Moon lost his sense of perspective.

  “You cheating bastard!”

  Friendly frowned. In Safety he would have cut a man who spoke to him like that. He would have had to, so that others would have known not to try. He would have started cutting him and not stopped. But they were not in Safety now, they were outside. Control, he had been told. He made himself forget the warm handle of his cleaver, pressing into his side. Control. He only shrugged. “Five and six. The dice don’t lie.”

  Crescent Moon grabbed hold of Friendly’s wrist as he began to sweep up the counters. He leaned forwards and poked him in the chest with a drunken finger. “I think your dice are loaded.”

  Friendly felt his face go slack, the breath hardly moving in his throat, it had constricted so painfully tight. He could feel every drop of sweat tickling at his forehead, at his back, at his scalp. A calm, cold, utterly unbearable rage seared through every part of him. “You think my dice are what?” he could barely whisper.

  Poke, poke, poke. “Your dice are liars.”

  “My dice… are what?” Friendly’s cleaver split the crescent mask in half and the skull underneath it wide open. His knife stabbed the man with the ship over his face through his gaping mouth and the point emerged from the back of his head. Friendly stabbed him again, and again, squelch, squelch, the grip of the blade turning slippery. A woman gave a long, shrill scream.

  Friendly was vaguely aware that everyone in the hall was gaping at him, four times three times four of them, or more, or less. He flung the dice table over, sending glasses, counters, coins flying. The man with the fox mask was staring, eyes wide inside the eyeholes, spatters of dark brains across his pale cheek.

  Friendly leaned forwards into his face. “Apologise!” he roared at the very top of his lungs. “Apologise to my fucking dice!”

  * * *

  “Somebody-!”

  Ario’s cry turned to a breathy wheeze of an in-breath. He stared down, and she did too. Her knife had gone in the hollow where his thigh met his body, just beside his wilting cock, and was buried in him to the grip, blood running out all over her fist. For the shortest moment he gave a hideous, high-pitched shriek, then the point of Monza’s other knife punched in under his ear and slid out of the far side of his neck.

  Ario stayed there, eyes bulging, one hand plucking weakly at her bare shoulder. The other crept trembling up and fumbled at the handle of the blade. Blood leaked out of him thick and black, oozing between his fingers, bubbling down his legs, running down his chest in dark, treacly streaks, leaving his pale skin all smeared and speckled with red. His mouth yawned, but his scream was nothing but a soft farting sound, breath squelching around the wet steel in his throat. He tottered back, his other arm fishing at the air, and Monza watched him, fascinated, his white face leaving a bright trace across her vision.

  “Three dead,” she whispered. “Four left.”

  His bloody thighs slapped against the windowsill and he fell, head smashing against the stained glass and knocking the window wide. He tumbled through and out into the night.

  * * *

  The club came over, a blow that could’ve smashed in Shivers’ skull like an egg. But it was tired, sloppy, left Greylock’s side open. Shivers ducked it, already spinning, snarling as he whipped the heavy sword round. It cut into the big man’s blue-painted forearm with a meaty thump, hacked it off clean, carried on through and chopped deep into the side of his stomach. Blood showered from the stump and into the faces of the onlookers. The club clattered to the cobbles, hand and wrist along with it. Someone gave a thin shriek. Someone else laughed.

  “How’d they do that?”

  Then Greylock started squealing like he’d caught his foot in a door. “Fuck! It hurts! Ah! Ah! What’s my… by the-”

  He reached around with the one hand he had left, fumbling at the gash in his side, dark mush bulging out. He lurched forwards onto one knee, head tipping back, and started to scream. Until Shivers’ sword hit his mask right in the forehead and made a clang that cut his roar off dead, left a huge dent between the eyeholes. The big man crashed over on his back, his boots flew up in the air, then thumped down.

  And that was the end of the evening’s entertainment.

  The band spluttered out a last few wobbly notes, then the music died. Apart from some vague yelling leaking from the gaming hall, the yard was silent. Shivers stared down at Greylock’s corpse, blood bubbling out from beneath the stoved-in mask. His fury had suddenly melted, leaving him only with a painful arm, a scalp prickling with cold sweat and a healthy sense of creeping horror.

  “Why do things like this always happen to me?”

  “Because you’re a bad, bad man,” said Cosca, peering over his shoulder.

  Shivers felt a shadow fall across his face. He was just looking up when a naked body crashed down headfirst into the circle from above, showering the already gaping crowd with blood.

  That’s Entertainment

  All at once, things got confused.

  “The king!” someone squealed, for no reason that made any sense. The blood-spattered space that had been the circle was suddenly full of stumbling bodies, running to nowhere. Everyone was bawling, wailing, shouting. Men’s voices and women’s, a noise fit to deafen the dead. Someone shoved at Shivers’ shield and he shoved back on an instinct, sent them sprawling over Greylock’s corpse.

  “It’s Ario!”

  “Murder!” A guest started to draw his sword, and one of the band stepped calmly forwards and smashed his skull apart with a sharp blow of a mace.

  More screams. Steel rang and grated. Shivers saw one of the Gurkish dancers slit a man’s belly open with a curved knife, saw him fumble his sword as he vomited blood, stab the man behind him in the leg. There was a crash of tinkling glass and a flailing body came flying through one of the windows of the gambling hall. Panic and madness spread like fire in a dry field.

  One of the jugglers was flinging knives, flying metal clattering about the yard, thudding into flesh and wood, just as deadly to friends as enemies. Someone grabbed hold of Shivers’ sword arm and he elbowed them in the face, lifted his sword to hack at them and realised it was Morc, the pipe player, blood running from his nose. There was a loud whomp and a glare of orange through the heaving bodies. The screaming went up a notch, a mindless chorus.

  “Fire!”

  “Water!”

  “Out of my way!”

  “The juggler! Get the-”

  “Help! Help!”

  “Knights of the Body, to me! To me!”

  “Where’s the prince? Where’s Ario?”

  “Somebody help!”

  “Back!” shouted Cosca.

  “Eh?” Shivers called at him, not sure who was howling at who. A knife flickered past in the darkness, rattled away between the thrashing bodies.

  “Back!” Cosca sidestepped a sword-thrust, whipped his cane around, a long, thin blade sliding free of it, ran a man through the neck with a swift jab. He slashed at someone else, missed and almost stabbed Shivers as he lurched past. One of Ario’s gentlemen, mask like a squares board, nearly caught Cosca with a sword. Gurpi loomed up behind and smashed his lute over the man’s head. The wooden body shattered, the axe blade inside split his shoulder right down to his chest and crushed his butchered wreckage into the cob
bles.

  Another surge of flame went up, people stumbled away, shoving madly, a ripple through the straining crowd. They suddenly parted and the Incredible Ronco came thrashing straight at Shivers, white fire wreathing him like some devil burst out of hell. Shivers tottered back, smashed him away with his shield. Ronco reeled into the wall, bounced off it and into another, showering globs of liquid fire, folk scrambling away, steel stabbing about at random. The flames spread up the dry ivy, first a crackle, then a roar, leaped to the wooden wall, bathing the heaving courtyard in wild, flickering light. A window shattered. The locked gates clattered as men clutched at ’em, screaming to be let out. Shivers beat the flames on his shield against the wall. Ronco was rolling on the ground, still burning, making a thin screech like a boiling kettle, the flames casting a crazy glare across the bobbing masks of guests and entertainers-twisted monsters’ faces, everywhere Shivers looked.

  There was no time to make sense of any of it. All that mattered was who lived and who died, and he’d no mind to join the second lot. He backed off, keeping close to the wall, shoving men away with his scorched shield as they grabbed at him.

  A couple of the guards in breastplates were forcing their way through the press. One of ’em chopped Barti or Kummel down with his sword, hard to say which, caught one of Ario’s gentlemen on the backswing and took part of his skull off. He staggered round, squealing, one hand clapped to his head, blood running out between his fingers, over his golden mask and down his face in black streaks. Barti or Kummel, whichever was left, stabbed a knife into the top of the swordsman’s head, right up to the hilt, then hooted as the point of a blade slid out of the front of his chest.

  Another armoured guard shouldered his way towards Shivers, sword held high, shouting something, sounded like the Union tongue. Didn’t much matter where he was from, he had a mind for killing, that was clear, and Shivers didn’t plan on giving him the first blow. He snarled as he swung, full-blooded, but the guard lurched back out of the way and Shivers’ sword chopped into something else with a meaty thwack. A woman’s chest, just happened to be stumbling past. She fell against the wall, scream turning to a gurgle as she slid down through the ivy, mask half-torn off, one eye staring at him, blood bubbling from her nose, from her mouth, pouring down her white neck.