Best Served Cold

by Джо Аберкромби

  “Do we gather you are less than satisfied with tonight’s endeavours?” asked Morveer.

  “We got Ario. It could’ve been worse. I need some dry clothes. We leave Sipani right away.” She limped up the steps, torn skirts dragging in the dust behind her, and shouldered past Morveer. Shivers swung the warehouse door shut and leaned against it, head back.

  “That is one stone-hearted bitch,” muttered Vitari as she watched her go.

  Cosca pursed his lips. “I always said she had a devil in her. But of the two, her brother was the truly ruthless one.”

  “Huh.” Vitari turned back into the kitchen. “It was a compliment.”

  * * *

  Monza managed to shut the door and make it a few steps into her room before her insides clenched up as if she’d been punched in the guts. She retched so hard she could hardly breathe, a long string of bitter drool dangling from her lip and spattering against the boards.

  She shivered with revulsion, started trying to twist her way out of the whore’s clothes. Her flesh crept at the touch of them, her guts cramped at the rotten canal stink of them. Numb fingers wrestled with hooks and eyes, clawed at buttons and buckles. Gasping and grunting, she tore the damp rags off and flung them away.

  She caught sight of herself in the mirror, in the light of the one lamp. Hunched like a beggar, shivering like a drunk, red scars standing out from white skin, black hair hanging lank and loose. A drowned corpse, standing. Just about.

  You’re a dream. A vision. The very Goddess of War!

  She was doubled over by another stab of sickness, stumbled to her chest and started dragging fresh clothes on with trembling hands. The shirt had been one of Benna’s. For a moment it was almost like having his arms around her. As close as she could ever get, now.

  She sat on the bed, her own arms clamped around herself, bare feet pressed together, rocking back and forth, willing the warmth to spread. Another rush of nausea dragged her up and had her spitting bile. Once it passed she shoved Benna’s shirt down behind her belt, bent to drag her boots on, grimacing at the cold aches through her legs.

  She delved her hands into the washbasin and threw cold water on her face, started to scrape away the traces of paint and powder, the smears of blood and soot, digging at her ears, at her hair, at her nose.

  “Monza!” Cosca’s voice outside the door. “We have a distinguished visitor.”

  She pulled the leather glove back over her twisted joke of a hand, winced as she worked her bent fingers into it. She took a long, shuddering breath, then slid the Calvez out from under her mattress and into the clasp on her belt. It made her feel better just having it there. She pulled the door open.

  Carlot dan Eider stood in the middle of the warehouse floor, gold thread gleaming in her red coat, watching Monza as she came down the steps, trying not to limp, Cosca following after.

  “What in hell happened? Cardotti’s is still burning! The city’s in uproar!”

  “What happened?” barked Monza. “Why don’t you tell me what happened? His August fucking Majesty was where Foscar was supposed to be!”

  The black scab on Eider’s neck shifted as she swallowed. “Foscar wouldn’t go. He said he had a headache. So Ario took his brother-in-law along in his place.”

  “And he happened to bring a dozen Knights of the Body with him,” said Cosca. “The king’s own bodyguards. As well as a far greater volume of guests than anyone anticipated. The results were not happy. For anyone.”

  “Ario?” muttered Eider, face pale.

  Monza stared into her eyes. “Deader than fuck.”

  “The king?” she almost whispered.

  “Alive. When I left him. But the building did tend to burn down after that. Maybe they got him out.”

  Eider looked at the floor, rubbing at one temple with her gloved hand. “I’d hoped you might fail.”

  “No such luck.”

  “There will be consequences now. You do a thing like this, there are consequences. Some you see coming, and some you don’t.” She held out one hand. “My antidote.”

  “There isn’t one.”

  “I kept my side of the bargain!”

  “There was no poison. Just a jab with a dry needle. You’re free.”

  Eider barked despairing laughter at her. “Free? Orso won’t rest until he’s fed me to his dogs! Perhaps I can keep ahead of him, but I’ll never keep ahead of the Cripple. I let him down, and put his precious king in harm’s way. He won’t let that pass. He never lets anything pass. Are you happy now?”

  “You talk as if there was a choice. Orso and the rest die, or I do, and that’s all. Happy isn’t part of the sum.” Monza shrugged as she turned away. “You’d better start running.”

  “I sent a letter.”

  She stopped, then turned back. “Letter?”

  “Earlier today. To Grand Duke Orso. It was written in some passion, so I forget exactly what was said. The name Shylo Vitari was mentioned, though. And the name Nicomo Cosca.”

  Cosca waved it away with one hand. “I’ve always had a lot of powerful enemies. I consider it a point of pride. Listing them makes excellent dinner conversation.”

  Eider turned her sneer from the old mercenary back to Monza. “Those two names, and the name of Murcatto as well.”

  Monza frowned. “Murcatto.”

  “How much of a fool do you take me for? I know who you are, and now Orso will know too. That you’re alive, and that you killed his son, and that you had help. A petty revenge, perhaps, but the best I could manage.”

  “Revenge?” Monza nodded slowly. “Well. Everyone’s at it. It would’ve been better if you hadn’t done that.” The Calvez rattled gently as she rested her hand on its hilt.

  “Why, will you kill me for it? Hah! I’m good as dead already!”

  “Then why should I bother? You’re not on my list. You can go.” Eider stared at her for a moment, mouth slightly open as though she was about to speak, then she snapped it shut and turned for the door. “Aren’t you going to wish me luck?”

  “What?”

  “The way I see it, your best hope now is that I kill Orso.”

  Ario’s one-time mistress paused in the doorway. “Some fucking chance of that!” And she was gone.

  IV

  VISSERINE

  “War without fire is as worthless as sausages without mustard”.

  Henry V

  The Thousand Swords fought for Ospria against Muris. They fought for Muris against Sipani. They fought for Sipani against Muris, then for Ospria again. Between contracts, they sacked Oprile on a whim. A month later, judging they had perhaps not been thorough enough, they sacked it again, and left it in smouldering ruins. They fought for everyone against no one, and no one against everyone, and all the while they hardly did any fighting at all.

  But robbery and plunder, arson and pillage, rape and extortion, yes.

  Nicomo Cosca liked to surround himself with the curious that he might seem strange and romantic. A nineteen-year-old swordswoman inseparable from her younger brother seemed to qualify, so he kept them close. At first he found them interesting. Then he found them useful. Then he found them indispensable.

  He and Monza would spar together in the cold mornings-the flicker and scrape of steel, the hiss and smoke of snatched breath. He was stronger, and she quicker, and so they were well matched. They would taunt each other, and spit at each other, and laugh. Men from the company would gather to watch them, laugh to see their captain bested by a girl half his age, often as not. Everyone laughed, except Benna. He was no swordsman.

  He had a trick for numbers, though, and he took charge of the company’s books, and then the buying of the stocks, and then the management and resale of the booty and the distribution of the proceeds. He made money for everyone, and had an easy manner, and soon was well loved.

  Monza was a quick study. She learned what Stolicus wrote, and Verturio, and Bialoveld, and Farans. She learned all that Nicomo Cosca had to teach. She learned tacti
cs and strategy, manoeuvre and logistics, how to read the ground and how to read an enemy. She learned by watching, then she learned by doing. She learned all the arts and all the sciences that were of use to the soldier.

  “You have a devil in you,” Cosca told her, when he was drunk, which was not rarely. She saved his life at Muris, then he saved hers. Everyone laughed, except Benna, again. He was no lifesaver.

  Old Sazine died of an arrow, and the captains of the companies that made up the Thousand Swords voted Nicomo Cosca to the captain general’s chair. Monza and Benna went with him. She carried Cosca’s orders. Then she told him what his orders should be. Then she gave orders while he was passed out drunk and pretended they were his. Then she stopped pretending they were his, and no one minded because her orders were better than his would have been, even had he been sober.

  As the months passed and turned to years, he was sober less and less. The only orders he gave were in the tavern. The only sparring he did was with a bottle. When the Thousand Swords had picked one part of the country clean and it came time to move on, Monza would search for him through the taverns, and the smoke-houses, and the brothels, and drag him back.

  She hated to do it, and Benna hated to watch her do it, but Cosca had given them a home and they owed him, so she did it still. As they wended their way to camp in the dusk, him stumbling under the weight of drink, and her stumbling under the weight of him, he would whisper in her ear.

  “Monza, Monza. What would I do without you?”

  Vengeance, Then

  General Ganmark’s highly polished cavalry boots click-clicked against the highly polished floor. The chamberlain’s shoes squeak-squeaked along behind. The echoes of both snap-snapped from the glittering walls and around the great, hollow space, their hurry setting lazy dust motes swirling through bars of light. Shenkt’s own soft work boots, scuffed and supple from long use, made no sound whatsoever.

  “Upon entering the presence of his Excellency,” the chamberlain’s words frothed busily out, “you advance towards him, without undue speed, looking neither right nor left, your eyes tilted down towards the ground and at no point meeting those of his Excellency. You stop at the white line upon the carpet. Not before the line and under no circumstances beyond it but precisely at the line. You then kneel-”

  “I do not kneel,” said Shenkt.

  The chamberlain’s head rotated towards him like an affronted owl’s. “Only the heads of state of foreign powers are excepted! Everyone must-”

  “I do not kneel.”

  The chamberlain gasped with outrage, but Ganmark snapped over him. “For pity’s sake! Duke Orso’s son and heir has been murdered! His Excellency does not give a damn whether a man kneels if he can bring him vengeance. Kneel or not, as it suits you.” Two white-liveried guardsmen lifted their crossed halberds to let them pass, and Ganmark shoved the double doors wide open.

  The hall beyond was dauntingly cavernous, opulent, grand. Fit for the throne room of the most powerful man in Styria. But Shenkt had stood in greater rooms, before greater men, and had no awe left in him. A thin red carpet stretched away down the mosaic floor, a white line at its lonely end. A high dais rose beyond it, a dozen men in full armour standing guard in front. Upon the dais was a golden chair. Within the chair was Grand Duke Orso of Talins. He was dressed all in black, but his frown was blacker yet.

  A strange and sinister selection of people, three score or more, of all races, sizes and shapes, knelt before Orso and his retinue in a wide arc. They carried no weapons now, but Shenkt guessed they usually carried many. He knew some few of them by sight. Killers. Assassins. Hunters of men. Persons in his profession, if the whitewasher could be said to be in the same profession as the master painter.

  He advanced towards the dais, without undue speed, looking neither right nor left. He passed through the half-circle of assorted murderers and stopped precisely at the line. He watched General Ganmark stride past the guards and up the steps to the throne, lean to whisper in Orso’s ear while the chamberlain took up a disapproving pose at his other elbow.

  The grand duke stared at Shenkt for a long moment and Shenkt stared back, the hall cloaked all the while in that oppressive silence that only great spaces can produce. “So this is he. Why is he not kneeling?”

  “He does not kneel, apparently,” said Ganmark.

  “Everyone else kneels. What makes you special?”

  “Nothing,” said Shenkt.

  “But you do not kneel.”

  “I used to. Long ago. No more.”

  Orso’s eyes narrowed. “And what if a man tried to make you?”

  “Some have tried.”

  “And?”

  “And I do not kneel.”

  “Stand, then. My son is dead.”

  “You have my sorrow.”

  “You do not sound sorrowful.”

  “He was not my son.”

  The chamberlain nearly choked on his tongue, but Orso’s sunken eyes did not deviate. “You like to speak the truth, I see. Blunt counsel is a valuable thing to powerful men. You come to me with the highest recommendations.”

  Shenkt said nothing.

  “That business in Keln. I understand that was your work. All of that, your work alone. It is said that the things that were left could hardly be called corpses.”

  Shenkt said nothing.

  “You do not confirm it.”

  Shenkt stared into Duke Orso’s face, and said nothing.

  “You do not deny it, though.”

  More nothing.

  “I like a tight-lipped man. A man who says little to his friends will say less than nothing to his enemies.”

  Silence.

  “My son is murdered. Thrown from the window of a brothel like rubbish. Many of his friends and associates, my citizens, were also killed. My son-in-law, his Majesty the King of the Union, no less, only just escaped the burning building with his life. Sotorius, the half-corpse Chancellor of Sipani who was their host, wrings his hands and tells me he can do nothing. I am betrayed. I am bereaved. I am… embarrassed. Me!” he screamed suddenly, making the chamber ring, and every person in it flinch.

  Every person except Shenkt. “Vengeance, then.”

  “Vengeance!” Orso smashed the arm of his chair with his fist. “Swift and terrible.”

  “Swift I cannot promise. Terrible-yes.”

  “Then let it be slow, and grinding, and merciless.”

  “It may be necessary to cause some harm to your subjects and their property.”

  “Whatever it takes. Bring me their heads. Every man, woman or child involved in this, to the slightest degree. Whatever is necessary. Bring me their heads.”

  “Their heads, then.”

  “What will be your advance?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Not even-”

  “If I complete the job, you will pay me one hundred thousand scales for the head of the ringleader, and twenty thousand for each assistant to a maximum of one quarter of a million. That is my price.”

  “A very high one!” squeaked the chamberlain. “What will you do with so much money?”

  “I will count it and laugh, while considering how a rich man need not answer the questions of idiots. You will find no employer, anywhere, unsatisfied with my work.” Shenkt moved his eyes slowly to the half-circle of scum at his back. “You can pay less to lesser men, if you please.”

  “I will,” said Orso. “If one of them should find the killers first.”

  “I would accept no other arrangement, your Excellency.”

  “Good,” growled the duke. “Go, then. All of you, go! Bring… me… revenge!”

  “You are dismissed!” screeched the chamberlain. There was a rustling, rattling, clattering as the assassins rose to leave the great chamber. Shenkt turned and walked back down the carpet towards the great doors, without undue speed, looking neither right nor left.

  One of the killers blocked his path, a dark-skinned man of average height but wide as a door,
lean slabs of muscle showing through the gap in his brightly coloured shirt. His thick lip curled. “You are Shenkt? I expected more.”

  “Pray to whatever god you believe in that you never see more.”

  “I do not pray.”

  Shenkt leaned close, and whispered in his ear. “I advise you to start.”

  * * *

  A lthough a large room by most standards, General Ganmark’s study felt cluttered. An oversized bust of Juvens frowned balefully from above the fireplace, his stony bald spot reflected in a magnificent mirror of coloured Visserine glass. Two monumental vases loomed either side of the desk almost to shoulder height. The walls were crowded with canvases in gilded frames, two of them positively vast. Fine paintings. Far too fine to be squeezed.

  “A most impressive collection,” said Shenkt.

  “That one is by Coliere. It would have burned in the mansion in which I found it. And these two are Nasurins, that by Orhus.” Ganmark pointed them out with precise jabs of his forefinger. “His early period, but still. Those vases were made as tribute to the first Emperor of Gurkhul, many hundreds of years ago, and somehow found their way to a rich man’s house outside Caprile.”

  “And from there to here.”

  “I try to rescue what I can,” said Ganmark. “Perhaps when the Years of Blood end, Styria will still have some few treasures worth keeping.”

  “Or you will.”

  “Better I have them than the flames. The campaign season begins, and I will be away to Visserine in the morning, to take the city under siege. Skirmishes, sacks and burnings. March and counter-march. Famine and pestilence, naturally. Maim and murder, of course. All with the awful randomness of a stroke from the heavens. Collective punishment. Of everyone, for nothing. War, Shenkt, war. And to think I once dreamed of being an honourable man. Of doing good.”