Best Served Cold

“Ah! Mind my hand!” One of them dragged her off the bed, shoved her stumbling towards the door and she nearly slipped, getting her balance back without much dignity. There wasn’t much dignity to be had in all of this. Benna’s little glass statue watched from its niche. So much for household spirits. “Can we get some clothes at least?”

“I don’t see why.” They hauled her out onto the landing, into the light of another lantern. “Wait there.” Langrier squatted down, frowning at the zigzag scars on Monza’s hip and along her thigh, neat pink dots of the pulled stitches almost faded. She prodded at them with one thumb as though she was checking a joint of meat in a butcher’s for rot. “You ever seen marks like that before, Pello?”

“No.”

She looked up at Monza. “How did you get these?”

“I was shaving my cunt and the razor slipped.”

The woman spluttered with laughter. “I like that. That’s funny.”

Pello was laughing too. “That is funny.”

“Good thing you’ve got a sense of humour.” Langrier stood up, brushing dust from her knees. “You’ll need that later.” She thumped Monza on the side of the head with an open hand and sent her tumbling down the stairs. She fell on her shoulder with a jarring impact, the steps battered her back, skinned her knees, her legs went flying over. She squealed and grunted as the wood drove the air out of her, then the wall cracked her in the nose and knocked her sprawling, one leg buckled against the plaster. She lifted her head, groggy as a drunkard, the stairway still reeling. Her mouth tasted of blood. She spat it out. It filled up again.

“Fuh,” she grunted.

“No more jokes? We’ve got a few more flights if you’re still feeling witty.”

She wasn’t. She let herself be dragged up, grunting as pain ground at her battered shoulder-joint.

“What’s this?” She felt the ring pulled roughly off her middle finger, saw Langrier smiling as she held her hand up to the light, ruby glinting.

“Looks good on you,” said Pello. Monza kept her silence. If the worst she lost out of this was Benna’s ring, she’d count herself lucky indeed.

There were more soldiers on the floors below, rooting through the tower, dragging gear from the chests and boxes. Glass crunched and tinkled as they upended one of Morveer’s cases onto the floor. Day was sitting on a bed nearby, yellow hair hanging over her face, hands bound behind her. Monza met her eye for a moment, and they stared at each other, but there wasn’t much pity to spare. At least she’d been lucky enough to have her shift on when they came.

They shoved Monza down into the kitchen and she leaned against the wall, breathing fast, stark naked but past caring. Furli was down there, and his brother too. Langrier walked over to them and pulled a purse from her back pocket.

“Looks like you were right. Spies.” She counted coins out into the farmer’s waiting palm. “Five scales for each of them. Duke Salier thanks you for your diligence, citizen. You say there were more?”

“Four others.”

“We’ll keep a watch on the tower and pick them up later. You’d better find somewhere else for your family.”

Monza watched Furli take the money, licking at the blood running out of her nose and thinking this was where charity got you. Sold for five scales. Benna would probably have been upset by the size of the bounty, but she had far bigger worries. The farmer gave her a last look as they dragged her stumbling out through the door. There was no guilt in his eyes. Maybe he felt he’d done the best thing for his family, in the midst of a war. Maybe he was proud that he’d had the courage to do it. Maybe he was right to be.

Seemed it was as true now as it had been when Verturio wrote the words. Mercy and cowardice are the same.

The Odd Couple

I t was Morveer’s considered opinion that he was spending entirely too much of his time in lofts, of late. It did not help in the slightest that this one was exposed to the elements. Large sections of the roof of the ruined house were missing, and the wind blew chill into his face. It reminded him most unpleasingly of that crisp spring night, long ago, when two of the prettiest and most popular girls had lured him onto the roof of the orphanage then locked him up there in his nightshirt. He was found in the morning, grey-lipped and shivering, close to having frozen to death. How they had all laughed.

The company was far from warming him. Shylo Vitari crouched in the darkness, her head a spiky outline with the night sky behind, one eye shut, her eyeglass to the other. Behind them in the city, fires burned. War might be good for a poisoner’s business, but Morveer had always preferred to keep it at arm’s length. Considerably beyond, in fact. A city under siege was no place for a civilised man. He missed his orchard. He missed his good goose-down mattress. He attempted to shift the collars of his coat even higher around his ears, and transferred his attention once again to the palace of Grand Duke Salier, brooding on its long island in the midst of the fast-flowing Visser.