Best Served Cold

“Why ever a man of my talents should be called upon to survey a scene of this nature is entirely beyond me. I am no general.”

“Oh no. You’re a murderer on a much smaller scale.”

Morveer frowned sideways. “As are you.”

“Surely, but I’m not the one complaining.”

“I resent being dropped into the centre of a war.”

“It’s Styria. It’s spring. Of course there’s a war. Let’s just come up with a plan and get back out of the night.”

“Huh. Back to Murcatto’s charitable institution for the housing of displaced agricultural workers, do you mean? The stench of self-righteous hypocrisy in that place causes my bile to rise.”

Vitari blew into her cupped hands. “Better than out here.”

“Is it? Downstairs, the farmer’s brats wail into the night. Upstairs, our employer’s profoundly unsubtle erotic adventures with our barbarian companion keep the floorboards groaning at all hours. I ask you, is there anything more unsettling than the sound of other… people… fucking?”

Vitari grinned. “You’ve got a point there. They’ll have that floor in before they’re done.”

“They’ll have my skull in before that. I ask you, is an iota of professionalism too much to ask for?”

“Long as she’s paying, who cares?”

“I care if her carelessness leads to my untimely demise, but I suppose we must make do.”

“Less whining and more work, then, maybe? A way in.”

“A way in, because the noble leaders of Styrian cities are trusting folk, always willing to welcome uninvited guests into their places of residence…”

Morveer moved his eyeglass carefully across the front of the sprawling building, rising up sheer from the frothing waters of the river. For the home of a renowned aesthete, it was an edifice of minimal architectural merit. A confusion of ill-matched styles awkwardly mashed together into a jumble of roofs, turrets, cupolas, domes and dormers, its single tower thrusting up into the heavens. The gatehouse was comprehensively fortified, complete with arrow loops, bartizans, machicolations and gilded portcullis facing the bridge into the city. A detachment of fifteen soldiers were gathered there in full armour.

“The gate is far too well guarded, the front elevation far too visible to climb, either to roof or window.”

“Agreed. The only spot we’d have a chance of getting in without being seen is the north wall.”

Morveer swung his eyeglass towards the narrow northern face of the building, a sheer expanse of mossy grey stone pierced by darkened stained-glass windows and with a begargoyled parapet above. Had the palace been a ship sailing upriver, that would have been its prow, and fast-flowing water foamed with particular energy around its sloping base. “Unobserved, perhaps, but also the most difficult to reach.”

“Scared?” Morveer lowered his eyeglass with some irritation to see Vitari grinning at him.

“Let us say rather that I am dubious as to our chances of success. Though I confess I feel some warmth at the prospect of your plunging from a rope into the frothing river, I am far from attracted by the prospect of following you.”

“Why not just say you’re scared?”

Morveer refused to rise to such ham-fisted taunting. It had not worked in the orphanage; it would most certainly not work now. “We would require a boat, of course.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard to find something upriver.”

He pursed his lips as he weighed the benefits. “The plan would have the added advantage of providing a means of egress, an aspect of the venture by which Murcatto seems decidedly untroubled. Once Ganmark has been put paid to, we might hope to reach the roof, still disguised, and back down the rope to the boat. Then we could simply float out to sea and-”

“Look at that.” Vitari pointed at a group moving briskly along the street below, and Morveer trained his eyeglass upon them. Perhaps a dozen armoured soldiers marched on either side of two stumbling figures, entirely naked, hands bound behind them. A woman and a large man.

“Looks like they’ve caught some spies,” said Vitari. “Bad luck for them.”

One of the soldiers jabbed the man with the butt of his spear and knocked him over in the road, bare rump sticking into the air. Morveer chuckled. “Oh yes, indeed, even among Styrian prisons, the dungeons beneath Salier’s palace enjoy a black reputation.” He frowned through the eyeglass. “Wait, though. The woman looks like-”

“Murcatto. It’s fucking them!”

“Can nothing run smoothly?” Morveer felt a mounting sense of horror he had in no way expected. Stumbling along at the back in her nightshirt, hands bound behind her, was Day. “Curse it all! They have my assistant!”

“Piss on your assistant. They have our employer! That means they have my pay!”

Morveer could do nothing but grind his teeth as the prisoners were herded across the bridge and into the palace, the heavy gates tightly sealed behind them. “Damn it! The tower-house is no longer safe! We cannot return there!”

“An hour ago you couldn’t stand the thought of going back to that den of hypocrisy and erotic adventure.”

“But my equipment is there!”