Best Served Cold

“I doubt it.” Vitari nodded her spiky head towards the palace. “It’ll be with all the boxes they carried in there.”

Morveer slapped petulantly at the bare rafter by his head, winced as he took a splinter in his forefinger and was forced to suck it. “Damn and shitting blast!”

“Calm, Morveer, calm.”

“I am calm!” The sensible thing to do was undeniably to find a boat, to float silently up to Duke Salier’s palace, then past it and out to sea, writing off his losses, return to the orchard and train another assistant, leaving Murcatto and her imbecile Northman to reap the consequences of their stupidity. Caution first, always, but…

“I cannot leave my assistant behind in there,” he barked. “I simply cannot!”

“Why?”

“Well, because…” He was not sure why. “I flatly refuse to go through the trouble of instructing another!”

Vitari’s irritating grin had grown wider. “Fine. You need your girl and I need my money. You want to cry about it or work on a way in? I still say boat down the river to the north wall, then rope and grapple to the roof.”

Morveer squinted unhopefully towards the sheer stonework. “You can truthfully secure a grapple up there?”

“I could get a grapple through a fly’s arse. It’s you getting the boat into position that worries me.”

He was not about to be outdone. “I challenge you to find a more accomplished oarsman! I could hold a boat steady in a deluge twice as fierce, but it will not be needful. I can drive a hook into that stonework and anchor the boat against those rocks all night.”

“Good for you.”

“Good. Excellent.” His heart was beating with considerable urgency at the argument. He might not have liked the woman, but her competence was in no doubt. Given the circumstances he could not have selected a more suitable companion. A most handsome woman, too, in her own way, and no doubt every bit as firm a disciplinarian as the sternest nurse at the orphanage had been…

Her eyes narrowed. “I hope you’re not going to make the same suggestion you made last time we worked together.”

Morveer bristled. “There will be no repetition of that whatsoever , I can assure you!”

“Good. Because I’d still rather fuck a hedgehog.”

“You made your preferences quite clear on that occasion!” he answered shrilly, then moved with all despatch to shift the topic. “There is no purpose in delay. Let us find a vessel appropriate to our needs.” He took one last look down as he slithered back into the attic, and paused. “Who’s this now?” A single figure was striding boldly towards the palace gates. Morveer felt his heart sink even lower. There was no mistaking the flamboyant gait. “ Cosca. Whatever is that horrible old drunkard about?”

“Who knows what goes through that scabby head?”

The mercenary strode towards the guards quite as if it was his palace rather than Duke Salier’s, waving one arm. Morveer could just hear his voice in between the sighing of the wind, but had not the slightest notion of the words. “What are they saying?”

“You can’t read lips?” Vitari muttered.

“No.”

“Nice to find there’s one subject you’re not the world’s greatest expert on. The guards are challenging him.”

“Of course!” That much was clear from the halberds lowered at Cosca’s chest. The old mercenary swept off his hat and bowed low.

“He is replying… my name is Nicomo Cosca… famed soldier of fortune… and I am here…” She lowered the eyeglass, frowning.

“Yes?”

Vitari’s eyes slid towards him. “And I am here for dinner.”

Darkness

U tter dark. Monza opened her eyes wide, squinted and stared, and saw nothing but fizzing, tingling blackness. She wouldn’t have been able to see her hand before her face. But she couldn’t move her hand there anyway, or anywhere else.

They’d chained her to the ceiling by her wrists, to the floor by her ankles. If she hung limp, her feet just brushed the clammy stones. If she stretched up on tiptoe, she could ease the throbbing ache through her arms, through her ribs, through her sides, a merciful fraction. Soon her calves would start to burn, though, worse and worse until she had to ease back down, teeth gritted, and swing by her skinned wrists. It was agonising, humiliating, terrifying, but the worst of it was, she knew-this was as good as things were going to get.

She wasn’t sure where Day was. Probably she’d blinked those big eyes, shed a single fat tear and said she knew nothing, and they’d believed her. She had the sort of face that people believed. Monza never had that sort of face. But then she probably didn’t deserve one. Shivers was struggling somewhere in the inky black, metal clinking as he twisted at his chains, cursing in Northern, then Styrian. “Fucking Styria. Fucking Vossula. Shit. Shit.”

“Stop!” she hissed at him. “Might as well… I don’t know… keep your strength.”

“Strength going to help us, you reckon?”

She swallowed. “Couldn’t hurt.” Couldn’t help. Nothing could.

“By the dead, but I need to piss.”

“Piss, then,” she snapped into the darkness. “What’s the difference?”