Best Served Cold

The sizzling grew quieter. Shivers’ scream had become a moaning hiss, the last air in his lungs being dragged out of him, spit spraying from his stretched-back lips, frothing from the wood between his bared teeth. Langrier stepped away. The iron had cooled to dark orange, smeared down one side with smoking black ash. She tossed it clattering back into the coals with some distaste.

Pello let go and Shivers’ head dropped forwards, breath bubbling in his throat. Monza didn’t know if he was awake or not, aware or not. She prayed not. The room smelled of charred meat. She couldn’t look at his face. Couldn’t look. Had to look. A glimpse of a great blackened stripe across his cheek and through his eye, raw-meat-red around it, bubbled and blistered, shining oily with fat cooked from his face. She jerked her eyes back to the floor, wide open, the air crawling in her throat, all her skin as clammy-cold as a corpse dragged from a river.

“There we go. Aren’t we all better off for that, now? All so you could keep your secrets for a few minutes longer? What you won’t tell us, we’ll just get out of that little yellow-haired bitch later.” She waved a hand in front of her face. “Damn, that stinks. Drop her down, Pello.”

The chains rattled and she went down. Couldn’t stand, even. Too scared, too hurting. Her knees grazed the stone. Shivers’ breath crackled. Langrier rubbed at her shoulder. Pello clicked his tongue softly as he made the chains fast. Monza felt the sole of his boot dig into the backs of her calves.

“Please,” she whispered, whole body shivering, teeth rattling. Monzcarro Murcatto, the dreaded Butcher of Caprile, the fearsome Serpent of Talins, that monster who’d washed herself in the Years of Blood, all that was a distant memory. “Please.”

“You think we enjoy doing this? You think we wouldn’t rather get on with people? I’m well liked mostly, aren’t I, Pello?”

“Mostly.”

“For pity’s sake, give me something I can use. Just tell me…” Langrier closed her eyes and rubbed at them with the back of her wrist. “Just tell me who you get your orders from, at least. Let’s just start with that.”

“Alright, alright!” Monza’s eyes were stinging. “I’ll talk!” She could feel tears running down her face. “I’m talking!” She wasn’t sure what she was saying. “Ganmark! Orso! Talins!” Gibberish. Nothing. Anything. “I… I work for Ganmark!” Anything to keep the irons in the brazier for a few more moments. “I take my orders from him!”

“From him directly?” Langrier frowned over at Pello, and he took a break from picking at the dry skin on one palm to frown back. “Of course you do, and his Excellency Grand Duke Salier is constantly down here checking how we’re getting along. Do you think I’m a fucking idiot?” She cuffed Monza across the face, one way and back the other, turned her mouth bloody and set her skin burning, made the room jerk and sway. “You’re making this up as you go along!”

Monza tried to shake the mud out of her head. “Wha’ d’you wan’ me to tell you?” Words all mangled in her swollen mouth.

“Something that fucking helps me!”

Monza’s bloody lip moved up and down, but nothing came out except a string of red drool. Lies were useless. The truth was useless. Pello’s arm snaked around her head from behind, tight as a noose, dragged her face back towards the ceiling.

“No!” she squawked. “No! N-” The piece of wood was wedged into her mouth, wet with Shivers’ spit.

Langrier loomed into Monza’s blurry vision, shaking one arm out. “My damn shoulder! I swear I’m in more pain than anyone, but no one has mercy on me, do they?” She dragged a fresh iron clear of the coals, held it up, yellow-white, casting a faint glow across her face, making the beads of sweat on her forehead glisten. “Is there anything more boring than other people’s pain?”

She raised the iron, Monza’s weeping eye jammed wide open and fixed on its white tip as it loomed towards her, fizzing ever so softly. The breath wheezed and shuddered in her throat. She could almost feel the heat from it on her cheek, almost feel the pain already. Langrier leaned forwards.

“Stop.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a blurry figure in the doorway. She blinked, eyelids fluttering. A great fat man, standing at the top of the steps in a white dressing gown.

“Your Excellency!” Langrier shoved the iron back into the brazier as though it was her it was burning. The grip round Monza’s neck was suddenly released, Pello’s boot came off the back of her calves.

Grand Duke Salier’s eyes shifted slowly in his great expanse of pale face, from Monza, to Shivers, and back to Monza. “Are these they?”

“Indeed they are.” Nicomo Cosca peered over the duke’s shoulder and down into the room. Monza couldn’t remember ever in her life being so glad to see someone. The old mercenary winced. “Too late for the Northman’s eye.”

“Early enough for his life, at least. But whatever have you done to her skin, Captain Langrier?”

“The scars she had already, your Excellency.”