Best Served Cold

“Abandoned, eh?” Salier gave a grunt. “I know the feeling. My allies have abandoned me, my soldiers, my people. I am distraught. My sole remaining comfort is my paintings.” One fat finger pointed to a deep archway, heavy doors standing open and bright sunlight spilling through.

Cosca’s trained eye noted a deep groove in the stonework, metal points gleaming in a wide slot in the ceiling. A portcullis, unless he was much mistaken. “Your collection is well protected.”

“Naturally. It is the most valuable in Styria, long years in the making. My great-grandfather began it.” Salier ushered them into a long hallway, a strip of gold-embroidered carpet beckoning them down the centre, many-coloured marble gleaming in the light from huge windows. Vast and brooding oils crowded the opposite wall in long procession, gilt frames glittering.

“This hall is given over to the Midderland masters, of course,” Salier observed. There was a snarling portrait of bald Zoller, a series of Kings of the Union-Harod, Arnault, Casimir, and more. One might have thought they all shat molten gold, they looked so smug. Salier paused a moment before a monumental canvas of the death of Juvens. A tiny, bleeding figure lost in an immensity of forest, lightning flaring across a lowering sky. “Such brushwork. Such colouring, eh, Cosca?”

“Astounding.” Though one daub looked much like another to his eye.

“The happy days I have spent in profound contemplation of these works. Seeking the hidden meanings in the minds of the masters.” Cosca raised his brows at Monza. More time in profound contemplation of the campaign map and less on dead painters and perhaps Styria would not have found itself in the current fix.

“Sculptures from the Old Empire,” murmured the duke as they passed through a wide doorway and into a second airy gallery, lined on both sides with ancient statues. “You would not believe the cost of shipping them from Calcis.” Heroes, emperors, gods. Their missing noses, missing arms, scarred and pitted bodies gave them a look of wounded surprise. The forgotten winners of ten centuries ago, reduced to confused amputees. Where am I? And for pity’s sake, where are my arms?

“I have been wondering what to do,” said Salier suddenly, “and would value your opinion, General Murcatto. You are renowned across Styria and beyond for your ruthlessness, single-mindedness and commitment. Decisiveness has never been my greatest talent. I am too prone to think on what is lost by a certain course of action. To look with longing at all those doors that will be closed, rather than the possibilities presented by the one that I must open.”

“A weakness in a soldier,” said Monza.

“I know it. I am a weak man, perhaps, and a poor soldier. I have relied on good intentions, fair words and righteous causes, and it seems I and my people now will pay for it.” Or for that and his avarice, betrayals and endless warmongering, at least. Salier examined a sculpture of a muscular boatman. Death poling souls to hell, perhaps. “I could flee the city, by small boat in the hours of darkness. Down the river and away, to throw myself upon the mercy of my ally Grand Duke Rogont.”

“A brief sanctuary,” grunted Monza. “Rogont will be next.”

“True. And a man of my considerable dimensions, fleeing? Terribly undignified. Perhaps I could surrender myself to your good friend General Ganmark?”

“You know what would follow.”

Salier’s soft face turned suddenly hard. “Perhaps Ganmark is not so utterly bereft of mercy as some of Orso’s other dogs have been?” Then he seemed to sink back down, face settling into the roll of fat under his chin. “But I daresay you are right.” He peered significantly sideways at a statue that had lost its head some time during the last few centuries. “My fat head on a spike would be the best that I could hope for. Just like good Duke Cantain and his sons, eh, General Murcatto?”

She looked evenly back at him. “Just like Cantain and his sons.” Heads on spikes, Cosca reflected, were still as fashionable as ever.

Around a corner and into another hall, still longer than the first, walls crowded with canvases. Salier clapped his hands. “Here hang the Styrians! Greatest of our countrymen! Long after we are dead and forgotten, their legacy will endure.” He paused before a scene of a bustling marketplace. “Perhaps I could bargain with Orso? Curry favour by delivering to him a mortal enemy? The woman who murdered his eldest son and heir, perhaps?”

Monza did not flinch. She never had been the flinching kind. “The best of luck.”