Best Served Cold

S hivers sat on the steps of the farmhouse, trimming some loose skin from the big mass of grazes on his forearm and watching some man weep over a corpse. Friend. Brother, even. He weren’t trying to hide it, just sat slumped over, tears dripping off his chin. A moving sight, most likely, if you were that way inclined.

And Shivers always had been. His brother had called him pig-fat when he was a boy on account of his being that soft. He’d cried at his brother’s grave and at his father’s. When his friend Dobban got stabbed through with a spear and took two days going back to the mud. The night after the fight at Dunbrec, when they buried half his crew along with Threetrees. After the battle in the High Places, even, he’d gone off and found a spot on his own, let fall a full puddle of salt water. Though that might’ve been relief the fighting was done, rather than sorrow some lives were.

He knew he’d wept all those times, and he knew why, but he couldn’t remember for the life of him how it had felt to do it. He wondered if there was anyone left in the world he’d cry for now, and he wasn’t sure he liked the answer.

He took a swig of sour water from his flask, and watched a couple of Osprian soldiers picking over the bodies. One rolled a dead man over, some bloody guts slithering out of his split side, wrestled his boot off, saw it had a hole in the sole, tossed it away. He watched another pair, shirt-sleeves rolled up, one with a shovel over his shoulder, arguing the toss over where’d be easiest to start digging. He watched the flies, floating about in the soupy air, already gathering round the open mouths, the open eyes, the open wounds. He looked at ragged gashes and broken bone, cut-off limbs and spilled innards, blood in sticky streaks, drying spots and spatters, red-black pools across the stony yard, and felt no pleasure at a job well done, but no disgust either, no guilt and no sorrow. Just the stinging of his grazes, the uncomfortable stickiness of the heat, the tiredness in his bruised limbs and a niggling trace of hunger, since he’d missed breakfast.

There was a man screaming inside the farmhouse, where they were dealing with the wounded. Screaming, screaming, hoarse and blubbery. But there was a bird tweeting happily from the eaves of the stable too, and Shivers found without too much effort he could concentrate on one and forget the other. He smiled and nodded along with the bird, leaned back against the door frame and stretched his leg out. Seemed a man could get used to anything, in time. And he was damned if he was going to let some screaming shift him off a good spot on the doorstep.

He heard hoofbeats, looked round. Monza, trotting slowly down the slope, a black figure with the bright-blue sky behind her. He watched her pull her lathered horse up in the farmyard, frowning at the bodies. Her clothes were sodden wet, as if she’d been dunked in a stream. Her hair was matted with blood on one side, her pale cheek streaked with it.

“Aye aye, Chief. Good to see you.” Should’ve been true but it felt like some kind of a lie, still. He felt not much of anything either way. “Faithful dead, is he?”

“He’s dead.” She slid stiffly down. “Have any trouble getting him here?”

“Not much. He wanted to bring more friends than we’d planned for, but I couldn’t bring myself to turn ’em down. You know how it is when folk hear about a party. They looked so eager, poor bastards. Have any trouble killing him?”

She shook her head. “He drowned.”

“Oh aye? Thought you’d have stabbed him.” He picked her sword up and offered it to her.

“I stabbed him a bit.” She looked at the blade for a moment, then took it from his hand and sheathed it. “Then I let him drown.”

Shivers shrugged. “Up to you. Drowning’ll do it, I reckon.”

“Drowning did it.”

“Five of seven, then.”

“Five of seven.” Though she didn’t look like celebrating. Hardly any more than the man crying over his dead friend. It weren’t much of a joyous occasion for anyone, even on the winning side. There’s vengeance for you.

“Who’s that screaming?”

“Someone. No one.” Shivers shrugged. “Listen to the bird instead.”

“What?”

“Murcatto!” Vitari stood, arms folded, in the open doorway of the barn. “You’ll want to see this.”

It was cool and dim inside, sunlight coming in through a ragged hole in the corner, through the narrow windows, throwing bright stripes across the darkened straw. One fell over Day’s corpse, yellow hair tangled across her face, body twisted awkwardly. No blood. No marks of violence at all.

“Poison,” muttered Monza.

Vitari nodded. “Oh, the irony.”

A hellish-looking mess of copper rods, glass tubes and odd-shaped bottles was stood on the table beside the body, a couple of lamps with yellow-blue flames flickering underneath, stuff bubbling away inside, trickling, dripping. Shivers liked the look of the poisoner’s equipment even less than the look of the poisoner’s corpse. Bodies he was good and familiar with, science was all unknown.

“Fucking science,” he muttered. “Even worse’n magic.”