Best Served Cold

The duke peered down at them. “Oh, their help goes well beyond the spiritual. They are emissaries of the Prophet Khalul. Duke Orso has his allies in the Union, the backing of their banks. I must find friends of my own. And even the Emperor of Gurkhul kneels before the Prophet.”

“Everyone kneels to someone, eh? I guess Emperor and Prophet can console each other after their priests bring news of your head on a spike.”

“They’ll soon get over it. Styria is a sideshow to them. I daresay they’re already preparing the next battlefield.”

“I hear the war never ends.” She drained her glass and slung it rattling back across the wood. Maybe they pressed the best wine in the world in Ospria, but it tasted of vomit to her. Everything did. Her life was made of sick. Sick and frequent, painful, watery shits. Raw-gummed, saw-tongued, rough-toothed, sore-arsed. A horse-faced servant in a powdered wig flowed around her shoulder and let fall a long stream of wine into the empty glass, as though flourishing the bottle as far above her as possible would make it taste better. He retreated with consummate ease. Retreat was the speciality down in Ospria, after all. She reached for the glass again. The most recent smoke had stopped her hand shaking, but nothing more.

So she prayed for mindless, shameful, stupefying drunkenness to swarm over and blot out the misery.

She let her eyes crawl over Ospria’s richest and most useless citizens. If you really looked for it, the banquet had an edge of shrill hysteria. Drinking too much. Talking too fast. Laughing too loud. Nothing like a dash of imminent annihilation to lower the inhibitions. The one consolation of Rogont’s coming rout was that a good number of these fools would lose everything along with him.

“You sure I should be up here?” she grunted.

“Someone has to be.” Rogont glanced sideways at the girlish Countess Cotarda of Affoia without great enthusiasm. “The noble League of Eight, it seems, has become a League of Two.” He leaned close. “And to be entirely honest I’m wondering if it’s not too late for me to get out of it. The sad fact is I’m running short of notable guests.”

“So I’m an exhibit to stiffen your wilting prestige, am I?”

“Exactly so. A perfectly charming one, though. And those stories about my wilting are all scurrilous rumours, I assure you.” Monza couldn’t find the strength even to be irritated, let alone amused, and settled for a weary snort. “You should eat something.” He gestured at her untouched plate with his fork. “You look thin.”

“I’m sick.” That and her right hand hurt so badly she could scarcely hold the knife. “I’m always sick.”

“Really? Something you ate?” Rogont forked meat into his mouth with all the relish of a man likely to live out the week. “Or something you did?”

“Maybe it’s just the company.”

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised. My Aunt Sefeline was always revolted by me. She was a woman much prone to nausea. You remind me of her in a way. Sharp mind, great talents, will of iron, but a weaker stomach than might have been expected.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.” The dead knew she disappointed herself enough.

“Me? Oh, quite the reverse, I assure you. We are none of us made from flint, eh?”

If only. Monza gagged down more wine and scowled at the glass. A year ago, she’d had nothing but contempt for Rogont. She remembered laughing with Benna and Faithful over what a coward he was, what a treacherous ally. Now Benna was dead, she’d murdered Faithful and she’d run to Rogont for shelter like a wayward child to her rich uncle. An uncle who couldn’t even protect himself, in this case. But he was far better company than the alternative. Her eyes were dragged reluctantly towards the bottom of the long table on the right, where Shivers sat alone.

The hard fact was he sickened her. It was an effort just to stand beside him, let alone touch him. It was far more than the simple ugliness of his maimed face. She’d seen enough that was ugly, and done enough too, to have no trouble at least pretending to be comfortable around it. It was the silences, when before she couldn’t shut him up. They were full of debts she couldn’t pay. She’d see that skewed, dead ruin of an eye and remember him whispering at her, It should’ve been you. And she’d know it should have been. When he did talk he said nothing about doing the right thing anymore, nothing about being a better man. Maybe it should have pleased her to have won that argument. She’d tried hard enough. But all she could think was that she’d taken a halfway decent man and somehow made a halfway evil one. She wasn’t only rotten herself, she rotted everything she touched.

Shivers sickened her, and the fact she was disgusted when she knew she should have been grateful only sickened her even more.

“I’m wasting time,” she hissed, more at her glass than anyone else.

Rogont sighed. “We all are. Just passing the ugly moments until our ignominious deaths in the least horrible manner we can find.”