Best Served Cold

“I should be gone.” She tried to make a fist of her gloved hand, but the pain only made her weaker now. “Find a way… find a way to kill Orso.” But she was so tired she could hardly find the strength to say it.

“Revenge? Truly?”

“Revenge.”

“I would be crushed if you were to leave.”

She could hardly be bothered to take care what she said. “Why the hell would you want me?”

“I, want you?” Rogont’s smile slipped for a moment. “I can delay no longer, Monzcarro. Soon, perhaps tomorrow, there will be a great battle. One that will decide the fate of Styria. What could be more valuable than the advice of one of Styria’s greatest soldiers?”

“I’ll see if I can find you one,” she muttered.

“And you have many friends.”

“Me?” She couldn’t think of a single one alive.

“The people of Talins love you still.” He raised his eyebrows at the gathering, some of them still glowering at her with scant friendliness. “Less popular here, of course, but that only serves to prove the point. One man’s villain is another’s hero, after all.”

“They think I’m dead in Talins, and don’t care into the bargain.” She hardly cared herself.

“On the contrary, agents of mine are in the process of making the citizens well aware of your triumphant survival. Bills posted at every crossroads dispute Duke Orso’s story, charge him with your attempted murder and proclaim your imminent return. The people care deeply, believe me, with that bottomless passion common folk sometimes have for great figures they have never met, and never will. If nothing else, it turns them further against Orso, and gives him difficulties at home.”

“Politics, eh?” She drained her glass. “Small gestures, when war is knocking at your gates.”

“We all make the gestures we can. But in war and politics both you are still an asset to be courted.” His smile was back now, and broader than ever. “Besides, what extra reason should a man require to keep cunning and beautiful women close at hand?”

She scowled sideways. “Fuck yourself.”

“When I must.” He looked straight back at her. “But I’d much rather have help.”

– 

Y ou look almost as bitter as I feel.”

“Eh?” Shivers prised his scowl from the happy couple. “Ah.” There was a woman talking to him. “Oh.” She was very good to look at, so much that she seemed to have a glow about her. Then he saw everything had a glow. He was drunk as shit.

She seemed different from the rest, though. Necklace of red stones round her long neck, white dress that hung loose, like the ones he’d seen black women wearing in Westport, but she was very pale. There was something easy in the way she stood, no stiff manners to her. Something open in her smile. For a moment, it almost had him smiling with her. First time in a while.

“Is there space here?” She spoke Styrian with a Union accent. An outsider, like him.

“You want to sit… with me?”

“Why not, do you carry the plague?”

“With my luck I wouldn’t be surprised.” He turned the left side of his face towards her. “This seems to keep most folk well clear o’ me by itself, though.”

Her eyes moved over it, then back, and her smile didn’t flicker. “We all have our scars. Some of us on the outside, some of us-”

“The ones on the inside don’t take quite such a toll on the looks, though, eh?”

“I’ve found that looks are overrated.”

Shivers looked her slowly up and down, and enjoyed it. “Easy for you to say, you’ve plenty to spare.”

“Manners.” She puffed out her cheeks as she looked round the hall. “I’d despaired of finding any among this crowd. I swear, you must be the only honest man here.”

“Don’t count on it.” Though he was grinning wide enough. There was never a bad time for flattery from a fine-looking woman, after all. He had his pride. She held out one hand to him and he blinked at it. “I kiss it, do I?”

“If you like. It won’t dissolve.”

It was soft and smooth. Nothing like Monza’s hand-scarred, tanned, callused as any Named Man’s. Even less like her other one, twisted as a nettle root under that glove. Shivers pressed his lips to the woman’s knuckles, caught a giddy whiff of scent. Like flowers, and something else that made the breath sharpen in his throat.

“I’m, er… Caul Shivers.”

“I know.”

“You do?”

“We’ve met before, though briefly. Carlot dan Eider is my name.”

“Eider?” Took him a moment to place it. A half-glimpsed face in the mist. The woman in the red coat, in Sipani. Prince Ario’s lover. “You’re the one that Monza-”

“Beat, blackmailed, destroyed and left for dead? That would be me.” She frowned up towards the high table. “Monza, is it? Not only first-name terms, but an affectionate shortening. The two of you must be very close.”

“Close enough.” Nowhere near as close as they had been, though, in Visserine. Before they took his eye.

“And yet she sits up there, with the great Duke Rogont, and you sit down here, with the beggars and the embarrassments.”

Like she knew his own thoughts. His fury flickered up again and he tried to steer the talk away from it. “What brings you here?”