Best Served Cold

“After the carnage in Sipani I had no other choices. Duke Orso is doubtless offering a pretty price for my head. I’ve spent the last three months expecting every person I passed to stab me, poison me, throttle me, or worse.”

“Huh. I know that feeling.”

“Then you have my sympathy.”

“The dead know I could do with some.”

“You can have all mine, for what that’s worth. You’re just as much a piece in this sordid little game as I am, no? And you’ve lost even more than I. Your eye. Your face.”

She didn’t seem to move, but she seemed to keep getting closer. Shivers hunched his shoulders. “I reckon.”

“Duke Rogont is an old acquaintance. A somewhat unreliable man, though undoubtedly a handsome one.”

“I reckon,” he managed to grate out.

“I was forced to throw myself upon his mercy. A hard landing, but some succour, for a while. Though it seems he has found a new diversion now.”

“Monza?” The fact he’d been thinking it himself all night didn’t help any. “She ain’t like that.”

Carlot dan Eider gave a disbelieving snort. “Really? Not a treacherous, murdering liar who’ll use anyone and anything to get her way? She betrayed Nicomo Cosca, no, and stole his chair? Why do you think Duke Orso tried to kill her? Because it was his chair she was planning to steal next.” The drink had made him half-stupid, he couldn’t think of a thing to say to it. “Why not use Rogont to get her way? Or is she in love with someone else?”

“No,” he growled. “Well… how would I know-fucking no! You’ve got it twisted!”

She touched one hand to her pale chest. “ I have it twisted? There’s a reason why they call her the Snake of Talins! A snake loves nothing but itself!”

“You’d say anything. She used you in Sipani. You hate her!”

“I’d shed no tears over her corpse, that’s true. The man who put a blade in her could have my gratitude and more besides. But that doesn’t make me a liar.” She was halfway to whispering in his ear. “Monzcarro Murcatto, the Butcher of Caprile? They murdered children there.” He could almost feel her breath on him, his skin tingling with having her so near, anger and lust all mangled hot together. “Murdered! In the streets! She wasn’t even faithful to her brother, from what I hear-”

“Eh?” Shivers wished he’d drunk less, the hall was getting some spin to it.

“You didn’t know?”

“Know what?” An odd mix of curiosity, and fear, and disgust creeping up on him.

Eider laid one hand on his arm, close enough that he caught another waft of scent-sweet, dizzying, sickening. “She and her brother were lovers.” She purred the last word, dragging it out long.

“What?” His scarred cheek was burning like he’d been slapped.

“Lovers. They used to sleep together, like husband and wife. They used to fuck each other. It’s no kind of secret. Ask anyone. Ask her.”

Shivers found he could hardly breathe. He should’ve known it. Few things made sense now had tripped him at the time. He had known it, maybe. But still he felt tricked. Betrayed. Laughed at. Like a fish tickled from a stream and left choking. After all he’d done for her, after all he’d lost. The rage boiled up in him so hot he could hardly keep hold of himself.

“Shut your fucking mouth!” He flung Eider’s hand off. “You think I don’t see you goading me?” He was up from his bench somehow, standing over her, hall tipping around him, blurred lights and faces swaying. “You take me for a fool, woman? D’you set me at nothing?”

Instead of cringing back she came forwards, pressing against him almost, eyes seeming big as dinner plates. “Me? You’ve made no sacrifices for me! Am I the one who’s cut you off? Am I the one who sets you at nothing?”

Shivers’ face was on fire. The blood was battering at his skull, so hard it felt like it might pop his eye right out. Except it was burned out already. He gave a strangled sort of a yelp, throat closed up with fury. He staggered back, since it was that or throttle her, lurched straight into a servant, knocking his silver tray from his hands, glasses falling, bottle shattering, wine spraying.

“Sir, I most humbly-”

Shivers’ left fist thudded into his ribs and twisted him sideways, right crunched into the man’s face before he could fall. He bounced off the wall and sprawled in the wreckage of his bottles. There was blood on Shivers’ fist. Blood, and a white splinter between his fingers. A piece of tooth. What he wanted, more’n anything, was to kneel over this bastard, take his head in his hands and smash it against the beautiful carvings on the wall until his brains came out. He almost did it.

But instead he made himself turn. Made himself turn and stumble away.

– 

T ime crawled.