Best Served Cold

The blood pounded suddenly behind her eyes, worse than ever. “What my brother was to me is my fucking business!” She realised she was stabbing at him with the knife, tossed it away across the table. “I’m not in the habit of explaining myself. I don’t plan to start with the men I hire!”

“That’s what I am to you, is it?”

“What else would you be?”

“After what I’ve done for you? After what I’ve lost?”

She flinched, hands trembling worse than ever. “Well paid, aren’t you?”

“Paid?” He leaned towards her, pointing at his face. “How much is my eye worth, you evil cunt?”

She gave a strangled growl, jerked up from the chair, snatched up the lamp, turned her back on him and made for the door to the balcony.

“Where you going?” His voice had turned suddenly wheedling, as if he knew he’d stepped too far.

“Clear of your self-pity, bastard, before I’m sick!” She ripped the door open and stepped out into the cold air.

“Monza-” He was sitting slumped on the bed, the saddest sort of look on his face. On the half of it that still worked, anyway. Broken. Hopeless. Desperate. Fake eye pointing off sideways. He looked as if he was about to weep, to fall down, to beg to be forgiven.

She slammed the door shut. It suited her to have an excuse. She preferred the passing guilt of turning her back on him to the endless guilt of facing him. Much, much preferred it.

The view from the balcony might well have been among the most breathtaking in the world. Ospria dropped away below, a madman’s maze of streaky copper roofs, each one of the four tiers of the city surrounded by its own battlemented walls and towers. Tall buildings of old, pale stone crowded tight behind them, narrow-windowed and striped with black marble, pressed in alongside steeply climbing streets, crooked alleys of a thousand steps, deep and dark as the canyons of mountain streams. A few early lights shone from scattered windows, flickering dots of sentries’ torches moved on the walls. Beyond them the valley of the Sulva was sunk in the shadows of the mountains, only the faintest glimmer of the river in its bottom. At the summit of the highest hill on the other side, against the dark velvet of the sky, perhaps the pinpricks of the campfires of the Thousand Swords.

Not a place for anyone with a fear of heights.

But Monza had other things on her mind. All that mattered was to make nothing matter, and as fast as she could. She crabbed down into the deepest corner, hunched jealously over her lamp and her pipe like a freezing man over a last tongue of fire. She gripped the mouthpiece in her teeth, lifted the rattling hood with trembling hands, leaned forwards A sudden gust came up, swirled into the corner, whipped her greasy hair in her eyes. The flame fluttered and went out. She stayed there, frozen, staring at the dead lamp in achy confusion, then sweaty disbelief. Her face went slack with horror as the implications fumbled their way into her thumping head.

No flame. No smoke. No way back.

She sprang up, took a step towards the parapet and flung the lamp out across the city with all her strength. She tilted her head back, taking a great breath, grabbed the parapet, rocked forwards and screamed her lungs out. Screamed her hatred at the lamp as it tumbled down, at the wind that had blown it out, at the city spread out below her, at the valley beyond it, at the world and everyone in it.

In the distance, the angry sun was beginning to creep up behind the mountains, staining the sky around their darkened slopes with blood.

No More Delays

C osca stood before the mirror, making the final adjustments to his fine lace collar, turning his five rings so the jewels faced precisely outwards, adjusting each bristle of his beard to his satisfaction. It had taken him an hour and a half, by Friendly’s calculation, to make ready. Twelve passes of the razor against the sharpening strap. Thirty-one movements to trim away the stubble. One tiny nick left under his jaw. Thirteen tugs of the tweezers to purge the nose hairs. Forty-five buttons done up. Four pairs of hooks and eyes. Eighteen straps to tighten and buckles to fasten.

“And all is ready. Master Friendly, I wish you to take the post of first sergeant of the brigade.”

“I know nothing about war.” Nothing except that it was madness, and threw him out of all compass.

“You need know nothing. The role would be to keep close to me, to keep silent but sinister, to support and follow my lead where necessary and most of all to watch my back and yours. The world is full of treachery, my friend! The odd bloody task too, and on occasion to count out sums of money paid and received, to take inventory of the numbers of men, weapons and sundries at our disposal…”

That was, to the letter, what Friendly had done for Sajaam, in Safety then outside it. “I can do that.”