Best Served Cold

It was hot, but there was a soothing breeze wafting off the glittering sea, and one of his ever-expanding legion of new hats was keeping his eyes well shaded. It was dangerous, the crowd very likely containing more than one eager assassin, but for once there were several more hated targets than himself within easy reach. A drink, a drink, a drink, of course, that drunkard’s voice in his head would never be entirely silent. But it was less a desperate scream now than a grumpy murmur, and the cheering was very definitely helping to drown it out.

Aside from the vague smell of seaweed it was just as it had been in Ospria, after his famous victory at the Battle of the Isles. When he had stood tall in his stirrups at the head of the column, acknowledging the applause, holding his hands up and shouting, “Please, no!” when he meant, “More, more!” It was Grand Duchess Sefeline, Rogont’s aunt, who had basked in his reflected glory then, mere days before she tried to have him poisoned. Mere months before the tide of battle turned against her and she was poisoned herself. That was Styrian politics for you. It made him wonder, just briefly, why he was getting into it.

“The settings change, the people age, the faces swap one with another, but the applause is just the same-vigorous, infectious and so very short-lived.”

“Uh,” grunted Shivers. It seemed to be most of the Northman’s conversation, now, but that suited Cosca well enough. In spite of occasional efforts to change, he had always vastly preferred talking to listening.

“I always hated Orso, of course, but I find little pleasure in his fall.” A towering statue of the fearsome Duke of Talins could be seen down a side street as they passed. Orso had ever been a keen patron to sculptors, provided they used him as their subject. Scaffolding had been built up its front, and now men clustered around the face, battering its stern features away gleefully with hammers. “So soon, yesterday’s heroes are shuffled off. Just as I was shuffled off myself.”

“Seems you’ve shuffled back.”

“My point precisely! We all are washed with the tide. Listen to them cheer for Rogont and his allies, so recently the most despicable slime on the face of the world.” He pointed out the fluttering papers pasted to the nearest wall, on which Duke Orso was displayed having his face pushed into a latrine. “Only peel back this latest layer of bills and I’ll wager you’ll find others denouncing half this procession in the filthiest ways imaginable. I recall one of Rogont shitting onto a plate and Duke Salier tucking into the results with a fork. Another of Duke Lirozio trying to mount his horse. And when I say ‘mount’…”

“Heh,” said Shivers.

“The horse was not impressed. Dig through a few layers more and-I blush to admit-you’ll find some condemning me as the blackest-hearted rogue in the Circle of the World, but now…” Cosca blew an extravagant kiss towards some ladies on a balcony, and they smiled, pointed, showed every sign of regarding him as their delivering hero.

The Northman shrugged. “People got no weight to ’em down here. Wind blows ’em whatever way it pleases.”

“I have travelled widely,” if fleeing one war-torn mess after another qualified, “and in my experience people are no heavier elsewhere.” He unscrewed the cap from his flask. “Men can have all manner of deeply held beliefs about the world in general that they find most inconvenient when called upon to apply to their own lives. Few people let morality get in the way of expediency. Or even convenience. A man who truly believes in a thing beyond the point where it costs him is a rare and dangerous thing.”

“It’s a special kind o’ fool takes the hard path just ’cause it’s the right one.”

Cosca took a long swallow from his flask, winced and scraped his tongue against his front teeth. “It’s a special kind of fool who can even tell the right path from the wrong. I’ve certainly never had that knack.” He stood in his stirrups, swept off his hat and waved it wildly in the air, whooping like a boy of fifteen. The crowds roared their approval back. Just as if he was a man worth cheering for. And not Nicomo Cosca at all.

– 

S o quietly that no one could possibly have heard, so softly that the notes were almost entirely in his mind, Shenkt hummed.

“Here she is!”

The pregnant silence gave birth to a storm of applause. People danced, threw up their arms, cheered with hysterical enthusiasm. People laughed and wept, celebrated as if their own lives might be changed to any significant degree by Monzcarro Murcatto being given a stolen throne.