Best Served Cold

A lot had changed since Monza last rode up to Fontezarmo, laughing with her brother. Hard to believe it was only a year ago. The darkest, maddest, most bloody year in a life made of them. A year that had taken her from dead woman to duchess, and might well still shove her back the other way.

It was dusk instead of dawn, the sun sinking behind them in the west as they climbed the twisting track. To either side of it, wherever the ground was anything close to flat, men had pitched tents. They sat in front of them in lazy groups by the flickering light of campfires-eating, drinking, mending boots or polishing armour, staring slack-faced at Monza as she clattered past.

She’d had no honour guard a year ago. Now a dozen of Rogont’s picked men followed eagerly as puppies wherever she went. It was a surprise they didn’t all try to tramp into the latrine after her. The last thing the king-in-waiting wanted was for her to get pushed off a mountain again. Not before she’d had the chance to help crown him, anyway. It was Orso she’d been helping to his crown twelve months ago, and Rogont her bitter enemy. For a woman who liked to stick, she’d slid around some in four seasons.

Back then she’d had Benna beside her. Now it was Shivers. That meant no talk at all, let alone laughter. His face was just a hard black outline, blind eye gleaming with the last of the fading light. She knew he couldn’t see a thing through it, but still she felt like it was always fixed right on her. Even though he scarcely spoke, still he was always saying, It should’ve been you.

There were fires burning at the summit. Specks of light on the slopes, a yellow glow behind the black shapes of walls and towers, smudges of smoke hanging in the deep evening sky. The road switched back once more, then petered away altogether at a barricade made from three upended carts. Victus sat there on a field chair, warming his hands at a campfire, his collection of stolen chains gleaming round his neck. He grinned as she reined up her horse, and flourished out an absurd salute.

“The Grand Duchess of Talins, here in our slovenly camp! Your Excellency, we’re all shame! If we’d had more time to prepare for your royal visit, we’d have done something about all the dirt.” And he spread his arms wide at the sea of churned-up mud, bare rock, broken bits of crate and wagon scattered around the mountainside.

“Victus. The embodiment of the mercenary spirit.” She clambered down from her saddle, trying not to let the pain show. “Greedy as a duck, brave as a pigeon, loyal as a cuckoo.”

“I always modelled myself on the nobler birds. Afraid you’ll have to leave the horses, we’ll be going by trench from here. Duke Orso’s a most ungracious host-he’s taken to shooting catapults at any of his guests who show themselves.” He sprang up, slapping dust from the canvas he’d been sitting on, then holding one ring-encrusted hand out towards it. “Perhaps I could have some of the lads carry you up?”

“I’ll walk.”

He gave her a mocking leer. “And a fine figure you’ll appear, I’ve no doubt, though I would’ve thought you could’ve stretched to silk, given your high station.”

“Clothes don’t make the person, Victus.” She gave his jewellery a mocking leer of her own. “A piece of shit is still a piece of shit, however much gold you stick on it.”

“Oh, how we’ve missed you, Murcatto. Follow on, then.”

“Wait here,” she snapped at Rogont’s guards. Having them behind her all the time made her look weak. Made her look like she needed them.

Their sergeant winced. “His Excellency was most-”

“Piss on his Excellency. Wait here.”

She creaked down some steps made of old boxes and into the hillside, Shivers at her shoulder. The trenches weren’t much different from the ones they’d dug around Muris, years ago-walls of hard-packed earth held back by odds and ends of timber, with that same smell of sickness, mould, damp earth and boredom. The trenches they’d lived in for the best part of six months, like rats in a sewer. Where her feet had started to rot, and Benna got the running shits so bad he lost a quarter of his weight and all his sense of humour. She even saw a few familiar faces as they threaded their way through ditch, tunnel and dugout-veterans who’d been fighting with the Thousand Swords for years. She nodded to them just as she used to when she was in charge, and they nodded back.

“You sure Orso’s inside?” she called to Victus.

“Oh, we’re sure. Cosca spoke to him, first day.”

Monza didn’t draw much comfort from that idea. When Cosca started talking to an enemy he usually ended up richer and on the other side. “What did those two bastards have to say to each other?”

“Ask Cosca.”

“I will.”