Best Served Cold

Keeping in mind Bialoveld’s maxim- any successful state is supported by pillars of steel and gold -she’d dug out every cringing bureaucrat she could find who wasn’t besieged in Fontezarmo along with their old master. There’d been discussions about the Talinese army. There wasn’t one. Discussions about the treasury. It was empty. The system of taxation, the maintenance of public works, the preservation of security, the administration of justice, all dissolved like cake in a stream. Rogont’s presence, or that of his soldiers anyway, was all that was keeping Talins from anarchy.

But Monza had never been put off by a wind in the wrong direction. She’d always had a knack for reckoning a man’s qualities, and picking the right one for a given job. Old Rubine was pompous as a prophet, so she made him high magistrate. Grulo and Scavier were the two most ruthless merchants in the city. She didn’t trust either, so she made them joint chancellors, and set each one to dream up new taxes, compete in their collection while keeping one jealous eye on the other.

Already they were wringing money from their unhappy colleagues, and already Monza had spent it on arms.

Three long days into her unpromising rule, an old sergeant called Volfier had arrived in the city, a man almost laughably hardbitten, and nearly as scarred as she was. Refusing to surrender, he’d led the twenty-three survivors of his regiment back from the rout at Ospria and all the way across Styria with arms and honour intact. She could always use a man that bloody-minded, and set him to rounding up every veteran in the city. Paying work was thin on the ground and he already had two companies of volunteers, their glorious charge to escort the tax collectors and make sure not a copper went missing.

She’d marked Duke Orso’s lessons well. Gold, to steel, to more gold-such was the righteous spiral of politics. Resistance, apathy and scorn from all quarters only made her shove harder. She took a perverse satisfaction in the apparent impossibility of the task, the work pushed the pain to one side, and the husk with it, and kept her sharp. It had been a long, long time since she’d made anything grow.

“You look… very beautiful.”

“What?” Cotarda had glided up silently beside her and was offering a nervous smile. “Oh. Likewise,” grunted Monza, barely even looking.

“White suits you. They tell me I’m too pale for white.” Monza winced. Just the kind of mindless twittering she had no stomach for tonight. “I wish I was like you.”

“Some time in the sun would do it.”

“No, no. Brave.” Cotarda looked down at her pale fingers, twisting them together. “I wish I was brave. They tell me I’m powerful. One would have thought being powerful would mean one need not be scared of anything. But I’m afraid all the time. Especially at events.” The words spilled out of her to Monza’s mounting discomfort. “Sometimes I can’t move for the weight of it. All the fear. I’m such a disappointment. What can I do about that? What would you do?”

Monza had no intention of discussing her own fears. That would only feed them. But Cotarda blathered on regardless.

“I’ve no character at all, but where does one get character from? Either you have it or you don’t. You have. Everyone says you have. Where did you get it? Why don’t I have any? Sometimes I think I’m cut out of paper, just acting like a person. They tell me I’m an utter coward. What can I do about that? Being an utter coward?”

They stared at each other for a long moment, then Monza shrugged. “Act like you’re not.”

The doors were pulled open.

Musicians somewhere out of sight struck up a stately refrain as she and Cotarda stepped out into the vast bowl of the Senate House. Though there was no roof, though the stars would soon show in the blue-black sky above, it was hot. Hot, and clammy as a tomb, and the perfumed stink of flowers caught at Monza’s tight throat and made her want to retch. Thousands of candles burned in the darkness, filling the great arena with creeping shadows, making gilt glimmer, gems glitter, turning the hundreds upon hundreds of smiling faces that soared up on all sides into leering masks. Everything was outsize-the crowd, the rustling banners behind them, the venue itself. Everything was overdone, like a scene from a lurid fantasy.

A hell of a lot of effort just to watch one man put on a new hat.