Best Served Cold

He unscrewed the cap of his own flask, shifted in the captain general’s chair, fondly stroking the battered wood of one of its arms. “Well?”

Victus’ thin face radiated suspicion, causing Cosca to reflect that no man he had ever met had a shiftier look to his eyes. They slid to his cards, to Cosca’s cards, to the money between them, then slithered back to Cosca. “Alright. Doubles it is.” He tossed some coins into the centre of the table with that delightful jingle that somehow only hard currency can make. “What are you carrying, old man?”

“Earth!” Cosca smugly spread his cards out.

Victus flung his own hand down. “Bloody earth! You always did have the luck of a demon.”

“And you the loyalty of one.” Cosca showed his teeth as he swept the coins towards him. “I shouldn’t worry, the boys will be bringing us plenty more silver in due course. Rule of Quarters, and all that.”

“At this rate I’ll have lost all my share to you before they get here.”

“We can hope.” Cosca took a sip from his flask and grimaced. For some reason it tasted even more sour than usual. He wrinkled his lips, sucked his gums, then forced another acrid mouthful down and half-screwed the cap back on. “Now! I am deeply in need of a shit.” He slapped the table with one hand and stood. “No tampering with the deck while I’m away, you hear?”

“Me?” Victus was all injured innocence. “You can trust me, General.”

“Of course I can.” Cosca began to walk, his eyes fixed on the dark crack down the edge of the doorway to the latrine, judging the distances, back prickling as he pictured where Victus was sitting. He twisted his wrist, felt his throwing-knife drop into his waiting palm. “Just like I could trust you at Afieri-” He spun about, and froze. “Ah.”

Victus had somehow produced a small flatbow, loaded, and now aimed with impressive steadiness at Cosca’s heart. “Andiche took a sword-thrust for you?” he sneered. “Sesaria sacrificed himself? I knew those two bastards, remember! What kind of a fucking idiot do you take me for?”

– 

S henkt sprang through the shattered window and dropped silently down into the hall beyond. An hour ago it must have been a grand dining room indeed, but the Thousand Swords had already stripped it of anything that might raise a penny. Only fragments of glass and plate, slashed canvases in shattered frames and the shells of some furniture too big to move remained. Three little flies chased each other in geometric patterns through the air above the stripped table. Near them two men were arguing while a boy perhaps fourteen years old watched nervously.

“I told you I had the fucking spoons!” a pock-faced man screamed at one with a tarnished breastplate. “But that bitch knocked me down and I lost ’em! Why didn’t you get nothing?”

“ ’Cause I was watching the door while you got something, you fucking-”

The boy raised a silent finger to point at Shenkt. The other two abandoned their argument to stare at him. “Who the hell are you?” demanded the spoon-thief.

“The woman who made you lose your cutlery,” asked Shenkt. “Murcatto?”

“Who the hell are you, I asked?”

“No one. Only passing through.”

“That so?” He grinned at his fellows as he drew his sword. “Well, this room’s ours, and there’s a toll.”

“There’s a toll,” hissed the one with the breastplate, in a tone no doubt meant to be intimidating.

The two of them spread out, the boy reluctantly following their lead. “What have you got for us?” asked the first.

Shenkt looked him in the eye as he came close, and gave him a chance. “Nothing you want.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” His gaze settled on the ruby ring on Shenkt’s forefinger. “What about that?”

“It isn’t mine to give.”

“Then it’s ours to take.” They closed in, the one with the pocked face prodding at Shenkt with his sword. “Hands behind your head, bastard, and get on your knees.”

Shenkt frowned. “I do not kneel.”

The three zipping flies slowed, drifting lazily, then hanging almost still.

Slowly, slowly, the spoon-thief’s hungry leer turned into a snarl.

Slowly, slowly, his arm drifted back for a thrust.

Shenkt stepped around his sword, the edge of his hand sank deep into the thief’s chest then tore back out. A great chunk of rib and breastbone was ripped out with it, flew spinning through the air to embed itself deep in the ceiling.

Shenkt brushed the sword aside, seized the next man by his breastplate and flung him across the room, his head crumpling against the far wall, blood showering out under such pressure it made a great star of spatters across the gilded wallpaper from floor to ceiling. The flies were sucked from their places by the wind of his passing, dragged through the air in mad spirals. The ear-splitting bang of his skull exploding joined the hiss of blood spraying from his friend’s caved-in chest and all over the gaping boy as time resumed its normal flow.

“The woman who made your friend lose his cutlery.” Shenkt flicked the few drops of blood from his hand. “Murcatto?”

The boy nodded dumbly.

“Which way did she go?”

His wide eyes rolled towards the far door.