Best Served Cold

“Beg!” she hissed. “Beg, you fat fucker!”

But Gobba was too busy staring at the mincemeat on the end of his arms, and screaming. Hoarse, short, slobbery screams.

“Someone might hear.” Friendly looked like he didn’t care much either way.

“Better shut him up, then.”

The convict leaned over the barrel from behind with a wire between his fists, hooked Gobba under the neck and dragged him up hard, cutting his bellows down to slippery splutters.

Monza squatted in front of him so their faces were level, her knees burning as she watched the wire cut into his fat neck. Just the way it had cut into hers. The scars it had left on her itched. “How does it feel?” Her eyes flickered over his face, trying to squeeze some sliver of satisfaction from it. “How does it feel?” Though no one knew better than her. Gobba’s eyes bulged, his jowls trembled, turning from pink, to red, to purple. She pushed herself up to standing. “I’d say it’s a waste of good flesh. But it isn’t.”

She closed her eyes and let her head drop back, sucked a long breath in through her nose as she tightened her grip on the hammer, lifted it high.

“Betray me and leave me alive?”

It came down between Gobba’s piggy eyes with a sharp bang like a stone slab splitting. His back arched, his mouth yawned wide but no sound came out.

“Take my hand and leave me alive?”

The hammer hit him in the nose and caved his face in like a broken egg. His body crumpled, shattered leg jerking, jerking.

“Kill my brother and leave me alive?”

The last blow broke his skull wide open. Black blood bubbled down his purple skin. Friendly let go the wire and Gobba slid sideways. Gently, gracefully almost, he rolled over onto his front, and was still.

Dead. You didn’t have to be an expert to see that. Monza winced as she forced her aching fingers open and the hammer clattered down, its head gleaming red, a clump of hair stuck to one corner.

One dead. Six left.

“Six and one,” she muttered to herself. Friendly stared at her, eyes wide, and she wasn’t sure why.

“What’s it like?” Shivers, watching her from the shadows.

“What?”

“Revenge. Does it feel good?”

Monza wasn’t sure she felt much of anything beyond the pain pulsing through her burned hand and her broken hand, up her legs and through her skull. Benna was still dead, she was still broken. She stood there frowning, and didn’t answer.

“You want me to get rid of this?” Friendly waved an arm at the corpse, a heavy cleaver gleaming in his other hand.

“Make sure he won’t be found.”

Friendly grabbed Gobba’s ankle and started dragging him back towards the anvil, leaving a bloody trail through the sawdust. “Chop him up. Into the sewers. Rats can have him.”

“Better than he deserves.” But Monza felt the slightest bit sick. She needed a smoke. Getting to that time of day. A smoke would settle her nerves. She pulled out a small purse, the one with fifty scales in it, and tossed it to Shivers.

Coins snapped together inside as he caught it. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Right.” He paused, as though he wanted to say something but couldn’t think what. “Sorry about your brother.”

She looked at his face in the lamplight. Really looking, trying to guess him out. He knew next to nothing about her or Orso. Next to nothing about anything, at a first glance. But he could fight, she’d seen that. He’d walked into Sajaam’s place alone, and that took courage. A man with courage, with morals, maybe. A man with pride. That meant he might have some loyalty too, if she could get a grip on it. And loyal men were a rare commodity in Styria.

She’d never spent much time alone. Benna had always been beside her. Or behind her, at any rate. “You’re sorry.”

“That’s right. I had a brother.” He started to turn for the door.

“You need more work?” She kept her eyes fixed on his as she came forwards, and while she did it she slid her good hand around behind her back and found the handle of the knife there. He knew her name, and Orso’s, and Sajaam’s, and that was enough to get them all killed ten times over. One way or another, he had to stay.

“More work like this?” He frowned down at the bloodstained sawdust under her boots.

“Killing. You can say it.” She thought about whether to stab him down into the chest or up under the jaw, or wait until he’d turned and take his back. “What did you think it’d be? Milking a goat?”

He shook his head, long hair swaying. “Might sound foolish to you, but I came here to be a better man. You got your reasons, sure, but this feels like a bastard of a stride in the wrong direction.”

“Six more men.”

“No. No. I’m done.” As if he was trying to convince himself. “I don’t care how much-”

“Five thousand scales.”

His mouth was already open to say no again, but this time the word didn’t come. He stared at her. Shocked at first, then thoughtful. Working out how much money that really was. What it might buy him. Monza had always had a knack for reckoning a man’s price. Every man has one.