Best Served Cold

“The Aldermen have been nervous since Borletta fell,” said Morveer from his seat. “They are checking everyone who enters. I will do the talking.” Shivers was happy enough to let him, since the prick loved the sound of his own voice so much.

“Your name?” asked the guard, eyes infinitely bored.

“Reevrom,” said the poisoner, with a massive grin. “A humble merchant from Puranti. And these are my associates-”

“Your business in Westport?”

“Murder.” An uncomfortable silence. “I hope to make a veritable killing on the sale of Osprian wines! Yes, indeed, I hope to make a killing in your city.” Morveer chuckled at his own joke and Day tittered away beside him.

“This one doesn’t look like the kind we need.” Another guard was frowning up at Shivers.

Morveer kept chuckling. “Oh, no need to worry on his account. The man is practically a retard. Intellect of a child. Still, he is good for shifting a barrel or two. I keep him on out of sentiment as much as anything. What am I, Day?”

“Sentimental,” said the girl.

“I have too much heart. Always have had. My mother died when I was very young, you see, a wonderful woman-”

“Get on with it!” someone called from behind them.

Morveer took hold of the canvas sheet covering the back of the wagon. “Do you want to check-”

“Do I look like I want to, with half of Styria to get through my bloody gate? On.” The guard waved a tired hand. “Move on.”

The reins snapped, the cart rolled into the city of Westport, and Murcatto and Friendly rode after. Shivers came last, which seemed about usual lately.

Beyond the walls it was crushed in tight as a battle, and not much less frightening. A paved road struck between high buildings, bare trees planted on either side, crammed with a shuffling tide of folk every shape and colour. Pale men in sober cloth, narrow-eyed women in bright silks, black-skinned men in white robes, soldiers and sell-swords in chain mail and dull plate. Servants, labourers, tradesmen, gentlemen, rich and poor, fine and stinking, nobles and beggars. An awful lot of beggars. Walkers and riders came surging up and away in a blur, horses and carts and covered carriages, women with a weight of piled-up hair and an even greater weight of jewellery, carried past on teetering chairs by pairs of sweating servants.

Shivers had thought Talins was rammed full with strange variety. Westport was way worse. He saw a line of animals with great long necks being led through the press, linked by thin chains, tiny heads swaying sadly about on top. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head, but when he opened them the monsters were still there, heads bobbing over the milling crowd, not even remarked upon. The place was like a dream, and not the pleasant kind.

They turned down a narrower way, hemmed in by shops and stalls. Smells jabbed at his nose one after another-fish, bread, polish, fruit, oil, spice and a dozen others he’d no idea of-and they made his breath catch and his stomach lurch. Out of nowhere a boy on a passing cart shoved a wicker cage in Shivers’ face and a tiny monkey inside hissed and spat at him, near knocking him from his saddle in surprise. Shouts battered at his ears in a score of different tongues. A kind of a chant came floating up over the top of it, louder and louder, strange but beautiful, made the hairs on his arms bristle.

A building with a great dome loomed over one side of a square, six tall turrets sprouting from its front wall, golden spikes gleaming on their roofs. It was from there the chanting was coming. Hundreds of voices, deep and high together, mingling into one.

“It’s a temple.” Murcatto had dropped back beside him, her hood still up, not much more of her face showing than her frown.

If Shivers was honest, he was more’n a bit feared of her. It was bad enough that he’d watched her break a man apart with a hammer and give every sign of enjoying it. But he’d had this creeping feeling afterwards, when they were bargaining, that she was on the point of stabbing him. Then there was that hand she always kept a glove on. He couldn’t remember ever being scared of a woman before, and it made him shamed and nervous at once. But he could hardly deny that, apart from the glove, and the hammer, and the sick sense of danger, he liked the looks of her. A lot. He wasn’t sure he didn’t like the danger a bit more than was healthy too. All added up to not knowing what the hell to say from one moment to the next.

“Temple?”

“Where the Southerners pray to God.”

“God, eh?” Shivers’ neck ached as he squinted up at those spires, higher than the tallest trees in the valley where he was born. He’d heard some folk down South thought there was a man in the sky. A man who’d made the world and saw everything. Had always seemed a mad kind of a notion, but looking at this Shivers weren’t far from believing it himself. “Beautiful.”