Best Served Cold

“Help us, you get the antidote, and at least the chance to run.” Monza rubbed the blood from the point of Benna’s sword with gloved thumb and forefinger. “Try and tell anyone what we’re planning, here or in the Union, Orso, or Ario, or your friend the Cripple, and…” She slid the blade back into its sheath and slapped the hilt home with a sharp snap. “One way or another, Ario will be short one mistress.”

Eider stared round at them, one hand still pressed to her neck. “You evil bitches.”

Day gave the plum pit a final suck then tossed it away. “It’s a living.”

“We’re done.” Vitari dragged Ario’s mistress to her feet by one elbow and started marching her towards the door.

Monza stepped in front of them. “What will you be telling your battered manservant, when he comes round?”

“That… we were robbed?”

Monza held out her gloved hand. Eider’s face fell even further. She unclasped her necklace and dropped it into Monza’s palm, then followed it with her rings. “Convincing enough?”

“I don’t know. You seem like the kind of woman to put up a struggle.” Monza punched her in the face. She squawked, stumbled, would’ve fallen if Vitari hadn’t caught her. She looked up, blood leaking from her nose and her split lip, and for an instant she had this strange expression. Hurt, yes. Afraid, of course. But more angry than either one. Like the look Monza had herself, maybe, when they threw her from the balcony.

“Now we’re done,” she said.

Vitari yanked at Eider’s elbow and dragged her out into the hallway, towards the front door, their footsteps scraping against the grubby boards. Day gave a sigh, then pushed herself away from the wall and brushed plaster-dust from her backside. “Nice and neat.”

“No thanks to your master. Where is he?”

“I prefer employer, and he said there were some errands he had to run.”

“Errands?”

“That a problem?”

“I paid for the master, not the dog.”

Day grinned. “Woof, woof. There’s nothing Morveer can do that I can’t.”

“That so?”

“He’s getting old. Arrogant. That rope burning through was nearly the death of him, in Westport. I wouldn’t want any carelessness like that to interfere with your business. Not for what you’re paying. No one worse to have next to you than a careless poisoner.”

“You’ll get no argument from me on that score.”

Day shrugged. “Accidents happen all the time in our line of work. Especially to the old. It’s a young person’s trade, really.” She sauntered out into the corridor, passed Vitari stalking back the other way. The look of glee was long gone from her sharp face, and the swagger with it. She lifted one black boot and shoved the chair angrily away into one corner.

“There’s our way in, then,” she said.

“Seems so.”

“Just what I promised you.”

“Just what you promised.”

“Ario and Foscar, both together, and a way to get to them.”

“A good day’s work.”

They looked at each other, and Vitari ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth as if it tasted bitter. “Well.” She shrugged her bony shoulders. “It’s a living.”

The Life of the Drinker

A drink, a drink, a drink. Where can a man find a drink?”

Nicomo Cosca, famed soldier of fortune, tottered against the wall of the alley, rooting through his purse yet again with quivering fingers. There was still nothing in it but a tuft of grey fluff. He dug it out, blew it from his fingertips and watched it flutter gently down. All his fortune.

“Bastard purse!” He flung it in the gutter in a feeble rage. Then he thought better of it and had to stoop to pick it up, groaning like an old man. He was an old man. A lost man. A dead man, give or take a final rattle of breath. He sank slowly to his knees, gazing at his broken reflection in the black water gathered between the cobblestones.

He would have given all he owned for the slightest taste of liquor. He owned nothing, it had to be said. But his body was his, still. His hands, which had raised up princes to the heights of power and flung them down again. His eyes, which had surveyed the turning points of history. His lips, which had softly kissed the most celebrated beauties of the age. His itching cock, his aching guts, his rotting neck, he would happily have sold it all for a single measure of grape spirit. But it was hard to see where he would find a buyer.

“I have become myself… an empty purse.” He raised his leaden arms imploringly and roared into the murky night. “Someone give me a fucking drink!”

“Stop your mouth, arsehole!” a rough voice called back, and then, with the clatter of shutters closing, the alley plunged into deeper gloom.

He had dined at the tables of dukes. He had sported in the beds of countesses. Cities had trembled at the name of Cosca.