Best Served Cold

“Not that way,” came the convict’s slow, deep voice. He slid one hand under Cosca’s arm and half-led him, half-carried him in the opposite direction.

“You are a gentleman, sir,” muttered Cosca.

“I am a murderer.”

“I see no reason why a man cannot be both…” Cosca strained to focus on Vitari, loping along up ahead, then at the side of Friendly’s heavy face. Strange companions. Outsiders. Those no one else would find a use for. He watched Monza walking, the purposeful stride he remembered from long ago turned slightly crooked. Those who were willing to cross Grand Duke Orso. And that meant madmen, or those with no choices. Which was he?

The answer was in easy reach. There was no reason a man could not be both.

Left Out

F riendly’s knife flashed and flickered, twenty strokes one way and twenty the other, grazing the whetstone with a sharpening kiss. There was little worse than a blunt knife and little better than a sharp one, so he smiled as he tested the edge and felt that cold roughness against his fingertip. The blade was keen.

“Cardotti’s House of Leisure is an old merchant’s palace,” Vitari was saying, voice chilly calm. “Wood-built, like most of Sipani, round three sides of a courtyard with the Eighth Canal right at its rear.”

They had set up a long table in the kitchen at the back of the warehouse, and the six of them sat about it now. Murcatto and Shivers, Day and Morveer, Cosca and Vitari. On the table stood a model of a large wooden building on three sides of a courtyard. Friendly judged that it was one thirty-sixth the size of the real Cardotti’s House of Leisure, though it was hard to be precise, and he liked very much to be precise.

Vitari’s fingertip trailed along the windows on one side of the tiny building. “There are kitchens and offices on the ground floor, a hall for husk and another for cards and dice.” Friendly pressed his hand to his shirt pocket and was comforted to feel his own dice nuzzling against his ribs. “Two staircases in the rear corners. On the first floor thirteen rooms where guests are entertained-”

“Fucked,” said Cosca. “We’re all adults here, let’s call it what it is.” His bloodshot eyes flickered up to the two bottles of wine on the shelf, then back. Friendly had noticed they did that a lot.

Vitari’s finger drifted up towards the model’s roof. “Then, on the top floor, three large suites for the… fucking of the most valued guests. They say the Royal Suite in the centre is fit for an emperor.”

“Then Ario might just consider it fit for himself,” growled Murcatto.

The group had grown from five to seven, so Friendly cut each of the two loaves into fourteen slices, the blade hissing through the crust and sending up puffs of flour dust. There would be twenty-eight slices in all, four slices each. Murcatto would eat less, but Day would make up for it. Friendly hated to leave a slice of bread uneaten.

“According to Eider, Ario and Foscar will have three or four dozen guests, some of them armed but not keen to fight, as well as six bodyguards.”

“She telling the truth?” Shivers’ heavy accent.

“Chance may play a part, but she won’t lie to us.”

“Keeping charge o’ that many… we’ll need more fighters.”

“Killers,” interrupted Cosca. “Again, let’s call them what they are.”

“Twenty, maybe,” came Murcatto’s hard voice, “as well as you three.”

Twenty-three. An interesting number. Heat kissed the side of Friendly’s face as he unhooked the door of the old stove and pulled it creaking open. Twenty-three could be divided by no other number, except one. No parts, no fractions. No half-measures. Not unlike Murcatto herself. He hauled the big pot out with a cloth around his hands. Numbers told no lies. Unlike people.

“How do we get twenty men inside without being noticed?”

“It’s a revel,” said Vitari. “There’ll be entertainers. And we’ll provide them.”

“Entertainers?”

“This is Sipani. Every other person in the city is an entertainer or a killer. Shouldn’t be too difficult to find a few who are both.”

Friendly was left out of the planning, but he did not mind. Sajaam had asked him to do what Murcatto said, and that was the end of it. He had learned long ago that life became much easier if you ignored what was not right before you. For now the stew was his only concern.

He dipped in his wooden spoon and took a taste, and it was good. He rated it forty-one out of fifty. The smell of cooking, the sight of the steam rising, the sound of the fizzing logs in the stove, it all put him in comforting mind of the kitchens in Safety. Of the stews, and soups, and porridge they used to make in the great vats. Long ago, back when there was an infinite weight of comforting stone always above his head, and the numbers added, and things made sense.

“Ario will want to drink for a while,” Murcatto was saying, “and gamble, and show off to his idiots. Then he’ll be brought up to the Royal Suite.”

Cosca split a crack-lipped grin. “Where women will be waiting for him, I take it?”