Best Served Cold

He could almost feel the sweat springing out of his skin. His head was pulsing, booming with pain. He clawed at his itchy neck but that only made it itch the more. He was smiling like a skull, he knew, and talking far too much. But it was smile, and talk, or scream his exploding head off.

“… saved my life at the siege of Muris, eh, Monza? At Muris, was it?” He hardly even knew how his cracking voice had wandered onto the subject. “Bastard came at me out of nowhere. A quick thrust!” He nearly knocked his water cup over with a wayward jab of his finger. “And she ran him through! Right through the heart, I swear. Saved my life. At Muris. Saved my… life…”

And he almost wished she had let him die. The kitchen seemed to be spinning, tossing, tipping wildly like the cabin of a ship in a fatal tempest. He kept expecting to see the wine slosh from the glasses, the stew spray from the bowls, the plates slide from the see-sawing table. He knew the only storm was in his head, yet still found himself clinging to the furniture whenever the room appeared to heel with particular violence.

“… wouldn’t have been so bad if she hadn’t done it again the next day. I took an arrow in the shoulder and fell in the damn moat. Everyone saw, on both sides. Making me look a fool in front of my friends is one thing, but in front of my enemies-”

“You’ve got it wrong.”

Cosca squinted up the table at Monza. “I have?” Though he had to admit he could hardly remember his last sentence, let alone the events of a siege a dozen drunken years ago.

“It was me in the moat, you that jumped in to pull me out. Risked your life, and took an arrow doing it.”

“Seems astoundingly unlikely I’d have done a thing like that.” It was hard to think about anything beyond his violent need for a drink. “But I’m finding it somewhat difficult to recall the details, I must confess. Perhaps if one of you could just see your way to passing me the wine I could-”

“Enough.” She had that same look she always used to have when she dragged him from one tavern or another, except even angrier, even sharper and even more disappointed. “I’ve five men to kill, and I’ve no time to be saving anyone anymore. Especially from their own stupidity. I’ve no use for a drunk.” The table was silent as they all watched him sweat.

“I’m no drunk,” croaked Cosca. “I simply like the taste of wine. So much so that I have to drink some every few hours or become violently ill.” He clung to his fork while the room swayed around him, fixed his aching smile while they chuckled away. He hoped they enjoyed their laughter while they could, because Nicomo Cosca always laughed last. Provided he wasn’t being sick, of course.

– 

M orveer was feeling left out. He was a scintillating conversationalist face to face, it hardly needed to be said, but had never been at his ease in large groups. This scenario reminded him unpleasantly of the dining room in the orphanage, where the larger children had amused themselves by throwing food at him, a terrifying prelude to the whisperings, beatings, dunkings and other torments in the nocturnal blackness of the dormitories.

Murcatto’s two new assistants, on the hiring of whom he had not been given even the most superficial consultation, were far from putting his mind at ease. Shylo Vitari was a torturer and broker in information, highly competent but possessed of an abrasive personality. He had collaborated with her once before, and the experience had not been a happy one. Morveer found the whole notion of inflicting pain with one’s own hands thoroughly repugnant. But she knew Sipani, so he supposed he could suffer her. For now.

Nicomo Cosca was infinitely worse. A notoriously destructive, treacherous and capricious mercenary with no code or scruple but his own profit. A drunkard, dissipater and womaniser with all the self-control of a rabid dog. A self-aggrandising backslider with an epically inflated opinion of his own abilities, he was everything Morveer was not. But now, as well as taking this dangerously unpredictable element into their confidence and involving him intimately in their plans, the group seemed to be paying court to the trembling shell. Even Day, his own assistant, was chortling at his jokes whenever she did not have her mouth full, which, admittedly, was but rarely.

“… a group of miscreants hunched around a table in an abandoned warehouse?” Cosca was musing, bloodshot eyes rolling round the table. “Talking of masks, and disguises, and weaponry? I cannot imagine how a man of my high calibre ended up in such company. One would think there was some underhand business taking place!”

“My own thoughts exactly!” Morveer shrilly interjected. “I could never countenance such a stain upon my conscience. That is why I applied an extract of Widow’s Blossom to your bowls. I hope you all enjoy your last few agonising moments!”

Six faces frowned back at him, entirely silent.