Best Served Cold

Cosca snorted. “People don’t visit Cardotti’s for the music.”

“Shouldn’t we have checked how they fight?”

“If they fight like they play we should have no worries.”

“They play about as well as runny shit.”

“They play like lunatics. With luck they fight the same way.”

“That’s no kind of-”

“I hardly thought of you as the fussy type.” Cosca peered at Shivers down his long nose. “You need to learn to live a little, my friend. All victories worth the winning are snatched with vim and brio!”

“With who?”

“Carelessness,” said Vitari.

“Dash,” said Cosca. “And seizing the moment.”

“And what do you make of all this?” Shivers asked Vitari. “Vim and whatever.”

“If the plan goes smoothly we’ll get Ario and Foscar away from the others and-” She snapped her fingers with a sharp crack. “Won’t matter much who strums the lute. Time’s running out. Four days until the great and good of Styria descend on Sipani for their conference. I’d find better men, in an ideal world. But this isn’t one.”

Cosca heaved a throaty sigh. “It most certainly is not. But let’s not be downhearted-a few moments in and we’re five men to the good! Now, if I could just get a glass of wine we’d be well on our way to-”

“No wine,” growled Vitari.

“It’s coming to something when a man can’t even wet his throat.” The old mercenary leaned close enough that Shivers could pick out the broken veins across his cheeks. “Life is a sea of sorrows, my friend. Enter!”

The next man barely fit through the warehouse door, he was that big. A few fingers taller than Shivers but a whole lot weightier. He had thick stubble across his great chunk of jaw and a mop of grey curls though he didn’t seem old. His heavy hands fussed with each other as he came towards the table, a bit stooped like he was shamed of his own size, boards giving a complaining creak every time one of his great boots came down.

Cosca whistled. “My, my, that is a big one.”

“Found him in a tavern down by the First Canal,” said Vitari, “drunk as shit but everyone too scared to move him. Hardly speaks a word of Styrian.”

Cosca leaned towards Shivers. “Perhaps you might take the lead with this one? The brotherhood of the North?”

Shivers didn’t remember there being that much brotherhood up there in the cold, but it was worth a try. The words felt strange in his mouth, it was that long since he’d used them. “What’s your name, friend?”

The big man looked surprised to hear Northern. “Greylock.” He pointed at his hair. “S’always been this colour.”

“What brought you all the way down here?”

“Come looking for work.”

“What sort o’ work?”

“Whatever’ll have me, I reckon.”

“Even if it’s bloody?”

“Likely it will be. You’re a Northman?”

“Aye.”

“You look like a Southerner.”

Shivers frowned, drew his fancy cuffs back and out of sight under the table. “Well, I’m not one. Name’s Caul Shivers.”

Greylock blinked. “Shivers?”

“Aye.” He felt a flush of pleasure that the man knew his name. He still had his pride, after all. “You heard o’ me?”

“You was at Uffrith, with the Dogman?”

“That’s right.”

“And Black Dow too, eh? Neat piece o’ work, the way I heard it.”

“That it was. Took the city with no more’n a couple dead.”

“No more’n a couple.” The big man nodded slowly, eyes never leaving Shivers’ face. “That must’ve been real smooth.”

“It was. He was a good chief for keeping folk alive, the Dogman. Best I took orders from, I reckon.”

“Well, then. Since the Dogman ain’t here his self, it’d be my honour to stand shoulder to shoulder with a man like you.”

“Right you are. Likewise. Pleased to have you along. He’s in,” said Shivers in Styrian.

“Are you sure?” asked Cosca. “He has a certain… sourness to his eye that worries me.”

“You need to learn to live a little,” grunted Shivers. “Get some fucking brio in.”

Vitari snorted laughter and Cosca clutched his chest. “Gah! Run through with my own rapier! Well, I suppose you can have your little friend. What could we do with a pair of Northmen, now?” He threw up one finger. “We could mount a re-enactment! A rendering of that famous Northern duel-you know the one, Fenris the Feared, or whatever, and… you know, what’s-his-name now…”

Shivers’ back went cold as he said the name. “The Bloody-Nine.”

“You’ve heard of it?”

“I was there. Right in the thick. I held a shield at the edge of the circle.”

“Excellent! You should be able to bring a frisson of historical accuracy to the proceedings, then.”

“Frisson?”

“Bit,” grunted Vitari.

“Why not just bloody say bit, then?”

But Cosca was too busy grinning at his own notion. “A whiff of violence! Ario’s gentlemen will lap it up! And what better excuse for weapons in plain sight?” Shivers was a sight less keen. Dressing up as the man who killed his brother, a man he’d nearly killed himself, and pretending to fight. The one thing in its favour was he wouldn’t have to strum a lute, at least.

“What’s he saying?” rumbled Greylock in Northern.

“The two of us are going to pretend to have a duel.”

“Pretend?”

“I know, but they pretend all kinds o’ shit down here. We’ll put a show on. Act it out, you know. Entertainment.”