Best Served Cold

A tall woman stood behind him, a shining black fur draped around her shoulders, long black gloves on her long arms, black hair scraped over to one side and hanging soft and smooth across her white face. Her mask was scattered with chips of crystal, eyes gleaming through the narrow slots and set on him.

“Er…” Shivers had to make himself look away from her chest, the shadow between her tits drawing his eyes like a bear’s to a beehive. “Something I can… you know…”

“I don’t know, is there?” Her painted lips twisted up at one corner, part sneer and part smile. Seemed as if there was something familiar about that voice. Through the slit in her skirts he could just see the end of a long pink scar on her thigh.

“Monza?” he whispered.

“Who else as fine as this would have anything to say to the likes of you?” She eyed him up and down. “This brings back memories. You look almost as much of a savage as when I first met you.”

“That’s the idea, I reckon. You look, er…” He struggled for the word.

“Like a whore?”

“A damn pricey one, maybe.”

“I’d hate to look a cheap one. I’m headed upstairs, to wait for our guests. All goes well, I’ll see you at the warehouse.”

“Aye. If all goes well.” Shivers’ life had a habit of not going well. He frowned up at those stained-glass windows. “You going to be alright?”

“Oh, I can handle Ario. I’ve been looking forward to it.”

“I know, but, I’m just saying… if you need me closer-”

“Stick your tiny mind to keeping things under control down here. Let me worry about me.”

“I’m worried enough that I can spare some.”

“Thought you were an optimist,” she tossed over her shoulder as she walked away.

“Maybe you talked me out of it,” he muttered at her back. He didn’t like it much when she spoke to him that way, but he liked it a lot better’n when she wouldn’t speak to him at all. He saw Greylock glowering at him as he turned, and stabbed an angry finger at the big bastard. “Don’t just stand there! Let’s get this damn fake circle marked out, ’fore we get old!”

– 

M onza was a long way from comfortable as she teetered through the gambling hall, Cosca beside her. She wasn’t used to the high shoes. She wasn’t used to the draught around her legs. Corsets were torture at the best of times, and it hardly helped that this one had two of the bones removed and replaced with long, thin knives, the points up between her shoulder blades and the grips hidden in the small of her back. Her ankles, and her knees, and her hips were already throbbing. The notion of a smoke tickled at the back of her mind, just like always, but she forced it away. She’d endured enough pain, these past few months. A little more was a light price to pay if it got her close to Ario. Close enough to stick a blade in his sneering face. The thought alone put some swagger back into her step.

Carlot dan Eider waited for them at the end of the room, standing with regal superiority between two card tables covered with grey sheets, wearing a red dress fit for an empress of legend.

“Will you look at the two of us?” sneered Monza as she came close. “A general dressed like a whore and a whore dressed like a queen. Everyone’s pretending to be someone else tonight.”

“That’s politics.” Ario’s mistress frowned over at Cosca. “Who’s this?”

“Magister Eider, what a delightful and unexpected honour.” The old mercenary bowed as he swept his hat off, exposing his scabrous, sweat-beaded bald patch. “I never dreamed the two of us would meet again.”

“You!” Eider stared coldly back at him. “I might have known you’d be caught up in this. I thought you died in Dagoska!”

“So did I, but it turned out I was only very, very drunk.”

“Not so drunk you couldn’t fumble your way to betraying me.”

The old mercenary shrugged. “It’s always a crying shame when honest people are betrayed. When it happens to the treacherous, though, one cannot avoid a certain sense of… cosmic justice.” Cosca grinned from Eider, to Monza, and back. “Three people as loyal as us all on one side? I can hardly wait to see how this turns out.”

Monza’s guess was that it would turn out bloody. “When will Ario and Foscar get here?”

“When Sotorius’ grand ball begins to break up. Midnight, or just before.”

“We’ll be waiting.”

“The antidote,” snapped Eider. “I’ve done my part.”

“You’ll get it when I get Ario’s head on a plate. Not before.”

“What if something goes wrong?”

“You’ll die along with the rest of us. Better hope things run smoothly.”

“What’s to stop you from letting me die anyway?”

“My dazzling reputation for fair play and good behaviour.”

Unsurprisingly, Eider didn’t laugh. “I tried to do the right thing in Dagoska.” She jabbed at her chest with a finger. “I tried to do the right thing! I tried to save people! Look what it’s cost me!”

“There might be a lesson in there about doing the right thing.” Monza shrugged. “I’ve never had that problem.”

“You can joke! Do you know what it’s like, to live in fear every moment?”