Best Served Cold

Time stretched out to the vague accompaniment of the incompetent musicians down in the courtyard, but with the exception of the guards rocking gently from side to side, there was no further sign of movement. Morveer slowly shook his head. In this case, it seemed, as in so many, one moment was much like another. He breathed in deep, lifted the pipe to his lips, taking aim on the furthest of his allotted pair The door to Ario’s chamber banged open. The two women emerged, one still adjusting her skirts. Morveer held his breath, cheeks puffed out. They pulled the door shut then made off down the corridor. One of the guards said something to the other, and he laughed. There was the most discreet of hisses as Morveer discharged his pipe, and the laughter was cut short.

“Ah!” The nearest guard pressed one hand to his scalp.

“What?”

“Something… I don’t know, stung me.”

“Stung you? What would’ve-” It was the other guard’s turn to rub at his head. “Bloody hell!”

The first had found the needle in his hair, and now held it up to the light. “A needle.” He fumbled for his sword with a clumsy hand, lurched back against the wall and slid down onto his backside. “I feel all…”

The second guard took an unsteady stride into the corridor, reached up at nothing, then pitched over on his face, arm outstretched. Morveer allowed himself the slightest nod of satisfaction, then crept over to Day, crouching over two of the holes with her blowpipe in her hand.

“Success?” he asked.

“Of course.” She held the bun in the other, and now took a bite from it. Through the hole Morveer saw the two guards beside Ario’s suite slumped motionless.

“Fine work, my dear. But that, alas, is all the work with which we were trusted.” He began to gather up their equipment.

“Should we stay, see how it goes?”

“I see no reason so to do. The best we can hope for is that men will die, and that I have witnessed before. Frequently. Take it from me. One death is much like another. You have the rope?”

“Of course.”

“Never too soon to secure the means of escape.”

“Caution first, always.”

“ Precisely so.”

Day uncoiled the cord from her pack and made one end of it fast around a heavy joist. She lifted one foot and kicked the little window from its frame. Morveer heard the sound of it splashing down into the canal behind the building.

“Most neatly done. What would I do without you?”

– 

D ie!” And Greylock came charging across the circle with that great lump of wood high over his head. Shivers gasped along with the crowd, only just scrambled clear in time, felt the wind of it ripping at his face. He caught the big man in a clumsy hug and they tottered together round the outside of the circle.

“What the fuck are you after?” Shivers hissed in his ear.

“Vengeance!” Greylock dealt him a knee in the side then flung him off.

Shivers stumbled away, finding his balance, picking his brains for some slight he’d given the man. “Vengeance? For what, you mad bastard?”

“For Uffrith!” He slapped his great foot down, feinting, and Shivers hopped back, peering over the top of his shield.

“Eh? No one got killed there!”

“You sure?”

“A couple o’ men down on the docks, but-”

“My brother! No more’n fourteen years old!”

“I had no part o’ that, you great turd! Black Dow did them killings!”

“Black Dow ain’t before me now, and I swore to my mother I’d make someone pay. You’d a big enough part for me to knock it out o’ you, fucker!” Shivers gave a girlish kind of squeak as he ducked back from another great sweep, heard men cheering around him, as keen for blood as the watchers might be at a real duel.

Vengeance, then. A double-edged blade if ever there was one. You never could tell when that bastard was going to cut you. Shivers stood, blood creeping down the side of his face from a knock he took just before, and all he could think was how fucking unfair it was. He’d tried to do the right thing, just the way his brother had always told him he should. He’d tried to be a better man. Hadn’t he? This was where good intentions put you. Right in the shit.

“But I just… I done my best!” he bellowed in Northern.

Greylock sent spit spinning through the mouth-hole of his mask. “So did my brother!” He came on, club coming down in a blur. Shivers ducked round it, jerked his shield up hard and smashed the rim under the big man’s jaw, sent him staggering back, spluttering blood.

Shivers still had his pride. That much he’d kept for himself. He was damned if he was going to be put in the mud by some great thick bastard who couldn’t tell a good man from a bad. He felt the fury boiling up his throat, the way it used to back home in the North, when the battle was joined and he was in the thick of it.

“Vengeance, is it?” he screamed. “I’ll show you fucking vengeance!”

–