Best Served Cold

“Earlier today. To Grand Duke Orso. It was written in some passion, so I forget exactly what was said. The name Shylo Vitari was mentioned, though. And the name Nicomo Cosca.”

Cosca waved it away with one hand. “I’ve always had a lot of powerful enemies. I consider it a point of pride. Listing them makes excellent dinner conversation.”

Eider turned her sneer from the old mercenary back to Monza. “Those two names, and the name of Murcatto as well.”

Monza frowned. “Murcatto.”

“How much of a fool do you take me for? I know who you are, and now Orso will know too. That you’re alive, and that you killed his son, and that you had help. A petty revenge, perhaps, but the best I could manage.”

“Revenge?” Monza nodded slowly. “Well. Everyone’s at it. It would’ve been better if you hadn’t done that.” The Calvez rattled gently as she rested her hand on its hilt.

“Why, will you kill me for it? Hah! I’m good as dead already!”

“Then why should I bother? You’re not on my list. You can go.” Eider stared at her for a moment, mouth slightly open as though she was about to speak, then she snapped it shut and turned for the door. “Aren’t you going to wish me luck?”

“What?”

“The way I see it, your best hope now is that I kill Orso.”

Ario’s one-time mistress paused in the doorway. “Some fucking chance of that!” And she was gone.

IV

V ISSERINE

“War without fire is as worthless as sausages without mustard”

Henry V

T he Thousand Swords fought for Ospria against Muris. They fought for Muris against Sipani. They fought for Sipani against Muris, then for Ospria again. Between contracts, they sacked Oprile on a whim. A month later, judging they had perhaps not been thorough enough, they sacked it again, and left it in smouldering ruins. They fought for everyone against no one, and no one against everyone, and all the while they hardly did any fighting at all.

But robbery and plunder, arson and pillage, rape and extortion, yes.

Nicomo Cosca liked to surround himself with the curious that he might seem strange and romantic. A nineteen-year-old swordswoman inseparable from her younger brother seemed to qualify, so he kept them close. At first he found them interesting. Then he found them useful. Then he found them indispensable.

He and Monza would spar together in the cold mornings-the flicker and scrape of steel, the hiss and smoke of snatched breath. He was stronger, and she quicker, and so they were well matched. They would taunt each other, and spit at each other, and laugh. Men from the company would gather to watch them, laugh to see their captain bested by a girl half his age, often as not. Everyone laughed, except Benna. He was no swordsman.

He had a trick for numbers, though, and he took charge of the company’s books, and then the buying of the stocks, and then the management and resale of the booty and the distribution of the proceeds. He made money for everyone, and had an easy manner, and soon was well loved.

Monza was a quick study. She learned what Stolicus wrote, and Verturio, and Bialoveld, and Farans. She learned all that Nicomo Cosca had to teach. She learned tactics and strategy, manoeuvre and logistics, how to read the ground and how to read an enemy. She learned by watching, then she learned by doing. She learned all the arts and all the sciences that were of use to the soldier.

“You have a devil in you,” Cosca told her, when he was drunk, which was not rarely. She saved his life at Muris, then he saved hers. Everyone laughed, except Benna, again. He was no lifesaver.

Old Sazine died of an arrow, and the captains of the companies that made up the Thousand Swords voted Nicomo Cosca to the captain general’s chair. Monza and Benna went with him. She carried Cosca’s orders. Then she told him what his orders should be. Then she gave orders while he was passed out drunk and pretended they were his. Then she stopped pretending they were his, and no one minded because her orders were better than his would have been, even had he been sober.

As the months passed and turned to years, he was sober less and less. The only orders he gave were in the tavern. The only sparring he did was with a bottle. When the Thousand Swords had picked one part of the country clean and it came time to move on, Monza would search for him through the taverns, and the smoke-houses, and the brothels, and drag him back.

She hated to do it, and Benna hated to watch her do it, but Cosca had given them a home and they owed him, so she did it still. As they wended their way to camp in the dusk, him stumbling under the weight of drink, and her stumbling under the weight of him, he would whisper in her ear.

“Monza, Monza. What would I do without you?”

Vengeance, Then