Best Served Cold

Morveer had no breath left to speak, let alone scream. The pain was fading in any case. He wondered, as he often had, how his life might have differed had he not poisoned his mother, and doomed himself to life in the orphanage. His vision was clouding, blurring, growing dark.

“I need to thank you. You see, Morveer, a man can change, given the proper encouragement. And your scorn was the very spur I needed.”

Killed by his own agent. It was the way so many great practitioners of his profession ended their lives. And on the eve of his retirement, too. He was sure there was an irony there somewhere…

“Do you know the best thing about all this?” Cosca’s voice boomed in his ears, Cosca’s grin swam above him. “Now I can start drinking again.”

– 

O ne of the mercenaries was pleading, blubbering, begging for his life. Monza sat against the cold marble slab of the tabletop and listened to him, breathing hard, sweating hard, weighing the Calvez in her hand. It would be little better than useless against the heavy armour of Orso’s guards, even if she’d fancied taking on that many at once. She heard the damp squelch of a blade rammed into flesh and the pleading was cut off in a long scream and a short gurgle.

Not really a sound to give anyone confidence.

She peered round the edge of the table. She counted seven guards still standing, one ripping his spear free of a dead mercenary’s chest, two turning towards her, heavy swords ready, one working an axe from Secco’s split skull. Three were kneeling, busily cranking flatbows. Behind them stood the big round table on which the map of Styria was still unrolled. On the map was a crown, a ring of sparkling gold sprouting with gem-encrusted oak leaves, not unlike the one that had killed Rogont and his dream of Styria united. Beside the crown, dressed in black and with his iron-shot black hair and beard as neatly groomed as ever, stood Grand Duke Orso.

He saw her, and she saw him, and the anger boiled up, hot and comforting. One of his guards slipped a bolt into his flatbow and levelled it at her. She was about to duck behind the slab of marble when Orso held out one arm.

“Wait! Stop.” That same voice that she had never disobeyed in eight hard years. “Is that you, Monzcarro?”

“Damn right it is!” she snarled back. “Get ready to fucking die!” Though it looked as if she might be going first.

“I’ve been ready for some time,” he called out softly. “You’ve seen to that. Well done! My hopes are all in ruins, thanks to you.”

“You needn’t thank me!” she called. “It was Benna I did it for!”

“Ario is dead.”

“Hah!” she barked back. “That’s what happens when I stab a worthless cunt in the neck and throw him from a window!” A flurry of twitches crawled up Orso’s cheek. “But why pick him out? There was Gobba, and Mauthis, and Ganmark, and Faithful-I’ve slaughtered the whole crowd! Everyone who was in this room when you murdered my brother!”

“And Foscar? I’ve heard no word since the defeat at the fords.”

“You can stop listening!” Said with a glee she hardly felt. “Skull smashed to pulp on a farmhouse floor!”

The anger had all gone from Orso’s face and it hung terribly slack. “You must be happy.”

“I’m not fucking sad, I’ll tell you that!”

“Grand Duchess Monzcarro of Talins.” Orso tapped two fingers slowly against his palm, the sharp snaps echoing off the high ceiling. “I congratulate you on your victory. You have what you wanted after all!”

“What I wanted?” For a moment she could hardly believe what she was hearing. “You think I wanted this? After the battles I fought for you? The victories I won for you?” She was near shrieking, spitting with fury. She ripped her glove off with her teeth and shook her mutilated hand at him. “I fucking wanted this? What reason did we give you to betray us? We were loyal to you! Always!”

“Loyal?” Orso gave a disbelieving gasp of his own. “Crow your victory if you must, but don’t crow your innocence to me! We both know better!”

All three flatbows were loaded and levelled now. “We were loyal!” she screamed again, voice cracking.

“Can you deny it? That Benna met with malcontents, revolutionaries, traitors among my ungrateful subjects? That he promised them weapons? That he promised you would lead them to glory? Claim my place? Usurp me! Did you think I would not learn of it? Did you think I would stand idly by?”

“What the… you fucking liar!”

“Still you deny it? I would not believe it myself when they told me! My Monza? Closer to me than my own children? My Monza, betray me? With my own eyes I saw him! With my own eyes!” The echoes of his voice slowly faded, and left the hall almost silent. Only the gentle clanking of the four armoured men as they edged ever so slowly towards her. She could only stare, the realisation creeping slowly through her.