Best Served Cold

by Joe Abercrombie

Monza forced her head up. “Lick my arse, cocksucker.” Not clever, perhaps, but from the heart.

He gave the nearest sailor a cheery nod. “Off I go.” He got no more’n a grunt in return, but his brother used to tell him it was what you gave out that made a man, not what you got back.

She’d seen husk-smokers often enough, sprawling like corpses, withered to useless husks themselves, caring for nothing but the next pipe. Husk was like mercy. A thing for the weak. For the cowardly. He smiled his dead-man’s smile again. “This will help.” Enough pain makes a coward of anyone.

“One cannot grow without pain. One cannot improve without it. Suffering drives us to achieve great things.” The fingers of her good hand plucked and scrabbled uselessly at his fist. “Love is a fine cushion to rest upon, but only hate can make you a better person.

“No bother,” said Shivers, though he’d spent hours chopping logs for it. Quite a lot of painful bother, in fact. The rest of ’em were all looking now, big sad eyes like pups needed feeding. He threw up his hands. “If I had bread for everyone, why the fuck would I be stood here?”

“A banker.” “A what?” “A man who counts money.” “He makes money counting money?” “That’s right.” “Some strange fashions you folk have down here. What did he do?”

Shivers struggled with all the long Styrian words. For a man who reckoned himself clever, Morveer had a fool’s way of talking, seemed meant to make the simple difficult.

Nowhere was a single coin in evidence. The wealth here was made of words, of ideas, of rumours and lies, too valuable to be held captive in gaudy gold or simple silver.

“Optimists.” “That’s the one. I’m an optimist.” “How’s it working out for you?” “Not great, but I keep hoping.” “That’s optimists. You bastards never learn.”

How the hell was he going to explain that? Just a midnight stroll, you know, all in black, taking the old bow for a walk.

“I’m a thoughtful man, for one out of a gang of hired killers.” “I’ll have you know that some hired killers are very nice people.”

“So you’ll kill a man for money, but you won’t suck a cunt for it?” She snorted. “There’s morals for you. You want my advice? Take the five and stick to killing in future. That you’ve got a talent for.”

Nine-tenths of war is waiting, Stolicus wrote, and she felt he’d called it low.

“You have it back to front. A man’s mind goes, then he gets weak, then he takes to drink. The bottle is the symptom, not the cause.

“That’s a lot o’ people,” said Shivers, eyes narrowed against the chilly glare. Just the kind of stunning revelation Monza had come to expect from the man. “An awful lot.”

“I’ve always thought it must be a fine enough life, being a whore. A successful one, at any rate. You get the days off, and when finally you are called upon to work you can get most of it done lying down.”

In my experience, life rarely turns out the way you expect. We must bend with the circumstances, and simply do our best.”

There was a huge canvas in a gleaming frame on one wall—a woman with an improbable bosom bathing in a stream, and seeming to enjoy it a lot more than was likely. Monza never had understood why getting out a tit or two made for a better painting. But painters seemed to think it did, so tits is what you got.

“Bit late for second thoughts, no?” “Unless you’ve decided you’d rather fuck them instead.” “I think we’ll stick to murder.”

Vengeance, then. A double-edged blade if ever there was one. You never could tell when that bastard was going to cut you.

Monza stared into her eyes. “Deader than fuck.”

“A man sleeps through most of his life, even when awake. You get so little time, yet still you spend it utterly oblivious. Angry, frustrated, fixated on meaningless nothings. That drawer does not close flush with the front of my desk. What cards does my opponent hold, and how much money can I win from him? I wish I were taller. What will I have for dinner, for I am not fond of parsnips?” Shenkt rolled a mangled corpse out of his way with the toe of one boot. “It takes a moment like this to jerk us to our senses, to draw our eyes from the mud to the heavens, to root our attention in the present. Now you realise how precious is each moment. That is my gift to you.”

“All those dead men at that bank in Westport, that was your righteous work, I suppose? And the carnage at Cardotti’s, a fair and proportionate reply?” “What had to be done!” “Ah, what had to be done. The favourite excuse of unexamined evil echoes down the ages and slobbers from your twisted mouth.”

“I wish I could’ve made Orso one of them.” “Well.” Cosca raised his brows. “It’s a noble calling, but I guess you can’t kill everyone.”

“A wise man once told me you have to be realistic. Strange how fast we change, ain’t it, when we have to?”

I fear you are too much soldier and not enough politician. I fear I am the opposite. Words may hold more power than swords, as Juvens said, but I have discovered to my cost that there are times when there is no substitute for pointy metal.”

“If men can change like that.” And Monza snapped her fingers in his face. “That’s the only way they do change, ain’t it?” His one eye stayed on her. “If things change enough around ’em? Men are brittle, I reckon. They don’t bend into new shapes. They get broken into them. Crushed into them.”

Strong leaders might like it when someone brings ’em a better idea, but weak ones never do.

Shivers liked the look of the poisoner’s equipment even less than the look of the poisoner’s corpse. Bodies he was good and familiar with, science was all unknown. “Fucking science,” he muttered. “Even worse’n magic.”

“Fucking banking,” he murmured. “Even worse’n science.”

“Fucking magic,” he mumbled. “Even worse’n banking.”

“How do I look?” Black pointed knee-boots set with huge golden spurs in the likeness of bull’s heads. Breastplate of black steel with golden adornments. Black velvet sleeves slashed with yellow silk, cuffs of Sipanese lace hanging at the wrists. A sword with flamboyant gilded basketwork and matching dagger, slung ridiculously low. An enormous hat, its yellow feather threatening to brush the ceiling. “Like a pimp who lost his mind in a military tailor’s.” Cosca broke out in a radiant grin. “Precisely the look I was aiming at! So to business,

“Now for freedom!” Or at best a better-looking brand of tyranny. “Now for glory!” A glorious place in the mud at the bottom of the river.

“You think a man can turn on me? Betray me? Give my chair to another for a few pieces of silver, then smile and be my friend? You mistake me, Andiche. Fatally. I may make men laugh, but I’m no clown.”

On reflection, I doubt the facts of my betrayal quite match the story. But in any case, a man can forgive all manner of faults in beautiful women that in ugly men he finds entirely beyond sufferance.

“Now that you mention it… I must confess I rather relish being looked down on by a strong woman.” He brushed her knees with his fingertips, ran his hands slowly up the insides of her scarred thighs to the top, and then gently back down. “I don’t suppose… you could be persuaded… to piss on me, at all?” Monza frowned. “I don’t need to go.” “Perhaps… some water, then? And afterwards—” “I think I’ll stick to the pot.” “Such a waste. The pot will not appreciate it.” “Once it’s full you can do what you like with it, how’s that?” “Ugh. Not at all the same thing.” Monza slowly shook her head as she stepped off him. “A pretend grand duchess, pissing on a would-be king. You couldn’t make it up.”

‘Things aren’t what they used to be’ is the rallying cry of small minds. When men say things used to be better, they invariably mean they were better for them, because they were young, and had all their hopes intact. The world is bound to look a darker place as you slide into the grave.”

The notary winced. “Counting all ancillaries, servants and tradesmen?” “Absolutely.” “Whores too?” “Counting them first, they’re the hardest workers in the whole damned brigade!”

He was forcibly reminded of his attempt to discomfort four of his tormentors at the orphanage by placing Lankam salts in the water, which had ended, of course, with the untimely deaths of all the establishment’s staff and most of the children too.

He squatted there, fascinated, and watched them. Innocent. Unformed. Full of possibilities. Before they began to make their choices, or had their choices made for them. Before the doors began to close, and sent them down the only remaining path. Before they knelt. Now, for this briefest spell, they could be anything.

“Men can have all manner of deeply held beliefs about the world in general that they find most inconvenient when called upon to apply to their own lives. Few people let morality get in the way of expediency. Or even convenience. A man who truly believes in a thing beyond the point where it costs him is a rare and dangerous thing.”

Duke Orso might have been all but finished, his people hailing a new leader, his palace at Fontezarmo surrounded and under siege. None of that made the slightest difference. Shenkt had his work, and he would see it through to the end, however bitter. Just as he always did. Some stories, after all, are only suited to bitter endings.

a dangerous man indeed - paraphrase of Cosca last chapter

It was like the Bloody-Nine told him once—love and hate have just a knife’s edge between ’em.

“You sure this is the best time for jokes?” Monza muttered. “Unhappy times are the best for levity. You don’t light candles in the middle of the day, do you?”

It ensures a steady flow of willing bodies up the ladders, and has the added benefit of weeding the bravest men out of the company to boot.” Shivers looked even more baffled. “Why would you want to do that?” “‘Bravery is the dead man’s virtue,’” Monza muttered. “‘The wise commander never trusts it.’

The arrogance was incalculable, and if there was one quality Morveer could not abide, it was arrogance. Humility, after all, cost nothing.

chefs kiss

“Have you considered the possibility of… perhaps… leaving it be?” She looked at him as if he was speaking in a foreign tongue. “What?” “I myself have left a thousand tasks unfinished, unstarted or outright failed across the whole breadth of the Circle of the World. In the end, they bother me considerably less than my successes.”

“You one-eyed cocksucker!” Not clever, perhaps, but from the heart.

“You should’ve seen this coming,” he whispered, and she reckoned he had a point. It had been coming a long time. Since she fucked Rogont. Since she turned her back on Shivers. Since he lost his eye in the cells under Salier’s palace. Maybe it had been coming from the first moment they met. Before, even. Always. Some things are inevitable.

“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.”