Joe Abercrombie - Best Served Cold

He sighed, wrapped them carefully in their soft cloth, once, twice, three times, and he tucked them up tight, safe into the darkness of his inside pocket. He wished that he was tucked up tight, safe in the darkness, but things were what they were. There was no going back. He stood and brushed the street scum from his knees.

“What’s the plan?” asked Shivers.

Friendly shrugged. “Six and one.”

He pulled his hood up and started walking, hunched over, hands thrust into his pockets. Light from a high window cut across the group as they came closer. Four grotesque carnival masks, leering with drunken laughter. The big man in the centre had a soft face with sharp little eyes and a greedy grin. The painted woman tottered on her high shoes beside him. The man on the left smirked across at her, lean and bearded. The one on the right was wiping a tear of happiness from his grey cheek.

“Then what?” he shrieked through his gurgling, far louder than there was a need for.

“What d’you think? I kicked him ’til he shat himself.” More gales of laughter, the woman’s falsetto tittering a counterpoint to the big man’s bass. “I said, Duke Orso likes men who say yes, you lying-”

“Gobba?” asked Friendly.

His head snapped round, smile fading from his soft face. Friendly stopped. He had taken forty-one steps from the place where he rolled the dice. Six and one made seven. Seven times six was forty-two. Take away the one…

“Who’re you?” growled Gobba.

“Six and one.”

“What?” The man on the right made to shove Friendly away with a drunken arm. “Get out of it, you mad fu-”

The cleaver split his head open to the bridge of his nose. Before his mate on the left’s mouth had fallen all the way open, Friendly was across the road and stabbing him in the body. Five times the long knife punched him through the guts, then Friendly stepped back and slashed his throat on the backhand, kicked his legs away and brought him tumbling to the cobbles.

There was a moment’s pause as Friendly breathed out, long and slow. The first man had the single great wound yawning in his skull, a black splatter of brains smeared over his crossed eyes. The other had the five stab wounds in his body, and blood pouring from his cut throat.

“Good,” said Friendly. “Six and one.”

The whore started screaming, spots of dark blood across one powdered cheek.

“You’re a dead man!” roared Gobba, taking a stumbling step back, fumbling a bright knife from his belt. “I’ll kill you!” But he did not come on.

“When?” asked Friendly, blades hanging loose from his hands. “Tomorrow?”

“I’ll-”

Shivers’ stick cracked down on the back of Gobba’s skull. A good blow, right on the best spot, crumpling his knees easily as paper. He flopped down, slack cheek thumping against the cobbles, knife clattering from his limp fist, out cold.

“Not tomorrow. Not ever.” The woman’s shriek sputtered out. Friendly turned his eyes on her. “Why aren’t you running?” She fled into the darkness, teetering on her high shoes, whimpering breath echoing down the street, her night-bell jangling after.

Shivers frowned down at the two leaking corpses in the road. The two pools of blood worked their way along the cracks between the cobblestones, touched, mingled and became one. “By the dead,” he muttered in his Northern tongue.

Friendly shrugged. “Welcome to Styria.”

Bloody Instructions

M onza stared down at her gloved hand, lips curled back hard from her teeth, and flexed the three fingers that still worked-in and out, in and out, gauging the pattern of clicks and crunches that came with every closing of her fist. She felt oddly calm considering that her life, if you could call it a life, was balanced on a razor’s edge.

Never trust a man beyond his own interests, Verturio wrote, and the murder of Grand Duke Orso and his closest was no one’s idea of an easy job. She couldn’t trust this silent convict any further than she could trust Sajaam, and that was about as far as she could piss. She had a creeping feeling the Northman was halfway honest, but she’d thought that about Orso, with results that had hardly been happy. It would’ve been no great surprise to her if they’d brought Gobba in smiling, ready to drag her back to Fontezarmo so they could drop her down the mountain a second time.

She couldn’t trust anyone. But she couldn’t do it alone.

Hurried footsteps scuffled up outside. The door banged open and three men came through. Shivers was on the right, Friendly on the left. Gobba hung between them, head dangling, an arm over each of their shoulders, his boot-toes scraping through the sawdust scattered across the ground. So it seemed she could trust the pair of them this far, at least.

Friendly dragged Gobba to the anvil-a mass of scarred black iron bolted down in the centre of the floor. Shivers had a length of chain, a manacle on each end, looping it round and round the base. All the while he had this fixed frown. As if he’d got some morals, and they were stinging.

Nice things, morals, but prone to chafe at times like this.

The two men worked well together for a beggar and a convict. No time or movement wasted. No sign of nerves, given they were going about a murder. But then Monza had always had a knack for picking the right men for a job. Friendly snapped the manacles shut on the bodyguard’s thick wrists. Shivers reached out and turned the knob on the lamp, the flame fluttering up behind the glass, light spilling out around the grubby forge.

“Wake him up.”

Friendly flung a bucket of water in Gobba’s face. He coughed, dragged in a breath, shook his head, drops flicking from his hair. He tried to stand and the chain rattled, snatching him back down. He glared around, little eyes hard.

“You stupid bastards! You’re dead men, the pair of you! Dead! Don’t you know who I am? Don’t you know who I work for?”

“I know.” Monza did her best to walk smoothly, the way she used to, but couldn’t quite manage it. She limped into the light, pushing back her hood.

Gobba’s fat face crinkled up. “No. Can’t be.” His eyes went wide. Then wider still. Shock, then fear, then horror. He lurched back, chains clinking. “No!”

“Yes.” And she smiled, in spite of the pain. “How fucked are you? You’ve put weight on, Gobba. More than I’ve lost, even. Funny, how things go. Is that my stone you’ve got there?”

He had the ruby on his little finger, red glimmer on black iron. Friendly reached down, twisted it off and tossed it over to her. She snatched it out of the air with her left hand. Benna’s last gift. The one they’d smiled at together as they rode up the mountain to see Duke Orso. The thick band was scratched, bent a little, but the stone still sparkled bloodily as ever, the colour of a slit throat.

“Somewhat damaged when you tried to kill me, eh, Gobba? But weren’t we all?” It took her a while to fumble it onto her left middle finger, but in the end she twisted it past the knuckle. “Fits this hand just as well. Piece of luck, that.”

“Look! We can make a deal!” There was sweat beading Gobba’s face now. “We can work something out!”

“I already did. Don’t have a mountain to hand, I’m afraid.” She slid the hammer from the shelf-a short-hafted lump hammer with a block of heavy steel for a head-and felt her knuckles shift as she closed her gloved hand tight around it. “So I’m going to break you apart with this, instead. Hold him, would you?” Friendly folded Gobba’s right arm and forced it onto the anvil, clawing fingers spread out pale on the dark metal. “You should’ve made sure of me.”

“Orso’ll find out! He’ll find out!”

“Of course he will. When I throw him off his own terrace, if not before.”