might merely have been due to paralysis. “The attempt will more than likely end in your death, and possibly even in mine. My point is that you have to stop this madness, my dear Monzcarro. You have to stop it at once, and give it no further thought.”
Her eyes were pitiless as two pots of poison. “Only death will stop me. Mine, or Orso’s.”
“No matter the cost? No matter the pain? No matter who’s killed along the path?”
“No matter,” she growled.
“I find myself entirely convinced as to your level of commitment.”
“Everything.” The word was a snarl.
Morveer positively beamed. “Then we can do business. On that basis, and no other. What do I never deal in, Day?”
“Half-measures,” his assistant murmured, eyeing the one cake left on the plate.
“Correct. How many do we kill?”
“Six,” said Murcatto, “including Orso.”
“Then my rate shall be ten thousand scales per secondary, payable upon proof of their demise, and fifty thousand for the Duke of Talins himself.”
Her face twitched slightly. “Poor manners, to negotiate while your client is helpless.”
“Manners would be ludicrous in a conversation about murder. In any case, I never haggle.”
“Then we have a deal.”
“I am so glad. Antidote, please.”
Day pulled the cork from a glass jar, dipped the very point of a thin knife into the syrupy reduction in its bottom and handed it to him, polished handle first. He paused, looking into Murcatto’s cold blue eyes.
Caution first, always. This woman they called the Serpent of Talins was dangerous in the extreme. If Morveer had not known it from her reputation, from their conversation, from the employment she had come to engage him for, he could have seen it at a single glance. He most seriously considered the possibility of giving her a fatal jab instead, throwing her Northern friend in the river and forgetting the whole business.
But to kill Grand Duke Orso, the most powerful man in Styria? To shape the course of history with one deft twist of his craft? For his deed, if not his name, to echo through the ages? What finer way to crown a career of achieving the impossible? The very thought made him smile the wider.
He gave a long sigh. “I hope I will not come to regret this.” And he jabbed the back of Murcatto’s hand with the point of the knife, a single bead of dark blood slowly forming on her skin.
Within a few moments the antidote was already beginning to take effect. She winced as she turned her head slowly one way, then the other, worked the muscles in her face. “I’m surprised,” she said.
“Truly? How so?”
“I was expecting a Master Poisoner.” She rubbed at the mark on the back of her hand. “Who’d have thought I’d get such a little prick?”
Morveer felt his grin slip. It only took him a moment to regain his composure, of course. Once he had silenced Day’s giggle with a sharp frown. “I hope your temporary helplessness was not too great an inconvenience. I am forgiven, am I not? If the two of us are to cooperate, I would hate to have to labour beneath a shadow.”
“Of course.” She worked the movement back into her shoulders, the slightest smile at one corner of her mouth. “I need what you have, and you want what I have. Business is business.”
“Excellent. Magnificent. Un… paralleled.” And Morveer gave his most winning smile.
But he did not believe it for a moment. This was a most deadly job, and with a most deadly employer. Monzcarro Murcatto, the notorious Butcher of Caprile, was not a person of the forgiving variety. He was not forgiven. He was not even in the neighbourhood. From now on it would have to be caution first, second and third.
Science and Magic
Shivers pulled his horse up at the top of the rise. The country sloped away, a mess of dark fields with here or there a huddled farm or village, a stand of bare trees. No more’n a dozen miles distant, the line of the black sea, the curve of a wide bay, and along its edge a pale crust of city. Tiny towers clustered on three hills above the chilly brine, under an iron-grey sky.
“Westport,” said Friendly, then clicked his tongue and moved his horse on.
The closer they came to the damn place the more worried Shivers got. And the more sore, cold and bored besides. He frowned at Murcatto, riding on her own ahead, hood up, a black figure in a black landscape. The cart’s wheels clattered round on the road. The horses clopped and snorted. Some crows caw-cawed from the bare fields. But no one was talking.
They’d been a grim crowd all the way here. But then they’d a grim purpose in mind. Nothing else but murder. Shivers wondered what his father would’ve made of that. Rattleneck, who’d stuck to the old ways tight as a barnacle to a boat and always looked for the right thing to do. Killing a man you never met for money didn’t seem to fit that hole however you twisted it around.
There was a sudden burst of high laughter. Day, perched on the cart next to Morveer, a half-eaten apple in her hand. Shivers hadn’t heard much laughter in a while, and it drew him like a moth to flame.
“What’s funny?” he asked, starting to grin along at the joke.
She leaned towards him, swaying with the cart. “I was just wondering, when you fell off your chair like a turtle tipped over, if you soiled yourself.”
“I was of the opinion you probably did,” said Morveer, “but doubted we could have smelled the difference.”
Shivers’ smile was stillborn. He remembered sitting in that orchard, frowning across the table, trying to look dangerous. Then he’d felt twitchy, then dizzy. He’d tried to lift his hand to his head, found he couldn’t. He’d tried to say something about it, found he couldn’t. Then the world tipped over. He didn’t remember much else.
“What did you do to me?” He lowered his voice. “Sorcery?”
Day sprayed bits of apple as she burst out laughing. “Oh, this just gets better.”
“And I said he would be an uninspiring travelling companion.” Morveer chuckled. “ Sorcery. I swear. It’s like one of those stories.”
“Those big, thick, stupid books! Magi and devils and all the rest!” Day was having herself quite the snigger. “Stupid stories for children!”
“Alright,” said Shivers. “I think I get it. I’m slow as a fucking trout in treacle. Not sorcery. What, then?”
Day smirked. “Science.”
Shivers didn’t much care for the sound of it. “What’s that? Some other kind of magic?”
“No, it most decidedly is not,” sneered Morveer. “Science is a system of rational thought devised to investigate the world and establish the laws by which it operates. The scientist uses those laws to achieve an effect. One which might easily appear magical in the eyes of the primitive.” 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. “Magic, conversely, is a system of lies and nonsense devised to fool idiots.”
“Right y’are. I must be the stupidest bastard in the Circle of the World, eh? It’s a wonder I can hold my own shit in without paying mind to my arse every minute.”
“The thought had occurred.”
“There is magic,” grumbled Shivers. “I’ve seen a woman call up a mist.”
“Really? And how did it differ from ordinary mist? Magic coloured? Green? Orange?”
Shivers frowned. “The usual colour.”
“So a woman called, and there was mist.” Morveer raised one eyebrow at his apprentice. “A wonder indeed.” She grinned, teeth crunching into her apple.
“I’ve seen a man marked with letters, made one half of him proof against any blade. Stabbed him myself, with a spear. Should’ve been a killing blow, but didn’t leave a mark.”
“Ooooooh!” Morveer held both hands up and wiggled his fingers like a child playing ghost. “Magic letters! First, there was no wound, and then… there was no wound? I recant! The world is stuffed with miracles.” More
