Monza held out her gloved hand. Eider’s face fell even further. She unclasped her necklace and dropped it into Monza’s palm, then followed it with her rings. “Convincing enough?”
“I don’t know. You seem like the kind of woman to put up a struggle.” Monza punched her in the face. She squawked, stumbled, would’ve fallen if Vitari hadn’t caught her. She looked up, blood leaking from her nose and her split lip, and for an instant she had this strange expression. Hurt, yes. Afraid, of course. But more angry than either one. Like the look Monza had herself, maybe, when they threw her from the balcony.
“Now we’re done,” she said.
Vitari yanked at Eider’s elbow and dragged her out into the hallway, towards the front door, their footsteps scraping against the grubby boards. Day gave a sigh, then pushed herself away from the wall and brushed plaster- dust from her backside. “Nice and neat.”
“No thanks to your master. Where is he?”
“I prefer employer, and he said there were some errands he had to run.”
“Errands?”
“That a problem?”
“I paid for the master, not the dog.”
Day grinned. “Woof, woof. There’s nothing Morveer can do that I can’t.”
“That so?”
“He’s getting old. Arrogant. That rope burning through was nearly the death of him, in Westport. I wouldn’t want any carelessness like that to interfere with your business. Not for what you’re paying. No one worse to have next to you than a careless poisoner.”
“You’ll get no argument from me on that score.”
Day shrugged. “Accidents happen all the time in our line of work. Especially to the old. It’s a young person’s trade, really.” She sauntered out into the corridor, passed Vitari stalking back the other way. The look of glee was long gone from her sharp face, and the swagger with it. She lifted one black boot and shoved the chair angrily away into one corner.
“There’s our way in, then,” she said.
“Seems so.”
“Just what I promised you.”
“Just what you promised.”
“Ario and Foscar, both together, and a way to get to them.”
“A good day’s work.”
They looked at each other, and Vitari ran her tongue around the inside of her mouth as if it tasted bitter. “Well.” She shrugged her bony shoulders. “It’s a living.”
The Life of the Drinker
A drink, a drink, a drink. Where can a man find a drink?”
Nicomo Cosca, famed soldier of fortune, tottered against the wall of the alley, rooting through his purse yet again with quivering fingers. There was still nothing in it but a tuft of grey fluff. He dug it out, blew it from his fingertips and watched it flutter gently down. All his fortune.
“Bastard purse!” He flung it in the gutter in a feeble rage. Then he thought better of it and had to stoop to pick it up, groaning like an old man. He was an old man. A lost man. A dead man, give or take a final rattle of breath. He sank slowly to his knees, gazing at his broken reflection in the black water gathered between the cobblestones.
He would have given all he owned for the slightest taste of liquor. He owned nothing, it had to be said. But his body was his, still. His hands, which had raised up princes to the heights of power and flung them down again. His eyes, which had surveyed the turning points of history. His lips, which had softly kissed the most celebrated beauties of the age. His itching cock, his aching guts, his rotting neck, he would happily have sold it all for a single measure of grape spirit. But it was hard to see where he would find a buyer.
“I have become myself… an empty purse.” He raised his leaden arms imploringly and roared into the murky night. “Someone give me a fucking drink!”
“Stop your mouth, arsehole!” a rough voice called back, and then, with the clatter of shutters closing, the alley plunged into deeper gloom.
He had dined at the tables of dukes. He had sported in the beds of countesses. Cities had trembled at the name of Cosca.
“How did it ever come… to this?” He clambered up, swallowing the urge to vomit. He smoothed his hair back from his throbbing temples, fumbled with the limp ends of his moustaches. He made for the lane with something approaching his famous swagger of old. Out between the ghostly buildings and into a patch of lamplight in the mist, moist night breeze tickling at his sore face. Footsteps approached and Cosca lurched round, blinking.
“Good sir! I find myself temporarily without funds, and wonder whether you would be willing to advance me a small loan until-”
“Away and piss, beggar.” The man shoved past, barging him against the wall.
Cosca’s skin flushed with greasy outrage. “You address none other than Nicomo Cosca, famed soldier of fortune!” The effect was somewhat spoiled by the brittle cracking of his ravaged voice. “Captain general of the Thousand Swords! Ex-captain general, that is.” The man made an obscene gesture as he disappeared into the fog. “I dined… at the beds
… of dukes!” Cosca collapsed into a fit of hacking coughs and was obliged to bend over, shaking hands on his shaking knees, aching ribcage going like a creaky bellows.
Such was the life of the drinker. A quarter on your arse, a quarter on your face, a quarter on your knees and the rest of your time bent over. He finally hawked up a great lump of phlegm, and with one last cough blew it spinning from his sore tongue. Would this be his legacy? Spit in a hundred thousand gutters? His name a byword for petty betrayal, avarice and waste? He straightened with a groan of the purest despair, staring up into nothingness, even the stars denied him by Sipani’s all-cloaking fog.
“One last chance. That’s all I’m asking.” He had lost count of the number of last chances he had wasted. “Just one more. God!” He had never believed in God for an instant. “Fates!” He had never believed in Fates either. “Anyone!” He had never believed in anything much beyond the next drink. “Just one… more… chance.”
“Alright. One more.”
Cosca blinked. “God? Is that… you?”
Someone chuckled. A woman’s voice, and a sharp, mocking, most ungodlike sort of a chuckle. “You can kneel if you like, Cosca.”
He squinted into the sliding mist, pickled brains spurred into something approaching activity. Someone knowing his name was unlikely to be a good thing. His enemies far outnumbered his friends, and his creditors far outnumbered both. He fished drunkenly for the hilt of his gilded sword, then realised he had pawned it months ago in Ospria and bought a cheap one. He fished drunkenly for the hilt of that instead, then realised he had pawned that one when he first reached Sipani. He let his shaky hand drop. Not much lost. He doubted he could have swung a blade even if he’d had one.
“Who the bloody hell’s out there? If I owe you money, make ready”-his stomach lurched and he gave vent to a long, acrid burp-“to die?”
A dark shape rose suddenly from the murk at his side and he spun, tripped over his own feet and went sprawling, head cracking against the wall and sending a blinding flash across his vision.
“So you’re alive, still. You are alive, aren’t you?” A long, lean woman, a sharp face mostly in shadow, spiky hair tinted orange. His mind fumbled sluggishly to recognition.
“Shylo Vitari, well I never.” Not an enemy, perhaps, but certainly not a friend. He propped himself up on one elbow, but from the way the street was spinning, decided that was far enough. “Don’t suppose you might consent… to buy a man a drink, might you?”
“Goat’s milk?”
“What?”
