he tested the edge and felt that cold roughness against his fingertip. The blade was keen.
“Cardotti’s House of Leisure is an old merchant’s palace,” Vitari was saying, voice chilly calm. “Wood-built, like most of Sipani, round three sides of a courtyard with the Eighth Canal right at its rear.”
They had set up a long table in the kitchen at the back of the warehouse, and the six of them sat about it now. Murcatto and Shivers, Day and Morveer, Cosca and Vitari. On the table stood a model of a large wooden building on three sides of a courtyard. Friendly judged that it was one thirty-sixth the size of the real Cardotti’s House of Leisure, though it was hard to be precise, and he liked very much to be precise.
Vitari’s fingertip trailed along the windows on one side of the tiny building. “There are kitchens and offices on the ground floor, a hall for husk and another for cards and dice.” Friendly pressed his hand to his shirt pocket and was comforted to feel his own dice nuzzling against his ribs. “Two staircases in the rear corners. On the first floor thirteen rooms where guests are entertained-”
“Fucked,” said Cosca. “We’re all adults here, let’s call it what it is.” His bloodshot eyes flickered up to the two bottles of wine on the shelf, then back. Friendly had noticed they did that a lot.
Vitari’s finger drifted up towards the model’s roof. “Then, on the top floor, three large suites for the… fucking of the most valued guests. They say the Royal Suite in the centre is fit for an emperor.”
“Then Ario might just consider it fit for himself,” growled Murcatto.
The group had grown from five to seven, so Friendly cut each of the two loaves into fourteen slices, the blade hissing through the crust and sending up puffs of flour dust. There would be twenty-eight slices in all, four slices each. Murcatto would eat less, but Day would make up for it. Friendly hated to leave a slice of bread uneaten.
“According to Eider, Ario and Foscar will have three or four dozen guests, some of them armed but not keen to fight, as well as six bodyguards.”
“She telling the truth?” Shivers’ heavy accent.
“Chance may play a part, but she won’t lie to us.”
“Keeping charge o’ that many… we’ll need more fighters.”
“Killers,” interrupted Cosca. “Again, let’s call them what they are.”
“Twenty, maybe,” came Murcatto’s hard voice, “as well as you three.”
Twenty-three. An interesting number. Heat kissed the side of Friendly’s face as he unhooked the door of the old stove and pulled it creaking open. Twenty-three could be divided by no other number, except one. No parts, no fractions. No half-measures. Not unlike Murcatto herself. He hauled the big pot out with a cloth around his hands. Numbers told no lies. Unlike people.
“How do we get twenty men inside without being noticed?”
“It’s a revel,” said Vitari. “There’ll be entertainers. And we’ll provide them.”
“Entertainers?”
“This is Sipani. Every other person in the city is an entertainer or a killer. Shouldn’t be too difficult to find a few who are both.”
Friendly was left out of the planning, but he did not mind. Sajaam had asked him to do what Murcatto said, and that was the end of it. He had learned long ago that life became much easier if you ignored what was not right before you. For now the stew was his only concern.
He dipped in his wooden spoon and took a taste, and it was good. He rated it forty-one out of fifty. The smell of cooking, the sight of the steam rising, the sound of the fizzing logs in the stove, it all put him in comforting mind of the kitchens in Safety. Of the stews, and soups, and porridge they used to make in the great vats. Long ago, back when there was an infinite weight of comforting stone always above his head, and the numbers added, and things made sense.
“Ario will want to drink for a while,” Murcatto was saying, “and gamble, and show off to his idiots. Then he’ll be brought up to the Royal Suite.”
Cosca split a crack-lipped grin. “Where women will be waiting for him, I take it?”
“One with black hair and one with red.” Murcatto exchanged a hard look with Vitari.
“A surprise fit for an emperor,” chuckled Cosca, wetly.
“When Ario’s dead, which will be quickly, we’ll move next door and pay Foscar the same kind of visit.” Murcatto shifted her scowl to Morveer. “They’ll have brought guards upstairs to watch things while they’re busy. You and Day can handle them.”
“Can we indeed?” The poisoner took a brief break from sneering at his fingernails. “A fit purpose for our talents, I am sure.”
“Try not to poison half the city this time. We should be able to kill the brothers without raising any unwanted attention, but if something goes wrong, that’s where the entertainers come in.”
The old mercenary jabbed at the model with a quivery finger. “Take the courtyard first, the gaming and smoking halls, and from there secure the staircases. Disarm the guests and round them up. Politely, of course, and in the best taste. Keep control.”
“Control.” Murcatto’s gloved forefinger stabbed the tabletop. “That’s the word I want at the front of your tiny minds. We kill Ario, we kill Foscar. If any of the rest make trouble, you do what you have to, but keep the murder to a minimum. There’ll be trouble enough for us afterwards without a bloodbath. You all got that?”
Cosca cleared his throat. “Perhaps a drink would help me to commit it all to-”
“I’ve got it.” Shivers spoke over him. “Control, and as little blood as possible.”
“Two murders.” Friendly set the pot down in the middle of the table. “One and one, and no more. Food.” And he began to ladle portions out into the bowls.
He would have liked very much to ensure that everyone had the exact same number of pieces of meat. The same number of pieces of carrot and onion too, the same number of beans. But by the time he had counted them out the food would have been cold, and he had learned that most people found that level of precision upsetting. It had led to a fight in the mess in Safety once, and Friendly had killed two men and cut a hand from another. He had no wish to kill anyone now. He was hungry. So he satisfied himself by giving each one of them the same number of ladles of stew, and coped with the deep sense of unease it left him.
“This is good,” gurgled Day, around a mouthful. “This is excellent. Is there more?”
“Where did you learn to cook, my friend?” Cosca asked.
“I spent three years in the kitchens in Safety. The man who taught me used to be head cook to the Duke of Borletta.”
“What was he doing in prison?”
“He killed his wife, and chopped her up, and cooked her in a stew, and ate it.”
There was quiet around the table. Cosca noisily cleared his throat. “No one’s wife in this stew, I trust?”
“The butcher said it was lamb, and I’ve no reason to doubt him.” Friendly picked up his fork. “No one sells human meat that cheap.”
There was one of those uncomfortable silences that Friendly always seemed to produce when he said more than three words at once. Then Cosca gave a gurgling laugh. “Depends on the circumstances. Reminds me of when we found those children, do you remember, Monza, after the siege at Muris?” Her scowl grew even harder than usual, but there was no stopping him. “We found those children, and we wanted to sell them on to some slavers, but you thought we could-”
“Of course!” Morveer almost shrieked. “ Hilarious! What could possibly be more amusing than orphan children sold into slavery?”
There was another awkward silence while the poisoner and the mercenary gave each other a deadly glare. Friendly had seen men exchange that very look in Safety. When new blood came in, and prisoners were forced into a cell together. Sometimes two men would just catch each other wrong. Hate each other from the moment they met. Too different. Or too much the same. Things were harder to predict out here, of course. But in Safety, when you saw two men look at each other that way you knew, sooner or later, there would be blood.
A drink, a drink, a drink. Cosca’s eyes lurched from that preening louse Morveer and down to the poisoner’s full wine glass, around the glasses of the others, reluctantly back to his own sickening mug of water and finally to the wine bottle on the table, where his gaze was gripped as if by burning pincers. A quick lunge and he could have
