problem with hiding a thing yourself.
You always know where it is.
“I do not care for this country.” Morveer stood from his swaying seat and peered out across the flat land. “This is good country for an ambush.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Monza growled back. Hedgerows, the odd stand of trees, brown houses and barns alone or in groups away across the fields-plenty of hiding places. Scarcely a thing moved. Scarcely a sound but for the crows, the wind flapping the canvas on the cart, the wheels rattling, splattering through an occasional puddle.
“Are you sure it is prudent to put your faith in Rogont?”
“You don’t win battles with prudence.”
“No, one plans murders with it. Rogont is notoriously untrustworthy even for a grand duke, and an old enemy of yours besides.”
“I can trust him as far as what’s in his own interest.” The question was all the more irritating as it was one she’d been asking herself ever since they left Puranti. “Small risk for him killing Faithful Carpi, but a hell of a pay-off if I can bring him the Thousand Swords.”
“But it would hardly be your first miscalculation. What if we are marooned out here in the path of an army? You are paying me to kill one man at a time, not fight a war single-”
“I paid you to kill one man in Westport, and you murdered fifty at a throw. I need no lessons from you in taking care.”
“Scarcely more than forty, and that was due to too much care to get your man, not too little! Was your butcher’s bill any shorter at Cardotti’s House of Leisure? Or in Duke Salier’s palace? Or at Caprile, for that matter? Forgive me if I have scant faith in your ability to keep violence contained!”
“Enough!” she snarled at him. “You’re like a goat that won’t stop bleating! Do the job I pay you for, and that’s the end of it!”
Morveer pulled up the cart suddenly with a haul on the reins and Day squawked as she nearly fumbled her apple. “Is this the thanks I get for your timely rescue in Visserine? After you so pointedly ignored my sage advice?”
Vitari, sprawling among the supplies on the back of the cart, stuck up one long arm. “That rescue was as much my doing as his. No one’s thanked me.”
Morveer ignored her. “Perhaps I should find a more grateful employer!”
“Perhaps I should find a more obedient fucking poisoner!”
“Perhaps…! But wait.” Morveer held up a finger, squeezing his eyes shut. “But wait.” He puckered his lips and sucked in a deep breath, held it for a moment, then slowly blew it out. And again. Shivers rode up, raised his one eyebrow at Monza. One more breath, and Morveer’s eyes came open, and he gave a chuckle of sickening falseness. “Perhaps… I should most sincerely apologise.”
“What?”
“I realise I am… not always the easiest company.” A sharp burst of laughter from Vitari and Morveer winced, but carried on. “If I seem always contrary it is because I want only the best for you and your venture. It has ever been a failing of mine to be too intransigent in my pursuit of excellence. There is no more important characteristic than pliability in a man who must, perforce, be your humble servant. Can I entreat you to make with me… a heroic effort? To put this unpleasantness behind us?” He snapped the reins and moved the cart on, still smiling thinly over his shoulder. “I feel it! A new beginning!”
Monza caught Day’s eye as she passed, rocking gently on her seat. The blond girl lifted her brows, stripped her apple to the last fragment of stalk and flicked it away into the field. Vitari was on the back of the cart, just pulling off her coat and sprawling out on the canvas in the sunlight. “Sun’s coming out. New beginning.” She pointed across the country, one hand pressed to her chest. “And aaaaaaaw, a rainbow! You know, they say there’s an elf- glade where it touches the ground!”
Monza scowled after them. Seemed more likely they’d stumble on an elf-glade than that Morveer would make a new beginning. She trusted this sudden obedience even less than his endless carping.
“Maybe he just wants to be loved,” came Shivers’ whispery voice as they set off again.
“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.”
Burned into them, maybe. “How’s your face?” she muttered.
“Itchy.”
“Did it hurt, at the eye-maker’s?”
“On a scale between stubbing your toe and having your eye burned out, it was down near the bottom.”
“Most everything is.”
“Falling down a mountain?”
“Not that bad, as long as you lie still. It’s when you try to get up it starts to sting some.” That got a grin from him, though he was grinning a lot less than he used to. Small surprise after what he’d been through, maybe. What she’d put him through. “I suppose… I should be thanking you for saving my life, again. It’s getting to be a habit.”
“What you’re paying me for, ain’t it, Chief? Work well done is its own reward, my father always used to tell me. Fact is I’m good at it. As a fighter I’m a man you need to respect. As anything else I’m just a big shiftless fuck wasted a dozen years in the wars, with nothing to show for it but bloody dreams and one less eye than most. I’ve got my pride, still. Man’s got to be what he is, I reckon. Otherwise what is he? Just pretending, no? And who wants to spend all the time they’re given pretending to be what they ain’t?”
Good question. Luckily they crested a rise, and she was spared having to think of an answer. The remains of the Imperial road stretched away, an arrow-straight stripe of brown through the fields. Eight centuries old, and still the best road in Styria. A sad comment on the leadership since. There was a farm not far from it. A stone house of two storeys, windows shuttered, roof of red tiles turned mossy brown with age, a small stable-block beside. A waist-high wall of lichen-splattered drystone round a muddy yard, a couple of scrawny birds pecking at the dirt. Opposite the house a wooden barn, roof slumping in the middle. A weather vane in the shape of a winged snake flapped limply on its leaning turret.
“That’s the place!” she called out, and Vitari stuck her arm up to show she’d heard.
A stream wound past the buildings and off towards a mill-house a mile or two distant. The wind came up, shook the leaves on a hedgerow, made soft waves in the wheat, drove the ragged clouds across the sky, their shadows flowing over the land beneath.
It reminded Monza of the farm where she was born. She thought of Benna, a boy running through the crop, just the top of his head showing above the ripening grain, hearing his high laughter. Long ago, before their father died. Monza shook herself and scowled. Maudlin, self-indulgent, nostalgic shit. She’d hated that farm. The digging, the ploughing, the dirt under her nails. And all for what? There weren’t many things you worked so hard at to make so little.
The only other one she could think of right off was revenge.
Since his earliest remembrances, Morveer seemed always to have had an uncanny aptitude for saying the wrong thing. When he meant to contribute, he would find he was complaining. When he intended to be solicitous, he would discover he was insulting. When he sought earnestly to provide support, he would be construed as undermining. He wanted only to be valued, respected, included, and yet somehow every attempt at good fellowship only made matters worse.
He was almost starting to believe, after thirty years of failed relationships-a mother who had left him, a wife who had left him, apprentices who had left, robbed or attempted to kill him, usually by poison but on one memorable occasion with an axe-that he simply was not very good with people. He should have been glad, at least, that the loathsome drunk Nicomo Cosca was dead, and indeed he had at first felt some relief. But the dark clouds had soon rolled back to re-establish the eternal baseline of mild depression. He found himself once more squabbling
