Best Served Cold: A First Law Novel

Highlights

Page 60

‘This man we’re going to kill … what did he do?’ ‘He got me to pay fifty scales for his corpse. Isn’t that enough?’ ‘Not for me.’ She frowned at him for a long moment. That straight-ahead look that was already giving him the worries, somehow. ‘So you’re one of them, eh?’ ‘One o’ what?’ ‘One of those men that like reasons. That need excuses. You’re a dangerous crowd, you lot. Hard to predict.’ She shrugged. ‘But if it helps. He killed my brother.’

Page 77

‘Thirty?’ Monza looked at the blood on her father’s sword, and thought how strange it was that she was a murderer now. How strange it was that it had been so easy to do. Easier than digging in the stony soil for a living. Far, far easier. Afterwards, she waited for the remorse to come upon her. She waited for a long time. It never came.

Page 195

He stood up. ‘Fuck the past. I am Nicomo Cosca, damn it! I laugh in the face of fear!’ He paused for a moment. ‘And I am going back to bed. My earnest thanks, Master Friendly, you make as fine a conversation as any man I’ve known.’ The convict looked away from his porridge for just a moment. ‘I’ve hardly said a word.’ ‘Exactly.’

Page 200

‘Not much honour in it,’ said Shivers. ‘Shit at least makes flowers grow. Honour isn’t even that useful.’ ‘What happens when you get old, though, and no one wants you no more? Seems to me all you’re doing is putting off the despair and leaving a pack of regrets behind you.’ Below Cosca’s mask, his smile had a sad twist. ‘That’s all any of us are doing, my friend. Every business is the same, and ours is no different. Soldiering, killing, whatever you want to call it. No one wants you when you get old.’

Page 314

‘Beautiful,’ Cosca lied. To the starving man, bread is beautiful. To the homeless man, a roof is beautiful. To the drunkard, wine is beautiful. Only those who want for nothing else need find beauty in a lump of rock.

Page 345

‘Revenge,’ she snarled. ‘Revenge. If you could even get it, what good would it do you? All this expenditure of effort, pain, treasure, blood, for what? Who is ever left better off for it?’ His sad eyes watched her slowly stand. ‘Not the avenged dead, certainly. They rot on, regardless. Not those who are avenged upon, of course. Corpses all. And what of the ones who take vengeance, what of them? Do they sleep easier, do you suppose, once they have heaped murder on murder? Sown the bloody seeds of a hundred other retributions?’ She circled around, trying to think of some trick to kill him with. ‘All those dead men at that bank in Westport, that was your righteous work, I suppose? And the carnage at Cardotti’s, a fair and proportionate reply?’ ‘What had to be done!’ ‘Ah, what had to be done. The favourite excuse of unexamined evil echoes down the ages and slobbers from your twisted mouth.’

Page 406

‘Not me.’ From what Shivers had seen he reckoned Faithful was one o’ those men make a good second and a poor chief. Lots of bones but no imagination. Looked like he’d got stuck to one way of doing things over the years and had to do it now whether it fit the job or not. But he weren’t about to say so. Strong leaders might like it when someone brings ’em a better idea, but weak ones never do. ‘You reckon I could get my axe back, though?’

Page 456

If only. Monza gagged down more wine and scowled at the glass. A year ago, she’d had nothing but contempt for Rogont. She remembered laughing with Benna and Faithful over what a coward he was, what a treacherous ally. Now Benna was dead, she’d murdered Faithful and she’d run to Rogont for shelter like a wayward child to her rich uncle. An uncle who couldn’t even protect himself, in this case. But he was far better company than the alternative. Her eyes were dragged reluctantly towards the bottom of the long table on the right, where Shivers sat alone. The hard fact was he sickened her. It was an effort just to stand beside him, let alone touch him. It was far more than the simple ugliness of his maimed face. She’d seen enough that was ugly, and done enough too, to have no trouble at least pretending to be comfortable around it. It was the silences, when before she couldn’t shut him up. They were full of debts she couldn’t pay. She’d see that skewed, dead ruin of an eye and remember him whispering at her, It should’ve been you. And she’d know it should have been. When he did talk he said nothing about doing the right thing any more, nothing about being a better man. Maybe it should have pleased her to have won that argument. She’d tried hard enough. But all she could think was that she’d taken a halfway decent man and somehow made a halfway evil one. She wasn’t only rotten herself, she rotted everything she touched. Shivers sickened her, and the fact she was disgusted when she knew she should have been grateful only sickened her even more.

Note: Thus it always is. No happy endings for Abercrombie characters

Page 464

For a moment she was about to get up, go to him, put her hand on his shoulder. Then his one eye moved towards her, cold and narrow. ‘But you’d know all about that, I reckon. Kissing your brother.’ The blood pounded suddenly behind her eyes, worse than ever. ‘What my brother was to me is my fucking business!’ She realised she was stabbing at him with the knife, tossed it away across the table. ‘I’m not in the habit of explaining myself. I don’t plan to start with the men I hire!’ ‘That’s what I am to you, is it?’ ‘What else would you be?’ ‘After what I’ve done for you? After what I’ve lost?’ She flinched, hands trembling worse than ever. ‘Well paid, aren’t you?’ ‘Paid?’ He leaned towards her, pointing at his face. ‘How much is my eye worth, you evil cunt?’ She gave a strangled growl, jerked up from the chair, snatched up the lamp, turned her back on him and made for the door to the balcony. ‘Where you going?’ His voice had turned suddenly wheedling, as if he knew he’d stepped too far. ‘Clear of your self-pity, bastard, before I’m sick!’ She ripped the door open and stepped out into the cold air. ‘Monza—’ He was sitting slumped on the bed, the saddest sort of look on his face. On the half of it that still worked, anyway. Broken. Hopeless. Desperate. Fake eye pointing off sideways. He looked as if he was about to weep, to fall down, to beg to be forgiven. She slammed the door shut. It suited her to have an excuse. She preferred the passing guilt of turning her back on him to the endless guilt of facing him. Much, much preferred it.

Note: Feels like how Ferro and Logan broke up. Author is a bit predictable

Page 468

‘You see my point exactly! We are entire opposites, like earth and air, yet we are both … missing something … that others take for granted. Some part of that machinery that makes a man fit into society. But we each miss different cogs on the wheel. Enough that we may make, perhaps, between the two of us, one half-decent human.’ ‘One whole from two halves.’ ‘An extraordinary whole, even! I have never been a reliable man – no, no, don’t try to deny it.’ Friendly had not. ‘But you, my friend, are constant, clear-sighted, single-minded. You are … honest enough … to make me more honest.’ ‘I’ve spent most of my life in prison.’ ‘Where you did more to spread honesty among Styria’s most dangerous convicts than all the magistrates in the land, I do not doubt!’ Cosca slapped Friendly on his shoulder. ‘Honest men are so very rare, they are often mistaken for criminals, for rebels, for madmen. What were your crimes, anyway, but to be different?’ ‘Robbery the first time, and I served seven years. When they caught me again there were eighty-four counts, with fourteen murders.’ Cosca cocked an eyebrow. ‘But were you truly guilty?’ ‘Yes.’ He frowned for a moment, then waved it away. ‘Nobody’s perfect. Let’s leave the past behind us.’ He gave his feather a final flick, jammed his hat onto his head at its accustomed rakish angle. ‘How do I look?’

Note: He is hilarious though

Page 486

Cosca peered up at the gently flapping roof of the tent, tapping at his pursed lips with one finger. ‘A dilemma. A moral quandary. I want so badly to attack, but I cannot attack Rogont. And I can scarcely attack Foscar, when his father has also paid me so handsomely. In my youth I jerked this way and that just as the wind blew me, but I am trying earnestly to change, Colonel, as I explained to you the other evening. Really, in all good conscience, the only thing I can do is sit here.’ He popped a grape into his mouth. ‘And do nothing.’

Note: Love it

Page 492

‘Sotorius was the host. Ario was under his protection. The old man knew Orso would never forgive him for the death of his son. He knew the doom of Sipani was sounded. Unless Orso could be stopped. We came to an agreement that very night, while Cardotti’s House of Leisure was still burning. In secret, Chancellor Sotorius brought Sipani into the League of Nine.’ ‘Nine,’ muttered Monza, watching the Sipanese host march steadily down the gentle hillside towards the fords, and Foscar’s almost undefended rear. ‘My long retreat from Puranti, which you thought so ill-advised, was intended to give him time to prepare. I backed willingly into this little trap so I could play the bait in a greater one.’ ‘You’re cleverer than you look.’ ‘Not difficult. My aunt always told me I looked a dunce.’ She frowned across the valley at the motionless host on top of Menzes Hill. ‘What about Cosca?’ ‘Some men never change. He took a very great deal of money from my Gurkish backers to keep out of the battle.’ It suddenly seemed she didn’t understand the world nearly as well as she’d thought. ‘I offered him money. He wouldn’t take it.’ ‘Imagine that, and negotiation so very much your strong point. He wouldn’t take the money from you. Ishri, it seems, talks more sweetly. “War is but the pricking point of politics. Blades can kill men, but only words can move them, and good neighbours are the surest shelter in a storm.” I quote from Juvens’ Principles of Art. Flim-flam and superstition mostly, but the volume on the exercise of power is quite fascinating. You should read more widely, General Murcatto. Your book-learning is narrow in scope.’ ‘I came to reading late,’ she grunted.

Note: This goes great with the reversal in the next page

Page 526

She stared down at Foscar, flattened head twisted sideways, crossed eyes goggling up at the wall, blood spreading out across the stone floor in a black puddle from his broken skull. Her voice seemed to come from a long way off, reedy thin. ‘Why did you—’ ‘Why not?’ whispered Shivers, coming close. She saw her own pale, scabbed, pinched-in face reflected, bent and twisted in that dead metal ball of an eye. ‘What we came here for, ain’t it? What we fought for all the day, down in the mud? I thought you was all for never turning back? Mercy and cowardice the same and all that hard talk you gave me. By the dead, Chief.’ He grinned, the mass of scar across his face squirming and puckering, his good cheek all dotted with red. ‘I could almost swear you ain’t half the evil bitch you pretend to be.’

Note: The end of any possible relationship

Page 547

‘Men can have all manner of deeply held beliefs about the world in general that they find most inconvenient when called upon to apply to their own lives. Few people let morality get in the way of expediency. Or even convenience. A man who truly believes in a thing beyond the point where it costs him is a rare and dangerous thing.’

Page 570

Working in dispiriting solitude, Morveer had appropriated the clothes, toolbox and documentation of a journeyman carpenter who had arrived in the city looking for piecework, and hence would be missed by nobody. Yesterday he had infiltrated the Senate House in this ingenious disguise to reconnoitre the scene and formulate a plan. While doing so, just as a bonus, he had carried out some challenging jointing work to a balustrade with almost conspicuous skill. Truly, he was a loss to carpentry, but he had in no way lost sight of the fact that his primary profession remained murder. Today he had returned to execute his audacious scheme. And to execute Grand Duke Rogont, both together.

Page 616

‘Why?’ she snarled at him, point of the Calvez moving in little circles. She didn’t care a shit about his reasons, really. Just playing for time, looking for an opening. ‘Maybe I got sick o’ your scorn.’ He nudged forwards behind his shield and she backed off again. ‘Or maybe Eider offered me more’n you.’ ‘Eider?’ She spat laughter in his face. ‘There’s your problem! You’re a fucking idiot!’ She lunged on the last word, trying to catch him off guard, but he wasn’t fooled, knocked her jabs calmly away with his shield. ‘I’m the idiot? I saved you how many times? I gave up my eye! So you could sneer at me with that empty bastard Rogont? You treat me like a fucking fool and still expect my loyalty, and I’m the idiot?’ Hard to argue with most of that, now it was stuck under her nose. She should’ve listened to Rogont, let him put Shivers down, but she’d let guilt get in the way. Mercy might be brave, like Cosca said, but it seemed it wasn’t always clever. Shivers shuffled at her and she gave ground again, fast running out of it. ‘You should’ve seen this coming,’ he whispered, and she reckoned he had a point. It had been coming a long time. Since she fucked Rogont. Since she turned her back on Shivers. Since he lost his eye in the cells under Salier’s palace. Maybe it had been coming from the first moment they met. Before, even. Always. Some things are inevitable.

Note: Only inevitable, predictable part of his story telling. No happy endings allowed. Everyone turns on everyone else.

Page 636

‘What I wanted?’ For a moment she could hardly believe what she was hearing. ‘You think I wanted this? After the battles I fought for you? The victories I won for you?’ She was near shrieking, spitting with fury. She ripped her glove off with her teeth and shook her mutilated hand at him. ‘I fucking wanted this? What reason did we give you to betray us? We were loyal to you! Always!’ ‘Loyal?’ Orso gave a disbelieving gasp of his own. ‘Crow your victory if you must, but don’t crow your innocence to me! We both know better!’ All three flatbows were loaded and levelled now. ‘We were loyal!’ she screamed again, voice cracking. ‘Can you deny it? That Benna met with malcontents, revolutionaries, traitors among my ungrateful subjects? That he promised them weapons? That he promised you would lead them to glory? Claim my place? Usurp me! Did you think I would not learn of it? Did you think I would stand idly by?’ ‘What the … you fucking liar !’ ‘Still you deny it? I would not believe it myself when they told me! My Monza? Closer to me than my own children? My Monza, betray me? With my own eyes I saw him! With my own eyes!’ The echoes of his voice slowly faded, and left the hall almost silent. Only the gentle clanking of the four armoured men as they edged ever so slowly towards her. She could only stare, the realisation creeping slowly through her. We could have our own city, Benna had said. You could be the Duchess Monzcarro of … wherever. Of Talins, had been his thought. We deserve to be remembered. He’d planned it himself, alone, and given her no choice. Just as he had when he betrayed Cosca. It’s better this way. Just as he had when he took Hermon’s gold. This is for us. He’d always been the one with the big plans.

Note: This was foreshadowed well. Most twists have been.

Page 637

Shenkt was always surprised by how treacherous men could be over trifles, yet how loyal they could be when their lives were forfeit. These last few guards still fought to the death for Orso, even though his day was clearly done. Perhaps they could not comprehend that a man so great as the Grand Duke of Talins might die like any other, and all his power so easily turn to dust. Perhaps for some men obedience became a habit they could not question. Or perhaps they came to define themselves by their service to a master, and chose to take the short step into death as part of something great, rather than walk the long, hard road of life in insignificance.

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