"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?"
"I hear it's good for the digestion."
"They always said you had a flint for a heart, but I never thought even you would be so cold as to suggest I drink milk, damn you! Just one more shot of that old grape spirit." A drink, a drink, a drink. "Just one more and I'm done."
"Oh, you're done alright. How long you been drunk this time?"
"I've a notion it was summer when I started. What is it now?"
"Not the same year, that's sure. How much money have you wasted?"
"All there is and more. I'd be surprised if there's a coin in the world that hasn't been through my purse at some point. But I seem to be out of funds right now, so if you could just spare some change—"
"You need to make a change, not spend some."
He drew himself up, as far as his knees at least, and jabbed at his chest with a crabbing finger. "Do you suppose the shrivelled, piss-soaked, horrified better part of me, the part that screams to be released from this torture, doesn't know that?" He gave a helpless shrug, aching body collapsing on itself. "But for a man to change he needs the help of good friends, or, better yet, good enemies. My friends are all long dead, and my enemies, I am forced to admit… have better things to do."
"Not all of us." Another woman's voice, but one that sent a creeping shiver of familiarity down Cosca's back. A figure formed out of the gloom, mist sucked into smoky swirls after her flicking coat-tails.
"No…" he croaked.
He remembered the moment he first laid eyes on her: a wild-haired girl of nineteen with a sword at her hip and a bright stare rich with anger, defiance and the slightest fascinating hint of contempt. There was a hollowness to her face now, a twist of pain about her mouth. The sword hung on the other side, gloved right hand resting slack on the pommel. Her eyes still had that unwavering sharpness, but there was more anger, more defiance and a long stretch more contempt. Who could blame her for that? Cosca was beyond contemptible, and knew it.
He had sworn a thousand times to kill her, of course, if he ever saw her again. Her, or her brother, or Andiche, Victus, Sesaria, Faithful Carpi or any of the other treacherous bastards from the Thousand Swords who had once betrayed him. Stolen his place from him. Sent him fleeing from the battlefield at Afieri with his reputation and his clothes both equally tattered.
He had sworn a thousand times to kill her, but Cosca had broken all manner of oaths in his life, and the sight of her brought no rage. Instead what welled up in him was a mixture of worn-out self-pity, sappy joy and, most of all, piercing shame at seeing in her face how far he had fallen. He felt the ache in his nose, behind his cheeks, tears welling in his stinging eyes. For once he was grateful that they were red as wounds at the best of times. If he wept, no one could tell the difference.