"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 it. How much could he swallow before they wrestled it from his hands? Few men could drink faster when circumstances demanded—
Then he noticed Friendly watching him, and there was something in the convict's sad, flat eyes that made him think again. He was Nicomo Cosca, damn it! Or he had been once, at least. Cities had trembled, and so on. He had spent too many years never thinking beyond his next drink. It was time to look further. To the drink after next, at any rate. But change was not easy.
He could almost feel the sweat springing out of his skin. His head was pulsing, booming with pain. He clawed at his itchy neck but that only made it itch the more. He was smiling like a skull, he knew, and talking far too much. But it was smile, and talk, or scream his exploding head off.
"…saved my life at the siege of Muris, eh, Monza? At Muris, was it?" He hardly even knew how his cracking voice had wandered onto the subject. "Bastard came at me out of nowhere. A quick thrust!" He nearly knocked his water cup over with a wayward jab of his finger. "And she ran him through! Right through the heart, I swear. Saved my life. At Muris. Saved my… life…"
And he almost wished she had let him die. The kitchen seemed to be spinning, tossing, tipping wildly like the cabin of a ship in a fatal tempest. He kept expecting to see the wine slosh from the glasses, the stew spray from the bowls, the plates slide from the see-sawing table. He knew the only storm was in his head, yet still found himself clinging to the furniture whenever the room appeared to heel with particular violence.
"…wouldn't have been so bad if she hadn't done it again the next day. I took an arrow in the shoulder and fell in the damn moat. Everyone saw, on both sides. Making me look a fool in front of my friends is one thing, but in front of my enemies—"
"You've got it wrong."
Cosca squinted up the table at Monza. "I have?" Though he had to admit he could hardly remember his last sentence, let alone the events of a siege a dozen drunken years ago.
"It was me in the moat, you that jumped in to pull me out. Risked your life, and took an arrow doing it."
"Seems astoundingly unlikely I'd have done a thing like that." It was hard to think about anything beyond his violent need for a drink. "But I'm finding it somewhat difficult to recall the details, I must confess. Perhaps if one of you could just see your way to passing me the wine I could—"