“There never was any gold!” snapped Faithful. “I told you that, pig!”
“There’s this much.” One by one, Gobba twisted the battered rings from her dangling fingers, already bloating, turning angry purple, bent and shapeless as rotten sausages. “Good stone, that,” he said, peering at the ruby. “Seems a waste of decent flesh, though. Why not give me a moment with her? A moment’s all it would take.”
Prince Ario tittered. “Speed isn’t always something to be proud of.”
“For pity’s sake!” Orso’s voice. “We’re not animals. Off the terrace and let us be done. I am late for breakfast.”
She felt herself dragged, head lolling. Sunlight stabbed at her. She was lifted, limp boots scraping on stone. Blue sky turning. Up onto the balustrade. The breath scraped at her nose, shuddered in her chest. She twisted, kicked. Her body, struggling vainly to stay alive.
“Let me make sure of her.” Ganmark’s voice.
“How sure do we need to be?” Blurry through the bloody hair across her eyes she saw Orso’s lined face. “I hope you understand. My great-grandfather was a mercenary. A low-born fighting man, who seized power by the sharpness of his mind and sword together. I cannot allow another mercenary to seize power in Talins.”
She meant to spit in his face, but all she did was blow bloody drool down her own chin. “Fuck yourse—”
Then she was flying.
Her torn shirt billowed and flapped against her tingling skin. She turned over, and over, and the world tumbled around her. Blue sky with shreds of cloud, black towers at the mountain top, grey rock face rushing past, yellow-green trees and sparkling river, blue sky with shreds of cloud, and again, and again, faster, and faster.
Cold wind ripped at her hair, roared in her ears, whistled between her teeth along with her terrified breath. She could see each tree, now, each branch, each leaf. They surged up towards her. She opened her mouth to scream—
Twigs snatched, grabbed, lashed at her. A broken branch knocked her spinning. Wood cracked and tore around her as she plunged down, down, and crashed into the mountainside. Her legs splintered under her plummeting weight, her shoulder broke apart against firm earth. But rather than dashing her brains out on the rocks, she only shattered her jaw against her brother’s bloody chest, his mangled body wedged against the base of a tree.
Which was how Benna Murcatto saved his sister’s life.
She bounced from the corpse, three-quarters senseless, and down the steep mountainside, over and over, flailing like a broken doll. Rocks, and roots, and hard earth clubbed, punched, crushed her, as if she was battered apart with a hundred hammers.
She tore through a patch of bushes, thorns whipping and clutching. She rolled, and rolled, down the sloping earth in a cloud of dirt and leaves. She tumbled over a tree root, crumpled on a mossy rock. She slid slowly to a stop, on her back, and was still.
“Huuuurrrrhhh…”
Stones clattered down around her, sticks and gravel. Dust slowly settled. She heard wind, creaking in the branches, crackling in the leaves. Or her own breath, creaking and crackling in her broken throat. The sun flickered through black trees, jabbing at one eye. The other was dark. Flies buzzed, zipping and swimming in the warm morning air. She was down with the waste from Orso’s kitchens. Sprawled out helpless in the midst of the rotten vegetables, and the cooking slime, and the stinking offal left over from the last month’s magnificent meals. Tossed out with the rubbish.
“Huuurrhhh…”
A jagged, mindless sound. She was embarrassed by it, almost, but couldn’t stop making it. Animal horror. Mad despair. The groan of the dead, in hell. Her eye darted desperately around. She saw the wreck of her right hand, a shapeless, purple glove with a bloody gash in the side. One finger trembled slightly. Its tip brushed against torn skin on her elbow. The forearm was folded in half, a broken-off twig of grey bone sticking through bloody silk. It didn’t look real. Like a cheap theatre prop.
“Huurrhhh…”
The fear had hold of her now, swelling with every breath. She couldn’t move her head. She couldn’t move her tongue in her mouth. She could feel the pain, gnawing at the edge of her mind. A terrible mass, pressing up against her, crushing every part of her, worse, and worse, and worse.
“Huurhh… uurh…”
Benna was dead. A streak of wet ran from her flickering eye and she felt it trickle slowly down her cheek. Why was she not dead? How could she not be dead?
Soon, please. Before the pain got any worse. Please, let it be soon.
“Uurh… uh… uh.”
Please, death.
Table of Contents
Front Cover Image
Welcome
Dedication
Extras
Meet the Author
Interview
A Preview of Best Served Cold
Venetia
The Millioni family tree
Dramatis Personae
Part 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Part 2
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Books by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Praise for the Novels of Jon Courtenay Grimwood
Copyright
Books by
JON COURTENAY GRIMWOOD
neoAddix
Lucifer’s Dragon
reMix
redRobe
The Arabesk Trilogy
Pashazade
Effendi
Felaheen
Stamping Butterflies
9tail Fox
End of the World Blues
The Assassini
The Fallen Blade
Praise for the Novels of Jon Courtenay Grimwood
“Alternately violent and touching, exotic and strangely familiar.”
—Washington Post
“All brilliant light and scorching heat… Grimwood has successfully mingled fantasy with reality to make an unusual, believable and absorbing mystery.”
—Sunday Telegraph (London)
“Grimwood’s imagination and the lively originality of his writing make this an intriguing enterprise…”
—Chicago Tribune
“Disregard for the lines between genre is something we’ve come to expect of Grimwood, but even by his standards this is audacious—and brilliantly, seamlessly realized.”
—SFX
“Grimwood’s hard-boiled prose reels you in like a velvet rope.”
—Entertainment Weekly
“Ambitious, deft and accomplished… confirms Grimwood’s place amongst the very best of contemporary SF authors.”
—Iain M. Banks
“Grimwood imbues his creations with startling psychological complexity…”
—The Guardian (UK)
“Jon Courtenay Grimwood has emerged over the last few years as one of the more interesting newer British novelists… No one else is doing anything like it—or even trying to. Grimwood actually seems to have been in the places he makes up.”
—Locus
“Grimwood packs every sentence with so much meaning that you’ll want to go back… dazzling, seductive and pointed.”
—The Independent (UK)
“Raymond Chandler for the 21st century…”
—Esquire
“Dazzling panache and an acute satirical eye…”
—The Times (London)
“William Gibson meets Quentin Tarantino.”
—New Woman
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by JonCGLimited
Excerpt from Best Served Cold copyright © 2009 by Joe Abercrombie Limited
Map by Flying Fish
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Orbit
Hachette Book Group
237 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.
www.orbitbooks.net
First eBook Edition: January 2011
Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ISBN: 978-0-316-12339-6