Best Served Cold

Best Served Cold is a fantasy novel set in Styria, a continent of feuding city-states modeled on Renaissance Italy, where mercenary companies and poisoners shape the fortunes of dukes and kings.

Monzcarro "Monza" Murcatto, captain general of the Thousand Swords, Styria's most powerful mercenary brigade, rides with her brother Benna to the mountain fortress of Fontezarmo to report her latest victories to their employer, Grand Duke Orso of Talins. The campaign to conquer Orso's rivals is nearly won. Orso praises Monza effusively, then warns that the people of Talins cheer for her too loudly, louder even than for him. Gobba, Orso's hulking bodyguard, loops a wire around her neck from behind. Prince Ario, Orso's eldest son, stabs Benna in the neck, and General Ganmark, a former officer of the Union, a powerful northern empire, runs Benna through with his sword. Faithful Carpi, a veteran captain Monza trusted, stabs her with her own dagger while Gobba crushes her right hand under his boot. Mauthis, a banker from the Banking House of Valint and Balk, watches impassively. Orso's men throw Monza from the terrace. She plummets down the mountainside, but Benna's corpse, lodged against a tree, breaks her fall.

A reclusive bone-collecting healer finds Monza and spends twelve weeks mending her shattered body, replacing skull fragments with gold coins and sedating her with husk, a powerful narcotic. Monza wakes to find her right hand a twisted claw and her legs barely functional. Dependent on husk, she escapes, hobbles to her dead father's abandoned farm, and retrieves supplies from a hidden cellar: weapons, gold stolen from a merchant named Somenu Hermon, and a Calvez sword she gave Benna as a gift. She vows to kill all seven men present at her brother's murder.

In Talins, Monza contacts Sajaam, a crime lord of Kantic descent who runs a smoke-house. Sajaam provides Friendly, a powerfully built convict obsessed with numbers and dice. Monza also recruits Caul Shivers, a Northman who traveled to Styria hoping to leave violence behind. The three ambush Gobba on the streets, and Monza beats him to death with a hammer, mirroring the destruction of her own hand. She recovers her ruby ring from Gobba's finger.

For the second target, Monza hires Castor Morveer, a vain and paranoid master poisoner, and his innocent-faced apprentice Day. In Westport, the group infiltrates Valint and Balk's fortified offices by night. Shivers scales the exterior while Morveer poisons every ledger with a lethal contact agent. When Mauthis licks his finger to turn pages the next morning, he dies in seizures, along with dozens of clerks who touched the tainted books. Monza is furious at the indiscriminate killing, but Morveer insists it was the only way. Shivers threatens to quit; Monza raises his pay and persuades him to stay.

In Sipani, Monza adds Shylo Vitari, a sharp-tongued former torturer and information broker, to the team. They coerce Carlot dan Eider, Ario's mistress and a Union spy, into helping them infiltrate Cardotti's House of Leisure, a famous brothel where Ario plans a private celebration. Monza also finds Nicomo Cosca, the mentor she once betrayed for command of the Thousand Swords, now destitute and battling alcohol addiction. The plan unravels when the King of the Union arrives with elite bodyguards no one anticipated. Monza drugs the king with husk and stabs Ario to death, but a staged duel turns real, a fire-breather accidentally ignites the building, and the night degenerates into a bloody free-for-all. The group escapes, and Eider sends a letter to Orso revealing Monza is alive.

The group enters Visserine just before Orso's army, led by Ganmark, lays siege to the city. A farmer they sheltered betrays them for a bounty. Monza and Shivers are arrested and tortured in a dungeon, where the interrogator burns out Shivers' left eye with a hot iron. Grand Duke Salier intervenes after Cosca talks his way into an audience at the palace. When the city falls, Monza traps Ganmark inside Salier's art gallery with a portcullis, a heavy iron gate. After a grueling duel, a colossal marble statue topples and impales Ganmark on its bronze sword. Cosca, stabbed through the stomach, insists on being left behind to die. The survivors escape by boat.

Meanwhile, Orso has hired Shenkt, a supernaturally powerful assassin who moves faster than the eye can follow, to hunt Monza. Shenkt tracks her through Sajaam's smoke-house, killing everyone inside, and follows her across Styria.

In Puranti, Monza allies with Grand Duke Rogont of Ospria and Ishri, an agent of the southern Gurkish Empire, to ambush Faithful Carpi. Shivers rides into the mercenary camp pretending to betray Monza's location, luring Faithful into a trap. Before the attack, Morveer discovers Day's attempt to poison him. He tricks Day into drinking a lethal dose, and she dies. Morveer flees to Orso. In the ambush, Monza chases Faithful on horseback and corners him at a millstream, where his cloak catches in the waterwheel's gears and he drowns.

Cosca, having survived his wound, secretly returns to seize command of the Thousand Swords by signing a contract with Prince Foscar, Orso's surviving heir. He turns Monza away. Rogont reveals his grand strategy: His retreat across Styria was designed to lure Orso's army into a trap, with a secret Sipanese army poised to strike from behind. At the Battle of Ospria, Cosca keeps the Thousand Swords idle, playing both sides for Gurkish gold. The Sipanese crush Foscar's forces from the rear while Monza leads a cavalry charge that saves Rogont's collapsing flank. Shivers beats the captured Foscar to death when Monza hesitates, telling her she is not half the evil woman she pretends to be.

Monza is installed as Grand Duchess of Talins and begins a relationship with Rogont, who prepares to be crowned King of Styria. Morveer, now working for Orso, poisons the coronation crown with a lethal contact agent. Rogont and four other leaders die after touching it. Monza alone survives because the glove covering her ruined right hand shields her from the poison: The very injury Orso's men inflicted saves her life.

With the alliance shattered, Monza relies on Cosca and the Thousand Swords to besiege Fontezarmo. Cosca, secretly sober since Sipani, eliminates his treacherous captains and catches Morveer sneaking through his quarters. The poisoner accidentally pricks himself with his own lethal needle, dying by the agent he most feared. Shivers, manipulated by Eider into believing Monza will discard him, attacks her inside the palace. Friendly intervenes, tackling Shivers into a brutal fight. Shenkt, revealed to be the healer who mended Monza, appears and hurls Shivers aside.

Monza confronts Orso in his study. He reveals that Benna had been secretly conspiring to overthrow Orso and install Monza as Grand Duchess, exactly the treachery Orso feared. Benna engineered their doom, just as he had orchestrated her betrayal of Cosca and the murder of Hermon. Shenkt destroys Orso's remaining guards, and Monza runs Orso through with her brother's sword. She releases the imprisoned Shivers, returns the ruby ring, and tells him she has had enough vengeance. Shivers heads back to the North, reflecting that he arrived hoping to become a good man but leaves a hardened killer who has stopped pretending otherwise. Monza, pregnant with either Rogont's or Shivers' child, begins governing Talins, keeping Orso's crown locked in her desk as she prepares for the wars to come.