Best Served Cold

Best Served Cold Plot Summary

Introduction

# The Serpent's Vengeance: A Symphony of Blood and Betrayal The wire bit deep into Monza Murcatto's throat as Duke Orso's men held her fast in the marble halls of Fontezarmo. She had come expecting praise for another victory, another city conquered for the man she served with unwavering loyalty. Instead, she watched her brother Benna die with a blade through his chest, his blood spreading across the polished floor like spilled wine. The Serpent of Talins, the most feared general in Styria, was about to learn that even serpents could be crushed underfoot. They threw her from the tower balcony like garbage, her broken body tumbling through darkness toward the rocks below. But death, it seemed, had other plans. Months later, scarred and twisted but very much alive, Monza crawled from the shadows with a simple mission that would drench Styria in blood. Seven men had betrayed her. Seven men had murdered her brother. Seven men would pay the price, no matter what it cost her soul or the world around her.

Chapter 1: The Fall of the Snake: Betrayal at Fontezarmo's Peak

The mountain fortress of Fontezarmo perched on its rocky outcrop like a stone vulture, watching over the valleys where armies had bled for Duke Orso's ambitions. Monza Murcatto rode through its gates expecting celebration, another triumph to add to her legend as the Butcher of Caprile. The Thousand Swords mercenary company she commanded alongside her brother Benna had just delivered another victory, another step toward Orso's dream of a united Styria under his crown. The trap closed with surgical precision in Orso's private chambers. Seven men surrounded her, faces she knew as well as her own reflection. General Ganmark with his sad eyes and perfect manners. Prince Ario, golden and cruel. Faithful Carpi, her own captain, wearing guilt like an ill-fitting coat. They had decided she was too popular, too dangerous to live. The people cheered louder for the Snake of Talins than for their duke, and that was a sin Orso could not forgive. Benna tried to save her, his soft hands fumbling for an ornamental blade he had never learned to use. Prince Ario's knife opened his throat in a crimson smile, and he fell choking on his own blood while Monza screamed against the wire crushing her windpipe. They held her down as Ganmark drove her own dagger through her ribs, the steel sliding between bones with the precision of a surgeon's cut. The fall from the balcony should have killed her. Three hundred feet of empty air, then rocks and twisted metal waiting below. But Benna's corpse, thrown after her like an afterthought, cushioned her landing just enough. She lay broken among the kitchen scraps and rotting garbage, more dead than alive, while above her the seven conspirators divided her lands like carrion birds picking at a carcass.

Chapter 2: Forged in Pain: The Broken General's Resurrection

The bone-thief found her in his collection of skulls and specimens, a creature more corpse than woman. For months she drifted between life and death while he rebuilt her with gold coins pressed into her shattered skull, wire and screws holding her bones together, and husk smoke to dull the endless agony. Her right hand was a twisted claw, her legs barely functional, her face a roadmap of scars and suffering. Pain became her teacher, more thorough than any master-at-arms. Each morning brought fresh torment as she forced her ruined body to move, to walk, to fight. The husk pipe became her constant companion, its sweet smoke the only thing that made existence bearable. Yet even as the drug claimed more of her days, her hatred burned brighter than her need, a flame that no amount of suffering could extinguish. When she finally escaped the bone-thief's charnel house, stumbling through rain-soaked woods on legs that screamed with every step, she carried with her a list of seven names burned into her memory like brands. Duke Orso himself, the spider at the center of the web. His sons Ario and Foscar, golden princes who had watched her brother die without a flicker of remorse. General Ganmark, Faithful Carpi, the banker Mauthis, and Gobba the torturer. In her father's hidden cache, she found the tools of her resurrection. Hermon's gold, a fortune looted from conquered cities, would buy her the killers she needed. Benna's sword, a Calvez blade he had commissioned but never learned to wield properly, would drink their blood. The woman who had once been the Snake of Talins was dead, but something far more dangerous had taken her place.

Chapter 3: Gathering the Poisoned Blades: A Company of Killers

Talins had not changed, but Monza moved through its familiar streets like a ghost haunting her former life. The city where crowds had once cheered her victories now displayed wanted posters bearing her scarred face, proclaiming her death at the hands of League of Eight assassins. Orso's lies had made her a martyr to his cause, even as he prepared to complete the conquest she had begun for him. In the shadows of the old city, she found Caul Shivers, a Northern warrior fallen on hard times. The one-eyed giant begged for work on the docks, his pride ground down by months of poverty and rejection. Desperation made him dangerous, and desperation made him cheap. For the promise of enough gold to buy his way back to respectability, he agreed to help her kill the men who had betrayed her. Castor Morveer emerged from the criminal underworld like a spider from its web, a poisoner whose vanity matched his lethal skill. The thin man preened over his deadly craft while his apprentice Day watched with worshipful eyes, learning the art of murder disguised as accident. Their methods were subtle where Shivers was direct, but their effectiveness was equally lethal. The final piece came from the most unlikely source. Friendly, a convict whose obsession with numbers masked a capacity for sudden, brutal violence, joined their cause with the mechanical precision of a clockwork soldier. His flat eyes and methodical movements spoke of years in the Union's most notorious prisons, where survival meant becoming something less than human. Together, they formed a weapon unlike any Styria had seen, a blade forged from betrayal and tempered in hatred.

Chapter 4: Blood Across Styria: The Systematic Hunt Begins

The first death came in a smoke-filled tavern where Gobba the torturer played cards with fellow thugs. Day slipped poison into his wine while Monza and Shivers waited in the shadows above, patient as hunting cats. When the toxin took hold, they descended like avenging spirits. Shivers held the massive man down while Monza methodically shattered his hands with a hammer, each blow punctuated by his animal screams. Prince Ario died as he had lived, surrounded by luxury and utterly unprepared for consequence. Cardotti's House of Leisure in Sipani became a charnel house as Monza's blade opened his throat, the flames consuming both his body and the illusion of safety his father's power had provided. The golden prince who had laughed while Benna bled choked on his own blood, his perfect face twisted in terror and disbelief. Mauthis the banker proved more challenging prey, hidden behind the marble walls of his counting house in Westport. But Morveer's poisons seeped through the very documents he trusted, turning his ledgers into instruments of death. The man who had financed armies and counted coins while soldiers died convulsed at his desk, black foam pouring from his lips as his fortune became his funeral shroud. Each death sent ripples across Styria's political landscape like stones thrown into still water. Orso's allies began to whisper of curses and divine retribution, while his enemies grew bolder. The Duke of Talins, once the most feared man in the region, now found himself looking over his shoulder, wondering when the dead woman's vengeance would finally reach him. But Monza was patient. She had learned that revenge, like wine, improved with age.

Chapter 5: Shifting Loyalties: Allies, Enemies, and the Dance of Power

The siege of Visserine trapped Monza and her killers in a city slowly dying under Duke Orso's assault. General Ganmark had come to claim Duke Salier's famous art collection, walking into the carefully laid snare that would become his tomb. The man who had driven her own dagger through her heart would face justice at last, surrounded by the marble beauty he had come to steal. The duel took place in Salier's garden, a paradise of sculpted perfection that would soon be watered with blood. Ganmark was everything Monza remembered, a master swordsman whose blade moved like liquid silver. Her ruined right hand could barely grip a weapon, forcing her to fight left-handed against one of the greatest warriors in Styria while her companions battled his guards among the flowering trees. Desperation bred cunning. As Ganmark pressed his advantage, Monza struck at the cracked statue of The Warrior, the massive bronze figure that dominated the garden's heart. Ancient stone split and tons of marble crashed down, the hero's sword piercing Ganmark through the back in a final, brutal irony. He died impaled on the blade of legend, his tactical brilliance no match for falling stone and bitter necessity. But their escape came at terrible cost. Captain Langrier, who had tortured Shivers for information in the palace dungeons, paid the price for her cruelty. The Northman's revenge was swift and merciless, his knife opening her throat in a spray of arterial blood. As they fled through Visserine's burning streets, Monza saw how the violence was changing them all, each death demanding another in an endless cycle of retribution.

Chapter 6: The Crown of Corpses: Triumph and Treachery Intertwined

The battlefield at Ospria stretched before them like a canvas painted in mud and blood, the final confrontation between old loyalties and new ambitions. Monza found herself fighting alongside Duke Rogont, once her bitter enemy, against the forces of her former master. The irony was not lost on her as she prepared to engineer Duke Orso's greatest defeat using the very skills she had once employed in his service. Prince Foscar led his father's army across the lower ford with the confidence of youth and inexperience, unaware that he was walking into a carefully prepared trap. The Thousand Swords, led by the unpredictable Nicomo Cosca, held the key to victory on the hills above. But mercenaries' loyalty was always for sale to the highest bidder, and gold spoke louder than old friendships in the calculus of war. As the sun reached its zenith, the trap was sprung with devastating effect. The Sipanese forces, thought neutral, revealed themselves as Rogont's allies, crushing Foscar's army between hammer and anvil. In the chaos of battle, Monza found herself face to face with Prince Foscar himself, the last of Orso's sons and another name on her list of the condemned. But when the moment came to strike, something stayed her hand. The young prince knelt before her in chains, no longer the laughing boy who had jested with Benna in happier times but a broken man begging for mercy. In that instant, Monza felt the weight of all the blood she had spilled, all the lives she had taken in her quest for vengeance. The blade fell from nerveless fingers as she turned away, her list of enemies incomplete but her humanity preserved.

Chapter 7: Final Reckonings: When Vengeance Comes Full Circle

The crown was poison, literally and figuratively. As the great ceremony in Talins' ancient Senate House reached its climax, Monza watched in horror as her supposed allies collapsed one by one. Duke Rogont, Chancellor Sotorius, and all the great leaders who were to unite Styria under one crown writhed and died from toxins that coated the golden circlet, their dreams of unity dissolving in convulsions and bloody foam. Only Monza survived, protected by the glove that covered her ruined right hand. The same injury that had marked her as a victim now saved her from sharing her allies' fate. As chaos erupted in the great hall and white doves flew overhead in mockery of peace, she realized that her quest for vengeance had made her the target of others' revenge, a player in games she barely understood. The poisoner Morveer, acting on orders from the Banking House of Valint and Balk, had orchestrated the massacre with surgical precision. But his success created a power vacuum that threatened to tear Styria apart like wolves fighting over a carcass. Without Rogont's unifying vision, the great cities turned on each other with renewed fury, and the Years of Blood promised to become something far worse. In the aftermath, Monza found herself thrust into a role she had never sought but could not refuse. The Snake of Talins had become Grand Duchess Monzcarro, inheritor of a crown built on corpses and conspiracy. Her enemies multiplied even as her power grew, and she began to understand that survival at the top required different skills than climbing to reach it.

Chapter 8: The Price of Victory: From Revenge to Rule

The siege of Fontezarmo brought Monza full circle, back to the mountain where her brother had died and her journey of vengeance had begun. The fortress that had once seemed impregnable now trembled under the assault of Gurkish fire-powder, its walls cracking like eggshells. Duke Orso waited within, surrounded by his last loyal guards and the ghosts of his former glory. When she finally reached Orso's private chambers, the confrontation was almost anticlimactic. The Duke of Talins, once the most powerful man in Styria, stood alone beside a map of his former domain. His crown lay discarded, his dreams of empire reduced to ash and memory. But even in defeat, he had one final revelation that would shake Monza's understanding of everything that had brought them to this blood-soaked moment. The truth hit her like a physical blow. Benna, her beloved brother, had been planning to betray Orso all along. The meetings with revolutionaries, the promises of weapons, the whispered plans for her to claim the Duke's throne had all been real. Orso's betrayal had been born not of paranoia but of genuine discovery, making her quest for vengeance a monument to her own ignorance and her brother's hidden ambitions. As Orso's blood pooled on the marble floor where Benna had died, Monza felt the hollow victory of a woman who had won everything and lost herself in the process. Seven names had been on her list, and six men now lay dead by her hand or her command. But the satisfaction she had expected never came, only the cold realization that revenge was a meal that left the diner forever hungry.

Summary

In the end, Monza Murcatto discovered that vengeance was not a destination but a transformation, one that changed the seeker as much as it punished the guilty. Each death on her list had carved away another piece of her soul until little remained but scars and bitter wisdom. The woman who had begun her journey burning with righteous fury now ruled from a throne built on corpses, wielding power purchased with blood and betrayal. The mysterious forces that had shaped her path revealed themselves at last, showing her how she had been a weapon in someone else's war, a tool for settling debts older than her grief. Yet perhaps that was the true nature of power in Styria's broken world, where every crown was won through murder and every throne stood on foundations of bone. The Snake had shed her skin but kept her venom, becoming exactly what her shattered realm needed: a ruler hard enough to hold together what others would tear apart, no matter the cost to her soul or the souls of those who served her.

About Author

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Joe Abercrombie

Abercrombie interrogates the darker facets of human nature through his grimdark fantasy works, crafting narratives that emphasize complex characters and moral ambiguity. His writing diverges from traditional epic fantasies by focusing on visceral depictions of violence and dark humor, while de-emphasizing detailed world-building in favor of character-driven storytelling. Abercrombie's debut book, "The Blade Itself", introduces readers to the unpredictable and gritty universe of The First Law trilogy, which also includes "Before They Are Hanged" and "Last Argument of Kings". These novels establish his signature style, rooted in exploring flawed and morally complex individuals.\n\nBeyond this trilogy, Abercrombie expands his universe with standalone novels like "Best Served Cold" and "The Heroes", maintaining his reputation for exploring the brutal realities of power and survival. Meanwhile, he extends his reach to young adult audiences with the Shattered Sea trilogy, proving his adaptability in crafting stories that appeal to different demographics. Abercrombie’s commitment to character complexity invites readers to question conventional heroic archetypes and instead engage with more nuanced narratives. His bio as a film editor informs his cinematic storytelling approach, contributing to the immersive and dynamic nature of his writing.\n\nAbercrombie’s impact on fantasy literature is underscored by his recognition as a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, showcasing his early influence in the genre. His works have been translated into multiple languages, expanding his international audience. For readers seeking stories that challenge conventional fantasy tropes with a focus on character depth and moral complexity, Abercrombie's books offer a compelling exploration of the human condition.

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