The Cold Commands

by Richard K. Morgan

  His companion frowned. “Such as?”

  “Such as trying to keep the murder of an imperial legate quiet. Right now, I guarantee you, they’re shitting milk and sugared biscuits up at the Keep. They need all the time and quiet they can buy just to work out how they handle the Tlanmar garrison commander when he finally comes calling. This is a frontier town. They’ve got a lot to lose if that boils down badly.”

  “No one mentioned the legate down there in the square, huh?”

  “No one. Like it never happened.”

  Eril grunted. He was a career criminal; he understood the dynamic. Ringil poured them both more wine.

  “Yeah, like that. And there’s something else.” He set down the flagon, picked up his goblet, and studied its contents without much enthusiasm. Hinerion, as Shend had been fond of whinging, wasn’t exactly famed for its viticulture. “These guys have got the best part of a thousand captured slaves milling around now with no apparent owner. That’s a lot of quick cash for the city if they can parcel it out before anyone gets down here from Trelayne to claim ownership.”

  “Oho.”

  “Yeah. My best guess? Sometime in the next couple of days, you’re going to see an open auction for city coffers. And I doubt very much they’ll be sending any bonded couriers to Trelayne until that’s done.”

  “Gives us some time, huh?”

  “Yeah.” Ringil sipped his wine. Grimaced and put it down again. “Gives us some time. So—you see anything good in the harbor?”

  The Marsh Brotherhood enforcer gestured with his bone shard at the cheap glass panes of the window they sat beside. The snug was on the ground floor of the inn, and it was full dark outside by now; but even through the grubby, distorted glass and the lanternlit gloom beyond, you could make out gathered thickets of mast-tops over the roofs of the intervening houses.

  “There’s a caravel flying marsh daisy pennants tied up at the south dock. Couldn’t make out the name from here, even with the spyglass, but she doesn’t look familiar.” A shrug. “No reason she should. Half the merchantmen out of Trelayne fly those pennants now, just to scare off pirates.”

  “But they’ve got to be paying dues, right?”

  “Dues, yeah.” Eril pulled a sour face. “But that doesn’t have to mean much of anything anymore. When I was coming up in the city, you knew the name and rig of every keel flying the daisy, and you knew the crew on those ships would be solid Brotherhood to a man. These days …” Another shrug. He stabbed at the fowl carcass with his bone shard, left it sticking there. “These days, it’s like every other fucking thing. Comes down to haggling.”

  Ringil tried to muster some enthusiasm. Eating seemed to have pushed back his fever a little, and the marsh daisy vessel had the gossamer feel of luck come calling. Dark Lady Firfirdar, seated on her iron throne, blowing the ghost seed off her fingers and into their path, so it danced and lit their way.

  “Well, look,” he said reasonably, holding off a deep, rolling urge to shiver. “At a minimum she’s out of Trelayne, and going back there at some point. Now with that, and maybe some haggling like you say, or just a judicious bit of leaning on the captain—I’d say we’re nearly home dry.”

  Eril nodded. “Lean on him’s right. I’ll fucking—”

  Quick rapping at the snug door. Both men stiffened and swung to face the sound. Eril’s hand slipped under his coat without fuss. Ringil loosened his sleeve where the dragon-tooth dagger was stowed.

  “Yes?”

  The door opened a crack. The boy who’d served them earlier stuck his head and one scrawny shoulder around the jamb.

  “My lord Laraninthal?” Stumbling over the Tethanne syllables, nervousness taut in the hurried tones. His face was pale and sweaty in the lamplight. A cool combat tension soaked into Ringil’s limbs, settled there.

  “Yes?”

  “Uh … Somebody here to see you, sir. It’s uh …” The boy swallowed, licked his lips. “They’re soldiers, my lord.”

  CHAPTER 14

  e found the pawnshop easily enough—there were several on that stretch of the An-Monal road, but only a couple offered rooms above. Counting the time spent to climb one of the staircases in the dizzying Kiriath architecture and then walk the Black Folk Span across, the whole search took him not much more than an hour.

  The pawnbroker, a wiry old man with a patched eye, bought the line about family the same way the Lizard’s Head publican had. He waved Egar through musty gloom and out again to the shop’s backyard. Rickety outside stairs went up the wall above them to a row of doors under the eaves.

  “Second room,” he said wheezily. “Tell him I’ll need him tonight.”

  Egar went up the stairs. Laid knuckles on sun-bleached wood a couple of times.

  “Fuck do you want?” someone bellowed, in bad Tethanne.

  Sounds like a hangover in there. Egar grinned and called back through the door in Majak.

  “Is that any way to talk to a brother?”

  Sudden quiet. He thought he heard the creak of someone moving off a cot. Sensed the weapon lifted stealthily from its resting place against the wall.

  “Harath? Let’s not get off on the wrong foot here, son.”

  The voice behind the door came back, matching Egar’s change of tongue.

  “What do you want, brother?”

  Youthful sneer and an Ishlinak twang on it, blunted somewhat by time away from the steppes. And the thick, unmistakable smolder of mistrust. Egar chose his words carefully.

  “Could take a while to explain that. How ’bout I buy you some belly lining and a pint?”

  “That fuck Alnarh send you? He wants me dead, he should have the balls to come down here and do the work himself.”

  “No one sent me. I got some questions I’d like to ask you, is all. About the fight down at the Lizard’s Head.”

  Footfalls across the boards inside. Egar judged the other man was still a good three feet back from the door, and probably off to one side. It was the same basic precaution he would have taken himself. If the door got smashed suddenly inward, you’d want the space.

  “I’m not a big fan of the Citadel myself, see. Thought maybe you could help me out.”

  Silence. A floorboard creaked. Harath cleared his throat.

  “I didn’t get your name, brother.”

  “Egar. Of the Skaranak. They call me the Dragonbane.”

  Coughed laughter. “Yeah, right.”

  “Look.” A spurt of genuine anger licked through him. “You going to open this fucking door or what?”

  A final quiet, but the tone of it had changed, and Egar knew he was getting in. He waited. A bolt slatted back. The bleached wood paneling swung inward a grudging handbreadth and a young Majak face glowered out from around the jamb. Wispy beard, long unkempt hair across the bloodshot eyes. Harath of the Ishlinak stared blearily at the Dragonbane for a couple of seconds, but seemed not to see a threat.

  “Anyone tells you I started that fight, they’re a fucking liar.”

  Egar nodded. “Why I came to ask your side. Want to let me in?”

  The younger man shrugged gracelessly and shoved the door wide. Backed up a couple of paces and held out both arms like a seller displaying his wares—or a man as he submits to being frisked by the City Guard.

  “Sure. Mind your head.”

  The room behind the door was hot and cramped, jammed under the eaves as it was. Stoop height only except in the very center. Harath filled the space simply by virtue of standing up in it—he was a big lad, still slim with youth but built in the shoulders and thighs from a lifetime of horsemanship and staff lance practice. Behind him, Egar saw a low cot under a tiny window, stained and tangled sheets, a threadbare cloth curtain that did little more than strain the sunlight blasting into the room. A chamber pot sat in one corner, but the bearish reek of the room was general.

  “Share hearth and heart’s truth, break bread and sup under a shared sky.” The ritual disarming welcome phrases didn’t really work once yo
u got down off the steppe and into a city, but Harath mumbled through them nonetheless. “The warmth of my fire is yours.”

  “As grateful kin, I take my place.”

  “Yeah, well …” Harath showed the skinning knife he’d been holding at his back. Made an apologetic gesture with it. He stuffed the blade into the sheath on his belt and stood there yawning—slept-in shirt and breeches, hair a tangled mess even by Majak standards. Night-before breath that Egar could smell on the yawn from a yard away. “Can’t be too careful, you know. Can’t even trust the brothers in this fucking place. And I don’t mean Majak across the board, guys like you—cuz that’s always been a bit iffy, right? I’m talking my own fucking Ishlinak blood-bond kin here.”

  Egar pulled a face he hoped was sympathetic. Mostly, he was trying not to breathe too much of Harath’s secondhand air.

  “Hard to believe, something like that. Yeah.”

  “Believe it, old-timer.” Harath wandered back to the cot and sat down hard enough to make the timbers crack. “This fucking city. Gets its teeth into you, you know. Sometimes wish I’d never set eyes on the place. Fucking Alnarh, I knew him back in Ishlin-ichan. Knew his kin out on the steppe. Sure, he was a bit of a mouthy prick, even then, but you could always trust him in a scrap. Trust him to get a brother’s back.”

  “I hear he’s a convert now,” Egar hazarded. “What’s that about?”

  “Yeah, it’s fucked up.” Harath scratched at his belly through the shirt. “I mean, we all did it, the cash was too good to turn down. No conversion, no commission, so we figure what the fuck, it’s only like marrying some Voronak tart or something; you got to make libations to all their pointy-faced little ice gods, else you’re never going to hear the end of it from her family, right? Same thing here. There’s this number you do, offering up your blade to that book they’ve got. Bunch of reciting, some incense, and you’re in.”

  “So what went wrong?”

  “Fuck knows. We had this squabble a few months back over a slave girl. Waggle-arsed little package from up in the League, you know what they’re like, right?”

  Egar nodded absently—lurid images of Ishgrim dancing behind his eyes.

  The Ishlinak mustered a weary grin. “Had udders on her like you wouldn’t believe, brother. And when I jumped her, well, Alnarh took that hard. He’s a jealous fuck at the best of times. But, nah …” Harath sank fists in his own hair, dragged the heels of his hands down his face. Shook his head. “He was acting weird way before that. It’s like he was buying into the Revelation for real. When he talked about it, he got this look in his eye. Starts telling us to stop using Dweller names around him when we curse. Some shit about offending the angels. I mean, come on. I expected the others to call him on it, couple of them are way closer kin than I can lay claim to, I think Larg’s a full cousin or something. But they just let it go. And then when Menkarak comes calling, it’s a whole—”

  “Menkarak?” A moment too late, the words already out of his mouth, Egar realized the way he’d jumped. “Pashla Menkarak, you talking about?”

  “That’s right.” Harath looked up. “Listen, Skaranak, don’t take this the wrong way, but what the fuck’s your interest here?”

  “Ahh, the usual.” Trying belatedly for mercenary nonchalance. “Took blade pay from a court noble and now she’s into it with the Citadel. Fine as far as that goes, but then I hear they’ve been hiring brothers, and that’s new. Never figured I might end up fighting my own kind when I took the purse.”

  Harath shrugged morosely. “Coin is coin.”

  “Yeah—speaking of which, the old guy downstairs told me to tell you he needs you tonight. If that makes sense.”

  A grimace. “Sense enough.”

  “He got you strong-arming for him?”

  “Debt collection.” Harath yawned and gestured. “This fucking city. Got to cover the rent somehow, you know how it is.”

  “Been there once or twice when I was your age, yeah.”

  “Not going to pretend I like it much.” The young Ishlinak picked up the chamber pot and peered into it, grimaced again and put it down. “Thumping some poor kid about to get money back he borrowed to buy a ring or impress his friends. Or—like last week—some war widow trying to feed her kids when they just doubled the rice tax. Lot of the time, I’ll just stand there behind the old fuck with my arms folded. With the widows, that’s usually enough. They don’t have the money, they’ll take him behind the curtain, or get the daughter to do it. He’s good like that, most times he’ll let it slide, you know. But fuck, man, if I’d known back in Ishlin-ichan I was going to be making my bread like this …”

  “Coin is coin,” Egar reminded him.

  “Yeah, well it’s a pretty small fistful. By the time he writes off the rent, lucky if I’m eating two squares a day.” Harath’s face changed, seemed abruptly younger. “You really a Dragonbane like you said?”

  “Yeah. I am.”

  “Takes some balls, huh?”

  “And some luck.” Egar chopped down the subject. “You didn’t think about going up the hill, then? Sign up for Demlarashan, get some coin that way?”

  Harath stared at him. “I did two tours down there last year. That was enough for me. Fucking shit-hole. You ever been?”

  “In the war, yeah.” Egar shrugged. “Different then.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t know about that. But I’ll tell you something for nothing, Dragonbane—they’re all fucking nuts down there now. I reckon it’s the heat.”

  Egar remembered the heat, like some solid bronze idol of a fat man he had to carry around everywhere, seated weightily on his shoulders, fat burnished thighs wrapping around his neck, pressing down on his chest. The steppes in summer could be sweltering—but it was nothing compared with Demlarashan heat. And Harath was right, the locals were mostly barking mad. He didn’t blame the Ishlinak. He wouldn’t go back himself if he could possibly avoid it.

  Not even to look at the bones of that fucking dragon.

  “Tell you,” the young Ishlinak muttered. “Demlarashan, it’s a waste of fucking time. The Empire’s never going to rein them in, doesn’t matter how many men they spend. Those guys got nothing better to do down there than string each other up over spelling mistakes in the fucking Revelation. Might as well give it up now and go home. I mean, it’s not like there’s anything down there worth having anyway. It really is a shit-hole. Nothing grows, you’re lucky if you can keep goats. So let them keep their goats and their fucking rock temples and gibberish texts and acres of fucking sand. Who gives a shit?”

  Egar looked around for somewhere to sit down, but there was only the cot. The room was growing oppressive.

  “Well, next time I’m up at court, I’ll be sure and pass on your strategic advice.”

  Harath shot him a hungry look. “You really gigging for a noble, huh?”

  “Yep. Like I said.”

  “Good purse, yeah?”

  Egar nodded. “Very good. You want to get some lunch?”

  THEY FOUND A TAVERN IN A STEEP BACKSTREET WITH VIEWS OUT ACROSS the Span and the estuary. Harath apparently knew it from his high-rolling days before Menkarak fired him. They took a table out on the balcony. Ordered some hair-of-dog to blunt the edge of the Ishlinak’s hangover.

  “Wasn’t him personally, mind you.” Harath, surfacing from the suds of his ale. “They got Alnarh to tell me. Which he did with a big fucking grin on his face, the cunt. Said if I couldn’t comport myself like a man of faith, I had no business standing guard over Citadel property. Like he wouldn’t have jumped that bitch if she’d given him half a look.”

  “So it was about this girl then?”

  Harath stared off across the water. “Oh, I guess. Like I said, Alnarh was acting twitchy well before that, but yeah, that seemed to send him over the edge. Fucking nuts, it’s not like he couldn’t have had his pick from the others.”

  “The others?”

  “Sure, they’re keeping a whole gaggle of them up there. Some boys
, too, if that’s your thing.”

  Egar frowned. “Up there? At the Citadel?”

  “No, man—Afa’marag.” Harath jerked a thumb over his shoulder, upriver. “The old horse stringer’s temple, up by the locks. Menkarak had it opened up again in the spring. Creepy fucking place. You didn’t know that?”

  “No. And what are they doing up at Afa’marag? Aside from corralling slaves?”

  “Fuck knows. I never bothered getting that close, they were paying me well enough just to keep an eye on the gate and take food into the slave pen. Alnarh and Larg volunteered for sanctum duty, arse-licking around Menkarak as usual.” The young Ishlinak shook his head. “Way too much purifying prayer and memorizing bollocks in it for me. Who needs that shit?”

  The food came. Harath plunged in. Egar watched him eat, picked at his own plate for appearances. Mostly, he was thinking it through. Shuffling Harath’s grumblings together with what he already knew from Archeth’s briefing the previous year, and Imrana’s court gossip since. Trying to assemble it all into a hand you could bet something on.

  Invigilator Pashla Menkarak—son of Grand Invigilator Envar Menkarak, and a big noise now in his own right, it seemed. A loud voice among the new crop of humorless asshole invigilators they were apparently cultivating up at the Citadel these days. Renowned writer of clerical opinions and interpreter of holy text—Imrana read that one out to him from a court communiqué she had secondhand a couple of months back. She reckoned he’d once been a pretty canny political animal, but now he was openly critical of the Empire’s failure to properly consolidate conquests of infidel territory in the north after the war. The King’s Reach suspected direct links with the Demlarashan tendency, but it seemed they couldn’t prove it yet, and with the way things were between palace and Citadel right now, that kept Menkarak safe.

  Archeth had gone head-to-head with the fucker last year at court, and the Emperor backed her play. Teetering moments when it looked like the tensions between palace and Citadel might crack wide open. But cooler heads from the Citadel forced an apology, and Menkarak skulked off into the tall grass. There’d been no further direct clashes, but behind every shot the Citadel had taken at intimidation since, Archeth reckoned you could count Menkarak’s hand, or the hand of invigilators who shared his dickhead views.