The Cold Commands

by Richard K. Morgan

  Whatever the little turd was doing upriver would bear a look.

  “You reckon you could get me in?” he asked.

  Harath looked up over a laden fork. “In where? Afa’marag? Doubt it. Alnarh told the others not to have anything to do with me after I got thrown out.”

  “Yeah, I wasn’t really thinking about going in the front door.”

  “Ohh.” A slow nod. The Ishlinak shoveled the forkful of food in and grinned through it as he chewed. “All right, I got you. Yeah, that’s doable. Place is ancient, it’s falling apart. Got a whole stack of places you could break in with not much more than a bent pin. Show you that if you like, sure.”

  “What about coming in with me?”

  Harath hesitated. Swallowed his food and sat back. “What is this, Skaranak? What you want to get in there for? Come on, really. Man, if you’re looking for some cheap League pussy, I can take you to a couple of—”

  “It’s not about the girls.” Hurriedly. “The boys, either. Like I said, this Menkarak’s on the other side of a blade gig from me, and I’m just looking for an edge. All I want to do is get in there, poke around for a bit, see what I find. Get out again without making any noise.”

  “I don’t want to get in a fight with any of these guys. Not with steel.”

  “We won’t.”

  “ ’Cause they used to be my friends, right? Wasn’t for Alnarh, they probably still would be. All that shit down at the Lizard’s Head? That only kicked off because I bought Elkret a drink and Alnarh told him to pour it away. Fucking prick.”

  Egar sat forward. “Son, look at me. We won’t get in a fight with your friends. We won’t get in a fight with anyone. We get in, we have a look around, maybe ask a couple of questions to some of these slaves, then we get out. Do it right, no one has to even know we were there. But I need you to show me the way in, and I need you to watch my back for me while I’m inside. You do that, I’ll see your rent covered for the rest of the month, and top you up fifty elementals in cash into the bargain. Save you having to go out on widow-battering duty for a while.”

  Harath settled back to his meal again. Shrugged. Chuckled as he broke bread. “Okay, man, what am I going to say to that? You got me. Coin is coin.”

  “Coin is coin,” Egar agreed. “And I’m going to throw in another twenty when we’re done. You want to know what that’s for?”

  “Sure.” Throwaway gesture—the younger man’s attention didn’t come up off his plate. “Hit me with it.”

  “That’s to keep your mouth shut. No drinking down the Lizard’s Head, yarning about how you broke into a Citadel temple with a Dragonbane for company.”

  A noncommittal grunt. “Does sound like a good yarn, that. Worth a few beers.”

  “Hey.” Egar snapped his fingers under Harath’s nose. Got him eye-to-eye. “You listen to what I’m telling you, Ishlinak. Twenty. On top. Mouth shut. I’ll want your blood oath on that.”

  “Okay, Dragonbane, okay. Relax. I’m just fucking with you. Blood oath, you got it.”

  “Good.”

  Egar sat back, looked out at the Black Folk Span and the river while the other man ate. Across the city, the day was tipping over, noon heat spilling down toward afternoon. He watched the traffic threading across the Span’s ebony thoroughfares, wagons, riders, the plodding majority on foot. Some troops, sun glinting off their helmets and mail. A slave coffle, dust plastered, stumbling into town and journey’s end.

  He caught the loose thread of the thought. Looked across the table at Harath.

  “This slave girl. You reckon she knows anything?”

  The Ishlinak grinned down at his food, still chewing. “Knew plenty, brother. Couple of tricks she had, telling you, man …”

  He shook his head in bemused delight.

  “Like that, huh?”

  “Like that.” Harath swallowed and reached for bread. Leaned across the table and gestured with the chunk he’d torn off. “Look, I got to reckon the last couple of years, I’ve had more pussy than a clanmaster’s eldest sees in a lifetime. I must have seen the inside of nearly every brothel the Empire has, from Dhashara to Demlarashan. But that’s still got to be one of the best fucks I ever had.”

  It was common enough talk—Urann knew he’d done enough like it when he was Harath’s age. But just on the off chance …

  “She ask you for anything in return?”

  The other Majak laughed. “Sure, man—what do you think? Get her out of there. What else is a slave going to ask you for?”

  “So what happened to her?”

  Harath, slopping up gravy with the torn chunk of bread, shrugged and didn’t look up. Shook his head as he chewed.

  “Dunno, never saw her again. Why?”

  CHAPTER 15

  ingil met Eril’s eyes across the table. Their swords were up in their rooms with the cloaks and baggage. He kept his voice soft and nonchalant.

  “Soldiers, eh.”

  Eril made a show of lounging back in his chair. “So what do they want, lad? Is it the Watch?”

  The boy shook his head, licked his lips again.

  “No, my lords. They are irregulars.”

  There was a pleading quality to his expression as he looked at his two customers. Not so long since the war swept through here. Hinerion’s walls had held well enough against the Scaled Folk, but the border skirmishing that followed between imperial and League forces was brutal on the inhabitants. Standard tavernkeeper’s wisdom for the whole region: Forget uniforms or nominal allegiances—if it wears a weapon and scars, it’s no safer than the next starving wild dog. Feed and water with care, walk like you’re carrying dragon eggs, and never, never get between rival packs.

  “All right,” said Ringil, rising. “We’ll come out and talk to them. Nothing to worry about.”

  But he had a moment—allowed himself the self-pitying luxury of it as he got up from the table—to wonder if Dakovash hadn’t taken demonic offense at his earlier insolence and set him up, whispered the plan to come to Hinerion into his head and let him believe it his own, all so that he could be caught like a rat and dragged down to the dungeons and a death by screaming inches.

  He shivered.

  This fucking flu.

  Outside, through the candle gloom and smoky air in the main bar, he made out half a dozen bulky figures ranged about the place. The unmistakable, rigid jut of weaponry from their silhouettes, at hip and over shoulder, the instinctive space the tavern’s other clientele accorded them. One or two were idly bullying the customers and serving girls. Smacked lips and slurping sounds as the crockery-laden women tried to squeeze past, the inevitable pawing hands, stoically endured. At one table, a thickset axman leaned low over the board, getting in the diners’ faces with a mock-friendly grin and the kind of intrusive commentary that demanded either weakly smiling capitulation or offense taken and a fight.

  Ringil went by and jolted him heavily with one hip, jarred the man’s leaning arms so he slipped mid-sentence on the table edge and nearly fell.

  “Oi!”

  It was more yelp than bellow, outrage beaten upward in pitch by surprise. But the axman came back from his stumble with a scary fighter’s grace, pivoted and grabbed Ringil by the arm, dragged him back around.

  “Fuck do you thi—”

  And his voice died out from under him as Ringil met his eyes.

  They were close enough for the reek of the man’s breath to plaster Gil’s face like something solid, to feel that it was congealing and smearing there. Ringil said nothing, just looked at him.

  It felt, for one flickering moment, as if there were black wings at his back.

  The axman broke. Dropped his eyes, dropped his hand from Ringil’s arm. Turned away.

  “Wanna look where you’re fucking going, man,” he muttered.

  “Same might be said for you, Venj.” The voice was a good-natured rumble that Ringil recognized. “Thought you said you were a skirmish ranger in the war. Don’t they teach all-around awareness
at all times, or some such shit?”

  It was the shaven-headed bounty hunter from the office. He loomed up at the axman’s side, one cautionary arm out loosely across his comrade’s chest, a gesture that looked restraining and protective in about equal measures. He was taller than Ringil had realized when they talked before. He grinned with the assurance of a man used to dominating whatever room he was in.

  “How you doing, Shenshenath?”

  “I am. Well.”

  “Klithren. From the bounty offices.”

  Ringil got a firmer grip on his fake Yhelteth accent. “Yes, I remember. You have come looking for me?”

  “Yeah, how about that?” The bounty hunter tugged at his mutilated ear. “See, some of us got sick of waiting for the Keep to put up its list. Going to ride out at dawn, see if we can’t flush this bandit scum out of the forest and worry about the names later. Wondered if you wanted in.”

  Ringil grappled with his fever-blurred wits. “Me?”

  “Yeah, well, I pride myself on being a judge of men with steel. And you’re like me, you’ve held a command. Got the rank, the experience. Man like that, be glad to have you ride with us.”

  “Uh.” Ringil glanced across at Eril. The Marsh Brotherhood enforcer shrugged.

  “Your pal here’s welcome along of course,” Klithren said quickly. “I didn’t know you were mobbed up. Thought you’d come in alone. Seemed like a man alone, you know. But this fella looks like he can handle himself. You’d be welcome to ride with us too, pal.”

  Eril inclined his head. Ringil said nothing. Klithren looked from one to the other.

  The silence stretched.

  “So, uhm, look.” Briskly. “I figure an even split with the boys here, your man included, plus you and me take a captain’s tithe on whatever total we bring in. Sound about right?”

  Ringil made an effort, brought a hand to his chin, rubbed at his stubble as if giving the offer weighty consideration. He held it for as long as he dared, head tilting dizzily with the thought of riding out at dawn in hard pursuit of himself.

  “Yes,” he managed. “Yes, that. That would be acceptable. The rates. Good. And you say at dawn?”

  “Yeah. Going out the Dappled Gate. You know how to get there?”

  “Yes, I … the Dappled Gate. Of course.” Stop fucking mumbling, Gil. Get a grip. “On the eastern wall. Yes.”

  “So you’re in?”

  Ringil pulled himself somewhat together. “I will be there, yes.”

  “Good.” The bounty hunter looked triumphantly around at his men. “Told you, didn’t I? The imperial knows a paying opportunity when he sees one. Here, give me your hand on it, Shenshenath.”

  Ringil took the clasp, gripped the leathery swordsman’s palm in his own, forced pressure into his fingers and a smile. Klithren squeezed back, only about half as hard as a war hound’s bite.

  “See, now that’s what I’m talking about.” Once more, he seemed to be addressing his companions rather than Ringil. “That old Alliance magic, just like back in the war. No stopping us now, eh?”

  Some halfhearted assent from the other men. The axman glowered and didn’t join in. Klithren evidently didn’t care. He turned Ringil’s pulped hand loose and waved a dismissive arm.

  “Ah, ignore them, they’re a bunch of fucking pussies. I’ve been at them over two hours not to just sit on their arses down there waiting for the city to loosen its purse strings like it’s some virgin taking off her shift. If we’d acted this way when the Scaled Folk came, there wouldn’t be a city still standing on this coast.”

  “Hoy.” The axman’s glare shifted focus to Klithren. “I fucking stood with my city. I was on the walls of Trelayne when the lizards came, and I threw them back into the ocean. And I was part of the levy sent down to clean up the mess here before that, when you border rats couldn’t hold the line. So don’t come the superior fucking warrior with me.”

  Klithren cocked his head. A slow, comfortable grin lit his features. The axman saw it, but it took a couple of moments for him to catch up. He was in a Hinerion tavern, after all; his comrades were—it appeared from their scowls—mostly from Hinerion. The border rats comment had not gone down well.

  “Venj,” Klithren said fondly. “You are a grumpy old fuck. And if you weren’t such a dab hand with that ax of yours, I would probably have to kill you. We all know you married a border rat’s daughter, so why don’t you just get over the fact you don’t live in the capital anymore, and let’s leave Shenshenath here to get some sleep. Dawn’ll be ’round soon enough for all of us.”

  It was masterfully done. The tension leaked out of the room, grins leaked in. A guffaw came from way back in the tavern gloom.

  “Oh, the pain of exile,” jeered someone, none too quietly.

  Muzzy from his fever, Ringil jerked a hot-eyed glance toward the voice before he realized it was not meant for him. He caught a flurry of motion at one table; much looking away or hiding of faces in goblets. Ringil detached his gaze carefully again, found himself looking instead into Venj’s mutinous face. The axman stared at him for a couple of moments, then snorted and turned to Klithren.

  “Are we done here? Can we please get out of this shit-hole now?”

  Klithren shrugged. “Sure. Got what we came for, didn’t we? See you in the morning, Shenshenath. Dappled Gate, right?”

  Ringil nodded. “Look for me there at dawn.”

  The bounty hunters left. They went in grimly assured quiet, watched fearfully and equally silently by the tavern’s clientele. They shouldered their way out through the standing customers, knocked back the main door so it clunked hard into the wall, and ducked out under the lintel, here and there a man pulling his back-slung weaponry down to stop it snagging.

  Ringil and Eril watched them go.

  “Got this knack for making friends, don’t you?” the Marsh Brotherhood enforcer said, deadpan.

  Ringil peeled him a sour look. The door swung shut on the final broad-shouldered back, and chatter sprouted across the quiet like weeds.

  “So,” said Eril. “The harbor?”

  “The harbor.”

  THE SKIPPER OF THE MARSH QUEEN’S FAVOR POURED THEM RUM FROM A scuffed leather flask and did his best to seem pleased. But he was not a gifted actor.

  “Of course, for any Brother of the Bloom in need … ”

  He gestured vaguely, as if he hoped something in the cabin around them would sufficiently underline his loyalty to the marsh daisy pennants he flew. Following the gesture around, Ringil saw no likely candidate for the task. It was a pretty squalid space they sat in, cramped and rot-smelling, and fairly indicative of what they’d seen of the vessel as a whole so far.

  “Good,” said Eril bluntly. He drained his shot glass and put it back on the table. “I’m glad to hear that. So what we’ll need from you is cabin space for the duration, somewhere as far away from prying eyes as possible. And a dawn departure.”

  The skipper blinked. “Dawn?”

  “Yes. You told us your cargo’s already stowed.”

  “Well, yes, the cargo.” The skipper made a visible effort to regain his shipboard authority. “But I do have other passengers to consider as well.”

  Eril leaned forward. “Are you trying to tell me there’s no cabin for us?”

  “No, no, far from it, brother. We have four cabins disposable aboard the Queen; it would be my honor to guest you in, uh …”

  “Two of them,” prompted Ringil.

  The skipper swallowed. “Yes. Two. But one other cabin is nonetheless occupied by a, uh, a lady of the realm, and she does not expect to join us until late tomorrow morning.”

  Eril sat back. “A lady of the realm, eh?”

  He swapped a glance with Ringil. Ringil shrugged, sniffed at his shot of rum and put it carefully aside untouched.

  “I’ll go,” he said.

  A little later, trudging up from the harbor with a brace of the Marsh Queen’s huskier crewmen at his back for porters, he thought maybe he should h
ave drained his cup after all, the same way Eril had. Rough as the liquor was, the shock of it in his throat and belly might have gone some way to anchoring him a little more firmly to the cobbled street underfoot and its attendant reality. Might have stopped this queasy sense of seepage. As it was, he was now dealing with the uneasy sensation that the whole nighttime substance of Hinerion could at any moment shrivel away around him, like so much poorly painted morality-play backdrop canvas tossed onto an end-of-season bonfire; and when that happened, it would leave him drifting alone in a muggy, gray-tinged void with no way back.

  It’s the fever, he told himself patiently. Not like you haven’t had one before. Few more days, some sea air to clean your head out, you’ll be sharp-edged and smoking as a harbor-end whore on krin.

  Krinzanz. His hand crept automatically to the pocket it was stowed in. Now, there’s an idea.

  But it wasn’t really. He’d debated long and hard with himself whether or not to use some of his dwindling supply to beat out the symptoms of whatever he’d caught from the sneezing slave boy. In the end, an iron campaign frugality won out. He was down to his last thumb-sized twist of the krin, and there was no telling when he’d next be able to buy some more. Hugging the coast and allowing for favorable winds, Marsh Queen’s Favor might make harbor at Baldaran in a couple of days, but then Baldaran was an odd town, full of neatly maintained temples and pious little fucks in the magistrature. There’d been a public order ban in force on noxious substances the last time Ringil was there.

  After Baldaran, it was Rajal, almost twice the distance again, and a searing, sand-and-spat-blood combat memory for every yard of shoreline once they got there. He wasn’t sure he’d be going ashore at Rajal if he could avoid it.

  And after that, well …

  After that …

  Decision time, Gil.

  The street took a bend to the right, and above cheerily lit windows the hanging sign outside the Hero’s Respite Inn came into view—some suspiciously clean-looking knight at restful ease on a carpet of lizard corpses. Lettering above his head in gilt-edged red. So it seemed the skipper was competent to chart a course, on land at least. Seven streets up, the crooked lane to the left and follow the torches until the bend with the temple on the right. The inn stands at the corner opposite. Room Eleven. Ask for the Lady Quilien of Gris.