The Cold Commands

by Richard K. Morgan

  Heard her unlatch her jaws with a click, and spit again.

  His head hung. Blood dripped thickly into his lap. Vomit burned in his throat. Dimly, he realized he’d pissed himself. The agony spidered back and forth across the left side of his face. She leaned down next to his ear.

  Oh no please no …

  Her voice came softer than ever.

  “In three days, Ringil, we will unleash the Talons of the Sun on this city, and it will burn. The Yhelteth Empire will collapse, and those who crawl from the ruins will be told it was the Black Folk and their knowledge who caused it. Any of that cursed race who remain, they will hunt down and torture to a slow death. Then, this idiot religion they own will burn all books but their own, and condemn all learning not from that book. They will regress to grubbing about on their knees in their own unworth. They will forget. There will be nothing to challenge the rise of the north, and with the north, we will rise, too. We will carve out a new Aldrain realm, and it will have Seethlaw’s name on it.” He made a noise, like choking.

  “But that’s in three days.” She patted him on the shoulder again. He thrashed away from the touch. “First, your friend and great love Egar, slayer of dragons, will wait in vain for you to come back and free him. He will be taken and executed, slowly, in as much agony as your rather limited imaginations can manage. This, I have seen already, in the scrying of days. He will wait for you right to the end, and he will die, screaming, unmanned, knowing you failed him. I will bring you news of it, to season your other suffering.

  “And only when that’s done will we unleash the Talons of the Sun.”

  Ringil lifted his head. It was like raising a dressed-stone building block with his bare hands. His vision jerked about crazily, shot through with black and red and too much light. Risgillen was a wavering presence, like someone seen from under water. Trembling consumed him.

  He thought he managed to snarl at her, but could not really be sure.

  “Very good,” she said, from somewhere in a gathering darkness. “Strength. Where you now go, the more you have of strength, the more cursed you will be.”

  Then she reached over his head with both arms and took hold of the chair by its back. She rocked it experimentally a couple of times, then shoved hard, so it went over backward with him in it.

  He waited for it to crash against the floor, but it never did.

  “Seethlaw is waiting” was the last thing he heard her say in the closing, roaring darkness as the Gray Places took him.

  He fell then, forever.

  CHAPTER 43

  ay marched across the slice of sky visible from the cell, way faster than you’d think if you hadn’t been paying attention before. He watched it decay from the cell window after Archeth was gone. The gold-leaf blaze of late-afternoon sun over the estuary, fading to dull and dusty tones of red at sunset, and finally the few molten flecks among darkening cloud like discarded mango peel in gutter mud.

  This fucking city.

  Darkness clogged in from the east. He watched that, too, and tried not to wait too hard. He knew Gil was not coming.

  Give the faggot a fucking chance, Eg. He’s got three days to get this done.

  But it was two days now.

  Archeth had no news. Jhiral had refused her audience, and the King’s Reach were not talking. She sat on one of the beds in the cell and fiddled with the child’s rag doll from the floor.

  “He has a flare,” she told him. “Like the ones we used in the war. If he fires it, we’ll see it from anywhere in the city.”

  “Yeah, if it works.”

  Brought out of some long-forgotten canister at An-Monal along with other curious and frankly not ideal Kiriath tools for the war, the flares had never been all that reliable. Egar remembered Flaradnam yelling desperate abuse at one, battering the business end against the ship’s rail at Rajal when it refused to fire.

  “Most of them work,” Archeth said quickly.

  He frowned at her. She seemed uncharacteristically focused today, not the moody, scattered woman he’d been used to living with this last year at all.

  “It’s daytime, Archeth.” Patiently, reasonably, trying not to let his own sense of gathering doom take hold in his head. “If he’s still in the Citadel, he’s got to spend the next seven or eight hours hiding. And if he’s not in the Citadel, then …”

  He shrugged. Looked away.

  I have seen my death, he didn’t tell her. But he remembered thunder prowling at the limits of the steppe sky, the blood of his brothers on the grass around him, the calling that had brought him south once more. He remembered his acceptance then—tried to boil up something similar now. He built a small smile.

  “Maybe that’s it,” he offered her. “He’s skulking until nightfall again.”

  “At Rajal Beach,” she said carefully, “he lay in his own blood and piss for ten hours playing dead, and the Scaled Folk didn’t find him, even with the reptile peons sniffing for survivors.”

  “He told me it was six hours.”

  “Whatever. If he survived being hunted by the Scaled Folk, alone, a whole day, then how much trouble can a bunch of invigilators give him?”

  “You’re forgetting our blue-fire friends.”

  She shrugged it off. “You saw him at Beksanara. They fall down just like men, remember?”

  “What’s the matter with you, Archidi?” He couldn’t help the growl in his voice. “You getting laid all of sudden or something?”

  She looked at the rag doll in her hands. “I don’t believe he’s failed, that’s all. He came back from Rajal Beach, he came back from the Kiriath wastes and Gallows Gap. He brought us all back from the brink at Beksanara. A few hours of daylight aren’t going to stop him.”

  She left shortly after that, ushered out by the jailer who brought the afternoon meal. She promised she’d carry a message to Imrana, but in the end Egar wasn’t very sure what he should tell her to say. He was unreasonably angry with Imrana, an anger that was all the worse for the clear understanding that he was the one who had failed to grasp the ground rules of the game they’d been playing. That he had been deluding himself about what they had.

  You can’t crawl back inside what you once had, Eg. Facing him in the cooling bathwater. You have to live with now.

  It hadn’t seemed like a warning at the time, but now, too late, he wondered.

  Tell her not to worry, he settled for in the end, and Archeth nodded, carefully noncommittal, and left him alone with his thoughts.

  He ate without much enthusiasm, left half of the platter untouched. Limped about the cell a bit, leaned at the window and watched the dark. Used the chamber pot. Scooped up the rag doll from where Archeth had left it—threw it irritably at the wall. Dropped onto the bed he’d taken to thinking of as his own, and watched bandlight paint itself cool and blue-white across the stone ceiling.

  You have to live with now.

  Yeah, problem is, Eg—not a lot of now left.

  Come on, Gil. Get your faggot arse in the saddle. He held the rind of a smile against a thin but rising fear. Don’t send me to a shit death, man. Not like this.

  They came to take his plate and chamber pot away, which was unusual at this time of night. He propped himself up on the bed and grinned sourly at the jailer.

  “No effort spared for His Radiance’s guests, eh?”

  The man stared at him. It wasn’t the face he’d gotten used to over the last couple of days, wasn’t in fact—

  Oh, no …

  He saw it in the other man’s eyes an instant before the knife came out. He came clumsily up off the bed, threw himself aside as the man lunged at him.

  “For the blood of clan Ashant!”

  It was a triumphant shout—and far too early. The knife missed Egar’s shoulder by inches, buried itself in the mattress. Egar twisted out from under and punched the man savagely in the kidney. He fell to the floor, injured leg trailing, caught under his attacker’s sprawled weight. Saw the second assassin at the doo
r, the downed body of the jailer laid out on the flagstones beyond.

  “Two of you,” he spat. “Well, that figures.”

  He yanked his foot free, scrabbled backward across the cell on his hands. The second killer came at him, but got tangled up as his comrade tried to get up off the bed at the same time. It gave Egar the split second he needed to get back on his feet. He yelled in their faces, high, steppe nomad shriek, grabbed the desk chair, swung it up and into the air, brought it smashing across both men. It was heavy, he didn’t get anything like the swing he wanted, but it hit with bruising force, upward against arms and faces. He saw the first of his attackers go to his knees again.

  The second man just shook himself, growled, and backed up. The way he held the knife, he looked to be Egar’s major problem. Not a shit death! Not a shit death!

  Like a chant, like a pulse through his head. It came up through the soles of his feet and he seized it like a new weapon. Dropped into a crouch, feinted with his empty right hand grabbing. The assassin smiled grimly, floated back unfazed. He knew what he was doing, he had the only knife. Had the time and would make it work for him. He waited for his companion to get up.

  “Come on then,” Egar snarled at them. “Want to see what a Majak soul costs? Fucking pussies!”

  He went for the chair again, but the smarter assassin read the move and leapt in to block it. A tangled moment—Egar lashed out with his injured leg, grunted as he felt stitches tear and the wound reopen. The man danced clear, Eg punched at him, got a burly shoulder and no real effect, felt the hot lick of the knife blade across his ribs in trade. He recoiled sideways. For a brief moment, he thought he might make the open cell door, but the other killer—Eg saw now he was younger, barely out of his teens—scrambled shakily to block it.

  “That’s it, lad.” The older one grinned tightly. “Keep him penned.”

  The three of them stood panting for a moment. The more experienced assassin raised his blade at Egar, almost like a toast.

  “Kadral told me to make this last,” he said, mastering his breathing. “Fatal but slow, he’s asked for. You got pain coming, steppe scum.”

  “You,” Egar grabbed breath of his own, “talk too much for a killer.”

  Have to get to the boy.

  He saw how it might be done.

  “Two on one, with knives.” He spat on the floor. “And you’ve brought a fucking child with you.”

  The boy surged forward, flushed with fury.

  “My clan is Ashant!” he cried. “Bright is the name! For my cous—” Egar darted in, bent-kneed. He scooped the doll from the floor in his left hand, grabbed at the boy’s knife. The boy misread it, thought he was going for the wrist. Egar’s fist closed over rag doll and blade alike, and snapped tight.

  Not a shit death!

  The steel was keen—he felt it go deep into his palm, even through the rags. He roared in the boy’s face, gripped harder, wrenched. The boy recoiled, the knife slipped free. Stuck deep in the flesh of his clenched fist, no time to use it. He hooked the boy in the face with an elbow, spun about, grinning at the pain.

  Not a—

  The senior assassin was there. He snagged Egar’s unharmed right arm, twisted it away. He stepped in, his blade slugged home. They stood close as lovers.

  “For Saril Ashant,” the man hissed in his face. “Bright is the name!”

  Egar tottered backward, suddenly stupid. The killer let him go. He looked down at his wound, tried to let go of the knife in his left hand, but his fingers refused to open. He pressed with his right hand at the sudden spike of fire in his belly. Turned his palm up and saw the blood. Looked at the man who’d done the damage.

  “Oh, that’s not fatal,” the assassin assured him. He raised the knife. “That’s for pain. When I promise slow, slow is what you get.”

  Egar summoned strength. Fell backward onto the bed instead. The back of his head thumped the wall and he bit his tongue.

  Oddly, it hurt worse than the wound in his belly.

  “Yeah, you have a seat. This is going to take a little while.”

  The killer advanced on him slowly, grinning. Egar floundered, could not get off the bed.

  “Better come and watch this, Jadge,” the assassin told the boy. “Get your knife back as well. We won’t talk about how you fucked that one up,

  eh?”

  The boy made an unhealthy, strangled noise in his throat. The killer rolled his eyes.

  “Oh, come on. Don’t get sick on me now. This is your fucking jo—”

  “This is treason, boys.”

  Egar’s head snapped up at the voice. The assassin whirled away from him, turning to the door. Staggered backward with a weird, high scream, pawing at something in his eye.

  Egar stared, trying to make sense.

  Archeth—at the open cell door—still holding up the boy for cover, while his slashed throat bled out over the left forearm she had hugged across his chest. Her face was cuddled up close to his, her right arm was still out from the throw. There was another knife held, blade sideways, in her left hand.

  Her eyes were wide in the lamplight, glittering with krinzanz fire. Egar thought vaguely that he’d never seen a more beautiful woman in his life.

  SHE LET GO OF THE BOY, AND HE CRUMPLED BONELESSLY.

  She stepped across his body, knelt and cut the other assassin’s throat just to be certain, though from the way he lay twitching on the stone floor, it looked to be unnecessary. She retrieved her knife from his eye socket and glanced up at the Dragonbane.

  “I heard painful, not fatal?”

  Egar grimaced and moved a little, testing. “Yeah, he got that much right. Motherfucker. You want to get this out of my hand?”

  She stared at his clenched left fist, the bloodied rags and the protruding knife.

  “How the … ?” She shook her head. “Never mind. Come here.” She cupped his hand with her own, applied pressure, took hold of the knife’s hilt and pulled the blade out of his flesh. Egar gritted his teeth and yelped. She threw the weapon away, across the room, to where its crumpled owner lay. It skittered off the stone floor, slid and landed in front of the boy’s empty, staring eyes.

  “Right, we’d better get you fixed up. Can you walk?”

  “Out that door? Just fucking watch me.” He tried to rise, just about managed it by propping himself against the wall with one arm. He grimaced as fresh pain spiked through his belly. “So where’d you come from all of sudden?”

  “Sheer dumb superstitious luck,” Archeth said grimly, cleaning her knives one by one on the dead man’s breeches. “Blame my mother’s blood. I was out trying to score, last-minute thing, you know. Everywhere’s closed. Got some mystic old fuck with a beard down by the river. Tells me to go check on my friends, while I still can. For some reason, I did. Go figure.”

  Egar swayed a little on his feet. “Nice of him.”

  “Yeah, well he charged me enough for the krin.” Archeth stowed her knives and stood up. Took a look around at the mess. “You know—Jhiral is going to have a fucking fit when he hears about this. I really wouldn’t want to be part of clan Ashant right now.”

  “Right.” Egar got his swaying under control, let his throbbing left hand hang and pressed his right to the hole in his belly. “And Gil?”

  Archeth looked away, wordless.

  Shook her head.

  CHAPTER 44

  e stumbles for a long time across a desolate marsh plain strewn with the living heads of dwenda victims, and into a bitter wind. Men, women, children, even some dogs—all cemented to tree stumps around him, all alive to some degree, though few are probably sane anymore. There are tens of thousands of them. Their voices tangle around his knees like marsh mist, come mumbling and weeping and sometimes screaming up to his ears. Sometimes what they say is intelligible. He tries not to hear them.

  … Mummy I don’t like it I don’t like it Mummy make it stop, I don’t like it make …

  She’s about five or six. Long rat’s tai
ls of muddy hair plastered on her face. Voice a thin, hopeless moan. If the mother she’s calling for is with her, she has long since stopped talking back to her daughter in anything but screams or gibbering.

  He marches doggedly on, waiting for her voice to fade out like the others. There is nothing he can do. There is nothing he can do for any of these people. The marsh stretches to the horizon in all directions. There is water underfoot, everywhere. And as long as there is water, the roots will draw sustenance, and as long as the roots draw sustenance, the lives spiked atop them will endure.

  Seethlaw told him this.

  Is it any worse, Seethlaw asked him at Ennishmin, than the cages at the eastern gate in Trelayne, where your transgressors hang in agony for days at a time as an example to the masses?

  He seemed genuinely not to understand Ringil’s horror.

  Seethlaw is out there somewhere now. Ringil can hear him from time to time, howling from the horizon, keeping pace.

  He shivers, with cold and the traceries of memory. He puts one foot in front of the other and does not fall down. He stares at the horizon ahead. His wounded eye and face seemed to have healed, but into what he is not sure. He remembers putting his hand to the wound, some measureless time before, but cannot recall what his fingers touched. And now, whenever his hand twitches upward again, something in him will not let it rise.

  He is weaponless, he is cold.

  But the cold drives him on.

  NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME, HE SAGS TO AN EXHAUSTED HALT. HE DROPS TO his knees in the shallow muddy water and the squelching marsh grass.

  Time.

  It’s coming again, Risgillen’s revenge. Last time, he screamed at the leaden sky. It didn’t do any good. Now he just stares dully at the nearest heads, defocuses his gaze, tries not to meet their eyes.

  Seethlaw’s howling circles closer. He knows he won’t see him yet, but—

  He collapses on his side, sobbing like a child. He sees the standing stones as they emerge around him, towering sentinels against the gray sky.