The Cold Commands

CHAPTER 37

It took Ringil longer than he’d have liked to get to the Black Folk Span. The streets below the palace on the estuary side were crammed, impassable at any pace above that of a snail with a diploma in law. Wagons and carts and every variety of human traffic vied for space. No way to open passage, short of spurring his horse forward into the press, trampling down anyone too slow or stubborn to get out of his way.

But that could only draw attention, and violence of one sort or another, and despite the spiky, hungover will to do harm in his head, what he needed right now was to stay as inconspicuous as possible, to lose himself in the hubbub of Yhelteth’s heart. Archeth would let him go, he knew, and he clung to a hope that Rakan might, too. But word had to get back to Jhiral sooner or later, and that meant a limited amount of time to work with. So he gathered his small store of patience around him like a threadbare cloak, rode the slow throb of his aching head, and sat his horse like a man midway across a river in full summer spate, up to his knees in the flow of citizenry, moving slower than he could have walked.

It gave him time for thinking he would rather not have had.

In the back of his mind, the leaf spiraled downward again, to join its myriad dried-out and curling cousins on the footpath through the garden. The woody light around him shifted, and he heard the crunch of footfalls over parched leaf remains, coming closer behind him.

He knew what he would see if he turned. Had somehow seen it already, though he didn’t know what it meant.

A woman, face shrouded, head bowed, the lap of her plain white robe blotched and stained with blood. Something small and bundled and bloody cradled in her arms.

The cold legions wrap around you…

He shook it off. Urged his horse forward with his thighs, fighting a cool sense of dread that he was running much too late.

The street he was on finally gave out onto the main estuary wharf road, and here there were at least cargo marshals and dockmasters to ensure that the thoroughfare did not become too clogged for freight to pass. They saw him coming, made him for some merchant or merchant’s agent, and did their best to open easy passage for him. Closer in, his scar and the Ravensfriend sent a different sort of message, but achieved a similar result. A good many of the berthed vessels along the estuary were heading for Demlarashan, hauling troops or supplies or both, and there were enough mercenaries mixed in with the levy that he would pass for a freebooter captain in a hurry to confirm some detail of passage for his men.

Pass for a freebooter captain, Gil? Pass for? Freebooter captain is pretty much what you are these days.

Thought I was long-lost imperial nobility, welcomed home after long absence. You heard Shanta last night. Undeserving Victims of the Ashnal Schism, Exiles of Conscience in a Time of Great Turmoil, carrying the Flame of Faith to Safer Lands.

Despite himself, he felt the corner of his mouth quirk. Shanta had done a superb job, rolling out the tale with all due ponderous, lachrymose formality of idiom and salute—for a man so well versed in the practicalities of building ships, he certainly had a very flowery turn of phrase when he chose to deploy it. Gil was pretty sure he’d caught the aged Shab Nyanar dabbing delicately at the corner of one eye with his napkin at one point.

He thought his mother, had she been in attendance at the banquet, would have enjoyed that speech. Not so much for its leaky sentiments—Ishil was never one for tears or romance—as for its blunt manipulation, for its masterful twisting of messy, mundane events into some refined poetry of significance, into a narrative built to tug at the heartstrings of those who lived desperate for validation of the codified ways they saw the world.

No one will like the truth of who you are, she’d told him once, when he was barely into his teens. But if they can once be sold a gilded nobility that covers for the truth, well, then—that they may be taught to love more than any real aspect of their own grubby little lives. And by such ruses, we live and prosper.

Just don’t tell your father that.

Sampling his own early drafts of youthful cynicism at the time, he’d believed she was talking about social standing and how it was maintained. It was only much later, recalling the sadness of her smile, that he understood she had seen in him what he was becoming, and was offering him a survival strategy.

Yeah. Fumbled that catch, though, didn’t you?

Sometimes—it surprised him abruptly to realize—he missed Ishil. Missed that eyebrow-arching appreciation of artifice and life’s attendant irony that seemed to serve her so well as armor. Missed her haughty, witch queen poise.

He thought she would have done rather well in Yhelteth.

Shade falling across his face made him look up. The Black Folk Span had crept up on him while he brooded; the shadow it cast downriver at this time of the morning was cool around him, as if he’d ridden into the fringes of a wood. The estuary road had become a sparsely trafficked towpath, and the Good Luck Dead Lizard, or whatever they were calling it these days, was just up ahead. He nudged the horse into a trot.

Outside the tavern, a small boy was swabbing down the trestle tables, answering occasionally to a grizzled old man who sat at one already cleaned. There was an untouched pint of beer in front of this solitary customer, and horse tackle dumped at his side. He glanced up at the sound of Ringil’s horse’s hooves; he seemed to be waiting for someone. Ringil dismounted and tethered his horse to a convenient trestle leg. The old man watched him steadily as he approached, and for just a moment Gil thought there might be something vaguely familiar about the face.

He shrugged it off. “This where the fight was last night?”

“Over there.” The old man nodded at the riverbank. There were blackened patches on the thin grass and bald patches of earth. It looked as if someone had knocked a torch or lamp over and left it there to burn into the ground.

“Did you see it?” Ringil asked him.

“No, I was not here.” The old man picked up his pint and sipped at it. He seemed to be enjoying a private joke.

“Anybody around who did see it?”

“You might try inside. There are those who claim witness.” The old man shrugged. “But who can tell for sure? Tales are already being spun around whatever truth there once was.”

Ringil grunted.

“Some never left, my lord,” the boy piped up, pausing for a moment in his wiping. “They stayed the whole night and are talking of it still.”

Someone had blacked his eye for him a while back; there were fading blue-and-yellow bruises still in evidence, and scabbing on a swollen lower lip. But youthful enthusiasm shone through the damage like sunrise through marsh-weather cloud.

“They say the Dragonbane tore free of his bonds in a berserk rage, sir. They say he magicked a sword from the air, then called up fire spirits to scorch his attackers.”

“I see,” said Ringil gravely.

“Maybe his victory over the dragon gave him powers, sir.”

Gil nodded, ignored the knowing look the old man was giving him. “That’s very possible. I have heard similar stories before.”

“My father died fighting dragons,” said the boy hopefully.

Ringil held back a grimace. Mouthed the rancid words. “Then your father was a… great… hero. And I’m sure… I’m sure his spirit is watching over you from, uh, from a high place of honor and peace.”

“And my mother, sir.”

“Yes. And your mother.”

The old man was still watching him, keenly. As Ringil turned to go inside, he called out. “You carry a Kiriath blade, sir.”

Ringil stopped, did not turn back. “Expert in swords, are you?”

“No, sir. A humble barber only. But I work with blades of my own, after a fashion, and I know their strengths and weaknesses. I know steel. And that is Kiriath steel upon your back.”

“And if it is?”

“Well, then perhaps you are some sort of hero as well?”

Still without turning, Gil closed his eyes for a moment. But what he found there on the inside of his eyelids gave him no respite.

Some sort of hero.

He opened his eyes again, found himself turning unwillingly back to face his accuser.

“Appearances are deceptive, old man,” he said shortly. “You’d do better not to judge a man by the steel he carries on his back.”

“Gracious advice.” The old man bowed his head. Still that maddening familiarity about him. “I am indebted. Should you ever wish for a shave, I am at your disposal. Finest barbering in the city. I am in the Palace Quarter. Ask for Old Ran’s place.”

“I’ll keep it in mind.” Ringil saw the way the boy was watching him, the enthralled look in his eyes again. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

And he fled from the boy’s gaze, into the cool gloom of the tavern and the harsh back-and-forth quarrel of grown men talking shit at the tops of their voices.

“THAT’S YOUR BEST BET,” THE PUBLICAN SAID, TAPPING THE COIN ON the bar-top and sliding it into his pocket. He nodded across the crowded room and the noise. “In the corner there, with his new whore.”

Ringil darted a surreptitious glance over to where a greasy-looking Majak in his early twenties sat goblet in hand at a table against the wall. The whore in question was young, too, and likely pricey by house standards, a little raddled, but otherwise quite shapely and not making much effort to hide the fact. She’d split her skirts apart, put one leg on display to the top of the thigh, and her breasts were pushed up almost to spilling from her bodice. She was pressing them up against the Majak’s arm, chattering insistently in his ear between drafts from her goblet.

Ringil frowned, still hazy with hangover. “Really?”

“Yeah.” The publican grinned and shifted a toothpick around his mouth. “I know. Little fucker doesn’t look like much, does he?”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Well, sir, your judgment there is accurate.” Gil had made the man for a veteran on sight, and rolled out a mannered commanding officer’s drawl when he approached him. He’d given enough orders to imperial troops in his life that his Tethanne was more or less flawless in the context. The publican practically saluted in response. He was falling over himself to be helpful. “See, Harath over there is just what he looks like, a fucking steppe savage no different from the rest, and he’s a mouthy little punk into the bargain. Always getting in trouble, late on his tab most of the time. Just about what you’d expect from his kind. Come down off the steppes for our women and the easy living, problem is, they’re just not used to a civilized way of doing things.”

Ringil looked carefully at the scarred wooden bar-top. “And why exactly should I be interested in this Harath?”

“Oh, well.” The other man leaned in close to impart his secret, grinning. “Dragonbane come in here about a week ago, sir, asking after him. Asking where he could be found.”

“Asking after him by name?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was he with him last night?”

The publican shook his head. “Only showed up this morning, seemed pretty surprised about it all. But he’s still your best bet, sir. I mean, this lot?” A broad, dismissive gesture at the clientele. “Some of them were around when it went down, true enough. Been here ever since, too, right through to daybreak, talking it up. Best night’s takings for a month. But not a one of them actually had words with the Dragonbane. Dragonbane never even got through the door before the Guard jumped him. This lot? Fucking bystanders, all of them.”

“Yeah, always plenty of those.” Ringil brooded for a moment. “You talk to anyone else about this?”

“Can’t say as I have, sir. But I knew they’d send someone like you, sooner or later.”

Ringil’s eyes narrowed. “Someone like me?”

The publican grinned again. “Don’t worry, sir. I know how to keep my mouth shut. And honestly, nothing against the Guard, there’s some good men among them. But sometimes, well, it takes a certain… Reach, am I right?”

“You’re a shrewd man,” Ringil told him and produced another coin. “And a discreet one, it seems. That’s a pair of admirable qualities in a soldier.”

“Yes, sir.” The coin disappeared like a magic trick, untapped this time. “Hope you get him, sir. Dragon hero or not, it’s foreign thugs like that are sinking this Empire.”

Ringil gave the publican what he judged an appropriately grim nod and departed. He crossed the low-beamed space toward the young Majak and his whore, eying the exits as he moved, instinctive checks prior to the confrontation. Realizing as he got closer that it wouldn’t be necessary. Harath was oblivious to his approach, as he was to the whore’s cleavage pressing into his arm and her grinning chatter into his ear, and just about everything else going on in the room, it seemed. He sat, goblet in hand, staring into the middle distance as if it contained a rainbow’s end chest of marsh dweller gold.

Ringil dropped into the seat opposite.

“Hello, Harath.”

The steppe nomad started, saw the man sitting across from him and tried to leap to his feet. Ringil’s hand leapt first, locked down on his arm at the elbow. He leaned in behind it. The table jarred; the wine bottle jumped and fell sideways. The whore grabbed it with a practiced hand before it could spill, set it back upright. Harath strained to break free and rise.

“Let’s not make a scene,” said Ringil softly.

“Fuck do you think—”

“I’m a friend of the Dragonbane. I’m anxious to find him before the King’s Reach do. Do you know where he is?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Still struggling to get loose. “You—”

“Sit down.” Eye-to-eye with the younger man now. “Or I’ll see to it you’re talking to the King’s Reach yourself by lunchtime. Want to see the inside of their questioning rooms up at the palace? That can be arranged. Now where is the Dragonbane?”

Harath broke, gave up. Sank back in his seat, breathing hard. Ringil let him go. Sat back in his own seat and straightened his right sleeve, which had ridden up in the struggle. Brushed down his doublet with a fastidious hand. It all made a good cover while he regained his own breath. He glanced up at the Majak.

“Well?”

“I haven’t seen that Skaranak fuck in days.” It was a hissed outburst across the table. “And he owes me money, the cunt. I want to find him just about as badly as you do.”

“You don’t appear to be looking very hard.”

“That’s what you think. Why I came down here this morning in the first place. Thought he might have come in. Then I hear all this shit about the Guard, stupid bastard’s been raping and murdering nobles up the hill. Like we didn’t have enough trouble already.”

“Trouble? What trouble?”

“He’s owed money,” the whore put in with asperity. “Didn’t you hear? You’re a friend of this Dragonbane, you ought to—”

Ringil cut her a look and her voice dried up as if he’d slapped her across the face. He turned his attention back to the young Majak.

“What trouble?”

IT TOOK A WHILE TO GET THE STORY STRAIGHT. HARATH WAS QUITE drunk, and he seemed mostly concerned to enumerate grievances, against this so-called Dragonbane, the Skaranak clan in general, randy old men who thought they were still young bucks, his faithless Ishlinak friends, miserly mercenary pay, military stupidity in Demlarashan, religious maniacs and imperial arrogance, and in fact pretty much every aspect of life he’d encountered since he came south of the Dhashara pass…

The actual tale he told blundered along through all this like a badly injured man, clinging to the complaints like pillars in some hard-to-navigate colonnaded hospital he’d been told had a bed for him somewhere. The whore sat at his side throughout, too cowed by Ringil’s glittery stare to actually interrupt, but rubbing Harath’s thigh vigorously every so often, murmuring cod-maternal sympathetic sweet nothings to him, and refilling his goblet from the bottle whenever he drained it. Harath nuzzled her in return, lost the thread of what he was saying, occasionally abandoned it altogether in a welter of gruff, growling kisses to neck and throat, while Ringil looked on and set his jaw and worked at keeping his hands to himself.

Under other circumstances…

He held down his temper, mainly because violence would have drawn attention he didn’t want from the rest of the room, but also because he didn’t want to stop Harath’s rambling confessional flow, which did seem, slowly, to be taking on some comprehensible shape, thus:

The Dragonbane shows up at Harath’s door with a blade contract, he knows about some prior falling-out between Harath and another Majak, name of Alnarh, faithless piece of shit, like I said, wouldn’t believe he was Ishlinak blood, while they were both working for a high-level invigilator out of the Citadel called Pashla Menkarak—Ringil frowned, the name was vaguely familiar, something Archeth had talked about—who got Harath cut loose from his job for messing about with a temple maiden, slave girl, whatever, something like that, anyway, the Dragonbane has a grudge of his own against the Citadel so they plan a burglary together, some disused temple upriver, Ringil’s never heard of it, but all the time this Dragonbane, man, he’s like, fucking obsessed with this slave girl, but he’s never even fucking met her, right. But coin is coin, and another tour in Demlarashan is just no sane option for anyone who’s seen what’s going on down there, done two fucking tours, mate, believe me, I know what I’m talking about, so Harath’s in—they hit the temple by night, mix it up with Harath’s old Ishlinak pals, which he said we wouldn’t fucking get into, right, I mean, I had to kill a brother that night, and get into some kind of secret harem, where the Dragonbane apparently finds what he’s looking for, some whining bitch, no, not that one, a different one, don’t ask me why and then, on the way out, they’re attacked by this angel, yeah, that’s right, you heard me, a fucking angel, which glows with blue fire and—

“Stop.”

“I am not fucking making this up,” Harath said heatedly. “It was—”

“I didn’t say you were.” There was a sudden spike of ice down his spine, and his hangover seemed to have acquired a new, cold-clamping focus at his temples and in his guts. Scenes from the fight at Ennishmin danced through his head, flicker-lit in that same unearthly blue.

Here? In Yhelteth? It was a shuddering, dithering voice in his head. Can’t be, can’t fucking be…

He saw the figures, emerging from the core of their own radiance.

He saw Seethlaw, smile like a wolf…

“Here—you going to puke or something?”

He blinked at Harath’s voice. Looked up and saw the Ishlinak’s whore watching him with a sneer on her paint- and powder-clogged face. Curled red lip over teeth turning gray, probably with too much bad krinzanz or just—

Memory of the girl on the wharf leapt in. Propped against the barrel, accosting him with the same gray grin. I have a message for you, Dragonbane…

You are awaited at the Temple of Red Joy. Do not delay. All things will become clear.

He shook off a shiver. Cleared his throat. “This place you cracked upriver. The temple. Did it have a name?”

Harath shrugged. “Afa’marag, I guess, like the neighborhood. Called it after some water demon, the maraghan or something. That’s what the boatman said, anyway. Though he was a lying little—”

“Not Red Joy? Not the Temple of Red Joy?”

The Ishlinak looked at him blankly. “No. Never heard of that, it’s—”

The whore’s cackle shut him up. Both men looked at her irritably.

“Temple of Red Joy?” She grinned at Ringil, widely now. Leaned in toward him, mock-affectionate, then let her grin freeze out. “I know where that is, scar-face. Question is, what’s it worth to you?”

“I don’t know,” said Ringil mildly. “How about it’s worth I don’t tell the King’s Reach you’re holding out on where I can find the Dragonbane.”

The color fled her face. She tried to shrink back to her side of the table, but his hand whipped out and grabbed her wrist.

“Or would you prefer to talk to them about it directly?”

“Southside.” The words blurted out of her. “It’s on the southside. Across the Span and down into the old ferry quarter. Back of Keelmakers’ Row.”

“Thank you.”