The Cold Commands

CHAPTER 29

Ringil Eskiath came down the gangplank of the Famous Victory None Foresaw and joined the bright, brawling chaos on the wharf. Sunlight shattered across the water, slammed glints into his narrowed eyes. The Black Folk Span held the sky to the south like a massive slice of shadow dropped across the estuary. It was better than a mile upriver from where he’d disembarked, but you could sense the cool of its shade from here, beckoning you on.

Yhelteth.

They’d given him a medal here, once.

“Rooms, my lord, rooms! Swan-down beds and views to the great Kiriath wonders of the city! Step this way!”

“Pig’s heart skewers! Piping hot! A Yhelteth delicacy, fresh from the coals!”

“Baths, my lord! Hot baths. Waters perfumed with all the scents of the Great City!”

He wondered, shouldering his way through the press, if that included the reek of hot tar and effluent that crept up from the pilings along the wharf.

“Wanna get fucked, soldier?”

“Wanna get fucked up? The purest flandrijn in town, sire, the finest pipes. A Yhelteth tradition awaits you.”

For a moment, he was tempted, by the latter offer at least. He’d been in some good pipe houses in his time, and doubted the grubby, hollow-eyed individual at his elbow was going to take him to one of anything like the same rank. But he also doubted the tout and any friends he had would be stupid enough to try to roll a man with a blade-scarred face and the tilted crux of a broadsword hilt at his shoulder. Flandrijn they offered, flandrijn in all probability they would have, and a cool, dark place to smoke it in.

Or maybe they would try to roll him.

In the sunny, quick-pulse rush of the morning, he found he didn’t much mind the thought of that, either. He had a full belly from breakfast aboard the Famous Victory, he had a full purse under his cloak—the Lady Quilien had bluntly refused any compensation at their parting, Let us say only that you will owe me a favor, Ringil Eskiath, she told him instead—and he had back his full strength of limb and lung. He was awake in ways he hadn’t been for months.

A flandrijn pipe or a back-alley brawl—he had appetite to spare for either.

But by then, in those moments of idle reflection, he’d already drifted on, and the tout stayed put somewhere in his wake, still crying his wares to the crowd. Ringil kept moving, vaguely aware that he was heading for the Span’s shadow and, as he recalled, a low-rent mercenary watering hole built there. The Good Luck Pony, or something—it had always been a favorite of Egar’s, though Ringil had never been able to see the appeal himself. Scabby fittings, no decent wine to speak of, and a clientele of obnoxious young men all looking to prove their mettle at the slop of a spilled pint. A fistfight a night, a stabbing a week, all pretty much guaranteed.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to swing by. It was a little early in the day for drunken chest-beating; the place would likely be quiet. He might glean some useful gossip on what was going down in the city these days, whether there was much work for freebooters, who to talk to about it. At a minimum, he could get something to eat.

At some point after that, he’d see if he could remember the way to Archeth’s place.

“Ringil Eskiath! Hey, hero!”

For a moment, the voice seemed almost familiar—certainly, he thought he would know its owner as he turned. But the grinning gray-toothed girl who lounged there against the curve of a donkey-sized wine tun left on the wharf was familiar only in type. He’d seen her in a dozen different cities before, her soiled, tight-laced bodice and shredded redrag skirt practically a uniform. Painted nails chewed down to the quick, tanned arms laden with bangles at the wrists, clinking bracelets at the ankles, bare feet clotted with dust and streaked with melted tar. She caught his eye and flexed herself at him, elbows propped back on the tun’s curving surface. Slid one hand down into the rags of the skirt, and shifted it aside on a length of pallid thigh. A wood shard toothpick shifted from one side of the rotted smile to the other, lifted on a darting tongue. She was all of fourteen years old.

“You know me?” he asked warily.

“Who would not, honored sire? Victor at Gallows Gap, savior of the northern cities, slayer of dragons at Demlarashan. The debt we all owe you is without tally.”

“It was just the one dragon.”

She ignored the interjection, as if her words were lines she must recite and he a poor companion player on the stage, forgetful of his part.

“I have a message for you, Dragonbane,” she said.

He looked her up and down. “That doesn’t seem likely.”

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

“I’m afraid I—”

“And your friend awaits you above.” She gestured upward past his shoulder.

It was such a tried-and-tested old trick, the standby of pickpockets and footpads everywhere, that he already had his sleeve tilted for the dragon-tooth dagger as he glanced the way she pointed. He felt himself loosening for the fight. Was looking forward to the girl’s accomplice and his pitiful street-urchin moves, whatever they might turn out to b—

“Ringil! Ringil!”

Archeth’s voice.

In the hubbub and gull shriek along the wharf, he might not have heard her if his gaze hadn’t been directed toward the cry. He shielded his eyes against the sun-glint and spotted her, leaning on the uppermost deck of some absurd floating bordello built in stacked layers like the world’s largest Padrow’s Day cake. Fussy finish on everything, actual glass in most of the lower deck windows, some of it stained nine different shades of fucking expensive. Natty little gangplank at dock level, complete with ornately carved handrails, a style ill suited to the hired soldiery standing about it with halberds. He counted four, solid and grizzled, giving passersby the odd brutal shove when they lurched too close. They looked handy enough to avoid tangling with.

“Hey, okay, Ringil, look.” Archeth, waving hastily. “Just stay there, I’ll come down.”

She disappeared as if yanked off the rail by the scruff of the neck. He found himself grinning, pure pleasure of a sort he hadn’t felt tickle his guts for what seemed like ever. He turned about to thank the wharf whore, digging under his shirt for a coin.

The worn oak curve on the wine tun, gleaming back at him. No gray-toothed grinning girl to lean on it. He stood and frowned at the space where she’d been, until a harried-looking freight agent suddenly materialized out of the crowd.

“Ah! You are the owner, my lord? Tailen March? From the Scourge of the Maraghan?”

Ringil shook his head, put a boot against the tun to see if it rocked, if it might be hollow for a bolt-hole. It didn’t, it wasn’t.

“Nope.”

The man hesitated. “Then you wish to buy? I can make you a good price, wharf price if you—”

“Did you see the girl who was leaning on this?” Ringil asked him. “Just a moment ago. Working girl? Henna hair, cream bodice?”

A lip curled in pious disgust. “No. I did not.”

“She was right there, man. You didn’t see where she went?”

The man drew himself up. “I am not a whore’s broker, sir, and I’ll thank you not to take me for one. This is Yhelteth you’re in now, not the pirate cities.”

Didn’t realize my accent was that bad.

And then Archeth, suddenly at his shoulder, laughing, getting between him and the agent, grabbing his arm. “Ringil! You old backstabber! What are you doing here? You making trouble already? How long you been in town?”

He saw her shoot the freight agent a warning glance. She needn’t have bothered. He’d already made her for Kiriath and was backing off like a poet asked to wash dishes. Ringil stared vainly about at the brightly colored surge and slop of the crowd.

“There was a—” He gave it up. Accepted Archeth’s grip, made the four-handed clasp and leaned in close. “It’s good to see you, too, you immortal bitch. That your boat?”

“Belongs to a friend. Why?”

“Ah—nothing.”

“Come on, I’ll introduce you.” She led him to the gangplank. The halberdiers stood grudgingly aside, watched him pass with ill-concealed mistrust. “What are you doing here, anyway? Thought you’d gone home to a happy ending and a handsome reward. What happened? Family reunion not work out after all?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“Not looking for work, are you?”

He looked at her. Saw she wasn’t joking.

HE LIKED SHANTA ON SIGHT.

Something of the tangled academic about the man—a willingness to entertain the possibility of something, anything, regardless of how likely it actually was. You could see his eyes kindle as he did it, could see them staring off into other places, as if into the coals of a fire. You could sit there and watch him drift, watch him tugged away from the wharf of the real world by the currents in his head.

Could almost be Kiriath.

Though in the Black Folk, to tell the truth, the same trait had manifested itself as something closer to insanity. Grashgal and Flaradnam had both been prone to lapse that way, disconcertingly often in the midst of humdrum conversations, for minutes at a time, then come back down to Earth trailing skeins of mystic gibberish you couldn’t really make much use of in the real world. Ringil had even seen Grashgal do it once in the midst of battle. Had had to snap him out of it pretty fucking sharply to save both their lives.

He wondered idly how much it was that similarity, that same musing, brooding withdrawal, that drew Archeth to the naval engineer the way she obviously was.

“Of course, your experiences in the Aldrain realm—the so-called Gray Places—these go only to support what the Helmsman has said about the Ghost Isle.” He was doing it now—gnarled fingers steepled, gaze falling lost through the gap beneath. “If the dwenda are truly at home in places where reality is not moored to the same set of laws we know here, then there is no reason they would not sail whole chunks of territory away with them from time to time.”

“Yes, and if my father’s people fought them, then they would have had technologies to combat it. Just as the Ghost Isle makes sense, so does An-Kirilnar.”

Ringil frowned. He hadn’t heard a fervor like this in Archeth’s voice for the better part of a decade. And from the look of her eyes as she leaned forward, she wasn’t even using. Which fact was in itself remarkable.

Change, it seemed, was in the air.

“That’s as may be.” Shanta drifting back now from his speculative trance. “But these are hardheaded men we’re talking about, and that bitch Nethena Gral is harder than any of them. It’s going to take more than maybes to loosen their purse strings.”

The trace of a smile touched Archeth’s mouth. “I think I’m going to leave that part to Anasharal.”

To Ringil, it was as if the shade they sat in had deepened for a moment. He’d never much liked the Helmsmen.

“Where are you keeping it?” he asked.

“At my place.” Archeth gestured out to the rail and the glittering sunstruck city beyond. “We were using the palace, but Jhiral found out Anasharal is mobile, and that was the end of that.”

“Fucking pussy.”

Mahmal Shanta glanced at Ringil, fresh interest in his eyes. Archeth saw the look and felt the warning prickle go along her nerves.

But she had to concur. Jhiral had been childishly aghast.

That thing can walk about? The Emperor wide-eyed, staring at her in the gloom of the tower. It has legs? What the fuck are you doing bringing it into my palace?

No point in trying to calm him or explain her observations and inference that Anasharal might be able to walk, but couldn’t walk far. Or that anyway, a being able to eavesdrop on conversations at who knew what remove probably didn’t need to walk about much to achieve its purposes, whatever they might be. She kept silent instead, and made arrangements: Noyal Rakan and his men to escort a carry party of trusted slaves to her home; the Helmsman to be wrapped in sacking and loaded into a nondescript donkey carriage along with a bunch of Kiriath junk from one of the palace storage cellars. More raw material for the jet-black madwoman to ponder over and wreck apart with engineer’s hammers. She already had the reputation—no one would give any of this a second glance.

“The Emperor,” she admonished, “is of the opinion that this enterprise would best be served at some remove from the palace. We are, after all, trying to encourage a spirit of independent enterprise.”

Shanta grunted. “You’re not going to have any problem with that, believe me. Problem is going to be keeping all that independent spirit from sheering off in half a dozen different directions, and running before the wind with its sails in tatters.”

“Ringil?”

Ringil examined his nails. “I think I can keep them in line. Bunch of merchants, aren’t they?”

“These days they are.” There was the edge of a chuckle in Shanta’s voice. “But some of them came the hard road to it. Shendanak started out slitting travelers’ throats in the Dhashara pass and selling their horses at auction. Got the right side of an imperial supply contract for horseflesh just in time to miss out on the gallows. Down deep, he’s still more Majak steppe raider than imperial citizen.”

“Well, I get on well enough with those.” Ringil winked at Archeth. “How’s the Dragonbane keeping, down here in the civilized world?”

“He’s all right,” Archeth estimated. “Bit twitchy at the moment.”

“Can’t wait to see the old thug.”

“You might have to climb a few harem walls.” She knew she sounded bad-tempered, but couldn’t help it. Lack of sleep, lack of krinzanz, lack of Ishgrim—it was all catching up with her at once. And she’d seen the way Egar looked at Ishgrim, had caught him at it a couple of times. “Getting laid’s still his main interest in life. He’s most likely camped out up the hill with his lady friend right now.”

Shanta, waiting politely for them to wrap up the gossip. “You’ll also likely have trouble with Kaptal and Tand. Tand because he despises Shendanak, and Kaptal because he’s another one who made it up from gutter beginnings and never really left them behind. It’ll put his back up just being in the same room as gentry like Gral and Nyanar.”

Ringil shrugged. “Seen that before: rank and file hating the nobles, nobles despising the rank and file. Sounds no worse than any other command I ever had.”

“Yes, my lord Eskiath, but I would remind you, your commands were of military men—men who understood the rigor and discipline of soldiering.”

He thought back to the crew of mercenaries he’d led and then abandoned outside Hinerion. Had to stop a smile crossing his lips. The naval engineer, for all his apparent wisdom in other areas, clearly didn’t have the faintest fucking idea about men of war.

“Soldiers come in all shapes and sizes, my lord Shanta.” And here came the smile anyway, leaking out. “I’ve ridden my share of ill-disciplined bastards, and lived to tell the tale. Your gentry will be safe in my shadow.”

“It’s the gentry that worry me, Gil.” Archeth shot him an admonishing don’t-get-cute look. “Men like Shendanak and Kaptal you can bring to heel—they understand force of will, they understand leadership. It’s a little harder getting past six centuries of selective breeding and entitlement.”

“Well.” Ringil rolled out a remarkable impression of courtly hauteur. “I would remind you, my lady, I have noble roots myself.”

This time Mahmal Shanta did chuckle. “I don’t doubt it, my lord. But I’m afraid nobility from the north will not be counted here in the same coin as imperial title.”

“On my mother’s side”—Ringil, staying in affronted noble character—“I trace a direct line of descent back to the very noblest of this Empire’s, ehm, refugees.”

It got him an unexpected silence.

Shanta glanced at Archeth. She shrugged. “True enough. Driven out in the Ashnal schism, apparently. A lot were.”

“Yes. Yes, I—I thought—” The naval engineer turned to fix Ringil with a fascinated eye. “Something in your face—the cheekbones, the arch of nose—yes, it must be that, of course. Of course. And that skin tone—perfect!”

Ringil gave him a thin smile. It was all a little too close to slave-auction appraisal for his liking. But he caught Archeth’s tiny shake of the head, and he tried his best to keep the steel out of his voice.

“I’m happy you approve, my lord. Given, then, that my face fits so well, perhaps I will not need to break the faces of these other nobles to get their support.”

“Oh, no question,” chortled Shanta, rubbing his age-knobbed hands as if with soap and water. He didn’t seem to have spotted the sudden edge in Ringil’s tone. “Have no fear, my lord Eskiath—we’ll manufacture some very fine cloth from this, some very fine cloth indeed. Whole dynasties were torn down in the Ashnal years. We can load your veins with as much Yhelteth nobility as we like. You’ll see. We’ll have Gral and Nyanar down on bended knee before we’re done.”

Ringil traded looks with Archeth. He cracked a smile, a genuine one this time. Impossible, somehow, not to get caught up in the older man’s enthusiasm.

“Glad to hear it. So when do you want me to meet these gracious gentlemen and lady?”

Shanta pondered. “Better that we postpone your introduction somewhat. I’d like to think seriously about what lineage we attribute to you before we leap into the fray.”

“Yeah, and your Tethanne could use some polish,” said Archeth unkindly.

“At the same time, I don’t believe we should delay our preliminary meetings. There is currently a lull in the Demlarashan insurgency, the northern marches remain stable, at least for now, and in the east our relations with Shaktur are cordial. But all or any of this may change, and sooner than any of us expect. Your Helmsman has chosen an auspicious moment to arrive, Archeth, and I think we must seize that moment while it lasts.”

“Then we’ll need Rakan, at least initially.”

Ringil blinked. Rakan?

“I suspect,” Shanta mused, “that you will need Rakan throughout, regardless of our friend here. The Throne Eternal represent the Emperor, in symbol and in fact. They are his sworn men. I don’t see His Radiance taking kindly to them being excluded.”

“I’m his sworn representative, too.”

“Hmm.”

Ringil caught the undercurrent. Something in the air between these two that they hadn’t bothered to share with him yet. He cleared his throat.

“This Rakan. Any relation of old Faileh?”

Archeth nodded absently. “His younger brother. Seconded when the elder died. He’s supposed to have the command, but Mahmal doesn’t think he’s up to it.”

“He isn’t,” said Shanta gloomily.

“Yes, well, if that’s so, Mahmal, I don’t really see how we can proceed.” Archeth, working on quite exasperated actually. Ringil thought he caught the scraping edge of no krin today in her tone. “We’re going to have a fucking mess on our hands, trying to get this early start you want.”

“It’s a price we’ll just have to—”

“Yeah, a higher price than you—”

“Archeth, it’s worth the—”

“It’s a fucking mist—”

Ringil cleared his throat, loudly. They both shut up and looked at him. He tried out the thin smile again. Couldn’t hurt to practice a little ahead of time.

“It’s perfect,” he told them. “That’s what it is. Perfect.”