The Cold Commands

CHAPTER 33

“And how exactly did you come by that murderous little item?”

Ringil reached up and touched the pommel of the Ravensfriend, where it rose at his shoulder. “It was forged for me at An-Monal by Grashgal the Wanderer.”

“Yes—actually, I was talking to the sword.”

HELMSMEN—HE’D NEVER MUCH LIKED THEM, EVEN IN THE OLD DAYS. Too little readability in their immobile iron bodies, when you could actually see one, and in their disembodied avuncular voices when you couldn’t. And too fucking impressed with themselves by half. Personally, he told Archeth, when the subject of Anasharal came up, I’d trust one of those things about as far as I could carry its melted-down carcass up the street. They’re no better than demons—it’s like keeping the Dark Court in a fucking bottle on your mantelpiece. Who knows what they’re thinking, or what they want?

In truth, he was exaggerating a little for effect. During the war, he’d spent time at An-Monal and conversed with Manathan on and off, albeit mostly in the company of its Kiriath handlers. The Helmsman had given him no reason to dislike it, if you didn’t include the run of tiny cold shivers he felt every time it spoke unexpectedly to him out of the bedrock air. To Grashgal and the others, the creatures were part of the furniture, and over time Ringil had found himself able to cultivate a similar attitude. But it didn’t change the fact that you were dealing with something as inert as a sword or a temple wall, and it still—apparently—had intelligence far greater than your own. And seemed to enjoy reminding you of the fact.

The Dark Court and the dwenda at least had the courtesy to appear human.

“Well, you’re still going to have to talk to it.” Archeth, pragmatic as ever when anything other than her own life was concerned. “It’s the heart of the expedition, it’s the reason we’re going in the first place.”

“Yeah, makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

“What?” They were riding back from the Shanta boatyards, side by side through noon city bustle and heat. But even against the backdrop hubbub of the streets and clop of their horses’ hooves on cobbles, he could hear the irritable tension clambering upward in her voice. “Makes you wonder what?”

He sighed. They were long overdue for this conversation. He’d been putting it off for days.

Might as well get it over with.

“Archeth, come on. A watchtower city in the ocean, a clan dedicated to standing eternal guard down the centuries? That’s not how people live, and you know it. Not even your people. Anasharal is spinning you a fireside yarn for children. You don’t believe it any more than I do. That’s not what this is about.”

“You know”—a studied calm in her voice now, a signal he knew for the warning smolder of staved-off rage—“I am getting a little fucking tired of hearing men explain to me what my real motivations are. If you’re so sure we’re wasting our time, then why did you—”

“I didn’t say that.” He shifted sideways in his saddle to face her better. “I didn’t say we’re wasting our time. Look, maybe An-Kirilnar does exist. And maybe, just maybe, it hasn’t been plundered the way An-Naranash was. The Hironish are tough to get out to, true enough, those are bad waters, so maybe this place has been overlooked. That’s certainly what your merchant pals have got to be hoping. So, sure, I’ll break heads and keep order for you, and I’ll ride along with you when you go. It’s something to do, it’ll keep me busy. But please don’t tell me you really think we’re going to find a bustling little colony of Kiriath custodians up there, keeping an eye on some wet chunk of granite with a tomb on top, cheerfully passing down their mission from father to son for the past four thousand years and acting like the rest of the world doesn’t exist. I mean, is that likely?”

“It isn’t impossible.”

He sighed again. “No, it isn’t impossible. Very little seems to be impossible in this world. But is it really what you think you’ll find?”

“So, what? You think Anasharal is just making this up?” The evasion was blatant, the scratchy signs of krinzanz denial right behind it in the uneven tone of her voice. “To what fucking purpose, Gil? Answer me that. A cabal of misfit rich fucks, ships built and equipped, men hired and trained, an expedition to a place that doesn’t exist—why would a Helmsman want all that?”

He shrugged. “I think we’ve covered this ground. You’re trying to second-guess something completely inhuman. Why should its motivations make any sense to us?”

They rode on without speaking, a dozen or so clopping horse strides.

“Yeah, well,” Archeth repeated, with evident sour satisfaction. “You’re still going to have to talk to it.”

HE WAS NEVER VERY SURE WHY HE WENT ARMED INTO ITS PRESENCE.

There was a certain dress formality in the League cities for noblemen. War was, after all, their trade, and it seemed appropriate they should represent the fact in public. Before the Scaled Folk came, the tradition had ebbed somewhat. The more mannered among the gentry adopted flimsy court swords with more attention given to their gaudy scabbards and guards than to the plain steel sheathed within. But with the war and the subsequent upheaval, heavy blades were in evidence once more, and Ringil, on his return to Trelayne last year, had found himself unexpectedly fashionable.

But it wasn’t that.

Perhaps, then, it was simply that the Ravensfriend was his link with the world of the Kiriath, his contract of passage and letter of recommendation to everything Anasharal represented. Grashgal forged it in workshops Ringil was never given admission to, out of alloys humans had no names for and containing, Ringil sometimes suspected, mechanisms the Kiriath didn’t like to talk about. If, he reasoned one drunken night on the steppe with Egar, those cryptic fuckers have Helmsmen to help them sail their fireships, why wouldn’t they have something like that to help them fight their wars? Something—I don’t know—something aware?

Egar had cast a glance at the Ravensfriend where it lay on the ground by the fire. He smirked.

Yeah, thought I seen you talking to it a couple of times. Stroking it, like. You want to watch that shit, Gil.

Ringil threw a boot at him.

He put the memory away.

“Talk to the sword all you like,” he told Anasharal evenly. “I’m the one in charge here.”

“Well, if you say so.”

It sat on a low, ornate table, set to one side of the room’s ample hearth. High-angled morning sunlight poured in from the windows in the eastern wall, made odd facets and chinks in its rounded upper surface shine like jewels. Its limbs—if that was what they were—spread out evenly around its body like a marsh spider’s legs, rising to a jointed midpoint, then dipping to sharp ends that dug visibly into the wood of the table top. Archeth had told him it couldn’t move with much speed or competence, but to Ringil’s uneasy eye the thing looked poised to leap or scuttle off somewhere at a moment’s notice.

“Actually, the Lady kir-Archeth Indamaninarmal says so.” He unslung the Ravensfriend and leaned it carefully against one side of the mantelpiece. In the hard, bright light, dust motes seemed to coalesce around the weapon as he let it go. “She’s named me expeditionary commander. And since she has the Emperor’s ear in this matter, I’d say that’s about as final as it’s going to get.”

“And is the Lady kir-Archeth aware of just how popular you are in northern climes at this precise moment?”

Ringil lowered himself into the armchair opposite. “I’d say she has an inkling.”

“And His Imperial Radiance?”

“I could give a back-alley fuck what that asshole thinks.”

“I see. That good old dead-man-walking defiance, too.” Impossible to tell from the tone if the Helmsman was mocking him or not. “Yes, I can see why they chose you.”

“Chose me?” Blurted out, before he could help himself.

“You know what I’m talking about—Dragonbane.”

Breathe. Build a thin smile. “No one calls me that.”

“Shame. It must be upsetting, the lack of proper recognition.”

“Well.” Ringil settled deeper into the chair. Examined the nails of his right hand. “It was a joint effort.”

The quiet stretched. He watched the dust motes dance around the Ravensfriend’s hilt. On the table, one of Anasharal’s limbs twitched. The point lifted fractionally, tapped at the wooden surface like an impatient schoolmaster’s finger.

“The Ahn Foi are not your friends, Ringil Eskiath. You should keep that in mind.”

“I don’t”—despite the cold shiver through him—“recognize that name.”

“Do you not? Try, then, the Immortal Watch. The Murderers of the Muhn. Hoiran’s Band. The Sky Dwellers. The Dark Court. Any of those ring a bell?”

He stared back at the machine, fighting off memories of Dakovash. “I have nothing to do with the Dark Court.”

“Good,” said Anasharal, suddenly brisk. “That’s a healthy attitude. You’ll live longer.”

Ringil glanced toward the hearth, for all that it was cold and ashen at this hour of the day. Fought down a creeping impression that the Helmsman didn’t believe a word he’d just said.

“The Lady kir-Archeth tells me,” he said, “that An-Kirilnar was constructed to guard against the return of an ancient evil. A human ally of the dwenda.”

“Yes.”

“She says you referred to him as the Ilwrack Changeling.”

“Yes.” A certain archness crept into Anasharal’s tone. “Is that name familiar to you?”

Like a blow under the heart, he was back in the Gray Places.

Seethlaw, introducing his sister. Her archaic, mangled Naomic.

I am with name Risgillen of Ilwrack…

“What can you tell me about him?”

“About him?” The Helmsman’s tone was shot through with definite amusement now. “Or about the Aldrain clan that fostered him?”

Ringil manufactured a shrug. “Is there some reason you wouldn’t tell me about both?”

Quiet crept across the room between them. The Ravensfriend stood wreathed in dancing dust and light. The Helmsman tapped the table again—with every appearance, Ringil thought, of pettish ill humor.

“I know what you are, Eskiath,” it said. “Don’t think for a moment that I don’t.”

Ringil let that one sit, let it sink away into the quiet. He kept his face an immobile mask. Finally, he set one ankle four-square across his knee, leaned forward in his seat with a frown, and brushed fluff from his boot.

“Care to elaborate on that?”

Tap-tap. Quiet.

“Oh, very well…” Anasharal’s voice took on a slightly singsong cadence. “The Ilwrack Changeling was born of a noble house whose name is now lost. As a child, he probably spent—are you getting this, Ringil Eskiath?—he probably spent as much of his time in the Aldrain realm as on Earth, and from this he derived his powers. Changeling is technically a misnomer, a misappropriated marsh dweller myth applied to those among the human ruling classes who were chosen for their great beauty and strength of intellect by the Aldrain overlords, and borne away at an early age to learn the culture of the Ageless Realm. It was, in its way, not much different from the military training noble males receive in the Empire or the League today. Then as now, their mothers must bid them farewell, give them up into the arms of terrible strangers, and mourn their long absences.

“Many Aldrain clans peopled the Earth in those times. The Aldrain walked among humans, and it was no more remarked upon than the Kiriath walking among humans these last centuries. Marriage unions between the races were not uncommon, though they rarely bore issue. Friendships and family ties sprang up. Such issue as there was, was honored. Many clans took changelings into the Ageless Realm, and many human noble houses gave away their offspring to such honor with joy. But no name among those clans stood in such high regard as that of Ilwrack—the royal house, the instigators and leaders of the Repossession. And to be chosen by the clan Ilwrack was the highest of honors. Its scions took only the very best and the brightest, opened to them every secret of the Aldrain race, and then flung them back into the world as their most powerful and faithful servants. For this has ever been the way of the Aldrain—not to rule subject races by their own hand, but to find those among the subject race who can be groomed and fit to rule on their behalf.”

Ringil grunted. “Been ever the way of anyone with half a brain and a limited purse to pay the levy.”

“Yes—well.” A disapproving pause, then Anasharal resumed, in lofty, lecturing tones. “The Changeling, then, was singled out by a young Ilwrack scion more or less from the cradle. They say the child was so beautiful that the Aldrain lord was bewitched despite himself. That he fell in love with all the impulsive passion of his people, and would not be denied. Bided his time for the brief cycles of human youth, taught and shepherded the boy through what he would need to see and know, took the resulting young man and ushered him through the Dark Gate younger than any the Aldrain had ever taken before. Gifted him early, you see, wrapped the first of his own cold legion about him while he was still in his teens. He must, just as the legend says, have been very smitten to bestow such power. But then the Changeling’s eyes, they say, were the green of sunlight through tree canopies, his smile, even as a child, could turn your heart over. When he grew to manhood, he was tall and long-limbed, and—”

“This Aldrain lord.” Ringil kept his voice neutral. “He have a name?”

“It is lost,” said Anasharal succinctly.

“Like so much of the detail in this story, it seems.” Ringil rubbed idly at a scuff on the leather of his boot. “Tell me something, Helmsman. Are you sure there’s a phantom island up there beyond Hironish? Are you sure there’s a city in the ocean keeping guard? You wouldn’t be making this whole thing up, would you?”

“Is the Ghost Isle not plotted on the maps of your own city’s shipmasters?”

“On some of them, yeah. So is the site of a floating star that crashed into the western ocean a hundred thousand years ago, when the gods fought for mastery of the heavens.”

“Well, maybe that’s there as well.”

“Archeth says you claim to have seen the Ghost Isle before you fell to Earth. That you have been watching the surface of the world for thousands of years. That suggests to me you would have seen this floating star as well.”

Brief hesitation. “Perhaps.”

Ringil nodded. Went on rubbing at the scuff mark on his boot. “So is it there or not?”

The hesitation ran longer this time. Tap-tap went one of the thing’s angled limbs.

“No,” Anasharal said finally. “It’s not.”

Ringil nodded again. “Was it ever there?”

“It may have been. That was before my time. But if it existed outside of myth, then it sank. Fallen stars do not float.”

“Islands do not come and go like pirate vessels, either.”

“This one does.”

“I DON’T KNOW,” HE TOLD ARCHETH THE NEXT MORNING. “IT’S LYING about something. I’d put money on it. Maybe not the Ghost Isle, maybe not even An-Kirilnar. But there’s something going on, something more than we’re being told.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.” He nodded at the ceiling, up to the room where the Helmsman was kept. “Like I keep telling you, Archeth, we’re out of our depth. You think this thing is on your side just because Manathan and the rest did what your father’s people told them to. But you aren’t your father, and this Helmsman wasn’t around back then. It’s come from somewhere else, and there’s no reason to suppose it plays by the same rules as the others.”

“Manathan commended Anasharal to me, Gil. Manathan sent us out there to collect the damn thing in the first place.”

Ringil shrugged. “Then maybe the rules have changed for Manathan, too.”

Archeth brooded on that for a while.

“I’ll talk to Angfal,” she decided finally. “I don’t believe there’s some evil conspiracy of Helmsmen all of a sudden. If something is going on, Angfal will have something to say on the subject.”

“Yeah, something cryptic and snide.” Ringil yawned into his fist. He’d been up all night arguing with Shendanak and Tand about escort logistics. “Any news on Eg?”

She shook her head. “Gone like smoke. The Guard Provost is making a big thing about turning the city upside down, but so far it’s all noise.”

“What I thought. They don’t have the—”

A diffident knock. The door eased open and Kefanin poked his head through the gap.

“My lord Ringil?”

“Yeah?” If Shendanak was back with more fucking names of cousins you could trust with your life, seriously, he was going to…

“Captain Rakan of the Throne Eternal to see you, my lord.”

“Oh.” He looked at Archeth, who just shrugged. “All right, then. Show him in.”

“He said he would wait for you in the courtyard.”

“The courtyard?”

Not that it was an unpleasant venue. Archeth’s house was built, like most of the properties on this side of the boulevard, in traditional Yhelteth corral fortress fashion. High walls and two-story construction around a broad open airspace that in antiquity would have served to shelter livestock from rustlers and wolves alike. In its urban incarnation, the space was cobbled and studded with a trio of ornamental fountains. On the stables side, in faint echo of tradition, there were hitching rails and a drinking trough, but elsewhere the inward-facing walls of the courtyard boasted stone benches set under awnings and trellis ceilings tricked out with crimson-flowering creeper.

Beneath one of which latter he found Noyal Rakan, waiting. The young captain was resplendent in full Throne Eternal dress uniform, rigged with a sword that owed more to soldiering than display, and cutting, truth be told, a rather fetching figure all around. But, Gil noticed as he and Kefanin approached, the young man’s demeanor was no match for his imperial finery. Instead, Rakan stood irresolute and staring at the sun-dappled ground, as if hemmed in by the beams of light that spilled through the foliage overhead. He turned awkwardly at the sound of their footfalls on the cobbles, and he stuck out his hand with a heartiness that Gil made for counterfeit.

“Captain Rakan.” Ringil made the clasp, and tried to read the younger man’s sun-striped face for clues. “To what do I owe this honor?”

“The honor is mine.” Rakan produced a smile that had most of the characteristics of a wince. “To serve under such a commander is…”

The words trailed off.

“Difficult?” Ringil hazarded. “Irritating? Don’t worry about it. Been upstaged the same way myself a couple of times, and once by a real king-sized asshole. Stings a bit at first, but after a while you’ll see I’m doing you a favor.”

The Throne Eternal’s eyes widened. “No, my lord, I have only respect for your record and reputation.”

The words lay drying in the sunlit air. Ringil blinked. Groped for his composure.

“Well, that… suggests, Captain”—he licked the lips of a smile he found he’d suddenly grown—“that you’ve heard very little about me.”

“I’ll bring lemonade,” said Kefanin hastily, and left.

“I have heard of Gallows Gap,” said Rakan with an odd, quiet fervor. “And I have heard of Beksanara, too. I know and have spoken with men who were in my brother’s command, who saw what you did there.”

Gallows Gap. Beksanara. The siege of Trelayne. You gather the names like dirt under your fingernails, no way to scrub it out.

And all the young men line up, to admire the fucking manicure.

Ringil mastered his smile. He cleared his throat, gestured at the nearest bench. “Shall we, uh, sit down?”

“Yes. Gladly.”

They took station at opposite ends of the bench. Rakan stretched out long, slim legs in cavalry boots and leaned back. Gil felt a suddenly risen pulse tripping in his throat. He’d missed the cues before, registered them, if at all, for that mannered laxness that the Yhelteth upper class were wont to deploy as proof of their better-than-peasant standing. But now, belatedly, it was dawning on him that Throne Eternal captain Noyal Rakan was, in at least one fashion, very different from his elder sibling.

“I’m very sorry about your brother,” he said awkwardly. “He was a fine soldier.”

“And you led him to a”—the younger Rakan swallowed. “A fine and honorable death. Defending the Empire against a great evil. He would not have had it any other way.”

Actually, I more or less embarrassed him into it, Ringil recalled silently. I dared him to stand and die at Beksanara, and he did it because there was no way he could let a degenerate northerner make him look bad in front of his men.

“So,” he said, for something to say. “They have given you his command.”

Rakan shook his head quickly. “His rank only. Throne Eternal service is in our family, we have provided the Khimrans with three generations of bodyguards and retainers. On my father’s death, Faileh rose to the post. Now I…” A brief, fluttered gesture. “Well, it is traditional.”

“Tradition, eh. How’s that working out for you?”

The young captain met his eyes for a moment, then looked away. “I, well… it’s difficult. You are measured against the other man, always.”

“Yeah, that can be tough.”

“I wanted,” Rakan blurted, “to thank you. For your intervention the other day. I am accustomed to dealing with soldiers. I have little experience of this kind of thing—merchants and entrepreneurs, men with power and wealth but no ethic of service to either Holy Revelation or Empire. It is not… That is, I would not have believed it could be so…”

“My pleasure.” Ringil lifted a languid, dismissive arm. “We’re a whole city of merchants up in Trelayne, even those who work hard at pretending otherwise. The League is built on trade these days, not conquest. I’m used to it.”

The Throne Eternal captain blushed. “I did not mean to—”

“Insult me?” Gil grinned. “Didn’t you hear the Lady kir-Archeth at dinner the other night? I’m of noble imperial stock on my mother’s side. Besides.” He slouched a little, dropped that languid hand to his thigh and left it there. “I don’t exactly fit in, back in Trelayne. I am not what you’d call a pillar of mainstream society there. If you catch my meaning.”

“I—yes.” Hurriedly: “My lord Ringil, I have been considering some of the logistical issues for the coming expedition. Now, with plague and slave rebellion rumored around Hinerion, we will most likely need to avoid the northern march coast. Which means, of course, a lengthier initial voyage, and landfall in Gergis may be much farther west.”

“Yes, quite.” He fought for a detached curiosity of tone. “Slave rebellion, you say?”

“So it appears. Reports from the Tlanmar garrison are garbled, but the garrison commander seems certain that at least one slave caravan has risen up against its chains and slaughtered its masters. There may be others. And with the plague rampant, the Tlanmar commander is not prepared to risk sending a force into Hinerion, so we really have very little idea what’s happening. Of course, we have until next spring, but everything seems to indicate we should bypass Hinerion if we can.”

Ringil put together a fresh smile. “Well, it’s not much of a town, Hinerion. No loss there.”

“Uh, yes. I’ve heard that.”

“Though, of course, every town has its less conventional side. Every city is possessed of streets that its more mannered citizens might not like to talk about. Even Yhelteth, unless it’s much changed since my last visit.”

Rakan held his eye this time.

“It is not much changed,” he said.