The Cold Commands

CHAPTER 35

Banging at the gate. Muffled voices.

Ringil stirred in the broad bed, wine-sodden senses floundering for some clue to his current whereabouts, let alone what was going on outside. He’d been dreaming of Egar—some incoherent nonsense, sitting out on the steppe at night, hearing the lick and splinter of campfire flames and watching the Dragonbane’s bearded face against the spark-ridden dark, watching his lips as they enunciated words Gil kept craning close to catch, but somehow couldn’t make out.

He came up out of it, spiked through with creeping black unease and a sense of time and place gone irredeemably awry…

The damp-earth odors of recent sex suffused the room around him. It was still dark beyond the shutters.

Banging at the—

… banging back the chamber door as they stumbled drunkenly in together. Shoving Noyal Rakan hard against the wooden paneling and pressing up against him. Grins and little growling noises, and then Gil thrust stiffened fingers forward into the young captain’s luxuriant curly locks, tangling there and tugging Rakan’s face in closer for the first stabbing kiss…

Ah.

Final, blessed release from the long, solemn, and unbelievably tedious banquet Shanta had thrown in honor of the Nyanar clan. Father and eldest son of said clan both pontificating across the feast-laden table to their host as only courtiers can. And down the table, Shanta and Nethena Gral making arid, mannered counterpoint. Florid toasts, tossed back and forth like escalating bets in some smug game of flattery and form. Speech after turgid toe-the-line speech to the greater glory of Empire, Emperor, Imperial Charter, and the Most Assured Success of this, Our Current Venture, which cannot fail to Magnify His Radiance’s munificent wisdom in…

He caught Archeth stifling yawns and holding down a glower. Dared not catch her eye thereafter, for fear he would be unable to choke back the bubbles of hilarity rising in his belly. He caught Noyal Rakan’s gaze instead, and held it, gently, feeling it flutter against his own, like a moth in the curl of his closed-up palm.

Beneath the satin drape of the tablecloth, a building heat in his groin.

Raise your glasses, I pray you, gentlemen and ladies, raise your glasses once more and drink. To the Holy Might of Yhelteth and her Godly Appointed Mission to lead humankind out from the Shadow of Lesser…

Yawn.

Later, while Shanta saw the Nyanars and their entourage to the door, and bade them all farewell, Ringil walked behind Rakan through the dimly lamplit corridors of the riverside villa, shepherding the younger man gradually toward the rooms Shanta had given him. It was taut, skin-thin theater. They paused now and then to admire the naval engineer’s taste in art or sculpture, murmured meaningless syllables back and forth on the edge of excited laughter, brushed against each other in seeming accident, turned suddenly to lock gazes then look away, as those rising bubbles in Gil’s belly turned from hilarity into something urgently else… And burst.

Once, just once, inches off that first kiss, Rakan hesitated, Rakan said:

I—my brother, he… He would not—

Fuck your brother, Ringil growled, tongue delirious on the tips of his own teeth. I’m fucking you, not him.

And then it was glorious and burning and heated flesh to flesh as the door slammed shut behind them. It was kissing and clinging and peeling clothes and kneeling, finally, before Rakan’s sculpted soldier’s musculature, taking his swollen prick into his mouth and tasting, sucking in, swallowing, all that velvet flesh like a man at the extremes of thirst, given water at last.

The young captain made noises close to weeping as he came. His hands plastered down, again and again, on Ringil’s head, patting, pressing, as if trying to fit some veil or maybe diadem over the man that was doing this to him.

Ringil rose, grinning vampiric through the taste, enfolded Rakan’s still-shuddering frame in his arms, folded him down to the bed, and turned him over…

Banging at the fucking gate.

Voices, now recognizably barking in coarse Tethanne.

“Open now, in the Emperor’s name!”

Ringil sat up in the sheets. He groped at his side, found the smooth rising slope of Rakan’s torso as the captain propped himself up on one elbow.

A tiny ache welled up inside him at the contact with the other man’s flesh. He blinked, swallowed—sudden shock, as he made the feeling for what it was; an obscure gratitude, that Rakan had stayed. Had not, as Gil had grown so used to expecting in these cases, fled the scene.

“Fuck is going on out there?” he grumbled, scrambling to cover his feelings.

“It is the palace,” said Rakan somberly.

There was the sound of unbolting and opening. Hooves, clattering in on cobbles. Ringil climbed out of bed and went to the window. He slid the edge of the curtain back a judicious half inch.

Down in Shanta’s courtyard, messengers in imperial ocher and black sat their fractious horses while Shanta’s wakened staff boiled about. Ringil watched long enough to see Shanta himself hurry out, wrapping a dressing gown about himself, sparse gray hair stuck up in disarray. He stood looking up at the lead messenger, mouth moving, but there was too much commotion to hear what was being said. Archeth appeared behind him, fully dressed—it didn’t look as if she’d been to bed at all.

Ringil let the curtain fall back, turned back into the room. Rakan was already out of bed, lean and hard in the dim light. Gil sighed.

“Looks like the fun’s over,” he said. “Better get dressed, I suppose.”

A process they were both about midway through when Archeth’s boot heels came tocking down the hallway outside, and she rapped impatiently at the door.

“Gil? Are you still in bed? Didn’t you hear that row out there? How much did you have to drink?”

He unslotted the latch, opened the door a handbreadth, checked she was alone before he swung it wider.

“What the hell are you—” She saw Rakan, seated bare-chested on the side of the bed, bending to his boots. “Oh. Right.”

Ringil leaned on the door frame, kept her pointedly out in the hall. “Want to tell me what all the fuss is about?”

She grimaced. “Yeah. Dragonbane just took on a bunch of the City Guard, down at that mercenary joint by the Span.”

“The Good Luck Pony?”

“Pony Stringer’s Fortune—but they’re calling it the Lizard’s Head these days.”

“Oh, well that’s original.”

“Gil, it doesn’t fucking matter what the place is called. He killed two of the Guard right there, right in front of half the mercenaries in the city. Hurt another three pretty badly, one they reckon won’t live to see the sunrise.”

He could not prevent the smile from rising to his lips. “Told you.”

“Yeah, you told me.” Voice tight with anger. “Laugh it up, Gil. Meanwhile, the Guard Provost wants the King’s Reach deployed. Says he can’t afford to have the Guard’s authority flaunted in a place like that. It sends the wrong signal to all the wrong people. He’s up at the palace now, demanding the Emperor’s hand in the matter.”

“Ah, shit.” Ringil banged his head back on the door frame, then wished fervently that he hadn’t. Closed his eyes against the waves of incipient hangover the blow had stirred. “And Jhiral’s going to cave in, right?”

Archeth cleared her throat, shot a warning look sidelong, past Ringil to the bed and the Throne Eternal captain who sat on it.

“He’s got the Ashant clan leaning on him already for King’s Reach intervention; now the head of his militia wakes him up in the middle of the night and tells him the exact same thing? What would you do?”

“Yeah,” said Ringil drearily. “Makes a soggy kind of sense, I guess.”

“It certainly does.”

Rakan appeared at his shoulder, still fastening his sword harness and jerkin. He swallowed, awkwardly. “I, uh. My lady. I must attend my Emperor. He may require—”

“Yeah, we’re all going,” Archeth said. She looked pointedly at Ringil’s unbuttoned shirt. “Just as soon as everyone’s ready to ride.”

WHICH GOT THEM TO THE PALACE A COUPLE OF HOURS LATER—A GUSTY, bandlit chase through the string of sleepy riverside hamlets where Yhelteth’s outskirts petered out upriver, then into the deserted nighttime streets of the city itself, at speeds you’d simply never manage with daytime traffic. Archeth, Ringil, Rakan, and the messenger squad who’d been sent to find them—six dark figures, cloaks flapping backward from their shoulders, and the drum of hooves at the gallop. All very dramatic, Ringil supposed sourly, tucking a stubborn corner of his shirt into his breeches while he held on to his mount with his thighs, if you happen to be out and about at this gods-forsaken hour and nothing better to do than gape openmouthed at the mysterious riders as they thunder past. Tales to tell your grandchildren, like something out of some marsh dweller myth. Last Ride of the Dark Company, the Messenger Before Dawn, the Fell News That Would Not Wait, so forth…

His head was killing him.

Hoiran curse you, Eg. If you had to take on the City Guard, couldn’t you at least have done it somewhere without witnesses?

They made the palace as dawn was breaking, storming up the hairpin rises of the approach causeway in the graying gloom. Cacophony of six sets of hooves on the Kiriath paving, profaning the early stillness. They reined in at the top behind a yell from the messenger chief.

“The King’s Messenger comes! Open!”

Yawning, shift-end guards came running from their boxes, shocked awake and fumbling halberds as they tried to assemble hard-bitten readiness from the shattered pieces of the night’s sleepy boredom. The messenger bellowed again.

“Open, fools! In the Emperor’s name!”

The gates hinged back, creaking. They rode on through. In the courtyard beyond, a high-ranking slave majordomo whose face Archeth knew scurried forward, arms folded into his robes. Stable slaves swarmed behind him.

“My lady. His Radiance awaits you in the Queen Consort Gardens.”

“Right.” She swung down off her horse and handed over the reins. Feeling a qualified relief now, because she doubted they’d have to face the Ashant family or the rest of the court just yet. Official meetings and grievances were generally dealt with in the throne hall. Elsewhere was for private council. She looked up at Ringil, who had not yet dismounted.

“Follow me,” she told him, switching to Naomic. “And don’t make this any harder than it has to be. Try to keep a civil tongue in your head. If you plan on hanging on to either, that is.”

Ringil sat his horse and grinned evilly down at her. “You wound me, my lady. Am I not of noble imperial blood on my mother’s side?”

“Fuck off, Gil. I’m serious.”

They tramped through the palace environs at a fast march. Long corridors and flagstone expanses of halls and courtyard. They passed slaves scrubbing floors and watering plants. The messenger chief took point, as ritual demanded, but behind him Archeth ushered Rakan into the lead. Most likely Jhiral would have a Throne Eternal guard with him, and they’d respond a lot better to a captain from their own ranks than they would to an armed, sleep-deprived, and hungover Ringil.

Though Rakan himself, hmm, well, now…

Given what she’d glimpsed in Ringil’s bedchamber, the young captain was not at all what she’d imagined him to be.

She shelved the thought. Enough else to worry about right now, don’t you think, Archidi.

Up broad, winding staircases, along colonnaded galleries, into the upper levels. The predicted Throne Eternal were there at the doors to the Queen Consort Gardens, two of them, resplendent in full honor guard rig. They saluted Rakan, and one of them led the party through the dusty, leaf-littered walkways to the balcony, where a lightweight trestle table had been hastily laid with silk cloth and a plethora of filled plates and bowls. Kitchen slaves stood in attendance—behind them more Throne Eternal. His Imperial Radiance Jhiral Khimran sat waiting in a wingback chair, chewing on a leg of roast chicken.

The chief messenger dropped to one knee before him.

“The Lady kir-Archeth,” he announced. “As sought. With her, I bring you Honor Captain Noyal Rakan. And, uhm, Lord Ringil Eskiath of the Glades House in Trelayne.”

He got up again, bowed and got out of the way. Jhiral surveyed the new arrivals without much enthusiasm. He was dressed and booted, which at this hour had to mean he hadn’t been to bed yet, and there was a slightly blurred look to his features that Archeth read as drink, or possibly flandrijn. He’d been experimenting with the drug recently, she knew, working it into his harem sessions.

“Eskiath,” he said, frowning. “Rings a bell. Should I know that name from somewhere?”

Ringil shrugged. “Your father gave me a medal, once.”

“Did he indeed?” Jhiral bit off more chicken, chewed, still frowning. “So you’re a war hero, then. And was I in attendance for this honor?”

Ringil met the Emperor’s eyes. His gaze glittered. “I don’t recall.”

Jhiral stiffened.

“Lord Ringil was instrumental in our victory at Ennishmin last year,” said Archeth hastily. “You’ll remember, I mentioned him to you.”

“Oh, yes.” But the Emperor was not mollified. He studied Ringil with narrow disdain. “Well, that must be it, then. Though, as I understood the tale, you went home at the end, sir knight of Trelayne, back to that miserable huddle of trading posts up north.”

Ringil nodded amiably. “As we always have done when the work of rescuing the Empire is completed. But my lord would be wiser not to put so much trust in tales. They are no substitute for getting out and about as your father did.”

Stunned silence rippled outward from the words—spreading rings from the splash of a raw building block dumped into some ornamental pond. The air seemed to rock with it. The two men stared each other down. The Throne Eternal stirred. Ringil smiled…

Archeth stepped forward, put herself physically between the two of them.

“I have commissioned Lord Ringil to lead our expedition to An-Kirilnar. It’s a role in which he will be invaluable.” Leaning on the last word. “He is helping us with route planning, and will conduct the bulk of the diplomacy when we reach League territory.”

Jhiral relaxed a muscle at a time. He arched an imperial brow. “Diplomacy, you say?”

“Yes, my lord. As a member of the Glades aristocracy, he will have a level of access ideal for our purposes.”

Elaborately raised brows again—Well, if you say so. The Emperor tossed his gnawed chicken bone back onto the trestle, still chewing, and held up one languid hand. A slave hurried forward with a napkin. Jhiral took it and wiped his hands with thoughtful care.

“This meeting,” he said. “Is not about the An-Kirilnar expedition, Archeth.”

“Yes, my lord. I have been made aware of that.”

Jhiral tossed the napkin after the chicken bone. Spared a gesture for Ringil. “So what’s he doing here?”

Just keep your fucking mouth shut, Gil. She rushed in. “Lord Ringil is, uh, acquainted with Egar Dragonbane. Well acquainted.”

“How convenient. We seem to be up to our eyes in war heroes at the moment. Let’s just hope this one knows better how to behave in the absence of war than your dragon-slaying barbarian houseguest.” The imperial gaze flickered back across to Ringil. “You were, I suppose, comrades-in-arms, something like that?”

“Something like that,” Ringil agreed softly.

Jhiral got up. “Well, your comrade-in-arms has managed to set himself a course for the executioner’s block, I’m afraid. That’s if I can talk Saril Ashant’s grieving family down from their demands for death by the chair or in the Chamber of Confidences. There it is. War hero honor doesn’t cut much cloth, I’m afraid, when you’ve slaughtered another war hero in his own bedchamber. Oh, and, uhm, outraged the virtue of his good lady wife into the bargain—apparently. There’s really no coming back from something quite that monumentally stupid. The death warrant is already drawn and signed.”

“That’s unfortunate.” A cold edge creeping into Ringil’s voice now. Archeth shot him a warning glance.

“Isn’t it.” The Emperor had given them his back. He browsed the food on his table, voice elaborately conversational. “Three Guardsmen dead, Archeth. Another two crippled, one probably for life. And this in front of a tavern stuffed with outlander sellswords. It really isn’t what I need right now. I have the Guard Provost screaming for palace support, and I have Kadral Ashant muttering around the court about ungrateful leadership. All because you would not have me deploy the Reach.”

“I am sorry, my lord. It seems I underestimated the—”

“Oh, horseshit, Archeth!” Fists slammed down on the tabletop. Platters jumped with the force of it. Jhiral spun about, face staining dark, strode at her as if to deal her a blow. “Horse, Shit! Do you really think I’m that much of a fool? You didn’t want him caught. You thought he’d quit the city, and you wanted him to get a good head start. Well, he hasn’t quit the city, has he? Has he?”

He hung three feet away, as if tugged to a halt there on some invisible cable, glaring at her. Down at his side, the ringed fingers of his right hand twitched with suppressed violence.

On her left, Ringil moved—a fractional, indefinable shift of stance, caught in the corner of her eye, more sensed than seen. He was, she knew without needing to see it, watching Jhiral, watching that twitching, imperial hand as it struggled not to curl into a fist. He was gone with it, into the awful, gently amused detachment that presaged the steel song, the only one the Ravensfriend knew how to sing.

She felt the air thicken with implication, felt the balance in the balcony space teeter with it, and begin to tip. If Jhiral made that fist and raised it…

Gil would kill him—she knew it as clearly as if it was already done.

She raised her arms, open admission of guilt, and her left arm hanging just a moment longer than the right, blocking out Ringil and the Ravensfriend’s flow. She hoped it would be enough. She bowed her head to her Emperor.

“You are correct, my lord. The fault here is mine.”

“It most certainly fucking is, Archeth.” A rancid satisfaction in his face and tone, there and just as quickly bleeding away. He cleared his throat, gestured carefully with the hand that had so recently longed toward a fist. “Well, then. No point dwelling on your manifest failings in this, I suppose. It’s left to me, once more, to make the difficult decisions and do the right thing. The King’s Reach are out, Archeth. It’s done. I signed the order an hour ago. They will bring this Dragonbane down, dead or alive, and justice will be done. In the—”

“My lord, if I—”

“In, the, meantime, my lady.” He waited to see if she would dare interrupt again, saw she would not, and went on in brisker tones. “The Reach commander will want to interview you for clues as to their quarry’s habits and haunts. Your northern friend here, too, I imagine. Rakan?”

Noyal Rakan jumped. “My lord?”

“Convey the Lady kir-Archeth and her noble companion to the King’s Reach barracks wing, with all haste. Taran Alman is waiting for them there.”

“Yes, my lord. At once.”

They turned to go. Archeth at speed, to hide what was in her eyes and the seething urge to speak what boiled behind her gritted teeth. Ringil took a little longer, and his gaze measured the Emperor with speculative calm.

Jhiral saw the look and bristled. “Was there something you wanted to say to me, Ringil Eskiath? Some suit or request, perhaps?”

“No.” Ringil did not move. “None. I believe Your Imperial Shininess has said everything worth saying here. It falls now only to execution.”

Jhiral laughed, but there was an uncertain rising tremor at the edge of it that he could not disguise. Archeth and Rakan both heard it, and both stopped dead in their tracks. The Throne Eternal honor guard heard it, and grew intent.

Ringil spared their stirring a flickered glance, a swift calculation, then he fixed Jhiral again with his gaze.

“Have I amused Your Shininess in some way?”

Jhiral cleared his throat, turned a little to his slaves and soldiers, playing for the gallery. “Well, your facility with our tongue is to be commended, my lord. Quite remarkable in a northerner, truly. But it seems your range in Tethanne is somewhat limited after all. You mean Radiance.”

“Do I?” said Ringil tonelessly.

He held the Emperor’s eye a moment longer, as if fixing the imperial countenance in some special place of memory. His lips twisted in a smile as thin as the scar across his cheek. He nodded as if told something by a voice that others could not hear.

Then he turned and walked away.

“SO THAT’S WHAT YOU’VE BEEN DOING FOR A LIVING THE LAST TEN years, is it?”

“If you mean serving the Burnished Throne and its people to the best of my ability,” hissed Archeth, “then yes, it is. I saw it as somehow more productive than hiding in a mountain backwater, spinning yarns about my heroic exploits for pocket money, and paying the stable boys to fuck me.”

“Well, some of us can’t afford slaves for that particular purpose.”

“Fuck you, Gil!”

Jagged loss of control on her accented Naomic, and a yell that had to carry. They’d jammed to an abrupt halt in the midst of the gardens, barely out of earshot of the balcony and the imperial party, and almost nose-to-nose. Rakan stood by, unable to follow the sudden switch to a foreign tongue, but needing little insight to understand the tone. Ringil sneering now, hungover ill temper flaring, opening his mouth to—

Behind him, something gusted past, keening.

He felt its touch distinctly, like cool fingers on the nape of his neck. He frowned, forgot what he was going to say.

A single leaf spiraled down from above, caught in a blade of sunlight lancing through the trees. He watched it fall, bemused. Sparse morning light gleamed farther off in the foliage, but it seemed cold and distant. Here, around him, the air was shadowy and cool, and something…

Something was not right.

“If they kill the Dragonbane,” he said, more quietly. “I will put this palace to the torch. You know I will.”

“Yeah,” Archeth snapped, apparently untouched by the cool shift around them. “You and whose army? The war is over, Gil. This isn’t Gallows Gap.”

“No. It isn’t as clean.”

“Oh, give me a fucking break.” She raised spread palms, struck them to her forehead, a gesture so purely Kiriath, so purely her father, that for a moment he saw Flaradnam’s features stamped across hers in the act. “This is civilization, Gil. You know, the thing we were fighting to save? You—you and Egar both—you can’t just stalk about, steel in hand, murdering your grievances.”

“That’s right. These days, that’s reserved for the likes of that little prick back there and his cabal. Civilization. Privileges of rank.”

“You had rank, Gil. You threw it away.”

“Yeah. And you clung to yours.”

Her eyes widened. She drew back, as if a jagged chasm had opened up through the paving between them.

“My lady,” Rakan interjected. He looked at Ringil, wet his lips. “My lord. Taran Alman is waiting. The Emperor’s will is clear. We should not delay.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Ringil nodded, switched to Tethanne. “He’s right, Archeth. You’d better not keep the Reach waiting.”

“We, Gil.” Urgently, because she could see what was in his eyes. “We had better not keep them waiting.”

But he was already moving. Past Rakan with a glance that said all he needed to—the Throne Eternal captain lowered his head and gave him ground. Away from Archeth’s desperate voice, calling him back.

“Gil! Gil, you can’t just—”

“Tell them everything you can dredge up,” he told her, not bothering to use Naomic, not bothering to turn. “The more, the better. Keep them talking.”

“I can’t just let you go,” she shouted.

“You can’t stop me.” His voice trailed back to her, oddly faded amid the greenery and growth. “Grashgal and your father saw to that. You know what they wrote on this blade.”

He turned a corner, and was gone.

The morning light seemed to strengthen in his absence.