The Cold Commands

CHAPTER 8

They cast off mooring from the iron quays an hour after dawn—a leisurely enough start by military standards, but Archeth wanted plenty of light in the sky to reassure the men. She stood at the starboard rail and watched as the Sword of Justice Divine drifted out on the swirl of the river, started to turn in the current, and then stiffened and quivered as the oars dug in along her flanks. The stroke drum boomed belowdecks, the pulse of it throbbing up through the planking under Archeth’s feet, and she heard the caller start the cadence:

And so on.

She let it wash over her, faint smile of recognition and then the words rinsing out in their own familiarity. Not a bad choice of chantey—the brutal shore-leave bravado in the lyrics might serve to bolster some nerve in men who’d gone to their bedrolls the night before amid mutterings of sorcery and demonic visitation.

And hadn’t woken up much better.

The frigate slugged its way upriver to the beat of the drum, the sky to the southeast now flushed deeper with the glare of a sunrise still hidden behind the long shoulder of An-Monal. Archeth leaned on the rail, eyes screwed up against the light, staring at the distant smoke.

It hadn’t changed since daybreak—a single, thin column in rising charcoal, like some craftsman’s sketch line drawn on the brightening blue tile of the sky. She’d woken at dawn to the sounds of the men as they spotted it. Graying light from the east outside her cabin window, and excited calls back and forth, building to a small storm of debate and disconcerted oaths, until Senger Hald came down the gangplank and bellowed them into quiet.

If he had misgivings of his own, he hid them well. Tasks were reaffirmed, the camp along the quays was struck, the frigate loaded for the off. The marines went about their work efficiently enough, but she heard their voices as they passed muttering back and forth below her cabin on the quay. They were mostly devout men, in their own rough fashion, and this was just too close a match for some of the more lurid prophesying rants in the chapters of the Revelation dealing with the Last Battle for the Divine. Demonic fire by night, and now something was burning in the east. Draw your own conclusions.

The sun slid up over the slope of the volcano like an incandescent coin, unstuck itself from the skyline, and started to rise. Archeth yawned and thought she might need more coffee. She hadn’t slept well in her stateroom. Had, in fact, rolled back and forth the whole night, tugged in and out of dreams, as if the frigate were plowing through heavy seas. Chalk up another delight to quitting the krinzanz. She didn’t remember the detail of the dreams, except that her father walked in them, and was not well, and warned her constantly of something whose impending form and nature she had not yet learned enough to grasp.

You must try, she thought she recalled him pleading. You must keep trying.

Big, blunt hands braced forward and wide apart on the table of scattered charts, eyes that glittered in the gloom, and a thin moaning outside the window that might have been someone in pain, or some Kiriath machine she did not understand, or possibly both.

If you do not try now, who will? Who is left, Archidi?

And then she knew, with the abrupt certainty of dreams, that he was dead, and she was next, and the thin moaning could only come closer, pressing up to the glass, peering in and she was—

Awake. Like the snap of a twig underfoot.

Staring across the cabin into empty gloom.

And so on, again and again, as the night wore slowly down on the hard-edged grind of her thoughts. Until dawn seeped in at the window like some pallid, halfhearted salvation, and gifted her with temporary purpose.

A second yawn swamped her. She blinked in the sunlight, took the hint, and went down to the galley. On her way back up, hands cradled around the warm ceramic mug, she ran into Hanesh Galat.

“Good morning, my lady.”

“Yeah.” She was already past him on the companionway, heading up. Trying not to hear as he called after her.

“Might I, uhm, join you?”

She made an indistinct noise, which he apparently took for assent. He trailed her to the rail, leaned there a diplomatic distance off her right elbow.

“A beautiful morning,” he said, awkwardly.

She stared down at the wash of orange-gold on the rippling water, the glistening churn of the oars. Krinzanz, krinzanz—my soul for a quarter ounce. She held herself down to a stark civility. “I guess.”

“Well, uh…” Galat hesitated. It made him seem oddly boyish. “You see, I’m from the north, originally. Vanbyr, near enough. We aren’t so lucky with the sun up there.”

Or anything else, lately, she just stopped herself from saying.

But scenes from the rout of the Vanbyr uprising marched by in her head like a column of leering trolls. Shrieks and smoke, the hovels burning in the countryside, the choking, pleading figures thrust back inside at pike-point when they tried to stumble out. Severed heads kicked like footballs in the cobbled city streets, infants thrown from upper windows and spitted on swords for sport while their mothers wept and howled and were raped to provide more conventional recreation for the imperial soldiery.

It was the Emperor’s command, and it was carried out to the letter. Akal the Great wanted an example made, a lesson given in what happens when an imperial border province gets ideas about independence. And all who were at Vanbyr agreed that the lesson had been given with magisterial force—though detail was of course decorously reworked to suit the court’s finer sensibilities. As for the man himself—aging and increasingly infirm from the toll of the injuries he’d sustained during the war, Akal was unable to ride with his army to Vanbyr, and so did not see the various ways in which his forces covered themselves in glory.

Archeth, as attached court observer for the action, had been only too viciously glad to bridge the gap, to bear accurate tidings home to her ailing Emperor, and recount them to him in careful, repeated detail, while he lay on his sickbed and muttered about necessity and would not meet her eyes.

After the succession, when the court murmurs against Jhiral started, she surprised herself with the withering tide of contempt she felt for those who murmured and the selective memories of the father they apparently retained.

And she was almost glad when Jhiral’s reprisals began.

Almost.

“You came to the capital while you were young?” she asked Galat, for want of something to chase out the memories.

“Before the uprising, yes.” Maybe he’d seen the shadow pass across her face. He cleared his throat. “I was selected for the Mastery at nine. It was a great honor for my family.”

“I suppose so.”

“Yes. Service to one’s fellow man may take many forms, but those who serve the Revelation are privileged beyond measure.”

Archeth deadpanned it. “They certainly are.”

“But for all that, I think my father would have liked, maybe even preferred me to hold a commission. We are traditionally a military family.”

“Then your father must be delighted with the recent direction of the Mastery’s teachings. Every faithful adherent shall then consider himself a warrior for the cause of the righteous, bearing not only the word of the Revelation, but also its holy sword.”

Hanesh Galat cleared his throat again. “There is actually some textual debate about the intrinsic meaning in that last image.”

“Not according to Pashla Menkarak there isn’t.”

Another awkward pause, long enough this time that Archeth glanced around to see if Galat was still there. He looked sheepishly away.

“Arch-Invigilator Menkarak is, uhm, a very learned man. A fine scholar of the Revelation and an incisive interpreter of doctrine. A fine writer, one of the Mastery’s finest. But as I am sure he would accept, his opinion is mortal and therefore potentially flawed.”

“You’ve met him?”

“Uh, not personally, no.”

“Didn’t think so.”

A silence opened up between them, and she thought maybe now he’d piss off. But no such luck. His hands mated and twisted on the rail, he shifted about as if tethered there. She could feel him marshaling the words in his throat, dismissing them, selecting again. In a better mood, she might have helped him out.

But she wasn’t in a better mood.

“This, uhm, disenchantment with the Revelation’s temporal representatives,” he tried finally. “It’s not unexpected for me.”

“No?”

“No. I am quite aware that your recent interactions with the Citadel have not been, shall we say, amicable. I have been… made aware of that.”

Archeth’s last direct interaction with a representative of the Citadel had involved slitting his throat in broad daylight on a public thoroughfare. She kept her eyes on the passing riverbank and her tone even.

“You have a diplomatic way with words, Invigilator Galat.”

“Yes, uhm, thank you.” He would not look directly at her. But he seemed to seize some kind of courage as he blushed. “We are not all in accord with Arch-Invigilator Menkarak, my lady. We are not all filled with hate. You should perhaps keep that in mind.”

And then, to her surprise, he actually did leave her to herself.

SHORTLY BEFORE NOON, THE SWORD OF JUSTICE DIVINE PLOWED INTO A mudbank not listed on the charts, and stuck fast.

There was no warning—just the sudden jolt and then a shuddering, groaning sound under the hull, like some monstrous donkey they’d just hit. The deck jumped violently, and tipped. Archeth staggered with the impact, would have gone over on her arse but for Senger Hald’s steadying hand on her shoulder. A couple of the younger marines standing about nearby did go over, to jeers and general hilarity from their peers. Somewhere below, the boxed horses voiced protest. And on the galley deck, yells and groans from the rowers. They were seasoned rivermen, they knew what the noise meant.

The caller cut across it. “Back oars! Back oars! One! Two! Put some fucking muscle into it, you pussies!”

Archeth and Hald made their way across the tilted deck to the rail and peered over. Nothing to be seen in the muddy brown churn of the water, but it was clear that despite the exhortations of the caller, the oarsmen were shoveling in vain.

“Come on! My baby sister rows harder than you cunts! Back oars—like you fucking mean it! One! Two!”

The oars dug in. The water boiled. The caller’s abuse intensified. It went on that way for a couple of minutes, then they heard Lal Nyanar in the captain’s nest at the prow, bellowing for them to stop. A moment later he came up on deck, glowering.

“We’re stuck,” he reported superfluously. “Going to have to put teams ashore and drag us off with ropes. The only good news is, we’re not far down from our landing point. This is a meander—you’ve got decent beaching shingle right across from us on the other bank.”

Hald shrugged. “Then I guess we do it from here.”

He and Nyanar divided up the men, leaving the bulk with the ship to help on the ropes. The remaining detachment lowered three landing boats, got equipment and Hald’s and Archeth’s horses aboard through the hull hatch, and then rowed across to the beaching point. There were a couple of tense moments as a giant desert croc hit water farther upstream and came nosing log-like and curious across the wake of the boats. Senger Hald detailed men with cranked and loaded arbalests at the stern of each boat, set others to calm the horses, and then quietly doubled the cadence of the rowers. At first the croc seemed undecided whether to follow them in to shore or not, but finally it showed them a yellow-black armor-plated tail and rippled off downstream, seeking easier prey.

You could hear the tautly held breath let go from throats in each boat as the creature swam away.

“Fucking things,” muttered one of the younger marines.

His companion on the opposite oar was older, temples and stubble showing gray. He grunted and showed his teeth on the stroke.

“Think yourself lucky, son. That’s a dumb lizard you’re looking at. Some of us were around when the smart ones came calling.”

And he met Archeth’s eyes as he leaned into the next pull.

She could not recall his face from the war. Maybe she’d stood near him in the battle lines, maybe not. There’d been thousands of faces, most of them gone now. More likely, she was simply emblematic—the jet Kiriath features, the stature, the eyes; mementos for a time now gone, when, at the hour of humanity’s greatest need, men and women like her had stood at the head of every army Yhelteth put into the field.

“Ganch,” someone said, farther back in the boat, “why don’t you give it a fucking rest with the war stories, huh?”

General laughter. Ganch himself joined in with it.

They beached without further incident, the men still giving one another queasy grins as they splashed overboard into knee-depth water, to drag the boats ashore. There was some overloud hilarity, some horseplay, evaporating as Senger Hald called muster and pulled out the men selected for the reconnaissance party, twenty in all. He gave them a brief sketch of intentions, ordered the remaining men to set up camp by the boats, then mounted up alongside Archeth and shot her a dubious glance.

“Well then, my lady—let’s get this done.”

They rode up through the silent desert air, tracking the smoke. Ancient, broken lava flows in a desolate, tilting landscape around them, no respite from the sun as far as the eye could see. There was some low-growing scrub initially, but as they left the river behind and climbed An-Monal’s skirts even that started to thin out. The volcano loomed in the sky at their backs like a living, watching presence. No more conversation out of Hald, in fact no sound at all but the horses’ hooves, the clink of harness iron, and the crunching tramp of the men’s feet behind them.

They found the tree about an hour in. It was a caldera oak, native to the flanks of An-Monal, and usually a majestic, welcoming sight in territory as arid and unshaded as this.

Something had burned this one to a crisp.

Senger Hald reined in and raised his hand. The sound of marching feet died off. They came to a halt beside the blackened skeleton of the oak. There wasn’t much to see—the tree’s foliage was gone completely, but the charred branches were still smoldering into the blue crystal air. Archeth prodded and wheeled her horse about, leaned out and wiped one hand across the charred trunk of the tree. Her fingers came back greasy and thickly smeared with ash.

Muttering from the men ranked behind her. She studied the ash on her fingers, listening without appearing to.

“Those trees don’t fucking burn, man.”

“Yeah, what do you know? Wood burns. Any wood, sooner or later.”

“No, he’s right, Trath. My old man grew up on the lava fields north of Oronak. He always said you could pour two gallons of lamp oil all over one of those trees and you’d not do more than scorch the twigs.”

“Yeah? So how did this happen? I mean, you got eyes to see it, don’t you?”

“I see it, yeah. I don’t like it.”

“Oh, and what did you expect? Got Monal glowering down on us from back there, got a burned-black for a guide. You think we—”

“Shut the fuck up, man! Sergeant’s coming up, he’s going to hear you.”

She stopped listening, let the words slip away like leaves on the river’s skin. But she knew they were looking at her—she felt the swift, stolen glances like pinpricks across her neck and shoulders. And though the sergeant did come up the line from the rear and bellow for quiet in the ranks, she knew that back at camp tonight the stories, the restless tales, would flicker back and forth in the firelight, myths about the Volcano and the Volcano Folk, and an uncle they had who’d once, no, just listen to this, back when he was a young man and the Kiriath used to…

So forth.

“Were you expecting this?” Hald asked her quietly.

She shook her head. “Nothing like this, no.”

The unspoken word hung in the air between them. Dragon.

IT WAS NOT A DRAGON.

It was not, in fact, very much of anything at all.

Beyond the first tree were others, similarly cremated, leading on toward the central column of smoke and then, abruptly, a broad, shallow bowl scooped in the canted ground of An-Monal’s colossal flank. Here, the only remaining trees were charred down to tall, jagged stumps, reminiscent of stakes and leaning at odd angles. Along the upper edges of the bowl, the reddish desert itself had blackened from the heat, and farther down toward the center the blackening gave way to a glassy pale substance that shone rainbow-iridescent in the sun.

The smoke column rose serenely from a crumpled pile of something at the bottom of the bowl. It was the finishing touch that made the place look eerily like a small copy of a volcanic crater.

Archeth dismounted and stood staring down.

We came all this way for… that?

Heat shimmer rendered the central object’s shape trembling and indistinct at this distance, but she thought it resembled nothing so much as the slag excrescences sometimes generated by the black iron machinery of the Kiriath brewing stacks south of Monal.

Manathan, if this is meant to be some kind of Helmsman joke, I’m going to take an engineer’s hammer to your fucking innards.

If I can find them.

“Leave your horse,” she said tiredly. “She won’t be able to walk on that stuff anyway. And tell the men they’ll need to be careful—it’s going to be slick as a waterfall rock face down there.”

Senger Hald swung off his mount and joined her. He shaded his eyes, peered down into the crater space. “The same as the Kiriath ramparts at Khangset and Hanliahg, is it not?”

“At a guess, yeah. Kiriath moldings are formed using a lot of heat, and I’d say there was a lot of heat here last night, too.”

She waited while Hald gave orders to the sergeant, squinting into the heat haze and the rainbow glare from the glass. At Khangset, she’d seen the reptile peons try to climb the defenses her father’s engineers had put in place; she’d watched them make two or three yards at most before they lost any kind of grip and went lashing and snarling back down into the sea below, claws raking impotently on the glassy slope.

She wondered, staring down into the bowl, if this, too, was a kind of defense.

“Do you intend to spend the whole day up there spectating, daughter of Flaradnam?”

For one stretched moment of shock, she thought the voice spoke solely to her. It had the same intimate word-in-your-ear feel as Manathan when he addressed her around the keep at An-Monal. But then she saw the way Senger Hald had stiffened, the way the marines stared about them with hands on sword hilts, and she understood that the air around her was filled with the rich, ironic, and slightly off-kilter tones.

“Yes—you I’m talking to.” Its tone was higher pitched than Manathan’s, almost feminine, and the jagged edge-of-unreason element was jumpier, more in evidence. “You and that gaggle of natives you’ve brought along. Could you perhaps cultivate a modest sense of urgency? Manathan insisted you were good in a crisis, but I’d have to say he appears to have overstated his case.”

Hald was at her side, bearded features taut and watchful. “My lady?”

“It’s all right.” Archeth raised a hand to indicate the calm she didn’t feel.

“It knows your name, my lady.”

“Oh, indeed,” said the voice acidly. “It also knows your name, Senger Hald. And the names of all your men, except for the tall one with the dueling scars who, for some reason, is using an alias and cannot actually remember what he was once called. I’d look into that if I were you—it seems inappropriate for a crack imperial unit.”

Archeth looked back at the men. They were all clutching at charms or making signs. A number of them wore dueling scars, it was impossible to be sure which man the voice had singled out, but mistrustful glances went back and forth. Someone needed to lock this down, fast. She cleared her throat, lifted her chin a little for want of a more specific direction to address herself in.

“You are the messenger Manathan promised?”

“No, I’m a random demonic voice in the wilderness.” From down in the crater, there was a loud crack. “Of course I’m the messenger, daughter of Flaradnam. Don’t you see the smoke? Now would you be kind enough to get down here and arrange some transport back to Yhelteth for me? It really is a matter of some urgency.”

And, in the heat haze at the center of the crater, sudden movement.