The Cold Commands

by Richard K. Morgan

  “My debt …,” Eril began.

  “Is hereby canceled. I asked you to help me throw a burning brand into Etterkal, and we did that pretty effectively. I’m all done murdering slavers for now.”

  The Brotherhood enforcer could not quite keep the relief from soaking into his features. He made an uncharacteristically awkward gesture.

  “I, uh, I sold the horses.”

  “Good. Get anything halfway decent for them?”

  Eril shook his head, overvehemently. “Got fucked in the arse. Barely three hundred apiece and that’s including the tackle. Fucking landlord’s going to double his money just by sleeping on it. Here.”

  He dug a purse out of his coat, took a half step forward on his way to hand it over, and then remembered. He stopped dead on the gangplank. Ringil nodded, lifted one open hand toward him.

  “ ’Sokay. I’m not too far gone to catch stuff.”

  Eril hesitated, then tossed the purse across the intervening gap. A good, hard throw, to make sure it cleared the edge of the wharf. The weight and impact stung in the cup of Ringil’s palm.

  The two of them stood there looking at each other.

  “What will you do?” the enforcer asked him finally.

  Ringil weighed the purse in his hand. “I don’t know. Get drunk, maybe. Don’t you worry about me, Eril. You need to turn around and put your foot in that captain’s arse. Get some sail hoist while you still can.”

  He turned away then, because the temptation of the gangplank’s sea-rotted edge where it rested on the wharf was getting a little too much to resist. Marsh Queen’s Favor sat there, four feet out from the quay, and the urge to cross that symbolic gap to safety was like krinzanz craving. Give himself any longer, and he’d do it, he’d start trying to talk his way into coming aboard regardless, rationalize his way past the obvious fucking shape of this particular truth, tell the tawdry fucking lies to himself that everybody did, Look, this isn’t plague, it’s just a bad cold, be over it in a couple of days with some sea air to clear your head, you’ll …

  Like that.

  He grimaced. You could already hear the pleading tone of it all.

  He walked away.

  Got about three paces before Eril called after him.

  “Sire?”

  He stopped. Blinked at the honorific. In the best part of eight months, he’d never heard Eril use it to anyone. He turned back.

  “Yeah?”

  “I, uh, wanted to say. All that shit they say about you? The corruptor-of-youth stuff, the queer thing. Just wanted to say. I always knew they were a bunch of lying fucks. Knew it wasn’t true. You’re no faggot.” He swallowed. “Sire.”

  Ringil remembered the times he’d caught himself staring with something worse than longing at Eril’s exposed arse and shanks when they bathed in rivers on the way south. The hollow ache that stalked behind the lust.

  He found the smile once more. Put it on.

  “You neither, Eril. You neither. We’re true men, the both of us. Now get out of here while you can. Go home. Fare well.”

  He put the gangplank and the Marsh Queen’s Favor at his back again, and this time he kept walking.

  CHAPTER 18

  hen they got up close to the black looming mass of the lock gates, the boatman shipped oars and threw out the anchor. It made a soft, swallowing plop as it went down. The boat tugged about silently on the dark flow of the river; the anchor cord went taut and held them.

  “That’s it, gents. ’S as far as I go.”

  “You could get us a bit closer to the shore,” Egar suggested.

  The boatman shook his head. “More than my hull’s worth. The Citadel posted guards around the temple on that side months ago. See the torches? They catch me at this time of night with you two muffled up like that, well … Folk are liable to draw conclusions, aren’t they?”

  He gave them an amiable grin to show he’d already drawn his own conclusions but hey, no hard feelings, we all got to make a living somehow.

  “So,” Harath hissed at him. “You saying we gotta fucking swim across there?”

  “Well, if you really want to, I suppose you could, yes.” The boatman jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “But there’s a ladder, back there on the lock gate. It’s a bit of a jump, but you should make it all right.”

  Egar waited to see if Harath could make the leap—turned out he could, and with wiry, youthful poise now he’d shrugged off his hangover—then paid the boatman out.

  “Couple of hours,” he said. “If we’re not here, then wait. It’ll be worth your while.”

  “Understood, my lord.” The man stowed the coin beneath his jerkin and leaned aside to let Egar get up the sharp end of the boat. “Have a profitable evening.”

  “Yeah, you, too.”

  He took the leap—it was awkward, the unaccustomed weight of the knotted rope he was carrying slung tight across his body putting him off. He missed the ladder with one hand. But the other found a grip and he hung on, harsh grunt with the effort, beat the barn-door pivot of his body to the side, and got his feet on a rung. He grabbed a couple of breaths—dank, pitch-smelling air—then went stealthily up to where Harath crouched atop the lock gate in his black burglar’s garb and charcoal smear. The Ishlinak nodded minimally toward the shore.

  “Four guys,” he murmured. “Same as before. They do paired perimeter in turns, the other two hold the gate. That puts all the blind spots exactly where they always were. I told Alnarh about that, but he didn’t want to hear it. He’s all We are Majak, no one will dare. Twat.”

  Egar stared at the crenellated bulk of the temple, the scrubby, cleared ground it stood on, the flicker and gust of a night guard brazier out front and the two figures gathered to its flames. Forty yards, fifty at most. He watched the bright yellow dapple of torches go along the darkened walls on the left and around the corner to the front, two vague forms beneath. He checked his knives and hoped he wouldn’t have to use them. Killing other Majak wasn’t something he’d ever really gotten used to—even if they were Ishlinak.

  “Right then, you call it. Let’s go.”

  They skulked along the top of the lock gate like rats, quick, purposeful spurts, cautious of balance on the foot-and-a-half width. Egar’s pulse picked up with the nighttime slide of it all. He caught himself grinning. The torches paused partway along the riverward façade of the temple block, and Harath locked to a sudden halt in front of him. Ten feet to the ground, no time to do it and not be seen or heard. They crouched, waiting.

  “Soon as the other two start moving,” the Ishlinak warned him. “They’ll be nattering back and forth, all four of them, like chucking-out time down at the Lizard’s Head. No eyes to the left side at all. There—see that bush at the corner they’ve just passed? King’s thorn—can’t see a thing through it, even during the day. Sprint for it, hold there.”

  The torches reached the gate. The two new arrivals became clear silhouettes in the brazier’s flare. Faint bass of voices, some laughter—indistinct echo off the temple walls and floating out over the water. The rhythm of it was Majak. Some jiggling with the torches, and then—

  “Now!” snapped Harath. “Go!”

  Off the lock, dark, sudden drop, soft crunch of impact on the ground below, spring up out of it running. Forty yards—easy ground, Dragonbane, come on. Behind him, he heard the swift brush of Harath’s footfalls, following. The torches wavered away along the wall to the right of the gate. Darkness held the left side. Egar reached the king’s thorn scraggle and crunched himself down into cover, trying not to breathe too hard. Harath piled in behind him.

  The float of voices stopped.

  Taut silence.

  Harath put his lips to Egar’s ear. “They spot us?”

  Egar shook his head minimally, raised a warning finger. No idea—shut the fuck up. Eyes slitted against the gloom and glare for detail. Hand to knife hilt at his waist.

  Soft mutter of another voice. The figures around the brazier shifted. A long laug
h drifted out. Egar relaxed, eased his hand off his knife. Harath got back into a poised crouch.

  “Along the left wall,” he whispered. “Follow my lead, look for that crack.”

  And off again, like ghosts into the gloom. They hit the shadowed edge of the wall, scuttled along its darkened length. Ahead of him, Harath found the crack, reached up and swung effortlessly off the ground. Little fucker was good. Egar was only seconds behind him, but by the time he arrived the younger man was already eight feet up the wall above him.

  That envy, Dragonbane?

  He shook it off, checked the crack with his hands. Snaking jaggedly upward, a clean shear through the stonework, about four fingers wide, once-ragged edges worn smooth with time. It was pretty much what you’d expect from a building this old. There were fractures like it all over the city, anywhere a structure still stood that had been around back when the Drowned Daughters of Hanliahg vented their volcanic spleen and the Earth shook and the sky over Yhelteth turned black. Not what you’d call comfy was Harath’s considered opinion. Nowhere to rest, but you can hand-jam if you need to …

  Torch glow at the far end of the wall.

  Egar hooked both hands into the crack, jammed his feet in below, made a braced sideways V with his body, and hauled himself up the crack. Sharp pinch of the stonework against his toes—the soft-sole boots he’d worn for the occasion were thin, and he had to angle his feet downward almost vertically to fit the confines of the crack. The torches rounded the corner and the two watchmen came ambling along the wall in companionable quiet. Apparently they’d run out of banter. And he was still less than ten feet off the ground. If either of them took the trouble to glance upward …

  He worked his way higher, as close to silently as he could. Finger-width chunks of the fractured stone gave a little under his grip, made a tiny grating sound. Shit, shit … Sweating palms, powdering stone under the pads of his fingertips. He hurried his hold past the loose section—the haste undid him, one foot slipped out of the crack and he hinged around and out.

  Fuck!

  He forced one hand fully into the crack, closed it up into a fist, and twisted it sideways. The ragged stone bit into his flesh as the hand-jam took his weight. He hung there, teeth gritted, twelve feet off the ground, and tried to quiet his breathing as the guards walked by underneath.

  Which they did. Right on by.

  He let them get a decent distance beyond before he moved. Then, working as swiftly as he could without noise, he worked his loose foot back into the crack, loosened off the hand-jam into a more conventional hold, and climbed the rest of the wall without incident. He came over the crenellated top and found Harath seated with his back to the battlement, as relaxed as if he’d come up here to get some sun.

  He sank down next to the younger man, breathing hard. Harath glanced sideways at him.

  “All right?”

  Egar held up his fist in the bandlight and spotted the tiny black trickle of blood. He licked it away, sucked the ragged edges of the torn flesh clean.

  “Fine.”

  “They see you?”

  “Yeah, they saw me. They said they’d give us an hour inside as long as we didn’t break anything. You going to show me this fucking hole in the roof, or what?”

  THE INSIDE OF THE TEMPLE HAD A MUSTY, STONE-DUST SMELL THAT reminded Egar of rock tombs he’d ransacked in Dhashara as a younger man. He kept expecting caskets, raised stone biers, or mummified remains racked in the walls. Instead, the spaces were broad and high and empty. Detritus crunched underfoot, but it was the leavings of decades without occupancy—stone and plaster powder fallen from the cracked ceilings, rat turds and grit and the tiny dried corpses of spiders. Somewhere, he could hear the sporadic drip of water falling in from the roof or some damaged cistern in the upper levels. There were a lot of holes up there like the one they roped in through; damage done by the same eruption that had cracked the walls. You could look up as you passed beneath and see the stars in the gaps.

  Old, denied gods held up the ceilings.

  “Remind you of anybody?” Harath whispered, nodding at one looming figure.

  Egar glanced up at the muscled torso, the shoulder weighed down with horse tackle, the short, squared-off blade in the upraised hand, barely a knife at all. The tight-lipped, somber warrior face and beard.

  “Yeah, Urann—without the teeth.”

  “Should think himself lucky he’s got any face at all. They tore up some of the others in here so bad, you can hardly tell who they were meant to be.”

  Egar nodded, mostly to himself. It was pretty much the way of things, wherever the imperial writ ran. The Revelation didn’t like competition.

  They slipped past under the empty stone gaze of the statue. Harath gestured left—shallow stone steps, leading up. They took them two at a time, knives drawn for anyone they might happen to meet at the top.

  Nothing. Shadows and dust. Tall, wood-paneled doors twice the height of a man, riddled with dry rot, wedged ajar on the gritty, detritus-strewn floor.

  “This opens onto a gallery over the central hall,” Harath told him when they got there. “Gallery runs right around. Get a good view from up there.”

  Egar nodded. He gripped one of the doors at its edge, decided moving it would make too much noise, and inserted himself sideways in the existing gap.

  “Deep breath,” said Harath judiciously.

  It took rather more than that. The effort of holding his belly tight made Egar’s eyes water, and he still scraped himself on the door edge, scraped the door open a farther grating inch, before he popped out the other side. He stood statue-still, teeth gritted, blade in hand, waiting to see if they’d been heard.

  Harath came sveltely through after him.

  The gallery was, as promised, a grand affair, sweeping round the hall fifteen feet up, broad and balustraded. Bandlight seeped in through tall windows long ago boarded up. Egar crept up to the balustrade in a crouch and peered through. Below him, he saw an expanse of the same derelict, debris-speckled stone flooring as in the previous chamber. Some remnant altar up at one end, looked like it hadn’t seen use in a century, couple of squat statues standing around elsewhere, a few long wooden benches and …

  He frowned. His gaze went back to one of the figures. He saw now there were five of them, four in a rough ring, the fifth more or less central …

  Like something he’d once—

  Height of a small woman or a child. Crude stonework, the facial features barely picked out. Stubby arms outspread as if for balance. Like mannequins for arrow practice, but dark and unyielding and dumped to floor height.

  The memory cascaded—filtering soil of familiarity, and then the big rocks of recall, falling in his head.

  Harsh gray light.

  Some kind of beacon for the dwenda. Archeth, the morning following the skirmish, one boot on the tumbled figure lying facedown in the swamp. She was kicking at the thing with her heel, some monotonous residual anger working itself out. The wound across her temple was cleaned and livid in the thin morning light. The marsh dwellers made them, way back when. Forms a link, somehow. Something to do with the kind of stone they used.

  He nudged Harath. “Where’d those come from?”

  “Where’d what c—” The Ishlinak saw where he was pointing. “Oh. Beats me. They only had two last time I was in here. Pretty cheap shit by the look of it. Worse carving than the Voronak, and that’s saying something.”

  “It’s glirsht,” Egar said absently. “Naom stone. They’ve got them set out like … that’s got to be … compass points, right?”

  The younger man shrugged, sniffed. “Could be. You want to see where they keep the slaves or not?”

  “Yeah, yeah.”

  But he followed Harath along the gallery and through another decaying doorway with a lot of backward glances. And even after they left the hall, the squat black stone statues sat in his mind’s eye like evil little dolls.

  CHAPTER 19

  fter a while, t
he cormorants seem to tire of his company. They hop ungainly off the rock they’ve all been sharing, disappear one by one into the depths below. The last one cocks its head back at him before it dives. Utters a parched croak that might be farewell, and is gone. Ringil raises the flask after them in salute.

  Puts it to his lips and finds it empty.

  No wonder they left.

  For a while, he resists the obvious implication in that. The rock is oddly pliant and comfortable beneath him, there seems no reason to—

  Well, apart from that queasy, gray-white patch of radiance seeping through at the sky’s eastern edge.

  Something’s on its way, Gil.

  Best if you’re not around for it to trip over when it arrives.

  He makes the effort and gets to his feet. Swaying a little with the sudden height it gives him. He peers downward after the cormorants, gets nothing for his trouble but a vague gloom and the rising reek of fouled seawater. He shrugs. The fact that they were seabirds and he isn’t doesn’t seem to matter that much in the end. He takes the long step forward and plunges downward after them. Splashes into the—

  Not water exactly, it’s too sparse and fleeting for that. But for scant moments he thinks he sees bubbles rising through it, his breath ascending in a milky trail toward a surface stirred silver by his entry above. There’s a brief, chilly prickling, like the splash of cold water thrown in his face, and then something lunges sharkish at him out of the murk.

  Fuck!

  He catches fragments of a glimpse—a circular mouth, dilated wide enough to swallow his head whole, the unbroken ring of a single taut lip rolled back and concentric rings of teeth erect in the throat beyond. It’s the akyia, the thing that Seethlaw and Risgillen called the merroigai. Behind the nightmare head, the hint of a lithe, approximately human body bisecting into long, coiling limbs fronded with fins. A sleekly muscled arm, darting out, one clawed hand grasping for him, perhaps to save him from the fall—but he shrinks from it like a child from the clutch of the Marsh Wraith, and the fall takes him on.