The Cold Commands

by Richard K. Morgan

  “Well—” The Dragonbane, momentarily taken aback. “What else would it be?”

  “I don’t know.” Ringil heaved himself to his feet and squeezed past on his way to the other bed. His boot caught on a small child’s rag doll dropped at the desk by some previous occupant—sent it skidding across the cold stone floor. “The dwenda aren’t human, Eg. It probably doesn’t pay to reason as if they were. And whatever they want, they’re the ones using Menkarak, not the other way around.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Menkarak may think he’s assembling an angelic guard to storm the palace and take back the Empire for God and the Revelation.” Gil seated himself on the edge of the bed, stared at the discarded doll for a moment. He rolled his neck, trying to work out a crick. “Or whatever. But that doesn’t necessarily make it so.”

  “Well, if that’s the case, I mean …” Egar gestured helplessly. “Is killing Menkarak going to do any good?”

  Ringil looked up and flashed him a smile. “I have no idea.”

  Egar stared at him. Went and sat opposite on the other bed, shoulders slumped. “I thought you’d know what to do.”

  “I do know what to do.” Gil swiveled and swung his legs onto the bed, lay full-length, and studied the ceiling. “I’m going to get into the Citadel, open Menkarak’s throat, and get you pardoned. The rest of it, I’ll make up as I go along.”

  “But the dwenda have to be protecting him.”

  Gil yawned. “Judging by the dismal failure of Jhiral’s other assassins, yeah, I’d say so.”

  “Then you can’t go in there alone!”

  “Why not?” He turned his head on the pillow and looked across at the Dragonbane. “They fall down just like men, remember. I’ve killed dwenda before.”

  “Not alone!”

  “Eg, look.” Ringil sighed. Propped himself up on his elbows. “Be reasonable. Even if they would let you out of here, there’s a hole in your leg the size of a tent flap, the rest of you looks like it got chewed up and spat out by steppe ghouls. You’re in no condition to get in a fight with anyone right now.”

  “I was managing pretty fucking well before you came along.”

  “Yeah, I noticed that.”

  “Nearly took two of those fuckers at the same time up at Afa’marag.”

  “So you said.”

  “Killed one with my bare hands at Ennishmin.”

  “Eg!” He propped himself up farther, met the Dragonbane’s eyes. Held his gaze. “I’ll be fine. All right? Appreciate the sentiment, but I’ll be fine.”

  They lay there, together, apart. The bars of warm orange light over their heads went on retreating, sliding away. The breeze coming in through the window turned cool.

  “And if you don’t make it back?”

  “Hoiran’s fucking balls, Eg! I’ll be fine! You just sit tight. Couple of days at worst. I’ll be back before you know it.”

  He heard how the Dragonbane wrestled with what he wanted to say, could almost hear it caught in his throat. He sighed. Closed his eyes.

  “What is it, Eg?”

  He heard the long breath come out of the other man. “I’ve seen my death, Gil.” Ringil’s eyes snapped open. “You’ve seen what?”

  “You heard me. The hand of the Dwellers is on me. Death is coming for me, I’ve seen it.”

  “Oh, give me a fucking break!” Ringil gestured helplessly at the cell wall. “That’s … that’s a bunch of superstitious Majak horseshit. Seen your death. Take another fucking dragon to kill you, Dragonbane.”

  Egar chuckled, but there wasn’t much humor in it. “That’d be nice.”

  “Not as I recall.”

  “I mean it, Gil. I saw my death. I stood on the Black Folk Span and watched it rumble past me. Ast’naha, carting my ale to Urann’s feast.”

  Ringil said nothing.

  “Thing is—that’s fine. Dying’s fine. Got to do it sooner or later, and I’ve lived longer than most Majak do. Seen more than I ever dreamed I would.” Egar sat up and faced him. “But I don’t want a shit death, Gil. I don’t want to go murdered by inches by these southern assholes, cabled into the chair in some dungeon, or strapped out for torturers and fucking squid. I got to die, I want to die with steel in my fist, with the sun and wind on my face.”

  “You get killed going after Menkarak with me, it’ll be at night,” Ringil pointed out.

  “You know what I fucking mean.”

  “Yeah. And you’re not going to fucking die.” Ringil rolled to face him. “All right? I don’t know what you saw on the Span, but it means nothing. I’m going out to slit Menkarak’s throat and I’ll be right back. After that, we’re both getting out of this fucking city. Soon. All right?”

  But the Dragonbane made no reply, and Ringil’s words sank into the gathering evening gloom like stones into dark water.

  Over their heads, the last of the sunset’s rays slipped away.

  CHAPTER 40

  alf a mile south and east of the Boulevard of the Ineffable Divine, the Citadel’s nighttime influence was a palpable thing, falling over the dourly named streets as solidly as the sweep of its sundial shadow did by day. There were no brothels, taverns, or pipe houses advertising themselves as such, and carvings of opened scriptural tomes stood in every public space, lit by guttering torches bracketed in black iron. Those few women you saw out of doors were wrapped in muddy, monochrome robes that draped them like tents and covered their faces as if they were corpses. The mood in the street was somber and watchful; you didn’t see much violence or laughter. Surly-looking bearded men went about in pairs with Revelation insignia pinned on their tunics and short wooden clubs swinging from their belts, making sure no one was having a good time.

  “All since the war,” Taran Alman muttered, apparently feeling the need to apologize. “Ten years back, you didn’t have any of this.”

  He might well have been telling the truth—Noyal Rakan certainly nodded agreement, but then again, ten years ago Rakan would scarcely have been shaving. Ringil really couldn’t say either way, nor did he much care. He’d passed through the southside a few times during the war, on the way back and forth from one deployment or another, or out to visit the Kiriath at An-Monal; but he’d always ridden, had never had occasion to dismount. And on broader furlough in the city, he’d never strayed farther south than Archeth’s place on the Boulevard.

  It didn’t look as if he’d missed much.

  “Up ahead.” The other King’s man, the local expert, nodded forward to where a pair of Citadel enforcers swaggered in the splashes of light from torches and shop frontages. “Alley on the right, after the chandler’s. Let the prick patrol get well ahead first.”

  They dawdled about, affecting interest in an ironmonger’s wares spread out on blankets in the street. Four men in dark, unremarkable garb, faces grimed and stubbled, not rich, not poor, not anything you’d think out of the ordinary unless you were looking for it closely. They’d been on foot since the river—a King’s Reach agent there had taken their horses, provided them with nondescript cloaks, and advised Ringil to wear his over the jut of the Ravensfriend. It gave him the look of an unusually tall hunchback, and if anyone stopped to actually think about it, they’d know well enough what was shrouded under the garment—Rakan, Alman, and the other King’s man all wore visible swords at their hip anyway—but chances were no one would bother. The main thing was to cover the gleaming iridescent Kiriath alloys worked into the Ravensfriend’s scabbard and hilt.

  The Citadel men forged ahead of them, glowering about and occasionally accosting startled citizens. They stopped to upbraid a woman carrying water canisters with naked hands and the cuffs of her robe rolled up. Rakan crouched to examine a pair of ornate battle-axes laid out separately from the pots and pans and yard tools that made up most of the ironmonger’s display.

  “Blessed weapons, my lord.” The ironmonger moved in, sensing a sale. “Consecrated for the war against the Scaled Folk by Grand Invigilator Envar Menkarak himself. Se
e his sigil, carved here upon the shafts. It gives protection to the wielder against dragon venom, the plague, and arrow shafts dipped in filth. Sold me by a veteran of Shenshenath and Rajal Beach fallen on hard times. And if he survived Rajal, what must that say?”

  Ringil, who’d survived Rajal Beach himself, rolled his eyes and touched Rakan lightly on the shoulder. Up the street, the Citadel men had tired of barracking the woman and were making their way into a press of street sellers farther along. Time to move.

  Rakan straightened up and murmured some demurral about price.

  “But you have yet to make me a price, my lord,” the ironmonger yelped, offended. “What is fair and just? What is the holy shield of the Revelation worth to you?”

  Ringil leaned in. “I was at Rajal, my friend. I was there. I saw Akal’s Ninth Holy Scourge meet the dragons at the end breakwater.” He smiled unpleasantly at the man. “They melted. All of them, blessed or not.”

  The ironmonger wet his lips, preparing some reply. His eyes darted to the scar on Ringil’s face, the hump of the sword pommel under his cloak.

  “I don’t want any trouble, my lord,” he decided.

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I honor the service you gave to Revelation and Empire. I repeat only what the weapons’ owner told me. And the sigil is genuine, vouched for.”

  “Yeah.”

  Ringil turned away and followed his companions up the street to the mouth of the alley. The King’s man shot him an irritated glance as they turned the corner.

  “Not smart, that. He’ll remember.”

  “Remember what?” A harsh sneering in Ringil’s voice—the memories of Rajal Beach had stirred him up more than he realized. “A pissed-off war veteran in a cheap cloak? I doubt that’s much of a freak occurrence around here.”

  The King’s man shrugged and turned away. “Suit yourself. In here.”

  Along the alley, he made a coded knocking on the narrow wooden door of a silent, darkened frontage. They waited. After a longish moment, the door opened on greased hinges and a burly figure in tunic and butcher’s apron gestured them inside.

  “Go on through,” he told them. “Stairs at the back. Eighth and thirteenth are dodgy.”

  They went down a long, darkened corridor that stank of blood and grease, and up the rickety wooden stairs, counting. There were rooms beyond, candlelit, with pig carcasses hung and cuts of meat laid out on tables. Men worked away with knives, carefully not looking up as they passed. The King’s man led them through it all to a back room lit only by bandlight falling in through a pair of broad sash windows. Bare boards, a few grain sacks stacked in corners, and a big wooden tub of what looked in the bluish light to be pig’s blood and offal. The King’s man waited until they assembled around him.

  “All right, this is it,” he said tensely. “We go out one of these, and drop. I’ll take you across the rooftops until we hit the Citadel curtain wall. After that, you’re on your own. It’s bedrock there, the crag the place is built on. Plenty of handholds, but it’s a long climb. You sure you want to take that bloody great spike you’re carrying up with you?”

  “It’s lighter than it looks,” Ringil told him.

  The King’s man pursed his lips. “Still going to get in the way going over. There’s a chink in the battlements, old damage from the last time the Drowned Daughters beat the drum. But it’s narrow, and so are the corridors up to the invigilator levels. Blade that long on your back, I don’t know if I’d—”

  “I don’t care what you’d do. If this goes bad, I’m not going up against the Citadel’s men-at-arms with nothing longer on me than a sneak blade.”

  The King’s man glanced at Taran Alman for a moment. Alman shrugged. Gestured—get on with it. The King’s man grimaced.

  “All right, then. Your choice. Now listen carefully. The senior invigilators’ quarters are on the far side of the keep so … ”

  He knew. He’d studied the floor plans of the place, along with the charcoal sketch of Menkarak’s face—smug-looking fucker was Egar’s passing comment—for a solid couple of hours before he left the cell. He knew the route, the probable exposure points, the few available bolt-hole options. He had it all by heart.

  Piece of cake, he’d lied briskly to Archeth and Rakan as they went out to the stables together. I broke into tougher nests than this robbing krinzanz storehouses in harbor end when I was a kid.

  Yeah—you didn’t have the dwenda prowling around harbor end, snapped Archeth, not fooled. Whatever stopped Jhiral’s assassins is going to be waiting for you, too. You watch yourself in there, Gil. Don’t you get stupid.

  Who, me?

  He’d winked at Rakan, but the young captain only looked away, troubled. And then the three of them took their mounts out to the palace gate to meet Taran Alman in shared, somber silence.

  “… is your best way out as well,” The King’s man finished up. “This side of the keep is mostly slave quarters and storage, so the watch is pretty light. Handful of men, spread thin. There’s supposed to be a sentry posted near the cracked battlement, but he won’t be on site tonight.”

  “Remarkable. And how exactly do you know that?”

  The King’s man nodded at the wooden tub. “Because he’s in there. I put him there myself, six hours ago. Your path has been laid, northman. It remains only for you to walk it.”

  Ringil spared a fastidious glance for the tub, playing it mostly for Rakan. He would have given a lot for half an hour alone with the Throne Eternal captain right now, preferably in a room without a corpse and a little better furnished than this, but, well, at a pinch, those grain sacks over in the corner, for example …

  His mouth quirked. He put the image away.

  Peeled his cloak, unslung the Ravensfriend, dressed himself again with the sword and scabbard out in the open. Went to the nearest window and dragged up the sash a solid three feet. It moved as if on well-oiled wheels, no more noise than a gusting wind. The cooking-fire smells of the city blew in, competing with the stink of slaughter already in the room. Ringil peered out.

  The nearest roof was a short drop below, backed right up to the wall of the building they stood in. The wider roofscape extended off into darkness, blocks and slopes, and narrow gaps they would evidently have to leap. Barely visible beyond, the Citadel loomed on its crag like some huge, hunched vulture, roosting.

  He sighed. “Come on, then. Let’s get on with it.”

  FLEET-FOOTED ACROSS THE JUMBLED TOPOGRAPHY OF THE ROOFS, JUST the two of them now, Ringil following the King’s man, close as a second shadow. Flat roof, sloping roof, garden space, gap—the route snaked back and forth, seeking advantage. In and out of shelter against chimneys and stumpy separating walls, pausing crouched while dim figures moved about or voices came and went on other rooftops in the smoky gloom. Leaping up and onward as soon as they were clear.

  Once, they heard a young woman’s voice, singing soft and haunting from a window under the eaves, lullaby or lament, Ringil couldn’t tell. And once, huddled against a cooling chimney stack, they heard a fragment of a children’s tale come up the vent from the hearthside below.

  … and when the handsome young Emperor heard this, he saw at once, like a blind man given sudden sight, that she had been true all along, and he was ashamed for his anger. Her quiet constancy melted the cold out of his heart, and he went down on one knee to fit the fated ring upon her finger. And her father, the blacksmith, was freed immediately from his bondage, brought to the palace, and honored for his faithful service with a medallion of rank bestowed by the Emperor himself before all the lords and ladies of the court. And everywhere in that great city, there was rejoicing in the justice that a common man and his daughter could …

  Pressure on his arm. The King’s man nodded, and they were off again. Leaping four-foot gaps across narrow alleys and the heads of people who never looked up. Balancing along the roof spine of a derelict storehouse, where the slates on either side were either gone to naked rafters, or too degr
aded to risk walking over. A couple of small fires glowed below in the ruined space, cloaked figures gathered close around; mumble of voices. Smoke coiled up through the rafters, blew in Ringil’s face. He gagged and tried not to cough. They were cooking something pretty awful down there.

  Now the Citadel and its crag blocked out the whole sky ahead. They cleared one final alleyway, a little wider than the others, a five-foot leap this time, and landed on a shallow sloping roof, huddled in against the rising crag the Citadel was built on. They went up the slope, crouched low. The King’s man raised his hand, fist clenched. Gil eased to a halt and peered forward. There was a final, treacherous three-foot gap between the top end of the roof and the skirts of the crag. The King’s man perched near the edge, getting his breath back. He nodded over to where a collection of gnarled bushes grew out of the rock.

  “You make the jump here,” he said softly. “Grab the bushes. They should hold—”

  “Should? Fucking should?”

  It got him a quick, involuntary grin. The King’s man leaned a little closer, finger raised close to his lips.

  “Will hold,” he amended. “Done it myself a couple of times. There’s a slope beyond, it’s scree and dust, and it’s steep, but you can just about stand on it. The first holds are right above you. And up you go.”

  Ringil tipped back his head to take in the bandlit loom of the crag, the way it bellied out just below the battlements over their heads. Looked like about a hundred feet. Mostly flat, then harder work toward the top. He flexed his hands a couple of times.

  “You got your signal?” the King’s man asked him.

  He nodded. Touched his belt where the Kiriath flare was tied on.

  “Remember how to use it?”

  “Indelibly.” Archeth had walked him through how you coaxed the thing to life a dozen times or more, ignoring his protests that he’d seen Grashgal and Flaradnam use the devices often enough in the war. “Just keep your eyes peeled.”

  “Yeah, we’ll be watching.” The King’s man did something peculiar with his hand at chest height. Only later would Ringil realize it had been a horse-tribe salute. “All right, then. Whenever you’re ready.”