The Cold Commands

by Richard K. Morgan

  Ringil sighed and sliced the throat across. Blood gushed out, all over the warrants the man had been writing. He held the invigilator’s head by the hair while he spasmed, waited, waited, then lowered the dead man’s face gently into the mess. He cleaned the dagger on one of the pieces of parchment, and stood for a moment in the candlelight, brooding.

  If Naksen does show up with a bundle more warrants, you’re blown. Out like a fucking candle. And that’s without counting the dwenda into the balance.

  This is taking too long.

  He blew out all the candles before he left, closed the door quietly behind him, and hoped that would be enough to keep Naksen or his pals from investigating further. There was a door-locking glyph somewhere in the ikinri ’ska, but he couldn’t remember how it went, had never, in any case, really mastered it. Not a lot of locking doors to practice on, out on the marsh.

  With luck, they’ll assume the old bastard went to bed.

  With better luck, they won’t come back at all until morning. Got my back, Kwelgrish?

  Let’s hope so.

  He prowled about the upper levels, listening for voices, looking for lights. It took him another half an hour to find what he wanted. Passing an apartment door, he heard farewells traded within. He skulked back into the gloom of an alcove. Shortly after, the apartment door unlatched and a man in invigilator’s robes came out. He was, Ringil noted, considerably younger than the old man in the study, he had a fair belly on him and a neatly barbered beard, and he walked with a self-important poise that looked promising. Gil trailed him through corridors and a stairway to a lower-level apartment door where the invigilator produced a key from his robes and slotted it into the lock. Ringil crept forward an inch at a time. The key turned with an iron clunk.

  The door swung open. Ringil leapt out of the shadows and grabbed the man from behind. He shoved him through the doorway and threw him to the floor, stepped inside, caught the swinging edge of the door and slammed it closed behind him. His gaze flickered about—broad entryway, unlit, leading to a well-appointed lounging area beyond. A window let in bandlight enough to see by.

  The invigilator had gone sprawled to hands and knees on a fine silk carpet laid out between the two spaces. Ringil checked that the door was firmly closed, kicked the man hard in his prodigious belly, and scooped up the fallen key. He turned it in the lock and left it there, listened for any sound of occupancy and judged the apartment empty.

  “Who the holy blue fuck do you think—”

  Ringil grabbed him again, hauled him to his feet and slung him against the nearest wall. He hit him in the face a couple of times, broad backhand slaps that didn’t do any real damage but would hurt like hell. The invigilator reeled and stumbled, tried to fall down. Gil got in close and held him up against the wall, put the dragon-tooth dagger to his face.

  “I’m in a hurry,” he said.

  “But, but—” The invigilator had gone abruptly still when he saw the knife, or maybe it was just Ringil’s eyes. “What do you want? I’m not—”

  “I’m looking for Pashla Menkarak. You’re going to tell me where his apartment is, or you’re going to die. Your choice.”

  “You—” The man wet his lips. “You’re from the palace?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I, but I—I took a holy oath. Holy orders. I am bound by …” Ringil looked at him.

  “The end apartment on the level above,” whispered the invigilator, eyes bulging wide in the dim light. “The door is—you will see it—it has the mark of the book and scepter.”

  “And is he in?”

  “Yes. He retires early, always. He will be at last prayer.”

  Ringil leaned closer. “You know I’m going to come back here if you’re lying.”

  “I’m not, I’m not,” the man was babbling now. “His faith is iron. He is at prayer. The whole Citadel knows it.”

  “Excellent.” Gil stepped back and clapped the invigilator on the shoulder with his left hand.

  Then he slashed the man’s throat open, stepped sharply left on the stroke, and shoved his victim around at the shoulder to the right. Blood gouted, missed his clothes, and the invigilator went down, flapping and gurgling. He floundered on hands and knees and tried to crawl away. Gil followed him cautiously, making sure. The dying man made a couple of feet across the blood-drenched silk of the carpet, then sank to the floor, whimpering, and finally bled out.

  Ringil checked himself once more for blood, knelt, and cleaned the dagger on an unstained corner of the carpet. He slipped back out of the apartment, locked the dead man inside, and pocketed the key. Got back onto the level above and along the corridor to the end without seeing or hearing another living soul. Luck still holding, it seemed. That Dark Court touch, Lady Firfirdar apparently riding in his pocket this evening. Torches guttered in their brackets on either side; somewhere very distant he heard the wind through some window or cranny. The ikinri ’ska chuckled and surged within. He reached Menkarak’s door, saw the gull-wing symbol of the book and the scepter carved into the wood, reached up and knocked hard.

  There was a long pause, and then he heard soft footfalls approaching from within the apartment.

  “Yes. Who is it?” Voice puzzled and hesitant. “This is no hour for—”

  “Your Holiness, it is an emergency! The palace has—” Ringil, putting on what he felt was a pretty fair approximation of the well-fed invigilator’s voice. He swallowed. “His Eminence craves your presence, your wisest counsel.”

  “The palace has what?” The lock turned, the door started to swing open, though Menkarak’s tone hadn’t got any less irritable. “Look, you can’t just—”

  Menkarak, in a simple gray robe, slippers on his feet. The face was a match for the charcoal sketch. He gaped at the black-clad figure before him.

  “What—”

  Ringil punched him in the face, knocked him backward into the apartment and followed him in. Menkarak staggered and managed to stay upright; Gil punched him again and he went down. Ringil closed the door. A quick glance to take in the surroundings—similar to the apartment he’d just been in, but far more expansive, the lounging area had multiple windows, there was a balcony beyond. Lamps burned in various corners of the place. No carpets, there was a cold austerity to everything. No one around.

  Menkarak, on the floor, struggling to rise.

  Ringil went straight to him, dumped one knee on his chest, used the other to pin a flailing right arm. He seized the man’s head, turned it, and pressed it to the floorboards.

  “Message from the debauched apostate,” he said. “He is not amused. This has gone far enough. I’m paraphrasing, of course.”

  He chopped down with the dagger, into Menkarak’s neck where the artery pulsed. Twisted and worked the blade to be sure. Blood welled up, thick in the gash he’d opened, spilled and splattered everywhere. Menkarak pawed desperately at him with his free arm, made bleating noises, but his face was already slackening with lack of fight. His mouth moved, no words came out. His breathing stilled, his eyes turned slowly dull and incurious. His arm drooped away, his knuckles knocked gently on the floorboards. His legs kicked a couple of times, and then went slack.

  Ringil eased up into a crouch. Looked at the body thoughtfully for a moment.

  “There, that wasn’t so hard,” he muttered. “You’d have thought—” Menkarak’s face … changed.

  It was like watching the image in a still pond surface stirred to choppy fragments by a sudden splash. The dead man’s features wavered, blurred. Any likeness to the charcoal sketch vanished as Ringil stared. A far younger man lay dead in Menkarak’s place.

  Flicker of blue fire.

  Oh, no—

  The blow hit him from behind, before he could turn, before he could even begin to rise. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a dwenda helm—smooth, blunt, black surface, still shimmering with faint traceries of blue light, faceless. But someone spoke his name, and it was a voice he knew.

  Then th
e world went out in a shower of sparks.

  WAKEFULNESS ROLLED BACK AROUND. HIS HEAD LOLLED. SOMEONE splashed water in his face.

  “—sure we should not—”

  “Believe me, Pashla Menkarak, he cannot harm you now. We have his weapons, his sorcery is in check. When angels watch over you, there is no threat you need fear.”

  Weird, limping inflection on that last voice—a real mangling of the Tethanne syllables. And Archeth says my accent’s bad, he thought muzzily, trying to lift his head.

  Someone did it for him. A smooth-gloved hand. He blinked, jerked his chin free of the hold. Hauled in focus.

  Menkarak stood before him, in black robes a lot more ornate than the simple gray affair his dummy had worn. There was thick gold brocade at the sleeves and along the lapels where they folded across each other. His eyes were beady and intent, his lean features suffused with triumph. He looked like a particularly smug prostitute crow.

  “How now, infidel,” he sneered.

  Ringil nodded groggily. “Fuck-face.”

  Most of him was taking in the other figures. The one who’d lifted his chin stood closest, clad neck-to-boots in the smooth leather-like dwenda mail, helmet pulled free to expose a face that was dry-bone white and severe—slash mouth, narrow nose, cheekbones high and sharp under the skin. Featureless eyes, like balls of fresh, wet pitch set in white stone sockets, but gathering in a faint rainbow sheen on the curve of all that smooth, black emptiness. It was like looking at a statue come to life. And behind him—

  Risgillen.

  She stepped closer. The same dwenda face, pale beyond pale and sculpted tight to the bone, lacking only the heaviness of brow and jaw and nose that had given Seethlaw’s otherwise delicate features their masculinity. He thought she might have lost some weight since he last saw her. Grown gaunt around the eyes and mouth.

  It stabbed at him how closely she resembled her brother.

  She stepped closer. They had him roped across the chest into a heavy oak chair, arms and legs secured with thick coils of the same cord. The stuff had a sorcerous look to it; it gleamed a little in the low light and he thought, uneasily, that every now and then it seemed to shift restlessly about on itself, like disturbed snakes in a nest.

  “Ringil.” She touched his face almost like a lover’s, the same urgent tone under soft, the same promise of something to come. “It has been long. But in the end, here you come to me as was always doubtless and entire.”

  He coughed. “Hello, Risgillen. I see your Naomic’s improved.”

  “I have had cause for practice in its pattern.” She let go his face, made a modest gesture. Rainbow sheen on the nails of her hand in motion. “Did you think the cabal in Trelayne was our only pathway to walk in the north?”

  Menkarak turned self-importantly to the other dwenda. “What are these spells?”

  “She binds him,” said the dwenda disinterestedly, Tethanne still appallingly accented. “There is much sorcery in him, rituals are required.”

  “But—what rituals? And why not in the Tongue of the Book?” Menkarak drew himself up. “Lathkeen has told me clearly—sorcery from the north must always wither in the Revelation’s true light. Why do we need—”

  “Lathkeen reveals truth to you as mortals can digest it.” The other dwenda glanced at Risgillen—Gil thought he caught a hint of weariness in the look. “You would do better not to question the Revelation, and lend us instead the strength of your faith and prayers.”

  “Well.” Menkarak cleared his throat. “Yes. But to seek illumination is in itself a part of what the Revelation teaches. To understand—”

  The dwenda turned on him and Menkarak shut up. Ringil, knowing the power of that blank stare, was quite impressed the invigilator actually stood his ground.

  “Forgive me.” Menkarak bowed his head, murmuring. “Atalmire, forgive my heedless zeal. I am incomplete and mortal, I crave illumination only to serve the Revelation better.”

  The dwenda stood like stone. “Illumination is coming, Pashla Menkarak. Rest assured. Possess your soul in patience. That is what your God and His servants ask of you now.”

  Ringil thought vaguely about disabusing Menkarak of the line of shit they were feeding him, but his head hurt from the blow he’d been dealt and he really couldn’t be bothered. Doubtful he’d put a dent in what the invigilator chose to believe anyway. He had seen hard-line faith before, knew its blindness inside and out.

  “Illumination is coming, eh,” he said to Risgillen. “You’ve really got this twat on a string, don’t you?”

  She shrugged. “The priest is useful. He hates the black scourge as demons, he will wash away their mark upon his people if he can.”

  “Yeah, well I doubt the rest of Yhelteth is going to see it that way.”

  “Do you?” It was as if Risgillen could smell the lie on him. “This is not my post, I visit only. But as I understand, there is but a single Kiriath remaining. And the humans turn away, the humans throw away whatsoever they cannot easily comprehend. Ever thus, it was. With this, we ruled them once. We will do such again. And whatsoever the southern Emperor sends now against us, as you are witness, it is easily turned aside.”

  Ringil grunted. At the corner of his eye, sprawled on the stone floor where the hallway began, he saw the protruding slippered legs of the man he’d killed in Menkarak’s place. He switched to Tethanne.

  “Hey, you bearded fuck,” he said, nodding at the body. “Who’d you hide behind back there? Who took the chop for your sweet, lily-livered cheeks?”

  Menkarak bristled. “Let infidel slaughter infidel, if it serve our cause. Hanesh Galat was apostate in the making. He diluted faith with his cheap compassion, he sowed doubt in his flock and his colleagues like a disease. He had congress with infernal workings of the Black Folk, and he came here proud of the fact. Weep for him if you care to, his soul is already in hell.”

  The dwenda called Atalmire placed hands on the invigilator’s shoulders and steered him away. “Come, Pashla Menkarak, there is much to do elsewhere. The Talons of the Sun must be sharpened. The gateway blessed. Leave this infidel in our keeping. We will show him to his own prepared place in the depths.”

  “Yes.” Menkarak was breathing heavily as he looked back at Ringil. “The Talons of the Sun. This city will burn, infidel, and all who are not purely of the Revelation will burn with it.”

  “That’s enough.” Atalmire’s grip tightened and he propelled the invigilator less gently toward the hallway. “There is work to do.”

  He spoke to Risgillen, fluid, lilting syllables of a tongue Ringil had last heard when he was with Seethlaw. Then he escorted Menkarak out of sight into the hall, stepping unceremoniously over the dead fall guy’s body as they went.

  “Well,” said Risgillen. “Alone at last.”

  Ringil shook his head wearily. “I’m sorry, Risgillen. I don’t think you have any idea how sorry I am. It didn’t end the way I planned.”

  For some reason, it seemed to unleash in her a fury previously held in check.

  “Sorry?” She leapt at the chair, grabbed it by the back on either side of his head. Blank black eyeballs, inches from his own. She hissed in his face. “You’re sorry? You took my brother from me.”

  “You think I’d forgotten?”

  She recoiled. Stood staring at Gil as if he was too hot to get near again. “He’s out there, you know that? Seethlaw is out there, in the Gray Places. Lost, I hear him howling, I hear … ”

  She mastered herself again. Wiped angrily at her eyes with the heel of her hand.

  “You still don’t understand what you’ve done,” she whispered. “Do you?”

  “I don’t care, Risgillen.” And then his own temper was suddenly out, unsheathed. He leaned hard into the bite of the ropes across his heart. “Don’t you fucking get it? You think I care what I’ve done, you think I’d go on living if I did? Do you really think what happened to your brother is the worst thing I’ve ever done? It doesn’t even come close!”r />
  The ropes scorched and stung him. He leaned harder, breathed in the pain, glared up at her. The chair rocked back and forth. He found the strength to hiss.

  “Go back to the Gray Places, Risgillen. Take your playmates with you. You’re not fucking wanted here anymore. We have outgrown you.”

  Risgillen gestured sharply. Spoke a word. The ropes slithered and tightened, chopped off his breath, killed his voice, snapped him upright against the back of the chair.

  “Excellent,” she said softly. “This is better than I had hoped.”

  He tried to sag. The ropes would not let him.

  “You stupid fucking bitch,” he wheezed.

  And screamed weakly as the ropes sprouted long jagged thorns, tearing into his flesh at the arms and legs and across his crushed chest.

  Risgillen came back to stand beside the chair. She leaned down and looked into his face from the side. Patted him on the shoulder like a favored pet.

  “Do you know how long it’s taken,” she murmured, “for you to finally have something worth taking away?”

  She jerked forward, he had a rushed glimpse of lengthening fangs in her mouth, and then she tore a living chunk out of his cheek and cracked the bone beneath.

  Agony stormed him, black behind the eyes. He convulsed with the force of it. The ropes held him rigid, crushed the scream out of his chest before it could leave his lungs. He croaked and the agony washed about within him. The thorns writhed and stabbed. Risgillen spat out his flesh. Wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Leaned close again.

  He flinched away. He couldn’t help it.

  “Do you know the dealings I’ve had to have with the Ahn Foi over you?” Now her voice rose. “The contracts and cajoling it has taken to bring you here, to this moment? To find a life that matters to you, to work the skeins so it is put into your keeping? So it will be lost, on your account? I have rehearsed this, Ringil Eskiath, I have lived for this day to come.”

  She lunged in again, he saw the teeth again, becoming fangs in the act of baring. Her tongue lashed, speared into his eye socket, exploded his sight. Her jaws fastened again, on bone this time. He heard something crack like the joint on a fowl dinner. Would have screamed if he could. Heard her growling as she worried at him.