It cost him a lot more than the whore's silence, but he expected as much. Visible military insignia were powerful tools in the begging game. They drew the eye on street corners, forced shame and remembrance on those who would just as soon walk on by with their purse safely stowed. They helped ward off the constant thuggery and assault that beggars were prone to suffer from street gangs or bands of young nobles out on a spree. Sometimes, if your luck was in, they could even get you charitable bed and board on feast days. Accordingly, soldiers cloaks and jackets were traded, stolen, even dug up out of graves on the outskirts of town for the revenue and comfort they could drum up.
In Egar s case, there was a simpler calculus. Since the war ended, there were several thousand veterans begging and sleeping rough on the streets of Yhelteth, not to mention those others, probably also in the thousands, passing themselves off as such. You saw worn-down men in ragged military garb pretty much anywhere a neighborhood lacked either the paid enforcement or the callous collective will to drive them out. They were a part of the noisy, churning backdrop of city life, no more worthy of attention than the next scurrying urchin or street-corner whore. Just another unavoidable sign of the times.
Back on the steppe, there were tales of a shaman-enchanted wolf-skin robe in whose sorcerous folds the wearer could, at will, become invisible to the gaze of men. Wrapped in the cavalryman s cloak, the Dragonbane could duck his head anywhere in Yhelteth and pull pretty much the same trick.
But not right now.
He left the alley with the garment bundled under his arm. The sun still wasn t much above the horizon, but you could feel the heat building already. The streets had filled up while he was inside the brothel. Crowds ebbed and flowed, horse and mule hooves clattered. Skeletal, untenanted market stalls he d passed on his way up the hill in the early hours were now hung with brightly colored cloth awnings, laden with artfully arrayed produce and mobbed with buyers, sellers, and a thin circling of prospective thieves.
He picked his way through the crisscross of sloping streets and alleys, heading for the river. Ideally, he d have liked to find out what went on around Imrana s mansion in the hours after he left, but now was not the time. He needed a doctor, one he could bribe or scare into silence, to dress and clean his wounds. He needed weapons, something a little more substantial than the knives he now carried. He needed to take stock and maybe, just maybe, catch a couple of hours sleep.
None of which was safe to do around here.
And you need to do it all before nightfall.
The faint whisper of his deeper fears because while he was confident he could evade the City Guard for weeks at a time without incident, the dwenda were another, utterly unknown quantity. And whatever unholy alliance they had forged with Pashla Menkarak and the Citadel, he was tolerably sure they would work like the demons they resembled to keep it hidden. They would do their best to track him, and he had no idea what that best might involve. Ringil had always said, after the battle at Beksanara, that the dwenda were as shocked by their encounter with humans as the humans were with them. The outcome of the battle seemed seemed to bear that out, but these fuckers had still appeared more or less out of thin air, had still moved with inhuman speed and grace, had still massacred the better part of an entire detachment of the finest crack troops the Empire had to offer.
Somehow, the state he was in, Egar didn t see himself taking down a dwenda warrior.
He crossed the river by the Sabal pontoon, blending into the ragged crowd as well as he could, slumping his shoulders, curving his back, and chopping his stride to a shuffle. When his turn came at the toll hut on the far side, he broke into a racking, spluttering cough, mumbling and waving and covering his face. The toll officer averted his own face with thinly veiled disgust, snatched the proffered coin, and waved Egar on without a second glance.
In the stew of streets up from the bridge, he prowled about for a while, checking the frontages. He found a doctor s signboard, hanging above the entrance to a flandrijn pipe parlor, but both businesses were shut up tight at this early hour. He shrugged and found a spot across the street to wait, a cool stone alcove between the buttresses of what appeared to have once been a temple. He sank down into the shade. Throb of agony in his thigh as the muscles stretched and tugged at the wound. He pressed lips and teeth together and rode the pain. Glowered across the street at the pipe house sign.
Could fucking use a flandrijn smoke right about now, these assholes just kept decent hours.
He thought vaguely about breaking in and helping himself, but decided against it. Anyone dealing in flandrijn would have watchmen on the premises, and while they might well be sleeping at this time of day, such men war veterans, more than likely would sleep with one ear cocked for disturbance. He wouldn t get past them in his current condition. And if the pipe house owners were well enough connected, a break-in was going to bring the City Guard down on the neighborhood like pox on a campaign whore.
He needed the doctor s services worse than he needed relief from pain right now, and that meant waiting. Anything else just wasn t smart.
Good to see you acting smart now, Dragonbane when it s way too late to be useful.
Oh yeah, what was I supposed to do? Let that cuckold asshole and his pal clear their steel first? Watch them run Imrana through for an adulteress, and then spit me on the same blade for good measure?
No. But maybe you should just have stayed away from Imrana until you knew Ashant was back on his hero s horse and somewhere south.
The girl
The girl, horseshit. You been looking to pick that fight for a fortnight now, and you know it.
He turned his head against the cool, shadowed stonework. Managed a weak smirk. Pretty slow for crack imperial officers. Riot duty in Demlarashan must be turning them soft.
Yeah, that and whatever they d been drinking all night. Don t kid yourself, Dragonbane. You got lucky, is all.
Or the Dwellers got my back. Takavach, maybe, watching over me
He dozed in and out of his pain. Time marched past, like the grubby street crowd, barely registering through his drooping eyelids and occasional starts back to consciousness. Around him, the shadows melted down the dilapidated temple walls like dark, fast-burning candles, as the sun cranked up into the sky. The city s sounds turned to a blurred ebb and flow in his ears. He drifted, back to memories of the steppe, the great bleeding sunsets at the bottom of the sky, the huddled mass of buffalo moving between the governing points of Skaranak herd riders in the gloom, the barked commands in Majak across the chilly air. He shivered in his doze, and turned tighter into the temple wall. He dreamed about getting a shave. The barber, cleaning soap scum from the razor, applying the blade to his throat. The cold metal presses in, begins to slice Do not disconcert yourself, my lord.
He jerked awake. Head snapped suddenly upright.
Across the street, a tubby black-clad man stood waiting while his much taller slave unsnapped the bolts at the top of the pipe house entrance. Egar grunted and got himself to his feet. Reeling a little, the first few steps, but he firmed up as he crossed the street. Pain stabbed through his thigh, scorched and bit at him elsewhere old habit forced it out, straightened his stride. He stood a couple of paces off the tubby man s shoulder and cleared his throat.
You the bone man?
Both men jumped. The slave s hand fell to his belt as he turned, and the seasoned wooden billy club that swung there. Egar cut him a glance, shook his head.
You the bone man? he repeated quietly, eyes on the master.
The tubby man drew himself up. Now, look, I I have already tithed this month. I m a devout man. But I don t do charity work on demand. I have to make a living. You ll just have to
I can pay, Egar told him. He patted the purse at his belt and made it clink.
Palpable relief washed across the doctor s face. It was like watching a man slide into well-warmed bathwater.
Oh, he said. Well, that s different.
CHAPTER 33
Ringil reached up and touched the pommel of the Ravensfriend, where it rose at his shoulder. It was forged for me at An-Monal by Grashgal the Wanderer.
Yes actually, I was talking to the sword.
Helmsmen .He'd never much liked them, even in the old days. Too little readability in their immobile iron bodies, when you could actually see one, and in their disembodied avuncular voices when you couldn t. And too fucking impressed with themselves by half. Personally, he told Archeth, when the subject of Anasharal came up, I d trust one of those things about as far as I could carry its melted-down carcass up the street. They re no better than demons it s like keeping the Dark Court in a fucking bottle on your mantelpiece. Who knows what they re thinking, or what they want?
In truth, he was exaggerating a little for effect. During the war, he d spent time at An-Monal and conversed with Manathan on and off, albeit mostly in the company of its Kiriath handlers. The Helmsman had given him no reason to dislike it, if you didn t include the run of tiny cold shivers he felt every time it spoke unexpectedly to him out of the bedrock air. To Grashgal and the others, the creatures were part of the furniture, and over time Ringil had found himself able to cultivate a similar attitude. But it didn t change the fact that you were dealing with something as inert as a sword or a temple wall, and it still apparently had intelligence far greater than your own. And seemed to enjoy reminding you of the fact.
The Dark Court and the dwenda at least had the courtesy to appear human.
Well, you re still going to have to talk to it. Archeth, pragmatic as ever when anything other than her own life was concerned. It s the heart of the expedition, it s the reason we re going in the first place.
Yeah, makes you wonder, doesn t it?
What? They were riding back from the Shanta boatyards, side by side through noon city bustle and heat. But even against the backdrop hubbub of the streets and clop of their horses hooves on cobbles, he could hear the irritable tension clambering upward in her voice. Makes you wonder what ?
He sighed. They were long overdue for this conversation. He d been putting it off for days.
Might as well get it over with.
Archeth, come on. A watchtower city in the ocean, a clan dedicated to standing eternal guard down the centuries? That s not how people live, and you know it. Not even your people. Anasharal is spinning you a fireside yarn for children. You don t believe it any more than I do. That s not what this is about.
You know a studied calm in her voice now, a signal he knew for the warning smolder of staved-off rage I am getting a little fucking tired of hearing men explain to me what my real motivations are. If you re so sure we re wasting our time, then why did you
I didn t say that. He shifted sideways in his saddle to face her better. I didn t say we re wasting our time. Look, maybe An-Kirilnar does exist. And maybe, just maybe, it hasn t been plundered the way An-Naranash was. The Hironish are tough to get out to, true enough, those are bad waters, so maybe this place has been overlooked. That s certainly what your merchant pals have got to be hoping. So, sure, I ll break heads and keep order for you, and I ll ride along with you when you go. It s something to do, it ll keep me busy. But please don t tell me you really think we re going to find a bustling little colony of Kiriath custodians up there, keeping an eye on some wet chunk of granite with a tomb on top, cheerfully passing down their mission from father to son for the past four thousand years and acting like the rest of the world doesn t exist. I mean, is that likely ?
It isn t impossible.
He sighed again. No, it isn t impossible. Very little seems to be impossible in this world. But is it really what you think you ll find?
So, what? You think Anasharal is just making this up? The evasion was blatant, the scratchy signs of krinzanz denial right behind it in the uneven tone of her voice. To what fucking purpose, Gil? Answer me that. A cabal of misfit rich fucks, ships built and equipped, men hired and trained, an expedition to a place that doesn t exist why would a Helmsman want all that?
He shrugged. I think we ve covered this ground. You re trying to second-guess something completely inhuman. Why should its motivations make any sense to us?
They rode on without speaking, a dozen or so clopping horse strides.
Yeah, well, Archeth repeated, with evident sour satisfaction. You re still going to have to talk to it.
He was never very sure why he went armed into its presence.
There was a certain dress formality in the League cities for noblemen. War was, after all, their trade, and it seemed appropriate they should represent the fact in public. Before the Scaled Folk came, the tradition had ebbed somewhat. The more mannered among the gentry adopted flimsy court swords with more attention given to their gaudy scabbards and guards than to the plain steel sheathed within. But with the war and the subsequent upheaval, heavy blades were in evidence once more, and Ringil, on his return to Trelayne last year, had found himself unexpectedly fashionable.
But it wasn t that.
Perhaps, then, it was simply that the Ravensfriend was his link with the world of the Kiriath, his contract of passage and letter of recommendation to everything Anasharal represented. Grashgal forged it in workshops Ringil was never given admission to, out of alloys humans had no names for and containing, Ringil sometimes suspected, mechanisms the Kiriath didn t like to talk about. If, he reasoned one drunken night on the steppe with Egar, those cryptic fuckers have Helmsmen to help them sail their fireships, why wouldn t they have something like that to help them fight their wars? Something I don t know something aware?
Egar had cast a glance at the Ravensfriend where it lay on the ground by the fire. He smirked.
Yeah, thought I seen you talking to it a couple of times. Stroking it, like. You want to watch that shit, Gil.
Ringil threw a boot at him.
He put the memory away.
Talk to the sword all you like, he told Anasharal evenly. I m the one in charge here.
Well, if you say so.
It sat on a low, ornate table, set to one side of the room s ample hearth. High-angled morning sunlight poured in from the windows in the eastern wall, made odd facets and chinks in its rounded upper surface shine like jewels. Its limbs if that was what they were spread out evenly around its body like a marsh spider s legs, rising to a jointed midpoint, then dipping to sharp ends that dug visibly into the wood of the table top. Archeth had told him it couldn t move with much speed or competence, but to Ringil s uneasy eye the thing looked poised to leap or scuttle off somewhere at a moment s notice.
Actually, the Lady kir -Archeth Indamaninarmal says so. He unslung the Ravensfriend and leaned it carefully against one side of the mantelpiece. In the hard, bright light, dust motes seemed to coalesce around the weapon as he let it go. She s named me expeditionary commander. And since she has the Emperor s ear in this matter, I d say that s about as final as it s going to get.
And is the Lady kir-Archeth aware of just how popular you are in northern climes at this precise moment?
Ringil lowered himself into the armchair opposite. I d say she has an inkling.
And His Imperial Radiance?
I could give a back-alley fuck what that asshole thinks.
I see. That good old dead-man-walking defiance, too. Impossible to tell from the tone if the Helmsman was mocking him or not. Yes, I can see why they chose you.
Chose me? Blurted out, before he could help himself.
You know what I m talking about Dragonbane.
Breathe. Build a thin smile. No one calls me that.
Shame. It must be upsetting, the lack of proper recognition.
Well. Ringil settled deeper into the chair. Examined the nails of his right hand. It was a joint effort.
The quiet stretched. He watched the dust motes dance around the Ravensfriend s hilt. On the table, one of Anasharal s limbs twitched. The point lifted fractionally, tapped at the wooden surface li
ke an impatient schoolmaster s finger.
The Ahn Foi are not your friends, Ringil Eskiath. You should keep that in mind.
I don t despite the cold shiver through him recognize that name.
Do you not? Try, then, the Immortal Watch. The Murderers of the Muhn. Hoiran s Band. The Sky Dwellers. The Dark Court. Any of those ring a bell?
He stared back at the machine, fighting off memories of Dakovash.
I have nothing to do with the Dark Court.
Good, said Anasharal, suddenly brisk. That s a healthy attitude. You ll live longer.
Ringil glanced toward the hearth, for all that it was cold and ashen at this hour of the day. Fought down a creeping impression that the Helmsman didn t believe a word he d just said.
The Lady kir -Archeth tells me, he said, that An-Kirilnar was constructed to guard against the return of an ancient evil. A human ally of the dwenda.
Yes.
She says you referred to him as the Ilwrack Changeling.
Yes. A certain archness crept into Anasharal s tone. Is that name familiar to you?
Like a blow under the heart, he was back in the Gray Places.
Seethlaw, introducing his sister. Her archaic, mangled Naomic.
I am with name Risgillen of Ilwrack
What can you tell me about him?
About him? The Helmsman s tone was shot through with definite amusement now. Or about the Aldrain clan that fostered him?
Ringil manufactured a shrug. Is there some reason you wouldn t tell me about both?
Quiet crept across the room between them. The Ravensfriend stood wreathed in dancing dust and light. The Helmsman tapped the table again with every appearance, Ringil thought, of pettish ill humor.
I know what you are, Eskiath, it said. Don t think for a moment that I don t.
Ringil let that one sit, let it sink away into the quiet. He kept his face an immobile mask. Finally, he set one ankle four-square across his knee, leaned forward in his seat with a frown, and brushed fluff from his boot.
Care to elaborate on that?
The Cold Commands alffh-2 Page 37