The Cold Commands (v5.0) (html)

by Richard K Morgan - [A Land Fit for Heroes 02]

  Across Hjel’s shoulder blade, the fingers of his dry hand find the scars.

  He stops what he’s doing—muffled grunt of frustration from Hjel—brushes his fingers across the raised scar tissue again, exploring at the edge of some black epiphany.

  There at the inner edge of the shoulder blade, a thick finger broad, and crawling down Hjel’s back the length of a child’s forearm. He remembers this scarring from before, remembers Hjel’s hushing evasion of the question that rose to his lips then, but never spilled over into speech. But now …

  Comprehension dawning, but still a fingertip out of reach …

  Hjel twisting impatiently about, voice thick with desperate lust. “Don’t—that’s not—don’t stop—”

  Ignoring him, spread fingers out now to the other shoulder blade and the identical scar carved there …

  Like angel wings, torn out at the roots. But—

  Ringil remembers, feels himself wilt with the memory. The creature’s arms, the two that settle on his back just below the shoulder blades, pressing in and up like hooks.

  The sibilant voice.

  I should hate to tear you asunder. You show a lot of promise.

  And now Hjel has worked himself around and seen the look on Ringil’s face. The lust flutters away, gone like mandolin notes into the dark. He’s working on a crooked smile, and for that alone Ringil wants to weep and hold him tight.

  “Gifts at the crossroads are not cheap,” Hjel says quietly. “Everyone must pay. And most of us heal somewhat with time.”

  Ringil shakes his head. Mouth tight—words are hard. He forces them out.

  “I didn’t pay.”

  Hjel reaches out, suddenly tender after the harsh impatience of their grappling. His hand touches Ringil’s cheek, touches the scar along the jaw.

  “Perhaps you already have,” he says. “Or will later.”

  Ringil tries his own bent smile. “What else could they take from me now?”

  But Hjel only puts rapid fingers across his lips, as if to seal the words back in, and pulls him back down into the shadows on the floor of the tent.

  SLOWER THIS TIME.

  Ringil uses the tricks he already knows from his other, yet-to-happen couplings with the dispossessed prince, the things he remembers that Hjel likes, the pressure of teeth and tongue like this that makes him writhe left and right like a severed snake, the delving fingers doing that so they make him stiffen and gasp …

  He understands now that at least part of Hjel’s allure when he first met him must have been a similar prior knowledge to this, inverted. And understanding this, he shows himself to the other man more intimately than he might otherwise have done, offering the gates to his own seduction with an abandon that is at least half sly investment in his own future pleasure.

  And half, perhaps, the understanding that this, all of this, cannot last.

  When, finally, he thrusts into Hjel from behind, it’s done almost gently, and still they both come in seconds. Clenched teeth and groans, the sorcerer bucking back against him like an unbroken pony. Hjel’s slim cock, pulsing suddenly sticky in his hand.

  As the spasms ebb, Ringil wraps his arms tight around the other man’s torso, hugging him up close, pressing face hard against the scar tissue etched into Hjel’s back. Closing his eyes for what thin escape there might be.

  Something to hold.

  CHAPTER 24

  t wasn’t a long list:

  Andal Karsh

  Mahmal Shanta

  Yilmar Kaptal

  Nethena Gral

  Shab Nyanar

  Jhash Oreni

  Klarn Shendanak

  “You know, you’d have thought we’d have a lot more rich fuckers than that in an Empire that spans the known world” was Jhiral’s sour opinion when they’d finished. He leaned over her in lamp-glow at the desk, glowering at the parchment and the names it held. “I’ve certainly handed out royal charter to five times that many, and I’ve only been on the throne two years.”

  “Wealthy and prepared to risk their wealth,” Archeth reminded him, sitting back in the chair, quill still in hand. “It’s not a combination we see a lot of these days.”

  “Well …” The Emperor gestured. “The war.”

  “Yes, my lord. The war.”

  At court it had become something of a catchall excuse, a slick evasion of responsibility for failures as varied as falling crop revenue, eastern province bandit incursions, and even street cobble upkeep in the poorer quarters of the city. The war, my lord.

  Sometimes, it was even true.

  And sometimes not. The war and the speculative skirmishing against the League in the aftermath might have decimated the ranks of Yhelteth’s less risk-averse nobles, but it was Jhiral’s post-coronation purges and appointments that were doing the damage now. The Emperor’s obsession with personal loyalty above all things was currently making obsequious caution in word and deed pretty much a required survival trait.

  And now, my lord, it’s come right back to bite you in the arse.

  Glancing up at him, she wondered if he saw it. Or if he cared. Jhiral was not a stupid man, but neither did he seem much disposed since the accession to put his intelligence to work. Or at least, not on any project beyond paranoid self-preservation and the drenching of his senses in pleasure.

  Yeah—can you blame him, Archidi? Five attempts on his life before he even got into his teens, seven more since then. Three exiled brothers and a sister who’d all slit his throat without blinking if they thought it’d bring them to the throne. Innumerable half siblings lurking backstage, nursing similar cheap ambition.

  What would you be living for?

  Through ornate windows on all sides, the city’s myriad lights glimmered to the horizon. A cooling breeze wandered in and out, stirring the papers on the desk. On Jhiral’s insistence, they’d retired to the top of the Sabal Tower—it was the other side of the palace from the Queen Consort Gardens and the closest thing to an inner sanctum the Khimran dynasty had owned before the Chamber of Confidences was built.

  Archeth wasn’t convinced this put them any better out of Anasharal’s earshot, but she said nothing to Jhiral—he was building to a foul enough mood without any encouragement from her. So they went to the tower. And in the meantime, evening had crept up on Yhelteth like an encroaching army, and sunk the heart of Empire in burnished gloom.

  “What about Menith Tand,” she tried. “He’s made a mint since the League slave routes opened up again.”

  Jhiral scowled. “Yes, and he’s not exactly shown willing when it comes to sharing the revenue. He’s opposed me on the requisitions council twice now. And I hear Tlanmar had some trouble getting toll dues out of him this season.”

  “Yes, but that’s tax. This is something he stands to profit from.”

  “Yeah—so says the iron demon. But what happens if we’re being led up a blind alley here? Eh, Archeth? What if there is no prize; no An-Kirilnar standing above the waves beyond Hironish and filled with wonders. Or what if it’s there, but it turns out as abandoned and plundered as An-Naranash was?”

  “Then,” said Archeth, carefully as handling sharp shards of glass, “Tand will be disappointed, along with the others. We will have learned the truth. And it will have cost the imperial treasury nothing at all.”

  She let it sink in, watching the impact of her words, the fade of the imperial scowl. The full genius of Anasharal’s scheme was still dawning on her.

  Make a list, the Helmsman told them, with airy aplomb, of moneyed citizens whose wealth will bear the weight of the enterprise, and whose appetite for risk will commend it to them. Your Radiance need only contribute a commodity in which he is infinitely resourced—his scrawl on parchment, and the Khimran seal of approval on a royal charter of endeavor.

  It was only as the list took shape that Archeth began to see the pattern. That, by virtue of their appetite for risk, these men—and one woman, Nethena Gral—were exactly the courtiers least likely to be found in
Jhiral’s choir of court-appointed sycophants, and thus least likely to be missed if they chose to absent themselves from court and plunge into more private matters; chose, in fact, in some cases—Shendanak would for certain, probably Kaptal, too—to actually leave the city and accompany the expedition at least partway to its destination.

  Jhiral would practically cheer them out the gates.

  Only one risk, really—

  “Admirably frugal, Archeth, yes.” Jhiral took a turn around the desk, dropped into a seat on the other side from her. He shoved a boot up on the edge of the desk, brooding. The table jarred an inch in her direction with his weight. “But on the other hand, if this expedition does return laden with wealth and wonders, it isn’t going to make Tand any easier to control. He’ll come back smug as a Majak climbing out a harem window at dawn. Not to mention, he’ll be more influential everywhere it counts.”

  Well, then you can always have him arrested, tortured, and fed to the pool dwellers, my lord.

  “The undertaking will have your seal upon it, my lord. Yours will be the wisdom that authorized it and made it a reality.”

  He looked at her across his raised boot. “Are you patronizing me, Archeth? Because I’m really not in the mood.”

  “That was not my intention, my lord. I merely—”

  “Yes, all right. Spare me the courtier groveling, you’re really not very good at it. Just an apology, that’d be nice.”

  “I—” Lack of krinzanz nagged and dragged at her like a bad tooth. She closed her eyes. “I am sorry, my lord.”

  “Good.” The change in him was mercurial. He dropped his boot to the floor with a slam, leaned forward across the desk, and tapped briskly on her scribbled list. “Go on, then. Tand. Put him down. Going to be hilarious, actually, watching him try to cooperate with Shendanak. You know they hate each other’s guts.”

  “I … did not know that, sire.”

  “Well, they do. You know, you should show up at court more often, Archeth. It really would improve your grasp of current affairs.”

  “Yes, my lord.” She dipped the quill and scraped the new name down.

  “Yes, good.” He watched her write, sat farther back in the chair. “Now, we’ve got another problem here. Mahmal Shanta.”

  Don’t stop writing.

  Because she knew he was watching her, not the pen. Had spilled the name with precision, to see how she reacted.

  She finished the final curlicue and set the quill aside. Warily: “My lord?”

  “We have to be able to trust these people, Archeth.” He jabbed a finger at her. “And just between you and me, my lord Shanta’s stock in that commodity is running pretty fucking low at the moment.”

  She hesitated. “Your father trusted him.”

  “Yes, well Shanta and my father were as chummy as two old buggers in a Trelayne Academy bathtub. But as we’ve seen in the last couple of years, loyalty to my late beloved father and to myself are two significantly different things. You’ve heard the rumors, don’t pretend you haven’t.” He considered that for a moment. “All right, maybe you haven’t. But just think about it. Apply that half-bred Black Folk genius of yours for a moment. Do you really think I’d promote Sang over Shanta’s head because I like the obsequious little turd?”

  “It is not my place, my lord, to—”

  “Oh, shut up. Sang got where he is now for one reason, and one reason alone. He is loyal. And in times like these, I cannot afford anything less.”

  Archeth said nothing. Waited for the rotted kernel at the heart of all this, because she knew it was coming.

  Jhiral stared back at her for a couple of moments in silence, then he sighed.

  “All right. It’s going to get out sooner or later, you may as well hear it from me. Bentan Sanagh named Shanta several times in his confession. Covert meetings of the shipwright seniors. Treasonous opinions on policy. Dissent.”

  Mahmal, you stupid fucking …

  “Under torture, my lord—”

  “Yes, I’m well aware of your opinions on the subject, Archeth. But I happen to trust my torturers. They’re the best in the Empire, and I pay them to get at the truth, not to wallow in dungeon bloodlust. Shanta’s name came up. Too many times for it to be entirely a lie.”

  “Was his the only name?”

  “Of course not. They’re shipwrights, aren’t they? Fucking coast-lander families to a man. Got a six-century chip on their shoulders about the horse tribes, ever since my forefathers rode down off the plains and made them all vassals. Sanagh says they’re all in it, have been at least since the accession.”

  “Then that would include Sang.”

  “No, I already told you. Sang’s loyal.”

  “Sanagh gave him special exemption when he was shrieking out his confession, did he?”

  “Look—”

  “What was it, foot flaying again?” She found, abruptly, that she could not stop herself. “I hear they like that down in the inquisitor colleges these days. Perfected the wire flail, have they, my lord? Or are we back to belly irons?”

  Then she did stop. Breathing hard now, pulse a soft and rising roar in her own head. Staring defiantly at him in the low light, and the silence opening up behind her words. For a while it seemed they were floating in it, shipwrecked survivors of some titanic ocean storm that had just abated, or was maybe just circling around.

  Jhiral twitched. For a moment, she thought she saw rage rising in his eyes, but then the twitch became a wince and his gaze wandered away among the books and papers that filled the tower room. He got up and prowled the space between desks, went to the window and looked out, came back. Met her gaze again.

  “Oh, don’t look at me like that, Archeth. I’m not a monster. I put Sanagh out of his misery for you, didn’t I?”

  She left that one well alone, worked instead at keeping her pulse even. She steepled her fingers over the parchment, as if affording the names there some arcane protection.

  “My lord.” Flat calm. “Much of this expedition, if not all of it, will be made by sea. And Mahmal Shanta is, whatever his diplomatic failings, the foremost naval engineer in the Empire. That alone would commend him to the list. But consider also that he is not a man to entrust important matters to underlings. He personally oversees every keel laid in his family’s boatyards, and since the war he takes most of them out on their maiden voyage as well.”

  “Yes, well, it’s not his fidelity to shipbuilding that I’m concerned about.”

  “No, my lord.” She paused. Let him see it for himself.

  Jhiral leaned on the back of the chair he’d been using. Not quite ready yet to sit down. “Yes, all right, I’m not stupid. The expedition gets him out of town, draws the fangs on any other little extracurricular activities he’s got brewing.”

  “It’s more than that, my lord. I know Shanta. He will insist on accompanying us, yes, but this is not all. He will want to plot our route and resupply points around the Gergis cape. He will want to review the charts and expeditionary records for the northern ocean and the Hironish. He will insist on designing and building the vessels we use.”

  “Yeah,” the Emperor jeered. “Nice little earner for the Shanta yards.”

  She shrugged. “Or, if we don’t build from scratch, he will want to dry-dock the vessels we acquire and refurbish them stem to stern. Either way, it will consume his energies for months. It will draw in those from the guild he considers his friends. It is late summer, my lord. The expedition cannot make ready before the seasons turn on us; we will have to wait for the spring. Involve Shanta in this, and you occupy him throughout autumn and winter, and then he leaves the city for who knows how many months.”

  “And escapes any redress for his treason.”

  She steeled herself for the step. “If you like. Though the northern ocean is hardly a safe place at the best of times. Who’s to say what may happen there?”

  The words floated down into quiet. Outside, the nighttime city glimmered. Jhiral tilted his hea
d and cocked a brow at her.

  “Are you … saying what I think you’re saying, Archeth?”

  “I am saying only that there is more than one way to remove a political opponent, my lord. You need not always feed them to the ocean in the confines of your own palace.”

  A faint breeze through the tower windows. Flicker of lamplight, caper of shadows.