The Cold Commands (33 page)

Does that suffice?

Ringil nods gingerly. His voice comes hoarse and dry.
Sounds good, yeah
.

The talon comes out from under his jaw, trails lightly up his cheek, and then lifts away. Ringil tries to rise from his crouch, but another swift tap on his shoulder stops him. He waits again. The creature makes another
throat-clearing sound, though from what Ringil has now seen, he’s not convinced it has a throat to clear.

Well, the merroigai speak highly of you. And I should not like you, at this crossroads, to think ill of me. It is that way
.

One bone-pale arm scissors out across his vision, gestures to the right.

What is?

What you seek, hero. Brief comfort, and a way out
.

HE’S FORGOTTEN THE FIRELIGHT FLICKER ON THE SKY.

Now, as if freshly unveiled, it shows up as a solid glow along the path to his right. He’d swear it was not that close before. Or maybe the sky, for cycles and reasons of weather he cannot begin to fathom, is actually darkening now toward some kind of night.

He walks an increasingly defined road, paving broad enough for a farmer’s cart, and he can see the ancient runnels where generations of such traffic have worn their mark. His boot heels tock solidly, send odd echoes scurrying away across the marsh, and he feels a faint prickling at his nape, as if at any moment he’ll hear other, stilted-scuttling steps mingled with his own, the creature at the crossroads rushing to catch up, to rise behind him, mouthparts splitting apart, talons unfolding once more, suddenly unforgiving of Ringil’s prior discourtesy and dragon-knife nerves …

Instead, the broad path takes him in amid the ruins of a city; windswept terraces of broken stone, the snapped stumps of pillars, huge tilted mausoleum blocks carved with rows of symbols he can’t read but whose chiseled march makes him shiver more than spider-bite fever and the gray marsh weather would rightly explain. And now there are steps on the left, broad, shallow ledges of them, worn wax-smooth and uneven with age, dripping down to the level of the road he’s on. He looks up their sweep and the fireglow jumps and gutters at the top, strong against a sky now undoubtedly darkening. He hears the pluck of a stringed instrument, human voices raised in laughter and undisciplined efforts at song.

He picks his way up toward the sounds, balancing relief against an
odd sense of loss for the haunted road he’s leaving below. And when he reaches the top, stands on a plateau of cracked white-stone paving that looks as if it might once have been the floor of some columned temple or market space, when he sees the wagons gathered in the center, the cheery reach of the bonfire and the motley-clad men and women gathered around it, he finds himself unaccountably pinned in the shadows at the edge of the plaza, not quite able to move forward.

It’s a woman who spots him first. Carrying a wine flask on one hip around the fire and back to one of the wagons, shrugging off ribald commentary from men who grab after her with halfhearted, hilarious ineptitude as she passes, she turns away from the fire for a moment, and there he is. In the instant their eyes meet, he sees himself as she must: gaunt, black-cloaked, and silent, sword pommel at his back.

He thinks she’ll shriek, but she doesn’t.

Hjel
, she calls instead.
We have visitors
.

Ringil hears the name as it floats across the campfire air to its owner, hears the archaic marsh dialect of Naomic the woman uses, and there’s a sudden twitch in his groin, and a wonder in his head. There, at the fire’s edge, the slumped, brim-hatted figure with the long-necked mandolin across his lap …

Ringil narrows his gaze.
Couldn’t be—could it?

The mandolin’s plucked chime stops, the last chords skitter off in the dark. The murmur of conversation around the fire dries up. The player lets long, supple hands lie on the instrument for a moment. Beneath the brim of the hat, he tilts his head slowly up. Glitter of eyes as they throw back the fire’s cheer.

It’s him. No question.

Visitors. Well
. Hjel props himself elegantly upright and hands the mandolin off to a woman seated at his side. He speaks the same tongue, just as he did before, marsh Naomic with its ornate traceries of old Myrlic. He stands, and stares across the hot sparks and wavering air above the fire.
And a warrior to boot, by the look of it. Come forward, sir. We don’t stand on ceremony at the court of Hjel the Dispossessed
.

Lightning-flash image: Under canvas-lit parchment yellow with the firelight outside, Hjel curls those long supple fingers around Gil’s cock and runs the tip of his tongue … 
That much I know. Do you not recognize me, Ragged Prince?

Hjel sets hands on hips and tilts his head a little at the familiar title.
Recognize you? To do that, I would need to see you in the light
.

A score of eyes on him around the fire—those on this side have scooted sideways to look. Ringil obliges them with a couple of paces forward, keeps his hands clearly visible for courtesy. The temptation to do a pirouette is an overwhelming itch in his—now oddly painless—stomach. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he’s on the edge of laughter.

The mandolin player comes around the fire, picks his way among the seated company with slim-hipped, long-legged grace. There’s stubble on his face, and there, that tiny scar on his chin he rubs at when he’s curious. He strolls up and makes a half circle at Ringil’s side, carefully out of blade range. Folds his arms across his lower chest as if hugging himself.

Lifts a hand and rubs the scar.

Shakes his head.

No. I’d remember that face. That big sword. I don’t know you, friend
.

Ringil smiles.
But I know you
.

Well, washed up as we are at the gray margins of the world, any chilled wraith hoping for a place at the fire might say the same thing
. But the eyes beneath the hat brim are dancing with all the curiosity and wild mischief Ringil remembers.
Convince me
.

Ringil raises a hand, crooks thumb and little finger as he has been taught. Words from the
ikinri ’ska
bubble behind his lips. He lets a few break free—harsh, whispered syllables that seem to leave little pockets of chilled air in their wake. At the fireside, one of the hounds pricks up its ears and looks at him strangely. Later, some will swear they saw a dark ripple step across the ancient, crack-stoned plaza. And shadows bicker at the edges of the fire.

The smile falls off Hjel’s face.

Who taught you that?

You did
.

Now Hjel’s disquiet is spreading to the men and women around the fire. Perhaps they sense, at some animal level, the same touch that the hound did. Or perhaps it’s only the way their captain has grown so abruptly serious.

The ikinri ’ska is not a set of tricks for cheap conjuring
, Hjel says quietly.
I would not have taught it to a charlatan
.

You asked to be convinced
.

I am not convinced
.

Very well. In your tent, you keep a white-marble figurine of a woman with a crack through its head. About this size, very beautiful, apparently very old. You found it on the marsh as a boy. You’d wandered away from your uncle’s caravan and lost yourself. A strange, pale wolf seemed to be stalking you, but when you—

Enough
. Hjel swallowed.
You walk out of my future to recite my past. You drag dark echoes behind you like a trawl net. What are you really?

What I am is hungry. And cold. Your hospitality wasn’t so circumspect the last time, Prince in Rags
.

So you say
.

Any chilled wraith hoping for a place at the fire might say the same. Yes
. Ringil shrugs.
You’re a sorcerer, you once told me. A master of the
ikinri ’ska.
So. My name is Ringil Eskiath. Look in my eyes and tell me if you see a wraith there
.

He waits.

It takes a moment, and before Hjel meets his gaze, the sorcerer’s eyes flicker off to right and left as if Ringil has come with an honor guard at his back. But finally he looks, and whatever he does or does not see in his visitor’s eyes, he chooses not to comment on it. He nods slightly instead, like a man accepting bad news he has long expected.

Be welcome at my hearth, then, Ringil Eskiath
. Hjel gestures toward the fire, some of his earlier elegant poise regained in the motion.
I place us both in bonds of guest and host
.

Then he jerks a thumb back over his shoulder, artfully casual, as if it’s an afterthought.

But your friends back there stay out in the dark
.

RINGIL DOESN’T LOOK BACK. IF HJEL THE SCAVENGER PRINCE AND SORCERER
can play this game, so can he.

But as the new chill walks its way up his spine, he knows beyond doubt what he’ll see if he does turn. He knows because he’s seen it before,
falling off the feverish edge of consciousness as he lay on the cobbled streets of Hinerion and heard the screams of Venj’s men dying.

A gaunt figure, a scarred face, a sword blade swinging like a scythe.

A blunt, powerful form, fists gripped around a heavy smith’s hammer and long-handled manacle cutters.

A young boy, mouth open, snarling through bloodied teeth, a quarrel sprouting from under his sternum like some alien iron appendage.

They stand at his back in the cold—he can feel them there now—like new gods. Like a fresh pantheon, waiting to be born.

IT WAS WARM, BY THE FIRE.

he slave quarters were guarded.

Harath sank back into cover with a clenched curse. Four flights of stairs below the landing they crouched on, a pair of tall doors like those they’d passed through to get to the gallery. Heavy chain through the handles, and three burly figures sat in a circle on low stools in front. A couple of lanterns stood on the ground nearby and threw long, fitful flickers across the floor. Low mutter of Majak, the odd explosion of good-natured cursing—the three men were playing dice in the dust. Three staff lances were propped casually against the side of the door, thin, bony shadows slanting down the wall in the lantern glow.

“This is new,” Harath whispered. “They never used to bother.”

“What happens when your hired help starts mauling the merchandise,” Egar hissed back.

Harath grinned sheepishly, and Egar felt like choking him. There
was a thin, restless anger rising in him now. Thanks to this Ishlinak punk, he was going to have to do it after all. Majak blood on his hands once again, and for no better reason than …

Than what, Dragonbane? Than bare, bored-out-of-your-mind curiosity? Than random scouting of the enemy’s ramparts in service to Archeth, who’s out of town anyway?

Or—oh, wait—is it that itch you can’t scratch with Ishgrim, maybe, and the thought that some other willowy Naom slave gash might be grateful enough if you—

He chopped the thoughts irritably away. The restless anger slopped higher in him, seeking outlet.

Fucking punk kids
.

In
his
day, no Majak who’d taken coin to guard slaves would have dreamed of touching the goods or—

That’s right, Dragonbane. And brothers always stood together, the buffalo came when they were called, the grass grew taller and greener, and it never fucking rained
.

Get a grip, old man
.

He crushed out the brooding with a grimace. Drew one of his knives. Crouched and listened to the voices float up through the gloomy air. The twang of the Ishlinak dialect.

Harath dipped his head closer.

“I thought you said we weren’t going to get into it with these guys.”

“I thought you said the slave quarters weren’t guarded, and we’d get in with a bent pin.”

Half the sheepish grin again. “Yeah, but—”

Egar spared two fingers from the grip on his knife, snagged Harath by the collar, and jerked him close. Eyes like slits, teeth tight. Voice a snake-strike hiss.

“You’ve been
paid
, Majak.”

Harath jerked loose. But he looked away and wet his lips.

“Look—I reckon that’s Alnarh down there,” he murmured.

“Good. That should make it easy for you. Some payback for all his shit? You can take him, I’ll do the other two.”

The younger man nodded hesitantly. Egar could not quite repress a savage twinge of satisfaction.
Bit of fucking consequence for your acts and
the coin you take, eh, kid?
He gestured with one knife-filled hand, and they ghosted down the stairs together in the shadow of the balustrades. Got to the final landing, and the last corner of usable cover. Harath hovered. Wet his lips again.

Egar widened his eyes at him, jerked his chin.
Fucking get on with it
.

Harath stood. Went down the final flight of stairs toward the dice players with no attempt at quiet.

Scrabble of action as they saw him and came to their feet, grabbing weapons.

“Hold it right the fuck there!”

“Not another step, asshole!”

Harath snorted. “Oh my, what big fucking blades you have, boys.”

Stunned silence. Peering through the balustrade, Egar made out short-swords, maybe an ax. But their staff lances still stood against the wall. The murderous seven-foot, double-bladed Majak standby—but still not in play.

One of the Ishlinak halfway lowered his sword.

“Harath—that you, buddy?”

“Shut up, Elkret. He’s outcast. What the fuck are you doing here, Harath? Who let you in?”

Harath made it to the bottom of the stairs, hands well away from his sides. He seemed, finally, to have started enjoying himself.

“Hey, Alnarh. How’s it hanging? Getting any Revelation-approved pussy?”

Alnarh twitched toward the staff lance where it leaned against the wall. “I
said
who let you in?”