The Cold Commands (50 page)

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 like 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?”

Tap-tap
. Quiet.

“Oh, very
well
 …” Anasharal’s voice took on a slightly singsong cadence. “The Ilwrack Changeling was born of a noble house whose name is now lost. As a child, he probably spent—are you getting this, Ringil Eskiath?—he probably spent as much of his time in the Aldrain realm as on Earth, and from this he derived his powers.
Changeling
is technically a misnomer, a misappropriated marsh dweller myth applied to those among the human ruling classes who were chosen for their great beauty and strength of intellect by the Aldrain overlords, and borne away at an early age to learn the culture of the Ageless Realm. It was, in its way, not much different from the military training noble males receive in the Empire or the League today. Then as now, their mothers must bid them
farewell, give them up into the arms of terrible strangers, and mourn their long absences.

“Many Aldrain clans peopled the Earth in those times. The Aldrain walked among humans, and it was no more remarked upon than the Kiriath walking among humans these last centuries. Marriage unions between the races were not uncommon, though they rarely bore issue. Friendships and family ties sprang up. Such issue as there was, was honored. Many clans took changelings into the Ageless Realm, and many human noble houses gave away their offspring to such honor with joy. But no name among those clans stood in such high regard as that of Ilwrack—the royal house, the instigators and leaders of the Repossession. And to be chosen by the clan Ilwrack was the highest of honors. Its scions took only the very best and the brightest, opened to them every secret of the Aldrain race, and then flung them back into the world as their most powerful and faithful servants. For this has ever been the way of the Aldrain—not to rule subject races by their own hand, but to find those among the subject race who can be groomed and fit to rule on their behalf.”

Ringil grunted. “Been ever the way of anyone with half a brain and a limited purse to pay the levy.”

“Yes—well.” A disapproving pause, then Anasharal resumed, in lofty, lecturing tones. “The Changeling, then, was singled out by a young Ilwrack scion more or less from the cradle. They say the child was so beautiful that the Aldrain lord was bewitched despite himself. That he fell in love with all the impulsive passion of his people, and would not be denied. Bided his time for the brief cycles of human youth, taught and shepherded the boy through what he would need to see and know, took the resulting young man and ushered him through the Dark Gate younger than any the Aldrain had ever taken before. Gifted him early, you see, wrapped the first of his own cold legion about him while he was still in his teens. He must, just as the legend says, have been very smitten to bestow such power. But then the Changeling’s eyes, they say, were the green of sunlight through tree canopies, his smile, even as a child, could turn your heart over. When he grew to manhood, he was tall and long-limbed, and—”

“This Aldrain lord.” Ringil kept his voice neutral. “He have a name?”

“It is lost,” said Anasharal succinctly.

“Like so much of the detail in this story, it seems.” Ringil rubbed idly at a scuff on the leather of his boot. “Tell me something, Helmsman. Are you
sure
there’s a phantom island up there beyond Hironish? Are you
sure
there’s a city in the ocean keeping guard? You wouldn’t be making this whole thing up, would you?”

“Is the Ghost Isle not plotted on the maps of your own city’s shipmasters?”

“On some of them, yeah. So is the site of a floating star that crashed into the western ocean a hundred thousand years ago, when the gods fought for mastery of the heavens.”

“Well, maybe that’s there as well.”

“Archeth says you claim to have seen the Ghost Isle before you fell to Earth. That you have been watching the surface of the world for thousands of years. That suggests to me you would have seen this floating star as well.”

Brief hesitation. “Perhaps.”

Ringil nodded. Went on rubbing at the scuff mark on his boot. “So is it there or not?”

The hesitation ran longer this time.
Tap-tap
went one of the thing’s angled limbs.

“No,” Anasharal said finally. “It’s not.”

Ringil nodded again. “Was it ever there?”

“It may have been. That was before my time. But if it existed outside of myth, then it sank. Fallen stars do not float.”

“Islands do not come and go like pirate vessels, either.”

“This one does.”

“I DON’T KNOW,” HE TOLD ARCHETH THE NEXT MORNING. “IT’S LYING
about something. I’d put money on it. Maybe not the Ghost Isle, maybe not even An-Kirilnar. But there’s something going on, something more than we’re being told.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.” He nodded at the ceiling, up to the room where the Helmsman was kept. “Like I keep telling you, Archeth, we’re out of our
depth. You think this thing is on your side just because Manathan and the rest did what your father’s people told them to. But you aren’t your father, and this Helmsman wasn’t around back then. It’s come from somewhere else, and there’s no reason to suppose it plays by the same rules as the others.”

“Manathan commended Anasharal to me, Gil. Manathan sent us out there to collect the damn thing in the first place.”

Ringil shrugged. “Then maybe the rules have changed for Manathan, too.”

Archeth brooded on that for a while.

“I’ll talk to Angfal,” she decided finally. “I don’t believe there’s some evil conspiracy of Helmsmen all of a sudden. If something is going on, Angfal will have something to say on the subject.”

“Yeah, something cryptic and snide.” Ringil yawned into his fist. He’d been up all night arguing with Shendanak and Tand about escort logistics. “Any news on Eg?”