The Cold Commands (6 page)

“And your entourage at the river will not wait? That seems unlikely, my lady
kir
-Archeth.”

Irony dripped off the title, or at least seemed to—with the Helmsmen you could never quite tell. But the rest of Manathan’s sentence was unquestionably the understatement of the day. Unlikely wasn’t in it—the imperial river frigate
Sword of Justice Divine
would hold station until Lady kir-Archeth of the clan Indamaninarmal chose to come back down from communing with her past at An-Monal, no matter what hour of the day or night that might be. The captain of the vessel and the commander in charge of the marine detachment aboard had both been charged by the Emperor himself to protect her life as if it were his own, and while the Holy Invigilator attached might not in theory be bound by such secular authority, this one was young and fresh to his post and quite evidently overawed by her presence. Which wasn’t an uncommon stance. The Kiriath might be long gone, but their status and mystique clung to Archeth like a courtier’s perfume. She’d wear the rank it bought her for human generations to come.

Occasionally, she wondered how it would be when those generations had finally passed, when all those who actually remembered the Kiriath and the Departure were in their graves, and only the tomes in the imperial library spoke of her people anymore.

She wondered if she’d still be sane by then.

The shadow of the iron tree reached out, touched her finally at the toe of one boot.

“Daughter of Flaradnam,” said Manathan sharply.

“Yeah, yeah.” She levered herself up off the wall and to her feet. Tossed the core of her apple away across the courtyard. “I hear you.”

THE RIVER FRIGATE HAD BEEN BUILT FOR THE OCCASIONAL USE OF
none other than his majesty Akal Khimran the Great—whose original
idea for the ship’s name, before politics intruded, had been
Crocfucker—
and its master’s suite staterooms were better appointed than some local lordlings’ mansions Archeth had guested in on her travels. And while Akal’s son Jhiral, now Jhiral Khimran II, probably hadn’t set foot aboard the vessel more than twice since his father died, neither had he ordered it decommissioned or struck from its original purpose. The fixtures and fittings endured, then, in all their regal splendor. There was a full-wall library in the lounge, a dedicated map room alcove off to one side, and a table fit to feast a dozen men set beside the broad stern window. Ornate astrolabes and telescopes stood sentinel at the corners of the room, and the walls were hung with portraits of venerable historical figures from the Khimran imperial line.

That the earliest of these were little more than sheep rustlers and mountain bandits had been tacitly ignored by the court artist, and all wore some kind of anachronistic circlet or crown to confer retrospective gravitas. With the cabin lamps lit, they formed a solemn, shadowy backdrop to the meeting Archeth called.

Similarly serious, the faces that looked back at her from around the table. Maybe it was the portraiture exerting its intended influence, maybe just the proximity to An-Monal and all that the volcano’s haunted bulk implied. Senger Hald, the marine commander, sat grim and watchful where he could see the door, seat set back a little from the table as if, even here, he couldn’t be wholly sure that they would not be burst in upon and attacked. Lal Nyanar, the frigate’s captain, was a little less obviously tense. But holding his vessel at the eerie iron quays of An-Monal’s abandoned harbor was clearly making him uncomfortable, and it was a demeanor that soaked into the other ship’s officers present. And Hanesh Galat, appointed Holy Invigilator to the ship, knowing approximately how well liked he wasn’t by the secular officers of the crew, just looked jumpy and upset. It didn’t help that the Citadel was fast coming around to the doctrinal position that the Kiriath Helmsmen were demonic presences imprisoned in iron to prevent them tempting or otherwise misleading the sons of the Revelation.

Not that I uh, actually accept that tenet
, Galat had hastened to assure Archeth one afternoon at the rail, as the frigate forged its way upriver toward An-Monal.
The Revelation is subject to such revision of course
,
through the wisdom of learned debate and prayer. But I see no reason to adopt every position proposed in the Mastery, simply because it is proposed. And I uhm, you know, actually I
cherish
the part your people have played in Yhelteth’s rise to its holy destiny
.

How very enlightened of you
. Archeth had promised the Emperor she would be polite.
I’ll be sure to keep that quiet when we get back. Wouldn’t want you getting in trouble with your superiors
.

He flushed, and left her largely alone after that.

Which was what she wanted, but now she wondered if antagonizing him had been wise. She doubted he could derail the intentions of Nyanar and Hald if they chose to back her—an invigilator’s so-called supreme moral authority was actually a pretty tenuous thing when it butted up against the blunt pragmatism of the Empire’s career military officers—but he could certainly pour some cold ecclesiastical water on any enthusiasm she managed to generate in men who, to be honest, were already looking decidedly dubious about the turn events had taken.

“We are a small force,” Hald pointed out. “And we don’t really know what it is we’re dealing with. Would it not make more sense to carry this news back to Yhelteth and organize a fully equipped expedition?”

It would—except for the fact that, under current circumstances, Jhiral wasn’t about to spare such a fully equipped force for anything that didn’t involve securing the northern borders or holding the line against rioting religious idiots in Demlarashan. And while the young Emperor had no time for the warmed-over superstitions muttering out of the Citadel these days as dogma, he didn’t have much time for the Helmsmen, either. Certainly, he wouldn’t trust one any farther than you would a steppe nomad with your wife. And in this he was, for once, representative of the people he governed. An-Monal stood empty and decaying for a reason.

So no, she fucking
couldn’t
go back to Jhiral with this one, and Hald probably knew it. She paced her words for conciliatory aplomb.

“I do not believe, Commander, that this is an operation requiring much military force. Certainly nothing that your men could not handle. Manathan was vague, but—”

“Vague indeed,” rumbled Nyanar. “A messenger in need of escort. Quote, unquote. That’s not much to go on.”

“And not much out there.” The frigate’s second officer nodded soberly
at the map they’d spread across the table. Pinned out between a pair of heavy silver paperweights carved like slain dragons, the thick yellow parchment showed the full extent of the Y’hela River as it reached back from Yhelteth and the coast, past the huge bulk of the volcano where An-Monal was built, and then on into the interior. The land around it was largely arid and featureless. No cities marked. “If this is a messenger, then where’s he come from?”

“Shaktur, perhaps?” Someone trying to be helpful.

“They are already represented at court,” Hald said. “And anyway, if this messenger’s come all the way from the Great Lake, why does he suddenly need an escort now? We’re deep inside imperial territory here. No barbarian incursions, no banditry to speak of. Compared with the eastern marches, this is a pleasure park.”

“From the south, then?”

Nyanar shrugged. “Same applies. Anyone coming up from the desert has to pass through rougher terrain than this. They made it this far, they don’t need our help with the last leg.”

“Unless they’re in trouble,” Hanesh Galat offered unexpectedly.

Everyone looked at him. He blushed, seemingly as surprised as anyone else that he’d spoken up.

“That is,” he pressed on, voice gaining a little force as he spoke. “Perhaps in coming this far, the messenger and his party have suffered privations that mean they can go no farther without our help. In which case, it would actually be our bound duty under the Revelation to bring aid to them.”

Archeth shut her mouth. Cleared her throat.

“Well, quite,” she said.

An uncomfortable silence settled around the table. It was an instinctive reaction where matters of doctrine were concerned. No one who valued their position in Yhelteth society would ever willingly be seen to call the tenets of the Revelation into question, least of all where those tenets had just been subject to interpretation by an accredited invigilator. However …

“My concern,” said Hald carefully, “is that this may be a trick. Maybe even an ambush of some kind. The Helmsman has said that this messenger is
waiting
for us. Is that not so, my lady?”

“
Will
be waiting for us, yes.”

The marine commander gestured. “Yes. Will be waiting for us, or is already. In either case, my lady, and outside of sorcery, how is that possible?”

“I don’t know,” Archeth had to admit. “High Kiriath is a complicated tongue at the best of times, and the Helmsmen frequently speak it in arcane inflections. Maybe I’m just not translating very well.”

Yeah, Archidi, and maybe that’s lizardshit. Maybe you’ve told these humans exactly as much as you want them to know, because anything else is going to make their support even harder to enlist. Maybe there are details and questions you’d really rather they left alone, not least so you can do the same and just concentrate on this bright new thing the Helmsman has brought you
.

This bright new thing …

“DAUGHTER OF FLARADNAM.” MANATHAN’S TIGHT-EDGED TONES FELL
somber in the cold air of her father’s study. Shadows across the walls, broad fading angles of light from the high windows as the afternoon closed down outside. “There is a message for you.”

“What message?” Not yet paying much attention, working with her tongue at a shred of apple peel caught in her teeth, looking absently around at the room instead, wondering as always where exactly in all this architecture the Helmsman was actually located. It was something she’d never managed to persuade Flaradnam to tell her.

“Well, a message of some importance, I imagine.” Impossible to read if the Helmsman’s voice was edged with exasperation or not. “Since the messenger is coming all this way to deliver it to you in person. Speaking of which, he will be
here
, more or less. And”—she thought she caught some subtle amusement in the voice—“he will
wait
for you.”

A twist of reddish light kindled at one corner of the room, unwrapped into a floating map of the local region. She wandered over, made out An-Monal, the volcano’s cone, and the city itself on the western slope. The road down to the harbor, the flex of the river as it skirted the volcano and backed off into the eastern hinterlands. Symbols she could not understand flared yellow across that portion, some kind of
path laid out in an arc across the desert, and finally a pulsing marker, some fifty or sixty miles upriver.

“Here?” She shook her head. “But there’s nothing out there.”

“Well, then you’d better hurry up and collect him, hadn’t you? Wouldn’t want him to go hungry.”

Archeth passed her hand through the phantom fire, not quite able to suppress the shiver of wonder it always engendered when the contact did not burn. She’d grown up with these things, but where some aspects of her father’s heritage had worn smooth with use over the years, others were still a jagged shock every time they manifested. She rubbed at her hand anyway, instinctively.

“And you say this messenger has come for me?”

“You might say that, yes. Of course you might also say he’s come for the whole human race—plus a few offshoots that don’t really fit the description anymore. In these times of transition, it’s hard to know how to phrase these things. Let us just say that your heritage fits you best for the role of message recipient.”

Archeth stood back from the bright glare of the map. Unease stirred through her.

“And you cannot simply give me this message yourself?”

“No, I simply cannot.”

Unease stoking now, sitting in the base of her belly like some coiled thing. It wasn’t often you heard the Helmsmen admit to limitations—most of the time they were sulkily self-assured in their superiority, and even when Archeth thought she might have detected some boundary of word or deed they weren’t prepared to cross, the block was usually shrouded in evasive gibberish of one sort or other.

“Cannot or will not?”

“Where you are concerned, daughter of Flaradnam, I don’t see that there is any practical difference between the two.”

“No? What about the difference of me not going to meet this messenger because I don’t think you’re being honest with me.”

“Well, it’s your message.” As if the great stone shoulders of An-Monal itself shrugged at her. “Suit yourself.”

Quiet gathered, like the cobwebbed shadows in the corners of the room. The map burned in the gloom.

“Look,” she said finally. “That’s a lot of arid wasteland out there. We could spend days searching an area that size.”

“There will be a sign,” said the Helmsman succinctly. “Look to the east for guidance.”

Which, for all it sounded like some faintly mocking parody of revelatory text, was also Manathan’s last word on the matter. Attempts to get clarification were rebutted with the mild admonition not to
waste time, daughter of Flaradnam
. Archeth, who’d seen the Helmsman behave like this before, gave up and slammed her way back out to the courtyard to saddle her horse. It was a fair few hours’ ride down to the harbor, and she wanted to get there before it was fully dark.

But on the road down, jolting tiredly in the saddle, she noticed the feeling in her belly that she’d mistaken for unease, and realized that it was nothing of the sort. Noticed in fact that it had warmed and spread, had become a faint pitter-patter of excitement throughout the web of her veins, and a slowly building, suffocating eagerness in her chest.

She clucked her horse into a trot.