Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

And he fled from the boy’s gaze, into the cool gloom of the tavern and the harsh back-and-forth quarrel of grown men talking shit at the tops of their voices.

“THAT’S YOUR BEST BET,” THE PUBLICAN SAID, TAPPING THE COIN ON the bar-top and sliding it into his pocket. He nodded across the crowded room and the noise. “In the corner there, with his new whore.”

Ringil darted a surreptitious glance over to where a greasy-looking Majak in his early twenties sat goblet in hand at a table against the wall. The whore in question was young, too, and likely pricey by house standards, a little raddled, but otherwise quite shapely and not making much effort to hide the fact. She’d split her skirts apart, put one leg on display to the top of the thigh, and her breasts were pushed up almost to spilling from her bodice. She was pressing them up against the Majak’s arm, chattering insistently in his ear between drafts from her goblet.

Ringil frowned, still hazy with hangover. “Really?”

“Yeah.” The publican grinned and shifted a toothpick around his mouth. “I know. Little fucker doesn’t look like much, does he?”

“No, he doesn’t.”

“Well, sir, your judgment there is accurate.” Gil had made the man for a veteran on sight, and rolled out a mannered commanding officer’s drawl when he approached him. He’d given enough orders to imperial troops in his life that his Tethanne was more or less flawless in the context. The publican practically saluted in response. He was falling over himself to be helpful. “See, Harath over there is just what he looks like, a fucking steppe savage no different from the rest, and he’s a mouthy little punk into the bargain. Always getting in trouble, late on his tab most of the time. Just about what you’d expect from his kind. Come down off the steppes for our women and the easy living, problem is, they’re just not used to a civilized way of doing things.”

Ringil looked carefully at the scarred wooden bar-top. “And why exactly should I be interested in this Harath?”

“Oh, well.” The other man leaned in close to impart his secret, grinning. “Dragonbane come in here about a week ago, sir, asking after him. Asking where he could be found.”

“Asking after him by name?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was he with him last night?”

The publican shook his head. “Only showed up this morning, seemed pretty surprised about it all. But he’s still your best bet, sir. I mean, this lot?” A broad, dismissive gesture at the clientele. “Some of them were around when it went down, true enough. Been here ever since, too, right through to daybreak, talking it up. Best night’s takings for a month. But not a one of them actually had words with the Dragonbane. Dragonbane never even got through the door before the Guard jumped him. This lot? Fucking bystanders, all of them.”

“Yeah, always plenty of those.” Ringil brooded for a moment. “You talk to anyone else about this?”

“Can’t say as I have, sir. But I knew they’d send someone like you, sooner or later.”

Ringil’s eyes narrowed. “Someone like me?”

The publican grinned again. “Don’t worry, sir. I know how to keep my mouth shut. And honestly, nothing against the Guard, there’s some good men among them. But sometimes, well, it takes a certain… Reach, am I right?”

“You’re a shrewd man,” Ringil told him and produced another coin. “And a discreet one, it seems. That’s a pair of admirable qualities in a soldier.”

“Yes, sir.” The coin disappeared like a magic trick, untapped this time. “Hope you get him, sir. Dragon hero or not, it’s foreign thugs like that are sinking this Empire.”

Ringil gave the publican what he judged an appropriately grim nod and departed. He crossed the low-beamed space toward the young Majak and his whore, eying the exits as he moved, instinctive checks prior to the confrontation. Realizing as he got closer that it wouldn’t be necessary. Harath was oblivious to his approach, as he was to the whore’s cleavage pressing into his arm and her grinning chatter into his ear, and just about everything else going on in the room, it seemed. He sat, goblet in hand, staring into the middle distance as if it contained a rainbow’s end chest of marsh dweller gold.

Ringil dropped into the seat opposite.

“Hello, Harath.”

The steppe nomad started, saw the man sitting across from him and tried to leap to his feet. Ringil’s hand leapt first, locked down on his arm at the elbow. He leaned in behind it. The table jarred; the wine bottle jumped and fell sideways. The whore grabbed it with a practiced hand before it could spill, set it back upright. Harath strained to break free and rise.

“Let’s not make a scene,” said Ringil softly.

“Fuck do you think—”

“I’m a friend of the Dragonbane. I’m anxious to find him before the King’s Reach do. Do you know where he is?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Still struggling to get loose. “You—”

“Sit down. ” Eye-to-eye with the younger man now. “Or I’ll see to it you’re talking to the King’s Reach yourself by lunchtime. Want to see the inside of their questioning rooms up at the palace? That can be arranged. Now where is the Dragonbane ?”

Harath broke, gave up. Sank back in his seat, breathing hard. Ringil let him go. Sat back in his own seat and straightened his right sleeve, which had ridden up in the struggle. Brushed down his doublet with a fastidious hand. It all made a good cover while he regained his own breath. He glanced up at the Majak.

“Well?”

“I haven’t seen that Skaranak fuck in days.” It was a hissed outburst across the table. “And he owes me money, the cunt. I want to find him just about as badly as you do.”

“You don’t appear to be looking very hard.”

“That’s what you think. Why I came down here this morning in the first place. Thought he might have come in. Then I hear all this shit about the Guard, stupid bastard’s been raping and murdering nobles up the hill. Like we didn’t have enough trouble already.”

“Trouble? What trouble?”

“He’s owed money ,” the whore put in with asperity. “Didn’t you hear? You’re a friend of this Dragonbane, you ought to—”

Ringil cut her a look and her voice dried up as if he’d slapped her across the face. He turned his attention back to the young Majak.

“What trouble?”

IT TOOK A WHILE TO GET THE STORY STRAIGHT. HARATH WAS QUITE drunk, and he seemed mostly concerned to enumerate grievances, against this so-called Dragonbane , the Skaranak clan in general, randy old men who thought they were still young bucks, his faithless Ishlinak friends, miserly mercenary pay, military stupidity in Demlarashan, religious maniacs and imperial arrogance, and in fact pretty much every aspect of life he’d encountered since he came south of the Dhashara pass…

The actual tale he told blundered along through all this like a badly injured man, clinging to the complaints like pillars in some hard-to-navigate colonnaded hospital he’d been told had a bed for him somewhere. The whore sat at his side throughout, too cowed by Ringil’s glittery stare to actually interrupt, but rubbing Harath’s thigh vigorously every so often, murmuring cod-maternal sympathetic sweet nothings to him, and refilling his goblet from the bottle whenever he drained it. Harath nuzzled her in return, lost the thread of what he was saying, occasionally abandoned it altogether in a welter of gruff, growling kisses to neck and throat, while Ringil looked on and set his jaw and worked at keeping his hands to himself.

Under other circumstances…

He held down his temper, mainly because violence would have drawn attention he didn’t want from the rest of the room, but also because he didn’t want to stop Harath’s rambling confessional flow, which did seem, slowly, to be taking on some comprehensible shape, thus: