Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

Let’s hope so .

He prowled about the upper levels, listening for voices, looking for lights. It took him another half an hour to find what he wanted. Passing an apartment door, he heard farewells traded within. He skulked back into the gloom of an alcove. Shortly after, the apartment door unlatched and a man in invigilator’s robes came out. He was, Ringil noted, considerably younger than the old man in the study, he had a fair belly on him and a neatly barbered beard, and he walked with a self-important poise that looked promising. Gil trailed him through corridors and a stairway to a lower-level apartment door where the invigilator produced a key from his robes and slotted it into the lock. Ringil crept forward an inch at a time. The key turned with an iron clunk .

The door swung open. Ringil leapt out of the shadows and grabbed the man from behind. He shoved him through the doorway and threw him to the floor, stepped inside, caught the swinging edge of the door and slammed it closed behind him. His gaze flickered about—broad entryway, unlit, leading to a well-appointed lounging area beyond. A window let in bandlight enough to see by.

The invigilator had gone sprawled to hands and knees on a fine silk carpet laid out between the two spaces. Ringil checked that the door was firmly closed, kicked the man hard in his prodigious belly, and scooped up the fallen key. He turned it in the lock and left it there, listened for any sound of occupancy and judged the apartment empty.

“Who the holy blue fuck do you think—”

Ringil grabbed him again, hauled him to his feet and slung him against the nearest wall. He hit him in the face a couple of times, broad backhand slaps that didn’t do any real damage but would hurt like hell. The invigilator reeled and stumbled, tried to fall down. Gil got in close and held him up against the wall, put the dragon-tooth dagger to his face.

“I’m in a hurry,” he said.

“But, but—” The invigilator had gone abruptly still when he saw the knife, or maybe it was just Ringil’s eyes. “What do you want ? I’m not—”

“I’m looking for Pashla Menkarak. You’re going to tell me where his apartment is, or you’re going to die. Your choice.”

“You—” The man wet his lips. “You’re from the palace?”

“Does it matter?”

“I, but I—I took a holy oath. Holy orders. I am bound by…” Ringil looked at him.

“The end apartment on the level above,” whispered the invigilator, eyes bulging wide in the dim light. “The door is—you will see it—it has the mark of the book and scepter.”

“And is he in?”

“Yes. He retires early, always. He will be at last prayer.”

Ringil leaned closer. “You know I’m going to come back here if you’re lying.”

“I’m not, I’m not,” the man was babbling now. “His faith is iron. He is at prayer. The whole Citadel knows it.”

“Excellent.” Gil stepped back and clapped the invigilator on the shoulder with his left hand.

Then he slashed the man’s throat open, stepped sharply left on the stroke, and shoved his victim around at the shoulder to the right. Blood gouted, missed his clothes, and the invigilator went down, flapping and gurgling. He floundered on hands and knees and tried to crawl away. Gil followed him cautiously, making sure. The dying man made a couple of feet across the blood-drenched silk of the carpet, then sank to the floor, whimpering, and finally bled out.

Ringil checked himself once more for blood, knelt, and cleaned the dagger on an unstained corner of the carpet. He slipped back out of the apartment, locked the dead man inside, and pocketed the key. Got back onto the level above and along the corridor to the end without seeing or hearing another living soul. Luck still holding, it seemed. That Dark Court touch, Lady Firfirdar apparently riding in his pocket this evening. Torches guttered in their brackets on either side; somewhere very distant he heard the wind through some window or cranny. The ikinri ’ska chuckled and surged within. He reached Menkarak’s door, saw the gull-wing symbol of the book and the scepter carved into the wood, reached up and knocked hard.

There was a long pause, and then he heard soft footfalls approaching from within the apartment.

“Yes. Who is it?” Voice puzzled and hesitant. “This is no hour for—”

“Your Holiness, it is an emergency! The palace has—” Ringil, putting on what he felt was a pretty fair approximation of the well-fed invigilator’s voice. He swallowed. “His Eminence craves your presence, your wisest counsel.”

“The palace has what ?” The lock turned, the door started to swing open, though Menkarak’s tone hadn’t got any less irritable. “Look, you can’t just—”

Menkarak, in a simple gray robe, slippers on his feet. The face was a match for the charcoal sketch. He gaped at the black-clad figure before him.

“What—”

Ringil punched him in the face, knocked him backward into the apartment and followed him in. Menkarak staggered and managed to stay upright; Gil punched him again and he went down. Ringil closed the door. A quick glance to take in the surroundings—similar to the apartment he’d just been in, but far more expansive, the lounging area had multiple windows, there was a balcony beyond. Lamps burned in various corners of the place. No carpets, there was a cold austerity to everything. No one around.

Menkarak, on the floor, struggling to rise.

Ringil went straight to him, dumped one knee on his chest, used the other to pin a flailing right arm. He seized the man’s head, turned it, and pressed it to the floorboards.

“Message from the debauched apostate,” he said. “He is not amused. This has gone far enough. I’m paraphrasing, of course.”

He chopped down with the dagger, into Menkarak’s neck where the artery pulsed. Twisted and worked the blade to be sure. Blood welled up, thick in the gash he’d opened, spilled and splattered everywhere. Menkarak pawed desperately at him with his free arm, made bleating noises, but his face was already slackening with lack of fight. His mouth moved, no words came out. His breathing stilled, his eyes turned slowly dull and incurious. His arm drooped away, his knuckles knocked gently on the floorboards. His legs kicked a couple of times, and then went slack.

Ringil eased up into a crouch. Looked at the body thoughtfully for a moment.

“There, that wasn’t so hard,” he muttered. “You’d have thought—” Menkarak’s face… changed .

It was like watching the image in a still pond surface stirred to choppy fragments by a sudden splash. The dead man’s features wavered, blurred. Any likeness to the charcoal sketch vanished as Ringil stared. A far younger man lay dead in Menkarak’s place.

Flicker of blue fire.

Oh, no—

The blow hit him from behind, before he could turn, before he could even begin to rise. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a dwenda helm—smooth, blunt, black surface, still shimmering with faint traceries of blue light, faceless. But someone spoke his name, and it was a voice he knew.

Then the world went out in a shower of sparks.

WAKEFULNESS ROLLED BACK AROUND. HIS HEAD LOLLED. SOMEONE splashed water in his face.

“—sure we should not—”

“Believe me, Pashla Menkarak, he cannot harm you now. We have his weapons, his sorcery is in check. When angels watch over you, there is no threat you need fear.”

Weird, limping inflection on that last voice—a real mangling of the Tethanne syllables. And Archeth says my accent’s bad , he thought muzzily, trying to lift his head.

Someone did it for him. A smooth-gloved hand. He blinked, jerked his chin free of the hold. Hauled in focus.