Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

Menkarak stood before him, in black robes a lot more ornate than the simple gray affair his dummy had worn. There was thick gold brocade at the sleeves and along the lapels where they folded across each other. His eyes were beady and intent, his lean features suffused with triumph. He looked like a particularly smug prostitute crow.

“How now, infidel,” he sneered.

Ringil nodded groggily. “Fuck-face.”

Most of him was taking in the other figures. The one who’d lifted his chin stood closest, clad neck-to-boots in the smooth leather-like dwenda mail, helmet pulled free to expose a face that was dry-bone white and severe—slash mouth, narrow nose, cheekbones high and sharp under the skin. Featureless eyes, like balls of fresh, wet pitch set in white stone sockets, but gathering in a faint rainbow sheen on the curve of all that smooth, black emptiness. It was like looking at a statue come to life. And behind him—

Risgillen.

She stepped closer. The same dwenda face, pale beyond pale and sculpted tight to the bone, lacking only the heaviness of brow and jaw and nose that had given Seethlaw’s otherwise delicate features their masculinity. He thought she might have lost some weight since he last saw her. Grown gaunt around the eyes and mouth.

It stabbed at him how closely she resembled her brother.

She stepped closer. They had him roped across the chest into a heavy oak chair, arms and legs secured with thick coils of the same cord. The stuff had a sorcerous look to it; it gleamed a little in the low light and he thought, uneasily, that every now and then it seemed to shift restlessly about on itself, like disturbed snakes in a nest.

“Ringil.” She touched his face almost like a lover’s, the same urgent tone under soft, the same promise of something to come. “It has been long. But in the end, here you come to me as was always doubtless and entire.”

He coughed. “Hello, Risgillen. I see your Naomic’s improved.”

“I have had cause for practice in its pattern.” She let go his face, made a modest gesture. Rainbow sheen on the nails of her hand in motion. “Did you think the cabal in Trelayne was our only pathway to walk in the north?”

Menkarak turned self-importantly to the other dwenda. “What are these spells?”

“She binds him,” said the dwenda disinterestedly, Tethanne still appallingly accented. “There is much sorcery in him, rituals are required.”

“But—what rituals? And why not in the Tongue of the Book?” Menkarak drew himself up. “Lathkeen has told me clearly—sorcery from the north must always wither in the Revelation’s true light. Why do we need—”

“Lathkeen reveals truth to you as mortals can digest it.” The other dwenda glanced at Risgillen—Gil thought he caught a hint of weariness in the look. “You would do better not to question the Revelation, and lend us instead the strength of your faith and prayers.”

“Well.” Menkarak cleared his throat. “Yes. But to seek illumination is in itself a part of what the Revelation teaches. To understand—”

The dwenda turned on him and Menkarak shut up. Ringil, knowing the power of that blank stare, was quite impressed the invigilator actually stood his ground.

“Forgive me.” Menkarak bowed his head, murmuring. “Atalmire, forgive my heedless zeal. I am incomplete and mortal, I crave illumination only to serve the Revelation better.”

The dwenda stood like stone. “Illumination is coming, Pashla Menkarak. Rest assured. Possess your soul in patience. That is what your God and His servants ask of you now.”

Ringil thought vaguely about disabusing Menkarak of the line of shit they were feeding him, but his head hurt from the blow he’d been dealt and he really couldn’t be bothered. Doubtful he’d put a dent in what the invigilator chose to believe anyway. He had seen hard-line faith before, knew its blindness inside and out.

“Illumination is coming, eh,” he said to Risgillen. “You’ve really got this twat on a string, don’t you?”

She shrugged. “The priest is useful. He hates the black scourge as demons, he will wash away their mark upon his people if he can.”

“Yeah, well I doubt the rest of Yhelteth is going to see it that way.”

“Do you?” It was as if Risgillen could smell the lie on him. “This is not my post, I visit only. But as I understand, there is but a single Kiriath remaining. And the humans turn away, the humans throw away whatsoever they cannot easily comprehend. Ever thus, it was. With this, we ruled them once. We will do such again. And whatsoever the southern Emperor sends now against us, as you are witness, it is easily turned aside.”

Ringil grunted. At the corner of his eye, sprawled on the stone floor where the hallway began, he saw the protruding slippered legs of the man he’d killed in Menkarak’s place. He switched to Tethanne.

“Hey, you bearded fuck,” he said, nodding at the body. “Who’d you hide behind back there? Who took the chop for your sweet, lily-livered cheeks?”

Menkarak bristled. “Let infidel slaughter infidel, if it serve our cause. Hanesh Galat was apostate in the making. He diluted faith with his cheap compassion, he sowed doubt in his flock and his colleagues like a disease. He had congress with infernal workings of the Black Folk, and he came here proud of the fact. Weep for him if you care to, his soul is already in hell.”

The dwenda called Atalmire placed hands on the invigilator’s shoulders and steered him away. “Come, Pashla Menkarak, there is much to do elsewhere. The Talons of the Sun must be sharpened. The gateway blessed. Leave this infidel in our keeping. We will show him to his own prepared place in the depths.”

“Yes.” Menkarak was breathing heavily as he looked back at Ringil. “The Talons of the Sun. This city will burn, infidel, and all who are not purely of the Revelation will burn with it.”

“That’s enough.” Atalmire’s grip tightened and he propelled the invigilator less gently toward the hallway. “There is work to do.”

He spoke to Risgillen, fluid, lilting syllables of a tongue Ringil had last heard when he was with Seethlaw. Then he escorted Menkarak out of sight into the hall, stepping unceremoniously over the dead fall guy’s body as they went.

“Well,” said Risgillen. “Alone at last.”

Ringil shook his head wearily. “I’m sorry, Risgillen. I don’t think you have any idea how sorry I am. It didn’t end the way I planned.”

For some reason, it seemed to unleash in her a fury previously held in check.

“Sorry?” She leapt at the chair, grabbed it by the back on either side of his head. Blank black eyeballs, inches from his own. She hissed in his face. “You’re sorry? You took my brother from me. ”

“You think I’d forgotten?”

She recoiled. Stood staring at Gil as if he was too hot to get near again. “He’s out there, you know that? Seethlaw is out there, in the Gray Places. Lost, I hear him howling , I hear…”

She mastered herself again. Wiped angrily at her eyes with the heel of her hand.

“You still don’t understand what you’ve done,” she whispered. “Do you?”

“I don’t care, Risgillen.” And then his own temper was suddenly out, unsheathed. He leaned hard into the bite of the ropes across his heart. “Don’t you fucking get it? You think I care what I’ve done, you think I’d go on living if I did? Do you really think what happened to your brother is the worst thing I’ve ever done? It doesn’t even come close!”

The ropes scorched and stung him. He leaned harder, breathed in the pain, glared up at her. The chair rocked back and forth. He found the strength to hiss.