Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

You must try , she thought she recalled him pleading. You must keep trying .

Big, blunt hands braced forward and wide apart on the table of scattered charts, eyes that glittered in the gloom, and a thin moaning outside the window that might have been someone in pain, or some Kiriath machine she did not understand, or possibly both.

If you do not try now, who will? Who is left, Archidi?

And then she knew, with the abrupt certainty of dreams, that he was dead, and she was next, and the thin moaning could only come closer, pressing up to the glass, peering in and she was—

Awake. Like the snap of a twig underfoot.

Staring across the cabin into empty gloom.

And so on, again and again, as the night wore slowly down on the hard-edged grind of her thoughts. Until dawn seeped in at the window like some pallid, halfhearted salvation, and gifted her with temporary purpose.

A second yawn swamped her. She blinked in the sunlight, took the hint, and went down to the galley. On her way back up, hands cradled around the warm ceramic mug, she ran into Hanesh Galat.

“Good morning, my lady.”

“Yeah.” She was already past him on the companionway, heading up. Trying not to hear as he called after her.

“Might I, uhm, join you?”

She made an indistinct noise, which he apparently took for assent. He trailed her to the rail, leaned there a diplomatic distance off her right elbow.

“A beautiful morning,” he said, awkwardly.

She stared down at the wash of orange-gold on the rippling water, the glistening churn of the oars. Krinzanz, krinzanz—my soul for a quarter ounce . She held herself down to a stark civility. “I guess.”

“Well, uh…” Galat hesitated. It made him seem oddly boyish. “You see, I’m from the north, originally. Vanbyr, near enough. We aren’t so lucky with the sun up there.”

Or anything else, lately , she just stopped herself from saying.

But scenes from the rout of the Vanbyr uprising marched by in her head like a column of leering trolls. Shrieks and smoke, the hovels burning in the countryside, the choking, pleading figures thrust back inside at pike-point when they tried to stumble out. Severed heads kicked like footballs in the cobbled city streets, infants thrown from upper windows and spitted on swords for sport while their mothers wept and howled and were raped to provide more conventional recreation for the imperial soldiery.

It was the Emperor’s command, and it was carried out to the letter. Akal the Great wanted an example made, a lesson given in what happens when an imperial border province gets ideas about independence. And all who were at Vanbyr agreed that the lesson had been given with magisterial force—though detail was of course decorously reworked to suit the court’s finer sensibilities. As for the man himself—aging and increasingly infirm from the toll of the injuries he’d sustained during the war, Akal was unable to ride with his army to Vanbyr, and so did not see the various ways in which his forces covered themselves in glory.

Archeth, as attached court observer for the action, had been only too viciously glad to bridge the gap, to bear accurate tidings home to her ailing Emperor, and recount them to him in careful, repeated detail, while he lay on his sickbed and muttered about necessity and would not meet her eyes.

After the succession, when the court murmurs against Jhiral started, she surprised herself with the withering tide of contempt she felt for those who murmured and the selective memories of the father they apparently retained.

And she was almost glad when Jhiral’s reprisals began.

Almost.

“You came to the capital while you were young?” she asked Galat, for want of something to chase out the memories.

“Before the uprising, yes.” Maybe he’d seen the shadow pass across her face. He cleared his throat. “I was selected for the Mastery at nine. It was a great honor for my family.”

“I suppose so.”

“Yes. Service to one’s fellow man may take many forms, but those who serve the Revelation are privileged beyond measure. ”

Archeth deadpanned it. “They certainly are.”

“But for all that, I think my father would have liked, maybe even preferred me to hold a commission. We are traditionally a military family.”

“Then your father must be delighted with the recent direction of the Mastery’s teachings. Every faithful adherent shall then consider himself a warrior for the cause of the righteous, bearing not only the word of the Revelation, but also its holy sword. ”

Hanesh Galat cleared his throat again. “There is actually some textual debate about the intrinsic meaning in that last image.”

“Not according to Pashla Menkarak there isn’t.”

Another awkward pause, long enough this time that Archeth glanced around to see if Galat was still there. He looked sheepishly away.

“Arch-Invigilator Menkarak is, uhm, a very learned man. A fine scholar of the Revelation and an incisive interpreter of doctrine. A fine writer, one of the Mastery’s finest. But as I am sure he would accept, his opinion is mortal and therefore potentially flawed.”

“You’ve met him?”

“Uh, not personally, no.”

“Didn’t think so.”

A silence opened up between them, and she thought maybe now he’d piss off. But no such luck. His hands mated and twisted on the rail, he shifted about as if tethered there. She could feel him marshaling the words in his throat, dismissing them, selecting again. In a better mood, she might have helped him out.

But she wasn’t in a better mood.

“This, uhm, disenchantment with the Revelation’s temporal representatives,” he tried finally. “It’s not unexpected for me.”

“No?”

“No. I am quite aware that your recent interactions with the Citadel have not been, shall we say, amicable. I have been… made aware of that.”

Archeth’s last direct interaction with a representative of the Citadel had involved slitting his throat in broad daylight on a public thoroughfare. She kept her eyes on the passing riverbank and her tone even.

“You have a diplomatic way with words, Invigilator Galat.”

“Yes, uhm, thank you.” He would not look directly at her. But he seemed to seize some kind of courage as he blushed. “We are not all in accord with Arch-Invigilator Menkarak, my lady. We are not all filled with hate. You should perhaps keep that in mind.”

And then, to her surprise, he actually did leave her to herself.

SHORTLY BEFORE NOON, THE SWORD OF JUSTICE DIVINE PLOWED INTO A mudbank not listed on the charts, and stuck fast.

There was no warning—just the sudden jolt and then a shuddering, groaning sound under the hull, like some monstrous donkey they’d just hit. The deck jumped violently, and tipped. Archeth staggered with the impact, would have gone over on her arse but for Senger Hald’s steadying hand on her shoulder. A couple of the younger marines standing about nearby did go over, to jeers and general hilarity from their peers. Somewhere below, the boxed horses voiced protest. And on the galley deck, yells and groans from the rowers. They were seasoned rivermen, they knew what the noise meant.

The caller cut across it. “Back oars! Back oars! One! Two! Put some fucking muscle into it, you pussies!”

Archeth and Hald made their way across the tilted deck to the rail and peered over. Nothing to be seen in the muddy brown churn of the water, but it was clear that despite the exhortations of the caller, the oarsmen were shoveling in vain.

“Come on ! My baby sister rows harder than you cunts! Back oars— like you fucking mean it! One! Two!”