Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

Abroad, about —his Tethanne had never been great in the finer points.

“Ah. With honors, eh? He was a soldier, then?”

The confusion smoothed out, gave way to a waxing pride that had clearly been taught as carefully as the clerical cant. “My father died fighting dragons in the war. He died defending the Emperor and his people.”

“That’s good. Something to be proud of, then. So look, who around here is—”

“Gadral? Gadral? ” It wasn’t quite a full bellow, but the boy jumped as if the head in the cage had suddenly opened its eyes at him. “If you’re out there jawing with your little cunt mates again, I’m going to give you such a fucking hi—”

The voice dried up as its owner loomed in the doorway and saw Egar standing there. The man narrowed his eyes against the early-morning sun.

“Help you, pal?” It wasn’t a helpful tone.

Egar let the moment stretch, took the time it gave him to read the other man. Big by Yhelteth standards, a heavy, once-muscular frame now beginning to blur at the edges with age and easier living. Sun-darkened face seamed and pouched, but still some trace of military bearing, something a little deeper etched than levy standard. A butcher’s chopper held casually in one meaty, blood-sprinkled hand.

Egar nodded at the clumsy blade. “Making soup?”

Brief clash of gazes while the other man took the trouble to read him, too. The chopper lowered, hung slack at arm’s length.

“Yeah. Week’s End stew. You want some?”

“I’ll start with a beer. Work up to it.”

“Sure.” The other man nodded him inside. As Egar stepped past and found a stool at the bar, he heard the publican cursing the boy out again. But he thought there was a little less heat in it this time, and the man came inside pretty quick.

“Your boy?” Egar asked, as his pint was drawn.

“Is he, fuck. My boy died under arms at Shenshenath, when the lizards came. That’s just my whore’s son. Came with the territory, y’know. Someone’s got to feed the little shit.”

“Right.”

The other man set the filled pint glass down on the bar between them. “Stew is going to take a while. I got bread and oil, you want it while you wait.”

“Sounds good.”

The publican disappeared behind a grubby curtain hung across the kitchen entrance, leaving Egar to his pint. Low voices, clatter of plates, and then the dull, repeated thud of the chopper into a wooden board. The Dragonbane sat in the stale, beer-scented gloom and the dusty, filtering light from shutters still not opened. He sipped his beer. It wasn’t bad.

Presently, a tall, haggard-looking woman came out carrying a platter with his bread and oil. She stopped in her tracks when she saw Egar but then gathered herself quickly enough and set the food down on the bar. She charged him one elemental for the platter and the beer, looked relieved when he paid up without a fuss, and then went outside. Egar heard her murmuring to the boy.

When she came back in, he said, breezily: “Guess you don’t see that many like me in here?”

“What?” Voice faint.

“Steppe dwellers. Don’t get a lot of them? I was wondering because—”

“Not so early,” she said and fled back into the kitchen.

Egar raised his eyebrows and went back to his pint. More lowered voices in the kitchen. The chopper chunked once, definitively, into wood. The publican came out through the curtain, glowering.

“What’s your fucking problem, then? I said she was my whore, I didn’t say she was up for grabs.”

Egar set his drink aside with care, and looked at the man.

“Just making conversation,” he said softly. “Where I’m from, reasonable men can talk to a woman without it meaning anything. You seemed like a reasonable man when I came in, but maybe I was wrong about that.”

The publican hesitated. Sunlight filtered into the low-beamed space and the quiet. Somewhere, a beer tap dripped into its tray. The moment stretched.

Went away.

“Yeah, all right then.” An ungracious shrug. “Let it go. Got a brother served up at the Dhashara pass, he always did say you lot let your women run riot. Mouthing off like they were men, riding horses, carrying weapons, shit like that.”

“Been known to happen,” Egar agreed.

“Yeah, well, that shit won’t wash down here. This is Yhelteth, this is the Empire. We’re civilized. Women know their place. And truth is, I’m about fucking sick of the trouble we get from your kind coming in here.” Grudging, bitten off. “No offense.”

“Oh—none taken. What kind of trouble would that be, then?”

“Only a big fucking fight a couple of weeks back. They put out two windows, and one of my serving girls lost a finger. Had to call the City Guard. Like I said, I’m sick of it. You going to live in a civilized city, you’ve got to act civilized, too. You know?”

Egar pulled a face. Brawling at the Pony Stringer’s Good Fortune hadn’t ever been out of fashion as far as he could recall.

In fact, some of his best brawls…

“What was this fight about, then?”

“Fuck would I know?” The publican swabbed irritably at his bar with a fetid-looking cloth. “Some tribal shit? Not like I speak northern, is it? All I know is, one minute everybody’s drinking and yelling back and forth like normal, next thing it’s fists and blades. Half of them in Citadel threads, too—I mean, that’s just…”

He gestured helplessly, a man losing his grip on the changing world.

“Citadel rig, huh?” Egar, voice elaborately casual, sipping his beer. “That’s unusual.”

“Yeah, tell me about it. When I was a kid, they wouldn’t have let an outlander set foot inside a temple, let alone fucking pay them wages to do it.”

True enough. It was a time Egar caught the tail end of, arriving in Yhelteth a decade and a half ago. A time when a lot of taverns were still calling themselves the Majak’s Head, still sporting iron cages very like the one outside this place to prove the point. He remembered burning one to the ground in the Spice Quarter one riotous summer night. A mixed-bag company of other steppe nomads, out staggering drunk on furlough. Summer heat, booze-tightened tempers, just waiting for the right tinder. Some heavyset Ishlinak, ax in hand, bawling that that was his fucking uncle up there in the cage, rot-eyed and blackened…

They burst in, boots and brutal-indignant rage. Broke faces and furniture, tore women’s clothing, grabbed torches from brackets on the wall. Roaring encouragement to one another. Whirl and toss—up behind the bar, in amongst the crowded tables. The straw across the floor went up, flames thigh-high in seconds.

And then it was all discordant screams and chaos, and a stampede for the doors.

He remembered making it outside, standing there grinning into the blaze as it built. Remembered the fire leaping out of windows, chewing at the low eaves. The head in its cage, flame-wrapped and roasting until the bracket charred too much to take the weight and the cage tumbled to the street, still on fire. The roof timbers took—cheap wood, poorly seasoned—burned rapidly through, and crashed in with a roar. The watching Majak roared with it.

Whirling, red-orange sparks on a cinnamon wind.

Akal the Great, always shrewd in his lawmaking, brought in an ordinance the following year. War against the League had brought the Majak south in their mercenary thousands—you could no longer afford to offend them. The tavern names changed.

No one recalled what happened to the various heads. Most, in truth, had probably never belonged to genuine Majak in the first place.

“…and he should fucking know better. That’s all I’m saying.”