Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

“So it was about this girl then?”

Harath stared off across the water. “Oh, I guess. Like I said, Alnarh was acting twitchy well before that, but yeah, that seemed to send him over the edge. Fucking nuts, it’s not like he couldn’t have had his pick from the others.”

“The others?”

“Sure, they’re keeping a whole gaggle of them up there. Some boys, too, if that’s your thing.”

Egar frowned. “Up there? At the Citadel?”

“No, man—Afa’marag.” Harath jerked a thumb over his shoulder, upriver. “The old horse stringer’s temple, up by the locks. Menkarak had it opened up again in the spring. Creepy fucking place. You didn’t know that?”

“No. And what are they doing up at Afa’marag? Aside from corralling slaves?”

“Fuck knows. I never bothered getting that close, they were paying me well enough just to keep an eye on the gate and take food into the slave pen. Alnarh and Larg volunteered for sanctum duty, arse-licking around Menkarak as usual.” The young Ishlinak shook his head. “Way too much purifying prayer and memorizing bollocks in it for me. Who needs that shit?”

The food came. Harath plunged in. Egar watched him eat, picked at his own plate for appearances. Mostly, he was thinking it through. Shuffling Harath’s grumblings together with what he already knew from Archeth’s briefing the previous year, and Imrana’s court gossip since. Trying to assemble it all into a hand you could bet something on.

Invigilator Pashla Menkarak—son of Grand Invigilator Envar Menkarak, and a big noise now in his own right, it seemed. A loud voice among the new crop of humorless asshole invigilators they were apparently cultivating up at the Citadel these days. Renowned writer of clerical opinions and interpreter of holy text —Imrana read that one out to him from a court communiqué she had secondhand a couple of months back. She reckoned he’d once been a pretty canny political animal, but now he was openly critical of the Empire’s failure to properly consolidate conquests of infidel territory in the north after the war. The King’s Reach suspected direct links with the Demlarashan tendency, but it seemed they couldn’t prove it yet, and with the way things were between palace and Citadel right now, that kept Menkarak safe.

Archeth had gone head-to-head with the fucker last year at court, and the Emperor backed her play. Teetering moments when it looked like the tensions between palace and Citadel might crack wide open. But cooler heads from the Citadel forced an apology, and Menkarak skulked off into the tall grass. There’d been no further direct clashes, but behind every shot the Citadel had taken at intimidation since, Archeth reckoned you could count Menkarak’s hand, or the hand of invigilators who shared his dickhead views.

Whatever the little turd was doing upriver would bear a look.

“You reckon you could get me in?” he asked.

Harath looked up over a laden fork. “In where? Afa’marag? Doubt it. Alnarh told the others not to have anything to do with me after I got thrown out.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t really thinking about going in the front door.”

“Ohh.” A slow nod. The Ishlinak shoveled the forkful of food in and grinned through it as he chewed. “All right, I got you. Yeah, that’s doable. Place is ancient, it’s falling apart. Got a whole stack of places you could break in with not much more than a bent pin. Show you that if you like, sure.”

“What about coming in with me?”

Harath hesitated. Swallowed his food and sat back. “What is this, Skaranak? What you want to get in there for? Come on, really. Man, if you’re looking for some cheap League pussy, I can take you to a couple of—”

“It’s not about the girls.” Hurriedly. “The boys, either. Like I said, this Menkarak’s on the other side of a blade gig from me, and I’m just looking for an edge. All I want to do is get in there, poke around for a bit, see what I find. Get out again without making any noise.”

“I don’t want to get in a fight with any of these guys. Not with steel.”

“We won’t.”

“ ’Cause they used to be my friends, right? Wasn’t for Alnarh, they probably still would be. All that shit down at the Lizard’s Head? That only kicked off because I bought Elkret a drink and Alnarh told him to pour it away. Fucking prick.”

Egar sat forward. “Son, look at me. We won’t get in a fight with your friends. We won’t get in a fight with anyone. We get in, we have a look around, maybe ask a couple of questions to some of these slaves, then we get out. Do it right, no one has to even know we were there. But I need you to show me the way in, and I need you to watch my back for me while I’m inside. You do that, I’ll see your rent covered for the rest of the month, and top you up fifty elementals in cash into the bargain. Save you having to go out on widow-battering duty for a while.”

Harath settled back to his meal again. Shrugged. Chuckled as he broke bread. “Okay, man, what am I going to say to that? You got me. Coin is coin.”

“Coin is coin,” Egar agreed. “And I’m going to throw in another twenty when we’re done. You want to know what that’s for?”

“Sure.” Throwaway gesture—the younger man’s attention didn’t come up off his plate. “Hit me with it.”

“That’s to keep your mouth shut. No drinking down the Lizard’s Head, yarning about how you broke into a Citadel temple with a Dragonbane for company.”

A noncommittal grunt. “Does sound like a good yarn, that. Worth a few beers.”

“Hey.” Egar snapped his fingers under Harath’s nose. Got him eye-to-eye. “You listen to what I’m telling you, Ishlinak. Twenty. On top. Mouth shut. I’ll want your blood oath on that.”

“Okay, Dragonbane, okay . Relax. I’m just fucking with you. Blood oath, you got it.”

“Good.”

Egar sat back, looked out at the Black Folk Span and the river while the other man ate. Across the city, the day was tipping over, noon heat spilling down toward afternoon. He watched the traffic threading across the Span’s ebony thoroughfares, wagons, riders, the plodding majority on foot. Some troops, sun glinting off their helmets and mail. A slave coffle, dust plastered, stumbling into town and journey’s end.

He caught the loose thread of the thought. Looked across the table at Harath.

“This slave girl. You reckon she knows anything?”

The Ishlinak grinned down at his food, still chewing. “Knew plenty, brother. Couple of tricks she had, telling you, man…”

He shook his head in bemused delight.

“Like that, huh?”

“Like that.” Harath swallowed and reached for bread. Leaned across the table and gestured with the chunk he’d torn off. “Look, I got to reckon the last couple of years, I’ve had more pussy than a clanmaster’s eldest sees in a lifetime. I must have seen the inside of nearly every brothel the Empire has, from Dhashara to Demlarashan. But that’s still got to be one of the best fucks I ever had.”

It was common enough talk—Urann knew he’d done enough like it when he was Harath’s age. But just on the off chance…

“She ask you for anything in return?”

The other Majak laughed. “Sure, man—what do you think? Get her out of there. What else is a slave going to ask you for?”

“So what happened to her?”

Harath, slopping up gravy with the torn chunk of bread, shrugged and didn’t look up. Shook his head as he chewed.

“Dunno, never saw her again. Why?”

Ringil met Eril’s eyes across the table. Their swords were up in their rooms with the cloaks and baggage. He kept his voice soft and nonchalant.