Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Archeth. I’m not a monster . I put Sanagh out of his misery for you, didn’t I?”

She left that one well alone, worked instead at keeping her pulse even. She steepled her fingers over the parchment, as if affording the names there some arcane protection.

“My lord.” Flat calm. “Much of this expedition, if not all of it, will be made by sea. And Mahmal Shanta is, whatever his diplomatic failings, the foremost naval engineer in the Empire. That alone would commend him to the list. But consider also that he is not a man to entrust important matters to underlings. He personally oversees every keel laid in his family’s boatyards, and since the war he takes most of them out on their maiden voyage as well.”

“Yes, well, it’s not his fidelity to shipbuilding that I’m concerned about.”

“No, my lord.” She paused. Let him see it for himself.

Jhiral leaned on the back of the chair he’d been using. Not quite ready yet to sit down. “Yes, all right, I’m not stupid. The expedition gets him out of town, draws the fangs on any other little extracurricular activities he’s got brewing.”

“It’s more than that, my lord. I know Shanta. He will insist on accompanying us, yes, but this is not all. He will want to plot our route and resupply points around the Gergis cape. He will want to review the charts and expeditionary records for the northern ocean and the Hironish. He will insist on designing and building the vessels we use.”

“Yeah,” the Emperor jeered. “Nice little earner for the Shanta yards.”

She shrugged. “Or, if we don’t build from scratch, he will want to dry-dock the vessels we acquire and refurbish them stem to stern. Either way, it will consume his energies for months. It will draw in those from the guild he considers his friends. It is late summer, my lord. The expedition cannot make ready before the seasons turn on us; we will have to wait for the spring. Involve Shanta in this, and you occupy him throughout autumn and winter, and then he leaves the city for who knows how many months.”

“And escapes any redress for his treason.”

She steeled herself for the step. “If you like. Though the northern ocean is hardly a safe place at the best of times. Who’s to say what may happen there?”

The words floated down into quiet. Outside, the nighttime city glimmered. Jhiral tilted his head and cocked a brow at her.

“Are you… saying what I think you’re saying, Archeth?”

“I am saying only that there is more than one way to remove a political opponent, my lord. You need not always feed them to the ocean in the confines of your own palace.”

A faint breeze through the tower windows. Flicker of lamplight, caper of shadows.

“Interesting.” Jhiral straightened up from the chair back. “Of course, I don’t believe for a moment you’d do it.”

“My loyalty is as it has always been, my lord, as my people’s loyalty has always been, to the Burnished Throne and the spread of Yhelteth civilization. I will do what I have to in order to defend those allegiances.”

“Well, that’s very noble, Archeth.” But she saw through the lightness of tone. Caught the tiny scratch at the back of his voice. “Perhaps we can find a way to stop short of having you murder your friends, though.”

She inclined her head. Tried not to hold her breath. Jhiral watched her for a couple of moments, then came around the side of the chair and sat back down.

“Very well. For now, Shanta is your problem. Keep him in line, and I’ll see to it that this goes no further.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

He put his boot back up against the side of the desk. She felt how the heavy wood creaked and shifted. He jabbed a finger at her. “ But if I hear any more unhealthy rumors coming out of the shipwright’s guild, I’m not going to wait until next spring to find out if you’ve got it in you to push him over the rail for me. He’ll be meeting our tentacled friends from Hanliahg just like anybody else. That clear?”

“As crystal, my lord.”

Jhiral grunted. “Shanta’s a lucky man. Might be worth making sure he realizes that.”

“I will speak to him tomorrow, my lord. I am anxious to get started as soon as possible. Spring will be upon us soon enough.”

“Yes.” The Emperor slumped deeper into the arms of the chair. He seemed to be staring right through her and into some other place. “Let’s just hope we all make it through the winter without anything else breaking loose in this miserable fucking city.”

When he woke again, it was to pale parchment light straining down through the tent over his head, and the dull strop of wind outside on the canvas.

Hjel was gone.

Like every other fucker around here .

But the thought felt facile, no rooted truth to it this time. There was a cold immediacy to everything around him that didn’t feel like the Gray Places. Ringil shifted a mound of blankets aside, caught the other man’s acrid scent on the bed linen beneath, and a fading trace of warmth. He paddled about in the confined space, looking for his underwear. His gaze caught on the Ravensfriend, laid carefully to one side where the canvas came close to the ground.

The blade was pulled a handbreadth out of the scabbard, as if someone had gone to draw the weapon, then thought better of it.

Voices from outside. Sounded as if they were striking the camp.

Ringil found drawers and breeches, contorted himself and pulled them on. Twitched aside the tent flap and peered out. Members of the wandering court went back and forth; someone had built up the fire and was feeding it. The odor of fried bacon and beans came and wiped itself across his face. He struggled upright and out into the day, blinking in the light.

“Morning.” A bright, slightly arch tone. A woman, face vaguely familiar from the night before, grinning as she passed him on her way to the fire. “Want some breakfast?”

He followed her, tucking in his shirt, not bothering with his boots. A couple of other familiar faces at the fire looked up from their plates and nodded affably. He remembered this from the last time with Hjel’s people, the palpable shock of it—no whispers behind hands, no scandalized tones or accusing glances, no real interest, in fact, beyond a basic curiosity about his arrival in their midst. Nobody cared. They were too full of their own lives to pass much judgment on others. It was an otherness, a magic as staggering in its way as the ikinri ’ska .

Ringil seated himself at the fire and was handed a heaped plate of his own. He soaked bread in the beans, chewed and realized abruptly how hungry he was.

“Good to be out, eh?”

It was the man seated on his right—Ringil recognized him now as Cortin, last male to the bedrolls the night before.

“Sorry?”

“Out of the Margins. Good to have the world feel solid again, right?”

Ringil chewed and swallowed, nodded.

“Never get used to it, myself. All those voices, calling you away.” Cortin set aside his plate and sprawled back, reflective on his full stomach. “Course, it’s easier when you’re in company, wouldn’t get me out there any other way. Going solo, now—that’s, like they say, strictly for princes and fools. No offense—I’m guessing by that broadsword you’re the former.”

“Was a gift,” said Ringil around a wad of bread and bacon.

“Oh.” Hurriedly: “Yeah, but still. Man of breeding, am I right? I mean the Black Sail gang don’t come all the way up the fjord for just anyone.”

Someone coughed on the other side of the fire. The woman who’d served Ringil shot Cortin a shut-the-fuck-up glance.