Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

Know the feeling .

She tried for toneless calm.

“It’s not good, Mahmal. Sanagh gave you up under interrogation. You and half the shipwright’s guild, apparently.” She looked back at him. “I mean, when are you people going to get it through your fucking heads? The horse tribes kicked your asses. There isn’t going to be a glorious resurgence of the coastal cultures. It is over. The Burnished Throne is our best shot at civilizing the world now.”

“My quarrel is not with the Burnished Throne.”

The qualifying words hung in the air unspoken. She found herself checking the deck, reflexively, for eavesdroppers.

She came back to where he was seated. Crouched close.

“He’s one man, Mahmal. He’ll live, and he’ll die—just like his father, just like his grandfather. And I remember them all—don’t you forget that. Right back to Sabal the Conqueror, and he was a total fucking bastard. It’s not them. It’s what they build that counts.”

“That’s an admirably Kiriath perspective, my lady.” Shanta closed the book in his lap, leaned across to the samovar, and busied himself refilling his glass. “You’ll forgive me if, as a mere mortal, I am less inclined to take the long view. Bentan Sanagh was a friend.”

“Then you need to choose your friends more carefully,” she snapped.

That sat between them while he finished with the samovar. He laid his book aside with elaborate care, did not meet her eyes. He held the glass of tea cupped delicately in both palms, head bowed over the steaming drink like a soothsayer scrying the future for a tricky client.

“Well,” he said mildly. “I will give your ladyship’s advice due consideration.”

“Yeah—do that. Because I don’t think I’ll be able to pull your chestnuts out of the fire like this if you fuck up again.”

He glanced up. “I am grateful for your intervention, Archeth.”

“Doesn’t sound much like it,” she said grumpily.

“No, I am grateful.” A gathering urgency in his tone now. “But I have taken oaths, Archeth, just like you. When the guild come to me with their complaints and fears, I am sworn to address those concerns. You know how many of us the purges have taken. What would you have me do? Put on a courtier smile and bandage my eyes like Sang? Stand aside as my friends and colleagues are disappeared and tortured to death?”

“And you really think joining your friends on an execution board is going to help matters?” She sighed. Went to get the cushion she’d kicked. Calling back to him as she bent to pick it up. “What would I have you do, Mahmal? I’d have you stay alive. Yhelteth needs men like you and me. The purges will pass, Jhiral will calm down. We have to outlast this phase.”

“I am an old man, Archeth. It’s doubtful I’ll live to see that—even if you do manage to keep me out of tentacled embraces for the duration.”

“So—what?” She came back, settled the cushion back in its place. Seated herself. “You’re looking for a glorious exit? Is that it? A martyr’s death?”

“Hardly.”

“The Citadel is restless, Mahmal—you know that. And Demlarashan is perfect tinder. It won’t take much for Menkarak and his clique to torch it all into a theocratic rising that’ll make Ninth Tribe Remembrance look like a drunken tavern brawl. Is that what you want? Asshole bearded righteousness ranting on every corner, and the blood of unwed mothers running in the streets? Jhiral at least will stand against that.”

Shanta grunted. “You miss the salient point, my lady. Jhiral himself is part of the reason people flock to the invigilators in the first place. If he had not tarnished imperial authority the way he has since accession, no one would give those selfsame bearded assholes the time of day. Akal would never have—”

“Oh, don’t feed me that line of shit! I was there , Mahmal. Remember? Akal got in bed with the Citadel for manpower, pure and simple. Religious morons to bulk up his armies, Citadel declarations to sanctify his fucking conquests. This is his mess we’re living through just as much as it is Jhiral’s.”

“And so we forgive corruption and imperial tyranny, because it promises to stanch theocratic rage?”

“No. What we do is get a sense of perspective. We tread carefully, and we look for ways to clean out the bilges that don’t involve knocking a big fat fucking hole in the hull.”

The nautical metaphor lifted the ghost of a smile to his lips.

“Got a mop, then?” he asked.

“Think I might, yeah.” She nodded at the samovar. “Pour me a glass of that, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

AFTERWARD, HE SAT SILENT FOR A LONG TIME.

Archeth sipped her cooling tea and gave him the space, gladly. That he was thinking it over could only be a good thing.

Wharf noise drifted up over the port-side rail, softened by the height of the houseboat’s decks. In keeping with the time of year, Shanta had had the vessel towed downriver from its winter moorings, and docked near the mouth of the estuary, where sea breezes helped keep the summer heat at bay. It also gave him the chance to sweep the harbor with his telescopes and keep up with foreign shipping technology. Only last year he’d been in transports of engineering delight over some gaunt gray square-rigged vessel that showed up from Trelayne sporting a raked bow and narrowed beam. You’re looking at the future there , he told her as she squinted through the scope, at a loss to see what all the fuss was about. Those League sons of whores—always one jump ahead. Do you have any idea how fast that beauty must be, even in heavy seas? She’ll clip through waves like a knife .

So we go right ahead and build the same way , she’d assumed.

He shook his head. Fat chance, the way things are right now. You try convincing anyone down here to make untried changes to something that’s functioned perfectly well for longer than living memory. There’s just no stomach for that kind of innovation anymore. Guild monopoly, vested interests at court, a line of fucking rent-seekers out the palace door and around the block. We’re choking on it, Archeth, and there’s nothing either of us can do. Akal would have…

So forth.

Her tea was stone-cold. She poured it away into the dreg pan, leaned over to the samovar, and turned the spigot for a fresh shot. Shanta looked up at the motion as if he’d forgotten she was there.

“So, you believe what this creature says?”

“Helmsmen don’t generally make things up, Mahmal. They can be obscure, willfully vague, cantankerous at times. But I’ve yet to catch any of them in a lie.”

“A city standing out of the ocean?”

“As at Lake Shaktan, yes.”

“A lake and an ocean are very different things, Archeth. The existence of a city standing in the waters of one does not necessarily prove the possibility of a city built to stand in the other.” But behind the pedantry, she could already hear in his voice that he believed, that he wanted it to be true. “Shaktan is shallow compared with the northern ocean. Its weather is mostly clement. But the seas around the Hironish? Just imagine the stresses such a structure would have to withstand. Imagine what constructions would be required.”

“If Anasharal’s scheme works, we will not need to imagine it, my friend. We’ll be able to see for ourselves.”

“Hmm.” He shot her a shrewd sideways glance. That my friend might have been pushing it a little. “Of course, even if this An-Kirilnar does exist, it will most likely be a ruin, just as An-Naranash was.”

“Perhaps.” It hurt more than she’d expected, just to say that much.

“You think a city of your people would have hidden themselves from us all this time? Really?”