Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

“You’re talking about Shendanak?”

“And Kaptal. Probably Tand as well, if he sees that Shendanak’s going. No love lost among any of those three, from what I hear. And Shendanak is in the habit of hiring his thugs right off the steppe. They’re mostly cousins and blood-oath bondsmen, and half of them probably don’t even speak Tethanne. So you’ve got the prospect of those guys rubbing up against the marines, plus whatever mob of slave enforcers Tand wants to bring in to balance the odds—”

“If he chooses to come along at all, that is.”

“I’d advise you not to start getting optimistic this early in the game, my lady.”

“Better than getting cold feet, isn’t it?” Sour tone only half in jest, because abruptly the lack of krinzanz was getting to her again, and she really didn’t want to think about what it was going to be like—trying to wield some kind of authority over this whole shabby, patchwork, freebooter scramble after loot. “What’s the matter, my lord Shanta, you turning old man on me all of a sudden? Just want your cup of spiced tea and your slippers?”

“ Doddering old man, wasn’t it?”

“Doddering moron , I said. Not the same thing at all.”

“Well, it’s hard to keep up with you immortals, you see.” A sudden edge on his humor now as well, the momentarily unguarded tinge of jealousy she was accustomed to with the humans who didn’t just hate her outright. Shanta heard it, too, hurried past it, sought safe ground again. “Perhaps it’s just, oh, that having had my life saved so recently, I value it all the more.”

The northern ocean is hardly a safe place at the best of times. Who’s to say what may happen there .

Her words to Jhiral the night before came back to her. For one nightmarish instant, she saw herself doing it.

“You’re welcome,” she said gruffly.

Another sideways slanted look, another smile. “You know I wouldn’t miss this—any of it—for the world, right?”

Her own lips quirked. “I guessed.”

“I’m coming with you, Archeth. You know I am. I’ll build your ships for you, I’ll sail them up around Gergis and beyond. I’ll draw the charts and plot the routes, I’ll put in what money you need. I’ll even sit quiet in council with idiots like Shendanak and Tand.” He shook his head, still smiling, perhaps at this recklessness, at his age. “But I’m telling you. You’re going to need more than the likes of Noyal Rakan to wield the whip and keep this lot in line.”

Which was of course when, staring down into the hubbub on the wharf, she spotted the gaunt, black-wrapped figure forcing its way through the crowd.

And for just that moment—like sudden sickness, like krinzanz coming on—it was as if she could feel the vast, ancient machinery of the universe as it turned. As if, through some ragged tear in the tawdry fairground paneling and painted cloth of the seeming world, the oiled mechanisms of fate now stood revealed in all their cog-toothed, malevolent intent.

And for just that moment, she was afraid.

Ringil Eskiath came down the gangplank of the Famous Victory None Foresaw and joined the bright, brawling chaos on the wharf. Sunlight shattered across the water, slammed glints into his narrowed eyes. The Black Folk Span held the sky to the south like a massive slice of shadow dropped across the estuary. It was better than a mile upriver from where he’d disembarked, but you could sense the cool of its shade from here, beckoning you on.

Yhelteth.

They’d given him a medal here, once.

“Rooms, my lord, rooms! Swan-down beds and views to the great Kiriath wonders of the city! Step this way!”

“Pig’s heart skewers! Piping hot! A Yhelteth delicacy, fresh from the coals!”

“Baths, my lord! Hot baths. Waters perfumed with all the scents of the Great City!”

He wondered, shouldering his way through the press, if that included the reek of hot tar and effluent that crept up from the pilings along the wharf.

“Wanna get fucked, soldier?”

“Wanna get fucked up ? The purest flandrijn in town, sire, the finest pipes. A Yhelteth tradition awaits you.”

For a moment, he was tempted, by the latter offer at least. He’d been in some good pipe houses in his time, and doubted the grubby, hollow-eyed individual at his elbow was going to take him to one of anything like the same rank. But he also doubted the tout and any friends he had would be stupid enough to try to roll a man with a blade-scarred face and the tilted crux of a broadsword hilt at his shoulder. Flandrijn they offered, flandrijn in all probability they would have, and a cool, dark place to smoke it in.

Or maybe they would try to roll him.

In the sunny, quick-pulse rush of the morning, he found he didn’t much mind the thought of that, either. He had a full belly from breakfast aboard the Famous Victory , he had a full purse under his cloak—the Lady Quilien had bluntly refused any compensation at their parting, Let us say only that you will owe me a favor, Ringil Eskiath , she told him instead—and he had back his full strength of limb and lung. He was awake in ways he hadn’t been for months.

A flandrijn pipe or a back-alley brawl—he had appetite to spare for either.

But by then, in those moments of idle reflection, he’d already drifted on, and the tout stayed put somewhere in his wake, still crying his wares to the crowd. Ringil kept moving, vaguely aware that he was heading for the Span’s shadow and, as he recalled, a low-rent mercenary watering hole built there. The Good Luck Pony, or something—it had always been a favorite of Egar’s, though Ringil had never been able to see the appeal himself. Scabby fittings, no decent wine to speak of, and a clientele of obnoxious young men all looking to prove their mettle at the slop of a spilled pint. A fistfight a night, a stabbing a week, all pretty much guaranteed.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt to swing by. It was a little early in the day for drunken chest-beating; the place would likely be quiet. He might glean some useful gossip on what was going down in the city these days, whether there was much work for freebooters, who to talk to about it. At a minimum, he could get something to eat.

At some point after that, he’d see if he could remember the way to Archeth’s place.

“Ringil Eskiath! Hey, hero !”

For a moment, the voice seemed almost familiar—certainly, he thought he would know its owner as he turned. But the grinning gray-toothed girl who lounged there against the curve of a donkey-sized wine tun left on the wharf was familiar only in type. He’d seen her in a dozen different cities before, her soiled, tight-laced bodice and shredded redrag skirt practically a uniform. Painted nails chewed down to the quick, tanned arms laden with bangles at the wrists, clinking bracelets at the ankles, bare feet clotted with dust and streaked with melted tar. She caught his eye and flexed herself at him, elbows propped back on the tun’s curving surface. Slid one hand down into the rags of the skirt, and shifted it aside on a length of pallid thigh. A wood shard toothpick shifted from one side of the rotted smile to the other, lifted on a darting tongue. She was all of fourteen years old.

“You know me?” he asked warily.

“Who would not, honored sire? Victor at Gallows Gap, savior of the northern cities, slayer of dragons at Demlarashan. The debt we all owe you is without tally.”

“It was just the one dragon.”

She ignored the interjection, as if her words were lines she must recite and he a poor companion player on the stage, forgetful of his part.

“I have a message for you, Dragonbane,” she said.