Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

“The Lady Imrana will see you now,” he said. “Please go through.”

She was off the bed and tucking herself tight in a linen robe as they walked in. The Lady Imrana Nemaldath Amdarian, long black hair in comely disarray, the face it framed hard-boned and harsh, even in the kindly light of the lamps Brinag had lit for her before he came out. It took the softening effect of all the cosmetics she would later layer on to ease the command in that face, to make it into something more appropriately womanly, something more appropriate, Egar always thought, to how she was below the neck. Imrana was voluptuous by Yhelteth standards, despite the advancing years, breasts full and heavy in the tight-wrapped folds of the robe, tilt and curve of generous hips as she stalked barefoot across the tiles toward him. And with the anger marked on her face like that, scarlet spots burning at each cheekbone, man, he could feel a want for her coming on stronger than—

“Are you fucking deranged , Egar?” The obscenity, there in her mannered mouth like a plum. As ever, it made him hard just hearing that urbane, throaty courtier voice rolling out language fit for a Skaranak milkmaid. “Are you out of your fucking mind ? Coming here like this?”

“Imrana, listen—”

“I said a fortnight! Is that so hard to get through your thick Majak skull? He’s still here , he’s still on fucking furlough !”

“Not in this bed, though.” Egar, stung by the epithet Majak . She’d never used it on him before outside of pillow play. “Didn’t take him long to burn through his marital obligations and take his business elsewhere, did it? Which brothel do you reckon it was this time?”

It stopped her like a slap. She breathed in, hard enough that he saw her fine aristo nostrils pinch with it. She retucked herself a little tighter in her robe, as if the temperature in the room had suddenly fallen. Her voice grew cold and calm.

“I have no idea, Egar. No idea at all. In truth, it’s more likely he’s with one of his mistresses. He will have had his fill of brothel flesh while he was on campaign.” Small, bleak smile for him. “So. Is speaking it aloud supposed to shock either of us?”

“I wouldn’t have come here if I had another choice.”

Imrana glanced at the girl. “Really? In this whole city, you really can’t find anywhere else to play three in a bed.”

“It’s not—”

“What about your beautiful black-skinned sponsor? I hear she likes it that way, couldn’t you persuade her to—”

“Will you shut up, woman! I didn’t come here to fuck you!”

The echoes chased briefly around the chamber, lost themselves in the heavy black drapes and expensive wall hangings. Imrana stared at him. In the breathing space that followed, he discovered that what really stung was her apparent opinion, laid abruptly bare with this unscripted meeting. It lurched through the arrangement of his memories like a drunken thug in a spice market, scattering and trampling the little rows of jars and pots, the artfully opened, fine-odored sacks. Belch and curse and stagger, smash and spill. Everything he’d valued, turned over in his head—he watched it happen like the sack of some pretty hillside town. Thick-skull big-cock barbarian bit of rough—was that all he’d ever been? Or was it the march of years, clawing them apart? Had passing time and age done this to them both, made them colder and more distant, wound up in their own affairs and grasping scared at what was left? He cast his mind back, tried to remember. Found he couldn’t. Found he didn’t want to.

His wounds ached, suddenly. Suddenly, he felt old.

Perhaps she felt it, too. Perhaps she read the damage in his face. She went back and sat on the edge of the bed. Unconscious elegance in the lines of her legs, the spread of her arms out to the sides, pressing on the mattress, the downward tilt of her head and the way her hair swung forward to shroud her face. She took the ends of her robe tie, fiddled with them. Looked up with a new smile, one that stabbed him through the chest.

“But you nearly did fuck me, Eg,” she said quietly. “Coming here like this.”

“Well, that wasn’t the plan,” he growled.

“No, perhaps not. And forgive me if I shouted, but Egar, you have to see. Saril and I have this down. I ignore his indiscretions, and he either genuinely believes I am chaste or he does not care so long as I appear so. It works, it is civilized. You…”

“I’m not civilized. Yeah, got that.”

“That’s not what I mean.” She glanced again at Nil, seemed to see the girl properly for the first time. Another smile, one he couldn’t read, flickering across her face. “She’s kind of cute, Eg, but she’s filthy. And she’s dead on her feet. Where on Earth did you get her?”

“That’s a long story.” Still the trace of the growl in his voice. “If you want to hear it.”

“Of course I want to hear it. Look, I’ll have her cleaned up, and we’ll talk. All right?”

It was almost like watching a knight putting on his plate, preparatory to battle. The sections of the Imrana he knew, strapped into place piece by piece. She got up and went to the bellpull at the head of the bed, tugged it sharply. One hand went up to her hair, stroked the dark fall back at her ear—it looked almost nervous. He saw how thin strands of gray and white twined through the dyed dark like the fine wires in some Kiriath machine. She tilted her head at him.

“You know, Eg, all those years. If you’d wanted three in a bed, you only had to ask.”

HE WASN’T SURE IF SHE BELIEVED HIM, WASN’T SURE IF HE MUDDLED through the tale clearly enough for it to make any sense to her. But with Nil taken away by Brinag for a bath, Imrana at least seemed to be listening. And he thought he read genuine anguish in her face when he showed her his wounds.

“I thought we’d done with all this, you and I,” she murmured, kneeling in front of him at the bedside, pressing gently along the sides of the gash in his thigh. She’d torn his breeches where the wound was, to see the cut more clearly. Ashant wasn’t the first knight she’d been married to, and like most Yhelteth noblewomen she was well versed in the art of caring for spouses returned from the fray. “I thought you’d come back here to retire from all this.”

“Yeah, me, too.” Though truth was, he’d never seen it in anything like those terms. “What can I tell you? Trouble grows lonely, comes looking for me again.”

She darted him a look. “I think you may have that backward.”

He grunted. Elsewhere in the mansion, through the walls, you could hear voices and the sounds of movement as the household got on its predawn feet. In here, though, it all felt very distant, the activity of other yurts around the camp when what counted was here before him in the soft glow of the lamps. The raw rift opened between them earlier seemed to have healed over, but he wasn’t sure if that didn’t unnerve him more than the revelation of the rift itself. He winced as she pressed tighter on the wound.

“This is going to need stitches,” she said. “I’ll do it myself, if you’d like that.”

“Yeah, fine. Question remains, Imrana. What am I supposed to do about all this? Can you keep the girl, at least for a while?”

“Of course. Who’s going to notice, in a household this size? But you’ll need to tell all this to Archeth, you know you will. You can’t go head-to-head with the Citadel on your own.”

“I told you, I can’t go near Archeth right now.”

“Then get word to her. I can arrange that easily enough. But you can’t stay here while I do it, Egar. You know that, too, right?”

“Right,” he said glumly.