Ричард Морган - The Cold Commands

Ringil let that one sit, let it sink away into the quiet. He kept his face an immobile mask. Finally, he set one ankle four-square across his knee, leaned forward in his seat with a frown, and brushed fluff from his boot.

“Care to elaborate on that?”

Tap-tap . Quiet.

“Oh, very well …” Anasharal’s voice took on a slightly singsong cadence. “The Ilwrack Changeling was born of a noble house whose name is now lost. As a child, he probably spent—are you getting this, Ringil Eskiath?—he probably spent as much of his time in the Aldrain realm as on Earth, and from this he derived his powers. Changeling is technically a misnomer, a misappropriated marsh dweller myth applied to those among the human ruling classes who were chosen for their great beauty and strength of intellect by the Aldrain overlords, and borne away at an early age to learn the culture of the Ageless Realm. It was, in its way, not much different from the military training noble males receive in the Empire or the League today. Then as now, their mothers must bid them farewell, give them up into the arms of terrible strangers, and mourn their long absences.

“Many Aldrain clans peopled the Earth in those times. The Aldrain walked among humans, and it was no more remarked upon than the Kiriath walking among humans these last centuries. Marriage unions between the races were not uncommon, though they rarely bore issue. Friendships and family ties sprang up. Such issue as there was, was honored. Many clans took changelings into the Ageless Realm, and many human noble houses gave away their offspring to such honor with joy. But no name among those clans stood in such high regard as that of Ilwrack—the royal house, the instigators and leaders of the Repossession. And to be chosen by the clan Ilwrack was the highest of honors. Its scions took only the very best and the brightest, opened to them every secret of the Aldrain race, and then flung them back into the world as their most powerful and faithful servants. For this has ever been the way of the Aldrain—not to rule subject races by their own hand, but to find those among the subject race who can be groomed and fit to rule on their behalf.”

Ringil grunted. “Been ever the way of anyone with half a brain and a limited purse to pay the levy.”

“Yes—well.” A disapproving pause, then Anasharal resumed, in lofty, lecturing tones. “The Changeling, then, was singled out by a young Ilwrack scion more or less from the cradle. They say the child was so beautiful that the Aldrain lord was bewitched despite himself. That he fell in love with all the impulsive passion of his people, and would not be denied. Bided his time for the brief cycles of human youth, taught and shepherded the boy through what he would need to see and know, took the resulting young man and ushered him through the Dark Gate younger than any the Aldrain had ever taken before. Gifted him early, you see, wrapped the first of his own cold legion about him while he was still in his teens. He must, just as the legend says, have been very smitten to bestow such power. But then the Changeling’s eyes, they say, were the green of sunlight through tree canopies, his smile, even as a child, could turn your heart over. When he grew to manhood, he was tall and long-limbed, and—”

“This Aldrain lord.” Ringil kept his voice neutral. “He have a name?”

“It is lost,” said Anasharal succinctly.

“Like so much of the detail in this story, it seems.” Ringil rubbed idly at a scuff on the leather of his boot. “Tell me something, Helmsman. Are you sure there’s a phantom island up there beyond Hironish? Are you sure there’s a city in the ocean keeping guard? You wouldn’t be making this whole thing up, would you?”

“Is the Ghost Isle not plotted on the maps of your own city’s shipmasters?”

“On some of them, yeah. So is the site of a floating star that crashed into the western ocean a hundred thousand years ago, when the gods fought for mastery of the heavens.”

“Well, maybe that’s there as well.”

“Archeth says you claim to have seen the Ghost Isle before you fell to Earth. That you have been watching the surface of the world for thousands of years. That suggests to me you would have seen this floating star as well.”

Brief hesitation. “Perhaps.”

Ringil nodded. Went on rubbing at the scuff mark on his boot. “So is it there or not?”

The hesitation ran longer this time. Tap-tap went one of the thing’s angled limbs.

“No,” Anasharal said finally. “It’s not.”

Ringil nodded again. “Was it ever there?”

“It may have been. That was before my time. But if it existed outside of myth, then it sank. Fallen stars do not float.”

“Islands do not come and go like pirate vessels, either.”

“This one does.”

“I DON’T KNOW,” HE TOLD ARCHETH THE NEXT MORNING. “IT’S LYING about something. I’d put money on it. Maybe not the Ghost Isle, maybe not even An-Kirilnar. But there’s something going on, something more than we’re being told.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.” He nodded at the ceiling, up to the room where the Helmsman was kept. “Like I keep telling you, Archeth, we’re out of our depth. You think this thing is on your side just because Manathan and the rest did what your father’s people told them to. But you aren’t your father, and this Helmsman wasn’t around back then. It’s come from somewhere else, and there’s no reason to suppose it plays by the same rules as the others.”

“Manathan commended Anasharal to me, Gil. Manathan sent us out there to collect the damn thing in the first place.”

Ringil shrugged. “Then maybe the rules have changed for Manathan, too.”

Archeth brooded on that for a while.

“I’ll talk to Angfal,” she decided finally. “I don’t believe there’s some evil conspiracy of Helmsmen all of a sudden. If something is going on, Angfal will have something to say on the subject.”

“Yeah, something cryptic and snide.” Ringil yawned into his fist. He’d been up all night arguing with Shendanak and Tand about escort logistics. “Any news on Eg?”

She shook her head. “Gone like smoke. The Guard Provost is making a big thing about turning the city upside down, but so far it’s all noise.”

“What I thought. They don’t have the—”

A diffident knock. The door eased open and Kefanin poked his head through the gap.

“My lord Ringil?”

“Yeah?” If Shendanak was back with more fucking names of cousins you could trust with your life, seriously, he was going to…

“Captain Rakan of the Throne Eternal to see you, my lord.”

“Oh.” He looked at Archeth, who just shrugged. “All right, then. Show him in.”

“He said he would wait for you in the courtyard.”

“The courtyard ?”

Not that it was an unpleasant venue. Archeth’s house was built, like most of the properties on this side of the boulevard, in traditional Yhelteth corral fortress fashion. High walls and two-story construction around a broad open airspace that in antiquity would have served to shelter livestock from rustlers and wolves alike. In its urban incarnation, the space was cobbled and studded with a trio of ornamental fountains. On the stables side, in faint echo of tradition, there were hitching rails and a drinking trough, but elsewhere the inward-facing walls of the courtyard boasted stone benches set under awnings and trellis ceilings tricked out with crimson-flowering creeper.

Beneath one of which latter he found Noyal Rakan, waiting. The young captain was resplendent in full Throne Eternal dress uniform, rigged with a sword that owed more to soldiering than display, and cutting, truth be told, a rather fetching figure all around. But, Gil noticed as he and Kefanin approached, the young man’s demeanor was no match for his imperial finery. Instead, Rakan stood irresolute and staring at the sun-dappled ground, as if hemmed in by the beams of light that spilled through the foliage overhead. He turned awkwardly at the sound of their footfalls on the cobbles, and he stuck out his hand with a heartiness that Gil made for counterfeit.