The Cold Commands (3 page)

Egar reckoned the brutal handling his ears had just had was probably about his limit today. And the confines of the barbershop felt suddenly tight. He shook his head, made an effort to dump his brooding. He got up out of the chair and fumbled for his purse. Saw the big, freshly shaven man in the mirror do the same. It caught him out as ever
—shit, that’s a lot of gray hair!
For something to say while he dug out coins, he asked:

“And you say these compatriots of mine come in here a lot?”

“Regularly, yes, my lord.” The barber took the proffered payment. “Any message for them?”

The Dragonbane stared the mirror down, trying not to let a sudden weariness show through. What would he say? What message could he possibly pass on to young men possessed of all the idiotic, indestructible confidence he’d owned himself when he rolled into town a couple of decades back?

Enjoy it while it lasts, it sure don’t last long
, maybe?

Get paid well for the years you give?

If they were getting Palace Quarter shaves on a regular basis, they’d already learned that lesson better than he could teach it.

The man in the mirror frowned at him. The barber hovered. Behind the traitorous weariness, another sensation coiled, restless, like smoke; like something summoned but not yet called to tangible form. He tried to name it—could not.

He shook it off instead.

“No message,” he said, and stepped back out into the sun-blasted brightness of the street.

HE WALKED AT RANDOM FOR A WHILE, LET THE FLOW OF HUMANITY
through the Palace Quarter carry and soothe him. Women in brightly colored wrapping, like toffees too numerous to choose from, and the heady slap of perfume across the eyes as they passed. Slaves and retainers in the livery of this or that courtier’s service, bent beneath upholstered saddles piled five feet high with burden, or—the lucky ones—bearing some lettered and sealed communication from one lordly house to another. A noble trailing an entourage in his wake like noisy gulls at the stern of a fishing skiff. Here and there the odd brace of City Guard, sun smashed too bright to look at across their cuirasses. Beggars and street poets not dirty, deformed, or disruptive enough to be worth the effort of moving on.

Faint, twining scents of fruit and flowers from a market somewhere close. The broken rhythms of the sellers, crying their wares.

Heat like a blanket. Street dust stirring beneath the tramp of feet.

Egar drifted on it all like a swimmer with the current—nursing for a while the still-sharp, piercing pleasure of just
being
here, of having come back to this place he never thought he’d see again. But in the end, it was no good. His eyes tracked inevitably up and west, to the stately, tree-shaded white mansions along Harbor Hill Rise. To one particular mansion, in fact, with the mosaic dome cupola at its southern end, where
right now probably …

Come on, Dragonbane. Really. Leave it alone
.

Too late. His gaze stuck on the cupola’s polished wink and gleam like a blade in a frost-chilled scabbard. He felt his mood sour. Felt the unreasoning anger flare, the way it always did.

 … right now probably, sucking him off in that big bed …

Grow up, Eg. You knew you’d have to live with this. Besides
—a sly, steppe nomad wit intruding, relic of a man he sometimes wondered if he still was—
it’s way too close to prayer time for that sort of thing. He’s a pious little fucker, remember. She told you as much
.

As if in confirmation, the prayer call floated out from a tower somewhere
behind him. Egar put up half a twisted grin for a shield, and hung on to it. Memory of Imrana was inextricably bound up with the plaintive skyline ache of that sound.

In the early days, when passion flared between them at every touch, at every loaded look, transgression against the appointed hour of prayer would light her up like a taper soaked in oil. Her eyes wide, her lips flexed apart, the arched tension of appalled delight on her face at what he was doing to her, at
when
he was doing it to her. Occasionally, he’d catch the waft of memory from those days, and go hard to the root just thinking about it.

And then later, settling more comfortably into the harness of their mutual attraction, they still spent postcoital evenings out on her apartment balconies, wrapped up in each other’s tangled, sweat-slick limbs, listening to the evening call and watching the sun melt into layers of heat and dust over the western city.

His smile waned, turned ugly with the weight of current events.
Knight fucking commander or not, Dragonbane, one day you should just …

He grabbed the thought by the scruff of its neck.
Enough
.

Time to be elsewhere. Definitely.

HABIT TOOK HIS FEET SOUTH, PUT HIM ON THE BOULEVARD OF THE
Ineffable Divine. He didn’t think Archeth would be back from An-Monal yet, but there was always Kefanin to talk to in the meantime. Ishgrim to leer at, if she chose to put in an appearance. And anyway, he reminded himself, a little sourly, it was his job to keep an eye on them all; it was the genteel pretense he and Archeth maintained—that his place as long-term houseguest was paid out by informal security duties on her behalf.

That this amounted to not much more than being visible—and visibly Majak—about the place was not discussed. Nor were the small purses of silver coin that showed up regularly in the pockets of his attire when it came back from cleaning and was laid out in his rooms.

He tried not to feel too much like a kept hound.

Truth was, the Citadel raid on Archeth’s household was the best part of three full seasons in the past now, and the way it had worked out, it
seemed unlikely the same powers would try again. Menkarak and his kind had backed off. There was a ticklish equilibrium in place across Yhelteth these days, like some massive set of scales hanging in the sky above the city, one cupped, brass weighing bowl dipped over the imperial palace, the other riding the air above the raised crag and keep of the Citadel.

No one wanted to disturb that balance if they could help it.

He felt it again—that same coiling restlessness, familiar but just out of reach.

Could always look for a real job, of course. Dragonbane
.

He could, and with that name attached, there’d be no shortage of offers; you mostly had to look in graveyards for men called Dragonbane—the ones still walking around were few and far between. Any regiment in the city would kill to have one as a commander, or even a color officer. But a command, even a sinecure command, would mean responsibility—requirements to attend reviews and a hundred other tedious regimental affairs of one beribboned sort or another, when he’d really rather be out on a sun-soaked balcony somewhere, fucking Imrana or drinking and shooting the shit with Archeth. And a
real
command would be worse still—the way things were right now, he’d more than likely find himself deployed south to Demlarashan to supervise the slaughter of yet more deluded, poorly armed young men who had evidently somehow not managed to get their fill of war last time around.

The war; the years as clanmaster back on the steppe afterward—it still clogged him. It sat in his stomach and throat whenever he thought about it, the morning-after feel of too much undigested food and wine from some overblown feast the night before. He didn’t care if he never held another command in his life.

He was done giving other men orders.

Let the dumb fucks work it out themselves, for a change
.

He pitched up at Archeth’s place in no better mood than that. Got in off the crowded street and paused in the cool shadows of the gate arch to wipe sweat from neck and brow. The two young guardsmen stationed there nodded warily at him. More warily than you’d expect, given that he’d played dice with them a couple of times at shift change.

He forced a grin.

“All right, lads? Seen the Lady Archeth at all?”

The man on the left shook his head. “No word yet, my lord.”

Shrug. Kefanin, then.

He crossed the sunstruck cobbles of the courtyard, went inside, and rattled about the house a bit until he finally discovered the eunuch talking to Ishgrim in one of the enclosed garden patios out back. Egar didn’t catch what they were discussing, but they seemed to his jaundiced eye to be getting on altogether too well for a young woman shaped the way Ishgrim was and a man with no balls. The slave girl was laughing, tipping her long candlewax-colored hair back from her eyes. Body curves shoving gratuitously at the yellow linen shift she wore, straining the material at hip and breast. Kefanin made some convoluted gesture with both hands, shook out a red silk handkerchief, and spread his fingers wide so it hung between them. A small cascade of white rose petals drifted down onto the stone bench between them. Ishgrim gasped, clapped her hands like a small child. Her breasts gathered up and inward with the action, not like a small child at all. Egar felt a throb go through his groin at the sight.

Not what he needed right now.

He coughed and made himself known.

“ ’Lo, Kef.”

The eunuch got hurriedly to his feet. “My lord.”

“No sign of Archeth, then?”

“No. Ordinarily, I would have expected her back by now, but …”

“But once she gets up there to that house full of phantoms, who the fuck can tell.” Egar’s voice came out gruffer than he’d intended. “Right?”

Kefanin’s lips pursed diplomatically.

“Would you care for some refreshment, my lord?”

“No, I’m good.” Egar glanced down at Ishgrim, wondering, not for the first time, where Archeth found her restraint. If the girl had been
his
slave—a gift of the Emperor, no less, it doesn’t get much more legitimate than that—he would have plundered those curves fucking
months
ago. Would have lit her up like a steppe-storm sky, put a fucking
smile
on her face for once, instead of that perpetually downcast look she dragged around the house all the time like a bucket of used bathwater.

Ishgrim flushed and shifted on the stone bench.

“Are you going to tell him?” she asked in a small voice.

Silence. Egar switched a glance between the two of them. “Tell me what?”

“It’s nothing, really.” Kefanin waved a dismissive hand. “Not worth—”

“Tell me
what
, Kef?”

The majordomo sighed. “Well, then. It seems we are being subjected to a little more clerical brinkmanship. The Citadel wish once more to remind us of their existence.”

“They’re out there
again
?” Egar hadn’t noticed coming in, and an odd sense of shame crept through him at the realization.
Some fucking hound, Eg
. “Guys on the gate didn’t say a thing about it when I came in.”

Kefanin shrugged. “They are on loan from the palace. They don’t want unnecessary trouble.”

That ticklish fucking balance again. Egar remembered the wary looks the guardsmen had given him. Felt a fierce grin stitch itself onto his face.

“They think
I’d
cause unnecessary trouble?”

“My lord, I do not know if—”

“Leave it with me, Kef.”

Voice trailing out behind him as he walked away. Riding an upsurge of varying emotion now, at whose heart was that same vaguely familiar restlessness he couldn’t pin down. He strode back through the chambers and halls of the house. Across the blaze of the courtyard. Under the brief, cool caress of the arch, past the startled guardsmen
—assholes—
without a word. Out once more into the bustle and tramp of the street.

Paying attention now, he spotted them easily enough—there, under one of the acacia trees planted in twinned rows down the center of the boulevard. The lean, drab-robed figure of the invigilator and, flanking him in the cooling puddle of shade, the inevitable brace of men-at-arms; cheap bulk and professional scowls, lightweight mail shirts under surplices with the Citadel crest, short-swords sheathed at the hip.

There was a twinned flicker of motion as both men clapped hand to sword hilt when they saw the big Majak come striding through the traffic toward them. Egar nodded grim approval, let them know he’d seen it, and then he was planted firmly in front of the invigilator.

“You’ve got the wrong house,” he said conversationally.

The invigilator’s face mottled with anger. “How do you dare to—”

“No, you’re not listening to me.” Egar kept his voice patient and gentle. “There’s obviously been some mistake back at the Citadel. Pashla Menkarak isn’t keeping you up to date. When he sent you down here, didn’t he tell you how dangerous it is to stand under this tree?”

The invigilator flashed an inadvertent glance up at the branches over his head. Egar dropped an amiable right arm onto his shoulder, just above the collarbone. He dug in with his thumb. The invigilator uttered a strangled yelp. The men-at-arms came belatedly to life. One of them raised a meaty hand and grabbed Egar’s free arm.

“That’s en—”

Egar clubbed down with the blade of his right hand, felt the invigilator’s collarbone snap beneath the blow like a twig for kindling. The invigilator shrieked, collapsed in a sprawl of robes and choking pain. By then Egar had already turned on the man-at-arms who’d grabbed him. He locked up the grasping hand with a Majak wrestling trick, put the man into the trunk of the tree face-first. The other man-at-arms was a heartbeat too slow in reacting, and did entirely the wrong thing—he went for his sword. Egar swung a shoulder in with his full body weight behind it, trapped the man’s sword arm across his chest, and smacked him in the temple with the heel of one palm. At the last moment, something made him pull the full force of the blow, and the man went down merely stunned.

Meanwhile, the one he’d put face-first into the tree was still on his feet, blood streaming from a broken nose, and he’d also decided it was time to bring out the steel. He got the sword a handbreadth out of its scabbard and then the Dragonbane kicked his legs out from under him. He went down in a sudden heap. Egar stepped in and kicked him again in the head. That seemed to take care of things.