True enough in fact, most Majak went bearded in Yhelteth pretty much as they would have back home on the northern plains. Why pay good money to scrape hair off your face that was just going to grow back the following week? Why, for that matter, scrape it off at all? Kept the sun off, didn t it? Tickled the wenches, let them know they d been with a man, not a boy. Trim it back if you had to, if the grooming standards of whichever imperial mercenary brigade you d signed up with required it, but otherwise
The barber frowned a little as he bent and peered at his handiwork. I beg to differ, my lord. In fact, I had a brace of your brethren in here only last week. Young lads, not long in the city by the way they talked.
Egar grunted. Then they re getting better pay than I did at their age.
Perhaps so. They wore the livery of the Citadel Guard, as near as I recall.
Fucking Citadel?
A flickered glance at the barber to see if this would cause offense the imperials were funny about religious matters, had this clerk-arsed unforgiving book of rules to their observances, and very little sense of humor where it was infringed upon. Ordinarily, Egar could give a shit if he offended them or not, but it doesn t pay to upset a man who has a razor at your throat.
Yes, well Immersed in his task, the barber was apparently unmoved by any stirrings of religious fervor. He took the blade up under Egar s eye, back to the ear, strokes as smooth and practiced as the voice and the bland platitudes it uttered. The ranks of the Sacred Guard were much depleted in the war, my lord. Martyrdom called multitudes of the righteous away.
Yeah, didn t it just.
Egar had seen some martyrdom operations during the southern campaign, and they sickened even his well-worn mercenary soul. Waves of men and boys, some of them barely twelve or thirteen years old, hurling their bodies forward against the lizard lines with the name of the Revelation on their lips. Most struck at best a single blow before the reptile peons clawed or chewed them down. They died in their screaming thousands out on the field while the commanding invigilators looked on and offered prayers for victory.
At Egar s side on an overlooking promontory, one of the other Majak mercenary commanders spat in the dirt and shook his head.
And they call us berserkers?
But Yhelteth was like that. It lulled you along with its shaves and its baths, its book learning and its law; and then, abruptly, when you least expected it, you saw the vaunted trappings of imperial civilization cast aside, like the cloth and baked clay of some wealthy leper s mask, and you were abruptly face-to-face with the leering horror beneath a violent, tribal people, smug in their own assumed superiority and a faith that licensed their dominance wherever they could make it stick.
It doesn t pay to have too many illusions about us, Imrana once told him soberly. Take the Black Folk out of the equation and we d probably still be a bunch of bloodthirsty horse tribes squabbling over turf.
The barber finished up his bladework, wiped Egar s face and neck down with a moist towel, and brought a burning taper to scorch away the hairs growing from his ears. It was a painful process set the hair on fire for a scant second, slap it out again with a cupped palm, repeat but Egar submitted with a stoic lack of protest. He was hitting close to forty now, and had no desire to be reminded of the fact every time he looked in a mirror. Ears sprouting hair, gray in the beard and pelt, creases in brow and jowls that eased but never fully faded as his expression changed; it was all starting to pile up in ways he didn t much like.
Nor did he like the space it was starting to rent in his head.
Back out on the steppe the last few years, he hadn t really noticed the changes, because outside of shamanry, reflective surfaces weren t something the Majak had a great deal of use for. But now, returned once more to the imperial city, Egar was forcibly reminded that Yhelteth prized fine mirrors as a sign of wealth and sophistication. Both homes and public buildings boasted a wide and ornate selection, lurking at unexpected locations in halls and reception rooms wherever he went. Imrana s house was particularly well supplied, as befit, he supposed, her position at court, and her need to maintain a polished outward beauty. In the end , she said, a little bitterly, facing him in warm perfumed bathwater one evening, despite wealth, despite wisdom, despite contacts and court alliances, I am still a woman. And I will be judged on all counts for that single fact, via the cursed fucking geometry of how pleasing I am to the eye. Cheekbones and arse cheeks are my destiny.
I think you re undervaluing a couple of other assets there . Lazy rumble of lechery in his voice, reaching forward to cup one slumped breast and thumb the nipple. Refusing to meet her tone with any seriousness of his own. Tip to tail, it s all pretty pleasing to my eye. And a couple of other organs, too, in case you didn t notice.
It got him a faint smile. And what he d been angling for, really she put a hand on his already swelling prick, where it floated fatly between his legs in the bathwater.
Yes, an effect I m quite sure any unlaced tavern wench half my age would produce in that selfsame organ just by brushing up against it. You can t crawl back inside what you once had, Eg. You have to live with now. And now I am old. Practically a crone.
He snorted. You re not yet forty, woman.
Though privately he suspected that she probably was, and a couple of years besides. Truth be told, it wasn t something he d ever given a lot of thought to. Years ago when they d first met, with the war still raging and nothing certain to grab on to but the day you were given well, then things were different. The fact Imrana was a handful of years older than him had given her a darkly exotic allure, a frisson he was unused to in his more usual brothel tumbles. Age and court sophistication were the heady perfumes she was steeped in, a rising, maddening scent that hit him like patchouli or rose oil, and filled him with a restless, indefinable hunger.
Now, with thoughts of age creeping up on him as well, her vanguard battles against the same enemy troubled him more than he liked to admit.
Yeah, Dragonbane. Troubles you almost as much as that escutcheoned fuck she s got herself for a husband. And you don t much like to admit that, either, do you.
Ah. That.
Yes, that Knight Commander Saril Ashant, back from assignment in Demlarashan, where he steadfastly and selfishly didn t manage to get himself killed by the rebels he was putting down. Came home instead, covered in glory and claiming as rightful reward a couple of weeks furlough complete with nightly conjugal
Leave it alone, Eg.
Will there be anything else, my lord? The barber was down to a strictly unnecessary brushing off of collar and shoulders. A massage perhaps?
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
