as he used to be, either.
Ringil got up and went to stand at one of the sunset-gleaming windows. He stared out, as if he might spot the Majak perched there on one of the tiled roofs in the reddish evening light. Grinning and waving at him. Staff lance in hand.
I back the Dragonbane against anything this city can throw at him, he said thoughtfully. With the possible exception of the King s Reach. And I don t guess Jhiral plans to waste that kind of manpower on catching just one more steppe nomad who couldn t keep his dick in his breeches, right?
Archeth pursed her lips. Depends. Ashant s family swing some weight up at the palace. And like I said, the guy was a war hero. If the Guard don t get somewhere soon, they might push for it. They push hard enough, Jhiral may cave in.
Ah, that ll be the regal majesty of the Burnished Throne in action, will it? The unbendable will of His Imperial Shininess?
That s Radiance.
Not from where I m standing.
She waved the comment away, a wasp she d been stung by too many times to care about. Look, I ll do what I can to forestall the King s Reach deploying. But Demlarashan has split this city down the middle. Jhiral s hard up against the Citadel, and right now he needs all the backing at court he can get.
Including, presumably, from the Ashants of this world.
A tired nod. Most of the nobility side with the throne because they re shit scared of what mob religion will do if it hits the streets. That gets Jhiral the bulk of the professional military, too, the officer class and anyone loyal to them. And a fair few of the Citadel s Mastery are with us as well, because they re snug in bed with the nobility and don t want their comfy little boat rocked. But they re not anything like a majority, and they won t be able to hold the line if this thing kicks off. You ve got thousands of pissed-off and pious rank-and-file veterans out there, Gil. Across the Empire as a whole, it s tens of thousands. Men who went to war on the Citadel s say-so and came home to no change for the better.
Yeah, you can see their point. He swung away from the window, as if dismissing something. Came back to the table.
So are they organizing?
According to Jhiral s spies, not yet. Not here, anyway. But they know how to fight.
Gallows Gap flickered in his eyes like flames. I know they do.
They survived the Scaled Folk, and they think that s down to God and the Revelation, so they aren t really afraid of anything anymore. This is what s fueling Demlarashan. Men like that, men with a grudge, and faith, and nothing much left to lose. And it can just as easily come home to roost right here in the city. It s another Ashnal schism just waiting to happen. And you ve got demagogues like Menkarak and his clique, who ll use that to bring the whole thing to the boil if they can.
Ringil hooked up his seat by the upright slat, turned it about, and seated himself straddle-legged. Rested his arms on the back and sat there with his cloak puddled in black around him, brooding.
Can t they take this Menkarak off the board? Sneak into his rooms one night and just slit his throat?
Been tried. Jhiral sent half a dozen of the Throne Eternal s best assassins into the Citadel to get it done. None of them came back.
A raised brow. Just can t get the help these days, huh?
It isn t funny, Gil. The Citadel s a volcano getting ready to blow. You put enough cracks in Jhiral s alliances for example, you fail to deliver when the noble family of a Demlarashan war hero come asking for favors, and
Yeah, I get it. He sighed. All right, look. You keep the King s Reach leashed as long as you can. Soon as I get the chance, I m going to wander about this town a bit, see if I can get the Dragonbane to show himself. There might be time.
And if there isn t?
He peeled her an unpleasant smile. Then to get to Egar, the King s Reach will have to come through me.
CHAPTER 32
He'd dyed his hair deep black in a run-down brothel bathroom just after dawn. Took out his talismans. Bribed the whore whose dyes he borrowed to forget he was ever there.
It was a tidy sum by the standards of the place certainly more than she d make to fuck him but her expression barely changed with the commerce. She bit and stashed the coins without comment, somewhere under her grubby skirts, then pointed wordless down the corridor to where the baths could be found. By her listless, flandrijn-stunned gaze and the way she shut her fuck-room door on him as he left, Egar judged that forgetting him was exactly what she planned to do.
The bath chambers were silent and cooling, and weak fingers of early daybreak probed down through the scant steam from a row of high windows on a slimy back wall. He saw no other clients, heard only some splashing and some patently false giggling somewhere in a darkened alcove. He found an alcove of his own, stripped himself to the waist, and worked rapidly with the dye. He gave it as long as he dared, then slicked back his newly blackened hair and squeezed it as dry as he could. Once out in the street, the sun would take care of the rest. He rinsed his hands a couple of times in the bathing pool, shook them dry, and put on his shirt again. The talismans went into his pocket. Then he slipped the catch on one of the high windows and hauled himself up and through, trying not to clout any of his wounds in the process. He clung from the outside ledge by his fingertips for a moment, then dropped down into the shaded back alley below.
Pain spiked through the wound in his thigh with the impact, bad enough for a clench-jawed cry. He stumbled, propped himself against the wall, panting.
Down the alley, what he d taken for a pile of refuse made an answering groan.
He whipped around, hand to knife. For one desperate, floundering moment, he thought it was the front- parlor toughs, sent by the madam to investigate this customer who preferred to quit her premises by such unconventional means.
No need for that blade, my friend. The voice was hoarse, but showed no sign of fear. I ve no quarrel with any man who leaves a brothel by the back window.
Have you not? Egar stalked closer, peering.
He made out a slim figure, cuddled into the wall beneath the folds of a Yhelteth cavalryman s cloak. Sable on white, the rearing horse insignia, long worn to a grubby black and cream but unmistakable nonetheless. The bearded face that looked back from above its collar was scarred and grimed, the hair a poorly cropped mess. But the eyes were steady.
No quarrel at all. Done it myself, time to time. Way I see it, the least a patriotic brothelkeeper can do for a man who s served is waive payment. But they rarely see it that way.
Dangerous to linger here, but
Egar sank into a sprawl against the opposite wall of the alley, rested aching limbs for just a few moments. He nodded at the cloak.
Cavalryman, huh?
Seventeenth Imperial, yes sir. The man freed his right hand from the folds of the cloak, held it up for inspection.
Sadly no longer.
Egar looked at the half-hand claw. Ring and little fingers gone, a ragged mass of scar tissue where the blade had chopped deep into the palm behind. He d seen the like often enough before rank-and-file cavalry swords were for shit when it came to anything other than hacking down fleeing infantry. The Empire s factories churned them out cheap and fast and shiny, and about one in a dozen would likely fail as soon as you went up against a decently equipped mounted opponent. Couple of well-placed blows and the guard gave way like rusted scrap.
Seventeenth, huh? He racked weary brains for the memory. You were at Oronak then, that first summer when the Scaled Folk came. Before the dragons.
