Red Country

‘Because you don’t respect yourself. Doubt, Temple. Indecision. You simply worry too much. Sooner or later you have to do something, or you’ll never do anything. Overcome that, you could be a wonderful captain general. One of the greats. Better than me. Better than Sazine. Better than Murcatto, even. You might want to cut down on the drinking, though.’ Cosca tossed his empty bottle away, pulled the cork from another with his teeth and spat it across the room. ‘Filthy habit.’

‘I don’t want to do this any more,’ Temple whispered.

Cosca waved that away, too. ‘You say that all the time. Yet here you are.’

Temple lurched up. ‘Got to piss.’

The cold air slapped him so hard he nearly fell against one of the guards, sour-faced from having to stay sober. He stumbled along the wooden side of Superior Pike’s monstrous wagon, thinking how close his palm was to a fortune, past the stirring horses, breath steaming out of their nosebags, took a few crunching steps into the trees, sounds of revelry muffled behind him, shoved his bottle down in the frozen snow and unlaced with drunken fingers. Bloody hell, it was cold still. He leaned back, blinking at the sky, bright stars spinning and dancing beyond the black branches.

Captain General Temple. He wondered what Haddish Kahdia would have thought of that. He wondered what God thought of it. How had it come to this? He’d always had good intentions, hadn’t he? He’d always tried to do his best.

It’s just that his best had always been shit.

‘God?’ he brayed at the sky. ‘You up there, you bastard?’ Perhaps He was the mean bully Jubair made Him out to be, after all. ‘Just… give me a sign, will you? Just a little one. Just steer me the right way. Just… just give me a nudge.’

‘I’ll give you a nudge.’

He froze for a moment, still dripping. ‘God? Is that you?’

‘No, fool.’ There was a crunch as someone pulled his bottle out of the snow.

He turned. ‘I thought you left.’

‘Came back.’ Shy tipped the bottle up and took a swig, one side of her face all dark, the other lit by the flickering bonfire in the camp. ‘Thought you’d never come out o’ there,’ she said, wiping her mouth.

‘Been waiting?’

‘Little while. Are you drunk?’

‘Little bit.’

‘That works for us.’

‘It works for me.’

‘I see that,’ she said, glancing down.

He realised he hadn’t laced-up yet and started fumbling away. ‘If you wanted to see my cock that badly, you could just have asked.’

‘No doubt a thing o’ haunting beauty but I came for something else.’

‘Got a window needs jumping through?’

‘No. I might need your help.’

‘Might?’

‘Things run smooth you can just creep back to drowning your sorrows.’

‘How often do things run smooth for you?’

‘Not often.’

‘Is it likely to be dangerous?’

‘Little bit.’

‘Really a little bit?’

She drank again. ‘No. A lot.’

‘This about Savian?’

‘Little bit.’

‘Oh God,’ he muttered, rubbing at the bridge of his nose and willing the dark world to be still. Doubt, that was his problem. Indecision. Worrying too much. He wished he was less drunk. Then he wished he was more. He’d asked for a sign, hadn’t he? Why had he asked for a sign? He’d never expected to get one.

‘What do you need?’ he muttered, his voice very small.

Sharp Ends

Practical Wile slid a finger under his mask to rub at the little chafe marks. Not the worst part of the job, but close.

‘There it is, though,’ he said, rearranging his cards, as if that made his hand any less rotten, ‘I daresay she’s found someone else by now.’

‘If she’s got any sense,’ grunted Pauth.

Wile nearly thumped the table, then worried that he might hurt his hand and stopped short. ‘This is what I mean by undermining! We’re supposed to look out for each other but you’re always talking me down!’

‘Weren’t nothing in the oaths I swore about not talking you down,’ said Pauth, tossing a couple of cards and sliding a couple more off the deck.

‘Loyalty to his Majesty,’ threw out Bolder, ‘and obedience to his Eminence and the ruthless rooting out of treasons, but nothing about looking out for no one.’

‘Doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea,’ grumbled Wile, rerearranging his rotten hand.

‘You’re confusing how you’d like the world to be with how it is,’ said Bolder. ‘Again.’

‘A little solidarity is all I’m asking. We’re all stuck in the same leaky boat.’

‘Start baling and stop bloody moaning, then.’ Pauth had a good scratch under his own mask. ‘All the way out here you’ve done nothing but moan. The food. The cold. Your mask sores. Your sweetheart. My snoring. Bolder’s habits. Lorsen’s temper. It’s enough to make a man quite aggravated.’

‘Even if life weren’t aggravating enough to begin with,’ said Ferring, who was out of the game and had been sitting with his boots up on the table for the best part of an hour. Ferring had the most unnatural patience with doing nothing.

Pauth eyed him. ‘Your boots are pretty damn aggravating.’

Ferring eyed him back. Those sharp blue eyes of his. ‘Boots is boots.’

‘Boots is boots? What does that even mean? Boots is boots?’

‘If you’ve nothing worth saying, you two might consider not saying it.’ Bolder nodded his lump of a head towards the prisoner. ‘Take a page out of his book.’ The old man hadn’t said a word to Lorsen’s questions. Hadn’t done much more than grunt even when they burned him. He just watched, eyes narrowed, raw flesh glistening in the midst of his tattoos.

Ferring’s eyes shifted over to Wile’s. ‘You think you’d take a burning that well?’

Wile didn’t reply. He didn’t like thinking about taking a burning. He didn’t like giving one to someone else, whatever oaths he’d sworn, whatever treasons, murders or massacres the man was meant to have masterminded. One thing holding forth about justice at a thousand miles removed. Another having to press metal into flesh. He just didn’t like thinking about it at all.

It’s a steady living, the Inquisition, his father had told him. Better asking the questions than giving the answers anyway, eh? And they’d laughed together at that, though Wile hadn’t found it funny. He used to laugh a lot at unfunny things his father said. He wouldn’t have laughed now. Or maybe that was giving himself too much credit. He’d a bad habit of doing that.

Sometimes Wile wondered whether a cause could be right that needed folk burned, cut and otherwise mutilated. Hardly the tactics of the just, was it, when you took a step back? Rarely seemed to produce any truly useful results either. Unless pain, fear, hate and mutilation were what you were after. Maybe it was what they were after.

Sometimes Wile wondered whether the torture might cause the very disloyalty the Inquisition was there to stop, but he kept that notion very much to himself. Takes courage to lead a charge, but you’ve got people behind