Richard K. Morgan's Blog, page 11

Penultimate Pre-pub Taste

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 pretence he and Archeth maintained – that his place as long-term house guest 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 colour 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 just 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 afterwards – 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, 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.

"Alright, 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 sun-struck 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 candle-wax coloured 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 need 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 bath water.

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 mayordomo 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 realisation.  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 centre 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 towards 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 collar-bone.  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 collar bone 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 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 hands-breadth 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, which seemed to take care of things.

Behind him, the invigilator was still screeching and thrashing about on the ground in his robes like some kind of beached manta ray.  An interested crowd was starting to form.  Egar looked up and down the street for reinforcements, saw none, positioned himself carefully and kicked the robed form hard in the guts.  The screaming stopped, was replaced by a ruptured puking sound.  Egar planted another solid kick, higher this time, and felt a couple of ribs snap against his boot.  Then he crouched beside the invigilator, grabbed him by the throat and dragged him in close.

"Look up there," he said bleakly, and jerked the man's head upward for emphasis.  "Pay attention, because I'm only going to go through this once.  See that window?  Second floor, third across from the arch?  That's my room.  It looks directly out onto the street, right here.  Now I know that you people and the lady of this house have some prior history, but here's the thing: I don't fucking care. And more importantly, I don't want to have to look out of that window and see your scowling face fucking up my view.  Got it?"

Gritted teeth snarl.  "I have an ordained right-"

Egar slapped the rest of the sentence out of the man's mouth.

"We're not discussing rights, my friend.  Do I look like a lawyer to you?  We're talking here about a polite and reasonable personal request I'm making, to you and all your bearded chums.  Stay the fuck away from this house.  Take that back to Menkarak, make sure he spreads it around.  Because  anyone who doesn't get the message, I will be forced to hurt, probably very badly.  And if you ever come back here again."  The Dragonbane dug his index fingernail in under the invigilator's chin and lifted his face closer.  Looked into his eyes to make it stick.  "Well, then I'll kill you.  Okay?"

From the man's face, he judged the message conveyed.

He got up, looked around at the tumbled, twitching bodies, and the goggling crowd that had gathered.

"Show's over," he said brusquely.  "Nothing to see here."

And there it was, something in the words as he spoke them, some echo of the elusive feeling he'd been carrying around all day – which now slid out from the shadows and took on recognisable form.

Bored, he realised with a slight shock. Dragonbane – you are bored.

 

Altered Carbon for President!

Vote for Me!  Vote for Me!

(or not, as you see fit…. )

Been so busy haring around Europe talking to game designers that I managed to almost completely miss this.  Gollancz is celebrating fifty years of SF publishing by creating a list of the top twenty five fantasy and the top twenty five SF novels from their list.  Details right here.  Top five to be published in a new retro edition.  So if you'd like to see Altered Carbon in one of those old yellow jacket Gollancz covers (and I know I would), you know what to do!!

Oh yeah – and deadline is Sunday.  Sorry.  Like I said, been a bit distracted…..

Altered Carbon for President!  You Know it Makes Sense!

Sophistication

CONVICTED PAEDOPHILE PLUNGES TO DEATH IN FAULTY GUARDRAIL SCANDAL

Quite a few people have mailed me over the last couple of days, asking for my feelings about the death of Osama bin Laden.  Read the headline above and you'll have a rough idea.  On the one hand, yeah, it's a disgrace that the municipal authority has allowed a vital safety feature to get into such a lethally dangerous state.  On the other hand – well, couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

But someone sure as shit needs to fix that guardrail.

Instead of which, from the prevailing media current in the US it seems that opinion runs more along the lines of "Hey, that's cool, a broken guardrail – just what we need!  With a bit of luck, a whole bunch of other violent offenders are going to fall through that gap and smash on the rocks below!"  The thought that any decent god-fearing folk like you and me might get hurt seems not to have registered.  The idea that broken guardrails are a bad idea in general seems not to have penetrated the public consciousness very much.

Then again, is anybody very surprised?  The problem is that political debate – particularly in the US, but increasingly in the UK as well – has reached such levels of dumbed-down emotive populism that we no longer seem able to disentangle two very VERY basic philosophical concepts from each other – the concept of Who and the concept of What. And if I were asked to name a single characteristic that differentiates the Civilised from the Barbaric, then it's exactly that – the basic ability to think in terms of objective facts rather than subjective emotional ties.  To ask the question what happened? rather than who was involved?

Barbarism is punishing a crime if it's committed by someone you don't like, but cheerfully approving of it if the perpetrator is your pal.  Barbarism is law enforcement for other people, and laissez faire for ourselves.  Barbarism is human rights for us over here, rendition, torture and summary execution for you guys over there.

Civilisation, by contrast, is accepting that the law needs to apply without prejudice to everyone.  And it's a tough gig.  Because it goes against all our ingrained tribalistic sensibilities, our self-serving, self-deceiving self righteousness and our bloodthirsty appetite for scapegoats and vengeance.  And nor, by the way, is this in any way a simple dichotomy of left and right wing. We're all susceptible to this failing, you just have to re-tune slightly to get each person's particular tribalism focused.  Recall, if you will, the various leftist pundits gleefully declaring after 9/11 that, well, dreadful business, to be sure, but hey, those Americans really had it coming, didn't they.  Go back further still and recall the insane twistings of logic so beloved of all those hardline socialists justifying tanks on the streets of Budapest and Prague while simultaneously decrying imperialist intervention in South America and Vietnam. Moronic tribal myopia is by no means the exclusive preserve of the Republican right.

So do I care that Osama bin Laden was shot dead, despite being unarmed and offering precious little in the way of resistance?  No.  He was an evil old fuck, he had it coming.  I have better things to do with my compassion than waste it on guys like that.  (Things, for example, like be impressed by and thankful for the SEAL training that enabled a mission in which random women and children – for once – didn't bear the brunt of the massive collateral damage  that usually accompanies western military intervention.  Is this a better model than drones and aerial bombardment?  You bet it is.)

However – do I care that the US (and probably the UK, in its slavish puppy-like Me-tooism) seems to feel it has the sovereign right to send out death squads and murder with impunity wherever its geo-political interests are threatened.  Hell, yes, I care.  That is no way to run a civilisation.  Because next time, it might not be guys as accomplished as SEAL team 6.  Or next time, the intelligence might be of the standard we more normally associate with the C.I.A. (i.e for shit, or a loosely bundled pack of hegemony-serving lies).  Next time, we might be back to drones because it's just so much easier to pull off.

Next time, someone who doesn't deserve to die might get hurt.  Because generally that's the way it goes.  Iraq, anybody?

So by all means let's celebrate the immaculately-effected death of an evil old fuck who really had it coming.  You'll get no argument from me on that.

But meantime, let's also for fuck's sake get that guardrail looked at.  Before something happens that wipes the smile off everybody's face; something that leaves us casting about in our barbarian hypocrisy for some grubby Fox News tribal justification or other to cover up whatever new atrocity it is we've just permitted in our name.

In other words, let's try to do civilisation like we mean it.

Backing Tracking

DONE!!!!!

Final line penned (er – keyboarded) this morning – The Cold Commands is a wrap!  As they say in Spanish, Cha-Chan!!!

Of course, this is all slightly deceptive.  There's actually a fair bit of work still to be done.  The rough cut goes out to Simon Spanton at Gollancz tomorrow, and I now have to back up and read the whole manuscript through from scratch, trying to form some kind of overall impression of where we've been and what we've ended up with.  There'll be tweaking, there'll be proofing, there'll be polish to layer on – less at the front end than the back, since the earliest sections have been buffed smooth with a couple of years of constant revisiting and revising as the story inched its way forward.  The back end, though, is probably still altogether too cask-strength rough and ready in places.  Will need tempering.

Still – feels like coming through the door and setting down a very heavy pack at journey's end. Sure, I'll still need to unpack it all, do a hot wash or two, a tumble dry and put shit away, but we're home, man!  Even the gap between yesterday – when I only had about a page and a half left to write, and knew it – and today when it's done…..well, the sides of that gap feel weirdly worlds apart.

So, meantime, by way of celebration, here's a quick round-up of the soundtrack.  These albums were all wiring repeatedly through my head at one time or another during the making of  The Cold Commands:

The Black Angels – Directions to See a Ghost, Passover

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Beat the Devil's Tattoo, Baby 81, Live

The Black Ryder – Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride

The Black- (stop that! ed.) Bomb the Bass – Clear

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – Let Love In

Curve – Doppelganger, Cuckoo, Gift, Come Clean

The Dandy Warhols – Come Down, 13 Tales from Urban Bohemia, Odditorium

The Dead Weather - Horehound

David Gray – A Century Ends, Flesh, Lost Songs, A New Day at Midnight

Heroes de Silencio – El Espiritu del Vino, El Mar No Cesa/Senda '91

Jehst – The Return of the Drifter

The Kills - Keep On Your Mean Side, No Wow, Midnight Boom

The Killers – Sam's Town

Kings of Leon – Only by the Night

Mazzy Star – Among My Swan

Tom McRae – King of Cards, All Maps Welcome, Tom McRae

The Rolling Stones – Let it Bleed, Beggar's Banquet, Voodoo Lounge

Sisters of Mercy – Floodland, Vision Thing

Slobberbone – Everything You Thought Was Right Was Wrong Today

Richard Thompson – Mirror Blue, Rumour and Sigh

Two Gallants – What the Bell Tolls, Two Gallants

Tom Waits – Bone Machine, Mule Variations

The Warlocks – Phoenix

You have been warned!

You Believe This Shit? (reprise)

Further to my rant from a couple of months ago of the same name, I received a very heartening e-mail from a ranking serviceman yesterday.  He is, broadly speaking, in sympathy with the dynamic of Wikileaks (though he admits that there are those among his colleagues who are not) and implies he is far from the only one.  What's even more interesting is what he says after that:

Statistically I'm safer deployed than I am living in my home country. I joined the Army and subsequently worked very hard for a commission in the idealistic and misguided hope that off the back of my sacrifice the world would be a better place. The military is full of bitter people like me who are fighting for a cause we believe in in archaic, outmoded, inflexible and immoral ways. Most of us, owing to our reasons for joining or ironically the values inculcated by our training, would happily die in the defence of the things we hold dear.

You were on the mark with that one.

I've rarely seen the human dynamic of soldiering I try to express in my work so cleanly laid out by someone who knows.

Three Line WIP

So – delivery approaches.  Matter of a few weeks now.  Final chapters and then some polishing.

Meantime, all you lovely, patient people – li'l Archeth for ya:

His imperial radiance Jhiral Khimran II was executing traitors in the Chamber of Confidences when they got back.

Archeth had Anasharal brought up to the palace anyway.  She'd known the Emperor since he was a child, had watched his ascension to the throne – apparently with a few less illusions than the rest of the court, because she seemed to be the only one not shocked when the purges started – and she knew he was going to demand to see the Helmsman as soon as he heard about it.

He might even put the executions on hold.

So she went, unenthusiastically, along the sculpted marble corridors in the Salak wing of the palace.  Went deeper and deeper, towards the screaming, while krinzanz need scraped at her nerves like knives.  The smooth-walled architecture gleamed and curved and swept, palely voluptuous around her, mostly tones of muted jade and amber, but veined through in places with stark copper or black, and studded at intervals with conquest pieces – artwork and sculpture dragged here from every corner of the Empire and jammed into alcoves or nailed onto walls that didn't really suit the purpose.

And the shrieks and pleas for mercy echoed off the polished stone, chased each other down the corridors, ambushed her round corners, like the ghosts of the conquered dead, somehow trapped in the marble heart of the imperium that had vanquished them.

*

The Salak stone-masons and architects who built the Chamber of Confidences – so the story went – committed quiet suicide when they learnt what had been done with their work.  Archeth was a child at the time, and would never know for sure.  As she grew up she suspected a more pragmatic truth behind the tale; that his imperial radiance Sabal Khimran I had had the craftsmen murdered to ensure they never spilled what they knew about the various architectural tricks and secrets they'd so lovingly created.

Certainly had it in him, the evil-eyed old fuck.

Sabal the Conqueror, first of the Khimrans to really deserve the term Emperor.  He'd died before she hit her teens, putting down some rebellion or other out on the fringes of the eastern desert. But she still remembered how he'd lifted her up as a small child, the secret look on his hawkish face, as if she were some incredibly precious vase he entertained notions of smashing apart on the floor, one swift and brutal stroke, while no-one was looking.

She'd asked her father about that, many years later, when grief at her mother's death trawled the memory to the surface.  But Flaradnam was deep in grieving of his own and disinclined to discuss Sabal, or indeed anything much else, beyond bitter monosyllables.  He would not have dared, was about all she could extract.  He needed us – they all did back then – as they still do now.  Whole fucking dynasty leans on us like a crutch.  And Sabal knew I would have ripped his mother-fucking mortal heart out if he'd harmed a hair on your head.

Flaradnam lived through his grief and eventually put it aside – or at least learnt to ignore it for extended periods – but they never really discussed Sabal again.  The early excesses of Empire seemed to be bound inextricably in his mind with Nantara's death, and he skirted round them in conversation as soon as they arose.  And then, there was that whole fucking dynasty angle to worry about – Archeth was old enough now to be admitted to the Council of Captains, to take on her own role in the subtle steering of Yhelteth affairs that served the Kiriath for a mission, or a means to other ends, or maybe just a hobby.  There was, her father told her repeatedly, important work to be done.

So forget Sabal the Conquerer, because his son was on the throne now – Jhiral I, a diffident, gentle boy Archeth had grown up playing tag with through the gardens and corridors of An-Monal and the palace in Yhelteth  – and the succession was far from assured.  Flaradnam and Grashgal spent quite a lot of the next few decades quashing usurpers, safeguarding borders and laws, hammering and tempering the newly minted Empire into something resembling a permanent tool of policy for the region.

And after Jhiral, there was Sabal II, seemingly a solid reincarnation of his grandfather's brutality and cunning and military prowess.  At An-Monal, they all breathed a collective sigh of relief, and stood back to give him sword-room.

And then Akal the Great, perhaps the best of them so far.

And now Jhiral II.  Hers to handle alone, for her sins.  She sometimes wondered – she was wondering now – why she fucking bothered.

But old habits die hard.

She cleared a final twist in the milky, veined stone corridor – the shrieking hit her full in the face, she did her best not to flinch – and went under the heavy marble cowl of the entry arch, out onto the Honour promontory.

The execution party didn't pick up on her arrival at once – all attention was focused inward on the business of the day, and anyway with the noise the condemned were making, she could probably have ridden in on a warhorse in full armour and still not have been noticed.  She counted about twenty men in all – executioners and apprentices in the sombre grey and plum of their guild, a couple of robed judges, there to see sentence carried out, and then a scattering of whichever strong-stomached nobles felt they needed to curry a bit of imperial favour right now.

The Chamber of Confidences.

Under other circumstances, it was a radiant, beautifully-rendered space. The Honour promontory was one of three blunt marble tongues – Honour, Sacrifice, Courage, the old Yhelteth horse tribe trinity – extending at regularly spaced intervals from the otherwise circular walled circumference of a closed ornamental pool fifty yards across.   Sunlight fell in through cunningly angled vents in the high dome of the ceiling – the marble blazed and shone where it took the rays directly. Elsewhere, reflection off the water put cool, rippling patterns of light and shade on the walls.  A tented raft of rare woods and silks was ordinarily anchored in the centre of the pool, a private retreat for the Emperor you could reach only by poled coracle, because you certainly wouldn't survive the swim.

But the raft was currently moored tight to the Sacrifice promontory, well out of the way.  Well, you wouldn't want to get blood on that silk.  Take forever to get the stains out. And four of the convicted traitors – three men and a woman – were already afloat, shoved out a safe distance from the promontory on their execution boards and drifting further away.

Archeth tried not to look at what was happening to them.

She focused on Jhiral's back, the sumptuous imperial ochre and black of his cloak amongst the clustering matt palette of the executioners's garb.  She held down a shudder – swore she'd never again try to quit the krin cold.

"My lord."

Hopeless – the shrieking drowned her out.  The fifth man was thrashing and flailing as they dragged him to the manacles on the last remaining board.  She thought, with a sudden freezing through her veins, that she might know him.  Though beneath the marks of lash and heated irons, the distorting terror in the features, it was hard to tell for sure.

She cleared her throat – something seemed to be sticking in it – and tried again, louder.

"My lord!"

He turned.  Heavy silken sweep of the cloak across the marble flooring, handsome features a little clouded, brow furrowed like a man struggling with accountancy he had no real taste for.  His voice carried effortlessly – he was used to this.

"Ah, Archeth – there you are.  They said you were on your way.  But – as you'll see – I'm a little busy right now."

"Yes, sire.  I see that."

The last execution board was an old one, grey wood swollen and split from repeated immersions, manacle screw plates spotted with lichen-orange rust.  The board looked, she thought, not for the first time, like a generous wedge cut from some huge mould-coated cheese.  Broad at the top end so the victim's head stayed a good couple of feet above the waterline, tapering to a narrow end at the bottom so tortured and manacled feet would lie submerged, leaking slow tendrils of blood into the water.

The pool dwellers were smart – Mahmal Shanta swore he'd once seen them using lure tactics to  entice seal pups off beaches in the Hanliagh Scatter – and they knew well enough the sound of the underwater gongs lowered into the pool when there was to be an execution.   They'd have squeezed in through the submarine vents in the base of the chamber that morning, would have been waiting below the surface ever since.

They'd be ravenous by the time the first board hit the water.

And then she could no longer beat the perverse urge, she could not keep her eyes away.  Her gaze slid out to the water, to the four boards already floating there with their dreadful, shrieking, red-slippery writhing cargo.

In the wild, a Hanliagh black octopus would have wrapped tentacles around surface prey this large and dragged it deep, where it could be drowned and dealt with at leisure.  Defeated by the bobbing wood and the manacles, the creatures settled for swarming the boards, tearing at the chained bodies with frenzied, suckered force, biting awkwardly with their beaks.  So skin came off wholesale, gobbets and chunks of flesh came with it, finally down to the bone.  Blood vessels tore – in the case of a lucky few, fatally.  And occasionally, a victim might smother to death with tentacles or body mass across the face. But for most, it was a long, slow death by haphazard flaying and flensing – none of the creatures was bigger than a court-bred hound, they could not otherwise have squeezed in through the chamber's vents, and even their combined efforts were rarely enough to make a merciful end of things.

Jhiral was watching her.

She forced herself not to look away – the spray of blood, the up-and-down flail of tentacles like thick black whips, the soft, mobbing purple-black shapes hanging off the wood and flesh, crawling across it.  Her gaze snagged on a wild, wide-open human eye and a screaming mouth, briefly blocked by a thick crawling tentacle, then uncovered again to shriek to shriek, to shriek……

She turned to meet Jhiral's gaze.  Locked herself to the casual poise it took to do it.  Slowly, Archidi, slowly. Held his eyes, held the moment like a knife blade, loose for the throw.  Warrior trick – funnel the noises away, to the edges of your attention, like the pain from minor wounds when the battle demands you gather yourself.

Jhiral gestured impatiently.

"So?"

"We have found a new Helmsman, my lord.  It talks of threats to the city, to the Empire."

"A new Helmsman?"  Jhiral's brows kicked up.  "A new one?"

"Just so, my lord."

Jhiral glanced back at the last condemned man, the frantic scrabblings he made against his captors as, finally, they managed to get him to the board.  The Emperor seemed to be pondering something.  Then he looked back at her again.

"Archeth – you would not by any chance be trying to avert punishment for your old pal Sanagh here, would you?"

So.

The bloodied, screaming features – the memory popped into place like a brutally relocated shoulder joint.  Bentan Sanagh.  They'd hacked his hair off in the dungeons, of course, and he was haggard with suffering.  And anyway,  pal was not really accurate – she knew Sanagh only casually, through Mahmal Shanta and the shipwright's guild.  A loud-mouthed idealist, quite brilliant in his way, which was probably what had kept him alive during Akal's reign, but he'd always lacked Shanta's instinct for self-preservation.  Archeth had liked him well enough, shared some conversations, a banquet party or two.  But she judged him doomed from way back, and kept her distance accordingly.

"Because Prophet knows," Jhiral went on with a long suffering sigh.  "His good lady wife's been writing to every worthy at court he ever shared a bribe with, trying to get his sentence commuted.  We're all up to our ears in tear-stained parchment.  I imagine you're on the list as well, somewhere."

She was not.  Perhaps her own habitual standoffishness had been noted – doesn't pay to get attached to humans, her father told her bitterly, drunkenly, one night a few months after her mother died.  They only fucking die on you – or perhaps it was her black skin and her eyes and her volcanic origins.

Or maybe you missed the letter, Archidi.  Maybe you were fucked up on krinzanz or brooding out at An-Monal or hiding in the desert.

"I was not aware of Bentan Sanagh's conviction, my lord," she said evenly.

"No?"  Jhiral stared at her, she thought, almost resentfully.  "No?"

"No, my lord."

Shrieking.  Shrieking. Abruptly, the Emperor of All Lands rolled his eyes.

"Oh, just cut his fucking throat," he snapped.

The executioners froze.  Exchanged glances.  One of Sanagh's arms flailed almost free.

"My lord…..?" ventured one of the braver men.

"You heard me. Stop wasting my time trying to get him pinned and floated.  Just slit his throat, I'll witness it and we can all go and do something less…….noisy."

More glances.  Helpless shrugs.  Sanagh had frozen as well, fallen silent against the backdrop of his fellow convicts' screams.  It was hard to tell what expression his features held.

"Well?  Get on with it!"

"Yes, my lord!"  The sergeant executioner snapped to attention.  He cleared his mercy blade, came forward and knelt at Sanagh's head while the others held arms and legs down to the board.  Archeth caught one last glance of the blood-streaked face, the unreadable eyes, and then the sergeant's solid arm blocked her view.  She never saw the blade slice through Sanagh's flesh.  But a gout of blood leapt out across the grey wood, and it splattered on the copper-veined marble, almost at her feet.

Jhiral looked around at the assembled company and nodded.

"Good.  Well done."  Out across the water, the shrieking went on, bouncing crazily off the sculpted marble walls, filling the air, seeking the ears like swarms of stinging insects.  Jhiral still had to pitch his voice above it.  "That's it, then – we can all get out of here.  Thank you, everybody, you are dismissed.  Khernshal, have somebody clean up this mess, would you."

The named courtier bowed gravely.  Jhiral was already turning away.  "Well, then, Archeth.  Let's go and have a look at this Helmsman of yours, shall we?"

"Yes, my lord.  Thank you."

"Oh, don't mention it," said the Emperor of All Lands sourly.  "The pleasure is entirely mine."

The shrieking followed them out.

Airbrush and Ink

Happy New Year, n all that……..

So I'm back in an airport lounge again, up since 5 am and on my way to a battery of meetings in a foreign land – which is to say, 2011 begins much as 2010 ended.

And so, with typical no-real-sleep crankiness, here's something that struck me as I was blundering through a bunch of brightly lit media punts for the next generation of mindless wank-fantasy screen entertainment:  riddle me this:

In all seriousness, which of these two tattooed fictional women impresses you as the most dangerous.

See the problem?

Doesn't give you much hope for the American re-make of "Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", does it.

You believe this shit?

Imagine for a moment that you know a man who beats his wife.

Beats his wife, has beaten her for years.  Puts her in hospital on a regular basis.  Breaks bones, lacerates flesh, damages internal organs.  He has never been prosecuted for these offences because he is a powerful man locally, and you both live within a culture which takes such things for granted.

Then imagine that you meet him one day down the local pub and find he is complaining bitterly that one of his wife's female friends has started talking badly about him around town.  "That bitch," he cries into his fifteenth pint.  "Doesn't she get that she's poisoning our marriage; that she's going to put our happy home at risk."

Congratulations – you have now reached approximately the state of disbelief I'm in as I listen to the US state and its asshole apologists whine about how Wiki-leaks is putting lives at risk.

I'm sorry, US State Department, British Foreign Office, can we just back up a bit here? I need to clarify terms a little.  Putting lives at risk, you say?

What, you mean in the same way that conducting an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation in search of weapons of mass destruction for which there was no evidence put lives at risk (when it wasn't merely snuffing said lives out by the thousand)?  You mean in the same way that incompetent bombing of Afghan villages, wedding parties and miscellaneous shepherds put lives at risk? The way in which scooping up a random assortment of human beings and detaining them against every law there is for years at a time put lives at risk? The way in which grabbing citizens with names you don't like off the streets of Canada, Germany and Italy and flying them out to fuckwit totalitarian regimes for interrogation put lives at risk? The way acting as paymaster and approving sponsor for an unending succession of bloody-handed despots across the geo-political landscape for the last several decades put lives at risk? The way training up the best and the brightest of the world's torturers and political murderers for the last half century put lives at risk? Putting lives at risk in that sense, you mean?

Fuck you, buddy.

Has Wiki-leaks put lives at risk.  Doubtful.  But let's for a moment give the asshole cheerleaders for the Orwellian state their day in court.  Let's suppose the leaks have endangered some lives somewhere.

So – fucking – what?

Our much vaunted British legal system and its US outgrowth both function on the assumption that it is better that ten guilty men go free than that one innocent man be punished.  There is a cost attached to this – but we pay that price, because we understand what we're buying.  What we are buying is civilisation.

Winston Churchill – not a man I'm given to quoting very much – understood this concept of cost and sacrifice in relation to civilisation very well.  He once said:

"Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things."

Can anybody question that we have now arrived at that unhealthy state of affairs?  Can anyone doubt that the American state (and its sad little UK lackey) have over the last decade provided us with a new high in corrupt, brutal and incompetent geo-political governance?  Is there anybody still standing out there that actually thinks these people have shown themselves to be trustworthy? Is there anyone out that thinks these people need lower levels of performance monitoring and review?

Even if Wiki-leaks were to cost lives – it would still be a vital tool in the battle against an encroaching totalitarianism that we're paying far, far too little attention to.  The lives lost would be, to paraphrase Churchill, painful but necessary – a painful but necessary cost in a battle for the fragile edifice of law, human rights and civilisation that we have managed to cobble together in this corner of the world, and which our current political establishment is hellbent on tearing down.  And I, as a citizen, would certainly rather die in the defence of that edifice than for any of Bush and Blair's murderous misadventures in the Middle East overt the last decade, or the rather shabby continuation our current leaders enforce under the pretence of change.  And while I can't speak for British or American servicemen or -women, having met a few, I suspect that they, who have signed up to protect their country against all enemies, foreign or domestic, who have accepted that they may have to give their lives in that cause, would not quibble if their death came as the price for defeating a vicious, insidious and corrupt domestic foe rather than a nebulous, poorly defined and largely illusory foreign one.

So let me repeat – even if Wiki-leaks were to put lives at risk, it would still be a vital service to our civilisation.

But of course, as we all already know – Wiki-leaks does not put lives at risk. Those assholes are lying in their teeth about that, just as they lie in their teeth about every other misbegotten blood-spattered corrupt and obscene thing they do in your name.

WIPped again

Oh, alright – since you asked for it.  Here's some of what the Dragonbane's been doing recently:

He found the pawn shop easily enough – there were several on that stretch of the An-Monal road, but only a couple offered rooms above.  Counting the time spent to climb one of the staircases in the dizzying Kiriath architecture and then walk the Black Folk Span across, the whole search took him not much more than an hour.

The pawnbroker, a wiry old man with a patched eye, bought the line about family the same way the Lizard's Head publican had.  He waved Egar through musty gloom and out again to the shop's backyard.  Rickety outside stairs went up the wall above them to a row of doors under the eaves.

"Second room," he said wheezily.  "Tell him I'll need him tonight."

Egar went up the stairs.  Laid knuckles on sun-bleached wood a couple of times.

"Fuck do you want?" someone bellowed, in bad tethanne.

Sounds like a hangover in there. Egar grinned and called back through the door in Majak.

"Is that any way to talk to a brother?"

Sudden quiet.  He thought he heard the creak of someone moving off a cot.  Sensed the weapon lifted stealthily from its resting place against the wall.

"Harath?  Let's not get off on the wrong foot here, son."

The voice behind the door came back, matching Egar's change of tongue.

"What do you want, brother?"

Youthful sneer and an Ishlinak twang on it, blunted somewhat by time away from the steppes.  And the thick, unmistakable smoulder of mistrust.  Egar chose his words carefully.

"Could take a while to explain that.  How 'bout I buy you some belly lining and a pint?"

"That fuck Alnarh send you?  He wants me dead, he should have the balls to come down here and do the work himself."

"No-one sent me.  I got some questions I'd like to ask you, is all.  About the fight down at the Pony Stringer's."

Footfalls across the boards inside.  Egar judged the other man was still a good three feet back from the door, and probably off to one side.  It was the same basic precaution he would have taken himself.  If the door got smashed suddenly inward, you'd want the space.

"I'm not a big fan of the Citadel myself, see.  Thought maybe you could help me out."

Silence.  A floorboard creaked.  Harath cleared his throat.

"I didn't get your name, brother."

"Egar.  Of the Skaranak.  They call me the Dragonbane."

Coughed laughter.  "Yeah, right."

"Look,"  A spurt of genuine anger licked through him.  "You going to open this fucking door or what?"

A final quiet, but the tone of it had changed, and Egar knew he was getting in.  He waited.  A bolt slatted back.  The bleached wood panelling swung inward a grudging hands-breadth and a young Majak face glowered out from around the jamb.  Wispy beard, long unkempt hair across the eyes.   Bloodshot eyes.  Harath of the Ishlinak stared blearily at the Dragonbane for a couple of seconds, but seemed not to see a threat.

"Anyone tells you I started that fight, they're a fucking liar."

Egar nodded.  "Why I came to ask your side.  Want to let me in?"

The younger man shrugged gracelessly and shoved the door wide.  Backed up a couple of paces and held out both arms like a seller displaying his wares – or a man as he submits to being frisked by the city guard.

"Sure.  Mind your head."

The room behind the door was hot and cramped, jammed as it was under the eaves.  Stoop height only except in the very centre – Harath filled the space simply by virtue of standing up in it.  He was a big lad, still slim with youth but built in the shoulders and thighs from a lifetime of horsemanship and staff-lance practice.  Behind him, Egar saw a low cot under a tiny window, stained and tangled sheets, a threadbare cloth curtain that did little more than strain the sunlight blasting into the room.  A chamber pot sat in one corner, but the bearish reek of the room was general.

"Share hearth and heart's truth, break bread and sup under a shared sky."  The ritual disarming welcome phrases didn't really work once you got down off the steppe and into a city, but Harath mumbled through them nonetheless. "The warmth of my fire is yours."

"As grateful kin, I take my place."

"Yeah, well…"  Harath showed the skinning knife he'd been holding at his back.  Made an apologetic gesture with it.  He stuffed the blade into the sheath on his belt and stood there yawning – slept-in shirt and breeches, hair a tangled mess even by Majak standards.  Night-before breath that Egar could smell on the yawn from a yard away.  "Can't be too careful, you know.  Can't even trust the brothers in this fucking place.  And I don't mean Majak across the board, guys like you – coz that's always been a bit iffy, right?  I'm talking my own fucking Ishlinak blood-bond kin here"

Egar pulled a face he hoped was sympathetic.  Mostly, he was trying not to breathe in too much of Harath's second-hand air.

"Hard to believe, something like that.  Yeah."

"Believe it, old timer."  Harath wandered back to the cot and sat down hard enough to make the timbers crack.  "This fucking city.  Gets its teeth into you, you know.  Sometimes wish I'd never set eyes on the place.  Fucking Alnarh, I knew him back in Ishlin-ichan.  Knew his kin out on the steppe.  Sure, he was a bit of a mouthy prick, even then, but you could always trust him in a scrap.  Trust him to get a brother's back."

"I hear he's a convert now," Egar hazarded.  "What's that about?"

"Yeah, it's fucked up."  Harath scratched at his belly through the shirt.  "I mean, we all did it, the cash was too good to turn down.  No conversion, no commission, so we figure what the fuck, it's only like marrying some Voronak tart or something; you got to make libations to all their pointy-faced little ice gods, else you're never going to hear the end of it from her family, right?  Same thing here.  There's this number you do, offering up your blade to that book they've got.  Bunch of reciting, some incense, and you're in."

"So what went wrong?"

"Fuck knows.  We had this squabble a few months back over a slave girl.  Waggle-arsed little package from up in the League, you know what they're like, right?"

Egar nodded absently – lurid images of Ishgrim, dancing behind his eyes.

The Ishlinak mustered a weary grin.  "Had udders on her like you wouldn't believe, brother.  And when I jumped her, well, Alnarh took that hard.  He's a jealous fuck at the best of times.  But, nah…."  Harath sank fists in his own hair, dragged the heels of his hands down his face.  Shook his head.  "He was acting weird way before that.  It's like he was buying into the Revelation for real.  When he talked about it, he got this look in his eye. Starts telling us to stop using Dweller names around him when we curse.  Some shit about offending the angels – I mean, come on.  I expected the others to call him on it, couple of them are way closer kin than I can lay claim to, I think Larg's a full cousin or something.  But they just let it go.  And then when Menkarak comes calling, it's a whole-"

"Menkarak?"  A moment too late, the words already out of his mouth, Egar realised the way he'd jumped.  "Pashla Menkarak, you talking about?"

"That's right."  Harath looked up.  "Listen, Skaranak, don't take this the wrong way, but what the fuck's your interest here?"

"Ahh, the usual."  Trying belatedly for mercenary nonchalance.  "Took blade pay from a court noble and now she's into it with the Citadel.  Fine as far as that goes, but then I hear they've been hiring brothers, and that's new.  Never figured I might end up fighting my own kind when I took the purse."

Harath shrugged morosely.  "Coin is coin."

"Yeah – speaking of which, the old guy downstairs told me to tell you he needs you tonight.  If that makes sense."

A grimace.  "Sense enough."

"He got you strong-arming for him?"

"Debt collection."  Harath yawned and gestured.  "This fucking city.  Got to cover the rent somehow, you know how it is."

"Been there once or twice when I was your age, yeah."

"Not going to pretend I like it much."  The young Ishlinak picked up the chamber pot and peered into it, grimaced again and put it down.  "Thumping some poor kid about to get money back he borrowed to buy a ring or impress his friends.  Or – like last week – some war widow trying to feed her kids when they just doubled the rice tax.  Lot of the time, I'll just stand there behind the old fuck with my arms folded.  With the widows, that's usually enough.  They don't have the money, they'll take him behind the curtain, or get the daughter to do it.  He's good like that, most times he'll let it slide, you know.  But fuck, man, if I'd known back in Ishlin-ichan I was going to be making my bread like this……"

"Coin is coin," Egar reminded him.

"Yeah, well it's a pretty small fistful.  By the time he writes off the rent, lucky if I'm eating two squares a day."  Harath's face changed, seemed abruptly younger.  "You really a Dragonbane like you said?"

"Yeah. I am."

"Takes some balls, huh?"

"And some luck."  Egar chopped down the subject.  "You didn't think about going up the hill, then?  Sign up for Demlarashan, get some coin that way?"

Harath stared at him.  "I did two tours down there last year.  That was enough for me.  Fucking shit hole.  You ever been?"

"In the war, yeah."  Egar shrugged.  "Different then."

"Well, I wouldn't know about that.  But I'll tell you something for nothing, Dragonbane – they're all fucking nuts down there now. I reckon it's the heat."

Egar remembered the heat, like some solid bronze idol of a fat man he had to carry around everywhere, seated weightily on his shoulders, fat burnished thighs wrapping around his neck, pressing down on his chest.  The steppes in summer could be sweltering – but it was nothing compared to Demlarashan heat.  And Harath was right, the locals were mostly barking mad.  He didn't blame the Ishlinak.  He wouldn't go back himself if he could possibly avoid it.

Not even to look at the bones of that fucking dragon.

"Tell you,"  the young Ishlinak muttered.  "Demlarashan, it's a waste of fucking time.  The empire's never going to rein them in, doesn't matter how many men they spend.  Those guys got nothing better to do down there than string each other up over spelling mistakes in the fucking Revelation.  Might as well give it up now and go home.  I mean, it's not like there's anything down there worth having – it really is a shit-hole.  Nothing grows, you're lucky if you can keep goats.  Let them keep their fucking rock temples and gibberish texts and acres of fucking sand.  Who gives a shit?"

Egar looked around for somewhere to sit down, but there was only the cot.  The room was growing oppressive.

"Well, next time I'm up at court, I'll be sure and pass on your strategic advice."

Harath shot him a hungry look.  "You really gigging for a noble, huh?"

"Yep.  Like I said."

"Good purse, yeah?"

Egar nodded.  "Very good.  You want to get some lunch?"

*

They found a tavern in a steep backstreet with views out across the Span and the estuary.  Harath apparently knew it from his high-rolling days before Menkarak fired him.  They took a table out on the balcony.  Ordered some hair-of-dog to blunt the edge of the Ishlinak's hangover.

"Wasn't him personally, mind you."  Harath, surfacing from the suds of his ale.  "They got Alnarh to tell me.  Which he did with a big fucking grin on his face, the cunt.  Said if I couldn't comport myself like a man of faith, I had no business standing guard over Citadel property.  Like he wouldn't have jumped that bitch if she'd given him half a look."

"So it was about this girl then?"

Harath stared off across the water.  "Oh, I guess.  Like I said, Alnarh was acting twitchy well before that, but yeah, that seemed to send him over the edge.  Fucking nuts, it's not like he couldn't have had his pick from the others."

"The others?"

"Sure, they're keeping a whole gaggle of them up there.  Some boys too, if that's your thing."

Egar frowned.  "Up there?  At the Citadel?"

"No, man – Afa'marag."  Harath jerked a thumb over his shoulder, upriver.  "The old horse stringer's temple, up by the locks.  Menkarak had it opened up again in the Spring.  Creepy fucking place.  You didn't know about that?"

"No.  And what are they doing up at Afa'marag?  Aside from corralling slaves?"

"Fuck knows.  I never bothered getting that close, they were paying me well enough just to keep an eye on the gate and take food in to the slave pen.  Alnarh and Larg volunteered for sanctum duty, arse-licking around Menkarak as usual."  The young Ishlinak shook his head.  "Way too much purifying prayer and memorising bollocks in it for me.  Who needs that shit?"

The food came.  Harath plunged in.  Egar watched him eat, picked at his own plate for appearances.  Mostly, he was thinking it through.  Shuffling Harath's grumblings together with what he already knew from Archeth's briefing the previous year, and Imrana's court gossip since.  Trying to assemble it all into a hand you could bet something on.

Invigilator Pashla Menkarak – rising star in the new crop of severe, humourless young men coming through the Yhelteth religious colleges.  Renowned writer of clerical opinions and interpreter of holy text, apparently.  Formerly a pretty shrewd political animal, Imrana said, but now openly critical of the Empire's failure to properly consolidate conquests of infidel territory in the north after the war. Suspected links with the Demlarashan tendency, nothing ever proven.  Archeth had gone head to head with him last year at court, and the Emperor backed her play.  Teetering moments when it looked like the tensions between palace and citadel might crack wide open.  But cooler heads from the Citadel forced an apology and Menkarak skulked off into the tall grass.  No further direct contact, but behind every attempt at intimidation since, Archeth reckoned you could count Menkarak's hand or the hand of invigilators who shared his absolutist streak.

Whatever the little turd was doing upriver would bear a look.

"You reckon you could get me in?" he asked.

Harath looked up over a laden fork.  "In where?  Afa'marag?  Doubt it.  Alnarh told the others not to have anything to do with me after I got thrown out."

"Yeah, I wasn't really thinking about going in the front door."

"Ohh."  A slow nod.  The Ishlinak shovelled the forkful of food in and grinned through it as he chewed.  "Alright, I got you.  Yeah, that's do-able.  Place is ancient, it's falling apart.  Got a whole stack of places you could break in with not much more than a bent pin.  Show you that if you like, sure."

"What about coming in with me?"

Harath hesitated.  Swallowed his food and sat back.  "What is this, Skaranak?  What you want to get in there for?  Come on, really.  Man, if you're looking for some cheap League pussy, I can take you to a couple of -"

"It's not about the girls."  Hurriedly.  "The boys either.  Like I said, this Menkarak's on the other side of a blade gig from me, and I'm just looking for an edge.  All I want to do is get in there, poke around for a bit, see what I find.  Get out again without making any noise."

"I don't want to get in a fight with any of these guys.  Not with steel."

"We won't."

" 'cause they used to be my friends, right?  Wasn't for Alnarh, they probably still would be.  All that shit down at the Pony Stringer's?  That only kicked off because I bought Elkret a drink and Alnarh told him to pour it away.  Fucking prick."

Egar sat forward.  "Son, look at me.  We won't get in a fight with your friends.  We won't get in a fight with anyone. We get in, we have a look around, maybe ask a couple of questions to some of these slaves, then we get out.  Do it right, no-one has to even know we were there.  But I need you to show me the way in, and I need you to watch my back for me while I'm inside.  You do that, I'll see your rent covered for the rest of the month, and top you up fifty elementals in cash into the bargain.  Save you having to go out on widow-battering duty for a while."

Harath settled back to his meal again.  Shrugged.  Chuckled as he broke bread.  "Okay, man, what am I going to say to that?  You got me.  Coin is coin."

"Coin is coin." Egar agreed.  "And I'm going to throw in another twenty when we're done.  You want to know what that's for?"

"Sure."  Throwaway gesture – the younger man's attention didn't come up off his plate.  "Hit me with it."

"That's to keep your mouth shut.  No drinking down the Pony Stringer's, yarning about how you broke into a Citadel temple with a Dragonbane for company."

A non-committal grunt.  "Does sound like a good yarn, that.  Worth a few beers."

"Hey."  Egar snapped his fingers under Harath's nose.  Got him eye to eye.  "You listen to what I'm telling you, Ishlinak.  Twenty.  On top.  Mouth shut.  I'll want your blood oath on that."

"Okay, Dragonbane, okay. Relax.  I'm just fucking with you.  Blood oath, you got it."

"Good."

Egar sat back, looked out at the Black Folk Span and the river while the other man ate.  Across the city, the day was tipping over, noon heat spilling down towards afternoon.  He watched the traffic threading across the Span's ebony thoroughfares, wagons, riders, the plodding majority on foot.  Some troops, sun glinting off their helmets and mail.  A slave coffle, dust plastered, stumbling into town and journey's end.

He caught the loose thread of the thought.  Looked across the table at Harath.

"This slave girl.  You reckon she knows anything?"

The Ishlinak grinned down at his food, still chewing.  "Knew plenty, brother.  Couple of tricks she had, telling you, man….."

He shook his head in bemused delight.

"Like that, huh?"

"Like that."  Harath swallowed and reached for bread.  Leaned across the table and gestured with the chunk he'd torn off.  "Look, I got to reckon the last couple of years, I've had more pussy than a clan-master's eldest sees in a lifetime.  I must have seen the inside of nearly every brothel the Empire has, from Dashara to Demlarashan.  But that's still got to be one of the best fucks I ever had."

It was common enough talk – Urann knew he'd done enough like it when he was Harath's age.  But just on the off-chance…….

"She ask you for anything in return?"

The other Majak laughed.  "Sure, man – what do you think?  Get her out of there, of course.  What else is a slave going to ask you for?"

"So what happened to her?"

Harath, slopping up gravy with the torn chunk of bread, shrugged, didn't look up.  Shook his head as he chewed.

"Dunno, never saw her again.  Why?"

I Got Another One!!

So this came in late last night from a Charles Degrove, subject line The Steel Remains:

I recently paid $27 for this book. I have read several other of your books, and have enjoyed them all. So I figured it was worth it for a good book. So, imagine my surprise when I found out that the hero, "likes to suck mens cocks"…I can get porn on the internet for free. I don't have $27 to spare on your homosexual fantasies. The books going in the burn barrel with the trash tomorrow and I damn sure won't be buying any more of your garbage.

Get that?  The Burn Barrel. Man, Charles here isn't even going to try taking The Steel Remains back to the shop with the old got this as a gift, already read it, can I change it routine.  He isn't even going to see if he can shift it at his local second-hand bookstore for a few bucks back on his outlay.  Nope. This one's for BURNING!!!

You gotta admire the purity of a hatred so free from financial concerns.

(Unless he's just afraid whoever he sells/returns the book to is going to look at it and then at him, and then yell out to the whole shop:

"You read this homosexual fantasy garbage?  You cock-sucking faggot!  Betcha liked it too, didn't ya!  Bet it made ya hard!  Hey, y'all, look at this guy – he read this homosexual fantasy garbage, like all the way through, man!"

Actually, come to think of it – that quote about Ringil liking to suck men's cocks?  Does come kind of far into the thing………

I gotta say, Charles – now you're making me wonder, really you are…….)