The Cold Commands Read Free Page A

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 publicbuildings 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,