Skullsworn by Brian Staveley

Author:Brian Staveley
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

13

The lanterns were already lit by the time we returned to Dombâng. Our vessel slid silently past Rat Island, through the Water Gate, beneath Bald Bridge, then up Cao’s Channel toward the Shipwreck. I felt like a stranger in the city all over again as the tall teak buildings loomed above us. Threads of song twisted out from the windows and alleys to tangle in the wind, then fall apart. We’d been gone barely a day, hadn’t left the delta, and yet the channel where we burned the Annurian transport might have been in a different time or a different world altogether. The hot, bright silence of that lost backwater shared nothing with the human shapes and rhythms of the city. It seemed a miracle, suddenly, that we had gone there and returned.

As our pilot leapt onto the dock, Ruc turned from the rail to face the Greenshirts on the deck. The men looked exhausted, even those who hadn’t been rowing, as though the horror at what they’d witnessed were a weight they’d been carrying all day, the hot heft of it bowing their shoulders, weakening their knees. They studied their commander warily in the light of the dock lanterns.

“Anyone who speaks of what we saw today,” Ruc said quietly, “will be executed. If that seems extreme, consider this: our city is on the brink of civil war. An Annurian commander was found murdered in an outhouse, and someone has been slapping bloody hands on every building in sight. The legion charged with helping to keep the peace is the same legion we just found massacred in the delta.

“At this point, most commanders would try to reassure you. They would tell you that everything is under control, that we have nothing to fear. I am not going to tell you that. Dombâng is in danger. Everyone you love is in danger. Not from some mythical triad of gods. The gods, if they exist at all, don’t trouble themselves with our affairs. We are in danger from the very citizens we’ve sworn to protect. If there are riots, people will die. If there are fires, people will burn.”

He slid his gaze over the assembled soldiers.

“It is your job to see that there are no riots or fires. You will do what you swore to do, which is to protect this city, and you will keep your mouths shut while you’re doing it. If you’re tempted to whisper something to your wives about what you saw today, to your friends, remember this: that whisper could kill them as surely as a knife in the eye. Continue the normal schedule of patrols. Continue to guard Dombâng as you have done since you joined this order. Uphold your oaths. I know you’ll do this, because you are Greenshirts.” He paused. “Are there any questions?”

After a moment, one soldier raised an unsteady hand. “What are we going to do? About what happened out there. About what we saw.”

Ruc smiled. “Leave that to me.”

I waited until all the men had filed off the boat to approach him.

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