Staenbridge came up behind the civil servant and pushed him back into the chair with a thump. "You're right-handed, aren't you, Citizen?" he asked politely.
"Yyyyes," the Vice-Assistant stuttered.
"Good, wouldn't want to leave you unable to sign," the Descotter continued cheerfully, and grabbed his left wrist. There was no struggle-or rather the bureaucrat struggled; Staenbridge laid the hand on the smooth stone of the desk without noticeable delay. Whistling between his teeth he drew his pistol with his right hand, flipped it around to grip by the barrel, and brought it down in a blurring arc that ended on the pudgy clenched fist.
The sound of impact was like a bundle of sticks breaking, combined with the thump of bread dough on a kneading board. The Vice-Assistant screamed in antiphonal chorus with his secretary, then slumped out of his chair, sprawling. The Companion's grip on his wrist pinned the limb to the surface of the desk as effectively as an iron staple would have, however, so he could not slump all the way to the floor. His face had gone grey-brown and saliva dribbled from the corner of his mouth to match the tear streaks around his eyes. Then he spasmed and whinnied as Staenbridge shifted a thumb and ground it into the soft mush of shattered small bones at the center of his hand.
The Companion bent low, tapping the other man's nose sharply with the pistol butt to attract his attention. "Now, do sign the papers, there's a good little capon," he said. "Or shall I continue?" The thumb brushed across the wound once more, lightly.
* * *
"It's out of the question," the Director of Municipal Supply said, glaring at the Gruder brothers; their blocky shoulders filled the space in front of his desk. "Two thousand infantry tunics and trousers, shoes, belts, cartridge cases. . out of the question! I have their rifles in store, for reissue when the land grants are cleared and they resume regular duties, but this-!" he riffled at the request form. "Ridiculous!"
"The land grants are bein' taken care of right now," Evrard said patiently. Someone who knew him well would have realized how dangerous the trace of brogue was. "And this is Komar? Got cotton mills, dyeworks, tailors, tanners, cobblers? Export cloth and boots? Just append an authorization for rush contracts, down there at the bottom."
"Get out of my- Here, you man, what do you think you're doing?" he said, looking sharply around the blocky forms of the Gruder brothers.
Antin M'lewis looked up and grinned, snaggled brown teeth and cold brown eyes. "Stealin'," he said, wrapping the silver paperknife in a dirty handkerchief and tucking it into one of the patch pockets of his jacket. "Gives us summat in common, loik, eh?" The office walls were lined with shelves for knickknacks; he picked up a glass bubble with a miniature house inside, laughing like a child as he shook it to produce a tiny snowstorm inside, then dropped it in beside the knife.
The Director's eyes bulged, and his face turned purple, but the bellow died in his throat as Evrard's saber came out with a smooth sshhunng sound. The tip settled under his nose, touching just enough to dimple the skin of his upper lip.
"Evrard," Kaltin said. He touched a statue of a dancing girl, only six inches high but vibrant with life; it was of honey-toned spicewood, and he rubbed his fingertips on it before holding them under his brother's nose. "Excellent taste, don't you think?"
"Mmmm. Smells almost as nice as a real girl," Evrard said.
"But these," Kaltin continued, indicating a set of blown-glass animal figurines, "are definitely common." He began picking them up and dropping them over his shoulder, one tinkling crash after another.
"Damn you all to the Outer Dark, crash your cores and burn, demons eat your eyes," the Director hissed. There were beads of sweat on his forehead and upper lip. "You can't intimidate me this way!"
"Oh? How disappointing," Evrard said, wiping the tip of his sword on his sleeve and sheathing it. "M'lewis, what do you think we should do, then?"
"Dunno, ser," the trooper said, frowning. He brightened. "Throw 'im out the window, ser?"
They pounced, lifting the writhing, yelling form between them. "One-" The windows were glazed, with the outer wooden shutters latched against the sun "Two-
"Heave!"
The scream was cut off by a brittle crash and the crunch of breaking wood. The Director bounced back into the room; there were half a dozen superficial cuts on his face, and he spat out a tooth as he tried to climb to his hands and knees. The Descotters came around the desk and the Gruders seized him by ankles and belt; then they used his head and shoulders as a battering ram, to clear what was left of the windows and shutters out of the way. His bloodied hands scrabbled frantically at the frame, careless of the spikes of glass, before the inexorable pressure left him dangling head-down, supported only by their one-handed grips on his ankles. The struggles ceased then, as he realized that kicking free would send him fifteen feet straight down onto the cobbles.
M'lewis came up and pulled off one of his shoes. "Wouldn't fit nohow," he said regretfully, standing on one leg while he measured it against his own sole. The shoe went out the window, followed by the other and the red-and-blue checked socks; M'lewis reached behind his back and drew the skinning knife, held the hilt in his teeth while he rolled up his sleeves. "Tum-te-tum," he hummed, testing the edge by shaving a patch of hair from his corded forearm. "Well now, sers, m'father always said, you want a man to accommodate yer, skin 'im from the feets up. Er down, as we has heres."
"Keep him away from me!" the Director squealed, kicking again as the trooper drew a line of thin red down the bottom of one of his feet. "I'll sign!"
"I knew you would," Kaltin said.
* * *
"As per orders," Mekkle Thiddo said, dropping the documents on the table in front of Raj; the Companions were meeting in the same room as they had the day before. They rustled against the stack of papers already there, as the Companion sucked on a skinned knuckle and then went to rinse the hand in the fountain.
"Three months' rations for the full complement. No killing, but mine's going to be eatin' real careful."
Raj nodded briskly. And the men these penpushers depend on for their lives won't be begging in the streets, he thought with bleak satisfaction. "Is that infantry Captain here yet?" he asked. And what sort of a Menyez is he, to end up commanding an infantry Battalion?
* * *
Captain Jorg Menyez was a tall man, with much the same broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped build as the cavalryman he faced; Raj remembered suddenly that his maternal grandmother had been from the Kelden Straits country. There was little resemblance otherwise; Menyez was in his thirties, a pale-eyed, straight-nosed man with russet brown hair, sun-faded and thinning on top. The pale eyes were red-rimmed now, watering behind the wire-rimmed spectacles; he sneezed into his handkerchief and cleared his throat repeatedly as he scanned the documents. His lips thinned as he looked up:
"Thank you," he said. "For the men's sake. I tried, but-" A shrug, that turned into a grab for the handkerchief. "Chooo! What will Colonel Dyaz say?"
"Colonel. . Messer Dyaz has taken indefinite leave of absence for reasons of health, Messer Acting Colonel," Raj said, in the same gun metal flat tone.
Menyez sat silent except for his wheezing. "Well." Another pause. "It must be. . satisfying, to have such power."
"No it isn't!" Raj roared suddenly. "It isn't satisfying at all to have to act like a mountain bandit to get people to do their fucking jobs. It isn't satisfying that the agents of the Civil Government won't perform without a fucking pistol up their nose! But it's better than having this city undefended." He nodded to the documents in Menyez's hands. "Now you've got the tools, at least."