The Steel Remains lffh-1 Page 8

  Clouds shredded across the band as if frayed by its edge; silver light spilled on the plain to the south. Egar cast a seasoned commander’s eye across the simmering uncertainty he saw in his people, and called it.

  “If Urann the Gray has something to say to me,” he said loudly, “he can come here and say it personally. He doesn’t need a broken-down buzzard too idle to earn his meat like a man to speak for him. Here I am, Poltar.” He held his arms wide. “Call him. Call on Urann. If I have committed sacrilege, let him open the sky and strike me down here and now. And if he doesn’t, well, then I guess we’ll know that you do not have his ear, won’t we?”

  There were gusts of indrawn breath, but it was the sound of spectators at street circus, not outraged faith. And the shaman was glaring poisonously at him, but he didn’t open his mouth. Egar masked a savage joy.

  Got you, you motherfucker!

  Poltar was trapped. He knew as well as Egar that the Dwellers were not given to manifesting themselves much these days. Some said it was because they were elsewhere, others because they had ceased to exist, and still others because they never had existed. The true reasons were, as Ringil would have put it, hugely fucking immaterial. If Poltar called on Urann, nothing would happen and he’d be made out a fool, not to mention powerless. And Egar’s borderline flirtation with sacrilege could then be safely construed by the other men of the clan as warrior honor in the face of a mangy old broken-down charlatan.

  “Well, Shaman?”

  Poltar drew his moth-eaten wolf-skin robe about him and cast a look around at the crowd.

  “The south has addled this one’s brains,” he spat. “Mark me, he will bring the ruin of the Gray One upon you all.”

  “Get to your yurt, Poltar.” The boredom in Egar’s voice was layered on but entirely manufactured. “And see if you can’t find your misplaced manners there. Because the next time I see you lay hands on a grieving parent like that, I’ll slit your fucking throat and hang you out for the buzzards. You.” His arm shot out to indicate the oldest acolyte. “You’ve got something to say?”

  The acolyte looked back at him, face rancid with hatred, biting back the words that were so obviously swilling around in his mouth. Then Poltar leaned across, muttered something to him, and he subsided. The shaman threw one more haughty look back at the Dragonbane, then pushed his way rudely into the crowd and left, followed by his four companions. People turned to stare after them.

  “Help for the family of this fallen warrior,” called Egar, and gazes swiveled back to where Narma still crouched weeping over her dead son. Women went to her, laying on soft hands and words. The Dragonbane nodded at Marnak, and the grizzled captain crossed to his side.

  “That was well done,” Marnak murmured. “But who’s going to officiate at the pyre if the shaman stays sulking in his yurt?”

  Egar shrugged. “If needs must, we’ll send to the Ishlinak for a spellsinger. They owe me favors in Ishlin-ichan. Meantime, you keep an eye on that particular yurt. If he so much as lights a pipe in there, I want to know about it.”

  Marnak nodded and slipped away, leaving the Dragonbane to brood on what might be coming. Of one thing he was certain.

  This was far from over.

  CHAPTER 7

  Ringil went home, bad-tempered and grit-eyed with the krin.

  The Glades presented an accustomed predawn palette for his mood—low-lying river mist snagged through the tortured black silhouettes of the mangroves, high mansion windows like the lights of ships moored or run aground. The cloud-smudged arching smear of the band, nighttime glimmer gone dull and used with the approach of the day. The pale, unreal gleaming of the paved carriageway beneath his feet, and others like it snaking away through the trees. All the worn old images. He followed the path home with a sleepwalker’s assurance, decade-old memories overlaid with the last few days of his return. Nothing much had changed on this side of the river—excepting of course Grace-of-Heaven’s polished insinuation into the neighborhood—and this might easily have been any given morning of his misspent youth.

  Bar this bloody great sword you’ve got slung on your back, that is, Gil. And the belly you’ve grown.

  The Ravensfriend wasn’t a heavy weapon for its size—part of the joy of Kiriath blades was the light and supple alloys their smiths had preferred to work in—but this morning it hung like the stump of some ship’s mast he’d been lashed to in a storm, and was now forced to drag on his back one sodden step at a time up onto a beach of doubtful respite. Lot of things have changed since you went away, Gil. He felt washed up with the drug and Grace’s caving in. He felt empty. The things he’d once clung to were gone, his shipmates were taken by the storm, and he already knew the natives around here weren’t friendly.

  Someone behind you.

  He drifted to a slow halt, neck prickling with the knowledge.

  Someone moving, scuffing softly among the trees, off to the left of the path. Maybe more than one. He grunted and flexed the fingers of his right hand. Called out in the damp, still air, “I’m not in the fucking mood for this.”

  And knew it for a lie. His blood went shivering along his veins, his heart was abruptly stuffed full with the sharp, joyous quickening of it. He’d love to kill something right now.

  Movement again, whoever it was hadn’t scared off. Ringil whirled, hand up and reaching past his head for the Ravensfriend’s jutting pommel. The sword rasped at his ear as he drew, nine inches of the murderous alloy dragging up from the battle scabbard and over his shoulder before the rest of the clasp-lipped sheath on his back split apart along the side, just as it was made to. The rest of the blade rang clear, widthways. It made a cold, clean sound in the predawn air. His left hand joined his right on the long, worn hilt. The scabbard fell back emptied, swung a little on its ties; Ringil came to rest on the turn.

  It was a neat trick, all Kiriath elegance and an unlooked-for turn of speed that had cheated unwary attackers more times than he could easily recall. All part of the Ravensfriend mystique, the package he’d bought into when Grashgal gifted him with the weapon. Better yet, it put him directly into a side-on, overhead guard, the bluish alloy blade up there for all to see and know for what it was. Their move—up to them to decide if they really did want to take on the owner of a Kiriath weapon after all. There’d been more than a handful of backings-down in the last ten years when that blue glinting edge came out. Ringil faced back along the path, hoping wolfishly that this wouldn’t be one of them.

  Nothing.

  Flickered glances to the foliage on either side, a measuring of angles and available space, then he dropped into a more conventional forward guard. The Ravensfriend hushed the air apart as it described the geometric shift, faint swoop of the sound as the blade moved.

  “That’s right,” he called. “Kiriath steel. It’ll take your soul.”

  He thought he heard laughter in return, high and whispering through the trees. Another sensation slipped like a chilled collar about the back of his neck. As if his surroundings had been abruptly lifted clear of any earthly context, as if in some way he was gone, taken out of everything familiar. Distance announced itself, cold as the void between stars, and pushed things apart. The trees stood witness. The river mist crawled and coiled like something living.

  Irritable rage gusted through him, took the shiver back down.

  “I’m really not fucking about here. You want to waylay me, let’s get to it. Sun’s coming up, time for scum like you to be home in bed or in a grave.”

  Something yelped, off to the right, something crashed suddenly through branches. His vision twitched to the sound; he caught a glimpse of limbs and a low, ape-like gait, but crabbing away, fleeing. Another motion behind it, another similar form. He thought maybe he saw the glint of a short blade, but it was hard to tell—the predawn light painted everything so leaden.

  The laughter again.

  This time it seemed to swoop down on him, pass by at his ear with a caress. He felt it, and flinched wit
h the near physicality of it, twisted half around, staring . . .

  Then it was gone, the whole thing, in a way he felt sink into his bones like sunlight. He waited in the quiet for it to return, the Ravensfriend held motionless before him. But whatever it was, it seemed it was finished with him for now. The two scrambling, maybe human shadows did not return, either. Finally, Ringil gave up an already loosening tension and stance, angled the scabbard carefully off his back, and slid the unused sword back into place. He cast a final look around and resumed walking, stepping lighter now, rinsed out and thrumming lightly inside with the unused fight arousal. He buried the memory of the laughter, put it away where he wouldn’t have to look at it again too closely.

  Fucking krinzanz nerves.

  He came to Eskiath House in rising tones of gray as the sky brightened from upriver. The light pricked at his eyes. He peered in through the massive iron bars of the main gate, felt oddly like some pathetic ghost clinging to the scene of an earthly existence there was no way back to. The gates were secured with chains, and ended in long spikes that he knew—he’d done it when he was younger—there was no easy way to get over. No traffic this early; outside of the servants, no one would even be stirring. For a moment, his hand brushed the thick rope bellpull, then he let his arm fall again and stepped back. The quiet was too solid to contemplate shattering with that much noise.

  He summoned an uncertain sneer at this sudden sensitivity and skulked off along the fence, looking for a gap he’d made there in his youth. He squeezed—just barely!—through and forced his way out of some uncooperative undergrowth, then strode onto the broad gravel-edged lawns at the rear of the house, careless of the crunching sound he made over the stones at the border.

  A watchman came out onto the raised patio at the noise, stood at the sweeping stair with his pike and a fairly superfluous lantern raised in either hand. Ringil could have reached and killed him in the time it took the man to drop the lamp and bring the pike to bear; it was a dull, angry knowledge in his bones and face, a surge with no focus. Instead he raised a hand in greeting, was subjected to a narrowed, peering gaze. Then the watchman recognized Gil, turned wordlessly away, and went inside again.

  The door to the lower kitchens was open as usual. He saw the reddish, flickery light it let out into the dawn, like the leak of something vital at the bottom corner of the mansion’s stern gray bulk. Ringil went around the edge of the raised patio, fingers trailing idly along the worn, moss-speckled masonry, down three stone steps and into the kitchen. He felt the pores in his face open up as they soaked in the heat coming off the row of fires along the side wall. He smiled into it, breathed it in like homecoming. Which it was, after a fashion, he supposed. As warm a homecoming as you’re ever likely to get around here, anyway. He looked around for somewhere to sit. Anywhere, really; the long scarred wooden tables were still empty of produce, and no one had yet come down here to start preparing food for the day. A single small serving girl stood tending one of the big hot-water cauldrons; she looked quickly up from her work, seemed to smile at him, then looked away again almost as fast. For all the noise she made, she might as well have been a ghost.

  And in the doorway at the far end of the kitchen, someone else was waiting for him.

  “Oh well, what a surprise.”

  He sighed. “Good morning, Mother.”

  The day really was shaping up like his youth revisited. Ishil stood in the raised threshold at the far end of the kitchen, two steps up from the level of the flagged floor and as if poised on a dais. Her face was fully made up and she wore robes that she’d not normally choose to go about the house in, but aside from this she was a perfect copy of the mother he’d had to face all those crawling-in-from-the-night-before mornings so long ago.

  He dragged out a stool, sat on it. “Been to a party?”

  Ishil descended regally into the kitchen. Her skirts scraped on the flagstones. “I’d have thought that was my line. You’re the one who’s been out all night.”

  Ringil gestured. “You’re hardly dressed for staying in yourself.”

  “Your father has had guests from the Chancellery. Matters of state to consider. They are still here, waiting.”

  “Well, it’s good to know I’m not the only one who’s been up working late.”

  “Is that what you’ve been doing?” Now she stood on the other side of the table from him. “Working?”

  “After a fashion, yes.”

  Ishil gave him an icy smile. “And there was I thinking you’d just been out rutting with your former acquaintances.”

  “There are various ways to extract information, Mother. If you wanted a more traditional approach, you should have stuck with Father and his thugs.”

  “Tell me then,” she said sweetly. “What have your unorthodox methods brought to light about Sherin’s whereabouts?”

  “Nothing very much. The Salt Warren’s sewn up tighter than a priest’s sphincter. It’ll take me time to work around that.” He grinned. “Lubricate entry, so to speak.”

  She switched away from him, haughty as an offended cat. “Augh. Do you have to be so coarse, Ringil?”

  “Not in front of the servants, eh?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Ringil gestured over his shoulder at the girl by the cauldron, but when he turned to look, he saw she’d slid noiselessly out and left him alone with Ishil. Couldn’t really blame her, he supposed. His mother’s temper was legendary.

  “Never mind,” he said tiredly. “Let’s just say I’m making slow progress, and leave it at that.”

  “Well, he wants to see you, anyway.”

  “Who does?”

  “Your father, of course.” Ishil’s tone sharpened. “Haven’t you listened to a word I’ve been saying? He’s up there now with his guest. Waiting for you.”

  Ringil let his elbows rest on the table. He set one hand diagonally against the other, closed his fingers around, and looked at the clasp they made. He made his voice carefully toneless.

  “Is he now?”

  “Yes, he is, Gil. And he’s not in the best of tempers. So come on.”

  Prolonged rasp of her skirts along the floor. Abruptly, it set his teeth on edge. She made the length of the table before she realized he hadn’t gotten up to follow her. She turned, fixed him with a hard stare that he knew of old and didn’t bother to meet.

  “Are you coming or not?”

  “Take a wild guess.”

  “Gil, this isn’t helpful. You promised—”

  “If Gingren wants to talk to me, he can come down here and do it.” Ringil gestured at the empty space between them. “It’s private enough.”

  “You want him to bring guests into the kitchens?” Ishil seemed genuinely aghast.

  “No.” Now he looked at her. “I want him to leave me the fuck alone. But since that doesn’t seem to be an option, let’s see how badly he really wants to talk, shall we?”

  She stood there for a couple of moments more, then, when he didn’t drop his gaze or move more than a stone, she stalked up the steps and out without a word. He watched her go, shifted his position a little, hunched his shoulders, and looked up and down the empty kitchen as if for witnesses to something, as if for an audience. He rubbed his hands together and sighed.

  Presently, the girl from the cauldron materialized again, at his shoulder this time and with a silent, pallid immediacy that made him jump. She held a hinge-lidded wooden flagon in her hands, out of which crept wisps of steam.

  “An infusion, my lord,” she murmured.

  “Yeah, uhm.” He blinked and shook off a shiver. “Could you not creep up on me like that, please.”

  “I’m sorry, my lord.”

  “Right. Leave it there, then.”

  She did, and then withdrew as silently as she’d appeared. He waited until she was gone before he tipped back the lid on the flagon and hunched over it, breathing in. Bitter green odors steamed out; heat rose off the surface of the water the herbs ha
d been steeped in, soaked around his gritty eyes like a soothing towel. It was far too hot to drink. He stared down instead at the distorted, darkened reflection of his face in the water, cupped the uncertain vision of himself between his palms, as if afraid it might boil off and fade like the steam it was wreathed in. Finally, he slid the flagon carefully aside, slumped forward with his chin to the table, cheek pressed against one outflung arm, and stared blankly down the table and off into the space beyond.

  He heard them coming.

  Booted footfalls on stone, and suddenly something told him, some whispered hint of witch clarity he’d maybe picked up out there in the early-morning mist, some legacy of the uncanny laughter that had brushed by as if inviting him to turn and follow, still whispering now around the bowl of his skull, telling him what to expect next. Then again, it might just have been the sputtering remnants of the krin, a hallucinatory effect that wasn’t unknown among its users. One way or another, a coldly sober Ringil would later be unable to shake memory of this feeling that was almost knowledge, as shadows darkened the doorway and the footfalls approached. He came up off the table with that premonition, back straightening, sharp enough now, but the whole motion edged with a druggy weariness that felt somehow like resignation . . .

  “How now, Ringil.” Gingren boomed it out as he stomped down into the kitchen, but there was a false tone in the heartiness, like a missed step. “Your mother said we’d find you down here.”

  “Looks like she was right, then.”

  Father and son looked each other over like reluctant duelists. Gingren cut a big, blocky figure in the low-beamed kitchen space, waist perhaps a little thickened these days, much the same way Grace-of-Heaven’s had gone, features maybe a little bloated and blurred with the years and the good living—and now with staying up all night, Ringil supposed—but aside from these things, he was still pretty much the man he’d always been. No give in the flinty stare, no real space for regrets. And his son, well, not much change there, either, no matter how hard Gingren might look for it, and in the few days that Ringil had been back, truth be told, Gingren hadn’t done much looking. They’d encountered each other an inevitable number of times in various parts of the house, usually one or the other of them talking to someone else, which served as buffer and barrier and in the end excuse not to offer more than some grunted, grudging acknowledgment as they passed. The hours they kept didn’t coincide any better than they had in Ringil’s youth, and no one in the house, not even Ishil, saw any merit in trying to bring them closer together than they chose to be.