The Dark Defiles

CHAPTER 44

Rumor ran in the slum streets of Trelayne like sewage in the gutters, mingled and colorful in its contents, but mostly shit. Heightened by the tension of wartime nerves, imaginings among the citizenry slipped the common bounds of reason. Gleaned facts were twisted out of all recognition by each tongue that passed them on, fiction was drafted in wholesale where truth would not suffice. Simple narrative gained the grandeur of myth in less time than it took the increasingly stormy day to darken down. By nightfall proper, the taverns were replete with legends in the making and their drink-cadging authors. Spellbound audiences hung on every ornate word.

Hear, then, how the outlawed renegade, imperial lackey, and lately cursed dabbler in black magic Ringil—whom none should any longer call Eskiath so as not to sully that long-honored family name—was finally brought low, defeated and slain in battle at sea by a commission of inner-circle mage privateer captains invoking the long-lost powers of the Vanishing Folk. The Marsh Brotherhood, come lately to patriotic terms with the City Elders at the Chancellery, offered up sorceries only their kind had access to, all in service to the League forces. A cabal sworn to protect the Fair City in time of need stepped in, recruited and anointed the necessary men, gave them ships, and sent them out to do magical battle against the renegade and his encroaching imperial forces. And perhaps it was not just Aldrain power that Trelayne summoned in its hour of need, but the flesh-and-blood Vanishing Folk themselves—because dwenda have been seen, good gentlemen and ladies, seen by many in recent weeks, stalking the streets of the city by night, luminous and lithe and grim. Ask anyone, it is well known.

And so, all along the northern coast of Gergis the night of the engagement against the imperials, lightning reached down from a storm out of the west, striking with harsh white fire into the heart of Aldrain stone circles on cliff tops and bluffs, stirring strange shadows from the hallowed turf within. At Melchiar point, out beyond the marsh, a bolt struck directly at the Widow’s Watch Stone and split it open from the top. And as the surf burst there in the bang and flash of light on the rocks below, there were those who claimed they’d seen merroigai, breaching and sounding in the chop of the waves like bathing maidens at play, seaweed draped wetly across their plump and comely naked breasts, tangled in their long, flowing locks of hair and…

Thank you, kind sir, my thanks indeed. My throat is parched with the telling.

Now—where was I?

But if the black mage renegade was routed, it came at a grievous price. For in the moment that he was struck down—some said by a crossbow blessed in holy fire at Firfirdar’s temple in the Glades and fired across the space between ships by a Hinerion nobleman and great white mage named Klithren—the dark outcast invoked the last of his sorcerous strength and climbed the mainmast rigging, where he clung like some monstrous black bat entangled, and with his dying breath hurled a demonic curse upon his killers. Little enough was thought of it at the time; after all, what villain will not spit and curse when his hour has come around? But some few men among those who witnessed Ringil’s passing were heard to remark that they felt the cold touch of a shadow fall on them with the dying renegade’s words. And that same night, plague crept among the surviving vessels, walked the decks among the resting heroes like a wraith, touched each brave privateer without exception and laid them all low.

Perhaps the infection emanated from the slain corpse of the renegade himself, brought home as trophy with tongue and eyes put out, and fingers struck off at the roots. Or perhaps it came on an evil wind from the south. Whatever the case, now the plague ships sit at anchor out beside the prison hulk fleet, easily seen from the southern wall for those who doubt my word, flying pennants of distress and in bitter exile from the Fair City that birthed their crews. Yes, under grim banners, Trelayne’s heroes of the high sea now lie stricken, and unhallowed magic, though defeated, has left its tragic black stain for all to see…

The rain, m’dear? Sorcerous? Admirable imagination, truly, in one so fair and, uhm, unspoiled, if I may say so, by her dealings with the world. But I think not. The storm is unseasonal in its force, indeed—just listen to it! And damnably inconvenient, I must say, if it’s not eased by the time I must make my way to the poor garret where I lay my head some distance from here, if no closer, kinder shelter may be had, dear lady, by a poor wordsmith and romantic at heart.

But sorcerous? A sorcerous rainstorm? Hardly.

AMID WATERS SO LASHED BY THE DOWNPOUR THAT THEY SEEMED TO BOIL and steam in the fading evening light, the prison hulks slipped their chains one by one, rode the low swell, and were borne in toward Trelayne on no current Sharkmaster Wyr could ever remember pulling that way across the delta.

“Don’t worry about it,” Ringil told him. “You’ll get where you’re going. Just concentrate on holding up your end once we get there.”

Wyr looked bleakly up at him from where he was crouched at Sprayborne’s blunted prow, watching their progress. He was drenched to the skin, but seemed not to care. He held the ax-head pike in his arms almost like a nursing mother with an infant, and he drew a smooth, flat whetstone repeatedly down the long, curved edge of the blade. It made a harsh scraping sound on each stroke that he appeared to find soothing.

“I’m a man of my word,” he said.

The city came glimmering wetly at them through curtains of rain—harbor lights in marching sequence along the sea walls and the wharfs that flanked the river mouth, the dim outline of buildings with lighted windows rising beyond. Somewhere further back in all that, the Chancellery squatted on the closest thing Trelayne owned to a hill, commanding views across the city to both the ocean and marsh. But those overlooking towers and their lights were lost altogether in the murk. Gil had called down the rain in preference to summoning a fog because he reckoned it would clear the streets for him, but he had to admit it shrouded things pretty well into the bargain. There’d be watchmen, of course, up on the harbor walls, but their visibility was going to be way down in this weather, and what they’d be watching for mostly, squinting against the lash of the rain when they could be bothered, was the loom of masts and sails, neither of which the prison hulks had to offer. By the time the low profile of their hulls drew attention, Gil was hoping it’d be too late for anything other than panic.

His own ships, hanging back in the wake of the hulk fleet, could skulk in once the mess was made. Still flying their plague pennants, they’d likely cause almost as much dismay among the populace as the ghostly driven prison hulks that preceded them. And by then, the loosed prisoners would be on the rampage through Trelayne like soldiers given leave to sack.

House Eskiath, your outlaw son is home.

Light flickered low in his field of vision—the mast lantern on a fishing skiff caught out in the storm and struggling for haven. Sprayborne was on them before they could react, looming out of the swathes of rain, almost trampling them into the ocean under its bow. Ringil leaned hard over the rail and peered down, saw three pale faces staring back up at him as the hulk shouldered past. One of them looked to be not much older than a boy. Wide-eyed shock and accusation in the rain-whipped features, Gil caught the look and found himself hooked to it. Involuntarily, he swung around to watch as the skiff passed along Sprayborne’s waist, then fell away into the murk to stern, taking something with it he could not define. For a couple more moments, he could make out the agitated swing of the lantern light as the skiff rocked on the chop from the prison hulk’s passage. Then the storm came and took the last glimmer of light away in raging wind and rain.

“My lord?”

Let’s hope they steer well clear before one of the other hulks flattens them.

Yeah, and while we’re at it, black mage, let’s hope your merroigai are all too well fed or busy towing to stop, capsize the skiff and drag all of three of them under for a snack.

“My lord!”

A firm hand on his shoulder through the storm. Noyal Rakan, tugging him around. A depth of concern and adoration on the boyish face he could barely stand to look at.

“The men are mustered and ready, my lord.”

“Right.” He cleared his throat. Wiped some of the rain off his face. “Yeah. Coming down.”

He’d taken the same approach to picking his landing party as he had the wedge that helped him put Klithren’s men to flight on the sloping streets of Ornley. He asked for volunteers. Now two dozen men awaited him in ranks on Sprayborne’s main deck, mostly marines but one or two Throne Eternals sown into the mix. They stood at ease, mailed and stone-faced against the rain, darting occasional looks of cool disdain at the freed pirates who huddled in the corners of the deck, jeering and muttering among themselves. There was a tension in the air that might have led to fighting if the prisoners had been a little less starved, or had had more than one weapon per half dozen men.

But they didn’t.

Ringil came down the companionway behind Rakan, tipped a nod at Klithren where he stood at one front corner of the ranked assembly. Rakan stepped forward.

“My lord Ringil will address you now.” He had to shout against the bluster of the wind. “Salute!”

They did, a bit raggedly. Ringil took the cue, raised his voice.

“Empire men,” he called. “We are at war, and we find ourselves in the heart of the enemy’s domain. I imagine some soldiers might count this a misfortune. Do you?”

“No!” Ready chorus—he’d heard Rakan stoking them earlier.

“We are here to reclaim those noble prisoners taken from us by sneak attack, and to strike a blow at the northerners’ arrogance that they will not soon forget. Are you ready to do these things?”

“Yes!”

“Now, I anticipate some small resistance to these aims…” He let the grim laughter break and run among them, waited it out. “And I imagine we may have to show the locals some blood before they’ll let us have what we want. Are you ready for that?”

“Yes!” Bellowing now.

“Are you ready for blood?”

“Yes! Ready!”

He nodded. “Then follow me, and I’ll see what I can do.”

Cheers.

He threw out a salute, turned them back over to Rakan for weapons check. Went back to the companionway, had one foot set on the bottom rung when Klithren sidled up to him, face closed up against the rain like a fist. Gil beat down a sudden tension in his stomach, made himself relax. Klithren leaned in close.

“Not telling them about the dwenda, then?” he asked in Naomic.

“Not unless there’s cause to, no.”

“And you don’t think there’s cause? Behind the Chancellery stands the cabal, we both know that. And if the dwenda stand behind the cabal as you say they do, they aren’t going to take kindly to you marching in and taking away their bargaining counters.”

“We’ll deal with that as and when it arises.”

“Yeah?” Klithren grinned through the ribbons of rain on his face. “When’s that, black mage? When we’re at the Chancellery gates and they jump us?”

“We’re not going to the Chancellery,” Ringil told him shortly, and turned away to climb the ladder.

SPRAYBORNE BURST INTO TRELAYNE HARBOR LIKE THE RISEN GHOST OF some long wrecked warship from the city’s embattled past. Mastless, darkened, she cleared the harbor wall to starboard close enough for a brave man to leap down onto her deck as she passed. But no one did. Ringil heard shouting, saw movement on the wall and torches jerking about as watchmen ran up and down in disbelief, but that was about it. The hulk swept in past the confusion, crossed the rain-thrashed harbor without slowing at all, and trod down the timber boom fastened across the inner river entrance. Creak and splintering crack of the wood giving way under the bow. There were some vessels the boom might have kept out, but Sprayborne’s hull was long uncared for, thickly encased in barnacles that gave it a shell like iron. The whole ship rose in the water an instant, then crunched solidly back down and plowed on through.

Wyr’s ragged crew roared.

As they cleared the river mouth, Ringil looked back along the mastless deck and saw the second hulk come careering in behind them, heeling sharply in the harbor space, aimed directly at the western wharf and the merchantmen moored there. There was no time to see the impact—Sprayborne was already at the first bend in the river, and he lost any view he’d had behind the slum tenement façades that lined the bank. But he thought he heard the grinding crunch it made, thought he heard a second collective roar of triumph float loose in the night.

Bare-handed, half-starved wretches unchained, celebrating a release they’d only ever expected to see in death.

Yeah, and if they don’t get hold of some decent weapons pretty sharpish, that’s still going to be the way it ends.

Because if Sprayborne’s crew was poorly armed, they were princes in plate compared to the liberated prisoners aboard the other hulks. There’d been no more supply boats to ambush—the weather he’d summoned had seen to that—and while the lack of attention made freeing the convicted men that much easier, the corresponding lack of jailer’s escorts to murder and shakedown for steel had meant a real dearth of arms. The best most of the prisoners could do were sections of rusty chain or long splinters of half-rotted deck timber prized up and fitted out with ship’s nails through the business end. All right for a shock attack, maybe, but once the Watch woke up and found its feet, well…

There were prisoners aboard the hulks, Gil knew, whose minds and wills were long ago broken, others whose crimes never involved violence of any sort. Some of these would cower, some would hide, some would skulk and run. Some might never even crawl out of the cells whose doors he’d torn off their hinges. But crewing the hulks alongside these were a majority of men—and a tiny handful of women—once counted lethally dangerous by the courts. With luck, some of them would still merit that judgment. And no small number of those would have been pirates once, the kind for whom storming a harbor was second nature. They’d manage somehow, they’d work something out. Beat down and butcher the first few squads of watchmen while the element of surprise lasted, frisk them and take what weapons they carried. Break into the harbor-side arsenal, maybe—in time of war like this, it had to be stocked to the ceiling. Gear up, carry fire and steel onward, into the heart of the city.

What they did after that, Ringil told himself he didn’t much care. Just as long as it lasted the time he needed to get in and out.

The rat-hole tenements and rickety jetty walkways of Harbor End began to thin out, gave way to the more salubrious housing of halfway decent neighborhoods like Ekelim and Shest. Rain had driven other traffic off the water, and the people off the promenades. He saw lights in windows, smoke from chimneys, but little other sign of life. Once, down at the water’s edge alongside a jetty, he thought he saw a ferryman huddled in a cloak at his oars. Thought he saw the shadowed opening under the ferryman’s hood turn to follow him as they passed.

He shivered and looked away.

Sprayborne drifted on upriver like a phantom in the murk.

By the time they got to the Glades district, its manicured mangroves and ornamental jetty water frontage, there’d been a couple of graunching knocks to the hull, and Ringil was starting to worry about draft. A generation or two ago, the noble families whose mansions littered the Glades all owned warehouses across the river, and it was quite customary for League merchantmen to come up this far to load and unload. But the custom waned—cheaper land for warehousing came up for grabs near the newly expanded harbor, shipmasters preferred not to navigate the twists and kinks in the river if they didn’t have to and started charging a premium to do it. Anyway, the old plots across the river could now be sold at a huge profit as new wealth crowded in, seeking upriver cachet. Great stone mansions sprouted on the warehouse side—though none quite as imposing as the originals they aped on the opposite bank—and river traffic dwindled. Silt built up and was no longer dredged out, as a couple of incautiously overloaded mason’s barges discovered to their cost back in Ringil’s youth.

Later of course, with the war, a lot of that new wealth collapsed again and the land was reacquired in the reconstruction, designated for thanksgiving temples and shrines, ornamental gardens, and expensive memorials to the noble clans whose sons had done, if the truth were known, not much more than a single-figure percentage of the dying. It was about the time Gil left town, so he didn’t know if there’d been any dredging done since. Sprayborne was a raider, not a merchantman. Even fully laden she’d have been a pretty shallow draft vessel, and now, with no cargo but the skin and bone of her starved down, decimated crew—plus, okay, a scant two dozen imperial shock troops with assorted outlaws, mercenary turncoats, and faggot degenerates for officers—she was traveling light indeed. But then there was that thick crust of barnacles to think about, and whatever clearance they had below that, things had to be getting pretty cramped for the merroigai towing them…

He spotted the stretch of waterfront he’d been looking for. Laid hands on the starboard rail, leaned out to scan for signs of life. Sprayborne responded, as if to the rudder she’d been stripped of years past. The hulk angled and heeled, she surged in hard, rammed into the bank between two of the carefully kept, stilt-fingered mangroves. Crushed a dinky little jetty under her bow and jammed in place. Ringil barely kept his feet, and he’d seen it coming, was hanging on to the rail at the time. Down on the main deck he heard curses and bodies tumbling.

“Ride’s over,” he told Sharkmaster Wyr. “Hold your men until I give the word. I’ve got some instructions you need to follow.”

The pirate uncoiled from where he’d been crouched. It was a lot like watching a reptile peon get up from its nesting hollow. He hefted the ax-head pike. “I thought the instructions were blood from the ocean to the Eastern gate. Now all of a sudden you want to get particular?”

“There’s a mansion nearby,” Ringil said evenly. “A couple of hundred yards in. It has a family name graven into the gateposts, in the unlikely event you or any of your men can read, and Hoiran and Firfirdar in effigy on top if you can’t. Neither you nor your men will go anywhere near that mansion. Do I make myself clear?”

Wyr bared his teeth. “Let me guess. Eskiath house?”

“Just so. That’s where I’m going with my men, and I want a clear run at it. Is that understood? Or are we going to have a problem?”

A shrug. “I won’t get in the way of any man’s revenge, if doesn’t cross my own.”

“Good. Then we are in accord.”

Down on the main deck, Rakan already had the men formed up and ready to disembark. Boarding rope ladders borrowed from Dragon’s Demise were tossed tumbling over the side as Gil arrived. Wyr’s starveling pirates milled about, watching. Ringil nodded and Rakan called it. The imperials went over the rail and down, began to pick their way out of the tangle of mangrove roots below. Klithren went with them; Rakan hung around, gaze mistrustful on the freed pirate crew. Gil made a smile for him.

“You go. I’m fine, I’ll be right there.”

The Throne Eternal bowed his head, swung over the rail, and clambered handily down to join his fellow imperials. Ringil stood for a long last moment on Sprayborne’s grotty main deck, staring around at the ragged, barely clad company of men he’d freed and was about to unleash. His final gift to the fair city of Trelayne—pallid, fish-belly faces staring back, eyes sunken and feverish-bright with rage, filthy thinning hair plastered down in rat’s-tails by the rain. Bodies still hunching instinctively from long confinement and casual brutality, manacle-scarred wrists and ankles on limbs like the gnawed bones of a fowl platter, rib cages you could count each rib on from yards away. Closer in they stank to a man, despite all the rain could do.

He’d seen corpsemite-animated zombies that didn’t look much worse than this. Stalking the manicured paths and pastures of the Glades, they’d probably be taken for such.

How the fuck did it come to this, Gil?

He looked at them, as if they might give him the answer. But they only muttered and growled among themselves like feral dogs, and none would meet his gaze. He grunted, gave up, and looked up to the foredeck above, where Sharkmaster Wyr stood in command.

“All yours. Blood from ocean to Eastern gate. You make them pay.”

Wyr lifted the pike and jerked his chin in what Gil later deciphered as a salute. “Die well, my lord.”

It was an age-old commendation to battle from the founder legends of Trelayne, resuscitated and made fashionable again during the war. Odd, coming out of the mouth of a man set to slaughter and burn his way across the heart of his own city, but Ringil supposed he was hardly in a position to judge. He nodded soberly, uttered the formula response.

“As well as circumstance and the gods allow.”

“Hey, fuck the gods. This is what we’ve got left. You die well, sir.”

Ringil shrugged. “Yeah, you, too.”

He went over the rail.

IN THE TREE-SHADED DARK OF THE GLADES, THEY WERE SPARED THE WORST of the rain, though it hammered unseen into the foliage over their heads and made a sound like pebbles tossed constantly against glass. They ignored the winding ornamental paved paths Gil knew from his youth, cut directly across the sward instead. It was easy going, and the few inhabitants they came across ran screaming from their advance. The first time it happened—a young, bedraggled woman servant, out cutting marsh mint for the kitchen—the vanguard marines made to follow and bring her back. Ringil put out a barring arm, shook his head.

“Let her tell her tale. She’ll magnify numbers, likely make trolls of us, too. The more panic she sows, the better.”

Grins from the marines. The idea appealed. They let the other chance encounters run without comment. They tramped on across the sodden turf, dodged the odd thicket of mangrove roots, scared a few more servants, and came finally upon house lights through the gloom.

The iron spiked gates were chained up, as he’d expected. He tipped a bleak look up at the statues on the posts—King and Queen of the Dark Court, fanged and tusked Hoiran, Firfirdar in flames, angled slightly in toward each other as if enjoying a sly exchanged glance amid the more po-faced business of watching over the affairs of all humankind.

Yeah, well—watch over this.

He laid hands on the wet links of the chain, he uttered the glyph. The iron rusted and crumbled and broke apart under his touch. The gates blew back on their hinges as if hurled by the wind. They hit the blocking posts set to catch them at the sides of the carriage path with a resounding iron clang.

Bit overstated, Gil—you could have just pushed them open.

Did the timeworn grin on Firfirdar’s graven face broaden just the faintest bit?

He inclined his head fractionally at the effigy’s stony gaze, then stalked past it and up the gravel path, toward the house that once gave him birth.

CHAPTER 45

They hauled the Dragonbane out from under the corpse of the dragon he’d slain, but by then there wasn’t a lot left. Venom had eaten him down to the bone at arms and skull and shoulders, left his rib cage exposed in patches against the charred meat of his chest. The stench of cooked flesh was overpowering; even the sandalwood reek of the dead dragon couldn’t mask it.

She squatted beside him. Stared numbly down at the damage and the mess, at the skull’s anonymous rictus grin. Tried to make sense.

“Not a shit death,” she whispered.

Could have fooled me, grinned the skull.

Between two of the charred ribs, something glinted at her. She squinted closer, took a couple of uncertain moments to work out what she was looking at—the three-elemental coin, the one they’d tossed to choose who’d play decoy. The venom had scorched apart the pocket he’d stowed it in along with the rest of his clothing, had even melted the coin itself a little around the edges, glued it into the seared flesh. She touched the metal with one finger, and in that moment it dawned on her suddenly how he’d faked that toss.

Let the coin fall into the cup of your palm. Single, lightning-swift beat while you snatch a glance. If it came up the way you wanted, you let it lie, flexed your palm flat and offered it for inspection. If not—slap it across onto the back of your other hand, uncover it there instead.

Walked into that one, Archidi.

The wraith of a smile at her lips. She blinked rapidly, sniffed hard. Let the coin lie where it was, kissed her fingertips where they’d touched it, and laid her hand gently back on the blackened rib cage.

Presently, the Majak came across and stood by the corpse. One of them held Egar’s staff lance. She knew none of their names, understood almost none of what they murmured to each other. There were fragments, names of deities she’d heard before—Urann, Vavada, Takavach—words for fire and light, a phrase they used more than once that sounded like it might have been their dialect version of the Skaranak term for the band, the Sky Road that the Majak dead must walk. She supposed they were talking about where the Dragonbane was now.

Because he sure as shit isn’t here anymore.

She snorted back the tears behind her eyes, levered herself back to her feet. The Majak gave her respectful space.

“We can’t—” She cleared her throat. “We can’t take him with us. I’m sorry. There’s enough to carry as it is, and we still don’t know what’s down in that pit.”

The Majak who held the lance shook his head. “The whole world shelters beneath the Sky Road’s bow,” he said in accented Tethanne. “It will take the Dragonbane home, as well from here as any other place of rest.”

She nodded tepidly.

“Would he want burial?” one of the others asked. “It’s custom among the Skaranak. They cairn their dead. Would he want that?”

“I don’t know,” she said, because she didn’t.

The Majak with the lance coughed a laugh. He nodded at the slumped mountain of dragon flesh behind them.

“Memorial enough there, I reckon. I’ll bet no Skaranak that ever lived had a cairn the size those bones are going make.”

“The bones don’t last,” she said quietly. “They rot away with time. Everything does, apart from the teeth and the gut lining. It’s the venom. In ten years, there’ll be nothing left to show a dragon died here.”

“And the skin, the scales?” The one who seemed to know Skaranak custom looked pretty put out. His hand strayed down to a pouch at his belt. She guessed he’d taken time, like some of others among the men, to hack off some small trophy. “Doesn’t the skin last?”

Archeth shrugged. “Soak it in water for a day, scrub it well on both sides. Hang it out to dry in the sun. That usually does the trick.”

“Water?” The Majak cast about the gray, rubbled landscape, dismayed. “In the sun?”

“Yeah.” She turned to walk away, stopped. “You know what? We are going to bury him. Get him up out of this fucking crater, find someplace with a decent view. That’s where we dig.”

THEY LAID HIM OUT SO HE’D FACE THE RISING SUN, IF IT EVER CAME UP free of this endless fucking cloud cover. The Majak consulted among themselves, then decked the grave out with a couple of judiciously chosen talismans. They drove the staff lance down hard between the stones at the foot of the cairn they’d made, packed it tight with smaller chunks of masonry, so it stood a rigid yard and a half upright, gleaming in the pallid light.

They buried Alwar Nash alongside, laid the Throne Eternal’s sword and shield on the piled rubble the way his family would have done on his tomb back home. The men stood around, said what words there were. Selak Chan led the rest of the Throne Eternal in formal prayer. The Majak chanted and ululated a bit.

The rest drifted off down to the dragon corpse to see about souvenirs.

Archeth stood like a statue at the cairn, head bowed, as stiff and motionless as the upward jutting staff lance in front of her. Couldn’t believe she was leaving him here. Couldn’t yet believe that he was here, that those charred, buried remnants were all that was left of the Dragonbane. It was as if she expected him back at any moment, was just waiting for him to stick his head around the corner of the ruin, wink at her, grin.

What? You thought I’d go down that easy? It’s Dragonbane, Archidi. Dragon Bane. Not Dragonsbitch. I used to kill these fucking things for a living.

You certainly killed the fuck out of that one.

Hey—all part of the service.

The Majak and the Throne Eternal finished up their respective rituals, cast uncertain glances in her direction, and then left her alone. She heard them muttering among themselves as they headed down the slope to join the others. Rain blew about in the wind, specked at her face. Overhead, the clouds were in turmoil—massing thicker and darker, hastening off somewhere else, leaching what miserable light there was from the day and taking it with them.

She took the hint. Followed the men down.

She found the bulk of them gathered at a cautious distance from the dead dragon, squatting or standing in their respective groups. One or two were still toying with the mementos they’d carved from the corpse. She saw the Majak she’d talked to about hide curing—seemed he’d thought better of his initial trophy and somehow managed to gouge loose a fang from the dragon’s jaw instead. He was busily flensing the root end, scraping off the last stubborn leavings of tissue with his knife. He nodded at her as she arrived, perhaps in thanks.

Yilmar Kaptal stood apart, statue still, staring at the dragon as if it might come suddenly back to life. She cleared her throat, in advance this time, and like the others he turned to look at her. She lifted her voice, clear and loud against the ruffling wind.

“We have done what honor we can for those who gave their lives. It’s time now to give their sacrifice meaning.” She pivoted about and pointed to where the fire sprite hung about at the sinkhole rim. “That way is our means of returning home. The path is cleared, it remains only to walk it.”

A couple of the privateers exchanged a look. One of them leaned and muttered something in Naomic to one of Tand’s crew. The mercenary nodded soberly at what he was hearing, cleared his throat, and spoke in Tethanne.

“They want to know, my lady, what if there’s another dragon waiting for us down in the pits.”

She shook her head. “Dragons are solitary in adulthood. That much we did learn in the war. One this size would not tolerate any competition within its range.”

“But they act as brood mothers to the reptile folk.” Another mercenary, pitching in unhelpfully. “On the beaches at Demlarashan, they protected the lizard advance.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

“Then there may be Scaled Folk lairing in the pits.”

“Then we’ll kill them,” snapped Kanan Shent. He was banged up from the fight with the dragon, had two fingers on his left hand wrapped and splinted, wore thick bandages around both legs, right arm, and head. But there was a feverish, impatient gleam in his eyes. “As we killed them yesterday, as we slew this beast here today.”

“We lost nine men yesterday,” someone called out. “Fighting on open ground. In those pits, we could find ourselves—”

Shent rounded on the speaker. “Will you stand here bleating about losses and risk like some merchant negotiating cost? You were quick enough to cut trophies from the dragon that you did not earn, but will not face creatures one fiftieth its size? Did Menith Tand hire fighting men for his guard, or faggots?”

“Hey, fuck you, imperial. You don’t—”

“Gentlemen!”

No need to force it, there was enough undischarged grief and rage in her to fuel the sack of a city. They heard it in her voice, saw it in her face when they jerked around to look. They shut up. She worked at not showing her surprise, grabbed the advantage, and kept going.

“There will be no need, gentlemen, for these deliberations.” She gestured once more up at the waiting fire sprite. “Our guide has consistently steered us clear of the Scaled Folk and any other dangers we might face. Our only encounter came when we did not wait for its lead, and we were saved from the dragon because it held us here among the ruins until the beast showed itself. I think it’s safe to conclude that it will not now lead us into ambush.”

They quietened, but she spotted a couple of mutinous faces among the privateers. She held back a sigh. Well, you did warn me about this, Eg. Could have wished for better timing, but…

“You.” She indicated the mercenary who’d acted as translator. “Ask those two at the back what their problem is.”

Tand’s man glanced across the gathered men and caught the same expressions she had. He raised his hands in a gesture that needed no translation. The scowling privateers looked taken aback. There was a brief exchange in lilting Naomic, the mercenary, from the look of it, weighing in with a few brusque comments of his own above and beyond the brief Archeth had given him. One of the privateers got angry, the mercenary trampled his words down. There was some bristling on both sides, then Tand’s man waved his arm disgustedly and turned away, back to Archeth. He looked embarrassed.

“Well?”

“They, uh—my lady, they say they are not happy about following the fire guide. They do not trust the demon spirit at An-Kirilnar. They say if it murdered Sogren Cablehand on a whim, why should it not intend to do the same with them?”

Archeth shot the privateers a dirty look. “Little late in the day for these qualms, isn’t it?”

“What I told them, my lady.”

She drew a deep breath. What was it Gil was always saying? The men under your command may well hate you. And then some rambling drivel about learning to live with it, leaving it alone, transmuting it somehow into loyalty in the heat of battle, whatever. Didn’t sound very likely, but then Gil had led some very hard-boiled men into some very tight spots, and somehow always managed to come out the other side alive.

Let’s see if we can’t do the same thing here, Archidi.

She marshaled the slop of anger and loss inside, harnessed it again. She jerked her chin at the glowering privateers.

“Tell them,” she said, with biting force, “that the Great Spirit at An-Kirilnar did not act on a whim when it killed Sogren Cablehand. It acted for me. And it continues to act for me through this fire guide. If they do not want to follow Sogren to his fate, then there’s a very simple way for them to avoid it. Obey me, in all things.”

The mercenary gaped. She saw a similar look on a fair few other faces among the Tethanne speakers.

“Make that clear to them,” she said.

“Uh… Yes, my lady.”

“And then go get your pack on.” She turned her head slowly to take in the whole gathering. “All of you. Go find your packs and gear up. We’re going home. Throne Eternal Alwar Nash and the Dragonbane died for that. So did the nine men who fought and died yesterday. I will not piss away their sacrifice, and nor will any of you. We are going home.”

THEY GOT DOWN TO THE NEAREST EDGE OF THE PITS WITHOUT INCIDENT. There was some on-and-off muttering in the ranks, mainly among the privateers, but it died away as they got up close to the great black metal clamping arms, and the scale of the Kiriath construction dawned on them. The clamps were three times the height of a man where they came up out of the pit, tailing off only gradually to something you could have hauled yourself up onto when they were nearly fifty yards back from the lip. They crushed the Aldrain stone under their weight; she saw where dressed blocks of masonry had shattered and sheered.

She moved up closer to the lip of the pit, peered down, and saw a dizzying progression of scaffolding built along the inner surface, reaching away downward and out of clear view. There were interlocking stanchions and cross-struts, snaking cables and pipes the width of a man’s waist, huge angled dishes of alloy and wire, whole tilted panels of mesh as big as a mainsail, all giving back a sheen of purple or blue where they rose high enough into the neck of the pit to catch the light. She felt the steady rise of warm air up the shaft like a summer breeze on her face and hands. She caught the brewing stack reek of alloy husbandry below.

Dragonbane’s right—

Was, she reminded herself silently. Lips pressed hard together on the ache. Dragonbane was right. Looks like Kaldan Cross.

But as if Kaldan Cross were some kind of rough scale model built in advance, a quick proof of concept before the real work began. Human eyes had to work hard to see the bottom of the pit at Kaldan Cross—and idle human superstition said there was none—but it was there. Now she stared downward into the shadowed depths and even she could make out no end to this shaft. The scaffolding below her was broad and extensive in its own right, would have filled the Kaldan excavation almost to the center. Here—she followed the broad sweep of the pit’s lip around like the shore of a minor lake—here it clung to the edges going down like the flimsiest of lace borders on a court gown collar. It extended no thicker in comparison to the excavation’s full extent than the growth of moss coating an old well shaft.

You could hide an entire colony of Scaled Folk down there, Archidi.

Even a couple of dragons might manage to coexist across that much space, if the reptile packs they belonged to learned to stay out of each other’s way, lived on opposite sides of the pit, say.

If we really have to climb down through all that…

She made her face stone. Looked around for the fire sprite.

“Over here, my lady.”

Kanan Shent, calling and beckoning from back toward the tail end of the clamping structure. The sprite hovered and flickered there beside the alloy wall. The Throne Eternal gestured with his injured hand.

“It refuses to move from here, my lady. And there seem to be colors in the metal, as there were at An-Kirilnar…”

Stone, stone, your face is stone. Nothing here surprises you, Queen of Kiriath steel and murderous demonic spirits. You take it in your stride.

She came forward and peered at the black iron surface, now mottled and bleaching into lighter shades, colors shifting about like chemicals spilled on a rainwater puddle in a laboratory courtyard at Monal. She nodded briskly.

“This is our way down.”

She spoke the colors out in clearly enunciated sequence. Each one winked out as she named it, returning the alloy finally to its blank black norm. Then nothing. Long moments, piling up in the quiet and nothing else to see—she made herself wait it out, keenly aware of the gazes fixed on her as the seconds slipped by. They’d had the same delay at An-Kirilnar. She kept her face impassive until—

Ah.

A thin tracery whispered awake on the black alloy surface—sweeping, spilling, unreeling lines like the rapidly sketched outline of a rose in bloom, but taller than a man. She caught the tiny seething sound it made, down near the limits of her hearing, heard the hissing intensify as the sketch lines deepened into cracks, then began to split apart. The whorl patterning in the center of the design seemed to roll and fold into itself, down to one side and gone. The hissing stopped. Warm orange light sprang up in a hollow interior space.

She stuck her head inside and peered around. Saw a tall, vaulted corridor with curving sides leading from a blank bulkhead on her left and back the twenty-odd yards toward the edge of the pit—though she thought, uneasily, that it seemed to reach a lot farther than that. Farther, in fact, than was possible, given the way the clamp bent and dropped away down the side of the shaft. The floor was the same pentagonal-patterned iron latticework they’d walked on to reach An-Kirilnar, touched here by fleet-footed shadows and orange glimmerings that chased each other merrily away down the tunnel. She frowned for a moment, not understanding the effect, until it hit her that the glow she’d seen from outside was caused by distinct blots of light and dark that marched away in repeating sequence at about shoulder height along the sides of the bore, as if to hurry her in that direction. As if an endless procession of ghosts with invisible torches moved methodically down the tunnel already, and only the reflection of their flames could be seen, puddled in curving alloy surface of the walls and glinting off the latticed metal underfoot.

The fire sprite slipped past her shoulder and into the tunnel. It danced three or four yards down the bore, blending its colors to match the lights on the walls, then stopped and hung there flickering.

She pulled her head back out.

“Right, this is us. Selak Chan, you take the lead, I’ll catch you up once we’re all inside. Single file, give each other plenty of space. There shouldn’t be any trouble now, we’re on Kiriath ground. But that doesn’t mean you can’t trip over or fall off something, so keep your wits about you. No gawking.”

She stood at the entrance and counted them in, something she’d never bothered to do while Egar was alive. Thirty-five men, if you allowed Yilmar Kaptal in that category. Not much of a command, but still more than she wanted. She waited for them all to file past her, nodding them in if any chose to meet her eyes, trying to lock names to faces where she knew them. It might be important later.

The Throne Eternal and marines all bowed as they passed. So, unexpectedly, did the Majak and some of Tand’s crew.

Then, toward the end of the line, one of the privateers who’d complained earlier about Sogren’s death tried to stare her down, break her gaze with his scowl as he approached. On a different day, she might have laughed. Yeah, stare down the burned black witch, why don’t you. He’d clearly never looked into Kiriath eyes before. She gave him back his stare, well aware of the effect her darkling kaleidoscope pupils had on humans unused to them. He flinched and looked away, well before it was his turn to duck past her into the tunnel.

She heard his fellows jeering at him in the echoing space, as they followed the file down.

When the last man was in, she took one lingering look around at the shattered cityscape, the bleak mounds of rubble and forlorn crag outcrops of architecture still standing, the doom her people had brought down on this place. The dragon corpse and the cairns were hidden from view behind the ruins they’d sheltered in, as if already subsumed into the larger, more ancient death that held sway amid all this wreckage. For one aching moment, she wanted to run back up the rubble hillside and stand again at the Dragonbane’s grave, give him one more chance to quit fucking about, Eg, get up out of that hole in the ground and come with me.

“Come on, Archidi.”

For just one shaky, ecstatic moment, she was unsure who was speaking to her.

“We’re all done here, there’s nothing left.”

Her own voice, raised firm against the blanketing quiet. But it sounded nothing like her, and she could not tell what it meant by that we—if it was referring to her new command, her dead friendship, or her ancestors in their awful, obliterating triumph.

She turned away and hurried into the tunnel.

CHAPTER 46

He wasn’t very surprised to find armed men blocking his path; he’d perhaps even been courting something of the sort. Certainly, someone would have heard those gates slam back—the clang they made, you’d have to be deaf not to. And that someone would have duly sounded the alarm, which would in turn bring out the guard. Like most noble houses, the Eskiath family seat retained its own men-at-arms on site, and now, with the war on, they’d be twitchier than usual, eager to justify their exemption from the levy, their privileged escape from conscription to points of slaughter farther south. They’d jump at the drop of a thin cat, let alone the sound of the front gates being smashed open by an overly flamboyant black mage.

That cheap dramatic streak of yours is going to get you in some trouble you can’t get out of one of these days, Gil my lad. Grace-of-Heaven Milacar, in fond reprimand after a warehouse heist went spectacularly, bloodily wrong, and fifteen-year-old Ringil stayed ill-advisedly behind to taunt the Watch from the eaves of the burning building. Going to get you maimed or dead, just see if it doesn’t.

Yeah, well, Grace. Grimacing at the memory. Just look how that worked out.

So yes—as he came crunching up the gravel path toward the main doors of the house, out came the opposition. The door leaves parted, and a squad of men-at-arms in Eskiath livery issued rapidly through the gap. Ringil made the count, assessed the threat—seven men, five with pikes and two more behind that looked like Majak hires or some local imitation thereof, signature staff lances in hand. All lightly armored—their helmets and cuirasses showed signs of being donned in a hurry, but the metal gleamed dintless and smooth in the low light. It was either new gear or very well kept. And this was by no means the household’s full contingent, unless Gingren had made spending cuts of late. There’d be more inside.

The pikemen gathered in a rough scallop formation to defend the door, weapons lowered at infantry guard. The Majak spread apart in the space behind, staff lances loosely held across their bodies. There was a grim, drilled competence to it all, like clockwork parts moving. But when they saw the triple file of imperials at Ringil’s back, the shock stamped across their faces like marching boots.

“Crossbows,” Gil snapped in Tethanne, without turning or breaking pace. “Deploy left and right. Sound off on ready, hold for my command.”

He came to a casual halt, a couple of dozen yards short of the pike tips. Heard the crunch as the imperial bowmen stepped out of file behind him on the gravel, fanned out, and bent to their weapons. There was a heartbeat instant when he worried the pikemen might do the smart thing and charge while they had the advantage, before the bows were cranked and loaded. Well, he had some small magic in reserve for that, and anyway knew a couple of skirmish tricks to take a pike off its owner without dying in the attempt…

The bowmen sounded off, eight laconic voices, hard and tight. Ringil grinned at the pike guard, let them do the math. Switched to Naomic.

“Let’s not be hasty, boys. Do this right, we can all make it through to dawn without any unsightly holes in us.”

Lamplight, flickering in the doorway behind them. He saw dim figures move there.

“Hello, Dad,” he called. “This isn’t very friendly. Not going to invite me in?”

A mutter of voices, rising in dispute. He heard his father, maybe one of his brothers, too—sounded like that little cunt Creglir. A couple of other male voices he didn’t recognize, then his mother’s cutting tones, and abruptly he was off-balance, unsure how the fact of her presence made him feel. On the one hand, he’d hoped she’d still be down at Lanatray for the balance of the summer, and so well out of this. On the other hand…

“Mother? How about you talk some sense into Dad, and save us all a bloodbath here? These are imperial marines. The same guys you saw me with when we called in on our way north.”

Quiet for a moment. Then his parents’ voices rose again, straining against each other like wrestlers in some vicious grudge bout. He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded as if his mother was getting the best of it. He tried again.

“We’re at war now, Dad. I give these men the peeled rind of an excuse, they’ll go through your household guard here like Hoiran’s prick through a batch of virgin milkmaids.”

The lamplight and shadow shifted. Gingren stepped out behind his pikemen.

Ringil blinked.

For a moment he didn’t recognize the man before him, thought this was some aged, outlying member of house Eskiath, some great uncle he’d never met, family resemblance and all, but not…

Then, like a punch to the gut, he understood he was looking at his father after all. Understood how suddenly old Gingren had grown.

The corpulent warrior-gone-to-seed bulk that Gil remembered from only a couple of years ago was shrunken now, all but gone. The shoulders had slimmed down, were almost bony under the thin jerkin his father wore. Even Gingren’s thickened waist seemed to have lost most of its girth. The face, handsome in youth—though Gil had always hated to admit the fact—then more recently a little bloated with too much good living, was now lined and drawn, careworn beyond anything he could have imagined. It was hard to be sure in the poor light, but the set of the mouth seemed looser, too, the iron-gray hair whitened and thinned. Only the level flint gaze was the same as far as Gil could tell, and for that he was almost thankful.

“Ringil.” Twitching lips, Gingren mouthing his words like a crone before he spoke them. “What do you want? Have you come to slaughter us all, then? Hmm? Not content with dragging my name through the mud, now you come to spill Eskiath blood as well, in the halls of your own upbringing?”

“Hey! I’m not the one here who forgot what blood ties are, motherfucker!” His voice came out jagged and uncontrolled, and he saw Gingren flinch with it. “I haven’t sold my fucking soul for a place at the top table!”

“You broke the edicts!” There’s rage rising in his father’s voice too now, thin and desperate though it sounds. “You flouted the law!”

“Yeah—a law that takes the freedom of the city and snaps it like a twig for kindling. A law built by rich merchants to make themselves richer still, signed and ratified by their lickspittle political finger puppets up the hill, and falling—”

“You have no comprehension of these matters, Ringil! You—”

Trample it down. “—and falling without pity on the poorest citizens in the League. A law that took one of our own blood and made her a broken slave in a foreign land. Where was your precious fucking House of Eskiath honor when that happened, eh?”

“You burned down Elim Hinrik’s home! He died in that fire!”

“I’m not surprised. Both legs broken like that, he would have had a hard time getting out before it caught.” Suddenly, control was easy once more. He shrugged and examined his nails. “If he’d told me what I wanted to know, he might have lived.”

“You,” Gingren, breathing hard now. “Murdered a worthy merchant of Trelayne for no reason other than his part in a legal trade. And now you joke about it to my face? You are no son of mine! You never were!”

“Yes, that’s become increasingly clear to me over the last several years. Perhaps it’s something we need to talk to Mother about. Perhaps she felt the need for a more—”

“Ringil!”

Ishil Eskiath’s bright and haughty voice, like a crisp slap across the face. It shut him up the way nothing else ever could. He watched as she joined her husband behind the line of the men-at-arms, and his heart ached a little at the sight. He grimaced.

“I’m sorry, Mother. That was a bitchy crack.”

“Why are you here, Ringil?” she asked in that bright voice. “I don’t believe you intend to harm us, and I certainly don’t imagine you’ve come seeking forgiveness.”

“Right on both counts. I’m here for information, and then I’m gone.”

“I see.” Acid dripped in her tone. “And if we cannot furnish you with this information, what is to be our fate? Will you break our limbs, too, set the house afire and leave us to burn?”

He bit down on the ache, he put it away. “No, my lady, I will not. I have not forgotten my blood, even if my own father has. You have nothing to fear from me, or my men, if you can persuade yours to stand down and keep their cool.”

There was a longish pause. Gingren glowered. The pikemen looked uncertain. Then Ishil took two more firm steps forward, so she stood almost between the two men-at-arms with the staff lances.

“Stand down,” she said brusquely. “There’s no fight here.”

Gingren erupted. “Hoiran’s balls, woman, do you think I—”

“What I think, husband, is that I have absolutely no wish to see the family linen washed and aired in public this way. I would very much prefer to have our visitor inside and hear what he has to say in private.” A barbed look went at Gingren, impossible to miss even in this dim light. “It would be politic, husband, do you not think?”

Another creaking moment of uncertainty, during which the pikemen shot each other exasperated glances. Ringil saw the confusion, knew it for potentially lethal. He raised a very slow, very limp hand for his own men.

“Stand down,” he told them. “Let them see you mean it.”

He heard the exaggerated motions of the bowmen as they lowered their weapons and got back to their feet. Saw relief banner across the faces opposite him. He nodded amiably at the pikemen. Loosened his stance.

By the time Gingren picked up the beat, the tips of the pikes had already begun to droop.

“Stand down, then.” The command was snapped out, gruff and ungracious. “But your men stay out here, Ringil. And I’ll have that cursed blade of yours.”

“No, you won’t.”

Gingren drew himself up. “Then—”

“Husband,” said Ishil sharply, “would you be so kind as to lend me your arm and escort me back inside? I am quite faint from all this excitement.”

Gingren stared at his wife, mouth twitching. She looked evenly back. Finally, wordless, Gingren put out his arm, and Ishil took it with a languid gesture that Gil supposed just about passed for faintness. He saw smirks among the pikemen and surprised himself with a sudden stab of sympathy for his father.

Bit late for that, Gil.

And, very faintly, across the rain and stormy murk he’d brought down on the Glades, he heard the first of the screams.

INSIDE ESKIATH HOUSE, HE STOOD ITCHILY IN THE CENTER OF THE WESTern lounge, while his mother was seen to a completely unnecessary seat near the window and fanned by solicitous ladies in waiting. Gingren left her there like some task he was weary of attempting, went to the corner cabinet and poured himself a glass of something amber. Downed it in one, poured another, pointedly did not offer anything to Gil. They both acted as if the other was not in the room, until Creglir swept glaring through the door, apparently on course to grab Ringil by the throat.

“You fucking—”

“Creg!” The old snap of command in his father’s voice now; this was a son he knew he could manage. “Don’t you even think about it. I won’t have you brawling in front of your mother. Remember where you are, remember who you are. Is that clear?”

Creglir growled, but he backed off to the bookcase wall and contented himself with glaring murderously at his younger brother. It wasn’t much of a change from the last time Ringil saw him—they’d never really been able to stand each other. While Gil and Gingren junior had gotten on well enough, at least until the showdown at the Academy, and even after that maintained a kind of cordial mutual contempt, the thing with Creg was visceral and eternal. Maybe, unburdened by the eldest brother role that constrained Ging, Creglir had simply been able to give his competitive sibling urges free rein. Or maybe he genuinely felt the disgust for what Ringil was that he’d always professed to. Either way, they’d drawn blood from each other at an early age and never seen a reason to stop.

And certainly not now.

“Proud of yourself, little brother?” Creglir’s lip curled. “Bringing the enemy to our door, shaming your own mother in front of strangers and servants?”

Gil looked at him. “You want a spanking, Creg? I’m right here.”

He watched Creglir splutter and fume, knew he’d do nothing with their father’s leash applied. Curious to find the Dragonbane’s favored choice of words on his lips all of a sudden. Or not, because, well, there was a man who knew how to deal with difficult siblings.

“You faggot scum. If Mother weren’t in this room, I’d—”

“You’d die. That’s what you’d do. Now shut the fuck up while I talk to the grown-ups.” Ringil turned to Ishil. “You’d be well advised to stay inside for the next day or so, Mother. The men I have out there are the better behaved end of what I’ve brought to Trelayne.”

Ishil had already waved away her fanning, cooing ladies. Now she sat up straight in her chair, eyes intent on his, about as faint and flustered as a stooping hawk.

“What have you done, Ringil?” she asked quietly. “They told us you were dead. What have you brought down on us?”

“I’ve freed the hulk fleet convicts and brought them ashore.”

Creglir snorted. “Horseshit!”

A more general silence from the rest of the room. Creglir looked back and forth between his silent parents, neither of whom seemed to share his confidence.

“Well, I mean.” Hands spread, exasperated, but weaker of tone all of a sudden. “Seriously. How would he accomplish such a thing?”

“It’s done,” Ringil told them. “They are already in the city. The privateer Sharkmaster Wyr leads them, to the extent that a mob like that can be led. But mostly they are set to rampage at random. I imagine Harbor End is already overrun, perhaps Tervinala, too. And Wyr himself is loose in the Glades with the remains of his crew.”

“Are you—?” Gingren was gaping at him now, drink forgotten and spilling in his lowered hand. “Are you insane? Are you fucked in the head, Ringil? Have I raised a demon changeling in place of a son?”

“You have now, yeah.” He turned again to where Ishil sat. “You summoned me, Mother. You brought me back to find Sherin, to punish those who took her.”

“For the first part of which you were paid,” Ishil said severely. “Quite handsomely as I recall. And I do not recall asking you to punish anyone once Sherin was home.”

“No. Sherin asked for that herself.”

“Sherin Helirig is a stupid little trollop,” snarled Creglir, “without the wit or grace to marry well or bear children for her family name. She always was. Who cares what she wanted?”

“Apparently only me.”

“You rotted piece of—”

“That’s enough!” Ishil was on her feet, witch queen composed. “What’s done is done. And I imagine that this ingenious riot you’ve set, Ringil, cannot last much beyond morning. A mob of half-starved criminal wretches surely won’t present much challenge to the Watch once we have light and the true nature of the threat is understood.”

“Too right,” Creglir sneered. “The Watch is going to make chopped hound feed out of that scum. Just you watch it happen, brother.”

“I don’t expect to be here long enough. That’s not why I came.”

Distant shrieking came faintly through the half-open windows of the lounge. Both Gingren and Creglir hurried to the glass and stared out at the rain-peppered darkness. Behind their backs, Ishil seemed unmoved. Ringil wondered if she’d already heard earlier, fainter cries, and said nothing. He met her eyes, looking for signs, and though her face was otherwise unreadable, he thought for just a moment that he saw a smile touch the corners of her mouth and eyes. He thought he saw sadness there, and something like pity.

And maybe love. He couldn’t be sure.

And then it was gone.

“There’s red in the sky,” said Gingren grimly. “Something’s burning out there.”

“That’s Wrathrill House, Dad. Got to be.” A shocked, accusing look on Creglir’s face as he swung round to stare at Gil. “Hoiran’s balls, he was telling the truth!”

“Glad we got that sorted out.”

Gingren rounded on him, voice harnessed to some vestige of the colossal paternal rages Gil remembered from his youth. “You think this is funny? You let degenerate convict scum into the city of your birth to pillage and rape and burn like this, and you laugh?”

“Well, look at it this way, Dad. I doubt they’ll do anything that hasn’t already been done to them.”

Almost, Gingren went for him then, and with a shock that was like sudden sickness, Gil realized he wasn’t ready for it. Creg, he’d chop down as soon as look at, he’d speak a glyph and watch his brother drop and strangle to death on the floor with nothing but joy. But Gingren, his worn-down, sold-out, defeated father…

“We are getting nowhere,” Ishil said evenly. “We have our son’s word for the damage he’s done, and I for one never doubted it. The question is, Ringil, what it will take to make you go away again? You say you are here for information. What information?”

“The prisoners brought back from Ornley. My colleagues from the expedition. I want to know where they’re being held, and I want them released to me.”

Ishil glanced at Gingren. “Husband?”

Gingren ignored her. He was still looking wonderingly at Ringil. “You came all the way here for that? Did all this? For imperials?”

“They are my friends.”

His father nodded, mouth tight. The same slow-brewing, disgusted understanding as that first time he’d caught Gil in Jelim Dasnal’s arms in the stables. “Yes. Well, your friends are no longer held under Chancellery guard. They were transferred a week ago. All bar the rank and file, that is—those we interrogated on arrival and then executed as prisoners of war.”

“Transferred where? By whose order?”

“Into Etterkal.”

Ringil’s turn to nod. “Findrich. He knew I was coming.”

“Don’t be bloody ridiculous. How could he know that?”

“Oh, Dad. They really have kept you to the fringes of this, haven’t they?” And there it was again—the sudden, unlooked-for stab of pity for what Gingren had become. “Did you really sell yourself so cheap, Dad? Have they really told you nothing of what lies behind the cabal?”

“I do not ask such questions,” his father said stiffly. “Because I do not care. I am a soldier, not a politician. Enough that Findrich and his kind represent the spine and ambition the rest of the Chancellery cannot muster. Enough that they’ll lead us to a clean victory over Yhelteth this time, and not just one more mucky compromise.”

“Just like the battle hymn says, eh?”

“Fuck you, Gil, you traitorous piece of—”

Creglir’s voice dried up as Ringil swung to face him. Gil, eyes gone blank, left hand rising, cocked and crooked…

He saw, out of the corner of his eye, the look on his mother’s face. Heard the husked murmur of her voice—Gil, please don’t—perhaps only in his mind, and his hand fell back as if of its own accord, as if severed of all nerve and sinew by some ax blow to the arm. He quelled the rising glyph, stubbed it out like a krin twig ember in the fold of his palm. He stared his brother down.

“You’re in luck,” he said drably when Creglir had looked away. “For a moment there, I forgot she’s your mother, too.”

Gingren stepped in, some threadbare vestige of previous command in stance and tone. He was trying to thrust out his chest.

“You will leave now, outcast. Degenerate. Hmm? Stain, yes, pus-seeping stain on my family’s honor. You will leave us now in peace.”

His voice trembled and cracked on the attempted rage, scaled to something that rang more like some desperate plea.

Gil nodded. Found a smile and put it on.

“Yeah, I’m going. Good luck with your clean victory, Dad. You keep me posted, let me know how that works out. Mother—always a pleasure, your beauty never fades.”

“Ringil,” she said, very softly.

He stepped toward her and she raised one languid arm from where she sat. He bowed his head, took her fingers loosely in his, brushed his lips across the back of her hand. It was a touch as formal as the scratch of quill on vellum, as dry and cold as broom twigs. But in the moment of the kiss, her fingers folded and clenched fiercely on his, and for the time it took, they tugged hard against each other like a climber pulling his fellow up dangling out of some bottomless crevasse.

He never knew, then or ever after, which of them was the rescuer and which hung dangling over the drop.

The grip parted. She let him go. He straightened and cleared his throat.

“As I said, you’d all better stay inside and have your men-at-arms maintain a perimeter, at least until noon. I told Wyr to stay away from this place, and I think he’ll honor that. But I can’t answer for the rest.” He looked Ishil in the eye, voice momentarily low. “Good-bye.”

Then he turned and left them with each other.

Strode out of Eskiath House, into the rain and dark to gather his men. Smudges of ruddy light on the low-bellied murky sky, just as his father had claimed, as the first of the Glades mansions burned.

CHAPTER 47

In the tunnel, Selak Chan gave Archeth back the lead with evident relief. He’d already dropped a good twenty feet back from the fire sprite, ground she started to pick up again immediately. Her professions of confidence about their safety were hollow, she had no idea what was down here, but the one thin faith she had was in the sprite’s concern for their well-being.

They marched in silence for a few minutes before Chan came up close on her shoulder and broke into the rhythmic clanking echo of feet on the latticed metal.

“My lady, we have been walking for… some hundreds of yards now.”

“Yes. And?” Impatiently, because her ghosts had followed her into the simple, vectored promise of the tunnel and didn’t look like leaving her alone anytime soon.

“And it was only forty or fifty yards back to the edge of the pit, my lady. Sixty at the very most.”

“That’s…” Undeniably true, Archidi.

She fought down the urge to jam to a halt right there. Let her pace ebb a little instead, glanced back over her shoulder with every appearance of casual unconcern. Chan’s expression was tight in the striping orange glow, not yet afraid but not far off it. Behind him, she saw other queasy faces in the same flickering light, all struggling to fight down their fear. She faced forward again, before they could catch anything in her own features that she didn’t want them to see. She summoned a noncommittal grunt.

“Is this some Kiriath sorcery, my lady?”

“Yes, it is,” she said airily. “Nothing you need to worry about. My people were skilled in working with the forces that hold us to the Earth, in, uh, bending them, to suit their purposes, you see.”

“Then.” Chan cleared his throat. “Where are we, my lady?”

“We are in the shaft.” She fervently hoped. “We are walking downward into it. But the tunnel, uhm, saves us from the fall that would entail. You understand?”

A brief pause, filled thankfully by the iron tramp of their feet.

“Is it then the same, my lady, as the magic that raised the elevator in An-Kirilnar?”

“Uhm—yeah. Pretty much.”

“And so…” Dubiously. “We cannot fall, then?”

“No, no—impossible.” She grimaced to herself, into the gloom of the tunnel ahead… below… whatever. “Can’t happen. The, ah, the powers at work here would not permit anything like that to befall us.”

“Should I tell the other men of this, my lady?”

“Good idea, yes. Pass it on back.” Maybe you’ll sound a bit more convincing than I do.

She affected not to listen as the murmur went back along the file, the troubled low surf of voices it provoked. Tried not to worry how deep this pit might actually be, how far they might in fact fall—face forward, into poorly lit darkness—if it turned out she was as full of shit as she felt.

NO WAY TO RECKON TIME EFFECTIVELY IN THE ORANGE-LIT GLOOM, BUT she thought it was getting on for an hour before they saw a brightening ahead. They were not at marching pace—despite his protestations, Kanan Shent’s wounds were slowing him down, and there were others in the company who’d taken damage in the skirmish the day before as well—but however you looked at it, they must be at least a couple of miles deep in the earth by now.

Yeah, well. Got delvings at Monal go deeper than that.

Truth to tell, although the sheer scale of the pit’s construction and the magic of the tunnel made some impression on her, none of it hit that hard. She was, in the end, Kiriath in instinct and upbringing both. Going underground was what her people did.

The patch of brighter light resolved into a doorway, similar in outline to the one that had cracked open for them on the surface. The sprite went through without hesitation, hung there expectantly on the other side.

Well, what else are we going to do? Turn around and go back?

Archeth stepped gingerly through the opening. Found herself in a huge chamber whose walls were raw rock sealed behind some kind of glassy resin and rose into a dim vaulted space overhead filled with angular iron structure and dangling cables. She felt an easing go through her at the sight. Familiar ground. They coated the tunnels and shafts at An-Monal pretty much the same way. In fact, this might easily have been—she glanced around at the piled iron junk that crammed the chamber on all sides—any storage hall in the dry dock complex at Monal’s volcanic harbor. It certainly held the same chaotic assortment of discarded gear.

Chan and the others came hesitantly through, peering about them in awe. They stared upward into the gloom, they shielded their eyes from the light. She heard a couple of stifled oaths. It wasn’t that the hall’s illumination was much different from that in the tunnel, but there was a lot more of it to go around. Broad, glowing patches and veins pulsed in the resin—and she saw more of them blinking to life, in response, she supposed, to their arrival—throwing down a warm, orange-gold radiance that felt almost like being back home on the sunset-drenched streets of Yhelteth an hour before summer dusk. The same soft heat in the air as well—she looked down and saw the transparent resin surface underfoot, knelt to touch it with one hand and felt the warmth seeping through. The rock itself, she knew from experience at An-Monal, would be hot enough to burn flesh at this depth, but the resin did double duty, providing safety insulation and structural support in one simply brewed substance.

Flicker of motion in the corner of her eye—the fire sprite drifting suddenly upward toward some notional center of the space they were in, a couple of dozen yards off the ground. Archeth straightened up slowly to look, saw the sprite flatten and fatten itself until it became a perfect globe, then begin to slowly rotate. At the same time, the constant undulating ripples along its sides that had so resembled stubby, gesturing limbs of flame during the trek now damped away to a barely visible trembling line, a restless equator that swept back and forth around the spherical surface, as if in search of something.

“My lady?” Kanan Shent, possessively attentive at her side, as he’d been since the dragon went down.

She nodded. “Yeah, I see it. Get the impression this might be journey’s end.”

“So, then—humans.”

The Helmsman’s voice—sonorous High Kir tones booming from the ceiling somewhere, undercut as ever with slightly hysterical good cheer—unmistakable as anything else. A grim smile twitched momentarily at Archeth’s mouth, then was gone.

She stepped out, away from Shent and the others. “Take a closer look, Helmsman. I am kir-Archeth of clan Indamaninarmal, custodian regent at An-Monal, and last remaining executor of the Kiriath Mission. The Warhelm Tharalanangharst sends me to you.”

“Yes. With humans.”

“Is that going to be a problem?” she snapped.

“Not for me.”

Apparently content with this riposte, the Helmsman fell silent. The fire sprite came drifting gently down toward them, squeezing itself back into its former shape. Shrieking iron machinery awoke in the vault above, the same bright flurry of sparks through the gloom that she’d seen with Egar on the retrieval decks at An-Kirilnar when the hoists jerked to unaccustomed life. She saw something huge and tentacular swing sluggishly into motion at one end of the hall’s roof space. Thought she recognized it.

Sharp indrawn breaths behind her, the multiple rasp of drawn steel. She lifted a hand to stop the panic before it got started.

“Stand down.” Still absently speaking High Kir—get a grip, Archidi. She dropped back into Tethanne. “Stand down, all of you. There’s nothing to worry about here.”

The tentacular thing swung down out of the shadows, was revealed as nothing more alarming—to Archeth, anyway—than a straightforward craning appendage running on an iron track across the vaulted roof. It hovered for a moment over the seemingly random strew and stack of dark iron equipment that bulked fifty feet high at the far end of the hall. Then the various articulated arms plunged down as one and commenced rooting around with clanging abandon in the mess. They tilted and upended containers the size of small ships, rearranged huge stacked sheets of alloy material to clear space, lifted and set aside big bulky devices of unguessable function. There seemed to be no rationale to the process, and the noise it made was deafening.

“Have we angered it, my lady?” Shent shouted in her ear.

She shook her head, still watching. “It’s just looking for something.”

In the end, the crane retrieved three items from the piles it was searching through and backed off, seemingly satisfied. It brought its haul forward up the hall on its track, screeching and showering sparks as it came—a lengthy coil of what looked like giant metallic intestines, a dome-topped circular container nearly thirty feet across and at least the same in height, and a device that reminded Archeth of nothing so much as a huge, stiff-winged gold metal bat, balancing a dull gray fruit dish on its head.

The crane paused when it got closer to them. Three of its arrayed arms set the container down on its flat side, so delicately it barely made a sound on impact. Another two manoeuvred one end of the intestinal metallic tube into a connecting position somewhere on the dome’s curve. Colors awoke on the surface of the container, swirled giddily about, and then condensed to a single iridescent patch, directly under the poised end of the tube. The patch brightened until it was too dazzling to look at directly, there was a sharp, violent hissing and a pop, and then the glare faded out, leaving blotches on Archeth’s vision. Where the light had been, an opening now waited in the alloy dome, perfectly smooth and apparently a perfect fit for the metallic gut end held over it. The crane’s arms slid the tube into place and it sealed there with another brief rotating flare. The arms pulled back, and then the whole crane was rising, retreating upward, carrying the other end of the intestinal coil and the huge gold-winged bat and dish device with it, back up into the shadowed reaches of the roof space.

The grinding and showering of sparks stopped.

They all stood staring at the container, waiting. Archeth felt their glances on her. She cleared her throat.

“We require passage via your, ah, aerial conveyance, to—”

“Yes, I am already aware of your situation. The Warhelm’s messenger has not only brought you here, it has brought specific instructions as well. Observe.”

The swirl of color awoke once more on the domed container’s surface, converged once more into a single brilliant blotch. Where it faded out, there was a narrow doorway. The fire sprite darted forward, hovered a moment in the freshly made entrance, then slipped inside.

Archeth frowned. “What is this?”

“The next stage of your journey. Lead your human companions inside, and we will begin.”

She hesitated. Something about that narrow aperture that she didn’t like, some vague misgivings about the confinement…

Come on, Archidi—you just marched directly down the side of a cliff over a mile deep, with no more effort than strolling up the Boulevard of the Ineffable Divine. You came here behind an animate campfire flame that watches over you with a mother’s care. The only time you came to harm was when you ignored instructions.

Time to stop second-guessing your father’s antique servant spirits from the void, and just get in the saddle.

She glanced around at the men at her back.

“With me,” she said, and led them through the narrow doorway into the space beyond.

INSIDE, IT WAS WARM AND A PEARLY GRAY LIGHT SUFFUSED THE AIR. THE dome curved over their heads and showed scurrying smears of color—faint trace repetition of the swirl she’d seen on the outside, pink and gold, pale orange, bluish tinges out of the gray. The curving surface seemed less like a solid roof now and more like some low and limited dawning sky. The doorway’s edges flared and radiated bright white fire as the last man passed inside, the glare filled the entrance and spread beyond. When it inked out again, the wall was whole, so smooth you could not have told where exactly the door once was.

Distant gurgling, echoing off the curve of the enclosing walls.

They all heard it. She traded a wary glance with Shent and Chan, followed the injured Throne Eternal’s gaze up to where the opening to the intestinal tube gaped above them in the dome. The gurgling built, gathering force, became a hollow roar piping down from that hole. The men around her stared upward in united, dawning horror. She heard a bitten off curse in Tethanne. A sick certainty came and kicked her in the pit of her stomach.

In the center of the container space, the fire sprite flickered and went out.

The opening over their heads seemed to explode. Fluid burst into the chamber like a waterfall in full spate, crashed down with brutal force on their heads, knocked more than one of the company to the floor.

Somehow, Archeth stayed upright. She floundered through liquid—it was not water, it was thicker, more viscous stuff—already to her knees, to where Kanan Shent had gone over and was flailing to get back on his feet. She grabbed his arm and hauled him toward one side of the container, out of the immediate blast of liquid from above. She helped him upright, braced herself against the curve of the chamber wall. Dinning thunder of the flood in her ears, the Throne Eternal was shouting something at her, but she couldn’t make out the words in the roar. Around her, there was yelling and the sound of desperate thrashing to stay afloat.

“Motherfucker!” she screamed at the domed ceiling. “What are you doing?”

“I am protecting you to the best of my ability.” The Helmsman’s voice cuddled into her ear, as intimate as if it spoke from just behind her, as low as if they stood in some museum quiet instead of the thundering chaos of the drowning chamber. “Exactly as the Warhelm has ordered. Do not be concerned.”

Her feet left the floor, the viscous fluid buoyed her up. The container had filled to over half its height in less time than it took to mount and settle a restless horse. Through the massive surge, the heavy slop and splash of fluid into her eyes, she saw the level boiling upward, taking them all toward the domed roof above.

“We did not build for humans here,” the Helmsman added, as if in afterthought. “We built to win the war.”

“Fuck y—”

And her mouth filled with fluid she must spit violently out. It tasted faintly metallic, almost like blood, but cold. She felt herself swallow some, coughed and spluttered to get it back up. And then she must abandon anything except the attempt to keep her head above the rising fluid level. The men around her had stopped shouting and were focused grimly on treading water as best they could, but it was a hopeless battle. The curve of the dome was crowding them inward, tangling them up in each other’s limbs, and the waterfall blast from the opening above turned the remaining space as much into churning fluid as air. She heard a single intense screaming above the general roar, had time, briefly, in her own struggle to cast about and see Yilmar Kaptal, mouth gaping wide around the shrieks that poured out of him, some deeply buried memory of how he had died before perhaps torn loose and back to haunt him in his final moments. He took a mouthful, his screams turned gagging, his eyes went wide in horror, and down he went amid the close-packed, bobbing heads. He didn’t come up again.

The ceiling bumped her head, forced her facedown into the fluid. She kicked upward, hard, banged her head again. Tried to claw her way through the press of struggling bodies, closer to the center of the dome. Rational thought was gone; she fought blindly for one more lungful of air. Someone clouted her, an elbow caught her in the neck. She hit back, hampered by the heavy drag of the fluid. A panicked grip hauled hard on her shoulder, shoved her down into the chaos of tangling, kicking limbs beneath the surface. In the instant it happened, she tried to breathe, took in fluid instead. A foot hooked her in the stomach, she gagged, another foot scraped across her face, trod her down. Fluid cramming into her throat and lungs and stomach, pressing on her eyeballs, dimming sight. She grabbed weakly at something, an ankle maybe, felt her grip slip. Felt herself falling away.

A weird, metallic-tasting calm came to collect her then. It slowed her churning limbs, took strength from her muscles, closed her eyes.

Wiped her away.

CHAPTER 48

Etterkal without river transport was a stiff march across town, and they didn’t have a lot of time to do it in. Ishil had been pretty astute in her assessment of the situation. The chaos and panic he’d sown might last a couple of hours past dawn if they were lucky, but after that Sharkmaster Wyr and his starveling associates were done. Gil had seen Trelayne on a war footing before and he knew what it meant—the city was going to be stuffed full of freshly levied troops waiting to ship out south, and the Watch would have been bulked up, too. There’d be more than enough loose iron in town to put down this half-arsed rampage, and the Watch’s embarrassment at quite how easily they’d all been panicked would only add to the savagery with which it was done.

He had to be long gone by then.

They passed Wrathrill house, now well alight, gave it a wide berth to their left. Screams in the night, shouting and gusts of coarse laughter, a vague sense of siege seen through the intervening trees. Figures capered about outside, silhouetted black against the fire, or appeared at windows in the upper stories, throwing things out. The west wing was wrapped in flames to the roof, would not be long in coming down. As they left it behind, the glow lit their way, painted long dancing tongues of yellow light and shadow on the path ahead.

“You think they’ll stop with that one?” Klithren asked him.

Ringil shot him a glance. “Would you?”

“Well. They’ll have found booze in there by now, probably a lot of it. Women, food. Finery to cavort in.”

“And weapons. They’ll have a lot more weapons now.”

Across the Glades then, and out, into the genteel avenues of neighboring Linardin, a kind of antechamber for audience in the ruling district they’d just left—merchants and shipmasters on their way up rubbed shoulders here with Glades scions waiting on inheritance and the higher ranking among the Chancellery’s officials, all of them yearning toward the riverside opulence of the Glades itself and imitating it as best they could. Linardin was curving, tree-lined boulevards and facing rows of modest little mansions sat side by side in grounds barely worthy of the name, like so many portly matrons squatting in bathtubs made for infants. Gingren junior and Creglir both had places here, which just about said it all.

They double-timed along the avenues, wet slapping rhythm of booted feet on the rain-drenched boulevard paving, and night watchmen came hurrying to the locked iron gates of each property, peering out between the bars. Some would be veterans of the war no doubt, and might recognize imperial garb when they saw it; most would simply register the arms and armor, and assume this was a levy troop for the war, marching to muster somewhere and likely lost in the filthy weather. Nobody, in any case, showed any inclination to come out from behind their gates and find out what was going on for sure.

“Anasharal? You listening?”

“Always.” The Helmsman’s voice at his ear, with immediate, unnerving intimacy.

“There’s been a change of plan.” Breathing hard with the pace of the march. “Tell Hald and Nyanar they won’t need to come upriver after all. The captives have been moved to the Salt Warren, and I’m on my way there now. We’ll come out through Tervinala and see you at Outlander’s wharf, by the eastern harbor wall.”

“Will they know where that is?”

“Believe it or not, they call it the eastern wall for a reason. Even Nyanar ought to be able to work out which way is east.” Ringil did brief logistics in his head. “This is going to take a good few hours, so don’t look for us anytime soon. Stay out of the harbor, it’s got to be chaos in there by now. Stand well off from the walls, drop anchor in the delta, and don’t engage anyone unless they come looking for it. And have boats ready to lower. We’ll likely be in a hurry when we come.”

“I will convey your instructions. Will there be anything else?”

“Not right now, no.” He found time to grin. “But don’t go anywhere.”

Linardin’s mansion rows fell behind, became the tenement-lined streets of Kellil. Still a well-to-do neighborhood compared to the districts near Harbor End, but this was no longer the home of anything you’d call actual wealth. Around here, you worked for a living, and staying out of the weather just because it was unpleasant ceased to be an option. For the first time, they started to see substantial numbers of people in the streets, despite the hammering rain. Delivery carts and handbarrows were in evidence here and there, horses and haulers trudging alike through pothole puddles or standing patiently in the downpour while other men loaded or unloaded what they carried. Taverns and shops spilled customers onto the streets, breathed others in. Individual men and women hurried on errands that the rain would not excuse. Urchins and whores and young thugs schooled enough in subtlety not to get chased out of the neighborhood stood under doorway lintels, watching the deluge with bleak, empty eyes.

No sign of the Watch, but that wasn’t unusual in weather like this; Ringil was willing to bet they’d be found in the nearest tavern, warm and dry and cadging drinks.

Or they’ve already been pulled to Harbor End to fight the flames.

But he didn’t think that was likely. The streets they were on showed no signs of the panic you’d expect, once word of the assault got out. In the meantime, the drilled tramp of their passage drew some inevitable attention along the way, but nothing that caused any fuss. People heard the boots, turned and looked, but did nothing much else. The rain drew a curtain across their interest, kept vision indistinct. Now and then, men cheered at them with damp martial fervor, but mostly it was just pointing and muttering. And once a female urchin ran up and stole a kiss from Noyal Rakan, much to the amusement of everyone watching. Ringil turned casually, left hand cocked for the choking glyph, in case the girl registered the Throne Eternal’s dark, hawkish features and made him for the alien he was. But either the urchin was used to southern-looking men—to be fair, Rakan could just about have passed for mercenary talent out of Hinerion or Baldaran—or she didn’t care. She dropped back from the kiss, which she’d had to stand on tiptoe to get, and ran back to her friends where they sheltered under a wine merchant’s eaves. There was some more cheering.

“Wave and grin,” said Ringil behind his lips. “Everybody loves you.”

Rakan mustered a weak smile, a gallant twirl of the wrist and arm for his young admirer, and they marched hurriedly on. The incident washed away in their wake. Ringil realized he’d been holding his breath, and let it out with relief. Klithren drew in nearer to his side.

“That was too fucking close for comfort,” he muttered, hand still resting on the hilt of the short-sword at his hip.

“Relax, Hinerion. Nearly there now.”

At which point, more or less, their luck ran out.

THE TAVERN WAS CALLED THE LIZARD’S HEAD—ABOUT THE FOURTH OR fifth they’d passed so far of that name—and displayed a lumpy, misshapen chunk of something in a cage hung out from the wall on an iron bracket. It might have been a mummified Scaled Folk skull, it might not, but it was a clear sign they were getting close to Etterkal. Nice neighborhoods didn’t go in for that sort of thing anymore—you’d get a painted sign, or maybe a carved wooden likeness, but real rotting flesh and bone was frowned on these days where people ate and drank. The Salt Warren, on the other hand, didn’t much care about social norms—it catered to appetite, pure and simple, and if you didn’t like that, well, you could always stay at home. If veterans of the war wanted to drink someplace where no prissy veil was drawn across the savage times they’d lived through and survived, then Etterkal would offer that place, and places like it on any given corner, until the demand was well and truly met.

Ringil cast about for street signs, a name he’d maybe know. It was a decade or more since he’d been in this part of town, and nothing looked familiar. On previous occasions, he’d preferred to hit the Salt Warren from the other side, using the crooked thoroughfares and teeming outlander populace of Tervinala for fallback. Thing was, you could always lose yourself in the diplomatic quarter, you could hide in its exotic churn of visiting foreign dignitaries, embassy mission staff and merchants from far flung places. By comparison, an assault through well-to-do, nosy neighbored Kellil made no kind of sense for anyone with the twin luxuries of time and well-laid plans.

Yeah, pity we don’t have much of either this time around.

Thus forced to it, his navigation had been haphazard, based on a mix of vague recall and compass instinct. But he guessed they couldn’t be far off Caravan Master’s Rise, where it swept up from the city’s Eastern Gate like the edge of a scimitar blade, cutting what amounted to the formal boundary between Etterkal and Kellil. Ringil didn’t know if the Salt Warren still ran Watch barricades and braziers along its nominal borders. It certainly had the last time he crossed over, but now, with the war to focus attention outward…

The tavern door cracked inward, and a tongue of yellow lamplight ran out into the street. A small knot of men reeled out, stood blinking in the slash and splatter of the rain.

“Hoo, look at that!”

“Salute for the brave troops, lads!”

“Yeah, all hail th—” Spluttering out to a sudden, spiking yell. “Fuck! Girt, hoy, look! That’s… that’s fucking imperial rig!”

Ringil already turning, some predictive grasp of what was coming already in his mind. He cast the choking glyph at the man who’d made them, saw him clutch at his throat and stagger. Too late, though, far too late. The others went for weapons.

“Southern scourge! Southern scourge!”

“Empire’s here! Stand to arms!”

They were soldiers, or had been once. No flinch in stance or voice, and the motley assortment of short blades and blunt instruments they carried were brandished with a canny economy of intent. Ringil made hasty count—nine of them, not counting the one choking to death on the cobbled ground, and two at the back already ducking back inside to raise further hue and cry. They were all clearly drunk, but they shed that inconvenience like a split shield. They came straight in, swinging and roaring.

Gil met the first of them with empty hands, no time for spells, no time even to get the Ravensfriend off his back or Eg’s dragon-tooth dagger down out of his sleeve. The man had a club fashioned from the business end of a boathook, evil rusted metal claw backed with a yard of seasoned oak, and he swung the whole thing one-handed from about a third of the way down the shaft. Ringil took the blow on a rolling, rising forearm block, snapped a grip on the shaft with his left hand, and wrestled his attacker for possession. The rusted hook dipped and slashed, nearly took out his eye, left a scrape down one cheek instead. He pivoted about and let the other man’s momentum carry him past, kicked down savagely at the back of one knee, collapsed the League veteran to the floor. A marine stepped in obligingly with a mace, smashed the back of the man’s head open where he lay.

Ringil was already spinning back to face the tavern door and the source of the attack. Around him, the other veterans were locked in desperate, uneven struggle with his men—seven on twenty-four, even allowing for the relative youth and inexperience of most of the imperials, was no kind of fight that could last. But through that door might be any number of similarly hardened survivors of the war, not to mention serving maids, tap boys, whores and their customers, pimps and barmen, some of whom might right now be scrambling out through some other exit to raise a more general alarm…

He strode to the door, ducked beneath the lintel, and stepped into lamplit chaos. Men clambering over trestles to get to their fellows or maybe to weapons held behind the bar, others being shaken awake from a drunken doze. Serving maids and boys recoiling, grabbing tableware before it could be knocked to the floor and shattered. Shrieks. A pimp, flapping his arms at his whores like a panicked hen, trying perhaps to gather in his wards and ferry them out the back. A barkeep, cleaver in hand, glaring—

“Good evening,” Gil said. “All of you, sit down.”

The ikinri ‘ska snaked out among them, like lightning forked across a steppe sky, like veins through the back of an aged hand. Most of them sat, dropped back into their seats like stones, or hurried back to where they’d been. Some few were strong-willed enough to resist, or maybe just hard of hearing enough to miss the command. No time to worry about that. He sketched a claw at the beamed ceiling, made the bowed wooden members creak and groan, tore down one entire beam by its woodworm hollowed end. Plaster exploded in the close yellowish air, the roof sagged, the beam end crashed to the floor. Yelps and screams, and thick clouds of downward-sifting dust. With his other hand, he made a sweeping gesture, coughed a glyph that swept lamps and candles off table tops across the room. Flame flew, splashed and glinted to the floor, kindled in the straw underfoot.

Someone ran at him. The barkeep with the cleaver, bellowing rage—

“Broken,” he hissed, and the man shrieked as his forearm snapped, midway to the elbow, with an audible crunch. The cleaver flew loose, clattered on the floor.

I see what you could become if you’d only let yourself.

Not long ago, this much magic would have tired him. Now, each glyph felt like the flex of a muscle just warming up, like preparatory swashing motions with the Ravensfriend before any real duel began, building strength and focus, feeding a rising fire…

Better, a clicking, rasping voice whispers at his ear. You have an appetite for it after all. Let us see then, what we can do with the raw material at root…

And for just a naked second—the high stone altar on the screaming, empty plain, the figure crouched there over him, blur of tentacular limbs and the tools they hold, and he’s pinned, he’s—

No, no, let’s not go back there, Gil.

He blinked back to the burning tavern, flames waist high now across the interior, the air clogged with smoke, and most of the crowd was concerned with nothing more than getting away from the fire and the terrible figure in the doorway that had called it down. Through smoke and wavering heated air, he glimpsed a few stolid figures still sat where he’d ordered them, apparently ready to stay there and burn to death rather than break the spell he’d laid on them. But the rest was screaming panic.

He turned away, ducked back outside into cooler air and the rain.

Out in the street, his men had finished the veterans and stood over their slaughtered remains, looking at him expectantly. No one seemed to have collected worse than scrapes and bruises. He gestured at the tavern, the merry flicker and glow through its door and windows, the crackling and the screams within.

“That should keep everyone around here pretty busy. Means we’re covered to the rear. Let’s pick it up, gentlemen.”

They hit Caravan Master’s Rise a couple of cross streets later. There was a barricade set and two braziers smoldering weakly in the downpour, but the post was unmanned, the Watch pulled away, likely to Harbor End. Ringil checked for street names on the Etterkal side, found one he knew well enough to plan a route by.

Findrich’s place was less than ten minutes away.

CHAPTER 49

Soft, insistent hushing, like a whole roomful of mothers trying to soothe their infant offspring to sleep. Her clothes were waterlogged, cool and damp against her skin.

Raining?

It was not. She opened one eye, squinting against brightness. A hollow blue sky vaulted high overhead; nothing fell out of it but sunlight. The only visible cloud was in thin white striated layers, high up at the top of all that azure expanse. Beyond, and angled slanting across the dome of blue, the band made a warm golden hoop, fading in from nothing at one side to a sharp scimitar edge at the other. And she was warm, too, despite her soaked clothing, despite the lack of any apparent shelter and the wind that…

…sifted hushing through the long steppe grass she lay in. That was the noise, that was the—

She was out on the steppe.

She sat up with a jolt, and the last several weeks came down on her like a landslide. Failure and fury in Ornley, the wreck of the quest; Klithren’s privateers, the sudden new war; captivity, the storm; An-Kirilnar and the Warhelm, the march on the ancient shattered city, reptile peons, warrior caste lizards, the dragon, the death of Egar—a tight, hurt noise in her throat as the grief fell on her anew—the arcane tunnel into the pit and the cryptic, murderous Helmsman that dwelled there…

Except… you’re not murdered, Archidi.

In fact—

It dawned on her that she felt good, impossibly good, impossibly whole. Better than she had done in months, maybe in years. The stitching in her side no longer nagged with pain, there was just the deep itch of healing tissue. The myriad aches and pains she’d collected crossing the Wastes were gone. Even the remembered grief at Egar’s death couldn’t blunt the sense of well-being that suffused her.

She yawned and stretched against a soft, pleasing ache through the muscles in her lower back. She was hungry, she noticed, but it was mild, it was appetite, not grinding need. Her head was clear and clean, her thoughts unfogged by any residue of krinzanz or recrimination. Curtains of grass nodded gently around her with the breeze, rose higher than her head, blocked out clear view of anything but the sky. She felt nested there, cozy, but ready to move sometime soon. She wanted to explore, to understand what had happened. Felt strong and eager to start, with none of the clenched desperation that usually came when she drew on that strength.

Weird.

Like waking late one sun-soaked morning beside Ishgrim’s sleeping form, knowing they had the whole day to themselves.

I’m coming home, Ish, she knew with perfect calm. Nothing going to stop me now.

She clambered to her feet and stood in the waist-high grass, trying to get her bearings. Tried to squeeze the wet out of one sleeve with her fist, got a scant few drops for her trouble—her clothing was drying out far faster than you’d expect, and when she held the sleeve up and sniffed it, there was a faint medicinal reek underlying the damp. She shrugged, put out the arm at waist height, and brushed idly with the palm of her hand at the swaying surface of the grass around her. The steppe stretched away in all directions, as undistinguished as an ocean. No features to the landscape, or at least none that her unaccustomed eye could—

She stopped in midturn, staring.

The structure loomed behind her; it couldn’t be more than fifty yards away in the grass, and for a few moments she couldn’t work out what she was looking at. Towering broken curve twenty or thirty feet high, cavernous empty interior shadowed from the sun, like a two-thirds part of some colossal smashed earthenware tankard left rolling in the straw on a tavern floor. It gleamed wetly inside, seemed to have some woven texture to it, exposed at the oddly softened edges where…

Was it melting?

Archeth narrowed her eyes, gave up trying to guess, and made her way through the sighing grass toward the structure. She knew what it was now—recalled the dimensions of the drowning chamber they’d been hustled into by the Helmsman, made the match, could not accept this as coincidence. But how that solid alloy dome became this overturned, soft-edged shell was still beyond her. She reached the area of crushed—and, she now saw, scorched—grass where the shattered artifact lay. Saw a similarly burned and flattened trail leading up what she now understood was a slight incline, at whose brow the…

Shell? Chamber?

…had stopped… rolling?

“Ah, daughter of Flaradnam. What plans they have for you now.”

Acrid chemical whiff on the breeze, and the words whispered in her ear as if the wind itself had been given sudden voice—she spun about and found herself five feet away from a figure in a slouch hat and patched sea captain’s cloak.

“Who—” Quarterless, there in her right hand like a dream. She blinked at it, had no recollection of pulling the blade at all. “Who the fuck are you?”

The cloaked figure nodded at her knife-filled hand. “That’s very impressive. Can you do it with all of them at once yet?”

She brandished the knife. “I asked you a fucking question.”

“Yes. Not very politely, though. I believe if you make just a touch more effort, you’ll find you already know who I am. Ah—there you go.”

As if he’d parted a curtain for her in the back of her mind. The Dragonbane’s words, two years ago in the garden of a Pranderghal tavern, the faint chill that seemed to come on the breeze as he spoke. He’s from all the places the ocean will always be heard. Cavorts with mermaids in the surf and so forth. Cloak and hat’s like a symbol for it.

Takavach. Lord of the Salt Wind.

“You’re the fuck that poisoned my horse?”

Beneath the hat brim, she thought the eyes kindled like tiny flames. “Don’t push your luck, kir-Archeth Indamaninarmal. You’re not exactly popular with the Dark Court right now.”

“Then what do you want?”

“Oh, well, I don’t know. How about a little respect? Yes, that’d be nice, now I come to think about it. Under the circumstances. Not too much to ask, is it? Mutual respect, one immortal being to another?”

Archeth shrugged. “Respect is earned.”

“Earned?” It came out a whisper, built rapidly to a rasping fury. “Fucking earned? You cheeky half-blood bitch. You know what? I give up. No, I’m done. Really. This is too hard. It isn’t fucking worth it. Cannot believe you just said that. To me, to a demon god, a noble of the Dark Court. I’m trying to fucking help you here.” One cloaked arm slashed angrily at the waist-high grass. Trail of glinting, splintering light, and the tall, nodding blades withered and smoked where the Salt Lord’s hand passed. “We run around, we answer prayers. We grant wishes and favors by the shovel-load, try to fucking balance everything along the way—because, guess what, it doesn’t actually work too well if you don’t balance it—and after all that, after all that fucking effort, when you actually make yourself known, you manifest the way every bleating fucking supplicant for the last ten thousand years has been asking you to, this is what you get? You know what that is, daughter of Flaradnam? It’s fucking ungracious.”

“I don’t pray. To you or anybody else.”

“I didn’t say you did.” The Salt Lord seemed to calm a little. “Prayer is a tapestry, a system of permissions sewn into the world by the Book-Keepers. A way in. It’s leverage, and it reaches everywhere, it touches you all. I don’t need you to pray before I can get into your self-absorbed miserable little life. There’s always someone else.”

“Book-keepers?”

“Forget it. It doesn’t fucking matter. I’m not talking to you, anyway. Go on, blunder into your ill-conceived little revenge fantasy for your dead friend and see how far you get. See how close you get to Poltar the shaman before one or other of the horrors Kelgris has gifted him with chops you down.”

She blinked. “How do you know ab—”

“Oh, come on!”

They stood facing each other across the gently swaying grass. She wondered vaguely if she should feel afraid.

Her knives hummed and chuckled soothingly in the back of her head. Told her no.

She cleared her throat. “Sorry. My father’s people had no gods. I am not accustomed to—”

“No, evidently not.”

She hesitated again. “You mention Kelgris—Kwelgrish of the Dark Court, I guess. Ringil Eskiath told me you and she appeared to be, uhm, acting in concert?”

“Yes, well, he’s another one,” said the god grumpily. “Can’t muster the least shred of respect for his clan deities, sooner fucking die than drop his chin an inch, let alone get on his knees. Well, you work with the tools to hand, I suppose. Just don’t be surprised when they turn in your grip and gouge you.”

“So you’re not on the same side?” A little impatiently, because the demon god’s constant bitching was starting to grate on her. “Kwelgrish and you? You’re opposed?”

Takavach sighed. “Sides. Oppositions. Good and evil. Heroes and villains. Them and us. The old brain-dead binary tribal cant. Look, would it melt your little head away completely to take on board the awful truth that it’s actually a bit more complicated than that?”

“Don’t you fucking patronize me. You think I don’t understand complexity? My people steered human affairs for five thousand years—”

“Not without a little quiet help from us, you didn’t.”

“—and I’ve spent nearly two centuries doing the same job myself.”

“Well, you wouldn’t think so, to hear you talk. Call yourself an immortal? Sides? You sound just like the next fucking human, you know that?”

“My mother was human, you arrogant fuck!” It feels as if she’s teetering on the brink of something here, yearning to finally fall. “So—you know what? Fuck you. My father, my immortal father? He married her. He stood with humans his whole life, in battle and in counsel. They were good enough for him. They’re good enough for me, too.”

Brief pause—for just a moment, under the brim of the slouch hat, she thinks she sees Takavach smile.

“I’m very glad to hear that,” he says quietly.

“Are you and Kelgris on the same fucking side or not?”

“It doesn’t work like that.” Almost, there was a plea in the Salt Lord’s voice. “You of all people, kir-Archeth, should understand that. Think about those five thousand years your people tried to manage human affairs. Think, in not much more than your own lifetime, of the manipulation it took your father to unify the southern hill tribes, to steer the Khimran clan into imperial ambition and beyond. You think being a god for these people is any easier?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Well, it isn’t.” Snappish flare of temper, but then Takavach’s tone softened once more. “Look, try to understand. Try to grasp the magnitude of what we’re facing here, the mess we have to work with. The storm is coming, we see it massing on the horizon. We’ve been here before, we know how bad it can get. The dwenda are coming back, in all their idiot beauty and power, determined to claw back their beloved ancestral home. Stopping them without the Kiriath in place is going to be… a challenge. Certain things need to be done, certain pieces moved on the board, certain men put in place. Everyone has their own ideas about how to do it, but one constant remains—the Book-Keeper codes. By the codes used to repair the world aeons ago, we are forbidden direct intervention without supplicant request. And the major pieces, the ones best suited to the game we’ve chosen, do not fucking pray.”

The Salt Lord sighs. Looks away across the endless steppe.

“Perhaps they never did, perhaps it was never in them. Or perhaps they’ve just seen too much random horror to believe any longer in the power of the gods. Whichever the case, the gods must make do, must find what fragments of leverage they can—a heroic slayer of dragons turned poor excuse for a clan master, for example, a man whose long-dead father once laid down sacrifices and chanted explicit prayers to the Salt Lord for his son’s safety; the sour rage of a disenchanted holy man at the dying of tradition and respect this clan master represents; restless sibling rivalry and envy among the clan master’s brothers—yes, all right, out of random elements like these, we can build a hand of sorts, and then play out the cards. But it’s a complex, tangled game, daughter of Flaradnam, fenced about at every turn with limitation and compromise.

“You want to see how it’s played?”

THE STEPPE PLAIN AND THE SKY ABOVE IT TILT AND WHEEL AWAY. IT’S AS IF she’s ducked very rapidly into a tent and left the world outside. She stands in soft gloom, amid streamers of mist that coil and drift, seemingly at random. The god is at her side.

Take our failed clanmaster—Takavach’s voice is soundless in her head. He passes his hand through the drift of mist closest to them. It eddies and coils in the wake of the gesture, forms a passable image of the Dragonbane. He cannot simply be whisked from safety and comfort, and placed on a path of heroic doom by the god charged with watching over him and keeping him safe. That would go against the codes. An actual threat must be made, one that would justify such an extraction, and it must be credible. Let’s see—other faces now, ones she doesn’t know, but among them she sees the blood resemblance—the jealous brothers might serve in this, but they would have to be incited. They are restless, you see, but that’s all they are. Too much tradition vested in the clanmaster’s office for them to go against it alone. They need some kind of authority to unify them, to reassure the less enthusiastic among them when it comes to brother slaying.

So we back up. We cast about. What about this shaman—again, the Salt Lord stirs the mist, and a gaunt, sour-faced old man emerges, wrapped in a wolf skin that’s seen better days—he has no love for the clanmaster, he could be that authority. But he cannot simply be handed the tools and incited to act, either, unless he prays for it, and to date he has not done so. Poltar is bitter but weak, he contents himself with sulking about the fading of the old ways and the terrible failings in the youth of today. So back up once more. Can we provoke a fight, perhaps, between clanmaster and shaman? That might kindle enough rage to trigger the necessary prayers. But neither man is angry enough to start this fight. We’d have to stir things up. Grief, guilt, rage, then—these are some of any god’s favorite tools, after all, and the Dragonbane has been known to hurt people in the past when subject to such feelings. Perhaps, let’s see, if someone died badly enough, someone of the clan, and the clanmaster felt somehow responsible, then the necessary sparks might fly.

But how to arrange that death?

Oh, wait—here’s a young man—quite a number of young men in fact—all dreaming of battling monsters out of Skaranak legend, praying fervently for some opportunity to test their heroic mettle. Wolves, steppe ghouls, flapping wraiths, it really doesn’t matter which, their prayers are vague—as long as it’s a monster, bring it on. Well, we choose one of these idiots and we answer his prayers. Takavach gestures, the mist boils. She gathers a confused impression of monstrous, lanky creatures, twice the height of a man, lashing out with taloned limbs at a horse and rider. The rider goes down in the grass, reels briefly to his feet, is struck back down. The young man in question dies, heroically more or less, so there’s his prayer answered, and our clanmaster neatly assumes the burden of guilt as we’d hoped. He tangles with the shaman, decks him in front of the whole clan. She sees it in the mist, sees Egar throw the punch. And the shaman calls down the rage of the gods to avenge his sullied dignity.

Now we’re getting somewhere!

Oh, but wait again—whichever god answers the shaman’s prayers is going to find themselves in direct conflict with the Salt Lord, who is after all charged with protecting the Dragonbane from exactly this sort of thing. The two gods will be compelled, by the codes the Book-Keepers wrote, to do actual battle. And we can’t have that. So back up all over again. Let’s see—perhaps Poltar can be subtly encouraged to seek his own vengeance, to gather and shape his own tools. But how is a god to appear to him in direct answer to his prayers, only to refuse direct aid? The codes won’t allow that, either; they’d tear us apart for a breach like that. We need another avenue of approach, an indirect point of entry. And by a stroke of luck, here’s a young girl from Trelayne—the Salt Lord draws her from the mist, huddled and weeping on a grimy pallet—sold into whoring by whichever Majak mercenary brought her home and then tired of her, praying desperately to the Dark Court for intercession, revenge, and escape. All of which we can provide, though not quite in the way the girl imagines, but no matter—there, finally, is our point of contact with the shaman. He’s a frequent visitor to this brothel the girl finds herself in, and he’s not the nicest of clients. He vents himself upon the girl—Archeth watches grimly as the scene coalesces. Some part of her wants to look away, but she doesn’t—Kwelgrish manifests in answer to the girl’s prayers, gives her a peaceful escape into oblivion and the shaman the shock of his life, which we can more or less call revenge. Prayer obligations discharged once again, the codes are, if not wholly obeyed, at least appeased. And Kwelgrish has the holy man on the hook, but is free of any obligation to fulfill any direct prayers. We’re in business. Poltar is incited, and a couple of tantalizing myth-derived dreams later, so is one of the brothers. A plot is hatched, the clanmaster is at long last in mortal danger as required. Finally, we’re where we need to be. Time to usher in the protecting Salt Lord, to provide warning and escape, by means of which the clanmaster can be placed where he needs to stand on the board.

And then, after all this work, the Dragonbane chooses not to run.

I mean, he has every incentive. He’s sick of being a clanmaster, life on the steppe, the whole thing. He’s bored rigid. He dreams like a boy less than half his age, of running away from his obligations, back to the freebooter life he knew in the south. He ought to jump at the slightest chance to get out, that’s the way it ought to go.

Instead, he chooses to ignore the Salt Lord’s timely warning, he decides to stay and fight. And the fight boils up for her viewing, riders and horses out of mist, the ghostly silent clash of blades, a magnificent Yhelteth warhorse spiked through chest and eye with arrows, rearing up. The Dragonbane unhorsed and down. Nearly gets himself killed in the process, of course, and the Salt Lord then has to leap in and save him, using some frankly rather unsubtle supernatural means—like this. Silence, while she watches in horror as the Dragonbane’s brothers are slaughtered. One of the brothers—and there he goes—escapes the fray, rides back to the shaman and reports. The shaman does exactly what you’d expect, goes straight to Kelgris to demand similar supernatural support. And meantime our clanmaster is all set to storm back to camp, all the way on foot if need be, and go head to head with Poltar and whatever else gets in his way.

Now, the codes are rather clear on this—her initially oblique approach notwithstanding, Kelgris has become the shaman’s patroness, and in matters of protection, she has no choice but to grant his wishes—answer his prayers, if you will. So, despite our very best efforts, the scene is now set for exactly the battle of powers we wanted to avoid. Only some very fast talking on the part of the Salt Lord manages to hustle our clanmaster—ex-clanmaster now, of course—out of range and so place the whole conflict in suspension. But the problem has not gone away.

I tell you, it isn’t easy being a god.

THE WORLD RETURNED, SLAMMED DIZZYINGLY BACK INTO PLACE AROUND her, as if she’d been snapped upright into it from a prone position beneath the earth. Bright blue sky, wind through the grass, sunlight slanting. The cloaked and slouch-hatted figure stood opposite her once more. Quarterless was still in her hand.

“The Dragonbane is dead,” she said drably.

“Yes, I know.”

“So then.” She looked at her knife. Hefted it, spun it on the palm of her hand, and put it away in the sheath at the small of her back. “I’d say your problem’s solved for you.”

“For me, perhaps. But this is a blunderer kind of mess, if I might borrow a war metaphor, and the tail is still very much alive. If you go up against Poltar, burned black demon witch that you are, then he is going to call on Kelgris for support. Believe me, he’s done it for enemies a lot less imposing than you over the last couple of years. And if he calls, Kelgris will have no choice but to notice you, to answer the shaman’s call, and to deliver her protection. And you don’t want that.”

She looked down at the harness she wore, down to where the blade called Wraithslayer sat in its inverted sheath on her chest.

“I made the Dragonbane a promise,” she said tonelessly.

“He was your sworn bodyguard. He would want you to go home alive.”

Her clothes were almost dry, she realized. Absently, she squeezed at her sleeve again, searching for dampness, finding barely a trace. She gave the god a grim little smile.

“I will go home alive,” she said.

“My lady!”

A shout in Tethanne, from down the slope. She turned about, squinted, and made out Selak Chan, on his feet in the grass and waving madly. She lifted an arm in salute. Looked back toward Takavach, already knowing at some level, as she turned, that the Salt Lord was gone.

She stared at the sunlit space where he’d stood, could almost see the outline of his figure still hovering there in the empty air. She nodded to herself. Flexed both hands on the hollow feeling in the cup of her palms.

“I will go home alive,” she murmured once more.

She started down the slope toward Selak Chan. Halfway there, she almost tripped over the spread-eagled body of a privateer. She stopped and knelt beside him. Ascertained that he was alive, if deeply asleep and still quite damp. She left him there. Eyes sharper on the ground now as she descended the slope, and she spotted another two bodies hidden in the grass, one of Tand’s sellswords and a Majak. Neither of them seemed to be any the worse for wear.

Chan bowed his head in brief obeisance as she reached him, then gestured around. There was a bemused delight in his voice, and more than a little relief.

“My lady, this is… Where are we?”

“Exactly where we’re supposed to be,” she told him. “The Majak steppes.”

“I’d thought us betrayed and drowned.”

“I thought so, too.” She held up her sleeve and sniffed at it again. The medicinal scent was still there, but all trace of moisture had gone. “Apparently not.”

“But how…” He gestured around. “How did we come here, my lady?”

She looked back up the slope to the remnant loom of the cracked container, the scorched grass path it had taken. Understanding itched at the edges of her mind, maddeningly just out of reach. Images came to her out of memory, seemingly at random, wheeling in her head like the mist-drawn pictures the Salt Lord had shown her. The track marks of burning ballista load through the scrub at Tlanmar, when the garrison came under Scaled Folk siege and the catapult defenses saved the day; the shimmer of dissipating heat through the air in the crater where Anasharal fell to earth, the lethally heated shell the Helmsman came in; delicate Kiriath war munitions that mostly hadn’t worked come the crunch, but were packed warily in sand anyway for the jolting wagon haul south to Demlarashan; a Scaled Folk hatchling that Grashgal had kept preserved in fluid in a jar at the An-Monal workshops…

“We were… catapulted,” she groped. “A great height into the sky, I think, and then… let fall again, somehow. The liquid in the chamber was… not for drowning. It kept us from harm instead. And the chamber… Well, it must have cracked open when it hit the ground. Spilled us out here, in safety. I think.”

Chan’s eyes widened. “But the Dragonbane told us the steppes had to be at least a thousand miles to the east, maybe more. Does the reach of the Kiriath’s iron demons really extend so far?”

Brief flaring of a pride she hadn’t felt for a very long time.

“When need be, yes it does,” she said.

But she couldn’t help wondering—rather sourly—why, with such capacity, Tharalanangharst had not just ordered the Helmsman to catapult them all back to Yhelteth instead; why it was so bloody important that they come out here to the steppes and find themselves still a good thousand miles or more from home.

If it’s something the Dragonbane was supposed to do, then I guess we’re shit out of luck.

“My lady?”

Chan was nodding out across the shoulder of the slope she’d just walked down. She looked and saw figures picking themselves up out of the grass. One at least was Majak.

“Good,” she said. “Maybe Shendanak’s guys can tell us how far we are from Ishlin-ichan. All this fucking grass looks the same to me.”

She watched as a couple of the waking men hugged each other and crowed with delight. Whoops and shouts floated back and forth. More figures, stumbling upright, woken presumably by the exuberant din. More shouting, Naomic mingled with Majak and Tethanne. Closer in, a little way up the slope, she saw a privateer reach down grinning and pull Kanan Shent to his feet. The banged-up Throne Eternal nodded his thanks.

Yeah. Put them a thousand miles southwest of here, and they’d be busy trying to carve each other’s innards out. Go figure.

But she found herself grinning nonetheless.

“Right,” she told Chan. “With me. Let’s go see what the locals reckon.”

They headed back up the slope toward the nearest Majak figure.

They hadn’t made more than halfway when the man they were heading for stiffened, stared around at his fellows, then jabbed out an arm eastward and started shouting. Archeth swung about to follow the gesture, shaded her eyes. The fading traces of the grin fell abruptly off her face.

Riders.

At least a dozen of them, coming at speed.

CHAPTER 50

Findrich’s place stank of dwenda presence from five blocks off. Gil almost grinned as he felt it, the gossamer soft settling of its traceries over him, the creep of its threads through his mind. There was a time his nape would have cooled at that touch, a time it would have frozen him in midstep, sent his hand rising to the pommel of the Ravensfriend, his lip curling back off his teeth in the instinctive, defensive snarl of any fanged animal at bay.

Now he barely broke step in the rain.

“What is it, my lord?”

Noyal Rakan, brow furrowed with concern beneath his crested Throne Eternal helmet, young eyes intent on Ringil’s face. Appears you don’t have it quite as nailed down as you thought, Gil. He smiled at his Throne Eternal lover with what he hoped was reassurance.

“Nothing to worry about, Captain. Everyone’s where they need to be.”

The streets of Etterkal were eerily silent around them, as if emptied by some abrupt and brutal curfew. They passed barrows abandoned in the middle of thoroughfares, doors left open on deserted tavern interiors with stools flung over and tables still crowded with tankards and platters. Once or twice, they saw wary faces watching them from upper-floor windows, the odd hunched figure in a side alley or begging niche. But most of the Salt Warren seemed to have found pressing business to attend to elsewhere.

Yeah—one guess where that is.

Above the loom of tenement and warehouse walls, through the murk of rain and low-hanging ragged cloud, the sky toward Harbor End was tinged a deep, dull red. A safe bet by now that the news and its many embroidered exaggerations would have reached at least as far as that glow. And in a quarter like Etterkal, word of that sort would work like a flung fistful of coins in a market square. Everyone would be scrambling, fighting through, grabbing for something. Some would have gone to exploit the chaos, to break and enter, to loot, or maybe to settle old scores while the city’s equilibrium was tilted out of true. Some might have family or other, less warm-blooded Harbor-End interests to protect. Some would simply want to try their young thug mettle in the firelit streets, regardless of who or what against. Add to that those who’d go just to gawk, to say they were there, to have a tale to tell their fellows in years to come, and you could count the whole Salt Warren emptied out, faster than a knifed nobleman’s purse.

The dwenda presence strengthened, but he still had no sense that their eyes were on him. Back in the Glades what seemed like a lifetime ago, Seethlaw had stalked him through the mangrove dawn, followed him almost home through the mist, leaned in then at some unimaginable Grey Place angle, and bent his gaze on this mouthy, bad-tempered young swordsman who’d shown up to plague him. Gil wasn’t ever likely to forget what that felt like, and he couldn’t feel it now.

Still…

He put up a shrouding glyph, one of the stronger ones. It wouldn’t make him invisible to Aldrain eyes, but it should at least render him uninteresting. Just another human soldier, marching somewhere in a hurry with his comrades at his back. What was it Seethlaw’s lieutenant had said of human soldiery—like the lost souls of apes. Gil could still hear the wealth of disdain and distaste in those words, and he was counting on it. With a bit of Dark Queen luck, all eyes in the Findrich residence right now, human and dwenda, were turned the other way, out toward the conflagration at the harbor and the spilling, spreading rage behind it.

Boots through puddles, boots on cobbled stone—they reached the corner of Dromedary Row, swung crisply into Court’s Honor Rise. Slab Findrich’s converted warehouse palace gleamed in wet, dressed-stone frontage less than a hundred yards away at the end of the street. It wasn’t much of a rise—it isn’t fucking Gallows Gap, that’s for sure—but trust Findrich to find a hill to squat on, even here.

He bared his teeth. The rain trickled into his mouth.

He drew the Ravensfriend.

“All right,” he shouted through the downpour. “With me. Let’s get this done! For Empire, and for honor! Cut down anything that stands in your way!”

They stormed the scant distance to Findrich’s front door as one. Wet, drumming splatter of boots up the puddled street as they charged, the thin lash of rain across his face, and it felt as if something hard in the small of his back was driving him on. Ten yards out, he dropped the shrouding glyph, built a fast pyre of force in the gap it left. Brought up a howl from the pit of his stomach, raised one clawing hand at the double doors in his way—tore them apart. The oak locking bar on the other side snapped across like a toothpick; he felt it go, felt the upper hinge on the left-hand door panel tear out like a rotten tooth. The doors blew back into the stonework on either side, rebounded, sagged and hung.

In through the gap.

They met no opposition, they met no one at all. Inside, it was all torchlit vaulted space and twinned stone stairways sweeping grandly to the upper levels, as empty of human life as a ruin. Findrich’s place was one of the quarter’s original Marsh Brotherhood stockhouses, put up in a time when the harbor was still a silty undredged anchorage good for fishing skiffs and not much more. Trelayne’s commerce came and went overland in those days, long trailing caravans guided in and out through the mazes of the marsh by sworn men, and paying handsomely for the license. The merchants who built in Etterkal back then were men of cabalistic power and wealth, and their architecture reflected the fact. In the jumping shadow and glow of his men’s torches, blown wild by the sudden entry of the storm he’d let in, Ringil saw expensively finished bas relief and statuary everywhere—friezes depicting heavily laden beasts of burden amid lush marsh vegetation, piled gluts of goods and market stalls, stacked coin and assayer’s scales, and everywhere the repeating motif of masked men at guard. Masked figures led the caravans, masked overseers pointed imperiously at the gathered wealth, masked swordsmen stood with arms folded behind the tables of coin. And the paired stone balustrade staircases were watched over by twin statues of hugely thewed Marsh Brotherhood heroes, caped and masked, stern jawed and smiling faintly, as if in contempt at Ringil’s presumption in daring to enter here.

From the look of the stonework, there’d been some restoration work done recently. Gil snorted, wiped dripping water from his nose. “Fucking poser. Same as it ever was, Slab. The old brotherhood wouldn’t have wiped their arse with the likes of you, and now you want to pretend you’re the heir to it all?”

Rakan blinked at him in the torchlight. “What?”

At his side, Klithren looked perplexed. Gil sighed.

“Doesn’t matter. Upstairs, let’s go.”

No sign of life as they mounted the right-hand stairway. He reached for the dwenda presence, found it still there but churned up now, flickering disconcerted in a way he could only ever remember tasting once before.

“That’s right,” he singsonged softly in the gloom. “I’m behind you.”

Down a torchlit corridor flanked by heavy locked doors, nothing living behind them as far as he could tell. The air was stale and musty, and now that he was out of the rain, he could smell his own soaked clothes. He wrinkled his nose.

Funny, would have expected some resistance by now. Not like Slab at all, this.

“Keep your eyes peeled,” he muttered at Klithren.

The corridor gave out onto a kind of broad raised atrium with a honeycomb stonework floor. Rain fell in from the opened roof above, soaked the stone, and rinsed through to the floor level below. It made a hollow, almost musical splashing down there. Under the eaves that edged the central expanse and offered cloistered cover from the rain, the walls were worked with the same bas relief friezes he’d seen in the entry hall below. Torchlight guttered from the corners.

“Degenerate and oathbreaker! Stand where you are!”

Oh, here we go…

But it wasn’t Slab Findrich. Too much youth and pomp in those tones, too much jerky excitement, nothing of Findrich’s dead-eyed aplomb.

Vaguely familiar, though…

“You ran and hid from me once, outcast. Shirked your appointed time on Brillin Hill fields and left a beggared drunk to face me in your stead. Will you turn tail again now?”

Ah.

Like a warm flush through his nether half, like the twisting of some obscure lust in his guts. He made a damping gesture to the men at his back, lowered the Ravensfriend until its point touched the honeycombed floor.

“Hello, Kaad,” he said into the gloom. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

From the corners of the atrium space came skirmish ranger uniforms, crossbows cranked and cradled on the hip of at least a third of them, and the rest with swords or axes drawn. He guessed the count at about fifteen, it was hard to tell in the jumpy light. Not bad odds, now the element of ambush surprise was gone. From amid their number came two slim, erect figures, one older but still spry of step, the other taller, more muscle about him, and a sword in his raised right hand. A silver gleaming mail shirt glinted to midthigh, looked like it had been pulled on in a hurry. Iscon Kaad—Lord Watchman of Administrative… something or other, Gil couldn’t now recall the exact shape of that sinecure title. Swift emissary of the aspiring Kaad family name, anyway, keen avenger of slights to its fledgling honor. Blade salon graduate and pretty nifty with it, by all accounts, as the poor sozzled ghost of a certain war veteran called Darby would probably attest, if he could only be summoned back from wherever his bewildered soul had fled.

And look, he’s brought his daddy with him.

Chancellery counselor Murmin Kaad, smooth-smiling puller of strings, hungry climber of carefully placed strategic ladders into the upper echelons of Trelayne society. The man who nearly two decades past sent Jelim Dasnal to die in the cage for unclean acts of congress, the man who let the Eskiath clan buy Ringil free of the same sentence with who knew what fistful of slow-burning political favors. He wore an eye patch now—Gil’s guts seethed with joy at the sight—but was otherwise unchanged from the last time they met. Grace of Heaven Milacar had once commented on how the climb to power that might age and wring out some men, but seemed only to have energized Kaad. It was true. He stood now with the bearing of a man not much more than half his age, hair still thick and dark but for the two graying patches at his temples, face still unpouched, body still unswollen with all the years of fine living he’d managed to claw from Trelayne’s outmanoeuvred aristo cliques.

Ringil ignored the son, gave the father a harsh, brilliant smile.

“Hello, little man. How’s the eye?”

“Scum! You will not—”

Murmin Kaad put a hand on his son’s shoulder, and Iscon Kaad shut up like a drawbridge gate. He glowered silent, smoldering hate at Ringil across the atrium. Kaad senior let go his son’s shoulder, offered up a thin smile.

“The eye is dead jelly, as I’m sure you already know by now. We are sent to stop you, Ringil. Will you lay down your weapons and save your men’s lives at least, or will you sacrifice them all as you did poor old Darby?”

“Where’s Findrich?”

“He will see you once you are disarmed,” snapped Iscon Kaad. “Or he will see your corpse. Yield now, or do you prefer that we kill you all?”

“You could try that.”

“And succeed, I believe.” Kaad senior gestured left and right at the men he’d brought. “These are skirmish ranger veterans you see. No finer fighting men in the known world.”

“Fuck would you know about fighting, lickspittle?”

“That’s fucking it!” Iscon Kaad, shouting in rage, turning to look at the men behind him. His arm came up.

Ringil beat him to it—left hand rising, crimping for the glyph. Eddies of ikinri ‘ska force, out across the atrium like ripples on a pond.

“Heavy, those crossbows,” he intoned. “Far too heavy to hold.”

He didn’t need to hear the multiple clunking impacts as the bowmen lost grip on their weapons, let them tumble to the floor. He raised his hand, made another glyph.

“Broken.”

It went like a wave through the skirmish ranger ranks, screams and crumpling bodies as this limb or that snapped, sent them variously collapsing to the floor or staggering and clutching at the broken bone of an arm. Screams rose up and drowned out the fall of the rain.

“Sit down,” he said quietly to Murmin Kaad. “Watch.”

The counselor dropped to the rain-soaked atrium floor almost as fast as the men whose legs the ikinri ‘ska had broken. His jaw clamped, straining to resist the spell. But he stayed there as if nailed in place.

“Now then,” Ringil told the son. “Let’s pretend we’re back at Brillin Hill, shall we?”

Iscon Kaad came in yelling, sword a looping blur. Ringil didn’t even bother trying to get his shield down off his shoulder. He hacked sideways two-handed with the Ravensfriend, met the blow with everything he had, stopped Kaad dead in his tracks with the force of the block. Spun on the locking point, heaved upward, and stepped sharply back past the straining blades—spooning as close as any lover, back to the other man’s front. It was a thuggish, close quarters reverse, like nothing you’d find in any gentleman’s blade salon manual, and Iscon Kaad had no working defense against it. Ringil stamped savagely backward, boot heel to shin for distraction, right hand dropping from the double grip he had on the Ravensfriend. He hacked up and into Kaad’s sternum with his elbow so the other man convulsed. Let his arm straighten, twist—dropped the dragon-tooth dagger from his sleeve into his waiting palm, stabbed back and down. Buried the jagged blade deep in the low end of Iscon Kaad’s thigh.

Kaad screamed and staggered. His blade batted ineffectually against Ringil’s upheld left-hand block with the Ravensfriend, tried to scrape free, but the clinch was too close and Gil’s raised left arm was solid as stone, the Kiriath steel unmoving in his fist. Gil twisted the dagger, tore it loose. Spun about, raised a boot, and kicked Iscon Kaad in the knee. The younger man went down floundering and rolling, dropped his sword, clutched at his wounded thigh with both hands. Ringil followed him, let the dagger clatter free on the honeycombed stone floor, swapped the Ravensfriend back into his right hand, and stood over his downed opponent, breathing hard.

“Any questions?” he hissed.

A strangled moan, but not from Iscon Kaad’s lips. Ringil glanced sideways, saw Kaad senior still straining to rise from where the spell had him pinned. His eyes were pleading, fixed on his son’s stricken form. The screaming of the broken-limbed skirmish rangers rang in Ringil’s head. He jerked a look at Rakan and the imperials.

“Attend to the fallen.”

Rasped syllables in Tethanne, barely his own voice at all. Sounded like something that belonged somewhere down in the dark defiles.

Then he reversed his grip on the Ravensfriend, took it two-handed and struck a quick slanting blow down into Iscon Kaad’s belly. The Kiriath steel went through the mail as if wasn’t there, slashed a long lateral wound across Kaad’s guts. The downed man shrieked, and across the atrium his father screamed in awful sympathy. Ringil pulled the Ravensfriend free, watched almost absently as the blood welled up where it had been. Iscon Kaad screamed and wept, tried hopelessly to hold himself closed. Ringil shook himself, as if remembering some task that had slipped his mind, made his way across to Murmin Kaad.

“Hold out your hands,” he said gently.

The snaking whisper of the ikinri ‘ska under his words—the spell tugged Kaad’s arms instantly outward and held them there, as if suspended from invisible puppet strings. A thin stream of pleading dribbled from his lips; he was shaking his head in endless denial, of what exactly it was hard to tell. Ringil swung the Ravensfriend up, brought the blade slicing down. He severed both arms midway between elbow and wrist. Blood gouted and splattered, the counselor screamed, still holding both stumps out, paralyzed in place. Ringil unlocked the glyph with a gesture, and Kaad collapsed sideways in a twitching heap.

Rain fell ceaselessly in through the open roof and onto them both. Ringil wiped at his face.

“Someone get tourniquets on this man. I don’t want him to die just yet.”

A young marine came hurrying to comply, perhaps glad to be released from the more general task of seeing to the enemy wounded. He tore strips from the mutilated counselor’s cloak with his knife, knotted them savagely tight below Kaad’s elbows. The blood flow from the stumps slowed to a seep. Ringil nodded the imperial back to dispatching the League men. He crouched beside Kaad, grabbed him by one embroidered lapel, and dragged him close.

“You weren’t sent to stop me,” he said. “Findrich isn’t that stupid. You were just sent to slow me down.”

Kaad twisted on the floor, tried feebly to get loose. Words leaked and mumbled from him. Ringil had to lean in closer to hear.

“My… son…”

Gil looked bleakly across to where Iscon Kaad lay in the center of the atrium, blood leaking thickly from the wound in his belly. The rain falling in from the roof splashed around him, mingling with the blood, thinning it, draining it away through the holes in the honeycombed floor. The younger Kaad was keening, rocking very slightly side to side, hugging himself gingerly across the midriff.

“Your son is dying, Kaad. I’ve killed him. But it’s going to take awhile. Tell you what—why don’t you crawl over there and try holding him in your arms to comfort him?”

He patted the counselor on the shoulder and got up. Made as if to turn away, then stopped.

“Oh, but of course. You can’t now, can you?”

Then he turned away for real. Ignored the dislocated howl that went up from Murmin Kaad, went to collect and clean his dagger, while around him the imperials finished up the job of slitting throats on the last few crippled skirmish rangers.

KLITHREN CAME ACROSS TO HIM AS HE STOWED THE DRAGON KNIFE BACK IN his sleeve. Nodded casually out at Murmin Kaad, who was currently trying to crawl like some crippled insect across the rain-splashed atrium to where his son lay bleeding out.

“Something personal?”

Ringil rearranged his sleeve, met the mercenary’s eye. “You might say that, yeah. Got a problem?”

Klithren shook his head. “Fuck, no. Only ever met the guy once before, back when they gave me the command, and even then you could see what kind of arsehole he was. Street as me, but he’s poncing it up like some has-been Parashal family’s favored son. No surprise to me he had something like this coming. No, I just want to know what all that shit about slowing us down means.”

Ringil bent to pick up the Ravensfriend, retrieved the swatch he’d cut out of Iscon Kaad’s cloak to clean his weapons with.

“You heard that, huh?”

The mercenary grinned fiercely. “Guess freebooting for the Empire, you forgot you’re not the only one speaks Naomic around here.”

“No, I didn’t forget.” Wiping down the Ravensfriend’s blade absently as he spoke.

“Good, so what’s the deal? Slowing us down for what? If Findrich and the cabal knew you’d walk through a dozen skirmish rangers like they were an open door, what’s their second line going to look like?”

“You can’t guess?”

“The Aldrain? They’re here?”

Ringil nodded at the surrounding architecture, the rills of water streaming off the roof edge over their heads. “Somewhere in the building, yeah. I can fucking taste them.”

“Taste…?” Klithren shook his head. “Never mind. Black mage shit, I don’t want to know. But I guess it’s time for that briefing, isn’t it?”

There was a challenge in his eyes as he said it. Ringil sighed. He lifted his hand, snapped his fingers, and got Noyal Rakan’s attention from across the courtyard space. The Throne Eternal came over, past imperials patting down the men whose throats they’d just slit, stepping wide around Murmin Kaad, where the counselor lay collapsed and weeping in the tracks of his own slow-oozing blood, still not yet halfway to his dying son. Kaad had just caught one of his stumps on the textured stone floor as he crawled, was convulsed with the fresh agony it brought. Ringil saw it happen out of the corner of his eye, heard the feeble shriek, was dimly disappointed for the lack of any sensation it stirred in him.

Rakan got out of the rain, saluted. Tried not to let his gaze creep back to the mutilated man. He looked faintly queasy, whether from his work dispatching the injured skirmish rangers or from what his lover had just done, it was hard to tell. Probably both. The look in his eyes made Ringil feel shabby and stained and old.

“My lord?”

“Get the men formed up over there. There’s a couple of things they need to know before we go on.”

“Yes, my lord.” Rakan cleared his throat. He touched the mercy blade at his belt, gestured at Kaad’s sobbing and renewed efforts to crawl. “Would you like me to, uhm…”

Ringil stared at him, let him hang there.

“No, Captain,” he said coldly. “I would not. Pull your men from their pillaging and get them formed up.”

Rakan flushed. Saluted and turned smartly away. Klithren watched him go with a sage expression on his face.

“How that boy ever got to be Throne Eternal beats the fuck out of me.”

“Shut up,” Ringil told him, with more vehemence than he’d intended to use. “Fucking got the jump on you single-handed, didn’t he?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Am I treading on some delicate faggot toes here?”

“Treading on some black mage toes, remember? Back off or I’ll turn you into a fucking frog. Now go and get in line for this briefing you’re so fucking keen for me to give.”

Klithren shrugged and wandered over to join the assembling imperials. On the way, he passed close to Murmin Kaad’s crippled form, and the counselor said something to him. Klithren crouched to listen. Rainfall off the roof edges obliterated any chance of hearing what was said, but whatever it was, Klithren only shook his head, gestured in Ringil’s direction, and then resumed his ambling stride to where the imperials were gathered.

Ringil gave the Ravensfriend one more cursory wipe over, balled up the piece of borrowed cloak cloth, and tossed it away. He followed Klithren out into the rain, was surprised to find himself stopping and kneeling beside Murmin Kaad.

“Something you wanted?”

“Kill… him,” the counselor panted. “I beg you. You are revenged… upon me. I ask… nothing for myself. But end… his suffering. Please. He has done nothing to you.”

Ringil rubbed his chin. “Did Jelim Dasnal do something to you?”

“Please—”

“And yet you sent him to die on a spike.”

“That…” A spasm of pain twisted Kaad’s face. “It was the law.”

“So is this. It’s recent legislation, you may not have heard. Harm those I care for, and those you care for will be harmed. How does it feel?”

“Please, I’m begging you. I’m…” Tears streaming from Kaad’s undamaged eye. “I’m sorry… ”

“Yes, I imagine you are. I was, too, when it was too late to do anything about it. I still had to watch someone I loved die. I still had to live with their going away.” His pulse was thunder in his ears, a liquid beat in his vision with the pressure in the small capillaries of his eyes. He dragged down his rage with an effort, got his breathing back under control. “Look on the bright side, though—a wound like that, your boy’s going to be gone in a few hours at most. It won’t take him days, the way it did for Jelim.”

“Hoiran damn your soul to hell!”

“I think he’ll have trouble from his wife if he does.” Ringil got up. “Good-bye, Kaad. Save your energy for the rest of that crawl. You’re nearly there. Even without hands, you’ll get closer than I was ever allowed.”

“All right!” Kaad’s voice cracked across. “All right…”

Despite himself, Ringil hesitated. “All right what?”

“I… will… buy my son’s death. I… I know something… something of what awaits you.”

“So do I. Your dwenda pals and I have already had a couple of dustups. We’re almost old friends.”

“No, not that. The dwenda have brought something with them.”

Ringil’s eyes narrowed. “The Talons of the Sun?”

“My son.” Kaad levered himself up on one elbow, teeth gritted. “You will give my son peace first.”

“You’re in no position to bargain, Kaad. You tell me what you know, I’ll decide if it merits an act of mercy or not.” He crouched again, grabbed the other man by the ruined forearm and squeezed. Blood welled up in the ragged end of the stump. The counselor shrilled and collapsed. Ringil bent the arm over against the elbow joint, knelt closer, whispered in Kaad’s ear. “Or I’ll just twist it out of you anyway. Believe me, that’d make me a lot happier.”

Kaad made a broken sobbing sound in his throat. Ringil let go his arm.

“Come on, counselor. Cough it up.”

“A sword, they have a sword,” The words came tumbling out, Kaad’s voice high pitched and desperate. “An heirloom of Risgillen’s clan. They say the soul of an ancient warrior king is in it. A champion of the dwenda five thousand years ago.”

“What?” Ringil shook his head as if to clear it. “A champion? You’re talking about the Illwrack Changeling? Here?”

“I do not,” Kaad’s voice came faintly, the shock was taking him down. “Know his name. Only… they have the sword, they plan…”

“Plan what?”

Nothing. The counselor looked to have passed out from the pain. Ringil straddled him, stooped, and dragged him onto his back. Slapped him methodically back and forth across the face.

“Come on, Kaad. Come on back. What plan? You want to save your son some pain, this is no way to go about it. What plan? Come on!”

Kaad twitched and flinched from the blows, semiconscious. His stumps pawed at the air—in his confusion, he was attempting to push Gil away with hands he no longer possessed. Ringil grabbed one of the wagging forearms and squeezed it again, not too hard this time. The pain must have been searing—Murmin Kaad jolted awake, stared up at him, hissing hatred.

“Fuck you… aristo faggot… scum…”

“Yeah, yeah. Great way to engage my pity, Dad.” He backhanded the mutilated man savagely across the face. “Pack it in. Talk. What plan?”

“Plan?”

“Oh, for Hoiran’s fucking sake…” Ringil grabbed Kaad by the scruff of the neck, hauled him into something resembling a sitting position. He threw out a demonstrative hand to where Kaad junior had rolled in their direction, rain-splashed face a mask of agony and desperation, one hand still trying to hold the wound in his belly closed, the other stretched out mutely toward his father. “You want me to put young Iscon there out of his misery? You tell me about the sword. What are they planning to do with it?”

“They…” Panting, face suddenly crumpled up in pain. “They… will… force the sword on you. Force it into your grip. There is… a ritual And then… the Dark King will… possess you. Will return to them… in your form.”

Ringil held on to the mutilated counselor a moment longer, then let him go, let him sag back to the honeycomb floor. He sat back on his boot heels, soaked in sudden thought.

“That’s the plan, is it?” he murmured.

Kaad lifted his head a bare couple of inches from the floor. “My… son…”

“Yeah, your fuckwit son.” Gil frowned, remembering. “Was going to have his bowmen turn me into a pincushion. That would have been embarrassing, wouldn’t it? Handing the dwenda a corpse for their ritual.”

His eyes snapped back to focus, nailed the counselor with a stare.

“Or are you lying to me, Murmin Kaad?”

“No… no… No lie.” The effort was too much. Kaad’s head fell back on the stonework with an audible clunk. He stared up into the rain, mouth working. “Alive or dead… it does not… matter. They told us. The… ritual is unchanged. But the lady Risgillen… will have you alive… if she can. Have you know… what devours you. My son… please, my son…”

Ringil sighed. Pressed the heel of one hand to his forehead in the rain. “Risgillen, Risgillen, fucking Risgillen. Should have killed that bitch when I had the chance. Should have known she’d never fucking quit. All right.”

This last snapped out with abrupt force, as he came to his feet, decided. He strode across to where Klithren waited with the imperials, well out of the rain.

“You came to the Hironish looking for a sword as well as me?” he asked the mercenary with dangerous calm. “Supposed to dig it up and bring it back here, were you?”

Klithren looked at him blankly. “Sword?”

“All right, never mind. Look, let’s get this briefing out of the way and just—”

“Liar!” It was a scream so high and tortured, it might almost have been an eagle’s shriek. Both men glanced around to where Murmin Kaad thrashed about in his rain-soaked bloodied cloak, flailing and rolling round to glare after Gil, face almost upside down, features contorted in fury and grief. “Scum! Faggot liar!”

“He’s going pull those tourniquets loose if he’s not careful,” Klithren reckoned.

“Yeah, maybe.” Ringil raised an arm, gestured the imperials to gather around. “All right, listen up. This next—”

“Liar, fucking liar!” Kaad was weeping now, sobbing out his rage and loss. “You swore. Liar! Liar!”

“This next—”

“Fucking aristo scum-fuck liar!”

Rustle of interest among the men, heads turning to look, muttered commentary. The screaming went on; apparently Kaad had discovered new reserves of strength. Gil closed his eyes. Opened them and looked for Noyal Rakan.

“Captain.”

“My lord.” Still a guarded stiffness in the Throne Eternal’s voice.

“… fucking burn in hell, Hoiran will have your soul, you fuck, you…”

“Would you be so good as to slit the throats on those two, so I can hear myself think?”

The stiffness melted out of Rakan’s tone. “Yes, my lord. At once. Uhm… both of them?”

“… swore, you fucking swore, you lying aristo fucking…”

Ringil nodded wearily. “Both of them. Oh, and… do the younger one first. Make sure his father sees it done.”

The Throne Eternal captain drew his knife, hurried eagerly to the task. Ringil saw grimly impressed looks pass among the imperials, approving nods. By the look of it, he’d just cemented another brick in the wall of his reputation as the black-hearted swordsman sorcerer from hell.

Oh, good.

His face twitched with an insanely compelling impulse—laugh out loud or weep, he wasn’t very sure which it was.

He locked it carefully away. He made his features stone.

But as Rakan knelt by Iscon Kaad and opened his throat, as Kaad senior’s screaming soaked abruptly away, left only a high, tight keening in its place, he could not quite close out the thought, the insistent wondering if Gingren might ever have shown as much fury and love for him. What it might have taken to earn it, what it might have cost.

Whether either of them, father or son, could ever have paid enough.

Get a fucking grip, Gil. Kind of busy here.

Rakan stooped over Murmin Kaad. He thought the counselor might have been smiling in welcome as the knife dipped down.

CHAPTER 51

“The war?” Carden Han, imperial legate for the Majak steppe, bit into a pear and chewed with a lot less decorum than you’d expect for a man of his rank. He talked right through the mouthful. “Going well, the last I heard. Hinerion taken by storm, gains in the Gergis hinterland, so forth. But that news is months old, of course. We don’t exactly have our finger on the pulse up here.”

She caught a splinter of bitterness in that last comment. Ishlin-ichan was strictly a backwater posting, too far from the Empire to have any real political significance, or afford much in the way of opportunities for advancement. Career diplomats avoided it altogether if they could; failing that, they got it out of the way early on. Time served out here on the steppes as a younger man could always be parlayed into some weightier office closer to the heart of things once you came home. But Carden Han was not by any stretch of the imagination a younger man. The face Archeth sat across from was lined and tired-looking, hair receding from a deeply creased brow, beard gone mostly to gray.

Which could only mean a couple of things, really. Either a mediocre diplomatic career, now guttering low, or some form of exile. And she’d not paid nearly enough attention at court the last few years to know which was the case for Han.

She chose her words with according care.

“Nonetheless, my lord, you do seem to run a tight ship.” She nibbled at a sweetmeat she didn’t really want. “Your intervention out there today was nothing if not timely.”

The legate flushed. “You are too kind, my lady. Really. It was just a routine precaution. The locals here set much store by anything that happens in the sky—portents and so forth—and a sudden comet in the west, an hour before dawn, falling sky iron, well… you can imagine the fuss something like that would set off among a people like these.”

Or any other people I ever ran into, she managed not to say. Han might have gone native as far as table manners were concerned, but like some others she’d seen in similar posts over the years, he was still gnawing what sustenance he could from the chewed-over rind of his own assumed cultural superiority.

Yeah—not unlike a certain sulking young Kiriath half-blood we know back in Yhelteth, eh, Archidi?

Behind her, a cool night breeze blew in the feasting chamber’s window, touched her at the nape of the neck. The Dragonbane’s lonely ghost come to call, perhaps. Or just the messaged death of that other Archeth, left so far behind now she could scarcely believe she’d been the same woman not six months ago. Up to the arse end of the world, back down again, through death and storm and dragons, and here she suddenly was, like some odd, graceful stranger to herself. The abrupt stab of empathy with Han startled her. She was not accustomed to seeing herself in the humans around her, and certainly not used to seeing her failings writ large in theirs. Her introspection was rarely so lucid.

Nothing a quarter ounce of krin won’t fix for you, some grim old shard of her personality advised. But like the night breeze, she shrugged it off without much effort. Other, more pressing concerns crowded it out—Jhiral, alone on the throne and poorly served by sycophant advisers, likely fumbling the war’s course by now and stumbling toward some policy catastrophe or other; the Citadel rampant, tipping the Empire’s hard-won pragmatic cosmopolitanism back over into tribal intolerance, conquest, and rage. Ishgrim, caught up in it all.

Getting home for all of them, before it was too late.

“Yes, I’d have been remiss indeed,” the legate went nattering on. “To let an Ishlinak scavenger party ride out there without imperial observers along. It doesn’t take much to show the flag, really. A handful of men, a medical officer we can pass off as our very own shaman. They don’t differentiate, you see; healing and augury, diseases and portents, it’s all the same big mysterious mess to the steppe peoples. Fortunately, our man Sarax—the one who conveyed you back here—well, he’s become adept at playing the role. Poor fellow, he thought he’d come here to treat gashes, fevers, and broken bones, and at least three times in the last year he’s found himself pronouncing sagely over chunks of smoldering dross dropped out of the sky. I remember one incident last year when…”

She drifted a little, let Han’s eager-to-please chatter fade out. Let the man talk; he’d clearly been starved of imperial company for far too long. The room they sat in said it all—dull, functional brickwork for walls, rough-sawn timber beams for the roof. Here and there, a floor tile was glazed to include a Yhelteth crest and emblem, but the effect was crude, clearly the work of craftsmen for whom the symbols held no significance beyond the wage it brought in. The rugs on the floor were of Majak design, the furniture had the same blunt lines as the roof timbers. The fireplace was modest for the size of room, as was the blaze within it. And she’d seen no glass in any window since she arrived at the embassy.

The only apparent artifact of Yhelteth origin was Han’s family coat of arms—a silk drape banner hung on one wall, looking lonely and out of place.

“… but the Majak do at least listen to us on these matters now—that is, the Ishlinak in these parts do, and increasingly the more outlying clans too. Such basic medical successes are slowly winning them over to a broader respect for our learning and faith, you see, and with that kind of—”

“Yes, fascinating indeed.” She worked at keeping the impatience out of her voice. It was a big favor she needed from this man, and she wasn’t sure the simple fact of her rank back in Yhelteth was going to swing it. She sipped at her wine, tried to sound casual. “This, uh… respect—would you say it holds sway with other clans out across the steppe?”

“Oh, certainly.” Han swallowed and helped himself to another piece of fruit from the table. “We see to it that our presence is felt well beyond the walls of Ishlin-ichan. Not easy to do with a garrison this small, but any legate worth his salt knows the value of projection.”

“That’s good. There are a couple of things I need to do out there before I head south. And it’s going to take some projection.”

“Oh?” Sudden shift in the legate’s tone.

She drained the rest of her wine, set down the empty goblet like a chess piece. “Yes. How much influence do you have with the Skaranak?”

“The Skaranak?”

And just from the way he said it, she knew she had trouble.

WHEN HE’D CALMED DOWN A BIT:

“Look, my lady, I would like to help you, really I would. Any other clan, and we could have this Poltar quietly murdered for you, no problem. Even abducted so you could torture and kill him yourself, if that’s your pleasure. I’d be delighted to arrange it for you, really. But this is the Skaranak we’re talking about. I don’t know that you understand quite what that means.”

She shrugged. “All right. The Skaranak. Tell me about them.”

“Yes. First you have to understand that things have changed a lot up here in the last ten years. Ishlin-ichan is a lot bigger than it used to be, and there are a couple of secondary settlements sprouting on the other side of the river, too. The western clans are getting more and more comfortable with idea of staying in one place, getting used to rubbing along with their neighbors with a minimum of violence, too. But the Skaranak are old school. They’re the die-hard horse tribe remnants of what the rest of the Majak used to be. They never settled like the Ishlinak, you see, and they pride themselves on that fact. Nomad to the bone, still the same basic thug raiders they were a century ago. That gets them a lot of respect. And with the Ishlinak sticking mostly to the city environs and the other side of the river, there’s been no one to challenge them for primacy on the eastern steppe for the better part of a decade. The recruiting sergeants love them, of course; they’ll take Skaranak in preference to any other clan. And for every ten young thugs they send south to become soldiers, at least two or three are bound to trickle back here at some point as seasoned veterans, which just adds to their fighting capacity.”

Archeth nodded. “Common dynamic. Seen it get us in trouble more than once in the past.”

“Yes, but try telling that to the recruiters.” Carden Han leaned forward in his chair, a man trying to drive home the valid point of his refusal to help her. “Quite seriously, my lady, if the Majak plains were not so vast, if we were a few hundred miles closer to Dhashara and the frontier, I’d be flagging the Skaranak as a significant future threat to Empire. Now all of that was true even before your friend Egar Dragonbane quit the clan mastery and disappeared. These days”—a rueful grimace—“to the Skaranak’s military prowess and territorial dominion, you can now add rumors of black shamanry and night powers magic. This shaman you want taken off the board—from what they tell me, he’s supposed to have the personal favor of the Sky Dwellers. Rumor says he can conjure demons from the steppe rim to do his will.”

Archeth studied the grain in the table top. She rubbed at a knot in the wood that looked a little like a screaming face.

“You surely don’t believe that sort of thing, though, do you?” she asked mildly. “Demons and magic? An educated man of faith such as yourself?”

Han gave her a mirthless little smile. “What I believe has very little bearing on the matter, my lady. It is what the Skaranak themselves believe, and what the rest of the steppe believes about them, that defines the game. Have you ever seen a Majak berserker in action?”

Flurry of recall—the frozen moments of the dragon fight, the Dragonbane’s howl as he called the beast around to face him.

“Yes, I have,” she said quietly.

“Well.” A little disappointed at the way she’d stolen his thunder. “Then you’ll know what I’m talking about, my lady. A Skaranak warrior who believes he has the night powers on his side may as well actually have them, for all the difference it makes. He will think himself capable of superhuman feats in battle, whether he actually is or not, and in this part of the world, his enemies will think it, too. More than half my men here are local auxiliaries, most of them not even converts. I can trust them to guard the compound and carry out basic patrol duties. But I could no more order them to march on a Skaranak encampment than you could get the Ninth Southern Guard to lay siege to the Citadel.”

Archeth grimaced. Got up from the table and the rather sparse spread Han had laid on for her. She’d barely touched her food anyway, wasn’t really hungry. Since waking out on the steppe, she was touched with a keen-edged, wakeful energy that put the best krin she’d ever had to shame. She went to the open window behind her, leaned there and stared out over the sparse yellow scatter of torches and firelit windows that marked out the town below.

At five stories high, the imperial mission was by far the tallest building in Ishlin-ichan. You could see it as you rode into town, rising over the huddle of cabins and low houses like some chunky priest bestowing blessings on the backs of a multitude abased in prayer. Now it gave her a view through thin palls of chimney smoke to the city walls and beyond, where the lights ended and the steppe stretched away like some vast dark ocean. The sky had clouded from the west as night fell, the band was muffled up like a sneak assassin’s blade. Here and there, she thought she could make out the glimmering spark of campfires far out in all that darkness, but it was hard to be sure.

“You must have some homegrown muscle, too,” she mused without turning from the view. “I saw Upland Free colors on your scouts this afternoon.”

“Yes.” She heard him get up from the table and move to join her. “A seven-man scout detachment, plus a regular levy troop of eighty, of whom about a dozen are currently down with the local coughing fever. Allowing for that and the fact I need to maintain a strong command presence here among the auxiliaries, I could perhaps spare you forty to put into the field. Forty-five at most. I can tell you right now that isn’t going to be enough.”

“No.”

“You’d need five times that number to contemplate even marching into Skaranak country uninvited, let alone picking a fight once you get there.” The legate hovered awkwardly at her shoulder, not daring the familiarity to lean at her side. He pointed past her instead, out at the darkness beyond the city. “There are local legends here that say a vast army once marched out onto that plain to do battle with demons, and just… disappeared. No survivors to tell the tale, no trace of a battlefield, just—gone. But they say sometimes at night, when the wind is blowing hard out of the north east, you can still hear the sounds of a great battle, carried very faintly, as if that army is still out there somewhere, still fighting whatever it ran into.”

“Have you heard it yourself?” she challenged him.

“No, my lady. Nor do I think it ever really happened, at least not the way the legends tells it. But I do think it’s a clear warning, meant perhaps for overambitious warlords and generals. You underestimate the steppe and what it contains at your peril.”

She turned to look at him. “My lord Han, in case you weren’t listening earlier, I have just survived the better part of a month in the Kiriath Wastes, a place even my own people considered lethally dangerous. I have lived through a shipwreck and a skirmish with the Scaled Folk, a fight with a dragon and a sorcerous catapult that sent me flying a thousand miles or more through the air before crashing to earth here. If you think I’m going to be put off by tales of wailing ghost armies and black shaman conjuring, then it is you who is guilty of underestimation.”

The legate bowed his head. “My humblest apologies, my lady. It was not my intention to imply—”

“No.” She waved it off. “I know that. Raise your head, my lord. The apology should be mine; you are trying to help. But this is a blood debt, and I have no choice.”

Han looked up meekly. “Perhaps if you returned next year, my lady. With a larger force.”

“No, that’s not going to work. Do you really see the Emperor sparing me several hundred of his best fighting men to march up here and make a personal point, while the Empire’s still locked in war with the League?”

Not to mention my own chances of having the time to spare. Great big fucking mess there’ll be to clear up once I get back.

For a moment, the bitter old krin-addicted aspect of herself stepped forth grinning; she was almost tempted to forget about Yhelteth and just fucking stay up here for a couple of years. Ride some horses, learn to speak Majak, camp out under the stars, and watch the big-sky seasons turn. Or failing that, maybe catch one of the trade barges down the Janarat, stay on it past the Dhashara jump-off, drift all the way down to Shaktur and the Great Lake instead. Blag a place to stay and funds from the imperial embassy there, maybe have another go at waking the comatose Helmsman in the ruins of An-Naranash.

Let the war in the west sort itself out, let the Empire live with its stupid mistakes. Let Jhiral fend for himself for a change, just let it all go.

In slanting rays of morning sun, Ishgrim rolls over in the sheets of the big bed, gives her that smeared mouth look, reaches for her…

Going to let that go, too, are we, Archidi?

She saw the girl again, standing at the rail, not waving, as the flotilla drifted downriver with the current and away.

Back before you know it, she’d told her.

She jerked her chin—actually did it physically. Curt dismissal for the krin-eyed apparition in her head. She watched, fascinated, as her own bitter ghost raised its brows, grinned savagely at her, and then walked forward like a duel opponent.

Shouldered rudely past, was gone.

“Look,” she said to Cerdan Han. “This is going to get done, one way or the other. And I don’t have much time. If you can’t put a force together that lets me do it head-on, what are the other options? Doesn’t this shaman ever come here, to Ishlin-ichan?”

Han shook his head. “Not for a couple of years now. We kept tabs on him, of course, just like any other influential Skaranak when they blew into town. According to my spies, he used to be a regular at a pretty well-known whorehouse out by the eastern wall. But then something happened. The story we got is that he hurt one of the girls pretty badly, and she died from her injuries. Not really a problem in itself—she was a foreign slave, dragged here from one of the League cities if my memory serves me correctly. No Majak ties, no family to want blood vengeance, you see.”

“I see.”

“Yes, so, anyway,” Bemusement in the legate’s voice now—all this fuss over one bloody slave girl. “If this Poltar had just paid out the madame, no one would have cared. But he skipped instead and just never came back. No one’s very sure why. The madame put out a bounty on him, of course, but from what I hear, it wasn’t very high. More of a gesture than anything; certainly not enough to attract serious talent. So now there’s a stand-off—Poltar can’t ever walk the streets of Ishlin-ichan safely again, but it doesn’t look like he wants to. And meantime, no one’s stupid enough to ride east and go up against the Skaranak for such a paltry sum.”

She grunted. Stared out into the dark of the steppe. Daydreamed scenarios dancing in her head.

“No Skaranak malcontents, then? This Poltar must have enemies within the clan as well, surely.” Certainly works that way back in Yhelteth. “Is there really no way we could get this done from the inside? Bribe someone, maybe? Blackmail them?”

Well, look at you, Archidi—all political manoeuvring and manipulation, just like a real imperial adviser.

Grashgal and Dad would be proud.

Han sighed. “I will check our files for you, but I think it’s unlikely. The steppe clans tend to be tight knit, and the Skaranak more so than most. To act against the shaman, unless he can somehow be dishonored, is to act against the clan as a whole, against the clanmaster and all he stands for. It’s an oath-breaking matter, and you won’t find many Majak willing to do that.”

“They did it fast enough when they drove out the Dragonbane,” she grumbled.

“Perhaps. But that is not the official version of events we have. As far as my spies were able to ascertain at the time, the story told by the Dragonbane’s younger brother is that Egar went berserk and slaughtered all his other siblings unprovoked, using black arts that were blamed on his time away in the south.”

“Ershal.” She nodded grimly. “And now the little fucker’s sitting pretty as clan master, right?”

“In fact, I understand the situation is a little more akin to a governing council at whose titular head he sits. Senior herd owners and other notable wise heads, that sort of thing. It does appear to be a stable arrangement.” The legate cleared his throat delicately. “I have no wish to offend, my lady, especially as you still mourn your friend. But it’s my understanding that the Dragonbane, mighty warrior though he may have been, was not much of a clan master. Apparently, he did the job distractedly and with poor grace. He was far more interested in, ehm, shall we say, more carnal pursuits.”

The underside of her eyes pricked with tears. She found out of nowhere that a small, sad smile had crept out onto her face.

“Yeah, that sounds like him,” she whispered.

Han spread his hands. “Leadership is not for everyone.”

Fucking tell me about it.

Ishgrim, Jhiral, an Empire on the brink. The men she led, who now trusted her to get them all home. Could she really hold it all hostage to some pointless vow of vengeance for an ageing, irresponsible tomcat thug whose ignominious departure no one apparently even regretted?

Is that what he was? Really?

Perhaps. But he was the Dragonbane, too.

She bowed her head for a moment and sighed. Could not decode the riddle at all.

Still staring into the dark, she spotted the faint reflected glimmer of firelight on the sky at the horizon. Skaranak encampment or something else, no way to know. Her gaze locked to it regardless and held there, unblinking, until the cool breeze through the window rinsed tears into her eyes once more.

On the same wind, out of the same encompassing dark, came a moment of clarity, something as near to understanding as she reckoned she’d ever get.

You don’t have to decode it, Archidi. It isn’t about who he was.

It’s about who you are.

She closed her eyes for a moment, took the soothing relief it gave. Then she straightened up from the window ledge, turned away from the dark outside, and faced the nervously waiting imperial at her side.

“Let’s have a look at these files of yours,” she said briskly.

CHAPTER 52

“You know anything about a sword the Illwrack Changeling carried?”

“I think it’s safe to assume he had one,” said Anasharal in his ear. “He was, after all, a warrior king.”

Gil set his jaw. “Yeah, thanks. I’d got that far myself. Could you manage something a little less fucking obvious?”

“Is this really important? To know, at this exact juncture, how some chieftain four thousand years dead was once armed? Commander Nyanar is becoming very nervous with all this holding station and waiting. Are you not nearly done in there?”

Down the deserted, dimly lit corridors of Findrich’s labyrinthine warehouse palace. They’d seen no one since the skirmish ranger ambush. No signs of life but the lit lamps, no sound but their booted footfalls on stone and the rearguard calling clear every twenty paces. Standard precautions against bushwhack. They moved at a wary pace, weapons out and watchful. Gil carried the Ravensfriend low in his right hand, shield hanging ready on his left arm at his side. The ikinri ‘ska prowled in and out of his head like a marsh spider looking for prey.

“If it wasn’t important,” he said evenly, “I wouldn’t be asking you about it. And no, we are not nearly done. The sword is here in Etterkal. I’m told the Illwrack Changeling’s soul is still trapped inside, and the dwenda plan to use the blade in some way to make me a host for his return. Ring any bells?”

“None at all. It sounds fanciful.”

But he thought he picked up the faintest shadow of hesitation, of doubt maybe, laid across the Helmsman’s dismissive tone.

“Fanciful, perhaps. But you’re the one sent us up to the Hironish looking for a legendary warlord back from the dead, and now it looks like there might actually be one. I’m no great believer in coincidences, Helmsman.”

“I have already told you that the Illwrack Changeling legend was a pretext, a means to get kir-Archeth Indamaninarmal safely out of the city and have her rub shoulders with potential cabalists. I did not expect you to find anything, in fact I anticipated a convenient vacuum in which discontent and plotting could emerge.”

“But it didn’t.”

“There is no need to state the obvious.”

“Yeah. Irritating, isn’t it.”

They reached a crossing of corridors. Ringil, nerves cranked like bowstrings in the gloom, raised a clenched fist to halt his men. He set loose the ikinri ‘ska, sent it billowing out ahead of him, sniffing for anything that might wish him ill. Eased forward a soft step at a time until he could peer around the corner both ways.

Nothing.

He puffed out a breath, tried to rid himself of a creeping sensation that somewhere, the jaws of a trap were poised to snap shut on his head. If Findrich had sent Kaad and son out to slow him down, it was to buy time to prepare some greater, more unpleasant surprise further in. Just a matter of what and where.

“There is something you might try,” Anasharal volunteered unexpectedly. “The scheme to seek the Illwrack Changeling was drawn by the Warhelm Ingharnanasharal and implanted in me without depth or detail. I was literally incapable of knowing more. But the glyphs you inflicted on me have broken some of the constraints I exist under. I know now, for example, that I once was Ingharnanasharal, and that something of that self may still survive separate from me, high up over the curve of the Earth. If you… compel me once again, command me to reach out to what is left of the Warhelm, I may be able to transcend the separation between us and find answers for you in Ingharnanasharal’s full memory.”

“All right.” Ringil mustered the glyphs in his mind. “Do that. I, uhm, I compel you.”

It felt strange, imposing the ikinri ‘ska at a distance. But like the gathering of the storm elementals at his command back in the Hironish, he felt the power stir, out at the edges of his perception. And then, he felt it hit home.

Anasharal shrieked.

Long drawn out, grinding, inhuman—it came at him like something fanged and clawed, chilling his blood with the sound, building out of some incalculable depth, swelling, scaling upward, shredding at his ears—

And then, abruptly, gone.

He felt the sudden absence as clearly as the shriek itself. It was a silence that stuffed itself deep into his ears like wool.

“Anasharal?”

Nothing. Whatever battle was being fought now, between the ikinri ‘ska’s compulsion glyphs and the antique Kiriath sorceries that governed what Helmsmen could and could not do, resolution would take time. Anasharal was out of the game.

He was surprised by how suddenly naked it made him feel.

“Something wrong, my lord?” Rakan, close at his side.

They peered together down the empty, lamplit perspectives of the cross corridor. Ringil shook his head, tried to shake some of the woolen silence out of his ears. He clapped the other man on the shoulder with what he hoped was an approximation of manly camaraderie. Pitched his voice for general consumption.

“Nothing we can’t fix with some cold, sharp steel,” he lied brightly.

THERE ARE FORCES LOOSE IN THIS PLACE, HE’D TOLD THEM BACK AT THE atrium, that you would very likely call demonic. And we will probably have to face and fight them before we can get our people back. I am sorry. I had hoped these creatures wouldn’t be present, or that if they were, that we’d be able to surprise them. That is now impossible. They are warned.

Faint muttering through the gathered half circle, some of it none too happy. He couldn’t blame them. He waited it out.

But I want you to remember one thing as we push forward. Two years ago, I defeated these same creatures with only a handful of men for support. Those men were imperial soldiers like you. He pointed at Rakan. And this man is brother to their commander. Imperial warrior blood, the same blood that runs in all your veins, the blood that has laid the world at Yhelteth’s feet.

A couple of low cheers, hushed to silence.

With those few warriors at my back two years ago, I discovered a very simple truth about these supposed demons that we face. They fall down just like men. They may come from the shadows, they may glow like the blue fires of hell, they may be lightning swift and alien, but in the end none of this could save them from good imperial steel. They bleed just like men, they hurt just like men, they die just like men.

And if they stand at any point between us and those we have come to save—we will cut them down and butcher them just like men.

Assent boiled snarling out in the wake of his words. It was the same low ugly growl he’d gotten from them by the watchtower at Dako’s point back in Ornley.

Getting good at this shit again, Gil, he allowed to himself as they marched out of the atrium cloisters and into the corridors beyond. Just like Gallows Gap.

Yeah, let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.

But he knew at some level that his real wishes were nowhere near as clean-cut or as clean. And he could feel the Mistress of Dice and Death put her icy arm around his shoulders once more.

In the end, he found Slab Findrich by the simple expedient of tracking the dwenda stench to its heart. Turn this way down a corridor, and the sensation of eldritch presence ebbed; turn back and it swelled again. It took him a couple of wrong turns to get the full hang of it, but once he did, the ikinri ‘ska seemed to quicken and shake itself more fully awake—as if, he thought, rousing itself from a sated doze after the carnage in the atrium. It took him, with growing confidence and exultation, through passages and galleried storage halls, across another unroofed atrium space, and finally, to the foot of a single ornate staircase, leading up to an unsuspected third level that must, he supposed, sit right under the warehouse roof.

They went up quietly, no bravado this time, no charge. There were double doors at the top, in clear echo of the heavy oak portal they’d broken in through downstairs. But this time the wood was lighter, more delicately carved, set with two fussy-looking curled iron handles, and it opened inward. Ringil took up station on the left, pressed a palm gently to the paneling between the handles, found the lock unengaged. He nodded at Rakan. They took a handle each—the Throne Eternal swapping sword smoothly to his left hand for the moment it would take—and stood poised.

Ringil met his lover’s eyes across the short space between them and the corner of his mouth quirked. There was an itching in his belly, and he couldn’t honestly tell if it was proximity to the Throne Eternal’s young muscled frame, so long untouched, or just the longing for slaughter. He raised three fingers erect on his left hand. Rakan nodded. Gil put his hand back on the handle.

Shaped the numbered count slowly, exaggeratedly, silently, with his lips.

Three… two… one!

They dropped the handles hard, flung the doors open, and Ringil went lithely through the gap. Shield up to guard, Ravensfriend raised. From the way the doors went back, he knew there was no one waiting pressed up against the jamb to jump him. Peripheral vision confirmed it. He stalked into the hall beyond, cleared the doorway, and let his men follow him in. Surveyed the vaulted interior for threat.

“Good evening, Gil. You took your time.”

Slab Findrich, in the murderous flesh.

Ringil had been expecting, it only now dawned on him, some kind of formal throne at the end of this regal space, maybe even set up on a little dais. It would have fitted with Findrich’s undisputed dominance of the Etterkal slavers association, his reputed captaincy of the cabal, his shadowy reach into the chambers of Trelayne’s political heart. It would have fit the man as Gil remembered him, tall and gaunt and grave.

But there was no throne. No outward show of power at all.

Findrich sat instead in a simple armchair under a window halfway down the right-hand wall of the chamber. It was one of a pair of seats set around a table strewn with sheaves of heavy parchment, a sample couple of which he still held loosely in one hand. A full size Yhelteth water pipe stood on the floor beside the armchair, still smoldering from its crucible top. The thick, cloying scent of flandrijn tinged the room. Sipping tube and mouthpiece rod were draped neatly over the arm of the chair. Set against the lordly dimensions of the hall, the slaver looked like some vagabond clerk, squatting in the ruins of a glory long fled.

Looks like exactly what he fucking is.

“Well? Are you just going to stand there all night, oh great avenger? You’ve kept me waiting quite long enough, don’t you think?”

“Got held up,” Ringil told him. “Nice of you to feed me the Kaads like that, father and son in one juicy bite.”

Findrich smiled and set the documents aside. “I didn’t imagine they’d get the better of you for long.”

“No. They didn’t.”

He looked around—it was the same honeycombed stone floor and ornate friezework as the atrium where the Kaads had died, this time roofed in with antique—or maybe fake antique—stained glass. There was some heroic statuary looming in corners, a wood paneled shrine to the Dark Court against the back wall with candles lit, but aside from these features, Findrich’s chairs and table were the only furnishing in a wholly vacant and deserted space. If the dwenda were as close as Gil’s senses insisted, they either weren’t ready to spring their trap yet, or they looked to be suffering from some sudden, massive bout of shyness.

All right, then.

He heard the footfalls, the rustle and clink of his men massing at his back. He moved up closer to the table.

“Let’s get this over with Slab. Where you keeping the imperials?”

The slave merchant took off a pair of reading spectacles that Gil only now registered he’d been wearing. His hair was full white these days, but cropped savagely short, so it looked like a sparse fall of snow across his pate. On some men, it would have conferred a mild, grandfatherly air, but on Slab Findrich, it just looked cold and hard. Age had not softened the old thug; it looked instead to have cured him like some strip of hung and salted meat. The pox-scarred Harbor-End features were just as impassive, the leaden, predatory eyes unchanged.

“You know, you’ve caused us all a great deal of trouble, Ringil.”

“Glad to hear that. Where are my friends?”

“You took our Aldrain warlord from us just as things were building toward a promising new day for the League. Then you set about slaughtering so many of my associates that our whole way of doing things up here almost fell apart.” Findrich took up the mouthpiece rod of his pipe and wagged it admonishingly at Gil. “Did you know there were riots in the street against the slave laws after your little rampage last year? Serious questions raised in the Chancellery about repealing Liberalization? That’s how close we came.”

“I’m sure you quashed it all easily enough. You always were pretty fucking slick when it came to protecting your coin.”

“Says the noble son who never lacked for any.” The slave merchant sipped delicately at the pipe, sieved smoke out between his teeth. “You’ll forgive me if I’m not mortally wounded by your contempt.”

Ringil grinned and hefted the Ravensfriend. “If I wanted to mortally wound you, Slab, I’d just take this thing and shove it through your purse.”

“And Klithren of Hinerion!” Booming false cheer in Findrich’s voice, but the gaze that slipped past Ringil’s shoulder was heavy-lidded and cold. “Well, well. We thought you defeated and dead, knight commander, but I see it’s worse than that. You seem to have found something you like, sniffing around our faggot war hero here. Been initiated into the dark arts of buggery and stubble-cheeked blow jobs, have we?”

Klithren cursed thickly and stepped past Ringil on the right, sword arm rising. Gil put out a hand to block him. Soft brushing touch of the ikinri ‘ska, in case the mercenary’s command discipline wasn’t enough.

“Stand down,” he said firmly. “That’s not what we’re here for.”

“I know what you did to me, Findrich,” Klithren snarled. “I know what you fucking did!”

Findrich raised an eyebrow. “What? Made you a knight of Trelayne and handed you a command fit for a man of ten times your social standing? Well, I’m deeply sorry for it now, especially seeing as how you’ve pissed it all away.”

Klithren lurched forward again. Gil lifted his arm again, murmured a glyph and looped the ikinri ‘ska subtly tighter about the mercenary.

“Easy there.” He produced a thin smile for Findrich. “Thing is, Slab, we’re not all as in thrall to rank and standing as Harbor-End dregs like you. Some of us are just fighting men. Some of us actually stood against the reptiles—as opposed to just sending our sons off to stand and die in our stead.”

Viciously unjust, and he knew it. Findrich had done everything he could, pulled every string at his command, to keep his only son out of the war. Pointless effort—the boy defied his father, volunteered for the southern shores defense levy, and subsequently died, either at Rajal beach or somewhere on the brutal fallback march that followed. Gil saw the slaver’s dead-eyed stare catch fire on the old pain, saw his upper lip lift fractionally from his teeth.

Something savage in him rejoiced at the sight.

The legend cracks and crumbles. Not every day you get a rise out of Slab-face Findrich.

“I hear they never did find a body,” he went on mildly. “That’s the thing about the Scaled Folk, though. You could always rely on them to clean up after a battle. Right, Klithren?”

“Right,” said the mercenary somberly.

“Yeah, how do you live with something like that, Slab? I mean—knowing your son died, roasted and eaten by monsters, and you put him out there because you were too much of a coward and a coin-grubbing thief to go and fight yourself.”

The pipe mouthpiece clattered to the floor. Findrich surged halfway to his feet, knuckles white on the arms of the chair. Rage in his eyes, and a low growl rising from his throat. Ringil gave him an unfriendly smile, and he froze.

“Just so you know—you get up out of that chair, I’ll chop your fucking feet off. Sit down.” Gil let the point of the Ravensfriend drift lazily up from the floor, waited while the slave merchant lowered himself by glaring inches, back into his seat. “Right. Small talk’s over, Slab. I just set this entire city on fire to get my friends back; you think I’m going to go easy on you for old times’ sake? I killed Grace, I killed Poppy, and the only reason you’re not following them is that I’m short of time. So let’s stop fucking about, shall we? You want to live? You want to keep your appendages and your manhood intact? Where are my friends?”

He felt the change shiver through the room like a cold wind. Saw Findrich bare his teeth in triumph.

“Right fucking behind you, faggot.”

OUT OF THE SHADOWS AT THE BACK OF THE CHAMBER, THE DWENDA CAME.

Some of them were the statues in the corners, melting now back into life and motion, shedding their stone glamour the way a snake sheds skin, shaking off their held poses in shimmering splinters of blue fire. He saw a couple of them tilt their necks to shake off stiffness as they came. Others just walked out of the blue fire haze he’d seen them emerge from at Ennishmin, as if curtained portals drew back in the air itself, edged with the same blue fire, and let them through. Tall, ghost pale of face, eyes like pits of gleaming black tar, and they moved with a terrible unhuman grace and poise. Beneath cloaks of shimmering velvet blue and gray, they were armored head to neck in smooth, seamless black garb that seemed to repel the light. They bristled with weapons, glimmering long-sword blades and ornate axes, and Risgillen of Illwrack was at their head.

Ringil surveyed them bleakly for a moment, shot a brief glance back at Findrich.

“Not those friends,” he said patiently.

The slaver spat on the floor at his feet. “Fuck you. Arrogant aristo prick. You’re fucking done.”

“Well, we’ll see.” Ringil caught Klithren’s eye. Nodded at Findrich. “Keep an eye on our pal here. I got this.”

He strode out to meet Risgillen, across the expanse of honeycombed stone floor. Was vaguely aware of Noyal Rakan, barking orders at the gaping imperials, trying to snap them out of their shock, trying to mask his own. Ringil felt a twinge of sympathy. He remembered his own first dwenda encounter, two years back, the icy terror that had seized him at the time. The imperials had had more warning, true enough, but still, they were mostly young and unseasoned. He’d seen them give a solid account of themselves against human foes, but he could not predict how they would cope here.

Best not to risk finding out.

He passed Rakan, put out his shield, and touched him on the arm with its cold steel edge.

“Keep them tight,” he murmured. “Bowmen deployed, but no move unless I call it, or these motherfuckers try to jump me. Got that?”

“Yes, my—” Voice taut and hoarse, he heard how Rakan swallowed to clear his throat. “My lord, are these truly—”

“They fall down just like men,” Gil told him. “Remember that. Just like men.”

And left the young captain there. Moved out to meet the dwenda wedge and their commander. He’d forgotten how coldly beautiful Risgillen was—sculpted ivory features, jutting cheekbones and smooth pale brow, black silky fall of hair, framing the face. Long, mobile mouth, long slim-fingered hands.

He’d forgotten how much she resembled Seethlaw. How hard the blood resemblance struck at him, and what it left welling up in the wound.

He wiped it all away. Stored it, behind a stony battlefield mask.

“Risgillen,” he called amiably across the space between them. “You really are a stubborn fucking bitch. I warned you not to come back here again. Now I’m going to have to kill you, just like your fuckwit brother.”

She tilted her head, wolflike, and smiled. “This world is ours, Ringil, and we will have it for our own. We owned it before men learned to build their first campfires out on the arid plains, we will own it long after you are all gone. Look to your own legends if you think I’m lying. We are the Aldrain, the Elder Race; we are the Shining Immortal Ones.”

“Yeah.” Ringil came to an easy halt, a couple of yards away from her. If she raised her long sword at him now, they could touch blades “Legends I’ve been reading say you got your arses handed to you by the Black Folk four thousand years ago, and they drove you out. What have you been doing since—sulking?”

He heard indrawn breath along the dwenda line. Looked like they’d all learned pretty good Naomic, which suggested they’d been deployed here for a while. A dwenda warrior on Risgillen’s flank twitched in the ranks, bleached features stretched in outrage, long ax raised. Ringil lifted the Ravensfriend casually, pointed it,

“You—don’t even fucking think about it.”

Risgillen turned and said something softly in the Aldrain tongue. The outraged dwenda subsided, fell back in line. Risgillen smiled again, thinly. She looked back at Ringil with an intensity that bordered on adoration.

“You should have stayed in the south,” she said very softly. “But I’m glad you came. I would not have wanted to miss your doom.”

Ringil nodded. “Let’s get on with it, then. Where’s this sword?”

For just a moment, he had her. He saw the way she froze. Gave her a lopsided grin.

“Risgillen, Risgillen.” Gathering the ikinri ‘ska stealthily to him, like the folds of some heavy net for casting. Meantime—misdirection, Gil, loud and bright as you can manage. “Did you really think I was coming to you unaware? You really thought you were going to have your last fuckwit human stooge just crawl up out of whatever jinxed Illwrack heirloom he got magicked into five thousand years ago, and take my soul? You really haven’t understood who you’re fucking with here, have you.”

She stared at him for a long, cold moment, black empty eyeballs catching glimmers of light from the torches around the chamber, twisting them into something else.

“It’s you who hasn’t understood,” she whispered.

He felt it lash out for him, the dwenda glamour in all its binding force. Flash recall of his time with Seethlaw in the Grey Places, the subtle webs of compulsion he would only later understand had been spun around him. It fell all about him, at angles he could not see or name, coiled inward, made a soundless hissing as it came—

He reached for the ikinri ‘ska. Grinned as it came on in his head like icy fire. Struck.

Nothing.

He tried again, cast hard. The dwenda compulsion drew savagely tight, crushing out the glimmer of the ikinri ‘ska a scant moment after it arose. He yelped. Something tore in his chest with the reversal; it felt as if his rib cage would crack like a nutshell between clenching teeth. His arms hung at his sides as if weighted there with ballast. The Ravensfriend fell through his fingers, his shield tore loose from his left arm. Clank and clatter as they hit the honeycomb floor. His head lolled back a second, then straightened through no effort of his own. He would have gone to his knees if the choice had been his to make, but whatever forces Risgillen had unleashed held him upright, as if suspended there by a spike through the sternum.

He twisted his head to the side, rolled his eyes like a panicked horse, trying to see his men…

“They are bound as you are.” Risgillen told him. “The power of Talonreach, the storm-callers’ art enacted. The glamour ripples outward. It’s a simple enough matter—whatever power you summon is deflected, taken from you, pushed away and used in binding your followers ever tighter. You have already made them breathless with your efforts so far. I daresay if you keep pushing, you’ll suffocate them.”

At the extremity of his vision, he saw the truth of it—Noyal Rakan’s straining face, the locked-up posture. He heaved once more against the binding, got no single fraction of leverage anywhere. He let go. Hung from his failure as if nailed there.

Risgillen stepped closer to him, long sword lowered. She put up her free hand to touch his face. He felt the trembling in her fingers as she did it.

“You see?” she said, voice a shaky caress. “I have understood exactly who I am fucking with.”

Ringil made a noise through gritted teeth.

“Oh, yes. You wanted to see the sword.”

She let go of his face, raised her hand, and snapped her fingers in the chilly air. More words in the Aldrain tongue and a name, one he thought he recognized.

A dwenda shouldered through the ranks, unarmed, limping a little. There was an ornate bordering on his cloak, glyphs worked into it in strands of red and silver, and the rest of the company gave him respectful ground. He stood beside Risgillen, fixed Ringil with his empty black stare. Risgillen made an elegant gesture of introduction.

“This is Atalmire, ordained storm-caller for clan Talonreach. The glamour that holds you is of his making. You’ll remember him, of course. You crippled him in the temple at Yhelteth.”

Fractional easing in the pressure on his chest—Gil found, abruptly, he could speak.

“You all look the same to me,” he husked. “Hello, Atalmire, you crippled fuck. Tell me, what kind of mage can’t fix his own leg?”

The storm-caller looked impassively back at him.

“He has chosen not to heal,” Risgillen said. “He chooses to remember instead. But have no worries on that account. When you end, so will the wound you gave him.”

Following Atalmire, two more dwenda came through carrying a slim, six foot ornately worked wooden casket between them. Risgillen darted a smiling glance at Ringil, like a mother at a patient child finally about to receive a long-promised gift. She leaned close again.

“They tell me that some small part of you will survive this,” she said very gently. “That it will sit behind the eyes of the risen Dark King, eyes that were once your own, and see everything that he sees with them, everything that he does as he takes back this world for us. I hope that pleases you as much as it pleases me.”

“Big mistake,” he hissed at her. “You don’t want to leave me alive, Risgillen.”

“No, I do,” she said seriously, and nodded at Atalmire.

The storm-caller uttered a single, harsh syllable and made a sharp beckoning motion at the casket. The wooden lid splintered, then cracked violently apart. Exploded away from the base in five jagged chunks. Splinters stung Ringil’s cheek.

The sword lay within.

CHAPTER 53

Marnak Ironbrow rode to Ishlin-ichan irritable and combative, and what he found there didn’t put him in any better mood.

They didn’t know him at the gate—no sign of the usual crew; they had a quad of callow herd boy types propping up the gateposts instead. None of them looked old enough to be wiping their own arses yet, let alone wielding the staff lances they’d been given. Not a beard between them. He looked around in the early evening gloom for a familiar face, saw only a corpulent captain sat outside the guard hut, picking his teeth with a fowl bone. Old line command instincts prickled along his nerves—down south, he’d have had all five of these on a slouching charge, quick as slitting a throat. Couple of strokes each at the posts, double for the captain, and docked pay all around. He reined in the impulse, reined in his mount, too, a prudent dozen yards from the gates. Raised his hand to the riders behind him to do the same.

“Nine men seek entry,” he intoned loudly. “We bring no word but peace.”

The staff lancers fumbled about a bit, glances back and forth between them. They looked hopefully over at the man by the hut. The guard captain dug a chunk of something out on the end of his improvised toothpick, looked quizzically at it, and then popped it back into his mouth. He stood up, stretched, and yawned.

“Skaranak, eh?” He looked them over with calculated insolence. “Coming in for a bath, are we, lads?”

Marnak felt how his men bristled at his back. He offered the man a bleak grin. “Come to fuck some of your Ishlinak whores, actually.”

Barked laughter behind him. The corpulent captain flushed. Marnak leaned forward in his saddle, kept his grin but never let it touch his eyes.

“Is there going to be a problem?”

From long habit, he’d measured the logistics of the fight reflexively as they rode up. Nine of them, hardened herd outriders all, versus the four kids with their staff lances on the gate and this bag of guts. Marnak and his crew were all riding with lances sheathed, but against this kind of opposition, it wouldn’t much matter. It’d be over in less time than you’d need to tell it around the campfire afterward. At worst they’d collect a couple of gashes between them.

And a whole new raiding war, with summer still a month to run.

Tensions were never far off between Skaranak and the Ish, but the two clans had not fought hard now for over a decade. The odd drunken tavern brawl in Ishlin-ichan, maybe, that got out of hand and went to knives. And a couple of inconclusive skirmishes over grazing up near the Bow-of-Bandlight meander three years back—but both sides hastily ascribed those to renegade elements, buried their dead, and paid out blood debt to the families, kissed and made up. It just wasn’t worth getting into anymore; there was too much at risk that was good for both sides now.

Yeah—tell that to your gut-sack captain here.

No matter. He couldn’t butcher the Ishlin-ichan gate watch over nothing but bad temper and balls-out tribal idiocy. Those days were long gone.

The guard captain appeared to have reached a similar conclusion. Or perhaps he saw the look in Marnak’s eyes. He sniffed and spat, courteously far from the Skaranak’s horse’s hooves. “No problem, graybeard, if you don’t bring one yourselves. Pay the levy and in you go. Nine of you—that’ll be ninety.”

“Ten star a man? Bit steep, isn’t it?”

A shrug. “You got imperial coin, I could let you in for—let’s see—eight elementals.”

“That’s still steep.” Marnak looked significantly around at the four staff lancers, one by one. Gate toll was meant in principle for the city’s coffers, but there was no way hard imperial coin was going to end up anywhere but in these men’s pockets. “Call it six. That’s a spinner each for your lads here and two for you. Can’t say fairer than that now, can we?”

He patted at the purse he wore under his coat and it clinked merrily. Not a noise you’d easily get out of the crude, star-stamped bronze octagons that passed for coinage among the Majak. The guard captain made a show of chewing the offer over, but Marnak could see the man’s hand twitch at his side and he knew, looking into the Ishlinak’s face, that the motion wasn’t any urge toward the sword he wore at his belt.

They were in.

“Oh, yeah,” he wondered, as they were waved through. “What happened to Larg, anyway? This is usually his shift.”

A shrug. “Coughing fever. Him and half a hundred like him. Even the imperials are coming down with it this year. That and the comet, it’s not looking good.”

Marnak’s men made warding gestures, so did the staff lancers on the gate. He sketched one himself, more for solidarity and appearance than anything else. Poltar had made a big song and dance about the comet, of course, dark muttered implications of character flaw among the council, angered Sky Dwellers, great impending threats. All the usual shit. Marnak didn’t set much store by portents; he’d traveled too far and seen too much over the years. But when the sky woke up, so did the shaman, and that in itself was worth a sleepless night or two—once Poltar Wolfeye was roused, there was no telling where the dance might go, how out of hand it might get. And it wasn’t as if he’d grown any more stable with the rise of his fortunes over the last couple of years, either. All those holes he liked to make in his own hide, the look in those eyes. He hadn’t wanted anyone to stray out of Skaranak territory in the wake of the comet’s fall, let alone ride the three days to Ishlin-ichan—Marnak had to get into an eye-to-eye facedown with the mangy old fuck just to make this trip, and now he was wondering whether it was going to be worth it.

You need to wrap this brooding shit up, horseman. Not why you came into town, is it? You can bitch and brood to your heart’s content back in your yurt.

He stowed his misgivings and tried to summon a decent degree of anticipation as they trotted on into the low rise of the town. Behind him, his men managed just fine—trading crude jokes and laughter, calling out brightly to passersby and women at upper windows. Fair enough, it was a big trip to town for them; not one of these lads had been off the steppe in their lives. But Marnak had seen the spires and domes of the imperial city, the crenelated towers of its northern rivals in the League. He’d lived and fucked and caroused in those places for the better part of his youth and then some. Next to all of that, Ishlin-ichan just didn’t measure up. Oh, sure, it was all right, but there were times when these trips felt like a paltry pleasure, a ride on a sullen pack mule when you’d been used to war-bred stallions. Lately, even the whoring didn’t seem to help.

You’re just getting old. This fifty-summers thing is kicking your arse, and you know it.

A few years back, right enough, it had been easier. He came back from Yhelteth wealthy and stocked with war stories enough to get him into Sky Home a dozen times over. He bought shares in the Skaranak herds, hired younger son loose ends from good families to help mind his investment. Married a canny, curvaceous widow, adopted her kids as his own and had a couple more. With time and the ebb of the initial fire, he found himself sloping off to Ishlin-ichan now and again for a taste of strange, but Sadra was canny in more ways than one and she didn’t sulk or rage all that much. He waited out her cold-shoulder treatment each time with the patient equanimity of a man whose professional years had accustomed him to waiting out far worse things; meantime, he spoiled her with gifts and apologies and steady affection until she cracked.

In the end, an unspoken agreement settled in between them—that he’d do what he liked in other beds as long as it was done far enough from the encampment not to embarrass her and wasn’t done all that often. Rules he found it easy enough to follow—Sadra, in a good mood, wasn’t something many whores could hold a candle to anyway. Day to day, he was happier than he’d ever thought he’d end up—well, he was alive for one thing—and if only the Dragonbane hadn’t gone stark raving berserk and run off like that, he reckoned even these vague misgivings would not trouble him half so much. Almost as if when Egar was still around, bitching noisily about life back on the steppe, it was that much easier to quell his own quiet nostalgia and get on with living.

Urann’s balls, Eg, where’d you go? What the fuck really happened to you out there?

They had Ershal’s story, of course, and evidence that seemed to back it up. He rode haggard and exhausted into camp on a limping mount that same night, startle-eyed and gabbling tales of southern mercenary friends of the Dragonbane, demons in the grass. Showed them the thin bleeding lash-mark wounds on his horse’s limbs and lower flanks. The scene of slaughter he led them back to the next morning bore him out, was like something out of a tale, and the shaman certainly made the most of it.

It is as I always thought. The Dragonbane has sold himself to the southerner’s demon god. He has angered the Sky Dwellers with his corrupt foreign ways. How else to explain such an atrocity worked on the flesh and blood of the Skaranak…

So forth.

None of it made a lot of sense, if you stopped to actually think about it. But you got used to that with shamanry. And in the end, whatever had really happened out there the previous night, the Dragonbane wasn’t around to tell his side of the story. No body, and no tracks out, or at least none that any of the scouts could find, but his gear was all gone. Staff-lance, saddle pack, knives—all vanished without trace like their owner, something that with every passing hour was starting to look dangerously like both sorcery and an admission of guilt. The only evidence Egar had ever been there at all was his Yhelteth-bred warhorse, lying dead on its side, feathered with Ershal’s arrows—it reared up at me and lashed out, eyes glowing with fire, gifted with demonic speech, cursing me in the southern tongue so my heart chilled at those alien syllables, he told them. What else was I to do but take it down?

And Poltar, nodding soberly along at his side.

Marnak grimaced at the memory. He’d never stood against Ershal’s rapid elevation to the clan mastery in the weeks that followed because it made all kinds of sense. The clan needed the continuity, they could ill afford a scramble for power between majority herd owners in the wake of all this spooky horror. The shaman was in favor of it, which by extension meant the gods were, too. Gant, the Dragonbane’s only other surviving brother, gave it the nod. And Ershal was, truth to tell, a pretty good candidate for the job. He was young, but shrewd with it, and he had an instinctive grasp of the political necessities that the Dragonbane had either never owned or maybe just never seen fit to bother with. He listened respectfully to the herd owners and other clan graybeards, he won over the younger men and women around the encampment with his prowess in archery and horsemanship. A couple of months in, and everyone was saying, in somewhat relieved tones, that he should have been the one right from the start…

Whoops from his men stirred him back to the present. They were calling out his name and laughing. Marnak blinked and looked around. Saw he’d been so sunk in recollection that he’d nearly ridden right past their destination.

The Feathered Nest.

Three stories high, cheap brickwork and timber daubed with Tethanne script in red, the whole structure sagging alarmingly to the left—one of these days he was going to wake up here and find himself buried under rubble. A couple of underemployed working girls slouched about outside on the porch, calling out to passersby and flaunting themselves tiredly. They were kohled up in what they fondly imagined was the Yhelteth fashion, and their slightly grubby robes approximated harem-wear, more or less. There was the customary joke in the name of this place, of course, a double meaning just like most of the other whorehouses in town. But the joke was in Tethanne; it didn’t translate very well into Majak, and he’d grown tired over the years of explaining it to fellow carousers who didn’t really care one way or the other.

He reined in, harder than strictly necessary, brought his horse’s head around to the hitching rail. Swung a leg up and over with a show of Skaranak horseman insouciance, skidded down out of his saddle look-no-hands. His boots hit the dirt and sent up little puffs of dust, he tried not to grunt as the impact snagged in his knees. A couple of the girls made oohing sounds, but their hearts weren’t really in it. Horseman wanker tricks. He guessed they saw this shit nine times before breakfast most days.

He made an effort for his men. “All right, lads. Let’s get out of the saddle and right back into the saddle, eh?”

Ready roars of approval. One man whooped and leapt up onto the rail, balanced there on dipping, twisting legs, and then commenced prancing back and forth with arms spread wide. The porch girls unfolded, yawning, from their posts. He jumped down grinning into their arms.

“Open up girls, here we come,” crowed the man at Marnak’s side. “Going to get me some of that imperial pussy!”

Yeah, that’s what you think, Marnak thought sourly.

IN FACT, THERE WERE YHELTETH WHORES TO BE HAD AT THE FEATHERED Nest, but not many of them, and they cost a lot more than most Majak herdsmen were willing or able to pay. The majority of the Nest’s customers settled quite happily for local girls made up to look the part. Most of them wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference anyway.

Marnak could tell the difference.

He sat sprawled among the silk drapes of a top-floor room, trying to separate his nostalgia from his lust. They’d plied him with wine downstairs while he waited—he was still working his way through a colossal goblet of the stuff now—and he hadn’t eaten much since breakfast, so he was pretty giddy. He set down the drink with exaggerated care on a stool beside the bed. Loosened his belt a bit, felt a soggy grin creep into his mouth.

“What’s keeping you, girl?” he called out in Tethanne. “Not shy, are you?”

“Not really, no.”

Tall, shadowy frame in the doorway, a stiffly braided mane of hair that made her taller still, and she wasn’t dressed much differently from him. Boots and leather breeches, a jerkin buckled about with gear. The voice was chocolate dark and deep, court-bred tones with a command rasp beneath. Marnak came up off the bed like a scalded cat.

“Who the fuck are you? What—”

His voice dried up as she stepped into the light. Jet-black features, eyes that threw back the candle glow in a contemptuous swirl like bandlight hitting well water a long way down. Knives sheathed in some weird upside-down fashion, but the hilts were…

“I… know you,” he whispered.

She stepped further into the room, put her hands on her belt. “Probably, you do. There were never very many like me.”

“You’re, uh,” his mouth was dry from the wine, “Flaradnam’s daughter, aren’t you? I saw you at the memorial gathering in Yhelteth. I, uhm, I marched with your father. On the northern expeditionary. I saw him die.”

“And you were at Gallows Gap after.” She nodded. “Where you collected the long scar above your eye. Awarded the white silk three times in as many years, promoted to line commander in fifty-four, offered another sizable promotion after the war, resigned your commission and came back here instead. Trusted lieutenant to the rightful Skaranak clanmaster until he disappeared in sixty-one; getting along fine with his not-so-rightful successor today. You see, I know all about you, Marnak Ironbrow. The only thing I don’t know is whether or not you had a hand in kicking the Dragonbane out.”

“Fuck you.” Up from his belly, without thought.

A thin white smile split her ebony face. “I’ll take that as a no.”

He held down the impulse to cross the space between them and backhand her to the floor. Stayed where he was. Partly, that was his mercenary training, corroded now by the years but still in place. Manage your emotions, soldier; use them, don’t let them use you.

But also, he wasn’t going to kid himself, it was those curiously empty churned-light eyes, it was the way she stood. He recalled how Flaradnam had fought in the Wastes, the cold methodical strength and fury that drove him, and he thought he saw an echo of it in the woman before him.

“What do you want with me, Kiriath?” he growled.

“That’s better,” she said.

THEY SAT ON OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE BED, EACH WITH A LEG DRAWN UP SO they could face—and watch—each other. Heavy boots and buckles pressing down into the brightly colored silk sheets, leaving grit and mud traces. Not quite the congress the Skaranak veteran must have been anticipating when he came in here, and the tension in his face suggested he was still adjusting. Neither of them had relinquished their knives at any point and there was a telltale immobility to their hands as they talked. If there was trust in the room, it was smoke-thin and floating as yet.

“Dead?” Marnak asked grimly.

Archeth nodded. “Killing a dragon in the Wastes. He saved my life doing it. Which is why I’m here. He left me a blood debt to honor.”

She watched for signs of emotion, knew she’d probably not see much. For a people famed as berserkers in battle, the Majak came off oddly impassive when they dealt with loss. If Marnak planned to weep for the Dragonbane, he wouldn’t do it here.

The Skaranak grunted. “Could not have asked for a better death, then.”

You didn’t see what was left of him, she wanted to say, but kept it stowed. And anyway, maybe he was right. Marnak probably knew more about the way the Dragonbane had felt than she ever would.

“He was coming here, Ironbrow,” she said. “Coming to kill the shaman Poltar and his usurper brother Ershal, the same way he dealt with the others when they jumped him with hired help at his father’s grave.”

Marnak’s face might have been stone. “Is that right?”

Near enough, it is. That revenge on the shaman and his brother were always incidental to their homeward trek wasn’t something the Ironbrow needed to know. Let’s keep it simple, Archidi. Blood simple.

She smiled across the bed at the Majak graybeard. “That’s right. And now it falls to me to accomplish vengeance on the Dragonbane’s behalf. And I would like your help.”

Long quiet amid the silks, while Marnak looked broodingly at her. Out in the street beyond the drapes at the window, she heard horses clop and jingle past. Footfalls on the stair. Uncontrolled laughter came up through the floor from some room where people were apparently having a lot more fun than in here.

“You are an outlander,” he said finally. “You’re not even human.”

“On my mother’s side, I am actually. But I take your point. Here I am, asking you to side with a complete stranger against your clan, and on no better evidence than said stranger’s word. That’s a big ask. But tell me this, Ironbrow—what do I stand to gain from lying to you?”

He glowered. “Yhelteth manipulates all it comes into contact with, and the Kiriath in turn dangle and dance the Empire like a child’s puppet. This is what I saw throughout my time in the south. How should I guess what benefit the Black Folk might see in stirring up the Skaranak? Perhaps your aim is to weaken us, to feed us in pieces to your citified Ishlinak lapdogs as incentive for some political favor or other.”

“The Black Folk are all gone,” she told him quietly, and for the very first time, the pain as she said it was muted and remote. “They took ship at An-Monal, the year after the war ended. I am the last of my kind.

It seemed to mean something to him—he sketched a gesture at her she didn’t recognize. Fumbled a bit with his Tethanne phrasing.

“Honored word to those in Sky Home that, uhm, well, the gods, uh, your god…” He shook his head, took up his goblet, and raised it. “Look, whatever. I honor your clan’s passing. We had heard it before now, from Skaranak warriors coming home. The Black Folk gone away, sunk in the fiery crater. I, uh, I mourn with you those who have passed from this world.”

She cleared her throat. “Thank you. In fact, I don’t think they’re dead. Just somewhere else. Just… gone.”

He shrugged. “The dead also are just somewhere else. The Dragonbane is in Sky Home, your father is wherever the honorable slain of your people go. We mourn only because we may no longer reach them.”

“So you believe me?”

“About the Dragonbane’s passing?” Marnak frowned into his wine. “Seems that I do, yeah. But that doesn’t mean anything else you’re saying here is true.”

“In all the time that you served with him, did my father ever lie to you? Did any Kiriath you served with?”

“That I know of, no. But how would I know for sure?” She saw him hesitate, saw in his eyes the moment he started to believe. “You’re saying the Dragonbane’s brothers came to their father’s tomb with mercenaries in tow, aiming to murder him? That’s what he told you?”

“Yes. All but the one called Gant, apparently. Egar said he never showed. They told him Gant would approve the outcome but would not involve himself. That sound about right?”

She watched him nod, slow and bleak.

“The Dragonbane told me you rode out to his father’s tomb with him that night, but he sent you back to the encampment before sunset. Is that true?”

Another reluctant nod.

“He told me Ershal murdered his warhorse with arrows. Put out its eye with one of them. Is that true?”

“Yeah.” Very quietly, not looking at her. “Looked like it from what I saw at the scene the next day.”

“Right. Well, the way Egar told it to me, Ershal was all set to follow that up by putting a shaft through his eye as well. Only then Takavach showed up.” She held down a brief shiver, legacy of the meeting on the steppe. “You know, the Salt Lord?”

The Majak made a ward, absently. “We don’t call him that out here. That’s League stuff. Dark Court worship. But yes, I know who you mean.”

“Yes, well this Takavach apparently saved his life. Took Ershal’s next arrow out of the air in midflight, summoned up some kind of killer spirits from the grass to take down the brothers—”

“From the grass?” She saw how still he’d grown.

“Yeah. Grass demons. Or something. The grass came to life, he said. Clawed down his brothers, choked them to death. Ershal only just made it out.”

Marnak Ironbrow, staring at her, rather the way he had when she first walked in. She saw the growing acceptance in his eyes.

“Describe the fight,” he snapped. “How many did the Dragonbane account for?”

“Of his brothers, none at all.” She sifted back through the memories, the endless times they’d sat and Egar had told her the tale, sometimes in his cups, sometimes hungover, sometimes simply sober, over and over again, as if seeking from her some obscure absolution. “The grass took them. But he took down three out of the four freebooters they brought with them. The fourth fled, I believe…”

Let her voice fade out on the last word, as Marnak threw himself to his feet and stalked to the window. He stood with his back to her, facing the draped silk as if he could see through it to the night outside.

“We looked for him,” he said tightly. “Tracked his mount back to Ishlin-ichan, but we were a day too late. Fucking half-Ishlinak southern jackal, out of Dhashara they said, but none knew his name or would give it to us easily, anyway. By the time we learned more, he was long gone, probably back home or into the Empire lands beyond.”

“That’s convenient.”

A low growl. “Ershal swore the sellswords were at the Dragonbane’s command, hired out of the south to kill his brothers. That the Dragonbane sent for them to meet him at their father’s tomb, and sprang an ambush when they arrived. I—”

He shook his head.

“You didn’t believe that shit for a minute,” she suggested.

“I rode with him to the grave.” He turned to face her now, and the struggle was gone from his eyes. “I saw nothing to indicate he planned a brother slaying. I saw no sellswords, or their horses. I saw nothing in his face. I knew, I fucking knew it was a lie. But the Dragonbane was gone. Vanished.”

“Yeah. Taken under Takavach’s wing. Someday, when we’ve got time, I’ll tell you what for. It’s a fine tale.”

He nodded.

“Two years,” he said quietly. “You know, Poltar’s a twisted piece of shit, more than ever since he got his hands on some real power. No one’d weep if he dropped dead tomorrow. But Ershal—whatever he did against Eg—in the two years since that time, I’ve never seen him put a foot wrong. I hate to say it out loud, but he’s a better clan master than the Dragonbane ever was.”

“That so?” Archeth got up off the bed. Straightened her jerkin and the harness that held her knives. She faced the burly Skaranak warrior, impassive. “See, that’s a pity. Because I’m going to slit his fucking throat.”

CHAPTER 54

Ringil peered into the opened casket. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it wasn’t this.

The Illwrack heirloom blade—what he could make out of it—seemed unremarkable. It had the same basic form as the long swords the dwenda carried, though perhaps a bit broader and heavier looking. But at the handling end, it stopped looking anything like a useful weapon at all. The crosspiece of the guard sloped sharply downward at either side, leaving a grip space only the narrowest of hands could have settled comfortably into. And in defiance of any useful purpose Gil could imagine, the underside was lined with small barbed spikes that would gouge chunks out of the flesh of anyone attempting to actually hold and wield the sword. As if that were not enough, below the guard, instead of grip or pommel, there was only what looked like the naked tang of the blade above, but twisted and sharpened into a lengthy, coiled, and inward-pointing spike.

Despite himself, Ringil felt a faint shudder walk up his spine.

If the construction of the sword was less than sane, then what had been done with the weapon seemed wholly appropriate. It was strapped up in the casket like some lunatic in an asylum chair—stained leather bandaging wrapped tightly around the blade over and over, crisscrossing itself up and down like an incessantly made argument, shrouding the steel almost entirely from guard to tip except where the bluish edge had frayed through and showed like a glimpse of living bone in a wound. And all along the inner surfaces of the casket, Gil saw runes scratched roughly into the wood. He couldn’t read them, but what faint whispering traces of the ikinri ‘ska were still open to him hissed in disapproval as he stared.

“Four and a half thousand years it has lain hidden,” Risgillen said quietly. “But for your blundering expedition to the Hironish isles, the news of your confused and tangled goals, it might lie hidden still. We might never have remembered what was lost, nor understood the chance we now had. But we snatched it away in time, and brought it home. And then we sent for you as well, and you came. Welcome to your end, Ringil Eskiath. Welcome to your doom.”

She nodded at Atalmire again.

The storm-caller uttered a series of sibilant phrases and Ringil felt the hairs on the back of his neck waft slowly erect. Inside the casket, the bandaging around the blade began to twist and rub against the blade edge, slicing itself apart, writhing like a nest of worms. It made a soft, insistent sound like a barber’s razor on the strop. And down at the pommel end, the sword’s coiled and sharpened tang moved, bent as supple as a silk cord, lifted its sharpened end like a snake, swaying and seeking. He thought he heard a faint, rising whine in the air.

Risgillen smiled and gestured. “There. It has your scent.”

Desperately, he reached for the power he’d owned. Felt it ooze fractionally forth, felt Atalmire’s glamour wipe it away again like a tavern boy’s cloth. Risgillen took his right arm and he could do nothing to prevent her.

“Come,” she said warmly. “It’s time. Give me your hand.”

In the casket, the sword was almost free of its bindings. The last few scraps of bandaging fell away, the blade itself was twisting slightly back and forth now, as if itching to be free. Atalmire reached in carefully and took it in reverent hands, lifted it out. He angled the pommel end upward, toward Ringil’s face, and for a moment the flexing, coiling sharpened tang looked as if it might dart in and stab at eye or mouth. Ringil flinched—he couldn’t help it. His head barely moved on his neck, the rest of his body was a locked catalogue of straining muscles. He thrashed for a grip on the ikinri ‘ska, found nothing he could use. Risgillen smiled again, but absently now, gone into some transport of ecstasy at what she was about to do.

She raised his hand slowly to meet the questing tang.

“What exactly is going on here?”

Like some violent and irritable schoolmaster, stumbling on mischief cooked up by his errant pupils—the Helmsman Anasharal, back in his ear as if it had never been away. Ringil made a tight, convulsive sound, somewhere between laughter and tears.

“You’re… a little late, Helmsman.”

But he saw an alarmed look pass between Atalmire and Risgillen. Thought the dwenda’s grip on his arm slackened just a fraction…

“Oh, indeed,” said Anasharal combatively, and it dawned on Ringil that the Helmsman was not speaking for him alone. Its voice echoed through the whole chamber now, sent dwenda heads craning and peering for its source. A deep, new timbre to the avuncular edge-of-asylum-madness tones, as they tolled in the heights of Findrich’s vaulted, stained glass roof. “Clan Illwrack, is it? Well, you lot haven’t changed much in five thousand years, have you?”

Snapped exchange between Risgillen and the storm-caller—he understood none of it. But he saw something new in their faces, and it looked a lot like fear.

“Still trying to get humans to do your dirty work for you, eh? Still not up to the task of learning the way of mortal muck yourselves?”

He saw Atalmire let go of the sword, drop it back into its casket. Raise crook-fingered hands to carve some sequence of glyphs in the air, understood that whatever fragile balance had existed in this space was now at risk—

Fragile.

Like a lightning bolt into his face, splitting his skull above one eye.

“Call yourselves an Elder Race?” The Helmsman, still declaiming somewhere over his head, fading out as he grabbed after this other thing, whatever it was. “Geriatric race is more like it. I have to wonder. Or, no, maybe you’re just not very clever, especially when it comes to…”

Despite the merroigai’s good opinion, I find you fragile, hero. Very fragile.

And abruptly, memory comes roaring in at him. Will not be fended off. Tears aside the curtain he’s placed so carefully in its way. High st—

No! Fragile!

He’s stumbling, through confining gloom toward a blur of gray light, bracing himself on the sides of the defile to stay upright. Horror behind him, horror coursing through his veins. The glyphs are in him. He’s been somewhere, done something, had something done to him, something so intimate and dark that trying to think about it puts cold sweat on his skin and in his hair…

High stone al—

Easy there, hero, let’s leave that alone, shall we?

The gray light is stronger now, he sees defined edges and a narrow gap. He ups his pace, falling forward against the bracing of his hands, have to get out, get out, get back to H—

High stone altar, somewhere—

Hjel, back to Hjel. The sides of the cleft run out on either side of him and he’s back in the open air, he all but falls from the abrupt lack of support. Only Hjel’s sudden, wiry grip on his arm keeps him from crumpling to the ground.

Gil! The dispossessed prince is shouting at him, seemingly across vast distance. Gil! What happened, did you—

I’m fine, I’m fine, he keeps babbling it, trying to make it true. I’m fine.

But he’s not, he’s not fine, because—

No!

Because—

Fragile. He’s weeping it now, because—

On a high stone altar, somewhere out on an endless empty plain, where he lies stripped back to a nakedness he hadn’t known was possible, where a nameless blurred and writhing shape leans over him, reaches in, changes him with clawed limbs and cold, unmerciful tools, while beyond, in every direction, the plain is filled with a horde of the same writhing, claw-limbed shapes, clambering over each other to get closer and see what’s being done, and the sky above is filled with a vast shrieking, like the torture of an entire living, feeling universe torn apart…

The dark defiles.

They lead here, all of them. This is where they empty out, and he chose to follow them to their end. He was not brought here, he asked to come.

The ikinri ‘ska.

Stitched into him as he’s remade, as the whole world was once remade by those same incessant, obsessive claw-limbed seamstresses, for no better reason than because they happened by and it needed to be done…

He turns and runs, flees from the memory, but it sits there on his shoulder, murmuring in his ear as he—

—slammed back to the chamber in Etterkal, the dwenda in dismay and disarray before Anasharal’s hectoring tones, the glamour loosened, slipped by vital inches—

He reaches now for the ikinri ‘ska, into the place it really lives, drags it down into the real world and the pit of his stomach and—

Vomited it up.

Atalmire spun on him, somehow alerted, binding up the glamour, grip tightening all over again, defending himself and his troops. Gil ignores the defence, grinning, doesn’t bother fighting, reaches down instead…

Smashed the stone honeycomb floor apart under his feet, under theirs. Shattered its delicate latticework integrity, dropped them all through it and into the space beneath.

The floor below was storage, a long hall stacked high with crates for some trade less obnoxious than Etterkal’s human staple. At some level, he or maybe the ikinri ‘ska must have known. The shattered chunks of flooring crashed down on top of it all, smashed the top layer of crates open, let loose big, choking clouds of dust and—by the taste of it—spices. Gil felt the dwenda glamour evaporate as Atalmire lost his grip entirely. He stumbled to his feet on an uneven, shifting surface, broad fragments of flooring sunk at crazy angles into the wreckage of shattered crates. He found the Ravensfriend, unaccountably in his hand.

“Imperials!” He bawled it, coughing amid the spice. “Imperials! Rally to me!”

A figure stumbled into him from behind and he spun. Atalmire, off-balance and choking. He grunted, snagged a hand in the dwenda’s hair, yanked it hard toward him.

“C’mere, you fuck.”

He swung the Ravensfriend in a clumsy hacking blow. The Kiriath steel went deep into the storm-caller’s side, and he screamed, tried to flail free of Ringil’s grip on his hair. Gil tore the sword loose and hacked again, another brutal gash—he felt it snap through ribs this time, get into the chest cavity beyond. Flaring alien reek of the dwenda’s blood, mingling with the spice. Atalmire’s scream scaled to a wild shriek. He beat at Ringil with his fists, trying to get loose. Gil let go his grip on the dwenda’s hair, shoved the Atalmire away from him and off the blade. The storm-caller collapsed on the rubble. Ringil took a moment to settle his footing.

“Guess we won’t be fixing that leg of yours after all.”

Atalmire tried to get up, gagging hoarsely. He made it to his knees. Ringil swung again, better targeting this time. The storm-caller got one desperate fending hand up and the Ravensfriend sliced right through it, took fingers off like severed twigs, chopped deep into the face behind. Atalmire made a trapped, glutinous noise, lips bisected at an angle by the Kiriath blade. Blood foamed out of his mouth, around the intruding steel. He shuddered like a man taken by a fit.

Ringil lifted a boot, balancing with care, put it against Atalmire’s chest, trod down, and pulled the Ravensfriend free. The storm-caller hit the rubble like a felled tree, pitch eyes staring at nothing at all. Gil felt little scribbles of the glamour’s power shriveling away in the space around the dwenda’s body as he died. He felt the ikinri ‘ska rush greedily in to fill the gap it left—endless, shapeless force, like the sea running and breaking, slopping and lapping on the rocks at the Dark Queen’s feet. He gathered it to him like armor, cast about in the chaos, eyes starting to smart from whatever was in the spices. He raised the Kiriath blade high.

“Risgillen!” He bawled it at the shattered roof, deep, grinding rage unleashed. “Don’t get killed on me now, bitch! I want your fucking heart!”

Around him on the uncertain footing, imperials and dwenda grappled in the slowly settling clouds of spice, like figures in some murky seabed dream. He tipped back his head, summoned the ikinri ‘ska, opened himself to it like a canal sluice, lashed out with its trailing, lightning-strike spikes. He sent it slithering and hissing into every dwenda head it could find. Instinctive grasp of what would work, coming to hand as unerringly as the grip of the Ravensfriend.

The Black Folk are here! They have loosed the dark souls of apes and turned them against you! You have heard the Warhelm’s voice! Your doom is Kiriath steel!

He felt the strike go home—convulsive shock as it hit the reeling Aldrain minds around him. He unsheathed a grin and strode in among them, seeking, grabbing, chopping hamstring strokes, spine-severing slices into unguarded backs—

“Risgillen? Where are you, Risgillen?”

—trying with every savage blow to drive out the memory of that high stone altar and what had happened there. He peeled the dwenda off his men, he maimed and crippled them and left them lying in agony for the imperials to finish. He peered through tearing eyes into every dwenda face as they fell, but none were Risgillen. He—

“Ringil! Ringil!”

A hand on his shoulder, shaking him. Gil swung blindly about and Klithren of Hinerion stepped deftly into the move, blocked the blow, arm to locked-up arm.

“It’s done!” he shouted into Gil’s face. “Stand down, it’s done! It’s over. We took them.”

“We…?” Ringil tried to piece the words together, tried to make sense.

“We took them down. The Aldrain. Look.” He waved an arm through the last of the settling spice dust. Not a struggling figure to be seen, just the imperials bent with vengeful blades over the last few injured dwenda where they lay. “All of them. It’s over.”

Ringil coughed on something that might have been a laugh. Klithren nodded. His eyes were streaming, his face was clogged with sweat and yellow powder and the spice-reeking blood of the dwenda. But he was grinning. He gestured up at the ceiling, the ragged fifty-foot hole where the honeycombed stone had come crashing down.

“You do that?”

Ringil wiped at his eyes. “Yeah, had to distract them.”

“Some fucking distraction, eh?”

“Seemed to work.” He stared at the tear-dampened powder caked on his fingers, as if it were some vital clue. “You know what this is?”

Klithren ran his tongue along his upper lip, tasted. “Chili powder, right?”

“Yeah, and the rest. What are you using for taste buds? There’s turmeric in there. Ginger. Ground coriander. This is a Yhelteth curry blend.”

The mercenary chuckled. “Secret weapon from the imperial south, eh? If you can’t meet ’em blade for blade, just choke ’em and blind ’em first.”

“Something like that.” Ringil looked around again, sobering. “You find me that bitch Risgillen’s body, though. I want her twice as dead as the others, I want her fucking heart.”

“Don;t you worry—if she’s down here, she’s done.”

“Yeah, well. Believe it when I see it. How many did we lose?”

“Haven’t done the count yet.” A grimace on the scarred freebooter face. “Looks like about half to me.”

“Do the count. And find Findrich too, he’s got to be down here somewhere. We still have to—”

“My lord! Come quick!”

One of the Throne Eternal, voice urgent, and Ringil’s stomach dropped out at the sound. He turned to face the man, already knowing, reading it there in the strained features before the imperial could speak again.

“It’s the captain, my lord.”

Gil made his face a mask. “How bad?”

The Throne Eternal’s face alone would have been answer enough. “He’s asking for you, my lord. There’s not much left.”

NOYAL RAKAN LAY PROPPED UP AGAINST THE SHATTERED REMNANTS OF A crate, shivering and bloodied from the chest down, blood running out of him and clotting in the drifts of spice he lay on. But he smiled through his clenched teeth when he saw Ringil approach.

“Con—” A cough racked him and he had to start again, voice a whisper. “Congratulations… on your victory, my lord. The day is yours.”

“Captain.” Ringil knelt at his side, everything in him screaming against the formality. “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Rakan shook his head, shivering violently. They’d made him as comfortable as they could, put a rolled cloak under his head for a pillow, wrapped another about him for a blanket. But the blood would not be stopped; it soaked steadily through the cloak, spread in the spice beneath him, and his face had gone the dirty yellow of old parchment.

“Give me… your hand,” he mumbled, groping with his own.

Ringil grabbed it, clasped it tight. “There. Can you feel that?”

“Yeah.” Faintly, voice still trembling. “Feels… feels hard. Good and hard.”

Wavering triumph in his smile—tables finally turned, nothing to lose now, his turn to make the jokes with double meanings. Ringil pressed his lips together, made a small noise through them. He put his other hand on Rakan’s, made a double clasp, as if he could cup in the Throne Eternal’s ebbing life. Rakan nodded jerkily.

“They fall down just like men,” he husked. “Good advice, my lord. I have… put it to some good use, I think.”

A weak gesture with his free hand, perhaps intended to indicate the various slaughtered dwenda lying around them. He coughed again, and blood flecked his lips. A spasm of pain twisted his features, and when it passed, there was something almost pleading in his eyes.

“But they’re fast, Gil. They’re so fucking fast.”

“I know.” Clenching his fists around the dying man’s hand. “I know they are.”

“I tried… I was… too many of them.” More coughing, wet and gurgling now. “I’m sorry, my lord. You’ll have to… have to go on alone now.”

“It’s all right,” said Gil numbly. “It’s all right.”

Rakan spat out blood. His eyes rolled about, taking in the silently watching men. He mustered breath. “Come… closer. I have… some private… instructions to pass on.”

Ringil leaned in and placed his head next to Rakan’s. Rasp of stubble on stubble, the press of the Throne Eternal’s cheek to his own. Rakan made a convulsive sobbing sound. Ringil let go his hand, cupped his face.

“Talk to me,” he murmured. “I’m here.”

“Don’t… trust the iron demon, Gil.” The Throne Eternal’s voice was down to a desperate, throaty hiss. Ringil could feel him pouring the last dregs of his strength into it. “It has no love for us… nor good intentions. It lies to us all. It plots… treachery, to bring down everything good. I love… the lady Archeth. But she is no empress.”

“I know that, Noy. And she knows it, too.” He squeezed his eyes tight shut for a second, opened them again on fresh tears. This motherfucking spice. He planted a kiss on the other man’s cheek. “Noy, the throne is safe. Let go. Take your ease.”

“You… will not… help her overthrow Jhiral? Place her… on the throne? The truth, Gil. She is… your friend, I know.”

“She wouldn’t want the fucking throne if you handed it to her on a plate, Noy. I promise. Rest now, you’ve done enough.”

He felt something inside the other man slip, give way like a bad step. Rakan made a soft sound and tried to nuzzle at his neck.

“Smells… like home,” he whispered wonderingly, and stopped.

Ringil closed his eyes. Held them closed for what felt like quite a while. Then, very slowly, he pulled back from Rakan’s body, spread his hands flat in front of the Throne Eternal’s softened, blood-flecked features, like a man trying to warm himself at a meager fire. Long moments while he stared through the spaces between his spread fingers, looking for what, he could not have said. Then he lowered his hands. Sniffed hard, and got up.

They were all looking at him.

“Anyone got anything to say?” He cleared his throat, gestured at the body. “Get it said now. We don’t have a lot of time.”

A couple of the Throne Eternal came hesitantly forward. Ringil backed off, stood aside, left Noyal Rakan to the care of his comrades.

“Here’s a little something for you!”

Klithren of Hinerion, booming cheerfully from amid the strewn dead, propelling Slab Findrich before him with one arm twisted up into the small of his back. The slave merchant stumbled, struggling to keep upright on the chaotic, tilted surface. Klithren let go his arm, gave him a brutal shove in the back that pitched him at Ringil’s feet in a brief cloud of spice dust.

“Slab Findrich, for your delectation.” The mercenary grinned. “Pretty much intact, too.”

“That’s good,” said Ringil bleakly.

Findrich tried to get to his feet. Klithren booted him hard in the gut, and the slave merchant collapsed again. The mercenary glanced aside to where the Throne Eternal were gathered, heads bent in prayer, around Noyal Rakan’s corpse. He jerked a thumb at them.

“Your boy get off okay?”

Ringil nodded. Wiped at his eyes. Klithren pulled a sympathetic face.

“Fucking chili powder, right?”

“You find Risgillen?”

The mercenary shook his head. “Got a few females in the ranks, all chopped up pretty good. Boys are taking trophies. But she’s not here.”

Like the slip of a foot on battlefield blood, like a lethal error made. He grimaced with sudden lightness that it left in his belly. At his feet, Findrich coughed a sneer.

“Don’t you worry, faggot. She’ll be back.”

Gil stooped and grabbed the slaver by his collar, dragged him up onto his knees. “I’m going to ask you once more, politely, Slab. Where are you keeping my friends?”

Findrich looked back at him out of sullen, reddened eyes. “Fuck you. Aristo prick.”

Ringil made a fist and punched Findrich solidly in the face. He felt the nose break as the slaver went down. He dragged him back up, leaned in close.

“I’m in no fucking mood, Slab. Where are they?”

The slave merchant grinned at him through the streaming blood and snot. Four or five decades of Harbor End street in his eyes. He spat in Ringil’s face. “Get on with it, you faggot aristo waste. You don’t have the fucking time or balls to break me and you know it. And she’ll be back for you, don’t think she won’t. Oh, she wants you bad. Back for you, too, you turncoat borderland fuck.”

Klithren made a pained face.

“Want me to open him up?” he asked. “Pull out a few feet of guts and dance on them? Usually does the trick.”

“No, that’s going to make him difficult to move.” Ringil let go of Findrich, let him slump back to the floor. “Just keep him there a moment, I’ve got a better idea.”

CHAPTER 55

She cut the bonds and gag she’d put on Marnak’s Yhelteth whore, left her weeping and shuddering in the Ironbrow’s arms and bid them both good night. Privately, she thought the girl was milking it a bit—beyond showing her Bandgleam’s naked blade for a threat and manhandling her, all right, a little roughly perhaps, she had done her no actual harm at all. A glimpse of the Kiriath steel, a look into the burned-black witch’s eyes—look at me, girl, you’re not going to give me any trouble, are you?—was about all it took. By the time the Ironbrow showed up at the door, Archeth had her neatly trussed and quiescent in the back chamber. But now, she turned her eyes away as Archeth spoke, pressed her face hard into Marnak’s leather-clad shoulder, and sobbed as if some demon from the bowels of the Earth had come for her.

Let’s just hope we can get the same reaction out of the Skaranak.

She left the way she’d come in, via the window. Outside on the tiny balcony, she swung a leg over the rail and found purchase for the toe of her boot in the poorly cemented brickwork. Similar chinks higher up gave her fingers something to cling to as she stepped off the balcony altogether, worked her way around the brothel’s façade and into the shadows of the side alley. There, she down-climbed until she was about four or or five yards off street level, then jumped clumsily the rest of the way to the ground. She staggered a little on impact, grabbed the wall to stop herself going down. The horses out front, whinnying and snorting, shifting about on their tethered reins…

Eyes!

It was a flash glimpse as she straightened up, the slanted amber gleam of a wolf’s gaze at her shoulder—

She spun about. There was a knife in each hand, Wraithslayer and Bandgleam, though she’d later swear she’d made no move to draw either one of them. The balanced weight of the steel seemed to anchor her to the ground, settle her better into the fighting crouch…

Nothing.

The alley was as deserted as it had been when she slipped into it an hour earlier—dust and grit and the odd discarded shred of rags too small to be usefully scavenged away. A thin breeze blew out of the gloom and past her, sat briefly on the nape of her neck, then was gone. She held the crouch for another couple of moments, pivoted slowly about to be absolutely sure, and then straightened up again, one tense muscle at a time.

Nerves.

Yeah, right.

She shook off the chill on her neck. Put her knives away and walked out of the alley to where the horses were beginning to settle down once more. Absently, she patted a couple of them on the neck, murmured soothing words to them in High Kir. Up by the brothel doorway, the Feathered Nest’s bouncer, a blocky, grizzled Majak with a leather eye patch, spotted her and nodded. She tripped lightly up the steps to meet him, some slight excited giddiness pulsing in her veins, and counted the balance of his bribe into his outstretched palm. Imperial coin—it was Carden Han’s very own brand of magic; up here, he told her, you can make the most remarkable things happen with even the tiniest handful of this stuff.

“My men still inside?” she asked

The doorman nodded. She went past him, pushed her way through a short series of dyed cloth drapes, each consecutively thinner and finer than the last, until she parted a final curtain of translucent silk and stepped into the pipe-fume-clogged air of the brothel’s main lounge. Her appearance stirred a slight ripple through the reclining figures scattered about the place, but most were too smothered in their pleasures to give even this new arrival more than cursory attention. Maybe, she thought sourly, some of them just assumed she was a flandrijn hallucination.

She found Selak Chan and Kanan Shent with the embassy’s spymaster, sprawled amid a welter of cushions and young, semiclad female flesh. For appearance’s sake, they had a standing water pipe of their own, but none of them appeared to be smoking from it. Their eyes were serious and watchful on the surroundings. Chan saw her as soon as she came through the drapes, prodded his companions, and came to some sort of half-crouched attention as she approached.

“My lady? Is all well?”

“Well enough.” She bent low and tipped a glance at the spymaster, a wiry, soft-spoken character whose Majak affectations of hair and clothing did nothing much to hide the imperial edge on the man beneath. The legate had told her he was ex–King’s Reach, and it showed. “Your sources were correct, it seems, my lord Eshen. Your recommended key is ready to turn in the lock.”

“This is heartening, my lady. But there is no need for codes.” Eshen smiled and gestured at the women surrounding them. “The Feathered Nest doesn’t waste its Yhelteth stock on lobby duties. None of these understand more than service fragments of Tethanne. You may brief us freely without fear of eavesdropping.”

Archeth let her eyes wander across the bodies on display, saw it was very likely true. The whores were made up in Yhelteth fashion—though decades out of date in their use of kohl traceries, she noticed—but the faces beneath the gilding were broader, coarser featured, and paler than anything you’d see in most Empire lands. Their figures were stockier, too, big in the shoulders, less delicate curve in hip and waist than most women from the imperial capital would have had, though with a fuller, enticing load on behind, sure enough, and big, ripe breasts that…

One of the whores caught her looking, caught her eye over the mouthpiece of the flandrijn pipe as she toked on it. She giggled, and breathed out smoke at Archeth in a long, sickly sweet plume. Nudged one of her coworkers and murmured something in her ear in Majak. The second girl looked up at Archeth and her mouth split in a loose, inviting grin. The two of them blinked in drugged unison, staring at her with paired candor, frank and open curiosity painted in their eyes. Archeth felt desire trickle and ache in her, snaking up from her crotch into belly and breasts like soft, slow fire.

Ishgrim, she reminded herself severely. You are going home to Ishgrim.

She cleared her throat and looked away. “The Ironbrow will turn for us, if we meet a few conditions he insists upon. Safeguarding clan integrity, basically. But there’s more than enough rage in him against this Poltar to start the fire we need.”

Eshen inclined his head. “And even more so now, I suspect. The spy who brought us news of Marnak’s coming also tells me he tangled with the shaman over fraternizing with Ishlinak city dwellers so soon after the comet. Auspicious, the way the heavens align with your requirements.”

“I was in that comet,” she said shortly. “There’s nothing auspicious about it.”

“Yes, so I understand.” The spymaster eased his crossed legs into a fresh posture. “Some antique machine of your people, I’m told. I have been in the capital, my lady, I have seen the Span. I understand that it is engineering, not magic. Nonetheless, the manner of your arrival is a story we might do well to sow widely among the locals in the run up to your confrontation with the shaman. We think of these people as primitive in their beliefs, but it’s worth remembering that they hold those beliefs every bit as firmly as we our faith. A woman of your hue, delivered out of the heart of a comet… well, there are some real tactical advantages to be derived here.”

She nodded. “All right, get it done. Marnak told me he came here to do deals for ironware and horseflesh—”

“That will certainly have been his excuse, yes.”

“—so his men should be around for a few days. Long enough for them to catch the word?”

“I will see to it.” The spymaster stroked his beard. “Is it your intention, my lady, to stay here longer tonight?”

The whores were still looking at her. She kept her gaze rigidly on Eshen. “No. I’m going back to the embassy. You three stick around, see if the Ironbrow goes anywhere interesting or sends his men out. I think this is going to work, but I don’t know the man, and I don’t want to get tripped up for not paying attention.”

Eshen looked approving. Selak Chan just looked worried.

“You intend to walk back alone, my lady?”

“I do.” She flashed him the edge of a grin as she stood up. “After what we’ve all been through, I don’t think the streets of this glorified horse camp can have much in them to worry us. Stay and enjoy yourselves. I’ll be fine.”

And if I’m not, I have my knives.

Not very sure where that had come from. She managed to glance only briefly at the whores as she turned to leave, to put them at her back and walk away, to fill her mind with Ishgrim’s face instead. The leashed desire inside her guttered low, began to seep away.

Curdling in her guts to an ugly hope that the streets might give her some cause to use her Kiriath steel after all.

THE TANGLED ROADS AND FOOTWAYS OF ISHLIN-ICHAN DREW HER IN, ENfolded her in quiet gloom.

Carden Han had told her to expect as much. A scant hundred years of settlement had not yet purged the Ishlinak inhabitants of their steppe nomad heritage; a preference for fireside huddling by night prevailed. Anyone with a place to be was generally in it by the time darkness fell, and torchlit thoroughfares were few and far between. Now and then, a pony clopped by with a rider drunk or nodding sleepily in the saddle; once it was a woman astride a mule with two small children clinging on in front. A couple of times, she thought she heard the patter of urchin feet up side alleys. For the rest, she had the streets to herself.

The embassy building stuck up in the middle distance ahead, five stories studded with warm orange-lit oblong eyes. But she steered toward it in near darkness, navigating by patchy bandlight through cloud and the dim glow of hovel windows showing the ruddy flicker of a hearth somewhere within.

And she was being followed.

The knowledge grew on her by increments. It was small sounds at her back, glimpsed motion out of the corner of her eye as she looked back at corners. At first, it blended with the other occasional noises of brief traffic on adjacent streets, but by the time she was halfway back to the embassy, the coincidences were too many to accept. Someone or something was behind her, dogging her steps, and not making much effort to hide the fact.

The blunt longing for violence in the pit of her belly rejoiced. Flaradnam had taught her from a very early age not to walk afraid—this world is not a civilized one, he told her when she was still a girl. And so you really only have two choices. You can become a fighter, and let it show. Or you can go in constant terror of every cut-rate thug who thinks he’s special because his mummy saw fit to birth him with a pair of balls and a prick. I am sorry, Archidi, really I am. I would have liked you to grow up in a better place, but that place will be centuries in the making. This is the best I can do.

Grashgal brought her the knives the next day.

She felt them stirring now, tiny points of warmth in the small of her back, across her chest, and down in her right boot where Falling Angel lurked. Perhaps they felt the proximity of pursuit the way she did, perhaps they were just responding to the quickening of her blood. Perhaps, as the Warhelm had tried to make her see, it was all part of a single response.

So she couldn’t fuck those two hot-eyed whores back at the brothel.

She’d fuck up whomever this was instead.

On a crossroads street corner, she came on the noisy, iron-ringing brightness of a smithy, where black silhouettes worked late with hammer and tongs against the furnace glare. Three men, looked like the smith and two younger apprentices, maybe his sons. She made as if to walk past, paused abruptly and spun about, put the furnace at her back and scanned back along the path she’d taken.

Yep. Right there.

Slanting amber eyes in the darkness, a couple of dozen yards back down the street, blazing with reflected glare from the smithy’s fire.

The palms of her hands tingled.

Come on then, you bitch.

As if it heard her, the creature moved out into the light. It was exactly the wolf the eyes had promised. Six feet from nose to tip of tail, a yard high at the shoulder, sleek and gray with summer fur. Lips peeled back off front teeth in a silent snarl.

Archeth felt her own upper lip lift in response. Reflexive, violent pumping of heart and lungs, readying for the fight. She flexed her hands at her sides and the knives quivered eagerly in their sheaths.

Sparks blew off the forge and out across the street, like incandescent snow.

Come on, then.

And gone.

She stood in shock, unsure quite how it had happened. One moment the wolf was there, the next it seemed to rear up impossibly on its hindquarters and step back into the cloaking darkness. The slanting amber eyes blinked once at her, and went out.

Archeth looked dubiously at the patch of darkness that had swallowed the wolf, probing the gloom, then shrugged.

That all you got, Kelgris?

Beside her, she noticed the hammering from the forge had stopped. She glanced at the smith and his sons, saw them frozen and staring, implements in hand. A stormbolt flash of insight lit inside her head, a vision of herself, seen through their eyes—night-black, tall and immobile in the glow from the furnace, the glint and gleam of the Kiriath knife harness, wrapped tight around her frame in alien artistry, the upside-down hilts of Wraithslayer and Bandgleam laid on her chest, the kaleidoscope light in her eyes.

To these men, she probably didn’t look much less otherworldly than the thing that had followed her up the street.

She nodded at them, silent acknowledgment, and went on her way. Took the corner and the mild slope up toward the embassy. The glow from the forge fell behind, her heart climbed back down from its thunderous pumping. She—

Out of a niche between hovel walls on her left, so fast she had no time even to turn her head. A lithe dark form leapt out and grabbed her tightly about the chest, bound her arms down by her sides, dragged her kicking furiously back into the dark. She threw her head back to butt at whatever face her attacker might have, but the force of it met only empty air. The dark figure wrestled her back, step by struggling step, further into the space between the hovels and without apparent effort.

The knives came to life. Falling Angel leapt up out of her boot and was in her hand. The others yearned in the harness. She snarled and twisted her neck about, tried to find a throat or a face to bite, found nothing at all. Craned down hard at the arms that held her bound. Sliced at the air beside her thigh with Falling Angel’s blade…

“Be still!”

It was a tight murmur, nothing more, but she felt the fight tugged out of her like the stopper on a wine bottle. Felt her strength drain put behind the command. Even her knives fell abruptly quiet. All the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

“That’s better. We’ll have a bit less of the stroppy warrior queen, if you don’t mind.”

A woman’s voice, throaty gorgeous and intimate; it seemed to echo and seep down into her belly, down where she’d left her feelings about the two hot-eyed Ishlinak whores. A fresh fire woke in her at the memory. The grip on her arms loosened the slightest fraction, a slim dark hand fluttered in her line of sight, like a conjuror’s flourish before the trick. Then, before she could react, the hand dropped again, went to the juncture of her thighs, pressed palm and long fingers into the gap. She gasped and arched. Her innards ran heated and liquid at the touch. Somehow, through leather and cotton layers, the fingers on that hand were right inside her, opening her suddenly willing cunt, pumping gently, firmly, reaching up to touch some unfeasible core within, cupping and pressing, and then it was like lava in the overflow lake at An-Monal, bursting the banks, pouring hot and thick and majestically unstoppable, tumbling stickily downward as shuddering, shaking, she came.

Came harder than she had a living memory with which to compare.

She slid down out of the encircling arms, sagged into a heap against the nearest hovel wall, panting, sobbing, tears squeezing into her eyes.

“There you go. I’d like to see your little League hussy manage that for you.”

Something dark knelt beside her in the alley. She blinked through tears, saw a face of perfectly molded beauty hanging over her—smooth ebony skin, a match almost for her own, grinning, overly sharp white teeth in a jaw framed by long riotous hair that didn’t look like it had seen a comb in its owner’s entire life. At the heart of it all, the eyes were the same amber she’d already seen twice that night. The same hand that had just lit her up now reached in and rearranged her collar, thumbed the tears off her face, and stroked her cheek, all with the gentle but insistent intimacy of a long-known lover. The voice sent tiny aftershock shudders through her lower body with each word it spoke.

“What I mean to say is…” Tongue slipping out—just a little unnervingly long for the human face Kelgris wore—to wet her thumb before she went back to wiping away Archeth’s tears. “There’s no reason why you and I can’t be good friends—as long as you don’t overstep the mark on this ridiculous revenge fantasy you’re entertaining.”

Archeth worked up a groggy smile. “So it’s commerce after all, is it?”

“Would you prefer the wolf?” The woman or whatever wore her skin finished with Archeth’s face and ebbed gracefully away a couple of feet. In the darkness, she was all amber eyes and teeth now, only the faint crowning silhouette of her hair to define her as human. “You really need to take a more long-term outlook on this, kir-Archeth Indamaninarmal. Poltar the shaman and his pet clanmaster are mortal, both of them. They’ll die soon enough, without any help from you. As will your little northern piece of pussy waiting back home, come to that. It’s what they do, mortals. They die. Think about that—it’s going to be a long, lonely road for you. Maybe you could use a little immortal company now and then.”

Archeth propped herself up a little better against the wall. She still could not rise; her legs felt like tangled drifts of seaweed beneath her. “I’ve turned down two whores so far this evening. I’m not about to cave in for a third.”

A snarl, out of no human throat. Suddenly, Kelgris was in her face. The amber eyes burned inches away. A thin droplet of blood oozed out of her hair and ran down her face

“You want to be careful with that mouth of yours, kir-Archeth.”

Convulsively, Archeth flung out a hand and tangled it in that copious mane of hair. Brought Falling Angel up in her other hand, jammed the point of the blade under the other woman’s jaw. Faster than she’d ever moved before, she wasn’t even sure if it was her. She breathed in hard, leaned a half inch closer to the amber eyes.

“I don’t plan to use my mouth on you, bitch,” she said tightly. “But I’m willing to find out if Kiriath steel can get the job done. You make me come, you think that’s it? I can do that myself, with only half the hand holding this knife.”

As if Falling Angel poured fresh, cabled strength down into her the muscles of her grip and the arm behind it. She felt the force of it flood her, felt a surge inside like breaking waves. She pressed herself back into the wall, levered herself slowly to her feet. Brought Kelgris with her, hooked up on the knife blade as she rose. Blood was running down out of the Sky Dweller’s hairline now at an alarming rate, painting half her face bloody and wet. Her lips writhed with syllables unspoken, a low growl was rising in her throat. Wraithslayer awoke moaning, shivered to life in the harness on Archeth’s chest. Archeth lifted Falling Angel higher, let go the the goddess’s mane with her other hand, took Wraithslayer out of the air as it left its sheath, like catching it as it fell. She slid Falling Angel slowly out from under Kelgris’s blood-dripping chin.

“I’m done,” she hissed. “You can go.”

The face in front of her seemed to shiver and shift, a composite swirl of different women, different in almost everything but the amber eyes and the steady seep of blood down one side of the face. Kelgris bared her teeth in an awful grin.

“You have been warned twice now, kir-Archeth,” she said in a voice gone suddenly cold and harsh. “There will not be a third time.”

And gone again.

After a while, Archeth got herself off the wall. She shook the shiver out of her spine, looked about the confined space the confrontation had taken place in. Trampled mud and scattered clods of horseshit kicked in here off the street over time. She laughed, a little shakily.

“Divine intervention, eh? Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”

She stepped back out into the main thoroughfare, peered left and right. No one in sight, and the twitchy sense of pursuit she’d had since the brothel was gone. She breathed in, and even the wood-smoke-smelling air seemed a little less heavy in her lungs.

“Right, Archidi,” she said out loud to the empty street. “Let’s see if we can’t get you home without any more excitement.”

SHE ALMOST MANAGED IT. UP TO THE EMBASSY COMPOUND, NODDED through the gate by respectful imperials, past the stables and across the courtyard, into the main block. Through the hall and up the stairs to her apartment. She was on the third flight when she heard a door open behind her, and then the diffident clearing of a throat.

She turned and found Yilmar Kaptal stood on the landing below, door to his apartment ajar behind him. By the look of it, he’d been waiting up for her.

“My lord Kaptal. Can I help you?”

“My lady Archeth, I have been thinking.” Kaptal scrubbed at his face with one hand, like a man recently woken from sleep. He sounded oddly puzzled, as if taken aback by the words coming out of his own mouth. “It strikes me… would it perhaps not make sense, I mean…”

She stifled a yawn. “Would what make sense?”

“A change of ruling dynasty,” he said. “If you became Empress.”

CHAPTER 56

They were holding the prisoners in an empty wine cellar at the rear of the warehouse. Stone steps down and a low ceiling in vaulted black brick. Guttering torches in brackets on the walls, solid oak doors closing off sections on either side. There was a six-man guard mounted outside the second door on the left, hard-bitten Etterkal toughs armed with knives and clubs, sitting around on wine barrels or propped against the vaulted walls in the glow from a couple of lanterns on the floor. They’d come scrambling to their feet as soon as they heard boots on the stairs, let loose oaths when they saw Ringil and a pinioned, broken-faced Slab Findrich at the head of a squad of grim and bloodied imperial soldiers.

Ringil stopped a couple of yards from where they stood, let them get a good look. He’d only brought eight of his able-bodied men with him, left Klithren with the rest to get the wounded bound up and ready to move. But it was eight heavily armed marines, jubilant with their just-done victory against dark forces, just scraped and banged up enough to feed the combat fire in their bellies. They’d eat Findrich’s men alive. Ringil gave the local hard men time to do the math, waited the scant moments it took them to decide.

He nodded curtly back at the stairs he’d just come down.

“Go on, fuck off. Leave the keys.”

Clank of the big iron key ring as it hit the stone flags. The man who’d unhitched it from his belt skirted a wide, wary circle around the imperials and then scurried up the stairs like a spooked rat. His comrades weren’t far behind. Hurried footfalls, fading away. Ringil glanced sidelong at Findrich.

“Just can’t get the help these days, eh? What is the Salt Warren coming to?”

The slave merchant made a strangled noise. Ringil stepped over to the fallen keys, toed them back across the flags to where the two marines held Findrich pinioned between them. He nodded at the imperials to let him go.

“Tell you what, Slab—you open up for us. If Risgillen’s built any nasty surprises into that lock, you can taste them first.”

Privately, he thought a trap of that sort unlikely. There was no whiff of magic he could detect, dwenda or otherwise, anywhere in the cellar, and he was getting pretty good at sniffing these things out. But Findrich didn’t know that. Loosed by his captors, he bent and picked up the keys like a man forced to handle a snake. He stood hesitant, staring at the door.

“Come on, let’s go.” Ringil shoved him forward, closed up the gap, shoved him again. Forced him to the door, where Findrich worked the lock with trembling hands.

The oak paneling hinged creakily inward. Ringil shoved the slaver through ahead of him, followed him briskly in. There was lantern light inside, some crude straw matting and trestle cots. He saw familiar faces, familiar figures, scrambling to their feet. Mahmal Shanta—Menith Tand—Klarn Shendanak there, one eye drooped and dead-seeming for some reason. All three of them looking a lot thinner and worn than he remembered, but otherwise intact. A couple of ranking marine officers for a bonus, a Throne Eternal lieutenant of Rakan’s with his arm in a grubby sling…

He shoveled Findrich out of the way, stood glaring around the chamber.

“Ringil?” Mahmal Shanta’s reedy voice, disbelieving. “Is it really you?”

“Where the fuck is the Dragonbane?” He swung on Findrich, hands crooked like talons. “Where’s Archeth?”

IT TOOK TAND AND SHENDANAK, IN A COOPERATIVE EFFORT HE WOULDN’T have believed if he hadn’t seen it, to talk him down.

He had Findrich by the throat, rammed up against the nearest black brick wall. Yelling for his men to bring the sword again in its casket, see if that didn’t loosen this fuck’s lips for real this time, Findrich grunting in panic through the clenched grip on his windpipe, hands trying in vain to prize Ringil’s iron-fingered hold loose, wheezing desperately with what breath he had left, he didn’t know what Gil was talking about, what Dragonbane, what fucking Black Folk bitch, these were all the imperial prisoners they had, the rest were lost, they were lost, the man-of-war Lord of the Salt Wind never made it home, the storm, the fucking storm—

“He’s telling you the truth, Eskiath.” Menith Tand put in with mannered calm. “Before you choke him quite to death there.”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Shendanak, up off the cot he was sitting on, shoulder to shoulder with Tand. He seemed to be limping, and Ringil noticed for the first time that his arm was also in a sling. “Listen to the man, will you. The Dragonbane never made it. Archeth neither. They wrecked off the Wastes coast.”

The simple fact of Tand’s and Shendanak’s voices chiming agreement was enough of a miracle to stop Gil in his tracks. He turned his head, loosened his grip on Findrich’s windpipe. Stared from the scarred Majak visage to Tand’s blandly composed features. He let go of Findrich convulsively, let him slump to the floor.

“Wrecked?” he asked stupidly.

Tand nodded. “I’m afraid so. Yilmar Kaptal was aboard as well. Quite a few marines, some of Klarn’s best men, a number of Throne Eternal, too, I believe. We waited for news while they held us at the Chancellery, but none came. Lord of the Salt Wind never made it home.”

“They could have lied to you.” Lips numb as the words mumbled out. “You were prisoners of war, maybe they—”

“We saw them driven in toward the shore,” Mahmal Shanta said somberly. “The storm came out of nowhere, we had no warning. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen. We nearly wrecked on the headland ourselves. Any closer in and we would have been smashed to kindling. And their ship was a good quarter league to port of ours. I’m sorry, Ringil. They are gone.”

A storm out of nowhere.

He heard it again, grumbling and prowling, somewhere under the horizon to the south and east as the elementals wrapped Dragon’s Demise in fog. The outlying recalcitrant snarl of the forces he had summoned and strictured to his will.

You don’t know that, Gil. You don’t know that’s how it was.

But he did. He knew.

He heard Hjel’s sombre tones again.

The elementals are capricious, and their range is wide. Unleash them, and their mischief will be general. Try not to worry about it too much, it’s a price you have no choice but to pay.

But in the end, he was not the one who had paid.

That they do your will in the immediate vicinity is the trick. What havoc they wreak elsewhere need not be your concern.

The fucking ikinri ‘ska.

He felt the rage come twitching through him, icy in the hollow space under his ribs, like rivulets of meltwater down rock. He felt his breathing come hard, felt his jaw tighten. Looked around as if awakening from something, saw Findrich on the floor at his feet.

At his shoulder—the two marines he’d charged with carrying the sword stood expectantly by, open casket held up between them.

And the Aldrain blade waiting within.

Findrich read his face, the look in his eyes, and a panicked moan broke from his lips. When Ringil threatened him with the sword before, when he held the languidly writhing tang up close to the slave merchant’s face, Slab-face Findrich had cracked like an egg. Babbled out the location of the prisoners, promised to lead Ringil to them, to stand down his guard, anything, anything, just get that fucking thing away from me…

Looked like Risgillen had at some point explained pretty clearly to him what would happen to whoever took up the sword.

Now it was the same. Findrich tried to push himself away backward along the black brick wall, eyes fixed in horror on the casket. Ringil stood staring down at him, wrapped in a paroxysm of loss, and something seemed to pass between the two men, some long-awaited understanding coming home.

“No, Gil, listen…”

“Archeth and Egar are gone.” He said it quietly, reasonably, as if trying to explain it. “Wrecked. What does that leave me, Slab?”

“Gil, please…”

“It’s time, Slab. Way past time.”

He swung on the casket, took hold of the sword at the blade where it joined the hilt. He felt it leap alive at the touch, felt it try to twist in his grip, but his fist was closed too tight. He dropped to one knee in front of Findrich, vaguely aware he was grinning like a skull. He grasped the slaver’s right arm at the wrist, dug a thumb savagely into the nerve point so Findrich’s fisted fingers loosened. Findrich flailed and kicked, Ringil held on stolidly, leaned in close.

“Be still,” he hissed, and the slave merchant’s struggles ceased.

Throat clearing behind him. “My lord Ringil, we should perhaps—”

“Shut up, Tand. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

Findrich lay there rigid, sweat beading his face, lips twitching with pleas he had no way to voice. The sword wriggled impatiently in Ringil’s grip. Gil let go the slave merchant’s wrist, pressed the paralyzed hand open on the flagstone floor.

“Truth is, Slab—I never fucking liked you, even back in the day. And we’ve none of us improved with age.”

He laid the softly flexing sword tang across Findrich’s open palm.

Let it go.

Watched, fascinated, as the metal coiled stealthily around the slave merchant’s hand and forearm, then drew savagely tight. Findrich screamed, girlishly high, staring down the length of his arm in horror as the sharp end of the tang lifted like a striking snake, bent, stabbed down into the meager flesh at the wrist. Another shriek, wrung out of the slaver like water from drenched clothing, the metal end digging hungrily into the meat of his wrist now, gouging deeper but no blood apparent, Findrich’s body beginning to shudder…

Gil got to his feet. Glanced at Tand and the others, there in a gathered ring behind him, ashen faced and staring. He gave them a small, preoccupied smile.

“You want to get out and leave this to me?”

They needed no further encouragement. Out the door as fast as they could walk without loss of dignity in front of the watching marines. He saw the last of them out, nodded at the two men holding the casket.

“You, too. This is just tidying up. Tell Rakan—” He remembered. Blinked. “Tell, uhm, Salk to head back and have the wounded detail ready to move out. We’ve got another forced march to the harbor coming up. Everybody else stay put out there and wait for me. Yeah, you can leave that here.”

They dropped the casket where they stood, visibly relieved to be rid of it. Hasty salutes and they backed out. He wondered if they could sense even a fraction of the stink of magic that was rising in the room around him. Or maybe the twitching, undead body on the floor and the leeching sword wrapped around its arm was enough.

“Would you mind explaining to me,” Anasharal asked irritably in his ear, “what it is exactly that you’re doing now?”

“Sure,” he said distantly. “Your Divine Empress scheme is a bust. Archeth isn’t here. She’s dead. Drowned in a shipwreck on the Wastes coast.”

Long pause. “Oh. That is unfortunate.”

“I’d say so, yeah. Unfortunate.” He found a certain bitter satisfaction in enunciating the word, like biting down on a loose tooth, like grinding it into the soft wounded gum beneath. Pain he deserved. “So what I’m doing now, I’m just finishing up. Killing what’s left to kill, burning down the rest.”

“Admirable thoroughness. But what about the others? Shanta, Tand, the Maja—”

“Yeah, your toy fucking cabal-in-waiting is still intact. For what that’s worth. I’m bringing them out as planned, soon as I’m done here.”

“Good. I shall tell commanders Hald and Nyanar. But—perhaps you should hurry.”

“Perhaps you should shut the fuck up,” Ringil said without heat. “And let me handle the sharp end of this.”

“Oh, well, that’s very gracious. Coming from someone whose life I saved at the sharp end, not an hour ago.”

“As I recall, you just talked. It wasn’t exactly shoulder-to-shoulder-shield-wall heroics.”

“Heroics are overrated as a means of resolving matters. It is and has always been the tragedy of humans that they cannot see this. In any case, shield wall or simple scolding, I don’t see you complaining about the outcome.” A sour pause. “Or saying thank you.”

Ringil grimaced. “Thanks. Wasn’t exactly selfless though, was it? Without me, there’s no rescued cabal, no rescued God-Empress-in-waiting.”

“Nonetheless, you should—”

“Got no time for this, Helmsman.” Glancing at the body on the floor. “We’ll talk later. Right now, I got things to kill.”

Stretched out across the flagstones, Findrich, or what was left of him, had stopped shuddering. His limbs were sweeping back and forth on the floor in the twitchy, ill-coordinated swimming motions Gil associated with bodies infested by corpsemites. The chest rose and fell on long deep breaths, the air it breathed made a faint rasping noise in and out. The head lifted on the neck, the eyes snapped open. Something there grinned out at him. Whatever it was, he was pretty sure it wasn’t Findrich.

Gil nodded at the door, and it slammed shut. He clicked a crick out of his neck, took a turn around the chamber, drew the Ravensfriend almost casually from his back.

“Come on, then. Get up.”

It wallowed to its feet, some tangled mess of old Myrlic syllables dribbling from its lips. The eyes fixed on him, burning malice without recognition. He looked into them and forced down the faint chill that blew along his spine. Clan Illwrack’s champion, the Dark King returned. The sword wagged at the end of the thing’s right arm like some extended limb, broken at the joint. Findrich’s feet took hesitant steps on the stone floor. The mouth opened unnaturally wide, gaping at him. A thin, gull-plaintive shriek issued out.

Ringil rolled his eyes.

“Are you fucking serious? Come on!”

It came hissing at him and he let it come, blocked the clumsy sword blow it brought. Looped the strike aside and down on the Ravensfriend’s blade, swung neatly back in and chopped Findrich right through the midriff to the spine. For just one moment, he was eye to eye with the thing behind the slave merchant’s face, close enough for a kiss.

“Illwrack Changeling?” he sneered. “Thank you and good night.”

He tore the Ravensfriend sideways out of Findrich’s body, sliced the spine apart on the running edge of the Kiraith blade. Stepped away and spun with showy elegance. Findrich went down in a welter of blood—though not as much as you’d expect out of a still-living body—and collapsed in two halves across the flagstones.

Ringil stood for a careful moment, and yeah, sure enough, the head moved on the neck, the eyes were still alive, the lips still mouthing. Hissed arcane syllables, the Aldrain tongue this time, by the sound of it. He put the Ravensfriend’s point at the thing’s throat for a moment, then reconsidered. Skirted warily around the cloven body, stood on the sword arm at the wrist. He felt the weapon’s tang writhe under his boot like a chopped snake. Ignored it, put the Ravensfriend carefully in place, severed the arm from the body just below the elbow. It was a tricky stroke, took a couple of slicing blows with the limb pinned flat to the floor, but there wasn’t much to Findrich’s gaunt limbs these days, and the edge on the Kiriath steel got the job done well enough.

The head died. The mouth gaped mutely open, the eyes emptied of what had been there. Even the sword tang stopped flexing under his boot.

If Risgillen was somewhere watching, she gave no sign.

Ringil drew a deep breath, kicked the severed sword arm away across the floor. He went to the door and pulled it open, found himself facing a thicket of steel blades and the tense, taut faces of his men.

He found he could grin at them.

“We’re out of here,” he said. “Torch everything that’ll burn.”

THEY FELL BACK THROUGH THE ECHOING SPACES OF THE WAREHOUSE, lighting curtains with their borrowed torches, smashing apart furniture or storage crates and barrels alike, heaping the splintered shards into impromptu bonfire piles in the center of each chamber they passed through. They saw no more sign of life than they had coming in, only the corpses of the slaughtered skirmish rangers and Kaad, father and son, like empty sacks discarded in the atrium rain.

BY THE TIME THEY MADE THE FRONT DOORS, YOU COULD HEAR THE HUNgry, crackling roar of the flames, echoing down the corridors they’d come through, and long-tongued shadows danced on the roof over their heads. The mounting heat ushered them to the door like an impatient host.

They made their way out into the rain and down the steps outside to the street. Twitchy with unslaked rage and his failure to account for Risgillen at any point, Ringil stopped at the bottom step and looked back. Flames capered in the windows, as if gesturing him farewell. He’d never seen a building this grand sacked before; he wasn’t sure how much damage the fire would finally do with that much stone in the structure. Probably wouldn’t bring the whole thing down like Hinrik’s place, but given time, he supposed the roof must catch, at least in places, should end up falling in and adding to the blaze. With luck, there’d be enough structural beams in wood somewhere to char through and collapse, bringing down the upper levels. Even with the rain, he could hope for a gutted, smoldering shell by morning.

Honor pyre for the Throne Eternal captain.

He closed his eyes for a brief moment, brought back the supple ghost. Steel-thighed, taut-bellied, firm-handed, innocent-eyed Noyal Rakan. Rakan, who’d taken what brief stolen minutes and fragments of hours they could find for each other over the five months of the expedition, had given himself in grateful passion each time and never once grown maudlin or morose at the constraint. Rakan, who’d gone single-handed aboard Mayne’s Moor Blooded and set himself against an entire privateer ship’s crew to rescue Gil from harm. Rakan, who’d followed him without question into the citadel heart of his enemies, to rescue a woman he feared would threaten the core of what he’d stood by his whole young life.

Well, he thought drably. No need to worry on that score now, Captain.

He looked once more into the flames, raised an arm in salute. There should have been a better farewell. But in the end, there never is. And we take what meager scraps we can find. You should know that by now, Gil.

If the war had taught him nothing else, it had at least driven that steel-edged lesson home.

“Let’s go,” he said.

Out along the deserted streets of Etterkal, away from the gathering blaze, shrouding themselves in the surrounding damp and dark. Elsewhere against the sky, they saw the glow of other fires burning, heard faint yells and commotion over the rooftops. Barring some really piss-poor luck, they should have a clear run through the rest of the Salt Warren and then Tervinala all the way out to the eastern harbor. He had five men seriously injured, three of them too badly to walk, and then Mahmal Shanta on top—for these, Klithren had improvised sling stretchers out of looted curtain cloth and rope, two marines detailed to each. The other two injured men could limp along in the rear. It was all going to put a dent in their pace, but aside from that, Gil reckoned they were in pretty good shape.

OFFERED A STRETCHER IN CONSIDERATION OF HIS INJURIES, KLARN SHENdanak just spat on the floor and bristled like a roused hound.

If this slack motherfucker can keep up, he snapped, jerking a thumb at Menith Tand, then you’d better believe I can, too.

Tand just grinned.

Distracted as he was, Ringil still found himself mildly staggered at the camaraderie that seemed to have grown up between the two men. He dropped back to march alongside Mahmal Shanta’s stretcher for a spell.

“What the fuck have they been feeding those two?”

Shanta smiled wanly. “Captivity is an interesting catalyst, is it not?”

“If you say so. Personally, I would have thought it’d have them at each other’s throats twice as fast.”

“Ah, well.” Shanta’s weak and reedy voice came jolted by his stretcher bearers’ steps, overlaid with the splash of their boots in puddles. But he seemed in good spirits. “These are fluid times. We are at war, after all, and such a crisis can concentrate the mind wonderfully well. Certain truths become more readily apparent, certain… necessary adjustments may suggest themselves. Opportunities, even, for men with the right bent of mind. And in the face of opportunity and necessity, fresh allegiance emerges easily enough.”

“Yeah. You want to drop the diplomatic flannel and tell me what the fuck the three of you are cooking up?” Though in truth he already had a pretty shrewd idea. “If it’s a peace plan, riding on Tand’s influence up here, I’d say you’re fucked. The Chancellery won’t forgive this mess in a hurry.”

“No, nor forget it. You have struck a quite remarkable blow for the Empire, Ringil. Shown the League a vulnerability they might not previously have believed they suffered from. We did not expect this, nor anything remotely like it, but now it is achieved, well…”

“You’re forgetting who started this war.”

“No.” Shanta’s aged eyes were suddenly cold and hard, contemplating something Ringil could not see. “We have not forgotten that at all.”

So. Helmsman called it right after all.

Halfway right. Archeth stood in his mind’s eye, scowling, uncooperative. Lost.

Lost like the Dragonbane, lost like Rakan. For one sagging moment, he was waterlogged with the piling up of loss.

“You want to tell me what all that means?” he asked Shanta thinly.

The naval engineer looked elaborately around at the men who carried him, the others who marched in step with them. Grim-faced Throne Eternals, a few paces back.

“This is neither the time nor the place,” he said delicately. “And matters are, in any case, not yet at a suitable head. A fluid situation, as I said. But rest assured, my lord Ringil, when the time is right, you will be among the very first to know.”

“Might I inquire how far along you are?” Anasharal asked testily.

“We’re on our way.” Nodding at Shanta. “If you’ll excuse me, my lord. The Helmsman speaks. Matters I must attend to.”

“Are you at least out of Etterkal and into the diplomatic district yet?”

Ringil stiffened his pace, heading back to the vanguard and Klithren, who he’d left to lead the march. “No, not yet. But it won’t be long.”

“Nyanar insists that the commotion in the harbor is beginning to damp down. He is concerned that order may be restored before much longer, and we’ll find ourselves facing some organized opposition. If you don’t get out soon, you may have to fight your way to the boats.”

“That was always a possibility.”

“Yes. Perhaps if you stopped hobnobbing with my chess pieces, though, and set a decent pace, you could achieve an earlier arrival.”

“Your chess pieces are redundant, Helmsman. Remember? Archeth’s fucking dead.”

The Helmsman hesitated. “Yes. I am sorry about that. I know you were friends.”

“Good,” he said flatly. “Then fuck off out of my head and leave me alone. I’ll tell you when we cross into Tervinala, and you can have Nyanar send the boats.”

Into territory now that he knew only too well. From the district boundary with Tervinala at Blacksail boulevard to the slave-house heart of Etterkal, these were the streets that had played host to his war of attrition against Findrich, Snarl and the rest a year ago. Break in, brutalize, interrogate, burn. Random acts of terror at first, narrowing slowly to a savage search. Who enslaved my cousin? Who raped her, branded her, broke her soul? Who gave the orders, who paid the crew? Whose purse was enriched? Who benefits, who holds sway, who runs this fucking brave new world? And as he walked away from the rising smoke and flames each time, an endless, swelling list of fresh targets for his rage. He knew the street names intimately, the names of the slum taverns and converted warehouse homes he’d torched, the names of the owners and district benefactors whose charred remains he’d left within.

He could walk this path in his sleep.

They passed the rubbled remains of Elim Hinrik’s emporium, still not rebuilt or even cleaned up by the look of it. For all he knew, the bodies were still buried within. Memory flared, lantern bright. Mostly wooden beamed and floored, Hinrik’s place had gone up like autumn scrub. Nothing inside the waist-high outer walls now but mounded rubble and the odd jagged jut of a charred beam poking through, all of it glistening wet and dark in the rain. Gil led them past it without comment, took a narrow cross-street alley he knew at the corner, angled them a little more directly north.

Might clip some time off the journey, shut that fucking Helmsman up.

Out into a muddy, poorly cobbled plaza—huddled figures under eaves in the corners stirred and watched, but offered them no greeting or resistance. By their bony lack of bulk, most looked to be urchins, though he thought he saw one or two hugging infant bundles to their breasts. The first living souls he’d seen on the streets of the Warren since they got out of Findrich’s place, and they turned out to be the last as well.

Two more narrow, winding streets later, they spilled abruptly out onto Blacksail boulevard, almost before he’d noticed they were there.

CHAPTER 57

It is time, my friend.

He blinks back to awareness, wipes moisture from his face, and stares around in the rain-lashed murk. The others give no sign of having spoken—they’re huddled like him under the makeshift shelter of a sailcloth tarp, rigged across the main deck to keep the worst of the downpour off. One or two of them meet his eye as he moves, but aside from a comradely grimace, they show no interest in conversation. Besides, it was not a human voice and he knows it.

It’s the Helmsman.

He shivers, maybe from the damp, and steps out into the full force of the storm. Goes to the rail as if to peer out at the lights of Trelayne harbor in the murk beyond. He mutters under his breath against the roar of the rain.

Time for what?

Time for the final unmasking. He’d swear there’s a trace of regret in the iron demon’s tone. Time for you to finally understand the purpose marked out for you.

You said you couldn’t see my purpose clearly.

Yes, I’m afraid I lied about that. What you are and why has in fact been fairly clear to me since we first met. But the field of play was too tangled for me to map a certain use for that knowledge at the time. I have improvised along the way, but I think we’re beyond that now.

I don’t… understand what you’re saying.

I told you that you had a great destiny, and it was tied to the lady kir-Archeth. Well, that wasn’t quite accurate. You were tied to kir-Archeth for rather more mundane reasons of infiltration. The Citadel had long been taking an interest in her, you see, and that combined with… other interests gave birth to a rather remarkable kind of spy. A spy with no knowledge of what he actually was, a spy who could observe without understanding, but later recall everything in perfect detail. A spy who could, if necessary, be awakened to step in and take the lady kir-Archeth’s life. That’s really why I needed to keep you asleep.

He shivers in the rain. What are you talking about? I would never… I’ve sworn…

No, that wasn’t you. The man you think you are took that oath. But he is not among us. You usurped his place that drunken night when assignments were confirmed. Woke hungover in his place at barracks.

He stares down at his hands on the rain-soaked rail, the hands that so often didn’t seem to be his. Watches them twist and grip at each other of their own accord. He feels himself shaking his head in denial.

Nightmare, creeping back in.

It really is for the best, I assure you. The Helmsman’s voice, indistinct through the rising whine in his head, the choir of shrieking and sobbing behind. The field of play is changed, you see, and it turns out there is useful work for you after all.

For one desolate moment, he’s back on that marsh plain with the others, the thousands of severed living heads, fed by the roots of the stumps they’re cemented atop. And he’s looking at himself, at his own severed head, mouth wrenched open on endless screams. He puts up both hands in horror, presses fingertips to his face, and his face is no longer his own.

He backs away, shaking his head numbly. Sanity hemorrhaging out of wounds he can feel but cannot locate…

The Helmsman’s voice cuts across it all, like an arm thrust down into the deep for a drowning man to grasp.

Time to wake up, Anasharal says crisply. And remember who you really are.

CHAPTER 58

Decades-old nominal boundary between the diplomatic quarter and the Salt Warren, Blacksail boulevard had been heavily policed by the Watch during the hours of darkness as far back as Gil could remember. Before the war, the polite pretext was that Tervinala’s resident aliens needed a cordon against the depredations of Trelayne’s more ignorant and bigoted slum citizens. Underlying, and taken as read by all parties with much—appropriately enough—diplomatic aplomb, was the concern that wealthy foreigners and representative agents of foreign powers could not be permitted to simply come and go across the city as they pleased without anyone taking official note. A delicate, mutually deceitful dance ensued.

With Liberalization and the rise of the slavers association in Etterkal, these mannered maneuverings grew secondary. The Watch stood on Blacksail boulevard primarily because Etterkal’s masters wanted them there. Entry into the Salt Warren, especially from a district swarming with who knew what foreign spies and creatures, was subject to tight scrutiny and report. The watchmen would want particulars of where you were going, whom to see, and on what business. Numbers were restricted, note of names was taken. Listed undesirables, heavily armed or otherwise suspicious parties, anyone in fact that the Watch didn’t like the look of, would be summarily turned away.

Tonight you could have rolled an entire army, with siege engines, either way across the Blacksail divide, and no one would have blinked. Fires were burning in Tervinala, some of them clearly visible down the streets that opened onto the boulevard from that side, and any Watch presence there might have been was long gone. It was a repeat of the scene on Caravan Master’s Rise, but with twice the number of abandoned barricades and untended braziers in the rain. Faintly from the diplomatic quarter, he heard the iron clash and yell of fighting.

“We’re crossing into Tervinala now,” he said, for Anasharal’s benefit. “Twenty-two of us. Five seriously injured. No sign of resistance, I reckon we’ll be at the eastern harbor wall in an hour or less.”

“I shall make this known to Commander Nyanar.”

They plunged into the stew of streets on the far side, avoiding the telltale glow of fires. Took quiet, darkened avenues that looked like they’d escaped the rampage. Gil kept a map lit in his head, plotting the twists and turns he was taking, trying to keep them more or less on a direct course for the waterfront. Here, too, he was at home, carried on the combined recall of a dozen or more nights spent skulking after violent inroads into Etterkal and rapid retreats back out. None of it quite matched his current needs; you couldn’t skulk with a score of men at your back the way you could with only two or three, but still…

“This will not… not be forgotten, my lord. Rest assured.”

Menith Tand, there at his side. The slave magnate had upped his pace to get level, was a little out of breath as a result. Ringil grunted.

“Forgotten by whom?”

“Well, of course, by any associates of Findrich, and the Trelayne Chancellery in general.” Tand found the spare energy for a thin smirk. “You have inflicted a quite stunning humiliation on them all. But that’s not what I meant. Quite seriously, my lord Ringil, I am in your debt. We all are.”

Ringil shot him a dubious glance. “I’d have thought you had the leverage to skip out easily enough once the shouting dies down. You of all people, Tand. Circles you move in, professional courtesy and so forth.”

“Not in times of war, I’m afraid. Our treatment as prisoners has in fact been quite heavy-handed. Not what I’d expected at all.”

“Yeah? That what happened to Shendanak?”

The slave merchant pursed his lips. “No, that’s legacy of a disagreement he had with the Dragonbane. Your friend had already put him into a coma by the time the privateers arrived in Ornley. He only woke later, on the voyage south.”

Gil blinked. “Egar did that? Why?”

“I have no clear idea, I’m afraid. I believe it had something to do with a squabble over the local whores.” Tand shrugged. “You are talking about Majak, after all.”

For a moment, the Dragonb ane stood grinning in his mind’s eye. Thuggish, scarred, something of the unkillable about him.

Gone.

Ringil bit down on the loss and the guilt it came with. Put it away.

“You don’t think you would have been ransomed home?” he asked, for something to fill the silence.

The slave magnate shook his head. “Not easily, no. I fear we could well have spent several years of our lives in very unsavory confinement, had you not come for us. We might perhaps even have been executed as spies, if only to placate the rabble when the war took some turn for the worse.”

“Well, that’s wars for you.”

“Oh, indeed.” Tand nodding sagely to himself as they marched. “Not the most intelligent of ventures, even at the best of times.”

“You want to talk to your Emperor about that.”

“Yes.” A pensive, drawn out weight on the words now. “Our beloved Emperor.”

They marched on in silence, and the echoes of what had been said scurried off into the rain and the dark. The thoroughfare they tramped down ended at a five-point crossroads. Screams and harsh wild, laughter in gusts from the street directly opposite, and flames leaping out of first-floor windows along the row. Bodies in the street, figures locked in savage back-and-forth combat, yelling in Naomic and another language whose cadences Ringil recognized but could not understand. Hard to believe, but it looked as if someone had gotten into the Shaktur embassy and was busy putting it to the torch.

He summoned the map in his head. Pain in the arse, but they could detour left past this lot, then cut back up Candleman’s Cleft and get out onto the Dawn Boulevard further along. It was another quarter mile or so, not exactly ideal ground, but—

Three ragged figures came loping up the road from the burning embassy, flicker-lit by the flames at their back. Ringil saw stolen finery pulled on over starveling, bony frames, a couple of cutlasses in hand, a pike. One of the marauding convicts had found himself a big floppy hat, another seemed to be wearing a flaxen wig. They whooped when they spotted Gil and the others hesitating at the crossway—brandished their weaponry and swaggered forward grinning into the open space, to meet these new victims. They didn’t seem to have noticed quite how many men were at Ringil’s back. Perhaps they were drunk, on their freedom and fury if nothing else.

“Will you meet your end tonight, watchman?” the one with the hat crowed, and did a little dance back and forth across the cobbles. There was blood down the front of his stolen breeches. A scant array of broken teeth in his grin. “Is it tonight?”

“No, it’s not,” Ringil said curtly.

He stepped forward, snapped out a loose left hand, made a two-fingered claw. The convict dropped his cutlass, went screaming to his knees with hands cupped to his eyes.

His two companions gaped.

“You have me confused with someone else,” Ringil told them. “Now fuck off.”

They needed no second warning. Both men fled back down the street they’d come from, leaving pike and cutlass and the bloodied flaxen wig strewn across the cobbles beside their writhing, shrilling companion. Ringil made a lateral chopping motion with his clawed hand and the man’s screams and struggle ceased. His body rolled brokenly to a halt.

“This is a scalp,” said Klithren curiously, lifting the bloodied blond hairpiece on the end of his sword for inspection.

Ringil peered. “Yeah, certainly looks like it. This way.”

He led them into the dark on the far side of the crossroads.

A HUNDRED CROOKED YARDS DOWN THE CONFINES OF CANDLEMAN’S CLEFT, and they went single file because the alley-space forced it, picking their way on the cobble-and-pothole surface underfoot. The stretcher bearers struggled not to stumble and tip their charges. Mahmal Shanta was insisting loudly on getting out and walking this bit, but Gil wouldn’t have it. He wanted them out of here as fast as possible and Shanta wouldn’t do well over this terrain in the dark.

It seemed unnaturally warm in the Cleft; not much rain or wind got in from above. Flashlit blue recall of the dark defiles insisted at the borders of his vision, threatened to tip him off the edge of here-and-now, pitch him back into nightmare. He sniffed and stopped it up somewhere inside him, like the pain from any other wound. The inward-leaning, jaggedly piled-up levels of the houses on either side pressed in and down, promised a nightmare toppling. The myriad darkened windows and tiny balconies offered the more prosaic threat of ambush by arbalest or bow, or just some heavy crockery and stones.

Still no sign of Risgillen.

He had Klithren drop back to handle the rearguard, moved a couple of yards ahead and led on with senses spread like a net, taut for any whisper of life, human or otherwise. But if there were eyes on them above, he felt no sign of their presence. And if anyone cared what he’d done here, what he’d brought screaming down on this city, then they were keeping it to themselves, at least for now.

Near the end, with the glimmer of light at the end of the Cleft, he stumbled over a couple of bodies, throats slit and clothes torn off below the waist. Someone overly shy had evidently been using the alley for privacy, but the perpetrators were long gone. He gathered a glimpse of pale drowned faces in the gloom, the raw black, glittering gashes beneath their chins. Gil thought one was a boy, the other a woman his age, but in the uncertain light it was hard to be sure.

He looked away.

Moments later, they spilled out onto the Dawn boulevard’s lamplit expanse, found more corpses strewn there, properties burning and smoke in the street, but no sign of whoever was responsible. They’d missed the party. He looked up and down the ravaged, deserted thoroughfare. Caught his men watching him in expectant quiet, stopped up the heavy sigh of relief in his throat before it could vent.

“All right?” Klithren asked him, shouldering up from the rear.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t I be? Go on, you take the van. Down that way, keep straight on. Set the pace. We’re almost home.”

He let Klithren lead off, fell in a couple of ranks back, brooding on the images in his head. Menith Tand joined him again, paced along at his side. When Ringil said nothing to him, he walked in silence, too, but he was clearly agitating at something that he’d left unsaid before. In the end, Gil gave up.

“What is it, Tand?”

The slaver cleared his throat

“Yes. I am not unaware, my lord, of what sacrifice these acts represent on your part. I know well enough what it is to own blood on both sides of a bitter divide.”

Ringil snorted. “You’d have to dig back a few generations to find my imperial blood.”

“Nonetheless, it is there, and noble, too. I have read about the Ashnal schism. It was, quite frankly, a farcical business, and a scandalous betrayal of some of the Empire’s finest families. Your ancestors should never have been driven out.”

“But they were.”

“Yes, quite. Which makes your sacrifices here all the more… significant. To throw in your lot with the Empire is one thing; any mercenary of note might do the same.” Tand paused. He seemed to be working through some emotions of his own. “But to choose. And in so spectacular a fashion. To march with fire and steel on the city of your birth, to betray the weightier part of your origins in order to honor your duties under imperial charter. As I said before, this will not be forgotten.”

“I was already an outcast up here, Tand.” Dead iron in his tone—with Rakan, Archeth, and the Dragonbane lost, he was in no mood for plaudits. “You know I tried to burn down the whole Trelayne slave trade last year?”

“Word had reached me of that, yes.”

Ringil looked at him, jolted. “You knew that before we left for the Hironish?”

“Yes, somewhat before. I made inquiries.”

“And you said nothing of it?”

Tand shrugged. “You seemed to have gotten it out of your system.”

“Oh, did I?”

“Well. Let us just say you seemed by then to be existing comfortably enough amid the Empire’s very widespread use of slaves, and without any apparent urges to commit murder or mayhem against those who used or owned them. In fact, indiscretions with our young Throne Eternal captain aside, you were behaving perfectly well.”

Behaving perfectly well. Gil grimaced. “Knew about that, too, huh?”

Another shrug. “It was evident, I believe, for anyone with eyes educated enough to notice. When I invest in a venture, I like to know the men I am entrusting my investment to. But this is by the by—your bedchamber inclinations really were of no interest to me, except as they might affect more important considerations.”

“No?” A bitterness he could not right now quell or ironize away. Hooking out the verse from seared memory. “If a man lie down with another man as with a woman, it is as if he lie down with an animal in filth, it is a gross sin in the sight of the Revelation. That’s by the by, is it?”

“Oh, that.” The slave merchant pulled a face. “Well, yes, the Citadel may rant and proscribe to its rabid heart’s content, but that’s strictly for the rabble. Among the noble classes in Yhelteth, we prefer, let us say, a more nuanced approach. It’s helpful to have the proscription and associated punishments in place, of course, but actual exposure is far too valuable a political tool to be deployed on”—an airy gesture—“vulgar principle.”

“Vulgar principle, huh?” Ringil shook his head, riding down a brief urge to smash in sophisticated, accommodating Menith Tand’s face in with the pommel of his sword. “You know, Tand, if you’d based yourself up here instead of at the Empire end of things, it might have been your warehouses I was burning down. Your merchandise I set free.”

“Yes, but it was not.” The slave merchant offered him an urbane smile. “If anything, I believe I may even have benefited somewhat from your depredations among my Trelayne competitors. You see, my lord Ringil, I am above all a pragmatist.”

“Yeah.”

“And you were, by the time the caravan grapevine carried this news to me, a very significant asset to us all. You whipped our quest fellowship into shape as no one else available could have. You carried command. Men followed you instinctively, looked to you for leadership as a matter of natural course. Under the circumstances, I saw no good reason to trouble the lady Archeth or our other sponsors with what I knew, to set fresh ripples in water we had already spent all winter calming.”

“Hsst!” Klithren’s arm raised, fist clenched. “Hold up.”

They slammed to a halt, on a road surface that had begun to tilt very slightly downward. Charred, collapsed structures on either side of the street, a carpet of shattered glass and crockery stretching ahead, a tavern sign still on its brackets, torn loose and flung flat to the cobbles. Flames still licked and crackled amid the shattered remnants of the building on the right, but the rain was beating out the blaze. Elsewhere, it was smolder and low-drifting acrid smoke. Bodies everywhere, tangled up untidily across the cobbles like bundles of dirty washing, or spread-eagled and staring blindly up into the rain that fell on their faces. The clothes had been torn off at least every one in three.

Ringil cast about for signs of threat or life, saw some few quivering figures huddled into walls or niche spaces. From somewhere came a high, endless keening. Impossible to tell which, if any, of the visible survivors were making the noise.

“Nice one,” said Klithren, loud in the murky air.

The eastern harbor lay before them, devoid of life in the fitful flicker of flames from a dozen different fires across the wharves.

AGAINST THE ODDS, THEY’D BEATEN NYANAR’S PICK UP TO THE MEETING point. Outlander’s wharf was deserted, unless you counted the dozen or so corpses of convicts and harbor Watch strewn along its worn stone length. Most of them still held the weapons they’d died with, which in the case of the convicts didn’t amount to very much—lengths of chain and clubs made of rotten, torn-up deck timber, here and there the odd looted ax or knife. From the pincushion look of the bodies, somebody had panicked, ordered repeated crossbow volleys across the wharf, and taken out almost as many of their own watchmen as they had attackers.

“So where the fuck is our ride?” Klithren wanted to know.

Ringil scanned the burning harbor, looking for— “There.”

He pointed. Motion, low in the water, off to their left. Two longboats, rowers bent-backed at their task, coming in across water speckled with flame in oily patches and spiked with the spars of burned and scuttled ships. Add to that the wind and rain and dark, and he supposed, grudgingly, that it couldn’t have been an easy passage to make.

Klithren squinted through the rain.

“Hoiran’s aching cock—two fucking boats? Is that it? We’re going to struggle to get everybody in those and not capsize soon as we hit open water.”

Ringil shrugged, masking similar misgivings. “I told the Helmsman twenty-two men. Nyanar must reckon this is enough. Maybe he’s right.”

“Yeah, and maybe my prick’s a fucking mainmast.” The mercenary scowled. “Well, I just hope you can keep a tight leash on those merroigai horrors of yours. Because we’re going to be riding very fucking low in the water.”

Privately, Gil doubted he could get the merroigai to do anything very much that they didn’t want to. About the only binding magic he’d been able to work on the swimmers, aside from summoning them to his aid in the first place, was an injunction to stay in the water, which, according to Hjel, was where they liked to be anyway. The merroigai speak highly of you, the Creature at the Crossroads had assured him, but he had no idea what that meant. And while Dakovash claimed he’d sent one to save him when Gil let himself be carried too far out to sea at Lanatray in his youth, that was a long time ago and the affection apparently didn’t extend to anybody else, even if they were under his command. Best bet, Hjel says unhelpfully when asked, just stay out of the water and tell anyone you have any affection for to do the same.

Right.

Useless fucking ikinri ‘ska.

“You just let me worry about the merroigai. Flag them in, will you? They haven’t seen us yet.”

He watched the mercenary put hand to mouth and vent a piercing whistle, then cross-wave both arms slowly and steadily over his head. Faint cries went back and forth among the rowers as they spotted the signal. Both boats altered heading by a fraction and arrowed in directly toward them. Ringil peered over the side of the wharf.

“You see a ladder anywhere?”

In the end, they had to settle for a knotted rope that Klithren spied poking out from under an upended fishing skiff further along the quay. They looped and tied one end around a mooring post, dangled the rest down to the water just as the first longboat’s rowers shipped oars on a natty little swerve that brought them bumping gently in against the wharf. Marine sergeant Shahn, crouched in the bow, grabbed the rope end out of the water, secured it, and clambered handily up to meet them. He saluted, fist to chest, grinning.

“Commander Nyanar sends his regards, sir. He asks for haste.”

“That’s a good idea,” said Klithren, with bright malice. “Why didn’t we think of that?”

Ringil shot him a warning glance. “Start getting the wounded aboard. Shahn, you come with me, I want to set a rearguard cordon while we board.”

“Sir.”

He had the remaining Throne Eternals and half the marines form a line across the wharf, left Shahn in charge of it while everyone else got the first longboat tied in tight and then loaded. Yelps, then clenched screams from the wounded as they were lowered more or less gently down into the boat and tried to take the pain. Some urgent shouting as one of the marines with a chopped thigh started bleeding out around his tourniquet. Men scrambled about in the boat, worked frantically to tighten up the binding. A fresh scream floated loose and the man passed out. More marines climbed down. Mahmal Shanta turned to Ringil just before it was his turn to descend, eyes wet and bright with reflected light from the burning fires. He snagged Gil’s arm with an old man’s fierce, bony grip.

“We are going home thanks to you, Ringil. I will never forget that.”

Ringil forced a grin. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to let you.”

The stretcher bearers moved to help the naval engineer away, get him down the rope. But he hung on to Gil’s arm a moment longer.

“Something better will be built on this,” he said. “I promise you.”

Faint, enduring chuckle and crack of fire, everywhere across the sacked harbor. Drifting smoke in the rain. Somewhere back the way they’d come, a blazing wooden structure that might once have been a storage shed groaned and fell in on itself. Ringil turned back to look. The quarrel-spiked bodies along the wharf caught his eye. Flames leaping and climbing out of first-and second-story windows along the harbor frontage. Above the skyline of the city, patches of smoky orange fire glow stained the murk.

Hard to see what you’d build on foundations like these.

“You sure you got no steppe nomad in you?” Klarn Shendanak asked at his shoulder, and barked a laugh. “Mess you made here, I got to wonder.”

“Thanks.”

Where are you, Risgillen? Where the fuck are you? You really going to let me get away with this?

With Shanta and his stretcher bearers aboard and settled, the first longboat was visibly filled to capacity. As Klithren had predicted, it sat low in the water, though not alarmingly so. Unless the weather out in the bay was really atrocious, they wouldn’t even have to bail. Gil watched as the marines cut the tie ropes and shoved off, got the prow pointed out. The oarsmen dipped in, someone started calling cadence. They pulled away. The second boat nosed in to take its predecessor’s place.

“No more wounded,” Klithren shouted down at them. “Don’t bother tying in, just hold station and hang on to that fucking rope. We’ll be right there.”

Ringil lifted an arm, signalled Shahn to fold down the rearguard line. The marine sergeant nodded, sent men back one by one to board the boat. They spidered rapidly down the knotted rope, leapt from the midpoint, directly into the boat. Oarsmen caught and steadied them as they landed, got them seated. Shendanak nodded Menith Tand ahead of him in the queue, clapped Gil on the shoulder just before he followed.

“Cheer the fuck up, man.” He unhooked his sling, flexed his injured arm and gestured at the burning harbor, the fire in the sky. “All this? Dragonbane himself would have been proud.”

He squatted and swung himself down onto the rope with his good arm, nimble as a man half his age despite his injuries, clambered a bare couple of knots lower, and then leapt the rest of the way with a harsh whoop. The boat rocked violently as he hit. There was enough echo of Egar in the bravado to put the ghost of a reflexive smile at the corners of Ringil’s mouth.

He blinked, caught Klithren staring at him. Gestured down at the boat.

“Go on, Hinerion. Your turn. Don’t hang about.”

The mercenary didn’t move. Gil felt his pulse trip over itself. The ghost smile soaked away like spilled wine into straw.

“All that black mage shit you pulled tonight,” Klithren said slowly.

“Yeah?”

“You didn’t need me to get this far. You could have dropped me, like a Tlanmar bunny for the pot, anytime. Couldn’t you?”

Ringil shook his head impatiently. “Not and keep my word, no. Come on, get down that fucking rope. We haven’t got all—”

“Hostiles!” Shahn bellowed from up the wharf. “Blue fire!”

IT TOOK HIM A MOMENT TO IDENTIFY THE FEELING THAT COURSED THROUGH him as he spun.

Relief.

Flat-out sprint. Klithren at his back, then at his side as they ran—splintered moments, scarcely time to draw breath, out to where the marine sergeant stood staring back down the wharf. Gil scanned the same space, eyes eager for the telltale splinters of light. Pulse up for real now, right hand itching for the Ravensfriend in his grip. No sign he could see. His gaze flickered to the frontages beyond, the crawling collage of flame and black-shadowed ruin that spread there.

“Where? Where are they?”

Shahn turned, one arm up and out—

—something wrong with his eyes?—

—swung the doubled-up, gore-clotted length of chain in his hand, smacked Ringil full around the head with the links.

Dropped him to the wharf, exactly like one of Klithren’s Tlanmar bunnies for the pot.

CHAPTER 59

They made camp early, still plenty of warmth in the air and light in the crystal clear sky. She estimated the sun had at least another hour to fall. No particular features in the landscape to recommend stopping, either, at least not as far as Archeth could see. Then again, what did she know—to her eyes, the whole fucking steppe was one big grass-grown wilderness. They’d ridden for two days now, and aside from the disappearing river and the chimney smoke trails of Ishlin-ichan crawling up the sky behind them, she hadn’t seen a single navigable landmark along the way.

But if Marnak Ironbrow said this was the place, well then, probably this was the place.

“Sacred ground,” he grunted when she asked him why they’d chosen it. “Long ago in legend, a great god’s sword fell to earth here. My people took the sky iron it left in the earth and forged the weapons we used to chase out the Long Runners. See, this is where it lay.”

She followed the gesture he made. Saw a long, low ridge along the ground that she hadn’t spotted before. It curved outward on either side of where they stood, encircling a broad, shallow scoop in the landscape whose final extent she had to guess at, as she lost the ridge in the endless nodding waves of waist-high grass. She made the connection, understood what she was looking at. They were camped out at the edge of a huge crater, filled in and blurred with the centuries since it was formed.

“Sky iron, eh?” she said, and looked back at the wagon they’d brought. “Appropriate enough, I guess.”

“Yes. The shaman will approve. The spirits remaining here will lend strength to the ceremonies he must perform. Added to which”—no apparent irony in the Ironbrow’s tone—“if your intent is not as honest as you claim it to be, the Dwellers will likely notice it on ground such as this. They will watch over us here.”

“Good to know,” she said tonelessly. Let’s just hope they don’t bear grudges.

She watched Marnak’s men unharness the draft horses and lead them away for feed. A couple of them sketched wards at what hulked on the wagon’s flatbed as they left. You couldn’t really blame them. Beneath the heavy canvas wrappings in which it was shrouded, the half-melted remnant of the Kiriath catapult projectile loomed massive and jagged, like the recovered statue of some ancient alien god. Even to Archeth, there was something stark and ominous about the way it rose against the early evening sky.

Sky iron—the dead heart of a comet fallen to earth.

It was the one thing they’d been able to come up with that might drag the shaman out of camp.

“And you’re sure he won’t come tonight?”

Marnak snorted. “The shaman might, but Ershal won’t. He’ll want daylight for the cleansing rituals. Come to that, I probably would, too. It doesn’t pay to mix darkness and things that fall out of the sky.”

She wondered absently if there was a barbed comment in there about her skin. Decided that Marnak probably meant it innocently enough. He seemed to have had a genuine respect for her father, a genuine lack of fear of the Black Folk in general.

She wished half the imperials she knew could manage as much.

“My lady?”

She looked up, saw Selak Chan advancing toward her through the sunlit grass. She made her excuses to Marnak, went to meet the Throne Eternal captain halfway.

“We in good shape?”

“We are, my lady. I’ve assigned a watch.” He gestured back to where the camp was taking shape. “The nomads will mount one, too, they say, but I’d rather trust our own men.”

“Fair enough. But let’s try not to tread on any toes. They’re twitchy enough as it is. We do outnumber them two to one.”

“Yes, my lady.”

She wished she felt as comfortable with the numbers as she pretended. Twenty horsemen—lined up in mounted pairs at the embassy gate, they’d looked a tidy enough little force. But out here under the vast steppe skies and forging steadily into Skaranak territory, it didn’t seem like a whole lot of muscle anymore. She was beginning to wish she’d brought double.

But she had Marnak Ironbrow’s finer feelings to worry about, and he wouldn’t countenance a larger invasion. And anyway, Carden Han’s men weren’t exactly chomping at the bit to get out into Skaranak territory any more than their legate was keen to send them—she’d be hard-pressed to get more than a handful of volunteers, and morose conscripted soldiery was not what she needed for this.

Fucking politics, the bane of her existence.

In the end, she’d opted to take the marines and the few Throne Eternal she’d brought out of the Wastes—their loyalties to her were forged far deeper than mere formal oath by now. The problem was, they numbered only thirteen out of the company—Tand’s men, she still didn’t fully trust, and the privateers were out of the question—and none of them knew anything about the local terrain. She’d have liked to use the Majak survivors from her party, but they were Ishlinak, albeit from the far southern end of the steppe, and once again Marnak would not hear of it. Enough that I’m siding with outlanders against my own shaman and clanmaster, he grumbled. I’ll not have Ishlinak riders at my back into the bargain. So that was that.

She went to talk to Carden Han.

The legate, of course, was delighted at the compromise. No doubt steeling himself against a request for the forty-five imperials he’d originally promised her, he’d almost grinned with relief when she told him what she actually wanted. Seven men, at least two drawn from the Upland Free scouts, but the rest could be grunt imperials, auxiliaries, whatever, as long as they knew the steppe like the wrinkles on their dicks and took their duties seriously…

Chan still hovered, looking uncomfortable. “Uhm, my lady?”

“Oh. Yes, Captain, what is it?”

“Uh… my lord Kaptal has some misgivings. Will you speak with him?”

“Oh, for f—” She bit it back. She was the one who’d caved in when Kaptal insisted he come along. This was her mess. “All right, I’ll talk to him.”

Again.

WHEN HE CAME OUT WITH IT LIKE THAT, THERE ON THE CANDLELIT STAIRS in the embassy, she just stood for a moment and gaped. Legacy of the night she’d had so far, a slightly hysterical giggle cracked her lips.

“Empress? You’re joking, right?” She saw the set of his mouth, the furrowed brow. Her grin fell off her face. “You’re not joking.”

“I understand your surprise, my lady—”

“Yeah?” She came down the stairs at him. “How about you understand my desire not to set off a palace feud that’ll split this Empire six ways to the sea just when we can least afford the dissent? Get back in there!”

She shoved him bodily through the opened door to his apartment, hooked it closed with her heel as she followed him in. He was a bit harder to shift than she’d expected, felt bulky and well anchored on his feet, but the twitch and flare of her combat with Kelgris was still in her, itching just under the skin. Bad enough she’d spent the night climbing in and out of brothel windows like some not-very-bright Majak in a tale, then swapping pillow talk and threats of violence with an oversexed local god. Now she had to deal with this shit? She slammed the door-bolt across, whirled on Kaptal in the low light from his lobby lanterns, and stabbed the blade end of her fingers into his chest.

“Have you talked to anyone else about this?”

Kaptal looked impassively back at her. “No one, my lady. I am neither suicidal nor a fool.”

“Well, you’re doing a very good impression of both at the moment. Let’s leave aside the fact that I’m sworn in service to Jhiral Khimran, and could have your skull on a spike for what you’ve just said to me. Let’s leave aside the fact you’re suggesting high treason out loud on the staircase of an imperial embassy with who the fuck knows how many unwanted ears wagging at every corner. The rather more pertinent point is that we are at war. Right now, what the Burnished Throne needs more than any other single thing is solidarity. Loyalty.”

“Loyalty to the Burnished Throne, my lady, is not the same thing as loyalty to the Khimran dynasty. And even loyalty to clan Khimran is not the same as loyalty to the whore’s dreg idiot who walked us into this war in the first place.”

She turned away. “None of that is a good excuse for trying to put me on the throne. I don’t want it, I’m not qualified. I’m not even fucking human.”

“That is precisely what qualifies you so well, my lady. You are immortal. You would provide a continuity not possible for any human ruler.”

“That—”

She stopped. Peered back at him suspiciously. She’d made no great study of Yilmar Kaptal in the months of the quest—had been too absorbed in her own obsessive hopes and fears to bother—but this didn’t sound like him at all. There was a measured precision to his speech that reminded her more of Tand or Shanta or—

—a Helmsman?

The thought came fleeting through her mind and jammed there. Just now, back out on the landing—Kaptal had sounded hesitant, as if woken from some dream he was still half in. And now he was arguing with her in tones that—

She saw him again, hauled up off the ocean floor in a sack, spilled dead and chewed upon, across the iron floor at her feet.

Cleansing is required, and substantial surface repair. But aside from this, I foresee no real difficulties.

And the Warhelm’s bland assertion to the Dragonbane in the same clanging, echoing workshop, as dark iron machines went about their work and Tharalanangharst spun plans for them all like some great ancient spider in its web: if either of you knew what end was intended from your actions, your knowledge would damage the equilibrium of the model, in all probability to an extent that would prevent said end from ever being achieved.

This was Anasharal’s scheme? This was what the emasculated iron demons out of her father’s past had in mind? Usurp the imperial throne and dump it on her fucking head?

And whom exactly am I talking to here?

She thought again of the spidering silver machines everywhere underfoot and in the walls of An-Kirilnar, the one that might even now be sitting somewhere inside the once-drowned brain behind Kaptal’s eyes, steering the words to his tongue and watching her for response.

She closed up the gap between the two of them. Tapped Kaptal or whatever was in him on the chest.

“I don’t know where you got this idea—”

“The idea that Jhiral Khimran is not a worthy successor to his father is common currency in certain court circles. But you surely know this, my lady. Associating so closely with Mahmal Shanta, you could scarcely fail to.”

“My associations with Mahmal Shanta are none of your fucking business.”

“Don’t be naive, my lady, please.” A sudden snap in his voice that sounded a lot like the old Yilmar Kaptal. “There is very little at court and around that I have not made my business at one time or another in the last several years. Coastlander discontent smolders stronger now than it has in over a century. Asked to produce names and proof, I could. Asked to bring others into the same fold, whether willingly or kicking and screaming, I could. Do not underestimate what I can do for you in this arena, my lady.”

She nodded grimly. “Yeah. Well, right now what you can do for me in this arena is keep your fucking mouth shut.”

AND STAY OUT OF MY WAY, SHE SHOULD HAVE ADDED.

Because here he was, hanging around amid the Skaranak and the imperials like a virgin in a brothel and twice as useless, just one more thing to worry about in terrain already stacked high with hazard she couldn’t predict. She supposed, rather sourly, it was safer that way—in the end, if she gave in to his dogged insistence on joining them, it was because she was more afraid of what unpredictable thing he might do in her absence.

Yeah, like go to the legate with this sudden insurrectionary fervor. See if he can’t fan that wistful bitterness of Han’s into something more stroppy. Start sounding out some of the men, maybe. The auxiliaries, even. See what recruits might be had from out on the steppe by word of mouth.

She felt a chill blow through her at the thought.

Wouldn’t be the first time a pretender gathered together a bunch of savage horsemen and rode on the capital in hopes of taking the throne.

There was no one human left to remember the last time it happened—which would make it all the more appealing in the hearts and minds of men, of course—but she did. A century and more after the event, she still had flash recall of the bloody mess it made. The sacked towns and scorched earth, the chaotic scramble for response; the stinking summer slaughter at the eventual battle that broke the rebel forces; then the reprisals, the towns burned and razed in retribution for declaring sympathy, the columns of slaves marched out, and the bodies, the bodies everywhere—piled on charnel pyres that smoked and smoldered for days, left out unburied in fields and streets for scavengers to chew apart. Crucified along the An-Monal road as exemplary punishment, mile after mile of them, hung there until they rotted enough to fall.

Whatever the Warhelm had done to Kaptal to bring him back from the dead, it didn’t seem to have recaptured much of his street smarts in the process. And Archeth had seen enough of spymaster Eshen to know how little Kaptal would need to slip before he was marked, and a report filed right back to the palace in Yhelteth. Which was about the last fucking thing she needed. There was going to be quite enough hard work as it was when they got back, without shit like this to stoke the fires of Jhiral’s enduring obsession with disloyalty.

She found Kaptal standing beside the wagon, alone. Offered a horse from the embassy stables for the trip, he’d elected to ride beside the wagon-driver instead, which earned him a few respectful glances from imperials and Skaranak alike. He seemed the only one among the party entirely untroubled by the nature of the thing they hauled.

“Got a problem?” she asked him without preamble.

He gestured around at the men setting up camp. “We are stopping here for the night?”

“Your powers of observation astound me. Yes, we are stopping here for the night. What’s the matter—you don’t like the view?”

“Don’t you see the crater? Do you know what happened in this place? “

She eyed him curiously. “No, I do not. Do you?”

“I… am informed.” Again, that odd hesitation, as if he was trying to assemble reasons after the fact for the words coming out of his mouth. “The Skaranak… mentioned just now… to some of our men… they say this is a sacred place to their people.”

“Yeah, I’m told some warrior god dropped his sword here. It was awhile ago, I doubt he’ll be back for it.”

“You really think it wise to—”

“Kaptal! Or…” A weary gesture. “Whoever else is in there. Just. You got something useful to tell me? Then how about you skip the dark hints and just tell me.”

She thought that for a brief moment she saw panic rising in his eyes. Then it was gone, snuffed out by something else, and he drew himself up, offended.

“I do not understand you, my lady, or your rudeness. I am not part of some cabal with ulterior motives; my opinions are my own. And the useful thing I have to tell you is this—that awaiting a local sorcerer on ground that holds magical significance for his people is not a wise move.”

“Well, it’s the only way the Skaranak are going to do this,” she said evenly. “So I guess we’re stuck with it. Now why don’t you go see if they’ve put up a tent for you yet?”

He bowed and backed off. She watched him go, brooding on what he’d said and seemed uncannily to know, because she had a nasty suspicion he was right.

She didn’t like the feel of the crater, either.

SHE FOUND HERSELF SOME EVEN GROUND. WORKED THROUGH A COUPLE OF Hanal Keth katas, thrusting, blocking, slashing, and stabbing at the air around her, barking and shrilling with each strike. Twisting about, pouring knife hilts from hand to hand and back like water between cups. Draw, sheath, draw again, swap and double, finish on a throw. Now go pick up your blade.

Again.

The ingrained moves and paces, the formal savagery of it soothed her, put her brooding to rest. The sun declined, got low enough to dazzle her each time she turned westward. No cloud to speak of, the band was an unbroken hoop that leapt horizon to horizon, caught and threw back the reddening gleam of the sun as it set. The day’s heat started to seep away. Her sweat stood cooler on her brow. A couple of bright stars pricked through the velvet gloom in the east.

Once more round and then—

It came at her, out of the long grass and the declining sun’s dazzle, as she bent to retrieve Bandgleam from the ground. She had time for one snatched impression—a boulder, smooth and pale and hidden in the grass, thrashing to sudden life—and then the whole creature towered over her, three yards tall, hunching forward, long backward-hinging limbs lifting a curved, compact body, long head and wide, fanged snout gaping down at her like a shark’s. A long, taloned hand the size of a warhorse’s head, reaching for her at the end of an arm that came down like a whip.

Move!

The change jolted through her—the patterned calm of the kata, shattered into the mess of real combat. Just time to grab Bandgleam left-handed, then she was rolling frantically right, away from the taloned lash of the arm. The thing shrilled and stamped forward a step—the ground quivered under her with the impact—felt like the foot came down right next to her head. She rolled again, found her feet, came up with a knife in each hand, facing her foe.

The fanged mouth leered at her. Hot blast of breath across her face as the creature shrilled again, the reek of rotting meat fragments bedded somewhere in its jaws. Archeth threw on reflex—Wraithslayer, up and into the long throat, so the creature reared back in shock. Her empty right hand swung back in and down, brushed at her thigh, and Falling Angel leapt out of her boot to fill the gap. She circled, looking for an eye.

“Long Runners! To arms! The steppe ghouls are on us!”

Someone bawling in Tethanne—one of the auxiliaries by the atrocious accent—against a backdrop of startled Majak yells. Well—nice to know what we’re facing. But she didn’t like the sound of that plural.

The runner she’d spiked was pawing irritably at its throat, trying to dislodge the knife. But it turned its neck snakishly as she moved, keeping her in view and centered, and it grinned at her like a parent crouched to play with offspring.

She grinned back. Threw both her knives, like skipping slivers of bandlight across the gathering gloom.

Bandgleam put out the steppe ghoul’s right eye, Falling Angel found a home in the side of the throat, not far from her sister blade. The runner screamed and staggered sideways. Archeth was already rushing in, empty-handed but both arms tugging to the small of her back, didn’t even feel like she was the one doing it. Quarterless and Laughing Girl kissed her palms, came out in her grip. She got in close and struck, first into the upper leg, hauled herself up on the fixing point that Quarterless made, slashed across the ghoul’s unprotected belly with Laughing Girl. The creature’s guts sagged out, steaming in the evening air. She hung on and slashed again, plunged Laughing Girl deeper, twisting and gouging into the midst of the steaming mess. Sudden, intense stink of shit from the ruptured entrails, a gush of blood and other fluids from the wound. The runner screamed again, clouted her aside with one blindly thrashing arm. She flew briefly through the air, hit hard amid the grass.

But she heard the steppe ghoul go down. It shook the ground she lay on.

She scrambled back to her feet, cast about. The long runner lay on its side about a dozen yards off in the grass—hoarse, snorting breath and one limb kicking at the sky in spasm. By the lack of other motion, she judged it done. But—

Across the camp to her right, battle raged in the reddish light. Looked like at least a half dozen more of these fucking things, and nobody on a horse to face them. The Skaranak and a couple of the auxiliaries fought with staff lances, weapons whose reach was at least suited to the enemy. They kept the runners at bay with thrust and block as she watched. The imperials, forced to use arms more suited to the dispatch of humans, were in trouble.

She stalked toward the fight. Did it without thinking, did it unarmed.

Threw up her empty right hand like a command to halt. Wraithslayer flew to it like some trained hawk. Her hand wrapped the hilt and something shocked through her whole body at the grip. Down at waist height, her left hand opened behind her, unprompted, and another blade was there. At some level only now opening to her, she knew without looking that it was Quarterless.

She saw the damage the Kiriath steel dreamed.

Something inside her chimed. Rang in her ears like tolling bells, shivered in her skull. She opened her mouth and let it out. She ran in, screaming.

Worry about the rest later.

CHAPTER 60

The world went briefly away, came back in fragments tinged in red.

Klithren at his side as he went down—hand on the sword at his waist, blade half drawn—furious, disbelieving roar, choked off as the scavenged chain length came around, inhumanly swift, wrapped him hard around the throat and jaw—

Shahn’s eyes—pupil, iris, all gone into featureless, staring black—

Worm’s eye view of the wharf he lay on and the corpses strewn along it—

“Cast off, cast off—they’re here!” Shahn’s voice, pitched for the same panic that had drawn Gil and Klithren in. “Row for your lives! My lord Ringil is down, torn apart! Get the fuck out of here! The northmen’s demons are coming!”

His flesh seemed to shrivel on his bones as he yelled. Ringil saw the weathered southern features slough away, peeled like leather scraps off a cobbler’s knife. Pale, gaunt white beneath—bone sharp features, a triumphant snarl—the face of an alabaster demon, looming over him—

Like Risgillen, like Seethlaw, and he could not choke down the longing that rose in him at that fleeting thought, nor the corrosive self-hate that came searing in behind.

But was not Seethlaw, nor Seethlaw’s sister, nor any dwenda he knew.

One more snatched shred of vision as he went down into the darkness…

Klithren, turned toward him on the stones of Outlander wharf not a yard and a half away, face turning slowly black and bulge eyed as the downed mercenary strangled to death on his crushed and swollen larynx.

Done.

VOICES IN THE WHIRLING DARK.

Well—a voice, anyway—echoes gathering into a single, familiar tone.

“… and if it’s any small consolation, I can tell you with some reasonable degree of certainty that your friend kir-Archeth Indamaninarmal is in fact alive and well. She did not drown on the Wastes coast after all.”

Anasharal?

“Ingharnanasharal, in truth. I am the Warhelm once again, more or less entire.” And Ringil heard it, as if for the first time, grasped finally what it meant—the fresh, faintly sonorous timbre in the voice that had spooked the dwenda back in Findrich’s palace. “We have not been formally introduced, of course, though I have been with you since I saved you from the storm-caller’s bonds.”

“It… the ikinri ‘ska… it worked?”

“Yes, it did. Admirably. Your new mastery of the glyph systems written into this world is quite remarkable. You succeeded in forcing Anasharal against every embedded command and compulsion it was given, out of discrete existence and back into a full union with the Warhelm carcass it left behind. The fusion is clumsy, the joins are fissured here and there, still bleeding a little into the void, but really, I am impressed. And I am whole.”

“Good.” His lips were numb; he wasn’t sure if he was actually having this conversation or not, whether the words were in his mouth or only in his head. “You can help get me the fuck out of here, then.”

“Ah, yes. That.”

They were binding him, they were lifting him. But his vision was useless, shattered, shot through with red-veined dark. He caught swooping, fragmented glimpses of things—dwenda faces leaning over, peering at him; Risgillen in conversation with the new dwenda who had been Shahn; the night sky and the rain that fell out of it.

His head lolled back—Outlander wharf receding upside down behind him, Klithren of Hinerion’s corpse, lying twisted among the other scattered dead. A jolting, inverted view of firelit harbor waters, and there—his eyes grabbed for one desperate moment, could not hold the view—Nyanar’s second longboat, reduced by distance to the dimensions of a toy and pulling hard away, almost at the harbor mouth…

“I’m afraid,” said the Warhelm, without any trace of regret, “that rescue from your predicament won’t be possible. In fact—it is only fair to let you know this—you are back in dwenda hands almost entirely as a result of my efforts. It was I that helped Lathkeen of Talonreach shed his rather deep human cover.”

He saw it again—marine sergeant Shahn standing over him, peeling back from the eyes, shriveling away like some discarded costume.

“You did this? What the fuck for?”

“I would have thought that was obvious. Perhaps your injuries have fogged your brain. I told you, kir-Archeth is still alive.”

“Your stupid fucking God-Empress wank fantasy?” Anger spluttered, but it was feeble, a guttering mockery of the rage he wanted. He felt sick to his stomach. “I told you I’d keep silent, you iron fuck. I gave you my word.”

“Yes. But I’m afraid it’s not your knowledge of the plan that is the problem.”

“Then what is the fucking problem?”

“You are.”

They were taking him away. He passed the heat and restless dance of flames on his left, red and yellow tongues leaping up at the murky dark. House frontages rising on either side, blocking out chunks of the sky as they left the harbor behind and they headed—he guessed—back into Tervinala. The Warhelm’s voice walked beside him, amiably conversational in his ear.

“You must understand the quest cabal is coming together rather nicely, just as Anasharal hoped it might. Shanta, Shendanak, Tand. A viable core has formed after all, and these three will draw the others in, as and when they return to Yhelteth. The stage has been set for this a while now—long-term discontent with the ruling dynasty, smoldering coast-lander resentment coupled with raw entrepreneurial spirit and ambition, all chafing at the constraints set by palace and citadel alike. And now a profound distaste for this new war and the idiots who wage it. It’s a very promising mix. It will see Jhiral Khimran removed from the Burnished Throne before the year is out.

“Unfortunately, though, our conspirators have fixed on the wrong figurehead to replace him.”

It dropped on him like a ton weight.

“Oh, come on,” he gasped faintly. “Me? The fucking faggot outcast?”

“These are sophisticated men. They do not care, and they will happily put in place curtains and contrivances to deal with those who do. The ignorant will be blinded, the brutish restrained or disappeared, the cost considered negligible. It is you they want to front for them on the Burnished Throne, Ringil Eskiath—you, scion of an exiled Yhelteth noble line, war hero, disinterested warlord, reluctant leader of men, human. Kir-Archeth Indamaninarmal cannot hope to compete with all that. I cannot allow you to get in her way.”

“You stupid, metal motherfucker.” It panted out of him, the last desperate dregs of resistance as something, dwenda sorcery or his wounds, he couldn’t tell, dragged him down into soft whirling darkness again. His words echoed upward as he fell away. “She won’t do it, Helmsman, she doesn’t fucking want it. She’ll never turn on the Khimrans, they’re the keystone of everything her people built.”

“Yes, I believe I have taken that into account and allowed for it. Mechanisms are in place.” The Warhelm’s voice stayed oddly close and clear as he faded out. “But thank you for your concern. Oh, and thank you for your heroic service in bringing out our core conspirators. You have triumphed, as a hero should. You will be remembered and honored—if not eternally then, well, certainly for a good long while, I should imagine.

“Good-bye.”

And away, down an endless, gray-webbed tunnel of loss, blotching out to black.

THIS TIME, WHEN HE COMES BACK HE KNOWS IT’S SORCERY, HE CAN SMELL it. He can taste it in the back of his throat like too much krin. He sees the dwenda flickering around him, like blue candle flames the size of men, before he’s even opened his eyes.

He opens his eyes.

Standing stones, rooted on the downslope of a bleak, low hill.

They flank him, bend around before him in a ring, blank and rough hewn. The dwenda have drawn together in a black garbed huddle six or seven strong at the center of the circle, deliberating in their own eldritch tongue, mostly with their backs turned. Unaccountably, he’s on his feet, though it seems not to cost him any effort. There’s a cold wind blowing from somewhere, a hurrying gray sky above, and his bones ache in his flesh.

He tries to spit. Coughs and gags instead. Harsh, rasping in the cold air. Dull pain in his chest, across his chest—he looks down, understands.

They’ve roped him upright to one of the standing stones. Risgillen’s living twine, oily gleaming cord only finger width, but looped around a dozen times or more, high up under his arms and tight to his chest, lower across his belly and pinning his arms downward in place, all of it smoldering faintly blue, shifting against itself like restless snakes. He’s been here before, seen this stuff in action back in Yhelteth—it can slither tight or loosen, twist, sprout savage thorns, all at the whim of its mistress and, oh, look, here she comes now…

Turning from her deliberations with the other dwenda, seeing him awake. A broad grin paints itself across her face at the sight. She strolls through the long, thickly matted grass toward him, all the time in the world, none of the combat tension he saw in her back at Findrich’s place.

Ringil. For all the world as if he’s a much-loved comrade or family friend. You’re awake at last.

He steels himself as she gets close, tries not to let it show.

Fails, apparently. Her lips curls. Oh, don’t worry, hero. I won’t harm you the way I did in the south. Your flesh is far too precious to us now.

He shakes his head groggily. We have to stop meeting like this, Risgillen.

We will. This will be the last time, I promise you. Can you not feel how thin, how few, are the pages that remain in your story?

He reaches, experimentally, for the ikinri ‘ska. Finds no help there. Like drawing on a krin twig and finding nothing in your lungs but wood smoke. Like reaching for the Ravensfriend, finding only an empty scabbard instead.

Risgillen grins at him again. Oh, don’t worry. We have a sword for you. Lathkeen Talonreach will be down with it shortly.

She nods up to the brow of the hill to where, well, something’s going on, that’s for sure. But it’s a something Ringil can’t quite get his eyes to focus on. He guesses at smoke and lightning, a writhing tentacular motion within, and it’s dark, like the heart of a storm, but it hurts like bright light to look at directly and…

It has taken awhile, you see, Seethlaw’s sister presses gently on. To prepare. To recover the sword from the fire you set; to understand what you did, to cleanse the blade of its contact with that… gaunt, joyless ape you unleashed it upon.

See, Slab—he clings to the sour shreds of humor, it’s really all he has right now—nobody ever really liked you, not even this demon bitch.

But time here is—Risgillen gestures around—flexible, as you’ll know. Here there is no hurry. And this time we have assembled the pieces with all due care. This time, we do not underestimate.

That’ll be a first.

Yes, well the signs have been complicated. Tangled. Reading them has been tricky, trickier than we are accustomed to. When the Black Folk came to this world, they disrupted it. They damaged the eternal norms. They were Other, they did not belong. In five thousand years, the chaos and confusion they sewed has still not abated. Heroes no longer stand forth clearly the way they once did, the way they were when we reigned in the real world. They are sullied, muddied at the edges, hard to recognize or judge. Seethlaw thought he saw a new hero in you, but what he truly saw, I think, was this. She gestures at the standing stones around them. Your transfiguration. This place was Cormorion’s, you see. Built and bound in Aldrain power for him alone, the Last Dark King. His strength and refuge in the Grey Places. For a while it looked as if it might become yours in turn, that you might take on that mantle. But now I think those were simply the forward echoes of this moment, the moment in which Cormorion steps out of shadow once more, out of the glory of the Aldrain past, and is mantled once more, in your flesh.

Turns out you aren’t a hero after all, Ringil. You’re just a receptacle.

At odds with the harshness in her tone, she reaches up and strokes his cheek where the scar that Seethlaw gave him runs.

He was my brother’s great love. Cormorion Ilusilin Mayne, Cormorion the Radiant. None among your kind who came before or after, in all our years of skulking at the margins of human myth and legend, ever touched Seethlaw Illwrack the way Cormorion did. Perhaps he thought you would with time, but, well… She shrugs. You see how fitting this is. I honor my brother’s memory, avenge the love he offered and you spurned, and bring back the true focus of his heart, at one and the same time. Revenge and redemption in a single act. It has taken me until now to understand the elegance of it all.

He coughs up a mangled laugh. You’re right, your eternal norms really took a knock, didn’t they? Redemption? Revenge? Nothing’s ever that clean, you dizzy fucking bitch.

No, it will be. It will be the way it once was. Look out there.

She lifts one sweeping arm at the downslope. He looks despite himself, sees a gathered host of dwenda, thousands strong. Rank upon rank of black garbed, cloaked, smooth-helmed, faceless figures, weapons shouldered or sheathed, immobile as statues, all facing this way. The helms are total, a seamless match for the black armor suits, obliterating any trace of the features behind their smoked-glass visors.

But he knows they’re watching him, and the knowledge is ice on his spine.

He sniffs and forces out the cold. Forces a combat grin.

If they’re all waiting on me to serve them the way I did your brother, I’m going to end up pretty fucking chafed.

Risgillen is not rising to the bait. She shakes her head.

They await their old warlord, not you. His coming has unified the Aldrain as nothing since we were driven out. And when he returns to them, they’ll follow him out of the Grey Places and into battle against the ramshackle excuse for an Empire the Black Folk cobbled together in our absence, and they will crush it.

I don’t think your troops are going to like Yhelteth weather, Risgillen. All that glaring sunlight, all those bright blue skies. They fucked up down there once before, remember?

She smiles. But there will be no more blue skies, Ringil. Did you not know this? The Drowned Daughters of Hanliagh are stirring, ready to sink the world in shadow again. And Clan Talonreach prepares even now to give them a good hard rutting where it will do most good. Another sweeping gesture, this time up to the brow of the hill and the writhing darkness that squats there like a storm on a leash. Her voice grows animated. See, the Talons of the Sun, gathering force under the storm-callers’ hand. It is the herald of Cormorion’s coming, the clarion behind which the Aldrain will go to war. It is the means to take back, finally, what is ours by ancient right.

He still can’t make out what the Talons of the Sun is exactly, but as he watches, blue light scribbles through the roiling black of its flanks, and a dwenda emerges. No helm, his pale face and long jet hair are exposed, and he’s close enough for Ringil to recognize.

Lathkeen of Talonreach, last seen shrugging off the flesh that was once marine sergeant Shahn, like a whore at night’s end, wiping off her work face. His hands are gloved in black, he holds a long sword by its blade in the right, no rewards for guessing which sword that is, eh, Gil, and he’s got something else in his left—at first, Gil can’t quite make that out, either, but as the dwenda comes down the slope toward them, he realizes what it is, and his heart kicks against the bindings across his chest.

It’s a spiked iron crown, and he’s seen it before.

His own ghost wore it, seated opposite him at Hjel’s campfire, grinning like a skull.

Lathkeen reaches the edge of the stone circle, passes the crown awkwardly to the same hand as the sword for a moment, and sketches a series of glyphs in the air before he steps over whatever invisible threshold exists there. The sword goes berserk. The tang lashes at the air like a demented serpent. Gil sees the storm-caller grimace and tighten his gloved grip on the blade.

A little help? he snaps at Risgillen. Here, take this at least.

She goes to him and takes the crown, bears it back to Ringil in both hands. Sets it at a jaunty angle on Gil’s head. Cold, slanting touch of the iron band across his brow. Risgillen stands back and looks him over.

Suits you, she says somberly.

Lathkeen has taken a fresh grip on the Illwrack sword, both hands this time. He raises it reverently a moment, as if offering it to the sky, then drives the blade down a foot into the ground of the stone circle, a couple of yards from where Ringil is bound. A cold plaintive cry breaks through the air, like some solitary gull lost over an endless leaden ocean. It’s impossible to tell where it comes from, it seems to sweep in on the wind from all corners of the sky. The sword trembles in the ground.

That’s it, the storm-caller says. He’s here, no question.

Risgillen gestures impatiently. Then what are we waiting for?

Lathkeen shrugs. He uproots the sword again with loving care, carries it across to Ringil. The tang coils about, sharpened end scratching and prodding at the air. Ringil clenches his fists closed. Risgillen sees it and smiles. She nods at the cords binding his chest and one of them tugs itself loose under his arm, wraps around his left shoulder, and goes coiling rapidly downward, past his elbow, encircling his bared forearm and wrist, sprouting offspring vines that each seek out a finger and force his knuckles back one by one, straighten out his whole hand and hold it poised to receive the sword.

Firfirdar, if you were ever on my fucking side, now’d be the time to show up and demonstrate the fact.

The Dark Court will not intervene here, says Lathkeen absently, as if Gil’s spoken aloud. They are not permitted that much power. None are since the world was written over, not even those who laid down the text in the first place. And your dominion of the ikinri ‘ska cannot help you here, either. Talonreach has it well in check.

He jerks his chin up the slope at the storm of writhing motion and the dark that’s tethered there.

Most of the clan is in attendance. Their combined will is bent upon you. I am not my cousin Atalmire, I do not run unnecessary risks.

Ringil bares his teeth. Yeah well, your cousin Atalmire died squealing like a pig. I chopped him apart. Just so you know.

A muscle twitches in Lathkeen’s bone-white face. Something dark and twisted rises cheering in Gil at the sight, as if he’d managed to drive a dagger point home in the storm-caller’s flesh.

Harm—done.

What else, aside from slaughter with sharp steel, are you really good for, Ringil Eskiath?

What else indeed?

Well, you will not die, the storm-caller says tonelessly. Not in the sense you understand the word, anyway. But you will be trapped for the lifetime of your flesh behind the eyes of Cormorion Ilusilin Mayne. I will ask him as a personal favor to track down your family and friends when he storms the world, and to give them exceedingly special treatment so that you can watch. You have, I believe, already seen something of our methods for dealing with those who defy us.

He turns to Risgillen. Want to say anything?

Just get it done.

They put the sword against his open hand. It coils and grabs him around the palm. Wraps his bared forearm end to end, intimately warm and oddly slick. Rears up and stabs him somewhere above the wrist, gouges in between tendons and muscle. He can feel it in there digging deeper, sprouting barbs, but there’s curiously little pain. He sees Risgillen smile and jut her chin at him in farewell.

Then the whole world wrenches sideways and down.

CHAPTER 61

The long runners heard her scream, and they seemed to pause as one. She saw long, smooth-skinned heads lean and twist in her direction, fanged mouths gape and grin. Felt their eyes fix on her running form as she closed the gap.

Don’t know how smart they are, the Dragonbane had told her once. But they know a staff lance when they see one, and they’ll avoid them if they can. They know it’s better to take a man on foot than a rider and they’ll plan around doing that, too…

No horse, no blades of any real length. With luck, she looked no more lethal than a warm meal on legs.

The nearest steppe ghoul made a dismissive tilting motion with its head, went back to what it was doing—stomping through a group of yelling imperials. Looked like two men already down, another dragging himself from the fray with a shattered leg.

Her men.

She sprinted straight in.

Unleashed Wraithslayer from ten yards out.

The eye again, and this time she must have gotten lucky on penetration. The runner stumbled and went down like a tripped horse. Her men yelled triumph and stormed onto its thrashing body, hacking with ax and sword anywhere they could reach. Archeth tore past them without let, one trailing hand out to collect Wraithslayer from the air as it leapt back into her grip.

Pick it up, Archidi. If this is going to work…

She put on speed. Slipped behind a second ghoul backing up from staff lance thrusts, slashed hard at a cord muscled leg as she passed. Felt like she cut the tendon—no time to see for sure. Her main objective lay ahead.

The Skaranak had left their horses to wander—they’d come when called, under any normal circumstance. But now they’d bolted riderless in all directions. Give thanks, Archidi, to whatever bad-tempered gods they keep in these parts, that at least some of us imperials aren’t that trusting. A half dozen of the Yhelteth thoroughbred warhorses were tethered along the side of the wagon, plunging and snorting with panic as they caught the scent of the runners and tried to tear free. Beyond them, smoke and pale flame rose from somewhere on the other side of the wagon—looked like someone had kicked the campfire apart in the fray. Archeth spotted her mount among the tied horses and ran in. No saddle or reins, of course, but… fuck it, she flung herself up and over the animal’s neck, settled astride it bareback, slashed Quarterless up and through the tether.

The horse reared again, but she clung to the neck, muttered soothing into its ear. It wasn’t Idrashan—no horse was Idrashan, ye gods she missed that stallion—but it was Yhelteth bred and trained for war, and with a rider atop, it settled. She clucked and urged it about with her thighs, away from the wagon. Kept her balance barely, knives held wide. Scanned the action. Gaze racing across the grass expanse.

There—and there—and there—they’d brought down the ghoul she’d hamstrung, were finishing it now, staff lances rising and falling like whaler’s harpoons. But four more runners slashed and stomped about the camp, reached and tore men limb from limb where they stood…

“Right, you motherfuckers,” she muttered. “Now let’s see what you’ve got.”

And kicked her horse into a charge.

The first ghoul was easy—it had chased a Skaranak axman around a half-trampled yurt and tangled one arm awkwardly in the ropes. She stormed in on the horse and the runner panicked, tried to flail around and face the approaching threat, got itself tangled further. She put knives in its eyes while she was still twenty feet off, saw it stagger and go down shrieking, pawing at the damage and the sudden darkness. Up popped the axman, nodded breathless thanks, and—three! grunting! blows!—chopped the creature’s head apart. Archeth was already wheeling away, palms up and open, as if in prayer.

Falling Angel, Laughing Girl—into her grasp as she rode down the second ghoul. Their blades were still daubed with gore from the wounds they’d torn themselves out of when she called. Their hilts thrummed against her palms like machinery levers on a fireship bridge. Deep vibration ran down through the muscles of her arms and into her chest, sat there like fresh strength. She almost choked on the feeling it set off in her guts, whooped for sheer joy at the lines of force it painted through her body and out across the steppe to the other, waiting knives.

The next nearest runner spun about, away from the men it was harrying. Perhaps it heard her cry, perhaps it just felt the thunder of her horse’s hooves through the ground. It faced her, crouched to spring. She loosed Falling Angel, no time for careful aim, took the creature in the shoulder and staggered its pounce. Threw up her empty hand in demand and Wraithslayer was in it, as if dropped out of the sky. The ghoul flinched—twisting and pawing Falling Angel loose—Archeth grabbed the moment, rode in on the other side, got behind that long, shark-fanged head. She stabbed in left-handed, buried Laughing Girl to the hilt under the runner’s jaw, and hung on. The ghoul stumbled back, awkwardly off-balance, crashed against the horse’s flank. The horse reared and screamed, Archeth clung on with both legs—the collision of the two beasts had her pinned by one thigh anyway—reached around with Wraithslayer—yelled triumphant—dragged the blade back in a ragged, throat-opening gouge.

“Think you’re something?” she heard herself snarl through gritted teeth, as the steppe ghoul collapsed backward and the horse wallowed, eyes rolling, almost down on its hind legs with the weight. She dragged back hard on both knives, tilted the huge, lolling head up against her “Think you’re dangerous? I was killing dragons before this, you fuck.”

The steppe ghoul’s nearest eye rolled up, the jaw snapped shut on some feeding reflex, bit off a foot of lolling tongue between the fangs. She felt the life go out of the massive carcass, felt it shudder and slump. She pulled out her knives, held them aloft.

Howled.

If the long runners had ignored her before, she had their full attention now. Both the remaining ghouls abandoned the fight they were in, gaped for a moment, seemed to exchange a glance, and then came prowling rapidly toward her.

“Yeah, you see me now, don’t you, motherfuckers?” she screamed as they closed. “You see me now!”

She drew herself up on the horse’s back, knives poised. She felt their eagerness, those in her grasp and those waiting to be next. For one fleeting instant, she actually saw the connections, like lines of glowing hot wire snaking out from her mount and into the steppe grass around her. She almost stopped breathing with the shock and beauty of it. Waited rapt for the paths of the two attacking runners to converge—

The left-hand steppe ghoul seemed to trip, as if the knife had already left her hand.

Gray-fletched stick-thin spike, protruding magically from its thigh.

So someone had finally gotten hold of a strung bow and quiver, gotten some space, grabbed breath to steady their aim…

Hiss-thump and a second arrow joined the first. She heard men cheering. A third shaft and the long runner staggered sideways, went down still trying to drag itself forward on one leg. Archeth’s attention shuttled to the other ghoul. She saw it hesitate, look around—saw a pair of arrows spike its head, saw one take out the eye. Shriek of rage and pain, the creature reeled about, trying to find its new attackers. It got a chest and throat full of gray-fletched shafts for its trouble, crashed into the grass. Skaranak stormed in with lances to finish the job. The bowmen—she spotted them now, three men, striding purposefully out toward the left hand ghoul, short recurved bows held high, laying down a steady three-every-five-seconds hail of fire. The ghoul snorted and flailed about on the ground, finally gave up and lay still.

The steppe seemed suddenly very quiet again.

Archeth nudged her horse cautiously in. She got to the downed ghoul about the same time as the first of the Skaranak bowmen. They both watched the heavy, jerky rise and fall of the creature’s pincushioned side, listened to the stertorous snorts rasping from its throat. Blood ran down in stripes from a couple of the wounds the arrows had made, leaked copiously from the runner’s mouth. The Skaranak eased tension on his draw. He put up the arrow and the bow, stepped back, and made a gesture it took her a moment to understand.

Hers to kill.

“Uhm…”

More men hurried up. One of the auxiliaries spoke to the bowman, got a sharp retort, and turned to face her with a toothy grin.

“He say you have this honor. You take the life.”

She shook her head. “He brought it down. It’s his kill.”

That went back and forth in Majak, then the auxiliary turned to her again.

“He say he is a dead man if you not help us. You save all Skaranak here, this is your honor. They will laugh if he makes kill.”

She glanced at the bowman’s weathered face. Steady, pale eyes looked back at her, and for a brief, dizzying moment it was like locking gazes with the Dragonbane once more. The bowman raised one clenched fist and thumped it deliberately to his heart, lifted it away again, toward her. He bowed his head.

She nodded. “Very well. But you tell him it was work we all did, and I’m grateful for his part.”

While the bowman and the auxiliary conferred, she levered up a leg and slid down off her mount. Went to the hoarsely snorting runner. One slowly glazing eye stared up at her, the eyelid slid weakly down and up. Without ceremony, she bent and ripped Laughing Girl’s blade up and through the throat. Stood watching as the creature thrashed feebly and bled out on the flattened grass.

Hurrying footfalls behind her. Marnak and Kanan Shent ran up, weapons in hand and streaked with gore. The Ironbrow rather more out of breath than the young Throne Eternal at his side.

“My lady, are you hale?”

I feel fucking fantastic, she didn’t say, but wondered if it showed in her face anyway. Her pulse was climbing down now, but the fight had left a slow burning joy splattered all over her insides, and a keen, enduring clarity of vision at levels she’d never known she owned. The knives were still out there, murmuring quietly across the distance and in her ear. The glowing wire tracery that joined them all had faded from her sight, but it didn’t matter. She saw it clearly now. Kiriath steel—her father’s legacy; they’d come when she called. They’d be there when she had need.

Makes you wonder, though.

All that other Kiriath ironwork lying around back in Yhelteth—what that would do if you called on it for help?

“I am unharmed,” she told Shent. “But I saw the camp burning. You had best attend to that.”

“It is being done. My lady—Selak Chan is…”

Her exultation dropped like a stone into the pit of her belly. Pivot rudely about—her shoulder caught Marnak and he staggered a bit with the force of it—scan the strewn aftermath of the fight for—

“He is by the wagon, my lady,” Shent said quietly. “The other side. He asks for you.”

CHAN WAS A BLOODY MESS.

Shent briefed her in the scant moments it took them to jog hurriedly to the wagon, but still, as the gathered imperials gave ground and let her close, as she saw what had been done—she winced. She couldn’t help it.

One of the steppe ghouls had stomped the Throne Eternal into the ground from behind; there was nothing left whole below the waist. Chan lay on his front, face turned awkwardly to the side, right cheek pressed into the flattened steppe grass. His right arm out, as if for the hilt of the sword that lay just out of reach. They hadn’t bothered trying to move him, just put a horse blanket over the damage. Another lower-ranking Eternal met her gaze as she moved in. He shook his head.

She got down on her knees, must finally lie almost full length beside him in order to get decent eye contact.

“Chan?”

“Ah—my lady.” The words sobbed from him, edged with pain. “My apologies… if I do not rise. I find myself… inconvenienced.”

“Rest easy,” she said through numb lips. “You have done enough.”

He seemed to grit his teeth. “I have not… gotten you home, my lady. That is… failure.”

“No—”

“Yes!” The vehemence jerked motion into his upper body. He moaned in agony, lay panting for a moment. “I was charged… by Jhiral Khimran himself… with your protection. The Empire… needs you. This… this much… I know. You must go home.”

“We’re all going home, Chan. You, too.”

He managed a grimace. “I think… not.”

She put a hesitant hand on his neck. “Listen to me, Selak Chan. You are going home, for burial with honors and a pension for what family you may have. You have my word. Whatever else, I will see this done.”

“You are… kind, my lady. But I find… I must beg… another favor, too.”

“Name it.”

And realized, cursing her own stupidity, what he meant.

Could you be any more fucking obtuse, Archidi?

She got herself a little more upright, drew Laughing Girl from the small of her back. Some tiny part of her noticed that in her numb hurry to get to the fallen Throne Eternal, she’d sheathed her blades unwiped, and the Warhelm’s harness sheath had eaten the blood. She cleared her throat, put her free hand back on Chan’s neck. He’d seen the knife, maybe caught some reddish sunset gleam that the blade threw in his eye. He nodded at her. Tremulous attempt at a smile on his mouth.

“Yes,” he husked. “That.”

“Think of home,” she told him. “And you will be there.”

He squeezed his eyes closed. She saw tears bunch on the lids and lashes. Lifted herself over him, moved her hand a fraction on his neck, put Laughing Girl’s point in place.

Sliced down hard and fast, through neck and spine in a split second.

Sent Selak Chan home.

THE REST OF THE CAMP LOOKED AS IF A STORM HAD PASSED THROUGH IT—yurts unmoored, crumpled and sagging where they’d been fought around, or trampled wholly underfoot by the ghouls. In between, scorch marks blackened the ground. The flames she’d seen by the horses were exactly what they’d seemed—the nascent campfire had been kicked apart at some point in the combat and started the grass smoldering in a dozen different places, as well as setting one of the half-collapsed yurts alight. Rapid action from the Skaranak had smothered the flames, but a stink of burning hung about in the air like the ghost of smoke. On the nearest fallen yurt, a loose flap of cloth stropped insistently in a rising evening breeze, like a trapped bird trying to get free.

And everywhere the corpses.

Marnak found her standing amid the mess, cleaning the blade she’d used to kill Chan. She nodded absently at him and they stood side by side in silence for a while, watching the last red edge of the sun drop below the horizon.

“All right?” she asked, when it was gone.

He made a strangled noise in his throat.

She stowed the knife. “Guess not, then.”

“This…” Marnak gestured around, voice thick with fury. “That fucking shaman. I’m going to rip his balls off and feed them to him for this.”

“You think it’s his work?”

The Ironbrow spat. “Who else? The long runners have not come this far south in summer since my father’s time. Only sorcery could drive them out of the north right now. And who else knew to expect us here?”

She shrugged. “Well, we are trying to kill him, too, I suppose.”

“But he doesn’t know that yet!”

“Perhaps he does. Man’s a sorcerer, after all.” She looked thoughtfully about at the wreckage of the camp, marveling at the sudden depths of calm she seemed to have acquired. She wondered if this was what it felt like to be Ringil Eskiath. “Or maybe he’s just looking to keep the sky iron for himself and no credit to you for bringing it in. Real question is—does he have any way to know his pet monsters fucked up here and we’re still alive?”

For which Marnak appeared to have no ready answer. The Majak just stood there, jaw knotted up with rage, glaring at the damage around him.

Night thickened, shrouding the corpses in soft gloom.

“How many’d you lose?” she asked him.

“Three.” Through his teeth. “Kinsmen all. There’s a fourth going to be crippled for life, if he doesn’t join the others before morning. Runner picked him up, threw him across the whole fucking camp. Broke his back.”

“And seven of mine.”

The Ironbrow held up one tightly clenched fist, stared at it as if for useful answers. “This will be paid back in blood. The shaman and all who stand with him will fall.”

Not the best time to point out that had been the plan all along, so she kept silent. After a couple of moments, Marnak lowered his fist and glanced sideways at her in the clogging light.

“If we are alive,” he said gruffly. “It’s thanks to you, black woman. I saw you fight.”

“We all fought.”

“Not like you. Not like that. My men are saying you bear the soul of Ulna Wolfbane, some even that you are Ulna returned to us in Sky Dweller flesh.” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “They have heard you fell with the comet, you see.”

Nice work, my lord Eshen.

“So they’ll stand with me against their own clanmaster?” she wondered.

“Right now?” Marnak stared off into the dark. “I think they’d march with you to the gates of hell if you asked them.”

CHAPTER 62

He sits on a dark oak throne, facing the ocean.

No bindings anymore, he’s loose and comfortable in his seat. The wood is worn and scooped from long use, and the scalloped curves fit him perfectly. No serpent-tanged sword trying to gouge its way inside him, no standing stones, no dwenda. The sea is calm, small waves rolling gently in and breaking knee deep. A loose breeze ruffles his hair.

For a moment, he thinks Firfirdar has rescued him after all.

Then he sees the Illwrack Changeling.

It crouches in the shallows, draped in ragged black robes, so still that for a moment he mistakes it for an uncannily human-looking rock, dark and hung about with black kelp, patched with pale colonies of clams at roughly the places a face and hands might be. Then the head tilts up, glittering deep set eyes fix on him through tangled ropes of hair, a mouth like a wound opens in the pallid flesh and the gull-plaintive cry skirls out.

It’s a sound to crack his heart across. Tears flood his eyes, he can’t help it.

The last of the Dark Kings erupts from the water. It flounders upright. Cries out again as it staggers up the beach, drenched robes hanging heavy, weaving like a drunk. It’s a man or was once, but it’s bigger and bulkier than most men ever grow. Its eyes hold Gil’s like a lover’s and for one horrified second, he’s so overwhelmed by what lives in that gaze that he wants this ravaged thing to reach him, wants the embrace it promises.

He’s getting to his feet, is almost out of the throne before he understands.

It’s the ikinri ‘ska, turned against him. A depth of power he’s only recently begun to taste, and the Changeling snaps it out at him like a man crooking a finger at a tavern wench. Effortless, flowing force, unrestrained by any lack of will, by any doubt, by any remaining vestige of self. He stares into Cormorion Ilusilin Mayne’s eyes, sees nothing recognizably human there.

The deeper into the ikinri ‘ska you go, the less it is your tool to use, the more you become its gate and channel. Hjel has told him this often enough, but until now Gil never really understood what the dispossessed prince was trying to say. He never wondered—perhaps the ikinri ‘ska would not let him wonder—where the road might end.

He drops back into the warmed wood curves of the throne, like a puppet with strings slashed through. He grasps the oak arms with as much force as his hands will supply. Understands that whatever happens, he must not give up this seat.

The Illwrack Changeling shrieks in thwarted rage and leaps forward, impossible speed and lift for anything so withered and torn. It lands with one knee in his chest, cold, wet hands digging like claws into his arms. Its grubby pale features loom over him, mouth working silently with effort, eyes staring blind. Its hair hangs in his face, stinks of the sea and other, less easily understood depths. The Dark King radiates a steely power Gil can find no resource against. It hauls with both hands, throws itself backward, and tears Gil from the throne as if he were a child.

Coming home.

Words at last, antique Myrlic, syllables Ringil can barely decode, hissing from pallid, torn up lips he sees have been bitten through, over and over again with the—understanding flashes in him—endless waiting.

Coming home, See… The seat is mine…

Yeah, like fuck it is.

The two of them stumble upright together, grappling at each other like tavern brawlers desperate for a knife that’s fallen where neither of them can see it. The thing that was once Cormorion is trying to turn him, to get itself closer to the throne, and there’s precious fucking little he can do about that…

He pulls a Majak wrestling lock. Tangles up their legs, trips the Changeling over toward him, takes the fight to the floor. They land hard on the wet sand. Forewarned, Gil only loses most of the breath in his lungs. Rolls the Dark King desperately away from the throne, worms one hand free, goes after eyes and mouth. He gets a middle finger in through the chewed up lips, hooks hard into the cheek, tries to tear it open. The Changeling flails and throws a head-butt he can’t quite dodge, he takes it on the side of the face, feels numbing pain spike down his cheek…

Cormorion Ilusilin Mayne does something inhuman to his jaw, dislocates it sideways and catches Ringil’s finger, snags it back into the bite radius.

Bites down hard.

Gil screams and tries to hang on, but it’s no use. The Changeling grinds down on the trapped finger, snarling at him now, lopsidedly through the bitten lips. The pain scales upward, shouldn’t hurt this badly, it’s only a fucking finger, but it does, it’s agony and it’s spreading, drenching his whole body, draining his strength. He feels the thing that was Cormorion shift its weight, he digs in to stop the move, but his bracing leg slips, goes straight amid clods of wet sand. The Dark King gets on top of Gil, still worrying at him with its teeth, jerks its head savagely up and aside, tears off the first two flanges of the mangled finger and spits them in Ringil’s face. Grins down in triumph, bloodstained lips mouthing words again.

Coming, See… Seethlaw, I’m coming home…

Gil, abruptly stricken, paws at him with his maimed hand, but it’s nothing, it’s more like a hard caress. Cormorion shrugs it off, straightens up astride him. Chops him in the throat with killing force.

Ringil lies there choking, robbed of the strength to move.

The Dark King gets off him, panting. Staggers a little getting upright, stands at last looking down. The eyes are still blind, unreadable, but the Illwrack Changeling lifts its left hand and makes a curious, oddly gentle sketching gesture over Gil’s twitching body. He thinks he feels the pain he’s drenched in start to ebb. Feels himself beginning to ebb with it.

A fight is coming. He remembers the crone at the Eastern Gate, snarling her prophecy at him. A battle of powers you have not yet seen. A battle that will unmake you, that will tear you apart.

A dark lord will rise.

A hopeless grimace smears his mouth. To think he worried once it might have been him.

Cormorion Ilusilin Mayne stalks to the throne. Turns almost prissily to take the seat.

And something is there.

Gil’s vision is blotchy, fading fast. But it looks to him as if someone’s already sitting on the throne, ghostly but gaining definition—someone into whose lap the Illwrack Changeling sinks unaware.

Slim arms reach round and up. It’s somehow languid and lightning swift at one and the same time. A flicker of animal alarm across the Changeling’s pale face, and that’s all there’s time for. Elegant, long-fingered hands take hold of his head at top and bottom, slip tight and sink fingernails into eyes and mouth, dig deep, bury the fingers in behind the nails, right up to the second knuckle.

Cormorion makes a distorted, despairing shriek, just once.

Then, in a single brisk motion, the elegant hands turn the Changeling’s whole head sideways on its neck and tear it open, lower jaw and skull, blood and gristle fragments exploding, tear it completely apart.

HIS EBBING LIFE SOAKS BACK BY FRACTIONS.

Whatever destroyed Cormorion stands up, and the Changeling’s body spills from its lap like an empty suit of clothes, tumbles to the wet sand and lies there leaking blood. A slim, lithe figure steps over the remains and paces down toward him. It’s draped in blue-black robes, delicately cowled in the same cloth. It stoops over him, fine-boned features calm and very faintly concerned.

It is done, a voice tells him through the dim roaring in his ears. Cormorion is released to the void at last.

Mother?

It gathers him up in its arms, turns and carries him back toward the throne. Looking up into the face, he sees it isn’t quite his mother. There’s something of Ishil in the features, true enough, but it’s an Ishil who never soured, who never learned the bitter lessons that life in Trelayne at Gingren’s side would teach her. And it’s a less obviously womanly face than he ever remembers his mother having. Something martial, almost male about it. And the arms that bear him up have an unbending iron strength that radiates like warmth, that seems to feed him a new strength of his own.

You’re not my mother.

A clean, clear laugh that Ishil’s throat would never have given up. No. I’m not your mother.

Then—

The figure lowers him gently into the oaken arms of the throne. He finds he can sit up almost at once. He finds he can breathe. His throat still aches, but as if from unshed tears, not damage. He puts up a hand to touch it, realizes his maimed finger is intact as well. He looks at his unharmed hand for a moment in disbelief, looks back up at the mobile, beautiful face and the lithe, blue-black-clad form.

Firfirdar? .… . . . .Kwelgrish?

Now you’re going to offend me. The Dark Court are not your friends. You will find them at your side only when they need something from you.

Then… He sat up straighter on the throne, pressed his lower back into its wooden curves. What is your name?

A warm, self-deprecating smile. My name is a complicated thing. What matters is that I am at your side, and will be until the end of the road.

Ishil or not, the figure presses a warm, dry palm to his forehead, just the way she used to when he was a child and went down with a fever.

You must go back now, the gentle voice says. Much longer, and they will begin to grasp what has happened here. You must finish what you began.

The dwenda?

Yes.

He rolls his head against the warm, dry pressure of the hand on his brow. But there’s… fucking thousands of them. What am I supposed to do?

You’ll know what to do.

Against that many? Alone?

The smile again, some teeth in it this time.

Not alone, the voice says. Call for me—and I will be at your side.

HE BLINKS BACK TO THE STONE CIRCLE, FINDS HIMSELF LYING PRONE IN the grass with Risgillen and Lathkeen standing over him yelling at each other. Through a wavering fog, he finds he can understand what they’re saying.

No, I do not fucking think he was supposed to fall down like that. Something is wrong.

My lady Risgillen, you are far from well-versed in these matters. We are bringing back a Dark King, it is not an act that…

The spiked iron crown is wrapped across his forehead still, the Illwrack Changeling’s sword is still in his left hand, snaked about his arm, but it’s inert. The slick warmth when it crawled around on his skin and burrowed inside him is gone. There’s a dull, throbbing ache just below his wrist where he supposes the spike must still be in his arm, but that’s it for the pain. He’s had worse hurt from back-alley rough trade.

Through eyes fluttered three quarters shut, he senses Risgillen pacing farther from him. She’s still shouting, gesturing.

Can you not feel it, storm-caller? Can you not? The sword is dead, the stones are dead, this whole fucking circle is dead.

It is transition, my lady. We expected this. Cormorion gathers in the flesh, it is a process that must go particle by particle, cell by cell until he rises…

He can feel Lathkeen’s sorcerous will, still bent on him, but there’s a loose inattention to it now. Most of the storm-caller is busy arguing with Risgillen. He still keeps Ringil’s body in the corner of his mind’s eye, watchful for developments, but he’s expecting Cormorion Ilusilin Mayne and apparently not anytime soon. And if the rest of Clan Talonreach are still providing backup, Gil can’t feel it. He senses them vaguely, out on the far surface of his new senses. Feels like they’re busy with something else. There’s wiggle room for the ikinri ‘ska here—

Is that why you can suddenly follow Risgillen’s bickering, Gil? Some leaking in of the Illwrack Changeling’s grasp on the craft?

Some leaking in of the Changeling itself, maybe?

He drops the thought like a heated iron utensil. He has no taste for where this is going, and in any case no time…

Wiggle room, yeah. But not enough for anything spectacular. Not for anything that’d substitute for a fucking blade.

Still stood over him, Lathkeen shouts after Risgillen.

The sword was a container, my lady, nothing more. A Black Folk trick to hold the Changeling’s soul. Now it is discharged, of course the casing is dead.

Believe that if you like, storm-caller. Her sneer is distant now, she must be almost on the far side of the circle. He imagines her there, pacing past the granite uprights like some war cat prowling the barred perimeter of its cage. I don’t see how the Changeling—

Can he actually use this sword? It doesn’t feel like it. The binding was tight around his arm when it was living steel, but now it feels like loose jewelry, like bangles made for some unfeasibly big-limbed courtesan. The tang lolls loose from his palm. Whatever it once was, it isn’t a sword anymore, it isn’t a weapon.

That’s what he needs. To finish this, he needs a fucking weapon.

The dragon-tooth dagger is gone, just like the man who gifted it to him, lost who the fuck knows where. He recalls Ingharnanasharal said nothing about Egar surviving, only Archeth. It’s an omission that paints the likely truth in stinging script behind Ringil’s eyes. He can only hope it wasn’t a shit death, hope the Dragonbane found the clean end he’d always said he wanted, and under open sky.

Speaking of which…

Yeah. Half a dozen dwenda in the circle with him, all of them armed. He can feel the flicker of their disquiet as they watch Risgillen and Lathkeen argue. And a few thousand of them down on the slope below. Looks pretty much like the end of your run, too, Gil.

Better make this good.

I am at your side, and will be until the end of the road, he recalls sourly. Not so I’ve fucking noticed—whoever you were, wherever you’ve fucked off to now it counts.

My name is a complicated thi—

It hits him, then, like a drenching in cold water. And he knows abruptly what he has to do with the finger-width sliver of the ikinri ‘ska he can just about reach.

His heart commences a heavy, preparatory pounding. His veins flood with cool fire. He feels how it snags Lathkeen’s attention, knows his time is up. The storm-caller can’t miss the truth of this, surely, can’t fail to grasp what’s happened. This is going to go bad, Gil, and fast—

You see, my lady! You see! Lathkeen’s voice, raised to a cry of triumph. He bends over Gil, one hand pressing into his chest. He’s laughing, bubbling over with blind joy. See here! The heart responds, Cormorion returns. How could you doubt?

Ringil snaps his eyes open, grabs Lathkeen’s alien gaze with his own. Grabs the dwenda’s jerkin with both hands.

C’mere, motherfucker!

He hauls down, hard. The dwenda starts backward, staggers, features contorted with shock, trying to get away. Ringil uses it, flexes to his feet, matches the retreat, step for stumbling step, still hanging on. Plants a head-butt in Lathkeen’s face, smashes the rim of the iron crown into the bridge of that elegant arched nose. It knocks the storm-caller back into the nearest of the standing stones. Vaguely, he hears Risgillen yell—assume she’s worked out that something’s really wrong now—but there’s no time to worry about that. The ikinri ‘ska wakes right up in the gap it’s been left, and he uses it like a troop muster loudhailer. He bawls out into the Grey Places…

Ravensfriend! Bring the Ravensfriend!

My name is a complicated thing…

I am Welcomed in the Home of Ravens and Other Scavengers in the Wake of Warriors, I am Friend to Carrion Crows and Wolves, I am Carry Me, and Kill with Me, and Die with Me where the Road Ends, I am not the Honeyed Promise of Length of Life in Years to Come, I am the Iron Promise of Never Being a Slave.

Lathkeen comes snarling at him, nose streaming blood, fingers sprouting lupine talons, reaching like a winter tree. He’s fast, Hoiran’s balls he’s fucking fast—but he’s no soldier and it shows. Eldritch alien rage, sure, but it isn’t channeled where it needs to go. Ringil stand his ground, face like stone. Chops down the storm-caller’s attack with brutal blows—some talons get through, rip the skin of his throat, but hey—he locks Lathkeen up, spins him. Grabs him by the hair and neck, runs him savagely face first into the standing stone.

Where the Road Ends…

Echoing in his head like some sunken ship’s bell, fathoms and ages drowned, but coming up fast.… until the End of the Road… what matters is that I will be at your side…

Call for me…

BRING THE RAVENSFRIEND! He screams it out as he smashes the dwenda’s face apart on the rough-hewn stone.

And out there on the edge of his senses, he thinks he hears an answering cry.

Risgillen is incoming, long sword drawn; he can feel her sprinting in across the circle toward him. But Lathkeen is dead now or not far off it, and Gil’s shrugging off the bindings on the ikinri ‘ska like coilings of frayed and rotted rope. He grabs something handy, some minor distraction glyph, tosses it, lets it detonate in Risgillen’s eyes. Feels her stumble, swings around and brings whatever’s left of Lathkeen with him. He hurls the dying storm-caller into Risgillen’s path, tangles her up for the time he needs, the time he knows he needs, and knows is nearly up.

Behind her—the rest of the dwenda from inside the circle. He sees them scrabbling belatedly for their weapons, moving hesitantly in. He casts again, the glyph that staggered Risgillen, three times more, like a dagger repeatedly into flesh—the dwenda flinch and then start flailing about them at empty air. But they don’t go down; he’s not sure what it would take to achieve that much, not even sure what he’s done to them except that it’s enough for now, and some stitched-in ikinri ‘ska impulse is telling him not to invest too much effort in this, this is not the battle, this is only—

Unnerving keening—Risgillen looks up from the shattered mess of Lathkeen’s face in disbelieving rage. No understanding yet of what’s gone wrong, who’s still standing there in Ringil’s flesh. Gil grins at her, gets his back against the standing stone, splays his arms, crooked hands empty of anything but cold air and the will to do harm. It’s enough—something in stance or grin—he sees her face change, sees her eyes narrow with fury, and knows she’s made him.

Come on then, he pants. Time you went to join your brother.

Her eyes go on narrowing, down to slits, tilting into something demonic as her jaw lengthens and her mouth splits with fangs. Trace memory from another time and place spikes up the side of his face and into his eye. He forces it down, keeps the grin, waits for her to make her move, blade or magic, he’s past caring now, he—

Stone splinters, shatters, stings his face with shards.

The Ravensfriend.

There, standing out of the rough-hewn blood-splattered granite at his side like an arrow shaft from a body—as if some hurrying, hopelessly delayed courier god hurled the Kiriath blade the last hundred paces to its owner and instead struck the standing stone through with mortal force.

Risgillen recoils.

And somewhere distant, just faintly, there’s the pale sense of something huge, some vast balance, tipping—toppling—falling flat on its fat fucking face

Ringil’s right hand leaps sideways for the sword. It barely feels like his own act, hand up and out across his chest, fingers folding around the grip. His left arm is up, bracing against the stone by his face, he tugs hard on the sword—there’s one heart-stopping moment when it doesn’t move—pull, hero, fucking pull—he presses with his other arm for purchase and here it comes, grating up out of the stone with an almost musical clang. Brief scatter of sparks as the point and leading edge drag finally clear of the granite, and the Ravensfriend is his again.

A single, harsh bark of joy is in his throat. He coughs it out, takes the sword two-handed, holds it out at Risgillen like an offering. She’s rising now, like something from the war, like some hissing slithering warrior caste reptile at bay. The blue-lit sword weaves but there’s no conviction to it, no power, and she’s trying to summon something, some—

The ikinri ‘ska leaps in, tears it down before it can form.

He shivers with the force of the counter. Hjel was right, the glyph magic isn’t in him anymore, it is him, it wears him like a suit of mail. He can no longer tell where it ends and he begins.

Can you feel it, Risgillen? he’s screaming in her face. Can you feel how thin the pages left?

The rest of the dwenda rush in on her flanks—perhaps they’re an honor guard, he’ll never know—he glimpses long-hafted ax and raised shield to his left, a scything long sword blade to the right, and then he’s gone, into the fight and a high, thin, unwinding sound in his head that might be the Ravensfriend’s song or his own battle scream. Kiriath steel meets dwenda glimmer, impossible speed for any human-forged blade—it turns the long sword, comes back for the ax. The ikinri ‘ska summons the grass to life underfoot, tangles it around the staggering dwendas’ feet, snatches fragments of splintered stone from the broken megalith at Ringil’s back, sews them through the air like horizontal hail. Ravensfriend locks up the ax haft, drags it down. Stamping kick into an exposed knee, the shield defense fails, the sword finds a thigh and bites a gash down through dwenda armor and flesh alike. The dwenda tumbles, mouth gaping open on a yell, and Gil has time to chop the pale face open before he’s spinning away, hurling granite shards into his attackers’ eyes, tripping them with the coiling, lashing blades of grass, barely needing now to trade and repulse blows at all, the dwenda are too busy trying to drive off the ikinri ‘ska assault with glyphs and calls of their own…

He stalks among them, iron spike crowned.

Grabs and kicks to take them off balance, hacks and maims as their defenses crumble and horror sets in. It’s the Dark King returned all right—it’s bloody slaughter to match anything at Gallows Gap, and he doubts, he really fucking doubts that Cormorion could have done any better if he’d ever got loose and tried. It’s bloody slaughter and it’s—

Done.

Seven dwenda—in the time it’d take to draw a deep breath for each one and let it out, he’s taken them down. Left them strewn crippled, eviscerated and screaming across the grass of Cormorion’s stone circle. The reek of their spilled blood is in his nose, he’d swear he can almost taste it on his tongue. The circle is his, he feels the air shiver with his dominion. It’s protection thrown around him, a space he owns, a space that’s been waiting for him always. He casts about like a hound, sees Risgillen among the fallen, trying to drag herself back upright, leaning on the pivot of her long sword. Looks like her leg is chopped, though he doesn’t remember doing it.

She snarls up at him as he approaches, nothing human in it. He sees her fingers lengthening into claws, digging into the blood-matted grass she lies on. Her jaw distending for the fangs. He lifts his left hand, pushes the iron crown back up his brow a little from where it’s settled too low. He readies the Ravensfriend for the blow that will slice Risgillen apart.

You never fucking learn, do you? Oddly, he finds his voice is almost gentle across the wind. There’s no place for you in the world anymore. It does not want you back.

Tell that to our acolytes by the thousand in Trelayne. Her fangs distort and crisp the words. She gags on a bite reflex, gathers herself again. Tell that to every soul that cannot endure the arid modern march your Black Scourge masters have imposed on humanity, every soul that secretly craves the darkness and the sweet delirium it brings. You have understood nothing, mortal—you kneel and beat your breasts in your temples and shrines, you seek the spirit within—we are your eternal soul, we, the dwenda, the eternal ones. She’s leaving her human form behind as he watches. Her tongue is forked and blackened, slipping out between her teeth, tasting the air for him. He has to strain now to get meaning from the noises she makes. We are your darkness, we are your soul. We have haunted your dreams since the beginning of time, we bring you the gift of dark joy and escape. If we are your masters, it is because you cannot live without us.

Yeah? He sniffs and tilts the Kiriath steel invitingly. Just watch us.

The thing Risgillen is turning into makes a rattling sound behind its teeth. It takes him a moment to identify it as laughter.

You think killing me will stop us now? Look about you, fool. A predator claw gestures out at the ranked dwenda waiting silent below the circle. At the boiling, tightly bound darkness on the slope above. Our armies wait only for the breach. The Talons of the Sun wait to be unleashed, clan Talonreach will see it done.

Feels to me like Talonreach got their hands full right now.

The truth of it hits him even as the words leave his mouth. The sense of distraction from inside the heart of the Talons has shifted, lurched into something resembling panicked effort. He finds a lopsided grin. I don’t think this is just about me anymore, Risgillen. Something else is coming. Can’t you feel it?

And maybe it’s recognition of that truth that drives her, finally, up off the bloodied grass and at him, talons reaching, jaws gaping, a scream in the throat and the demon slanting, burning eyes, a wild challenge there and, perhaps, a plea.

He doesn’t need the ikinri ‘ska, unless that’s what lends him the inhuman speed and poise. He doesn’t need the magic, or even the hate anymore.

All he needs is the steel. All he is, is the blade.

He sways, just barely, out of the way of the leap, chops upward with the Ravensfriend and follows through to the side. Kiriath steel catches the snarling thing that was Risgillen somewhere at the midriff, slices upward through armor and the body it sheathes. The Ravensfriend snags, briefly, on the spine, Ringil grunts and hauls hard, the blade slices clear. The dwenda comes apart in an explosion of lifeblood and entrails. The severed sections hit the ground, he spins about, Ravensfriend at low guard.

Sees that Risgillen, the top half anyway, is still somehow alive, writhing and thrashing on what’s left of its belly, trying to rise on downward pressing arms alone. The lower trunk and limbs lie twitching to one side, already shriveling back toward more human form and dimension, but even the massive damage he’s done doesn’t seem to be enough. Somehow she turns herself over, and the eyes burn up at him.

He steps in. Reverses the Ravensfriend in his right hand.

I’m sorry about your brother, he finds himself unaccountably saying. Sorry I couldn’t be Cormorion for him, or for you.

You just chose the wrong hero, is all.

He plunges the Kiriath blade down. Two handed, his full weight behind the blow. Down through rib cage and heart, into the Earth beneath. Risgillen hisses once, softly, through her fangs, and the demonic glare in her eyes goes finally out.

With it goes the last trace of Seethlaw he’ll ever see.

CHAPTER 63

They came with the dawn.

Two dozen riders, silhouetted against the pale rise of light in the eastern sky, and spread out on approach. They were spike helmeted and looked to be wearing some form of lightweight chest armor. Clearly visible against that sky, even at distance—the way the bowmen among them reached up and back for arrows from the quiver as they spotted the camp.

“See anyone you know?”

Marnak, lying alongside her in the grass, squinted and nodded. “Ershal’s in the van. The one with the horsehair plume on his helmet.”

So far so good. “And the shaman?”

The Ironbrow screwed up his eyes again. Shook his head. “Doesn’t look like it. The old fuck rides no better than a Yhelteth harem girl, I’d know him in the saddle a mile off. He must be hanging back till Ershal sends word.”

“Yeah, sounds like a fucking holy man.”

Short tempered growl in her voice. They’d been waiting all night, spelling each other for what sleep they could snatch on the cold, unyielding ground without bedroll or fire. Marnak seemed to manage fine, but the vigil had left Archeth stiff and irritable. She hoped this was going to go according to plan, because she was in no mood for anything more complicated.

Cries from among the riders, calls back and forth.

Marnak grunted. “They’ve seen the bodies.”

So far so good.

It had gone against the grain for the Skaranak to leave their dead lying out for whatever scavenging animals might show up, but Marnak had talked them around. The imperials were more sanguine—they’d come up on stories of the war, and they understood recovery of the slain for the occasional luxury it was. Archeth, seeing to the distribution of the corpses where they would do the most good, felt a stab of betrayal for Selak Chan. She’d sworn to take him home, and she would see it done. But by morning, his eyes would likely be gone.

Sure enough, she saw a sparse rising scatter of wings—kites and ravens flapping skyward, cawing and screeching protest as the riders drew close and spooked them from their breakfast. One of Ershal’s vanguard slid lithely down out of his saddle and stomped over to examine the nearest of the corpses the birds had been feeding on. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked as if he was prodding the body with his boot. He turned and called back to his mounted colleagues. Some rough laughter. The Skaranak in the horsehair plumed helmet barked across it.

“Telling them to check the wagon,” Marnak muttered.

“Eager little fucker, isn’t he?”

“Can’t afford to show fear of the comet. The shaman’s grip is already strong, Ershal won’t want it any stronger.”

Archeth eased Bandgleam from its sheath, held the knife loosely in her hand. Her mail clinked a little on her forearm with the motion. She froze again, watched the lead Skaranak mount back up and nudge his horse forward. Ershal came after, bow and nocked arrow held casually across his lap. Now she saw the family resemblance, the hint of the Dragonbane in the lines of jaw and brow. She looked past him and tracked the remainder of the riders, saw them funnel slowly inward toward the wagon and its load. The procession went warily still, but she heard them talking to each other now, heard more of the laughter, and the bows were all lowered…

“Don’t seem too upset about their clansmen dying,” she whispered.

Marnak curled his lip. “These are Ershal’s personal guard, or the shaman’s men. Kinsmen and trusted retainers. No love lost between them and us. Now?”

“Now.”

Already moving as she spoke. Hard shove with both feet and the heels of her palms, up out of the prone position in the cover the wagon gave. She came around the side of the driver’s board, a scant dozen yards in front of the lead rider. Saw him gape in disbelief, try in vain to bring his bow to bear—

She whooped and put Bandgleam in his eye.

He went backward out of the saddle without a word. Archeth was already moving, grabbing the riderless mount for cover, tugging its head around. She heard yells go up across the early morning air. An arrow sliced past her head. She moved with the skittering horse, snuggled in against it. Snatched Wraithslayer free in her left hand.

“Volley!” she bawled in Tethanne.

From behind the wagon and its load, from out of the grass on the fringes of the camp where they’d lain as false corpses among the slain—imperial archers and their counterparts among Marnak’s men sprang or rolled upright and loosed their shafts. Three every count of five, from a dozen different bows, into the horseshoe-shaped killing ground, indiscriminate of target, horse or man. The air filled up with the hush-thump sound it made, and then the screams. Horses reared and threw their unwary riders, or brought them down tangled in the stirrups as they stumbled and fell. Some of the cannier warriors in Ershal’s party leapt to the ground before they could suffer the same fate, but the archers found most of them as well. Archeth saw ten men dropped in half as many seconds.

She ducked out from behind her commandeered horse, looking for Ershal.

Found him—shit!—right on her. Helmet aslant on his face from where he’d come off his horse, but he had his short sword out and raised. He shrilled something at her in Majak, aimed a wild hack at her head. No time to draw a second blade and he had her wrong-handed with Wraithslayer. She flinched aside, slashed blindly at him as he passed. Felt her blade connect but couldn’t tell if it went through the boiled leather cuirass or not. Egar’s little brother grabbed her by the hair from behind, yanked her off her feet, laid her out in the grass. She rolled frantically away, but he was gone. No follow up, no boots or killing blow with the sword. She came up in a crouch, looked for him again. Saw him grab the reins on the horse she’d had hold of, swing up into the saddle and kick the beast into flight. She drew back with Wraithslayer, left-handed, awkward with lack of custom, lost line of sight as Ershal put the wagon between them.

Drum of hooves through the earth as the horse hit the gallop.

She ran round the side of the wagon, but Ershal was already gone, right through the jaws of the ambush and out the other side. Terror in mount and rider united in a flat-out stampede towards the horizon. She squared up for the throw, Wraithslayer jumping smoothly across the air from left hand to right, hefted the knife—already knew she was too late.

She screamed frustration at the sky. Swung about, slammed into Marnak. They both nearly went down with the impact. He gripped her by the shoulders for a moment. Looked in her eyes and let go again, as if she was red hot to the touch. He raised a hand.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. He’s still in bowshot, we can—”

“Forget it,” she snarled. “Just mop up here. I’m going after him.”

Then she turned and stalked out into the killing field, in search of a horse they hadn’t managed to murder yet.

SETTING THE AMBUSH HAD ROBBED THEM OF MOUNTED CAPACITY—THEY’D had to drive off their own remaining horses, all bar one they’d sacrificed to create a halfway convincing array of corpses; no chance the steppe ghouls would have taken an entire encampment without bringing down at least a couple of mounts before the rest stampeded clear, they had to have that horse body in among the dead men, real and faked. No one liked the idea, anymore than leaving their dead comrades out for the crows, but finally, stone-faced, the Upland Free scout chose one of the imperial horses, led it away from the others, talking gently to it the whole time, nuzzling at the side of its face until it calmed, and then he opened the artery in its neck with his knife. They all stood and watched, under a glowering sky, as the doomed animal bucked and snorted, broke loose, and made a dozen stumbling steps before it buckled to the steppe and bled out.

Beside Archeth, one of the Skaranak spat and cursed.

She’d felt pretty unclean about it herself.

And now—arrow fire had most of Ershal’s horses crippled or dying amid the general slaughter, as the imperials stormed in with drawn blades to finish the rout. She saw dazed and wounded men hacked down whether they offered resistance or not, prone bodies stabbed through or maced repeatedly just to be sure, a couple of knots of actual fighting where defiant Skaranak had gathered back to back in pairs or small groups to die hard, and—

There!

A rider on the fringes, both legs spiked through with at least one arrow, clinging to his mount’s neck, wavering on his feet and desperately trying to haul himself back up into the saddle. The horse pivoted like a weathervane in high winds, was clearly terrified, but looked to be unharmed. Archeth sprinted flat out, got there just as the injured man managed finally to get his body up and across the horse’s back. She grabbed him by the shoulder, hauled him back off. He yelled—some flailing attempt at a blow, fended it impatiently off, cut his fucking throat, and dump him aside. She swung up into the saddle, grabbed the reins, and wheeled the horse about.

Found Ershal immediately, a dot on the brightening horizon to the southeast. Fucking idiot was arcing back around, by the look of it, maybe trying to head home. She squinted for a bearing, a line to intercept him on. With luck she could get up on his flank before he even realized she was there. She nudged with her heels, and the horse needed no second urging. Out through the chaotic, last-stand savagery of the skirmish—she kicked a desperate Majak in the face as he tried to grab and drag her down, felt the crunch of boot heel into nose, shook him loose—heading for the open steppe. Her mount went to a full gallop in seconds. Bandgleam—calling to her as she passed, out of the blood-glutted eye socket of the first man she’d killed. She slammed Wraithslayer away in the upside-down sheath, flung her right hand out and back. In her mind’s eye, she saw the slim knife twist stickily free, skip up and across the air in a long, flat arc. Opened palm, and the butt dropped into it as if from a great height. She curled her grip, put Bandgleam away in its sheath as well. Plenty of time for steel once she caught up.

Out across the steppe, leaving the fight behind. Don’t look now, Ershal—here comes your big brother’s last will and testament. She laid herself down against the horse’s neck, urged it to greater speed. The rhythm of the chase asserted itself. Thudding of the horse’s hooves, the drumbeat of it up into her belly and chest, wind through the shaggy mane and over her face like a cooling hand. A weird, undramatic calm settled in. As if the steppe rolled out forever, and she had nothing left to do in her life but ride its limitless expanse. She thought, for one wild moment, that you could die out here and maybe not actually mind…

Over her head, the first high-angling rays of sunrise hit the scimitar sweep of the band and edged it in blood.

The vast sky brightened, the gap between riders closed up. Ershal and his mount resolved out of gloom and distance, from dot to tiny figure, then to a man and horse large enough in her view that she could squint through the tears the wind stung from her eyes and make out detail—harness and armor, staff lance slung, the clanmaster’s long hair loose in the wind. She saw the moment he realized she was there, the way he startled and raised in the saddle, stared out toward her. She made a soft noise deep in her throat, gritted teeth on a grin. Swept in on Ershal’s left flank, no drop in her mount’s pace. The clanmaster yelped audibly across the wind, spurred his horse to fresh effort and put on a little spurt of speed. She let him try to outrun her, content to shadow at the distance she had. Let him wind his mount trying to get away, if he was that stupid. She was in no hurry. Majak horses ran shorter and stockier than their more southerly cousins, but they were tougher, too, and their stamina was legendary. She could ride like this for miles.

The sun welled up molten on the horizon ahead. A scant wavering mound at first, but then the light came spilling out over the steppe. It drove out the predawn gray wherever it touched. Gilded the nodding grass, painted every blade in the same faint tones of blood it had left on the band above. Washed her face with warmth, dazzled her eyes, broke up her vision in dancing blotches of orange and dark—

Out of the dazzle, Ershal came riding right at her.

Upright in the saddle, bawling something in Majak, war-cry, challenge, maybe there were words, maybe not. Staff lance unslung now, brandished in the air like a spear. She had splinters of a second to feel admiration for his horsemanship—no mean feat to get his mount around so fast and come right back at her like that, in behind the blinding advantage of the morning sun’s rays before she even noticed…

Then he hurled the lance.

She tried to jerk her horse aside, get somehow out of the way. With Idrashan, she might have managed, but the Majak mount wasn’t having any of it. A flat-out gallop she wanted, a flat-out gallop she could have. She careered in at Ershal without let, and the staff lance hit her squarely in the side.

She grunted and clutched convulsively at her horse’s neck. Vision, already dazzled to pieces, went suddenly black and sparkle-veined. She heard the clanmaster whoop in triumph, somewhere back in the wind of their mutual passing. She fought not to throw up from the force of the blow he’d dealt, clung sickly on as the horse’s gallop slowed. Tried to think.

Little fucker’s going to rein in now, and be right back around to finish the job…

The chase positions, hunter and quarry, neatly reversed.

What you get for taking on the Skaranak on their home turf, Archidi. Not like you weren’t warned. Not like you couldn’t have walked away.

She reached back down to the lance’s point of impact, felt for blood. Found none, you lucky girl, you. Knife harness or the mail shirt beneath, maybe both, something had stopped the lance blade getting through to her flesh. She’d have a bruise there the size of a court bard’s belly—if she lived—but for now…

For now, you’ve had far worse and still stood up to fight some more. You’ve killed lizards with worse damage than this.

So let’s get to it, Archidi.

Get on and kill this little shit. Then we can all go home.

She glared back over her shoulder. Saw Ershal riding hard behind her, short sword out. He hadn’t bothered to stop and collect the staff lance, which meant he was feeling pretty fucking confident all of a sudden—

Use that, Archidi. Use it.

She huddled lower on her horse’s neck, let herself sag a little to the side. Not hard to act like she was hurt, her whole side was throbbing like a bad tooth. She patted the horse’s neck, let it drop its pace till she judged it just about safe, then, rapidly, before she could talk herself out of it again, she let go and rolled right off.

She hit the ground hard enough to smash her vision apart all over again. Pain spiked out from the site of the lance impact, killed the breath in her lungs, drew a sharp, involuntary cry from her lips. Her horse cantered on, she rolled to a breathless halt in the long grass. Felt the vibration against her cheek as Ershal rode in, rolled once more to get herself face up. Didn’t think a Majak mount was likely to trample a body; you had to train warhorses pretty hard to get that kind of behavior out of them, but then who knew what the Skaranak trainers got up to, they said they could—

She buried the fear. Lay still, eyes closed, tried to look broken.

I hope you’re somewhere watching this, Eg. I really do.

Hoof-falls, slowing, coming closer, circling in. The skin on her scalp cringed at the thought of what one of those hooves would do to her skull if she’d called this wrong. She heard the Majak muttering to his horse, calming it. Uneasy stomping as it quietened and then stood still. She heard the grunt as Ershal dismounted, the brushed-aside grass as he tramped up to her motionless form…

Now.

She flung herself to her feet, tugged Wraithslayer and Bandgleam crossways down out of their sheaths and held them up. Found Ershal five yards off in the sunrise-tinged sea of grass, staring at her in comical disbelief. His face seemed to crumple with the shock, his shoulders sagged. He spat something at her in Majak, but more than anger, she thought there was a dull weariness in his voice. She thought she caught the name Poltar in there somewhere, but couldn’t be sure.

“The Dragonbane sent me,” she called. Harshly enunciated Majak—she’d had Marnak school her in the various phrases, rehearsed them to herself until she had them word perfect. “Your brother is dead, but he reaches down from Sky Home, and I am his hand.”

He stared at her, wordless, and for just one pounding heartbeat moment she saw herself through his eyes. Tall, burned-black witch, eerie kaleidoscope eyes, seemingly invulnerable to the bite of human steel, sowing slaughter and chaos in her path.

As if the Dragonbane had sent back some demon to avenge him from beyond the grave, and here she stood.

Ershal, Clanmaster of the Skaranak squared his shoulders and drew a deep breath. She saw the desperation on his face, saw him fight it down. She tipped her head in invitation. He jerked his chin at her, he spat on the ground at his feet.

Then he raised his sword and ran at her, screaming.

Wraithslayer took him in the throat before he got halfway.

HE WAS LYING ON HIS SIDE IN THE GRASS, NOT YET DEAD WHEN SHE REACHED him. His legs made spasmodic pumping motions sideways against the ground, as if in some dream he was still running at her, trying to finish the attack. He was choking quietly on his own blood, clutching vainly with one hand at the Kiriath steel that protruded from his throat, slicing up his fingers on the edges of the blade. His mouth moved, formed hissed words she had no way to understand. His eyes flickered as she stooped and her shadow fell over him, but she was never very sure if he looked at her or not, if he even knew she was there.

She squatted and waited for it to be over.

Slowly, his legs stopped their kicking and grew still. His body heaved a couple of times, then subsided into twitching. His mutilated fingers slackened, his hand fell away from the wound in his throat. She watched intently, trying to derive some thin sense of satisfaction from the sight. But it was not her vengeance, she didn’t even know this man, and however much the Dragonbane might have rejoiced to see the light go out in Ershal’s eyes, when it finally happened, Archeth felt nothing at all.

Job done.

She hesitated a moment, then reached down to the dull blank stare and pressed the clanmaster’s eyelids closed. Took hold of Wraithslayer and levered the knife out of Ershal’s flesh. Wiped it carefully clean on his sleeve, stood up and stared about her in the soft-toned flush of early morning light.

Felt the nape of her neck prickle with being watched.

Her pulse kicked in her throat, she spun about.

Found herself face-to-face with a gaunt figure in a wolf-skin cloak, an impossible yard and a half away.

CHAPTER 64

Of the seven dwenda he took down in the fight, he apparently wounded three badly enough—well enough actually, Gil—to kill them outright or pretty fast thereafter. But the other four have all managed to crawl some distance away from where they fell. One of them is still trailing his own guts from the eviscerating slash Ringil put in his belly.

They are all trying to get out of the stone circle. They’re all trying, desperately, with gritted breath, to get away from him.

And at the limits of its extent, crowding in the spaces between the stones, the dwenda host from the plain below have gathered close, massed ranks with helmets on and visors down, utterly silent, like an assembly of armored ghosts spectating at the cage of some captured wild beast.

Gil cuts them a thin smile, then sets about killing their comrades.

One of the injured dwenda has almost reached the edge of the circle, so he starts there. Bends and grabs the armored figure by one limp ankle, drags it bodily back from whatever perimeter between the stones it was trying to cross. Black gloved hands that grasped and tugged at the coarse grass, now lifting in imprecation toward the watching host. He thinks it makes a strangled noise. He puts a boot on its back and skewers the Ravensfriend down through the rib cage, pins the dwenda to the ground. He levers the blade back and forth to be sure he’s found the heart, waits until the creature’s spasms cease.

Next.

By the time he’s done all four, he’s working up a sweat, and the iron spiked crown is slippery on his brow when he bends. He straightens up from the last execution, the reek of dwenda lifeblood thick in his throat. Stares around at the watching host, the stones that hold them at bay, then up at the storm on the hill behind him. He pushes the crown up his brow with the back of his hand, sniffs hard and wipes at his mouth, though there’s really not much blood on it as far as he can tell.

Right. Clan Talonreach. Let’s be having you.

He turns and heads up the hill.

And the stone circle goes with him.

HE REMEMBERS THE SAME EFFECT FROM TIME IN THE GREY PLACES A YEAR ago. A prison of misshapen granite bars, a mobile ring of armor with Ringil at its heart. But back then the stones were fleeting phantom traces, flickering into existence when he stood still, fading out as soon as he moved toward the nearest of them.

Now, somehow, they stand solid as real world stone—he sees the detail of weathered granite and soft moss patching with a lucid vision that’s so sharp it makes his eyes ache—and yet each monolith moves through the grassy ground like a ship’s keel cutting water. The gathered dwenda host parts before the effect, surging back like broken waves off rock. The corpses of the dwenda he’s killed stay where they are on the ground, one or two of them catching against one stone or another in his wake, then tugging loose and finally free of the circle altogether. The monoliths leave them indifferently behind, keep pace with their master like some impassive honor guard.

And when they touch the outer edges of the Talons of the Sun, there’s a brief flicker of lightning that seems to light the entire gray sky from end to end.

Something sighs, something unfolds.

It’s as if he’s suddenly standing in freezing fog. Vague, tentacular stripes of darkness reach up around him like riverbed weed caught in a current, or bend away in all directions like leather straps tied tight. Through the mist, he sees the figures of dwenda, locked into postures that he only slowly recognizes as glyph casts, frozen in time. There’s a shivering tension through the air, like lightning undischarged, and he understands that if this is Clan Talonreach, then they already have a fight on their hands. Against what, he cannot tell, except to know that it isn’t him.

Is it over, then?

A voice like the wind, soundless in his head, and weary beyond anything he’s ever heard in the real world. For a moment, he thinks of his father and the exhausted bitterness in his voice back at Eskiath house, but this is something astronomical magnitudes beyond. As if Gingren had somehow managed to live an eternity, travel every land under the band, and still find no solution for his woes, for the city leadership that failed to live up to his martial dreams, the wife he could not domesticate, the son he could not own.

You talking to me? he asks. Is what over?

The war. Is the war finally done?

Ringil blinks. Just getting started, last time I checked.

And yet you have come. The first Core Blood commander we have seen since the Binding. The first full human to enter here since our Purposing. Have you come to stand the cadre down at last, as was promised? To reverse the Codes, to dissolve the Bond and set free the Source?

I, uh… Ringil gives up and sighs. Lowers the Ravensfriend until its tip touches the grass. Look, whoever you are, you’re going to have to slow down. I just got here.

A long pause. You wish me to file a report?

He pauses himself, for almost as long. Yeah. That’d be nice.

IN THE DAYS OF DESPERATION, THE VOICE TELLS HIM SOUNDLESSLY, A FINAL weapon was forged.

The war had torn great rifts in the fabric of the world, damaged it in ways that were impossible for the minds of men to either understand or repair. Great storms blew up, winds howling from places humankind was never equipped to venture, unleashing desolation on all they touched. Whole armed hosts were sucked into these gray spaces, never to be seen or heard from again, whole territories were submerged. Skies darkened for generations, it rained fire and jellied gray horror, the moon itself tore apart and died.

Some few survivors trickled back, most of them no longer sane. A handful who still had mouths to talk with, and minds to recall, spoke of a race of beings within the Grey Space Beyond, alien things either summoned by some faction of warring mankind or simply drawn scuttling to the scent of the damage done—and these creatures were powerful beyond belief. Some said they appeared in some strange way to be repairing the wounds gouged in the fabric of the world, others that they merely waited outside the boundaries of the real, biding their time for an invasion.

A plan was scaffolded, materiel assembled, a cadre formed. Honor bound warriors from among the scant remaining cream of human soldiery, changed by human science at depths so basic that they could now survive and function comfortably inside the Grey Space, then tasked by the High Command with passing through the wounds of the world, building a beachhead there, capturing one of the creatures and harnessing its powers. It was thought that such a weapon would obliterate the existing impasse, negate the threat from the rifts, and create a victory so total that a negotiated peace was the only possible option for the defeated side. It was thought that such a weapon would end the war forever.

A… creature? Ringil says faintly, because he can really only think of one candidate, and it’s making the inside of his head ring, as if from a close call battlefield blow to the helm. What kind of… never mind. Did they manage it? Did they chain this thing?

Of course. Slight note of offense in the voice. The preparation was impeccable, the cadres dedicated, the Codes strong. How could the mission not succeed? You are Core, you are the Blood of Command. Look on us—do you not see?

Ringil peers at the vague forms in the mist before him. Tangled straps and slow waving tentacles, perhaps some wrenched and twisted, darkened core over there at the center. He can make no sense of any of it. Uh… yeah, sure. I see. But if you think, I mean, uhm, if the war still isn’t over, then something went wrong. Right?

The mission was a success, they bound the creature, and the Codes held. The cadre waited, entrenched beyond the borders of the real, ready to deploy. But while they held station, the one command they could not have predicted came in. Stand down. Abandon the field. Dismantle the weapon, set the creature free again and return home. Circumstances have changed, no need to deploy.

I bet that went down well.

The cadres recoiled. They could not believe, would not believe that after all they had done, after all that had been done to them, to fit them for purpose—that now there was no need for any of it. They believed instead, chose to believe instead, that they had been betrayed. They fell back into the Grey Spaces, and they took the weapon with them. Here, they had the whole of time and space to hide in, to roam, to use the weapon if need be to defend themselves, but holding back its full force, haunting the margins of all human history instead, dipping in, dipping out, listening, always listening for true word from the High Command, to deploy at full strength and then to return home in triumph.

But they stayed longer away than they knew, stayed far longer than had ever been planned. And in time, the gray spaces changed them, made them something else entirely. They bred and dispersed, formed clans and alliances, became a whole race unto themselves. And as they grew into their new existence, as memory faded with the unnumbered centuries, so they lost all track of what they once were. Mission brief became legend, legend became myth, myth became unquestioned truth. They went everywhere with their new truth, and finally they came home behind it—only to find home unrecognizable.

In place of the glorious homeland their myths spoke of, they found a shattered world and only the primitive remnants of the mortal race to which they once belonged. And there they raised an overlordship built on the myths they thought they remembered. Perhaps they lied to themselves for comfort, perhaps they had really lost track of the truth by then. In any event, they reached a kind of peace, would perhaps have returned slowly to sanity but, just when they believed the war might really be done, they faced invasion from the veins of the Earth—a dark new foe from another place who drove them back out into the Grey Space and… are you laughing?

Ringil stifles his chuckling with an effort. I, uhm, I’m sorry. It just fits so well with all the rest of Findrich’s fake antique shit. He summons supernatural allies from the shadows and all the time they’re a perfect match for his lizardshit bas relief wall art. They’re just as fake, and he never knew it. He wipes at his eyes. I’m sorry, you were saying… no, look, wait. Wait. Who… who exactly the fuck are you again?

I am the Codes and the Binding Force, I am the Way and Means. I am the Chain that Holds the Source Restrained.

And you couldn’t tell them—these cadres, he gestures at the frozen glyph-casting figures in the mist, these, the dwenda—you couldn’t tell them any of this? You couldn’t talk them down?

It is not my place. I am the Way and Means only. I am bound to execution. I observe and I obey. I may not open fresh protocols.

Ringil thinks of Anasharal and its magicked limits, of the Warhelm Ingharnanasharal and the spells that had somehow kept the one from becoming the other until the end. He nods soberly.

I get it—you’re just another Helmsman.

I’m not familiar with that term.

Doesn’t matter. He looks again at the locked-up postures of Clan Talonreach in the mist. Feels the way they are aware of him, but cannot do anything about it—like catching the desperately rolling eye of an opposing soldier on the field, locked in combat with someone else. You want to tell me what’s going on in here? Why they’re all frozen like that?

The Source stirs. It senses something. It is trying, for the first time in tens of thousands of years, to break loose. They have compressed its range to a fraction of a second in time so they can contain it more easily.

How long’s that going to last?

It is hard to know. The last time, the struggle was short—only a few decades in duration.

Right. He turned the Ravensfriend in his hand, looked around in the foggy light. Maybe I can save you all some time here. Would you excuse me a moment?

He turns and steps back out, away from the mist and what it contains. He stands on the coarse grass slope, facing down toward the gathered dwenda. The rough-hewn monoliths stand like sentinels, the storming fog and tentacles that form the Talons of the Sun tower and fountain up behind him like some murky, insubstantial kraken rearing to strike.

Well, well, well, he calls down the slope in Naomic. The Elder Race in all its ancient glory. Got some bad news for you guys.

From the front ranks of the dwenda, a figure steps forward. A gloved hand reaches up and tears the smooth helm off. The face beneath is pale and perfectly boned—yeah, aren’t they all—a poem in pallid beauty. Lips drawn back from teeth, brow furrowed in noble rage. The dwenda commander raises his free hand and points. His voice rings out across the space between them. His Naomic isn’t bad

You can cower in the circle’s scope, mortal. But your face and name are fixed in our mind’s eye now and forever. You have earned the undying hatred of the Aldrain.

Thought I had that already.

The finger trembles visibly. The dwenda’s voice rises to a yell. We will haunt you! The rest of your life will be lived in fear of the twilight and the shadows from which we can slip at will. Your loved ones will never be safe, as long as you live; your children will be raised in horror of darkness and our touch, we will age their hearts with early terror, ruin the sinews of their growth, make them trembling and infirm before their time. And when you are old and helpless, we will come for you and them, and your living heads will be mounted out here in the Grey Places for all eternity.

I have no children, Ringil tells him, impassive as the monoliths that ring him around. And if you plan on haunting me, you’d better get in the fucking queue. But nice try. Now let’s get down to the blood and bone, shall we?

Yes! Shouted, vicious with joy. Yes! Face me!

That’s not what I meant. Got a history lesson for you here. You think you’re an elder race, you think you’ve been around since the dawn of time? It’s a lie, all of it. And suddenly he’s shouting at them, some jagged chunk of dislodged rage, like some frustrated schoolmaster with recalcitrant students. There’s nothing in you, nothing that wasn’t once human. You’re not ancient immortals, you’re fucking children. You’re the bastard-bred offspring of men who needed something monstrous to fight their wars for them and twisted their own blood to make those monsters, then sent them out into the Grey Places and lost them there.

You lie. A thin smile smears across the pale features, but uncertainty hovers at the corners. You think you can confuse us with these… fantasies?

I think I don’t have to. Ringil masters his rage, raises his hand. Codes—you want to get this for me? Put it into their heads the way you did into mine?

I am not sure if—

I’m a, what was it, Core Blood commander, right?

The voice of the Codes and the Binding Force hesitates a beat. Yes…

Then I’m giving you a Core Blood command. This is a fresh protocol. Tell these fake antique fuckwits who they really are.

Another pause, but shorter now. As you command.

Thank you.

And he watches it fall on them.

Like a wind through the steppe grass at evening, like chop in the wake of a big ship’s passing, he sees the armored ranks sway. Sees hands raised to helmed heads as if pain. Hears a choked sobbing rise from a thousand armored throats. A hard glee fills him at the sound, a crackling, laughing sheet of flame licking up from the pit of his stomach. The words rise to his lips as if chosen by some other speaker.

That’s right, he bawls down at them. That’s who you really are, you stupid fucks—the lost and wandering bastard children of men. And we don’t want you back, we never did.

Say good-bye to your weapon, dwenda—this is demob. I’m here to melt it down.

He raises his hand again.

Codes—

Something changes.

The cold breeze stops blowing, the light shifts and tilts away. Time stands still, he feels it stop like the breeze on his face. Figures stand there in the gloom, about a dozen strong. They are not dwenda—too varied, too ragged around the edges. It takes him a couple of seconds to understand who he’s looking at.

The Dark Court, come at last.

CHAPTER 65

Falling Angel—up out of her boot and in her hand, faster than thought. She lashed out with the blade, drove a gutting stroke up and at the belly beneath the wolf-skin cloak.

Something stopped the blow in its tracks.

For the count of six thudding heartbeats, she strained to complete the stroke. Saw Falling Angel’s tip tremble with the locked forces that held the blade immobile in the air. Looked up in disbelief and saw a wintry smile on the lined face opposite. Then the figure made an abrupt upward gesture with one arm, like hurling something in her face. She blinked, but the gnarled open hand never touched her. Instead, another unseen force hit her in the chest like a warhorse kick. Lifted her fully off her feet, punched her backward, dumped her brutally on the ground.

Jagged agony spiked through her side all over again. Falling Angel flew from her grasp. She grunted. Feels like that lance blow broke a couple of ribs after all, Archidi. She tried to breathe through the pain.

Poltar the shaman—yeah, got to be him, who else going to dress that badly around here—took a couple of paces closer. Stood looking down on her and then, inexplicably, spoke to her in High Kir.

“So the Goddess was right. The Dragonbane sends a demon from the veins of the earth to do his dirty work for him.”

She blinked dazedly up at him. Heard the words in her head well enough, but the shaman’s lips didn’t seem to be mouthing the same syllables. She shook her head to clear it. Poltar grinned at her and nodded.

“Yes, She has given me your tongue to speak, so that I may explain to you your doom. It is her way. The Goddess serves me in all things, so that I might serve Her and help make this world pure again.”

“Pure?” Metallic taste on her tongue; she’d bitten through the folds of flesh in the side of her mouth when she hit the ground. She turned her head and spat out blood. “Fuck are you talking about, pure?”

“A hundred thousand years.” The shaman’s voice grew almost crooning. “This much I have learned from Her. Ever since the birth of the band itself, our world has been beset by unhuman races and unnatural creatures. The ascendancy of man slipped and fell, a hundred thousand years ago, and still we struggle to arise and claim it back. But it will come. Men will drive out the other races and make the world their own once more. Your people knelt on the neck of the tribes in the south for centuries and bent them to your will, but where are your people now? You are the last of your kind, demon. This I know.”

“Well, there’s only one of you, too,” she muttered, sitting up.

“You know nothing! I am Chosen!” One naked arm slipped loose of the wolf-skin cloak. “See! The mark of the Goddess upon me.”

Archeth stared.

The arm was a mess—rows of small circular scars and half-healed punctures, all along the skinny length of flesh and muscle from armpit to wrist, like some kind of methodical torture or the repeated fang marks of a wild beast that had for some reason decided not to just chew the limb right off…

“Very nice,” she said carefully.

From the Dragonbane and then Marnak Ironbrow, she’d formed an impression of Poltar that painted him both dangerous and deluded. But it hadn’t ever occurred to her that he might be stark raving mad.

“She chose me,” the shaman ranted at her, “to lead the Skaranak, to keep them pure. You will not corrupt them with your alien ways.”

She coiled for the leap to her feet. “You got any more, uhm, marks of the Goddess you want to show me?”

The tortured arm whipped away, back beneath the cloak. Poltar grinned craftily at her.

“You think you’ll trick me? I know you, demon, I know your schemes. You think I did not come here prepared? I am wrapped against your weapons, as against the cold.”

I’ve seen good steel swung at the shaman and somehow not bite, Marnak told her in the brothel. Blades turned by nothing but that filthy cloak he wears. Arrows that fail to find their mark, punches that never land. You wouldn’t be the first to try. But you’d be the first for a good long while. No one else is that stupid anymore.

You’re that stupid, Archidi.

Now move!

“You do not belong here, burned black witch, and it falls to me to drive you—”

She moved.

Up and away, ignore—fuck, that hurts!—the clutch of agony down through ribs and side. Get some distance from this rambling cloaked asshole, try to work out what to do. She opened her hand to the side and Falling Angel came to the call. Grunt of satisfaction, heft and aim. From five yards out, she hurled the knife at Poltar’s eye.

And this time, she saw.

Blurring in the air around him, like sudden heat-haze, but… shaped. As if some invisible tentacle lashed out to knock the knife away, and must somehow become apparent with the motion. Her hands swept back at her hips—jagged pain on the right with the move—Quarterless and Laughing Girl leapt from the sheaths in the small of her back and fell to her grip. She circled warily, arms out like a courtesan dancing, weight of the knives in each hand like balance. Eyes fixed on the shaman and the space he occupied.

Their gazes met.

“Well then,” he called. “So it ends. Go back to the shadows you came from, demon. Here is your doom!”

He lifted his naked arm out of the cloak again, held it forward at a low angle. She saw the same wavering through the air around the limb and then, abruptly, the most recent of the puncture marks were leaking thick, dark blood. As if something unseen were sucking it out.

Something was.

The air around the shaman began to stain an oily black. At first, it was only hints, like some assemblage of restless curving shadows in the sunlight, but as she watched, it took nearly solid form. It coiled and undulated around Poltar, almost like a thick, second cloak except it had a form all its own and…

Once, more than a century ago in Trelayne, she’d watched fascinated as some ignorant fuck claiming to be a doctor placed leeches on a fevered man’s flesh. More than anything, the thing twined around the shaman reminded her of one of those creatures grown vast. But it had wings, too, like an ocean ray, and it raised itself up like a cobra poised to strike. It looked altogether too lithe and poised for something that must crawl along the ground. And as it darkened into full visibility, it tipped back its headlike appendage and uttered a dull, droning cry.

Poltar’s voice rose exultantly to match the sound.

“It was not a god’s sword that fell to earth on the plain a hundred thousand years ago, it was a vessel, a ship made to carry back allies from a place beyond this world. And the ghosts of its crew endure. Behold, the wraith that heralds your end!”

The thing, whatever it was, had unwrapped fully from the shaman now. It flapped heavily up into the bright morning light, turned languidly over on its back, and seemed to swell to twice its size with the motion. The sun gleamed on its flanks, made them seem wet. It writhed about a little, as if to get its bearings, and then, with abrupt, gut-swooping speed, it came slithering through the air at her.

She ducked left, favoring her injured side. Stabbed upward with Laughing Girl, but the wraith flapped its whole body like a wing on that side and lifted clear. Her ribs screamed, she stumbled on the missed stroke. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed the wraith snap about like a shark in a feeding circle, come back at her again. She threw herself sideways and this time she fell headlong. The wraith gusted past like a slick black cloud, tilted one effortless wing upward and banked about. She thrashed backward as it sank down toward her, heard it make a noise like a pan filled with seething water, hurled Quarterless and Laughing Girl in sheer, panicked revulsion.

The knives hit; she saw how the flapping wraith clenched around the wounds—and then spat them back out, apparently not much harmed. She bounced to her feet, pain buried now under the avalanche of combat need and fear. Hands out and reaching—Quarterless and Laughing Girl flew up out of the grass like startled birds, were in her hands again. But how the fuck—

“My lady Archeth!”

She swung at the shout, saw a tottering, wounded horse, arrow shafts still spiking from its neck and rump, ridden near to collapse. Astride it, an awkward-looking Yilmar Kaptal, brandishing a commandeered short sword he pretty clearly didn’t know how to use. He was twenty yards off and waving frantically at her. Under different circumstances, it would have been comical.

Archeth gaped. “Kaptal?”

But if the portly ex-pimp cut no lethal figure in her eyes, Poltar the shaman thought otherwise. Perhaps he saw only a mounted warrior and jumped with Skaranak tribal instinct to an immediate conclusion. Perhaps he saw through Kaptal’s flesh to what lay beneath. Or perhaps he just didn’t like surprises. A string of harsh syllables coughed from his mouth, he gestured with one lean arm. The flapping wraith flexed upward, rippled away over Archeth’s head, gibbering and hissing to itself as it dived at Kaptal and his mount.

“Salgra Keth, my lady,” he bellowed desperately. “Salgra Keth!”

The horse saw it coming. It screamed and reared, tried to throw Kaptal—who was showing some uncanny horsemanship, all things considered—then stumbled and went to its knees at the fore. There was no time for more. Blur of glistening black, like a drenched washcloth hurled across a kitchen—the wraith fell on horse and rider like some huge tarpaulin, wrapped them both wetly in its folds, settled to the ground.

Horror held Archeth unstirring, as the vague shapes of Kaptal and his mount rose and wallowed beneath the shrouding black. It was like watching a horse and rider with pitch poured over them, struggling to get out of a bog.

Salgra Keth.

The shout rang in her ears. The art of fucking juggling, what the—

She stared down at the knives in her hands.

That’s very impressive. The words of an irritable god, in the wind that blew across the steppe. Can you do it with all of them at once yet?

All of them at once.

The art of—

Under the billowing drape of the wraith, she saw the injured horse’s neck arch. Its head rose and lunged valiantly against the monster that had it wrapped. The wraith made a hissing, clucking sound and convulsed tighter…

The rage erupted behind her eyes. She hurled both knives. Had Wraithslayer and Bandgleam in her grip a split second after, and hurled them, too. Some barely aware portion of her mind registered that she was staring blindly at the wraith and its victims, but it didn’t feel that way. It felt instead as if she floated, loose and free above the steppe, saw only a constantly shifting tracery of molten wire, saw she stood at its heart, saw at last she was its heart.

My Father’s House!

The ancient, silent walkways at An-Monal, the stilled machines. The watchful spirits that lived in the walls. The Helmsmen, the Warhelms, the naming of blades…

Bandgleam, Laughing Girl, Falling Angel, Quarterless and Wraithslayer, oh yes, Wraithslayer—

She took up the molten traceries the way she would the reins on a horse. She opened herself, finally, entirely, to the calling of the Kiriath steel.

She brought her knives, all of them.

She tore the wraith apart.

SHE CAME BACK DOWN SLOWLY, BACK INTO HERSELF AND A SUDDEN AWAREness that she stood with arms raised in graceful arcs over her head, like a dancer poised to begin.

The steppe was quiet around her, the fight was done. She saw it all without really needing to look—the raw, bloodied corpses of Kaptal and his horse, as if they’d been boiled or scorched with acid. The feebly flapping remnants of something oily black and shredded, strewn through the grass, draped here and there in fragments not much larger or thicker than a handkerchief. Her knives like luminous beacons, each pegged neatly in the earth at points about equidistant around the place where she stood.

Poltar in his moth-eaten wolf-skin cloak, gaping at her like some halfwit taken for the first time to the village fair.

Bandgleam leapt unbidden to her right hand.

She lowered her arms and stalked toward the shaman. Summoned the memorized Majak phrases once more.

“The Dragonbane sent me,” she called across the wind. “Egar is dead, but—”

He threw both scrawny arms upward, shucked his cloak with the motion. Tipped back his head and yelped something at the sky. Beneath the cloak, he was naked to the waist and starved. She saw the puncture marks, in various stages of healing, stitched across rib cage and hollow belly, up and down both arms. The tired trickle of blood here and there, the yellowish white roundels of old scars everywhere. The spell he chanted sounded like the whining of a whipped dog.

But it seemed to work.

As if a cloud passed across the morning sun, as if evening stole the day and fell across the steppe early. The light around them dimmed, the breeze stopped on her face. Even the sound it made through the tall grass went away.

A familiar figure stood in her path.

“Behold, demon!” Poltar, voice cracked and reedy on the High Kir he still seemed able to speak. “The Sky Dwellers attend me! Kelgris herself rises as my protector, I shall not want for aid. I command her.”

Archeth met the amber-eyed gaze, the ambiguous smile that played about the mouth like an invitation. Glimpse of sharp white teeth within. Brief, warm twinge through her groin as she recalled the night in the alley, she couldn’t help it. She grimaced to cover the heat.

“Nice work you’ve got.”

The Sky Dweller slanted her eyes, shrugged minutely. What are you going to do?

“She will tear the life from you before you can lay a finger on me,” ranted the shaman at her back. “That is my will. Even if I fall, she will av—”

Voice abruptly choked off.

Eyes staring, bulged in shock.

One hand creeping up to his throat and the knife buried there at the base, gone hilt deep. Then the hand skittered away again, as if terrified of what it had touched. The shaman stared at his own bloodied fingertips, disbelieving. His mouth worked soundlessly.

And here was her own hand, empty, extended, slim lethal Bandgleam gone from it in the heartbeat moment of impulse she could barely understand as her own.

Poltar gurgled and fell down.

Kelgris cleared her throat delicately. “I think that might have been avenge he was trying to say there. High Kir is your tongue, not mine. What do you think?”

“Might have been.” She forced herself to meet the Sky Dweller’s eye again. “Hard to say for sure.”

“Yes, well.” The provocative smile slipped and licked at the corners of the mouth. “Leave it at that, then, shall we? I have other work to be about, and I’m sure you do, too.”

The wind blew again. Light leaked back into the sky. Archeth stared through the empty air where Kelgris had been. Still trying to work out just exactly what had just happened.

After a while, she gave up trying to understand.

She went to collect her steel.

CHAPTER 66

They stand there like some temple frieze brought to sudden life. The Dark Court in all their glory. Hoiran the Dark, tusked and grinning fanged. The lady Firfirdar, flames dancing about her in a restless high-collared cloak of orange red. Kwelgrish, blood-drenched towel pressed to the wound in her head with one hand, wolf-skin robe hanging off one shoulder by the teeth in its upper jaw. Dakovash, slouch hat slanted across a shadowed face, high-collared patched leather cloak swept about his form. Astinhahn, ax in one hand, foaming tankard in the other. Morakin, wrapped about in serpents, each as thick as his upper arm. Harjellis, starved and skullish beneath his cowl…

They’re smiling at him, all of them. He swears he sees Dakovash wink.

You’ve done well, Ringil. Oddly, it’s not Hoiran who steps forward to speak for the court he’s supposed to rule. It’s Firfirdar instead, arm wreathed in little coiling bracelets of flame as she lifts a hand toward him. Not one mortal in a million could have come this far.

Yeah, he growls. Thanks for all the help.

She smiles brilliantly at him. We knew you would not need it. And now look at you—a destiny fulfilled, a dark lord arisen. You even have the crown. You’ve thrown down the dwenda, you walk at will in the Grey Places, and now you command the Talons of the Sun. The Kiriath steel has crept inside you, as you have soaked into it, and the union serves your will. The vengeful dead gather to your command—actually, you don’t seem all that adept at using them yet; perhaps we can help you there. But I digress. Your blood is mingled Yhelteth nobility and marsh dweller heritage stretching back to the original Core Command from the Great War and the Death of the Moon. You are the pivot on which it all turns, Ringil. It remains only for you to step back into the world, depose the Emperor of All Lands and take your rightful place on the Burnished Throne.

Oh, not you lot, too. He rolls his eyes, genuinely weary. For… Hoiran’s sake, why would I want the Burnished Throne? What would I do with the fucking thing?

Firfirdar shrugs. Anything you wish. March on Trelayne, make your father bow down and eat dirt at your feet, perhaps. Abolish the slave trade. Crush the Citadel. We do not much care as long as it is a human who holds the reins of Empire.

I told you once before—I am not your motherfucking cat’s-paw.

Of course not, she says soothingly. Your victory is your own. Do with it as you will. Only be warned of the cost.

You’re too kind. He turns about to face the Talons of the Sun. Codes—I want to speak to the Source; is that possible?

If it deigns to reply, yes. It has been uncommunicative these last several thousand years, though.

I wonder why. All right, let’s go—open up.

Another indefinable unfolding around him and the upward rippling tentacles seem to gain a fresh density, as if they’re somehow more solidly here before him. A tiny prism of light opens eight inches away from his eyes and something tightly coiled weaves within it.

Ringil peers into the light, but his vision shies away from fully seeing whatever’s in there. It’s tangled, is all he knows, and at angles that threaten to tear his mind open. He blinks and looks off to one side. He clears his throat.

I, uhm—I think I’ve been sent to set you free.

Something gusts to life in the chilly air. Yes… so it seems…

And if confirmation were needed, here it is; at base, the voice is a match for the hoarse whisper of the Creature at the Crossroads. But there’s something else woven into the tone of it, a limping pain that stings tears into his eyes and a weariness that echoes the voice of the Codes and the Binding Forces, as if somehow, over immense stretches of time the two entities, prisoner and jailer, have somehow interchanged and merged at the edges.

My sister’s mark is on you, the Source whispers. Overhead, the slow weaving of tentacles seems to yearn towards the sky. She has stitched you through at levels that should have destroyed you. Such a doubtful, patchwork scheme. Such delicate abuse of the limits and laws that govern it all. Such… fragility.

Yeah, well, he says sourly. Seems to have worked out though, doesn’t it. You want these chains off or not?

I would be indebted to you for the eternity you must spend trapped here.

That’s what I—Ringil blinks. What?

Was this not made clear to you?

Nothing—no fucking thing—has been made clear to me. Apparently that’s not how things get done around here. I’m just the hero.

Well then—it is simple enough, hero. Like the Creature at the Crossroads, the Source seems able to mock and take the title seriously at one and the same time. Its tone is almost kindly. The only reason that the wounds of the world remain unhealed is that my sisters could not bear to abandon me. They could not, by the laws of their own work, intervene in the repaired scheme of things for me, but they left their repairs unfinished, in the hope that through some small gap or other an escape might become possible.

The entire remaining world is stitched and stained through with that single forlorn, enduring hope of escape.

Ringil grunts. That explains a lot.

But the gaps are all levered trapdoors, set to fall as soon as that purpose is fulfilled. I would escape to the void and my sisters’ embrace, swept there by the act of releasing my bonds. But all else would be trapped in the Grey Space for eternity.

And you’re telling me this… why?

Because it is the truth.

You see, Ringil. There’s a smile licking around Firfirdar’s mouth like the flames that lick at her body. The Book-Keeper is not what she seems, despite her gifts. She has manipulated you as much as any other power, betrayed you, sent you to your doom without warning.

So I should trust you lot instead, right?

We at least want you alive. You should trust that—or at least value it over this offered extinction. Take charge of the Talons of the Sun, Ringil. Leave its power leashed in place to serve your ends. Reach out for the throne of Yhelteth. Become the Dark King, if you will.

It is all we ask. We will take you home.

He nods slowly. Glances up at the slow writhing of the tentacles overhead. The tiny, imprisoned pocket of light and coiling darkness floating in front of his face.

And you. What do you ask?

I am weary, says the voice. A hundred thousand years of wars I wanted no part in, of acting the linchpin for a fantasy of ancient rights and ascendancy based in ornate lies and arrant self-deception. I am weary of it all.

Ringil grimaces. Yeah, you and me both.

He looks down the slope at the waiting dwenda horde. At the expectant Dark Court personages and their eager, welcoming smiles. The silent stones that ring him, the bleak rushing sky overhead.

Could be worse.

Fuck all of you gods, he says tiredly. I’m done with you. Codes—dissolve the bonds, turn the Source loose.

He sees the shock rip across their faces. Firfirdar’s dark queen calm dissolved, Hoiran’s lips peeling back from his tusked and fanged mouth in snarling rage. Kwelgrish, dropping the blood-soaked towel from her skull and he sees the wound, sees how deep it really goes. Morakin’s snakes hissing in unified disbelief with the flicker-tongued gape of his own handsome mouth…

It’s worth it, everything that’s coming now, just to see that look on those faces.

I piss on you all, he calls, against a steadily rising wind. I piss on your smug schemes and destinies and storied lies. Go on—fuck off back to the real world and play your hollow games if you must. Some of us have grown out of this shit.

The Source is released, the Codes and the Binding Force says, and he thinks there might be a hint of relief in its voice. Dissolution will follow. All coherent beings should exit the wounded spaces while there is still time…

What do you think you’re doing? Firfirdar, screaming desperately across the wind. This is insane, this serves no one well. You cannot do this!

It’s done, he tells her somberly. I’d get out of here while you still can, if I were you.

It’s a conclusion the rest of the Dark Court seems already to have reached. They are turning and dissolving away as he watches, Kwelgrish reaching into the wound in her head and tugging irritably at something within, Astinhahn draining his tankard and tossing it away in disgust, Dakovash—does he, for just one moment, incline his brim-shaded face in salute?—Hoiran, Morakin, all of them, even, finally, the Mistress of Dice and Death herself. Twisting, fading, while above them all the sound of the wind is rising to a scream, and something writhing huge and tentacular and impossible to look directly at scrabbles and lunges for the hurrying sky—

And is gone.

Silence slams down across the horizon. The Talons of the Sun wisp away to fragments and then to nothing at all. If the storm-callers of Clan Talonreach were still in there somewhere, then whatever happened to their weapon seems to have happened to them as well. The departing Source has dragged them away in its wake.

The clouds shred apart overhead, the wind drops once more to a keening lament.

Ringil sniffs and looks down the slope to where the dwenda are waiting for him. He takes a couple of steps down toward them, and the standing stones refuse to move with him. They bulk as immovable and impassive as they were the night Seethlaw first brought him inside their scope. Whatever power he borrowed from them is gone now, like everything and everyone else around here.

Oh, well. He isn’t much surprised.

How now, yells the dwenda commander. See, the stones themselves turn against you! What will you do for protection now, mortal? How will you evade the vengeance of the Shining Folk?

Quarter ounce of krin would have been nice, he thinks vaguely.

The sky dims again.

BETWEEN HIM AND THE DWENDA HORDE—A TALL, PATCH-CLOAKED FIGURE, face cast in hat-brim shadow. Dakovash the Salt Lord, back for some kind of smart-arse last word, no doubt.

Ringil raises a brow. Forget something?

Too much, over the millennia. Far too much. The god’s voice is weary, but his habitual irritation seems to have faded into something more considered. But never mind. You asked for this.

He holds out his hand, open. Cupped in the palm sits a dark, gold-grained pellet of krinzanz.

Gil stares at him for a long moment. Then he reaches out and takes the offering, rolls and presses it between finger and thumb until it’s warm and pliant.

I’m not changing my mind, he warns the Salt Lord.

You could not now, even if you wished to. A thin smile in the shadow of the hat brim, as if Dakovash can feel the tiny spike of chill through his heart at the words. The Source was not lying. The gaps the Book-Keepers left are closing fast. Already, they are whorled too tight to permit mortal passage.

Taking a risk coming back then, aren’t you?

A modest gesture. Nothing I can’t handle. Could use the exercise, to be honest.

Ringil thumbs the krin into his mouth and chews it down to mulch. He nods at the dwenda waiting below.

What about them?

The Salt Lord considers. Oh, some among them maybe. The very strongest might find a way back if they’re quick about it. But wherever they finally wash up, it won’t be in your world. They’re broken there as a force.

All according to plan, eh? He can’t quite keep the bitterness from his voice.

According to one plan, yes. Though the truth is you could equally have ended up their glorious leader.

I nearly fucking did.

Dakovash smiles again beneath the hat. No, I mean you, Ringil Eskiath—you could have ended up leading the dwenda to victory against the south. It was one possible outcome we foresaw. Or equally, you saved the Empire and sat on its throne, but with a shadow guard of dwenda to watch over you by night and strike terror in the hearts of your subjects. You used them to tear the Citadel apart, and in the gap left by the Revelation, we entered back in.

There were so many plans, so many possibilities, so many endings. You gave us this one. In the end, the Book-Keeper saw you more clearly than we gave her credit for.

You don’t look too upset about it.

A divine shrug. The game plays out. Some you win, some you lose. No god could take a more precious attitude and survive.

The others seemed pretty pissed off.

Yeah, they’ll get over it.

Ringil rubs the last grainy traces of the krin into his gums with a finger. The drug’s icy fire is already kindling in his head. Why are you helping me? Why come back like this?

Why? Did you not know that among the Majak, I am thought the most wildly capricious and impulsive of the Sky Dwellers?

Yeah, and your reputation in the Dark Court isn’t very much better. That’s not an answer.

Well. Dakovash’s smile is back, and this time Gil thinks he sees a sadness in it. Let’s just say you remind me of… someone I knew, a very long time ago.

Wildly capricious and nostalgic, then.

The god inclines his head. If you like.

Do me a favor out of nostalgia, would you?

A favor? Dakovash coughs on a laugh. It’s a little late in the day for that, my lord Fuck-all-you-Gods. I can’t get you out of this one, I already told you that.

That’s not what I’m asking for. He hesitates a moment, thinking it through. How it might be done. Outside Hinerion, you gave me a shadow guard of your own. A cold command, the Book-Keeper called them—

Yes, the boy, the smith, the swordsman. Quite a neat little symbolic bundle, I thought. Nice resonances. So what of them?

They’ve served me well. Saved my life more than once.

Yes, that was the idea.

They’ve done enough. Can you release them now?

Release them? And now, in the rising, incredulous tone, he thinks he hears something of the old Dakovash leaking back through, the bad-tempered, impatient god he’s dealt with before. What do you think this is, a fucking fairy tale? No, I can’t release them, they’re already fucking dead. They’re ghosts. They’re haunting you, precisely because they have nowhere else to go. You want them released, as you put it, then get on down this hill and get yourself killed. When you cease, so will they.

Right. Guess it was stupid, thinking a lord of the Dark Court could do anything useful for me.

Don’t you fucking start with that.

Quarter of cheap krin—that’s about as far as your demonic powers stretch, is it?

I said—

What are you, a god or a fucking drug dealer?

That is enough! An arm swings up, one gnarled, pointing finger inches from his face. You locked yourself in here, not me. You made the big gesture. Told us all to go fuck ourselves. Don’t come whining to me about the consequences.

That old nostalgia not what it used to be, eh?

ASK ME FOR SOMETHING IN THE REAL WORLD AND I WILL DELIVER IT!

Black lightning forks through the air around them. The ground shivers. Beneath the god’s hat brim, the eyes kindle like the fire in the pit at An-Monal.

Ringil grins into it. Excellent. Then I ask you to watch over Archeth Indamaninarmal and Egar Dragonbane, wherever they are. Keep them both safe from harm.

The pointing arm drops as if severed. What?

You heard me. And try to keep your shit a little tighter than you did with Gerin Trickfinger.

Dakovash makes a noise in his throat like rocks coming apart. He swings away from Gil, and the same black lightning shimmers suppressed in the air around him. His shoulders seem to hunch under the battered and patched leather coat, far more than a human frame would allow. Ringil thinks he hears bones, cracking. The voice comes out a gritted whisper.

You think you’ll… trick me like this? You think you’re going to stand here on the precipice of your own mortality and drive slick bargains with the gods?

I think I already have, Ringil tells him soberly. What’s a god’s word worth these days?

The Salt Lord comes back around, and for just a moment Gil thinks he sees something unhuman writhing for escape under the hat brim. Then it’s gone and only the burning bright eyes are left to show he’s facing anything other than a man.

Dakovash stalks a tight circle around him. Leans in at his shoulder.

I am the most wildly capricious of the Sky Dwellers. His voice is a serpent hiss. What’s to say I am bound to the promises I make?

You shouted it loud enough for us all to hear.

And who else do you think is here to listen? The Salt Lord prowls around him again, gestures at the dimmed earth and sky, the locked moment they stand within. What power do you think there is that will force me to honor this?

Ringil summons a shrug. The Book-Keepers, perhaps? In the end, it doesn’t matter. You and I both heard it. You and I both know.

Yes, well you’ll be dead shortly. And I’ve been known to keep secrets.

From yourself?

Oh, you’d be surprised what a god can manage to forget.

Haven’t forgotten that old friend I remind you of, though. Have you?

A long pause. I didn’t say he was a friend.

Ringil says nothing. The god continues to circle him, like some wolf around a treed quarry.

You’re wasting your time asking favors for the Dragonbane. A cruel smile glimmers up in the hat brim shadow. He’s dead. Eaten down to the bone by dragon venom in the Kiriath Wastes.

It’s a pike-butt blow to the sternum, for all he already sensed the truth. Gil tenses his whole body against it and still he feels himself staggered. He reaches for the krin-fire in his head and belly, lets it bear him up. One day or another, Gil, it comes to us all. Dragonbane just beat you to it. Like the death blow on that dragon down in Demlarashan. He just got there first, is all.

He looks up at the Salt Lord. Meets the burning eyes and puts on a killing smile.

Hey, Dakovash—fuck you, too.

Oh, I’m sorry. Did I upset you? Guess you forgot, I’m not your fairy fucking godmother. I’m a demon god, a lord of the Dark Court.

Down at his side, Gil thinks he feels the Ravensfriend shiver impatiently. He glances at the glimmering blade and keeps his smile.

You think I’m upset, demon god. You got no idea. You just made this a whole lot easier for me. And you still owe me half a favor, so fuck off and get it done.

The god hesitates. Ringil can’t be sure, but the eyes beneath the hat brim seem to burn a little less bright.

Go on, he barks. Get back to where it’s safe, why don’t you? We’re done here.

Oh, you’re welcome. Think nothing of it. No, really.

Gil jerks his chin at him. Yeah. Thanks. Been a pleasure.

Dakovash does not move. The light in his eyes is out. And for just a moment, out of nowhere, Ringil has a sudden flash of ikinri ‘ska vision. As if the sky splits open to spill fresh light in, and there’s the god, frozen in place like some storm-blasted tree on a heath, old and worn and hollowed out, nothing left living but the bark.

The eyes are dim, but a single bright glimmer tracks down one weathered cheek.

Ringil—

Gil shakes his head. ’Sokay. Thanks for the krin. Going to be a big help.

He slings the Ravensfriend up and over his shoulder, walks away from the god and down the slope toward the waiting dwenda.

After all, he calls back, worse fates than being forced into a place where your choice of acts is limited to those where your soul burns brightest.

Right?

If the god has an answer, he doesn’t hear it.

THE DWENDA COME TO MEET HIM. CRUMP-CRUMP OF THEIR BOOTS ACROSS the ground as the ranks move up. Here and there, gray light gleams off the curve of a visor or the edge of a blade. Ringil nods to himself.

Do you know, he calls down to them conversationally, how I can tell you’re not demons or gods?

Glaring hatred and a taut, shrill cry as the dwenda commander rushes him. Ringil stands his ground, meets the chop of the Aldrain blade with Kiriath steel, loops it away. The swords lock up and they face each other, dwenda and human, teeth bared in mutual effort and hate. Ringil hisses over the straining steel.

You threaten the torture of children as a weapon, you call down fire and ruin on unarmed multitudes—

The dwenda commander snarls and shoves at the clinch. Ringil stands his ground, holds the lock. It feels like nothing, it feels effortless. The krin is a screaming exultant engine in his head. His voice rises over the dwenda’s growls.

—and you leave thousands weeping eternally in your wake. None of this shit is demonic, none of it. You don’t need demons for that.

The blades tilt over and down, up and back. Ringil leans in closer, almost whispering now.

Your acts—are the acts of men. Of lost apes, gibbering in the mist. That’s all you are, it’s all you ever were—

No! It is not so! We are the—

—and I’ve been killing men just like you, all my fucking life.

Face-to-face, inches off biting distance, he smooches his opponent a kiss. The dwenda snarls and tries to force the clinch again.

Ringil lets it slip, lets him think he’s won.

The blades slide, go shivering, grating. The two of them pivot on the lock, the dwenda advances with a shrill, triumphant cry. Gil steps in hard and fast, hooks an elbow up and into the commander’s face, tangles a leg around his opponent’s ankles, shoves. The dwenda staggers. The Ravensfriend comes scraping shrieking off the other blade, swings up and around.

Chops the dwenda’s head loose.

Blood geysers up, the head dangles over at the neck by fleshy shreds. The decapitated body stands for a long moment before it crumples bonelessly into the grass. Ringil lifts his head and lets the blood patter down on his face like rain. He howls, counterpoint to the keening wind, a lament for everything that never was and now has gone away. His bloodied gaze drops to the ranks of the dwenda facing him.

You are men—you are nothing more than men, he yells at them. You’re just like me.

And now it’s time to die.

He storms down in savage joy, to meet all the waiting blades and hate.

CHAPTER 67

The so-called Imperial Road south out of Ishlin-ichan was an undramatic dun-colored streak across the steppe, little more than a drover’s track grown broad. At this end, it snaked up to the city’s southern gate through trampled surrounding grass and expired there in a patch of stony ground. There was barely enough space at the gates for a wagon to turn around in, let alone mustering room for two hundred and eleven Skaranak horsemen and their mounts. Thus Marnak’s solution—a select couple of dozen sat honor guard along the sides of the road with the marines and Throne Eternal, while Archeth made her farewells. The rest had to content themselves with gathering a watchful distance away in the grass beyond, or watering their horses down by the river until it was time to ride.

“Probably just as well,” Carden Han observed. “There haven’t been this many Skaranak outside the walls since the bandlight meander massacres three years back. Whole town’s pretty nervous about this lot; they’ll be glad when you take them away.”

At her back, her horse tossed its head and stamped. Clink and jingle of harness iron.

“Be glad to get moving myself,” she said.

His face fell a little. “Yes, if you could just… mention to the Emperor that this is, well, not the best of postings for a man of my years and experience. I’d be grateful.”

“Rest assured, I shall. Your assistance has been indispensable, my lord Han. Jhiral will hear of it, you have my word.”

“Yes.” He didn’t look as if he really believed her. He cleared his throat, hurried on. “Quite a handsome force there, anyway. No one could say you return to Yhelteth empty-handed.”

And another hundred join us downriver at Broken Arrow ford, if Marnak’s word is good.

In the wake of Poltar’s death and her own sudden fame as the spirit of Ulna Wolfbane returned—or whatever—there’d been a queue of young Skaranak men out the embassy door, eager to sign up in her service and ride south to see the Empire. Marnak weeded out the flaky ones for her and the hopelessly underaged, saw to it that the rest understood what they were embarking upon, and then swore loud blood allegiance with her himself, just to seal the agreement tight. They would now, he assured her, fight and, if necessary, die in her train as if she were Skaranak born.

Three hundred-odd steppe nomad freebooter cavalry.

It was hardly the riches and plunder the quest had promised, hardly a return in triumph. But in time of war and need, it was perhaps not an inconsiderable gift to bring home.

At any rate, it would have to do. Let Jhiral bitch and moan.

She made the clasp with Han once more, murmured formula farewells and good wishes. Then she swung up onto her horse and nudged it around to face south. Kanan Shent and the other Eternals formed up without word on her flanks. Somewhat less handily, the marines wheeled their mounts to follow. She nodded once more at the legate, leaned and clucked gently to her horse, trotted it steadily out along the road.

As she passed the lined ranks of Skaranak to left and right, each man thumped fist to chest and bowed his head.

And then followed on behind.

MARNAK AGREED TO RIDE WITH HER AS FAR AS THE FORD. HE’D SEE TO THE new men when they arrived, ensure that they integrated smoothly into the existing ranks. It was a couple of days over easy ground, and he could do with the time away. Ershal and the shaman’s deaths were too recent, his own involvement too close. His friendship with Ulna Returned notwithstanding, things were a little tense around the encampment right now, and it wasn’t helped by the rumor that with Ershal gone, some of the herd-owners in council wanted to put him forward for the Mastery.

“Don’t fucking want it,” he rumbled. “And if I stay away, maybe they’ll take the hint.”

She grinned. “Or you’ll go back and find yourself already crowned. Leadership stalks you, Ironbrow. Told you, you ought to run south with me while you’ve got the chance.”

“And I told you I’m done fighting other men’s wars. That’s an idiot youngster’s game.”

He’d refused her offer of a new imperial commission and command, repeatedly, but you could tell more than half of him would have loved to go. He rode mostly in silence, peeling off now and then to see to some minor matter of discipline up and down the Skaranak ranks, but when he did speak to her, it was all reminiscence about his time in the south. Dissection of battles they’d both seen against the Scaled Folk, some kind words about her father, tales of adventure and near-death, much of it undertaken at the Dragonbane’s side.

She found talking about Egar and Flaradnam ached a lot less than she’d expected. The past was losing its power to hurt her. There was too much eagerness in her for the future.

Ishgrim—you are going to get such a fucking when I walk through that door.

A few hours into the journey, in one of Marnak’s disciplinary absences, Yilmar Kaptal rode level with her.

“My lady?”

She glanced sideways at him. The bandages were off his hands now, but his left eye and upper face were still swathed and hidden from view. She tried not to remember what he’d looked like when he first staggered upright on the steppe and called out to her. Flesh scorched and melted away at the wraith’s embrace, one cheekbone protruding like a beam end from some torched shack, the eye above gone to bloodied, sightless jelly. Ears eaten back to nubs, hands reduced to blackened, skeletal claws, patches of bluish pale bone showing through. One cheek had been eaten back to the jaw and the teeth grinned at her in the gap. His throat was melted open down to the rib cage, pipes and gore laid bare inside.

She saw furtive silver spidering down in that mess and looked hastily away. Saw the scorched raw corpse of the horse he’d been riding

You’re still alive? she’d blurted at him.

Evidently. Though he didn’t sound too sure. His voice hissed and bubbled in his ruined throat, and the look in his one intact eye was desperate. You must cover my wounds. They must not see me like this. Please.

She did her best. Cut lengths of cloth, the softest she could find, from Ershal’s shirt and breeches, in the end had to use the sleeves from her own blouse, too. Wrapped his hands, thinking sickly of the times she’d seen digits scorched by dragon venom that had healed together into fused, crippled paws from such hopeless treatment. She bound up his head, covered it all but a single diagonal slit so he could see from the remaining eye.

You saved my life, she kept saying numbly as she worked. Salgra Keth. It’s, I know now, I see it. But if you hadn’t come…

He said nothing at all in response. Appeared to have no idea what she was talking about.

By the time Marnak and the others found them, the gurgling in his voice had begun to ebb and he seemed capable of getting on a horse and staying there. And when Han’s surgeon back in Ishlin-ichan stripped the makeshift bandaging off the wounds, they had already shrunk to damage a strong man might survive.

Now, less than a fortnight later, it was as if he’d had no worse than a rookie’s run-in with the desert sun in Demlarashan. Some peeled pink flesh, some ugly spotting.

“Feeling better?” she asked him tonelessly.

“Much. But I really must question your wisdom, my lady, in bringing along that variegated sellsword rabble.”

He gestured back over his shoulder with one pinkly peeling hand. She turned in the saddle, looked back at the men he was talking about.

“There’s a war on, my lord… Kaptal.” Or whoever you really are. “They have all proven themselves capable, they’ve fought and died alongside our own men. Should I turn them away then, on the last leg of our journey home?”

Kaptal sniffed. “It is a matter of trust. They are not imperials. Tand’s men have no loyalty to anything other than coin, and the rest are drawn from the ranks of our present enemy.”

“They’re pretty solidly outnumbered,” she pointed out.

Perhaps impressed by all the talk of tribal blood allegiances and fighting loyalty from the Skaranak, fully half of Tand’s former mercenaries had undertaken to swear similar oaths in Archeth’s service, too. So, curiously, did a handful of the surviving privateers, when they understood what was going on. Wary at first, she eventually agreed. Sat solemnly through their—rather clunky compared to the Skaranak—oath giving and had the legate outfit them with horses. The unsworn remainder she cut loose to seek their fortune in Ishlin-ichan or find their own way home. Carden Han made some noises about extracting parole from the privateers, but, well—good luck with that. She found she no longer cared. So a handful of grubby, penniless pirates dribble back into League lands and choose to rejoin the fray on the side of their homeland.

Had they not earned the right?

Have we not all earned the right, the simple right to go home?

Those of us who still can.

Kaptal hung stubbornly at her side, spoiling her mood. “It is not what they will do now that I fear, my lady. It is the risk their future implies.”

“There’s a risk in everyone’s future, Kaptal. Yours and mine as well.”

“True indeed, my lady.” The undead pimp-made-good lowered his voice, leaned closer across the space between them. “And that is something else that I would like to discuss with you, perhaps when we make camp tonight. Our Empire is adrift in uncertain times, and with this new force you have at you personal command—”

“Enough!”

Whiplash swift, she had him by the arm. She yanked him closer still, almost out of his saddle. Looked hard into his healing face, put on a smile for any audience they might have, kept her voice to a corrosive hiss. “I don’t know who’s really in there, you or Tharalanangharst, but this is for both of you. We have already had our one and only chat about insurrection. I will not jeopardize what my people spent centuries building, out of some misguided belief in a glorious new era of leadership. We are going home to help our Emperor end this war as swiftly and cleanly as possible, and when that is done, I will resume my role as imperial adviser at court. And that is all I will do. Is that fucking clear?”

Kaptal looked impassively back at her out of his single eye.

“Quite clear, my lady,” he said.

She let him go. “Good. Now fuck off back down the line and leave me alone.”

He fell back, and presently Marnak rode up to replace him.

“Trouble?” the Majak asked.

She shook her head. “Bit of a disagreement over court etiquette. No big deal. My lord Kaptal and I have different ideas about how to proceed when we get back home.”

The Ironbrow wrinkled his nose. “The imperial court for a workplace. I don’t envy you that.”

“Yeah, well. There’s a good chance you’re going back to be clanmaster, so don’t look so fucking smug.”

“I told you, I have no interest in that. There are more worthwhile pursuits.” He grinned in his beard. “Do you have someone waiting for you at home?”

“Yeah.” Ishgrim’s face came to her, brought with it the quick, hot twinge in her belly and an answering smile. “I do, actually.”

He saw the smile. “Then you, too, know what is truly worthwhile.”

“Yes, I do.”

And she urged her horse into a faster trot, along the road southward and home.