The Steel Remains

CHAPTER 7

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

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

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

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

Someone behind you.

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

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

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

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

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

Nothing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The laughter again.

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

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

Fucking krinzanz nerves.

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh well, what a surprise.”

He sighed. “Good morning, Mother.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“After a fashion, yes.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Not in front of the servants, eh?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

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

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

“Well, he wants to see you, anyway.”

“Who does?”

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

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

“Is he now?”

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

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

“Are you coming or not?”

“Take a wild guess.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“An infusion, my lord,” she murmured.

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

“I’m sorry, my lord.”

“Right. Leave it there, then.”

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

He heard them coming.

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

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

“Looks like she was right, then.”

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

But now . . .

And finally, the knowledge crashed in on him, like something tearing a seam. Soft-footed and slim despite the years that had grayed his temples, Murmin Kaad stepped down into the room.

“Good day, Master Ringil.”

Ringil sat rigid.

“Ha! Cat got his tongue.” But Gingren had been—was perhaps still, just about—a warrior, and he knew what the sudden stillness in his son meant. He made a low gesture at Kaad with one hand, a warning to stay back. “Lord Justice Kaad has come here as my invited guest, Ringil. He’d like to talk to you about something.”

Ringil stared very carefully straight ahead.

“So let him talk.”

Brief hesitation. Gingren nodded, and Kaad stepped across to the far side of the table. He made a show of pulling out one of the crude wooden stools, of settling onto it with ironic magnanimity for the lack of ceremony or plush. He rearranged his cloak about him, pulled up closer to the table edge, rested his hands on the scarred surface in a loose clasp. A silver ring chased with gold inlay and the city’s Chancellery crest bulked on one finger.

“It is always good,” he began formally, “to see one of the city’s honored sons so returned.”

Ringil flickered him a glance. “I said talk, not tongue my arse clean. Get on with it, will you.”

“Ringil!”

“No, no, Gingren, it’s all right.” But it clearly wasn’t—Ringil saw the quick stain of anger pass across the other man’s face, just as rapidly wiped away and replaced with a strained diplomatic smile. “Your son and the Committee have not always seen eye-to-eye. Youth. It is, after all, not a crime.”

“It was for Jelim Dasnel.” The old anger fizzled in him, blunted a little with the comedown. “As I recall.”

Another brief pause. Behind Ringil, Gingren made a knotted-up sound, then evidently thought better of releasing it into speech.

Kaad put on the thin smile again. “As I recall, Jelim Dasnel broke the laws of Trelayne and made a mockery of the morality that governs us all. As did you, Ringil, though it grieves me to recall the fact in your family home. One example had to be made.”

The anger found its edge, shed the comedown blur and glinted clean and new. Ringil leaned across his half of the table, fixed Kaad with lover’s eyes.

“Should I be grateful to you?” he whispered.

Kaad held his gaze. “Yes, I would think you should. It could as easily have been two cages at the eastern gate as one.”

“No, not easily. Not for a lickspittle little social aspirant like you, Kaad. Not with a big fat chance to get on the Eskiath tit in the offing.” Ringil manufactured a smile of his own—it felt like an obscenity as it crawled across his face, it felt like a wound. “Haven’t you sucked your fill yet, little man? What do you want now?”

And now he had him. The rage stormed the other man’s face again, and this time it held its ground. The smile evaporated, the patrician mask tightened at mouth and eyes, the groomed, half-bearded cheeks darkened with fury past dissembling. Kaad’s origins were pure harbor-end, and the disdain with which he’d been viewed by the high families as he rose through the legislature had never been concealed. The ring and the badges of rank had come hard, the stiff smiles and party invitations from Glades society clawed forth like blood; wary respect if not acceptance, never acceptance, mined from the lying aristocratic heart of Trelayne with cunning and cold, inching calculation, one shored-up bargain and veiled power play at a time. In Ringil’s sneer, the other man could hear the creak of that shoring, the sudden cold-water chill of knowing how flimsy and man-made it all was, and how at blood-deep levels that had nothing to do with material wealth or rank displayed, nothing had or ever would change. Kaad was still the tolerated but unappreciated guest in the house, the grubby, harbor-end intruder he’d always been.

“How dare you!”

“Oh, I dare.” Ringil let one hand slide up to rub casually at his neck, alongside the upjutting spike of the Ravensfriend’s pommel. “I dare.”

“You owe me your life!”

Ringil slanted a look at his father, calculated more than anything to further infuriate Kaad, to dismiss him as a threat worth keeping his eye on.

“How much more of this do I have to listen to?”

Gingren smouldered to anger. “That’s enough, Ringil!”

“Yeah, I’d say so, too.”

“You tell.” Kaad, getting up now, face still mottled with fury. “Your degenerate, your fucking ungrateful degenerate son, you tell him—”

“What did you call me?”

“Ringil!”

“You tell him where the lines are drawn, Gingren. Right now. Or I leave, and I take my vote with me.”

“His vote?” Ringil stared at his father. “His fucking vote?”

“Shut up!” It was a roar fit for a battlefield, a great tolling bellow in the confines of the kitchen. “Both of you! Just shut up and start acting like a pair of adults. Kaad, sit down. We’re not finished. And Ringil, no matter what you think, you’ll keep a courteous tongue in your head while you’re under my roof. This is not some roadside tavern for you to brawl in.”

Ringil made a small spitting sound. “The roadside taverns of my acquaintance have cleaner clientele. They don’t like torturers much in the uplands.”

“What about the murderers of small children?” Kaad seated himself again, with the same fastidious attention to the drape of his cloak. He shot Ringil a significant look. “How do they react to that?”

Ringil said nothing. The old memory seeped in his mind, a flow he stanched before it got properly started. He placed his hands around the flagon of steaming tea and stared downward. Still too hot to drink. Gingren saw his chance.

“We’re trying to help you, Ringil.”

“Are you really, Father.”

“We know you’ve been sniffing around the Salt Warren,” said Kaad.

Ringil looked up abruptly.

“You’re having me followed?”

Kaad shrugged. Made a small, worldly gesture. In Ringil’s head, recollection of the walk home slipped into focus. Sounds of soft pursuit. The prickle at his neck. Watchers among the trees, scuttling away.

He let the smile that was a gash split his face again.

“You want to be careful, Kaad. You let your Committee thugs creep up too close on me, you’re liable to find yourself fishing them out of the harbor in chunks.”

“I’d advise you against threatening Chancellery staff, Master Ringil.”

“It wasn’t a threat. It’s what’ll happen.”

Gingren made an impatient noise. “Point is, Ringil, we know you’re not getting anywhere with Etterkal. That’s what we can help you with. What Lord Kaad here can help you with.”

Something like a sense of wonder crept up in Ringil. He sensed vaguely the shape of what was before him, felt carefully around its edges.

“You’re going to get me into the Salt Warren?”

Kaad cleared his throat. “Not as such, no. But there are, let us say, more profitable avenues of inquiry that you might pursue.”

“Might I?” asked Ringil tonelessly. “And what avenues are those?”

“You are looking for Sherin Herlirig Mernas, widow of Bilgrest Mernas, sold under the debt guarantors’ charter last month.”

“Yeah. You know where she is?”

“Not at this precise moment. But the resources of the Chancellery might very well be opened to you in a way that they have not yet been.”

Ringil shook his head. “I’m done with the Chancellery. There’s nothing worth knowing up there that I don’t already know.”

Hesitation. Gingren and Kaad swapped glances.

“There is the issue of manpower,” began Kaad. “We could—”

“You could provide me with enough Watch uniforms to turn the Salt Warren upside down. Break some heads and get some answers. How about that?”

Again, the exchange of looks, the grim expressions. Ringil, for all he’d known what the response would be, coughed out a disbelieving laugh.

“Hoiran’s fucking balls, what is it about Etterkal?” Though, if Milacar was to be believed, he already knew, and was starting to realize it must, after all, be taken seriously. “The place was a fucking slum last time I was here. Now everyone’s too fucking scared to go knock on the gate?”

“Ringil, there is more to this than you understand. More than your mother understood when she called you back.”

“Yeah, that’s becoming very clear.” Ringil stabbed a finger at his father. “You wouldn’t lift a finger to help Sherin when they sold her, but now I’m banging on the Salt Warren gate, it suddenly merits attention. What is it, Dad? You want me to stop? Am I going to upset the wrong people? Am I going to embarrass you again?”

“You take this matter too lightly, Master Ringil. You do not understand what you are about to involve yourself in.”

“He just said that, Kaad. What are you, a fucking parrot?”

“Your father is motivated principally by concern for your well-being.”

“Candidly, I doubt that. But even if it were true, that leaves you. What’s your end of this, you conniving old fuck?”

Fist slammed onto the table, Kaad half risen from his seat.

“You will not speak to me in that way,” he said thickly.

Then he was reeling backward off the stool, falling, both hands up to his face, mashing in the sound of a high shriek and streaming with the heated tea. Ringil got up and tossed the emptied flagon across the table after him, onto the flagstone floor, where it lay, still steaming slightly from the mouth.

“I’ll speak to you exactly how I like, Kaad.” He was oddly cold and calm now, tranquil in the understanding that this and all it implied had been unavoidable from the moment he agreed to come home. “You got a problem with my mouth, I’ll see you on Brillin Hill Fields about it.”

Kaad rocked back and forth on the floor in the puddle of his own cloak. His hands still clutched at his face. He made a mewling sound through the fingers. Gingren stood mute with disbelief, staring from the downed justice to his son. Ringil ignored him.

“If you can get someone to show you which end of a sword you’re supposed to pick it up by, that is.”

“Hoiran damn your fucking soul to hell!”

“If you really believe what you preach, he’s already done that. Alongside all my carnal sins, I don’t think roughing up the local magistrature is going to impress the Dark King all that much. Sorry.”

By now Gingren had gone around the end of the table and was kneeling by Kaad’s side. The justice slapped away his efforts to help. He climbed to his feet, face already turning pink and raw looking across nose and one cheek where the tea had evidently burned worst. He pointed a trembling finger at Ringil.

“On your own head, Eskiath. This will be on your own head.”

“It always is.”

Kaad gathered his robes about him. From somewhere, he mustered a sneer. “No, Master Ringil. Like all your kind, the consequences of what you do are borne by others. From Gallows Gap to the cages at the eastern gate, it is others, always others, who pay the carriage for your acts.”

Ringil twitched forward a quarter inch. Held himself back.

“Now you’d really better get out,” he said quietly.

Kaad went. Perhaps he saw something in Ringil’s eyes, perhaps he just didn’t see any way to salvage value from the situation. He was, after all, a political animal. Gingren hurried after him, one furious backflung glance at his son in lieu of words. Ringil stood still a couple of moments after they’d gone, then slumped under the gathering weight of the comedown. He leaned flat palms on the table in front of him, gazed at the emptied flagon there.

“Wouldn’t have thought it was still that hot,” he murmured, and chuckled a little to himself. He looked around for the serving girl, but she hadn’t reappeared. He squinted down toward the door out to the garden, where the light was now getting bright enough to hurt his krin-stunned pupils. He thought about going to bed, but in the end, he just sat back down at the table and sank his head in his hands instead. A fading trace of the drug whined about in the back of his head.

Gingren found him there, unmoved, what felt like hours later.

“Well, now you’ve done it,” he growled.

Ringil wiped hands down his face and looked up at his father. “I hope so. I don’t want to have to breathe the same air as that fuck again.”

“Oh, Hoiran’s teeth! What is it with you, Ringil? Just for once tell me, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?” Suddenly Ringil was off the stool, scant inches out of his father’s fighting space. His arm scythed out, pointing eastward. “He sent Jelim to die on a fucking spike!”

“That was fifteen years ago. And anyway, Jelim Dasnal was a degenerate, he—”

“Then so am I, Dad. So am I.”

“—fucking deserved the cage.”

“Then so did I!”

It screamed up out of him, the dark poison pressure of it, the same nagging ache that had driven him up the pass at Gallows Gap, like biting down on a rotten tooth, the pain and the sweet leak of pus behind it, the taste of his own hate in his mouth, and a trembling that now he found he couldn’t stop. Gingren saw it, and wavered in the blast.

“Ringil, it was the law.”

“Oh lizardshit!” But abruptly the force of his rage was no longer there, the krin drop was crushing it out, falling on him harder now with every waking second, bleaching away his focus. He went back to the stool and seated himself again, voice flung dull and disinterested back over his shoulder at Gingren where he stood. “It was a political deal, and you know it. You think they would have hung Jelim up at the eastern gate if his surname had been Eskiath? Or Alannor, or Wrathrill, or any other name with a Glades punch behind it? You think any of those raping sadists up at the Academy are ever going to see the sharp end of a cage?”

“That,” said Gingren stiffly, “is not something we—”

“Oh, fuck off. Just forget it.” Ringil dumped his chin into one cupped hand, defocusing vision of the grain in the table’s wooden surface as the comedown leaned in on him. “I’m not going to do this, Father. I’m not going to argue about the past with you. What’s the point? Look, I’m sorry if I fucked up your negotiations with the Chancellery.”

“Not just mine. Kaad could have helped you.”

“Yeah. Could have, but he wasn’t going to. He just wanted—you both just want—me to stay away from the Salt Warren. The rest is just distraction. It isn’t going to help me find Sherin.”

“And you think thugging your way into Etterkal is?”

Ringil shrugged. “Etterkal took her. That’s where the useful answers are going to be.”

“Hoiran’s teeth, Ringil. Is it really worth it?” Gingren came to the table, leaned on it at his son’s shoulder, leaned over him. His breath was sour with stress and lack of sleep. “I mean, one fucking merchant’s daughter, barren anyway, and too stupid to look to her own welfare in good time? She’s not even a full cousin.”

“I don’t expect you to understand.” Any more than I understand it myself.

“She’ll be soiled goods by now, Ringil. You do know that, don’t you? You know how the slave markets work.”

“Like I said, I don’t expe—”

“Good, because I don’t.” Gingren thumped the table, but with a despairing lack of real force. “I don’t understand how the same man who helped save this whole fucking city from the lizards can stand there and tell me that getting back one raped and brutalized female is more important to him than protecting the stability of the very same city he fought so hard to save.”

Ringil looked up at him. “So it’s about stability now, is it?”

“Yeah. It is.”

“Want to expand on that?”

Gingren looked away. “This is under seal of council. I can’t divulge—”

“Fine.”

“Ringil, I promise you. On the honor of the Eskiath name, I swear it. It may not seem like much, you stirring up trouble in Etterkal, but there’s a threat at the heart of all this and it’s easily the equal of those fucking lizards you threw off the city walls back in ’53.”

Ringil sighed. He rubbed the heels of his palms in his eyes, trying to dislodge the feeling of grit.

“I had a rather minor part in lifting the siege, Father. And to be honest I would have done the same thing for any other city, including Yhelteth, if we’d had to fight there instead. I know we’re not supposed to say that kind of thing these days, seeing as how we’re back to being sworn enemies with the Empire. But it’s the truth, and truth is something I’m kind of partial to. Call it an affectation.”

Gingren drew himself up. “Truth is not an affectation.”

“No?” Ringil summoned energy and stood up to leave. He yawned. “Doesn’t seem any more popular around here than it was when I left, though. Funny, they always said it was one of the things we were fighting for back then. Light, justice, and truth. I distinctly remember being told that.”

They stood looking at each other for a couple of long moments. Gingren drew breath, audibly, as if it hurt to do. The expression he wore shifted.

“You’re still going, then? Into Etterkal. Despite everything you’ve just heard.”

“Yeah, I am.” Ringil tilted his head until his neck gave up its tension with a click. “Tell Kaad not to get in my way, eh.”

Gingren held his gaze. Nodded as if just convinced of something.

“You know, I don’t like him any more than you do, Ringil. I don’t like him any more than the next harbor-end cur. But curs have their uses.”

“I suppose they do.”

“These are not the most honorable of times we find ourselves in.”

Ringil hoisted an eyebrow. “You reckon?”

Another silence, into which Gingren made a noise that might, locked behind closed lips, have been a laugh. Ringil masked his disbelief. His father hadn’t laughed in his company for the best part of two decades. Uncertainly, he let the trace of a smile touch his own mouth.

“I’ve got to go to bed, Dad.”

Gingren nodded again, pulled in another breath that seemed to hurt him.

“Ringil, I . . .” He shook his head. Gestured helplessly. “You, you know . . . if you’d just been . . . If only you . . .”

“Didn’t like to suck other men’s cocks. Yeah, I know.” Ringil came to life, heading for the door, walking quickly past Gingren so he wouldn’t have to watch his father’s face twitch in revulsion. He paused at the other man’s shoulder, leaned close and murmured, “But the problem is, Dad, I do.”

His father flinched as if he’d struck him. Ringil sighed. Then he raised a hand and clapped Gingren roughly on the chest and shoulder.

“It’s okay, Dad,” he said quietly. “You’ve got two other red-blooded sons to make you proud. They both did pretty good at the siege.”

Gingren said nothing, did nothing, made no audible noise. He might as well have been a statue. Ringil sighed again, let his hand drop from his father’s shoulder and walked away.

Sleep. Sleep would help.

Right.