The Steel Remains (7 page)

Archeth forced down the scalding behind her eyes and managed a dry, self-possessed voice.

“My lord, I fail to see why I would want such a favor.”

“Oh come, come, Archeth. Do you see an invigilator in here? We are alone— and worldly, you and I, soaked through with the storm of education and experience this world has given us.” The Emperor gestured with his scented hand. “Let us at least enjoy the pleasures that derive. Laws graven in stone are all well and good for the common herd, but are we not above such paltry considerations?”

“It is not given to me to question the Revelation, my lord.”

A swift borrowing of the Prophet's words, weighty with the echo, and solid coin as a result. Jhiral looked miffed.

“Clearly not, Archeth.
To none in the material realm is it given.
But consider, as even the Ashnal interpretations do, that there must surely be compensation for the burden of leadership, a loosening of ties intended for governance of those less able to govern themselves. Come, I shall send the girl to you as soon as you return.”

“Return, my lord?”

“Oh yes. I'm sending you to Khangset. It seems there's been some disturbance there. Some kind of reavers. The reports are rather incoherent.”

Archeth blinked. “Khangset is a garrisoned port, my lord.”

“Just so. Which makes it all the more strange that anyone would be stupid enough to launch an attack on it. Ordinarily, I'd simply send a detachment of the Throne Eternal my father was so fond of, and then forget about it. However, the messenger who brought the news seemed to think there was some kind of sorcery at work.” Jhiral saw the look Archeth gave him and shrugged. “Science or sorcery, the man's a peasant and he's not clear on these distinctions. I can't say I am myself, come to that. Anyway, you're my resident expert on these things. I've had a horse saddled for you, and you can have that detachment of the Throne Eternal I mentioned. With their very own and most holy invigilator attached, of course. Since you're feeling so pious these days, that should suit you down to the ground. They're all waiting in the west wing courtyard. Quite impatiently, by now, I should imagine.”

“You wish me to leave immediately, my lord?”

“Yes, I would be immensely grateful if you would do that.” Jhiral's voice dripped irony. “At a hard ride, I'd imagine you could reach Khangset by tomorrow afternoon, wouldn't you?”

“I am wholly yours to command, my lord.” The ritual words tasted ashen in her mouth. With Akal, it had been different, the same words but never the same taste. “My body and my soul.”

“Don't tempt me,” said Jhiral drily. “Now, do you have any requirements above and beyond the men I've allocated?”

“The messenger. I'd like to question him before I leave.”

“He's going back with you. Anything else?”

Archeth thought about it for as long as she dared. “If this was an
attack by sea, I'd like to have Mahmal Shanta's opinion on any wreckage we find.”

Jhiral grunted. “Well, he'll be delighted, I'm sure. I don't think he's been off that housebarge of his since the Ynval regatta, and even that was only to inspect the new navy launches. He certainly hasn't been on a horse this year.”

“He is the foremost naval engineering authority in the Empire, my lord.”

“Don't lecture your Emperor, Archeth. It's not good for your health.” The tone of the veiled threat was playful, but Archeth knew she'd struck a nerve. “I'm well aware of the court appointments my dear father made, and why he made them. Very well, I'll send to the cantankerous old bastard, and he can meet you at the city gates. You'll be good company for each other, I imagine.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

“Yes.” Jhiral rubbed at his chin and caught the scent of the slave girl on his fingers again. His nostrils flared slightly, and he made a dismissive gesture with the hand. “Well, you'd better go then, hadn't you?”

Archeth got to her feet, rituals at the ready.

“I speed to do your will.”

“Oh, please, Archeth. Just get out of my sight, will you.”

On the way out, she passed the pale- skinned slave girl where she sat between the inner and outer curtains, awaiting the imperial summons. She'd lifted her veil, and Archeth saw that she was, perhaps unsurprisingly, quite beautiful. Their eyes met for a brief moment, and then the girl looked quickly away. A scarlet flush spread down over her face and breasts.

From within came the sound of Jhiral clearing his throat.

The girl scrambled back to her hands and knees and crawled toward the gap in the curtains. Her breasts swung heavily with the motion. Archeth placed one hand on her shoulder, felt a flinch go through the smooth flesh where she touched. The girl looked up.

“Your veil,” Archeth mouthed, in Naomic.

Parted lips, a soft, panicked sound. The girl began to tremble visibly.
Archeth gestured calm with both hands, crouched beside her and settled the veil carefully in place, reached up inside the muslin to tuck away a loose fall of candlewax- colored hair.

On the other side of the inner curtains, Jhiral cleared his throat again, louder. The girl lowered her head and began once more to crawl, under the curtain and into his imperial radiance's presence. Archeth watched her go, lips pressed tight to cover for the gritted teeth beneath. Her nostrils flared, and the breath that came through them was audible. For a single insane moment, she stood there and strained toward the inner curtain.

Get the fuck out of here, Archidi. Right now.

Just another slave, that's all.
It flitted through her head, faster than she could catch at it. She wasn't sure whom the thought was referring to.

She turned and left.

Went obediently about her Emperor's business.

here the broad westward flow of the River Trel split and spread in tributaries, and wore itself into the soft cushioned loam of the Naom coastal plain like the lines etched across a man's palm, where the sea spent its force across acres of mudflat and marsh and could not easily threaten man- made structure, one of Grace- of- Heaven Milacar's distant ancestors had once spotted a less- than- obvious strategic truth— to wit, that a city surrounded by such a maze of mingled land and water would in effect be a kind of fortress. Well, being by nature a modest as well as an inventive man, this root patriarch of the Milacar line not only went ahead and founded an ingenious settlement you could only reach with local guides through the marsh; he also renounced the right to name the city after himself and called it instead Trel- a- lahayn, from the old Myrlic
lahaynir—
blessed refuge. Out of this vision, and the eventual laziness of men's tongues, Trelayne was born. And over time, as stone replaced
wood, and cobbles covered mud streets, as blocks and then towers rose gracefully over the plain to become the city we all know and love, as the lights, the very lights of that subtle fortress came to be visible to caravanserai and ship captains a full day and night before they reached it, so the origins of the city were lost, and the clan name
Mi-lacar,
sadly, came to be valued no more than any other…

At least, that was Grace- of- Heaven's end of the tale, backed up now as always with consistent narrative passion if not actual evidence. There weren't many who would have had the nerve to call him a liar to his face, far less interrupt him with the accusation at his own dinner table.

Ringil stood in the brocade- hung entryway and grinned.

“Not this horseshit again,” he drawled loudly. “Haven't you got any
new
stories, Grace?”

Conversation drained out of the candlelit dining chamber like the last of the sand from an hourglass. Bandlight seeped coldly into the quiet from window drapes along the far wall. Gazes flickered about, on and off the newcomer, in among the gathered company. Some at the broad oval table looked around, arms in richly tailored cloth braced on chair backs— squeak of shifting chair legs and the soft brush of heavy robes in motion across the floor. Well- fed and contented faces turned, some of them still chewing their last mouthful, momentarily robbed of their self- assurance. Mouths open, eyes wide. The machete boy crouched at Milacar's right hip blinked, and his hand tightened on the hilt of the ugly eighteen- inch chopping blade at his belt.

Ringil caught the boy's eye. Held it a moment, no longer grinning.

Milacar made a tiny clucking sound, tongue behind his top teeth. It sounded like a kiss. The boy let go of the machete hilt.

“Hello, Gil. I heard you were back.”

“You heard right, then.” Ringil switched his gaze from boy to master. “Seems you're as well informed as ever.”

Milacar— always rather less svelte than he would probably have liked, rather less tall than his claim to ancestral Naom blood suggested he should be. But if these elements had not changed, then neither had the stocky, muscular energy that smoked off him even when he sat, the sense that it wouldn't take much to have him come up out of the chair, big
cabled arms falling to a street fighter's guard, fists rolled up and ready to beat the unceremonious shit out of anyone who was asking for it.

For now, he settled for a pained frown, and rubbed at his chin with the pads of his index and middle fingers. His eyes creased and crinkled with a smile that stayed just off his lips. Deep, gorgeous blue, like the sunstruck ocean off the headland at Lanatray, dancing alive in the light from the candles. He held Ringil's look and his mouth moved, something inaudible, something for Ringil alone.

The moment broke.

Milacar's doorman, whom Ringil had left encumbered and struggling to hang his cloak and the Ravensfriend, arrived red- faced and cringing in his wake. He wasn't a young man and he was puffed from sprinting up the stairs and down the corridor after his escaped charge.

“Uhm, his worthiness Master Ringil of Eskiath Fields, licensed knight graduate of Trelayne and—”

“Yes, yes, Quon, thank you,” Milacar said acidly. “Master Ringil has already announced himself. You may go.”

“Yes, your honor.” The doorman darted a poisonous glance at Ringil. “Thank you, your honor.”

“Oh, and Quon. Try to keep up with the uninvited arrivals, if you could. You never know, the next one might be an assassin.”

“Yes, your honor. I'm truly sorry, your honor. It won't happen agai—”

Milacar waved him out. Quon shut up and withdrew, bowing and wringing his hands. Ringil crushed out a quiver of sympathy for the man, stepped on it like a spilled pipe ember. No time for that now. He advanced into the room. The machete boy watched him with glittering eyes.

“You're not an assassin, are you, Gil?”

“Not tonight.”

“Good. Because you seem to have left that big sword of yours behind somewhere.” Milacar paused delicately. “If, of course, you still have it. That big sword of yours.”

Ringil reached the table at a point roughly opposite Grace- of-Heaven.

“Yeah, still got it.” He grinned, made a leg for his host. “Still as big as ever.”

A couple of outraged gasps from the assembled company. He looked around at the faces.

“I'm sorry, I'm forgetting my manners. Good evening, gentlemen. Ladies.” Though there were, technically, none of the latter in the room. Every female present had been paid. He surveyed the heaped table, matched gazes with one of the whores at random, spoke specifically to her.

“So what's good, my lady?”

Shocked, gently rocking quiet. The whore opened her purple- painted mouth in disbelief, gaped back at him. Ringil smiled patiently. She looked hopelessly around for guidance from one or another of her outraged clients.

“It's all good, Gil.” If the room bristled at Ringil's subtle insult in addressing a prostitute ahead of the gathered worthies, Milacar at least was unmoved. “That's why I pay for it. But why don't you try the cougar heart, there in the yellow bowl. That's especially good. A Yhelteth marinade. I don't imagine you'll have tasted much of that sort of thing in recent years, out there in the sticks.”

“No, that's right. Strictly mutton and wolf, down among the peasants.” Ringil leaned in and scooped a chunk of meat from the bowl. His fingers dripped sauce back across the table in a line. He bit in, chewed for a while, and nodded. “That's pretty good for a bordello spread.”

More gasps. At his elbow, someone shot to his feet. Bearded face, not much older than forty, and not as overfed as others around the table. Burly beneath the purple- and- gold upriver couture, some muscle on that frame by the look of it. A hand clapped to a court rapier that had not been checked at the door. Ringil spotted a signet ring with the marsh daisy emblem.

“This is an outrage! You will not insult this company with impunity, Eskiath. I demand—”

“I'd rather you didn't call me that,” Ringil told him, still chewing.
“Master Ringil
will do fine.”

“You, sir, need a lesson in—”

“Sit
down.”

Ringil's voice barely rose, but the flicker of his look was a lash. He locked gazes with his challenger, and the other man flinched. It was the same threat he'd offered the machete boy, given voice this time in case the recipient was drunk or just hadn't ever stood close enough to a real fight to read Ringil's look for what it promised.