The Steel Remains (14 page)

“So there you are.”

Mahmal Shanta stood outside the dwelling, framed in a stone doorway that had somehow escaped the devastation to the wall it was once set in. Off his horse, the engineer seemed to have regained a modicum of good humor. He cocked an eyebrow at the phantom entrance and stepped through, squinted around at the mess and grimaced. She couldn't tell if he'd spotted the corpses yet or not, but he couldn't have missed the stench.

“Seen enough?”

She shook her head. “Not enough to make any sense of it.”

“Is that what we're doing here?” Shanta came closer, peering at her face. “You been crying?”

“It's the smoke.”

“Right.” He cleared his throat. “Well, since you're foolhardy enough
to actually want an explanation for all this, I thought you might like to know Rakan's boys have found us a survivor. Maybe we could ask her.”

“A survivor? Here?”

“Yes, here. It seems while everyone else was stampeding out into the surrounding countryside, this one was smart enough to find a hiding place and sit tight in it.” Shanta gestured back out to the street. “They've got her down by the harbor, they're trying to feed her. Apparently, she's been living off beetles and rainwater for the last four days, hasn't been out of her hidey- hole since the raid. She's not what you'd call calm right now.”

“Great.” Archeth looked deliberately around the ruined house one more time. The corner of her gaze caught on the child's crushed rib cage again, as if each upjutting, snapped- off rib was a barb made expressly for that purpose. “So let's get the fuck out of here.”

“After you, milady.”

Out in the street, some of the pressure seemed to come off. Late-afternoon sunlight slanted down across the piles of rubble; birds sweetened the air with song. Down the hill, the sea was a burnished, glinting fleece to the horizon. The heat of the day was beginning to ebb.

But the ruin stood at her back like a reproach. She felt like an ungracious guest, walking out on mortified hosts.

Shanta came past her, woke her from the moment and broke her free.

“You coming?” he asked.

Halfway down the road to the harbor with him, she remembered.

“So what was all that about back there?
Foolhardy enough to actually want an explanation,
what's that supposed to mean?”

Shanta shrugged. “Oh, you know. We're not a people that cares much about ultimate causes, are we? Show the flag, roll out the levy. Punish
someone
so we all feel better, doesn't much matter who. Remember Vanbyr?”

Archeth stopped and stared at him. “I'm not likely to have forgotten it.”

“Well, there you go then.”

“I'm not here to show the flag and look for scapegoats, Mahmal. This is a fact- finding mission.”

“Is that what Jhiral told you?” The naval engineer pulled a face. “You must have caught him on a good day.”

They stood locked to a halt on the ash- smeared street stones, listening to the echo of Shanta's words on the breeze, searching each other's faces for the next step. The silence grew rooted between them. The relationship went back, but they didn't know each other well enough for this.

“I think,” Archeth said finally, quietly, “that perhaps we'd best both concentrate on doing what we were sent here to do, and let our concerns for our Emperor remain a matter for private thought and prayer.”

Shanta's lined, hawkish face creased into a well- worn court smile.

“Indeed, milady. Indeed. Not a day goes by that Jhiral Khimran does not feature pointedly in my prayers.” A slight but formal bow from the chest up. “As I am sure is the case for you as well.”

He made no mention of what it was he prayed for on his Emperor's behalf. Archeth, who didn't pray at all, made an indeterminate noise of assent in her throat.

And they went on down the ashen thoroughfares together, quiet and a little more hurried now, as if the ambiguity in Shanta's words stalked after them, nose to the ground and a peeled glimpse of teeth revealed.

t was still light when he got up.

Somewhat surprised by the fact, Ringil wandered yawning about the house in search of servants, found some, and ordered a hot bath drawn. Then he went down to the kitchens while he was waiting, scavenged a plate of bread and dried meat, and ate it standing at a window, staring absently through the glass at late- afternoon shadows on the lawn. The kitchen staff bustled about him in steam and shouted commands, carefully ignoring his presence, more or less as if he were some expensive and delicate statue dumped inconveniently in their midst. He looked about for the girl who'd served him tea but didn't see her. When the bath was ready, he went back upstairs and soaked in it until the water started to cool. Then he toweled off without help, dressed with fastidious care from the new wardrobe Ishil had funded for him, put on the Ravensfriend and a feathered cap, and took himself out for a walk.

The Glades were suffused with dappled amber sunlight and thronged with strollers out enjoying the last of the autumn warmth. For a while he contented himself with drifting among them, ignoring the glances the sword on his back attracted, and letting the last dregs of the krin rinse out in the glow from the declining sun. High in the eastern sky, the edge of the band arched just visible against the blue. Ringil caught himself staring blankly up at it, and out of nowhere he had an idea.

Shalak.

He picked his way down to the moss- grown Glades quayside, where there were tables and chairs set up for the view, stalls serving lemonade and cakes at inflated prices, and a steady traffic of small boats picking up and dropping off parties of expensively dressed picnickers from the upriver districts. Eventually, he managed to find a boatman halfway willing to take him downriver to Ekelim, and jumped lightly aboard before the man could change his mind. He stood in the stern as they pulled away from the shore, watching the Glades as it receded, face washed warm with stained- glass sunset light, only faintly aware that he was striking a pose. He sat down, shifted about on the damp wood with due attention to his new clothes and the slant of the Ravensfriend until he was more or less comfortable, and tried to blink the sun out of his eyes.

“Not many days like this left in the year,” the boatman commented over his oars. “They say we're in for an Aldrain winter.”

“Who does?” Ringil asked absently. They were always predicting an Aldrain winter. It would be what passed for presaging doom among the entrail- readers at Strov market now that the war was over and won.

The boatman was keen to expound. “Everyone thinks it, my lord. The fisher crews down at harbor end all say it's harder to land silverfry this year than they've ever known before. The waters are colder flowing in from the Hironish isles. And there've been signs. Hailstones the size of a man's fist. On the marsh flats at south Klist, they've seen strange lights at dawn and evening, and people hear a black dog barking through the night. My wife's brother stands forward lookout for one of Majak Urdin's whalers, and he says they've had to sail farther north this year to sight spouts. One day at the end of last month they went out beyond the Hironish, and he saw stones of fire falling from the band right into the water. There was a storm that night and …”

And so on.

Ringil went ashore at Ekelim with the echoes of it all still in his head. He headed up Dray Street from the harbor, hoping a little belatedly that Shalak hadn't found occasion to move premises anytime in the last decade. It was slow progress through the milling early- evening crowds, but the cut and fabric of his new clothes helped open a path. People didn't want trouble, even at this end of the river. There were members of the Watch paired on street corners, watching the press and toying twitchily with long wooden day- clubs; in resolving any dispute, they were going to see the same things in Ringil's clothing as everyone else. He'd get the rich man's benefit of the doubt, and anyone on the other side of the equation was going to get dragged down a side alley and given a swift, timber- edged lesson in manners.

He reached the corner of Dray and Blubber, and grinned a little. He needn't have worried about the passing of time here. Ten years on, Shalak's place hadn't changed any more than a priest's mind. The frontage was the same scoured stonework and dark, coffee- stain windows lit dimly from within, the same heavy browed eaves drooping so low across the front door you could bash your head if you'd grown up sufficiently well nourished to gain the height. The same cryptic sign swinging outside on its rusted iron bracket:

COME IN AND SEE.

Back in the early years, before the war, there'd been another set of words up on that sign:
COME IN AND LOOK AROUND
—
YOU MIGHT SEE SOMETHING THAT LIKES YOU,
surrounded by a ring of arcane— and, Ringil always suspected, fake— Aldrain glyphs. But then came the ‘50s, the war and the dragonfire and the alien invaders from the sea. What had once been a harmless come- on for the dilettante Vanishing Folk enthusiasts Shalak made his living from was now suddenly a statement of sorcerous intent that verged on treason. Some said it was the west that the Aldrain had vanished into, and it was out of the west that the Scaled Folk were coming now; Shalak had his windows smashed by angry mobs a couple of times, had stones thrown at him in the street on more occasions than he could easily count, was summoned repeatedly to appear before the Committee for Public Morals. He got the message. The sign came down,
the glyphs were scrubbed off every surface inside the shop, and any claims of magical powers for the items Shalak sold were replaced with disclaimers stating that nothing was known for certain of Aldrain lore, that no one had seen a dwenda in living memory, and that their whole existence was, in all probability, a bunch of children's fairy stories, nothing more. Ringil always suspected how deeply it hurt Shalak to hand- letter those little notices— whatever the affectations of his clients, the man himself had always been a true believer. But when, with youthful brashness, he broached the subject, Shalak had offered in return only a pained smile and good- citizen platitudes.

We all must make sacrifices, Ringil. It's the war. If this is all I suffer, you will not hear me complain.

Oh, come on!
Ringil, plucking a notice from a carving at random, brandishing it.
This shit? “No one in living memory has seen a dwenda.” Fuck's sake, Shal. No one in living memory's seen Hoiran walk, but I don't notice them closing down the fucking temples. What a bunch of fucking hypocrites.

People are frightened, Ringil.
There was a livid bruise around Shalak's left eye.
It's understandable.

People are sheep,
Ringil raged.
Moronic fucking sheep.

With that, Shalak had made no sign that he disagreed.

He hadn't changed much, either, in the intervening years. The close-cropped beard was shot through with white now rather than gray, and there was less hair to balance it atop the lined forehead, but otherwise it was the same faintly lugubrious clerk's face that peered up from the leather- bound tome it was bent over, as Ringil opened the door to the little shop and ducked inside.

“Yes, noble sir? How may I be of service?”

“Well, you can knock off the ornate honorifics, for a start.” Ringil took off his cap. “Then you might want to have a go at recognizing me.”

Shalak blinked. He removed the eyeglasses he'd been using to peruse the book, and stared hard at his new customer. Ringil made a leg.

“Alish? No, wait a minute.
Ringil?
Ringil Eskiath? Is that really you?” Shalak hopped off his chair, came forward, and seized Ringil by the arms. “Hoiran's
teeth,
what are
you
doing back here?”

“Came to see you, Shal.”

Shalak rolled his eyes and let go. “Oh please. You know Risha's going to claw your eyes out if she sees you batting your lashes at me like that.” But you could see, despite it all, he was pleased. “Really, why'd you come back?”

“Long story, not very interesting.” Ringil seated himself on the corner of a table laden with odd lumps of stone, semiprecious gems, and obscure metalwork. “Could use some advice, though, Shal.”

“Advice from me?”

“Hard to believe, huh?” Ringil picked up a chunk of tangled iron wire with a glyph worked into its center. “Where'd you get this?”

“A source. What do you want advice about?”

Ringil looked elaborately around the shop. “Take a wild guess.”

“You want
Aldrain
advice?” Shalak pulled a face, chuckled. “What's the matter with you, Gil? You come into some money you don't need all of a sudden? I'd have thought, you know, a man like you, the Kiriath stuff has got to be more your thing.”

“I've got all the Kiriath stuff I need.” Ringil gestured with two crooked fingers at the pommel jutting over his shoulder. “Anyway, I'm not buying anything. Just want your opinion on a couple of things.”

“Which are?”

“If you had to kill a dwenda, what's the best way to go about it?”

Shalak gaped. “What?”