The Steel Remains (41 page)

The Ravensfriend propped casually against the wall nearby in its scabbard.

He stood and gaped at it. Outside the windows, birds made stupid, early- morning noises to counterpoint the sudden stillness. It felt, in some aching way, as if he already knew the room he was in.

What the fuck… ?

“Thought you'd have to fight your way out, did you?”

He spun about, one hand groping back after the weapon. The dwenda leaned in the arch of an entryway on the other side of the chamber, grinning, dressed. His hair was gathered back from his face, his arms folded over a doublet of black and sapphire- blue weave. His feet were booted in black to match; his breeches were no lighter, and they clung to the lines of his legs before they tucked in. He was not armed.

If you ignored the blank dark eyes, he might almost have been human.

Ringil made himself turn away from the empty gaze. He picked up and started to unfold his clothes.

“I have to go,” he said, not quite firmly.

“No, you don't.”

Ringil fumbled his way into his shirt. “You don't understand. I have an appointment. I'm going to be late.”

“Ah, just like the estranged princess of fairy tale.” A whip- crack snapping of fingers behind him, to jog memory that must, Shalak had always argued, stretch back through thousands upon thousands of years. “Now what's her name? You know, the one who loses track of time at the ball, the one who stays and dances all night, until the night wears thin, as thin as the soles of her shoes and then she finds—”

“You know.” Underwear, breeches. Bending to pull them on, breath held tight. “I could probably do without the fucking fairy- tale jokes right now.”

“All right.” And the voice so suddenly close, the cold- water shock of it on his neck. Right behind him. He spun about and found the dwenda standing two feet away in the light from the window. “Try this. You're not going anywhere.”

“Try and stop me.”

“I already have. What time do you think it is really?”

Ringil met the Aldrain gaze and he saw the eyes glow, just as he'd known they would, with the rinsed- out rosy tints of the approaching sunrise. He felt the spike in his heart, felt how he sagged as the realization hit. The dwenda nodded.

“Dawn itself, properly speaking, has come and gone while you slept. You are out of time. They waited for you at Brillin Hill Fields a full half hour, as custom apparently dictates these days. Then your second, a man named Darby, stood in for you and was duly killed by your opponent. He gave a good account of himself, it seems, but was simply not well enough versed with a court sword to hold his own.”

Ringil closed his eyes, bit his lip until he tasted blood. Behind his curtained- off vision he saw it, the little gathered knots of men on the open ground down by the fish pools. Gray sketched figures, not enough light yet to color them in. And the two men between, the back- and- forth shunt of the duel. He heard its miserly metallic tones on the cool air, the clink and scrape of the court sword blades. Saw Darby drawn in, wrong-sided, feinted out. Riposte— the grating blade goes home. Bright crimson on the graying pastel palette of a day that Darby now won't live to see.

How long did it take Iscon Kaad to find the opening? Was Darby sober, had he made that much effort for the man that might have been his commander once?

Ringil opened his eyes. Whatever the dwenda saw there, it didn't like much. It swayed back a fraction.

“Easy there.”

“You knew. You fucking knew.”

The dwenda nodded. “So did you. But you allowed yourself to forget.”

Ringil wrenched his shirt straight. “You take me back. Back into the Aldrain marches, back before it happens. You—”

“I'm afraid that can't be done.”

Through clenched teeth now. “You fucking take me back or—”

“Or what?” Abruptly the dwenda's arms whipped out. A grabbed handful of shirt, Ringil was jerked forward. A flat palm came at him like stone, slapped palm- first into his forehead, and suddenly he was on the floor, arms and legs robbed of anything resembling motive force. He flopped like a landed fish.

The dwenda stood over him, arms folded.

“Ageless Realm
is a misnomer, you see,” it said somberly. “We can swim to the shallows, yes; with practice we can step into places where time slows to a crawl, slows almost to a stopping point, even dances around itself in spirals. It's a matter of gradient relative to, well… never mind, it's not something you're equipped to understand. But however slow the crawl, we cannot actually
stop
time, and nor can we turn it back. What is done, cannot be undone. You will have to accept this as truth.”

Ringil managed to get onto his front and force his knees under him. The room rocked and shifted around him, ice trickled down his limbs. He struggled for strength to push himself upright.

He heard the dwenda sigh.

“I was afraid it might come to this, Ringil Eskiath, but not so soon. We are none of us used to dealing with humans after so long. It's a constant learning experience.”

A booted foot came out and gently shoved him over on his side. Getting up faded to a distant dream. Ringil summoned what breath he could.

“Who sent you?” he panted.

“I am not sent, as you put it.” The dwenda knelt beside him. “But you do have your petitioners for my favor. There are those, it seems, who have no wish to see your grim but still rather beautiful face get slashed to ribbons in squabbles of petty honor.”

He raised his hand again, palm- down, fingers lightly flexed. The gesture blocked light from Ringil's eyes.

“Wait,
wait.”

It took Ringil a moment to understand that the dwenda had obeyed.
He could not read the sudden flurry of expression that chased across the unhuman face as it hung there. He thought he saw impatience, but impatience with whom it was hard to tell.

“Well?”

“Tell me.” Faintly. Ringil's voice was almost emptied out, no stronger now than his limbs. “One thing, I need to know. It's important.”

The palm hovered. “Yes?”

“What's your name? We fucked all night, and I never asked.”

Another hesitation, but finally it gave way to a curious smile. “Very well. You may call me Seethlaw, if that will serve.”

“Oh, it will.” And now Ringil smiled as well. “It will.”

Silence dripped between them. The dwenda's palm stayed where it was.

“You mind telling me why now you suddenly want to know my name?” it asked him finally.

Ringil nodded weakly. Summoned some last fragments of breath and made his lips move.

“Simple enough,” he whispered. “A cheap fuck doesn't need to have a name. But I like to know what to call the men I'm going to kill.”

Then the dwenda's hand came down, touched his face, lifted gently off again. It seemed to lift consciousness away from him as well, like a delicate mask he'd been wearing and hadn't noticed until now.

The last thing he saw, as his own vision inked out, was the dwenda's gaze as it raised its head to face the windows; the featureless empty eyes, now washed the color of blood by the rising sun.

he went up to the palace at first light.

Earlier would have invited arrest. While the lower echelons of palace life— the lighting of stoves, the cleaning of acres of marble flooring— got under way well before dawn, courtiers did not present themselves before breakfast. It was a rule of thumb with strong precedent. Two years ago, a provincial governor had made the mistake of bringing his concerns before Jhiral while the Emperor was still in bed. The occasion was a local revolt by resettled eastern nomads who'd jumped their reservation and reverted to banditry against the trade caravans, so there was some justification for the urgency, at least in the eyes of the governor's special envoy, who rode up to the main gate at the head of a cavalry squad just as the sun was rising, and started yelling for the Emperor's immediate attention.

He got it. Jhiral had him thrown in jail for a week, along with his
men, summary sanction for lack of respect before the imperial throne. Protests by senior advisers at court were in vain; the punishment stood. By the time the man was brought into the imperial presence and formally reprimanded, the revolt had more or less sputtered out, and the issue was moot. Proving, Jhiral observed drily, that there'd been nothing to get so worked up about in the first place. He took a rhetorical turn about the throne room to drive the point home, gesturing, pitching his voice for effect in the vaulted space.
These are not the days of my father's reign, my friends. Not the days of bitter warfare and privation, however much various of my father's faithful friends and advisers in that struggle appear, inexplicably, to wish otherwise. Give it a rest, gentlemen. We are no longer at war, we face no implacable enemies or unhuman threats. There is no need for panic- stricken counsel and steely decision before the dawn comes up. Our Empire is prosperous and at peace. Our difficulties in these times are small and undramatic, admitting of equally small- scale solutions, which, though they may offer scant chance of wild glory, should nonetheless be effective. I, for one, welcome that change. It has been given to us to
enjoy
the legacy of all those who sacrificed for us— not to imitate their suffering. I am glad and grateful for that fact, as I am grateful for their sacrifices, and I would have
thought
that those of you who went through the horror of the war with my family would feel the same.

Does anybody here
not
feel the same?

Eloquent silence in the gathered ranks of the court. Somewhere off to the right, someone cleared his throat, then evidently thought better of speaking up. The sound turned magically into a cough. Jhiral heard it, knew what it meant, and smiled. He waited the echoes out, then clapped his hands.

Excellent. I am, as ever, indebted to you all for your loyal support. Now— next order of business, and please tell me it's a simple budget for city sewer repairs.

The laughter was largely sycophantic, but Archeth had found her mouth stretching to echo it anyway. Privately, though she commiserated with some of her friends from the old guard, she felt there was a lot in what Jhiral said. She knew the provincial governor who'd sent the
emissary, and didn't hold him in much regard. Quite conceivably, he'd overreacted to a situation a shrewder man could have handled without rising from his desk. The revolt very likely could have been extinguished with relatively little fuss— could perhaps even have been avoided altogether, with a little intelligent foresight. You kept your finger on the pulse, you picked up the warning signals well before matters reached boiling point. You made a few examples, you made a few concessions, nine times out of ten the combination paid off. She'd done it herself enough times in the past, when Akal was still on the throne.

Panic and overreaction— the late response of fools.

Now, waiting in an antechamber for Jhiral to get out of bed, going over what the Helmsmen had told her, she couldn't be sure if, sleepless and churned up and raw from the krin, she wasn't giving in to a similar fool's impulse herself.

But:

The dwenda are gone, Archeth. Thousands of years ago. They fled the parameters of this world when they couldn't defeat us.

Apparently, they're back.

One of the Helmsman's unnerving silences. Then, severely:

That's really not funny. The dwenda are not something you joke about, daughter of Flaradnam.

I'm not trying to be funny, Angfal. I've got better things to do with my time than come down here and tell you jokes.

You certainly have. To start with— if you're right and the dwenda really have returned, now, with the Kiriath gone— then you have graves to dig. About a hundred thousand ought to do it— you might want to get started ahead of time.

“The Emperor will see you now.”

She glanced up and saw the smirk on the chamberlain's face. She supposed there weren't a lot of courtiers receiving audience in Jhiral's bedchamber. It begged a rather obvious question, and court gossip would doubtless provide a dozen different salacious answers by lunchtime.

“You can wipe that fucking grin off your face,” she told him as she got up. “Or I'll come back and cut it off for you.”

The smirk vanished as if dragged downward off the man's visage with a claw. He shrank from her as she passed. The krin made her glad.

Better get ahold of that temper, Archidi. His radiance Jhiral Khimran II wont bully as easily as his servants.

She stepped through into a room that reeked of sex.

The imperial bedchamber faced east by careful design and had floor- to- ceiling windows for the view. The sun flooded in, struck deep into the back of the room, and gilded what it touched— the drapes on the huge four- poster bed, the rumpled covers, and the three tousle-haired sleeping forms that lay amid them. Archeth registered the curves, made herself look carefully away.

“Archeth! Good morning!” Jhiral was over by the wood- paneled partions on the far side of the room, wrapped in a long silk robe and picking at an extravagant spread of breakfast platters set out on three separate tables. He turned to face her, put a quail's egg into his mouth and chewed vigorously. Lifted a wagging finger. “You know, when I said I'd hold you to your promise of rapid progress, I didn't intend you to take it quite
this
hard. Sometime this afternoon would have been fine.”