The Steel Remains (11 page)

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.