The Steel Remains (53 page)

Archeth put out the flames again, kept the two of them apart. They put Sherin with Elith in an unlocked cell downstairs, one of those the village administrator had been prevailed upon to equip with a few comforts when Archeth and her men were forced to stay the night before. They sent the administrator and his men away with some simple tasks to perform, told them there was nothing much to worry about, really, and locked themselves in the tower room. They got down to business, got up to date on the varied paths that had brought them to Ennishmin, which in itself was a lengthy business— and not without its awkward moments.

“Impossible! This is heresy.” Halgan, one of the two Throne Eternal lieutenants Faileh Rakan had detailed to sit in, was not dealing very well with Egar's tale of his encounter with Takavach. “There is but One God and He has made himself known to us in the One True Revelation.”

Ringil rolled his eyes. But Darash, the other lieutenant, was nodding agreement, and even Rakan's ordinarily impassive face was turned toward the Majak with a frown. Archeth couldn't be bothered; she let
them get on with it. She stared out of the window and wondered why the mention of Takavachs leather hat and cloak seemed so familiar. Meanwhile, Egar grinned and poured himself more coffee. He was used to this sort of thing, had in fact always derived a rather childish satisfaction from scandalizing the imperials when he lived in Yhelteth. He lifted the callused blade of a hand at Halgan.

“Look, mate, I saw this Takavach take a crossbow bolt out of the air in midflight with his bare hand. Like that. He summoned an army of demons from the steppe grasses the way you'd call your children in from play, and he brought me the best part of seven hundred miles southwest to Ennishmin in the time it'd take you to snap your fucking fingers. N ow— if that's not a god, then it's a pretty good imitation.”

“Yes, an imitation.” Darash insisted. “An evil spirit. A trick to steal your allegiance.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Egar slurped his coffee, put it down again and grinned. “Guys, you don't get it, do you? Takavach saved my arse out on the steppe. He butchered my enemies for me and then made me a gate out of air and darkness and hung it from a branch of my father's grave tree so I could escape. You know, for that— he's pretty much
got
my allegiance.”

“But this is a
demon,
Dragonbane.” Halgan was aghast, almost pleading. “You must see that. This is a devil, trying to steal your soul.”

The Majak snorted. “My soul will walk the Sky Road
anyway,
whatever happens to me here on earth. It's not something you can steal like some lady's silk underwear. I killed a fucking
dragon,
man. My ancestors will have been polishing up my seat in the Sky Home ever since, grinning like idiots, probably. My father must be boring the Dwellers rigid with tales of my prowess.”

“This is superstition,” said Rakan dismissively “This is not… truth.”

“You calling me a liar?”

Ringil rubbed hands down his face. “Maybe, Rakan, it's your Revelation that's the superstition. Ever think of that? Maybe the Majak have gotten hold of the right end of the arbalest after all. Has the One True God shown up to save any of your skins recently? Has He appeared to any of you?”

“You know God does not manifest Himself,” Halgan shouted. “That is also heresy. The Revelation is not corporeal. You know this. Why do you persist in this perverted speech?”

“I like perverted. Maybe you would, too, if you gave it a chance.”

“Leave my men alone,” Rakan said coldly. “Degenerate.”

Ringil smooched a kiss at him. Rakan, out of nowhere, spat a curse and was halfway to his feet before Archeth snapped out of her daydream. She grabbed him by the arm and yanked him back into his seat.

“That's enough. You lot can sort out your religious differences someday when there isn't anything more important to do. Right now, I want to know,
Ringil,
why you're so sure they'll come after you?”

Ringil exchanged a glance with Egar.

“You want to tell her?” he asked the Majak.

Egar shrugged. “We saw them on the bank. Twice during the night. Blue fire and a dark shape at its heart, watching us go past.”

“Could that not be something else?” Halgan asked. He didn't want to believe in this any more than he had in Takavach. “Reflected light through mist around some scavenger taking a piss in the river? Or some effect from the marsh gases. The locals say—”

“The locals talk a load of shit, is what they do,” Egar said flatly. “I've been working the swamp for the best part of a month now, and I've never seen anything like what I saw last night. And anyway, Archeth, it fits with what you told us about Khangset. Blue flickering light, shadow figures.”

“It's how they come through from the gray places, the Aldrain marches.” Ringil rubbed tiredly at an eye. Falling asleep in the drifting skiff had left him stiff and unrested. “As far as I can work out, there are places they don't need this aspect storm to do it, but there don't seem to be many of them. The heart of the swamp apparently, near where this Kiriath weapon is buried. Or maybe it's got something to do with these glirsht carvings you're talking about, I don't know. All I can tell you for sure is that Seethlaw turned up in Terip Hale's cellar as easily as if he'd just opened a door in the wall.”

“That was at night, though.”

“Yes. And I'd say the legends are right as far as that goes, too. The dwenda don't seem to like sunlight very much. Most of the time I was in the Aldrain marches, it was dark or dim, like twilight. One place we went, there was something like a sun in the sky, but it was almost burned out. Like a hollow shell of itself. If that's where the dwenda are from originally, it might explain why they can't tolerate bright light. And this pirate raid on Khangset you were talking about, I think I met one of the dwenda who went on it, name of Pelmarag. He told me they pulled out well before dawn because the sun was going to be too strong for comfort.
With
that
kind of sun coming up in a couple of hours’ time,
he said.”

“Ennishmin must suit them down to the fucking ground then,” Egar grumbled. “I don't think I've seen the sun more than twice since I got here.”

It provoked an unlooked- for burst of laughter from the imperials. The cranked tension around the table eased. A couple of despairing comments about rain and fog went back and forth. Darash grinned, made a loose vertical fist, and dropped it into his other hand a couple of times, Yhelteth symbol among the urbane for a good joke, a sense of humor well tickled. Egar made modest noises back.

“Can we stop them?” Archeth asked quietly, and the hilarity disappeared as fast as it had come. The gazes around the table tightened back to her. “At Khangset, they said they fired arrows that passed right through the blue fire and left the dwenda themselves unharmed.”

Ringil nodded soberly. “Yeah. Eril told me the same thing happened to Girsh's crossbow bolt when he tried to stop Seethlaw I think maybe when the aspect storm first comes through, it's like the dwenda's not completely there, like he's a ghost of some sort. But your guys at Khangset weren't as ineffective as they thought. Pelmarag said the expeditionary force he was in lost men. Six or seven of them on the beach alone. Now, that's got to be before any close- quarters fighting, we're talking about the moment the Khangset garrison realizes they've got company. So some of those arrows must have hit home. If I had to guess, I'd say this ghost aspect is shortlived. The dwenda has to let go at some point, has to become solid and grounded in this world. When they do.” He smacked fist into palm. “You've got them. Pelmarag told me they lost another half a dozen warriors in the fight across town. Your marines did get to them, they were just
too scared and demoralized to realize it. That's not a mistake we have to make. I crossed blades with Seethlaw, I felt the contact, even when the aspect storm was still around him. It can be done.”

“Yeah, they kill easily enough,” Egar rumbled. “I took two last night. Knife in the throat for one, fists and an ax haft for the other. They go down no different from a man.”

“And the damage we saw at Khangset?” Archeth asked. “The Kiriath defenses were melted right through. It looked like the sort of thing dragonfire would do.”

Ringil frowned and fumbled though memories already grown unreal and confused. He pressed his hands together, steepled the fingers, and pressed them to his mouth in thought. The small, carved figure in the swamp, the conversation with Pelmarag.
Tell you a funny story.

“He said something about
the talons of the sun.
Something they unleashed through the aspect storm, before they went through themselves. Like an arrow flight before an advance or something.”

“These were not arrow marks,” said Rakan ironically.

“I don't think they have these talons of the sun here in the swamp.” Ringil stared emptily off into dim recall. There was an odd ache in there with the memories, and he didn't like it. “They were different tactics. It was some dwenda commander who didn't agree with Seethlaw's approach. He wanted a frontal assault. That's not what Seethlaw's trying to achieve here.”

“You know that for certain?” Archeth's tone was skeptical. “The dwenda are committed to a stealth campaign?”

“I don't…” Ringil sighed. “It isn't as simple as that, Archidi. This isn't like the Scaled Folk over again. It's not some massive migration across an ocean to escape a dying land, a whole race on the move, an invading people who have to either conquer or die. The dwenda aren't unified, they aren't anything
like
unified. There are factions, disagreements over strategy, constant individual disputes. There don't even seem to be that many of them at the moment, and even those, the handful I got to meet were squabbling with each other half the time.”

“The Helmsmen say they are impulsive and disordered,” Archeth said slowly. “Perhaps not even sane. Would that fit?”

Ringil thought again about the Aldrain marches. He shivered.

“Yes, it would,” he said. “It would make a lot of sense. Seethlaw was…”

He stopped.

“Was what?” asked Rakan.

Ringil shook his head. “Skip it. Doesn't matter.”

“Maybe not to you, degenerate,” said Halgan angrily. “But to my men and I, it matters a great deal. You are asking us to stand and fight, maybe to die, on your word. Under the circumstances, I think you owe us the highest degree of clarity and confessed truthfulness.”

“That's true,” said Rakan. “Like an explanation for how exactly you came to be so closely taken into this creature's confidence in the first place. How it is that you traveled freely with him in these infernal realms, how it is that he allowed you to bring out your slave cousin.”

Ringil smiled thinly. “You'd like that explained with the highest degree of clarity, would you?”

“Yes. We all would.”

“Oh, well, it's easy enough.” Ringil leaned across the table toward the Throne Eternal captain. “I was fucking him. In the arse, in the mouth. A lot.”

Quiet slammed onto the table like a pallet of bricks dropped from above. The two Throne Eternal lieutenants looked at each other, and Halgan made a tiny but distinct spitting noise.

“You are an abomination, Eskiath,” said Rakan softly.

“Well.” Ringil gave the Throne Eternal captain another brittle little smile. “You know, the thing about fucking is, it's a lot less wear and tear than trying to kill each other with bits of steel. And it's the sort of thing that does tend to lead to confidences and favors if you play it right. Ask any woman, she'll tell you that. Unless of course your experiences in that direction are limited, as, come to think of it, yours probably are, to whores and rape.”

This time it was Halgan who surged to his feet with an oath on his lips and a hand on the hilt of the sword he wore. Ringil sat back a little where he was, met the other man's gaze and held it.

“You clear that blade, and I'll kill you with it.”

The moment held, seemed to creak.

“He means it,” Archeth said quietly. “I'd sit down if I were you, Halgan.”

Faileh Rakan made a short gesture, and his lieutenant sank back into his seat by inches. Archeth sighed and rubbed at her eyes.

“You're saying you insinuated yourself into this Seethlaw's affections in order to get your cousin back?”

“Yes, I am.” The tiny, fading ache of memory, like a small, blunt knife turning inside his rib cage. He didn't know how much truth there was in the words. He couldn't remember anymore. “That's exactly what I'm saying.”

“And you think Seethlaw's coming to get you because, what, he feels betrayed? Pissed off that you let him down?”

“No.” Ringil drew a deep breath. “Seethlaw is coming to get me— and you, and
you,
Rakan, and
you two,
and everyone else in this fucking village— because he can't afford to have his plans brought to light. There's too much in play, too much he can't predict. You've got to understand, Archidi, you've got to see it from the dwenda's point of view. It's thousands of years since they had dealings with us. They're rusty, they don't know how to gauge us anymore. Seethlaw's had three years to learn contemporary politics in Trelayne, and that's it. Three miserable fucking years. He's hasn't done badly, he's built a covert power base, but by its very nature it's got to be limited. And elsewhere he's working nearly blind. He doesn't know the Empire at all, except through the lens of northern opinion, and he's smart enough to know you can't trust opinion any farther than a whore with your house keys. He has
no way
of knowing how Yhelteth will respond if it knows the attack on Ennish-min is a ploy. Worse than that, he probably can't tell what the parts of the Trelayne Chancellery he hasn't managed to corrupt will do, or any of the other cities in the League come to that. For all Seethlaw knows, the League and the Empire will unite the way they did against the Scaled Folk. He can't take the chance. Anybody human who knows about this, outside of his little cabal, has to die.”

“He was going to let you live before,” Darash pointed out. “He was going to let you go home. You sure this isn't just a lovers’ tiff we're dealing with here? A falling- out between faggots, maybe?”