The Steel Remains

THE LANDLORD, BY HIS FACE AS HUNGOVER AS RINGIL, DID BRIGHTEN somewhat at the mention of Trelayne currency. He opened the dining chamber at the back of the residents’ bar, ordered bleary-eyed stable hands to take care of the horses, and wandered off into the kitchen to see what was salvageable from the previous night’s feast. Ringil went with him, made himself an herbal infusion, and carried it back to one of the dining chamber’s oak trestle tables, where he slumped and stared at the steam rising from the cup as if it were a summoned sprite. In due course Ishil came in, followed by her men and three ladies-in-waiting who’d presumably been hiding in the carriage. They bustled about, making far too much noise.

“Traveling light, I see.”

“Oh, Ringil, be quiet.” Ishil settled herself on the other side of the table. “It’s not my fault you drank too much last night.”

“No, but it’s your fault I’m awake this early dealing with it.” One of the ladies-in-waiting tittered, then flushed into silence as Ishil cut her an icy glance. Ringil sipped at his tea and grimaced. “So you want to tell me what this is about?”

“Could we not have some coffee first?”

“It’s coming. I don’t have a lot of small talk, Mother.”

Ishil made an elegant gesture of resignation. “Oh, very well. Do you remember your cousin Sherin?”

“Vaguely.” He fitted a childhood face to the name, a wan little girl with downward-falling sheaves of dark hair, too young for him to want to play with in the gardens. He associated her with summers at Ishil’s villa down the coast at Lanatray. “One of Nerla’s kids?”

“Dersin’s. Nerla was her paternal aunt.”

“Right.”

The silence pooled. Someone came in and started building a fire in the hearth.

“Sherin has been sold,” Ishil said quietly.

Ringil looked at the cup in his hand. “Really. How did that happen?”

“How does it always happen these days?” Ishil shrugged. “Debt. She married, oh, some finished-goods merchant, you don’t know him. Name of Bilgrest. This was a few years ago. I sent you an invitation to the wedding, but you never replied. Anyway, it seems this Bilgrest had a gambling problem. He’d been speculating on the crop markets for a while, too, and getting it mostly wrong. That, plus maintaining appearances in Trelayne, wiped out the bulk of his accumulated capital, and then like the idiot he was, he stopped paying into the sureties fund to cut costs, and then a ship carrying his merchandise got wrecked off the Gergis cape, and then, well.” Another shrug. “You know how it goes after that.”

“I can imagine. But Dersin’s got money. Why didn’t she bail them out?”

“She doesn’t have much money, Ringil. You always assume—”

“We’re talking about her fucking daughter, for Hoiran’s sake. And Garat’s got well-heeled friends, hasn’t he? They could have raised the finance somehow. Come to that, why didn’t they just buy Sherin back?”

“They didn’t know. Bilgrest wouldn’t tell anybody the way things were going, and Sherin went along with the charade. She was always so proud, and she knows Garat never really approved of the marriage. Apparently, he’d already loaned them money a couple of times and never got it back. I think Garat and Bilgrest had words. After that, Sherin just stopped asking. Stopped visiting. Dersin hadn’t seen either of them for months. We were both down at Lanatray when we heard, and by the time the news got to us and we got back to the city—it must have been at least a week by then. We had to break into the house.” She shuddered delicately. “It was like walking into a tomb. All the furniture gone, the bailiffs took everything, even the drapes and carpets, and Bilgrest just sat there with the shutters closed, muttering to himself in the dark.”

“Didn’t they have any kids?”

“No, Sherin couldn’t. I think that’s why she clung to Bilgrest so hard, because he didn’t seem to care about it.”

“Oh great. You know what that means, don’t you?”

Another little pool of quiet. The coffee came, with yesterday’s bread toasted to cover its stiffness, an assortment of jams and oils and some reheated broth. The men-at-arms and the ladies-in-waiting fell on it all with an enthusiasm that made Ringil slightly queasy all over again. Ishil took a little coffee and looked somberly back at her son.

“I told Dersin you’d look for her,” she said.

Ringil raised an eyebrow. “Did you? That was rash.”

“Please don’t be like this, Gil. You’d be paid.”

“I don’t need the money.” Ringil closed his eyes briefly. “Why can’t Father do it? It’s not like he doesn’t have the manpower.”

Ishil looked away. “You know your father’s opinion of my family. And Dersin’s side are practically full-blood marsh dwellers if you go back a couple of generations. Hardly worthy of his favors. Anyway, Gingren won’t go against the edicts. You know how things are since the war. It’s legal. Sherin was sold legally.”