The Steel Remains

“Just tell me something,” he asked instead. “I see your end of this, you get your sacred ancestral . . . lizardshit . . . blood right . . . whatever . . . promised fucking land back. I see that, it isn’t what you’d call a fresh concept. But what’s in it for the cabal? Looks to me like you’ve got the whole Chancellery dancing to your tune one way or the other. What the fuck did you promise them?”

The dwenda gave him a thin smile. “What do you think? You see where we are, you know what Ennishmin represents to the League.”

The knowledge must already have been there inside him in some shape or form. He felt no real surprise, only an icy sliding sensation in the pit of his stomach.

“You told them you’d take it back for them?”

“Yes, more or less.”

“You’re going to invade imperial territory? Break the accords?”

Seethlaw shrugged. “I signed no accord. Nor did my people. It’s a service I’m rendering my hosts in Trelayne.”

“But . . .” Now the trickle of ice in his guts was swelling, was filling him up. “The Empire isn’t going to sit still for that, Seethlaw. Not the way things are right now. They’ll go to war. It’ll mean another fucking war. You must know that.”

“Yes.” Another blank-eyed shrug. “What of it? The League and the Empire will go to war over their relative hypocrisies, with my hand on the Trelayne side of the scales to render the struggle evenly matched. They’ll fight for years, I imagine. They’ll spend their strength and drag each other down, and when it’s done, when they’re finally sick of the slaughter, when they’re tired and broken, my people will walk through the ruins and take up their rightful place once again in this world.” Seethlaw’s voice turned oddly soft and urgent. “You shouldn’t object, Gil. It’ll be a far better world for it. No more hysterical hatreds and petty factional bloodshed. No more hypocrisy to cover for the abuse of power, no more lies.”

“No, that’s right. Just domination by the Aldrain. I think I’ve got some sense of what that’ll be like.”

“That’s a stupid thing to say.” A quick trace of anger in the dwenda’s voice, as quickly wiped away. “There is no reason human and dwenda can’t coexist as we did once before. Our chronicles are full of warriors from your race, taken in out of pity or love and rising to great stature among us. I myself—”

He stopped. Made a small gesture.

“No matter. I’m not some market trader at Strov, hawking his wares, nor a member of the Chancellery making his empty speeches for funds and a handsgrab more power over his fellow humans. If your own wits and experience will not convince you, then I will not drag you to an understanding you do not want to own.” He turned abruptly away. “Come, we are here on other business.”

They picked a careful path through the swampy ground, around the massive iron flank of the platform, to where something like a partially roofed corral had been built against the lowest visible flange. There was a fence of some material similar to the wires of the Aldrain bridge, though nowhere near as subtly worked. Woven more thickly, the same webbing went to form three long, low structures like stables, which were backed up to the ironwork of the platform. The ground the corral occupied was firm and looked dry, was perhaps reinforced with the same Aldrain building materials as the rest, but outside the fence swamp water pooled and sat in stagnant, grayish expanses. The path through was twisted and deceptive and ended at a chained gate.

Around the corral, and set back about a yard from the fence, a number of small, blunt objects protruded from the water. Ringil made them for rotted tree stumps until they were almost at the gate, and one of the nearer protrusions made a wet, sucking sound. He looked down at it more carefully.

And recoiled.

Fuck!

The object was a human head, fixed neatly at the neck to the tree stump he’d believed it to be. A young woman’s head, long hair trailing down into the soupy gray water in clotted rat’s tails. As he stared at it, the neck corded and twisted about, and out of a pale face the woman’s eyes found his. Mud-streaked, her mouth twisted and formed a silent word.

. . . please . . .

Grace-of-Heaven’s story slammed back through him:

I didn’t say these men were dead. I said all that came back were their heads. Each one still living, grafted at the neck to a seven-inch tree stump.

Swamp-water tears started from the woman’s eyes, ran dirty down her face.

Ringil’s eyes darted out across the swamp, and the other protrusions that studded the surface. It was an arc of the same horror, living human heads staring inward at the corral.

He’d seen dragonfire and the charred bodies of children on spits over roasting pits. He’d thought himself hardened to pretty much anything by now.

He was not.

“What the fuck is this, Seethlaw?”