The Steel Remains

“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.