The Steel Remains

“Pack that in, Gil.” She squinted around in the sun to see if anyone was listening to them. “You’re going to spoil the good impression you just made on the troops.”

“Yeah, all right. Fair point.” Ringil glanced at Egar. “What about you?”

The Majak skinned another grin. “Too late to make a good impression on me, Gil. I know you.”

“The krin. I’m talking about the krin.”

Egar shook his head. “Interferes with my breathing. I fucked up on that stuff back in the summer of ’49, made myself really sick. Couple of friends of Imrana’s had this high-quality supply through someone they knew at court, and I overdid the dose because I didn’t realize. Fucking nightmare. Can’t even stomach the taste anymore.”

“Okay.” Ringil turned to go back inside. “I’m still going to ask Rakan. Might save some lives if I can convince him.”

Archeth squinted up at him again. “Nice shield he gave you.”

“This? Yeah, it’s his spare, apparently.” The ghost of a smile touched Ringil’s mouth. “I think he liked the speech as well. Seems maybe I’m not such a total degenerate dead loss after all.”

“Well.” She tried to think of something to say, to stave off thought.

She was starting to feel slightly sick, even with the better weather. “It was a pretty good speech.”

Egar grunted. “Yeah, not bad for a fucking faggot.”

And they all laughed, long and hard in sunlight, while there was still time.

CHAPTER 32

The small cold hours before dawn.

Ringil was seated on a low wall down near the river, feeling the rush and scrape of the krin through the valves of his heart and barely aware of the outside world at all. He’d been waiting too long. The initial pounding anticipation in the first few hours of darkness had sagged and slumped sometime after midnight; for an experienced warrior, it wasn’t something you could sustain for long. The tension, the itching preparedness to fight, even the fear itself grew dull after a while. He rode the krin looser, let himself detach from what it was doing to his physical body, topped himself up every couple of hours with another pinched fragment from the slab rubbed into his gums. Began to wonder if he hadn’t made a mistake.

“Blue fire! Blue fire! They’re coming!”

He snapped back to awareness, swiveled off the wall—more effort than expected, he’d forgotten he was wearing the armor—and snatched up his shield. He slung it on his shoulder, grabbed his helmet from beside him on the wall and crammed it on as he ran, up toward the main street. Unsheathed the Ravensfriend with a chime as the scabbard lip parted and grinned at the sound. The night breeze off the river seemed to hurry him along. The alarm had come from the boathouse end.

“Blue fire! Blue fi—”

It ended on a gurgled scream. He cursed and sprinted flat-out, went around the boathouse corner, and ran straight into the first dwenda. They bounced off each other, staggered and nearly fell. The Throne Eternal who’d yelled the warning was on his knees in the street, head bowed, bleeding out between futilely clutching fingers and a neck wound. His companion, the other half of the patrol, lay beyond in a broad pool of his own blood. Blue light shone off everything, made the imperials into melancholy silhouettes and the puddle of blood a solid, polished plate. The same glow clung about the big, black-clad form that had killed them like some enchanted armor.

The Ravensfriend leapt to block and Ringil saw the sweeping blue glitter of the Aldrain blade a second after. Lock, scrape. The impact shivered through him. He whipped his sword back, changed stance. The dwenda attacked again, up out of a low guard. He chopped it down, backed up, let the krin take his senses and smear them thin. The dwenda nodded its smoothly helmeted head and said something incomprehensible. He had a moment to wonder if it knew him.

“Come on then, you fuck. Let’s see what you’ve got.”