The Steel Remains

He reached out blindly in the bed beside him. “Gil?”

But the bed was empty.

And he remembered then where he was, remembered how he’d come to be there, the years it had taken, and last of all he remembered he was old.

He sagged back onto the bed. Stared up at the painted ceiling, the debauchery whose details it was too dark to make out.

“Ahhh, fuck it.”

A sliver of the dream dropped abruptly back into his head, a piece that didn’t fit with the nostalgia and the old house memories of the rest. He’d been standing out on the marsh, quite a long way from the city walls, and it was getting dark. The sunset showed amid ragged black and indigo cloud at the horizon, like a smashed egg in mud. There was salt on the breeze, and a few odd noises in the undergrowth that he could really have done without. There was a chill on the nape of his neck.

A young girl stood before him amid the marsh grass with a flagon of tea clutched in her hands. The wind plucked at the simple oatmeal-colored shift she wore. At first he thought she was going to offer the flagon to him, but as he put out his hands she shook her head and turned away without a word. She started walking away, into the gloom of the marsh, and he was seized with a sudden, unaccountable fear of her leaving.

He called out after her.

Where are you going?

I have other fish to fry, she said obscurely. I don’t need to watch this to the end.

And then she turned back to look at him, and she was suddenly a red-tongued, white-fanged she-wolf, reared upright on its hind legs and grinning.

He fell back with a yell of horror—it was this, he guessed now, that had woken him—but she only turned her back again and walked off into the marsh grass, still balancing delicately upright.

He sat up again in the big bed. The dream had left him sweaty beneath the silk sheets, and he could feel the hairs on his legs pasted to his skin. He swallowed and looked around the room. He felt the sense of ownership, the sense of belonging settling back over him. He felt his skin cooling. He rubbed a hand down his face and sighed.

“Something keeping you from sleep, Grace?” asked the shadowed figure by the window.

This time, it was a full kick to the heart. He was awake, he knew he was awake now, and this was no fucking dream.

And outside of a dream there was no way anyone should be able to get in here if he hadn’t invited them.

There was a cool breeze wandering through the room. He registered it for the first time, felt it on his skin. Saw the way the muslin drapes stirred by the open window.

He’d closed it before he went to sleep. He remembered.

The figure stepped out of the shadows at the casement edge. Bandlight crept in from the balcony and did its best to touch the face.

“See—” he began, and then clamped his mouth shut.

The figure shook its head. “No. Not Seethlaw. You won’t be seeing him again.”

“Gil?”

A grave inclination of the shadow-dappled head. Faintly now in the bandlight, he made out the features to go with the voice.

“Gil. How did you get in here?”

“Easily.” A gesture back to the balcony. “You’ve really got to start picking your boys for competence, not looks, Grace. I walked right past three of them in the gardens. Could have been invisible for all the notice they took. Didn’t have to kill them or anything. And then, well, ornate stonework’s never a good bet if you don’t want burglars scaling the walls. Like I said—easy.”

Milacar swallowed. “We all thought you were . . . gone.”

“I was gone, Grace. Into the gray places. You made sure of that.”

Ringil moved again, closer to the bed. Now the bandlight caught him full, painted its pallid glow across his face. Milacar winced as he saw the scarring along the jawline.

“What are you talking—”

“Don’t.” There was a terrifying matter-of-factness in the single word. “Just don’t, Grace. There’s no point. I remember you in the garden. I was just supposed to stay colorful for you here in the slums. That’s what you said. Here in the slums. Because that’s where we were, wasn’t it? The garden at the old place, across the river on Replete Cargo Street.”

“Gil, listen to me—”