The Steel Remains

On the other side of the inner curtains, Jhiral cleared his throat again, louder. The girl lowered her head and began once more to crawl, under the curtain and into his imperial radiance’s presence. Archeth watched her go, lips pressed tight to cover for the gritted teeth beneath. Her nostrils flared, and the breath that came through them was audible. For a single insane moment, she stood there and strained toward the inner curtain.

Get the fuck out of here, Archidi. Right now.

Just another slave, that’s all. It flitted through her head, faster than she could catch at it. She wasn’t sure whom the thought was referring to.

She turned and left.

Went obediently about her Emperor’s business.

CHAPTER 5

Where the broad westward flow of the River Trel split and spread in tributaries, and wore itself into the soft cushioned loam of the Naom coastal plain like the lines etched across a man’s palm, where the sea spent its force across acres of mudflat and marsh and could not easily threaten man-made structure, one of Grace-of-Heaven Milacar’s distant ancestors had once spotted a less-than-obvious strategic truth—to wit, that a city surrounded by such a maze of mingled land and water would in effect be a kind of fortress. Well, being by nature a modest as well as an inventive man, this root patriarch of the Milacar line not only went ahead and founded an ingenious settlement you could only reach with local guides through the marsh; he also renounced the right to name the city after himself and called it instead Trel-a-lahayn, from the old Myrlic lahaynir—blessed refuge. Out of this vision, and the eventual laziness of men’s tongues, Trelayne was born. And over time, as stone replaced wood, and cobbles covered mud streets, as blocks and then towers rose gracefully over the plain to become the city we all know and love, as the lights, the very lights of that subtle fortress came to be visible to caravanserai and ship captains a full day and night before they reached it, so the origins of the city were lost, and the clan name Milacar, sadly, came to be valued no more than any other . . .

At least, that was Grace-of-Heaven’s end of the tale, backed up now as always with consistent narrative passion if not actual evidence. There weren’t many who would have had the nerve to call him a liar to his face, far less interrupt him with the accusation at his own dinner table.

Ringil stood in the brocade-hung entryway and grinned.

“Not this horseshit again,” he drawled loudly. “Haven’t you got any new stories, Grace?”

Conversation drained out of the candlelit dining chamber like the last of the sand from an hourglass. Bandlight seeped coldly into the quiet from window drapes along the far wall. Gazes flickered about, on and off the newcomer, in among the gathered company. Some at the broad oval table looked around, arms in richly tailored cloth braced on chair backs—squeak of shifting chair legs and the soft brush of heavy robes in motion across the floor. Well-fed and contented faces turned, some of them still chewing their last mouthful, momentarily robbed of their self-assurance. Mouths open, eyes wide. The machete boy crouched at Milacar’s right hip blinked, and his hand tightened on the hilt of the ugly eighteen-inch chopping blade at his belt.

Ringil caught the boy’s eye. Held it a moment, no longer grinning.

Milacar made a tiny clucking sound, tongue behind his top teeth. It sounded like a kiss. The boy let go of the machete hilt.

“Hello, Gil. I heard you were back.”

“You heard right, then.” Ringil switched his gaze from boy to master. “Seems you’re as well informed as ever.”

Milacar—always rather less svelte than he would probably have liked, rather less tall than his claim to ancestral Naom blood suggested he should be. But if these elements had not changed, then neither had the stocky, muscular energy that smoked off him even when he sat, the sense that it wouldn’t take much to have him come up out of the chair, big cabled arms falling to a street fighter’s guard, fists rolled up and ready to beat the unceremonious shit out of anyone who was asking for it.

For now, he settled for a pained frown, and rubbed at his chin with the pads of his index and middle fingers. His eyes creased and crinkled with a smile that stayed just off his lips. Deep, gorgeous blue, like the sunstruck ocean off the headland at Lanatray, dancing alive in the light from the candles. He held Ringil’s look and his mouth moved, something inaudible, something for Ringil alone.

The moment broke.

Milacar’s doorman, whom Ringil had left encumbered and struggling to hang his cloak and the Ravensfriend, arrived red-faced and cringing in his wake. He wasn’t a young man and he was puffed from sprinting up the stairs and down the corridor after his escaped charge.

“Uhm, his worthiness Master Ringil of Eskiath Fields, licensed knight graduate of Trelayne and—”