The Steel Remains

And they drag him out that way, on a dreadful, trailing shriek that everyone assembled knows is only the beginning, the very least of the raptured agonies he’ll vent in the cage tomorrow.

Below in the chamber, on the raised dais of the justices, Murmin Kaad, until now watching the proceedings with impassive calm, looks up and meets Ringil’s gaze as well.

And smiles.

“Motherfucker.” A tremor in the matter-of-fact tone he was trying for. He drew on the twig for sustenance. “Should have had him killed back in ’53 when I had the chance.”

He glanced sideways, caught the way Grace-of-Heaven was looking at him.

“What?”

“Oh beautiful youth,” Milacar said gently. “Do you really think it would have been that easy?”

“Why not? It was chaos that summer, the whole place was packed with soldiery and loose blades. Who would have known?”

“Gil, they just would have replaced him with someone else. Maybe someone worse.”

“Worse? Fucking worse?”

Ringil thought about the cages, how in the end he’d been unable to look out of the carriage window at them as they passed. The scrutiny in Ishil’s face as he turned back to the interior of the carriage, the impossibility of meeting her eyes. The warm flush of gratitude he felt that the rumble and rattle of the carriage’s passage drowned out whatever other noises might otherwise have reached his ears. He was wrong, he knew then. His time away from the city, time buried in the shadow of Gallows Gap and its memories, had not kept him hardened as he’d hoped. Instead, it had left him as soft and unready as he’d ever been, as the belly he’d grown.

At his side, Milacar sighed. “The Committee for Public Morals is not dependent on Kaad for its venom, nor was it ever. There’s a general hate in the hearts of men. You went to war, Gil, you should know that better than anyone. It’s like the heat of the sun. Men like Kaad are just the focal figures, like lenses to gather the sun’s rays on kindling. You can smash a lens, but that won’t put out the sun.”

“No. Makes it a lot harder to start the next fire, though.”

“For a little while, yes. Until the next lens, or the next hard summer, and then the fires begin again.”

“Getting a bit fucking fatalistic in your old age, aren’t you?” Ringil nodded out over the mansion lights. “Or does that just come with the move upriver?”

“No, it comes with living long enough to appreciate the value of the time you’ve got left. Long enough to recognize the fallacy of a crusade when you’re called to one. Hoiran’s teeth, Gil, you’re the last person I should need to be telling this to. Have you forgotten what they did with your victory?”

Ringil smiled, felt how it leaked across his face like spilled blood. Reflex, tightening up against the old pain.

“This isn’t a crusade, Grace. It’s just some scum-fuck slavers who’ve gone off with the wrong girl. All I need is a list of names, likely brokers in Etterkal I can lean on until something gives.”

“And the dwenda?” Milacar’s voice jabbed angrily. “The sorcery?”

“I’ve seen sorcery before. It never stopped me killing anything that got in my way.”

“You haven’t seen this.”

“Well, that’s what keeps life interesting, isn’t it. New experience.” Ringil drew hard on the krinzanz twig. Glow from the flaring ember lit the planes of his face and put glitter into his eyes. He let the smoke up, glanced across at Grace-of-Heaven again. “Anyway, have you seen this creature?”

Milacar swallowed. “No. I haven’t, personally. They say he keeps to himself, even within the Warren. But there are those who have had audience with him, yes.”

“Or so they claim.”

“These are men whose word I trust.”

“And what do these trustworthy men have to say about our Aldrain friend? That his eyes are black pits? That his ears are those of a beast? That he flickers with lightning as he walks?”

“No. What they say is . . .” Another hesitation. Milacar’s voice had grown quiet. “He’s beautiful, Gil. That’s what they say. That he’s beautiful beyond words.”

For just a second, a tiny chill ran along Ringil’s spine. He put it away, shrugged to shake it off. He pitched the stub of his krinzanz twig away into the nighttime garden below and stared after the ember.

“Well, I’ve seen beauty, too,” he said somberly. “And that never stopped me killing anything that got in my way, either.”

CHAPTER 6

By the time they made camp, a clouded darkness held the sky above the steppe.