The Steel Remains

Brief hesitation. Gingren nodded, and Kaad stepped across to the far side of the table. He made a show of pulling out one of the crude wooden stools, of settling onto it with ironic magnanimity for the lack of ceremony or plush. He rearranged his cloak about him, pulled up closer to the table edge, rested his hands on the scarred surface in a loose clasp. A silver ring chased with gold inlay and the city’s Chancellery crest bulked on one finger.

“It is always good,” he began formally, “to see one of the city’s honored sons so returned.”

Ringil flickered him a glance. “I said talk, not tongue my arse clean. Get on with it, will you.”

“Ringil!”

“No, no, Gingren, it’s all right.” But it clearly wasn’t—Ringil saw the quick stain of anger pass across the other man’s face, just as rapidly wiped away and replaced with a strained diplomatic smile. “Your son and the Committee have not always seen eye-to-eye. Youth. It is, after all, not a crime.”

“It was for Jelim Dasnel.” The old anger fizzled in him, blunted a little with the comedown. “As I recall.”

Another brief pause. Behind Ringil, Gingren made a knotted-up sound, then evidently thought better of releasing it into speech.

Kaad put on the thin smile again. “As I recall, Jelim Dasnel broke the laws of Trelayne and made a mockery of the morality that governs us all. As did you, Ringil, though it grieves me to recall the fact in your family home. One example had to be made.”

The anger found its edge, shed the comedown blur and glinted clean and new. Ringil leaned across his half of the table, fixed Kaad with lover’s eyes.

“Should I be grateful to you?” he whispered.

Kaad held his gaze. “Yes, I would think you should. It could as easily have been two cages at the eastern gate as one.”

“No, not easily. Not for a lickspittle little social aspirant like you, Kaad. Not with a big fat chance to get on the Eskiath tit in the offing.” Ringil manufactured a smile of his own—it felt like an obscenity as it crawled across his face, it felt like a wound. “Haven’t you sucked your fill yet, little man? What do you want now?”

And now he had him. The rage stormed the other man’s face again, and this time it held its ground. The smile evaporated, the patrician mask tightened at mouth and eyes, the groomed, half-bearded cheeks darkened with fury past dissembling. Kaad’s origins were pure harbor-end, and the disdain with which he’d been viewed by the high families as he rose through the legislature had never been concealed. The ring and the badges of rank had come hard, the stiff smiles and party invitations from Glades society clawed forth like blood; wary respect if not acceptance, never acceptance, mined from the lying aristocratic heart of Trelayne with cunning and cold, inching calculation, one shored-up bargain and veiled power play at a time. In Ringil’s sneer, the other man could hear the creak of that shoring, the sudden cold-water chill of knowing how flimsy and man-made it all was, and how at blood-deep levels that had nothing to do with material wealth or rank displayed, nothing had or ever would change. Kaad was still the tolerated but unappreciated guest in the house, the grubby, harbor-end intruder he’d always been.

“How dare you!”

“Oh, I dare.” Ringil let one hand slide up to rub casually at his neck, alongside the upjutting spike of the Ravensfriend’s pommel. “I dare.”

“You owe me your life!”

Ringil slanted a look at his father, calculated more than anything to further infuriate Kaad, to dismiss him as a threat worth keeping his eye on.

“How much more of this do I have to listen to?”

Gingren smouldered to anger. “That’s enough, Ringil!”

“Yeah, I’d say so, too.”

“You tell.” Kaad, getting up now, face still mottled with fury. “Your degenerate, your fucking ungrateful degenerate son, you tell him—”

“What did you call me?”

“Ringil!”

“You tell him where the lines are drawn, Gingren. Right now. Or I leave, and I take my vote with me.”

“His vote?” Ringil stared at his father. “His fucking vote?”

“Shut up!” It was a roar fit for a battlefield, a great tolling bellow in the confines of the kitchen. “Both of you! Just shut up and start acting like a pair of adults. Kaad, sit down. We’re not finished. And Ringil, no matter what you think, you’ll keep a courteous tongue in your head while you’re under my roof. This is not some roadside tavern for you to brawl in.”

Ringil made a small spitting sound. “The roadside taverns of my acquaintance have cleaner clientele. They don’t like torturers much in the uplands.”

“What about the murderers of small children?” Kaad seated himself again, with the same fastidious attention to the drape of his cloak. He shot Ringil a significant look. “How do they react to that?”

Ringil said nothing. The old memory seeped in his mind, a flow he stanched before it got properly started. He placed his hands around the flagon of steaming tea and stared downward. Still too hot to drink. Gingren saw his chance.