The Steel Remains

“His holiness has retired to camp,” Rakan said tonelessly. He nodded up the slope of emptied buildings and rubble piles. “In the main market square with the rest of the men. He left before we found her, said it was important that he go to pray for us. It is getting dark, of course.”

It was elaborately done, in true Yhelteth fashion. The captain’s dark, crop-bearded face stayed inexpressive as tanned leather. There was just the hint of creasing in the lines around the jet eyes to match the momentary contempt in the last few syllables he’d spoken.

Archeth took it and ran with it, met Rakan’s eyes and nodded. “Then let’s keep him up there. No sense in disturbing his prayers for something like this, right? I can ask any questions we need answering right here.”

“We’ve already tried questioning her, milady.” The captain leaned in closer, as if to demonstrate something, and the ragged woman flinched back. “Not getting any sense out of her at all. Tried to feed her, too, but she’ll only take water. I guess we could—”

“Thank you, Captain. I think I’ll take it from here.”

Rakan shrugged. “Suit yourself, milady. I need to get a picket organized for the camp, just in case we have visitors tonight. I’ll leave you a couple of men. Bring her up to camp when you’re done, we’ll try to feed her again.” He nodded up past the charred timberwork at the sky. “Best if you don’t take too long. Like the invigilator said, going to be dark soon.”

He made brief obeisance, turned and gestured three soldiers to stay. The rest followed him away up the street. Shanta stayed, hovering on the far side of the broken-down wall like a hesitant buyer outside a shop. Archeth crouched to the woman’s eye level.

“Can I get you anything?” she asked gently.

The woman gaped at her, fixed, Archeth supposed, on the intensely black skin.

“Kiriath,” she mumbled. “Look at your walls, Kiriath. Look what they did. Get between a swamp dog and its dinner, look what it gets you.”

“Yes.” Archeth had no idea what a swamp dog was. The woman’s accent was not local; she had a way of eliding the Tethanne sibilants that suggested it was not her cradle tongue. “Can you tell me your name?”

The woman looked away. “How’s that going to help?”

“As you wish. I am Archeth Indamaninarmal, special envoy of his imperial radiance Jhiral Khimran the Second.” She made the Teth horseman’s gathering gesture, formally ornate, right-handed across her body to the shoulder. “Sworn in service to all peoples of the Revelation.”

“I’m not of the tribes,” the woman muttered, still not looking at her. “My name is Elith. I’m from Ennishmin.”

Oho.

Archeth’s lips tightened as if against pain, way before she could beat back the reflex. Her eyes darted across the woman’s clothing, found the frayed edges of orange at the breast where the kartagh, the sewn badge of nonconvert citizenry, had been ripped away. No mystery as to why Elith would have done that—marauders and criminals throughout the Empire took nonadherence to the Revelation more or less as license for their depredations; in any raid or other low-grade thuggery, the infidel was an easy mark. Imperial courts tended to concur: Outrages against the property or persons of nonconverts were consistently underpunished, occasionally ignored. When iron clashed and hooves thundered through your streets, you were well advised to tear off the legally required identification of your second-class citizenship quick, before anyone with a blade and a bloodlust-stiffened prick spotted it.

“We came south,” Elith went on, as if blaming Archeth for something. “We were told to come, told we’d be safer here. The Emperor extends his hand in friendship. Now look.”

Archeth remembered the long limping columns out of Ennishmin, the desolate tendrils of smoke from the burning settlements they left behind, scrawled on the washed-out winter sky like a writ in accusation.

She’d sat her warhorse on a scorched rise and watched the weary faces go by, mostly on foot, the odd cart piled with possessions and huddled children, seemingly washed along on the flow like a raft on a slow river. She’d listened to the boisterous clowning and squabbling of a group of imperial troops at her back as they rooted through piles of loot gathered out of the hundreds of homes before they were put to the torch. Shame was a dull heat in her face.

She remembered the rage on Ringil’s.

“Listen to me, Elith,” she tried again. “Whoever did this will face the Emperor’s justice. That’s why I’m here.”

Elith gave up the choked edge of a sneer.

Archeth nodded. “You may not trust us, I understand that. But please at least tell me what you saw. You lose nothing by it.”

Now the woman looked directly at her.