The Steel Remains lffh-1

by Richard K. Morgan

  “We have not discussed price yet,” observed Hale, still in a tone like silk. But Ringil’s feigned outrage seemed to have had the desired effect. A little of the tension went out of the slaver. He set the goblet down and steepled his fingers. “In any case, it isn’t that which concerns me. It’s merely that I don’t see why you should be so concerned with the wench in question’s breeding capacity. It really is neither here nor there. If she swells with child, we can soon find you a replacement, well before she becomes unsightly. And meanwhile, by law you will own the offspring if it survives. You can sell it, along with the mother if she no longer pleases you, or separately, if that improves your price. The market is flexible in these matters.”

  “I, uh, I would not know how to go about—”

  “Oh, you may be assured of my diligence in such a case. I’ll gladly pledge you any assistance you require.”

  Yeah, I’ll bet—for a small consideration. But at least Hale seemed to be tipping back in the right direction. Ringil put in another diffident clearing of the throat.

  “You see, in imperial law, slave offspring cannot be—”

  “Yes, I’m sure.” A faint impatience curled into the slaver’s tone now. “But you’re not in the Empire now, my lord. We have League law here, and I assure you, I know it to the letter where my business is concerned.”

  “Well, then.” Grudgingly. “I suppose that—”

  “Excellent.” Hale clapped his hands. “Well, I think what we’ll do is, instead of talking all night, we’ll go down and see some flesh right now. That’ll give you something to sleep on, eh, my lord.”

  A lewd wink. Ringil tried hard to look enthusiastic.

  “Oh, and perhaps before we do that, my Lord Laraninthal could give me any other specifics he has in mind. The stable we hold is extensive, and it may save time if we can narrow the field. Is there perhaps a particular hair color that draws you? Height? I understand your women in the south are quite small-boned.”

  Ringil called Sherin to mind, his own faded childhood memories and what Ishil had told him about her lineage. He had the charcoal line sketch of what she looked like in his pocket, but better right now to play it looser than that. He didn’t want to tip his hand too early.

  “You have in this city, I’m told, a race who live out on the marsh. Is it so?”

  “Yes.” Hale was watching him warily. “That’s so. What of it?”

  Ringil cleared his throat. “Numerous countrymen of mine have told me that the marsh women behave uhm, well . . . differently in bed. You know. That they, uhm, abandon themselves to the act. Utterly. Like animals.”

  It was flat-out fabrication—the marsh dwellers had no such reputation in Yhelteth, in fact most untraveled imperials would have no knowledge that they existed at all as a discrete group. As far as the Empire was concerned, the whole of the Trelayne territory was filled with backward, marsh-grubbing peasants. Only the very well informed knew enough to make distinctions. But no matter—it would play well enough. You could hear the same basic whisper of abandoned sexuality about women from any brutalized or excluded race under the band. Ringil had sat and listened to soldiers repeat it around campfires in every disputed piece of territory he’d fought in after the war with the Scaled Folk was done. It was a basic justification for rape.

  He sometimes thought they would have said it about the lizard females as well, if the Scaled Folk had not been so unremittingly alien.

  Well, I wouldn’t rule that out, either, Archeth once told him, huddled against the coastal wind in Gergis, watching the camp below them. These men would fuck mud if it was warmed to a decent temperature.

  She was talking about her own command.

  “Marsh dwellers, eh?” Terip Hale rolled out a slow smile. “Well, I’ve not heard that one before, exactly. But of course, if that’s your preference. Janesh.”

  The doorman took a step forward. “My lord.”

  “We’ll be paying a visit to the joyous longshank girls. Go down ahead of us and see that everything’s opened up. So to speak.”

  The doorman’s face split in a fierce grin. “Yes, sir.”

  Hale watched him go with a sober expression at odds with the joke. He seemed to be working through something in his head.

  “We don’t deal that much in full-blood dwellers,” he said reflectively. “Though if what you tell me is true, perhaps we should. But it’s problematic, you see. Their families are mostly very tightly knit, and as a people they’re a stubborn, unthinking lot. I’ve seen cases where a man on the marsh would rather starve than sell his children. I mean, what can you do with people like that?”

  Ringil hid his face in his goblet.

  “Fortunately, though, marsh dweller blood isn’t quite as uncommon among our ordinary citizens”—Hale permitted himself a thin smile—“as those same citizens would have you believe. It’s been known to leak into even the noblest of Trelayne families. Don’t worry yourself, Laraninthal of Shenshenath, I’m quite sure we’ll be able to find you a girl with suitable blood.”

  They made small talk after that, while Ringil finished his wine, played the diffident imperial fop, and kept his feelings masked. Inwardly, a cautious optimism was rising through him. He didn’t really expect to find Sherin here—even if she had passed through Hale’s stable, and not one of the others that specialized in concubinage, that was a month ago. Despite the slave trader’s comments about the difficulties of training spirited girls, Ringil didn’t think it would require that long to break a young woman who probably already considered herself worthless for her lack of childbearing ability; who had already been shunned by her whole family and then, finally, betrayed by the man who’d taken her away from them.

  But if she had been here, there’d be traces. Memories among the other girls, among servants and handlers. There’d be documents of sale, somewhere. It was a legal trade now, all above board. Part of the brave new world they’d all been fighting for. If this was the place, the door was halfway levered open, and Ringil could do the rest in easy stages—even if that meant taking Terip Hale somewhere secluded and getting what he needed out of him with hot coals and iron.

  If this was not the place, well, he had the other names on Milacar’s list. He could start all over again.

  “Shall we go down?” Hale asked him.

  He smiled and nodded in eager, foppish assent.

  IT SEEMED THE JOYOUS LONGSHANK GIRLS WERE KEPT ON THE OTHER side of the building. Ringil followed Hale down to ground level and out to the courtyard. Eril and Girsh brought up the rear, along with Hale’s flail-equipped muscle. Everybody watched everybody else with hardened calm. The night had turned clear and cold while they were inside—they crossed the courtyard in silence under sharp stars and the long cool arc of the band. Ringil saw his breath puff ice white in the air.

  If the cold bothered Hale, in his silk dressing gown and slippers, he gave no sign. He led them through another side door in the courtyard wall, down three sets of stone steps and into a semicircular basement chamber with five curtained alcoves along its curving wall. Janesh the doorman was already there, the grin still plastered across his face—apparently he’d been enjoying his work. Bandlight spilled in from small barred windows near the roof, but most of the illumination came from two lanterns set down in the center of the room. There were Majak rugs on the floor, lewd murals etched into the curving wall—though rather prim of content compared with Grace-of-Heaven’s ceiling—and a vast black iron candelabra hanging from the vaulted roof.

  Terip Hale turned to face them.

  “Allow me to present,” he said gravely. “The joyous longshank girls.”

  The curtains whisked aside in their alcoves. Armed men stood there grinning. Short-swords and hatchets, maces and clubs. Two men to an alcove, at least. Ringil saw at least one crossbow, raised and cocked.

  The doorman caught his eye and winked.

  “Now,” said Hale. “Perhaps, Laraninthal of Shenshenath, you’d like to tell me who exactly the fuc
k you really are.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Egar rode out a couple of hours before sunset.

  He didn’t really need the extra time; the Skaranak buried their dead relatively close to wherever they happened to be camped at the time, and their migrations across the steppe were roughly seasonal. As the anniversary of his father’s death swung around each year, so did the proximity of the grave Erkan was laid in. Egar could track it by the changes in the sky and the few windswept landmarks that marked the steppe, could feel it circling beyond the horizon as the seasons turned, curving slowly inward as the warmth ebbed from each year and winter crept in, closing on him like the anniversary itself.

  He didn’t need the extra time.

  But Sula was driving him up a fucking guy rope right now with her youth and her breezy nomad matter-of-factness; she was blunt and clumsy around his feelings, would not give him space, thought sucking him off was the solution to pretty much everything.

  Can hardly blame the lass. Not like you’ve given her any reason to think any different, is it?

  So he told her lies as he dressed.

  “I’ll do the last league on foot,” he said. “For respect.”

  “But that’s stupid!”

  He held down his temper with an effort. “It’s a tradition, Sula.”

  “Yeah.” A throaty snort. “Not since my fucking grandfather died, it isn’t.”

  “Well, that wasn’t all that long ago, was it?”

  She stared at him, stricken. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  It means I remember your grandfather as a young man about the camp. It means I’m easily old enough to be your father. It means you’re sixteen fucking years old, girl, sitting in my yurt like you own it, and beyond all of that it means that at my age I really should know better than to keep doing this.

  “Nothing,” he muttered. “Doesn’t mean anything. But traditions are, uhm, important things, Sula. They’re what holds the clan together.”

  “You think I’m too young for you,” she wailed. “You’re going to pack me in, just like you did that Voronak bitch.”

  “I’m not going to pack you in.”

  “Yes, you are!”

  And she dissolved in tears.

  So then of course he had to go to her, had to hold her. He had to nuzzle at her neck and murmur in her ear as if she were a horse he hadn’t quite broken yet, had to tip back her chin with one hand and wipe away her tears with the other. Had to shelve the chilly, swelling sadness under his own ribs, had to force a grin as she stopped crying, had to tickle her and grope her through the red felt overshirt she’d appropriated from his clothing chest. Had, in fact, taken to wearing around the camp like a blazing fucking declaration of what she spent her time doing in the clanmaster’s yurt.

  Have to talk to her about that.

  At some point.

  “Look,” he said finally. “It’s fucking freezing out there, right? Riding doesn’t keep you warm. That’s the real point. If I walk, I warm up. Chances are, that’s where the tradition comes from in the first place, right?”

  She nodded doubtfully, sniffed, knuckled at one eye. He mashed his tongue hard into the back of his grin and wished she didn’t look so much like a fucking child when she did that.

  How come they all start out hot-eyed temptress minxes and all end up crying into your shirt like babies?

  Isn’t it enough I have to carry the weight of the whole fucking clan on my back? Urann’s aching balls, isn’t it enough that I came back, that I left Yhelteth and everything it held and rode home to be with my fucking people? Isn’t it enough that I’ll probably fucking die up here just like my father and never see Imrana’s face again?

  No answer that he could hear.

  You whine like a girl, Clanmaster. Worse than a girl—this girl wearing your shirt is at least weeping about the future, about something she might be able to change. She’s not the one moping around full of bitterness about a past you can’t do any fucking thing about.

  Now get a grip.

  He tilted her chin back again.

  “Sula, listen. I’ll be back as soon after dawn as I can make it. You wait for me, you keep things warm.” He clowned it, raised brows, grabbed after a buttock and a breast again. “Know what I mean?”

  He got a choked laugh out of her, and then a long, wet kiss. He got out pretty fast after that. Marnak had his horse saddled and waiting outside in the ruddy evening light, shield and lance and small ax slung, a bundle of blankets, firewood, and other provisions tied securely on. The older man stood a discreet distance off from the clanmaster’s yurt, beside his own horse and in grave conversation with a pair of camp guards. He glanced over as Egar pushed back the yurt door flap, left the other two men immediately to their own devices, and strode across. He surveyed his clanmaster without comment.

  “All right?” he asked.

  “Been better. You still want to ride along?”

  “With you in that mood?” Marnak shrugged. “Sure, should be a bundle of fun.”

  IN FACT, EGAR’S MOOD LIGHTENED SOMEWHAT AS THEY RODE OUT ACROSS the steppe and the camp fell behind. Slanting rays from the low winter sun turned the grassland a deceptively warm reddish gold, gave the sense that the evening might hold itself like this forever. The sky was clear and hollow blue, the band arched through it at a tilting angle, tinged a scintillating wash of ruddy shades to match the sunset. A keen wind came scything out of the north but the grease on their faces kept back its bite. The horses made an ambling pace, occasional clink or jingle from metal parts in the rig and the small iron talismans braided into their manes as they tossed their heads. Once or twice, a returning pair of herd minders would hail them as they passed, headed in for the evening meal.

  It all felt a little like escape.

  “You ever miss the south?” he asked Marnak eventually, when the quiet between the two of them had loosened to a wayfarer’s ease. “Ever think about going back?”

  “Nope.”

  He glanced across, surprised by the spike of vehemence. “Really? What, never? You don’t even miss the whores?”

  “Got a wife now.” Marnak grinned in his beard. “And they got whores in Ishlin-ichan, you know.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Even some Yhelteth girls there these days, if that’s your thing.”

  Egar grunted. He knew that, too.

  Marnak raised up a little in his saddle, gestured around at the steppe. “I mean, what’s not to be happy with here? Grazing that never ends, plenty of waterholes, slow-flowing rivers we don’t have to fight the Ishlinak for, plenty of space for everyone. Practically no raiding anymore, now the young guys all head off south instead. We don’t see the long runners much this far south and west, the wolves and steppe cats mostly leave us alone as well. We’ve got more meat on the hoof these days than we know what to do with. Got the clan, the people around us. What’s in Yhelteth to stack up against all that?”

  Where’d you want me to start?

  Views over the harbor, sunlight shimmering off endless ruffled blue to the horizon. Tall white towers at the headland, the slow spiral of a dozen big lizard raptors riding the thermals. The carping of gulls down on the wharf, the bang-bang on wood of fishermen repairing their boats.

  Patios, sun-blasted and riotous with some flowering crimson creeper whose name you never did learn to pronounce right. Ornate ironwork on windows and doors, narrow white-walled streets that tricked away the sun’s assault. Cunningly crafted meeting nooks and warm stone benches set in deep pools of shade, the music of falling water somewhere beyond a screen.

  Market stalls heaped high with brightly colored fruit you could smell at a dozen paces. Philosophers and verse-makers declaiming from their pitches in the less pricey corners of each square, teahouses spilling out with the noisy back-and-forth quarrel of voices disputing everything under the sun: the advisability of trade with the western lands, the existence or not of evil spirits, the urban horse tax.

  Books
—the warm, leather-skinned weight of them in your hands, the way they smelled when you lifted them close to your face. The unfeasibly heart-jolting shock once, as a tome fell heavily open at some much-visited page, divided itself neatly in two blocky halves along the spine—and you thought, guiltily, that you’d broken it.

  The lines and lines and lines and lines of squiggling black text, and Imrana’s long-nailed finger leading him along them.

  The stir and billow of translucent window drapes as a sea breeze wandered in from the balcony and carried away some of the midday heat, cooled some of the sweat on your skin and hers.

  The ebbing bustle of the day, the cries of street sellers growing somehow ever more mournful as the light thickened and a yellow-glow sprinkle of windows lit up across the city.

  The aching, dusk skyline lament of the call to prayer—and ignoring it in slim, dark, orange-blossom-perfumed arms.

  The riding lights of fishercraft out on the evening swell.

  “Yeah, well,” he said.

  Marnak concentrated on the grasslands ahead for a while. Maybe he could feel some of what was smoking off Egar.

  “In the south, they paid me to kill other men,” he said tonelessly. “That’s well and good when you’re young. It seasons you, and it wins honor for your name, for your forefathers in the Sky Home. It brings you to the Dwellers’ notice.”

  “It gets you laid.”

  A chuckle. “It gets you laid. But the time comes you’re not a young man anymore. You start to lose the pleasure in it all. Truth is, I would have gone home long before I did, if the Scaled Folk hadn’t come.”

  “Humanity’s finest hour, eh?”

  The quote didn’t come out quite as sour as Egar intended. Despite everything, the clarion ring that Akal the Great had given to it still clung in faint echo. Marnak nodded to himself, so slightly it might have been the motion of the horse that caused it.

  “For a while, it was.”

  “Yeah, until you end up facing your own fucking people across a line of lances.”