The Steel Remains lffh-1

by Richard K. Morgan

  “No, that’s right. Just domination by the Aldrain. I think I’ve got some sense of what that’ll be like.”

  “That’s a stupid thing to say.” A quick trace of anger in the dwenda’s voice, as quickly wiped away. “There is no reason human and dwenda can’t coexist as we did once before. Our chronicles are full of warriors from your race, taken in out of pity or love and rising to great stature among us. I myself—”

  He stopped. Made a small gesture.

  “No matter. I’m not some market trader at Strov, hawking his wares, nor a member of the Chancellery making his empty speeches for funds and a handsgrab more power over his fellow humans. If your own wits and experience will not convince you, then I will not drag you to an understanding you do not want to own.” He turned abruptly away. “Come, we are here on other business.”

  They picked a careful path through the swampy ground, around the massive iron flank of the platform, to where something like a partially roofed corral had been built against the lowest visible flange. There was a fence of some material similar to the wires of the Aldrain bridge, though nowhere near as subtly worked. Woven more thickly, the same webbing went to form three long, low structures like stables, which were backed up to the ironwork of the platform. The ground the corral occupied was firm and looked dry, was perhaps reinforced with the same Aldrain building materials as the rest, but outside the fence swamp water pooled and sat in stagnant, grayish expanses. The path through was twisted and deceptive and ended at a chained gate.

  Around the corral, and set back about a yard from the fence, a number of small, blunt objects protruded from the water. Ringil made them for rotted tree stumps until they were almost at the gate, and one of the nearer protrusions made a wet, sucking sound. He looked down at it more carefully.

  And recoiled.

  Fuck!

  The object was a human head, fixed neatly at the neck to the tree stump he’d believed it to be. A young woman’s head, long hair trailing down into the soupy gray water in clotted rat’s tails. As he stared at it, the neck corded and twisted about, and out of a pale face the woman’s eyes found his. Mud-streaked, her mouth twisted and formed a silent word.

  . . . please . . .

  Grace-of-Heaven’s story slammed back through him:

  I didn’t say these men were dead. I said all that came back were their heads. Each one still living, grafted at the neck to a seven-inch tree stump.

  Swamp-water tears started from the woman’s eyes, ran dirty down her face.

  Ringil’s eyes darted out across the swamp, and the other protrusions that studded the surface. It was an arc of the same horror, living human heads staring inward at the corral.

  He’d seen dragonfire and the charred bodies of children on spits over roasting pits. He’d thought himself hardened to pretty much anything by now.

  He was not.

  “What the fuck is this, Seethlaw?”

  The dwenda was occupied with the chain on the fence, hands laid on and murmuring softly to it. He looked up distractedly.

  “What?” He saw the direction of Ringil’s stare. “Oh, those are the escapees. Got to hand it to you, you humans are a stubborn lot. We told them where they were, told them there wasn’t any easy way out of the swamp, told them it was dangerous to try. We told them if they stayed put they’d be fed and well treated. They still kept trying. So those are a kind of object lesson. We don’t have so many escape attempts now. In fact, mostly they stay inside, and certainly well away from the fence.”

  Ringil’s eyes went to the stable construction in the shadow of the Kiriath iron. He pressed his tongue hard against the roof of his mouth.

  “These are the marsh blood slaves? You’re keeping them here.”

  “Yes.” Seethlaw lifted the suddenly unfastened chain aside and pushed the gate open. He seemed to notice Ringil’s expression for the first time. “So what? What’s the matter?”

  “You.” It was as if he suddenly could not draw breath properly. “Did this, to them, just to warn the others?”

  “Yes. An object lesson, as I said.”

  “How long do they go on living like that?”

  “Well,” Seethlaw frowned. “Indefinitely, given water supply to the roots. Why?”

  “You motherfuckers.” Involuntarily, Ringil found he was shaking his head. “Ahhh, you fucking piece of shit. You cunt. No reason human and dwenda cannot coexist? What do you call that, then? What kind of fucking coexistence is that?”

  Seethlaw stopped and fixed him with a stare.

  “Is it any worse,” he asked softly, “than the cages at the eastern gate in Trelayne, where your transgressors hang in agony for days at a time as an example to the masses? There is no pain involved in this process, you know.”

  Ringil forced down memory of the searing agony he had never suffered. “No pain involved? Would you choose it for yourself, you fucker?”

  “No. Clearly not.” The dwenda seemed genuinely perplexed by the question. “But their path is not mine, nor would I have walked it the way they have. This really is a minor matter, Ringil. You’re making far too much of it.”

  In that single instant, Ringil would willingly have given his soul to have the weight of the Ravensfriend on his back, the dragon-tooth dagger in his sleeve. Instead, he swallowed hard, swallowed down his hate and looked away from the muddied woman’s face, through the open gate of the corral.

  “Why?” he managed, in a shaking voice. “Why have you brought them here? What purpose does it serve?”

  Seethlaw studied him for a long moment.

  “I’m not sure you will understand,” he said. “You are being very obtuse at the moment.”

  Ringil bared his teeth. “Try me.”

  “Very well. They are to be honored.”

  “Oh, that sounds delightful. That’s better than the Revelation’s purifying inquisitorial love, that is.”

  “As I said, I do not expect you to understand. The marsh dwellers on the Naom plain are the closest to kin that the Aldrain have in this world. Thousands of years ago, their clans were favored retainers to the dwenda, favored enough that we mingled our blood with theirs. Their descendants, in however attenuated a form, carry our bloodline.”

  “That’s a fucking myth,” Ringil said disgustedly. “That’s the lie they sell down at Strov market so they can jack you twice as much to read your fortune. Don’t tell me you fell for that shit. What, three fucking years of politics in Trelayne, rubbing shoulders with the best liars and thieves in the League, and you still can’t see a simple street scam like that coming at you?”

  Seethlaw smiled. “No. The myth, like most of its kind, is based on truth, or at least on an understanding of the truth. There are ways to confirm it. How strongly the dwenda heritage emerges among the marsh clans varies enormously. But when a female child is born unable to conceive in human congress, there the bloodline is strong. It’s harder to tell in males, but something similar applies.”

  “So you’ve been creaming them off through Etterkal and bringing them here. Your cousins at a hundredth remove. Come on, what does that really mean, honored?”

  He was aware of the same savage grin, still pinned to his face. He saw the way Seethlaw was looking at him, and in some tiny way it felt like loss. There was another test here, like seeing the bridge, and this time he was failing it.

  “I think you know what it means,” the dwenda said quietly.

  From Ringil’s throat came a single, jolting, almost soundless sneer. “You’re going to sacrifice them.”

  “If you care to call it that.” Seethlaw shrugged. “Yes.”

  “That’s great. You know, I’m just some scum-fuck human, I’ve barely seen three decades of life, and even I know there are no gods worthy of the name out there. So what is it you fucks believe in so desperately it needs a blood ritual?”

  The dwenda looked pained. “Do you really require an answer to this tirade?”

  “Hey, we’re fucking talking, aren’t we?” />
  Another shrug. “Well, then. It’s less a question of gods than of mechanisms, of the way things are bound up and acted upon. Of ritual, if you like. You may as well ask why humans bury their dead, when eating them would make more sense. There are powers, entities with sway in these matters, though the Aldrain do not consider themselves bound by them in any meaningful way. But there is also an etiquette, an observance of hallowed rules, and for this, blood has always been the channel. You might think of it as the signature on the treaties your people make with each other—though we at least honor our agreements once they are made. If there must be blood, we will offer it. The blood of birth, the blood of death, the blood of animals when a minor shift in fate is required, of one’s own people when something greater is desired. In our history, those chosen for this honor have always gone willingly to their end, as a warrior goes willingly to battle, knowing what their sacrifice is worth.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to be the case with your distant cousins here.”

  “No,” Seethlaw agreed. “It’s not ideal. But it will have to serve. In the end, the fact that we are willing to spill blood we know is our own, well, that will have to be sacrifice enough.”

  “Oh, good. Glad you’ve got it all worked out.”

  The dwenda sighed. “You know, Gil, I had thought you of all people might be able to understand. From what I know of you—”

  “You know nothing of me.” Through clenched teeth. “Nothing. You’ve fucked me, that’s all. Well, that’s a crowded hole you’re in, darling. And us humans, we’re a lying, dissembling bunch, remember. Doesn’t pay to trust us between the sheets any more than anywhere else.”

  “You’re wrong, Gil. I know you better than you know yourself.”

  “Oh, lizardshit!”

  “I’ve seen you in the marches, Gil. I see how you handled yourself there.” Seethlaw leaned across and seized him by the shoulders. “I see what the akyia saw, Gil. I see what you could become, if you’d only let yourself.”

  Ringil raised his arms, sharp empty-hand technique, broke the dwenda’s hold, shook him off. He felt an odd calm settling over him.

  “I’ve done all the becoming I’m going to in this life. I’ve seen enough to know where it all goes. Now you made me a fucking promise. Are you going to keep it? Or do you want to give me back my sword and we’ll finish this thing the way we started it?”

  They stared at each other. Ringil felt himself falling into the dwenda’s empty eyes. He locked up the feeling, kept the stare.

  “Well?”

  “I keep my promises,” said Seethlaw.

  “Good. Then let’s get on with it.”

  Ringil turned brusquely and shouldered his way past, into the corral. Seethlaw stared after him for a long moment, face unreadable, and then he followed.

  CHAPTER 29

  Sherin didn’t know him.

  You couldn’t blame her, Ringil supposed. It had been a long time, and there probably wasn’t a lot left in him of the little boy who refused to play with her in the gardens at Lanatray. Certainly there wasn’t much of the wan little girl he remembered in the woman slumped before him. He’d very likely have walked right past her in the Glades without recognition if he hadn’t been staring a hole in Ishil’s charcoal sketch of her for the last couple of weeks. In fact, even the sketch wasn’t such a great match now. Sherin’s privations seemed to have melted the flesh from her face, turned her eyes hollow and inward, and added a brutal burden of years she hadn’t yet lived. There were streaks of tangled gray in her hair and gathered lines of pain around mouth and eyes that wouldn’t have looked amiss on a harbor-end tavern drudge twice her age.

  Looking at her, he wondered briefly what marks his time with the dwenda had left on his own face. He hadn’t seen a mirror since the night he left the Glades for Etterkal, and now, suddenly, the thought of facing one filled him with unease.

  “Sherin?” he said, very gently. He knelt to her level. “It’s your cousin Ringil. I’ve come to take you home.”

  She didn’t look at him. Her eyes were fixed past his shoulder on Seethlaw, and she cowered into the corner of the stall as if the mother-of-pearl weave of the walls would absorb her. When Ringil reached out to touch her arm, she flinched violently away and her hands crept up to clutch and cover her neck. She rocked back and forth minutely in the corner and began a high single-note keening, a sound so divorced from human voice that at first he could not be sure it came from her throat.

  Ringil twisted on his haunches, looked up at Seethlaw’s pale, Aldrain features.

  “You want to get the fuck out?” he snapped. “Give me a minute with her?”

  The dwenda’s gaze went from his face to Sherin and back again. His shoulders lifted minimally. He turned and slipped out through the half-open door like smoke.

  “Listen, Sherin, he isn’t going to hurt you. He’s . . .” Ringil weighed it up. “A friend. He’s going to let me take you home. Really. There’s no trick here, no sorcery. I really am your cousin. Your mother and Ishil asked me to come. Been looking for you for . . . for a while. Don’t you remember me from Lanatray? I never wanted to play with you in the gardens, remember, even when Ishil made me.”

  That seemed to do it. Inch by inch, her face came around. The keening broke up, caught on shards of breath, then soaked away into the quiet like water into parched earth. She looked at him out of one eye, shivering, both hands still clasped at her neck. Her voice creaked like a rusty hinge.

  “Ri-ringil?”

  He put together something resembling a smile. “Yeah.”

  “It’s really you?”

  “Yeah. Ishil sent me.” He tried the smile again. “You know what that means. Ishil. What she’s like. I fucking had to find you, didn’t I?”

  “Ringil. Ringil.”

  And then she threw herself onto him, collapsed over his neck and shoulders, weeping and clutching and screaming as if a thousand possessing demons were trapped inside her and had decided now, finally, that they’d been there too long, they wanted out, and it was time to let go.

  He held her while it lasted, rocking her gently, murmuring platitudes and stroking her rat’s-nest hair. The screams ran down to sobbing, then to shuddering breaths and quiet. He peered at her face, cleaned it of tears as best he could with his shirtsleeve, and then he picked her up and carried her out, bits of straw from the stall’s floor still clinging to the simple swamp-stained shift she wore.

  Happy now, Mother? Have I done enough?

  Outside, the sky was moving, thick cloud boiling past overhead at menacing speed. The light had changed, thickening and staining toward a day’s-end dimness, and the air reeked of a coming storm. There were no sounds from the other stables or the other stalls in this one; if their occupants were awake, terror or apathy was keeping them quiet. Ringil found himself glad—it was easier to pretend there was no one else kept prisoner here but the woman he now held in his arms.

  Seethlaw stood with his back to the wall of the stable and his arms folded, looking at nothing at all. Ringil walked past him without a word, stopped a couple of steps past with Sherin in his arms. She buried her face in his neck and moaned.

  “So,” the dwenda said at his back. “Satisfied? You have everything you want now?”

  Ringil did not look around. “You put us both on a good horse, you point me to the Trelayne road, and you let me get a full day’s ride away from this shit-hole. Then we can maybe talk about promises kept.”

  “Sure.” He heard the sound of Seethlaw levering himself off the wall, straightening up and gliding in behind him. His voice fell drab and cold, lifted hairs on the nape of Ringil’s neck. “Why not. After all, there’s nothing more for you here, is there?”

  “You said it.”

  He walked toward the gate in the stormlight, bracing his steps a little because Sherin was heavier to carry than he’d expected when he first picked her up. Some forever insouciant part of him remembered a time when he could fight all day in plate
armor and still stand as night fell, find the energy to go among the conscripted men at camp and build their spirits for the next day’s slaughter, talk up victory he did not believe in and share their brutally crude jokes about spending and fucking and hurting as if he found them funny.

  Were you a better man then, Gil? Or just a better liar?

  Your arse cheeks and belly were tighter, anyway. Your shoulders were bigger and harder.

  Perhaps that was enough, for them and for you.

  He cleared the gate, working grimly to keep his eyes away from the heads in the water beyond. He almost succeeded. One slippery, sliding glance as he walked out, the corner of his eye grabbed by the despairing muddied features of the woman nearest the gate. He jerked his gaze away before he could glimpse more than one tear-soiled cheek and the mumbling desperate mouth. He never met her eyes.

  On through the swamp and the failing light, with Sherin weighing ever heavier in his arms and Seethlaw cold and remotely beautiful at his side, all three of them like symbolic characters from some irritatingly pompous morality-tale play whose original moral had somehow been scrambled and compromised and lost and was now, to audience and participants alike, anybody’s fucking guess.

  ON THE SOUTHWESTERN FRINGES OF THE SWAMP, THE LAND GREW slowly less hostile to human use, and apparently to life of other kinds as well. It started with the odd mosquito bite and sparse clouds of flies rising around their boots as they plashed through marshy portions of the path. Then, slowly, birdsong began to seep into the silence, and a short time after that Ringil started to spot the birds themselves, perched or hopping about in plain view on branches and fallen tree trunks. Increasingly, water gave up its unpredictable claims to the earth, ceased to ooze up out of the ground wherever they stepped and confined itself more and more to creeks and inlets. The path they walked hardened up; the ever-present stench of the stagnant pools receded to an infrequent wafting. The ground rose and folded itself, while the sound of flowing water over rock announced the presence of streams. Even the sky seemed to brighten as the threatening storm crawled off somewhere else for a while.