The Dark Defiles

by Richard K. Morgan

  That cheap dramatic streak of yours is going to get you in some trouble you can’t get out of one of these days, Gil my lad. Grace-of-Heaven Milacar, in fond reprimand after a warehouse heist went spectacularly, bloodily wrong, and fifteen-year-old Ringil stayed ill-advisedly behind to taunt the Watch from the eaves of the burning building. Going to get you maimed or dead, just see if it doesn’t.

  Yeah, well, Grace. Grimacing at the memory. Just look how that worked out.

  So yes—as he came crunching up the gravel path toward the main doors of the house, out came the opposition. The door leaves parted, and a squad of men-at-arms in Eskiath livery issued rapidly through the gap. Ringil made the count, assessed the threat—seven men, five with pikes and two more behind that looked like Majak hires or some local imitation thereof, signature staff lances in hand. All lightly armored—their helmets and cuirasses showed signs of being donned in a hurry, but the metal gleamed dintless and smooth in the low light. It was either new gear or very well kept. And this was by no means the household’s full contingent, unless Gingren had made spending cuts of late. There’d be more inside.

  The pikemen gathered in a rough scallop formation to defend the door, weapons lowered at infantry guard. The Majak spread apart in the space behind, staff lances loosely held across their bodies. There was a grim, drilled competence to it all, like clockwork parts moving. But when they saw the triple file of imperials at Ringil’s back, the shock stamped across their faces like marching boots.

  “Crossbows,” Gil snapped in Tethanne, without turning or breaking pace. “Deploy left and right. Sound off on ready, hold for my command.”

  He came to a casual halt, a couple of dozen yards short of the pike tips. Heard the crunch as the imperial bowmen stepped out of file behind him on the gravel, fanned out, and bent to their weapons. There was a heartbeat instant when he worried the pikemen might do the smart thing and charge while they had the advantage, before the bows were cranked and loaded. Well, he had some small magic in reserve for that, and anyway knew a couple of skirmish tricks to take a pike off its owner without dying in the attempt …

  The bowmen sounded off, eight laconic voices, hard and tight. Ringil grinned at the pike guard, let them do the math. Switched to Naomic.

  “Let’s not be hasty, boys. Do this right, we can all make it through to dawn without any unsightly holes in us.”

  Lamplight, flickering in the doorway behind them. He saw dim figures move there.

  “Hello, Dad,” he called. “This isn’t very friendly. Not going to invite me in?”

  A mutter of voices, rising in dispute. He heard his father, maybe one of his brothers, too—sounded like that little cunt Creglir. A couple of other male voices he didn’t recognize, then his mother’s cutting tones, and abruptly he was off-balance, unsure how the fact of her presence made him feel. On the one hand, he’d hoped she’d still be down at Lanatray for the balance of the summer, and so well out of this. On the other hand …

  “Mother? How about you talk some sense into Dad, and save us all a bloodbath here? These are imperial marines. The same guys you saw me with when we called in on our way north.”

  Quiet for a moment. Then his parents’ voices rose again, straining against each other like wrestlers in some vicious grudge bout. He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded as if his mother was getting the best of it. He tried again.

  “We’re at war now, Dad. I give these men the peeled rind of an excuse, they’ll go through your household guard here like Hoiran’s prick through a batch of virgin milkmaids.”

  The lamplight and shadow shifted. Gingren stepped out behind his pikemen.

  Ringil blinked.

  For a moment he didn’t recognize the man before him, thought this was some aged, outlying member of house Eskiath, some great uncle he’d never met, family resemblance and all, but not …

  Then, like a punch to the gut, he understood he was looking at his father after all. Understood how suddenly old Gingren had grown.

  The corpulent warrior-gone-to-seed bulk that Gil remembered from only a couple of years ago was shrunken now, all but gone. The shoulders had slimmed down, were almost bony under the thin jerkin his father wore. Even Gingren’s thickened waist seemed to have lost most of its girth. The face, handsome in youth—though Gil had always hated to admit the fact—then more recently a little bloated with too much good living, was now lined and drawn, careworn beyond anything he could have imagined. It was hard to be sure in the poor light, but the set of the mouth seemed looser, too, the iron-gray hair whitened and thinned. Only the level flint gaze was the same as far as Gil could tell, and for that he was almost thankful.

  “Ringil.” Twitching lips, Gingren mouthing his words like a crone before he spoke them. “What do you want? Have you come to slaughter us all, then? Hmm? Not content with dragging my name through the mud, now you come to spill Eskiath blood as well, in the halls of your own upbringing?”

  “Hey! I’m not the one here who forgot what blood ties are, motherfucker!” His voice came out jagged and uncontrolled, and he saw Gingren flinch with it. “I haven’t sold my fucking soul for a place at the top table!”

  “You broke the edicts!” There’s rage rising in his father’s voice too now, thin and desperate though it sounds. “You flouted the law!”

  “Yeah—a law that takes the freedom of the city and snaps it like a twig for kindling. A law built by rich merchants to make themselves richer still, signed and ratified by their lickspittle political finger puppets up the hill, and falling—”

  “You have no comprehension of these matters, Ringil! You—”

  Trample it down. “—and falling without pity on the poorest citizens in the League. A law that took one of our own blood and made her a broken slave in a foreign land. Where was your precious fucking House of Eskiath honor when that happened, eh?”

  “You burned down Elim Hinrik’s home! He died in that fire!”

  “I’m not surprised. Both legs broken like that, he would have had a hard time getting out before it caught.” Suddenly, control was easy once more. He shrugged and examined his nails. “If he’d told me what I wanted to know, he might have lived.”

  “You,” Gingren, breathing hard now. “Murdered a worthy merchant of Trelayne for no reason other than his part in a legal trade. And now you joke about it to my face? You are no son of mine! You never were!”

  “Yes, that’s become increasingly clear to me over the last several years. Perhaps it’s something we need to talk to Mother about. Perhaps she felt the need for a more—”

  “Ringil!”

  Ishil Eskiath’s bright and haughty voice, like a crisp slap across the face. It shut him up the way nothing else ever could. He watched as she joined her husband behind the line of the men-at-arms, and his heart ached a little at the sight. He grimaced.

  “I’m sorry, Mother. That was a bitchy crack.”

  “Why are you here, Ringil?” she asked in that bright voice. “I don’t believe you intend to harm us, and I certainly don’t imagine you’ve come seeking forgiveness.”

  “Right on both counts. I’m here for information, and then I’m gone.”

  “I see.” Acid dripped in her tone. “And if we cannot furnish you with this information, what is to be our fate? Will you break our limbs, too, set the house afire and leave us to burn?”

  He bit down on the ache, he put it away. “No, my lady, I will not. I have not forgotten my blood, even if my own father has. You have nothing to fear from me, or my men, if you can persuade yours to stand down and keep their cool.”

  There was a longish pause. Gingren glowered. The pikemen looked uncertain. Then Ishil took two more firm steps forward, so she stood almost between the two men-at-arms with the staff lances.

  “Stand down,” she said brusquely. “There’s no fight here.”

  Gingren erupted. “Hoiran’s balls, woman, do you think I—”

  “What I think, husband, is that I have absolutely no wish to see the
family linen washed and aired in public this way. I would very much prefer to have our visitor inside and hear what he has to say in private.” A barbed look went at Gingren, impossible to miss even in this dim light. “It would be politic, husband, do you not think?”

  Another creaking moment of uncertainty, during which the pikemen shot each other exasperated glances. Ringil saw the confusion, knew it for potentially lethal. He raised a very slow, very limp hand for his own men.

  “Stand down,” he told them. “Let them see you mean it.”

  He heard the exaggerated motions of the bowmen as they lowered their weapons and got back to their feet. Saw relief banner across the faces opposite him. He nodded amiably at the pikemen. Loosened his stance.

  By the time Gingren picked up the beat, the tips of the pikes had already begun to droop.

  “Stand down, then.” The command was snapped out, gruff and ungracious. “But your men stay out here, Ringil. And I’ll have that cursed blade of yours.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  Gingren drew himself up. “Then—”

  “Husband,” said Ishil sharply, “would you be so kind as to lend me your arm and escort me back inside? I am quite faint from all this excitement.”

  Gingren stared at his wife, mouth twitching. She looked evenly back. Finally, wordless, Gingren put out his arm, and Ishil took it with a languid gesture that Gil supposed just about passed for faintness. He saw smirks among the pikemen and surprised himself with a sudden stab of sympathy for his father.

  Bit late for that, Gil.

  And, very faintly, across the rain and stormy murk he’d brought down on the Glades, he heard the first of the screams.

  INSIDE ESKIATH HOUSE, HE STOOD ITCHILY IN THE CENTER OF THE WESTern lounge, while his mother was seen to a completely unnecessary seat near the window and fanned by solicitous ladies in waiting. Gingren left her there like some task he was weary of attempting, went to the corner cabinet and poured himself a glass of something amber. Downed it in one, poured another, pointedly did not offer anything to Gil. They both acted as if the other was not in the room, until Creglir swept glaring through the door, apparently on course to grab Ringil by the throat.

  “You fucking—”

  “Creg!” The old snap of command in his father’s voice now; this was a son he knew he could manage. “Don’t you even think about it. I won’t have you brawling in front of your mother. Remember where you are, remember who you are. Is that clear?”

  Creglir growled, but he backed off to the bookcase wall and contented himself with glaring murderously at his younger brother. It wasn’t much of a change from the last time Ringil saw him—they’d never really been able to stand each other. While Gil and Gingren junior had gotten on well enough, at least until the showdown at the Academy, and even after that maintained a kind of cordial mutual contempt, the thing with Creg was visceral and eternal. Maybe, unburdened by the eldest brother role that constrained Ging, Creglir had simply been able to give his competitive sibling urges free rein. Or maybe he genuinely felt the disgust for what Ringil was that he’d always professed to. Either way, they’d drawn blood from each other at an early age and never seen a reason to stop.

  And certainly not now.

  “Proud of yourself, little brother?” Creglir’s lip curled. “Bringing the enemy to our door, shaming your own mother in front of strangers and servants?”

  Gil looked at him. “You want a spanking, Creg? I’m right here.”

  He watched Creglir splutter and fume, knew he’d do nothing with their father’s leash applied. Curious to find the Dragonbane’s favored choice of words on his lips all of a sudden. Or not, because, well, there was a man who knew how to deal with difficult siblings.

  “You faggot scum. If Mother weren’t in this room, I’d—”

  “You’d die. That’s what you’d do. Now shut the fuck up while I talk to the grown-ups.” Ringil turned to Ishil. “You’d be well advised to stay inside for the next day or so, Mother. The men I have out there are the better behaved end of what I’ve brought to Trelayne.”

  Ishil had already waved away her fanning, cooing ladies. Now she sat up straight in her chair, eyes intent on his, about as faint and flustered as a stooping hawk.

  “What have you done, Ringil?” she asked quietly. “They told us you were dead. What have you brought down on us?”

  “I’ve freed the hulk fleet convicts and brought them ashore.”

  Creglir snorted. “Horseshit!”

  A more general silence from the rest of the room. Creglir looked back and forth between his silent parents, neither of whom seemed to share his confidence.

  “Well, I mean.” Hands spread, exasperated, but weaker of tone all of a sudden. “Seriously. How would he accomplish such a thing?”

  “It’s done,” Ringil told them. “They are already in the city. The privateer Sharkmaster Wyr leads them, to the extent that a mob like that can be led. But mostly they are set to rampage at random. I imagine Harbor End is already overrun, perhaps Tervinala, too. And Wyr himself is loose in the Glades with the remains of his crew.”

  “Are you—?” Gingren was gaping at him now, drink forgotten and spilling in his lowered hand. “Are you insane? Are you fucked in the head, Ringil? Have I raised a demon changeling in place of a son?”

  “You have now, yeah.” He turned again to where Ishil sat. “You summoned me, Mother. You brought me back to find Sherin, to punish those who took her.”

  “For the first part of which you were paid,” Ishil said severely. “Quite handsomely as I recall. And I do not recall asking you to punish anyone once Sherin was home.”

  “No. Sherin asked for that herself.”

  “Sherin Helirig is a stupid little trollop,” snarled Creglir, “without the wit or grace to marry well or bear children for her family name. She always was. Who cares what she wanted?”

  “Apparently only me.”

  “You rotted piece of—”

  “That’s enough!” Ishil was on her feet, witch queen composed. “What’s done is done. And I imagine that this ingenious riot you’ve set, Ringil, cannot last much beyond morning. A mob of half-starved criminal wretches surely won’t present much challenge to the Watch once we have light and the true nature of the threat is understood.”

  “Too right,” Creglir sneered. “The Watch is going to make chopped hound feed out of that scum. Just you watch it happen, brother.”

  “I don’t expect to be here long enough. That’s not why I came.”

  Distant shrieking came faintly through the half-open windows of the lounge. Both Gingren and Creglir hurried to the glass and stared out at the rain-peppered darkness. Behind their backs, Ishil seemed unmoved. Ringil wondered if she’d already heard earlier, fainter cries, and said nothing. He met her eyes, looking for signs, and though her face was otherwise unreadable, he thought for just a moment that he saw a smile touch the corners of her mouth and eyes. He thought he saw sadness there, and something like pity.

  And maybe love. He couldn’t be sure.

  And then it was gone.

  “There’s red in the sky,” said Gingren grimly. “Something’s burning out there.”

  “That’s Wrathrill House, Dad. Got to be.” A shocked, accusing look on Creglir’s face as he swung round to stare at Gil. “Hoiran’s balls, he was telling the truth!”

  “Glad we got that sorted out.”

  Gingren rounded on him, voice harnessed to some vestige of the colossal paternal rages Gil remembered from his youth. “You think this is funny? You let degenerate convict scum into the city of your birth to pillage and rape and burn like this, and you laugh?”

  “Well, look at it this way, Dad. I doubt they’ll do anything that hasn’t already been done to them.”

  Almost, Gingren went for him then, and with a shock that was like sudden sickness, Gil realized he wasn’t ready for it. Creg, he’d chop down as soon as look at, he’d speak a glyph and watch his brother drop and strangle to death on
the floor with nothing but joy. But Gingren, his worn-down, sold-out, defeated father …

  “We are getting nowhere,” Ishil said evenly. “We have our son’s word for the damage he’s done, and I for one never doubted it. The question is, Ringil, what it will take to make you go away again? You say you are here for information. What information?”

  “The prisoners brought back from Ornley. My colleagues from the expedition. I want to know where they’re being held, and I want them released to me.”

  Ishil glanced at Gingren. “Husband?”

  Gingren ignored her. He was still looking wonderingly at Ringil. “You came all the way here for that? Did all this? For imperials?”

  “They are my friends.”

  His father nodded, mouth tight. The same slow-brewing, disgusted understanding as that first time he’d caught Gil in Jelim Dasnal’s arms in the stables. “Yes. Well, your friends are no longer held under Chancellery guard. They were transferred a week ago. All bar the rank and file, that is—those we interrogated on arrival and then executed as prisoners of war.”

  “Transferred where? By whose order?”

  “Into Etterkal.”

  Ringil’s turn to nod. “Findrich. He knew I was coming.”

  “Don’t be bloody ridiculous. How could he know that?”

  “Oh, Dad. They really have kept you to the fringes of this, haven’t they?” And there it was again—the sudden, unlooked-for stab of pity for what Gingren had become. “Did you really sell yourself so cheap, Dad? Have they really told you nothing of what lies behind the cabal?”