CHAPTER 5

Where the broad westward flow of the River Trel split and spread in tributaries, and wore itself into the soft cushioned loam of the Naom coastal plain like the lines etched across a man’s palm, where the sea spent its force across acres of mudflat and marsh and could not easily threaten man-made structure, one of Grace-of-Heaven Milacar’s distant ancestors had once spotted a less-than-obvious strategic truth—to wit, that a city surrounded by such a maze of mingled land and water would in effect be a kind of fortress. Well, being by nature a modest as well as an inventive man, this root patriarch of the Milacar line not only went ahead and founded an ingenious settlement you could only reach with local guides through the marsh; he also renounced the right to name the city after himself and called it instead Trel-a-lahayn, from the old Myrlic lahaynir—blessed refuge. Out of this vision, and the eventual laziness of men’s tongues, Trelayne was born. And over time, as stone replaced wood, and cobbles covered mud streets, as blocks and then towers rose gracefully over the plain to become the city we all know and love, as the lights, the very lights of that subtle fortress came to be visible to caravanserai and ship captains a full day and night before they reached it, so the origins of the city were lost, and the clan name Milacar, sadly, came to be valued no more than any other . . .

At least, that was Grace-of-Heaven’s end of the tale, backed up now as always with consistent narrative passion if not actual evidence. There weren’t many who would have had the nerve to call him a liar to his face, far less interrupt him with the accusation at his own dinner table.

Ringil stood in the brocade-hung entryway and grinned.

“Not this horseshit again,” he drawled loudly. “Haven’t you got any new stories, Grace?”

Conversation drained out of the candlelit dining chamber like the last of the sand from an hourglass. Bandlight seeped coldly into the quiet from window drapes along the far wall. Gazes flickered about, on and off the newcomer, in among the gathered company. Some at the broad oval table looked around, arms in richly tailored cloth braced on chair backs—squeak of shifting chair legs and the soft brush of heavy robes in motion across the floor. Well-fed and contented faces turned, some of them still chewing their last mouthful, momentarily robbed of their self-assurance. Mouths open, eyes wide. The machete boy crouched at Milacar’s right hip blinked, and his hand tightened on the hilt of the ugly eighteen-inch chopping blade at his belt.

Ringil caught the boy’s eye. Held it a moment, no longer grinning.

Milacar made a tiny clucking sound, tongue behind his top teeth. It sounded like a kiss. The boy let go of the machete hilt.

“Hello, Gil. I heard you were back.”

“You heard right, then.” Ringil switched his gaze from boy to master. “Seems you’re as well informed as ever.”

Milacar—always rather less svelte than he would probably have liked, rather less tall than his claim to ancestral Naom blood suggested he should be. But if these elements had not changed, then neither had the stocky, muscular energy that smoked off him even when he sat, the sense that it wouldn’t take much to have him come up out of the chair, big cabled arms falling to a street fighter’s guard, fists rolled up and ready to beat the unceremonious shit out of anyone who was asking for it.

For now, he settled for a pained frown, and rubbed at his chin with the pads of his index and middle fingers. His eyes creased and crinkled with a smile that stayed just off his lips. Deep, gorgeous blue, like the sunstruck ocean off the headland at Lanatray, dancing alive in the light from the candles. He held Ringil’s look and his mouth moved, something inaudible, something for Ringil alone.

The moment broke.

Milacar’s doorman, whom Ringil had left encumbered and struggling to hang his cloak and the Ravensfriend, arrived red-faced and cringing in his wake. He wasn’t a young man and he was puffed from sprinting up the stairs and down the corridor after his escaped charge.

“Uhm, his worthiness Master Ringil of Eskiath Fields, licensed knight graduate of Trelayne and—”

“Yes, yes, Quon, thank you,” Milacar said acidly. “Master Ringil has already announced himself. You may go.”

“Yes, your honor.” The doorman darted a poisonous glance at Ringil. “Thank you, your honor.”

“Oh, and Quon. Try to keep up with the uninvited arrivals, if you could. You never know, the next one might be an assassin.”

“Yes, your honor. I’m truly sorry, your honor. It won’t happen agai—”

Milacar waved him out. Quon shut up and withdrew, bowing and wringing his hands. Ringil crushed out a quiver of sympathy for the man, stepped on it like a spilled pipe ember. No time for that now. He advanced into the room. The machete boy watched him with glittering eyes.

“You’re not an assassin, are you, Gil?”

“Not tonight.”

“Good. Because you seem to have left that big sword of yours behind somewhere.” Milacar paused delicately. “If, of course, you still have it. That big sword of yours.”

Ringil reached the table at a point roughly opposite Grace-of-Heaven.

“Yeah, still got it.” He grinned, made a leg for his host. “Still as big as ever.”

A couple of outraged gasps from the assembled company. He looked around at the faces.

“I’m sorry, I’m forgetting my manners. Good evening, gentlemen. Ladies.” Though there were, technically, none of the latter in the room. Every female present had been paid. He surveyed the heaped table, matched gazes with one of the whores at random, spoke specifically to her.

“So what’s good, my lady?”

Shocked, gently rocking quiet. The whore opened her purple-painted mouth in disbelief, gaped back at him. Ringil smiled patiently. She looked hopelessly around for guidance from one or another of her outraged clients.

“It’s all good, Gil.” If the room bristled at Ringil’s subtle insult in addressing a prostitute ahead of the gathered worthies, Milacar at least was unmoved. “That’s why I pay for it. But why don’t you try the cougar heart, there in the yellow bowl. That’s especially good. A Yhelteth marinade. I don’t imagine you’ll have tasted much of that sort of thing in recent years, out there in the sticks.”

“No, that’s right. Strictly mutton and wolf, down among the peasants.” Ringil leaned in and scooped a chunk of meat from the bowl. His fingers dripped sauce back across the table in a line. He bit in, chewed for a while, and nodded. “That’s pretty good for a bordello spread.”

More gasps. At his elbow, someone shot to his feet. Bearded face, not much older than forty, and not as overfed as others around the table. Burly beneath the purple-and-gold upriver couture, some muscle on that frame by the look of it. A hand clapped to a court rapier that had not been checked at the door. Ringil spotted a signet ring with the marsh daisy emblem.

“This is an outrage! You will not insult this company with impunity, Eskiath. I demand—”

“I’d rather you didn’t call me that,” Ringil told him, still chewing. “Master Ringil will do fine.”

“You, sir, need a lesson in—”

“Sit down.”

Ringil’s voice barely rose, but the flicker of his look was a lash. He locked gazes with his challenger, and the other man flinched. It was the same threat he’d offered the machete boy, given voice this time in case the recipient was drunk or just hadn’t ever stood close enough to a real fight to read Ringil’s look for what it promised.

The burly man sat.

“Perhaps you should sit down, too, Gil,” Grace-of-Heaven suggested mildly. “We don’t eat standing up in the Glades. It’s considered rude.”

Ringil licked his fingers clean.