Gingren found him there, unmoved, what felt like hours later.

“Well, now you’ve done it,” he growled.

Ringil wiped hands down his face and looked up at his father. “I hope so. I don’t want to have to breathe the same air as that fuck again.”

“Oh, Hoiran’s teeth!What is it with you, Ringil? Just for once tell me, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me?” Suddenly Ringil was off the stool, scant inches out of his father’s fighting space. His arm scythed out, pointing eastward. “He sent Jelim to die on a fucking spike!”

“That was fifteen years ago. And anyway, Jelim Dasnal was a degenerate, he—”

“Then so am I, Dad. So am I.”

“—fucking deserved the cage.”

“Then so did I!”

It screamed up out of him, the dark poison pressure of it, the same nagging ache that had driven him up the pass at Gallows Gap, like biting down on a rotten tooth, the pain and the sweet leak of pus behind it, the taste of his own hate in his mouth, and a trembling that now he found he couldn’t stop. Gingren saw it, and wavered in the blast.

“Ringil, it was the law.”

“Oh lizardshit!” But abruptly the force of his rage was no longer there, the krin drop was crushing it out, falling on him harder now with every waking second, bleaching away his focus. He went back to the stool and seated himself again, voice flung dull and disinterested back over his shoulder at Gingren where he stood. “It was a political deal, and you know it. You think they would have hung Jelim up at the eastern gate if his surname had been Eskiath? Or Alannor, or Wrathrill, or any other name with a Glades punch behind it? You think any of those raping sadists up at the Academy are ever going to see the sharp end of a cage?”

“That,” said Gingren stiffly, “is not something we—”

“Oh, fuck off. Just forget it.” Ringil dumped his chin into one cupped hand, defocusing vision of the grain in the table’s wooden surface as the comedown leaned in on him. “I’m not going to do this, Father. I’m not going to argue about the past with you. What’s the point? Look, I’m sorry if I fucked up your negotiations with the Chancellery.”

“Not just mine. Kaad could have helped you.”

“Yeah. Could have, but he wasn’t going to. He just wanted—you both just want—me to stay away from the Salt Warren. The rest is just distraction. It isn’t going to help me find Sherin.”

“And you think thugging your way into Etterkal is?”

Ringil shrugged. “Etterkal took her. That’s where the useful answers are going to be.”

“Hoiran’s teeth, Ringil. Is it really worth it?” Gingren came to the table, leaned on it at his son’s shoulder, leaned over him. His breath was sour with stress and lack of sleep. “I mean, one fucking merchant’s daughter, barren anyway, and too stupid to look to her own welfare in good time? She’s not even a full cousin.”

“I don’t expect you to understand.” Any more than I understand it myself.

“She’ll be soiled goods by now, Ringil. You do know that, don’t you? You know how the slave markets work.”

“Like I said, I don’t expe—”

“Good, because I don’t.” Gingren thumped the table, but with a despairing lack of real force. “I don’t understand how the same man who helped save this whole fucking city from the lizards can stand there and tell me that getting back one raped and brutalized female is more important to him than protecting the stability of the very same city he fought so hard to save.”

Ringil looked up at him. “So it’s about stability now, is it?”

“Yeah. It is.”

“Want to expand on that?”

Gingren looked away. “This is under seal of council. I can’t divulge—”

“Fine.”

“Ringil, I promise you. On the honor of the Eskiath name, I swear it. It may not seem like much, you stirring up trouble in Etterkal, but there’s a threat at the heart of all this and it’s easily the equal of those fucking lizards you threw off the city walls back in ’53.”

Ringil sighed. He rubbed the heels of his palms in his eyes, trying to dislodge the feeling of grit.

“I had a rather minor part in lifting the siege, Father. And to be honest I would have done the same thing for any other city, including Yhelteth, if we’d had to fight there instead. I know we’re not supposed to say that kind of thing these days, seeing as how we’re back to being sworn enemies with the Empire. But it’s the truth, and truth is something I’m kind of partial to. Call it an affectation.”

Gingren drew himself up. “Truth is not an affectation.”

“No?” Ringil summoned energy and stood up to leave. He yawned. “Doesn’t seem any more popular around here than it was when I left, though. Funny, they always said it was one of the things we were fighting for back then. Light, justice, and truth. I distinctly remember being told that.”

They stood looking at each other for a couple of long moments. Gingren drew breath, audibly, as if it hurt to do. The expression he wore shifted.

“You’re still going, then? Into Etterkal. Despite everything you’ve just heard.”

“Yeah, I am.” Ringil tilted his head until his neck gave up its tension with a click. “Tell Kaad not to get in my way, eh.”

Gingren held his gaze. Nodded as if just convinced of something.

“You know, I don’t like him any more than you do, Ringil. I don’t like him any more than the next harbor-end cur. But curs have their uses.”

“I suppose they do.”

“These are not the most honorable of times we find ourselves in.”

Ringil hoisted an eyebrow. “You reckon?”

Another silence, into which Gingren made a noise that might, locked behind closed lips, have been a laugh. Ringil masked his disbelief. His father hadn’t laughed in his company for the best part of two decades. Uncertainly, he let the trace of a smile touch his own mouth.

“I’ve got to go to bed, Dad.”

Gingren nodded again, pulled in another breath that seemed to hurt him.

“Ringil, I . . .” He shook his head. Gestured helplessly. “You, you know . . . if you’d just been . . . If only you . . .”

“Didn’t like to suck other men’s cocks. Yeah, I know.” Ringil came to life, heading for the door, walking quickly past Gingren so he wouldn’t have to watch his father’s face twitch in revulsion. He paused at the other man’s shoulder, leaned close and murmured, “But the problem is, Dad, I do.”

His father flinched as if he’d struck him. Ringil sighed. Then he raised a hand and clapped Gingren roughly on the chest and shoulder.

“It’s okay, Dad,” he said quietly. “You’ve got two other red-blooded sons to make you proud. They both did pretty good at the siege.”

Gingren said nothing, did nothing, made no audible noise. He might as well have been a statue. Ringil sighed again, let his hand drop from his father’s shoulder and walked away.

Sleep. Sleep would help.

Right.