CHAPTER 19

Ringil tried, just the once, on fading hope, for the outrage of imperial nobility.

“Just what is the meaning of this? You intend to rob me, like common criminals? My father will have you—”

Terip Hale shook his head. “Let it go, friend. I don’t imagine that accent is any more real than the rest of this charade, so drop it, why don’t you. This is going to be painful enough for you as it is. Now, like I asked you before, who the fuck are you? What are you doing here, asking after barren marsh dwellers?”

Ah.

“All right,” Ringil said, because he guessed he had perhaps another half a minute, at most, before Hale did the obvious thing and had them all disarmed.

Yeah, and after that, it’s down to whatever disciplinary facilities Hale keeps around here for recalcitrant slaves. Where we’ll be put to the question repeatedly, until Hale gets what he wants to hear from us, and then, if we’re lucky, they might put us out of our scorched and mutilated misery with a quick slit throat.

Nice going, Gil.

Ringil measured the possibilities. Eril and Girsh had both frozen when the trap was sprung, arms well out from their bodies so as not to invite a crossbow bolt for twitching a hand the wrong way, faces taut with concentrated tension. They looked like men wading belly-high across an icy river, like adults caught out midstep in a children’s game of closer-closer-statue. They would have already assessed the odds. Now they watched for Ringil’s lead.

There were three crossbows leveled at them, as far as he could see. The rest was hand-to-hand cutlery.

“All right what?” grated Hale.

“All right, you win. I’m not Laraninthal of Shenshenath, and I’m not an imperial. My name’s Ringil Eskiath.”

Hale blinked. “The Ringil Eskiath? Yeah, right.”

But Ringil had seen how that same taken-aback flinch ran around the armed men in the alcoves. He felt the way their casual thug focus gave way to curious stares. He saw a couple of them mutter to each other. The siege of Trelayne was eight years in the past, the triumph at Gallows Gap a year older than that. The war itself had been over now for more than half a decade. But the stories lingered on, attenuated maybe, yet still there in the city’s consciousness.

“Eskiath died at Ennishmin,” someone sneered. “Fighting imperials.”

Ringil forced a calm he didn’t feel.

“Heard that one before a couple of times,” he said lightly. “And it’s almost true. Still got the scars. But it takes more than three Yhelteth sneak assassins to put me away.”

Another of the men voiced a faint cheer. His companion elbowed him savagely to shut up. Ringil pushed as hard as it would go. He raised a cautious thumb, well out from his body so it wouldn’t be misinterpreted, gesturing up at his left shoulder.

“This is the Ravensfriend,” he said loudly. “Kiriath steel. Forged at An-Monal for the clan Indamaninarmal, gifted to me by Grashgal the Wanderer. Rinsed in lizard blood at Rajal Beach and Gallows Gap and the siege of Trelayne. I am Ringil of the Glades house of Eskiath.”

Another voice from one of the alcoves. “He does look kind of—”

“Yeah?” Terip Hale wasn’t having this. “Well, you know what I heard? I heard Ringil Eskiath was a fucking queer. That true as well?”

Ringil bent him a smile. “Would I have come to you looking for slave girls if it were?”

“I don’t know why you’re here.” Hale nodded at the muscle with the flail. “But we are going to find out. Varid.”

The big man moved across to Ringil, stepped in close enough to block any attempt to bring the Ravensfriend out of its scabbard, far enough off to beat a grapple move. It was done with sober professional care—no grin like the doorman’s, no jeering. Just a custom-hardened watchfulness in the eyes. Chances were that Varid had been a soldier once.

He nodded at the sword pommel. “Unstrap that. Make it slow.”

A tiny breeze got in from somewhere and made the lantern flames flicker behind their metal mesh. Shadows danced and shivered across the floor.

Ringil dropped the dragon knife from his sleeve. He took one rapid step left.

The Majak had made them, in the last years of the war, once the tide had turned. Mostly they were ceremonial, a statement of the victory to come, not ideal for fighting, even close in. Egar had given him his in a drunken fit of affection one campfire night on the Anarsh plain. Fucking useless thing, he’d mumbled, looking away. You might as well have it. It was basically an infant dragon fang, triangular in section, serrated up the two back edges, razor-sharp and smooth at the front. The artist, whoever he was, had carved a serviceable hilt into the base, weave-patterned it on both sides for grip. The whole thing was barely nine inches long—small enough to conceal, long enough to prick the life out of a man’s heart. It shone a dirty amber in the lanternlight as it came clear.

Ringil pivoted from the hip, rammed the knife home under Varid’s chin.

“Nooooooooooooooo!”

Someone bellowing with hysterical fury. It certainly wasn’t Varid—his tongue was nailed to his palate on the fang, his mouth was jammed shut. The best he could manage was a strangling agonized grunt, and his eyes were already turning up in their sockets as the rest of the dragon knife ripped his brain in half from below. Blood burst through his locked teeth in a gurgling crimson spray. Ringil held him up, stayed close in to his bulk, blinking the blood from his eyes, made the yell for Hale’s—no one else could have seen quite what was going on yet, probably no one else would be giving orders . . .

“Shoot, fucking shoot, will you!”

What Ringil had hoped for happened. He heard the flesh-cringing twang-clatter as the crossbows went off at close range. All three—skirmish-schooled, he counted them off and knew. Varid jolted with the impact. A quarrel head tore through the big man’s shoulder and nearly clipped Ringil’s nose off. The other two went somewhere else, Ringil couldn’t tell where. Crossbows—now, there’s a fucking useless weapon for you. He grinned—quick, pulse-jumping relief. Sensed rather than saw Hale’s men come storming out of their alcoves. Bolts shot, the advantage thrown away—it was down to the steel. He shoved Varid’s corpse away, left the dragon knife where it was. Gained a scant few necessary feet of space as they rushed him. The combat moments seemed to float loose of each other, spun out and unreal . . .

Freed hands both rising for the pommel now, so natural, so smooth, it was like Kiriath machinery, as if he were machinery, a cunningly crafted clockwork Kiriath mannequin, built to complement the steel.

He felt the accustomed kiss of the grip on his palms, felt the grin on his face turn into a snarl.

Cold chime as the scabbard gave up its embrace.

And the Ravensfriend came out.

YOU WANT TO KNOW HOW IT ENDS, GIL? GRASHGAL, CRYPTIC AND rambling and more than a little drunk one evening at An-Monal, holding up the newly forged Ravensfriend in scarred black hands and squinting critically down the runnel. Fireglow from the big room’s hearth seemed to drip molten off the edges of the steel. The carved beam-end gargoyles leered down from the gloom in the roof space above. I’ve seen how it ends. Someday, in a city where the people rise through the air with no more effort than it takes to breathe, where they give their blood to strangers as a gift, instead of stealing it with edged iron and rage the way we do, someday, in a place like that, this motherfucker is going to hang up behind glass for small children to stare at. Grashgal hefted the Ravensfriend one-handed, made a couple of idle strokes through the air, and the sword whispered to itself in the firelit gloom. I’ve seen it, Gil. They look at this thing through the glass it’s kept behind, they put their noses up so close to that glass their breath fogs it, and you can see the small, slow-fading print of their hands in the condensation after they’ve run off to look at something else. And it doesn’t mean a thing to them. You want to know why that is?