The Steel Remains (Gollancz)

by Richard Morgan

  Something like a sense of wonder crept up in Ringil. He sensed vaguely the shape of what was before him, felt carefully around its edges.

  ‘You’re going to get me into the Salt Warren?’

  Kaad cleared his throat. ‘Not as such, no. But there are, let us say, more profitable avenues of enquiry that you might pursue.’

  ‘Might I?’ asked Ringil tonelessly. ‘And what avenues are those?’

  ‘You are looking for Sherin Herlirig Mernas, widow of Bilgrest Mernas, sold under the debt guarantors’ charter last month.’

  ‘Yeah. You know where she is?’

  ‘Not at this precise moment. But the resources of the Chancellery might very well be opened to you in a way that they have not yet been.’

  Ringil shook his head. ‘I’m done with the Chancellery. There’s nothing worth knowing up there that I don’t already know.’

  Hesitation. Gingren and Kaad swapped glances.

  ‘There is the issue of manpower,’ began Kaad. ‘We could—’

  ‘You could provide me with enough Watch uniforms to turn the Salt Warren upside down. Break some heads and get some answers. How about that?’

  Again, the exchange of looks, the grim expressions. Ringil, for all he’d known what the response would be, coughed out a disbelieving laugh.

  ‘Hoiran’s fucking balls, what is it about Etterkal ?’ Though, if Milacar was to be believed, he already knew, and was starting to realise it must, after all, be taken seriously. ‘The place was a fucking slum last time I was here. Now everyone’s too fucking scared to go knock on the gate?’

  ‘Ringil, there is more to this than you understand. More than your mother understood when she called you back.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s becoming very clear.’ Ringil stabbed a finger at his father. ‘You wouldn’t lift a finger to help Sherin when they sold her, but now I’m banging on the Salt Warren gate, it suddenly merits attention. What is it that, Dad? You want me to stop? Am I going to upset the wrong people? Am I going to embarrass you again?’

  ‘You take this matter too lightly, Master Ringil. You do not understand what you are about to involve yourself in.’

  ‘He just said that, Kaad. What are you, a fucking parrot?’

  ‘Your father is motivated principally by concern for your well being.’

  ‘Candidly, I doubt that. But even if it were true, that leaves you. What’s your end of this, you conniving old fuck?’

  Fist slammed on to the table, Kaad half risen from his seat.

  ‘You will not speak to me in that way,’ he said thickly.

  Then, he was reeling backward off the stool, falling, both hands up to his face, mashing in the sound of a high shriek and streaming with the heated tea. Ringil got up and tossed the emptied flagon across the table after him, on to the flagstone floor, where it lay, still steaming slightly from the mouth.

  ‘I’ll speak to you exactly how I like, Kaad.’ He was oddly cold and calm now, tranquil in the understanding that this and all it implied had been unavoidable from the moment he agreed to come home. ‘You got a problem with my mouth, I’ll see you on Brillin Hill Fields about it.’

  Kaad rocked back and forth on the floor in the puddle of his own cloak. His hands still clutched at his face. He made a mewling sound through the fingers. Gingren stood mute with disbelief, staring from the downed Justice to his son. Ringil ignored him.

  ‘If you can get someone to show you which end of a sword you’re supposed to pick it up by, that is.’

  ‘Hoiran damn your fucking soul to hell!’

  ‘If you really believe what you preach, he’s already done that. Alongside all my carnal sins, I don’t think roughing up the local magistrature is going to impress the Dark King all that much. Sorry.’

  By now Gingren had gone round the end of the table and was kneeling by Kaad’s side. The Justice slapped away his efforts to help. He climbed to his feet, face already turning pink and raw-looking across nose and one cheek where the tea had evidently burned worst. He pointed a trembling finger at Ringil.

  ‘On your own head, Eskiath. This will be on your own head.’

  ‘It always is.’

  Kaad gathered his robes about him. From somewhere, he mustered a sneer. ‘No, Master Ringil. Like all your kind, the consequences of what you do are borne by others. From Gallows Gap to the cages at the Eastern Gate, it is others, always others, who pay the carriage for your acts.’

  Ringil twitched forward a quarter inch. Held himself back.

  ‘Now you’d really better get out,’ he said quietly.

  Kaad went. Perhaps he saw something in Ringil’s eyes, perhaps he just didn’t see any way to salvage value from the situation. He was, after all, a political animal. Gingren hurried after him, one furious backflung glance at his son in lieu of words. Ringil stood still a couple of moments after they’d gone, then slumped under the gathering weight of the comedown. He leaned flat palms on the table in front of him, gazed at the emptied flagon there.

  ‘Wouldn’t have thought it was still that hot,’ he murmured, and chuckled a little to himself. He looked around for the serving girl, but she hadn’t reappeared. He squinted down towards the door out to the garden, where the light was now getting bright enough to hurt his krin-stunned pupils. He thought about going to bed, but in the end, he just sat back down at the table and sunk his head in his hands instead. A fading trace of the drug whined about in the back of his head.

  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 this 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 Wrath-rill, 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 brutalised 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 honour 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.’

  Ginrgren 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 harbour-end cur. But curs have their uses.’

  ‘I suppose they do.’

  ‘These are not the most honourable 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.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Khangset was still smouldering.

  Archeth sat in the saddle on the ridge above the town, spyglass forgotten in her hands, staring down towards the harbour and the damage. Her mount shifted beneath her, uneasy at the damp acrid stink of ashes that came and went on the buffeting wind. The Throne Eternal detachment spread out along the ridge around her, elaborately impassive and professional, befitting reputation. But Archeth had already heard a couple of bitten-back oaths in the breeze as they saw what lay below. She couldn’t really blame them. Despite everything she’d been warned to expect, she was having a hard time believing it herself.

  She knew Khangset somewhat, had been there on several occasions with the Kiriath engineering corps during the war. The Scaled Folk had come ashore all along this coast in the early years of the fighting. They killed and burnt everything they found with an efficiency that was almost human, and invariably they retreated beneath the waves again before the Empire’s legions could respond. Akal, always a realist in tactical matters, swallowed his pride and called for Kiriath help. Grashgal sent the engineers.

  Now, along the harbour wall and beach line, the Kiriath fortifications were smashed through in a half dozen places, smooth glassy ramparts showing gouges whose exposed edges were jagged and rainbow coloured in the early afternoon sun. Whatever had done the damage hadn’t stopped there - beyond each breach, the path of destruction tore into what lay behind with a totality Archeth hadn’t seen since the war. Stone structures had been reduced to stumped ruins, wooden buildings were simply gone, only charred ash and fragments to signal they had ever existed at all. The harbour waters were spined with truncated, listing masts from vessels that had gone straight to the bottom. Rubble from a toppled lighthouse lay along the wharf. The whole place looked as if it had been swiped by some reptile god’s massive clawed hand.

  The dead numbered in the hundreds.

  She might have guessed that much from what she saw through the glass, but by then guessing was unnecessary. On the landward slopes of the ridge, they’d come upon a tangled exodus of towns-people and beaten soldiery, commanded, if that was the word, by one of the few remaining officers from the Khangset marine garrison. Shaken and wincing, the young lieutenant had given her his tight-lipped account of the raid. Unearthly shrieking from out to sea, balls of living blue fire and ghost figures stalking the smoke-filled streets, slaughtering all in their path with weapons made of glimmering light. Nothing worked, he told her numbly. I saw our bowmen put shafts into them at fifty feet, full draw. Steel-tipped fletch, at that range, it should go right through a man, full armour, the works. It was like the arrows just fucking dissolved or something. When they got twenty feet off our barricade, I led a charge. It was like fighting in a nightmare. Felt like you were moving underwater, and they were fast, they were so fucking fast ...

  He stared off into the memory of it like someone three times his age.

  What’s your name ? Archeth asked him gently.

  Galt. Still staring emptily away. Parnan Galt, Peacock Company, Fiftieth Imperial Marines, 73rd levy.

  73rd. Like the messenger who’d brought the news to Yhelteth, he would have been a boy when the war ended. In all probability he’d never seen combat outside standard anti-piracy policing and the odd bit of riot control. Few regular troops after the 66th had. Archeth pressed a hand on his shoulder, rose and left him sitting there with his memories. She didn’t ask him to come on with them to the town.

  She detailed a Throne Eternal sergeant and his squad to tak
e charge of the refugee column where it was, then pressed on with the rest of the company, sceptical voices in her head warring with a creeping sense that something really was badly wrong. That the young lieutenant and the original messenger actually had both been witness to something new and not easily explained away. That their terrified accounts were not just the babble of men who’d never seen battle in all its filth-caked finery.

  No? The sceptic in ascendancy now. Remember your first battle, do you? Majak berserk-skirmishers tearing through the lines at Baldaran. Howling across the field, panic in the ranks. Grass slicked down like a pimp’s hair with the blood. You went down that first time, grabbed at Arashtal’s arm and found it severed in your grasp. You screamed but no one heard, you moved like sludge. Didn’t that feel like a nightmare?