The Dark Defiles (52 page)

Dragonbane’s right—

Was,
she reminded herself silently. Lips pressed hard together on the ache.
Dragonbane
was
right. Looks like Kaldan Cross.

But as if Kaldan Cross were some kind of rough scale model built in advance, a quick proof of concept before the real work began. Human eyes had to work hard to see the bottom of the pit at Kaldan Cross—and idle human superstition said there was none—but it was there. Now she stared downward into the shadowed depths and even she could make out no end to this shaft. The scaffolding below her was broad and extensive in its own right, would have filled the Kaldan excavation almost to the center. Here—she followed the broad sweep of the pit’s lip around like the shore of a minor lake—here it clung to the edges going down like the flimsiest of lace borders on a court gown collar. It extended no thicker in comparison to the excavation’s full extent than the growth of moss coating an old well shaft.

You could hide an entire colony of Scaled Folk down there, Archidi.

Even a couple of dragons might manage to coexist across that much space, if the reptile packs they belonged to learned to stay out of each other’s way, lived on opposite sides of the pit, say.

If we really have to climb down through all that
… 

She made her face stone. Looked around for the fire sprite.

“Over here, my lady.”

Kanan Shent, calling and beckoning from back toward the tail end of the clamping structure. The sprite hovered and flickered there beside the alloy wall. The Throne Eternal gestured with his injured hand.

“It refuses to move from here, my lady. And there seem to be colors in the metal, as there were at An-Kirilnar …”

Stone, stone, your face is stone. Nothing here surprises you, Queen of Kiriath steel and murderous demonic spirits. You take it in your stride.

She came forward and peered at the black iron surface, now mottled and bleaching into lighter shades, colors shifting about like chemicals spilled on a rainwater puddle in a laboratory courtyard at Monal. She nodded briskly.

“This is our way down.”

She spoke the colors out in clearly enunciated sequence. Each one winked out as she named it, returning the alloy finally to its blank black norm. Then nothing. Long moments, piling up in the quiet and nothing else to see—she made herself wait it out, keenly aware of the gazes fixed on her as the seconds slipped by. They’d had the same delay at An-Kirilnar. She kept her face impassive until—

Ah.

A thin tracery whispered awake on the black alloy surface—sweeping, spilling, unreeling lines like the rapidly sketched outline of a rose in bloom, but taller than a man. She caught the tiny seething sound it made, down near the limits of her hearing, heard the hissing intensify as the sketch lines deepened into cracks, then began to split apart. The whorl patterning in the center of the design seemed to roll and fold into itself, down to one side and gone. The hissing stopped. Warm orange light sprang up in a hollow interior space.

She stuck her head inside and peered around. Saw a tall, vaulted corridor with curving sides leading from a blank bulkhead on her left and back the twenty-odd yards toward the edge of the pit—though she thought, uneasily, that it seemed to reach a lot farther than that. Farther, in fact, than was possible, given the way the clamp bent and dropped away down the side of the shaft. The floor was the same pentagonal-patterned iron latticework they’d walked on to reach An-Kirilnar, touched here by fleet-footed shadows and orange glimmerings that chased each other merrily away down the tunnel. She frowned for a moment, not understanding the effect, until it hit her that the glow she’d seen from outside was caused by distinct blots of light and dark that marched away in repeating sequence at about shoulder height along the sides of the bore, as if to hurry her in that direction. As if an endless procession of ghosts with invisible torches moved methodically down the tunnel already, and only the reflection of their flames could be seen, puddled in curving alloy surface of the walls and glinting off the latticed metal underfoot.

The fire sprite slipped past her shoulder and into the tunnel. It danced three or four yards down the bore, blending its colors to match the lights on the walls, then stopped and hung there flickering.

She pulled her head back out.

“Right, this is us. Selak Chan, you take the lead, I’ll catch you up once we’re all inside. Single file, give each other plenty of space. There shouldn’t be any trouble now, we’re on Kiriath ground. But that doesn’t mean you can’t trip over or fall off something, so keep your wits about you. No gawking.”

She stood at the entrance and counted them in, something she’d never bothered to do while Egar was alive. Thirty-five men, if you allowed Yilmar Kaptal in that category. Not much of a command, but still more than she wanted. She waited for them all to file past her, nodding them in if any chose to meet her eyes, trying to lock names to faces where she knew them. It might be important later.

The Throne Eternal and marines all bowed as they passed. So, unexpectedly, did the Majak and some of Tand’s crew.

Then, toward the end of the line, one of the privateers who’d complained earlier about Sogren’s death tried to stare her down, break her gaze with his scowl as he approached. On a different day, she might have laughed.
Yeah, stare down the burned black witch, why don’t you.
He’d clearly never looked into Kiriath eyes before. She gave him back his stare, well aware of the effect her darkling kaleidoscope pupils had on humans unused to them. He flinched and looked away, well before it was his turn to duck past her into the tunnel.

She heard his fellows jeering at him in the echoing space, as they followed the file down.

When the last man was in, she took one lingering look around at the shattered cityscape, the bleak mounds of rubble and forlorn crag outcrops of architecture still standing, the doom her people had brought down on this place. The dragon corpse and the cairns were hidden from view behind the ruins they’d sheltered in, as if already subsumed into the larger, more ancient death that held sway amid all this wreckage. For one aching moment, she wanted to run back up the rubble hillside and stand again at the Dragonbane’s grave, give him one more chance to
quit fucking about,
Eg,
get up out of that hole in the ground and come with me.

“Come on, Archidi.”

For just one shaky, ecstatic moment, she was unsure who was speaking to her.

“We’re all done here, there’s nothing left.”

Her own voice, raised firm against the blanketing quiet. But it sounded nothing like her, and she could not tell what it meant by that
we—
if it was referring to her new command, her dead friendship, or her ancestors in their awful, obliterating triumph.

She turned away and hurried into the tunnel.

e wasn’t very surprised to find armed men blocking his path; he’d perhaps even been courting something of the sort. Certainly, someone would have heard those gates slam back—the clang they made, you’d have to be deaf not to. And that someone would have duly sounded the alarm, which would in turn bring out the guard. Like most noble houses, the Eskiath family seat retained its own men-at-arms on site, and now, with the war on, they’d be twitchier than usual, eager to justify their exemption from the levy, their privileged escape from conscription to points of slaughter farther south. They’d jump at the drop of a thin cat, let alone the sound of the front gates being smashed open by an overly flamboyant black mage.

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—”

“Rin
gil!
”

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.

I
NSIDE
E
SKIATH
H
OUSE, HE STOOD ITCHILY IN THE CENTER OF THE WEST
ern 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.