The Steel Remains

But the warehouse blocks remained, big and brooding and impossible to rent. Some were carved up into lousy accommodations for labor overspill from the newly burgeoning shipyards—not a strategy that ever really worked out; some were demolished to clear out the vagrant bands they were found to be housing. A few burned down, for reasons no one was clear on, or cared very much about. With the war, the low-rent space became briefly useful again, for billeting and the marshaling of matériel, but the area saw no long-term benefit from it. The war ended, the soldiers went home. No one who wasn’t ordered to was going to move into Etterkal.

That left slaves, and those who traded in them.

Girsh found a small hatch cut into the body of the carriage entry door, and commenced banging on it with a compact, well-worn mace he produced from his burglar’s clothes like a conjuring trick. Ringil stood by and affected an aristocratic disdain for the proceedings, in case anyone was watching from one of the casements above. It took a good five minutes of repeated pounding, but finally there was the clanking sound of bolts being drawn, and the hatch hinged inward. A disgruntled, scar-faced doorman stepped out into the street, short-sword drawn.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he barked.

Eril had taken the lead. He turned toward Ringil and reeled off a string of numbers in Tetha

“This is my Lord Laraninthal of Shenshenath,” he said. “He’s here on recommendation, to examine your wares.”

The doorman let a sneer creep across his face. He put up his sword.

“Yes, well, my master doesn’t do business at this hour,” he told them. “You’ll have to come back.”

Stone-faced, Eril punched him in the stomach.

“And my master,” he informed the downed minion as he curled up on the floor whooping for breath, “does not like to be told to come and go like a common stevedore. Especially not by harbor-end curs like you.”

The doorman made gagging sounds and groped around on the cobbles for his sword. Girsh kicked it casually out of his reach. Eril crouched down and grasped the man by his collar and balls.

“We know,” he said conversationally, “that your master deals in the exotic end of things. And we know that he likes to conduct that business at exotic hours, if the price is right. Get up.”

The doorman really had very little choice in this last instruction. Eril dumped him onto to his feet and shoved him back against the iron-studded wood of the gate.

“My Lord Laraninthal is in the market for your stock in trade, and he’s impatient. The price he’s prepared to pay is substantial. So go and fetch your master, and tell him he’s missing a very special opportunity.”

The doorman groaned and cupped at his groin. “What opportunity?”

“The opportunity not to have his business burned down around his ears,” said Girsh, deadpan. “Now fuck off in there and tell him. No, leave the door. We’ll come in and wait.”

The doorman abandoned his halfhearted attempt to close the hatch on them, and they followed him through into a long, well-lit archway with a courtyard beyond. A side door was open in the wall of the arch, and the doorman disappeared into it, limping and muttering to himself. The three of them stood in the flickering torchlight after he’d gone, eyeing up the surroundings with identical professional interest.

“Think they’ll kick?” Ringil asked.

Eril shrugged. “They’re trying to make a living, just like everybody else. No percentage in bloodshed if you can deal instead.”

Girsh slapped the head of his mace into his palm a couple of times. “Let them kick. I’ve got a couple of cousins lost family to the debtors’ block since Liberalization. I won’t mind.”

Ringil cleared his throat. “Let’s not get carried away here. I need information from these people, not broken skulls.”

“Everyone’s got cousins seen family auctioned,” Eril said quietly. “It’s the times, Girsh. Nothing you can do about it.”

They waited in silence after that.

The doorman came back, accompanied by a larger and uglier colleague who wore a knotted leather flail at his belt and a long knife at his boot. He didn’t look as if he’d need either in a fight.

“My master will see you now,” the doorman said sullenly.

IT SEEMED THEY’D GOTTEN TERIP HALE OUT OF BED.

The slave trader sat behind his dark oak desk in a silk robe, slippers on his naked feet, graying hair tangled and matted from the pillow. Lamplight gave his skin a yellowish tone. Ringil didn’t know him, but he fitted Grace-of-Heaven’s thumbnail sketch well enough. Greasy old fuck, got eyes like a dead snake. It was true, he did. Once a small-time trafficker working various illicit trades through little-known marsh routes in and out of the city, Hale had apparently done well under Liberalization. Legacy of his prior success as a supply-and-demand criminal, he knew men’s appetites inside and out. A shrewd buyer’s sense at the auction blocks gave him his initial edge, it seemed, and a tightly maintained web of onward contacts in other cities of the League kept him out ahead of the pack. He was dangerous in his way, Milacar reckoned, but he wasn’t an unreasonable man.

He fixed the expressionless black eyes on Ringil.

“This had better be good,” he said mildly.

“I thank you, honored sire, for the—”

For the sake of appearances, Ringil had begun in Tetha

“Honored sire, I thank you, for seeing me at this late hour.” He shuffled his feet, playing up a timidity of stance and tone he’d sometimes liked to put on in games with Grace-of-Heaven. Silk-ski

“Yes, yes.” Hale waved it away as if swatting an insect. “What exactly is it that your father would not countenance about your visit?”

Ringil hesitated for a calculated couple of seconds. “Its purpose, sire.”

Hale rolled his eyes and made a signal to the doorman, who slipped out of the room without a word. The slave trader bridged his hands.

“Yes. Let’s talk about this purpose, shall we?”

“Gladly.”

Another pause. Hale visibly repressed a sigh.

“So what is it? Your purpose? What do you want, Laraninthal of Shenshenath?”

“I desire.” Ringil cleared his throat and looked about the room. “A bedmate. A woman, for my use here in Trelayne.”

A small smile leaked out of the corner of Hale’s mouth.

“I see. And your father wouldn’t approve of this?”

“My father is a conservative man. He would not wish me to spill my seed among women not of the tribes.”

“Well, fathers can be difficult like that, can’t they?” Hale nodded sagely. “Of course, at a price, I could probably provide you with a Yhelteth girl. Perhaps even of your specific tribe. You’d be surprised how easy—”

Ringil held up a hand. “I am not . . . drawn . . . to women of the south. I want pale skin, paler than mine. I want . . .”

He gestured graphically. Terip Hale gri

“Indeed. That’s something the girls up here are usually good for, isn’t it? Not the first time I’ve heard one of your countrymen remark on the matter, either. Difference is the spice, I always say.” A small sound from the door. “Ah, speaking of which, here we are.”