The Steel Remains полностью

“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 Tethanne. Now he coughed diffidently and switched to Naomic, stamping it through with a guttural edge common to imperials who’d learned the Trelayne tongue but never lived in League territory. He spotted the doorman and the flail-equipped muscle smirking at each other as he spoke.

“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-skinned kidnapped Yhelteth youth begs his captor—in vain, of course—not to corrupt him. “I, uhm, would not have come so late, you see, but this visit is not one my father would countenance if he knew of it. I am Laraninthal, eldest son of Krenalinam of Shenshenath, attached—uhm, we both are—to the Yhelteth trade mission in Tervinala and recently arrived in your gracious city, which I must say—”

“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.