The Steel Remains Read Online Free PDF Page A

well met.”
    “How did you know which window to break?” he countered sourly.
    The Lady Ishil gestured. “Oh, we asked. It wasn't difficult. Everyone in this pigsty of a town seems to know where you sleep.” A delicately curled lip. She let him go. “And who with.”
    Ringil ignored that one. “I'm a hero, Mother. What do you expect?”
    “Yes, are they still calling you Angeleyes in these parts?” Peering into his face. “I think Demoneyes suits you better today. There's more red in there than the crater at An- Monal.”
    “It's Padrow's Day,” he said shortly. “Eyes this color are traditional. And anyway, since when did you know what An- Monal looks like? You've never been there.”
    She snorted. “How would you know that? I could have been there anytime in the last three years, which is how long it's been since you last chose to visit your poor aged mother.”
    “Mother, please.” He shook his head and looked at her.
Aged
was, he supposed, an accurate enough statement of his mother's forty-something years, but it hardly showed. Ishil had been a bride at thirteen, a mother of four before she was twenty. She'd had the following two and a half decades to work on her feminine charms and ensure that whatever Gingren Eskiath's indiscretions with the other, younger females who came within his grabbing radius, he would always come back to the marriage bed in the end. She wore kohl in the Yhelteth style, on eyes and to etch her lips; her hair was bound back from a delicate, barely lined forehead and cheekbones that screamed her family's southern ancestry. And when she moved, her robes caught on curves more appropriate to awoman half her age. In Trelayne high society, it was whispered that this was sorcery, that Ishil had sold her soul for her youthful aspect. Ringil, who'd watched her dress enough times, thought it more likely cosmetics, though on the soul selling he had to agree. Ishil's aspirational merchant-class parents might have secured for their daughter a lifetime of luxury by marrying her into the house of Eskiath, but like all commerce it came at a price, and that price was life with Gingren.
    “Well, it's true, isn't it?” she insisted. “When were you last in Trelayne?”
    “How is Father?” he asked obliquely.
    Their eyes met. She sighed and shrugged. “Oh, you know. Your father's … your father. No easier to live with now he's gray. He asks after you.”
    Ringil arched an eyebrow. “Really?”
    “No, really. Sometimes, when he's tired in the evenings. I think maybe he's beginning to …regret. Some of the things he said, anyway.”
    “Is he dying, then?” He could not keep the bitterness from his voice. “Is that why you're here?”
    She looked at him again, and this time he thought he saw the momentary brilliance of tear sheen in her eyes. “No, that's not why I'm here. I wouldn't have come for that, and you know it. It's something else.” She clapped her hands suddenly, pasted on a smile. “But what are we doing out here, Ringil? Where is everyone? This place has about as much life to it as an Aldrain stone circle. I have hungry men and maids, horses that need feeding and watering. I could do with a little food myself, come to that. Doesn't your landlord want to earn himself some League coin?”
    Ringil shrugged. “I'll go and ask him. Then maybe you can tell me what's going on.”
    THE LANDLORD, BY HIS FACE AS HUNGOVER AS RINGIL, DID BRIGHTEN somewhat at the mention of Trelayne currency. He opened the dining chamber at the back of the residents’ bar, ordered bleary- eyed stable hands to take care of the horses, and wandered off into the kitchen tosee what was salvageable from the previous night's feast. Ringil went with him, made himself an herbal infusion, and carried it back to one of the dining chamber's oak trestle tables, where he slumped and stared at the steam rising from the cup as if it were a summoned sprite. In due course Ishil came in, followed by her men and three