Read Online The Steel Remains by Richard K. Morgan - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Richard K. Morgan
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arse, an unwelcome intimacy that seeped up through his breeches. The diners on either side of him looked studiously elsewhere. He held down an urge to shift in his seat.
You lay frozen in your own piss for six hours at Rajal Beach and played dead while the Scaled Folk nosed up and down the breakwaters with their reptile peons looking for survivors. You can sit still in a whore's heat for half an hour. You can make polite Glades conversation here with the great and gracious of Trelayne.
Grace- of- Heaven Milacar cleared his throat, lifted a goblet.
“A toast, then. To one of our city's most heroic sons, returned home and not before time.”
There was a pause, then a sort of grumbling tide of response around the table. The faces all buried themselves hurriedly in their drinks. It was, Ringil thought, a little like watching pigs at a trough. They finished the toast and Milacar leaned across his nearest guest to get his face less than a foot from Ringil's. His breath was sweet with the wine.
“So now the theatrics are out of the way,” he said urbanely, “perhaps you'd like to tell me what you're doing here, Gil.”
The pale eyes were crinkled at the corners, amused despite themselves. Between the trimmed mustache and goatee, the long, mobile lips were downcurved with humor, taut with anticipatory lust, tips of the teeth just showing. Ringil remembered the look with a jolt under his heart.
Milacar had gone bald, or nearly so, just like he'd said would happen. And he'd shaved it all down to a stubble, just like he'd always said he would.
“Came to see you, Grace,” he said, and it was almost the whole truth.
“CAME TO SEE ME, HUH?” MILACAR MURMURED IT LATER, AS THEY LAY in the big silk- sheeted bed upstairs, spent and stained and curled together, pillowed on each other's thighs. He raised himself slightly, grabbed Ringil's hair at the back of his neck, and dragged his face, mock- tough, back toward his flaccid crotch. “The fuck you did. You're a lying sack of highborn shit, Gil, same as you ever were.” He twisted his fingers, tugging the small hairs, hurtfully “Same as when you first came to me fifteen fucking years ago, Eskiath youth.”
“Sixteen years.” Ringil beat the grip on his nape, tangled fingers with Grace, and brought the back of the other man's hand around to his lips. He kissed it. “I was fifteen, remember. Sixteen fucking years ago, and don't call me that.”
“What,
youth
?”
“Eskiath. You know I don't like it.”
Milacar pulled his hand free and propped himself back a little on his elbows, looking down at the younger man who lay coiled across him. “It's your mother's name as well.”
“She married it.” Ringil stayed with his face bedded in the damp warmth of Milacar's crotch, staring off into the gloom near the bedchamber door. “Her choice. I didn't get that much.”
“I'm not convinced she had much choice herself, Gil. She was, what, twelve when they gave her to Gingren?”
“Thirteen.”
Small quiet. The same muffled bandlight from the dining chamber spilled in here unrestrained, an icy flood of it across the carpeted floor from the bedroom's broad river- facing balcony. The casements were back, the drapes stirred like languid ghosts, and a cool autumn breeze blew in past them, not yet the chill and bite there was in the upland air at Gallows Water, but getting that way. Winter would find him here as well. Ringil shifted, skin caressed to goose bumps, small hairs on his arms pulled erect. He breathed in Grace's acrid, smoky scent and it carried him back a decade and a half like a drug. Riotous wine and flandrijn nights at Milacar's house on Replete Cargo Street in the warehouse district; carefully steeping himself in the decadence of it all, thrilling at the subtle compulsion of doing Grace- of- Heaven's will, whether in bed or out. Down to the docks for collections with Milacar's thuggish wharf soldiers, sneaking the streets of the Glades and upriver for
You lay frozen in your own piss for six hours at Rajal Beach and played dead while the Scaled Folk nosed up and down the breakwaters with their reptile peons looking for survivors. You can sit still in a whore's heat for half an hour. You can make polite Glades conversation here with the great and gracious of Trelayne.
Grace- of- Heaven Milacar cleared his throat, lifted a goblet.
“A toast, then. To one of our city's most heroic sons, returned home and not before time.”
There was a pause, then a sort of grumbling tide of response around the table. The faces all buried themselves hurriedly in their drinks. It was, Ringil thought, a little like watching pigs at a trough. They finished the toast and Milacar leaned across his nearest guest to get his face less than a foot from Ringil's. His breath was sweet with the wine.
“So now the theatrics are out of the way,” he said urbanely, “perhaps you'd like to tell me what you're doing here, Gil.”
The pale eyes were crinkled at the corners, amused despite themselves. Between the trimmed mustache and goatee, the long, mobile lips were downcurved with humor, taut with anticipatory lust, tips of the teeth just showing. Ringil remembered the look with a jolt under his heart.
Milacar had gone bald, or nearly so, just like he'd said would happen. And he'd shaved it all down to a stubble, just like he'd always said he would.
“Came to see you, Grace,” he said, and it was almost the whole truth.
“CAME TO SEE ME, HUH?” MILACAR MURMURED IT LATER, AS THEY LAY in the big silk- sheeted bed upstairs, spent and stained and curled together, pillowed on each other's thighs. He raised himself slightly, grabbed Ringil's hair at the back of his neck, and dragged his face, mock- tough, back toward his flaccid crotch. “The fuck you did. You're a lying sack of highborn shit, Gil, same as you ever were.” He twisted his fingers, tugging the small hairs, hurtfully “Same as when you first came to me fifteen fucking years ago, Eskiath youth.”
“Sixteen years.” Ringil beat the grip on his nape, tangled fingers with Grace, and brought the back of the other man's hand around to his lips. He kissed it. “I was fifteen, remember. Sixteen fucking years ago, and don't call me that.”
“What,
youth
?”
“Eskiath. You know I don't like it.”
Milacar pulled his hand free and propped himself back a little on his elbows, looking down at the younger man who lay coiled across him. “It's your mother's name as well.”
“She married it.” Ringil stayed with his face bedded in the damp warmth of Milacar's crotch, staring off into the gloom near the bedchamber door. “Her choice. I didn't get that much.”
“I'm not convinced she had much choice herself, Gil. She was, what, twelve when they gave her to Gingren?”
“Thirteen.”
Small quiet. The same muffled bandlight from the dining chamber spilled in here unrestrained, an icy flood of it across the carpeted floor from the bedroom's broad river- facing balcony. The casements were back, the drapes stirred like languid ghosts, and a cool autumn breeze blew in past them, not yet the chill and bite there was in the upland air at Gallows Water, but getting that way. Winter would find him here as well. Ringil shifted, skin caressed to goose bumps, small hairs on his arms pulled erect. He breathed in Grace's acrid, smoky scent and it carried him back a decade and a half like a drug. Riotous wine and flandrijn nights at Milacar's house on Replete Cargo Street in the warehouse district; carefully steeping himself in the decadence of it all, thrilling at the subtle compulsion of doing Grace- of- Heaven's will, whether in bed or out. Down to the docks for collections with Milacar's thuggish wharf soldiers, sneaking the streets of the Glades and upriver for
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