Sworn in Steel

by Douglas Hulick

  I could live with that.

  I tossed the tea seller an extra copper owl and pushed on into the night.

  In the meantime, though, between Crook Eye’s death and Degan’s return, I was starting to think that my fading might not be a bad idea after all. I’d initially planned to fight the whispers about Crook Eye with rumors of my own, but I was far enough behind the wave—thanks to my new partner—that playing catch-up was proving nearly impossible. Any gains I made were transitory, and stories I spread ended up coming off as either excuses or blatant attempts to shift the blame. The street, I was coming to realize, had already made up its mind. If I wanted to change it, it was going to require more than I had to offer at the moment.

  Which meant the best strategy was to not try at all—or, at least, to not seem to.

  Leaving Ildrecca would accomplish part of that. Yes, it might look like I was running, but at this point staying could hurt my reputation just as much. Besides, the farther I was out of sight, the easier it would be for the street to become distracted by something else. What that something might be I wasn’t sure yet, but I knew just who to talk to about coming up with a bit of flash that could turn heads. After all, what was the point of having a troupe of actors in my debt if I couldn’t tap them for some inspiration when it came to making the Kin look stage left while I exited stage right?

  I headed out of Rustwater and down into the Cloisters. From there, I took to the roofs and arches of the cordon, skirting the edge of Lady of the Roses—there’d been a flare-up between two local street bosses of late, and I didn’t want to get caught in an overeager ambush—and made my way to the night market over in Hides.

  As the name implied, the market ran from sundown to sunup, catering to everything from Kin to late night drunks to early risers over the course of the evening. It covered a good dozen interconnected, but not necessarily immediately adjoining, blocks. Rather, the market was made up of a winding, twisting path that followed the side streets and alleys of Hides, with each shop and trader marked out by the green-glassed lantern he hung or placed before his shop. In some places, the merchants were packed close enough that I half expected to see fish swimming in the air, so much did it seem that I was strolling beneath the sea; in others, it was a long, dark walk from one jade pinpoint to another. In these dimmer spots, the local gang—a band of toughs called, aptly enough, the Green Shades—had patrols ranging, keeping an eye out for any freelance Prigs or Clickers that might otherwise decide to poach the local marks and undercut the Shade’s thriving protection racket.

  The shop I was looking for came after a particularly long stretch of dark—so much so that my night vision was on the verge of waking when I stepped into the pool of green light. A thick-armed, thin-haired leather worker was standing at the heavy pine table out front, his knives and shears and mallets ready to hand. At the moment, he was slowly drawing laces from a hide.

  “Points in?” I said.

  He didn’t even look up. “In back, as usual.”

  I half walked, half climbed my way past the stacks of leather to the back of the shop. There, under the fitful glow of a tallow dip, sat Points. I tried to ignore the smell of the burning rag coming from the bowl of rendered grease and instead settled myself on the pile of leather scraps before his low workbench.

  “Yes?” said Points. He was maybe thirty summers along, but too little food and too much sickness had made him look half again as old. What little hair he had left lay limp across his scalp, a dirty gray against only slightly pinker skin. His jaw hadn’t seen a razor in over a week. His eyes hadn’t seen anything in years.

  “It’s Drothe,” I said, reaching out to give him my hand. He took it, squeezed, and showed me a lopsided smile.

  “Ah, royalty,” he said. “If you’d been properly announced, I’d have had the servants put out the Vennanti glassware.” He shrugged. “Help: What’re ya gonna do?”

  I smiled in turn and took my hand back. “Got some trade for you,” I said.

  “Got a price for you.”

  “It’s a rush job.”

  “Price just went up.”

  “One you can’t tell anyone about.”

  “And up yet again.” He rubbed fingertips against thumb. “What is it?”

  I lifted Degan’s sword off my back, laid the bundle across my legs, and began unrolling the canvas. “I need a scabbard,” I said as I drew the sword free of its rough cocoon and ran my finger over the one clean spot on the blade—the space where the soot had been wiped away to reveal a single teardrop etched into the steel. “Something to protect the blade, and me, while I wear it.”

  “Well, that’s generally the point of a scabbard, isn’t it?” He held out his hands. “Let me feel what you’ve got.”

  I gave Degan’s sword over, my hands lingering on the filthy steel a moment longer than they needed to. Points’s fingers ran expertly up and down the blade, testing not only the width and length and weight, but also the edge and overall feel of the blade.

  “Still straight. That’s good. Don’t want to put a twisted blade in a scabbard—doesn’t like to come out.” He tapped the steel with his fingernail, then pulled out a small copper hammer and tapped it again. “Black Isle?”

  “Black Isle.”

  “Two in twice as many months for you. Impressive.” His hands wandered up to the guard, paused, then performed a quick inventory. “Fire?”

  “Yes.”

  “Um.” Points’s thumb rubbed at the base of the blade, where the tear marked the steel. I noticed his hands hesitate for a fraction of a moment, then continue on as if nothing had happened. “Pretty big fire down in Ten Ways couple of months back, from what I hear.” I stayed quiet. Points read the silence as only a blind man could.

  “It’d be my honor to make a new home for this blade,” he said solemnly. “How soon do you need it?”

  “As soon as you can manage.”

  Points ran his hands along the steel again. “I don’t have anything setting up right now that will work, but it shouldn’t take too long. I can get it back to you—”

  “The sword walks with me when I go.”

  Diplomatic pause. “I need the sword here to make the scabbard for it.”

  “You’re good enough to work off measurements.”

  A dip of the head. “Yes, but it goes faster if—”

  “It also goes faster if you don’t have three of my Cutters lingering about and getting in the way, not to mention inadvertently scaring off the rest of your customers.”

  “There is that.” Points reached over and placed his hand on a small pile of thin wooden slats. They were of various widths and thicknesses, and his hands moved over their ends deftly. “I don’t suppose you have time for me to make a quick mock-up of the blade, do you?” he said as he drew one of the slats out, ran his fingers along it, and shoved it back with a frown. “Even a wooden dummy would make it—ah, here we are, I think.” He pulled a pale piece of mountain pine and hefted it.

  “How long will it take?” I said, glancing out of the shop at the night beyond.

  “Not long. An hour, maybe. Maybe a bit more.”

  I looked out into the darkness and considered. Even if I left now, I wouldn’t be able to get everything done before first light. I had people to talk to, arrangements to make, a lost set of plays down that should have been recovered from Dirty Waters by now to check on. That all took time. But if I decided to hold off on those, if I stayed here and got the scabbard fitted, I wouldn’t have time to worry about all that. Instead, I’d be able to look into the city’s social calendar, maybe even find a time when the Baroness Christiana Sephada of Lythos wouldn’t be at home. Much easier to search a house when the mistress isn’t in, especially when you’re looking for private missives that could give you an idea where your former friend, who was also the baroness’s new want-to-be paramour, might be holding up. Degan and my sister had been hungering for one another ever since they’d first met. That had always bothered me—still
did, for that matter. Degan being with the woman who had sent two assassins after me aside, I’d just never liked the idea of my best friend getting involved with my little sister. Degan had understood; as for Christiana, well, it gave her one more reason to resent me—not that she needed any more.

  Now that Degan and I were done, though, I figured it had opened the door between them. I didn’t know that for certain, mind, but it seemed a safe bet, especially since my sister had been in a good—no, not good, gleeful—mood the last two times I’d seen her. And considering there wasn’t much I could think of besides Degan that would get her feeling quite that happy . . .

  Yes, I definitely needed to find out when my sister wouldn’t be in.

  “Fine,” I said, sitting down across from Points. “You have your hour.”

  “A wise choice,” said Points as he put the sword and the wood in his lap and picked up a bone stylus. “You won’t regret it, I assure you.”

  I smiled and didn’t comment. Regret was one thing I didn’t worry about when it came to annoying my sister.

  The irony has never been lost on me: Because I helped set up the security at my sister’s home in Ildrecca, it has always been easier for me to break in than anyone else. She knows this, mind you, and has taken precautions against it over the years, but still, there’s something to be said for knowing about the broken pottery cemented not only at the top of the garden walls, but two and a half feet down on either side, set so the shards blend in with the decorative carvings while still being perfectly placed to lacerate an unwary scrambler. Or that the locks on all of the doors are Kettle-makers, which means you might as well try and carve your way through the walls as pick the locks, since the first stands a better chance of success. Or that the catch on the second-floor east-facing window, fourth in from the corner, has a trick spring I’d installed to make sure I had easy access on nights like tonight.

  No, the irony has never been lost on me. Just as it was not lost on me now when, with my toes jammed onto a four-inch ledge and my fingers straining to keep their grip on the even thinner edging around the window, I discovered that Christiana had replaced the latch.

  It was never easy with my sister. Never.

  I stared at the pane of glass before me, my night vision illumining its details in the darkness. A bit bigger than my hand, it was high of quality: Blown and then quickly spun to draw it flat, it had less distortion to it than most of the glass you would find in the city. If I had known I was going to be drawing teeth, I would have brought putty and gloves and probes for removing the panes, not to mention choosing a window with a wider sill.

  This was going to be a pain.

  Of course, I could always just knock on the front door and have Josef show me to the salon to wait; but I also knew I stood a better chance of getting out of the Imperial prison at Athakon than I would leaving that room unobserved. Nor did I relish the idea of sitting through the lecture I would get from Christiana—again—about why I shouldn’t come calling at the front door. She had gone to great pains to keep our relationship secret even before she’d married into the nobility, and I’d agreed with the sentiment. A baroness with a brother deep amongst the Kin didn’t make for easy times at Court, either socially or politically; nor did I relish what would happen if it became known that I called a member of the Lower Imperial Court “sister.” Blackmail aside (for either of us), the kind of leverage she could provide my enemies, or even the random Kin with a thing against Noses, wasn’t something I cared to consider.

  Which left me here on the ledge, with my calves beginning to burn and my fingertips going numb.

  I studied the panes again. Nary a wrinkle in them. They must have cost a fortune.

  Oh well: It was her fault for changing the latch, after all.

  I slipped my wrist knife free and, hanging on with five white-tipped fingers, inserted its point into the lead glazing. After a bit of wiggling and prying, I got the tip where I wanted it and slowly began to lever the steel against the glass. A faint click rewarded me, along with a pair of long cracks running from the corner up to the opposite side of the pane.

  I smiled to myself as I picked the lower corner of the lead glazing away. It wasn’t fun or easy hanging here, popping teeth with a knife better suited to stabbing than prying, but the thought of my sister’s reaction when she found the break kept me at it. That, and the fall looming at my back.

  When the bottom third of the pane came free, I flicked it outward into the garden beneath me, cringing at the faint tinkle it made on the walkway. I heard Lazarus and Rinaldo and Acheron—the hounds that patrolled the garden at night—snuffing about below, but we were old friends ever since I had gotten them hooked on ahrami. A little rubbed into some choice scraps of pork, and the boys were nothing but wags and slobber when it came to me poking about the place.

  The second fragment of glass slipped out easily. It was the third that gave me the most trouble. I ended up slicing open my middle finger getting it free, but once it was done, I was able to reach in and release the latch.

  The window opened out. It took a bit of interesting gymnastics to get myself beneath its swing, but, aside from a few smears of red on the wall and casement, I managed to slip inside easily enough.

  Where I settled myself onto the floor with a groan. I hadn’t done any hard draw-latching for years, and I could tell. My thighs and calves were trembling, and I could still feel the stonework pressing into the fingers of my left hand. I closed my eyes for a moment, relishing the feeling of not clinging to something for dear life, and then remembered my finger.

  I had come in through the music room window, which meant there was a fair supply of paper about to use as a compress. The first page from Paulus’s’s The Enchanting of the Bridgemaker’s Daughter—something all the rage at Court, I was sure—was the easiest to hand, and did a passable job as I pulled out my herb wallet and dug through it. It wasn’t nearly as well stocked as it had been when I was living above Eppyris’s shop, but I managed to find a small envelope of powered woolman’s weed and a long strip of clean linen. The woolman helped slow the bleeding, and the linen finished the job, giving me fairly unrestricted use of my hand.

  Leaving Paulus bloodstained and crumpled on the floor, I crept to the door and cracked it open.

  Dark. Quiet. Good.

  I briefly considered the downstairs study, then rejected it. Christiana might keep her accounts and receipts and records of minor treacheries and betrayals down there, but what I wanted was of a more personal nature. And for a woman who had spent over half her life working as a courtesan, secrecy and privacy meant one place: her bedroom.

  Still, just because Christiana was gone didn’t mean the house was empty.

  I crept to the head of the stairs, then partway down, and listened. Laughter from the kitchen, and light shining out from beneath the door to Josef’s room off the main foyer. The mistress was away, and her butler was allowing the mice to play. It wasn’t impossible that someone could come wandering up to Christiana’s room while I was there—more dodges than I cared to think about have been ruined by a servant or a repentant spouse delivering a vase of freshly cut color at an inopportune time—but judging by the tone and volume of the talk, I didn’t expect anyone to be tearing themselves away anytime soon.

  I padded back upstairs and along the hallway. No light showed beneath the maid’s door, but I kept it slow and silent as I slipped past and cracked the gold-accented cream-colored double doors farther along. Which was a good thing, since Sara, the maid, was there, curled up on the window seat in Christiana’s receiving parlor, snoring softly.

  I froze, and then slowly let out my breath. This was a problem.

  If this were another Kin’s ken, or even some other noble’s pile of rocks, I would have had a knife to the maid’s eye and a gag in her mouth in an instant. But this was my sister’s servant, in my sister’s house: If I damaged the goods, I’d never hear the end of it.

  Besides, the girl had a nice smile. I
’d only ever seen it once, and then mostly out of the corner of my eye, but she’d flashed it my way in the middle of one of my sister’s tirades, when I’d delivered a particularly good comeback. I figured that kind of sympathy—not to mention spirit, given what would have happened if Christiana had caught the look—deserved a measure of respect.

  So instead, I pulled out a vial of Budger’s oil, scattered some across a strip of linen, and gently laid it down on the window seat near her face. In a strong enough dose, the distillations and herbs in the oil could drag a wakeful man into unconsciousness, but that required a well-soaked rag being clamped to the face for a good minute or more—a tactic I didn’t relish just now. Used like this, though, the Budger would deepen the girl’s sleep, so that only a sound shaking would rouse her, and then damn slowly.

  I crouched, counting my heartbeats and trying not to pick at the fresh wound on my finger, until enough time had passed. Then I took the rag from near her face, laid it far away on the floor, and got to work.

  Turning a room can take a long time, or very little—it all depends on the experience of two people: the one doing the hiding, and the one doing the looking. My sister didn’t lack in training when it came to secreting away things she didn’t want found—our stepfather, Sebastian, had seen to that—but all of her practice, at least early on, had been against me. First in our cabin in the Balsturan Forest, and then later in the dives of Ildrecca, Christiana and I had made a game of hiding things from each other, both in typical places—nooks and spots that hadn’t required construction or modification—and in more practiced locales. Eventually, the game turned serious, especially once Christiana had become a courtesan and had had things worth hiding. Even later, I’d still gotten plenty of practice against her while her late husband, Nestor, was alive.