“Degan was your friend,” said Christiana. She had come to my side of the table as I talked, which meant she was right in my face as she said, “Your best friend! He sacrificed what he was for you, Drothe, and you repaid him like that?”
“It was you and Kells and the future of the Empire on one side, and him on the other,” I said. “I did the sums. He understood that.”
“Sums?” said Christiana. “Sums? You ruin a man and you justify it with numbers?”
“You’ve justified a hell of a lot more with a hell of a lot less.”
Christiana straightened as if I’d struck her. “That’s Court. It’s different.”
“Yes, it is,” I said. “It’s much less personal and much more petty.”
Christiana’s hand came up. I caught it before it connected with my face—barely.
“Maybe,” grated Christiana. She tugged at her hand, but I held on. “But which is worse: betraying someone who understands that it’s part of the price for the game he plays, or abandoning someone who’s put his whole trust in you?”
“When has that ever stopped you?” I said, drawing her closer. “When was the last time you lost sleep over someone you turned on? Five years ago? Eight? More? You’re in no position to lecture me, little sister: We’ve both left blood and blame in our wakes.” I let her arm go. She stepped away. “Hell, you wouldn’t even be giving a damn about this if you didn’t want to get into his pants so badly.”
This time, her slap connected.
“Get out,” she said, her voice ragged and cold—colder than I’d heard it in years. Not since Nestor’s death. “I don’t know why you want to find Degan, and I don’t care; all I know is that if you need him, then I don’t want you to find him. He’s better off that way.”
I stood there, my face still stinging on one side, and regarded her. I could have, I decided upon reflection, managed this better; could have told her why I was looking for Degan to begin with. But my mind didn’t work that way—not when it came to my sister, not when it came to getting information from her.
Old, bitter habits.
Time for that to change.
“Ana—” I began.
“Get out.”
“I don’t want to find him for me.”
“Let me guess,” she said. “You’re in danger, or your reputation is. Or maybe it’s your organization, or some scum you care about on the street. But in any case, the only way you can fix it is by finding Degan. Am I right?”
“No. Well, yes, but—”
“Josef!”
The door swung open. Christiana’s butler stood framed in the doorway, a look of resigned displeasure on his face. Behind him loomed a pair of pillarlike objects in doublets: my sister’s “footmen.”
If I had anything approaching an ally in this house, it was Josef, but any sympathy he might feel toward me was easily outweighed by his loyalty to his mistress. He wouldn’t like ordering me thrown out—he’d always apologized to me after the fact in the past—but that wouldn’t stop him from doing it again.
“Him,” said Christiana, pointing at me. “Out.”
Josef stepped aside. The footmen advanced.
The table was between me and Christiana’s men, but that wouldn’t help me for long. I began a slow retreat toward the larder. If I had to fight, doing it from a doorway was my best option right now.
“Ana, I need to find him to bring him back to Ildrecca.”
“I just bet you do,” she said. “Is the thought of him returning supposed to make me weak in the knees? Am I supposed to give in at the prospect of seeing him again? That might have been a better gambit earlier in the conversation, Drothe; now it just irritates me.” She addressed her footmen. “Be as rough as you need to. No, rougher.”
One nodded; the other smiled. I recalled having broken the second one’s nose a couple of years back. This wasn’t shaping up well at all.
To hell with it. I cleared my steel.
The footmen stopped. Josef frowned. Christiana swore.
“Dammit, Drothe!” she said, although not as fiercely as she might have earlier. Hired help standing about and all that. “Just leave! Because, I swear, if you so much as—”
“I might be able to fix it, Ana!” I said as I eyed her men. They eyed me back. “Do you understand me? I might be able to get him back into the city. I might make it so Degan can come back and be what he was. I might be able to fix it.” Be able to fix him.
One of the footmen picked up a cleaver, hefted it, and nodded. The other cast about for a moment and settled on a rolling pin. They began moving again.
I slid into a low guard, my sword threatening from below, my dagger extended out at eye level. I had to get them as they came in; if they got in past my sword, I’d be carved and clubbed in no time.
“Wait.”
The footmen stopped at Christiana’s word but didn’t change stance: Their weight was still forward, their weapons still ready, their eyes still hard as granite. Prepared to move against me on a moment’s notice. I returned the favor.
Christiana walked over and stood just behind the footman with the crooked nose. “How?” she said to me. “How can you ‘fix’ it?”
“Another degan,” I said. “He says he may have a way to bring Degan back into the fold, but he needs me to find him.”
“Why you?”
I snorted and rubbed pointedly at my nose with the back of my dagger hand. “You’re joking, right?”
“And you believe him?”
“I don’t really have a choice,” I said. “But yes, I think he wants Degan back safe, as far as it goes.” I wasn’t sure what Wolf had planned after that—and I didn’t for a moment believe he was doing this for purely altruistic reasons—but that didn’t seem like something I should mention to my sister just now.
Christiana reached up and began twirling a loose ringlet of hair about her finger. She sighed, chewed on her lip, and sighed again.
When she said, “Dammit,” I knew I had her.
“Don’t get all cocky,” she snapped when she saw the smile on my face. “Understand that I’m going to hold you personally responsible for his safety,” she said. “Personally. As in, if he comes back missing more than a fingernail clipping, I’ll send people after you.”
I reined my grin back to a smirk and nodded. “Understood.”
“No, I don’t think you do.” Christiana pushed past her men, past my rapier, past my dagger even, until she was close enough for me to smell the soap on her skin and the closet’s lavender bouquet on her dress. She dropped her voice to a practiced, husky whisper that, on anyone else, in any other situation, would have been alluring but for me was merely threatening.
“When I say I’ll send people,” she said, “I mean I’ll bankrupt myself. I’ll embrace penury and whore myself in the streets if it means you get what you deserve. Assassins galore: more than you can count, and the best money can buy. Because if you set him up again and let him fall, I won’t care about the blood we share or the history we have or any of the damn lessons Sebastian pounded into our heads. If you hurt Degan, I promise I will see to it that you suffer. And that you die. Do we understand each other?”
There wasn’t the faintest hint of a smile on my face this time when I said, “Understood.”
Christiana gave my eyes a long, searching look, then nodded.
“He’s in el-Qaddice,” she said.
I blinked. “The Djanese capital?”
“Do you know another?”
I slammed my dagger and rapier home in their sheaths. “What the hell is he doing in Djan?”
Christiana turned and began walking away, her skirts whispering against the scrubbed stones of the floor. “I’m sure I don’t know, but I expect you can ask him when you get there.”
“Djan?” I said again. The border was weeks away, and el-Qaddice even farther. Fading from sight was one thing, but vanishing for months? That was more than enough time for things to go to hell.
“Oh,
I almost forgot,” said Christiana, pausing at the foot of the table. “The rumor at Court is that things have been going downhill with the Despotate lately. I wouldn’t be surprised if the ambassador were recalled soon. Angels know, he’s been treated shoddily enough by the despotic court. The man’s a diplomat, after all; you’d think—”
“Christiana,” I said.
“Yes?”
“By downhill, do you mean . . .”
“War?”
“Yes.”
She shrugged. “I doubt it, but who knows? All I’m saying is that it might prove difficult for an Imperial to cross the border right now, let alone into el-Qaddice. But then, you’re a clever boy: I’m sure you’ll manage. Just don’t do anything to make them suspicious.”
“Right.” Because I was never suspicious, either in nature or deed.
Christiana resumed her exit. “And, Drothe?”
“Yes?”
“Send the money to pay for the window and a new copy of The Enchanting of the Bridgemaker’s Daughter before you leave town, would you? I don’t want to be left on the hook for that.”
I shared my thoughts on the matter with my sister as she walked out the door. Her only answer was a peal of laughter coming back along the hallway.
I wondered briefly whether Tobin and his people had a copy of The Enchanting of the Bridgemaker’s Daughter in their collection, and whether they’d be willing to let me have a copy made of it. Wondered if Baldezar would consider it too below him to copy at all.
A throat cleared itself politely behind me. Josef reminding me it was time for me to walk out the door before I was thrown out.
I left by the servants’ exit. Naturally.
Chapter Ten
“No,” said Jelem. “Absolutely not. It’s impossible.”
“Why the hell not?” I said.
Jelem took a long draw on the brass-tipped hose that led to the communal water pipe on our table and considered me. We’d started out sharing it with another pair of men, but a few words from Jelem had sent them seeking another table shortly after I’d arrived. As for the rest of the patrons in the place, they were busy listening to the house storyteller, who was sitting in his narrow alcove and banging his brass sword on the floor every few minutes for emphasis.
We were in a street-side café in the Raffa Na’Ir, the Djanese district of Ildrecca. A gray-blue haze filled the café, filtering the morning sunlight that streamed in through the arched facade. A dozen low tables were scattered around the place, each surrounded by a collection of battered floor pillows. Every table held a water pipe with three to five untipped hoses coming off it. Patrons rented a tip—or, as in Jelem’s case, brought their own—and purchased their smoke of choice from the café. Wine, tea, coffee, and sekanjabin were available in abundance, as were a collection of pastries and finger foods the Djanese were so fond of at the end of a night and beginning of a day.
Unlike me, Jelem looked fresh. His linen undertunic and pants were crisp, his felted wool vest spotless, his neck and the cheeks above his beard freshly scraped. Mind, that was no guarantee that he hadn’t been up all night as well, but there was no way of knowing by just looking at him. He was the picture of Djanese complacency.
Which irked me to no end.
“Returning to Djan would be . . . unadvisable for me at present,” he said at last.
“Risky?” I said.
Jelem lifted the tip of the pipe to his mouth.
“Deadly?” I pushed.
Water bubbled in the pipe as Jelem drew in the smoke. The action almost hid the frown on his face, but not quite.
“Somewhere in between,” he said at last.
“Maybe I could—”
“No, I don’t think you could,” said Jelem. “But I appreciate the offer. It’s a Djanese matter: politics, family, magic—very complicated. Something I would not expect an Imperial to burden himself with, let alone understand.”
“Still,” I said. “If I’m going to be there anyhow, maybe you should prime me a bit.” I picked up another pastry. “I mean, being a simple Imperial and all, I wouldn’t want to step on the wrong toes and make things worse.”
Jelem snorted. I had known him for years. To me, he’d always been a Djanese Mouth, an occasional gateway to the Zakur, a collector of information, and a damn good gambler. Sometimes he was even a friend. But in all that time, he had never hinted at, let alone revealed, why he was living among his country’s traditional enemies. Oh, there were rumors, of course—murder, court intrigue, a secret romance with a member of the despot’s harem, you name it—but none of them had ever quite fit the calm, capable, arrogant son of a bitch who sat across from me and peddled his magic to Djanese and Imperials alike. And none of his fellow countrymen had been willing to clarify matters, either.
Which all made his mention of “politics, family, and magic” an encyclopedic dissertation compared to what I already knew, and the reason I pressed for more.
Jelem exhaled a gray plume out of the corner of his mouth. “Make things worse?” he said. “No, even considering your exceptional talents, I doubt you could find and crush enough toes to make things worse for me. Where are you going in the Despotate?”
“El-Qaddice.”
He coughed. “El-Qaddice? Then I take it back: You might just find enough toes after all.”
“All the more reason for you to come along and make sure I avoid them.” Having a native with me would be helpful; having a native Mouth of Jelem’s ability could be crucial if things turned ugly.
Jelem refused to rise to the bait. “Why Djan?” he said instead. “And, more important, why now?”
I’d thought about this after I’d left my sister’s and begun my nightlong hunt for Jelem: about the tales I could tell, the half-truths I could let drop, and the omissions I could get away with. And I’d decided that, if I wanted what I needed, none of those would suffice. Of the countless people in the Imperial capital, Jelem knew more about what had passed between Degan and me than any other soul, save my sister. So I simply said, “Degan’s there.”
The brass tip didn’t quite slip from his fingers, but it was a close thing. He covered it well by setting the pipe’s hose aside and taking up his own cup of sekanjabin. “Degan. Really. Interesting. Any idea why?”
“Part of the reason I’m going is to find out.”
“And the other?”
“I hear good things about taking the waters.”
“Yes, of course,” said Jelem. “We’re famous for our ‘waters’ in the desert.”
We drank in silence for a while after that, each itching to learn what the other knew, each unwilling to show his hand for fear of losing any kind of perceived advantage. Finally, after a second round of coffee and sekanjabin, along with a fresh tray of sweets, Jelem leaned in and set his cup aside.
“I cannot go,” he said. “While my family might be happy to see me, it would only be to put a dagger between my ribs. However, I still have associates there who might be persuaded to help. I will send word ahead of you. With luck, they will be able to assist you once you are inside the Old City.”
“And the cost for this help?” I said.
“For my aid? Deliver a package. As for my friends in Djan, that will be between you and them.”
“What kind of package?”
“A small one.”
“What’s in it?”
“Small things.”
“What kind of small things?”
“Letters. Missives. Nothing you need concern yourself about.”
I tapped my finger on the side of my cup, watching tremors form on the surface of the coffee. “I generally find that when people tell me I don’t need to be concerned about something, it ends up concerning me.” I looked up and met the Djanese’s eye. “What’s in the letters?”
Jelem smiled with all the charm of a snake. “I’m sorry, my memory must be slipping: Why did you say you were looking for Degan, again?”
I grimaced. “I just don’t want
any surprises when some customs patrol pulls a packet of diplomatic secrets out of my pocket and looks to me for an explanation.”
“Then I suggest you hide them very well,” said Jelem. “Besides, you know I don’t deal with things like that.”
“No, your secrets are likely much more dangerous.”
Jelem shrugged. “Danger is in the eye of the beholder. But very well: I will show you the letters before I seal them. Acceptable?”
I regarded the man across from me, trying to read him, to decide whether he was playing me or not, and how badly. Problem was, he was too skilled a gambler to let me see anything, and I was too proud to pretend I hadn’t.
“As long as you seal them in front of me,” I finally said.
“As you wish.” Jelem sipped coffee, sucked smoke. “But if you ask me, you should be worrying more about how you’re going to get into el-Qaddice than what I put in a letter.”
“Travel documents I can handle,” I said. Crossing borders and getting into large cities required passports and travel papers, both in the Empire and Djan. The imperial and despotic bureaucracies, not to mention tax collectors, were always happier when they knew who was going where for what reason, and how much they could make off the process. The farther you went and the more borders you crossed, the more elaborate became the requirements, but I had people for that.
“Yes, I don’t doubt that Baldezar could falsify papers for you,” said Jelem. He’d met and worked with the master scribe I had reluctantly taken into my organization back when I’d been on the run from Shadow. “And they would suffice, if all you wanted to do was get as far as Waas or Geshara on the Bay or some other merchant town. But we’re talking el-Qaddice; gaining access to one of the political and religious centers of the Despotate requires more than a forged passport with a false stamp of passage on it, especially for an unknown imperial traveling on his own.”
“What do you mean?”
“You need letters of passage. And for that, you need a patron.”
Djanese patronage. I’d heard about it but never had to deal with it myself. The few times I’d been to Djan, it had been to check with my contacts or pick up payment for one of the more valuable imperial relics I’d had smuggled. Those meetings had all happened in some dusty little border village that barely rated a name, or in one of the larger merchant towns where a simple passport and a couple of coins could get you through the gate without a second glance. I’d never needed to go deeper into the Despotate, and thus never needed the kind of contacts Jelem was bringing up.
Sworn in Steel Page 12
