Sworn in Steel

by Douglas Hulick

  The grins faltered.

  “What date is today again?” said Tobin.

  “The seventeenth day of Fallwah,” said Heron.

  Tobin and Ezak exchanged looks. “Well,” began Ezak, “it’s still a week. We could always—”

  “And,” continued Heron, as if the men hadn’t spoken, “the wazir would like you to perform something different from your original audition. Something more like . . .” Heron extended his hand out behind him, had it filled by one of the clerks. “This,” he said, bringing forward a trimmed and bound folio.

  The grins vanished.

  “What?” cried Tobin, even as Ezak reached out and accepted the thin book. “You want us to read, prepare, and perform a play in seven—”

  “Less,” said Ezak, looking up at the sun, which was already past noon.

  “In less than seven days?” finished Tobin.

  My stomach clenched, and not in sympathy for the troupe. A week was barely enough time to get my feet wet in the Old City, let alone stand a chance of finding Degan. I needed longer, which meant the troupe needed longer—ideally, as long as an extended engagement as the padishah’s players would allow. Seven days wasn’t going to get us that—not by a long shot.

  “We need more time,” I said.

  Heron arched an eyebrow. “Don’t we all?”

  “Seven days for a new play?” I said, attempting to take up my role as patron. “Is the wazir setting us up to fail?”

  Heron’s resulting silence was eloquence itself.

  “Fuck!” I said, stepping away lest I make our situation even worse by strangling the wazir’s secretary.

  “Four acts,” muttered Ezak, paging through the script. “At least three scene changes—one at sea. No, sorry, on a lake. Six key parts, maybe another seven minor . . .” He stopped and looked up. “Is this a translation?”

  Heron gave a small bow. “From one of the padishah’s current favorites. A high honor for you.”

  “Impossible!” said Tobin. “The sensibilities will be all wrong.” He stepped forward, his hands out, placating. “We have a piece ready—a wonderful piece. Heroic, passionate: It’s brilliance on the boards. We’ve been preparing the entire journey. If the padishah wants to see what we’re made of, then he needs to see us at our best. He has to let us—”

  Heron took a quick step forward—so quick that, were it not for the shifting of his robes around him, I would have missed the movement entirely. “The padishah has to do nothing!” snapped the secretary. “And that includes let you live. You stand in el-Qaddice at the pleasure of His Highness Yavir; you can just as easily sleep in its streets, or lie under its earth, by that same pleasure. If it pleases him, or his wazir, to tell you to howl like gibbons and swing from the rafters of the grand reception hall, I expect the first words out of your mouth to be ‘In or out of costume, if it may please His Excellence?’Am I understood?”

  Tobin opened his mouth, thought better of it, and nodded once instead. When he turned away, he made no effort to hide his disgust.

  “We’ll need an original copy of the text in Djanese,” said Ezak, his voice carefully neutral. “In case there are questions or errors.” Heron held out his hand, had it filled with another book.

  “And a translator,” said Ezak.

  Heron looked at me.

  “Oh, no,” I said, holding up my hands. “I speak Djanese, I don’t read it.” A lie, I admit, but a convenient one nonetheless. If the padishah—or rather, the wazir—wanted to be an asshole, I wasn’t about to make it easier on his purse.

  Ezak weighed the two books, then looked up at me. His expression said it all.

  I touched Heron lightly on the sleeve and gestured off to one side. He followed me over, the scowl on his face showing me he was getting tired of the subject. One apparently didn’t question the wazir—or his secretary—when a decision had been made.

  Too fucking bad.

  “What happened to helping out fellow Imperials?” I said, my voice low.

  “There’s a difference between a crate of ahrami and debating a decision with the wazir.”

  A crate?

  “Besides,” said Heron, “you’ll notice that I don’t live in the empire anymore; that I, in fact, serve the Despotate.”

  “And rushing an imperial acting troupe’s performance so they can fail—is that serving the Despotate, or the wazir?” I said. “Or is it merely serving your own skin?”

  Heron stiffened, his eyes growing hard. I found myself taking an involuntary step back.

  “You dare accuse me of . . . ?” he began. His right hand twitched toward his belt, then stopped. Heron took a short, sharp breath. “It’s serving whom I must,” he snapped. He gestured at the wall. “You, of all people, should know the burden we carry by our blood in this city. Be happy you were allowed in at all.” Then he turned and started to walk away.

  I glanced over at the wall, at the depiction of a burning corpse done in bas-relief. A thought occurred.

  “Who would you want besides Petrosius?” I said to Heron’s retreating back.

  He stopped.

  “Thycles?” I said, tossing out historians. “Verin the Younger?” I took a slow step after him. “Maybe Kessalon?”

  Heron looked over his shoulder. “You can get Kessalon?”

  “Both volumes of his Commentaries—if you can get us more time.”

  Heron’s eyes narrowed. “Originals?”

  “Copies.” Baldezar would have a fit about me promising copies of two of his most precious texts as it was; trying to get an original out of his hands would require someone to die, and he was too valuable to go dustmans.

  “Get Thycles, too,” said Heron, “and you have a deal.”

  I pretended to think, then gave a reluctant nod. Thycles would be easy—Baldezar had three copies; that’s why I’d mentioned him.

  “Very well,” said Heron, his voice still tight. He gestured at the younger of the two clerks. “Shaheer will show you to your accommodations in the Quarter. I will speak to the wazir. Report to me at the padishah’s palace tomorrow at dusk. I’ll have your answer then. Oh, and before I forget . . .”

  Heron held out his hand again. Shaheer put a bag in it. The bag clinked.

  “You’ll need these,” he said, handing the bag to me. I reached inside and pulled out an oval brass lozenge the length of my thumb, on a matching brass chain. A long flute, called a nay, and a rolled-up scroll were depicted on the face of the lozenge; Djanese script was etched into the back.

  “Those are your tokens of patronage from the wazir,” said Heron. “Wear them openly, and always. If you are seen outside the Imperial Quarter without your token, any citizen of Djan may report you, or try to detain you. There is a reward for anyone who helps capture Imperials without a mark of patronage.” He looked me squarely in the eye. “A large reward.”

  I watched as he walked away, the elder clerk and half of the guards falling in behind him. I turned back to the rest of the troupe. Tobin was already ushering his people forward, but Ezak stood off to one side, watching me watch Heron. Fowler waited a bit farther along.

  “Even an extra week won’t be enough,” said Ezak as I came abreast of him. “Not if we want to perform well enough to win patronage.”

  “All I know,” I said, “is that a hell of a lot can happen in five days.” I’d seen criminal organizations fall in less, and found myself promoted from Nose to Gray Prince in just a bit more. “Five days can be forever, if you’re in the wrong place.”

  “And are we in that wrong place?” said Ezak.

  I looked through the gate and into the Imperial Quarter. “I’ll let you know in seven days,” I said.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Heron had arranged for us to take rooms at an inn named the Angel’s Shadow, which made me smile despite myself. The place was put together well enough, with well-aired rooms, mostly fresh linens, a common room that smelled of mutton and wood smoke and thyme, and a small courtyard that Tobin immediat
ely appropriated for the troupe’s rehearsals—a situation, it turned out, Heron had arranged for in advance.

  I checked my room—small bed, small window, small hole in the wall I stuffed with candle wax and lint to defeat prying ears or eyes—dropped my bedroll and bag on the floor, and kicked the door shut. Then I undid my doublet.

  I ran a questing hand first over the outside, then across the inner lining. Aside from the slightest change in stiffness, there was no hint that Fowler and I had now twice opened up the doublet and fit the three small letters and the larger envelope that had made up Jelem’s packet among the garment’s padding. It hadn’t been an easy job the second time around—whoever had brushed the doublet had also noticed the hasty stitching Fowler had done after removing the papers and decided to repair the job proper—but we’d managed to open the seams, adjust and restuff the doublet, and sew it all back up with proper-colored thread liberated from one of the padishah’s carpets, all without being walked in on.

  I picked off a few lingering bits of cord, then gave the doublet an experimental shake. No tell-tale crackle of paper, no rattle of broken seals, no sigh of documents or lining shifting underneath the cloth. Good. I’d initially been amazed that the wax on all three letters had survived the trip; now, given that I’d guessed their contents, I wasn’t surprised. If you were going to send contraband like that across the border into Djan, you’d damn well want to make sure they didn’t come popping open at the first bend or tap. If anything, I expected there was glimmer in the seals, holding them tight and the paper safe.

  Part of me wanted to take the doublet and bury it, if not in a hole in the ground, then at least in the bottom of my travel trunk. The idea of carrying the information those letters contained, let alone whatever magic was cast on them, made my skin crawl whenever the fabric brushed up against me. But I also knew that the best way to keep the package, and therefore myself, safe was to keep it on me. Between shadow-casting yazani and darkness-draped assassins, I wanted to be as indispensable as possible. Besides, I doubted any of them would expect me to keep something that valuable on my person after what had happened in the cellar.

  Which reminded me. . . .

  When I walked back out of the inn, the members of the troupe were busy unloading the wagon, taking various parcels into either the inn or the stables, or setting them to one side in the courtyard. I waited until a bundle of stage swords came off the wagon, put them over my shoulder, and headed into the stables.

  Two of the stalls had been set aside—at no small expense, I was sure—for the troupe’s gear. I set down the blunted props, removed Degan’s Black Isle blade from its hiding place among the pile of swords, and hied myself up to the hayloft.

  Five minutes later, I was walking back into the courtyard, brushing dust and bits of hay from my sleeves. Degan’s sword was far up in the rafters, hidden alongside a beam and behind some stray bits of thatch. Unless someone knew where to hunt, the chances of stumbling across the weapon were exceedingly low—much lower than, say, finding it under my bed or behind a loose wallboard in my room.

  I’d considered putting the neyajin’s dagger up with Degan’s sword as well, but decided against it in the end. While I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of carrying around an unknown piece of portable glimmer, neither was I willing to leave it behind. It struck me as the kind of magic that, if nothing else, I could use as a bargaining chip in a pinch. Besides, you never know when a smoke-edged dagger might come in handy. So, instead, I’d slipped it and the scabbard I had bought for it down my other boot.

  I found Fowler standing off to one side in the yard, partaking in one of the Kin’s favorite pastimes: watching other people work.

  “Well?” I said as I put my backside up against the wall beside her.

  “Two Ravens in the street,” she said, still watching the wagon.

  “Heron’s men?”

  “Sure as hell not local talent—they’re too obvious.”

  “And?”

  “Thought I saw someone up on the roof, to our left and across the street. There’s a trellis up there, so I can’t be sure. I’ll take a look later. The best blind spots for us to come and go look to be to the south and east: too many overhangs and blocked lines of sight to be able to watch the inn without being obvious.”

  “What do you need?” I said.

  “Money. If you want me to recruit some coves and set up a perimeter, I need to be able to flash them something other than my winning smile.”

  I took half of what I had left from our traveling money—not as much as I would have liked—and handed it to her. “See what you can do about shorting the inn’s owner a bit as well,” I said. “If we can skim what Heron’s giving him and keep the hostler from raising any noise, it’ll make things easier.”

  Fowler smiled. “He looks like the nervous type. If I can promise to keep the more eager members of the troupe out of his daughters’—or his sons’—bedrooms, I expect he’ll be willing to go a bit lighter in the purse.”

  “Just make sure you aren’t cutting in on anyone else’s action. I don’t need the local talent complaining about us coming in and taking away their whoring money; it looks petty.”

  “Angels forbid,” said Fowler. Then, as I pushed away from the wall, “I still don’t like this, you know.”

  “What?”

  “You, out there, with no one on your blinders.”

  “It’s just like the Lower City,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “It’s nothing like the Lower City and you know it. Not after what happened with Raaz and that Blade. At least give me until nightfall to—”

  “You heard Heron,” I said. “We have seven days. I don’t have time to wait. I need to hit the street now, to start sniffing for rumors now, to start spreading money and names now. If I want to stand any chance of turning up a lead on Degan before the audition, I have to get started.”

  “And what if a week isn’t enough?” said Fowler. “Have you thought about that? It’s not the Empire out there—it isn’t even Ildrecca. Weighing down a few palms and pattering up a couple local coves isn’t going to get you to Degan—hell, I doubt it’ll even get you a rumor of him. If you think—”

  “What I think,” I said, “is that we don’t have a choice. Who’s going to work the streets? You? You barely patter the local lingo, never mind the cant. We both know better than that. It has to be me.”

  “But it’s Djan. Just being an Imperial around here is bad enough, but an Imperial asking questions? That isn’t going to make you any friends.”

  “Then I’ll make an effort to smile nicely when I talk to people.”

  “Dammit, Drothe, you know—”

  “What I know,” I said, “is that I’m going to need a safe, secure roosting ken I can come back to, no matter how well or poorly it goes for me. And that I need you to make this inn that ken.” I took a step closer. “If I had more time, I’d go slower. But I don’t. There’s no time to recruit Ears, turn mumblers, make unfriendly bosses friendly. It has to be me out there and you back here. It’s the only way it can possibly work, and we both know it.”

  Fowler grumbled and groused and kicked at the ground, but she didn’t argue. She couldn’t. She knew I was right.

  I turned and headed for the inn’s main gate.

  “If you end up getting dusted,” she called after me, “make sure they bring your body back. I’ll be damned if I spend the next month learning the alleys and sewers of this place, just so I can wind you and shove you under the earth.”

  “Done!” I called over my shoulder. Then I stepped out onto the street and into el-Qaddice.

  I eased in slow: wandering the main streets, stopping at a couple of coffee stalls, chatting with a rug merchant who had the right kind of look in his eye. From there, I moved into the side streets, ducking in and out of late afternoon shadows and under the reed canopies that hung over tiny local bazaars. I listened more than I spoke, browsed more than I bought, and was careful to spread so
me copper supps and silver dharms when my lingering seemed to arouse suspicion. If I dropped Degan’s name, it was as if by chance, and I relied more on description than anything. I doubted that he was going by “Bronze” or “Degan” anyhow.

  By the time I moved into the alleys near sunset, one thing was clear: The influence of Djan ran deep on the streets of the Imperial Quarter. I could see it in the loose robes and draped kaffiyehs of borrowed fashion; could taste it in the cardamom and mint and pepper that laced the local street food; could smell it in the oils laced with cinnamon or clove or sweet rush. But more important, I could see it in the manners and actions of the Dorminikans around me. Everything was done with an eye over the shoulder—a featherlight awareness that nothing could be taken for granted or done without the risk of consequence. Local legionnaires still swaggered, hawkers still called out in Imperial, and brothels still advertised their services with paper ribbons above their doors, but it didn’t have the feel of a district at ease with itself. We were surrounded by a city full of people who had been the empire’s enemy more than its friend over the centuries, and that weight showed.

  That went doubly so among the Kin, who not only had both the Quarter’s legionnaires and the despot’s green jackets to worry about, but also the local Zakur. I quickly discovered that there were no real bosses to speak of in the Imperial Quarter—not really. Oh, they might call themselves Anglers or Rufflers or, in one case, an Upright Man, but their organizations were just shadows of the true thing. Most failed to rise above the level of a street gang, and of those who did, all were little more than a successful raid or a failed payoff away from falling.

  No, very little, I found, happened in the criminal island that was the Imperial Quarter without the tacit approval of the Zakur. That in itself wasn’t terribly surprising—I’d expected as much, more or less, given el-Qaddice’s location and particular circumstance—but it was the level of control that surprised me. Even the purse cutters and drop coves were expected to offer up a cut to the Djanese bosses.

  That being the case, I kept my name close and my title closer. Better to play the new cove in town than the Gray Prince come to swagger his way through the streets. The first might get you ignored, but the second will draw the kind of attention that could end with a dagger thrust in an alley.