Sworn in Steel

by Douglas Hulick

  “Any luck finding us some Crows?” I said as I stood beside her and scanned the nearby roofs.

  Fowler let out a small laugh. “Hardly.”

  “Oh?” It wasn’t like Fowler to be unable to find people to stand watch over a ken, even in a place like el-Qaddice. If anyone could find willing, worthy eyes, it was her. I pulled up a chair. “Tell me.”

  “The Kin around here don’t make sense.”

  “How so?”

  “I’m used to Kin being careful,” she said. “Being cagey. Used to their standing half a step back when you talk to them, especially if they don’t know you. I can understand that. But here?” She made a dismissive gesture toward the world beyond the window. “It’s more than that. They’re nervous. No one wants to hire on to stand watch without checking with someone else first. It’s like they’re all looking at their shadows, afraid that something’s going to jump out at them. Everyone’s so afraid of stepping wrong, no one’s willing to lift up their feet.”

  “It’s the Zakur,” I said. “They’ve got a lock on the district—more so than you’d expect. More than the Kin have on the Raffa Na’Ir district back in Ildrecca, even.” I leaned back against my chair. My back cracked. It felt damn good. “I just wish I knew why their pull is so damn strong.”

  “It’s the glimmer,” said Fowler.

  “The what?”

  “The glimmer. They control it.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Remember how Heron went on about those carvings on the walls when we arrived?”

  “You mean the Plague of the Paragons? When the empire sent the magical sickness?”

  Fowler nodded impatiently. “Right, that. Well, it turns out not only did the despot decide to wall off the Imperial Quarter from the rest of the city; he also barred any kind of magic from the empire coming into el-Qaddice. And I’m not just talking portable glimmer here—I mean Mouths, too. Anyone who can speak a spell or mumble a charm. Getting caught with even a scrap of imperial spellcraft in this city gets you an immediate, irrevocable visit to the despot’s deepest dungeon.”

  “Which means,” I said, spinning the consequences out in my head, “the Kin in this city don’t have access to glimmer.”

  “Oh, we can get it, all right,” said Fowler, “as long at it’s Djanese in origin and we’re willing to pay the Zakur for the privilege.”

  I collapsed back into my chair. That would do it, all right. It wasn’t that we, as Kin, were used to having easy access to magic—it was still rare and pricey in the Empire as well—but it was at least an option. The Kin were central to the illegal glimmer trade back home, which meant that we could get it when we needed it. But here, in a city where they made dust cyclones dance in the street and summoned rainbows out of the air? Working a dodge without glimmer here would be like trying to take part in an alley fight without a weapon—you could still come out of it in one piece, sure, but that steel in your hand sure made the odds better.

  A thought occurred.

  “You can’t tell me someone hasn’t tried to sneak some Mouths in here over the years?” I said. “Especially Kin.”

  “Of course they have,” said Fowler. “And from what I hear, the despot’s magi have even eased up on the punishment for it. They used to keep the offender alive for a week while they let magical fires cosume their body; now they only draw it our for three days.”

  Shit. No wonder Fat Chair had sought me out so soon after my arrival. He wasn’t worried about me smuggling in a single piece of glimmer in; he was worried I was going to try and set up permanent shop. That I was going to step in and start supplying the Imperial Quarter with mages or magic—or both—and try to take over the district. Or more.

  And all because I was a Gray Prince. Because everyone knew that a Gray Prince wouldn’t come to a place like el-Qaddice in person unless he a good reason. Unless he had plans.

  Dammit.

  “How did I not hear about this?” I said, pushing myself away from the table so I could stand. And pace. “I just spent the last day and a half working the damn street. How did I miss it?”

  Fowler stayed put in the window. “What were you looking for?” she said.

  “Degan, of course.”

  “Well, there you go, then: You had no reason to ask.”

  “And you did?”

  “I saw what they do on the streets for fun while we were walking to the inn from the padishah’s. I figured if I wanted to have any chance of sewing this ken up, I’d need to get my hands on at least a couple glimmer-mongers, if not a proper Mouth. Only I couldn’t find any.” Fowler tapped the knife at her side. “It wasn’t until I started digging that people began to tell me the hows and whys of it.”

  I nodded. Kin or no, that wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to share with some brand-new cove on the street. Weaknesses are embarrassing, no matter whose fault they are.

  “If that’s the case with the glimmer,” I said, “then we may have a bigger problem than I first thought.”

  “How so?”

  I took a step closer, then thought better of it and moved to put the chair between me and her.

  I told her about Fat Chair.

  “And you told him to go to hell?” she practically shouted once I was done.

  “I thought he was a local boss flexing his muscle, trying to brush me back on some smuggling,” I said. “How was I supposed to know he had a lock on all the glimmer in the Imperial Quarter?”

  “Fuck,” said Fowler. She looked out the window, then back at me, then back out the window again. “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Do you know how hard it just got for me to secure this place? How hard it’s going to be to recruit any kind of Crows now? Once word gets out that this bastard is after you, no one’s going to want to take our coin. I’m going to have to skip over any likely Kin or Zakur I may have had my eye on and go straight to the street urchins and the outcasts.” She kicked the chair at me. “Fucking brilliant.”

  I sidestepped the chair. “We still may have one angle,” I said.

  “Oh, and what’s that?” said Fowler. She jerked her chin toward the troupe. “You going to sonnet the Zakur to death?”

  I tapped my doublet, where Jelem’s packet had been carefully restitched between layers of lining. “There’s still the yazani from the cellar.”

  Fowler sat up. “You mean Raaz?” She began to pat at her own doublet. “Shit. He was here looking for you earlier. I almost forgot. Said he needed to talk to you.”

  “I’ll bet he did.” Between the shadow magics and the yazani, he and his master had to be worried about whatever it was Jelem had hidden in those papers. My guess was that it was worth more than the price of getting us into the Old City—and if it wasn’t, I was going to make it so. “Where did he say I could find him?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “Well, then, how am I—?”

  “Ah, here it is.” Fowler pulled a thin strip of dark fabric from beneath her waistband. The cloth was roughly the length of her little finger and half as wide. She held it up between us. “He said to burn this when you were ready to talk to him.”

  I reached out and took it gingerly between finger and thumb. It felt tacky and stiff, as if it had been dipped in resin or tar and left to dry. “Burn it?”

  Fowler nodded.

  “And then what?” I said.

  Fowler shrugged.

  I sighed. Sleep would have to wait. “Go get me a candle, will you?”

  “Hey, Flora!” yelled Fowler. “Go get us a candle, will you?”

  The girl straightening the common room dipped her head and hurried off.

  I glared at Fowler and rubbed my ear. She smiled beatifically back.

  “Mistress,” said Flora as she hurried back into the room, her hand cupped around a burning taper. She set it on the table, bobbed another half bow, and left.

  “What the hell did you do to her?” I asked as the girl scuttled away, glancing over her shoulder at the Oak Mistress.

  “Nothing.
Just told her older brother that if he pushes her around again, I’d snap off his cock and feed it to him with a side of hummus.” Fowler winked. “Think she has a crush on me now.”

  I sighed and took a seat at the table. The taper’s flame flickered and wavered, giving off a oily, dirty smoke. I held up Raaz’s scrap, hesitated, then cautiously touched fabric to flame.

  If I’d been expecting an explosion or a clap of thunder, I would have been sorely disappointed. All that happened was a hiss and a sputter as the fabric reluctantly caught fire. I held it for a moment, then set it on the table. The flame crept slowly up the length of the scrap.

  I was about to ask Fowler what we were supposed to do next when I noticed the smoke from the cloth wasn’t behaving the way it should. Rather than wafting upward and spreading into a wider ribbon before dissipating, the pale line instead rippled and turned back on itself, bending to and fro, in arcs and lines, before finally resuming its journey ceilingward. It wasn’t until the fabric was half-gone that I was able to discern the face hanging before me in the air like an empty carnival mask, its features sketched in smoke.

  The face it depicted was, not surprisingly, Raaz’s.

  “Ah, you got my message,” said the mask. Or, rather, wrote, since each word came out its mouth as a gray bit of imperial cephta, drifting on the air between us before van-ishing. “We need to speak. Can you come now?”

  I waited until the last symbol drifted away and then said, “Um, yes?” There was less than a quarter of the fabric left on the table.

  “Excellent. Come to the old temple to the Family in the Blessed Sky District in the third ring. Repeat it.”

  “Temple to the Family in Blessed Sky, third ring.”

  “What the hell is going on?” whispered Fowler, leaning forward until her face almost passed though Razz’s. “Who are you talking—?”

  “Hsst!” I said, waving her away. The breeze from my hand caused Raaz’s face to shiver and distort briefly. He didn’t seem to mind.

  “Good. I’ll be waiting,” he smoke-said. Then his face broke apart and drifted away.

  I looked down at the table. The piece of fabric was nothing more than a charred line on its surface.

  “What happened?” said Fowler, still leaning forward. “Was it Raaz? What did he say?”

  “What did you see?”

  Fowler sat back and blinked. “You sitting there muttering to a stream of smoke. I couldn’t even hear what you were saying, you were talking so low. Why, what did you see?”

  I brushed the line of char away and stood. “Pretty much the same. Come on.”

  Fowler scowled at my answer but didn’t argue. “Where are we going?” she said as she rose.

  “To see how the other half prays, it seems.”

  We found the temple easy enough. Raaz, though, was another matter.

  It was an impressive place, and not what I had been expecting. Back in Ildrecca, the Empire went for vast and intimidating: vaulted ceilings, vast arches, mosaics and paintings four and five times the height of a man, all designed to make the petitioner feel both pious and penitent. What with the emperor being the direct intermediary between his subjects and the Angels, religion ran part and parcel with the state. Loyalty was one of the main businesses of the churches in the empire.

  By contrast, the business of the temples in Djan, or at least this one, seemed to be . . . well, everything.

  The place itself was a large rectangle, open to the heavens, bordered on all sides by more pillared arcades. Out in the middle, under the brilliant blue sky, a series of winding gravel paths wandered across a patchwork of trimmed lawns and small open areas. Men and women moved about on these paths, walking and talking, arguing and laughing, reading and contemplating. Almost as an afterthought, I saw people kneeling on prayer rugs as well, facing different directions as they bowed and prayed to one of the many images depicted on the back walls of the arcade.

  There was more praying going on in the shade in front of the murals. Each had been painted with a likeness of one of the members of the divine family and then decorated with various symbols and precious metals associated with each god—gold and rubies for Ahreesh, jade and lavender for A’wella, black silk and ashes for The Banished One, and so on—but there were other things going on there as well. Scholars sat conducting lessons with their students while water hawkers and rug menders called out their services, and beggars silently held out bowls, hoping for a share of the alms all Djanese were expected to donate every month. Off to one side, a young man was making an elaborate show of kneeling before a young woman and reciting poetry. I could hear her laughter from here.

  “It’s more like a bazaar than a temple,” said Fowler. She laughed. “I like it!”

  “Bazaar or temple,” I said, “we need to find Raaz.” I looked around, then hopped up onto the plinth for one of the columns and tried to see over the crowd. “You take that side of the temple,” I said to Fowler, “while I—”

  I was interrupted by the sound of a single, clear, deep note ringing out over the space.

  The poetry stopped, the girl became solemn, and everyone made their way to a clear patch of ground. Those without rugs or mats chose the grass, while most of the others opted for the clearings covered with raked sand. A few of the more dedicated knelt on the gravel. I noticed that those within the arcades fell silent as well, although not all of them knelt in prayer.

  As before, everyone faced in a different direction, directing their prayers at the image of the god they had come to petition. A few people seemed to pray in no particular direction at all, or looked to be facing the space between two representations. Indecisive, I wondered, or hedging their bets?

  The bell sounded again, and a single priest came out from an archway on the far side of the temple. He was clad in deep red-orange robes, and carried a twisted, gnarled staff in his hands. After a brief gesture to each of the four cardinal directions, he faced back the way he’d come and began a low, sonorous chant.

  The prayers lasted maybe ten minutes, and I used that time to look over the heads and backs of the various supplicants. When the bell sounded for a third time, everyone rose. Those with rugs or mats rolled them up. The water sellers and the rug menders began calling out again. Some people moved to leave, others stayed, and still others came in. The girl, I noticed, walked out before the poet could prostrate himself before her again.

  The temple had turned back into something like a common green.

  “Any luck?” said Fowler.

  I pointed. “Over there, under the arcade.”

  I led us out into the temple yard and along the gravel paths, angling over toward a small group of men and women who sat in the shade halfway along the wall.

  As we approached, I saw a brief shimmer appear and dance along the fingertips of one of the men in the circle. A moment later, a similar shimmer, but longer in duration and with more color, appeared on another set of fingers. Then a third. When a fourth figure—a handsome, raven-haired woman—raised her hands, only to have the magical luminescence slither up the arm and along the shoulders of the man next to her, the circle erupted in polite laughter, followed by the gentle tapping of palms on the floor of the arcade.

  Raaz smiled along with the rest of them and made a show of brushing off his shoulder.

  “Well done, Zural,” he said. “Now, tell me—ah!” He nodded as he saw me and held up one hand. We stopped maybe four paces away.

  “I’m afraid the rest will have to wait for another time,” said Raaz to his students. “But remember the purpose behind this exercise: If you can recognize another’s magic—can understand how he shapes the fragments of power—and form it to your own use, you are one step closer to turning it against him even as he gathers it, yes?”

  Murmured agreement from the circle. The students—both young and old—rose and wandered away, leaving Raaz alone, perched on a threadbare cushion on an even more threadbare rug.

  “Please,” said Raaz, indicating the flo
or before him. Fowler and I sat. “My apologies for dragging you here, but my master isn’t well and someone has to carry on the lessons.”

  “You teach your classes here?” said Fowler.

  Raaz tilted his head. “Why not?”

  “Well, I’d think . . .” She gestured at the milling square of the temple. “Privacy, for one. Secrecy for another. And, well, privacy for a third.”

  Raaz steepled his fingers and rested his elbows on the knees. “I can see your point,” he said. “And were I a member of, say, Tal Nareesh, I might agree with you. Were I Nareesh, I would happily stay back in my hall and conduct lessons in the privacy of a classroom or closed garden. But I’m of Tal al-Faj, and that means our school is no longer our own. It is, in fact, the property of Tal Nareesh—a gift from the despot for exposing the foul conspiracy of its former owners.”

  “Oh,” said Fowler, sounding abashed. “I didn’t—”

  “How could you?” cut in Raaz smoothly. “And besides, the despot has been generous. Tal al-Faj still has a school to call its own. It is just smaller. And poorer. And prone to leaning to one side. So we come here.” He gestured at the temple. “Where better to teach the secrets of power and control than under the eyes of the Family?” He leaned for-ward. “And how better to avoid suspicion than by sitting out in the open, for all to see? If my master wants privacy, dear Fowler, he will save it for the things that truly matter—not simple lessons in manipulative magics.”

  “Speaking of manipulative magicians,” I said, “What do you want?”

  Raaz grudgingly turned his attention to me. “You have to ask?”

  I smiled a thin smile and looked over my shoulder, making sure no one was near. Enough of the worshippers and loiterers had cleared out by now that we weren’t in any danger of being overheard. Still, I gave Fowler a look. She got up and stepped away, placing herself between us and the rest of the arcade.

  I turned back, reached into my doublet, and set Jelem’s packet on the polished floor tiles.

  Raaz looked from the packet to me and back again. I noted that he still had a wavering gray scar around his neck, still had a glove on his left hand where the neyajin had cut his shadow, and still spoke with a bit of a rasp.