Sworn in Steel

by Douglas Hulick

  Her eyes were big and deep and brown and edged with kohl, set close beside a narrow nose. There looked to be cheekbones happening under there as well. Between that and the smoke of her voice, not to mention the stray curve I’d noticed beneath those loose robes . . .

  I blinked. Focus, Drothe. Assassin. Happy to see you dead.

  I cleared my throat. “You were there,” I said. “You heard: I couldn’t show you how to see what I see, even if I wanted to.”

  “I’m not talking about want; I’m talking about need. We need to be able to face the Lions, to best them, to . . . restore our pride. You can help us do that.”

  I watched as her thumb began absently rubbing at the silver ring on her middle finger. It had been the same way in the empty room when he’d argued with her, when he’d mentioned her mother. Old wounds? Frustrations? Something else?

  Either way, I’d be a fool not to pick at it.

  “You and your grandfather don’t agree on many things, do you?” I said.

  “We agree on enough.”

  “But not when it comes to me.”

  She leaned in close. “There are yazani,” she said, “who can keep parts of a man—a finger, an ear, a foot, a heart—alive for months using magic and alchemy. How long, do you think, they could keep a man’s eye alive and intact? Long enough to draw the secrets from it, perhaps?”

  “That’s assuming the magic is held in my eye,” I said. “Who’s to say? Like I told your grandfather, I have no idea how the magic works. Taking my eyes might be the surest way of losing it.”

  I saw Aribah’s brow furrow. Clearly, she hadn’t expected her threat to fall quite so flat. I didn’t blame her, though—I’ve been threatened by the best.

  “What interests me more,” I continued, “is how long they can keep the head of an assassin alive. Because if you try to find an answer to your question using those yazani, I guarantee you they’ll get a chance to figure out the answer to mine.”

  We eyed each other a long moment, her measuring me, me returning the favor while trying not to get lost in her gaze in the process. Finally, she raised an exquisite eyebrow and snorted.

  “You’re still too valuable to kill, Marked Man,” she said, and turned away.

  I watched her go until she slipped into the shadows. Then I crossed the courtyard and entered the inn.

  A couple of Quarter locals were sitting at tables, finishing off their breakfasts. A few glanced up as I entered, but most kept their eyes on their bowls. None of Tobin’s people were present, and neither was Fowler. The former I didn’t care about—I wasn’t in the mood to deal with a brood of clucking actors—but Fowler I could have done with. To have her by me, swearing and fussing and, ultimately, understanding my news held a strong appeal just now. Maybe it was just the hour and the locale, but sharing the burden suddenly sounded damn good.

  Tired as I was, I couldn’t help noticing that my stomach was trying to eat a hole through my spine. I made my way over to the bar and signaled for a serving of whatever they’d made for breakfast. Then I put my back to the counter, rested my elbows on its top, and gave myself permission to relax.

  Djinn hunters? What the hell did a bunch of djinn hunters have to do with me, let alone my night vision? Bad enough when I’d thought they were some sort of shadow-wearing assassins, but now . . . now I had to wonder at the connection between my night sight and that of the djinn, or their riders, or whatever the hell the Lions of Arat were. The old assassin’s dismissal aside, I didn’t believe for one moment it was a coincidence that the neyajin’s glimmer foiled both the Lion’s vision and my own. In my limited experience, those kinds of things don’t just happen when it comes to magic: If anything, unexpected glimmer usually makes a situation worse, not better. No, as much as I disliked the notion, odds were good that, if there wasn’t a direct connection between the Lions of Arat’s vision and my own, then there were some damn close similarities. Similarities that might very well point to Djanese magic and the djinn.

  Djinn.

  Damn it, Sebastian, how the hell had you gotten our night vision, anyhow? And from where?

  The innkeeper’s girl set a bowl near my elbow, practically startling me. I turned around to take it up, and smiled. The porridge inside was done in the Ildreccan style, smelling of rice and goat’s milk and honey and coriander. My stomach grumbled at the memories of home. I took up the bowl and the horn spoon she’d set beside it, and headed for the stairs.

  Well, one thing was for certain: If I didn’t believe my night vision was a lucky coincidence, neither did Aribah’s grandfather. His letting me go simply meant that holding on to me right now wasn’t tenable. I was under no illusions about being done with him, or his granddaughter, or their interest in me. You don’t break a contract and then dust four of the local Upright Man’s enforcers, only to let the man you put your people at risk or go free. No, he was playing a long game, but whether I was a target or a tool at the moment, I couldn’t tell.

  I put a foot on the stairs, then another, and dipped the spoon into the porridge. It was hot and thick and grainy, and dropped into my gut like a stone. Despite that, it felt good—like a piece of home, sitting in my center and giving me indigestion. Small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.

  I didn’t want to think about anything right now: not glimmer, not neyajin, not the audition, not anything. I just wanted to fill my stomach and crawl into bed and come back out on the other side with enough energy to get back out onto the streets again. That’s where the answers would be: lying on hesitant, twisting tongues in the dark places of el-Qaddice—places that didn’t welcome anyone with open arms, let alone an Imperial. Places I had to tread carefully because answers didn’t come wandering in and sit themselves down on your doorstep in a new city. You had to fight and pay and lie and bleed for them; had to keep one hand in the open and the other on your knife; had to wonder whether the Djanese across from you was smiling because you’d offered the pay, or because he was planning to gut you the first chance he got. You had to throw yourself at the night over and over, hoping each time that it would be the one that broke instead of you.

  It was never easy. Never.

  Which made it all the more stunning when I reached the top of the stairs and found Bronze Degan sitting in a chair outside my room, eating breakfast.

  My porridge and bowl hit the floor with a heavy thud. For the moment, my exhaustion fell away with it.

  I felt a smile begin to split my face as I stepped over the bowl and started down the hall. How had he—?

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” said Degan, not looking up from his own repast. He’d forgone the morning’s offering, and instead had a platter of what looked like last night’s leftovers from the kitchen.

  I stopped where I was, the smile dying on my lips. So much for happy reunions. Not that I’d been expecting one, but still.

  “I’m inclined to ask the same thing,” I said.

  “What a surprise.”

  Degan was still Degan: broad-brimmed hat, tailored but comfortably loose fitting doublet and breeches, and tall campaign boots—the last rolled down to let the air get to his bare calves. The doublet was open as well, revealing a worn but clean shirt, its weave loose in deference to the Djanese climate. He was all in grays and faded yellows this morning, the dusty gold of the doublet’s piping matching the pale fall of his hair.

  He had a sword at his side, of course—he was Degan: he couldn’t not have one. But while it was a handsome piece of steel, with the guard filed and chiseled to look like a sweeping length of fixed, heavy chain, it didn’t feel right seeing it at his side. There was no bronze, no carefully etched vines, no . . . Degan to it.

  I could fix that with one quick trip to the stables, but I knew better than to offer. Not now. Not yet.

  “Fowler knows you’re here?” I said. Above me, I could hear the rafters creak as the inn settled in for the day’s heat.

  “She wouldn’t be much of an Oak Mistress if she did
n’t.”

  “And she didn’t tell me, why?”

  Degan shrugged and turned back to his plate, pausing to brush a small fall of dust from his knee. “You’d have to a—”

  “Wait,” I said. I looked up at the ceiling. Another creak, another fall of dust.

  Dammit.

  “Fowler!” I shouted. “Get your ass out of the attic and stop listening in!”

  Silence.

  “Angels help me,” I said, “I’ll start poking holes through the ceiling with my sword if you don’t move.”

  More silence.

  “Now, Fowler.”

  Fowler’s voice came drifting down from somewhere above Degan. “You couldn’t reach the ceiling if you tried.”

  I began to clear my steel, making sure to scrape the blade along the lip of the scabbard. “You want to risk it?”

  Another pause, then, “Fine!” The ceiling creaked and rained small falls of dust as she made her way among the rafters.

  I waited until the last drift of plaster had settled to the floor before I turned my attention away from the ceiling and to the hallway. “And if there’s anyone else listening at doors,” I yelled, “I’ll find out and gut you as well!”

  Doors began opening on my right and left, releasing actors in various states of dress, embarrassment, and amusement. They muttered and joked their way down the stairs, with Degan gathering at least a few winks from the female members of the troupe along the way.

  When the hallway was empty, I looked back toward Degan. There was a reluctant smile on his face. “It can never be easy with you, can it?” he said.

  “Why didn’t Fowler tell me?” I said again.

  Degan’s smile left altogether. “Because I asked her not to.”

  I nodded: I could see that. It didn’t mean I liked it, but I could understand it. Even Fowler didn’t know all of what had fallen out between Degan and me, but she knew enough to respect Degan’s wishes when it came to me.

  “All right,” I said. I walked the rest of the way down the hall and stopped beside Degan. “Congratulations, you’ve caught me by surprise and put me off balance: What next?”

  “Normally, I’d press the advantage and thrust home as soon as I was able, but this isn’t that kind of a conversation.”

  “What kind is it?” I said.

  “It’s the kind where I tell you to get the hell out of Djan and mind your own business.”

  “And how well do you think that’s going to work?”

  Degan set his plate on the floor and stood up. “Better than you seem to.”

  I stared up at him. “I think you may be misjudging the nature of this conversation,” I said.

  Degan clenched his jaw, along with his fists, and ran a hard eye over me. It was a look I’d seen before: the look of a degan weighing not just options, but his points of attack, the geometry of the conflict, the measure of his opponent. It was a cold, bloodless look, and one I wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of. It scared the hell out of me.

  Then he turned away and let out a sigh. I almost joined him.

  “Why Djan?” he said, not looking back. “Why now?”

  “Why the hell do you think?” I said.

  “Well, I’m fairly certain it’s not to keep your Oath,” he said. “We both know better than to expect that.”

  I stared at his back. I’d expected as much—and, honestly, deserved as much—but it still stung. No, it did more than that: a hell of a lot more.

  “I explained that,” I said.

  “I recall,” said Degan, “although it was hard to grasp all the subtleties of your argument: You’d just clipped me in the back of the head with a glimmered rope, after all, and my hair was smoldering. That can be a bit distracting. Something about your ass and the empire, wasn’t it?”

  “You know why I did what I did,” I said. “It wasn’t just about me or you or the empire or that damn journal: It was about Christiana and Kells and the rest of the Kin. It was about keeping them all alive despite the emperor and Shadow, about keeping my hands on the one thing that gave me any hope of bringing them out of that mess in one piece.”

  “I know,” said Degan.

  “And?”

  “And at first, I thought your argument was enough, that it could be enough to let me let it go,” said Degan. He turned back to face me, and his eyes were hard: hard like a soldier’s, hard like a broken promise, hard like the truth. “But I was wrong.”

  “Wrong?” I said, my guilt flaring, turning into anger. “Wrong how? Wrong in that you didn’t leave me a good choice? Wrong in that I didn’t know what the hell was going on with you and your Order until it was too late? Wrong in that I not only bent over backward to cover your involvement, but lied to your ‘brothers’ when they came asking questions with their fists?” I stepped forward, putting myself inches from Degan. “What part of that is so fucking ‘wrong’ that you can’t see past what either of us—what both of us—did?”

  “The part,” said Degan, glaring down at me, “where only one of us kept his word.”

  I held my ground under his gaze, even though part of me wanted to throw pride and pretense aside and ask for forgiveness, to say, fuck it, we both were wrong, let’s start over. But there was too much history between us to start fresh, just as there was too much spine in either of us to bend. Both of our trades had trained us to equate giving ground with weakness, and neither of us was in the habit of appearing weak.

  This was going to be even harder than I’d expected, for any number of reasons.

  “You could have told me about the Oath,” I said. “Told me that by taking it, you were going against the laws of your Order. If I’d known what it meant for you—”

  “Angels!” said Degan. “It’s not about the Oath! Don’t you understand that? If this were only about you breaking your word to a degan, I might be able to look past it, but it isn’t. It’s about you breaking your word to me. I took your Oath because of who we were, Drothe, because I didn’t want to see you cut down by Iron or Solitude or anyone else. Even if I ended up going against the Order, I knew I’d be doing it for two good reasons: you, and my duty to the empire. If everything else collapsed, I’d still be able to hold on to those things.

  “But then you swung your rope, and I fell, and both promises were broken.” Degan sighed and leaned his head back against the wall. “My failure is for me to bear, but I won’t carry yours as well: That’s your concern. Nor am I going to absolve you. You have to realize that knowing the ‘why’ behind something isn’t always enough, especially when it comes to things like this. Being able to talk your way out of a dilemma doesn’t mean it goes away.”

  He reached down to let his hand rest on his sword guard, then hesitated, steel untouched. “I have to remind myself what I am every day now,” he said, looking down as his fingers hovered over the chain-wrapped handle. “Every time I buckle this on in the morning, every time I take it off at night, every time my hand brushes against the guard, I stop and realize I’m no longer a degan. I remember that my word doesn’t carry any more weight than a mercenary’s, that my blade doesn’t serve any higher purpose than the one it’s been paid to enforce. My steel is just steel.” He lowered his hand and looked at me. “All the excuses and reasons in the world aren’t going to change that.”

  Just like all my pondering wasn’t going to change my being a Gray Prince, I thought. But that was different: I’d moved up the chain, not been cast from it. I might have lost friends and my ability to work the street as I once had, but Degan had lost everything that defined him. There was no way I could make a comparison between where he’d ended up and where I was—there wasn’t any, and I wasn’t going to insult him by trying.

  I sighed and sat down in Degan’s chair, suddenly tired. I could feel the spot where Aribah had tapped me on the back of the head starting to throb again, feel the aches and fatigue of earlier fights begin to reassert themselves. At fault or no, I was still a Gray Prince, and I still had a job to do a
nd people to protect. If I wanted to make my case with Degan, I was going to need to do it quickly, before my brain decided to follow my body’s slide toward exhaustion.

  I looked down at the plate of food on the floor: A leg and thigh of chicken, braised in a reduced wine sauce that smelled of rosemary and tart cherries, sat alongside a small charcoal-roasted turnip, the outside dark with ash, the inside smooth and buttery to the eye. Degan had hardly touched it, and it looked as if the inn’s cockroaches hadn’t found the bounty yet. My stomach rumbled. I licked my lips.

  Degan sighed. “Help yourself.”

  I did. The chicken had cooled and the sauce congealed, but there was an undercurrent of pepper that stood out nicely against the sweet-bitterness of the liquid. The turnip was still warm in the center, touched with a hint of olive oil, and delicious.

  Degan stood, watching and waiting. I knew he was going to start back in the moment I was done, so I decided to strike first.

  “You know,” I said, still chewing, “I could always help.”

  A harsh bark of a laugh. I winced. “The last thing I need—”

  “How long have you been down here?” I said.

  Degan frowned. “A little over two months.”

  I nodded, scooped the last bit of turnip into my mouth, and wiped my mustache and beard with my other hand. “I’ve been here less than two weeks,” I said. “And in the Old City maybe that many days. Want to know what I’ve found out in that time?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “But you get my point?”

  “I get it,” said Degan, “and I don’t care. I don’t want your help. What I want is for you to leave.”

  “Why?”

  “Because what I’m doing down here has nothing to do with you or the Kin, and I don’t want it to have anything to do with you or the Kin. It’s personal.”

  I took up the chicken’s thighbone and examined it for any remaining meat. No, I’d picked it clean. Oh well. I put it down on the plate, set the plate on the floor, and stood.

  “Fine,” I said.

  Degan took a small step back. “Fine? Just like that?”

  “Just like that. All I ask is that you answer me one question.”