Sworn in Steel

by Douglas Hulick

  “The city and I are still getting a feel for each other,” I said.

  “I can see that. And our actors? How are things progressing with them?”

  “They’re working their asses off.”

  He took a small sip, watching me through the steam. “Will they be ready in time?”

  “You know they won’t,” I said.

  Another sip. “I do.”

  “Did you get us more time?” I said.

  Sip.

  “Did you?”

  His eyes flicked away. “One day.”

  “What?” It came out louder than I’d intended, sounding out of place in such a hushed room. I didn’t care. “One day? What the hell help is that?”

  Heron’s eyes came back to me. They were hard now. “It gives you one more day than you had.”

  “One day’s nothing!” Not for Tobin’s people, and especially not for me.

  “One day is more than I’d hoped for: Accept it for the gift it is and make the best of it.”

  “You mean make our peace with being kicked out of the Old City.”

  Heron shrugged. “It was never a question of your audition succeeding; it was merely one of how long you’d be allowed to stay before being forced to leave.”

  “The Old City?”

  “Djan.”

  That brought me up short. I took a step forward, resting my hands on the table, and stared down at the clerk. Heron met my gaze and sipped his tea, unperturbed.

  “Why the hell would anyone want to force us out of the Despotate?” I said.

  “Because you embarrassed someone.”

  “What?” I said. “Who?”

  Heron sighed. “Think. Your troupe arrives in el-Qaddice. It moves up the queue for first auditions without anyone raising an objection. Then, having barely performed a scene, your people are granted conditional patronage and brought into the Old City to perform for the padishah. Clearly, someone was exerting influence on your behalf; and just as clearly, your success makes the person in charge of vetting new artists look like an ineffective fool.”

  “You mean the wazir?” I said.

  “I mean the wazir,” said Heron. “Who, I might add, only gave you the extra day because it turns out to have the least propitious omens for the month.”

  “Wait,” I said, straightening up. “Are you saying the only reason we got any extra time at all is because your boss thinks it will make things go even worse for us?”

  Heron blew over his cup. “It seems the astrologer made an error in his initial calculations.”

  I almost wanted to laugh. Instead, I stalked away from the table.

  Court politics? No wonder we’d been given a new script and barely any time to rehearse: We were meant to fail. And not just fail, but fail spectacularly—to do something so bad, so insulting, that the padishah would feel compelled to banish us from the Despotate.

  Just what the hell was in that play, anyhow?

  I could almost hear Christiana laughing from here. She would have seen this coming a league away, but me? No, not if it involved court politics, and especially not in Djan.

  One extra day. Hell.

  I turned and walked back over to stand beside Heron. I leaned back against the table and stared at his wall.

  “What are our options?” I said. The dried flowers, I noted, were marjoram and larkspur, in imperial purple and deep indigo. Had he brought them with him, or harvested and dried them here? Had his wife picked the bouquet at one point?

  Things I didn’t need to know but was used to wondering.

  “Options?” he said. “I’d suggest leaving early.”

  “That bad?”

  “It could get that way.” Heron shifted in his seat. “Mind, if you stay, I’d suggest you get an alternative translation of the play; not that I think it will make much of a difference.”

  “Banned?”

  “Years ago. By the despot himself.”

  I nodded. It wasn’t the most elegant setup, but it didn’t have to be—not against a bunch of Imperial players. The cards were already stacked against us, and no one had even spoken a line yet.

  That pissed me off.

  “I’ll get the troupe out,” I said. Like it or not, I was still their patron, and still responsible for them.

  “But not you?”

  I let my eyes slide over to the sword. It was old but well cared for, the worn leather of the scabbard rich with oil. “I have unfinished business.”

  “It’s not the actors who’ve earned my master’s ire,” noted Heron. “You’re the patron, so yours is the name that was whispered in the proper ears. Once the wazir finds out you’re not with the troupe, he’ll send people to find you. And he will find you.”

  “That’ll still give me a couple of extra days,” I said as I stared at the long sword. The handle looked to be chain-wrapped bone, but the cross guard was another matter. Curved slightly forward toward the tip, the two bars of the guard had had piercings filed into the metal so that they formed three interlinked circles per side. As for the pommel, it had been chiseled into the shape of a tulip, its three petals folded shut.

  The sword clearly had imperial roots. I wondered whether it had been Heron’s at one point, or if it had come down during one of the earlier wars and been left behind.

  “To do what?” said Heron.

  “A lot of things,” I said, stepping forward. I raised my hand, almost unconsciously, to run my fingers along the cross guard.

  “What kind of things?” said Heron, his tone becoming exasperated. “And please keep your hands to yourself.”

  “To find a friend,” I said, my hand stopping but not moving away. “And to see about getting back something I gave awa—” I froze, my eyes going from the guard back to the handle. It was too smooth to be bone, I realized; too fine. And the patterning in the material was all wrong. This looked more like . . .

  “Holy shit,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

  “What?” said Heron. He was still behind me, but I could tell by his voice that he was standing now.

  What I’d taken for piercings in the cross guard weren’t. The white that stood out against the steel wasn’t the plaster showing through from behind; they were carefully shaved and shaped pieces of material that had been set deep in the steel. I could almost imagine how, with the right light behind them, they would shine with a milky translucence. Like ivory.

  “What?” said Heron again.

  I looked from the ivory pieces to the long ivory handle, then reached out and gave the scabbard a quick tug. The pins under the cross guard kept the sword in place, allowing the leather to slide down and reveal the watery gray and white pattern of the steel. And a single etched teardrop.

  “Here, now—!”

  I spun away from the hand Heron tried to lay on my shoulder and let my wrist blade fall into my palm. I took a quick step back, both to let him see my steel and to keep him from laying hands on me.

  “Explain to me,” I said, “what the hell you’re doing with a degan’s sword that’s over two centuries old. And believe me when I say, you want this explanation to be good.”

  Heron stared at me for a moment. Then his eyebrows went up. “You know of the degans?” he said.

  “That wasn’t the question,” I said.

  Heron looked from me to my blade and then to the sword on the wall. He scratched his jaw.

  “I . . . collect things degan,” he said at last.

  It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “Collect?”

  “Acquire. Find. Study. Call it what you will. Ever since I heard about the Order of the Degans, I’ve been fascinated by it. By them.” He gestured at the sword. “I found that, of all places, at the Grand Souk. It’s a market held twice a year outside the city, when the despot opens and closes his summer court in el-Qaddice. Nine days after he arrives from the winter palace in Sajun, and nine days again before he and his court return, half the city and what seems like a sixth of the Despotate converge on the Plai
ns of Akra to trade and dicker and gamble and race horses and . . . well, you get the idea.”

  “And you found that there?” I said.

  Heron walked over to the sword and carefully slid the scabbard back in place. “Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

  Damn impossible, I thought. But instead, I said, “How’d you know it was genuine?”

  “I think you’ve already answered that question yourself.”

  “The teardrop etched near the guard,” I said.

  “You mean the drop of blood.”

  I looked from the sword to Heron. “It’s supposed to be blood?”

  Heron shrugged. “Some say a tear, some say sweat, some say holy water. I’ve always preferred blood, mostly for aesthetic reasons. It seems to fit better with the Order, don’t you think? I’ve never had a chance to ask a degan directly, to confirm it, though.” He looked at me sidelong. “Have you?”

  I slid my knife back home up my sleeve. “It never came up,” I said.

  “Pity.”

  We looked at the sword—Ivory Degan’s sword—in silence for a bit.

  “So, you . . . know a degan?” said Heron at last.

  “Used to. How’d you find out about the Order?”

  “They’re not exactly a secret: People do hire them from time to time in the empire, you know.”

  “I know,” I said. “But, well . . .” I gestured at the sword, giving him the opening to talk about his hobby. He took the bait.

  “How did I get so interested in them?”

  “Yes.”

  Heron swept the room with a gesture. “A book, of course.”

  I made sure I took a breath, so as not to rush my response. “A book? What kind of book?”

  “A history.”

  “Of the degans?”

  “Not at first, no.” Heron walked over to a shelf. After a moment, he pulled down a thin volume. “The Commentaries of Simonis,” he said. “She was a historian during the reigns of Lucien, and then Theodoi, over two centuries ago. This isn’t her main work, but it’s the one where she talks about the origins of the Order.” He started to open the book, then stopped himself and put it back on the shelf instead. “She was a remarkable historian. It’s thanks to her I first became interested in the idea of the degans.”

  I looked around the room—at the walls of books and papers, at Ivory’s sword—and remembered Wolf’s words, and Degan’s. About the papers and laws Ivory had taken with him when he left the Order of the Degans.

  It was too much to hope for—wasn’t it?

  “So, then what?” I said, stepping away from the sword and over to another shelf. “You started collecting more on the degans?”

  “And history in general, yes, but at the back of my mind, there were always the degans.”

  I pulled out a book at random and opened to the frontispiece. It was an elaborate woodcut of a sea battle: galleys and waves, bodies and blood, with a bald man in a short cape holding the forecastle of the nearest ship against an onslaught of raiders. In the distance, behind the ships, there was a castle on a crag. Admiral Niphinos Byzezes at the Battle of Quetanos: not the best day for the empire, considering Byzezes surrendered and then led the raiders to the hidden harbor at Argnossi. It took the empire over a decade to rebuild the portion of the fleet that was lost in those two battles alone. As for Argnossi, we’d never reclaimed it: The raiders who had taken it were now a treaty city that specialized in piracy for hire.

  “That’s the naval section,” said Heron.

  I closed the book and put it back. “I got that.” I looked around the room. “You have an impressive collection.”

  Heron surrendered a smile and preened. “It’s been a long time in the building. A good portion of what you see is, if not unique, then quite rare.”

  I moved farther along the wall until I came to four stone tablets, each set into a special partition on a shelf. “Unique?” I said.

  “Very. Are you familiar with Hout Yo?”

  “No.”

  “Oh.” Heron sniffed. “Well, they probably won’t mean much to you, then.”

  “Likely not.” I pulled out another ahrami seed and rolled it slowly between my palms. If there was a “naval section,” it seemed likely there would be a “degan section,” too. The most likely choice was where Heron had pulled out Simonis’s volume, but that was no guarantee: Merely mentioning them might not be enough.

  I’ve known—and robbed—a few bibliophiles in my time and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that none of them sort or classify their collections the same way. One might shelve, say, Dossanius’s Five Views on the Engraver’s Art (a folio that traditionally fetches a good price among Ildrecca’s Queer Hatchers, since most coin forgers won’t let their competitors see it once they get their hands on a copy) with books on crafts, another with metallurgy, a third with discourses of money policy, and a fourth under history. Back when I’d still been drawing the latch, I’d spent half the night searching the walls and cubbies of a bookbinder’s back room, hunting for a copy of Synod’s Poems and Polemics I’d been paid to lift. Finally, with dawn creeping in and the sound of his apprentices rattling about their room in the attic, I’d found it bracketed between two books on mathematics. I still haven’t figured that one out.

  I slipped the seed into my mouth and continued my circuit of the room, making a point not to spend too much time looking at any one title or section, so as to avoid raising suspicion. I made appreciative noises as I went.

  I was just coming up to Heron when he cleared his throat.

  “You said you knew a degan,” he said, trying to sound casual. “Do you mind if I ask which one?”

  It wasn’t a hard choice to make: I wasn’t about to reveal Bronze Degan’s presence in el-Qaddice, and I didn’t expect mentioning Silver’s name would win me any points with the Azaari. Not that I particularly cared one way or the other what Silver, in his guise as Wolf, liked at this point, but I didn’t want to jeopardize anything by revealing his presence to a secretary of the despot’s court.

  I went with a safe choice: the dead one.

  “Iron Degan,” I said.

  “I see.” A slight pause as Heron drew out his case and slipped his own ahrami seed into his mouth. “I don’t suppose he’s in el-Qaddice? I’d love to actually meet a—”

  “He’s dead.”

  The seed cracked in Heron’s mouth. “Oh.” He paused to chew and swallow. “Do you know when? Or how?”

  “Four months ago,” I said. “As to how . . .” I stepped around Heron and finished my circuit, ending in front of the small display again. It was time to throw him a bone, something to pique his interest and get him off his guard at the same time. “I’m not sure. Rumor has it it was another degan.”

  “What?” he said, his voice rising a fraction in disbelief. “A degan killing another degan? That hasn’t happened since, well . . .”

  “Him?” I said, pointing at Ivory’s sword.

  Heron’s eyebrows dropped into a scowl. “You seem to know a great deal about the degans for a . . .” He paused.

  “What?” I said. “The patron of an acting troupe?”

  “No,” said Heron. “A Gray Prince.”

  If he’d been expecting surprise, I disappointed him. Instead, I hooked my thumbs in my sword belt and smiled. “Who’s in your pocket in the inn?” I said. “The innkeeper?”

  “His wife. And the eldest son. You think it’s chance I put you there?”

  I shook my head. “No. I half expected it. Besides, it’s not like I’ve exactly made a secret of who I am.” Much to my recent chagrin.

  “No, you haven’t,” said Heron, his tone telling me word had likely leaked into the padishah’s court as well. “But that still doesn’t explain your knowledge of the Order.”

  “I told you,” I said. “I used to run with a degan.”

  “Iron.”

  “Right.”

  “And he told you about Ivory Degan?”

  I shrugged
and let a smile play about my lips. “Someone did.”

  Heron sighed in exasperation. “If you’re going to—”

  “How’d you learn about him?” I said.

  “What?”

  “How’d you find out about Ivory Degan?” I said. I waved at the overflowing shelves. “Don’t get me wrong, all of this is . . . nice, but you’re not going to find information about the Order, let alone someone like Ivory, in Zacres or Nessian the Younger or any of the usual histories; they wouldn’t know the first thing about it. This is something you need to get from the source.” I smiled and tapped the side of my nose and leered my best Nose’s “I know something you don’t” leer. “You know: from a degan.”

  Heron glared at me from across the room. “I have it from a degan,” he said coldly.

  I arched a mocking eyebrow. “Oh, really?” I said. “What, are you telling me you have a degan in your pocket? I thought you’ve never met one. Or is that a line of shit, too, just like what you’ve been feeding me about the auditions?” I snorted. “Hell, I’d put money down that you didn’t know what you had in that sword until some visiting imperial nobleman noticed it over tea. Is that what it’s for, to impress the visitors from back home? To make them feel just a bit smaller, and you a bit bigger, so you can feel good about walking out on the empire?”

  He moved fast for a scribe. Heron was across the room and in my face before I had time to react. I suspect it was only force of diplomatic habit that kept his hands from my throat.

  “You have no inkling of why I left the empire, thief,” he snapped. I could almost taste the indignation coming off him. “And you’ll keep your tongue silent on the matter, or you’ll come to regret it. As for that sword, the man who owned it was the historian of his Order. He helped found the degans, helped organize them, helped give a group of mercenaries a purpose. And if that were all I knew of him, it would be enough for me to put that sword on my wall, no matter what anyone may or may not think.”

  “But you know more than that, right?”

  “More than you can imagine,” he seethed.

  Here it was: Heron was at the edge, ready to fall. To spill. All he needed was the right push. I wet my lips and said the word, gave the nudge, making it an accusation as much as a question.