Sworn in Steel

by Douglas Hulick

  “The hell I can. I came down here to preserve my organization and protect my people. If I try to walk away—”

  “If you walk away,” snapped Degan, “you end up back where you started: in Ildrecca, with people at your back and a problem to solve. Do you realize how lucky you are? How fortunate that is? You can walk out of el-Qaddice and not have to worry about what you’re leaving undone behind you. Silver threatened you? So what? Threaten him back, or better yet, make it so he can’t hurt you.”

  “He’s a degan, dammit. I can’t just tell him to go fuck himself.”

  “Why not? You did it to me. You did it to a pair of Gray Princes, and killed one of them when he back came after you. Hell, you even sidestepped the emperor. So don’t tell me you can’t get a single swordsman off your back if you want to.”

  “I came down here because it was the best way to get him off my back.”

  “Bullshit.” The word was heavy with venom as it left Fowler’s lips.

  My eyes snapped over to meet hers. “What?”

  “You heard me. The organization was just an excuse, and you know it. You’re not here for your people back in Ildrecca or your position as a Gray Prince. Hell, you’re not even here for him.” Fowler jerked a thumb at Degan. “You’re here for you.”

  “For me?” I said. “In case you haven’t noticed, it hasn’t exactly been a string of festival days since we arrived. If I wanted to do something for myself, it sure as hell wouldn’t involve coming to Djan so I could get pissed on by the Despotate and the Zakur.”

  “Get pissed on?” Fowler was out of her chair and in my face in an instant. “You’ve been eating this up! You came to Djan so you wouldn’t have to play the Gray Prince anymore. By chasing after him, you got to leave everything else behind: the planning, juggling the Uprights and Rufflers and Princes, having to weigh politics and build connections. All you have to do here is be a Nose and run the streets, which is exactly what you want to do.

  “Well, let me tell you something: It doesn’t work that way. You can’t leave it behind. You’re not just a Nose anymore—not even down here. I know that. Fat Chair knows that. Mama Left Hand knows that. Hell, even Tobin and his people know that. The only one who doesn’t seem to understand it is you. And maybe him.” She jerked her chin at Degan, who lifted an eyebrow in response. “But here’s the thing: I’m done watching you play at being the Nose. Denying it is just going to get you dusted, and I didn’t come back to watch you talk yourself into a winding sheet. Like it or not, you’re a Gray Prince of the Kin—start fucking acting like one.”

  I was still opening my mouth the reply when Fowler pushed past me and stormed up the stairs. I watched her go without moving.

  “It’s good to see she hasn’t changed,” said Degan.

  “Fuck you.”

  “She does have a point, though.”

  I looked over at him. “Not you, too?”

  Degan regarded me for a long moment. “Let me ask you something: Would Kells have come down here if he’d found himself in your position? Would Solitude? Shadow?”

  “It’s not the same. They have, or had, stable organizations.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “Then what is?”

  “If Fowler’s right, then it won’t matter whether I return with you or not, because the problem will still be there.” He pushed himself away from the table and stood. “You might end up feeling better about yourself, but it won’t solve the dilemma that drove you here in the first place.”

  “And if she’s wrong?” I said. “If I really did come down here because of you?”

  “Then you’re going to be a very disappointed man, because I’m not going back to Ildrecca.”

  “But I think I found a lead. There’s this secretary named—”

  “I’ve already said no twice, Drothe. Don’t make me say it a third time.”

  He began to turn away. I reached out to stop him.

  “Dammit, Degan, I’m trying to tell you that if I can—”

  I’m still not sure if my fingers made it to his sleeve or not—all I know is that one moment I was reaching for him, and the next I was bent over the table, its edge forcing the air from my gut, my face pressed against the stained top. Fowler’s empty mug wobbled inches from my nose.

  “Go home, Drothe,” said Degan from the other end of the arm bar. His voice was tight, but also tired. “Walk away from me and the Despotate and the Zakur. Go home before you get hurt.”

  He held me like that a moment more, then let go. By the time I was able to suck in enough air to roll over and look for him, the common room was empty.

  I collapsed into Degan’s chair and took a deep, shaky breath. My shoulder hurt.

  Well, that had gone well.

  Was Fowler right? Had I told myself I was trying to save my organization, trying to help Degan, just so I could get back on the street? Had I walked away from Ildrecca not because it was the best option, but because it was the easiest one? The one I wanted most?

  I shook my head. I hadn’t asked for this, that was true enough. Hadn’t asked for Crook Eye or Rambles, for Wolf or Fat Chair. For actors and organizations and Kin to be looking at me for answers. Hadn’t asked to be made a Gray Prince, let alone sought it out.

  And yet here I was: a street-level Kin standing at the top of the criminal heap. King of my own little hill, worried about all the other coves planning to push me off. Afraid the fall might be harder than the climb, which, when you thought about it, was a given. Fighting to keep something I hadn’t even wanted in the first place.

  But that was the nature of being a member of the Kin, wasn’t it? To want what wasn’t yours—to want it so badly that you took it from someone else. Power, money, luxury, smoke, glimmer, the thing itself didn’t matter so much as the getting of it. And the keeping, of course. There was no worse, more vengeful, more spiteful victim of theft than the professional thief. Oh, we might happily lose a month’s worth of gains in a single night at bones, but that was on our terms. Woe indeed to the cove who was caught cutting another Cutter’s purse.

  And that’s what I was doing now: holding tight to my swag, lest anyone else take it from me. Clutching my princedom as if it were something I’d gotten after months of planning and slouching and spying, as if I’d cracked a ken and stolen it away by the skin of my teeth. I was acting as if I’d gotten my status on the dark and dirty rather than admitting the truth, which was that it had all but fallen in my lap. I wasn’t about to let anyone take my bit of glitter, dammit.

  Only . . . why the hell not?

  I was still turning that question over in my head when a shadow fell across the inn’s door. I looked up, hoping against hope to see Degan; instead, I saw Raaz slipping inside.

  “Ah, Master Drothe,” he said, his arms wide as he came across the floor. “I’m pleased to find you still here.”

  I grunted and picked up the mug in front of me, not remembering until it was too late that it was empty. I set it back down in disgust.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You heard about the troupe packing up and wanted to make sure you caught me before they—and I—left with your precious package.”

  “You’ve found me out,” he said, lowering himself into the chair across from me with enviable ease. He was clean, trimmed, and had probably gotten a full night’s sleep recently. I hated him. “And while we hate to see you go, we’d hate it even more if you took the other half of Jelem’s pages with you when you left.”

  “I’ll just bet you would,” I said. “But there’s no need to worry on either count. I’m not going anywhere for a while.”

  “Oh?” Raaz glanced back toward the door. “I’d assumed you’d be heading out with your . . . people.” He spared a forlorn look at the empty bar, then turned back to me. “Would it be forward of me to ask who will be acting as your patron once the padishah rescinds his favor?”

  It was a question I’d been kicking around in my own head ever since walking into the courty
ard. A question I’d only been able to come up with one answer to so far.

  “About that . . . ,” I began.

  “Oh no,” said Raaz, quickly reading my intentions. “Absolutely not. We can’t act as your patrons.”

  I leaned forward. “Need I remind you that you still owe me?” I said, wiggling the fingers of my left hand meaning-fully. “You and your master both?”

  “I haven’t forgotten what you did,” said Raaz. “Nor has he. But neither are we in a position to offer patronage to . . . someone such as yourself.”

  “You mean a member of the Kin?”

  “I mean an Imperial. My tal already stands in disgrace. If we were to openly take responsibility for you and your actions . . . ?” He shook his head. “We mean to honor our agreement, my friend, but I’m afraid in this matter what you ask is beyond our grasp. We can’t act as your patron.”

  It was an answer I’d more than half expected but had been hoping not to hear. Without a token of patronage, I was a marked man on the streets—and that was even before considering the price Fat Chair was offering for me, let alone the likely consequences of failing to keep my bargain with Mama Left Hand. Between the three, the thought of trying to find Ivory’s papers and bring Degan around, let alone simply function in el-Qaddice, went from daunting to nearly impossible.

  “Then I guess I’ll have to do it the hard way,” I said. “But that isn’t your problem, is it?” I stood up and took off my doublet. “You’re here for your delivery, and I can’t rightly hold it back any longer, especially considering what the next several days might be like.”

  I pulled out my boot knife and began working at the relevant seams.

  Raaz’s eyes went wide. “You . . . you mean you’ve been carrying it on you this whole time?”

  “I’m an Imperial living in an inn with a bunch of actors in the middle of Djan—where the hell else would you hide it to keep it safe?”

  “I had just thought . . .” Raaz shook his head and chuckled. “No, never mind what I thought. You’re right: It’s best you hand it over now, especially if you’re going to be without a token. Not having a patron is bad enough, but if you were caught with those papers? Even a merchant sheikh wouldn’t be able to worm his way out of that.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m no merchant sheikh. Hell, I’m barely a criminal one back home, let alone down here. I don’t even want to think about what would happen if . . .” I stopped midcut, my knife poised, and looked up at Raaz. I grinned.

  He inched back slightly in his chair. “What?”

  I set my blade down and turned toward the stairs. “Fowler!”

  Raaz started. “If I could ask—”

  “Fowler!”

  “Is there anything—?”

  “What the fuck do you want?” Fowler’s voice came flying down the stairs, followed hotly by the woman herself.

  I pointed at the courtyard. “Get out there and tell Tobin and his people to stop packing. In fact, get them to start unpacking. Now.”

  “Unpacking?” said Fowler. “Why?”

  “Because they have an audition to practice for.”

  “I thought the audition was fixed.”

  “There’s fixed,” I said, “and then there’s fixed.”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Just get out there and stop them. I’ll explain later.”

  Fowler glared and grumbled, but she headed out the door.

  Raaz cleared his throat. “This is all very dramatic,” he said, leaning forward ever so slightly, his hand reaching for my doublet, “but if I could just get Jelem’s papers . . . ?”

  I ripped open the rest of the seam and pulled out the remainder of the packet. “You said even a merchant sheikh couldn’t shake these off if the despot’s people found them on him, right?”

  “Ye-es.”

  “So, then, what do you think would happen if they found them on a prince of the Zakur?”

  Raaz’s eyes filled with understanding, followed quickly by dread.

  “No,” he said, standing “No, I can’t—”

  “Sit,” I said, doing the same myself. “Calm yourself. And let me tell you a little story about an ambush and a group of neyajin and a conversation in the dark. . . .”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  “Stop fussing,” I said.

  “Go screw yourself.”

  I dropped my hands and stepped away from Fowler. “Fine, have it your way. But it’s not going to work.”

  “The hell it isn’t.” Fowler adjusted the sheathed knife so it sat farther along the small of her back. “There, how’s that?”

  I looked at her, at what little there was of her costume, at the brass handle of the weapon peeking out, glaringly obvious from at least three different directions. I shook my head.

  “Dammit!” The knife hit the wooden floor with a solid, angry clatter.

  “Hsst!” whispered Ezak, standing a few feet away. He gestured out toward the stage and gave us a stern look. Fowler offered a gesture of her own. Ezak rolled his eyes and returned his attention to the performance.

  We were standing in the wings of one of the padishah’s amphitheaters in the second ring of el-Qaddice. I’d been told that the son of the despot had constructed several theaters around the city over the years for the various troupes and performers he sponsored. Each was designed to lend itself to different kinds of presentations, with such things as acoustics, lighting, floodable versus hollow stages, and even movable topiary being taken into consideration. Even though we were performing a Djanese play, the troupe had been booked in a theater constructed in the imperial style: high walls, open roof, with a wooden stage that extended out into the open area, or “pit,” where the more common members of the audience stood and watched the show. Those with the ready, or the social standing, or both, occupied the higher tiers and balconies, the better to look down upon the rest of us.

  Despite what Ezak had said in the yard about Tobin wanting to play Djan, I hadn’t been sure he’d be willing to stay, especially considering Heron’s letter. But he hadn’t hesitated a heartbeat when I’d broached the subject.

  “Done,” he’d said, turning to direct his people.

  “Just like that?” I’d said.

  “We’re players, sir. You are our patron. You’ve told me there will be a place to play and an audience to watch. What better reason do I need than that?”

  “I can think of half a dozen, easy.”

  He had smiled. “As can I. But what good will they do me, hey? I’m a boardsman, sir. An actor. I’d rather earn my banishment through my tongue and my trod than sulk away like a kicked dog. As would, I think, the rest. No, keep your reasons and your plots and your schemes to yourself. That you are willing to stand between us and the wazir is enough for me to walk the boards.” He’d paused to beam. “To walk them in Djan, no less!”

  And now he was.

  “And what of me?” cried Tobin from the stage, playing the part of Abu Ahzred—the future first despot—with more relish and zest than I’d ever seen in the rehearsals. “Am I to simply stand aside and look the fool this night?”

  “Why should this night be different from all other nights?” Marianne, the troupe’s female lead, stage-whispered to the audience, pantomiming a pair of cuckold horns behind Tobin’s back. Tonight she was the djinn Efferra, draped in silks and beads and tiny cymbals that gave off an audible shimmer whenever she moved.

  Laughter and a few shouts from the crowd. Even though we were performing in Imperial, there was enough broad humor—and enough translators scattered through the crowd, all at the padishah’s expense—to make the play work.

  I picked up the knife, touched Fowler on the elbow, and drew her farther into the wings. Even here, back among the props and the clutter, light from the magical globes hovering over the stage cast weak shadows across the boards.

  “Listen,” I said. “You know how this has to happen. I barely got Fat Chair to agree to meet me here in the first pl
ace. If that bastard sees people prancing around with half-concealed steel, he’s going to stroll. Or worse.”

  “I won’t even be near you,” said Fowler. “How the hell is that a threat?”

  “How will it do me any good?”

  Fowler set her jaw and turned away. When Tobin had initially asked her to play the spirit, Sekketheh, who came to haunt the despot-to-be with visions of eroticism and cruelty, she’d barely been able to say “yes” fast enough. But now that I’d come up with a plan that involved meeting with Fat Chair during the performance, she was itching to put her actor’s drapes aside and haunt my blinders. The only problem was, the play couldn’t go on without her down here—and I needed it to go on. Without the performance and the finale I had planned, I wouldn’t be able to set up Fat Chair, let alone make it out of the theater and across town to Heron’s alive.

  It was going to be a near thing. Nearer than I liked, and nearer than I’d let on to Fowler. Which was the other reason I wanted her down here. I didn’t care for the idea of putting my people in any more danger than I had to. Not here, not tonight.

  I put a hand on Fowler’s shoulder. She didn’t rip it off at the wrist. Good sign, that.

  “I need you down here,” I said. “Need you to keep your Oak Mistress’s eye on things. If anything goes wrong, I want to have someone I trust ready to read the signal and come to the rescue.”

  “If anything goes wrong,” she said, “it won’t matter how fast I see the sign: I won’t be able to make it to you in time.”

  “Then I’d best not let anything go wrong, had I?” It sounded weak even as I said it, felt worse as she turned and set worried eyes on me.

  “Let me come with,” she said. “I can keep out of sight, shadow you.”

  “Dressed like that?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I reached out and took a strand of her sun-gold hair between my fingers. I shook my head. “Not in this crowd, Fowler. Not even dirtied up and in your street clothes.” I let her go and forced my voice to take on a more businesslike tone. “You made sure everything is where it’s supposed to be?”