Sworn in Steel

by Douglas Hulick

  “Djinn?”

  She nodded. “Chained with silver shackles, forged and inscribed anew by magi every day so the spirits can be enslaved again every night. So my grandfather says.”

  “He’s seen them?”

  Aribah turned a dark, contemptuous gaze my way. “My grandsire is one of three assassins to have ever—ever—entered the despotic abode and returned to tell his tale. He is a Black Cord: His word is not questioned.”

  I looked back out at the guards, saw the lantern bob and dip. A small spot of fire took life on the ground. Someone had stumbled and spilled some of the burning pitch. Laughter and jeers drifted up to us.

  Even here, it seemed, Rags were Rags.

  “Imperial?” she said to me after a moment.

  “Yes?”

  She paused to lick her lips. When she spoke, there was just the slightest bit of a tremor to her voice. “What’s it like?”

  I didn’t need to ask, but I did anyhow. “You mean the night vision?”

  “Yes.”

  It wasn’t something I talked about much, but then, it wasn’t something most people knew about, either. Habit made me want to brush the question off, to play it down or simply lie. But she’d told me about the glyphs and the dyes in her robes: The least I could do was tell her about the thing she was putting her life on the line for.

  “I’ve had the night vision so long now,” I said, “I’m not sure how to describe it. In some ways, it’s just another part of the night for me, like the stars or the moon or the stink of an alley. How do you describe what it feels like to walk or smell or taste? It’s like that, only different. But I suppose that’s an excuse, not an answer, isn’t it?” I paused, staring out into the night as she sat beside me, silent. Waiting. “It’s red,” I said at last.

  “Red?”

  “Red.” I nodded. “Red and gold, and it sticks to everything I see. Everything is touched with hints of amber, almost as if it were dusted with light only I can pick out.” I gestured out at the grounds. Aribah followed the motion, as if trying to see what I saw, as if will alone could give her the vision. “Have you ever seen an artist at work, when he’s sketching out the lines for a painting? My . . . I know a baroness who patronizes one. I don’t know if they do it here, but in Ildrecca there’s a cadre—some say a cabal—of painters who are moving away from the old iconic style of art. They sketch everything out in careful detail first, using charcoal and chalk: textures, distance, shadows. Then they paint it. And it looks real; not real like you can tell it’s a man on a horse, but real in that it looks almost exactly like a specific man on a specific horse. You don’t have to guess—you’d know him on the street after you saw the painting.

  “Night vision is like the charcoal sketches they do, only instead of blacks and grays and whites, you have ambers and reds and golds. It’s hints and details and gaps, all in one: a picture you see as much by what isn’t there as what is.”

  “Like dark fighting,” she said. “You listen for the silences and fill them in, using the sounds as limits as much as guide-posts.” She shook her head. “A-ya, but if I had your gift—the blood-red path I would cut. The Lions would weep for their losses, and my grandfather . . .”

  “Your grandfather would what?” I said.

  Her hand reached up and pulled gently at the cloth covering the lower part of her face, drawing it tighter. I caught hints of her sharp nose, her straight jaw clenched tight against words that wanted to come out.

  I stayed silent, holding my words close. If Nosing had taught me anything, it was that most people wanted to talk, even when they thought they didn’t. A good Nose—and maybe even a good Gray Prince—left the silence there for others to fill.

  Aribah stared out over the grounds, her eyes focused not on the darkness without, but rather the shadows within.

  “My grandfather,” she said at last, the words heavy and solemn as granite, “might finally see me as myself, and not my mother’s pale shadow. See me as neyajin, and not as a disappointment.” She sniffed, staring out into the night. I watched as her thumb played with the battered silver ring on her finger.

  “She was astonishing,” said Aribah. “The best assassin our school has produced in generations. A natural, both as a killer and a leader. Grandfather says she could walk up to a Sentinel on a moonlit night, count the hairs in his beard at her leisure, and then cut a line across his throat, all without him knowing she was there. Salihah Shiham: Salihah the Arrow. She made her first kill at thirteen years, became kalat at seventeen, and took over as amma of our school at twenty-six.”

  “What happened to her?” I said.

  “She died.”

  I let the silence stretch, watched her worry the ring some more, but this time she didn’t respond.

  “On a dodge?” I said, then caught myself at her look. “A job,” I amended.

  “And this is your business how?”

  “It isn’t,” I admitted. “I just . . .” I shrugged.

  Aribah turned back to the night. “She went to slay the Imam General of the Sentinels.”

  “And did she?”

  “Yes, but not, it turns out, the demon he rode. The djinni was able to escape the saddle and slay my mother. I know because of this.” She held up her hand, showing me the ring. “Three months to the day after she left, I heard a knocking at our door during a dust storm. It was my mother’s special knock, but when I threw the door wide, all I found was her ring hanging on a braided cord of hair and . . . other things, spiked to the door.”

  I looked away. Thoughts jostled up against one another in my head, demanding attention: of my own mother wasting away in bed, of Sebastian being cut down before my eyes in front of our cabin, of my trying to provide for Christiana and failing on the streets of the Barren. I pushed them away, back down into the darkness of the past.

  All of a sudden, I wanted a ring of my own to worry.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “There’s nothing for you to be sorry for.”

  “Still, I can sympathize.”

  Dark eyes turned my way. “Yes, I believe you can.” A pause. “Why are you here?”

  “You mean why am I breaking into the padishah’s grounds?”

  “You can start there, yes.”

  “For a friend,” I said. “I broke my word, and now I’m trying to . . . well, I’m hoping to make amends in some small way.”

  “And will what you do here be enough to mend what you broke?”

  “I doubt it,” I said. “But that’s not the point: The point is that I need to try. Even if this isn’t enough, at least it’s something—it’s an effort. And that’s all I can give him right now.”

  Aribah stared off into the night. “It won’t be enough,” she said softly. “Once something is broken—be it your word, your friendship, your family—you can never do enough to repair it. A broken thing mended is still weaker than when it was whole. No matter how hard you work at it, no matter how much you bleed, no matter how much you cry, the flaw will always be there, beneath the surface.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.”

  “One should always try,” said Aribah. “But trying isn’t the same as succeeding.” She gave the ring one last rub, and then looked down the hill. “The patrol’s gone. Go.”

  “You’re not coming with?”

  Her eyes smiled. “Your amends are yours to make. Who am I to tell you how to repair your word?”

  I smiled back, but instead of rising to leave, I looked over at her hand.

  “Tell me something,” I said. “When you found your mother’s ring, you said the cord that held it had been spiked to the door.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did the djinn use as a spike?”

  A long, long pause. Then, softly, “Her dagger.”

  “Uh-huh.” I reached down into my boot and drew out Aribah’s, once Salihah Shiham’s, shadow-edged dagger and placed it beside her on the turf. “In that case, I apol
ogize. I never should have taken this from you in the first place. And your grandfather should never have made you give it back.”

  “You had no way of knowing—”

  “No, but he did.”

  I watched as she reached out and took up the blade. A soft hiccup of a laugh, a gentle stroke along the handle. She lowered her scarf and gently kissed the weapon, then slipped it into the darkness of her robes.

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” I said, “but your grandfather’s an asshole.”

  A soft sigh. She kept the scarf down. “A truth is a truth: as such, it can never be taken wrong.”

  “Is that your grandfather talking?”

  “The holy books.”

  “Oh.” I looked back out over the grass. I should be up and going; should be cracking Heron’s ken before it got too late. I didn’t move. “What do those books say about changing a truth?”

  “What do you mean? Lies?”

  “No, not lies. The opposite of a truth doesn’t have to be a lie.”

  Aribah narrowed her eyes, curious and dubious at once. “But then . . . what?”

  “Another truth,” I said. “A different one. One that you make for yourself.” Instead of, I thought, letting your grandfather do it.

  “I don’t . . .” She shook her head. “How does one ‘make truth’? Something is either true or it isn’t.”

  “Not when it comes to you. When it comes to you, you can decide on the truth about yourself.” I glanced out into the night, considered my circumstances and what had brought me here. “Well, up to a point, anyhow.”

  Aribah stared at me for a long moment. “You mean my grandfather, don’t you?” she said, her voice turning brittle, along with the rest of her. “You mean I should tell him I’m not my mother. He knows that, believe me. I’m reminded of the fact every day.”

  “No,” I said. “I mean you should tell him to go to hell and walk away.”

  “What?” She had the presence of mind to keep the outburst to a whisper—barely—but still, I flinched. “Leave him? Leave my school? He’s my blood, my clan. I’m neyajin—we don’t walk away.”

  “Then maybe you should start.”

  She was on her feet in an instant, a dark smudge against the night. “You know nothing about what it means to be neyajin, nothing about what it means to serve your people, to be part of something larger than—”

  “Than what?” I said. “You said yourself he’s the last of your blood. You belong to a clan of two, Aribah, and half of that clan treats you like dirt.” I sat up on the grass. “You think I don’t know what it’s like to belong to something bigger than yourself? I am something bigger than myself: I have people cheating and lying and dying for me right now, hundreds of miles away—coves I don’t even know. Coves I don’t want to have under me. But they all look to me for direction and answers anyhow, because their truths say I have those answers. Well, here’s the answer: I don’t have one. And neither do you. And neither does your grandfather. We’re all just making our truths up as we go.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “No. It’s not that simple for me. Maybe for you, maybe in your Empire, bonds are broken and truths are molded to your liking, but not here. Not in Djan. Here, you are nothing without your clan, without your family. And yes, he may be the only blood I have, but there is also the school. They are mine and I am theirs.”

  “But they aren’t your blood,” I said. “They aren’t your clan, right?”

  “They . . .” She sighed and sat down and looked at the ring on her hand. “No, they’re not clan—not my clan. They come from other tribes, other traditions. They’re here because of Grandfather, because of his Black Cord.”

  “And when he’s gone?”

  Aribah shook her head. “The school will become mine, but . . . will they stay? I don’t know.”

  “You know,” I said.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s as simple as you want it to be.”

  She stayed silent.

  “You want to know a truth?” I said. “Here’s mine: I’m a street-level sneak trying to pass himself off as some sort of criminal genius. I didn’t choose that truth, but it’s the one I’m stuck with. But before that, I made my own truth: I worked the streets and sifted secrets and carved out my own path. It wasn’t until I stepped away from the truth I’d made that someone else started to define it for me.”

  “And now? What is your truth now?”

  “It’s . . . complicated.”

  She smiled. “Only if you let it be.”

  I smiled back. “Maybe so, but we’re not talking about me.”

  The smile flickered on her face, vanished. “It’s not easy.”

  “To think about?”

  “To do.”

  “So you have thought about it?”

  She nodded. Of course she had. Who wouldn’t?

  I let the silence sit there between us, waiting for her words.

  “It’s frightening,” she said at last. “And exciting. The thought of leaving? Of being my own person, responsible only to myself? It both pulls and pushes me, feeling like bravery and cowardice at once. But I don’t know which one is true, don’t know which one is right. They keep changing.”

  “They’ll do that.”

  She looked up, meeting my eyes in the moonlight. “How do you leave everything you’ve ever known?”

  I thought back to the day Christiana and I had left Balsturan Forest, when I’d been half a decade younger than the woman before me now; thought back to when I had in turn walked away from my sister and any hope of repairing the damage between us; back, closer, to turning my back first on Degan, then on what I thought it meant to be part of the Kin. It hadn’t been a noble or glorious path, and Angels knew there’d been more than a fair amount of pain and heartbreak along the way, but at least it had been my path. I had chosen the truth of it.

  “You start by taking one step,” I said, “followed by another and another, until you realize the road you’re following is your own and not someone else’s.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  “It’s the hardest thing you’ll ever do. But the best part?” I reached out and tapped the worn ring on her finger. “She can come with you. Inside.”

  A relieved laugh. “That sounds good.”

  “It is.”

  Aribah was just opening her mouth to reply when a grim, harsh voice spoke from the darkness behind us. “It may sound good,” said the voice. “But it will never happen. My granddaughter isn’t leaving el-Qaddice. And she certainly isn’t leaving with you.”

  Chapter Thirty

  We both leapt to our feet and spun around in one motion. A darker patch of midnight was just visible among the trees.

  “Grandfather!” began Aribah. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Enough,” snapped the shadow. “No excuses. I heard what you said. I know what you meant.”

  I took a step off to the side. My wrist knife was already in my left hand. My right was hovering out at my side, ready to reach for either my rapier or my dagger, depending on what he did.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” I said.

  “He followed you,” said Aribah, answering before her grandfather could. “Followed us. He didn’t trust me to keep you safe, and didn’t trust you not to leave.”

  “Leave?” I said.

  “El-Qaddice,” said the elder assassin. “Although I didn’t expect you to try to take Aribah with you.” I heard him hawk, saw the flicker of his spit in my night vision. “Didn’t expect her to be so quick to turn away from her family, either, for that matter.”

  Aribah snapped up straight. “No one’s trying to take anyone anywhe—”

  “Silence, girl. You’ve already done enough damage to your mother’s memory for one night, let alone my honor. Don’t drive the blade in any further.”

  Aribah seemed to shrink at that—to retreat into herself, the fire I’d seen moments ago dimming in the process.
She shuffled back half a pace.

  I turned my eyes back to the dark smudge before us. You old bastard.

  “This isn’t about her,” I said, stepping to my left, trying to put the silhouette of one of the trees behind me. “It’s about you and your legacy.” Another step. Hand on my sword handle. “About using her, and my night vision, as a way to let your name live on after you die.”

  He let out a soft chuckle. “Is that what you think, Imperial? That I’m so vain I can’t stand the thought of being forgotten? That I’d risk her life by having her watch over you, just so I could craft a legacy for myself?” His head shifted, turning, I assumed, to Aribah. “And you? Is this what you think, also?”

  “I don’t know what to think right now,” she whispered.

  “Then you’re a fool.” He shifted, facing me fully. Ignoring her. “I’m a Black Cord, Imperial—what use do I have for fame? Fame brings attention and death. My only wish is to preserve my family and revive my clan. To restore the status of my school and the neyajin. To make sure they’re strong.”

  “Sounds very noble,” I said, drawing my rapier from its scabbard. The scrape of steel against leather and brass sounded loud in the night. “But you have to admit, being known as the one assassin who discovered the secret of dark sight after all these years? To be the Black Cord who single-handedly turns the fortunes of your school and tribe around?” I shook my head. “Heady stuff.”

  “I won’t deny it has its appeal, but it’s not my primary motive.”

  “If you say so.”

  He moved now, and I caught the amber-touched glint of steel in one hand. Small sword, if I had to guess. There was something in the other, but I couldn’t make it out. Fine. I dropped my wrist blade and pulled my dagger, the better to parry and slash with.

  “It won’t work, you know,” I said. “I already told you: I don’t know how to pass it on. Kill me, and the secret goes away; capture me, and all you get is someone who can’t tell you what you want to know.”

  “So I thought, too,” he said, “but then I remembered: This is el-Qaddice, seat of prophets and scholars . . . and magi—not all of whom are afraid to step into the shadows now and then. Especially if the incentive is right. And as a Black Cord, I have both the pockets and the presence to command their attention.” He took his own step back, slipping into the dappled, moonlit shadow of a tree. “There are learned men in this city, Imperial—men who know not only how to consult tomes and histories, but also creatures far wiser in the ways of magic than ourselves. Creatures who have long memories and carry great grudges.”