Sworn in Steel

by Douglas Hulick

  I didn’t catch it, didn’t even come close, but I did manage to jerk my body enough that I was able to fall over, the nearly deadweight that was me pulling the old assassin after. I flung my arm out, feeling for what I couldn’t see.

  A ring of black had formed at the edge of my vision and was working its way in. All I could make out was the grass before me, the tops of tree roots just cresting the surface of the ground. I blinked, but the circle only got bigger. Sparks fired in my vision. My head felt ready to fall off. My lungs were filled with the fire of need.

  I don’t remember finding the blade so much as feeling it in my hand—one moment, nothing, the next, a hard, smooth thing in my quickly weakening grasp. I gripped it tight, hefted it. It was heavy, so much so that I was amazed I could get it off the ground.

  I didn’t swing for him. Even then, I knew better than to try; knew that the angle was wrong, that I wouldn’t be able to generate enough power to do anything meaningful. No, instead I swung at the ground—at the blotch of bloody blackness that was our combined moon-cast shadow, praying that what had happened in the cellar, what I had seen Aribah do to the magi’s shadow with her mother’s blade, would work on her grandfather now. That the Angels or the Family or whoever was watching would let me cleave into his shadow. That I would kill either him or me, or both of us. Because I’d be damned if I’d die the way he wanted.

  The blade bit. The assassin screamed. So, for that matter, did I.

  “Get up!”

  “Wh . . . ” I paused to cough, rubbed at my neck. “What?”

  Aribah tugged hard on my arm, pulling me to a sitting position. “You have to go,” she said. “We have to go. We made too much noise. Someone will be coming.”

  Her voice was throaty and rough, and I noticed that she was pausing to swallow between each sentence. Blood trailed down her jaw from the vicinity of her ear, and the left side of her mouth was already starting to swell. Her turban was gone, revealing a tightly braided nest of raven-black hair set with brass pins. I wondered if the pins had steel tips to them, then decided it didn’t much matter at this point.

  She looked about as shaky as I felt. But her eyes were hard and her grip was solid, so I didn’t argue. I knew all about the value of staying quiet, let alone of becoming a memory when that failed to work out.

  I moved to put my legs under me, felt resistance. I looked down and found her grandfather lying across my right foot. He didn’t have to worry about being quiet anymore.

  “Yes,” she hissed. “He’s dead. Now come on. It does me no good if I get him out of here and leave you lying about for the guards to find. Get up!”

  I did as she said, wincing at a sharp pain along my right biceps. I looked down to see a clean slice in both the fabric and the skin below.

  I grimaced. Only I could manage to cut myself with a knife on the same arm that was wielding it. Fucking shadows.

  Then I stood fully and nearly fell over again. I gasped at the roaring pain in my head.

  “Here.” Aribah stuck a small bottle in my hand, then stepped into the darkness. “Drink it.”

  I did as ordered, nearly choking from the bitterness as it seeped over my tongue and forced its way past what felt like a permanent dent in my throat.

  “Angels, what is that?” I gasped as she came back. She had my rapier and dagger and boot knife in her hands.

  “Herbs, brewed ahrami, spices, a bit of kaffa—we use it to keep alert and dull pain.”

  I traded the empty bottle for my weapons, spitting all the while. The flavor stayed with you. Still, I could already feel the storm in my head beginning to ease.

  Aribah took my face between her hands and studied me in the moonlight, turning my head this way and that. She slapped me once, twice, then tilted my head back. “How many moons do you see?”

  “Two?” I said. “One and a half?”

  “Good enough.” She let go and bent down. When she straightened, she had her grandfather’s kaffiyeh in her hand, her mother’s knife at her belt. “Do you think you can make it to where you were headed?” she said as she draped and then tied the cloth around her head.

  I took a step aside and looked out over the expanse of ground between us and the next hill. It looked farther away than before, but was still empty. For the moment.

  “If there are no surprises, yeah.” I turned back to find her no more than a whisper in my vision.

  “Good. Then do so.” I blinked, realizing that the shadow before me had been just that. Aribah was already kneeling beside her grandfather, adjusting his clothes and using her own turban to bind and cover him in darkness. “I can get Grandfather and me past the guards if I hurry.”

  I considered her, considered the body. “Are you sure?”

  “I must be.”

  “I could—”

  “No,” she said, her voice both brittle and sharp at once. “You can’t. Not with this. He’s mine to bear. Alone.”

  There was no room left for argument in her voice, and I didn’t try to make any. Instead, I stalked over to where we’d been first talking and looked through the shadows until I found my wrist knife. When I turned back, she had pulled the body into a sitting position and was arranging him across her shoulders. She stood with a grunt, staggered a bit, then found her footing. I was just able to make out her eyes in the darkness.

  “I . . . I’m sorry,” I said, not finding any other words just then.

  “No more than I.” I watched her eyes blink wetly once, twice. Then, “Good luck finding your truth, Imperial.” And she turned away. I watched, but after a moment, she was little more than a blur. Two steps farther on, and she was gone.

  I stood there for a moment, watching the darkness. Thinking.

  The eyes of a djinni?

  Damn you. Damn you twice over for being dead, Sebastian.

  I turned and headed off down the slope. Like it or not, there was still more to do.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  I hadn’t had a chance to case Heron’s ken on my prior visit, and there wasn’t time for it now. A quick circuit showed a building designed as much for security as aesthetics: There were plenty of windows, but all of the accessible ones were narrow, more reminiscent of glass-filled loopholes meant for archers than for letting in light or air. Higher up, the few wider windows and balcony doors were fitted with elaborate gates of iron scrollwork, and those sat over equally ornate carved wooden screens. As for the doors at ground level, all were beautifully and solidly built, with locks that looked to be a study in intricacy, if their delicately acid-etched casings were any indication.

  I didn’t relish the notion of trying a new lock on the spur of the moment, especially with my head still pounding and my breath coming in gasps. While every lock may be ultimately pickable, that doesn’t mean every lock maker goes about his business in the same way. Just as each lock master has a personality, so do his locks; back in Ildrecca, I could have told you that the mechanism from the Iron Hand shop always turned in a clockwise direction, while a Dorynian lock used a double-turn system, and that Kettlemaker often as not installed a false pin that, if stroked incorrectly, could freeze up the rest of the mechanism. But here, in el-Qaddice, on the padishah’s grounds? I had no idea how simple or elaborate any given lock might be, let alone the particular traits of the device or its maker. And while I could likely feel and analyze my way through all but the worst of the tumbles I’d find here, the thought of being spotted by a member of the Opal Guard—or worse—while working my spiders didn’t exactly excite me.

  So instead, I decided to go with a tried-and-true method from my youth: I knocked on the front door.

  Despite everything I’d gone through tonight, it still wasn’t as late as I might have liked. That meant the steward wasn’t yawning and rubbing his eyes when he answered the door, but he still opened it readily enough. We were on a royal estate, surrounded by walls and guards and Angels knew what else—who would expect a gig rush here? Certainly not him.

  The pomme
l of my dagger caught him in the temple the moment the door had swung to, sending his woven skullcap flying.

  He staggered, and I followed up with another strike, this time to the back of his head. At the same time, I reached out with my free hand and directed his fall; I couldn’t have him blocking the doorway, after all. He hit the floor at the same time as his cap.

  It wasn’t the most elegant of entries, I admit, but the most effective methods sometimes aren’t. Far more Kin make a quick hawk with an expertly applied bludgeon or fist than those who take the time to slide a lock or cut a purse. As much as some Lighters may like to see us as smiling, capable rogues, the truth is most Kin are little better than back-alley thugs at heart. And even though I like to see myself as standing above the rest of my cousins, I have to admit to having washed my fair share of blood off coins before spending them over the years. Sometimes it’s just more expedient to spill a bit of claret.

  I pulled the steward the rest of the way into the entry and closed the door behind me. Then I crouched there, listening, running my hands over him even as he groggily tried to push them away. A ring of keys came off his belt, and a small whistle from around his neck. The belt itself I removed and cinched around his wrists, making them fast behind his back. Then I sat him up in the shadows beside the door and gave his face a few light slaps to get his attention.

  I held up my dagger. “How many besides you?” I said.

  He looked at the blade vaguely, clearly still having trouble focusing. “None,” he slurred.

  “If you stick with that answer and I find anyone else, they die.”

  “Two.”

  I nodded. “Where?”

  “Upstairs.”

  I unwound his sash, tied a knot in one end, and stuffed it in his mouth. The rest went around his head twice and became a gag. “Stay,” I said. It would have been nice if he’d passed out completely, but I wasn’t about to beat him until he lost consciousness; there are lines and there are lines, and not all of them need to be crossed simply for the sake of convenience.

  I retraced the steps from my previous meeting, first finding the library and then finding the key to it on the steward’s ring. The house was clearly settled in for the night, with only a handful of tapers burning against the master’s eventual return. A rhythmic creaking from the floor above told me what the other two servants were up to. I returned to the front door to retrieve the steward.

  He was trying to regain his feet but having a hard time of it, given his sallow complexion and sweating brow.

  “Easy,” I said, steadying him. “I wouldn’t recommend vomiting when you have a gag in your mouth. Good way to choke to death.”

  He thought about it and nodded weakly. I led him back down to the library, veering only to retrieve a taper on the way. Once inside, I set him in the middle of the floor and then locked the oak doors behind us.

  “Your life depends on your silence,” I said, turning around. “No kicking, no knocking things over, no noise of any sort, and you get to live. Make a sound, though, and I guarantee that, even if they break the doors down, they’ll only find one man breathing. Understand?”

  The steward glared and nodded.

  I straightened and looked at the shelves.

  “I don’t suppose you know where your master keeps his books on degans, do you?” I said.

  This time, all I got was the glare.

  “I thought not.”

  I began in the section Heron had pulled Simonis Chionates from, finding the work itself without much effort. A quick leafing through the pages showed both a well-marked and well-used text, with marginalia in at least two hands. More interestingly, beside it I found what appeared to be an earlier, draft version of the text, all in the same hand as the later work. The original notes and the finished work? One hell of a scholarly coup, but given that neither of them seemed to relate to Ivory Degan or the original practices of the Order, they didn’t do me much good. I moved on.

  The surrounding books were a mixture of general imperial histories, diaries of people who had done business with degans, two folios filled with fading letters, a handful of fighting manuals—including Gambogi, which I remembered Degan disparaging once—a dog-eared copy of Usserius’s opus On the Nature of Imperial Divinity, and what could only be described as a hodgepodge of fanciful tales and lays bound in one volume. The last was titled The Adventures, Heroic Deeds, and Perilous Dangers faced by the Most Noble Order of the Degans and attributed solely to “A. Gentleman,” which, glancing at the text, seemed to be an insult to any gentleman worthy of the title.

  It was far less than I’d hoped for and, after spending a good hour paging through the pile, clearly not Heron’s only sources on the Order. For someone who’d proclaimed a lifetime’s interest in collecting, let alone his fascination with a specific topic, the books before me constituted more of an embarrassment than a reason to crow. Maybe I’d been spoiled by the tomes that passed through Baldezar’s hands, or even the ones that came out of his workshop back in Ildrecca, but Heron had spoken too knowingly about the degans for me to think this was the extent of his knowledge. From what I could see, Ivory was barely mentioned, let alone the early Order.

  No, there had to be more, and not just because I wanted there to be.

  I glanced over at the steward. He’d drifted off into unconsciousness, brought on no doubt in part by the drubbing I’d given him. Even if he were awake, though, I knew better than to expect help from that quarter.

  Instead, I began searching the surrounding shelves and cases, paging through volumes, looking for any other tomes or folios that might pertain to my quest. Just because Simonis was in one area didn’t mean Heron couldn’t have degan-related material in another spot; like locks, libraries have their own personalities.

  As good as that theory was, though, it didn’t result in my finding any more books on the degans, obvious or otherwise. Sooner than I’d like, I was back before the shelf with Simonis and “A. Gentleman.”

  I looked around the room, wondering briefly if Heron was the kind to keep a written catalog of all his books. Probably not: He was just arrogant enough to carry it around in his head. And while getting in here had been easier than I’d hoped, I didn’t have any illusions about being able to lay hands on the secretary, let alone persuading him to tell me where he kept his materials on the degans. He didn’t seem the kind to break very easily.

  Still, appearances can be deceiving, and it wasn’t as if I had a lot of other options. I couldn’t see myself being invited back for coffee and a bite anytime soon. As for repeating tonight’s performance—well, a smart Draw Latch doesn’t crack the same ken twice, especially when that ken lies inside the domain of a royal prince. People like that tend to have enough resources to make a second attempt fatal.

  Which meant I got to wait. I wasn’t in the mood to wait.

  I entertained myself by searching the research table for hidden drawers and compartments, just in case I was wrong about Heron’s arrogance. I wasn’t. From there, I poked about the back of the shelves that held the degan folios, then the more likely bits of molding and joints along the walls. Nothing.

  If there was something hidden in Heron’s library, I decided, both Christiana and I had something to learn from the man.

  After checking to make sure the steward was still breathing, I found myself before Heron’s “memory” wall, staring at the flowers and the fan and the sword. On a whim, I pulled a chair over, climbed up, and gently lifted the fan off its mounting pins.

  It was big, even for a funerary fan, and required both hands to lift. This close, I could see an impressive amount of gold leaf and even a few precious stones through the dark gauze that covered the body of the fan. The ribs were polished ebony, held open by a rod extending across the back.

  The wall behind the fan was smooth and blank: no keys, no careful catalog of books, no conveniently hidden compartment containing centuries-old papers. Just plain white plaster and the trailing wisps of freshly broke
n cobwebs.

  Well, it had been a long shot anyhow.

  It was while I was shifting the fan back into place that the mourning cloth slipped off, raising a small cloud of dust even as it drifted to the floor. I turned my head and sneezed, both out of respect for the fan, and because I didn’t want to send myself toppling backward from my perch. The chair still teetered a bit, and the fan wobbled treacherously in my hands, but neither of us ended up falling. Relieved, I turned back to finish the remounting, and gasped.

  Exquisite didn’t even begin to describe what I saw before me. The calligraphy alone was a work of art, with each symbol, each accent, a study in technique: effortless and stylistically perfect at once. The painted cephta seemed to shimmer, the finely powdered pearl that had been mixed with the pigments catching and reflecting the lantern light behind me, making the writing come alive on the silk. It was as if the story of the woman before me wanted to step off the fan and dance its way across my eyes, rather than simply be read.

  The artwork was just as stunning: each figure, each mountain, each vista crafted with the fewest possible brushstrokes, but each clearly visible for what it was. As was traditional, the predominant color was black, but here and there, small hints of color had been added to underscore particular memories and moments: the blue-green edge of the sea, the pink of an almond tree in bloom, the sandy brown of a peregrine falcon’s belly in flight.

  It was a life laid out not just to be remembered and mourned, but to be glorified. To be reveled in. To be loved.

  But as stunning as the calligraphy and the art and the devotion apparent in the fan were, they weren’t what had caused me to catch my breath; that had been caused by the name written in fine golden symbols across the top of the fan: Simonis Chionates. The same name that had belonged to the woman who’d penned the two-hundred-year-old history on the shelf behind me. The woman who had inspired a secretary’s interest in the degans.

  And the woman who, scanning the details of the life stretched out before me, had been married to a man named Heronestes Karkappadolis. A man who was depicted on the fan wielding an ivory-handled sword, and who stood with a whole host of other men and women with metal-chased weapons.