Sworn in Steel

by Douglas Hulick

  “Yes and no,” said Ivory. “Like so many things with the emperor, there are multiple facets to the single gem that is his genius. Your so-called Dark King came along at an excellent time and served as a convenient excuse for creating a new cadre of swords within the palace. The White Sashes were created to hunt the Kin and guard the emperor, yes, but they were also formed to provide a recruiting ground for the Order of the Degans.”

  I sat up. “Are you telling me that wiping out Isidore’s organization two hundred years ago—along with more than half of the Kin—was a distraction for the benefit of imperial politics?”

  Ivory arched an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t it be?” He took a slow sip of tea. “Believe me, the emperor, and the empire, have done far worse over the ages, often for less commendable reasons. The blockade and resulting famine in Phykopolis, for example, can be traced to—”

  “Your ‘distraction’ resulted in thousands of Kin being hung from rooftops or staked out in the streets,” I said. “And not just Kin: The Sashes butchered anyone who knew them—neighbors and friends and family. There was open warfare in the streets of Ildrecca for almost a year.”

  “Yes,” said Ivory. “There was. And most of the people who died were either criminals or those who consorted with them.” He set his cup down with a solid clink. “Now compare that to the tens of thousands who died in Phykopolis simply because an anonymous clerk discovered an unlicensed trade monopoly, and that the easiest way to cover it up was to devastate the city it was based in. As things go, the slaughtering of a comparative handful of Kin and their friends is high moral ground for the Court.”

  “That doesn’t justify it.”

  “You should know by now that the Imperial Court feels no need to justify itself to the likes of us.” Ivory sniffed, made the slightest hint of a sour face. “Still, good results can sometimes come from ill actions.”

  “You mean the degans?” I said.

  “I mean the ideals we tried to incorporate within the Order and the Oath: the idea that a person is answerable for whatever events he puts in motion; that to receive service is to owe it in return; that a person’s promise, no matter who he is, is something he should be held to.”

  “I’ve found that ideals don’t carry a lot of weight in the real world,” I said. “At least, not with most people.”

  “If I was concerned with ‘most people,’ I would have remained a Paragon instead of becoming a degan.”

  I almost asked how those ideals fit with him cutting down his own brothers and sisters a couple of hundred years back, but that didn’t seem like the most constructive path to take just now. Instead, I folded my hands on the table before me and said, “So you’re telling me none of the other incarnations of the emperor have caught on about the degans? That, because he formed you, only Lucien knows you exist?” It didn’t seem likely, but then again, if anyone knew how to pull the cloth over the imperial eyes, who better than the emperor himself?

  “I haven’t exactly been keeping in touch,” said Ivory, “but my guess is no; otherwise, the Order would have been wiped out by now.”

  “What about the other Paragons?” I said. “You couldn’t have done this alone.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why didn’t they tell—?”

  “There was a purging.”

  “Ah,” I said. Stephen Dorminikos had done the same thing when he first had his soul shattered. The imperial policy seemed to be that it was easier to kill the casters than ask for their silence. I wondered if the current Paragons in Markino’s service knew about the fate of their predecessors. It seemed unlikely. “That seems to be an occupational hazard with imperial magicians.”

  Ivory took a sip of tea. “Get close enough to the emperor, and everyone becomes expendable.”

  I grunted agreement. It certainly seemed to be a recurring pattern.

  “So why did you get to be the one who gave up his soul?” I said.

  Ivory stared into his cup, took a last swallow. I got the feeling he was wishing for something stronger right about now. “I told you,” he said, pulling the iron teapot over to himself. “I was a Paragon: Someone had to cast the incantations and make the bindings. Someone had to speak the first Oath and bind the Order and the members to its purpose. When you’re talking about the empire and a divinely selected emperor, not to mention a secret sect of swordsmen, words often aren’t enough; you need magic.”

  I chose to ignore commenting on how the emperor had founded his cult based on nothing more than a carefully planned lie, and instead said, “And your soul locked the deal?”

  “Among other things, yes.” Ivory lifted the pot and poured. He frowned when only a tiny trickle of liquid, along with the dregs of the tea leaves, came out. “If it helps your understanding, I made the sacrifice—of my soul and my magic—willingly.” He set the pot back down. “I’m not sure I would do the same today. But that’s the curse of time, isn’t it? We get to look back and pick apart our actions, criticize our younger selves without the benefit of that self being able to offer a defense—only a justification.”

  I played with my own cup on the tabletop.

  I had to ask.

  “So, what’s it like living without a soul?” I said.

  “That’s none of your business, Kin,” he snapped. Then he blinked and seemed to shake off his mood, as well as his memories. When he turned his eyes on me again, they held the false cheer of a man trying to put a good face on a crappy situation.

  “So,” he said, “Bronze wants the old laws, does he?”

  “He seems to think finding your papers could somehow help preserve the Order.”

  “He’s hoping to find something,” said Ivory. “A line or a page that will put a sword through the heart of this argument once and for all. But it isn’t there. If it were, I would have used it when the dispute, and the Order, was young.”

  “No one’s seen the laws for two hundred years,” I said. “That’s a lot of time to operate on hearsay and passed-down memories. Who’s to say how this crop of degans will react to the original documents?”

  “I think I can make a fairly accurate guess. Besides, old papers and old men rarely change minds.”

  I perked up at that. “Old men?” I said. “Does that mean you’d be willing to come back to Ildrecca to make the argument?”

  A melancholy smile. “Perhaps. It’s been a long time. I wouldn’t mind seeing the paths Simonis and I used to walk again, if only for the memories.” Then a harder look. “But I’m not going to agree just on sentiment: It all depends on how Bronze makes his case. If you’re right, there’s too much idealism in his plan for my taste, but the least I can do is hear him out.”

  I could barely keep a smile from creasing my face. Between Ivory and his papers, not only did my odds of getting Degan back to Ildrecca suddenly look up; so did my chances of, if not making things right between him and me, then at least putting him in touch with the founder of his Order. A founder that, by all rights, should be dead.

  That sure as hell had to count for something.

  Ivory had penned my gate pass after that, signing it in his guise as Heron. To his credit, he’d only paused momentarily when I mentioned I needed it to get me off the hook for a certain incident at the Dog Gate as well. With a quick, elegant hand, he’d added a passage about the good of the state and the undesirability of my being delayed, and sent me on my way.

  I passed back through the grove, just out of curiosity. It was empty, both of guards and assassins. I was glad for the former, sad for that latter. It would have been nice to see her one final time.

  I took one last look around to make sure I wasn’t overlooking any neyajin-shaped shadows, and then slipped off into the night.

  “Well?” said Fowler as I sat down across from her. “Find anything?”

  We were in an all-night tea shop, just outside the Imperial Quarter and just within spitting distance of the gate to the fourth ring. The place catered to mild chiba addicts and seve
re music aficionados. The man seated on the small stage was said to be one of the best oud players in the central Despotate, brought in from his village in the Venatti hills for the month. All I knew was that the music helped cover our conversation. The air was thick with smoke.

  “One or two things,” I said. I picked up the pot on the table, filled the extra cup before me, and drank. Cardamom. “Turns out Heron is Ivory Degan.”

  “What?”

  Even the oud player stopped playing to stare at Fowler’s outburst. I smiled into my tea, then held up my hands and apologized to the room in Djanese while she glared at me. General laughter all around. The music resumed.

  “Ivory Degan?” she hissed once attention had shifted back to, variously, the music and the water pipes. “As in the one who started the Order of the Degans?”

  “One and the same.”

  “How is that even possible?”

  “Long story.”

  “No shit.”

  I lifted my eyes until they met hers. “Longer than we have time for right now.”

  “Humph.”

  I poured more cardamom tea, added two strips of candied lemon from a dish on the serving tray, and stirred. “What happened at the theater?”

  “You mean after you caused all hell to break loose?”

  “That was the general idea, if you recall.”

  “Well, then your idea worked. The performance was cut short, the Rags cleared the seats, and the pit nearly rioted until the padishah had handfuls of dharms thrown into the crowd.” Fowler held up a small handful. “I clipped a couple coves coming out.”

  I rolled my eyes. “And Fat Chair?”

  “Led off in chains.”

  “Any word from Mama Left Hand about that?”

  “Were you expecting any?”

  “Not really.” Her mention of coming to some sort of agreement about Crook Eye’s old routes had sounded good, but I’d suspected it had been meant to string me along rather than make any real kind of offer. Like as not, she had other routes into the empire for her glimmer.

  “Just as well, then,” said Fowler, “because her people wouldn’t be able to get word to us anyhow. The padishah had the troupe escorted back to the Angel’s Shadow under guard. Half of the Rags are still there.”

  I nodded. We’d expected something along those lines, Fowler and Tobin and I. You don’t unleash forbidden Dorminikan magic—even if it is just a lot of noise and show—and not have the Imperials in the room rounded up. Which was why we’d made certain there was nothing to connect them to what happened with Fat Chair. Not that that was a guarantee—the despot was called a despot for a reason: He could do whatever the hell he wanted when it came to us.

  “Any word on them?”

  Fowler shook her head. “Haven’t been back yet. I was planning to go after we get done here.”

  “And the wazir?”

  “Nearly eating his own arm off, I expect.”

  “I expect.” I sipped my tea. The lemon hadn’t helped. “You can get back into the inn all right?”

  Fowler held up a small, gauzy bundle. “I’ve got my stage drapes right here. Figure I can change back and say I got lost in the mayhem.”

  “And the sword?”

  I felt something hard bump up against my knee under the table and Fowler shoved it over.

  “Good.” I took a last drink and reached under the table, my hand closing on the now-familiar scabbard and baldric. “Let’s get going, then. I’ve a degan to find.”

  I found Degan a scant three blocks from his rooms, standing under a lantern in the street, picking at a sad pile of greens and charred meat, all sitting atop a soggy piece of flatbread.

  “What the hell is that?” I said as I sidled up beside Degan.

  He looked down at me and cocked an eyebrow in question.

  “Fowler followed you, remember?” I said. “It wasn’t hard to find you once I knew where to look.” I nodded at the food in his hand. “I repeat, what the hell is it?”

  He sighed and dropped it on the ground. “A mistake.”

  “Good. I’m hungry. Let’s go get something worth eating.”

  Ten minutes later saw us standing at a small window set in a dingy wall. Across and just down the street, the sounds of music and people talking spilled out of a curtained doorway. Here, there was little light and less sound, but the smells coming from the window more than made up for it. Onions frying in butter, coriander seeds toasting in a pan, cheese charring over a fire. Mint and peppers and the thick, sour smell of shredded meat simmering in a spiced yogurt sauce. And the bread—the smell of the crust browning and cracking as it warmed over a heated stone.

  I passed coins through the window, got two short loaves in return, their tops split and scooped out, the innards filled with onions and fried cheese and stringy strands of goat, all topped off with a salad of parsley and mint and lemon juice tossed.

  “How do you find these places?” said Degan after his fourth bite.

  I jerked my head toward the lively doorway. Three men were just staggering out. “I worked that ken a while back, looking for word of you. No success, but everyone in there ends up coming here for late-night tuck.”

  Sure enough, as if to prove me right, the three men began to make their way up the street, their hands already reaching into sashes and sleeves for money.

  Degan shook his head and took another bite. I led him away from the window and deeper into the night.

  I glanced at the man beside me as we walked and ate. It almost felt like old times, but I knew better. There was a tension between us, an unease that rode beneath the silence that had once been easy. Part of it, I knew, came from the presence of his sword—a tangible, visible indictment of my failures and his choices, riding my back a handful of feet away from his hand. I’d known bringing the blade wouldn’t make things easier, but I didn’t trust leaving it behind, didn’t know if I’d be able to get back to it again even if I did.

  The sword was only part of it, though: The rest came from the uncertainty that lingered between us. Even back when we’d first met—when he’d almost killed me and I’d nearly poisoned him—there hadn’t been this kind of hesitant unease. He hadn’t trusted me and I hadn’t trusted him, but it had been an honest distrust, born of unfamiliarity and simple street caution. This was different. This was born of regret and betrayal, of memories and might-have-beens.

  It was a silence that seemed both too heavy to lift and too fragile to leave in place. A thing that threatened to either smother us with its presence or cut us to the bone with its breaking.

  As usual, Degan was the first one to step into the breach.

  “So,” he said as he finished the last fragment of his bread and swallowed, “I take it you’re heading back to Ildrecca?”

  I looked him a question, then did my sums. “You heard about the audition, I take it.”

  “Heard about it? I was there.”

  “You were there?”

  “Not a lot of imperial theater in this city, have to take what you can get.” He paused to cough up a couple of crumbs. “I thought Fowler was good.”

  I smiled. “Who knew she could act?”

  “Didn’t see you, though.”

  “That was the idea.”

  “Too bad. I think you would have made a good Babba.”

  I snorted. Babba was the despot’s talking mule in the play. It was one of several Djanese tropes that hadn’t made sense to me. “Walking the boards isn’t my style.”

  “True, you seem to prefer offstage productions. Mind if I ask the purpose behind all the theatrics?”

  “I needed a distraction.”

  Degan glanced and me and raised an eyebrow. “You needed that much chaos to set up one criminal?”

  “That was only part of it.”

  “And the other part?”

  “Ivory Degan.”

  “Ivory?” said Degan, grabbing my arm. “You mean you found his papers?”

  “More than that, I found
him. The man himself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I took a last bite of my own loaf and tossed the rest away. “I mean he’s alive,” I said, swallowing. “Breathing. Talking, even.” I smiled up at Degan. “How’s that for finding—oop!”

  Before I knew what was happening, Degan had dragged me up a short flight of steps, into the shadow of a vine-covered archway. Behind us, I could smell the soft perfume of a garden asleep in the night. It was almost enough to mask the sudden scent of sweat coming from the swordsman beside me.

  “Degan?” I said, pulling my arm away. I put hand to my own sword. “What the hell is going on?”

  “You saw him?” he said, his eyes scanning the street, searching the shadows. “Does he know you figured out who he is?”

  “Does he . . . wait.” I took a step back to better glare at him. “Are you telling me you knew Ivory was alive?”

  Degan didn’t take his eyes off the street. “Let’s say I suspected.”

  “You suspected?” I said. “How the hell do you ‘suspect’ someone might be alive two hundred years after he should have died?”

  “You hear things.”

  “Things? What things? And why the hell didn’t you tell me you thought there might be a two-hundred-year-old degan walking around el-Qaddice?”

  “I was hoping I was wrong.” Then, after a pause, “I also was hoping you’d leave.”

  “Congratulations: You were wrong on both counts.”

  “So I see. How did you find him?”

  “Turns out he’s the secretary to the wazir of Garden of the Muse. I’ve been reporting to him on the progress of our troupe ever since we got into the Old City.”

  “He’s the . . . ?” Degan shook his head. “Amazing. And he told you who he was, just like that?”

  “Of course not. I figured it out.”

  “How?”

  “Well, for one thing, I saw his sword—”

  Degan’s eyes flew to the blade across my back. “He still has his sword?”

  “On the wall of his study. Apparently, not everyone resigns the Order by leaving their blade lying in a burning warehouse.”

  Degan gritted his teeth. I admit the comment wasn’t kind on my part, but I was still smarting from not being told about Ivory. I figure it evened out.