Sworn in Steel

by Douglas Hulick

  “I suppose finding that would have done it,” grated Degan.

  “If I’d known he was still alive, it might have, yes. But I had no reason to suspect Ivory would be anything more than a heap of moldering bones by now. It wasn’t until I broke back in tonight, raided his library, and held his steward at sword’s point that he told me who he was.”

  “So you did talk to him.”

  “At length.”

  “And?”

  “He wants to see you.”

  Degan chuckled and turned his attention back to the street. “I’ll just bet he does.”

  “It’s not like that, Degan.”

  “No? Ivory Degan cut down half a dozen of his brothers and sisters before he left the Order. And when he did, he made it very clear that he’d do the same to anyone who came after him. I doubt that sentiment’s changed, even after all this time.”

  I thought back on the scholar with warrior’s reflexes. Both faces of the man had struck me as tired, maybe even a bit resigned. Any fires that burned in him about his past, I guessed, had been banked long ago. “Two centuries is a long time.”

  “Not as long as you think.”

  “He said he might be willing to come back to Ildrecca.”

  Degan actually eased up on his grip on his sword. “Back to the empire?”

  I swallowed. “Maybe.” This was now every bit as delicate a negotiation as the conversation I’d had with Ivory. I wasn’t sure what Degan’s plans had been in coming to el-Qaddice, but it clearly hadn’t included having a sit-down with the founder of his Order. Except that was exactly what I needed him to do, for all our sakes—but mostly for his. “I told him about what happened with you and Iron. About—”

  “You what? You had no right—”

  “I have every right,” I said, cutting him off. “I helped cause this mess, helped put you in a position where you had to make that choice. If it hadn’t been for me, you wouldn’t be down here.”

  “Don’t fatter yourself. The problems in the Order were building long before you crossed paths with Shadow and Solitude. Or me, for that matter. I made the choices that got me here, not you.”

  “I’m not saying you didn’t. But I played a part in it, just as I’m playing a part in this now.” I gestured up in the general vicinity of the second ring. “Ivory’s had a lot longer time to think about his choices, but at the core you and he made the same call: You both drew blood and walked away from the Order. No one—not me, not Silver, not any of the other degans—knows what that’s like. Except for Ivory. And he’s willing to talk.”

  Degan sighed, took off his hat, and ran his fingers through sweat-damp hair until it stood up in uneven spikes. “You have to understand something,” he said. “I didn’t come down here looking for absolution. Or redemption. I came here to try and save something I cared enough to kill for, even though that killing meant I could no longer lay claim to that thing anymore. I came to protect my former brothers and sisters from having to do what I did, to keep others from having to walk the path I’m on. I’m not worried about restoring my name or reclaiming my place in the Barracks Hall; I expect I’ll never see the walls of Niceria again. No, I’m here because while I may no longer be a degan, I can still serve the Order.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s more or less what I told Ivory.”

  Degan blinked. Then he smiled. “Did you, now?”

  “Maybe not so eloquently, but I got the idea across.”

  “And how did Ivory take it?”

  “He says he doesn’t think he has the answers you want, but he’s willing to go over the old laws and discuss possibilities.”

  Degan rose out of the half-conscious fighting stance he’d been maintaining and took a deep breath. When he let it out, most of the tension he’d been holding seemed to leave with it.

  I let out a breath of my own as well. I had him.

  Degan took another breath, then chuckled. He put on his hat. “Ivory in the despot’s court. Who would have guessed?” he said as he tugged down on the brim. “Angels know it’s the last place I would’ve looked.”

  “You and me both,” I said. “Although I suppose I should have thought of it.”

  “How so?”

  Degan stepped out into the street. I joined him. We began walking.

  “When we first arrived, Wolf headed over to el-Beyad to look for you. He said he figured if a person was used to serving others, even with an Oath, then he’d go looking for—eh?”

  Degan had put his hand on my arm again, although this time it was to turn me to face him. “Wolf?” he said, a strange expression on his face.

  “Sorry: Silver Degan. I first met him as Wolf, and to be honest, that’s the name that I’ve hung on him in my head. It fits.”

  Degan nodded slowly. “It does.” He stepped closer. “Tell me about Silver.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “Tell me about his scar.”

  My stomach twitched. “What scar?”

  “The one that runs from just above his right eyebrow down to his jaw,” he said, tracing the line across his own face. “The one that made him blind in one eye.”

  My stomach began tying itself in something that felt like a tutorial for sailors’ knots.

  Degan read my face. “Your Silver isn’t blind in one eye, is he?” he said.

  “No.” My hands were shaking so hard I could barely form them into fists. That son of a bitch had played me again. “No, he isn’t.”

  “Then he isn’t Silver Degan.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  “Son of a bitch!” I yelled. Twice that bastard had conned me. Twice. “That lying, scheming son of a—”

  “Does Wolf have his sword?” said Degan.

  “What?”

  “Silver’s sword,” he said, looking down at me impatiently. “Does Wolf have it?”

  I thought of the silver-chased blade I’d become so used to seeing at Wolf’s side. “If you mean a silver-worked scimitar, then yes, he does.”

  Degan’s mouth became a thin, tight line. “That’s Silver’s.”

  I almost asked how I’d been fooled, but I already knew. I’d seen the sword, seen Wolf’s skill, heard him talk, and had simply followed my assumptions. After all, who the hell pretended to be a degan?

  More to the point, though, Wolf had had the air about him, had carried himself like a degan. And part of me, I was sure, had missed that.

  “Is he even a degan?” I said.

  “Oh, he’s a degan, all right,” said Degan, making me feel only slightly better. We began walking again. “We even called him Wolf sometimes because, as you say, it fits—all too well. But within the Order, he’s Steel.”

  “Steel Degan,” I said, trying out the name. It fit him better than Silver. “So if he has Silver’s sword, that means—”

  “It means I’m not the only one who’s shed blood within the Order recently,” said Degan. He shook his head. “Angels, what have we become?”

  I didn’t have an answer to offer on that one, and so kept my peace.

  “Does Ivory know about Steel?”

  “The only reason Ivory knows you’re here is because I told him,” I said. “Wolf . . . that is, Steel, never came up.”

  “That’s something, then. If Ivory knew there were two of us here, and that one was Steel, I expect it would take another two centuries to track him down again.”

  “Steel’s that dangerous?” I said.

  Degan nodded. “He’s one of the best of us when it comes to the blade—maybe the best.”

  “But it’s been two centuries,” I said. “Ivory has no way of knowing anything about this Steel. The Steel Degan he knew died ages ago.” Every degan took the name of one of the founding degans when he or she joined the Order—the Bronze Degan beside me was the seventh degan to bear that name.

  “Don’t kid yourself,” said Degan. “Ivory may have hidden himself away in Djan, but you can bet he has agents in the empire. He may not know all the doings of t
he Order, but he’s not as ignorant as he likely led on. You don’t create something like the degans and then forget about it, no matter where you go.”

  We walked on in silence for maybe half a block. Degan was setting a quick pace, and between my still-sore muscles and the night’s exertions, I was having a hard time keeping up. He didn’t seem in the mood to slow down, though, so I poured some ahrami into my palm. I’d meant for two, but five seeds fell out of the bag instead. To hell with it: I tossed them all into my mouth.

  “Degan?” I said around the seeds.

  “What?”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  “At a guess? Steel wants Ivory’s sword.”

  “Why?”

  “Because that sword is the key to our Order.”

  “How?”

  Degan stayed silent for a moment, then said, “What did I do after I killed Iron?”

  I thought back to that day in the A’Riif Bazaar, when, after a long, wandering fight, Degan had dusted Iron with one single, perfect thrust. “You took his sword.”

  “Yes. And when the Order came asking after Iron—after they found his sword, thanks to you—what did they ask you about me?”

  “They wanted to know where you were, of course.”

  “And?”

  “And . . .” Oh. I’d been so focused on getting them to believe my version of the story, I hadn’t separated the two questions until now. “They wanted to know what had happened to your sword.”

  “Exactly. There’s a reason we swear our Oaths on our swords, and it isn’t just for the symbolism: Each blade records not only the Oaths of the degan who wields it, but also the Oath of each person we’ve pledged ourselves to. It’s the walking record not only of our service, but of our debts, and the debts owed to the Order.”

  I reached up, my hand going for the weapon lying across my back. This time, I stopped just short of touching it. “You mean my Oath to you is in your sword?”

  “Along with its status, yes.”

  I bit down on the seeds in my mouth and swallowed. They didn’t go down easy. I was suddenly grateful I’d never let Wolf handle Degan’s blade. “And any degan who picks up your sword can, what, read that from it?”

  “It’s not quite that simple, but given some time and a bit of quiet, yes, they could. That’s how the Order keeps track of what promises have been kept and which ones are still owed when a degan passes.”

  “Which explains why you took Iron’s sword,” I said. “You were going to return it to the Order.”

  “Given what I’d just done, it seemed the least I could do. I owed it to Iron as well as the rest of my brothers and sisters.”

  A thought occurred. “Did Iron still have any debts due?”

  “I didn’t have it in my hands long enough to find out,” said Degan pointedly. I looked away. “But,” he continued, in milder tones, “given he was in the process of trying to deliver you to Solitude when we crossed blades, I’d wager there’s still a balance due on her part, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  It was. It also meant that Solitude was still on the Order’s leash, either now or in the future. That was both good to know, as well as worrying. If Wolf had been playing me, who was to say another degan wouldn’t be pushing Solitude as well?

  Because, Angels knew, I needed another thing to worry about. . . .

  “I understand about your sword, and Iron’s, and maybe even Silver’s,” I said, “since whoever Silver had in his debt is probably now in Wolf’s pocket. But how do Ivory’s Oaths play into all of this? Those debts are two hundred years old.”

  “Did Ivory tell you about the founding of the Order?” said Degan. We were coming up to the gate to the second ring. A pair of guards stood to either side, just outside the circle of light cast by a torch set in the wall. I slowed and looked away from the burn of the light.

  “A bit,” I said.

  “And?”

  “And he told me the degans were founded to serve as a foil against the other sashes at the time.”

  “On whose order?”

  “Lucian’s, of course. Who else could order a Paragon to bind his soul to a sword and then have him craft an Oath that would bind a bunch of swordsmen to hi . . .” I trailed off as the implications of what I was saying sank in. Oath. Degans. Emperor.

  Oh, hell.

  “Are you saying,” I said, my voice dropping despite itself, “that the emperor swore the Oath on Ivory’s blade? That Lucien is in debt to the Order of the Degans?”

  “The Order had to be bound to him,” said Degan. “And the strongest promises run both ways. What better binding—and what better show of faith—than for the emperor to take the Oath that was to become to core of our Order?”

  “And he swore that Oath on Ivory’s sword?”

  “All the degans did.”

  “Which meant all the original degans were bound to that sword, too.”

  “Yes.”

  I whistled. “But that was Lucien. Markino’s emperor now, with Theodoi coming next. Lucien’s next incarnation isn’t going to sit the imperial throne for at least another thirty or forty years. What good will the Oath do Wolf?”

  “The Oath was taken on Ivory’s blade, which holds Ivory’s soul,” said Degan. “And Ivory was a Paragon before he was a degan. That makes things . . . different.”

  “How different?”

  “The Order can hold any incarnation of the emperor to the Oath,” he said. “Including our current one.”

  I stopped, pulling Degan to a halt with me. “Are you telling me that if Wolf gets his hands on Ivory’s sword, he can call in Lucien’s Oath through Markino?”

  Degan nodded grimly. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “But how? Markino’s not even the same . . . well, not person, but incarnation.”

  “How should I know? It’s soul magic; all I know is what Ivory told me.” Degan gestured toward the gate. The guards were starting to eye us. “We should keep moving.”

  I followed his advice.

  “All right,” I said, measuring my pace as the guards watched. “Let’s say you’re right. But even with it being soul magic, you’d think that Wolf would need to, I don’t know, have part of . . . wait.” I looked up at Degan. “Wait. What Ivory told you? When the hell did you talk to Ivory?”

  Degan’s eyes went wide for an instant, and then quickly narrowed. When he spoke again, his voice was all iron and ice. “Now isn’t the time, Drothe.”

  “The hell it’s not. Now is exactly the time. When did you talk to Ivory?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Bullshit. You wouldn’t know about the sword unless he told you.” A thought occurred. I didn’t like it. “Have you been playing me to keep Wolf at bay? Lying about not knowing where Ivory was because you were afraid I might tell Wolf?”

  “What? No, of course not.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  Degan paced on in silence.

  “Dammit, Degan, I didn’t come down here for my health. I came to help.”

  “You came because Wolf has you over a barrel.”

  “Fuck Wolf and fuck his barrel. I came because of you. Because you deserve better than what you got from me. All Wolf did was show me there was a path; I’m the one who walked it.

  “Look, I’m not going to pretend that anything I do will make up for breaking my Oath—I know better. But that doesn’t mean I can’t try. And I’m going to, no matter if it involves saving the degans, or hiding you from them, or forcing them to take you back—I don’t care. That’s up to you. All I know is that I need to understand what’s going on if I’m going to help you. And I am going to help you.”

  Degan gave me a long, hard look. Then he studied his sword on my back. Then me again. Finally, he nodded.

  “Fine,” he said. “I know because I was there.”

  “Where?”

  “There when Ivory put his soul in his sword,” said Degan. “And again when Lucien made his vow. There when th
e rest of the Order swore to serve the empire, and through it, the emperor.” Degan gave a half-melancholy, half-rueful smile. “I was there when we all became degans.”

  “What?” I said, almost falling over my own feet as I stumbled to a halt. “But that would mean that you . . . that you’re . . .”

  “Two hundred and forty-two,” said Degan, doing the sums for me.

  “What?”

  “Will you stop yelling?” he said, tilting his head toward the gate. “We’re attracting enough attention as it is.”

  I didn’t resist as he led me past frowning guards and into the second ring of the Old City.

  “Two hundred and forty-two years?” I said once we were away from the gate.

  “Give or take. It all depends on which calendar you follow. I was born under the old Wystrian calendar, which has six fewer days per year than the imperial. By that reckoning, I’m—”

  “Two hundred and forty-two? But how the hell can you be—?”

  “The same way Ivory is as old as he is,” said Degan, his voice growing tight. “And Silver. And Copper. And Jade. The same way I knew Iron for over two centuries before I killed him. We all took the Oath with one hand on Ivory’s blade and the other on our own, binding our lives to service and steel.” He looked away. “Binding our souls.”

  “Your . . . ?” Of a sudden, the weight of his sword didn’t feel quite so comforting. “You mean your soul is in your blade?”

  Degan didn’t answer, but then he didn’t need to. The look on his face said enough.

  “And the rest of your Order?”

  “The same.”

  I shifted my shoulders, and in doing so, shifted the vessel that rode across my back. My stomach suddenly felt queasy. I jerked my thumb at the handle jutting up over my shoulder. “I don’t suppose . . . ?”

  “I told you before: I don’t want it. It’s not mine to wield anymore.”

  “But it’s your soul.”

  “It was given in service to the Order. I’m no longer of the Order. That means it’s no longer mine to claim.”

  My guts, which had been going cold, flared back to life.

  “Don’t be a fucking idiot,” I said.