Sworn in Steel

by Douglas Hulick

  “Oh, good. That puts me at ease.”

  Gold looked from us to Stone, and then smiled. “A fair point, brother. I stand admonished.” He gave a brief bow to Stone, then turned to his two companions. “Let’s take our ease while we wait for the rest, shall we?”

  The three went off to a corner, their heads together.

  “I take it that’s the opposition,” I said.

  “Something like that,” said Brass. “Gold’s been sensitive about degan blood ever since we lost Bone.”

  “Bone?” I said.

  “They were together,” said Degan. “Gold took his death hard. He promised to see any degan punished who followed in Ivory’s footsteps.”

  “Meaning you.”

  “Meaning me now, yes.” Degan let out a long sigh. “You should go,” he said.

  “Like hell.”

  “You have no standing here. No voice. Better you go before the rest arrive.”

  “I didn’t come all this way just to turn around and leave. I came here—”

  “I know why you came,” said Degan. “And I appreciate it. But if you stay, the least that will happen is that you get thrown out.”

  “‘The least’?” said Brass. “Come, now, Bronze, I don’t think—”

  “But I do,” snapped Degan. He took my by the arm and pulled me off to the side, away from everyone else. “Go.” It was almost a plea.

  “Why?”

  Degan’s eyes raced around the room. He leaned in closer. “Because no one outside the Order is supposed to know what you know. They won’t stand for anyone who’s not a degan being privy to our internal disagreements, let alone the emperor and the true nature of our service. If Gold or any of the rest realize how much you’ve found out . . .”

  “Are you saying they’ll kill me because I know too much?” I said. “That’s not exactly a new development for me, you know.”

  “Maybe, but not like this. Not with them. There won’t be any haggling or chatting or debating—they’ll just cut you down. It’s what we do. The time to go is now, when no one knows where you stand. Get out before things start, so the question remains unanswered.”

  “And your sword?” I said. “What do I do about that?”

  “Take it with you.”

  “What? But I thought—”

  “If they get my sword,” hissed Degan, “they can find out you’re still beholden to the Order. After everything else, I’d have you free of that—free of them. I took the Oath with you because of who you were, because of who you are, to me. They won’t understand that. To them, you’ll just be another tool to use, and I won’t have that. Take my sword and go.”

  I looked up at Degan and smiled. It was good to hear what I’d been hoping to hear. Worth all the miles to hear.

  Then I shook my head. “I can’t do that.”

  Degan’s jaw clenched. “I can’t let you stay.”

  “You can’t make me leave.”

  “Oh?” Degan turned, called to Stone. “Sergeant?”

  Stone turned his massive head. “Aye?”

  “This man isn’t a degan,” said Degan. “Escort him out, please.”

  I jerked my arm away from Degan’s grasp. “Like hell,” I said.

  “Come, now,” said Stone. His voice, I noticed, while normal for any other man, sounded small in his mouth. “Don’t make me work. The others can tell you I get ornery when I have to work.”

  I thought about dodging, about running, about trying to stave off the inevitable—but it was a room full of degans, with more on the way. What the hell was I going to do, fight them off?

  I sighed and let my shoulders droop. “You’re a son of a bitch,” I said to Degan.

  “And you’re welcome,” he said as I headed toward the doors, Stone at my back.

  Stone escorted me from the hall, down the long passage beyond, out to the entry to the keep. I stopped at the top of the stairs that led down to the main courtyard, blinking in the morning light. Stone stopped beside me.

  When he spoke, it was without preamble. “Gold tells me you killed Steel.”

  I froze.

  “Is that true?” he said.

  “I . . .”

  “Don’t lie, boy. I’ll know.”

  Had I? Technically, no: Aribah had performed the final deed, but it hadn’t been for lack of trying on my part. If it were up to me, he’d have died on Ivory’s sword and not a neyajin’s blade. But did it matter? And more important, was I going to quibble now, in the face of Wolf’s brother?

  “I had a hand in his dying,” I said.

  “Credit to you for telling the truth, then.” Stone grunted and cleared his throat. “I just want you to know, before things begin, that I don’t hold grudges when it comes to Wolf. Not anymore.”

  “If it matters, I didn’t—”

  “It doesn’t.” He cleared his throat again. “As much as he tried, I don’t think Wolf ever managed to place the Oath before himself. For that reason alone, he stopped being my brother a long time ago.” The degan looked down, showing me an uneven set of teeth. “I just thought you should know that.”

  “Thank you?” I said.

  “You’re welcome. Now, leave this place before I’m forced to kill you.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  I didn’t leave, of course—not really. Oh, I climbed aboard my mule and rode away from the fortress, but only until I was certain I was being neither followed nor watched. Then, being careful to avoid any degans that were still arriving, I put on Degan’s sword and circled around through the hills until I was able to come at the place from a different direction.

  It wasn’t easy. The fortress was situated on a bluff overlooking a narrow pass. It had been placed wonderfully in terms of defense, and there was no way I would have been able to approach it with an army even now and stand a chance of taking it against even a dozen degans. But there’s a difference between an army and a man on a mule, and besides, no one had been clearing brush or worrying about keeping sight lines open or the place defensible for a long time. It took a while, but I was able to find my mule and me—and then just me—enough goat paths and dried-up washes to make my way up to the wall and then through a gap, well away from the gate and the main courtyard.

  I’d been harboring a vague hope of somehow gaining the empty windows or some hole in the hall’s wall or roof to gain a view of the goings-on inside, but reality quickly put an end to those dreams. Without climbing gear, there was no way I could get to either, and even then I’d have risked being seen by Stone or another degan in the courtyard. Instead, I spent precious time scouting and skulking about the perimeter of the main building, trying to find a way either through or in. As luck would have it, every door seemed either to be locked or to open on a room or passage that led away from where I wanted to be.

  Finally, as I was passing through what might have once been a garden but was now an overgrown tangle, eyeing the side of a crumbling tower that stood almost close enough to the hall for a foolhardy jump, I heard them: voices. Just a trace, mind you, and lost on the wind as quickly as they’d been found, but I had the scent. After a bit of searching and listening, I found the source: a crack the width of my hand in the hall’s outer wall, put in place by a seed that had taken root in some fault in the masonry and become a Djanese maple over the years.

  The fault didn’t run straight, and it narrowed as it went in, but that didn’t matter. What I couldn’t see I could hear, and that was enough for the moment. I settled in against the rough, reddish brown trunk of the tree and put my ear to the gap.

  They were shouting. About what, I couldn’t tell, but there were enough voices to make it sound like a hollow buzz through the crack. Eventually, the buzz lessened and I heard Gold’s voice rise over the others, forcing them down by its sheer weight of authority.

  “While I don’t deny the importance of them,” said Gold, “I want to remind everyone why we’re here today. It isn’t to ooh and aah over Ivory’s blade and the laws Bronze has
brought back to us. That’s a noble gesture and an impressive feat to be sure, but their presence doesn’t change the fact that we have three swords on the table before us without owners, and one more hanging on the wall back in the Barracks House. If anything, those blades underscore the reason for this tribunal: four deaths in less than twice as many months, and all of them hovering around Bronze. That is why we’re here, brothers and sisters. Don’t forget that.”

  “The reason we’re here,” said Degan, his voice cutting through the air like the arc of a sword, “is because of the chasm that exists within the order. Everything else—the deaths, our lost laws, Ivory’s sword and what it holds—can all be traced back to that. Until we deal with the issue of our Oaths and how they relate to the emperor and the empire, what I did or didn’t do is minor by comparison.”

  “How convenient for you,” said Gold.

  “Convenient or not,” said Degan, “it’s true.”

  “Why should we even believe you?” Another voice, one I didn’t recognize. “Why are you even here, if not to buy our favor and bribe your way back into the fold?”

  “Because he’s come here to put himself at our mercy, is why.” Brass’s silky, easy tones were instantly recognizable. “Bronze brought back the swords and the laws. Who of us have tried to do one in the last century, let alone both? Who of us have done anything other than ignore the question that has plagued us since our founding? Who has settled for the status quo?”

  “I don’t dispute that Bronze brought the swords and the laws home,” said Gold, “but at what price? Where is Ivory? Where is Steel? Without them here, we have nothing but the word of the man on trial for their deaths.”

  “You have no cause to lay their deaths at Bronze’s feet.” This from a voice that sounded familiar but I couldn’t place. Someone who’d questioned me in Ildrecca about Iron? In any case, other voices rose in agreement. Still more rose against.

  “I have their steel before me,” shouted Gold, his words smothering the rest like a blanket. “What else do I need? Which of us would willingly give up their steel and still live? Oh, excuse me—which of us, save for Bronze?” A few laughs, but not many. “Are we to believe these swords didn’t come with a cost?”

  “Of course they did,” answered Brass. “But you can’t simply assume Bronze killed them because he’s alive. If so, why should he even bother to come back? Why not keep running? Or, if he’s the killer you say, why not keep hunting us? Why call the Order together and stand before us when he has so many other options?”

  “Fear.” The word fell from Gold’s lips like a weight, and the hall grew silent. “Fear of being hunted. Fear of being found. Fear of being judged by the sword rather than by his deeds. Fear, at last, of infamy. Our brother Bronze returned because he’d found more than he bargained for, more than he knew what to do with. Even an Oath-breaker and a killer can have his limits, and Ivory’s blade was Bronze’s, I think. When he held the whole of the Order in his hands, it was too much even for him: too much to act on, and too much to risk.” A pause. I could almost see Gold turning dramatically to face Degan as he said, “Am I right, brother? Was it fear that brought you back?”

  “Yes.”

  Even out here, I could hear the collective gasp within the hall.

  “You’re right,” continued Degan. “I came back because of fear. But not because I was afraid of being hunted or found or defamed. Not because I feared you or what Ivory’s sword represented. I came back because I was afraid for you, for the Order. I did what I did because, after I saw Iron lying on the ground, I knew that the Order was broken and that something needed to change.”

  “And you would be that change?” said Gold.

  “I would be part of it.”

  “And what kind of change would you bring, brother Bronze? A tide of blood and steel, as you say Steel would have wrought? Or would it come on the edge of Ivory’s sword, with the bindings it holds? How would you save us?”

  “Neither of those.”

  “Then what?”

  There was a long pause. Finally, when Degan spoke, I had to press my ear to the stone, straining to hear.

  “Steel wasn’t wrong, at least in part,” he began. “I didn’t realize that at first, but as I spent time on the road coming back, looking through some of the other books I took from Ivory’s library, I began to see his point. And Ivory’s.”

  A murmur through the crack that I couldn’t gauge. After a moment, it faded and Degan’s voice slid through again.

  “When you start something,” said Degan, “you have a picture in your head of how it will be. You build that image in your mind and you hold on to it, hard, because that’s your guide. But once that thing starts to become a reality, once you actually start to bring it into being, you realize it will never be that thing you saw in your dreams. You begin to see the flaws and the failures, the shortcomings and the mistakes; and try as you might, you can’t reconcile it all. Try as you might, the reality never shines as bright as its potential. It becomes disheartening. This perfect thing, you suddenly realize, will never be—can never be. Not as you dreamed it when you first began.

  “I think that’s what happened to Ivory, and to a lesser extent, to Steel. It’s what I think has haunted this Order from the beginning. We aren’t what we dreamed, and emperor or not, we never will be. But that doesn’t mean the dream has to go away. The thing we made is still here, waiting.

  “There are flaws in this Order, yes. They’ve been here since the beginning. In that sense, Steel was right—we need to start anew. But not with blood, and not with death. He would have torn us down past the foundations, started from scratch—but that ignores everything we’ve done up to now. Everything we’ve done right.

  “The main question for the Order is what to do about our Oath to preserve the empire. Wolf would have used the Oaths in Ivory’s sword to bind the emperor to us, to force him to redefine our service and our purpose. To make us what we were before the Oath. But we are all of us more than the White Sashes we once were.” Sounds of agreement.

  “Wolf’s mistake,” said Degan, “was thinking he could force us onto what he saw as the honorable path. But you can’t force someone to be honorable, just as you can’t buy it with a promise.”

  “And so what would you have us do?” This from Gold, not quite mocking, but not quite conciliatory, either. “Would you call on the emperor to decide? Would you use Ivory’s sword and the laws to push us one way or the other? Be our arbiter and guide on whichever road you choose to redemption?”

  “No. I’d choose a third path.”

  “And what is that?”

  Silence. Even the wind in the maple above me seemed to pause, waiting for the answer.

  “I don’t know,” Degan finally said. “But I—” But his words were drowned out by the shouting that erupted within the hall.

  It didn’t sound like the answer they were hoping for.

  After more yelling and what sounded like someone pounding on a table with the pommel of a sword, the room was called back into a semblance of order.

  “Well, this is enthralling,” said Gold after things had settled, “but it still doesn’t get us any closer to a solution for the matter at hand.”

  “And neither do your questions,” said Brass, nearly shouting. Her voice had the taint of desperation now, making me wonder what the mood was in the room. As used as I was to eavesdropping from my years as a Nose, it still didn’t help with the frustration I was feeling right now. Damn this crack for not being a window, anyhow. “Do you merely plan to cast aspersions on everything Bronze says?” said Brass. “Is that your plan? To color his every deed with doubt? Because if so, I’d remind everyone here that this is Bronze Degan we’re talking about. This is the man who—”

  “We all know what he’s done,” said Gold sourly. “And yes, since you ask, it is my intention to doubt everything about him precisely for the reasons you say: This is Bronze Degan. And because of that, we can offer him no quarter. He�
�d expect no less, am I right?” A majority of the room seemed to agree. “Our respect and admiration isn’t sufficient reason to pardon him, let alone welcome him back with open arms.”

  “Then what would you have him do?” said Brass, her patience clearly gone. “Would you have him summon up Steel or Silver and ask them how he came by their swords? Would you ask Ivory what Bronze did to get his hands on the sword and the laws? Because if it’s a village shaman you want, Gold, I can be back with one in two hours’ time.”

  Scattered laughter, but not enough. Not near enough. Brass and Degan were losing.

  “I appreciate the offer,” said Gold, “but I think I have an easier way.”

  “And what’s that?” said Degan.

  “I would have you answer a simple question,” said Gold. “One that cuts straight to the heart of the matter, and that speaks to everything that comes after. Nothing about Steel or the laws of Ivory—just one simple question.”

  “Again, what’s that?” said Degan.

  “Did you kill Iron Degan?”

  Crap.

  I was away from the tree and running in an instant. I didn’t need to have my ear to the crack to know what Degan’s answer would be, didn’t have to be paying attention to hear the roar that came tumbling out the hall’s windows as I raced through the garden and around toward the main doors, Degan’s blade slapping against my back.

  Of course Degan had answered honestly. Of course he said yes, because that’s who he was.

  And, damn Gold, of course he’d phrased the question in a way that didn’t allow Degan to explain the circumstances, or the fact that by fighting Iron he’d actually been keeping his Oath to me and, he thought, to the emperor. All the roomful of degans in there knew was that Bronze Degan had just admitted to killing one of their own. And, like him or not, there was only one response for that.

  Unless I could get in there and somehow make them listen to me. Or at least get Degan his sword, so he might have a chance. Either way, I wasn’t going to sit by and let everything come crashing down on his head.