Among Thieves: A Tale of the Kin

by Douglas Hulick

  I studied the sword and noticed for the first time that a faint teardrop had been etched into the blade, just between where Degan’s hand was holding it and where the steel met the guard. I looked back up at Degan.

  “I need you to help me settle things in Ten Ways,” I said. “No matter who is involved or what the outcome, I need you to stand beside and protect me. And I need you to tell me what you know about what’s going on down there, and help me find out whatever we may not know.” I paused a moment, then added, “Basically, I need you to cover my blinds and keep my best interests at heart. Again.”

  Degan clenched and unclenched his jaw a few times. “Is this all you require of me?” he said.

  I thought about it. There was plenty more I could add, but I was afraid the more specific I got, the more limited my options might become. Better to keep things loose and mutable, rather than locking myself into something I couldn’t amend later. “Yes,” I said, “that’s all I require of you.”

  Degan nodded. “Very well. I am willing to be so bound by my Oath as a degan to serve you, in faith as well as in deed. Are you willing to be bound likewise to my service, whenever I should request it and for whatever reason, unable to refuse or evade me? And will you honor this Oath with my brethren, should I perish before I am able to reclaim my payment?”

  Visions of Iron Degan calling in my marker, a toothy grin on his broad face, ran through my mind. “You’d better not die,” I said to Degan. A small smile flickered onto his face, then vanished. “Yes, I’m willing to be bound by all that,” I said.

  Degan nodded curtly. “Since the first days of the degans, through to the present, and until our Order is broken and its members turned to dust, so will it be. As I am bound to your service, so are you bound to mine. My sword stands as a symbol of this covenant.”

  With that, he turned the sword in his hand so the point was facing up, brought it to his lips, and kissed the steel. Then he held it out to me. I followed suit. The metal was cool on my lips and tasted of oil.

  “So be it,” said Degan. He wiped his blade on a sleeve and sheathed it.

  We stood in silence.

  “That’s it?” I said at last.

  “That’s it,” said Degan.

  “No clap of thunder, no lightning, no wailing spirits in the shadows? After all you told me, I expected something a little more dramatic.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you. Next time I’ll hire a Mouth to fill the streets with fog and glowing lights.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “There won’t be a next time.”

  “There usually isn’t,” said Degan.

  I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand to remove the last lingering hints of honing oil. “So?” I said.

  Degan turned and resumed walking down the alley, this time slowly. I fell in beside him.

  “Iron Degan,” he said, letting the name hang on the air for several paces. “He’s proud. As a man, as a degan. He doesn’t exactly cozen to the idea of some members of the Order selling their swords for coin, rather than solely for the Oath. It’s something most of us have done at one point or another—you have to live, after all, and coin tends to spend better than reputation in the long run. But, except for one or two occasions, my brothers and sisters have been able to keep the distinction between paid work and the Oath separate.”

  “ ‘One or two occasions’?” I said.

  Degan glanced down at my rapier. “Funny,” he said. “That doesn’t look like a degan’s sword in your scabbard.”

  I chuckled. “Right,” I said. “Mind my own damn business. So what would Iron Degan have the Order do?”

  “Find a cause and fight for it. Serve a worthy master or mistress. Hold ourselves above petty squabbles and enforcement-for-hire. Iron had his share of clan wars and slaughter-for-profit when he was growing up; he wants to put that behind him. He’d rather serve the goal than the man.”

  “So he’s seeking a higher road?”

  “As much as anyone can who fights and kills for a living.”

  “Which means he’s sworn himself to an idea or a cause, and not just a person, in Ten Ways.”

  Degan shrugged. “It’s Iron. He’s given the Oath to someone he believes in. That person either is the cause for him, or his link to it. But whoever that is, they aren’t a run-of-the-mill Kin, or even a promising Upright Man. As I said, Iron is proud, and as a degan, he wouldn’t let himself serve a minor cause. Whoever he’s sworn to, it’s no small player.”

  “Bigger than an Upright Man?” I said.

  We stopped short of where the Cloisters let out onto Plank Street, keeping to the shadows for a little longer. Ahead of us, the street was filling up with morning light and foot traffic.

  “That’s my guess,” said Degan.

  I leaned back against the alley wall, feeling the sudden need for support. “Degan,” I said, “are you telling me we’re up against a Gray Prince in Ten Ways? A fucking Gray Prince?”

  Degan kept his eyes locked on the street as he said, “Now you understand why I wanted you to walk away.”

  I barely heard him. I was too busy contemplating the wall behind my head, wondering how hard, and how many times, I would need to bash my skull against it to make this all go away. No more than five, I decided—maybe six to be safe.

  Go up against one of the Princes of the Kin? People talked about them in whispers, spoke about them as legends more than as flesh and blood. How the hell do you take on a legend? Even an Upright Man like Nicco knew better than to cross that line. And here was Degan, who seemed to have figured all of this out before me, agreeing to do it, anyhow—no, not just agreeing, but taking an Oath on it. My friend was insane.

  But then what did that make me? Degan had been telling me to walk away, to let it go; yet my gut still told me to follow it through. Why?

  Because of the Dark King; because if whoever was backing Iron Degan got his way, he’d bring the empire down on us all over again. I didn’t want to have to face the empire, to choose between fighting or hiding, to have to look over my shoulder for White Sashes for the next five years or give up the Kin life altogether.

  And, ultimately, because I was a Nose, I wanted to know what the hell was going on, who was trying to play me, and make them pay. If the empire stepped in, that might never happen.

  “Any idea which Prince it might be?” I said. I thought back to the sewers. “Was it the woman we heard with him in Ten Ways?”

  “I don’t know,” said Degan. “Maybe, but that could just as easily have been a lieutenant. Gray Princes don’t usually run on raids from what I hear. But I do have a few avenues I can follow, now that I’m committed to the matter.”

  There was a resigned note to Degan’s voice. I suspected he was going to tap his resources within his Order, to pry into his fellow degan’s business.

  I knew how he felt; as a Nose, I couldn’t help but know. But as a Nose, I also knew that no amount of sympathy or comment on my part would make a difference. So I held my peace and instead pushed myself away from the alley wall.

  “Good hunting,” I said.

  “What about you?” said Degan.

  I looked out on Plank Street again. More people, more light, shorter shadows; it was well into morning.

  “I have to go see if I can keep my boss from being drawn into a war he can’t win,” I said.

  “Good luck with that,” said Degan drily. I shrugged and headed deeper into the Cloisters. Degan stayed where he was for a moment, then walked in the opposite direction, out onto Plank Street.

  A few blocks later, I found a Dancer’s Ladder—a collection of crates and refuse arranged to look like a random pile of garbage. In truth, there were hidden handholds and carefully arranged supports among the debris to allow for a quick ascent to the arches and roofs above. Even with the ladder, though, it wasn’t easy—between the fall down the stairs and the deep bruises and muscle knots Tamas’s rope had caused, I wasn’t moving as easily as I’d like. Every reach and pull and pus
h burned in a different part of my body. When I got to the top, I was gasping.

  At least the air up here was still heavy with the smells of the sea that surrounded the city on three sides. As the day wore on, it would be replaced by smoke and dust, but, for now, I took a deep breath and reveled in its freshness. Overhead, the sky was a deep blue, with only the slightest smudge of gray far to the west—rain, but whether it would make it here or not was another matter. The sea had a habit of fighting with the land when it came to who ruled the skies over Ildrecca.

  I yawned and slipped another two ahrami into my mouth. They helped, but only just. I could feel the last several days looming behind me, waiting to pounce. Yesterday’s sleep had helped, but that was almost eighteen hours gone. I glanced off in the direction of Stone Arch and my home, then turned away.

  One more thing, I promised myself. One more errand, and then I could sleep.

  I made it across the Dancer’s Highway more out of habit than out of conscious effort. Peaks and gutters and roof gardens passed in a blur, and before I was fully aware of it, I was scrambling down a drain pipe into a back alley in Silver Disc cordon. I was sweaty, tired, and more than a little ready to say to hell with it. Except I knew I couldn’t.

  I wended my way to a scarred green door on a nondescript street, halfway between a sleepy neighborhood tavern on one end and a cordwainer’s shop on the other. I knocked.

  The door opened partway. A large hard-faced man looked out from the other side, his body blocking the entrance. He looked at me, and his eyes went wide.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he asked.

  “Nice to see you, too, Ios,” I said, pushing past him. “Now, do me a favor and run and tell Kells I need to see him immediately.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “We’ve got trouble,” I told my boss. “Big trouble.”

  “I suspected as much,” said Kells. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have come.”

  We were in Kells’s study, a small tidy place in a small tidy building. The floors and walls and furniture were polished wood, accented by several fine tapestries. But what really grabbed your attention was the stone: marble and granite, soapstone and pumice. It was everywhere, in every shape—statues, vases, balls, and bowls, even the finely wrought fireplace—all of it done by Kells, apprentice stonemason turned crime lord.

  “There’s a war brewing in Ten Ways,” I said.

  Kells nodded but otherwise didn’t react. He still looked more like a laborer than a crime lord. With his bald pate, heavy white mustache and brows, and sleeves rolled up past his thick forearms, he seemed more inclined to haggle over prices than order someone’s death. I’d seen him do both, and more—the man had vaulted garden walls I could barely scramble over—but mostly, he was content to sit back, look simpler than he was, and spin his webs.

  “You know?” I said.

  “I can read the signs as well as the next man.”

  “And?”

  “The next move is Nicco’s.” Kells ran his hand over the granite owl set in the mantel. It had been carved to appear as if it were flying out of the stone of the fireplace itself. If I looked closely, I knew, I would be able to make out individual feathers. “If Nicco wants to keep pushing in Ten Ways,” said Kells, “that’s his choice. But I’m not going to sit by and take it, and neither are some of the other Uprights. Blue Cloak Rhys is almost ready to go after Nicco on his own; same for Shy Meg. They both want me to wade in, and frankly, I’m tempted.” Kells brushed his hand off on his shirt and glared. “If he sends even one more crew into my territory, I—”

  “Wait a moment,” I said. “You’re saying Nicco’s been moving against you in Ten Ways?”

  “For more than two months,” he said. “Nicco’s been working through intermediaries, but the trail always leads back to him.” Kells’s bushy brows drew together. “Why? What have you heard?”

  “The same thing you’re saying, only from Nicco’s end—that you’ve been using locals to muscle in on some of his action, as well as other parts of the cordon.” Even Rambles had sounded as if he thought Kells was behind the push against Nicco. Nor, I realized, had Ironius dissuaded him from that notion.

  Ironius. And his Gray Prince. Shit.

  “Has Nicco been moving against me?” said Kells.

  “Until recently? No. Now, though . . .”

  Kells flexed his fingers, made a fist, then let it go. “We’re being played, aren’t we?”

  “Like a tin whistle,” I said. “You and the whole damn cordon.”

  “Why?”

  I grinned wryly. “Because Kin wars make people nervous,” I said, remembering what Ironius had said. “Because sometimes, they even make them desperate.”

  “How desperate?”

  “Desperate enough to consider the unthinkable.”

  “The unthinkable,” muttered Kells. Then he looked at me and seemed to see me for the first time. “Sit,” he said. “You look ready to fall over.”

  I did as he said, turning the chair around so I could lean forward onto its back. It felt wonderful. Kells stepped out of the room briefly, then came back in to take up his place before the fireplace again. “Food and wine are on the way,” he said. “In the meantime . . .” He handed me a cup of water.

  “The unthinkable,” repeated Kells as I drank. “I take it you mean more than forming simple alliances, like the one I was just talking about?”

  “That may be part of it,” I said. “But I think there’s more.”

  “Such as?”

  “What happens if you and Nicco go to war in Ten Ways?”

  I could almost hear the pieces clicking together in his head: War leading to instability leading to a power vacuum leading to opportunity.

  “A new Upright Man takes control of Ten Ways and kicks us all out,” he said. “He just has to wait until everyone else is reeling, then step in and do a cleanup.”

  “She,” I said. “She has to wait and clean up. Except there’s more to it than that.”

  Kells raised an eyebrow. “You mean make a push into our territories afterward? This woman doesn’t think small, does she?”

  “You have no idea,” I said. I set my cup down and met Kells’s eyes over the back of the chair. “She’s eyeing all of Ildrecca. The whole thing.”

  “You mean like Isidore?” said Kells. He snorted. “Well, in that case, I don’t think we have anything to—”

  “It’s a Prince,” I said. “There’s a Gray Prince’s hand over all of this: Ten Ways, Ildrecca, the whole thing. At least, I think there is.”

  Kells put his own hand out toward the owl, missed, and would have stumbled into the fireplace if he hadn’t caught the edge of the opening with his other hand. As he straightened up, he ran that hand over his mustache, leaving a smudge of soot in the thick whiteness.

  “That . . . changes things,” he said. There was the slightest quaver in his voice. Kells pulled the chair from behind his desk over to the fireplace and sat down across from me.

  “Do you have any idea which Prince?” he asked.

  “I’m working on it,” I said.

  “Tell me everything,” he said. “From the beginning.”

  So I did—everything, that is, except my Oath with Degan. I wasn’t sure yet where my duty to Kells left off and the Oath began. Given a little time, and plenty of sleep, I probably could have reasoned it out, but I wasn’t trusting my judgment on the finer points right now. Kells didn’t push in any case—he was too busy working through the ramifications of everything else I told him.

  “It fits,” he said. “Damn it, but it fits. Nicco and I are the perfect foils for this. He’s been itching to come after me for years, and I’m sure as hell not about to back down if he pushes the matter. There’s too much history for either of us to step away. And while we pound away at each other, whoever is behind this can sit back and gather their strength.” He shook his head. “Damn sneaky, conniving Princes.”

  “There’s one thing that bother
s me, though,” I said.

  Kells chuckled. “I wish my list were that short, but all right, my ‘optimistic’ Long Nose—what’s your one thorn?”

  “The empire,” I said. “Do you honestly think Markino is going to keep his hand, and his troops, out of this if the war gets as big as we think it will?”

  Kells sat back and stroked his mustache, spreading the dark spot wider within it. “I think,” he said slowly, “that whoever hatched this has already factored in the empire in some way. I can’t see how—I certainly wouldn’t want to try to play the emperor, especially Markino. He’s getting older, which means he’s liable to be a bit less . . . understanding.”

  I snorted. That was putting it mildly. As each incarnation of the emperor got older, he went a little bit crazy. Paranoia, mania, and unusual obsessions weren’t uncommon in the final years of the imperial life, but they were usually mild and kept within the Imperial cordon—or so the popular stories went. However, if Markino got wind of the Kin trying to play him, and he was in a vindictive, obsessive mood . . . I shuddered.

  “The point is,” said Kells, “you don’t go to these lengths and forget about something like that. No, we may not see how the empire fits in, but I expect it has its place as well.”

  “We can’t let it get to that point,” I said. “We need to keep the war in Ten Ways from happening.”

  “Possibly,” said Kells.

  “ ‘Possibly’?” I said. “Didn’t you hear what I just said? Kin war. Gray Prince. Targeting you—targeting us!”

  Kells stared at me coolly. “I heard you, Drothe, but I think you need to remember something: I’m not Nicco. I don’t jump at the first hint of smoke. Something like this can run in any number of directions, and I don’t want to end up going down a blind alley because I didn’t stop to think first.

  “Yes, keeping this war from happening would be the best course of action, but it may not be possible. We’re talking about Nicco here. He may not listen to reason, and he certainly won’t listen to it from me. If he decides I’m behind what’s happening in Ten Ways, he’ll see it as a personal attack and come at me with both fists cocked. And I won’t back down from him, even if this is all a setup. I still have my organization and my people to think about.”