Sworn in Steel (29 page)

Ever since Fowler had come back to work for me, things had been . . . different. Before, when I’d just been a Nose and she, the person who watched over my apartments, it had been easy:
Easy to talk, easy to spend time with one another, easy to fall in bed together every now and again. But that had changed when she’d learned I’d spent the past seven years lying to her
about who I had actually worked for—who, in some sense, I actually was. As a Long Nose, there had been no way for me to tell her that I worked for Kells and not Nicco, but that justification
hadn’t lessened her sense of betrayal any. Nor would I have expected it to.

So I hadn’t been surprised when she’d walked away. Even when I’d been named a Gray Prince, she hadn’t returned. And then, a month later, she was suddenly back. One day,
Broken Daniel was covering my blinders; the next, Fowler was back on the rooftops, her people watching my home. She never explained why she’d come back, and I’d never pushed, just as
I’d never asked what had passed between her and Broken Daniel. Sometimes, it’s simply better not to ask.

But ever since, there had been . . . not a distance, but a guardedness to her. I still trusted Fowler with my life—more so than anyone, now that Degan was gone—and while we still
slipped into old habits now and then, it was clear a line had been drawn in her head when it came to me. Some aspects of that line were obvious, others, less so.

This, it seemed, was one of the less obvious times.

“Any luck finding us some Crows?” I said as I stood beside her and scanned the nearby roofs.

Fowler let out a small laugh. “Hardly.”

“Oh?” It wasn’t like Fowler to be unable to find people to stand watch over a ken, even in a place like el-Qaddice. If anyone could find willing, worthy eyes, it was her. I
pulled up a chair. “Tell me.”

“The Kin around here don’t make sense.”

“How so?”

“I’m used to Kin being careful,” she said. “Being cagey. Used to their standing half a step back when you talk to them, especially if they don’t know you. I can
understand that. But here?” She made a dismissive gesture toward the world beyond the window. “It’s more than that. They’re nervous. No one wants to hire on to stand watch
without checking with someone else first. It’s like they’re all looking at their shadows, afraid that something’s going to jump out at them. Everyone’s so afraid of stepping
wrong, no one’s willing to lift up their feet.”

“It’s the
Zakur
,” I said. “They’ve got a lock on the district—more so than you’d expect. More than the Kin have on the Raffa Na’Ir
district back in Ildrecca, even.” I leaned back against my chair. My back cracked. It felt damn good. “I just wish I knew why their pull is so damn strong.”

“It’s the glimmer,” said Fowler.

“The what?”

“The glimmer. They control it.”

“How do you mean?”

“Remember how Heron went on about those carvings on the walls when we arrived?”

“You mean the Plague of the Paragons? When the empire sent the magical sickness?”

Fowler nodded impatiently. “Right, that. Well, it turns out not only did the despot decide to wall off the Imperial Quarter from the rest of the city; he also barred any kind of magic from
the empire coming into el-Qaddice. And I’m not just talking portable glimmer here—I mean Mouths, too. Anyone who can speak a spell or mumble a charm. Getting caught with even a scrap of
imperial spellcraft in this city gets you an immediate, irrevocable visit to the despot’s deepest dungeon.”

“Which means,” I said, spinning the consequences out in my head, “the Kin in this city don’t have access to glimmer.”

“Oh, we can get it, all right,” said Fowler, “as long at it’s Djanese in origin and we’re willing to pay the
Zakur
for the privilege.”

I collapsed back into my chair. That would do it, all right. It wasn’t that we, as Kin, were used to having easy access to magic—it was still rare and pricey in the Empire as
well—but it was at least an option. The Kin were central to the illegal glimmer trade back home, which meant that we could get it when we needed it. But here, in a city where they made dust
cyclones dance in the street and summoned rainbows out of the air? Working a dodge without glimmer here would be like trying to take part in an alley fight without a weapon—you could still
come out of it in one piece, sure, but that steel in your hand sure made the odds better.

A thought occurred.

“You can’t tell me someone hasn’t tried to sneak some Mouths in here over the years?” I said. “Especially Kin.”

“Of course they have,” said Fowler. “And from what I hear, the despot’s magi have even eased up on the punishment for it. They used to keep the offender alive for a week
while they let magical fires cosume their body; now they only draw it our for three days.”

Shit. No wonder Fat Chair had sought me out so soon after my arrival. He wasn’t worried about me smuggling in a single piece of glimmer in; he was worried I was going to try and set up
permanent shop. That I was going to step in and start supplying the Imperial Quarter with mages or magic—or both—and try to take over the district. Or more.

And all because I was a Gray Prince. Because everyone knew that a Gray Prince wouldn’t come to a place like el-Qaddice in person unless he a good reason. Unless he had plans.

Dammit.

“How did I not hear about this?” I said, pushing myself away from the table so I could stand. And pace. “I just spent the last day and a half working the damn street. How did I
miss it?”

Fowler stayed put in the window. “What were you looking for?” she said.

“Degan, of course.”

“Well, there you go, then: You had no reason to ask.”

“And you did?”

“I saw what they do on the streets for fun while we were walking to the inn from the padishah’s. I figured if I wanted to have any chance of sewing this ken up, I’d need to get
my hands on at least a couple glimmer-mongers, if not a proper Mouth. Only I couldn’t find any.” Fowler tapped the knife at her side. “It wasn’t until I started digging that
people began to tell me the hows and whys of it.”

I nodded. Kin or no, that wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to share with some brand-new cove on the street. Weaknesses are embarrassing, no matter whose fault they are.

“If that’s the case with the glimmer,” I said, “then we may have a bigger problem than I first thought.”

“How so?”

I took a step closer, then thought better of it and moved to put the chair between me and her.

I told her about Fat Chair.

“And you told him to go to hell?” she practically shouted once I was done.

“I thought he was a local boss flexing his muscle, trying to brush me back on some smuggling,” I said. “How was I supposed to know he had a lock on all the glimmer in the
Imperial Quarter?”

“Fuck,” said Fowler. She looked out the window, then back at me, then back out the window again. “Fuck, fuck,
fuck
! Do you know how hard it just got for me to secure
this place? How hard it’s going to be to recruit any kind of Crows now? Once word gets out that this bastard is after you, no one’s going to want to take our coin. I’m going to
have to skip over any likely Kin or
Zakur
I may have had my eye on and go straight to the street urchins and the outcasts.” She kicked the chair at me. “Fucking
brilliant.”

I sidestepped the chair. “We still may have one angle,” I said.

“Oh, and what’s that?” said Fowler. She jerked her chin toward the troupe. “You going to sonnet the
Zakur
to death?”

I tapped my doublet, where Jelem’s packet had been carefully restitched between layers of lining. “There’s still the
yazani
from the cellar.”

Fowler sat up. “You mean Raaz?” She began to pat at her own doublet. “Shit. He was here looking for you earlier. I almost forgot. Said he needed to talk to you.”

“I’ll bet he did.” Between the shadow magics and the yazani, he and his master had to be worried about whatever it was Jelem had hidden in those papers. My guess was that it
was worth more than the price of getting us into the Old City—and if it wasn’t, I was going to make it so. “Where did he say I could find him?”

“He didn’t.”

“Well, then, how am I—?”

“Ah, here it is.” Fowler pulled a thin strip of dark fabric from beneath her waistband. The cloth was roughly the length of her little finger and half as wide. She held it up between
us. “He said to burn this when you were ready to talk to him.”

I reached out and took it gingerly between finger and thumb. It felt tacky and stiff, as if it had been dipped in resin or tar and left to dry. “Burn it?”

Fowler nodded.

“And then what?” I said.

Fowler shrugged.

I sighed. Sleep would have to wait. “Go get me a candle, will you?”

“Hey, Flora!” yelled Fowler. “Go get us a candle, will you?”

The girl straightening the common room dipped her head and hurried off.

I glared at Fowler and rubbed my ear. She smiled beatifically back.

“Mistress,” said Flora as she hurried back into the room, her hand cupped around a burning taper. She set it on the table, bobbed another half bow, and left.

“What the hell did you do to her?” I asked as the girl scuttled away, glancing over her shoulder at the Oak Mistress.

“Nothing. Just told her older brother that if he pushes her around again, I’d snap off his cock and feed it to him with a side of hummus.” Fowler winked. “Think she has a
crush on me now.”

I sighed and took a seat at the table. The taper’s flame flickered and wavered, giving off a oily, dirty smoke. I held up Raaz’s scrap, hesitated, then cautiously touched fabric to
flame.

If I’d been expecting an explosion or a clap of thunder, I would have been sorely disappointed. All that happened was a hiss and a sputter as the fabric reluctantly caught fire. I held it
for a moment, then set it on the table. The flame crept slowly up the length of the scrap.

I was about to ask Fowler what we were supposed to do next when I noticed the smoke from the cloth wasn’t behaving the way it should. Rather than wafting upward and spreading into a wider
ribbon before dissipating, the pale line instead rippled and turned back on itself, bending to and fro, in arcs and lines, before finally resuming its journey ceilingward. It wasn’t until the
fabric was half-gone that I was able to discern the face hanging before me in the air like an empty carnival mask, its features sketched in smoke.

The face it depicted was, not surprisingly, Raaz’s.

“Ah, you got my message,” said the mask. Or, rather, wrote, since each word came out its mouth as a gray bit of imperial cephta, drifting on the air between us before van-ishing.
“We need to speak. Can you come now?”

I waited until the last symbol drifted away and then said, “Um, yes?” There was less than a quarter of the fabric left on the table.

“Excellent. Come to the old temple to the Family in the Blessed Sky District in the third ring. Repeat it.”

“Temple to the Family in Blessed Sky, third ring.”

“What the hell is going on?” whispered Fowler, leaning forward until her face almost passed though Razz’s. “Who are you talking—?”

“Hsst!” I said, waving her away. The breeze from my hand caused Raaz’s face to shiver and distort briefly. He didn’t seem to mind.

“Good. I’ll be waiting,” he smoke-said. Then his face broke apart and drifted away.

I looked down at the table. The piece of fabric was nothing more than a charred line on its surface.

“What happened?” said Fowler, still leaning forward. “Was it Raaz? What did he say?”

“What did you see?”

Fowler sat back and blinked. “You sitting there muttering to a stream of smoke. I couldn’t even hear what you were saying, you were talking so low. Why, what did you see?”

I brushed the line of char away and stood. “Pretty much the same. Come on.”

Fowler scowled at my answer but didn’t argue. “Where are we going?” she said as she rose.

“To see how the other half prays, it seems.”

We found the temple easy enough. Raaz, though, was another matter.

It was an impressive place, and not what I had been expecting. Back in Ildrecca, the Empire went for vast and intimidating: vaulted ceilings, vast arches, mosaics and paintings four and five
times the height of a man, all designed to make the petitioner feel both pious and penitent. What with the emperor being the direct intermediary between his subjects and the Angels, religion ran
part and parcel with the state. Loyalty was one of the main businesses of the churches in the empire.

By contrast, the business of the temples in Djan, or at least this one, seemed to be . . . well, everything.

The place itself was a large rectangle, open to the heavens, bordered on all sides by more pillared arcades. Out in the middle, under the brilliant blue sky, a series of winding gravel paths
wandered across a patchwork of trimmed lawns and small open areas. Men and women moved about on these paths, walking and talking, arguing and laughing, reading and contemplating. Almost as an
afterthought, I saw people kneeling on prayer rugs as well, facing different directions as they bowed and prayed to one of the many images depicted on the back walls of the arcade.

There was more praying going on in the shade in front of the murals. Each had been painted with a likeness of one of the members of the divine family and then decorated with various symbols and
precious metals associated with each god—gold and rubies for Ahreesh, jade and lavender for A’wella, black silk and ashes for The Banished One, and so on—but there were other
things going on there as well. Scholars sat conducting lessons with their students while water hawkers and rug menders called out their services, and beggars silently held out bowls, hoping for a
share of the alms all Djanese were expected to donate every month. Off to one side, a young man was making an elaborate show of kneeling before a young woman and reciting poetry. I could hear her
laughter from here.

“It’s more like a bazaar than a temple,” said Fowler. She laughed. “I like it!”