Sworn in Steel (50 page)

“No!”
The word exploded from Aribah’s throat as she stepped into the glow of the djinni’s rope. No, not stepped—stalked—her mother’s dagger in
her hand and a hard set to her jaw. Streaks of skin were just visible beneath her eyes, the dye washed thin by the tears rolling down her cheeks.

I’d never been so happy to see an assassin in my life.

“No,” she repeated. “We are
neyajin
. We don’t make deals with the things we hunt. We don’t bargain with the things we kill. We don’t accept rewards
from . . .” She gestured at the cloud. “
Them.
We are
neyajin
.”

“We are
shadows
,” snapped the old man. “Shadows of what we used to be, and pale reflections of what we might become. Think, Aribah. Think what this will mean for our
clan, for our school. For us. One small bargain, on small infraction, and we begin our climb back into the light.”

“But you yourself said we belong to the shadows, not the light.”

He made an impatient gesture. “You know what I mean, girl.”

Aribah looked at her grandfather, looked at the rope, looked at the cloud with its burning, merry eyes. The only one she didn’t look at was me, but I wasn’t part of the equation at
this point anyhow—not really. She bit her lip.

“It’s not
neyajin,
” she said at last.

“Enough! You forget your place.
I
determine what is and is not
neyajin
, what serves the school and the clan, not you. After we have the dark sight, after we are respected
and feared as in the days of old, you have my permission to come to me and argue about what is or is not
neyajin
, but until then, your place is to obey. And you
will
obey.”

Aribah’s head snapped back as if she’d been struck. She took a breath, squared her shoulders, and stepped forward.

Fiery laughter sounded in my head.

“That’s not my truth,” she said.

“What?” Her grandfather peered at her in the night. “‘Your truth’? What does that mean? What do you know about truth?”

“I know that it doesn’t involve working with djinn. Or . . .” She rubbed her thumb over her mother’s ring. “Or obeying you. Not when it comes to this. Not
anymore.”

His eyebrows crawled so far up his head, I expected them to come squirming out the back of his kaffiyeh. “You disobey me? Again?”

“I . . . disagree with you.”

I more than half-expected him to hit her right then. Instead, he made a fist with his free hand and turned away.

“Go,” he said. “Leave me. I disown you and all you do. You are
neyajin
no more.”

Aribah’s eyes went wide. She raised a hand and took a step toward him, then stopped. “Grandfather,” she said. “Listen to me. Please. These things you bargain with, that
you accept payment from—they’re the same spirits we’ve been fighting for generations. The leopard doesn’t allow the fox to buy its freedom, and we don’t spare the
djinn. Do you think the creature that killed your daughter offered her the chance to buy her life? That it asked my mother if she would like to make a bargain? No. It killed her and stuck
her—”

The old man spun around. “You think I don’t know that?” he cried. “That I didn’t consider it? That I didn’t sit up nights, wondering and weighing?” He
reached up and wiped at his face with the back of his sword hand. “The djinn took her, yes. But we need what this one has to offer, to make the
neyajin
strong again. To be proud
again.”

“But at what cost? The cost of her memory? Of her honor?”

“She would have understood!”

Aribah’s head came up, the rest of her straightening with it, until she was staring her grandfather in the eye. “No,” she said. “No, she wouldn’t. She would have
told you you were wrong.”

The elder
neyajin
considered her for a long, cold moment. When he spoke, his words were ice in the middle of the desert. “Leave her ring and her dagger, leave your robes and your
name. You don’t deserve to carry any trace of what you once were.” He showed her his back again. Then, almost under his breath, he added, “And you don’t deserve to have been
born her daughter.”

It was the wrong thing to say.

When she struck, it wasn’t with a yell of rage or a scream of defiance: It was with cold and silent efficiency. One step, two, and then she was in the air, her dagger
raised, its edge trailing smoke or shadows or whatever the hell they were behind her.

Still, her grandfather hadn’t earned his Black Cord for nothing. He was already dodging, already spinning and raising his sword to counterthrust when she landed where he’d been
standing.

Only, that wasn’t where Aribah had been aiming. Instead, she landed a good three feet away, gathered herself on the turf, and sprang into the air again, her dagger overhead.

When she slashed through the burning rope, three things happened at once. First, the djinni screamed. Second, her grandfather cursed. And third, I started to cheer, but was interrupted by my
falling out of the air.

By the time I recovered from my awkward landing and had rolled onto my back, the flames were gone and the cloud that had been the djinni was already dissipating. I thought I caught the final
hints of some smoky mutterings on the wind, but couldn’t be sure because of the sounds of combat that were now filling the grove. I scrambled to my knees and then into a crouch, only
remembering at the last moment that my sword and dagger were lying somewhere on the ground.

I scanned the darkness, thanking the Angels that my night vision seemed to be back to normal again. No more polished gold and brilliant rubies glinting in the night for me—now it was all
blacks and blood and dirty brass. Which was just fine.

The only problem was, I was looking for two people who were all but invisible to me. The sound told me roughly where they were, but—ah, there: a flash of uncovered chin, a hint of oily red
cloak, a dulled gold glimmer of steel. Not a clear picture of the fight, let alone the combatants by any means, but I at least had a better fix on them.

Now, what the hell was I going to do about it?

I reached down into my boot and drew the long knife I kept there. Then I moved forward, listening as much as looking for my prey.

Grunting and grasping. The dull thump of feet on grass, of flesh on flesh. They’d moved past blade work, into the realm of punches and holds and trips. Not surprising, really: There was so
much anger there, so much fury, that I don’t think mere steel could have sufficed. It was down to raw things now: blood and bone, teeth and sweat.

Love had fallen off the knife’s edge, leaving hate’s well-honed blade unimpeded.

Then I saw them a dozen steps away. A mass of half-seen shadows, shifting and straining, both against each other and in and out of my vision. Someone had someone else down, holding fast while
the other bucked against them.

I rushed forward. Either the old man was on top, which gave me his back, or he was on the ground, which meant I had time to angle for the kill. I just hoped I’d have time to tell who was
who before the question became moot.

I was maybe five feet away when the figure on top jerked up, rammed what I guessed to be a hand down onto the other assassin’s exposed, stain-free and visible throat, and then tumbled away
and into the darkness. That gave me a good idea of who had been who. It was confirmed when I found Aribah lying on the ground, half-conscious and gagging for breath.

“Easy,” I whispered, crouching down beside her. “I think—
urk!
”

The old man had moved fast. Where I thought he might have moved off to regroup, or was just putting some distance between himself and two opponents, he’d circled around and come up behind
me—all in the space of a handful of breaths. Now he drew the garrote tighter about my neck.

I gagged. My boot knife fell away in the surprise of his attack. Instead, I clawed with my fingers at the cord, at his arms, at the ground, trying to establish some sort of hold, some sort of
grip on the world around me. All I succeeded in doing was getting dirt under my nails.

He jerked back on the garrote, pulling me away from Aribah. I staggered a pace or two, then fell to one knee. He stayed with me the entire time.

“Not to worry,” he hissed in my ear. “I still need you alive, Imperial. You’re just going to sleep for a bit, is all.” Another tug on the line. “Can’t
be having you interfering in family business.”

I would have said it was like having a line of fire across my throat, but I knew from firsthand experience what that felt like now. This wasn’t that. This was sheer pain and panic—a
sensation that there was something wedged in my throat, and if only I could get it out, I could breathe again. A desperate need, not to end the pain, but to simply pull air into my lungs.

The garrote was too tight to get a finger under, let alone a hand. I reached back and over, feeling his cloth and skin and stubble behind me. I raked and pulled with my nails, came away with his
kaffiyeh, threw it aside, tried again. He drew his head back, held me at arm’s length, and leaned a knee into my back.

I looked frantically at Aribah. The moonlight was shining down through the leaves, painting her in the amber of my sight, shimmering on her face even as it cast a bloodred shadow beneath her.
She was on her side now, hands at her throat, drawing a ragged, desperate breath.

Her eyes met mine, and we both knew: She wouldn’t recover in time. Not even close. Her grandfather would strangle me into unconsciouness, possibly kill her, and then cart me off to
whatever cellar best suited him to renegotiate his deal with the djinni.

And yet Aribah shifted. She moved on the ground, reaching out, clawing at the dirt—no, clawing
in
the dirt, for something. For, I saw as she lifted it and tossed it my way, a
shadow-edged blade.

I didn’t catch it, didn’t even come close, but I did manage to jerk my body enough that I was able to fall over, the nearly deadweight that was me pulling the old assassin after. I
flung my arm out, feeling for what I couldn’t see.

A ring of black had formed at the edge of my vision and was working its way in. All I could make out was the grass before me, the tops of tree roots just cresting the surface of the ground. I
blinked, but the circle only got bigger. Sparks fired in my vision. My head felt ready to fall off. My lungs were filled with the fire of need.

I don’t remember finding the blade so much as feeling it in my hand—one moment, nothing, the next, a hard, smooth thing in my quickly weakening grasp. I gripped it tight, hefted it.
It was heavy, so much so that I was amazed I could get it off the ground.

I didn’t swing for him. Even then, I knew better than to try; knew that the angle was wrong, that I wouldn’t be able to generate enough power to do anything meaningful. No, instead I
swung at the ground—at the blotch of bloody blackness that was our combined moon-cast shadow, praying that what had happened in the cellar, what I had seen Aribah do to the magi’s
shadow with her mother’s blade, would work on her grandfather now. That the Angels or the Family or whoever was watching would let me cleave into his shadow. That I would kill either him or
me, or both of us. Because I’d be damned if I’d die the way he wanted.

The blade bit. The assassin screamed. So, for that matter, did I.

“Get up!”

“Wh . . . ” I paused to cough, rubbed at my neck. “What?”

Aribah tugged hard on my arm, pulling me to a sitting position. “You have to go,” she said. “
We
have to go. We made too much noise. Someone will be coming.”

Her voice was throaty and rough, and I noticed that she was pausing to swallow between each sentence. Blood trailed down her jaw from the vicinity of her ear, and the left side of her mouth was
already starting to swell. Her turban was gone, revealing a tightly braided nest of raven-black hair set with brass pins. I wondered if the pins had steel tips to them, then decided it didn’t
much matter at this point.

She looked about as shaky as I felt. But her eyes were hard and her grip was solid, so I didn’t argue. I knew all about the value of staying quiet, let alone of becoming a memory when that
failed to work out.

I moved to put my legs under me, felt resistance. I looked down and found her grandfather lying across my right foot. He didn’t have to worry about being quiet anymore.

“Yes,” she hissed. “He’s dead. Now come on. It does me no good if I get him out of here and leave you lying about for the guards to find. Get up!”

I did as she said, wincing at a sharp pain along my right biceps. I looked down to see a clean slice in both the fabric and the skin below.

I grimaced. Only I could manage to cut myself with a knife on the same arm that was wielding it. Fucking shadows.

Then I stood fully and nearly fell over again. I gasped at the roaring pain in my head.

“Here.” Aribah stuck a small bottle in my hand, then stepped into the darkness. “Drink it.”

I did as ordered, nearly choking from the bitterness as it seeped over my tongue and forced its way past what felt like a permanent dent in my throat.

“Angels, what is that?” I gasped as she came back. She had my rapier and dagger and boot knife in her hands.

“Herbs, brewed
ahrami
, spices, a bit of kaffa—we use it to keep alert and dull pain.”

I traded the empty bottle for my weapons, spitting all the while. The flavor stayed with you. Still, I could already feel the storm in my head beginning to ease.

Aribah took my face between her hands and studied me in the moonlight, turning my head this way and that. She slapped me once, twice, then tilted my head back. “How many moons do you
see?”

“Two?” I said. “One and a half?”

“Good enough.” She let go and bent down. When she straightened, she had her grandfather’s kaffiyeh in her hand, her mother’s knife at her belt. “Do you think you
can make it to where you were headed?” she said as she draped and then tied the cloth around her head.

I took a step aside and looked out over the expanse of ground between us and the next hill. It looked farther away than before, but was still empty. For the moment.