Sworn in Steel (54 page)

“Any word on them?”

Fowler shook her head. “Haven’t been back yet. I was planning to go after we get done here.”

“And the wazir?”

“Nearly eating his own arm off, I expect.”

“I expect.” I sipped my tea. The lemon hadn’t helped. “You can get back into the inn all right?”

Fowler held up a small, gauzy bundle. “I’ve got my stage drapes right here. Figure I can change back and say I got lost in the mayhem.”

“And the sword?”

I felt something hard bump up against my knee under the table and Fowler shoved it over.

“Good.” I took a last drink and reached under the table, my hand closing on the now-familiar scabbard and baldric. “Let’s get going, then. I’ve a degan to
find.”

I found Degan a scant three blocks from his rooms, standing under a lantern in the street, picking at a sad pile of greens and charred meat, all sitting atop a soggy piece of
flatbread.

“What the hell is that?” I said as I sidled up beside Degan.

He looked down at me and cocked an eyebrow in question.

“Fowler followed you, remember?” I said. “It wasn’t hard to find you once I knew where to look.” I nodded at the food in his hand. “I repeat, what the hell is
it?”

He sighed and dropped it on the ground. “A mistake.”

“Good. I’m hungry. Let’s go get something worth eating.”

Ten minutes later saw us standing at a small window set in a dingy wall. Across and just down the street, the sounds of music and people talking spilled out of a curtained doorway. Here, there
was little light and less sound, but the smells coming from the window more than made up for it. Onions frying in butter, coriander seeds toasting in a pan, cheese charring over a fire. Mint and
peppers and the thick, sour smell of shredded meat simmering in a spiced yogurt sauce. And the bread—the smell of the crust browning and cracking as it warmed over a heated stone.

I passed coins through the window, got two short loaves in return, their tops split and scooped out, the innards filled with onions and fried cheese and stringy strands of goat, all topped off
with a salad of parsley and mint and lemon juice tossed.

“How do you find these places?” said Degan after his fourth bite.

I jerked my head toward the lively doorway. Three men were just staggering out. “I worked that ken a while back, looking for word of you. No success, but everyone in there ends up coming
here for late-night tuck.”

Sure enough, as if to prove me right, the three men began to make their way up the street, their hands already reaching into sashes and sleeves for money.

Degan shook his head and took another bite. I led him away from the window and deeper into the night.

I glanced at the man beside me as we walked and ate. It almost felt like old times, but I knew better. There was a tension between us, an unease that rode beneath the silence that had once been
easy. Part of it, I knew, came from the presence of his sword—a tangible, visible indictment of my failures and his choices, riding my back a handful of feet away from his hand. I’d
known bringing the blade wouldn’t make things easier, but I didn’t trust leaving it behind, didn’t know if I’d be able to get back to it again even if I did.

The sword was only part of it, though: The rest came from the uncertainty that lingered between us. Even back when we’d first met—when he’d almost killed me and I’d
nearly poisoned him—there hadn’t been this kind of hesitant unease. He hadn’t trusted me and I hadn’t trusted him, but it had been an honest distrust, born of unfamiliarity
and simple street caution. This was different. This was born of regret and betrayal, of memories and might-have-beens.

It was a silence that seemed both too heavy to lift and too fragile to leave in place. A thing that threatened to either smother us with its presence or cut us to the bone with its breaking.

As usual, Degan was the first one to step into the breach.

“So,” he said as he finished the last fragment of his bread and swallowed, “I take it you’re heading back to Ildrecca?”

I looked him a question, then did my sums. “You heard about the audition, I take it.”

“Heard about it? I was there.”

“You were there?”

“Not a lot of imperial theater in this city, have to take what you can get.” He paused to cough up a couple of crumbs. “I thought Fowler was good.”

I smiled. “Who knew she could act?”

“Didn’t see you, though.”

“That was the idea.”

“Too bad. I think you would have made a good Babba.”

I snorted. Babba was the despot’s talking mule in the play. It was one of several Djanese tropes that hadn’t made sense to me. “Walking the boards isn’t my
style.”

“True, you seem to prefer offstage productions. Mind if I ask the purpose behind all the theatrics?”

“I needed a distraction.”

Degan glanced and me and raised an eyebrow. “You needed that much chaos to set up one criminal?”

“That was only part of it.”

“And the other part?”

“Ivory Degan.”

“Ivory?” said Degan, grabbing my arm. “You mean you found his papers?”

“More than that, I found him. The man himself.”

“What do you mean?”

I took a last bite of my own loaf and tossed the rest away. “I mean he’s alive,” I said, swallowing. “Breathing. Talking, even.” I smiled up at Degan.
“How’s that for finding—
oop!
”

Before I knew what was happening, Degan had dragged me up a short flight of steps, into the shadow of a vine-covered archway. Behind us, I could smell the soft perfume of a garden asleep in the
night. It was almost enough to mask the sudden scent of sweat coming from the swordsman beside me.

“Degan?” I said, pulling my arm away. I put hand to my own sword. “What the hell is going on?”

“You saw him?” he said, his eyes scanning the street, searching the shadows. “Does he know you figured out who he is?”

“Does he . . . wait.” I took a step back to better glare at him. “Are you telling me you
knew
Ivory was alive?”

Degan didn’t take his eyes off the street. “Let’s say I suspected.”

“You suspected?” I said. “How the hell do you ‘suspect’ someone might be alive two hundred years after he should have died?”

“You hear things.”

“Things? What things? And why the hell didn’t you tell me you thought there might be a two-hundred-year-old degan walking around el-Qaddice?”

“I was hoping I was wrong.” Then, after a pause, “I also was hoping you’d leave.”

“Congratulations: You were wrong on both counts.”

“So I see. How did you find him?”

“Turns out he’s the secretary to the wazir of Garden of the Muse. I’ve been reporting to him on the progress of our troupe ever since we got into the Old City.”

“He’s the . . . ?” Degan shook his head. “Amazing. And he told you who he was, just like that?”

“Of course not. I figured it out.”

“How?”

“Well, for one thing, I saw his sword—”

Degan’s eyes flew to the blade across my back. “He still has his sword?”

“On the wall of his study. Apparently, not everyone resigns the Order by leaving their blade lying in a burning warehouse.”

Degan gritted his teeth. I admit the comment wasn’t kind on my part, but I was still smarting from not being told about Ivory. I figure it evened out.

“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.”

“S
on 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.