Sworn in Steel (20 page)

“You put coves . . . criminals in touch with one another,” I said. “When someone’s putting a dodge or a con together, and they need, say, a Talker or a Fisherman, they
come to you.”

“And I bring them together?”

“For a price,” I said. “Or a cut. But only if you think both parties are on the straight. A good Fixer doesn’t let the people he fixes cross him—or one
another.”

Aadi took a sip of tea and smiled. “A Fixer. Yes. Very good. So, what would you have from me? Besides information on that big Imperial you’ve been asking about, of course.”

I’d been expecting this at some point. Just as I’d been asking about after Aadi, I had also been quietly searching for leads on Degan. Nothing as obvious as dropping his name, of
course—I had no idea what he might be calling himself now that he’d walked away from the Order—but enough to see if I could develop some early leads on a tall, fair-haired,
pale-skinned Imperial who was more than handy with a sword. So far, Aadi’s comment was the only lead I’d had, if you wanted to even call it that. More likely, he was just repeating what
he’d heard about me on the street.

Still, if he actually knew something . . .

“Do you—?” I began.

“I know nothing about him; I just wanted to see how important he is to you. ‘Very’ would seem to be the answer.”

“I have an interest.”

“Pah. My third son has an ‘interest’ in the baker’s daughter at the end of my street. You want to find this man, maybe
need
to find him—it’s writ in
your shoulders and across your face.” He set his tea bowl aside as more wafers arrived, took two at once. “Is he why you came looking for me?”

It was tempting to say yes, to tap in to the network this man had spread across the Lower City, to put him on Degan’s trail. I knew firsthand what someone like Aadi could do in his
hometown, who he could find, and how. But I also knew the price would be high: for Degan, or more likely, for me. I had too many marks against me to expect a fair offer, and even if it was, there
was no guarantee that he wouldn’t lead me to a dead end, of several kinds.

I looked in Aadi’s eyes. No, not today. Not from this one. Not about Degan.

“I’m looking for something else right now,” I said. “Information, and maybe a favor.”

He nodded. “That’s easier, then. Information doesn’t run away and doesn’t fight back. As for favors?” He shrugged. “Tell me what you have in mind, and
I’ll tell you if it’s worth my time to help an Imperial.”

“I want to know what I can do about this,” I said as I pulled out the clay chit Tobin had collected when he’d put our troupe on the padishah’s list of hopefuls.
“About changing our place in line and maybe looking into putting in a fix.”

Aadi look from the chit to me. Then he began to laugh. I ground my teeth and waited until he was done.

“Well?” I said.

“Thank you for the tea,” he said. “And for these.” He took the last three wafers and slipped them into his sleeve as he prepared to stand.

“Wait,” I said. I reached out but stopped short of grabbing his arm. This was still his city, and I needed him.

“No,” he said, returning to his knees and leaning toward me. “No ‘wait.’” He pointed at the round of fired clay in my fingers. “You don’t fix the
auditions for the Sixth Son of the Most High. Ever. The last
Zakur
who tried was a sheikh with three—three!—belts of merit to his name. They say on a quiet night you can still
hear his screams coming from the cells beneath the palace. I may arrange many things, but my own death isn’t one of them.”

“I’d heard anything was possible in Djan, among the
Zakur
.”

“Anything is, but fixing the result of one of the padishah’s auditions isn’t something either of us can afford.”

“Fine,” I said. I leaned forward slightly myself, using the illusion of intimacy to keep Aadi from walking away. “Then how about just adjusting our order in line? Moving the
audition up a bit?”

Aadi’s eyes narrowed. “That I can do.”

I began to smile.

“But not for you.”

The smile died. “What? Why not?”

“Because you are Kin, because you have inconvenienced me, and because, even were I inclined, I don’t want to risk getting on the bad side of the factors at this time. They are the
ones you should be talking to.”

I grunted. The factors were the local trade monopoly that operated in the district of the Lower City known as the Coop. All aspiring acts were required to lodge there and charged accordingly,
with a corresponding percentage going to the padishah’s ministers. I’d put us up in a caravansary at a price that made blackmail look cheap. “I tried,” I said.

“And?”

“They’re not interested.”

“Ah. So you already knew this was futile.”

“I knew they said no to me. That doesn’t mean they’d say no to someone who approaches them on my behalf. Someone with local weight.”

The flicker of a smile crossed his lips. He inclined his head. “I appreciate your confidence in me, but the answer is still no.”

“There has to be a way—”

“There isn’t.” Aadi sat back on his heels. “Not for you. Better to wait your turn and use the time to rehearse. The padishah’s wazir had high standards, and while
His Excellency may be inclined to favor players this season, the wazir is not. The extra time could end up being a boon for you.”

I muttered and looked away.

Aadi grunted as he rose to his feet. “I’ll ask you to refrain from seeking me out again.”

“Can’t promise that. Yours is the only name I have in el-Qaddice.”

“Then I suggest you either learn more or forget the one you know.” He salaamed a formal farewell, thanked me for my hospitality, and left.

Well, shit.

I tilted my head back and looked up at the carved cliffs and white walls of the Old City. They were visible from almost every street down here, sitting on the western skyline like a promise of
splendor that would never be fulfilled, or, in my case, like a failure I couldn’t afford.

Two weeks, Wolf had said. I didn’t know what he would do if I didn’t make it into the Old City by then, but considering what he’d done to get my attention in Ildrecca, I
wasn’t anxious to find out. Visions of myself being led into the Old City in chains, only to be broken out by the degan and let loose on foreign streets as a fugitive, flitted through my
head. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

The thing was, I did have another name, and not just the name of a
Zakur
or a factor or some other street runner in the Lower City. I had the name of a yazani up in the Old City that
Jelem had given me when he handed over his packet of letters. A name that, once I was inside, I could hopefully use to open doors and hunt for Degan—assuming people were willing and the price
wasn’t too high. But to contact that yazani, I needed to get into the Old City first.

“More tea or wafers?” said the girl, coming up beside me.

I blinked and looked over at her. “No, thank you.”

She nodded, then looked up to where my gaze had been lingering. “Have you been?”

“No.”

“You should. There’s an old woman in a market in the third ring that has the most wonderful candied fruits. Lemons and apricots and, sometimes, mangoes. They’re
wonderful.”

“They sound it.”

“They are,” she affirmed solemnly. “Sweet and sour and delightful. They’re costly, though, and I rarely get to have them. But now . . .” She glanced at me shyly and
touched her tunic where she’d secreted my
dharm
. “Well, I think I’ll be saying a prayer of thanks for you the next time I go up.”

“I’m glad I could . . . wait.” I sat up straight. “You’ve been to the Old City?”

“Of course.”

I stared at her in disbelief. “You mean you have patronage?”

“Patronage?” she said, her mouth twisting in puzzlement. “No. Why would I need—ooh!” She raised a hand to her lips and blushed furiously. “Oh, that’s
right: You’re not of Djan.
You
need it to get in. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel—”

“No,” I said quickly, throwing a smile on my lips. I could feel the beginnings of an idea, and more important, an opportunity, tugging at me. “No, it’s all right: I just
forgot that you don’t have to have a patron to get up there. It’s a holy place for Djanese, after all.”

“Um, yes, it is.” She tugged her tunic straight, telling me exactly how often she went to the Old City for religious reasons.

“And it has wonderful candied fruit,” I added.

A quick smile. “That, too.”

“Tell me,” I said as I took a last drink of tea and set the bowl aside. When my hand moved away, three silver
dharm
glinted among the dregs. “Do you think you could
get some of that fruit for me? Talking about it has made me hungry.”

Her eyes flicked from the coins to the curtained doorway. “I don’t . . .”

“I could come back tomorrow if it would be easier.”

She swallowed, nodded. “Tomorrow would be easier, yes.”

“And even more so if I left a few
supp
for your uncle as well?”

A long, relieved breath out. “Yes.”

“Good.” I moved to stand, then paused, my hand at my purse. “Oh, one more thing. As long as you’re up there, I was wondering if you could deliver a message for me? Just a
word to a friend, really.”

She shied away a bit, a willow bending in the breeze. “A friend?”

“Not to worry,” I said. “He’s a scholar.” All right, he was a
yazani
—the one Jelem had mentioned to me—but I didn’t want to scare her
off. “I’d simply need to deliver a note for me. You can just take it to his door.”

She looked down at the silver rectangles in the cup and pushed at the carpet with her toes. “Just a note?”

“Just a note.”

More pushing, more looking. She bit her lower lip, then nodded. “All right.”

“Excellent,” I said. “Now, all I need is to find a scribe’s stall. Is there one nearby . . . ?”

T
hree days later, as promised, I found the
yazani
squatting in the shade of a wall in the Lower City, making shadow puppets dance and
perform on the street. A group of children and teens were gathered around, shouting and laughing at the spectacle. The fact that the silhouettes moved and pranced on their own, with his only input
being the occasional word and gesture with a thin olive branch, didn’t seem to bother anyone. As we came up, he tucked the branch under his arm, reached both hands out into the sunlight, and
formed the shadow of a rooster on the dusty bricks. A few mumbled words, and the shadow-rooster hopped away from the confines of his shadow to join the dark dog, elephant, dragon, and man in their
silent street performance.

The crowd hooted and applauded, and the man smiled. Then he looked up and saw Fowler and me.

“And that is all for now, my friends,” he said as he stood up. The teens made nasty, sulking sounds while the younger children pleaded, but the man shook his head. “No,”
he said. “I’ve work to do. Go plague someone else for a while.”

The crowd dispersed, with one or two of the older boys casting us accusatory glances. I returned the looks, making sure to keep my eyes hard but my face neutral. Pups and young wolves, yes, but
they could take you down if you didn’t handle them right, especially if you were unknown.

The man chuckled to himself as he brushed the dust from his pants. He was dressed in what I was coming to think of as the “urban” style here, with bloused pants, a knee-length tunic,
and a short vest. The coloring was all rust and red, with a creamy kaffiyeh wrapped turban-style around his head. Matching pale tassels hung from the bottom edges of his sleeves and
vest—used, I’d been informed gravely by our caravan master on the trip here, to distract the djinn that supposedly lived throughout, and wandered in from, the desert.

As for the Mouth—or
yazani
—himself, he was smooth and wily as his shadow puppets. When he bowed to me, it was dutiful; when he bowed to Fowler, it was something more. And
she blushed.

Hmm.

“Your Grace,” he began in accented Imperial.

“Excuse me?” I said.

Confusion passed over his easy features. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re an emir—a prince—of your kind, yes? Is there some other honorific you’d
prefer?”

Fowler snorted.

“‘Drothe’ is fine,” I said.

“‘Drothe,’” he said, playing with the sounds and accent in his mouth. I knew Jelem had mentioned me in the letter he’d sent ahead, but that didn’t mean what I
said matched the sounds he’d read. “Drothe. Yes. Excellent. I have the pleasure of being Rassan ibn Asim bé-Mahlak, cousin to Jelem bar-Djan, formerly named Jelem ibn Abu Jhibbar
el-Tazan el-Qaddice.” He paused, then added, “But you can call me Raaz.”

I was opening my mouth when Fowler gave me a quick elbow to the ribs. I looked down. She arched an eyebrow at me and nodded toward Raaz.

“This is Fowler Jess,” I said.

Another bow, another lingering look. “My apologies for my Imperial being too imperfect to do your ears justice, Fowler Jess.”

Another blush from Fowler.

I cleared my throat. “Jelem’s cousin, you say?” I said, remembering what Jelem had said about his family; about how they’d be happy to see him only if it meant seeing him
dead. My left hand drifted down to hang at my side, ready to be filled with steel at the flick of a wrist. I wondered which would be faster, my hand or his mouth, if it came down to it.

“On his wife Ahnya’s side,” said Raaz, turning back to me. “Via her sister’s husband’s uncle. I am cousin, at best, by name and law, but not by blood. Unlike
his own people, my tribe has had no reason to disown Jelem, even after his banishment.” He glanced down at my arm. “Or want him dead.”

“But you still call him family,” I said. “I didn’t think Djanese called anyone family after they’d been cast out.”

“It’s tribal,” he said, waving a hand. “Very complex. Some of my own people would agree with you; others would not. Jelem helped me gain admittance to the
wajik-tal
in el-Qaddice, so I had a great deal of respect for him even before he married Ahnya and became a distant relative. When his own people cast him out, I chose to continue calling
him family. As for the Tazan . . .” He turned his head aside and spit casually in what I was sure was not a casual gesture. “They are petty fools. Their tribal elders have no say over
what I hold in my heart.”