Sworn in Steel (22 page)

“I jest. Yes, better communication.”

Raaz chuckled as I turned back around. He was Jelem’s cousin, all right.

I took a step, another. The light wavered again, the oil-fed flames dancing in the dark.

“Do they do that often?” I said as I came even with the lamps.

“Do what?” said Raaz.

“The lamps. Is the flickering going to be a problem when I try to make contact?”

“Flickering?” said Raaz in a tone that made me stop. “The lamps are still; have been kept still since . . .” His voice trailed off.

Something was wrong.

My hand was still going for my rapier when I saw the figure run out of the darkness and leap into the space between myself and the wall. He was little more than a silhouette himself, dressed in
deep blue-black robes, his face covered by a closely wrapped cloth. About the only thing I could make out for certain as he sailed through the air was the short, curved blade that he extended
toward the wall midleap. I heard the scrape of metal on stone, saw his shadow pass over the woman’s and the man’s, and then he was landing and rolling into the darkness on the other
side of the pool of light.

I was moving to go after him, my own sword clear now, when I heard a scream behind me. I glanced back and froze. One of the shadows, the woman, was teetering over, her head clearly separating
from her neck as she did so. The other was pulling back a hand that, while it might look like a closed fist, I knew was now missing its fingers, if not more.

As for Raaz, he was clutching at his own neck with one hand, gagging and choking, even as he reached out for the lamps with the other. The fingers of the hand he extended were black and seemed
to be smoking. Or dissolving.

I leapt back and kicked at one lamp with my foot, slashed down on the other with my rapier. I connected with both, and the room went dark.

Then someone else yelled.

Fowler.

I
dropped into a crouch, sword across my body. Best to stay low until my night vision reawakened. Damn me for getting so close to those lamps,
anyhow.

“Fowler?” I said.

No answer. I could still hear Raaz gagging, but it sounded less strained now. I couldn’t decide if that was good or bad. Hell, I didn’t even know if putting out the lights had helped
or hurt him, but there was nothing for it now. Besides, I
knew
it would help me—assuming I lasted that long.

I let my gaze flick around the space, looking for the first hints of amber, the first sign that I had my edge back. Whoever had come leaping out of the darkness had been good, a true deep file .
. . Blade? Arm? Nighthawk? If I had to guess, I’d go with Blade, or whatever passed for an assassin in Djan, but that was almost beside the point. No matter what he called himself, his timing
had been perfect: I’d been too far from the wall to interfere, but close enough to get in the way of any glimmer Raaz might have launched. That kind of luck didn’t happen by
accident.

That wasn’t what had me worried, though.

What had me on edge, had me holding my breath while I waited for my night vision to awaken, was the fact that I hadn’t seen the Blade before he moved. I’d peered into the shadows,
studied the darkness about us before stepping fully into the light, and noticed nothing. That didn’t happen—not to me, not in this much darkness.

And even if I had missed him somehow, that still didn’t explain the lamps and their flickering. A flickering only I had seen. Me. The one with the night vision.

I had no idea what that might mean, but I’d be damned if I was going to pretend I wasn’t scared shitless by it.

The broken lamp was the first thing to pull itself out of the darkness—jagged pieces of clay, edged in reddish gold, lying in a filmy pool of oil. The other lamp came next, on its side a
short ways away, followed by a section of wall. An arch followed, then Raaz—no longer gagging, but still on the floor, still breathing roughly—then the rest of the room, all overlaid by
the amber sketches and highlights of my night vision.

Fowler was lying where she had stood, her long knife halfway out of its scabbard. I couldn’t see any blood, couldn’t spot any wound, but that didn’t mean a thing. I resisted
the urge to call out, to go to her and check for breath or pulse. Going to see if she lived could get me killed.

Instead, I turned my attention to the wine cellar around us.

Empty.

I let my breath out slowly. The nearest niche was a good fifteen feet away, nothing but open space between it and I. Even if the Blade was hiding there, I’d have time to react, time to see
him. Whatever glimmer he’d used to help him hide from the lantern’s light hadn’t seemed to affect my night vision. I might not have been able to see him earlier, but now it was
darker than night. Now it was my turn.

I looked around the space again to be sure, then shifted and rose slowly out of my crouch.

And almost lost my life in the process.

I caught the blur of movement out of the corner of my eye just in time to drop my head even as I brought up my rapier. Metal hissed on metal. I felt the breeze of the deflected blade skim
through the air above me. Then a shoulder I couldn’t see connected with my own and shoved.

I slashed the air before me as I staggered back, found nothing. I struck a guard, my body low, sword angled before me and out.

I looked around, eyes wide. Raaz, Fowler, the walls, the extinguished lamps: all there, all visible to my night vision. So where the hell was the person who’d just missed taking off the
top of my head?

I took a step back, felt for and found the wall behind me in the darkness. It was usually a tactic for other people—for the ones who couldn’t see what I could see. Now, though, it
felt reassuring to have the stone at my back.

Another blur, this time from a bit farther away. I saw the arc of the cut, saw a hint of . . . something . . . behind it, moving toward me. It was enough to catch the blade on my own—one,
two, three times—enough to keep me breathing for the moment. Not enough to counterthrust or kill, though.

I shifted left and drew my fighting dagger from the back of my sword belt. My hand, I noticed, was shaking.

Raaz coughed. Groaned.

“Raaz!” I yelled. “What the hell is—”

“No talking,” he croaked, barely getting the words out. “Listen!”

Good advice, considering I heard, more than saw, the next attack coming. The double scuff of a gathering step on the gritty stone floor, an amber bluish blur, and then I was deflecting a slash
that still managed to carve a long, thin line in my forearm.

No way in hell I could last, not like this.

I peered out into the midnight-veiled cellar around me, trying to do something I’d never had any trouble doing before: trying to see someone with my night vision. It was unnerving. Every
wall, every stone, every person was visible—except the one that mattered.

Was my vision failing? Had the magical flare Shadow set off in front of my eyes almost five months ago done that much damage? Had the flickering flames been a sign, an indication that something
was wrong, that something had been done to me?

Dammit, Sebastian—why the hell did you have to die before you were able to tell me about the gift you gave me?

I shifted my footing, heard it echoed a moment later.

Listen,
Raaz had said. But what if I wasn’t the only one listening?

Another step by myself, this time echoed by two. Were they closer or farther away?

A low, gasping mutter to my right interrupted by a cough. Raaz, speaking in a tongue I recognized but didn’t know. Speaking magic. Shit.

“No light!” I said, even as I used my voice to cover my movement. Two sloping paces right, one step forward. In the amber-edged darkness, someone I couldn’t see shifted
position as well.

Right now, I realized, we were even. Whoever was out there couldn’t see me: Rather, he’d been trained to fight blind, using his opponent’s sounds to direct his actions.
That’s why the attacks were so wide, why he relied on cuts and slashes—the bigger the movement, the more area you covered. As for me, while I had never fought blind, I could at least
see the terrain, could catch the movement of his blade as it came in. My guess was that he’d never faced someone like me, had never had his supposed-to-be-blind target parry and riposte and
react in time to foil his plans. And I sure as hell had never faced someone I couldn’t see, especially in the dark.

But if Raaz spoke up some light . . . then it would all be different. Then I would become both blind and visible at once. Then I wouldn’t be able to see the Blade through the burning and
flashing in my eyes, and he’d be able to stroll up and slit my throat, no matter how easy it was for everyone else in the room to see him.

So, no light—not until it was over.

Which needed to happen soon.

I took a soft step left. Someone moved with me. Shit—I couldn’t be any quieter than that.

“You are unexpected,” said a soft voice out of the darkness. A woman. “A challenge.”

I adjusted my rapier so the point was in line with the sound of her voice.

“You can talk,” she said. Djanese, but with an accent I didn’t know. “I won’t kill you as you speak. It would be . . . unsporting.”

“But that won’t stop you from figuring out where I am in the meantime,” I said.

“I offer you the same advantage with my own voice.” More to my left now. I adjusted. “Although,” she added, “I don’t think you need it.”

“Maybe I’m just that good.” Ha.

“And maybe you can see in the night.”

I froze, almost dropping my dagger in my surprise. How . . . ?

“And yet,” she continued, “you’re not Djanese, which means you can’t be of the despot’s chosen. Can’t be a Lion.” A brief pause, complete silence.
“So, then, what are you?”

I didn’t know how to answer that. In all the years since Sebastian had taken me deep into the Balsturan Forest and performed the rite that gave me his night vision, I’d considered
myself unique. No rumors or tales about a similar ability had ever reached me, no claims to have heard about anyone who could push aside the night. And I’d been listening—first as a
Prig and a Draw Latch on the street, and then as a Nose, I’d been keeping my ears open and my secret close. Aside from Christiana and Degan, there was no one living who knew what I could do.
Jelem might suspect—but then, he’d suspect his own mother of faking his own birth—and Fowler might have guessed that my late-night luck was too good to be coincidence, but neither
had said anything outright.

No, in all my years of looking and listening, no word had ever come in, no whisper had ever gone out.

Until now.

Of a sudden, I no longer wanted to kill this woman; I wanted to catch her. To question her. To, maybe, get an answer or two.

“You’re silent, I see,” she said. “I will assume I’ve struck true.”

“What I am is dangerous,” I said. “Throw your steel down or get on with this. I’ve got friends bleeding; I don’t have time for you.” As much as I might want
to talk, I didn’t want to die even more.

“Nor I for you,” she said. Closer now, and to my right.

I turned my torso in that direction without shifting my feet. Took a shallow breath. Another. Then, after I was sure I was in the guard I thought stood the best chance of keeping me alive, I
tapped the pommel of my dagger lightly against the base of my rapier blade.

This time, I saw her coming; or rather, saw the indication of her coming. A hint of motion, a blur of something that seemed too slippery for my night vision to catch, but still,
there
,
just as I’d hoped.

Except she’d managed to shift silently to my left and was now coming on my open side. Damn, she was good.

I pivoted as fast as I could, bringing my dagger and rapier up on my left, one above the other, both pointing forward. Degan had liked to call it the “Wall of Steel”; I called it my
best chance right about now.

I adjusted my weapons to intercept the fastest part of the approaching ripple—what I assumed to be her blade. If I was lucky, I’d be able catch the cut and perform a counter-thrust
at the same moment, using her momentum to let her skewer herself. If not, well, at least I had a Wall of Steel, right?

Wrong. Turns out the assassin knew about steel walls since, just before she reached me, her blur dropped low and slid along on the floor, right at my legs.

I dipped my rapier’s tip even as I tried to jump up and avoid what I assumed was meant to be a sweep. Neither action was wholly unsuccessful on my part, but neither were they complete
failures.

I felt my sword’s tip skip and then grab, biting and then sliding along flesh at the last moment. At the same time, the front of my feet were struck in midair by something solid and
muscular, causing me to tumble forward. My rapier twisted itself out of my grasp, and I let it go—better to drop a weapon than break your fingers trying to keep hold of it. Besides, I needed
that hand to try and break my fall.

It did. Sort of. It also managed to wrench two of my fingers back as I hit the stone floor and half rolled, half collapsed onto my right side. I made sure to keep my dagger hand, and the blade
it held, far out to my left as I fell.

That last bit is what saved my life.

Metal struck on metal as I landed, assassin’s blade to Prince’s dagger, deflecting whatever backhand or follow-up cut she had planned. She hit hard, sending reverberations down my
arm, nearly forcing the dagger from my grip, but I held on. A moment later, I felt a hand on my right calf. The grip was weak. I kicked it off, then lashed out with my foot again as I scrambled
away. Fleeting contact, a gasp, the sound of metal skittering across the floor.

I shimmied back on my elbows and heels, then gathered my legs beneath me and stood up. I kept my dagger in my left hand, drew my boot knife with the working fingers and thumb of my right, and
hoped like hell she didn’t come after me. Close fighting is ugly enough, but in the dark, where you can’t see, against an opponent who is trained to do just that? No, thank you.