Sworn in Steel (35 page)

I regard him for a long moment. “Two conditions,” I said. “Seeing as how it’s for your honor, and I’ve been the one inconvenienced.”

He rose slowly from his bow. “Within reason.”

I gestured at Aribah’s waist. “First, I want my knife back.”

“
My
knife,” said Aribah, her hand going to the shadow-edged dagger.

“I plucked it straight and true during our fight,” I said. “Taking it back when I was unconscious isn’t the same. It’s still mine.”

“I will
not
—” began Aribah.

“Is what he says true?” said her grandfather.

“It doesn’t matter! You know that—”

“Give it to him.”

“
What?
”

“You heard me, girl. We’re not thieves. Return it.”

Aribah stood up straight. “I will not.”

He tensed. “I am you
amma
,” he said. “The head of your school. You will do as I say.”

“But, Grandfather, you more than anyone knows that what he asks is—”

The old assassin turned and lashed out so fast I almost didn’t see it. One moment, Aribah was standing, fists on her hips, eyes ablaze, yelling at her grandfather; the next, she was on the
ground, limbs splayed, eyes still ablaze, but in a different way.

“You may be my blood and my favorite,” he said, drawing his hand back, “but until you wear the braid of a
kalat
, you will not question my decisions. Am I
understood?”

Aribah glared at her grandfather. After a moment, she gave a grudging nod of assent.

“Speak!” he yelled.

“I hear and obey, O my sheikh.”

“May it always be so,” he replied, not sounding convinced. He turned back to me. I found my hand had gone for my own steel, even though it wasn’t there. He glanced down at my
empty grip, then back up at me. And chuckled. The bastard.

Behind him, Aribah got to her feet and drew the dagger from her belt. A moment later, it landed at my feet.

All of sudden, I didn’t much want the blade anymore, but refusing it now would only make things worse between the two of them. I bent down and picked up the weapon.

“You mentioned two conditions,” he said. “What’s the second?”

“Who sent you after the magi?”

Aribah gasped outright; as for her grandfather, he crossed his arms and stared at me so hard that I almost expected him to put a dagger in my throat. Not that I could blame him: not only was my
question inappropriate in hired-killing circles; it also implied I thought he might be unscrupulous enough to name his employer. The only thing that could have made it more insulting would have
been to offer money for the information.

“You would ask who hired us?” he said.

“I would.”

“And I should tell you, why?”

“You mean besides our sudden, yet enduring, friendship?”

“Beyond that, yes.”

“Three reasons,” I said. “First, because I need those magi alive, and I’d like to know who’s after them. Second, because I was down in that cellar, too, and I
don’t appreciate being a target, even tangentially. And third, because, if it’s who I think it is, you don’t have much to lose by telling me.”

The elder assassin glanced at his granddaughter then back to me. I saw his eyes crinkle into a smile. “You could learn from this one, Aribah. Not even an hour with us and he is already
reading our motives. Very well: It was Fat Chair who hired us. Is that what you thought?”

I nodded. It made sense. Fat Chair had flat out told me he thought I had an organization in place in el-Qaddice when it came to smuggling glimmer. And to believe that, he had to have reason to
believe that magic had already been coming in from the empire. That meant that Jelem and his people had somehow come to Fat Chair’s attention even before I’d arrived. My looking for the
yazani had only confirmed his suspicions, which had resulted in they
neyajin
being hired.

Well, at least I didn’t have to worry about them taking another contract from Fat Chair, considering the pile of bodies they were leaving him.

“My thanks,” I said. I offered the elder assassin the best salaam of leave-taking I could manage, given my condition, and turned to Aribah. “Shall we?”

She grunted and brushed past me, knocking into my shoulder as she went. I turned back to her grandfather.

“She knows I’m supposed to make it back alive, right?”

“Oh, she knows,” he said. “As to whether she’s inclined to listen . . .” He shrugged.

I recovered my steel and made sure that all my blades were in place before I followed her out the door.

B
y the time I made it back to the Angel’s Shadow, the sun was turning the eastern sky a dull gray. I rubbed at my eyes and considered another
ahrami,
then thought better of it. I was beyond their help at this point—taking more would only make me awake, not alert. And awake was something I was looking forward to not being
soon.

I was also looking forward to not having a surly assassin stalking at my side.

When we reached the inn, she stopped at the edge of the courtyard, in the shadow of the entryway.

“You’ll be safe here?” she said, her voice at once perfunctory and smoky behind the drape of her turban.

I looked about the place. One of the innkeeper’s sons was hauling tables away from the inn’s wall, preparing the outside seating for the day. A handful of chickens pecked the ground,
and I could see the window and side door to the kitchen standing open. Smoke rose from the chimney at the back.

There was no sign of Fowler, but that wasn’t a bad thing—her job was not to be seen when she was standing Oak. I scanned the roofline, just be sure, and saw the silhouette of a head
and shoulder poke up over the stables. It gave a small wave, using a hand signal I was familiar with from back in Ildrecca. A moment later, the figure vanished.

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

A long pause from Aribah as she considered me, the yard, and Angels knew what else.

“This isn’t right,” she said at last.

My hand went to my rapier as my eyes swept the street around us. “Excuse me?”

“Grandfather shouldn’t have let you go.”

Oh, that. I let myself relax, then thought better of it and positioned my hand closer to my dagger than my rapier. Aribah was too close for sword work should she suddenly decide to
“fix” things.

“You’re too potentially valuable to us,” she said, turning her eyes back to me. “He doesn’t see that, but I do.”

Her eyes were big and deep and brown and edged with kohl, set close beside a narrow nose. There looked to be cheekbones happening under there as well. Between that and the smoke of her voice,
not to mention the stray curve I’d noticed beneath those loose robes . . .

I blinked.
Focus, Drothe. Assassin. Happy to see you dead.

I cleared my throat. “You were there,” I said. “You heard: I couldn’t show you how to see what I see, even if I wanted to.”

“I’m not talking about want; I’m talking about need. We
need
to be able to face the Lions, to best them, to . . . restore our pride. You can help us do
that.”

I watched as her thumb began absently rubbing at the silver ring on her middle finger. It had been the same way in the empty room when he’d argued with her, when he’d mentioned her
mother. Old wounds? Frustrations? Something else?

Either way, I’d be a fool not to pick at it.

“You and your grandfather don’t agree on many things, do you?” I said.

“We agree on enough.”

“But not when it comes to me.”

She leaned in close. “There are
yazani
,” she said, “who can keep parts of a man—a finger, an ear, a foot, a heart—alive for months using magic and alchemy.
How long, do you think, they could keep a man’s eye alive and intact? Long enough to draw the secrets from it, perhaps?”

“That’s assuming the magic is held in my eye,” I said. “Who’s to say? Like I told your grandfather, I have no idea how the magic works. Taking my eyes might be the
surest way of losing it.”

I saw Aribah’s brow furrow. Clearly, she hadn’t expected her threat to fall quite so flat. I didn’t blame her, though—I’ve been threatened by the best.

“What interests me more,” I continued, “is how long they can keep the head of an assassin alive. Because if you try to find an answer to your question using those
yazani
, I guarantee you they’ll get a chance to figure out the answer to mine.”

We eyed each other a long moment, her measuring me, me returning the favor while trying not to get lost in her gaze in the process. Finally, she raised an exquisite eyebrow and snorted.

“You’re still too valuable to kill, Marked Man,” she said, and turned away.

I watched her go until she slipped into the shadows. Then I crossed the courtyard and entered the inn.

A couple of Quarter locals were sitting at tables, finishing off their breakfasts. A few glanced up as I entered, but most kept their eyes on their bowls. None of Tobin’s people were
present, and neither was Fowler. The former I didn’t care about—I wasn’t in the mood to deal with a brood of clucking actors—but Fowler I could have done with. To have her
by me, swearing and fussing and, ultimately, understanding my news held a strong appeal just now. Maybe it was just the hour and the locale, but sharing the burden suddenly sounded damn good.

Tired as I was, I couldn’t help noticing that my stomach was trying to eat a hole through my spine. I made my way over to the bar and signaled for a serving of whatever they’d made
for breakfast. Then I put my back to the counter, rested my elbows on its top, and gave myself permission to relax.

Djinn hunters?
What the hell did a bunch of djinn hunters have to do with me, let alone my night vision? Bad enough when I’d thought they were some sort of shadow-wearing
assassins, but now . . . now I had to wonder at the connection between my night sight and that of the djinn, or their riders, or whatever the hell the Lions of Arat were. The old assassin’s
dismissal aside, I didn’t believe for one moment it was a coincidence that the
neyajin
’s glimmer foiled both the Lion’s vision and my own. In my limited experience, those
kinds of things don’t just happen when it comes to magic: If anything, unexpected glimmer usually makes a situation worse, not better. No, as much as I disliked the notion, odds were good
that, if there wasn’t a direct connection between the Lions of Arat’s vision and my own, then there were some damn close similarities. Similarities that might very well point to Djanese
magic and the djinn.

Djinn.

Damn it, Sebastian, how the hell had you gotten our night vision, anyhow? And from where?

The innkeeper’s girl set a bowl near my elbow, practically startling me. I turned around to take it up, and smiled. The porridge inside was done in the Ildreccan style, smelling of rice
and goat’s milk and honey and coriander. My stomach grumbled at the memories of home. I took up the bowl and the horn spoon she’d set beside it, and headed for the stairs.

Well, one thing was for certain: If I didn’t believe my night vision was a lucky coincidence, neither did Aribah’s grandfather. His letting me go simply meant that holding on to me
right now wasn’t tenable. I was under no illusions about being done with him, or his granddaughter, or their interest in me. You don’t break a contract and then dust four of the local
Upright Man’s enforcers, only to let the man you put your people at risk or go free. No, he was playing a long game, but whether I was a target or a tool at the moment, I couldn’t
tell.

I put a foot on the stairs, then another, and dipped the spoon into the porridge. It was hot and thick and grainy, and dropped into my gut like a stone. Despite that, it felt good—like a
piece of home, sitting in my center and giving me indigestion. Small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless.

I didn’t want to think about anything right now: not glimmer, not
neyajin
, not the audition, not anything. I just wanted to fill my stomach and crawl into bed and come back out on
the other side with enough energy to get back out onto the streets again. That’s where the answers would be: lying on hesitant, twisting tongues in the dark places of el-Qaddice—places
that didn’t welcome anyone with open arms, let alone an Imperial. Places I had to tread carefully because answers didn’t come wandering in and sit themselves down on your doorstep in a
new city. You had to fight and pay and lie and bleed for them; had to keep one hand in the open and the other on your knife; had to wonder whether the Djanese across from you was smiling because
you’d offered the pay, or because he was planning to gut you the first chance he got. You had to throw yourself at the night over and over, hoping each time that it would be the one that
broke instead of you.

It was never easy. Never.

Which made it all the more stunning when I reached the top of the stairs and found Bronze Degan sitting in a chair outside my room, eating breakfast.

My porridge and bowl hit the floor with a heavy
thud
. For the moment, my exhaustion fell away with it.

I felt a smile begin to split my face as I stepped over the bowl and started down the hall. How had he—?

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” said Degan, not looking up from his own repast. He’d forgone the morning’s offering, and instead had a platter of what
looked like last night’s leftovers from the kitchen.

I stopped where I was, the smile dying on my lips. So much for happy reunions. Not that I’d been expecting one, but still.

“I’m inclined to ask the same thing,” I said.

“What a surprise.”

Degan was still Degan: broad-brimmed hat, tailored but comfortably loose fitting doublet and breeches, and tall campaign boots—the last rolled down to let the air get to his bare calves.
The doublet was open as well, revealing a worn but clean shirt, its weave loose in deference to the Djanese climate. He was all in grays and faded yellows this morning, the dusty gold of the
doublet’s piping matching the pale fall of his hair.

He had a sword at his side, of course—he was Degan: he couldn’t not have one. But while it was a handsome piece of steel, with the guard filed and chiseled to look like a sweeping
length of fixed, heavy chain, it didn’t feel right seeing it at his side. There was no bronze, no carefully etched vines, no . . . Degan to it.