Sworn in Steel (60 page)

No, if I wanted to help Degan, I was going to either have to come up with something that didn’t involve a weapon, or wait for the exact right moment to strike.

I glanced over at the Dog Gate for the third time in twice as many steps. It was wide open again thanks to Degan’s hasty exit, and the hounds had begun to skulk around the arch again. With
the sun coming up and a fight sounding on the padishah’s doorstep, I figured it was only a matter of time before the gate vomited forth a stream of men decked out in opal jackets and
ostrich-plumed turbans. I had no idea whether they’d decide to overwhelm us with numbers or feather us with arrows, but either way, I didn’t want to be here when the time for the
decision finally came.

I turned my attention back to the fight.

The fight had taken the degans to the far side of the square. Steel rang on steel, the noise bouncing off the buildings until it sounded as if a regiment of ghosts was doing battle in the
piazza.

Both men were showing signs of wear now. Degan, despite what looked like a bloody patch on his left leg, had resorted to a more upright stance, blade held near shoulder level, sword arm loosely
extended, his left arm held at his side. Whenever Wolf threw a cut, Degan either moved his tip around the other man’s blade or let the force of the blow carry his own blade around as he
stepped in for the counter. It was smooth and efficient and had a decidedly calculating air to it.

But as ruthlessly cold as the tactic seemed, Degan’s steel never managed to do more than threaten Wolf. The Azaari was a shifting, swaying reed, sliding forward and back on bent knees over
a wide stance. Lean back to parry, lean forward to cut, with gathering and crossing steps to change the distance and line. There was a tear in his burnoose. Metal scales glinted beneath it in the
growing light, telling me Wolf had come armored. I doubted Degan had a similar advantage.

Well, that did it, then. Offhanded or not, I couldn’t hold off any longer. Between his Black Isle steel and the metal jack he looked to be wearing, Wolf had too many cards in his favor. I
needed to disrupt the game.

I’d just started to move toward them when Degan advanced into one of Wolf’s assaults and began to press the Azaari. What had been a fit of exchanges suddenly became one long,
lopsided rush.

Degan, it seemed, had decided to push Wolf, and was now raining blows down on the other degan. Thrusts, cuts, reverse strikes, counterblows—the attacks flowed out of Degan like a river,
crashing against Wolf’s defenses and sending him reeling back step by relentless step. The Azaari, whose eyes had been narrow and cool before this, were now wide; his defense was verging on
frantic.

I quickened my pace, sensing opportunity was at hand. And I was right. The only problem was, it wasn’t the opportunity I’d been hoping for.

I was still half a dozen paces away when Degan brought his sword down in a hammer blow, striking Wolf’s blade so hard that the heavy rapier should have not only forced the shamshir aside,
but continued down into Wolf’s shoulder and chest. And it would have, too, save for the sudden, unmistakable
snap
of steel breaking against steel. Daylight shone, metal flashed, and
I caught the briefest glimpse of the first two-thirds of Degan’s sword as it sailed through the air and landed in the muck.

I froze, momentarily stunned. Wolf had no such problem. Without missing a beat, he reached out, grabbed Degan’s extended sword arm, and yanked, lashing out with his sword guard at the same
time. Degan staggered, took an awkward blow to the head, and was thrown to his knees.

In any other place, in any other circumstances, that would have been the end of it right there. But we were in the square off the Dog Gate, which meant that they weren’t fighting on paving
stones so much as a carpet of shit and muck. Muck that, when Degan landed, carried him a good three feet further along the ground than either of them had expected. This meant that while Wolf was
prepared to slash his blade into the spot where he’d expected Degan to stop, he wasn’t ready to see his former sword brother turn his slide into a roll and come up on his knees, facing
him, broken sword held at the ready.

Wolf blinked. Degan winked. Then the shamshir was moving again.

The sound of Wolf’s steel striking Degan’s guard snapped me out of my stupor. I took a reflexive step forward, then stopped. No, I’d never make it in time. If I was going to
save Degan, I’d have to get Wolf away from him, have to somehow make myself a more viable target than Degan and the fan . . .

No, not viable. Valuable.

I held up Ivory’s sword.

“Hey, asshole!” I yelled. “Hey!”

To my relief, Wolf looked up.

I sheathed my rapier as I began to retreat back the way I’d come. “You need this, right?” I said, waving the sword over my head.. “Can’t get anyone to do anything
without it, right?”

Wolf’s eyes narrowed. He took a step back from Degan. Degan, wisely, maintained his guard, though he cast a wary eye at me as well.

“Now, I don’t know about you,” I said as I paced backward, “but I’d feel like a right proper ass if I came all the way to Djan and ended up letting some Kin walk
off with the sword I came looking for. I mean, that’d be pretty fucking embarrassing, especially for a degan, right?”

“You don’t want to do this, Gray Prince,” said Wolf. “You know what will happen when I find you. Put it down.”

“You say ‘when.’ I say ‘if.’ I’ve spent my whole life on the dodge: If I know how to do one thing, it’s fade.”

“You won’t be able to hide. Not from me.”

“Who said anything about hiding?” I said as I glanced over my shoulder. Halfway there. “I used to smuggle artifacts, remember? I know people. People who know how to get things
places. People who can call in special favors.” I waved the sword again. “People who might be able to, say, get this to the monks at the Monastery of the Black Isle.”

Wolf’s eyes went wide. “You wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t what?” I said, refusing to glance at the hint of movement I’d thought I saw in the Dog Gate—movement too large to be from a hound. “Hand it over to
the monks? Why not? Way I hear it, they’re the only ones who know how to melt one of these swords down. Might even be able to pray away the magic, for all I know. Figure it’s worth a
try, either way.”

Wolf took a step toward me, and therefore away from Degan. I smiled.

“Not that I’d go personally, mind,” I added. “You’d know to lie in wait for me. But how much coal goes into that place, I wonder? How many bushels of grain? How
many pilgrims? It’d be Eriff’s work to sneak a blade in.”

The Azaari looked back at Degan, still kneeling in the muck, broken sword before him.

Degan nodded. “I’ll draw it out long enough for him to get away, Steel,” he said. “Even like this, you know I can.”

“Best choose,” I said, nodding at the Dog Gate. A small swarm of figures were gathering there now. “We’re not going to be alone much longer, and I thought I saw a couple
of bows being strung.”

Wolf swore—a deep, lyrical Azaari curse that, had I been able to understand it, probably would have seared my ears off. Then, with one last look at Degan, he swept Ivory’s fan up
from the ground and started running toward me.

“There’s my boy,” I muttered as I turned and ducked down the street. “Let’s see how well you can play the hunter when your quarry isn’t running the path you
laid out.” Behind us, I heard Degan begin to call out, but his voice was covered over by the sudden sound of a horn. The padishah’s men, it seemed, had decided it was time to sally
forth from the grounds. I only hoped that by the time they got there, all they’d find were sullen hounds and foot-smeared shit.

A
s it turned out, Wolf fit his moniker far better than I would have liked. Not that I wanted to lose him right away. If I did that, it was possible
he’d double-back so he could finish things with Degan—Degan who, I reminded myself, had no sword. No, I needed Wolf on my scent, if only until it felt safe to lose him. The problem was,
it was quickly becoming apparent that I might not be able to shake him, whether I wanted to or not.

I ducked and wove as I went, slipping down alleys, taking sudden turns, using the height of the crowd around me to mask my passage. But I also made sure to leave signs he would catch: a tipped
poultry cage here, an angry crockery seller there, a muddy footprint whenever chance permitted. Let him think he was following so that he didn’t know he was being led.

It was an old street urchin trick: Get the mark used to looking for the bigger signs so he’d miss the smaller ones when it came time to fade. I’d done it plenty in the past, and
while it tended to work better with a gang, or at least in a city where you knew the layout, it was still a solid dodge. The only problem was, I was beginning to suspect that Wolf knew it at least
as well as I did, if not better.

I reached the next cross-street and heard a crash behind me as someone crushed a reed cage underfoot. People yelled, others screamed. Something fell to the ground and shattered.

Wolf was still behind me, and from the sound of it, he still had his sword out.

I turned down a narrow street, bounced off a man dressed in some sort of shimmering cloak, recovered, and ran up a set of stone steps. The man began yelling behind me as I ducked through an
arched gate and found myself on a street that looked familiar but I knew wasn’t.

I hesitated. It was nearly time to leave Wolf chewing my dust: but which way? The last thing I wanted was a path that ended in a blank wall.

I looked up, saw a shadow skimming a roof, watched as it made the short hop across an alley and vanish along the top of a building. If only . . .

Back in Ildrecca, there’d have been no heitations about which wall to hop, which roof to dance, which shop to run into so I could leave out the back. I’d know what painters were
working where, whose scaffolding I could use, which plasterers would look the other way for a payment later. But here? Here I couldn’t even tell if I’d stumbled down the same street by
accident sometimes. In Ildrecca, I could choose to become invisible; in el-Qaddice, I was lucky if I wasn’t conspicuous.

Wolf’s voice came to me on the other side of the gate and down the stairs. He was yelling a question at the man who was busy yelling after me. Time to go.

I chose to go right.

I was feeling it now: the heat, the blow from the long sword, the day and the night without sleep. Fear was keeping me moving, but that didn’t erase all my ills. My head, which had begun
to feel clear in the square, was pounding again. My legs burned. A stitch like a knife wound pulled at my side. As for my mouth . . . well, I couldn’t have managed to spit if you promised me
the imperial throne just then. The mere idea of water seemed unattainable even as I dodged around a line at one of the public spigots set in a wall.

I followed the curve of the street as it emptied out into a wider lane, which in turn filled with people and pavilions and stalls, all covered over with a patchwork of canvas awnings. The
morning street market was in full swing.

I dove in, moving with the flow of people whenever possible, swimming against their current when necessary. Flies buzzed and musicians played, one no less annoying than the other to my aching
head, while butchers and herb sellers wielded their blades to trim down their wares. Dust and blood and exotic oils fought one another in the air, rolling over and past me, vanishing among the sea
of scarves and sandals and curious looks I left in my wake.

I kept to myself, ducking and dodging, drawing the kaffiyeh across my face as I held the shit-smeared long sword close. A couple of private guards gave me a dark eye as I passed, but for the
most part everyone was too busy with their own business to notice the small, filth-speckled Imperial weaving his way through the morass.

Ahead, I could see a break in the crowd. A fountain, by the look of it, with a street beyond. If I could get on the other side of that before Wolf managed to . . .

“Thief!” cried a voice I knew. He was behind me. “Stop! Thief!”

Years of practice kept me from altering my gait or drawing attention to myself as I glanced over my shoulder. Wolf was perhaps thirty paces behind me and closing. Shit. I knew he had a longer
stride, but I hadn’t expected the bastard to close the gap so fast.

It was the right thing to shout, especially in a market: Nothing got a faster reaction, or elicited more aid, than a call to stop a Palmer or a Purse Cutter. Thieves were the common enemy of
both sellers and buyers, and that meant a call of warning just as often turned into a call to arms.

I studied the crowd. Most eyes were still turned toward the degan, but a few had already begun to scan the street—especially the guards’.

“Thief!” Wolf shouted again. Maybe twenty-five feet away now, with people starting to actively get out of his way.

One of the market guards was looking at me now, considering. I glanced away, my eyes busy. He didn’t seem convinced, but I didn’t much care. I wasn’t playing to throw him off;
I was searching for a convenient—

There. Thin, dirty, with quick eyes and a slightly bent stance, clearly ready to run. Her pale green dress hid her intentions well, but there was no mistaking the flex of her knee beneath the
fabric, let alone the fresh sheen of sweat on her upper lip.

Thief. A Palmer, by the look of it, given the gap in the neat row of copper spice pots on the table before her. No one had noticed yet, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t, especially
with the cry being raised. She was scanning the crowd as well, but not for suspects: She was looking for a way out. Measuring the lines of traffic, the gaps between the stalls, the density of the
the crowd.

Our gazes met, locked. Instantly, I knew she could tell. Never having met, we still knew each other across the dusty space.

Her eyes narrowed. I smiled. Then I pointed at her and screamed, “There! Thief! It’s her. She took the spices!”

The guard who thought I hadn’t noticed him moving up on me spun about. Others followed suit. Someone took up the cry.