Sworn in Steel (12 page)

“How does coming back with you help?” I said. “I thought you just said you weren’t even sure they’d let him back into, what’d you call it, the Barracks
Hall?”

“It’s the closest thing we have to a council chamber. And you’re right: Walking in on his own could be the same as falling on his sword. But I have this.” Wolf slapped
the hilt at his side. “And, with your and his permission, I’ll have that, too.” He pointed at Degan’s blade. “Between the two, I can petition to speak for him. I can
invoke the old traditions of the Order and try to shield him from their judgment until he’s had a chance to speak.”

“And what will he say?” I thought back to Copper, and the cold steel in her eyes when she’d been asking me about Degan. “What can he possibly tell them that will excuse
his dusting Iron?”

Wolf shook his head. “I don’t know. But I think he should be able to have the option to stand before the Order and give his side of the story. I think he should be able to ask for
atonement and receive the judgment of his fellows face-to-face. I think he should know, once and for all, whether his name is to remain on our roles, of if it’s to be struck through in shame.
But mostly, I think he deserves the opportunity to choose to seek out his own redemption or damnation.” Wolf looked down at me. “Don’t you?”

My mouth was too dry to answer. To argue that Degan had left Ildrecca of his own free will, that he’d known what he was doing from the moment he’d walked out of that burning
warehouse after saving my life. To yell that the one thing the man wanted was to be left alone.

I didn’t say it because I couldn’t be certain it was true. Because I realized that all of the reasons I’d been giving for Degan walking away had really been excuses for me not
trying to find him, for not following after him. And because, dammit, Wolf was right.

Still, it wasn’t quite enough.

“Why should I trust you?” I said. It wasn’t the strongest argument, but it was all I had left. “How do I know that, despite everything you’ve said, you won’t
go for the steel cure the moment you see Degan?”

“You don’t,” said Wolf simply. “Aside from threatening to destroy you and your organization, there’s nothing I can do to force you to do as I ask. Except to ask.
And to offer my word that I’m not seeking Bronze out of any sense of vengeance.”

“A sword in one hand and a promise in the other? The two don’t exactly complement each other when it comes to putting my mind at ease.”

Wolf arched an eyebrow. “You would have me combine the two, perhaps?” he said, drumming his fingers on the hilt of his saber.

I didn’t have to ask what he was implying: I knew. Wolf was asking if I wanted to take the Oath on the matter—to bind him to me, and me to him, to the tune of a single service.

I shook my head, perhaps a bit too quickly. I’d seen where that could lead, and I didn’t want to think about the kind of price Wolf might exact in exchange for his service. No, his
bringing up the Oath was enough to show me just how serious he was about this.

“No need to go that far,” I said.

A brief smile passed over his lips. “Then we have an accord?”

I felt myself nodding before I made the decision to do so. Then, because I’d started, I said the words. “Yeah, we have an accord.”

I was going to find Degan.

But not for Wolf, and not for the Order. Not even for my people or for me. I was going to do it for Degan. Because he deserved better—far better than I’d given him.

Now I just needed to figure out how I was going to find him.

I
left the piazza maybe half an hour later with less of a plan, and fewer answers, than I would have liked. Despite neatly setting up two Gray
Princes and their organizations, Wolf hadn’t been able to offer me any information on the man he was actually looking for. Degan, it seems, had disappeared just as completely when it came to
his brethren as he had for me. This wasn’t terribly surprising, considering they wanted to kill him, but still, you’d think that the members of his Order would have some idea of where
Degan might have rabbitted to.

No such luck. Nor, had I been informed, was Wolf willing to tap the few resources he had on the matter. His asking after Degan, he’d argued, would arouse suspicion among his fellows.
He’d been carefully distant on the subject for months. To show a sudden interest now would only pique the wrong kind of curiosity. And the last thing we wanted, he assured me, was to have
other degans taking a sudden interest in our business.

On that score, at least, we’d agreed. One degan breathing over my shoulder was bad enough, thank you very much—I didn’t need more.

And breathing over my shoulder he was, too. Wolf had made it abundantly clear that the sooner we found Degan, the better—to the point that he expected me to start producing leads within a
week, and ideally less. I had tried to explain why the odds of that happening were beyond slim—that the trail was cold, that Degan had a knack for disappearing, that it was damn hard to find
someone who didn’t want to be found when they had a three-month head start—but Wolf hadn’t been impressed. Time, he’d assured me, couldn’t be wasted on this. As to
whether that time was to be spent tracking down Degan or trying to deal with the bodies that might start piling up at my door, well, that was up to me.

Arrogant bastard.

I turned onto Boot Nail Lane and began the slow climb uphill, leaving the worst of the grit and heat from the forges behind. My instincts told me to start working the street right away, to begin
digging up clues and tracking down rumors, but I knew I was both too exhausted and too twitchy to succeed at either. Better, I thought, to wear away some shoe leather and let my mind wander while I
ran an errand I’d been putting off ever since returning to the city. The street, I told myself, would still be there tomorrow.

I almost even believed me.

Still, that didn’t mean I had to contemplate the night on an empty stomach. I stopped at the first tea vendor I found and bought a cup of strong, peppery night tea from him. The drink
wasn’t exactly refreshing, but it helped settle my nerves. It also felt good going down since the vendor had been clever enough to store the tea in large clay pots, which kept the liquid
cooler than the summer air around me.

I sighed and pulled out more coins and had another cup.

I’d ended up not telling Wolf about Copper. Part of me knew I should have shared what I had, especially since he was already worried about other members of the Order following our lead,
but a larger part of me had decided he could go fuck himself. He’d been playing me for months, and I wasn’t about to give up everything I had just because he had me over a barrel. We
might have come to an “accord,” but that didn’t mean I trusted the bastard. If my keeping Copper’s interest hush could give me even the tiniest bit of leverage down the
line, it would be worth it. After all, what better weapon to use against a degan than another degan, even if tangentially?

As for the other Gray Princes and their increased interest in me, well, I’d gotten the feeling that Wolf was the one holding a bit back on that. He’d assured me that he had a plan to
deal with the problem once we found Degan, but he hadn’t been forthcoming on the details. This wasn’t surprising, but it was damn annoying. When pressed, he’d finally admitted
that he’d arranged for blame to shift away from me and onto someone else—all he had to do was give the word and leave a body or two in the street, and it would be done. He didn’t
say, but I got the feeling that the person who would end up taking the blame, and possibly end up lying in the street, might be Rambles.

I could live with that.

I tossed the tea seller an extra copper owl and pushed on into the night.

In the meantime, though, between Crook Eye’s death and Degan’s return, I was starting to think that my fading might not be a bad idea after all. I’d initially planned to fight
the whispers about Crook Eye with rumors of my own, but I was far enough behind the wave—thanks to my new partner—that playing catch-up was proving nearly impossible. Any gains I made
were transitory, and stories I spread ended up coming off as either excuses or blatant attempts to shift the blame. The street, I was coming to realize, had already made up its mind. If I wanted to
change it, it was going to require more than I had to offer at the moment.

Which meant the best strategy was to not try at all—or, at least, to not seem to.

Leaving Ildrecca would accomplish part of that. Yes, it might look like I was running, but at this point staying could hurt my reputation just as much. Besides, the farther I was out of sight,
the easier it would be for the street to become distracted by something else. What that something might be I wasn’t sure yet, but I knew just who to talk to about coming up with a bit of
flash that could turn heads. After all, what was the point of having a troupe of actors in my debt if I couldn’t tap them for some inspiration when it came to making the Kin look stage left
while I exited stage right?

I headed out of Rustwater and down into the Cloisters. From there, I took to the roofs and arches of the cordon, skirting the edge of Lady of the Roses—there’d been a flare-up
between two local street bosses of late, and I didn’t want to get caught in an overeager ambush—and made my way to the night market over in Hides.

As the name implied, the market ran from sundown to sunup, catering to everything from Kin to late night drunks to early risers over the course of the evening. It covered a good dozen
interconnected, but not necessarily immediately adjoining, blocks. Rather, the market was made up of a winding, twisting path that followed the side streets and alleys of Hides, with each shop and
trader marked out by the green-glassed lantern he hung or placed before his shop. In some places, the merchants were packed close enough that I half expected to see fish swimming in the air, so
much did it seem that I was strolling beneath the sea; in others, it was a long, dark walk from one jade pinpoint to another. In these dimmer spots, the local gang—a band of toughs called,
aptly enough, the Green Shades—had patrols ranging, keeping an eye out for any freelance Prigs or Clickers that might otherwise decide to poach the local marks and undercut the Shade’s
thriving protection racket.

The shop I was looking for came after a particularly long stretch of dark—so much so that my night vision was on the verge of waking when I stepped into the pool of green light. A
thick-armed, thin-haired leather worker was standing at the heavy pine table out front, his knives and shears and mallets ready to hand. At the moment, he was slowly drawing laces from a hide.

“Points in?” I said.

He didn’t even look up. “In back, as usual.”

I half walked, half climbed my way past the stacks of leather to the back of the shop. There, under the fitful glow of a tallow dip, sat Points. I tried to ignore the smell of the burning rag
coming from the bowl of rendered grease and instead settled myself on the pile of leather scraps before his low workbench.

“Yes?” said Points. He was maybe thirty summers along, but too little food and too much sickness had made him look half again as old. What little hair he had left lay limp across his
scalp, a dirty gray against only slightly pinker skin. His jaw hadn’t seen a razor in over a week. His eyes hadn’t seen anything in years.

“It’s Drothe,” I said, reaching out to give him my hand. He took it, squeezed, and showed me a lopsided smile.

“Ah, royalty,” he said. “If you’d been properly announced, I’d have had the servants put out the Vennanti glassware.” He shrugged. “Help: What’re
ya gonna do?”

I smiled in turn and took my hand back. “Got some trade for you,” I said.

“Got a price for you.”

“It’s a rush job.”

“Price just went up.”

“One you can’t tell anyone about.”

“And up yet again.” He rubbed fingertips against thumb. “What is it?”

I lifted Degan’s sword off my back, laid the bundle across my legs, and began unrolling the canvas. “I need a scabbard,” I said as I drew the sword free of its rough cocoon and
ran my finger over the one clean spot on the blade—the space where the soot had been wiped away to reveal a single teardrop etched into the steel. “Something to protect the blade, and
me, while I wear it.”

“Well, that’s generally the point of a scabbard, isn’t it?” He held out his hands. “Let me feel what you’ve got.”

I gave Degan’s sword over, my hands lingering on the filthy steel a moment longer than they needed to. Points’s fingers ran expertly up and down the blade, testing not only the width
and length and weight, but also the edge and overall feel of the blade.

“Still straight. That’s good. Don’t want to put a twisted blade in a scabbard—doesn’t like to come out.” He tapped the steel with his fingernail, then pulled
out a small copper hammer and tapped it again. “Black Isle?”

“Black Isle.”

“Two in twice as many months for you. Impressive.” His hands wandered up to the guard, paused, then performed a quick inventory. “Fire?”

“Yes.”

“Um.” Points’s thumb rubbed at the base of the blade, where the tear marked the steel. I noticed his hands hesitate for a fraction of a moment, then continue on as if nothing
had happened. “Pretty big fire down in Ten Ways couple of months back, from what I hear.” I stayed quiet. Points read the silence as only a blind man could.

“It’d be my honor to make a new home for this blade,” he said solemnly. “How soon do you need it?”

“As soon as you can manage.”

Points ran his hands along the steel again. “I don’t have anything setting up right now that will work, but it shouldn’t take too long. I can get it back to
you—”

“The sword walks with me when I go.”

Diplomatic pause. “I need the sword here to make the scabbard for it.”

“You’re good enough to work off measurements.”

A dip of the head. “Yes, but it goes faster if—”

“It also goes faster if you don’t have three of my Cutters lingering about and getting in the way, not to mention inadvertently scaring off the rest of your customers.”