Sworn in Steel (7 page)

Copper took a step back and folded her arms, the picture of a dangerous woman having a dangerous debate with herself.

She was the one who’d come to ask me about Degan the first time around, and later the one who had dragged me to meet with five other members of the Order of the Degans. They hadn’t
liked what I told them, hadn’t liked not having anyone alive to pin Degan’s disappearance on, let alone Iron’s death. Hadn’t liked it enough that I’d spent the next
week pissing blood after they were done “talking” to me. But while Copper had never laid a hand on me during that entire time, she’d also clearly not reached the same conclusion
as her fellows.

And that was what had me worried. It’s the calm ones you have to watch out for. Always.

Finally, she let out a sigh and dropped her arms. “All right, Kin,” she said, sounding tired. “We’ve gone over this as much as we’re going to here.”

I let myself relax. “Good, because I—”

“But,” she added, placing her hand on my shoulder—the shoulder that had the rope riding across it. I winced. “That doesn’t change the fact that Bronze is still
missing, and that I still don’t believe you. And that means we’re going to spend some more time together.” She squeezed. I grunted. “So what we’re going to do
is—”

“What you’re going to do,” said a voice behind Copper as the degan froze, her eyes going wide, “is let go of my boss and keep your hands out in front of you.”

I knew that voice. I smiled.

I shook off Copper’s hand and peered around the degan. Behind her, long knife prodding the space just to the left of the degan’s spine, stood Fowler. The Oak Mistress’s hair
was a near tangle, her clothing wrinkled and stiff from having dried on her body, her eyes ringed by dark smudges of fatigue. But none of that mattered. What mattered was the spark that shone
within the hollows of her eyes and the thrust of her lower lip above her dirty chin. What mattered was she was breathing. That, and the fact that she had a pair of her Oaks behind her.

If Copper hadn’t been standing between us, I would have kissed Fowler then and there, consequences be damned.

Copper looked over her shoulder. I saw her grin in profile.

“Three?” she said. “You think I can’t handle three of you, little bird?”

Fowler tilted her head and met the degan grin for grin. “I know you can. Which is why I made sure to send word to Blue Cloak Rhys and his boys before I came to interrupt.” She looked
past Copper to me for the first time. “Sorry for the delay.”

I shrugged. “These things happen.”

It might seem strange, but I didn’t control Blackpot Street or any of the surrounding cordon, collectively known as Paper Hill. Gray Princes didn’t operate that way. We didn’t
control territory; we controlled people. We influenced them, manipulated them, bought and sold them, steered and guided them—all without most of them being any the wiser. The threat of the
Gray Prince was not that he would send his people after you—it was that he would get your people to do his bidding for him. With a Gray Prince, you didn’t have to watch out for
enemies—you had to watch out for everyone.

Or, at least, that was the theory. I hadn’t quite figured out the finer points of pulling all of the marionette strings yet, and so had to rely on other tools, one of which was Blue Cloak
Rhys. Fortunately for me, Rhys was the local Upright Man. He was also mine. And while I might not have controlled the surrounding streets, he most certainly did.

Copper knew all this, of course, just as she knew that when Rhys showed up, it wouldn’t be alone. A degan she might be, but I suspected an alley full of heavily armed muscle could ruin
even her day.

If the degan spent any time weighing her options, she didn’t show it. She merely nodded once, put both of her hands in plain sight, and stepped slowly aside. She showed me a cool
smile.

“Another time, then,” she said.

I smiled back. “Mm-hmm.”

Copper turned and, without sparing even a glance for Fowler or her men, strolled off down the street.

Fowler watched the degan go. When Copper was half a block away, she nodded to her Oaks. They headed out after her, one melting into the crowd so expertly that I had trouble picking him out after
ten paces, the other moving toward a side street where he could parallel Copper either from roof or alley. Neither of them, I knew, would stop following the degan until she was well out of Paper
Hill.

“Is Blue Cloak Rhys really coming?” I said to Fowler as I watched them go.

“Are you joking?” said Fowler. She slid her long blade home. “When’s the last time you saw Rhys before sunset? That bastard’s eyes would shrivel up if he ever
looked on daylight.”

I nodded after the retreating degan. “Thanks for tha—”

“Fuck you.”

“Excuse me?”

Fowler turned, slapped both of her hands against my chest, and shoved. “I said,
fuck you!
” she shouted as I stumbled back. “What the hell were you thinking back there
at the landing?”

“I—”

“Shut up. I’ll tell you what you were thinking. You were thinking you knew better. You were thinking you needed to do something so you could save my ass. You were thinking you were
going to be clever and fast and play the hero.” She stepped forward and shoved again. This time I stayed put. “You were thinking like a fucking Nose.”

“I was thinking,” I said, stepping forward, “that we were overmatched and needed to get the hell out of there. Or would you have rather waited for more of Soggy Petyr’s
people to arrive before we ran?”

“I would have rather you left it to me in the first place. If anyone’s supposed to draw Cutters away from someone else, it’s me. You don’t get to take those kinds of
risks anymore.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s precisely the point. If I’d stayed we might all be dead. You were busy killing one cove and holding off another, and Scratch was pinned in; I was the only one who could
play the hare. So I did.”

“And ended up with three Cutters on your blinders.”

“Better on my blinders than in your face.”

Fowler’s hand flew faster than I could catch it. The crack of it connecting with my cheek practically echoed off the surrounding buildings.

“Don’t you dare,” she said. “Don’t you
dare
pretend that my life is more valuable than yours, that I don’t get to make that choice. I’m your
Oak Mistress, dammit—it’s my job to watch out for you.”

“Watching over me doesn’t mean—”

“Doesn’t mean what? Doesn’t mean I get to put my ass on the line? Doesn’t mean I get to care? To hell with that. I get to decide what my life is worth, not
you.”

“Not when it comes to trading it for mine, you don’t.”

“That’s precisely when I get to decide: When you’re busy being a stubborn, shortsighted, selfish ass.”

“In other words, most days.”

“Damn straight, most da—oh, you bastard.” Fowler turned away, trying to stifle a grin. “You son of a bitch. That’s not fair, making me laugh.”

I smiled in turn and forced myself to release some of the tension that had been gathering in my shoulders. “Fair has nothing to do with it. Or didn’t you realize that, now that
I’m a Gray Prince?” I made the last two words sound comically ominous.

Fowler snickered, then took a deep breath. When she turned back to me, her fires were, if not out, then at least banked. “You’re right,” she said. “Fair has nothing to do
with it. But that’s my point. You’re a Gray Prince now, Drothe—you don’t get to take stupid risks. Drawing three swordsmen away in a street fight is our
job—we’re the ones who’re supposed to face the steel while you fade. It’s not just about you being smart enough to stay ahead of the rest of the Kin; it’s about you
staying alive. About letting the rest of us handle the street-level shit so you can focus on the bigger picture.”

I shook my head. “That’s not how I work and you know it.”

“Maybe not, but it’s how you need to start operating. Otherwise it won’t matter whether it comes from another Prince or some cut-rate Eriff who gets lucky in an
alley—you’ll still end up dead because you couldn’t let go of the street. And I’ll be damned if I lose any more people just so you can keep playing the Nose instead of the
Prince.”

“Give me some cred—wait,” I said, picking up on what she’d just said—or rather, what she hadn’t said. I looked past her, scanning the street.
“Where’s Scratch? Is he dust-mans?”

Fowler barked out something that, on any other day, might have passed for a laugh. Now it just sounded like pain. “There’s no getting anything by you, is there?”

“How’d he—?”

“Does it matter? He was doing his fucking job, which is more than I can say for you.” She turned her head as if to spit, then seemed to think better of it and instead pulled off her
cap. She ran a hand through spiked, greasy hair. “People are dying for you, Drothe. And they’re going to keep dying. My people, your people—Kin you don’t even know. And you
can’t stop it. All you can do is be worth it.” She put the cap back on and turned away. “Try to be worth it, will you? At least for me.”

I stood there, watching her go, until the morning crowds swallowed her up.

I forced tired legs to lift heavy feet and began to make my way back toward Blackpot Street. Of a sudden, sleep didn’t sound so tempting anymore, if only because of the work I knew that
would be waiting for me on the other side.

Be worth it.
Angels help me
.

I
woke to the sound of a late summer storm, the rain hitting like shovelfuls of gravel in the paved courtyard outside my window. For a moment, the
remnants of a dream flitted at the edge of my consciousness—memories of roses and rivers, of blood and carpeted hallways—before the reality of the night came in and crowded them
aside.

I shifted in my bed and listened to the noise.

I wasn’t used to a courtyard yet, let alone one big enough to allow rain to fall down into it. The closest I’d ever come was a street running along the other side of my shutters, and
most of them had been so narrow that rain didn’t drop so much as seep into the gap between buildings. Before that, in my youth, it had been the rain coming down through the trees, which was a
different thing entirely.

I sat up in darkness that wasn’t darkness and looked over toward the window in question. Rain without, none within, thanks to the covered walkway that ran around three sides of the
courtyard. I’d left the shutters open on purpose, to test myself. To see if I could sleep with them open. I had, but only, I suspected, out of exhaustion.

When was the last time I’d left a window open when I slept? When was the last time I’d had the trust, or the courage, to even try? I couldn’t remember, and that alone told me
too much.

I reached over and took an
ahrami
seed from the bowl beside my bed and placed it in my mouth. Rest wasn’t an option anymore—not now. Not with the rain and the window and the
nerves.

I stood up. It wasn’t easy.

Everything felt sore, from the bottoms of my feet to the bruise on my forehead, and double for what lay in between. I stretched this way, twisted that, and filled the air with more curses and
grunts than were likely necessary. Then I drew on a fresh shirt, pulled up blissfully clean pants, and padded my way—stiffly—out of the bedroom and down the hall. I stopped in the
shadow of the doorway that led out onto the courtyard.

Out here, the rain was a curtain, the noise so loud I took a step back. Where normally I could have seen across the courtyard—seen the stone bench and the potted trees, the iron gate and
the entry alcove beyond—now all I could make out was an amber blur of falling water. I, who could see in the dark, blinded by a bit of falling water.

In a way, I preferred it like this: the not seeing—or at least, not seeing the trappings of my princedom before me. It was still unnerving to wake up and find rooms and a courtyard and sky
overhead. For nearly as long as I’d been in Ildrecca, it had been close walls, loud neighbors, and, maybe, a smoke-shrouded strip of blue glimpsed between buildings. Even when I’d
graduated to apartments of my own, they’d been in the darker, danker, tighter portions of the capital. Narrow was good, loud was secure, smelly was reassuring. But this?

Even with Fowler’s people standing Oak and making the rounds, the place didn’t feel secure to me; didn’t seem as if I belonged. Oh, I understood why it was easier to keep watch
over a private house rather than a set of rooms above a shop or in a tenement, how it made sense for someone like me to set himself apart from the rest of the Kin and the Lighters—but that
didn’t mean I had to like it.

It had been Kells’s idea, of course. Once my boss, now my sworn man, he was the closest thing I had to a mentor when it came to being a Gray Prince. It was Kells who had first told me
about the street naming me a Prince, just as he had been the first to offer me his Clasp and help me begin forming what little organization I now had. He was a master when it came to running a
crew, and I was happy to have him at my side.

Or would have been, if he wasn’t also serving as a Long Nose for me in another Gray Prince’s operation. It hadn’t been my intention to put him to spying on Solitude, but
she’d already taken him under her cloak when he’d approached me on the matter. We’d talked about him walking away from her over the last few months, but Kells was concerned that
his leaving would make her suspicious of the other members of his former organization that had taken shelter with her. In some cases, the suspicions would have been justified—I had five
people actively working the corners in Solitude’s camp—but in most others, it wouldn’t.

I’d spent seven years working as a Long Nose for Kells before our respective reversals of fortune—I knew what it meant to live neck deep in another person’s organization, with
only a slip of the tongue or the wrong piece of information standing between you and a very long, very painful death. I wasn’t willing to put his people at risk simply for my convenience.

And so we communicated on the sly, using coded messages and blind drops and the occasional carefully orchestrated meeting. His advice was still invaluable—more so even than his
information—but it came too seldom, and usually with too much delay, to make a difference most days.