Douglas Hulick - Sworn in Steel

“But I already told you. .”

“Doesn’t matter.” She produced a knife and began cutting away the buttons that held my doublet closed. “The neyajin didn’t know how to hide from the djinn in the beginning, but we learned. We figured it out. Just because you don’t know how your sight works right now doesn’t mean you won’t figure it out later.” She peeled back the cloth from my shoulder and I gasped at the pain. There was plenty of blood.

“I thought you weren’t going to stay in el-Qaddice,” I said, trying to distract myself. “That you were going to leave your school behind.”

Coolly: “That was before I inherited it.”

I winced, and not from her ministrations. “I’m not going to apologize for that,” I said.

“Did I ask you to? I was the one who attacked my grandfather first. He was my blood, but what he was doing, what he had planned. .” She shook her head. “His intentions may have been on the right path, but his actions? I couldn’t allow him to take our clan down that road. If you hadn’t killed him, it would have been me. There was no other way.”

I watched as she walked over to Wolf’s body and cut a length of cloth from his robes, then came back. “So you’re head of the neyajin in el-Qaddice now?” I said as she knelt beside me and began to fold up the fabric.

Her mouth became a tight, thin line. “Not quite. I may be the last of my blood, but I don’t have the rank or reputation my grandfather did. I expect some will leave. One or two others may challenge me for leadership of the school.”

“Can you take them?”

“One of them? Yes. The other, probably not. But it doesn’t matter. I won’t be staying.”

“But I thought you said-” The rest of my words were cut off by a hiss of pain as Aribah pressed the pad of fabric against my shoulder and closed the doublet back over it.

“What I said I was that I am neyajin and that I had inherited my grandfather’s school. This is true. But if I stay, the school will fracture and die. Better I take it with me and begin anew somewhere else.”

The pain I felt was joined by a sinking feeling inside me. “What ‘somewhere else’?” I said.

A self-satisfied smile. “Why, wherever you and your dark sight go, of couse.”

“You mean Ildrecca?”

“Is that where you’re headed? Then yes, Ildrecca.”

“But you can’t just-”

Her bloody finger came up, laid itself over my lips. “You’ve lost a lot of blood and nearly lost your life this night, so I’ll be as plain as I can. I need you. I need you alive. Because as long as you’re alive, I have a chance of not only redeeming my family’s line, but of restoring the neyajin through your sight. As I said, my grandfather was right-it’s only his method that was wrong. So if that means following you to Ildrecca, then that is where I will go. Not only for my family, but also for me: I still owe you.”

I shook my head. “We’re even.”

“In terms of deaths, yes, but in terms of saving lives? No. You did far more to save mine than simply kill someone, and I will not forget that.”

I considered the notion of walking into Ildrecca, a string of Djanese assassins in my wake. Or even just one. Yeah, that would go over well. .

But it could be handy.

“Come,” said Aribah. “We’ve lingered long enough. I need to get you to your people so they can look after you.”

“I need the swords,” I said, indicating Wolf’s body. “And the fan.”

Aribah scowled. “Surely you’re not in need of money so badly that-”

“No,” I said. “It’s not like that. I have debts to people, too, and I need those to pay them.”

Aribah considered the small collection of swag for a moment, then sighed. As she gathered them up and formed a rough sling from Wolf’s sash and robe, I pulled my doublet closed as best I could and forced myself to my feet. My leg burned and my head felt light, but I knew we wouldn’t be able to make it if I couldn’t walk. Better I get it over with now.

I fumbled two ahrami from the pouch around my neck and slipped them into my mouth, ignoring the coppery taste of my own blood that mixed with the smoke of the seeds.

When Aribah came back over, the swords wrapped and slung across her back, the fan in her hand, I was looking up at the pearl-colored sky through the buildings. Dawn was a thing well in progress.

“Any idea how we’re going to get across town, let alone through a couple of gates, in this condition?” I said as she slipped her shoulder under mine and her free arm across my back.

“Of course.” She smiled. “I am neyajin , after all, am I not?”

The door swung back on rusty hinges, sending a high-pitched squeal reverberating through the empty hall and up into the rafters. The noise unsettled the birds nesting there, and I saw several pigeons and what might have been an owl make their exit through the large hole that had claimed a good third of the roof, along with part of an upper wall.

I looked around the dusty, empty space and resisted the urge to sneeze.

“ This is the Barracks Hall?” I said to Degan.

“What?” he said, pushing the other half of the double doors wide. “Oh, no-this is far older.” He stepped back and brushed his hand against his pants, staring past the drifting feathers and slanting morning light, into the past. “This is where the Order of the Degans began.”

We were three weeks out of el-Qaddice and somewhere between two and five days east of Ildrecca. I couldn’t be certain of the latter because we’d left the coast road days ago, cutting across farmland and pastures and up into the stony hills beyond. We were between the port town of Niceria and the capital city, but if you’d asked me to point to our location on a map, the best I’d be able to do is indicate one of the many spurs of the Aeonian hills that ran beside the sea. What I did know was that this ruin of a fortress likely hadn’t been marked on any map for at least two hundred years, and maybe more.

Fowler had continued on to Ildrecca at my instructions. She hadn’t been happy about it, but I needed someone to evaluate just how far things had deteriorated in my absence and have a report ready when I returned. Besides, I knew that Degan wanted as few people tagging along to his meeting with the Order as possible. Ideally he would have gone alone, but I still had his sword-he’d refused to take it back even now-although I’d started keeping it in my bedroll rather than wearing it in his presence. There’s only so much salt some wounds can take. Even then, I suspect he would have left me behind, but for the fact that I was the one who’d retrieved both Steel’s and Ivory’s swords, not to mention the laws. Well, “retrieved” if you counted Aribah carrying them, and in the end, me, to the courtyard of the Angel’s Shadow before vanishing into the night. I hadn’t heard from her since then, but that didn’t surprise me: She was neyajin , after all.

As for Tobin and his people, they were taking the long, potentially profitable route back. While the play they’d performed might have gotten them expelled from el-Qaddice, that hadn’t stopped several rural sheikhs, and even a provincial Beg, from offering to put up the troupe and pay their way in exchange for a series of private performances. As it turned out, there was a not-so-secret audience for banned plays in hinterland, well away from the despotic court. And that it was a bunch of Imperials performing the forbidden art? Well, that made it all the more intriguing. Mama Left Hand had made all the arrangements, for what I was told was only a mildly rapacious cut. I’d been told to expect the troupe back in the Imperial capital come next spring-probably.