Douglas Hulick - Sworn in Steel

“And among the Kin.”

“No.” The ball had finally reached my tongue, had pushed itself up and out past my lips, into the world. “You can’t be telling me this. Not now. Not after all this. Not after what we just went through, after what we just did.”

Degan turned his face back to mine, met my burning eyes with his ravaged blue ones. “I’m a degan again, Drothe,” he said. “You helped see to that.”

“You can’t. Not after all this, damn you. You can’t.”

Degan stood up slowly-almost as slowly as you’d expect a two-hundred-and-forty-two-year-old man to stand-and looked down at me. “Drothepholous Pasikrates, I call in your Oath. I, and my Order, would have you remain a Gray Prince.” Degan paused a moment, then added, “And help us preserve the empire.”

Son of a bitch.

The door swung open and hit the wall behind it with a satisfying thunk . On the other side of the room, a tall man with a gray beard and a shock of white hair looked up from his desk and cleared a dagger in one smooth motion. The man who’d been sitting in front of him did even better. The door hadn’t even bounced off the wall before he was out of his seat, blade in his hand, eyes on the doorway.

He was good. But then, that’s what bodyguards were for.

Me, I just stood in the entry and smiled.

“Hello, Longreach,” I said.

“Alley Walker,” he said. “I’d heard you were back. Didn’t think you were that dumb.”

“Please,” I said, stepping into the room. “It’s just Drothe. I don’t go in for the street names.”

The bodyguard looked at his boss, who in turn looked at me. Longreach then looked toward the doorway.

“They’re fine,” I said.

“Who?”

“The guards you’re wondering about.”

My fellow Gray Prince gave his man a nod. The man moved toward me.

“You hire that Djanese Mouth again, is that it?” said Longreach, inching around his desk. “Have him glimmer my people down?” He shook his head. “Not a good idea, Alley. . Drothe. From what I hear, you haven’t been back in Ildrecca long enough to take a shit, let alone collect your people. Bad time to risk a war”

“I’ve been back three weeks,” I said. “Even on a straight diet of cheese and wheat, I don’t take that long.”

Longreach smiled. “Funny. But you’re not in a position to be making jokes.”

“Neither are you.” I nodded, and a bit of the shadows stepped forward and laid a blade across the Gray Prince’s throat.

“Breathe too heavily,” said Aribah in Djanese, “and I’ll take the wind from your lungs.”

“She says she thinks there’s a draft in here,” I said.

The bodyguard spun around, then turned back to me.

“Tricky one, isn’t it?” I said. “Who to stab first? Let’s see if this helps you make up your mind.”

The bodyguard’s eyes went wide as I moved to the side and Brass and Garnet and Degan stepped through the doorway. When his sword dropped to the floor a moment later, I wasn’t sure if it was due to choice or shock.

I strolled into the room. “Good choice.”

“So they were right,” said Longreach, his voice tight as he tried to watch me and talk without actually moving. “Crook Eye was just the first move: you’re trying to cut us all down.” He spit. “Fucking street trash.”

“And proud of it.” I stopped before the bodyguard and looked up at him. He quickly sidled out of the way. I sat down in his chair. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

“Oh? Well, if it’s not to start a war, then you better kill me, because that’s what you’ve got the moment you walk out of here.”

“It’s to get your attention,” I said. I scooted the chair forward until it was close enough for my feet to reach the desk, then sat back and set my heels on his papers. “As you may know, I did a bit of traveling of late. See the world, expand your horizons. All that crap. But aside from a few interesting new friends I picked up on the way. .” I paused to nod to Aribah, who sniffed in turn. “I did manage to learn a few things.”

“Who thought something like you could learn anything?”

“Imagine my surprise as well. Try to keep a djinn from burning out your insides, and you end up becoming a better person. Who knew? But the point is, I found out something very interesting about people and survival and respect. Turns out if you have people who are similar to one another, how they treat each other is how others eventually treat them as well. Take cordwainers: If you have three cordwainers living on the same street and they all spend half their time making shoes and the other half berating their fellows, not only do you end up with fewer shoes, but you have fewer people willing to buy the shoes because all they hear is how terrible each man’s work is. By attempting to build themselves up at the expense of the other-”

“Is this a fucking joke ?” gasped Longreach. “You’re talking about trade guilds, you idiot. It’s what they use to keep the fucking cordwainers and cobblers and whatever else you want to name from fucking over the whole industry. They’ve been around for centuries-it’s not a fucking revelation.”

“Ah, good: You’ve heard of them. That saves us time.”

“What?”

“What I’m thinking of,” I said, leaning back slightly in the chair, “is something like that for us. The Gray Princes. Only not so involved, and not so. . structured. More of a council.” I looked past him to the neyajin . “A tribal council, if you will.”

Her eyes smiled back.

“What?” said Longreach again. “You want to. . what?”

I sighed and looked back at Degan. He shrugged, as if to say, “I told you so.”

And here we’d thought Longreach would be the easiest one to persuade.

I turned back around.

“All right,” I said, “let’s try this: What do you know about Djanese assassin schools. .?”