Douglas Hulick - Sworn in Steel

Was that what the problem had been in Barrab? Had I gotten careless? I didn’t think so, but then, you never think you’re missing things until it’s too late. And Crook Eye had certainly caught me unawares, so maybe. .

It had been another meeting, another attempt at me trying to mollify the established lords of the Kin. Another slow dance of words and smiles and threats. As the newest Gray Prince, I was the unknown, the potential threat, and doubly so because no one had seen me coming-not even me. But kill a legend like Shadow, burn a cordon to the ground, stop a war and con an empire, and people on the street start to think you know what you’re doing. They start to call you Prince. And who can argue with the street? Not me. Not a Nose who got lucky and was pushed to the top of the hill. And not, it seemed, the other Princes; or, at least, not directly, and not right away.

You learned not to challenge the street in Ildrecca when it made pronouncements. Not if you were Kin, and not if you were smart.

And Crook Eye had been smart. Smarter than I’d given him credit for. Unlike the handful of other Gray Princes I’d met, he hadn’t come to our meeting full of bluff and bluster, hadn’t cloaked himself in offers of mentorship, hadn’t tried to warn me about my newfound peers. He’d simply approached me, one smuggler to another, to talk business. And given his web of contacts extended not only across the southern third of the empire, but deep into the lands and kingdoms beyond, I’d come. Warily, to be sure, but come I had. I needed those contacts, needed that web. Needed money if I was going to build any kind of organization, and to do that, I needed to move more of the one thing I knew how to move: holy relics.

Crook Eye had known all of that, of course. But he’d also known more: He’d known how to take hold of me. Because, like me, Crook Eye had gotten lucky.

Crook Eye, you see, had found a sword. Degan’s sword.

I could still remember the shock that had ripped through me when Crook Eye held up the blackened and charred length of metal. The last time I’d seen that sword, Degan had consigned it to the flames of a burning building-leaving it, and our friendship, to be consumed on the pyre of my mistakes. He’d risked everything he believed in, everything he was, on me, and I’d repayed that trust with betrayal. It had only seemed right to leave the sword where it lay: who was I to touch the symbol of what Degan had lost?

So to see it in another’s hands, let alone Crook Eye’s? To have him threaten me with it? To have him say I hadn’t been alone when Shadow died? That I’d hired it done by a degan? Well, that hadn’t sat well. Not his threats, and definitely not him holding Degan’s sword while doing so.

Only one person got to threaten me with that blade, and Crook Eye wasn’t it.

And so I’d drawn my own steel and taken Degan’s blade from Crook Eye at sword’s point.

And walked right into his hands.

Fowler was the first to realize it, of course. I’d been too angry to think about consequences, too focused on the sword to worry about having broken my Peace. But as Fowler had pointed out, thanks to me Crook Eye didn’t need Degan’s sword to shore up his story anymore: He had something better. He had me clearing steel and breaking my word and threatening his life-the exact things we’d both pledged not to do.

And I’d walked right into it. Crook Eye had set me up, and I’d repaid the bastard by making him look like a stand-up Gray Prince.

Dammit.

In the end, there hadn’t been any other choice: I needed to apologize. And so, gathering up my people and tamping down on my pride, I’d stalked back across Barrab to the meeing site in hopes of finding Crook Eye so I could try to make amends.

I’d found him all right: dead, my dagger in his eye, three of his men scattered about him on the floor.

After that, it had been all about getting out of Barrab and beating the news back to Ildrecca. Wolf, the Azaari bandit and smuggler who’d served as our guide through the hills down to Barrab, had proved invaluable in this respect. Word had gotten back to the rest of Crook Eye’s people in Barrab somehow, and our trip out had proved more of a challenge than anticipated. It wasn’t until we were well away from town and into the hills that I’d had the luxury to wonder where Wolf had been while I was meeting with Crook Eye, to realize that he hadn’t reappeared until after we’d found the bodies. To remember that he was a knife fighter, and that Crook Eye had been killed with a short blade.

By then, though, it was too late: Wolf had already disappeared.

Fowler’s constant strain of “I told you so” had nearly been unbearable on the way home.

I kept to Ildrecca’s thoroughfares and streets as much as possible. The back ways would have been faster, but I didn’t know the twists and turns here well enough to take full advantage of them. Besides, I was familiar with the kinds of things that could happen in strange alleys, and I didn’t have the time to deal with them now.

I wondered again what had happened to Fowler and Scratch, whether or not the Oak Mistress and her man had made it. Despite Tobin’s hurry to be gone and Ezak’s cautions, I’d done a quick nose of the blocks surrounding the actors’ barn, including a stint along the Slithers. I hadn’t been hoping to run into Fowler so much as to spot a specific pile of stones here, or maybe a pattern scratched into a wall or doorpost there-any of Fowler’s thief’s markings or signs that could tell me she was alive and on the streets. But none of the marks I saw were hers, and the few coves I risked talking to hadn’t heard anything of use. The best I’d been able to manage was to sketch a few reassurances for her below some windowsills and leave a tuft of pigeon feathers stuck into the doorjamb of a tavern to let her know I was looking for her.

I passed out of Five Bells cordon and cut across a corner of Needles. It was market day, so I avoided the main square and its retired stoning-pillars. Instead, I ducked and dodged my way through the secondary streets, past carts heavy with silk and linen and wool, ignoring the calls of the fabric merchants and their barkers. Faint hints of stale piss and wood ash-trace odors left over from the dying process, not fully faded yet-were overlaid by the heavier scents of mules and men sweating in the summer heat.

It wasn’t until I was almost out of the place that a new scent caught my nose: cardamom and cumin, along with a hint of citrus, all of it riding on the dark, scratchy smell of grilled meat. My stomach answered the call, and I realized that except for two boiled eggs and the fortified wine provided by the Boardsmen, I hadn’t eaten since before boarding the caïque.

Mouth watering, I tracked the scent to a street vendor tending a rough metal grate set atop a fluted brazier full of coals. He was just off to the side of a narrow lane, not far from another cross-street. There was a small crowd around him, watching and waiting as he deftly drew pieces of cubed lamb from a pot of spiced yogurt marinade, threaded them on a reed skewer, and placed them on the grate. As each skewer was finished, he speared half of a young onion on the end, gave it a quick sear, and served it up with workmanlike nonchalance.

I placed an order for two, looked about me, and then changed it to four at the last moment. He put the extra meat on the grill without a thought. Since this wasn’t my cordon, and I didn’t want to attract attention, I waited until mine were done, rather than taking the next four that were available, which would have been the habit of most Kin.

A pair of skewers in each hand, I walked over to the nearby lane and hunkered down against the wall, shifting slightly so that Degan’s sword wasn’t rubbing against my bandage. Taking a small, hot onion in my mouth from one, I carefully placed two of the other skewers across the bowl of the beggar beside me.