Chapter Thirty-eight
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.
All of which meant it had been a pleasantly quiet, and speedy, trip back. Until now.
“I thought you said Lucien created you?” I said as I took a hesitant step into the space. Bare red and gray stone walls rose almost three stories to a peaked ceiling, with high, narrow windows that had long ago lost any hints of glazing marching in narrow formation to either side. Two massive fireplaces stood opposite each other midway along. The one on the right showed signs of recent usage, although the fire that it had held must have been dwarfed by the potential of the space. Bandits using the hall for shelter, maybe, or more likely a lone shepherd. A few sticks of furniture were scattered about, along with the scarred remains of a long trestle table. None looked to have been original to the place. “I’d think the emperor would favor a more . . . resplendent locale. Or at least more convenient.”
“You don’t create a secret society of warriors in the courtyard of the Lesser Moon Palace,” said Degan as he picked up a chair and set it aright. One leg was broken off short, causing it to wobble. “That defeats the whole point of it being secret. Especially if all of the members of said society are known, or at least recognized, around the palace. Better to do it away from the Imperial City, where no one is in the habit of spying or prying.”
“So why here?”
“Why not?” Degan shrugged, adjusting the wrapped bundle of swords he carried over his right shoulder. “No one thought to ask, I suppose. We were told to come, and we came. That’s what we did back then.”
“Unlike now,” I said, limping slightly as I entered the hall. Even after a week on my back in the Lower City and regular visits from physickers and Mouths sent by Mama, the wound Wolf had given me still tended to be stiff come morning. I hoped getting home and off the trail would help, but I was beginning to have my doubts on the matter.
“Oh, the Order still listens,” said Degan. He patted the bundle. “When the call is loud enough, or the stakes high enough.”
“Which they are now, I expect,” said a voice from the far end of the room.
Both Degan and I reacted: me by dropping into a crouch, hand on my sword; Degan by turning around and then smiling.
“I was wondering if you’d come early,” said Degan.
“Why should I change my habits now?”
A broad, solid woman with wiry hair, dark skin and an easy smile was standing in a small archway off to one side of the hall. She was dressed for the road, but it clearly wasn’t the same road we’d been traveling: not in a beaded and embroidered tunic, kid-lined riding pants, and a travel coat that looked to be either of finest linen or roughest silk. She seemed suited more for the estate than the wilderness. The only thing on her that did look as if it belonged here was the battered, faded hat she had pushed back on her head, and even that had been a fine specimen once upon a time. Now it just looked like an old friend.
“Good to see you again, Bronze,” she said as she strode across the room, her coat flowing along almost as easily as she did. I spied a tapering triangle of a sword at her side, the forte of the blade a good six or more fingers wide where it met the guard. The handle was simple—black wood, with a rounded pommel—and had a forward-sweeping crescent of a guard done in deep, honey-yellow metal.
“Brass,” said Degan. He turned to face her but didn’t advance. She picked up on this and stopped farther away than I think she would’ve liked. Her smile crumbled a bit at the edges.
“That uncertain, are you?” she said.
“That careful.”
Brass regard him. “Probably just as well, for your sake.” She looked at me. “And you are?”
I wanted to say something like, “In over my head,” but instead went with, “Drothe.”
Brass cocked an eyebrow. “The Gray Prince?”
I turned to look at Degan. Degan was smirking. “What can I say?” he said. “You’re famous.”
Brass laughed. It was an easy, silken thing. “Or infamous. Copper’s had a few choice words to say about you over the past few months, I can tell you.”
Oh.
Degan’s voice grew serious. “He’s under my protection.”
“Fine,” said Brass, “but whose protection are you going to be under? That’s the real question.” She held up a folded piece of paper—one of the messages Degan had sent out to his fellows the moment we’d crossed the border. “This is all well and good, but you know it’ll carry about as much weight as what it’s written on for some of our fellows.”
“I know,” said Degan. “But I didn’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice, Bronze.”
Something passed between them in that moment that I couldn’t catch, couldn’t hope to understand. Something that spoke to two hundred years of fighting and feuding and family. Something I suspected you had to be a degan to understand.
After a moment, Degan nodded and looked away. Brass sighed. Then she pointed at the bundle.
“So you actually got it? Ivory’s sword?”
“And the laws.”
“And the . . . ?” Brass took a stunned step closer. Her jaw hung slack. “You didn’t say anything about the laws, Bronze.”
Degan smiled. “Well, I’ve got to hold something back for the big surprise, don’t I?”
“Can I . . . ?”
“Of course.” Degan set down the canvas, untied the leather laces, and rolled it open. Brass stared down at the three swords and the broken fan and whispered a prayer.
“Silver and Steel’s, too?” she said after a moment.
“Steel’s is a long story.”
“And Silver’s?”
Degan shook his head. I could still see him coming to my room, two nights after I’d woken up in the Lower City, Silver’s sword clutched in one hand, other men’s blood spattered across his clothing. He hadn’t been willing to tell me how he’d tracked down the sword Wolf had worn when I first met him, just that he had.
“I’d rather tell it all at once,” he said.
“I understand.” Brass knelt down before the weapons and reached out toward Ivory’s sword.
“Getting a bit ahead of yourselves, aren’t you?” said a voice from the main doorway. We looked up to find three degans standing between the open doors. One I recognized from months ago when I’d been questioned about Degan’s disappearance. That was Gold Degan. The second I didn’t know.
The third was Copper.
She grinned a dark grin at me. I pretended not to notice.
“There’s no harm in looking,” said Brass. Still, she stood without laying hands on any of the weapons.
“There’s every harm if you let Bronze’s offerings to the Order sway you,” said Gold as he came forward. He was a trim, compact man who nonetheless seemed to own the room just by stepping into it. Silver-haired, slate-eyed, with a measured way about him, I got the feeling that the last place you’d want to be was across a gaming board from this man. “Don’t forget why we’re here, sister: Iron and Silver are dead, Steel is missing, and now Ivory’s sword conveniently shows up in our fallen brother’s hands? You don’t gather up that much Oath-bound steel without shedding blood and taking lives.” He stopped and looked at Degan. “Do you, brother?”
“I’m not your brother anymore,” said Degan, his head dropping low as he stared at Gold from under his eyebrows. “I cast away my sword.”
“How convenient for you, then, that we can’t examine it. And where might it be?”
I forced myself to continue watching Gold, to not glance past him toward the doors and courtyard and my mule beyond. If he noticed the effort, he didn’t show it.
“Safe,” said Degan.
“Yes, I’m sure it is.” Gold deigned to turn his eyes to me. “Who’s the rapier?”
“Drothe,” said Copper, stepping up beside him. “You remember: the one who lied to us about Iron?”
“Ah, yes. I didn’t recognize him. What are you doing here, thief?”
“He’s here at my request,” said Degan, stepping in front of me before I could respond. “If it weren’t for Drothe, we wouldn’t have any of the swords, let alone the laws. He’s the one who got them from Steel.”
Gold looked truly surprised for the first time. “Him? Are you saying that Steel’s dead as well, and that this one killed him?”
“He’s here, isn’t he?”
“And Steel isn’t. Another convenience for you, brother.”
Brass took a step forward as well. “Back off, Gold. The tribunal hasn’t started yet. We’re still waiting on the rest.”
“Hm, yes.” Gold looked over his shoulder at his two companions, then back at us. “Although I have to wonder if it wouldn’t be easier on everyone if we just had the adjudication now? Call it a field court, if you will, and settle things quickly. Save us all some time.” He smiled. “A show of hands, perhaps?”
“Or of steel,” said Brass, putting her hand on her sword hilt.
The degan beside Copper grinned. “Oh, I don’t think you’d want to choose that option, sister,” he said, putting his own hand on his weapon. There were white dots set in the ribbon steel that made up the guard, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Pearl? Bone? White opals?
“No, you wouldn’t,” rumbled a voice behind them. “Because once steel comes out in this company, you never know who’s going to walk away.”
A tower of a man stepped into the hall, tall and wide enough to make the entryway look small. He was dark, with broad features that gave nothing away, and a great sword propped up against his shoulder. He wore a simple brown-and-green-striped tunic and bloused pants, with a head scarf whose pattern looked disturbingly familiar. The sword’s cross guard and ring looked to be of plain metal, with chips of something gray in it I couldn’t quite make out.
I leaned over to Degan. “Who’s the tree?” I whispered.
“Stone,” he said. “Steel’s brother.”
“His . . . ?” I suddenly found it hard to swallow.
“I know what you mean,” said Degan. “I’ve always found him intimidating as well.”
“Oh, good. That puts me at ease.”
Gold looked from us to Stone, and then smiled. “A fair point, brother. I stand admonished.” He gave a brief bow to Stone, then turned to his two companions. “Let’s take our ease while we wait for the rest, shall we?”
The three went off to a corner, their heads together.
“I take it that’s the opposition,” I said.
“Something like that,” said Brass. “Gold’s been sensitive about degan blood ever since we lost Bone.”
“Bone?” I said.
“They were together,” said Degan. “Gold took his death hard. He promised to see any degan punished who followed in Ivory’s footsteps.”
“Meaning you.”
“Meaning me now, yes.” Degan let out a long sigh. “You should go,” he said.
“Like hell.”
“You have no standing here. No voice. Better you go before the rest arrive.”
“I didn’t come all this way just to turn around and leave. I came here—”
“I know why you came,” said Degan. “And I appreciate it. But if you stay, the least that will happen is that you get thrown out.”
“‘The least’?” said Brass. “Come, now, Bronze, I don’t think—”
“But I do,” snapped Degan. He took my by the arm and pulled me off to the side, away from everyone else. “Go.” It was almost a plea.
“Why?”
Degan’s eyes raced around the room. He leaned in closer. “Because no one outside the Order is supposed to know what you know. They won’t stand for anyone who’s not a degan being privy to our internal disagreements, let alone the emperor and the true nature of our service. If Gold or any of the rest realize how much you’ve found out . . .”
“Are you saying they’ll kill me because I know too much?” I said. “That’s not exactly a new development for me, you know.”
“Maybe, but not like this. Not with them. There won’t be any haggling or chatting or debating—they’ll just cut you down. It’s what we do. The time to go is now, when no one knows where you stand. Get out before things start, so the question remains unanswered.”
“And your sword?” I said. “What do I do about that?”
“Take it with you.”
“What? But I thought—”
“If they get my sword,” hissed Degan, “they can find out you’re still beholden to the Order. After everything else, I’d have you free of that—free of them. I took the Oath with you because of who you were, because of who you are, to me. They won’t understand that. To them, you’ll just be another tool to use, and I won’t have that. Take my sword and go.”
I looked up at Degan and smiled. It was good to hear what I’d been hoping to hear. Worth all the miles to hear.
Then I shook my head. “I can’t do that.”
Degan’s jaw clenched. “I can’t let you stay.”
“You can’t make me leave.”
“Oh?” Degan turned, called to Stone. “Sergeant?”
Stone turned his massive head. “Aye?”
“This man isn’t a degan,” said Degan. “Escort him out, please.”
I jerked my arm away from Degan’s grasp. “Like hell,” I said.
“Come, now,” said Stone. His voice, I noticed, while normal for any other man, sounded small in his mouth. “Don’t make me work. The others can tell you I get ornery when I have to work.”
I thought about dodging, about running, about trying to stave off the inevitable—but it was a room full of degans, with more on the way. What the hell was I going to do, fight them off?
I sighed and let my shoulders droop. “You’re a son of a bitch,” I said to Degan.
“And you’re welcome,” he said as I headed toward the doors, Stone at my back.
Stone escorted me from the hall, down the long passage beyond, out to the entry to the keep. I stopped at the top of the stairs that led down to the main courtyard, blinking in the morning light. Stone stopped beside me.
When he spoke, it was without preamble. “Gold tells me you killed Steel.”
I froze.
“Is that true?” he said.
“I . . .”
“Don’t lie, boy. I’ll know.”
Had I? Technically, no: Aribah had performed the final deed, but it hadn’t been for lack of trying on my part. If it were up to me, he’d have died on Ivory’s sword and not a neyajin’s blade. But did it matter? And more important, was I going to quibble now, in the face of Wolf’s brother?
“I had a hand in his dying,” I said.
“Credit to you for telling the truth, then.” Stone grunted and cleared his throat. “I just want you to know, before things begin, that I don’t hold grudges when it comes to Wolf. Not anymore.”
“If it matters, I didn’t—”
“It doesn’t.” He cleared his throat again. “As much as he tried, I don’t think Wolf ever managed to place the Oath before himself. For that reason alone, he stopped being my brother a long time ago.” The degan looked down, showing me an uneven set of teeth. “I just thought you should know that.”
“Thank you?” I said.
“You’re welcome. Now, leave this place before I’m forced to kill you.”