Chapter Seven
The words were out of my mouth before I knew I was saying them.
“Like hell!”
I turned and yanked the door open and stormed down the hall.
“Wait!”
A chair turned over behind me, was followed by the sound of footsteps coming quickly.
I reached the head of the stairs and drew my rapier, spinning back as I did so. Wolf stopped short, my point less than a foot away from him, aiming center-left on his chest. I was pleased to see that my tip didn’t waver in the slightest.
“You don’t want to do this,” he said. He could have been talking about my walking out or my drawing steel on him. I expected it was a little bit of both.
“Maybe not, but I’d rather end up ruined or dead than help you hunt down Degan.”
Wolf raised an eyebrow. “You love him that much?”
“I owe him that much.”
“Then I was right to choose you.”
“To hell with your choices.”
Wolf shrugged. “Perhaps.” He gestured toward the stairs. “What about Rambles’s and Nijjan’s men? How will you get past them?”
“They’re not what concern me right now.” And besides, there was always the roof.
“Ah.” Wolf looked at my sword’s point, then back at me. The bastard didn’t even seem worried. “In that case, I’d best earn my reputation, yes?”
Before I could shift my rapier’s tip, his left hand was past it, sliding up and over and around the blade, his arm slithering up my sword like a snake. In an instant my weapon was enveloped, the fabric of his robes serving to both protect his arm from the edge and further entangle my steel. At the same time, he stepped forward and slammed the open palm of his right hand into my sternum.
I fell back, my hands empty, my breath lost, my sword in his grasp.
F*cking degans.
I was still gasping for air when Wolf put a hand under my armpit and helped me to my feet. He slid my rapier back into its scabbard.
“I think we may do better under an open sky,” he said. “Come.”
I didn’t argue. For that matter, I didn’t really walk until we were past the second landing and getting near the main floor. I was able to shake off Wolf’s arm and move under my own power by the time we made it to the door.
As he’d said, there were a good number of Cutters loitering in the courtyard, although all of them seemed more worried about glaring at one another than watching us. Nijjan and Rambles were there, too, standing with their respective crews. Rambles growled to his men when he saw us and led them back inside; Nijjan simply nodded and turned away.
“So, what was her price?” I said, watching Nijjan go. I’d be lying if I said my voice wasn’t bitter.
“Don’t hold on to your judgment of her too tightly,” said Wolf, following my gaze. “She gave you to me, yes, but only after she was certain I wouldn’t kill you. She was very exacting on that point.”
“And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“It’s supposed to tell you that she was only willing to go so far in her betrayal. Yes, Nijjan broke her agreement with you, but that’s all she did. How many of your Kin would have taken Rambles’s offer, or handed you over to me, no questions asked? You’re not a man lightly crossed, and she showed courage in doing it to your face. You need to respect the respect she has shown you. Jackals eat whatever meat they find; Nijjan Red Nails is no jackal.”
“That still doesn’t tell me what she charged to cross me.”
“Yes,” said Wolf, turning away. “It does.”
I started and looked down the street to where Nijjan and her men were slipping into an alley. At the last moment, I caught a glimpse of what might have been a woman’s face, skin thick with hennaed patterns, turning back my way. Then she was gone.
Had that been the entirety of her price? Nijjan keeping her turf and me not dying?
Of a sudden, I wanted to go after her—to ask just how far she would have gone for me if I hadn’t been set up for Crook Eye’s death; to ask whether another month or ten between us would have made a difference. Part of me liked to think that it would have.
Wolf led me toward the center of the square. The cobbles beneath us were black with coal dust and mud from the smithies that populated Rustwater. Iron and water and soot hung thick in the air. Combined with the heat—both from the weather and the banked but never dead forges—it felt as if we were walking through a mine. I glanced upward to be sure and made out blotchy, moving pockets of stars overhead. Clouds rolling in from the steppes to the northwest, bringing heat but no rain.
Summer in Ildrecca. Bad time to be in the city. The walls of the basement taverns would be sweating, while the Kin would be sitting in the dank, drinking, honing their blades, and polishing their grudges. Men and women would die for words that wouldn’t have garnered a hard look two weeks before, and the thinnest rumors would take on the heft of fact. More bodies to be found in the alleys, more reasons for the Rags to take their clubs to the Kin.
Bad time to be saving an organization; worse time to be losing one.
Wolf stopped beside a row of low wooden boxes that had been set up in the middle of the square, each filled with earth. Flowers and leeks and Angels knew what else pushed up against the heat, trying to justify the communal garden. Wolf rested a foot on the corner of a plot.
“I would see his sword,” he said.
I reached back, put my hand on the canvas. “No.”
“As Bronze’s sword brother, it’s only proper that I—”
“As the person who’s been framed, it’s only proper that I tell you to f*ck off. I faced down another Gray Prince for this—there’s no way I’m handing it over to you.”
“I only wish to see it.”
“You haven’t earned the privilege.”
“The—?” Wolf’s foot hit the ground with a thump. “I’m a degan! If anyone has the right to see Bronze’s blade, let alone carry it, it’s me.”
I put my finger to Wolf’s chest, my face in his. “You want to see it? You want to hold it? Tell me why you went through all of this—the charade, the setup, the blackmail—instead of just asking, and I’ll think about it. Because unless it’s a damn good reason, you have about as much chance of getting my help, and your hands on this sword, as I have of becoming emperor.”
Without taking his eyes off mine, Wolf reached up and wrapped his hand around my finger. I half expected to hear a crack, followed by agonizing pain. Instead, he merely pushed it, and me, back.
“I didn’t ask to see it,” he said, “because I couldn’t be certain of the answer. And because I suspected I already knew what your reply would be.” He let go of my hand. I got the feeling that, under different circumstances, he’d have snapped it—and other parts of me—off without hesitation. “You hunted Degan after the fire in Ten Ways,” he said. “Then you ceased. This tells me you lost his trail, or decided not to follow it. Either way, given your history with Bronze, I knew asking for your help wouldn’t be enough: I needed to get your attention.”
“So you dusted Crook Eye?”
“It worked, didn’t it? I doubt we’d be standing here talking if I hadn’t.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
I stepped over to the nearest raised bed and sat down on its corner. “So why do you want to find Degan?”
Wolf shook his head. “I answered your question about why I killed Crook Eye; now show me the sword. I’ll answer your other questions after that.”
I hesitated for a moment, then unslung the bundle and laid it across my legs. By the time I’d undone the rope and begun working at the canvas, Wolf was all but looming over me. When I folded back the last bit of cloth, he caught his breath.
“By the stars,” he murmured. “What happened to it?”
I ran my fingers over the wreckage that had been Degan’s sword. Soot blackened and charred, it looked worse than it was, but that was still bad enough. What had once been an elegant piece of moon-kissed steel now looked like something that had been abandoned in a back alley after a losing fight. Oh, the sword still ran straight, and the edge seemed to be true under all the grit—this was Black Isle steel, after all; it would take more than a simple fire to damage this blade—but no one would have taken this for a degan’s weapon at first glance, or even a second. It hadn’t been until I’d noticed the traces of bronze chasing left on the misshapen guard that I’d suspected it for what it was, wasn’t until I’d rubbed away the grime at the base of the blade and saw the single tear etched into the sword that I’d known it for what it was. And even then, I’d doubted—that is, until Crook Eye had told me how he got his hands on it.
“It was in that fire you mentioned down in Ten Ways,” I said. “I’d thought it had been lost or, I don’t know, found and returned to the Order. Either way, I hadn’t gone looking for it.”
“Because?”
“Because I figured that’s how he wanted it.”
“Yet Crook Eye ended up with Degan’s sword,” said Wolf. “How?”
“By being smart and lucky and in the right place at the right time.”
“And he wanted it why?”
“He didn’t. He wanted this.” I patted the rapier at my side. Shadow’s rapier. The tapering length of Black Isle steel that Fowler had fished from of the embers, gotten remounted, and gifted to me. A prince’s sword for the newest prince, she’d said at the time, knowing damn well what my having that blade would mean. I hadn’t known whether to curse her or kiss her at the time; still didn’t, to be honest. “For the Kin,” I said, “this blade holds far more meaning and symbolism than Degan’s sword ever could. Crook Eye wanted the rapier, but someone beat him to it. But in looking, he came across Degan’s blade instead.”
“And then?”
“And then, being the smart Gray Prince that he was, he thought and schemed and bided his time until he could use it against me.”
“Blackmail?”
“More or less.”
“I’m surprised I found him alive to kill.”
I rewrapped the canvas around Degan’s blade and hung it from the baldric. “Why? I would have done the same thing in his place. Leverage is leverage. Besides, he was under my Peace—there was no way I was going to dust him.”
Wolf cocked an eyebrow. “Not even over the sword?”
“I don’t break my word.”
The words felt like stones in my mouth. Of course I broke my word—but only when it truly mattered. The proof was lying right there in my lap. But I had to say it, had to see if I got a reaction from Wolf—especially with Degan’s name hanging in the air between us. If he knew about my Oath to Degan and what had happened, he couldn’t not react, couldn’t not call me out. All other things aside, he was still a degan.
I watched him as I slung Degan’s sword over my shoulder: studied the amber-limned lines around his eyes to see if they tightened, took in the red-gold line of his jaw to see if it clenched beneath his beard, listened for an intake of furious breath.
But all Wolf did was follow the sword with his eyes and sigh.
“All right,” I said. “You got to see it. Now it’s your turn: Why do you want Bronze?”
“You mean aside from his having killed Iron?”
I looked up sharply at that. “Like I told your Order, Shadow was the one who—”
“And like I told you,” said Wolf, “I don’t care about the lies you told them or the half-truths they mouthed back. We both know Bronze killed Iron. There was no other reason for him to disappear without a word, nothing else that would have caused him to abandon his sword. A degan’s blade is his identity, his soul. Bronze wouldn’t have done that unless he felt he no longer had a right to carry it.”
“You’re that sure?” I said.
“We all are.”
I shifted on my perch. “You all . . . ?”
“We know that Gray Prince didn’t kill our brother. Not that cleanly. We’re not fools, after all.”
I’d kind of been hoping they were, actually. Most people wanted their answers simple, their mysteries solved. But then again, most people weren’t the Order of the Degans.
“So is that why you want him?” I said, my voice tight. “You think he dusted your sword brother, and now you want to make him pay?”
“No. That may be true for the others, but not for me.”
“How convenient, then, that I’ve been set up by the one degan who doesn’t want Bronze dead. Lucky me.”
“Believe what you wish, but know this: It’s not my intent to hunt down Bronze so I can exact vengeance on him.”
“Then why?”
Wolf gave me a long, thoughtful look. “Because I need him.”
“For what?”
“I cannot say.”
“Oh, Angels!” It was Degan and his reticence about Iron all over again. “You degans and your damn secrets. You’re worse than a courtesan at court.”
Wolf’s voice took on a condescending tone. “It’s a matter regarding the Order of the—”
“It’s about the f*cking emperor, isn’t it?”
Wolf’s eyes went wide. “What?”
“The emperor. You know, the man your order promised to serve, only now you can’t agree among yourselves whether that means preserving the empire or the man himself.”
Wolf’s eyes grew even wider. I could almost read his mind by his expression: This was all supposed to be deep-file degan information, internal politics meant to be kept within the Order.
“How . . . ?” he began.
“How the hell do you think?”
“Perhaps,” said Wolf after a moment, “you should tell me—exactly—what Degan told you about the Order.”
“And perhaps you should tell me which side of the split you stand on.”
It wasn’t an idle question. The whole reason I’d ended up breaking my Oath to Degan was because he’d decided we needed to turn an ancient Paragon’s journal over to the emperor rather than let the information it contained fall into the wrong hands. Problem was, I’d already agreed to give the book to Solitude and help her throw down said emperor. That was no small thing, and not just because he was the emperor; it was also because killing him didn’t mean he wouldn’t come back.
For the past six-hundred-plus years, the Dorminikan Empire has been ruled by the same man—or rather, by three recurring incarnations of the same man: the founder of the empire, Stephen Dorminikos. Named, respectively, Lucien, Theodoi and Markino, each version of the emperor was reborn thirty years apart from the other two, always in the same order, always succeeding one another to the throne—more or less. The occasional revolt or stubborn regent had caused their fair share of gaps, but in the end, one version or another of the emperor always regained the throne. After all, it was the Angels who had chosen Stephen and shattered his soul into three pieces, so he could be perpetually reborn, wasn’t it? It only seemed proper that the Chosen One of the Angelic Host sit the earthly throne that had been set aside for him, right?
Right.
Except it was all a load of shit.
Thanks to the notes in the Paragon’s journal, I’d learned the truth: that Stephen Dorminikos’s broken soul and unending rule had had nothing to do with the Angels. The sole reason he’d been able keep coming back was that he’d tasked his magicians—his Paragons—with finding the secret to immortality. Unable to figure it out, they’d instead come up with the best solution they could manage: cyclical regeneration.
The whole thing—the Angels, being chosen as the Perpetual Emperor, the resulting Imperial Cult—had been a con. And what was worse, it was slowly falling apart. Not in terms of the magic—that appeared to working fine, at least from the outside—but rather in terms of the man, or by now the men, being reincarnated.
It was no great secret that the various incarnations had been slipping into madness over the last century or so. As each emperor aged, they tended to become paranoid about various things, especially one another. Over time, that had translated to more and more hostility. Right now it was minor, but as Solitude had pointed out, the eventual path was easy enough to see: Sooner or later, one incarnation would challenge the other openly, and the empire would end up at war with itself. Forever, because if the emperor you believed in never died, neither would his cause. But I couldn’t say the same for the empire itself, and that had bothered me. No Empire meant no Kin, and I wasn’t about to see the closest thing to a family, and the only legacy I had, go down the sewer someday because of a religious con job. Hunting us down because we were criminals was one thing, but to be destroyed as an afterthought of history gone bad? No, thank you.
And that’s where the problem had come in. Degan had stood with the part of his Order that believed preserving the empire meant preserving the emperor. If I’d let him follow his conscience and turn that journal over, there would have been no stopping the downward spiral towards civil war. I’d needed the information the journal held to try and topple the man Degan was sworn to preserve. Which was why I’d coldcocked my best friend the moment he’d turned his back to me and run off with the Paragon’s notes, even though I knew it meant I was destroying his life.
But just because I’d betrayed Degan that one time didn’t mean I was willing to do it again. If Wolf stood on the opposite side of the Order from Degan, I’d be damn if I helped him do anything.
For his part, Wolf waved the question off with a dismissive hand. “The Order’s issues with the emperor aren’t your concern.”
“You made it my concern when you set me up. So either you come clean or I take a walk and see just how well me and my people do against your lies.”
He shifted his weight back on his heels, but otherwise didn’t move. “You like dramatic threats, don’t you? To use your knowledge like a blade. Very well: I concede the point. I stand with the Order. No,” he said, holding up a hand to forestall my argument. “Don’t interrupt me. By that, I mean I wish to see the degans come together under one purpose, like it used to be in the days after our founding. I wish to see us do the things we are capable of, if only we didn’t have this thorn constantly worrying at our side. It festers and drives us apart.
“You wonder how I know Bronze and Iron fought? Because it was inevitable. If not them, then it would have been two others. I have no proof, no witnesses as you would say, but that isn’t important. One degan has spilled the blood of another over what it means to serve the Empire. If that deed stands unanswered, then the Order will fall upon itself. I need Bronze to prevent this.”
“How, by making an example of him?” I said. “By dragging him before your brothers for some kind of mock trial?”
“You understand nothing.”
“And whose fault would that be, do you think?”
Wolf sighed. “How do you make an example of someone who’s already an exemplar? Where the rest of us have argued and debated and even changed our minds, Bronze has stood unmoving, like a boulder in a gale. For him, it’s not about reasons or intentions—it’s about conviction.
“Bronze holds a special place in the eyes of my Order. By standing apart, he’s gained a certain degree of moral authority among us. In a roomful of yelling, headstrong swordsmen, it’s no small feat for everyone to fall silent when you speak. Bronze had that power among the degans before Iron fell, and I think he might have it still. That’s why I need him: I need his authority to help settle this before it becomes worse. Before we fully turn on one another.”
“But if they didn’t listen to him before, what makes you think they’ll listen now? You said yourself he did the unthinkable: He dusted another degan.”
“Which is exactly why they may listen.”
I reached up and ran my hands through my hair. “I’m sure that makes some kind of wonderful sense,” I said, “but let’s pretend I’m not a degan, that I don’t think like a degan, and that I don’t know an entire Flock or Oath or Misery or whatever the hell you call a bunch of degans, all right? Just explain it to me.”
Wolf leaned forward, his left hand on his sword, and pointed over my shoulder at Degan’s blade with his right. “Understand this: No degan has raised steel—not seriously—against another member of the Order in ages, and no degan has killed another since near the founding. Bronze’s action is no small thing. For two of us to come to blows over something so fundamental strikes at the very core of our purpose. That it was someone as respected as Bronze makes it even worse.” Wolf shook his head, something close to disbelief on his face. “No, if there’s anyone who might be able to sway the Order, it would be him: the man who bloodied his blade on his brother, and then had the presence of mind to cast it away.”
“And they’re just going to let him stroll back in and change their minds?”
“Well, no, not exactly.”
“How ‘not exactly’?”
“I’m not sure he’ll be allowed back into the Barracks Hall.”
“And why is that?”
“Why do you think?”
Yeah, that’s what I’d thought.
“Go to hell.” I stood up.
A heavy hand fell on my shoulder. “Listen to me. This could work.”
“Like hell it could. If you think I’m going to—”
“What I think,” said Wolf, “is that Bronze is the best hope the Order has right now, and that I, in turn, am his. If any of my brothers or sisters find him first, it will most likely end in blood. We are not a forgiving family. But win or lose, it will be too late for him then: The Order might be willing to look past one degan’s body if I can make a case for Bronze, but two? More?” He shook his head. “No. If you wish to save Bronze, and if I wish to save the Order, then I have to find him before the others.”
“How does coming back with you help?” I said. “I thought you just said you weren’t even sure they’d let him back into, what’d you call it, the Barracks Hall?”
“It’s the closest thing we have to a council chamber. And you’re right: Walking in on his own could be the same as falling on his sword. But I have this.” Wolf slapped the hilt at his side. “And, with your and his permission, I’ll have that, too.” He pointed at Degan’s blade. “Between the two, I can petition to speak for him. I can invoke the old traditions of the Order and try to shield him from their judgment until he’s had a chance to speak.”
“And what will he say?” I thought back to Copper, and the cold steel in her eyes when she’d been asking me about Degan. “What can he possibly tell them that will excuse his dusting Iron?”
Wolf shook his head. “I don’t know. But I think he should be able to have the option to stand before the Order and give his side of the story. I think he should be able to ask for atonement and receive the judgment of his fellows face-to-face. I think he should know, once and for all, whether his name is to remain on our roles, of if it’s to be struck through in shame. But mostly, I think he deserves the opportunity to choose to seek out his own redemption or damnation.” Wolf looked down at me. “Don’t you?”
My mouth was too dry to answer. To argue that Degan had left Ildrecca of his own free will, that he’d known what he was doing from the moment he’d walked out of that burning warehouse after saving my life. To yell that the one thing the man wanted was to be left alone.
I didn’t say it because I couldn’t be certain it was true. Because I realized that all of the reasons I’d been giving for Degan walking away had really been excuses for me not trying to find him, for not following after him. And because, dammit, Wolf was right.
Still, it wasn’t quite enough.
“Why should I trust you?” I said. It wasn’t the strongest argument, but it was all I had left. “How do I know that, despite everything you’ve said, you won’t go for the steel cure the moment you see Degan?”
“You don’t,” said Wolf simply. “Aside from threatening to destroy you and your organization, there’s nothing I can do to force you to do as I ask. Except to ask. And to offer my word that I’m not seeking Bronze out of any sense of vengeance.”
“A sword in one hand and a promise in the other? The two don’t exactly complement each other when it comes to putting my mind at ease.”
Wolf arched an eyebrow. “You would have me combine the two, perhaps?” he said, drumming his fingers on the hilt of his saber.
I didn’t have to ask what he was implying: I knew. Wolf was asking if I wanted to take the Oath on the matter—to bind him to me, and me to him, to the tune of a single service.
I shook my head, perhaps a bit too quickly. I’d seen where that could lead, and I didn’t want to think about the kind of price Wolf might exact in exchange for his service. No, his bringing up the Oath was enough to show me just how serious he was about this.
“No need to go that far,” I said.
A brief smile passed over his lips. “Then we have an accord?”
I felt myself nodding before I made the decision to do so. Then, because I’d started, I said the words. “Yeah, we have an accord.”
I was going to find Degan.
But not for Wolf, and not for the Order. Not even for my people or for me. I was going to do it for Degan. Because he deserved better—far better than I’d given him.
Now I just needed to figure out how I was going to find him.