Sword Catcher (Sword Catcher, #1)

Adrenaline shot through Kel’s body. He forced himself to remain motionless, the point of the knife still leveled against his throat.

The Ragpicker King only smiled. “Let me be more clear, Kellian Saren. You were given to Conor Aurelian of House Aurelian at the tender age of ten, under the Malgasi custom of the Királar, the King’s Blade. It is your job to protect the Prince with your own life. In dangerous situations you take his place, aided by a talisman that you are”—he narrowed his eyes—“not currently wearing. Though I would not be fooled either way. I know who you really are.” He folded his long pale hands over the top of his cane. “Is there anything you’d like to add?”

“No,” Kel said. There was a strange feeling in the back of his throat. A sort of pressure. He wanted to swallow hard, as if against a bitter taste, but he suspected his companions would take it as a sign of nervousness. “Nothing.”

The girl with the blade looked sideways at the Ragpicker King. “This is dull,” she observed. “Perhaps I should—”

“Not yet, Ji-An.” The Ragpicker King studied Kel’s face. Kel kept his expression neutral. Lights came and went around the edges of the black-curtained windows. Kel guessed they were somewhere in the Silver Streets, the merchant neighborhood that bordered the Temple District. “You are wondering, Sword Catcher, why I have an interest in you. Your business is Palace business, and my business is with the streets of Castellane. Yet sometimes—more often than you might guess—they intersect. There are things I wish to know. Need to know. And I could use your help.”

“We could all use something,” Kel said. “That doesn’t mean we’ll obtain it.”

“You’re awfully rude,” observed Ji-An, her hand steady on the dagger’s handle. “He’s offering you a job, you know.”

“I have a job. We’ve just been discussing it.”

“And I want you to keep your job,” said the Ragpicker King, crossing his impossibly long legs. “So think of what I am offering as a partnership. You help me, and in return, I help you.”

“I don’t see how you could help me,” Kel said, half distracted—the peculiar feeling remained in the back of his throat, halfway between a scrape and a tickle. It wasn’t painful, but it was strangely familiar. When have I felt it before?

“It is your duty to protect the Prince,” said the Ragpicker King, “but not all threats come from foreign powers or power-hungry nobles. Some threats come from the city. Anti-monarchists, criminals—not the gentlemanly sort like myself, of course—or rebellious merchants. The information I possess could be valuable to you.”

Kel blinked. None of this was quite what he had expected—not that he had anticipated being kidnapped tonight in the first place. “I will not spy on the royal family for you,” he said. “And I do not see why you would be interested in general gossip from the Hill.”

The Ragpicker King leaned forward, his hands folded atop his cane. “Do you know the name Prosper Beck?”

Odd that Prosper Beck should come up twice in one night. “Yes. Your rival, I imagine?”

Ji-An snorted, but the Ragpicker King seemed unmoved by the comment. He said, “I wish to know who is funding Prosper Beck. I can tell you it is not just unusual for a criminal so wealthy and well connected to simply appear in Castellane, like a sailor stepping off a ship; it is impossible. It takes years to build oneself up in a business. Yet Prosper Beck came from nowhere and has already moved to control the Maze.”

“Surely you are more influential than Beck. If you want the Maze back, take it.”

“It is not so simple. Beck is hard to find. He operates through intermediaries and moves his headquarters from place to place. He bribes the Vigilants with vast sums. Most of my Crawlers have decamped to work for him.” That was interesting, Kel thought. The Crawlers were famous in Castellane: skilled climbers who could shimmy up and down walls with the speed of spiders. They crept in through the upper windows of the rich and robbed them blind. “Someone is backing him, of that I am sure. Someone with a great deal of money. You make your way among the nobility, passing as a noble yourself. You should have little trouble finding out if one of them is financing Beck’s enterprises.”

“One of the nobility? Why would they bother funding a minor criminal?”

The carriage jounced over a patch of rough road, and Kel felt a wave of dizziness. The Ragpicker King was regarding him with a sort of bored curiosity, as if Kel were a bug he had seen many times before that was now exhibiting an unusual behavior.

“Let me ask you something, Kellian,” he said. “Do you like them? House Aurelian, I mean. The King, the Queen. The Prince and his Counselor. The Legate.”

For a long moment there was only silence, save for the sound of the carriage wheels rattling over stones. Then words spilled from Kel’s mouth, unplanned, unconsidered. “One does not ask if one likes the Blood Royal. They simply are,” he said. Like the harbor or the Narrow Pass, like the dark-jade canals of the Temple District, like Marivent itself. “It is like asking if one likes the Gods.”

The Ragpicker King nodded slowly. “That was an honest answer,” he said. “I appreciate it.”

Was it Kel’s imagination, or did the Ragpicker King put a special emphasis on the word honest? That strange pressure was still there—in Kel’s chest, his throat, his mouth. He remembered now the last time he had felt it, and he felt anger growing like a vine twining through his veins, his nerves, setting them alight.

“In the spirit of further honesty,” said Gentleman Death, “King Markus. Is it true his absences are not due to his being engaged in study, but rather due to illness? Is the King dying?”

“It is not a question of illness,” Kel said, and thought of the Fire on the Sea, the burning boat covered in flowers, and that was the moment he was sure. Without another word, he brought his left hand up, in one smooth, swift motion, and wrapped it around the blade of Ji-An’s knife.

She did exactly what he had predicted she would, and jerked the knife back. Pain shot through his hand as the blade opened his skin. He welcomed the pain, clenching his hand to invite it in deeper. He could feel blood wetting his palm as his mind cleared.

“Ssibal,” Ji-An hissed. Kel knew enough of the language of Geumjoseon to recognize this as profanity. He grinned as his blood welled in fat drops through his fingers and splashed onto the brocade interior of the carriage. Ji-An turned to the Ragpicker King. “This crazy bastard—”

Kel began to whistle. It was a common tune on the streets of Castellane, called “The Troublesome Virgin.” The lyrics were bawdy in the extreme.

“He’s not crazy,” said the Ragpicker King, sounding as if he could not decide whether to be irritated or amused. “Here, Sword Catcher. Take this.”

And he held out a handkerchief of fine black silk. Kel took it, wrapping it around his injured hand. The cut wasn’t deep, but it was long, an ugly slash across his palm.