Sworn in Steel

Chapter Twenty-five

The sun was smearing orange and purple across the clouds on the eastern horizon when I left the Angel’s Shadow the next evening and headed out of the Imperial Quarter.

My step wasn’t as light as I might have hoped, nor as quick. I’d spent most of the previous night and much of this morning working the streets in the company of one of Mama Left Hand’s men: a cove named Dirar who had a penchant for rashari leaf and a nose for artifacts. We’d haunted scribal shops and secondhand booksellers, talking our way into private libraries and out of tense encounters with rare document smugglers. We spoke with mercenaries in taverns, priests in temples, historians in gardens, and thieves in back alleys. Everywhere, people knew Dirar, and everywhere they had the same answer: no word, no idea, no hints-but they’d watch and listen and look, to be sure.

I’d finally left him close to midday, with assurances on his part that we’d made a good beginning. I’d had a hard time sharing his enthusiasm, but had nodded and smiled and crawled up to my bed with instruction not to be disturbed. Less than six hours later, I’d woken up to Fowler kicking my bed, telling me it was time to get my ass up and go meet Heron.

I’d thought about arguing, about telling her to go to hell, but we needed the stipend he held, not to mention however many days he’d managed to bargain out of the wazir on our behalf. Part of me wanted to tell her to go in my stead, but I decided I’d rather drink the mug of coffee she’d brought me than wear it.

I made a quick stop in the stables before leaving to check on Degan’s sword. It was still there, and after a slight hesitation, I slipped it over my shoulder. It was probably just as safe sitting in the rafters as riding my back-hell, safer, given the last several days I’d been having-but after finding Wolf in my room, not to mention Mama Left Hand in the inn, I didn’t like the idea of it being out of my sight anymore. Too many people were taking too close of an interest in me, and Degan’s sword would make a handy bit of leverage if they found it. Better I know where it was than be surprised again, as I had been with Crook Eye.

Besides, it felt good to have it on my back again.

This time around, I avoided the main entrance to the padishah’s palace and made directly for the Dog Gate instead. The same guard was there, keeping counsel with the yapping of the hounds in the falling night.

I smiled at him through the iron bars of the gate as I came up. His eyes grew wide, then narrowed quickly. I noticed that he’d invested in a new sash. Smart. I didn’t want to think about what it would have taken to clean the old one after I’d finished with it.

“He’s expecting me,” I said. “Again.”

The guard’s fingers shifted on his spear. I saw his eyes flick back and forth, looking to see if anyone else was near, if anyone else would see or hear what came next. His jaw clenched in anticipation.

I sighed. He wasn’t really considering trying to kill me, was he?

“If you thought it was going to be hard to explain why you had my money and ahrami in your pocket last time,” I said, slipping my last seed into my mouth, “what do you think will happen when someone finds my body lying out here, stabbed by a spear and mauled by dogs?”

His fingers fidgeted some more. He licked his lips.

“Or are you hoping you can leave your post long enough to dispose of my body and not be missed?” I said. “Because, let me tell you, it’s a lot harder than you think to drag this much deadweight someplace people won’t find it. Especially if there are dogs barking and yapping and getting in the way.”

I watched as he looked into the square behind me, considering the shadows and the hounds and where he might be able to dump me.

Fucking amateur. If you want to kill someone, kill him; thinking about it only gives you time to second-guess yourself.

I rattled the iron. “Just open the damn gate.”

He paused a moment longer, then transferred his spear to his left hand and pulled out a set of keys with his right. The gate opened with a mild squeal. I stepped inside, pretending not to see the sheepish look on his face as he refused to meet my eye.

I considered telling Heron about this gap in the padishah’s defenses, then thought better of it. You never know when a weak link will come in handy.

The guard stepped back over to his post house and rang a hand bell. After a short delay, a boy dressed in enough silk and silver to make a courtesan spit with envy came running up, torch in hand. He bowed to me and looked at the guard.

“For His Excellency, the Secretary to the Wazir of the Gardens of the Muse,” muttered the guard. He didn’t look at me as I left.

On the day we’d been escorted off the padishah’s estate, the troupe and I had followed a wide, paved road from the artist’s enclave to the main gate. Between the guards and the trees lining the road, I’d only managed glimpses of the grounds: a serene pool here, a carefully cultivated glade there, a stone-walled pavilion roofed in silk, complete with the sound of giggling maidens inside, up on a hill. It had been impressive, but hard to appreciate.

Now, though, I found myself walking through the midst of the garden’s glory. Manicured lawns rolled away on either side in the torchlight and polished marble stepping stones marked out the path beneath our feet. We passed through a stand of trees planted to resemble what I could only guess were supposed to be the jungles of Bakshar to the south, and then, farther along, another grove that reminded me of the tall pine forests of the empire’s Western Client Kingdoms. A stream crossed our path, thick with lazy fish, spanned by an arched bridge done in cedar and copper. The flowing water fed into a small pond, its edges staked with weeds and willows. I watched as small ripples appeared and vanished on its surface, the fat fish growing fatter off the night bugs that skated there.

The torch was spoiling my night vision, but its light allowed me to just make out buildings set off from the path. Some were large enough to be residences or stables, others smaller, their shapes and locations suggesting more private purposes: tea pavilions and artists’ workshops and quiet rooms perfect for assignations. . or assassinations. Most were dark, but a few showed faint flickers of light. Soft music wafted from one, while low, fast moans came from another. Occasionally, our path crossed other people’s-court functionaries, servants, men and women walking the grounds-but never any guards or patrols.

I asked my guide about this.

“These are the padishah’s grounds,” he said. “You don’t come here unless you’re invited. It is known.”

“But why?” I said.

He looked at me, as if not quite understanding the question. “It is known,” he said simply.

I let the subject drop. I was certain there were stories of guards and glimmer and the padishah and his father making gruesome examples of people who hopped the wall, but this clearly wasn’t the time to hear them. Not that I didn’t think this boy was overflowing with tales-what boys and servants aren’t? — but he’d clearly learned not to share servants’ gossip to visiting strangers, especially if those strangers were being taken to see someone who could have him beaten for talking out of turn.

Smart kid.

Two curving sweeps of the path later, we turned onto a wooden walkway and approached a low timber building set beside a hill. In a city that favored stone and brick and tile, this place stood out for its dark earthiness. Lights flickered in narrow glass windows, and I could smell, if not see, smoke coming from a chimney somewhere. The boy placed his torch in an iron holder a short distance from the building, then led me to the door and knocked.

A large man with a shining pate and an oiled mustache and beard opened the door. After relieving me of my rapier and Degan’s sword, not to mention the dagger on my belt, he closed the door in the boy’s face and led me into the house.

The inside was much like the out: simple, elegant, and mildly out of place. Thick rugs that would have made a desert sheikh wilt with envy ran over plain wooden floors. The walls were imperial in their feel-painted plaster, interspersed with the occasional mosaic done in cut stone and glass and marble, all depicting Angels and history (but not the emperor, I noticed)-while the ceilings were distinctly Djanese, their crossbeams made of heavy carved and painted timber. Silver lamps burned in holders on the wall, their smoke rising to brush over and around copper disks set above the flames: soot catchers, for making lampblack and ink. Heron, it seemed, was a clerk to the bone.

We walked along one hallway, turned down another, and then passed through a set of double doors already standing open. I crossed the threshold and stopped, awestruck.

Wall to wall, floor to ceiling, there were shelves. Shelves filled with books, with folios, with scrolls, with stone tablets, for Angels’ sake. Papers seemed to drip from them, hanging out here, where a binding had split; there, where a scroll draped a teasing, curling corner across its neighbor; and off to the side, where a sheaf of documents bulged out, restrained only by the twine that held them together. The place smelled dry and dusty and full of secrets.

I licked my lips. To hell with Baldezar-I wanted to work out an exchange with Heron, to browse and thumb and read my way through even a fraction of a single wall.

“Ah,” said, Heron. “On time. How pleasant. Tea?”

He was standing at a large, plain reading table near the far end of the room. The surface was immaculate, polished by years of leather covers and sheepskins rather than wax. A small iron tea service sat at one end, an elaborate candelabra at the other. Behind him, a blank section of wall-the only one in the entire room-held a single antique long sword, a jade vase full of dried flowers, and a large silk fan draped in black gauze. The fan, I knew, would be covered with intricately inked scenes-scenes that would start with a wedding and end with a funeral pyre or a corpse, depending on which sect Heron followed. Once, when it had been plainer, it had belonged to Heron’s wife; now it was his widower’s fan.

Hints of figures and gold leaf taunted me through the gauze. I looked away before my eyes tried to make out too many details of their life together, done small.

“Thanks, no,” I said, coming the rest of the way into the room. I took out an ahrami seed instead. Heron noted it and nodded.

“I’ve not forgotten I owe you more,” he said, pouring himself a cup of pale green liquid.

“Nor have I.”

We both smiled thinly at that. I noticed that there was only one chair in the room. Heron took it, regarding me over his steaming cup.

“And how is el-Qaddice agreeing with you?” he said, running his eyes over my battered countenance. I could only imagine how I appeared, since I’d specifically avoided the offer by Tobin to see “how wonderfully horrendous” I looked in his brass mirror. Ezak had stopped me on the way out to study my bruises for purposes of stage makeup.

“The city and I are still getting a feel for each other,” I said.

“I can see that. And our actors? How are things progressing with them?”

“They’re working their asses off.”

He took a small sip, watching me through the steam. “Will they be ready in time?”

“You know they won’t,” I said.

Another sip. “I do.”

“Did you get us more time?” I said.

Sip.

“Did you?”

His eyes flicked away. “One day.”

“What?” It came out louder than I’d intended, sounding out of place in such a hushed room. I didn’t care. “One day? What the hell help is that?”

Heron’s eyes came back to me. They were hard now. “It gives you one more day than you had.”

“One day’s nothing!” Not for Tobin’s people, and especially not for me.

“One day is more than I’d hoped for: Accept it for the gift it is and make the best of it.”

“You mean make our peace with being kicked out of the Old City.”

Heron shrugged. “It was never a question of your audition succeeding; it was merely one of how long you’d be allowed to stay before being forced to leave.”

“The Old City?”

“Djan.”

That brought me up short. I took a step forward, resting my hands on the table, and stared down at the clerk. Heron met my gaze and sipped his tea, unperturbed.

“Why the hell would anyone want to force us out of the Despotate?” I said.

“Because you embarrassed someone.”

“What?” I said. “Who?”

Heron sighed. “Think. Your troupe arrives in el-Qaddice. It moves up the queue for first auditions without anyone raising an objection. Then, having barely performed a scene, your people are granted conditional patronage and brought into the Old City to perform for the padishah. Clearly, someone was exerting influence on your behalf; and just as clearly, your success makes the person in charge of vetting new artists look like an ineffective fool.”

“You mean the wazir?” I said.

“I mean the wazir,” said Heron. “Who, I might add, only gave you the extra day because it turns out to have the least propitious omens for the month.”

“Wait,” I said, straightening up. “Are you saying the only reason we got any extra time at all is because your boss thinks it will make things go even worse for us?”

Heron blew over his cup. “It seems the astrologer made an error in his initial calculations.”

I almost wanted to laugh. Instead, I stalked away from the table.

Court politics? No wonder we’d been given a new script and barely any time to rehearse: We were meant to fail. And not just fail, but fail spectacularly-to do something so bad, so insulting, that the padishah would feel compelled to banish us from the Despotate.

Just what the hell was in that play, anyhow?

I could almost hear Christiana laughing from here. She would have seen this coming a league away, but me? No, not if it involved court politics, and especially not in Djan.

One extra day. Hell.

I turned and walked back over to stand beside Heron. I leaned back against the table and stared at his wall.

“What are our options?” I said. The dried flowers, I noted, were marjoram and larkspur, in imperial purple and deep indigo. Had he brought them with him, or harvested and dried them here? Had his wife picked the bouquet at one point?

Things I didn’t need to know but was used to wondering.

“Options?” he said. “I’d suggest leaving early.”

“That bad?”

“It could get that way.” Heron shifted in his seat. “Mind, if you stay, I’d suggest you get an alternative translation of the play; not that I think it will make much of a difference.”

“Banned?”

“Years ago. By the despot himself.”

I nodded. It wasn’t the most elegant setup, but it didn’t have to be-not against a bunch of Imperial players. The cards were already stacked against us, and no one had even spoken a line yet.

That pissed me off.

“I’ll get the troupe out,” I said. Like it or not, I was still their patron, and still responsible for them.

“But not you?”

I let my eyes slide over to the sword. It was old but well cared for, the worn leather of the scabbard rich with oil. “I have unfinished business.”

“It’s not the actors who’ve earned my master’s ire,” noted Heron. “You’re the patron, so yours is the name that was whispered in the proper ears. Once the wazir finds out you’re not with the troupe, he’ll send people to find you. And he will find you.”

“That’ll still give me a couple of extra days,” I said as I stared at the long sword. The handle looked to be chain-wrapped bone, but the cross guard was another matter. Curved slightly forward toward the tip, the two bars of the guard had had piercings filed into the metal so that they formed three interlinked circles per side. As for the pommel, it had been chiseled into the shape of a tulip, its three petals folded shut.

The sword clearly had imperial roots. I wondered whether it had been Heron’s at one point, or if it had come down during one of the earlier wars and been left behind.

“To do what?” said Heron.

“A lot of things,” I said, stepping forward. I raised my hand, almost unconsciously, to run my fingers along the cross guard.

“What kind of things?” said Heron, his tone becoming exasperated. “And please keep your hands to yourself.”

“To find a friend,” I said, my hand stopping but not moving away. “And to see about getting back something I gave awa-” I froze, my eyes going from the guard back to the handle. It was too smooth to be bone, I realized; too fine. And the patterning in the material was all wrong. This looked more like. .

“Holy shit,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.

“What?” said Heron. He was still behind me, but I could tell by his voice that he was standing now.

What I’d taken for piercings in the cross guard weren’t. The white that stood out against the steel wasn’t the plaster showing through from behind; they were carefully shaved and shaped pieces of material that had been set deep in the steel. I could almost imagine how, with the right light behind them, they would shine with a milky translucence. Like ivory.

“What?” said Heron again.

I looked from the ivory pieces to the long ivory handle, then reached out and gave the scabbard a quick tug. The pins under the cross guard kept the sword in place, allowing the leather to slide down and reveal the watery gray and white pattern of the steel. And a single etched teardrop.

“Here, now-!”

I spun away from the hand Heron tried to lay on my shoulder and let my wrist blade fall into my palm. I took a quick step back, both to let him see my steel and to keep him from laying hands on me.

“Explain to me,” I said, “what the hell you’re doing with a degan’s sword that’s over two centuries old. And believe me when I say, you want this explanation to be good.”

Heron stared at me for a moment. Then his eyebrows went up. “You know of the degans?” he said.

“That wasn’t the question,” I said.

Heron looked from me to my blade and then to the sword on the wall. He scratched his jaw.

“I. . collect things degan,” he said at last.

It was my turn to raise an eyebrow. “Collect?”

“Acquire. Find. Study. Call it what you will. Ever since I heard about the Order of the Degans, I’ve been fascinated by it. By them.” He gestured at the sword. “I found that, of all places, at the Grand Souk. It’s a market held twice a year outside the city, when the despot opens and closes his summer court in el-Qaddice. Nine days after he arrives from the winter palace in Sajun, and nine days again before he and his court return, half the city and what seems like a sixth of the Despotate converge on the Plains of Akra to trade and dicker and gamble and race horses and. . well, you get the idea.”

“And you found that there?” I said.

Heron walked over to the sword and carefully slid the scabbard back in place. “Hard to believe, isn’t it?”

Damn impossible, I thought. But instead, I said, “How’d you know it was genuine?”

“I think you’ve already answered that question yourself.”

“The teardrop etched near the guard,” I said.

“You mean the drop of blood.”

I looked from the sword to Heron. “It’s supposed to be blood?”

Heron shrugged. “Some say a tear, some say sweat, some say holy water. I’ve always preferred blood, mostly for aesthetic reasons. It seems to fit better with the Order, don’t you think? I’ve never had a chance to ask a degan directly, to confirm it, though.” He looked at me sidelong. “Have you?”

I slid my knife back home up my sleeve. “It never came up,” I said.

“Pity.”

We looked at the sword-Ivory Degan’s sword-in silence for a bit.

“So, you. . know a degan?” said Heron at last.

“Used to. How’d you find out about the Order?”

“They’re not exactly a secret: People do hire them from time to time in the empire, you know.”

“I know,” I said. “But, well. .” I gestured at the sword, giving him the opening to talk about his hobby. He took the bait.

“How did I get so interested in them?”

“Yes.”

Heron swept the room with a gesture. “A book, of course.”

I made sure I took a breath, so as not to rush my response. “A book? What kind of book?”

“A history.”

“Of the degans?”

“Not at first, no.” Heron walked over to a shelf. After a moment, he pulled down a thin volume. “The Commentaries of Simonis,” he said. “She was a historian during the reigns of Lucien, and then Theodoi, over two centuries ago. This isn’t her main work, but it’s the one where she talks about the origins of the Order.” He started to open the book, then stopped himself and put it back on the shelf instead. “She was a remarkable historian. It’s thanks to her I first became interested in the idea of the degans.”

I looked around the room-at the walls of books and papers, at Ivory’s sword-and remembered Wolf’s words, and Degan’s. About the papers and laws Ivory had taken with him when he left the Order of the Degans.

It was too much to hope for-wasn’t it?

“So, then what?” I said, stepping away from the sword and over to another shelf. “You started collecting more on the degans?”

“And history in general, yes, but at the back of my mind, there were always the degans.”

I pulled out a book at random and opened to the frontispiece. It was an elaborate woodcut of a sea battle: galleys and waves, bodies and blood, with a bald man in a short cape holding the forecastle of the nearest ship against an onslaught of raiders. In the distance, behind the ships, there was a castle on a crag. Admiral Niphinos Byzezes at the Battle of Quetanos: not the best day for the empire, considering Byzezes surrendered and then led the raiders to the hidden harbor at Argnossi. It took the empire over a decade to rebuild the portion of the fleet that was lost in those two battles alone. As for Argnossi, we’d never reclaimed it: The raiders who had taken it were now a treaty city that specialized in piracy for hire.

“That’s the naval section,” said Heron.

I closed the book and put it back. “I got that.” I looked around the room. “You have an impressive collection.”

Heron surrendered a smile and preened. “It’s been a long time in the building. A good portion of what you see is, if not unique, then quite rare.”

I moved farther along the wall until I came to four stone tablets, each set into a special partition on a shelf. “Unique?” I said.

“Very. Are you familiar with Hout Yo?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Heron sniffed. “Well, they probably won’t mean much to you, then.”

“Likely not.” I pulled out another ahrami seed and rolled it slowly between my palms. If there was a “naval section,” it seemed likely there would be a “degan section,” too. The most likely choice was where Heron had pulled out Simonis’s volume, but that was no guarantee: Merely mentioning them might not be enough.

I’ve known-and robbed-a few bibliophiles in my time and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that none of them sort or classify their collections the same way. One might shelve, say, Dossanius’s Five Views on the Engraver’s Art (a folio that traditionally fetches a good price among Ildrecca’s Queer Hatchers, since most coin forgers won’t let their competitors see it once they get their hands on a copy) with books on crafts, another with metallurgy, a third with discourses of money policy, and a fourth under history. Back when I’d still been drawing the latch, I’d spent half the night searching the walls and cubbies of a bookbinder’s back room, hunting for a copy of Synod’s Poems and Polemics I’d been paid to lift. Finally, with dawn creeping in and the sound of his apprentices rattling about their room in the attic, I’d found it bracketed between two books on mathematics. I still haven’t figured that one out.

I slipped the seed into my mouth and continued my circuit of the room, making a point not to spend too much time looking at any one title or section, so as to avoid raising suspicion. I made appreciative noises as I went.

I was just coming up to Heron when he cleared his throat.

“You said you knew a degan,” he said, trying to sound casual. “Do you mind if I ask which one?”

It wasn’t a hard choice to make: I wasn’t about to reveal Bronze Degan’s presence in el-Qaddice, and I didn’t expect mentioning Silver’s name would win me any points with the Azaari. Not that I particularly cared one way or the other what Silver, in his guise as Wolf, liked at this point, but I didn’t want to jeopardize anything by revealing his presence to a secretary of the despot’s court.

I went with a safe choice: the dead one.

“Iron Degan,” I said.

“I see.” A slight pause as Heron drew out his case and slipped his own ahrami seed into his mouth. “I don’t suppose he’s in el-Qaddice? I’d love to actually meet a-”

“He’s dead.”

The seed cracked in Heron’s mouth. “Oh.” He paused to chew and swallow. “Do you know when? Or how?”

“Four months ago,” I said. “As to how. .” I stepped around Heron and finished my circuit, ending in front of the small display again. It was time to throw him a bone, something to pique his interest and get him off his guard at the same time. “I’m not sure. Rumor has it it was another degan.”

“What?” he said, his voice rising a fraction in disbelief. “A degan killing another degan? That hasn’t happened since, well. .”

“Him?” I said, pointing at Ivory’s sword.

Heron’s eyebrows dropped into a scowl. “You seem to know a great deal about the degans for a. .” He paused.

“What?” I said. “The patron of an acting troupe?”

“No,” said Heron. “A Gray Prince.”

If he’d been expecting surprise, I disappointed him. Instead, I hooked my thumbs in my sword belt and smiled. “Who’s in your pocket in the inn?” I said. “The innkeeper?”

“His wife. And the eldest son. You think it’s chance I put you there?”

I shook my head. “No. I half expected it. Besides, it’s not like I’ve exactly made a secret of who I am.” Much to my recent chagrin.

“No, you haven’t,” said Heron, his tone telling me word had likely leaked into the padishah’s court as well. “But that still doesn’t explain your knowledge of the Order.”

“I told you,” I said. “I used to run with a degan.”

“Iron.”

“Right.”

“And he told you about Ivory Degan?”

I shrugged and let a smile play about my lips. “Someone did.”

Heron sighed in exasperation. “If you’re going to-”

“How’d you learn about him?” I said.

“What?”

“How’d you find out about Ivory Degan?” I said. I waved at the overflowing shelves. “Don’t get me wrong, all of this is. . nice, but you’re not going to find information about the Order, let alone someone like Ivory, in Zacres or Nessian the Younger or any of the usual histories; they wouldn’t know the first thing about it. This is something you need to get from the source.” I smiled and tapped the side of my nose and leered my best Nose’s “I know something you don’t” leer. “You know: from a degan.”

Heron glared at me from across the room. “I have it from a degan,” he said coldly.

I arched a mocking eyebrow. “Oh, really?” I said. “What, are you telling me you have a degan in your pocket? I thought you’ve never met one. Or is that a line of shit, too, just like what you’ve been feeding me about the auditions?” I snorted. “Hell, I’d put money down that you didn’t know what you had in that sword until some visiting imperial nobleman noticed it over tea. Is that what it’s for, to impress the visitors from back home? To make them feel just a bit smaller, and you a bit bigger, so you can feel good about walking out on the empire?”

He moved fast for a scribe. Heron was across the room and in my face before I had time to react. I suspect it was only force of diplomatic habit that kept his hands from my throat.

“You have no inkling of why I left the empire, thief,” he snapped. I could almost taste the indignation coming off him. “And you’ll keep your tongue silent on the matter, or you’ll come to regret it. As for that sword, the man who owned it was the historian of his Order. He helped found the degans, helped organize them, helped give a group of mercenaries a purpose. And if that were all I knew of him, it would be enough for me to put that sword on my wall, no matter what anyone may or may not think.”

“But you know more than that, right?”

“More than you can imagine,” he seethed.

Here it was: Heron was at the edge, ready to fall. To spill. All he needed was the right push. I wet my lips and said the word, gave the nudge, making it an accusation as much as a question.

“How?” I said. “If you’ve never met a degan, how do you know so damn much?”

I almost got him. Heron opened his mouth, ready to speak, ready to show me just how little I knew; then he caught himself. I watched, poised for the kill, as he took a step back and followed it up with a slow breath.

So close.

“I’ve been studying the Order of the Degans for longer than you’ve been alive,” he said softly. “If I say I know something about the Order, or its history, then I know it. I don’t need to prove it to you.”

I looked around the room, and then back at him. “You have them, don’t you?”

“What?”

“Ivory Degan’s records.”

I’ll give him this: His eyes barely flickered. But flicker they did, off toward a wall to my left. I pretended not to notice.

“Your acting company has an extra day,” said Heron, his voice turning as brittle as early winter ice. He stepped back over to the table and poured himself a fresh cup of tea. “I would suggest you spend it packing up your scenery and preparing to depart. As for your allowance, the sum has been adjusted. You’ll find the remainder of it-and the ahrami I promised you-near the door on your way out.”

I nodded and turned away.

“I don’t want to see or hear from you until the day of your audition,” he said as I left. “Am I understood?”

“You’re understood,” I said, not bothering to look back. The same servant met me in the hallway, led me to the door, and handed me my blades, along with a purse and a satchel. The satchel held a box.

Then I was outside, the door to Heron’s house closing behind me. The boy was still waiting, a torch now in hand against the darkness.

I followed him along the boardwalk and onto the grounds. He was chatty now, trying to pry gossip and secrets of the meeting from me; I wondered idly whether he was on someone’s payroll, or if he simply sold what he gathered to the first person who paid.

Either way, I didn’t say much. I was too busy trying to figure out how the hell I was going to break back into this place so I could raid Heron’s library.