Sworn in Steel

Chapter Thirty-four

There were four of them. It was hard to tell because of the work the hounds had done on the guards’ bodies, but it looked as if they had all died from a bare handful of sword strokes. Quick, efficient work. Degan barely paused to glance down before he was moving out of the circle of torchlight. After a quick glance inside the guardroom to make sure it was still empty, I followed.

The hounds snarled and showed red teeth as we passed, but otherwise ignored us.

I didn’t bother asking who had carved up the guards; we both knew the answer to that one.

Dawn was three hours away, if that.

“How did Steel know to come here?” said Degan as we moved deeper into the darkness.

“I don’t know,” I said. “The last time I saw him was. .” Oh. Of course. That explained it.

“Was what?”

“Was at the play,” I said.

“I don’t see how-”

“I caught him staring up at the padishah’s box at one point. Ivory was on the balcony near him.”

Degan grimaced. “That would do it. Steel would only need a glimpse of Ivory, even at a distance, to mark him. Then it would just be a matter of following him back from the amphitheater and biding his time.”

“And given the events at the play, Ivory would have been too distracted to notice he was being shadowed,” I muttered. Thanks to me.

Degan started walking faster.

I steered us off the patchwork trail of marble stepping-stones and took us overland. It was similar to the path Aribah and I had taken to Ivory’s residence, but not identical.

I led Degan around a large reflecting pool, then up over a small rise, and halted. I was half-surprised and half-pleased to see the side of Ivory’s house below us. There was light coming through two of the lower windows toward the back of the house. The rest was dark.

“That’s it?” said Degan.

“That’s it.”

Degan started down the slope.

“One thing,” I said.

Degan paused but didn’t look back. “Yes?”

“There were five guards at the gate when I left earlier tonight.”

“And only four when we returned,” said Degan. “Meaning Steel may have forced the fifth to act as a guide.”

“That’d be my guess.”

Degan drew his sword and continued down. I did the same.

Sure enough, we found the fifth guard lying on the walkway outside Ivory’s front door. The door itself stood ajar. There was a smear of blood along the lower edge.

Degan didn’t hesitate: He pushed the door open and stepped in, head tilted to the side, sword angled up and out to catch any cuts someone might throw from hiding. I came after, my own blade low, so as not to stab him should he need to retreat. We both had to step over the body of the steward lying just inside the doorway. The left third of his face had been sheared away by a blow that had continued down and into his neck and chest. His blood made the rug squelch underneath our boots.

“Where?” said Degan, his voice tight as he peered into the darkness. Compared to the starlit expanse of the grounds, the hallway seemed oppressive, even to me.

“My guess is the study,” I said. “Near the back of the house.” Where we’d seen the lights.

Degan was moving down the hallway before I’d finished speaking, his footfalls alternately muted by the rugs and amplified by the bare floor between. I swore and hustled after, the mosaics on the walls to either side little more than a blur of amber and shadows in my night vision.

“Right!” I called as Degan reached the intersection ahead of me. Any semblance of secrecy was gone anyhow. “Then your first left.”

Degan made the turn, guiding himself as much by instinct as half shadows at this point, I guessed. I followed an instant later, and immediately averted my eyes. Already, there was a glow coming from around the next corner. I slowed my pace out of habit, heard Degan pushing on ahead.

To hell with it.

I redoubled my step, keeping my gaze to whatever shadowy corners and crevices I could find in the corridor. I’d hoped to creep up on Wolf, to catch him unawares, to maybe be able to fucking see before crossing blades with him, but Degan clearly had other ideas. Not that I expected to be much use once the two of them cleared steel, but there was always something I could do: maybe bleed on Wolf excessively, say, or get my ribs stuck around his sword.

I took the second corner fast. Ahead, I could see light spilling out of Ivory’s study, forming a brilliant golden red pool in my night vision. Eyes burning, I put my head down and ran.

No sounds of steel on steel came to me as I covered the last few feet and ran through the doors. Instead, I was met by a profound silence-a silence broken only by my own shoes skidding on the floor as I tried to avoid running into Degan from behind. He had stopped just inside the room and stood, staring.

Even with blurring, watering eyes, I could see that the place was a mess. Books and papers had been knocked from the shelves, and the large reading table at the far end of the room was tipped over. Three spent candles lay in pools of hardened wax on the floor; two more stood, burning feebly, on an empty shelf. The smell of burning wick and freshly raised dust filled the space-so much so that it took me a moment to notice the darker, earthier scent that ran underneath.

But I didn’t need to smell the blood to know it was there: I could see the smeared trail that led from a spot near Degan’s feet, across the floor and over papers, to the form that sat slouched beneath the now-empty space on the display wall between the widower’s fan and the vase of dried flowers.

Ivory was here, but both his sword and the man who had used us to find him were gone.

Degan was across the room in an instant. I moved more warily, as if Wolf might somehow slip out from between the spines of a book or rise from the crackling vellum and paper scattered underfoot. The bastard had been two steps ahead of me from the start and I wasn’t about to lower my guard just because the room was empty.

There wasn’t much doubt as to Ivory’s condition. Between the missing right hand, the gash in his head deep enough to let notched bone show through, and the pool of thick, dark blood that had gathered in his lap, not only did I know he was dead; I also knew there was no way the old man could have made it to his current position on his own. Wolf had dragged the body over and propped him against the wall for us to find. A message left for me and Degan.

“How long ago, do you think-”

“He’s alive,” said Degan as he knelt down beside Ivory.

“He’s what?” I said, now hurrying across the room as well. “How?”

“Degans are hard to kill.”

I moved closer. Sure enough, I saw Ivory’s lids flicker briefly. Degan wiped gently at Ivory’s eyes with the cuff of his shirt, smearing the worst of the blood away. With the red gone, Ivory’s eyes opened more fully. When they landed on Degan, he smiled, causing a fresh well of blood to run from his mouth.

It was then that I realized Wolf had cut out his tongue.

Bastard.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Degan softly.

Ivory lifted his good hand and laid it on Degan’s arm. He opened his mouth, as if to speak, only to have it turn into a choking gurgle. Degan quickly leaned the wounded man to the side and held his head while he vomited up the blood that had been draining down his throat. It was dark and thick.

“Why his tongue?” I asked as Ivory coughed.

“I don’t know,” whispered Degan. “To keep him from speaking healing spells? I don’t know.”

When Ivory was done, Degan gently righted his friend again. The older degan’s color made some of the centuries-old parchment on the floor seem rich and luminous by comparison. His eyes were closed now.

“Ivory,” said Degan, gently.

Ivory’s lids fluttered but didn’t truly open. I was close enough now to hear the bubbling hiss that came with each breath of the dying man, telling me that at least one lung had been punctured.

How the hell was this old bastard still alive?

Degan cleared his throat. Despite that, his voice was still thick as he said, “I’m sorry, but I have to ask: Your sword. Does Steel have it?”

The old degan went rigid, and I couldn’t help thinking he’d decided to die rather than to admit to the loss. But then a slow breath escaped his lips, and he nodded.

Degan’s jaw clenched. He looked up at me, and I saw despair there: deep and dark. Despair over not just the sword, or even Ivory, but over what had become of his Order, and what was to become of it. What he was afraid he had started when he killed Iron, and had finished when he’d led Steel to Ivory.

Only it hadn’t been Degan, or not wholly him. I’d played more than my fair part in this as well, hunting after my own form of redemption, wanting it so badly that I’d let myself get played by Wolf, and then falling in line with his plans with hardly any resistance. Wanting to play the clever Nose one last time, to show that I could still scheme and con my way out from under a setup. Wanting to go to Djan so I could pretend I wasn’t a Gray Prince, only to have the title follow me here.

To be as much a cause of Ivory’s death as anything else.

I turned my eyes away from the dying degan and instead looked over the room again. At the empty and disheveled shelves, at the books and documents strewn about, at the trail of blood that marred the otherwise pristine carpet of paper and parchment and vellum on the floor. Most had been pushed aside as Wolf dragged Ivory to the wall, but a few pages had fallen back after Ivory’s passage. Their edges were now heavy with red, the old rust-colored ink fading into the background as the paper drank its fill.

I wondered whether the pages could be saved, whether trying to clean them off would help, or only cause more damage. Baldezar would know, but the old scribe wasn’t here. Then again, if he were, I expect the dry bone of a man would already be cataloging and sorting, cooing to himself and the books, ecstatic at not only the wealth scattered at his feet, but also the fact that most of them had somehow avoided getting damaged in the melee that had taken place. Looking at the clean pages and intact bindings, it was almost as if. .

I turned back around. “What about the laws?” I said.

Degan blinked. Ivory didn’t stir.

“What do you mean?” said Degan.

“The laws of your Order,” I said, stepping closer. “The rites and rituals and whatever the hell else Ivory took with him when he left. Did Steel get those?”

Degan stared at me. “He has Ivory’s sword, Drothe. I’m not worried about finding a damn clause that might-”

“Neither am I.” I knelt down on the other side of Ivory and took the old degan’s jaw gingerly in my hands. I turned his face to me.

“Ivory,” I said. “Ivory.” A faint gurgle and a wavering of one lid. Not good enough.

Degan bristled. “Drothe, what the hell-?”

“Look at this room,” I said. “These books and scrolls and papers didn’t get knocked down during the fight-they were pulled down afterward. After Wolf already had the sword. Which means he was looking for something else.”

“But if he has the sword, he already has the Oath,” said Degan.

“Then maybe he wanted something more. Maybe there’s a law or ritual that lets him use the Oath differently, or extend it, or something. I don’t know. All I know is that I can’t think of any other reason for him to tear this place apart, let alone remove Ivory’s writing hand and carve out his tongue.”

“Remove his. .” Degan looked down at Ivory, then out over the disaster that was the library. As I watched, I could see worry creep into his eyes.

He looked back down at Ivory. “Ask,” he said.

I leaned in closer to the dying degan, tilting his head to put my mouth near his ear. “Ivory,” I said. “What about your laws?”

Ivory’s eyes snapped open, so sharp that I almost recoiled under their gaze. Suddenly, he was all here, and I could only guess what it was costing him.

“The laws,” I said. “Did Wol-did Steel get them, too?”

The skin around Ivory’s eyes crinkled in a dark grin. I felt his head shake weakly in my hand.

“Are they still here?”

The slightest pressure of his chin in my palm. The ghost of a nod.

“Where?”

His eyes slipped off me and up, to the left.

Ivory turned his gaze up to his widower’s fan. “Himomif.” It came out of his ruined mouth sounding more like a wet croak than a word, but I knew what he meant.

“Simonis?” I said, saying his wife’s name for him. “Does she have the laws?”

Ivory smiled.

I looked at Degan. “It’s hidden in her history,” I said, already turning toward the shelf that had held her books. “Likely written in-”

Ivory’s left hand grabbed at my ankle, stopping me. I looked down to find him glaring from me to the wall and back. I followed his gaze.

“The fan?” I said, staring up at the large, crepe-covered arc. I’d taken a close look at it the night I’d figured out Ivory’s secret, but seen nothing concerning any laws, or even the Order itself.

Still, who was I to argue?

I righted Ivory’s reading chair, stood on it, and drew the covering away from the fan. The details were both fine and intricate, so much so that I found myself leaning forward, afraid I might overbalance the chair.

And still, even with that, I almost missed it.

It was a small thing, in the second to the last depiction of Simonis. She was more outline than image in that: the dark curve of a woman’s form, highlighted by a mirroring slash of white for her gown, bent over a kneeling desk in her study. Three lines of red for the ribbon in her hair, echoed by three dots of carmine for the cephta on the page before her, a pale line of gold leaf for a reed pen. A scribe at work, deep in the throes of her knowledge and craft: an image that clearly held a special place in Ivory’s heart if it was one of the last ones he’d had depicted of her. An image that centered on his wife, with each detail becoming less defined as the eye drew away from her-save for the pale row of tiny books on the wall behind her.

I leaned in even closer, placing one hand against the wall to keep from toppling over. I couldn’t be sure without an enlarging lens, but I would have sworn that the cephta on the bindings was legible, even at that size.

I looked down at Ivory. He was reclining now, his head crooked in Degan’s elbow, eyes regarding me from beneath heavy lids.

I wasn’t a White. I was a Paragon.

The sly old bastard.

“It’s not a clue, is it?” I said. “The laws are here, in her study.” I pointed at the figure. “You somehow glimmered the books into the fan, didn’t you?”

A relieved-or was it tired? — smile split his face. More blood trickled out.

“Eh,” he gasped. Yes.

“So how do we get them out?”

Ivory’s hand was still trying to lift itself off the floor when Degan spoke for him. “The sword,” he said, without looking up. “His sword holds his soul, which means it also holds the key to his magic. And to the laws.”

I stepped down off the chair. “His. .?” Of course. Ivory had been a Paragon before becoming a degan, and Paragons focused their power through their souls. Just because Ivory didn’t have his soul in his body anymore, it didn’t have to mean he’d lost his ability to-

“Oh, shit,” I said. “Does that mean Steel can use Ivory’s glimmer?”

“I wouldn’t think so. It’s Ivory’s soul after all, not Steel’s. Just having the sword doesn’t give him control over it, let alone the knowledge of how to use that magic.”

“But you don’t know.”

Degan looked back down at Ivory. The old degan’s eyes were closed again. His chest seemed to be barely moving.

“I’ll try to find out,” said Degan. “In the meantime, you should gather up Fowler and get out. We can meet up in the Lower City and see about picking up Steel’s trail there. There can’t be that many Azaari tribesmen leaving el-Qaddice; we shouldn’t have a hard time finding someone who saw him leave.”

“Assuming he didn’t dust all the witnesses,” I muttered.

“Then we’ll follow the vengeful mob on his tail instead.”

“I’m less worried about losing Steel than I am in getting out of here,” I said. I jerked a thumb back the way we’d come. “In case you forgot, it’s almost light out there. Between that and the pile of bodies at the gate, just getting off the grounds is going to be tricky.”

“Which is why I told you to leave now.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll go when Ivory’s gone.”

“That’ll be too late.”

“When he’s gone.”

I thought about arguing, didn’t. Degan had already been too late to save Ivory; it wasn’t right to try and talk him into walking away before he’d said his good-byes.

But I wasn’t ready to leave just yet.

“Degan,” I said. “Why does Wolf want the laws so badly?”

“I’m not sure.”

“But you have a suspicion.”

The briefest pause. Then, “Yes.”

I waited. The wheezing, bubbling sound of Ivory’s breathing filled my ears.

When Degan spoke, he didn’t look at me. “There’s an old story,” he said, “that when Ivory took our original Oaths, he bound them in such a way that we could be held to account. That we could be made to serve the holder of that Oath much the same way degans used to be able to compel those who swore to us. Not just by honor or threat, but by magical bonds.”

“And let me guess: The holder of that Oath was the emperor.”

“No,” said Degan. “Most said it was Ivory.”

“You mean he made you all. . clients? Just like anyone who swore an Oath to you?”

“‘Oath-bound’ is the term we use, but yes, that’s the idea.” Degan wiped a fresh bubble of froth from Ivory’s lips. “I have no idea if it’s true, but I can see why he might have done it. We were new, trying something new, and had no idea if it would work, if it would last. And Ivory was a Paragon. It was his duty to watch over the emperor before all else. Who knew what a group of undying warriors would get up to in a hundred years? Better to have some way to rein us in.”

“And no one confronted him about this?”

“Oh, some of us confronted him when the story came out, all right-especially Steel. He said he’d sworn himself to the emperor, not to Ivory, and that he wouldn’t have a sword like that hanging over his head. Said it dishonored him.”

“So what did Ivory do?”

“Do? Nothing. And neither did the rest of us.”

“What?” I said. “Why?”

“Because we were young and still had too many fresh memories of being White Sashes to think about arguing. And because he was a Paragon. And because the Oaths were already sworn. Besides, it was only a rumor: true or not, there were other things to keep us busy back then.”

“So you served?”

“We served,” said Degan. “But from that point on, the debate over whether we were sworn to serve the empire, or an emperor who may have lied to us, began. It’s been with us ever since.”

“And the laws of the Order?”

Degan looked to the fan in my hands. “Some theorized Ivory wrote down a ritual on how to call in the Oath. Or to renew it. Or to destroy it. No one knows for certain. All I know is that while having the sword gives you sway over the emperor and the Order via the Oath, having the laws might give you complete control.”

“And Wolf wants them both,” I said.

“I don’t know,” said Degan. “Maybe. But my guess is that as long as Wolf has Ivory’s sword, he can accomplish what he wants. After all, there was no way to know the laws had survived until now. Going after the sword would have been the more certain bet.”

“You came for the laws,” I observed.

“I came for whatever I could find, to do whatever I could to help my former sword kin. There’s a difference.”

I looked down at the dying man in Degan’s lap, then at the ruins of the study. Pieces of the story were still missing.

“Why do you think Wolf left him alive?” I said.

Degan shook his head. “I don’t know. But there’s a reason. With Wolf, there’s always a reason. And I plan to find out what it is.”

I didn’t argue. Instead, I got up and went back to where the fan had hung on the wall. I undid the two silk ribbons that had wrapped around the fan’s supports, straightened them out, and used them to tie the fan closed.

When I turned back around, I found Degan hunched over his sword brother, his lips almost touching the other degan’s ear, whispering. Ivory’s own lips moved in silent time with Degan’s, rhythm matching rhythm, pause matching pause.

I laid the fan at Degan’s feet, along with Ivory’s letter of passage, and left. Degan didn’t look up as I went.