Sworn in Steel (2 page)

Our boatman grew quiet as we approached a set of water stairs, their steps leading down into the harbor. I’d barely felt the scrape of the keel on stone before Fowler was clambering up and
over me, making for the stairs even as she sent the caïque to rocking. The boatman cursed. Fowler cursed. I grabbed the bundle at my feet and made it unanimous.

A moment later, the Oak Mistress was on the steps, scrambling up toward the quay as the boat settled.

I reached into my purse and pulled out a pair of silver hawks, then thought better of it and added three more, making sure none of them were clipped. The boatman stepped forward, easy and sure
in the craft, and I placed a week’s worth of work in his palm. To his credit, he nodded and pocketed the windfall without comment.

I turned and considered the slime-smeared steps, the rocking of the boat, and the canvas-wrapped bundle in my hands. I bent my knees, took a breath. . . .

“You want I should throw that to you?”

I blinked and looked back over my shoulder. “What?”

“The package,” said the boatman. “Steps are tricky enough as it is; figure you don’t need the added trouble of your hands being full.”

“I’ve got it,” I said. I turned back to the quay. I just needed to get the timing right. . . .

“Does it float?”

I jerked back. “What?”

“Wondered if it’d sink or swim if’n you dropped it. Wonder if you’ll do the same, for that matter.”

“Look—” I began.

“I don’t need your girl tracking me down and cutting me up ’cause I let you drown,” he said. “And I don’t need you doing the same if you drop your cargo
gettin’ off my boat. Figure it’s better for us both if I toss it to you once you’re ashore.”

I considered the steps, the boatman, the water all around us. Considered the canvas-wrapped sword in my hands.

“I ain’t stupid,” he said from behind me. “Last thing I want to do is cross the likes of you.”

“Last thing I want to do is be crossed,” I said softly. Mostly to myself.

“Drothe!” Fowler’s voice came hissing down from the quay. “What the hell. What’s taking so long?”

I hefted Degan’s sword, feeling more than just the weight of steel and leather and canvas in my hands. There was history here; obligation; blood. Not to mention broken promises and
memories.

I’d already lost him: I couldn’t lose his sword. Not after having just found it in Crook Eye’s possession. Not after having almost killed for it.

I handed the wrapped blade back to the boatman. Even if he were to row off with it, I stood a better chance of finding him than I did retrieving the sword from the bottom of the harbor.

I adjusted my stance, the muscles of my back and legs protesting, and waited for the caïque to bump up against the stairs again. When it did, I half stepped, half leapt across. Only one
foot ended up slipping back into the water.

When I turned, the boatman had moved his caïque up, bringing him even with me. He hesitated a moment, bending over the blade, and then tossed the long bundle in an easy arc over the water.
The blade landed in my arms almost before I had a chance to be worried. I drew the sword in close, then looked out at the boatman. He was already beginning to move away.

“Hey!” I called after him.

He turned his head but didn’t stop working his oar.

“I forgot to ask,” I said. “Has any news worth noting come across tonight?” Such as, I thought, word of a Gray Prince’s death?

“This a test?”

“Straight.”

He seemed to consider for a moment. “Naught I heard.” A flash of teeth in the gloom. “But then, I don’t hear much, yeh?”

I smiled and began to turn away.

“Heya!” he called.

I looked back.

“Check the blade.” Slight pause. “Your Highness.”

His chuckle was still rippling across the water as I held up the sword, but any anxiety I felt vanished as soon as I saw what he’d done. A worn length of rope had been tied to
Degan’s sword, running from the canvas-covered crosspiece down to a spot just above the point, forming an impromptu sling.

The boatman was on his way to becoming an amber-limned smudge on the water by now, but I raised my hand in thanks anyhow. I couldn’t be sure if the sound that came back was more laughter
or just the water.

I passed my left arm through the rope, ducked my head under, and let the sword settle across my back. It felt strange, but it also felt good. I climbed the rest of the way up the water stairs,
my left foot squelching every other step.

Fowler was waiting at the top, her travel coat thrown back to reveal the deep green doublet and split riding skirt beneath. Scratch was standing beside her, his heavy hands hanging loosely at
his sides, his face as expressive as a poorly carved block of granite. He was sporting a bloody lip. Fowler had sent him ahead to scout out the docks and arrange for discreet passage into Ildrecca.
I didn’t care for the results his face predicted.

“Problems?” I asked as I reached the top.

“Misunderstanding,” said Scratch.

“How big of one?”

Scratch shrugged, meaning it could be anything from broken ribs to a broken neck for the other cove.

“Is it going to get in the way of using the Gate?” I said.

“Wouldn’t recommend calling on Soggy Petyr.”

Fowler and I exchanged a look. Soggy Petyr was one of the local bosses down in Dirty Waters, specializing in for-hire press gangs, stolen goods, and shaking down small shipmasters. He also
controlled access to the oldest and largest hidden entry point this side of Ildrecca: the Thieves’ Gate.

I pointed at Scratch’s lip. “Petyr’s boys?” I said, hoping for the best.

“Petyr.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Scratch. . . .”

“Called you a cut-rate cove. Called Fowler worse. Wanted to shake us down. Backhanded me when I told him where to go.”

I sighed. I should have expected this. Various bosses and Kin had been testing me ever since the street had proclaimed me a Gray Prince three months back. Turned out having the title and keeping
it weren’t the same thing, especially when you made the jump from street operative to criminal royalty in less than a week. People wanted to make sure my rise hadn’t been a fluke, that
it wasn’t dumb luck that had put me on top.

Never mind that it
had
been luck—the important thing was to rise above it. A handful of hard names from the likes of Petyr weren’t going to bring me down, especially if I
sent some of my people to “talk” to him once I was back inside the city. But tonight, in his territory, with only two coves on my blinders, the city gates locked until dawn, and a
dangerous rumor running up behind me? This wasn’t the time or place to have a thin skin.

Unfortunately, it was starting to look like Scratch hadn’t seen it that way.

“And you took it, right?” I said. “When Petyr showed you his hand, you stood there and you took it, right?”

Scratch rubbed thoughtfully at the knuckles of his left hand and didn’t answer.

“Right?”

“Man hits you, sometimes you don’t think. Sometimes you—”

“Oh, for the Angels’ sake!” I turned away, not trusting myself to keep from backhanding Scratch myself. I took two steps along the quay, paused for a breath, took two more.

I could feel the edges of the sword biting into my back through the canvas as I thought of the man who had used to own it. A bloody lip? Not fucking likely. Degan wouldn’t have let Petyr
touch him—wouldn’t even have let him start the motion. The fight would have been over before it started. Hell, it wouldn’t have started in the first place. If Degan were here . .
.

No. Stop. Wishes and fishes and all that crap. Besides, I’d already poisoned that pond well and good. There was no going back.

I turned around. Fowler gave me a warning look as I came back. I nodded in response. Scratch was her man, not mine: any consequences for this would be meted out by her. Raising my hand against
him would only get me a face full of Oak Mistress, and not in any way I’d like. That pond had turned sour as well.

I glared up at Scratch. “How bad was it with Petyr?”

“Don’t think I broke his jaw, if that’s what you mean.”

“You don’t think you—?” I took a deep breath, tried again. “How’d you get out of there? By all accounts, Petyr doesn’t travel light.”

Scratch shrugged. “Threw a table and ran.”

I opened my mouth to say more, thought better of it, and turned to Fowler instead. “The Thieves’ Gate is out,” I said.

“You think?” She looked around the wharf. “We can’t stand around here for long. Broken jaw or not, Petyr’s going to have his people all over the Waters looking for
us.”

I nodded. Dirty Waters sat on a narrow strip of shore between Ildrecca’s city wall and the Corsian Passage. It had one main thoroughfare—called either Eel Way or the Slithers,
depending on who you talked to—that paralleled the city wall. Down in the Lower Harbor, it was wide enough for three wagons; here in the Waters, it was a good day when two carts could pass
each other and only rub wheel hubs. People, barrels, ramshackle huts, and garbage clogged most of the road, leaving a meandering path intersected by the occasional side street or alley. The back
ways were even worse.

The entire place was a warren of hidey-holes and roosting kens, but it wasn’t a warren I knew well. Running would be better than hiding, if we could manage it.

“We’ll need to stick to the Slithers if we want to get out of here,” I said as I began to move away from the quay.

“I don’t suppose you have any friends around here, do you?” said Fowler as she fell in beside me.

“No,” I said, looking up the street. Had that shadow been in that doorway before? “But that’s not the important question.”

“It isn’t?” said Fowler.

“No.”

“Then what is?”

The shadow, I decided, was definitely new, as were the four that had just slipped around the corner on the opposite side of the street. All were coming our way. Fast.

“The important question,” I said, drawing my rapier and my fighting dagger, “is how far is it to the end of Soggy Petyr’s territory? Because unless the answer is
‘pretty damn close,’ we’re going to have a long, hard fight ahead of us.”

I
took the corner fast—so fast that I slipped in the small pile of fish entrails someone had dumped inside the entrance to the alley. I
managed to catch myself against a crate in the process and keep running. The maneuver gained me a palmful of splinters, but it was a hell of a lot better than the alternative being offered by the
pair of Petyr’s Cutters running a block behind me.

I dodged past barrels and around fallen timbers, unsure whether to be grateful for the detritus or not. It could hide me and foil my trail, but it was also slowing me down. If I lost much more
ground to my pursuers, all the switchbacks and trash in the world wouldn’t keep them off my blinders.

I burst out of the alley and into what passed for a piazza in Dirty Waters—basically an irregular open space set off by a laundry on one side and a tavern on the other. Weak light spilled
out of the tavern, illuminating a collection of ramshackle tables and benches, all set on an uneven patio made up of stray boards laid out on the ground. Men sat at the tables. Two of them looked
up as I staggered past, my eyes already burning from the faint light. Neither man moved to interfere.

Small blessings.

I was most of the way across the piazza, heading for a gap in the buildings on the far side, when I heard a shout of triumph behind me.

Petyr’s boys. Had to be.

I redoubled my efforts, pushing tired limbs and battered muscles as best I could. Between the trip up from Barrab and the ambush on the quay, there wasn’t much left to draw on; but given
the alternative was to turn and fight and—most likely—lose, I headed into the alley and prayed I wouldn’t stumble over some fresh hazard.

If I could only find a handy bolt-hole, or a Rabbit Run, or maybe a Thieves’ Ladder to . . .

There. I came around a turn to find a gift from the Angels themselves: a tall, sloping pile of garbage directly ahead of me. If I could get enough purchase to run up it and leap to the
overhanging gutter beyond, I might be able to . . .

Pain flared along my back as I picked up my pace, reminding me I was doing good to be moving at all. I’d been striped across the back on the quay, just before we’d been forced to
rabbit: now a line of fire extended from below my shoulder blade, down across my ribs, to my hip. While I still wasn’t sure if it was a cut or one hell of a bruise—my hand had come back
red when I’d reached around to check the wound, but there’d been no way to tell whether the blood was mine or someone else’s—I did know I would have ended up in two pieces
if it hadn’t been for Degan’s sword lying across my spine.

One piece or two, though, there was no way I was going to be making that leap.

I skirted the garbage pile, tripped over a decaying mound of fur that might have once been a dog or a cat, and fell. My knee landed on something hard and I let out a gasp. Then I was up and
running again, but not for long. Thirty paces on, the alley ended in the back of a building.

I looked around. Dawn, I expect, was pushing itself toward the horizon somewhere to the east, but here in the slums of Dirty Waters, deep under the shadow of the city walls, it was still dark
enough for my night vision to function.

I studied the alley in the red and gold highlights of my sight and felt my heart sink. The wooden wall before me looked weathered and worn, but that didn’t mean it would give way easy. I
could still be trying to kick a hole in it when my pursuers arrived. The buildings to either side were brick, tall and without doors. There was a single window high up to my right, but it was
boarded over.

The sounds of voices and stumbling feet—and more ominously, of bared steel scraping up against stone—came to me from back along my path. They were getting closer.

I took a step toward the garbage. Maybe if I could bury myself in it quickly enough, I could . . .

No, wait. Even better.

To call the gap in the wall near the garbage pile an alcove would have been generous. At best, it was a space where two buildings failed to meet, just behind the stinking pile and well in the
shadows of the buildings that formed it. That I had initially missed seeing the gap spoke well of its potential; that I had missed it with my night vision was even better. If I couldn’t see
it, it would be nearly invisible to the normally sighted Cutters on my tail.