Sworn in Steel (32 page)

Still, even with the wider way and the empty streets, I couldn’t help but notice that I was gathering more dark looks than usual. I asked the urchin about it.

“You’re imperial,” he said simply.

“Your people hate us that much?” I said.

“Hate?” he said, looking back at me. “It’s not about hate, it’s about greed.” He pointed at me. “If you weren’t wearing that, you’d be a
healthy profit for anyone who managed to bring you in or send the city guard after you.”

I glanced down and realized that, rather than pointing to my sword or knife, he was indicating the brass lozenge hanging about my neck—the wazir’s token of patronage.

“They watch for it that closely?” I said. I’d expected to be stopped at gates between the city’s rings and have the occasional merchant or local Rag demand to see it just
to because he could—but to have Lighters on the street looking for it? “How much is the reward for finding someone like me without a token?”

The urchin smiled. “Were you to not have one and I to lead the green jackets to your side, I could live like a prince for a month and more.”

I reached up and ran a careful hand over the token, giving the chain a tug just to be sure. The urchin smiled wider and led on.

By the time we arrived outside the padishah’s grounds, full night had fallen, but you couldn’t tell it for all the lanterns and torches before us. Large, enameled wrought-iron gates
spanned a gap wider than the whole of the Angel’s Shadow—including the stables—flanked on either side by spindle-thin towers covered in elaborate carvings. An expanse of colorful
glazed bricks extended into the space before the gate, forming a massive half circle on the ground, the colors of the bricks blending to depict a giant phoenix, the symbol of the padishah’s
household. Guards resplendent in silk arming coats and tall-plumed turbans patrolled the towers and gate, the torchlight glinting equally off their acid-etched spear heads and the jewels in their
turban pins.

I dismissed the urchin with another coin and walked up to the gate. A bored-looking guard captain—or, at least I assumed he was a captain, given the cloth of silver sash around his waist
and thumb-sized opal in his turban pin—wandered over and regarded me from behind a colorful iron hummingbird.

“I’m here to see Secretary Heron.”

“Poet?” he said, glancing at the medallion on the matching bronze chain.

“Acting troupe.”

He motioned over his shoulder with his chin. “Nonpoets shielded by the wazir have to use the Dog Gate on the west side of the estate.”

We, of course, were standing on the east side of the estate.

He began to turn away.

“What if I said I was also a poet?” I said.

He turned back, a resigned look on his face. “Then I’d ask you to compose something on the spot to prove it.” He looked up at the gate. “Something depicted on this,
probably. Something complicated.”

“And if my poem didn’t meet your standards?”

“We scrub the blood off the bricks every morning.”

It took me another half an hour to wend my way to the Dog Gate. I discovered it was named so on account of the padishah’s kennels being located next to it; that, and because the kennel
masters made a habit of throwing scraps over the wall, meaning the small, irregular square before the gate was filled with packs of street hounds, not to mention their droppings.

The guard here was more officious than those at the main gate, which made no sense. Then again, when a person’s in charge of watching over dogs and their shit, I suppose one clings to
whatever dignity one can.

“You’re late,” he said, staring down his nose at me. “I was told to expect you at dusk.”

“I like to think of this time of night as dusk simply wearing a darker cloak, don’t you?”

Not even the hint of a grin. Fine. I could play that way, too.

“Look,” I said, shaking my right boot in an attempt to get a particularly stubborn piece of dog shit off it, “Heron wants to see me, all right? He told me to come. Explicitly.
Now, if you want to be the one who tells him you turned me awa—”

“The noble secretary already sent word; you’re not to be admitted.”

I stopped working on my shoe. “Has he, now?”

Now the guard decided to grin. “He doesn’t tolerate tardiness. Or,” he said, looking down at my shoes, “poor hygiene.”

I considered the guard, the gate, the height of the wall. It could be done: He was close enough for me to be able to reach through the bars, grab hold, and introduce him to my dagger. Then it
would be up and over the bars. This near the kennels, any noise probably wouldn’t even be remarked on. From there, I could stick to the shadows, grab a servant, and put the blade to him to
locate Heron’s ken.

Except I knew better. Tempting as it might be to my fatigue-edged temper to take out my frustrations on Heron and the guard, breaking into the padishah’s estate, let alone dusting one of
his men, wouldn’t do anything other than make my life in Djan harder.

But, damn, it would feel good.

I shook my head. Angels, did I need some sleep.

“Fine,” I said. “Just give me whatever he sent along and I’ll fade.” Late or not, I couldn’t see Heron leaving us short on our account at the inn: As he had
said, it was the wazir’s responsibility to watch over us while we wore his tokens. Besides, he’d said he would send along some
ahrami
.

The guard frowned and shifted his feet slightly. “You come late and expect the secretary to send gifts?” He took a firmer hold on his spear. “Get out of here.”

I wrapped one hand around the plain ironwork of the Dog Gate and made a show of scraping my shoe off on one of the lower bars. The guard’s scowl deepened.

“My apologies to the secretary for my tardiness, then,” I said. “Let him know I’ll do my best to be on time tomorrow.”

“I’m not your messenger,” said the guard. “I’ll be damned if I—”

This time my hand did reach out and grab him, pulling him close enough for my dagger to find his side—but not to enter it.

I leaned in close, the tip of my blade pushing the cotton of his uniform coat—no silk for the Dog Gate guard, I noted—into his ribs. I could smell fresh
ahrami
—
my
ahrami
—on his breath. “You’re whatever the fuck I say you are,” I said through the bars. “Now, where’s the package Heron sent along with his message for
me?”

“Package?” he said, a bit too quickly. “I told you—”

“Let me explain how this works,” I said. “Either you give me what’s mine or I call for your captain. Your captain goes through your things. He finds the money and
whatever else Heron sent. Maybe he believes you, maybe he believes me; I don’t really care. Because, either way, when someone finally gets around to dragging the secretary down here—and
they will, since I’ll scream my damn head off and invoke the wazir’s patronage until they do—you won’t have to worry about me anymore; you’ll have the secretary to
answer to.” I pushed the dagger a bit harder. “How’s that sound?”

I watched as the color fled his face in the lamplight.

“I thought so,” I said. I yanked on his coat once, forcing his forehead into the bars. The iron clanged dully, and the guard grunted. “Now get me what Heron sent.” I
looked down at my boots. “And give me your sash while you’re at it—I’ve been told I need to take better care of my ‘personal hygiene.’”

I
left the Dog Gate as the night was beginning to pick up in the Old City. Lanterns flared, torches burned, and Djanese Mouths juggled tiny
rainbows and offered to sell charms to the crowds to light their way.

The displays played hell on my night vision, and I found myself drifting toward the back streets despite the greater risk. That helped a bit, but even here lights burned and revelers shouted,
neither of which did much good for the budding ache at the back of my head. Part of the sensitivity, I knew, was simple fatigue; but just as much was coming from the charge the
ahrami
was
giving me.

As I’d hoped, Heron had not only left our daily stipend with the guard; he’d also included a down payment on the
ahrami
he’d promised me. A letter had chastised
me—mildly—for missing the appointment, but I got the impression that Heron had half expected me to get lost, or distracted, or the like. Our next meeting, he’d written, would be
in two days’ time, and this one I was expected to make.

As for the requested extension of the performance date, there was no mention. I chose to read the silence as a ploy to keep me hungry, rather than him avoiding bad news. Either way, though, it
meant we’d have to operate on the old timetable until we heard otherwise.

Tobin wouldn’t like that. Tough shit: Neither did I.

I slipped two more
ahrami
into my mouth, bringing the total up to six—or was it seven?—since I’d left the padishah’s gate. I could feel my pulse surging at my
temple now. Soon enough, the flush of those latest seeds would pass, and that thrumming would become a steady beat of pain.

What I needed, I knew, was sleep: What I was going to get, though, was another night full of seeds and coffee and questions. Rest would come in the morning, when both the back alleys and my
night vision went to bed.

I paused on a few street corners, stopped to watch a handler and his trained fox perform, lost a handful of
supps
at a street-side mags table, and even managed to find a snake-baiting
ring, but all the while, I kept working my way back toward the Imperial Quarter. It’s not that I didn’t want to work the street: I did. It drove me nearly to distraction to have to
stick to the streets and alleys, rather than jump to the roofs or dive myself down into the connected cellars and hidden ways that ran through every city, but I was still too fresh to the Old City
to slip those paths yet. Without a guide, or a name to use as my passport, the odds of me stumbling across trouble rather than answers was high. And while I might welcome the opportunities even the
occasional bit of bluff and blood could lead to, I wasn’t about to pursue them with Heron’s ready, not to mention my stash of
ahrami
, still on me for the plucking.

I slipped back into the Imperial Quarter with a nod and a pair of small bribes for the guards at the gate—one for the Djanese patrol on the outside, and another for their imperial
counterparts standing just within the sally port. I made a mental note to see if the same swads were on duty every night. If so, it would likely be cheaper to pay them for a week at a time, rather
than on a nightly basis, to forget my comings and goings.

Unlike portions of el-Qaddice, the Imperial Quarter was dark and quiet. Oh, taverns still spilled light out into the darkness and late-night hawkers chanted out wares—and offers—from
street corners, but the level of activity didn’t compare. Just as the walls separated Imperial from Djanese, so did they lock out the differing schedules. Both peoples might share the same
sky, but it was clear that, at least in the empire’s case, we weren’t about to bow down to it. Here in the Quarter, food and clothing and weather aside, the empire still held sway.

Or so we wanted to think. Me, I knew better, as did the two Cutters who stepped out in front of me five blocks from the Angel’s Shadow.

I stopped. They smiled. They were the same coves that Fat Chair had sent to escort me to his sedan chair.

Well, shit.

It was a good place for an ambush: We were on a narrow street, well past one curve and not quite to another, meaning no one would be able to see us from farther along the way. The walls were
blank on either side, with the only opening being a gated archway several feet past my ambushers. I looked over my shoulder; sure enough, there was two more figures back there, too. And I could
guarantee we were outside whatever perimeter Fowler had managed to set up.

I looked back and forth, judging distances, and checked the walls again: tall, with smooth tops shining in the moonlight. That was good, in that it meant they likely didn’t have broken
shards of glass and pottery cemented atop them to keep people like me out, but bad in that the walls were too tall and smooth for me to do anything with. Maybe if I had some rope and a
crawler’s crown, but a grapnel wasn’t something I’d planned on needing tonight.

Metal hissed as steel cleared leather. I turned back the way I’d been going to see the native tough holding a short, straight Djanese duelist’s sword in one hand and a brass buckler
in the other. The imperial Cutter beside him had a slightly longer, thinner blade. Behind me, I’d already seen a brace of small axes and a short, ball-headed mace and knife.

None were rapiers by any means, which gave me the advantage of reach, but considering the circumstances, that didn’t count for much.

I cleared my sword and drew my boot knife, making sure the moonlight slid along their lengths as I did so. Where the hell was Degan, or even Wolf, for that matter, when I needed them?

“We have a message for you,” said the man with the sword and buckler.

“I don’t suppose it’s in the form of a folded piece of paper, is it?” I said.

The man didn’t even blink.

“You were warned,” said the
Zakur
. “You ignored my lord’s warning, refused to hand over the magic you brought into el-Qaddice, and continue to intrude on his
business. You insult him with your very presence.”

“If I’d known it was that easy to insult your boss, I’d have done it sooner.”

The Cutter struck his buckler with the flat of his blade, sending a flat
clang
echoing up and down the street. “Now you’ll learn what it means to cross the
Zakur
-Mulaad!” he snapped. He leaned forward and extended both arms for-ward, laying the buckler over the sword guard so they could function as one entity. He looked very comfortable
doing it.

I didn’t wait for the others to come on guard; didn’t wait for any commands to be given; didn’t wait for him to start moving forward. I simply turned and ran at the two Cutters
behind me.

It stood to reason that the man delivering the message was the best hitter in the crew. That’s how Cutters tend to work, and, more important, how most bosses tend to think: Give the
toughest muscle the orders and let him keep the rest in line. If you needed something more complex, you sent someone besides a Cutter—say an Arm, or maybe a Bender.