Sworn in Steel (51 page)

“If there are no surprises, yeah.” I turned back to find her no more than a whisper in my vision.

“Good. Then do so.” I blinked, realizing that the shadow before me had been just that. Aribah was already kneeling beside her grandfather, adjusting his clothes and using her own
turban to bind and cover him in darkness. “I can get Grandfather and me past the guards if I hurry.”

I considered her, considered the body. “Are you sure?”

“I must be.”

“I could—”

“No,” she said, her voice both brittle and sharp at once. “You can’t. Not with this. He’s mine to bear. Alone.”

There was no room left for argument in her voice, and I didn’t try to make any. Instead, I stalked over to where we’d been first talking and looked through the shadows until I found
my wrist knife. When I turned back, she had pulled the body into a sitting position and was arranging him across her shoulders. She stood with a grunt, staggered a bit, then found her footing. I
was just able to make out her eyes in the darkness.

“I . . . I’m sorry,” I said, not finding any other words just then.

“No more than I.” I watched her eyes blink wetly once, twice. Then, “Good luck finding your truth, Imperial.” And she turned away. I watched, but after a moment, she was
little more than a blur. Two steps farther on, and she was gone.

I stood there for a moment, watching the darkness. Thinking.

The eyes of a djinni?

Damn you. Damn you twice over for being dead, Sebastian.

I turned and headed off down the slope. Like it or not, there was still more to do.

I
hadn’t had a chance to case Heron’s ken on my prior visit, and there wasn’t time for it now. A quick circuit showed a building
designed as much for security as aesthetics: There were plenty of windows, but all of the accessible ones were narrow, more reminiscent of glass-filled loopholes meant for archers than for letting
in light or air. Higher up, the few wider windows and balcony doors were fitted with elaborate gates of iron scrollwork, and those sat over equally ornate carved wooden screens. As for the doors at
ground level, all were beautifully and solidly built, with locks that looked to be a study in intricacy, if their delicately acid-etched casings were any indication.

I didn’t relish the notion of trying a new lock on the spur of the moment, especially with my head still pounding and my breath coming in gasps. While every lock may be ultimately
pickable, that doesn’t mean every lock maker goes about his business in the same way. Just as each lock master has a personality, so do his locks; back in Ildrecca, I could have told you that
the mechanism from the Iron Hand shop always turned in a clockwise direction, while a Dorynian lock used a double-turn system, and that Kettlemaker often as not installed a false pin that, if
stroked incorrectly, could freeze up the rest of the mechanism. But here, in el-Qaddice, on the padishah’s grounds? I had no idea how simple or elaborate any given lock might be, let alone
the particular traits of the device or its maker. And while I could likely feel and analyze my way through all but the worst of the tumbles I’d find here, the thought of being spotted by a
member of the Opal Guard—or worse—while working my spiders didn’t exactly excite me.

So instead, I decided to go with a tried-and-true method from my youth: I knocked on the front door.

Despite everything I’d gone through tonight, it still wasn’t as late as I might have liked. That meant the steward wasn’t yawning and rubbing his eyes when he answered the
door, but he still opened it readily enough. We were on a royal estate, surrounded by walls and guards and Angels knew what else—who would expect a gig rush here? Certainly not him.

The pommel of my dagger caught him in the temple the moment the door had swung to, sending his woven skullcap flying.

He staggered, and I followed up with another strike, this time to the back of his head. At the same time, I reached out with my free hand and directed his fall; I couldn’t have him
blocking the doorway, after all. He hit the floor at the same time as his cap.

It wasn’t the most elegant of entries, I admit, but the most effective methods sometimes aren’t. Far more Kin make a quick hawk with an expertly applied bludgeon or fist than those
who take the time to slide a lock or cut a purse. As much as some Lighters may like to see us as smiling, capable rogues, the truth is most Kin are little better than back-alley thugs at heart. And
even though I like to see myself as standing above the rest of my cousins, I have to admit to having washed my fair share of blood off coins before spending them over the years. Sometimes
it’s just more expedient to spill a bit of claret.

I pulled the steward the rest of the way into the entry and closed the door behind me. Then I crouched there, listening, running my hands over him even as he groggily tried to push them away. A
ring of keys came off his belt, and a small whistle from around his neck. The belt itself I removed and cinched around his wrists, making them fast behind his back. Then I sat him up in the shadows
beside the door and gave his face a few light slaps to get his attention.

I held up my dagger. “How many besides you?” I said.

He looked at the blade vaguely, clearly still having trouble focusing. “None,” he slurred.

“If you stick with that answer and I find anyone else, they die.”

“Two.”

I nodded. “Where?”

“Upstairs.”

I unwound his sash, tied a knot in one end, and stuffed it in his mouth. The rest went around his head twice and became a gag. “Stay,” I said. It would have been nice if he’d
passed out completely, but I wasn’t about to beat him until he lost consciousness; there are lines and there are lines, and not all of them need to be crossed simply for the sake of
convenience.

I retraced the steps from my previous meeting, first finding the library and then finding the key to it on the steward’s ring. The house was clearly settled in for the night, with only a
handful of tapers burning against the master’s eventual return. A rhythmic creaking from the floor above told me what the other two servants were up to. I returned to the front door to
retrieve the steward.

He was trying to regain his feet but having a hard time of it, given his sallow complexion and sweating brow.

“Easy,” I said, steadying him. “I wouldn’t recommend vomiting when you have a gag in your mouth. Good way to choke to death.”

He thought about it and nodded weakly. I led him back down to the library, veering only to retrieve a taper on the way. Once inside, I set him in the middle of the floor and then locked the oak
doors behind us.

“Your life depends on your silence,” I said, turning around. “No kicking, no knocking things over, no noise of any sort, and you get to live. Make a sound, though, and I
guarantee that, even if they break the doors down, they’ll only find one man breathing. Understand?”

The steward glared and nodded.

I straightened and looked at the shelves.

“I don’t suppose you know where your master keeps his books on degans, do you?” I said.

This time, all I got was the glare.

“I thought not.”

I began in the section Heron had pulled Simonis Chionates from, finding the work itself without much effort. A quick leafing through the pages showed both a well-marked and well-used text, with
marginalia in at least two hands. More interestingly, beside it I found what appeared to be an earlier, draft version of the text, all in the same hand as the later work. The original notes and the
finished work? One hell of a scholarly coup, but given that neither of them seemed to relate to Ivory Degan or the original practices of the Order, they didn’t do me much good. I moved
on.

The surrounding books were a mixture of general imperial histories, diaries of people who had done business with degans, two folios filled with fading letters, a handful of fighting
manuals—including Gambogi, which I remembered Degan disparaging once—a dog-eared copy of Usserius’s opus
On the Nature of Imperial Divinity
, and what could only be
described as a hodgepodge of fanciful tales and lays bound in one volume. The last was titled
The Adventures, Heroic Deeds, and Perilous Dangers faced by the Most Noble Order of the Degans
and attributed solely to “A. Gentleman,” which, glancing at the text, seemed to be an insult to any gentleman worthy of the title.

It was far less than I’d hoped for and, after spending a good hour paging through the pile, clearly not Heron’s only sources on the Order. For someone who’d proclaimed a
lifetime’s interest in collecting, let alone his fascination with a specific topic, the books before me constituted more of an embarrassment than a reason to crow. Maybe I’d been
spoiled by the tomes that passed through Baldezar’s hands, or even the ones that came out of his workshop back in Ildrecca, but Heron had spoken too knowingly about the degans for me to think
this was the extent of his knowledge. From what I could see, Ivory was barely mentioned, let alone the early Order.

No, there had to be more, and not just because I wanted there to be.

I glanced over at the steward. He’d drifted off into unconsciousness, brought on no doubt in part by the drubbing I’d given him. Even if he were awake, though, I knew better than to
expect help from that quarter.

Instead, I began searching the surrounding shelves and cases, paging through volumes, looking for any other tomes or folios that might pertain to my quest. Just because Simonis was in one area
didn’t mean Heron couldn’t have degan-related material in another spot; like locks, libraries have their own personalities.

As good as that theory was, though, it didn’t result in my finding any more books on the degans, obvious or otherwise. Sooner than I’d like, I was back before the shelf with Simonis
and “A. Gentleman.”

I looked around the room, wondering briefly if Heron was the kind to keep a written catalog of all his books. Probably not: He was just arrogant enough to carry it around in his head. And while
getting in here had been easier than I’d hoped, I didn’t have any illusions about being able to lay hands on the secretary, let alone persuading him to tell me where he kept his
materials on the degans. He didn’t seem the kind to break very easily.

Still, appearances can be deceiving, and it wasn’t as if I had a lot of other options. I couldn’t see myself being invited back for coffee and a bite anytime soon. As for repeating
tonight’s performance—well, a smart Draw Latch doesn’t crack the same ken twice, especially when that ken lies inside the domain of a royal prince. People like that tend to have
enough resources to make a second attempt fatal.

Which meant I got to wait. I wasn’t in the mood to wait.

I entertained myself by searching the research table for hidden drawers and compartments, just in case I was wrong about Heron’s arrogance. I wasn’t. From there, I poked about the
back of the shelves that held the degan folios, then the more likely bits of molding and joints along the walls. Nothing.

If there was something hidden in Heron’s library, I decided, both Christiana and I had something to learn from the man.

After checking to make sure the steward was still breathing, I found myself before Heron’s “memory” wall, staring at the flowers and the fan and the sword. On a whim, I pulled
a chair over, climbed up, and gently lifted the fan off its mounting pins.

It was big, even for a funerary fan, and required both hands to lift. This close, I could see an impressive amount of gold leaf and even a few precious stones through the dark gauze that covered
the body of the fan. The ribs were polished ebony, held open by a rod extending across the back.

The wall behind the fan was smooth and blank: no keys, no careful catalog of books, no conveniently hidden compartment containing centuries-old papers. Just plain white plaster and the trailing
wisps of freshly broken cobwebs.

Well, it had been a long shot anyhow.

It was while I was shifting the fan back into place that the mourning cloth slipped off, raising a small cloud of dust even as it drifted to the floor. I turned my head and sneezed, both out of
respect for the fan, and because I didn’t want to send myself toppling backward from my perch. The chair still teetered a bit, and the fan wobbled treacherously in my hands, but neither of us
ended up falling. Relieved, I turned back to finish the remounting, and gasped.

Exquisite didn’t even begin to describe what I saw before me. The calligraphy alone was a work of art, with each symbol, each accent, a study in technique: effortless and stylistically
perfect at once. The painted cephta seemed to shimmer, the finely powdered pearl that had been mixed with the pigments catching and reflecting the lantern light behind me, making the writing come
alive on the silk. It was as if the story of the woman before me wanted to step off the fan and dance its way across my eyes, rather than simply be read.

The artwork was just as stunning: each figure, each mountain, each vista crafted with the fewest possible brushstrokes, but each clearly visible for what it was. As was traditional, the
predominant color was black, but here and there, small hints of color had been added to underscore particular memories and moments: the blue-green edge of the sea, the pink of an almond tree in
bloom, the sandy brown of a peregrine falcon’s belly in flight.

It was a life laid out not just to be remembered and mourned, but to be glorified. To be reveled in. To be loved.

But as stunning as the calligraphy and the art and the devotion apparent in the fan were, they weren’t what had caused me to catch my breath; that had been caused by the name written in
fine golden symbols across the top of the fan: Simonis Chionates. The same name that had belonged to the woman who’d penned the two-hundred-year-old history on the shelf behind me. The woman
who had inspired a secretary’s interest in the degans.

And the woman who, scanning the details of the life stretched out before me, had been married to a man named Heronestes Karkappadolis. A man who was depicted on the fan wielding an ivory-handled
sword, and who stood with a whole host of other men and women with metal-chased weapons.