Sworn in Steel (58 page)

It was the kind of execution any Gray Prince would have been proud to call his own.

Had Wolf thought the old degan would bleed to death before anyone got to him? Or had he simply wanted to make sure that Ivory died a slow, lingering death—a kind of grim payback over their
falling-out so many years before? Angels knew Wolf was vicious enough to do that.

But then why leave the guards lying out in the open? I didn’t know whether he’d dusted them coming or going, but either way, Wolf must have known that even if the padishah’s
men didn’t find them, Degan and I would. And that if we did, we’d . . .

Oh. Of course.

Shit.

I turned and began sprinting back the way I’d come.

Fool!
We’d been meant to find them. And not just the guards—he’d wanted us to find Ivory, too. Alive. So we could talk to him. Comfort him.

Talk the dying degan into telling us where the laws were hidden.

Bastard.

Wolf had to be back there, had to be somewhere in or above the piazza, watching the Dog Gate even now, waiting for Degan to step through the gate. Just because I hadn’t seen him
didn’t mean he wasn’t hiding, wasn’t waiting to spring once we were off the grounds and away from despotic interruptions. He’d gotten into my rooms under Fowler’s
nose: If anyone could place himself without being seen, even by my night vision, it was him.

And why let me go? Why let me stroll away from the ground unmolested? Because he was after bigger fish. Wolf wanted the Order’s laws, and he knew that if anyone was going to have them, it
would be Degan.

And that he’d have to kill him for them.

I flew back the way I’d come, scrambling and leaping where before I’d moved with a more cautious pace. The dog barked again, but this time when its owner shouted, it was because of
the tiles I sent crashing to the street as I jumped down off his roof.

I ran back along the covered alley and practically tumbled down to the street in my haste. Amber-limned shapes drew back as I rushed past, shouting curses in my wake. I didn’t care:
didn’t care about gathering attention, didn’t care about my missing token, didn’t care that I might be drawing ready blades after me. All I cared about was getting back to the
damn gate before Degan stepped into whatever Wolf had planned for him.

I raced around the final turn and jerked to a halt, my feet skidding on the dusty stones beneath me. A lone figure stood where the street opened onto the piazza. The figure had a drawn sword in
his hand and a smile on his face.

He was a degan, all right—just not the right one.

“I was wondering if you’d put the pieces together,” said Wolf. He was dressed in the Djanese style, with loose pants and a short tunic, all under a flowing burnoose, all
spattered in blood.

“It wasn’t that hard,” I lied.

Wolf raised a dubious eyebrow. “Oh?”

“No,” I said.
Talk. Buy time. Let Degan walk out the gate and hear you, find you. Maybe take Wolf from behind.
“Remember what I used to do, why you brought me. I poke
at things until they make sense, collect pieces until I can see the picture through the puzzle.” I rested an easy hand on my sword. Wolf didn’t react. “You broke your
pattern.”

“My pattern?”

“You left Ivory alive. That isn’t like you.”

“Ah. That.” Wolf gestured at the wall beside him. There was a long sword leaning up against it. Ivory’s long sword. “Perhaps I was feeling merciful? He was a friend once
upon a time, after all.”

“Friends don’t cut out friend’s tongues.”

“You don’t know some of the people I’ve called friend.”

“Nor does a smart killer leave a pile of corpses to advertise his comings and goings.”

“And if I said I was in a hurry?”

“I’d say you’d stop to cover your tracks on the way out of a burning house.”

Wolf rested his saber’s tip—his own blade, I guessed, given the raised steel chasing on the guard—on the ground and regarded me. “Yes,” he said. “Very clever.
I was right to pick you.”

“And I was wrong to come.”

“I gave you no other choice.”

“There’s always another choice.”

“You mean stay in Ildrecca?” Wolf snorted. “You wouldn’t have survived, not once I set the other Gray Princes against you.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “But I could have tried. I could have at least stuck around and backed my own organization, instead of walking away.” Could have put something of
myself on the line, rather than coming down here and putting everyone else on the line for me. For what I thought a Gray Prince could be.

“You could have,” said Wolf, “but that’s not your nature. You’ve worked alone too long to let others claim you. You’re like a wolf who tries to run with a
pack of hounds: As good as it may feel, you know you’re meant for better things—broader fields, wider skies.” He lifted his sword and let the spine of the blade rest against his
shoulder. “Consider yourself fortunate to have figured it out now. It took me three lifetimes to realize an Oath isn’t a cause, that a brotherhood isn’t a tribe. For the others,
it may be enough, but for me?” He shook his head. “I’m Azaari: I’m not meant to gather up promises and trade them for my honor. I gave my word to serve a purpose and for
action, not to sit and wait and count.”

“Then why not leave the Order?”

“An Azaari doesn’t break his word.”

I couldn’t help it: I laughed.

Wolf took an ominous step forward. “You mock me?” he said. “Even now? Knowing who I am and what I can do?”

“I mock you,” I said, ignoring the hole forming in my stomach, “precisely because I know who you are and what you can do. Sworn brothers dead at your hand? The founder of your
Order dusted so you could steal his sword? That’s not keeping your word, not even close.”

Wolf straightened to his full height and glared down at me. “You know nothing.” He picked up Ivory’s sword with his left hand and began to turn away.

“I know plenty,” I said to his back. “Why else carve your way to Ivory’s door, if not to find out how to break free of the Order? Why go to all this trouble, unless you
plan to call the emperor to heel and force him to release you from your Oath?”

That stopped him. “What do you say?”

“Markino,” I said. “The emperor, and his other two incarnations, all indebted to the Order of the Degans. All bound by the Oath sworn on Ivory’s sword when you founded
your gang.”

Wolf looked back over his shoulder. “Bronze told you this?”

“No, the emperor mentioned it over drinks before I left Ildrecca.”

A thoughtful silence, then, “My sword brother must love you indeed, to share something the Order’s kept secret for so long.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I didn’t.

“You’re right that I came for the sword,” he said. “But it’s not what you think. I’ve no desire to be severed from my Oath. What I told you before is true: I
wish to save the Order. But unlike Bronze and most of the others, I’m not deluded enough to think we can fix our problems with talk or laws. Only action can save us now.”

“And what kind of action would that be?” I said. “Littering the streets with more bodies? Forcing the emperor to absolve you of all your sins? Or are you planning to put the
question in Markino’s hands? To force him to pick between having the Order serve him or the empire? Because if you are, I can tell you which way he’ll jump, no guessing
necessary.” Anyone capable of creating a religion for the sole purpose of ensuring his perpetual rule wasn’t about to let a tool like the degans slip through his fingers.

“You think me a fool?” said Wolf. “Of course I know what he’d choose: He’d say we were his, and the Order would be shattered for good. The fractures among us have
grown too deep to be solved by a simple proclamation, even from the emperor. To declare for one interpretation is to drive the adherents of the other away.

“No, the only reason the Order has remained whole this long is that we haven’t sought out a resolution, haven’t given one another cause to back our views with steel.
We’ve been careful to avoid repeating Ivory’s sins. But now, with Iron and Silver and Ivory dead? With degan blood on degan blades? It’s only a matter of time before someone draws
in anger, or pride, or vengeance, and the Order collapses.”

“But you helped cause that,” I said. “You killed two to Degan’s one, for Angels’ sake!”

“Yes.”

“You knew what would happen.”

“Yes.”

“Then why?”

Wolf regarded me for a moment, then looked up at the sky. It had gone from black to charcoal around us on the street, with the stars fading overhead. His eyes creased with the hint of a
smile.

“You’re trying to distract me,” he said. “To give Bronze time to get away, or come upon me unawares. Very good. Useless, but very good.” He turned and gestured
toward the square. “Come, let’s await my brother together.”

I didn’t budge.

What the hell was I missing? If the Order of the Degans was beyond repair as Wolf said, then why hasten its collapse? Why push them over the edge and destroy the truce they’d been holding
for centuries? Even if he did get his hands on Ivory’s laws, the odds of him being able to fix the Order once its members started killing one another seemed to rest somewhere between slim and
none. If they—

No. Wait. Not fix. Wolf hadn’t said “fix,” he’d said “re-forge.”

I looked up to find Wolf staring at me. Waiting.

“You
want
the members of the Order to clear steel,” I said. “To start fighting and killing one another.” To see that the Order was doomed, to see that there was
no compromise. To see there was no hope. “You want to break the degans.”

“Sometimes to repair something, you must break it first,” said Wolf. “To forge something anew, you have to tear it asunder. My Order can’t be saved as it stands, but if
it were to be built again, from the ground up? Then. Then it would be saved.”

“Betrayed isn’t saved,” said a voice behind Wolf. “Betrayed is just betrayed. Calling it anything else is a weak man’s excuse.”

Wolf spun about, his sword snapping to guard, while I slipped to the side and looked past him.

To see Degan standing in the square.

W
olf tensed for a moment. Then, seeing Degan wasn’t advancing, he laughed.

“You say this, Bronze?” he said. “You, who have Iron’s blood on your blade? Who are you to speak of justifications? I don’t see you putting yourself before the
Order for your crimes, don’t see you standing in the Barracks Hall awaiting judgment. How is your excuse for avoiding justice and coming after Ivory any better than mine?”

Degan was maybe fifteen feet from Wolf. He had his chain-hilted sword in one hand, Ivory’s widower’s fan in the other. I couldn’t read the look on his face.

“I didn’t come to kill Ivory,” he said.

Wolf snorted. “Then more fool you.”

“He didn’t deserve—”

“He deserved everything I gave him and more,” snapped Wolf. “Deserved a century’s worth of agony for the lies he told us, for the lives he stole from us. That old man
chained us with our honor and then walked away. Worse, he let us be set aside when he left. We, who were supposed to serve Lucien as his swords, instead spent our time trading promises like
merchants doing business in the bazaar. Swords that were once meant to support an empire now settle private debts.” Wolf spit into the square. “A blade rusts if it’s not used,
Bronze, and I’ve no intention of rusting anymore. It’s time for our steel to shine again.”

I eyed Wolf’s back, then took a tentative step forward, making sure to keep the Azaari between Degan and me. If he saw me, if he guessed what I was planning, I knew Degan would speak up
rather than let me strike down Wolf from behind. Easy solution or not, he wouldn’t allow that when it came to one of his sword brothers.

Which meant I just had to be careful as I moved in, is all.

“And what kind of shine would you have?” said Degan as I took another step. “The glisten of blood on steel? Listen to yourself! You talk about restoring the Order in one breath
and destroying it in another. Setting us against one another isn’t going to bring us together, Steel—we’re too hardened to the slaughter for that. You might get a few to relent
out of sympathy for the past, but once the blood starts flowing the rest won’t stop. Gold and Jade, Pearl and Brass: They’ll go to their graves before they give in.”

“I know.”

“Then why?” I could hear the desperation in Degan’s voice, could imagine the look of frustration on his face. “Why make it so we cut one another down?”

“Because we need to realize how truly broken we are. For the last two hundred years, all we’ve done is argue about which path is the proper one, ignoring the fact that both roads
lead nowhere. Serve the emperor? Serve the Empire? Both have forgotten us. Like fools dying of thirst, we sit in the desert remembering the taste of water instead of seeking it out on our own. If
the Order of the Degans is to reclaim any kind of purpose, any kind of honor, we have to leave the dust of our past behind. We have to free ourselves of the old ways before we can create the
new.”

“Killing someone doesn’t make them free,” said Degan.

Another step.

“It’s not the dead I’m worried about,” said Wolf. “Let the zealots and the true believers slaughter one another; let them paint the empire with blood. Once we start
littering the streets with our dead and hanging fatherless swords in the Barracks Hall, the others will begin to waver. Those degans who remain will see the need.”

“And what need is that?” said Degan.

“To be free of the Oath,” said Wolf. “To serve the empire as we see fit, without chains of words and magic holding us back. We have all of us seen and made history—we
should be chieftains in our own right, sheikhs and sheikhas, leaders of men, not hired swords waiting on a summons that will never come. Ivory called us a brotherhood, but to be brothers and
sisters there must also be a father. Well, I’ve outgrown my father the emperor, as I think the rest of us have. We are no longer a brotherhood; we are a tribe, joined together by the souls we
surrendered and the blood we’ve shed. When this is done, we will stand together as tribesmen should: free and equal and bound to no one but one another.”