Sworn in Steel (8 page)

No, just like the house, I was having to get used to more space around me when it came to the Kin. More room to maneuver, more space to make mistakes, more sky to bring down both disaster and
opportunity upon me.

I sat down on the stoop and listened to the rain falling in the courtyard, comforted by the fact that right now, whether my eyes were open or closed, I was equally blind.

Eventually, I fell asleep.

“You wanted to see me?”

I looked up from my plate to find Betriz standing over me, an impish smile on her face. She always seemed to have an impish smile on her face, usually for good reason. I just never liked when it
was directed at me.

It was two days after my entry back into the city and I was sitting at an outdoor table at a tavern called the Plucked Quill. It was three blocks from my new house, did respectable trade, and
had an excellent board when it came to food. I’d arranged to gain a small interest in the place after my second meal there.

“Sit,” I said, indicating the place across from me. She did, swinging one long leg over the chair rather than pulling it out. Betriz then placed an elbow on the table, put her chin
on her hand, and regarded me with bright brown eyes.

“You realize the answer is still no,” she said. “Right?”

I smiled as I picked up a piece of flat bread. It was still warm. “You haven’t even heard my offer.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m not about to be narrowed, not even by the likes of the great Drothe himself.”

I made a rude noise with my lips. “Please. If I were ‘great,’ I wouldn’t be asking you to work for me, I’d be telling you.”

“And I’d still be saying no.”

“Which is why I keep making offers.”

Betriz flashed an easy smile and helped herself to a corner of my bread. I didn’t argue.

Betriz was a Nose, and a good one at that. She had a strong reputation on the street, with a record of not falling for bullshit and a habit of getting things done. I’d been trying to bring
her into my organization for a couple of months now, but she was happy playing the Wide Nose—a freelance information scrounger—and had no interest in tying herself down. I
couldn’t blame her, really: I’d felt much the same way in my early days on the dodge. It hadn’t been until I’d fallen under Kells’s sway that I’d even considered
working exclusively for one crime lord, and that had only been because he was, to my mind, a legend among Upright Men. I might be a Gray Prince, but I hadn’t done near enough to warrant that
kind of starry-eyed devotion—at least, not in Betriz’s opinion.

“So what’s the dodge?” She leaned forward, eyes practically dancing. “Does it have anything to do with the ambush Soggy Petyr pulled on you the other day?”

I shook my head. Per Fowler’s pointed suggestion, I already had some people looking into dealing with Petyr, not to mention getting the plays back for Tobin and his troupe. Between the
bragging the Petty Boss was likely doing and the complaining I could expect from the actors if I didn’t have something to show them, I didn’t want to leave things longer than I had to.
But that didn’t mean I wanted to bring someone like Betriz in on either issue. The last thing I needed was outside talent getting wind of my debts.

“Don’t worry about Petyr,” I said. “All I need from you is a bit of cove hunting.”

“And you can’t use your own people because . . . ?”

“Because I don’t want to risk them being tied to me.”

“Meaning there’s a chance of someone seeing me if I do this dodge.”

“There’s always a chance. We both know that.”

Betriz put the corner of bread in her mouth and chewed.

“Who?” she said.

I tore off a portion of bread myself and dragged it through a smear of young, runny goat cheese on my plate, then topped it off with a piece of sliced sausage. There were hints of cardamom and
aniseed in the greasy meat, along with a healthy dose of black pepper, all of which worked against the sourness of the cheese. I chewed, swallowed, and then followed it with one of the fat black
grapes to help cut the spices.

Betriz waited patiently during this, knowing it for the delay it was.

“Rambles,” I said at last.

“Huh.” She sat back in her seat, then leaned forward to take a grape off my plate. “Huh,” she said again.

“What?”

“Way I hear it, he’s been looking for someone to do a bit of snilching on you, too.”

It didn’t surprise me, especially considering what else he’d been doing lately. “And?”

Betriz made a face. “He’s still figuring out he has money. Didn’t offer nearly enough for me to turn on you. Boy has to learn that people expect a certain amount of ready when
it comes to working for an Upright, let alone spying on a Gray Prince.”

“I’m heartened by how hard you cling to your standards.”

“Girl has to have ’em.” The grape went into her mouth. “So, what d’you need?”

“Not much,” I said. “Just a time and place where I can drop in on Rambles and knock the shit out of him.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“That’s all.”

Betriz shook her head and helped herself to my cup of coffee. “And this is why I’ll never take your Clasp, Drothe.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because if this is the kind of shit you have to talk me into doing, I hate to think about the jobs I’d get if we didn’t have to dicker over price.”

I smiled and signaled for another cup.

I
crouched, my body hidden by the decorative stonework that ran along the roof’s edge, and peered around the nymph’s carved ass in the
growing dusk. Sweat trickled down my back. Even three stories up, it was humid and still.

Below, in the small courtyard in front of the whorehouse, I could hear the voices of two toughs talking to a third. The two were alternately joking and pleading, trying to talk their way into
the Mort Ken across the way. The doorman was having none of it. He kept telling them over and over that the whorehouse was closed until an hour after sunset, but the two men weren’t taking no
for an answer.

Which was the whole idea.

“This is stupid,” muttered Nijjan.

I flexed my fingers and stared at the roof across from us and stayed silent.

“I mean, really stupid.”

“Shut up, Nijjan.”

Nijjan Red Nails shifted behind her own nymph, her slippers scraping softly against the roof tiles. As an Upright Woman, Nijjan wasn’t used to dancing roofs or playing the Crow; but
neither was she used to having her Gray Prince at her door, demanding she put together a raid on another boss’s territory in less than four hours. To say she hadn’t been happy to see me
would have been an understatement; to say part of her wouldn’t have preferred to gut me and throw me out the door after hearing my plan would have been an outright lie. Especially since she
was right: This was stupid. Really stupid.

Betriz had come through better—and faster—than I’d expected. A day of nosing had seen her back at my door, information in hand. It turned out that Rambles had developed a
pattern for himself, at least when it came to checking his investments, and today was the day he collected his profits—and sampled the wares—at the whorehouse across from us.

“Are you sure he’s in there?” said Nijjan.

“I’m sure.”

“Because if I end up going to war over this bastard and he isn’t even in there . . .”

I turned my eyes away from the roof and met Nijjan’s gaze. “I’m sure.”

Nijjan glared at me, her blue eyes standing out like lanterns in the fading light. She was wrapped in russets and tans and browns, her dark hair cropped short and spiky. Hennaed designs on her
hands and cheeks turned round and round one another, like some lost language run amok on her skin. Only her fingernails remained devoid of any decoration, and that because she didn’t want
there to be any confusion about her name. She wasn’t Red Nails because of what was at the end of her fingers; she was Red Nails because of the broad-headed copper spikes she used to hold
people down—or up—when she was annoyed with them.

“Fine,” she said. “He’s in there. But I still don’t see why we can’t bring a few more Cutters with us in case—”

“Because more Cutters mean more noise,” I said. “And being noticed is not what we need right now.”

Nijjan grumbled and looked back out over the roof.

I couldn’t blame her: We were deep in a rival Upright Man’s territory, preparing to make a raid on one of his properties. If we were looking for a way to start a minor war, it
didn’t get much better than this. Add to that the fact we were outnumbered—possibly severely—and that any help we might call on was hiding in a basement at least two blocks away,
and it was a wonder she’d agreed to come at all.

And yet here she was, all because I’d said one word: Rambles.

Ever since he’d climbed over the ruins of Nicco’s organization to become an Upright Man, Rambles had been working on expanding his territory. Take over a minor racket here, twist the
arm of a lesser gang there, and suddenly he was a growing concern. That kind of give-and-take wasn’t uncommon among the Kin, especially in the aftermath of a major war—uncertainty could
be translated into opportunity, after all—but in Rambles’s case, some of the take had been at Nijjan’s expense. Not enough to justify all-out war, but enough to fester and make
her knife that much looser in its sheath when it came to his name.

I turned my attention back to the roof of the Mort Ken. It was a morass of shadows now, the planters and statues and ivy conspiring to cloak the place in early darkness. The only saving grace
was that the statues and the roof behind us did the same thing over here.

I hooked a finger into the pouch around my neck and scooped out a pair of
ahrami
seeds. I slipped them into my mouth almost without noticing. They didn’t help my nerves, but then,
I hadn’t expected them to. We were long past that.

“How long are your boys going to take?” I said.

“Give them time. They can’t just start a fight at the drop of a hat.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

I could hear the smile in her voice. “Not if you want them to be a distraction, they can’t. Too soon, or too easy, and the Jiggerman at the door will catch on. Finesse, my Prince.
Finesse.”

I bit down on the seeds in irritation and reached for another. That’s when I saw the shadow move on the opposite roof.

“There,” I hissed. “There’s our Crow.”

“Where?”

“Third urn in, just past the statue of the woman with her hand up her—”

“I see it.” Pause. “Are you sure?”

Of course I was sure. It was getting dark enough that my night vision was beginning to limn the edges of things with faint amber threads. Another five or ten minutes, and I wouldn’t need
to study the shadows—I’d just be able to see the lookout. Out loud, though, I said, “Just wait. If your boys do their job, you’ll see that Crow twitch well
enough.”

A new voice had added itself to the noise from below. As planned, a third man had joined Nijjan’s first two and begun egging the others on, upping the tension and the uncertainty. Things
were getting louder now.

“Got him!” hissed Nijjan.

I looked over and smiled. Nearly directly across from us, a man’s head had emerged from the shadows of the urn and was now looking over the edge of the roof.

Like me, Nijjan wasn’t originally from Ildrecca. But where I’d come from the woods, she was a plains girl—raised to the horse and the herd and the bow. She’d first made a
name for herself when she began poaching from the Imperial Game Reserve northwest of Ildrecca and hosting Kin-only feasts at a tavern just inside the city. She was long past that now, but still put
on the occasional demonstration to remind people that, even from far away, you didn’t want to anger Nijjan.

I heard a faint sound beside me and turned in time to see Nijjan lift her bow from the shadows of the roof, lay one of the handful of arrows she’d brought across it, draw, and let fly, all
in a seamless, flowing motion.

By the time I looked back across the gap, the head was gone. I didn’t insult her by asking if she’d gotten her man.

“Let’s go,” she said. “My men won’t be able to keep those coves busy forever without someone getting bloodied. I’d prefer we have our hands on Rambles when
the time comes.”

I rose and padded along the roof, reaching behind me to adjust Degan’s sword as I went. I’d managed to find a baldric to replace the rope the boatman had given me, but hadn’t
gotten around to finding a suitable scabbard yet. I’d wrapped the canvas into a rough covering, though, so while it might not have been stylish, Degan’s sword was at least riding more
comfortably across my back.

For her part, when Nijjan had first seen the bundle she’d merely looked at it, looked at me, and shaken her head. Ungainly or not, I wasn’t about to risk losing it, even if it made
it harder to run the roofs.

We followed the roofline around the piazza, hopping low walls, dancing leaded peaks, and jumping a narrow drainage alley, until we found ourselves on the Mort Ken’s roof.

There had been a garden up here once. Raised beds meant for flowers and herbs had been shoved off to one side of the roof, their wood faded and rotting. A few potted fruit trees still struggled
on, their roots crowding out of the soil around the top, or escaping through cracks in the ceramic that held them. A handful of weathered columns were scattered about, standing guard over a herd of
forlorn chairs and dining couches. I could almost see how, at night, with the right lighting and enough fortified wine, the place could take on an air of neglected elegance—just the kind of
surroundings to help set the mood and persuade a Lighter to be that much lighter in his purse come morning. Assuming, of course, they first got rid of the man sprawled on the roof with
Nijjan’s arrow sticking out of his head.

We could hear shouting from the street now—voices raised in challenge and argument. No hiss or ring of steel yet, which was good. We needed attention focused on the front door for as long
as possible; a fight would be over too quickly, and not in our favor. So far, it sounded as if Nijjan’s people were doing just what we wanted.