“Solitude’s smart. She knows if she makes an open move on Ten Ways, the other Princes will try to stop her. This cordon is too important for us to let any one person control. It’s where Isidore got his start. It’s the one cordon that has resisted control since he fell. To take Ten Ways is to achieve something only he has done. Can you imagine what it would mean for a Prince to take Ten Ways?”
I nodded. More than a few Baldobers and Street Bosses would give the Clasp to a Prince who united Ten Ways. And if she took down Nicco and Kells in the process? The power vacuum would only add to the swell.
“They’d be on their way to becoming the new Dark King,” I said. I hadn’t been mad.
“Precisely,” said Shadow. “And I’m not willing to bend the knee to her, nor to anyone else. That’s what worries me. Solitude knows one or more of us will move to stop her; yet she’s going ahead, anyhow. That tells me she has an advantage-something she thinks will guarantee her taking Ten Ways. I think that something is the book.”
I fought the urge to look away, to blink, to show any reaction at all. Shadow was more right than he knew, but I wasn’t about to let him know that. Instead, I stared directly into his cowl, forced my voice to remain steady, and asked, “So how many other Princes are involved?”
“Right now, just Solitude and I.”
“So if this is so important,” I said, “why all the games? Why use me instead of sending your own people?”
“But you are ‘my people,’ ” said Shadow. “Just as you are Solitude’s, and the Dance Mistress’s, and Ash Tongue’s, too. It all depends on who is pulling the strings when. You don’t honestly think every piece of information you sifted from Nicco’s people and passed on to Kells was dredged up by your efforts alone? Did you ever consider the possibility that when you pulled strings to make Nicco’s organization less stable, someone might have been pulling your strings in turn?” A dark chuckle came from within the hood. “You, of all people, should know that the easiest way to manipulate something is from the inside. I-we-just do it at a deeper level.”
I’d always heard this was how it was supposed to work with the Gray Princes, but there’s a difference between casual street speculation and knowing something for a fact. To hear it put so bluntly, so casually, sent a chill down my spine.
Shadow leaned forward on the desk, exposing the sleeves of a fine charcoal gray doublet beneath his cloak. “Now it’s your turn,” he said. “Tell me about the journal.”
I looked into that midnight cowl and was tempted-tempted to tell him everything and let someone else worry about the book and Ten Ways and the war. If I talked, if I gave Shadow the journal, it would be done-no more running, no more puzzles, no more having to balance what I suspected against what other people knew. Let the Gray Princes fight it out-they were better suited to it than I. Let him thwart Solitude; I could just walk away and go back to being a Nose.
It was tempting, but I knew I couldn’t do it. “Don’t give that book to anyone,” Solitude had said in my dream. “Not even to me.” That didn’t fit with what Shadow was saying. If she was so intent on using it, Solitude wouldn’t have told me what she did. “I’d rather see Ioclaudia’s book lost again than in the wrong hands,” she had said. That was too big a gamble, even for someone as subtle as a Gray Prince; telling me that had raised the odds of my destroying journal too high for it to be a bluff.
Yes, Solitude wanted the journal, I realized, but not for the reasons Shadow and I had been thinking. I remembered what Baldezar had said about Solitude and Ironius, and a chill went through me. “They want to use it against the empire.” I hadn’t quite believed it then; now was a different matter.
“I’m waiting,” said Shadow.
I glanced over at Kells. He was staring at me as well. No help there-or was there? How much did Kells really know? How much would he want to know?
I put on my best resigned face and settled farther into my chair.
“The journal,” I said as I dug out a seed, “was written by Ioclaudia Neph. She was an imperial Paragon to Stephen Dorminikos back when he was still a normal person.”
“It’s that old?” said Kells.
“It’s that old,” I said.
“Have you opened it?” said Shadow.
“Of course I have! With everyone after it, how could I not?”
“And?”
“I’m no Mouth, so I can’t say for sure, but the people I had look at it told me there was talk of glimmer.”
Shadow’s hand slapped down on the desk, making the candles flicker inside their wineglasses. “I knew it! What does the glimmer deal with? Did they say?”
“Yeah, they said.” I leaned back farther in my chair, letting the moment draw out. I looked from Shadow to Kells. I waited, then bit down hard on the seed. Kells nearly jumped at the sound. Perfect. “It’s imperial,” I said.
“Splendid!” crowed Shadow. “I’d only half-”
“What?!” Kells exploded, just as I’d hoped. “Imperial glimmer?” He spun toward the desk and almost climbed into Shadow’s cowl. “You said those White Sashes in the Barren were looking for a relic, not a book on forbidden magic!”
“Relics come in all shapes and sizes,” said Shadow. “This one just happens to be more useful than most.”
“Relics are personal items used by the emperor,” I pointed out. “This isn’t a relic. I doubt the book ever came into contact with any of the incarnations.”
“It deals with the emperor,” said Shadow testily. “That’s close enough.”
“Nor do relics draw the interests of imperial Paragons,” I added.
Kells’s snowy brows descended into each other. “Paragons?”
“I can’t imagine them not coming after it at some point,” I said.
“Paragons?” said Kells. “Damn it, Shadow!”
I could almost feel the glare coming at me out of Shadow’s cowl. I smiled at him.
“The important thing to remember,” said Shadow pointedly, “is that we have the journal. If Drothe is right, the information in there could make Nicco and Solitude nothing more than minor annoyances.”
“And what about the empire?” said Kells. “They’re not going to just fade away.”
“They might,” said Shadow, “if we hand them the proper scapegoat.”
“That’d have to be a damn big scapegoat,” I said.
“My thought exactly,” said Shadow.
I considered. “Nicco?”
“Solitude,” said Shadow. “She’s a bigger fish, and she’s already after the journal. All we need to do is make sure the right words reach the right ears. Then, when the time comes, we arrange for her to fall into imperial hands.”
I laughed. “Set up a Gray Prince, just like that? Forgive me if I doubt you-even you-of being able to pull that off. But let’s say you do-she’d still talk. There’s no reason for her not to.”
“Not if she’s dustmans.”
“Not good enough,” I said. “I can’t believe the empire would be satisfied with one body and no book. I’ve been on the receiving end of some of their relic hunts, and this is a hell of a lot more valuable to them than a ratty old cassock.”
“Then give them a few legitimate charred pages and a pile of bogus ash,” said Shadow. “They’ll put the pieces we give them together and come to the conclusion we want.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Frankly, I think you’re giving the empire too much credit.”
“And I don’t think you give it, or us, enough,” said Kells, walking over to stand behind me. “Have you been by the Tower of Gonias lately? It’s still smoldering, and the Whites and Paragons dragged that Mouth out of there during Theodoi’s fifth incarnation, three hundred years ago! If they’re willing to go to the trouble of making brick burn, let alone that slowly, just to make a point, I’m willing to bet they won’t be put off by a corpse and a pile of charred paper.
“You may be able to vanish if things go wrong, but we can’t. Not that well. I’m not going to tell my people to hunt down Solitude, watch half of them die in the process, and then take the imperial heat, just so you can come out of this with one less rival and a bunch of new glimmer at your fingertips.”