It was a gilt-ken-one of the fine, furnished houses that was rented out to country nobility when they came to court. These houses supposedly sat vacant the rest of the time, watched over by caretakers-except when the caretakers rented them out to well-heeled Kin. Gilt-kens usually played host to traveling games, flash whorehouses, or high-end cons, but I wasn’t surprised to learn that a Gray Prince might hire one out for meetings as well.
Iron led me along the path. I blinked, rubbed my eyes, blinked again. It had taken a while for us to slink out of Ten Ways and get across the city, and somewhere along the way the sun had come up. Now, the morning light reflected off the gravel path, making my eyes sting and blur.
It was leftovers from Shadow’s flash glimmer, I knew. While my night vision had come back, my eyes were still overly sensitive to light, much as they had been when I first got the gift from Sebastian. It would pass, I knew, but the question was how soon.
I blinked and squinted until we entered the shadow of the main entry. Iron opened the doors without knocking. The foyer beyond was small, with a tiled floor and dark wood covering the walls. It was cool inside. The only light came from a pair of small windows set high in the wall behind us.
I sighed for the shadows and felt some of the tension drain out of my neck and shoulders. Then I noticed the woman in the archway across from us.
Solitude looked different in person than in the dream. She had traded in the close-cut jerkin and hose for an unremarkable blue dress, and her hair was falling casually to her shoulders. There were the beginnings of small lines at the edges of her eyes and mouth-from laughing or frowning, I couldn’t tell-but the eyes themselves were still the same gold-sprinkled jade that would make any jeweler wring his hands in envy. Those eyes regarded me for a long moment before they turned to Iron.
“Well?” said Solitude.
Iron Degan stepped in close and spoke softly in her ear. Solitude’s eyes narrowed in response to what he said, but otherwise her face stayed a careful blank.
When he was done, Solitude turned and led us deeper into the house, the charms on her dress and in her hair tinkling softly through the empty spaces. I couldn’t help but notice that some of them were old pilgrim’s tokens.
Of course-I should have guessed earlier.
We passed through three rooms, each larger than the last, each filled with furniture covered by cloths. The rugs had all been rolled up and set aside, and the drapes were still drawn across the windows. The place smelled of dust and disuse.
The fourth room we entered was smaller than the previous three. A pair of low chairs stood uncovered, a small slate-topped table between them. A book sat open on the table, with an extinguished taper next to it. One entire wall of the room looked to be made up of windows, given the size of the drapes and the amount of light leaking in beneath them.
Solitude settled herself in one chair. I moved toward the other.
“You’ll stand,” she said. There was no hint of warmth in her voice, none of the candor I’d experienced in the dream. She was all cold steel today.
I stopped and hooked my thumbs in my belt. Iron Degan took a position a few feet behind me.
“Well?” said Solitude after it became obvious I wasn’t going to start.
“I don’t have the journal on me, in case you’re wondering,” I said.
“Yes, I can see that. Where is it?” Her lisp, I noticed, became more pronounced when she was irritated.
“I didn’t tell Kells and I didn’t tell Shadow; what makes you think you’re any different?”
Solitude leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs. They were nice legs. “They haven’t got you. I do.”
“Threats,” I said. “How imaginative.” I crossed my arms. “Let me explain something to you. I’ve been targeted by Nicco, cajoled by Kells, beaten by a White Sash, found a dead assassin floating in my bedroom, and gone up against Shadow face-to-face, all in the past three days! And those are only the highlights. So you’ll understand if I don’t give much of a damn for your threats. If you want to get your hands on Ioclaudia’s journal, you’re going to have to give me a better reason than, ‘I’ll make you bleed.’ I’ve been bleeding since this thing started, and it doesn’t bother me that much anymore. So offer me something besides blood, or shut the fuck up.”
The room grew silent. I could hear the house settling, a temple bell ringing in the distance, Iron Degan shuffling his feet behind me. The last sound made me tense my neck.
Solitude didn’t move. She sat watching, her body still. Except now, there was a hint of fire in her eyes.
“Ironius,” she said at last, her voice making me jump, “leave us.”
There was a brief silence behind me; then I heard Iron Degan turn and move away. His footsteps were far softer than I would have expected from someone his size.
“Never trust a sell-sword,” pronounced Solitude once the door had closed behind him.
“Even a degan?” I said.
“Especially a degan. People who charge promises for their lives worry me. And people who can call those promises in anytime it suits them worry me even more.”
“And yet you’re working with one.”
“Some worries are larger than others,” she said.
I had to agree, but not when it came to Bronze Degan’s promise. I’d seen what that had entailed, and I was still amazed. My worry with him centered around whether he was still alive; whether Shadow was dead; whether my sister was in danger. I wasn’t worried about what I owed Degan; rather, I was comforted by the thought that he may still be out there, looking out for my interests.
Solitude gestured at the chair across from her. “Please,” she said. I sat. “Tell me what you know about Ten Ways,” said Solitude once I was settled.
“It’s a shit hole,” I said.
“And?”
“It’s surrounded by imperial troops.”
“And?”
“And there’s a Kin war going on there,” I said. “One you started.”
Solitude didn’t even flinch. “Good. Why did I start it?”
“You tell me.”
She showed me a smile that would have made a razor seem dull. “It doesn’t work that way,” she said. “You spill what you know. Then I fill in the gaps.”
“So you can keep back whatever you don’t want me to know?” I said. “No. If you want to hear my side, I get to hear yours. All of it.”
Solitude settled back and folded her hands before her face. I heard a faint clicking. It took me a moment to realize she was tapping at her front teeth with a thumbnail.
“Done,” she said. “But you still go first. I need to know what Nicco and Kells and Shadow think I’m after in Ten Ways. You’ve been their main source on that count. I need to hear your version before you start adjusting it to fit my facts.”
I pulled out a seed and rolled it between my palms. The combination of sweat and warmth released a burned, musky-sweet scent from the ahrami. I bent down and breathed it in, an old friend in a strange room.
This was the woman who had told me-in a dream, no less-to keep things close to my chest. I had to assume she played the same way. But there was a difference between being careful and being stupid, and holding out on a Gray Prince when she was willing to meet me halfway definitely fell into the stupid category. I doubt I’d get a better offer any time soon.
“All right,” I said, still hunched over my hands. “You want to be the next Dark King. You needed the war in Ten Ways to pull Nicco and Kells in and get them reeling so you could take them down. From there, you’re going to move into their territories, and then the rest of Ildrecca after that.”
Solitude didn’t move. “What about the other Princes?” she said. “They won’t much care for that kind of a move on my part.”
“That’s why you want the book,” I said. “It’ll give you the power to roll over them if they decide to get in the way.”
“Ah.” Tap, tap, tap-the sound of a nail on a tooth. “And this is what you’ve told them?”