Nicco reached down, gathered the front of my jerkin in his fist, and hoisted me to my feet. I hugged my sore left arm with my partially numbed right one. The action caused my hand to brush against my belt and the coiled roughness that resided there.
I felt a sudden surge of something. Not hope-not then, not yet-but maybe desperation; that, and a bit of darkest guile.
It was enough, though.
I let the fingers of my right hand trail slowly downward.
“Come on,” said Nicco. He leaned his face close into mine, smelling of oil and olives. My fingers found their goal and closed around it as best they could. “I have three Brothers of Agony waiting to meet you,” he snarled. “Each one ready to work eight hours at a stretch; each one ready to keep at it until I say it’s over.”
I looked Nicco dead in the eyes, then. I don’t know what he saw, but it was enough to make him draw his face away from mine. I smiled a jagged smile.
Now. Now I could feel it coursing through me. Hope. And hate.
“I hope you paid them in advance,” I said. Then I brought Jelem’s coiled rope up between Nicco’s legs. Hard.
Chapter Twenty-eight
There was a series of pops so close together, they almost sounded like one. Nicco’s eyes opened wide and rolled up into his head. He fell over. I stood there, swaying on my feet, a smoking coil of rope in my hand. Then I bent down and wrapped the rope around Nicco’s neck.
The knots in the rope were spaced just right for crushing a victim’s throat-not surprising, considering Jelem’s template had been crafted for an assassin. As I twisted and squeezed, I noticed that three of the paper runes weren’t smoldering like the rest-they were still white and pristine. Glimmer to spare, then.
Nicco didn’t put up a struggle; in fact, I don’t even think he was aware he was dying. His face went blue, then purple, but I kept tightening the garrote until blood began to well around the edges. Even then, I didn’t stop-couldn’t stop. Deep down, I knew he was dead, but part of me kept saying, Make sure. Make sure! So I did, until my hands began to cramp up, until my arms were trembling with the effort. Even then, I had to consciously tell myself to ease up on the tension, to stop.
When I finally peeled the rope from around his neck, I had to wipe it on his clothes to remove the excess blood. I knew I should have felt something-relief, disgust, satisfaction-but all I could find was a vague sense of futility. Nicco was dead, but things hadn’t changed-not in any way that mattered.
I straightened up to find the square empty of the living. It was thick with the gloom of evening now. I blinked and rubbed at my eyes. The darkness felt good.
I turned to go back to Mendross’s stall and the book. Then I caught sight of Degan and stopped.
He still had his back to the base of Elirokos’s statue, but now he was leaning against it in exhaustion. A half circle of corpses lay piled around him like some grisly barricade. Not one of the bodies groaned, not one shifted in pain, so thorough had been his slaughter.
Degan was covered in gore from the chest down and from his biceps to his fingers. His own sword hung limply in his right hand, and it took me a moment to make out a new cut that had laid that arm open between the shoulder and the elbow. He still had Cretin’s blade in his left, but that hand was shaking visibly.
I looked around the square for Iron. He was nowhere in sight.
I coiled the rope carefully in my left hand. I retrieved my rapier and walked over to Degan. I stopped short of the ring of carnage.
“So,” said Degan, his voice coming out low, flat, exhausted. He indicated Nicco’s body with the extra sword. “How was it for you?”
My hand tightened around the rope until it creaked.
“You son of a bitch!” I said.
“Ah, straight to business, then.” Degan looked down at his blood-slicked boots. He flicked a small bit of someone else’s bone off the tip of his foot. “First, let me ask you something,” he said, looking up and meeting my eye. “If I had simply asked you-after you cut your deal with Solitude, after you’d come here to deliver it into Iron’s hands-to give the journal to me instead, would you have?”
I stared at him. I knew what I desperately wanted to say, but I couldn’t bring myself to lie to him.
Degan nodded. “I thought as much. So, given that, you see why I had to invoke the Oath.”
“No, I don’t,” I said. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Don’t I?” Degan leaned his head back against the stone. “Why not? Because Solitude says so? Because Iron does? Because they think the emperor will somehow destroy an empire he’s gone to amazing lengths to save?” Degan closed his eyes. “Why did you attack Shadow?” he said.
“What?”
“You heard me. Why did you attack a Gray Prince on your own?”
“Because he threatened Christiana,” I said. “He threatened Kells, the organization, everything. Shadow was going to use them as leverage against me, and sooner or later, when I wasn’t useful anymore, he’d make an example out of them. I realized the best chance for them was my dusting him.”
“But you must have known you couldn’t win,” said Degan. “That you might have died even before I got there.”
“I had to try,” I said. “There wasn’t any other option.”
Degan smiled softly. “It’s the same with me and the journal,” he said. “I can’t let them doom the empire just because they think the emperor is a threat. That’s why I called in your Oath-because it’s the only way to save both the empire and you.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
Degan rolled his head back and forth against the granite, his eyes still closed-a tired man’s head shake. “You don’t think Shadow is going to give up on you, do you? If you haven’t guessed, I didn’t kill him. He’s still out there. And he’s not going to be happy with you when he finds out that not only did you attack him, but you also delivered the journal to Solitude. I don’t care what she promised you-you can’t hide from Shadow, Drothe.” Degan opened his eyes and looked at me. “Unless…”
“Unless?” I said, knowing I was being led but not caring right now.
“Unless I take the book from you,” said Degan. “Shadow knows you wouldn’t be able to stop me if it came down to a fight. If I ‘took’ it-however that might end up happening”-a grin here-“he couldn’t blame you for the book not making it to him.”
“Maybe,” I said, “but there would still be my having attacked him. And he’ll be none too pleased with you, either.”
“Leave that to me,” said Degan. “He’s not as good as he thinks he is.”
“He was good enough to survive last time.”
“He won’t always have pocket change handy.”
I crossed my arms. “So you’re saying he was the one who got away from you after all the Rags were dealt with?” I said.
“Let’s call it a mutual fade due to extenuating circumstances,” said Degan. “Besides, I had to backtrack and get your rope for you.”
I ran my thumb along one of the knots. “And you just happened to bring it to Mendross’s stall to deliver it to me? Today? Right now?”
“If you stake out a place long enough, you’re bound to get lucky. Besides, you tend to check in with your little fruit seller first and last when something is going down.”
Was I that predictable?
“Yes, you are,” said Degan.
I made a face. Then I sighed. “What now?” I said.
Degan pushed himself to a fully standing position. “I call in your Oath and take the journal,” he said. “Nothing’s changed.”
“No, nothing has,” said Iron Degan.
I spun around. Iron was stepping out from between two stalls. He was walking easy, his sword lolling in his hand. His shirt was soaked with sweat, and his short hair lay plastered to his head. There were two fresh cuts on his right forearm and a scrape along the knuckles of his left hand. Besides the split Degan had given him on the cheek, he had picked up a shallow gash along his jaw. None of the wounds looked serious.