I looked around the dusty, empty space and resisted the urge to sneeze.
“This is the Barracks Hall?” I said to Degan.
“What?” he said, pushing the other half of the double doors wide. “Oh, no-this is far older.” He stepped back and brushed his hand against his pants, staring past the drifting feathers and slanting morning light, into the past. “This is where the Order of the Degans began.”
We were three weeks out of el-Qaddice and somewhere between two and five days east of Ildrecca. I couldn’t be certain of the latter because we’d left the coast road days ago, cutting across farmland and pastures and up into the stony hills beyond. We were between the port town of Niceria and the capital city, but if you’d asked me to point to our location on a map, the best I’d be able to do is indicate one of the many spurs of the Aeonian hills that ran beside the sea. What I did know was that this ruin of a fortress likely hadn’t been marked on any map for at least two hundred years, and maybe more.
Fowler had continued on to Ildrecca at my instructions. She hadn’t been happy about it, but I needed someone to evaluate just how far things had deteriorated in my absence and have a report ready when I returned. Besides, I knew that Degan wanted as few people tagging along to his meeting with the Order as possible. Ideally he would have gone alone, but I still had his sword-he’d refused to take it back even now-although I’d started keeping it in my bedroll rather than wearing it in his presence. There’s only so much salt some wounds can take. Even then, I suspect he would have left me behind, but for the fact that I was the one who’d retrieved both Steel’s and Ivory’s swords, not to mention the laws. Well, “retrieved” if you counted Aribah carrying them, and in the end, me, to the courtyard of the Angel’s Shadow before vanishing into the night. I hadn’t heard from her since then, but that didn’t surprise me: She was neyajin, after all.
As for Tobin and his people, they were taking the long, potentially profitable route back. While the play they’d performed might have gotten them expelled from el-Qaddice, that hadn’t stopped several rural sheikhs, and even a provincial Beg, from offering to put up the troupe and pay their way in exchange for a series of private performances. As it turned out, there was a not-so-secret audience for banned plays in hinterland, well away from the despotic court. And that it was a bunch of Imperials performing the forbidden art? Well, that made it all the more intriguing. Mama Left Hand had made all the arrangements, for what I was told was only a mildly rapacious cut. I’d been told to expect the troupe back in the Imperial capital come next spring-probably.
All of which meant it had been a pleasantly quiet, and speedy, trip back. Until now.
“I thought you said Lucien created you?” I said as I took a hesitant step into the space. Bare red and gray stone walls rose almost three stories to a peaked ceiling, with high, narrow windows that had long ago lost any hints of glazing marching in narrow formation to either side. Two massive fireplaces stood opposite each other midway along. The one on the right showed signs of recent usage, although the fire that it had held must have been dwarfed by the potential of the space. Bandits using the hall for shelter, maybe, or more likely a lone shepherd. A few sticks of furniture were scattered about, along with the scarred remains of a long trestle table. None looked to have been original to the place. “I’d think the emperor would favor a more. . resplendent locale. Or at least more convenient.”
“You don’t create a secret society of warriors in the courtyard of the Lesser Moon Palace,” said Degan as he picked up a chair and set it aright. One leg was broken off short, causing it to wobble. “That defeats the whole point of it being secret. Especially if all of the members of said society are known, or at least recognized, around the palace. Better to do it away from the Imperial City, where no one is in the habit of spying or prying.”
“So why here?”
“Why not?” Degan shrugged, adjusting the wrapped bundle of swords he carried over his right shoulder. “No one thought to ask, I suppose. We were told to come, and we came. That’s what we did back then.”
“Unlike now,” I said, limping slightly as I entered the hall. Even after a week on my back in the Lower City and regular visits from physickers and Mouths sent by Mama, the wound Wolf had given me still tended to be stiff come morning. I hoped getting home and off the trail would help, but I was beginning to have my doubts on the matter.
“Oh, the Order still listens,” said Degan. He patted the bundle. “When the call is loud enough, or the stakes high enough.”
“Which they are now, I expect,” said a voice from the far end of the room.
Both Degan and I reacted: me by dropping into a crouch, hand on my sword; Degan by turning around and then smiling.
“I was wondering if you’d come early,” said Degan.
“Why should I change my habits now?”
A broad, solid woman with wiry hair, dark skin and an easy smile was standing in a small archway off to one side of the hall. She was dressed for the road, but it clearly wasn’t the same road we’d been traveling: not in a beaded and embroidered tunic, kid-lined riding pants, and a travel coat that looked to be either of finest linen or roughest silk. She seemed suited more for the estate than the wilderness. The only thing on her that did look as if it belonged here was the battered, faded hat she had pushed back on her head, and even that had been a fine specimen once upon a time. Now it just looked like an old friend.
“Good to see you again, Bronze,” she said as she strode across the room, her coat flowing along almost as easily as she did. I spied a tapering triangle of a sword at her side, the forte of the blade a good six or more fingers wide where it met the guard. The handle was simple-black wood, with a rounded pommel-and had a forward-sweeping crescent of a guard done in deep, honey-yellow metal.
“Brass,” said Degan. He turned to face her but didn’t advance. She picked up on this and stopped farther away than I think she would’ve liked. Her smile crumbled a bit at the edges.
“That uncertain, are you?” she said.
“That careful.”
Brass regard him. “Probably just as well, for your sake.” She looked at me. “And you are?”
I wanted to say something like, “In over my head,” but instead went with, “Drothe.”
Brass cocked an eyebrow. “The Gray Prince?”
I turned to look at Degan. Degan was smirking. “What can I say?” he said. “You’re famous.”
Brass laughed. It was an easy, silken thing. “Or infamous. Copper’s had a few choice words to say about you over the past few months, I can tell you.”
Oh.
Degan’s voice grew serious. “He’s under my protection.”
“Fine,” said Brass, “but whose protection are you going to be under? That’s the real question.” She held up a folded piece of paper-one of the messages Degan had sent out to his fellows the moment we’d crossed the border. “This is all well and good, but you know it’ll carry about as much weight as what it’s written on for some of our fellows.”
“I know,” said Degan. “But I didn’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice, Bronze.”
Something passed between them in that moment that I couldn’t catch, couldn’t hope to understand. Something that spoke to two hundred years of fighting and feuding and family. Something I suspected you had to be a degan to understand.
After a moment, Degan nodded and looked away. Brass sighed. Then she pointed at the bundle.
“So you actually got it? Ivory’s sword?”
“And the laws.”
“And the. .?” Brass took a stunned step closer. Her jaw hung slack. “You didn’t say anything about the laws, Bronze.”