“So you dusted Crook Eye?”
“It worked, didn’t it? I doubt we’d be standing here talking if I hadn’t.”
I couldn’t argue with that.
I stepped over to the nearest raised bed and sat down on its corner. “So why do you want to find Degan?”
Wolf shook his head. “I answered your question about why I killed Crook Eye; now show me the sword. I’ll answer your other questions after that.”
I hesitated for a moment, then unslung the bundle and laid it across my legs. By the time I’d undone the rope and begun working at the canvas, Wolf was all but looming over me. When I folded back the last bit of cloth, he caught his breath.
“By the stars,” he murmured. “What happened to it?”
I ran my fingers over the wreckage that had been Degan’s sword. Soot blackened and charred, it looked worse than it was, but that was still bad enough. What had once been an elegant piece of moon-kissed steel now looked like something that had been abandoned in a back alley after a losing fight. Oh, the sword still ran straight, and the edge seemed to be true under all the grit-this was Black Isle steel, after all; it would take more than a simple fire to damage this blade-but no one would have taken this for a degan’s weapon at first glance, or even a second. It hadn’t been until I’d noticed the traces of bronze chasing left on the misshapen guard that I’d suspected it for what it was, wasn’t until I’d rubbed away the grime at the base of the blade and saw the single tear etched into the sword that I’d known it for what it was. And even then, I’d doubted-that is, until Crook Eye had told me how he got his hands on it.
“It was in that fire you mentioned down in Ten Ways,” I said. “I’d thought it had been lost or, I don’t know, found and returned to the Order. Either way, I hadn’t gone looking for it.”
“Because?”
“Because I figured that’s how he wanted it.”
“Yet Crook Eye ended up with Degan’s sword,” said Wolf. “How?”
“By being smart and lucky and in the right place at the right time.”
“And he wanted it why?”
“He didn’t. He wanted this.” I patted the rapier at my side. Shadow’s rapier. The tapering length of Black Isle steel that Fowler had fished from of the embers, gotten remounted, and gifted to me. A prince’s sword for the newest prince, she’d said at the time, knowing damn well what my having that blade would mean. I hadn’t known whether to curse her or kiss her at the time; still didn’t, to be honest. “For the Kin,” I said, “this blade holds far more meaning and symbolism than Degan’s sword ever could. Crook Eye wanted the rapier, but someone beat him to it. But in looking, he came across Degan’s blade instead.”
“And then?”
“And then, being the smart Gray Prince that he was, he thought and schemed and bided his time until he could use it against me.”
“Blackmail?”
“More or less.”
“I’m surprised I found him alive to kill.”
I rewrapped the canvas around Degan’s blade and hung it from the baldric. “Why? I would have done the same thing in his place. Leverage is leverage. Besides, he was under my Peace-there was no way I was going to dust him.”
Wolf cocked an eyebrow. “Not even over the sword?”
“I don’t break my word.”
The words felt like stones in my mouth. Of course I broke my word-but only when it truly mattered. The proof was lying right there in my lap. But I had to say it, had to see if I got a reaction from Wolf-especially with Degan’s name hanging in the air between us. If he knew about my Oath to Degan and what had happened, he couldn’t not react, couldn’t not call me out. All other things aside, he was still a degan.
I watched him as I slung Degan’s sword over my shoulder: studied the amber-limned lines around his eyes to see if they tightened, took in the red-gold line of his jaw to see if it clenched beneath his beard, listened for an intake of furious breath.
But all Wolf did was follow the sword with his eyes and sigh.
“All right,” I said. “You got to see it. Now it’s your turn: Why do you want Bronze?”
“You mean aside from his having killed Iron?”
I looked up sharply at that. “Like I told your Order, Shadow was the one who-”
“And like I told you,” said Wolf, “I don’t care about the lies you told them or the half-truths they mouthed back. We both know Bronze killed Iron. There was no other reason for him to disappear without a word, nothing else that would have caused him to abandon his sword. A degan’s blade is his identity, his soul. Bronze wouldn’t have done that unless he felt he no longer had a right to carry it.”
“You’re that sure?” I said.
“We all are.”
I shifted on my perch. “You all. .?”
“We know that Gray Prince didn’t kill our brother. Not that cleanly. We’re not fools, after all.”
I’d kind of been hoping they were, actually. Most people wanted their answers simple, their mysteries solved. But then again, most people weren’t the Order of the Degans.
“So is that why you want him?” I said, my voice tight. “You think he dusted your sword brother, and now you want to make him pay?”
“No. That may be true for the others, but not for me.”
“How convenient, then, that I’ve been set up by the one degan who doesn’t want Bronze dead. Lucky me.”
“Believe what you wish, but know this: It’s not my intent to hunt down Bronze so I can exact vengeance on him.”
“Then why?”
Wolf gave me a long, thoughtful look. “Because I need him.”
“For what?”
“I cannot say.”
“Oh, Angels!” It was Degan and his reticence about Iron all over again. “You degans and your damn secrets. You’re worse than a courtesan at court.”
Wolf’s voice took on a condescending tone. “It’s a matter regarding the Order of the-”
“It’s about the fucking emperor, isn’t it?”
Wolf’s eyes went wide. “What?”
“The emperor. You know, the man your order promised to serve, only now you can’t agree among yourselves whether that means preserving the empire or the man himself.”
Wolf’s eyes grew even wider. I could almost read his mind by his expression: This was all supposed to be deep-file degan information, internal politics meant to be kept within the Order.
“How. .?” he began.
“How the hell do you think?”
“Perhaps,” said Wolf after a moment, “you should tell me-exactly-what Degan told you about the Order.”
“And perhaps you should tell me which side of the split you stand on.”
It wasn’t an idle question. The whole reason I’d ended up breaking my Oath to Degan was because he’d decided we needed to turn an ancient Paragon’s journal over to the emperor rather than let the information it contained fall into the wrong hands. Problem was, I’d already agreed to give the book to Solitude and help her throw down said emperor. That was no small thing, and not just because he was the emperor; it was also because killing him didn’t mean he wouldn’t come back.
For the past six-hundred-plus years, the Dorminikan Empire has been ruled by the same man-or rather, by three recurring incarnations of the same man: the founder of the empire, Stephen Dorminikos. Named, respectively, Lucien, Theodoi and Markino, each version of the emperor was reborn thirty years apart from the other two, always in the same order, always succeeding one another to the throne-more or less. The occasional revolt or stubborn regent had caused their fair share of gaps, but in the end, one version or another of the emperor always regained the throne. After all, it was the Angels who had chosen Stephen and shattered his soul into three pieces, so he could be perpetually reborn, wasn’t it? It only seemed proper that the Chosen One of the Angelic Host sit the earthly throne that had been set aside for him, right?
Right.
Except it was all a load of shit.