Free Sworn in Steel by Douglas Hulick Page A

we might call on was hiding in a basement at least two blocks away,
and it was a wonder she’d agreed to come at all.
    And yet here she was, all because I’d said one word: Rambles.
    Ever since he’d climbed over the ruins of Nicco’s organization to become an Upright Man, Rambles had been working on expanding his territory. Take over a minor racket here, twist the
arm of a lesser gang there, and suddenly he was a growing concern. That kind of give-and-take wasn’t uncommon among the Kin, especially in the aftermath of a major war—uncertainty could
be translated into opportunity, after all—but in Rambles’s case, some of the take had been at Nijjan’s expense. Not enough to justify all-out war, but enough to fester and make
her knife that much looser in its sheath when it came to his name.
    I turned my attention back to the roof of the Mort Ken. It was a morass of shadows now, the planters and statues and ivy conspiring to cloak the place in early darkness. The only saving grace
was that the statues and the roof behind us did the same thing over here.
    I hooked a finger into the pouch around my neck and scooped out a pair of
ahrami
seeds. I slipped them into my mouth almost without noticing. They didn’t help my nerves, but then,
I hadn’t expected them to. We were long past that.
    “How long are your boys going to take?” I said.
    “Give them time. They can’t just start a fight at the drop of a hat.”
    “You’re kidding me, right?”
    I could hear the smile in her voice. “Not if you want them to be a distraction, they can’t. Too soon, or too easy, and the Jiggerman at the door will catch on. Finesse, my Prince.
Finesse.”
    I bit down on the seeds in irritation and reached for another. That’s when I saw the shadow move on the opposite roof.
    “There,” I hissed. “There’s our Crow.”
    “Where?”
    “Third urn in, just past the statue of the woman with her hand up her—”
    “I see it.” Pause. “Are you sure?”
    Of course I was sure. It was getting dark enough that my night vision was beginning to limn the edges of things with faint amber threads. Another five or ten minutes, and I wouldn’t need
to study the shadows—I’d just be able to see the lookout. Out loud, though, I said, “Just wait. If your boys do their job, you’ll see that Crow twitch well
enough.”
    A new voice had added itself to the noise from below. As planned, a third man had joined Nijjan’s first two and begun egging the others on, upping the tension and the uncertainty. Things
were getting louder now.
    “Got him!” hissed Nijjan.
    I looked over and smiled. Nearly directly across from us, a man’s head had emerged from the shadows of the urn and was now looking over the edge of the roof.
    Like me, Nijjan wasn’t originally from Ildrecca. But where I’d come from the woods, she was a plains girl—raised to the horse and the herd and the bow. She’d first made a
name for herself when she began poaching from the Imperial Game Reserve northwest of Ildrecca and hosting Kin-only feasts at a tavern just inside the city. She was long past that now, but still put
on the occasional demonstration to remind people that, even from far away, you didn’t want to anger Nijjan.
    I heard a faint sound beside me and turned in time to see Nijjan lift her bow from the shadows of the roof, lay one of the handful of arrows she’d brought across it, draw, and let fly, all
in a seamless, flowing motion.
    By the time I looked back across the gap, the head was gone. I didn’t insult her by asking if she’d gotten her man.
    “Let’s go,” she said. “My men won’t be able to keep those coves busy forever without someone getting bloodied. I’d prefer we have our hands on Rambles when
the time comes.”
    I rose and padded along the roof, reaching behind me to adjust Degan’s sword as I went. I’d managed to find a baldric to replace the rope the boatman had given me, but hadn’t
gotten around to finding