The thing about being the lowest rung on the ladder was that everyone stepped on you.

It was Tristan’s fourth day as a Kassa traveling man, which meant he was still swallowing an awful lot of boot: there hadn’t been a single trip across the city where he wasn’t the one hanging onto the back of the carriage and he’d thrice been volunteered to clean vomit or horseshit. The pay, to be honest, wasn’t great. Four coppers a day, one of which went to the injury fund, and then an additional twelve if he made it to the end of the month.

Staying with the company for longer raised your salary, but most traveling men only lasted a month or two. It was a rough, exhausting job and its veterans were a tight-knit group that cared little for outsiders. Tristan genuinely could not tell if he was being hazed or they were attempting to push him out. The Kassa family kept about forty traveling men, which was at least ten less than they needed, and of these a quarter were what the veterans called ‘ermanos’.

The sobriquet was a mix of the Cycladic word for ballast and Antigua for sibling and was used as a shorthand for dead weight. If you dropped a crate? Fucking ermano. If you showed up late? Ermano thinks this is a vacation. You didn’t pay for the first round of drinks? Typical ermano. On account of being Sacromontan Tristan got ridden twice as hard as the other newcomers, some of which even joined in to keep the heat off them.

Still, there was a rough sense of fairness to how the Kassa men did things. To his honest surprise, the injury fund truly was that: if anyone crippled themselves or were forced to rest by sickness then the injury fund was spent to support them. When one of the other newcomers, a sly little shit by the name of Eugenios, tried to get Tristan blamed for his having put the wrong crate on the cart the foreman looked into it and slugged the liar into the stomach when the lie was outed.

Eugenios got the worst duties for the rest of the day and got ribbed for being ‘more dishonest than a Sacromontan’. It warmed the cockles of his heart how genuinely despised the Six were around here, even if as usual the shit of the infanzones had ended up splashing his boots.

The fourth day started as all the others had: show up an hour before dawn at the workshop, share a plate of flatbread and olives more for the ritual than for need, then spill out in the alley for assignments. The four foremen called out their traveling men for the day, splitting the lots until early afternoon when the crews reunited and there was a shuffle for the day’s second work order. Tristan still kept an eye on the distribution, it was useful to discern the cliques, but no longer paid attention to his own name.

He always ended up with Nikias, a mustachioed bastard of a man who looked like someone had built a barn door out of horse leather. Nikias took most of the ermanos in his crew, the rest going to whatever foreman had taken a shine to them or wanted to try them out on a job. Nikias, naturally, thus ended up getting assigned the worst jobs – not that he seemed to mind. If anything, he appeared to take a twisted sort of pride in it.

“Oi. You listening, Ferrando?”

Tristan twitched, turning to the old man addressing him. Temenos, the white-haired elder of the Kassa traveling men – thirty years in a job that broke your back in twenty gave one standing in spades. He coughed.

“Of course, sir,” he lied.

“Then get in the line, you idiot,” Temenos bluntly said.

Hiding his surprise, he fell in with the man’s crew. Temenos and his nine always got the Lordsport runs, which were hard work loading and unloading the goods but otherwise a restful ride. It was seen, with good reason, as the plum assignment. It was a job that an ‘ermanos ‘like him shouldn’t be getting anywhere near, and he caught Eugenios glaring at him from the corner of his eye. Had he done something to catch the old man’s eye? They’d hardly traded more than a dozen sentences over the last few days.

After an hour moving the goods into the three carts began rolling south towards Lordsport – the wool cloth wasn’t so bad, but the Kassa also sold shrine idols of some wealth god from southern Tianxia made in Asphodelian marble and those were brutal to move. As a useless newcomer Tristan wasn’t going to be trusted leading the horses so he had expected to spend the trip wedged in between crates, but instead he was sent to sit by one of the drivers: Temenos himself.

Something was off.

The mostly toothless old man took his Izcalli snuff religiously every hour, snorting up the ground tobacco. Tristan personally thought it smelled horrid – it wasn’t the expensive scented snuff nobles used, which was somewhat easier on the nose – but some of the other traveling men had told him that when Temenos got off the stuff the usually pleasant old man turned into a veritable monster.

More worrying than the unpleasant smell was that Temenos took the time to show him the basics of cart driving, how long he could and should run the horses as well as the easiest path out of the capital. Tristan made himself an attentive pupil, the entire time awaiting the drop of the other shoe. It came, in a manner of speaking, shortly after they passed the city gates.

The old man opened his worn wooden box, snorted deep of the snuff and put it away with a roll of his shoulder.

“So,” Temenos said. “We have questions.”

Tristan cleared his throat.

“Questions?”

“Yeah,” Temenos grunted. “It’d be for the best if you answered them, Ferrando.”

Tristan glanced back, finding that the men in the other carts conspicuously all had cudgels near their hands. Ah. 

“Well,” he said, “you have my attention, Temenos.”

“The Shoulderbones recommended you,” the old man said, “but I asked around: none of our friends there know who in Sculler’s name you’re supposed to be. Only those up high, and they’re not saying shit.”

Of course they wouldn’t. Tristan had robbed the account books of the most brutal – and richest – moneylender in the northeastern ward without her noticing in exchange for the Brazen Chariot negotiating on his behalf with the Shoulderbones to get that recommendation. I’d taken him a day to case the place and another to rob it unseen, much longer than he’d wanted since now that he’d stopped sleeping at Black House he had to arrange his own accommodations.

“I came in from another basileia,” he said. “They made a deal.”

“It’s what we figured,” Temenos said. “But the thing is, Ferrando, we don’t like the basileia boys. They make trouble, and a lot of them think because they know someone they can get away with laziness.”

His jaw clenched.

“I have not been lazy,” Tristan replied, anger not entirely feigned.

“You haven’t,” the old man agreed. “Which is why we’re having this talk all nice and friendly, instead of in an alley with double black eyes and a knife at your throat.”

Keeping anger on his face, the thief let his mind whirl. This looked bad, at first glance, yet it was the contrary. They would not bother to look into him if they weren’t looking to keep him around. He scoffed.

“Let’s just get this over with,” he said.

Temenos eyed him lazily.

“Young men and their pride,” he said, shaking his head, then let the amusement fade. “What’s a Sacromontan doing in bed with a basileia?”

Fortunately, Tristan had come equipped with a plethora of lies that the Brazen Chariot had been instructed to regurgitate if needed. He sighed, as if put upon.

“You ever hear about the Meng-Xiaofan?” he asked.

Temenos nodded.

“Tianxi criminals,” Temenos said. “They’ve tried to get a foot in the Lordsport, but the Trade Assembly’s got their own mules for drugs and they don’t want foreigners getting a cut.”

“In Sacromonte they have more than a foot,” Tristan said. “And they tried to get more, push into the Murk and deal there, but they lost some toes trying.”

Temenos looked him up and down.

“Tianxi, are you?” he drily asked.

“I’m Murk,” Tristan replied. “But I knew the twins that were running that expansion, and when it went belly up they were hung out to dry – and that splashed on everyone they did business with.”

He’d burn a candle for Lan and Jun tonight, a sacrifice to the Rat King, for the twins were to be a helping hand from beyond the grave. If the Kassa knew people in Sacromonte, which they likely did, then they could check up on the story.

“I wasn’t eager to get my throat cut, so I took a ship out as far as I could,” Tristan continued. “I know some people who knew people, so I emptied the last of my pockets getting that recommendation.”

Temenos grunted.

“Why the Kassa? Why the traveling men?”

“I didn’t want to step in piss all day by joining as a fuller,” Tristan said. “And, well, the Kassa weren’t actually my first choice.”

The old man looked surprised.

“I looked into the Euripis warehouses first, on Charon, but then I heard about that one foreman…”

“Ah,” Temenos said, then eyed him skeptically. “Not sure you’re pretty enough to draw that fucker’s eye, but I can understand not wanting to risk it.”

The old man hummed, then struck out with his whip to quicken the horses again. Tristan looked back at the other carts and found the cudgels were being put away.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“That’s it,” Temenos said. “Pay attention, you’ll be driving the horses on the way back.”

“I thought there would be more questions,” Tristan said.

“We’ll check on your story,” the old man shrugged. “But I’m not your father, Ferrando. If you’re not trouble I don’t care.”

The story would hold up even better when asked about, he’d made sure of that. The Brazen Chariot, after all, was a smuggling basileia. It would be entirely believable that Tristan’s supposed Meng-Xiaofan ties had put him in contact with them.

“Back to Nikias tomorrow, then,” he drily said. “It was good while it lasted.”

Temenos eyed him like he was a fool.

“I didn’t pick your name out of a hat, boy,” he said. “You got twice as much shit as the rest of the ermanos and still put in twice as much work. Make it to the end of the week like this and we’ll see about getting you in properly – you’ve got all your teeth and you speak well, it’ll make you useful with the dockmasters at Lordsport.”

It was an odd thing, but Tristan would admit to feeling somewhat proud about that. For all that it had been for the purposes of deception, he had put in the work.

“Because you liked my answers,” he said.

Temenos snorted, then nodded.

“And if you hadn’t liked them?” Tristan dared to ask.

The old man gave a toothless smile.

“Then you fell off the cart and got run over,” Temenos said. “Tragic accident, it was.”

Well. That motivated him to keep paying attention to the lessons, if nothing else. He was being let in on the veteran crowd, by the looks of it. Good. Once he was in, he could sketch out who the inner circle was.

And when he had that, he had the trail he must follow.

—

While objectively Maryam knew that Lord Rector Evander Palliades was a clever and ruthless king, it was hard to think of him that way when he kept looking like a kicked puppy whenever she showed up to give the reports instead of Song.

While the bespectacled man always forced himself to pay attention to the latest word from the Thirteenth – which was mostly that leads were being run down by Tristan and Tredegar – it was also quite blatant that he wanted to get the reports out of the way as fast as possible so he could get to bribing Maryam with fresh burek and raspberry jam pastries.

They called burek by a different name here, and didn’t put potatoes in it, but the recipe was basically the same. It had significantly raised her esteem of Asphodel, because no people who made decent burek could be entirely without saving graves.

Polishing the last of the layered cheese-and-egg pastry under the Lord Rector’s vigilant eye, she set down her fork as the man rang a small bell to have her empty plate taken away and a dessert plate brought in to replace it. They even topped off her wine while at it. It was a hard job, reporting to the Lord Rector. Sometimes she had to take naps afterwards. Maryam watched the servants discreetly exit, their ruler barely acknowledging their presence, and leaned back into her seat.

Well, she had been bribed good and proper. Now came the price. First her own part of it. The bespectacled man set a leather-bound journal on the table, dipping his steel-tipped pen in a pot of ink before turning a look on her. Maryam bit into her delicious pastry, regally getting powdered sugar all over her chin. It was really good raspberry jam.

“You last mentioned that the Triglau are not a single people but three,” Evander Palliades said. “Might you elaborate on this?”

Maryam swallowed as quietly as she could, which was not very, and wiped the sugar powder off her face with the born grace of a princess of Volcesta.

“I am Izvorica,” Maryam told him. “The Izvoric are – were – the people dwelling in the lowlands of the continent we call Juska. The lowlands were bordered by the sea and a great plateau, the only way through which was the Great Gates.”

“The same now known as the Broken Gates,” the Lord Rector half-asked.

She nodded. Maryam had best not speak of that, else a sea’s worth of venom about the Malani would spill past her lips.

“These were maintained by the People of the Gate, the Skrivenic, while past them dwell the great kingdoms of the highlands whose people are known as the Toranjic.”

“And of these peoples the Izvoric were the greatest?” he asked.

Maryam shook her head.

“The Skrivenic were never many, though of great wealth, but there are ten Toranjic for every Izvoric and some of their fortresses have walls built by the Ancients. The Malani would have broken their teeth trying to take a bite, it is no wonder they preferred to break the Gates than risk it.”

His hand paused before the pen reached the paper.

“The Kingdom of Malan,” he said, “claims it is the Triglau who broke the gates.”

Maryam snorted, dismissive.

“My people were pleading for help from the highlands while Malan sacked our cities and burned our groves,” she said. “Why would we break our own Gates? Besides, my own mother – a practitioner of the Craft of high rank – commonly spoke of it as being Malani work in public. None ever contradicted her.”

Maryam had no doubt the Toranjic kings would have bled the Izvoric dry for their help, and likely made vassals of quite a few cities, but the highlanders were warlike men who relished in the fight. Their fortress-cities clashed with each other almost as much as they did with the hollows that dwelled in the bleak lands beyond their own.

The Lord Rector did not look entirely convinced but put it to ink regardless.

It pleased Maryam somewhat to be correcting Malani lies, though she was not sure that Evander Palliades would live long enough to finish a book – or that it would spread beyond this isle, even if he did. Still, she had only so much tolerance for speaking of the past and had told the man as much. He’d not argued, considering what it was he really wanted to talk about. Or, rather, who.

The Lord Rector pushed up his glasses and cleared his throat, embarrassed but not embarrassed enough not to ask.

“Poetry,” he said. “What does she like?”

She set down her dessert, humming as she sifted through her memories.

“She owns a book by Pingyang Zong,” Maryam noted. “One of her favorites, I think.”

It was certainly worn enough to have been read often.

“Really?” the Lord Rector exhaled, looking pleased.

Maryam cocked an eyebrow at him and he coughed into his fist.

“Lady Zong wrote much of drinking under moonlight and love affairs,” Lord Rector Evander explained. “I am merely surprised.”

‘Surprised’. Sure he was.

“The only other I can recall is titled ‘Ruina’,” she said. “It’s from… Alaria, or something of the sort?”

“Ilaria,” the bespectacled man corrected. “The preeminent poetess out of Sacromonte, the reckoning of most. Ruina is one of her finest works, though not her most popular. It is very maudlin.”

The steel tip tapped around the paper, as if the Lord Rector of Asphodel was debating how to transmute sad Lierganen poetry into smooth seduction.

Now, it might seem like Maryam was selling out her captain for jam pastries. Really good jam pastries, mind you. But the truth was that there was a little more at play. The dais under Evander Palliades’ throne was being gnawed at by rebels, but for now the man was still the greatest authority in the land. And so long as he believed he might have a chance at seducing Song, he was quite amenable to the Thirteenth Brigade.

It was the sort of thing that might come in quite useful if, say, they needed to get the head of the Watch’s diplomatic delegation to Asphodel removed because he was trying to get Tristan abducted on behalf of some sinister conspiracy.

Anyhow, Maryam wouldn’t have entertained the notion if she didn’t suspect that somewhat Song wanted to be seduced in the first place. You didn’t sit down alone on brothel beds with men you weren’t at least a little attracted to. Besides, if she’d wanted to nip the entire thing in the bud she could have simply told Palliades they were headed to a brothel in the first place, which would have seen him withdraw his insistence to tag along.

Insisting on taking a lady you were taken with to a brothel wasn’t a good look.

“How’s your handwriting, Your Excellency?” she asked.

His brow rose.

“Respectable,” he replied.

“Song is a great admirer of calligraphy,” she meaningfully said.

There, she’d given him as much as she intended to. If he couldn’t work something out with so many hints on his side, he was a lost cause anyway. Maryam was of the opinion that a good romp would help mellow out Song, once she was done panicking about it, but their captain would get on just fine if Evander Palliades fumbled the draw.

Clearing her throat, she changed tack to signify she’d delivered as much as his bribe warranted.

“I am charged by Brigadier Chilaca to inquire when the delay to the visit will be ending,” she said.

Lieutenant Apurva had been, it turned out, one of the very covenanters meant to visit the shipyard on the delegation’s behalf. As a tinker with a decade of experience servicing Someshwari skimmers, he’d been meant to assess the quality of the engine-building suites of the Asphodelian shipyards.

By slitting his throat Tristan had kicked a beehive.

Not only had the Watch been forced to bring in a second Umuthi tinker from the Lordsport, one that was less qualified, the visit itself had been put on hold until the death was fully investigated. Song, reading between the lines, had told Maryam that the Lord Rector had grabbed the opportunity to further delay the visit with both hands.

The theory floated by the blackcloak diplomats was that Palliades wanted some signed accommodation with the Republics before letting the Watch in – that way, if the rooks tried to fence him in by leaning on the Iscariot Accords he could drag in the Tianxi to argue for his side. It was clever diplomacy, since the Republics were hungry for his wares.

The Sanxing republics could make aetheric engines, sure, but none capable of powering something as large as a warship. If Tianxia got its hands on a skimmer warfleet, it would no longer need to fear the fleets of Izcalli and the Someshwar should it come to full, bare-knuckle war with either. They could afford to start truly throwing their weight around the Trebian Sea.

“Two days,” the Lord Rector said. “Arrangements are nearly finished and a letter will be sent this afternoon. It is unfortunate that it took so long, but the delay was most necessary given Lieutenant Apurva’s death.”

He smiled pleasantly.

“I am grieved to hear the Watch’s investigation has yielded no results. As always, my offer to lend the help of the lictors stands.”

Maryam, on the other hand, was deeply pleased by the dead end that’d followed the corpse. She was not surprised in the least that Tristan had skill in disposing of bodies – eventually his closet must have run out of room to cram skeletons in – but that he’d been able to stump a Watch investigation was impressive. While the site of death had been found, he’d himself come under no open suspicion. Why would he, when the entire Nineteenth Brigade had been out the same night?

No request had been made that the Thirteenth recall him from his infiltration assignment so he might be interrogated, either, which was a promising sign. Even better Song had mentioned that while there were frustrations among the delegation supposedly they were as much about the delay to the shipyard visit as they were about the death.

The rumor so far was that it was a robbery gone wrong, the killer panicking when realizing they’d attacked a blackcloak and killing the lieutenant to avoid leaving someone that’d know their face alive. Apparently such things were not too uncommon, the Watch’s reputation for heavy-handed reprisal for attacks on its members having some hidden costs.

“That’s a decision for Brigadier Chilaca to make, Your Excellency,” Maryam demurred. “I will be sure pass the offer along.”

They both knew the brigadier had no intention of allowing the lictors anywhere near that case. It would mean tacitly admitting the Watch couldn’t close the investigation it had the legal privilege of conducting without more than symbolic oversight from the Lord Rector. An admission of weakness in the middle of important negotiations with the same throne that’d granted the privilege.

“Please do,” Lord Rector Evander shrugged. “Though now that we are on this subject, it does bring a matter to mind.”

“I am all ears, Your Excellency.”

“Would I be wrong in understanding you’ve an interest in skimmers?” he asked.

Her hand clenched under the table. Of course he would have noticed that. It was hardly as if requesting books on the subject from the archives had been subtle. Maryam had simply not expected him to care, given how sparse the materials were. While no doubt the private archives had better volumes, it would have been an abuse of the given permission to use them for something other than their contract with the throne.

“As a Navigator, I must admit I’ve a certain curiosity about them,” Maryam evenly replied.

A cunning gleam behind those glasses.

“Then it should be no trouble at all to add you to the shipyard visit,” Evander Palliades said. “Our first skimmer is being kept there, at the moment, so you could study it in some depths.”

He paused.

“Besides, you’ve mentioned looking for potential fissures in the aether like the one that allowed the assassin to enter the palace,” the Lord Rector added. “It would be reassuring to establish whether or not such an opening exists in the shipyard as well, given its importance.”

Shit, Maryam thought. He was a clever bastard, wasn’t he? If it was only an excuse for her to get her hands all over the first skimmer she had seen built in her lifetime she would have declined, but it was a legitimate concern whether or not the assassin could get into that shipyard. And since the Antediluvian construction was supposed to be somewhere under the island, going so deep might yield some fresh insight about the brackstone shrines and what they held imprisoned.

In a few sentences he’d gotten her to want to go and given her good reasons to. Which made it all the more frustrating that they both knew the only reason he’d offered was that it would mean she was gone for two days and Song would have to bring the reports during – with Tristan currently gone and Tredegar a known face at court, there wasn’t really another choice for it.

Maryam resisted the urge to grit her teeth.

“I must consult with my captain, you understand,” she said.

“Of course,” he said, nodding. “I will merely require an answer from you before the departure, which is the day after tomorrow.”

At least he wasn’t smug, Maryam thought. If he had been she would have held a grudge, because they both knew that whatever she’d said just now she sure as Nav would be joining the delegation on that trip.

—

The trouble with this particular conspiracy was that it did not actually need to conspire all that much.

Song nibbled at a meat skewer as she watched Lieutenant Shu Gong haggle with a street peddler over a necklace, admitting to herself that this one looked like another bust. The Peiling Society lieutenant had truly gone to the street markets of the southwestern ward to get a few trinkets, not out of any secret plan to contact the Nineteenth Brigade. It was the second time that following her out had yielded nothing, a cause of mounting frustration, but there was little she could do.

Song, in principle, had names for most the local conspirators and accomplices of the Ivory Library: the whole of the Nineteenth Brigade, Sergeant Ledwaba, the ship called ‘The Grinning Madcap’. She even had knowledge of one more traitor, the mystery individual that Lieutenant Apurva had claimed was ‘high up the ranks’. Spying on these, separately and individually, was entirely achievable.

Only Song had been forced to look elsewhere, because none of these conspirators actually needed to meet.

Oh, she was nearly certain that Sergeant Ledwaba had met with the Nineteenth one time. Song had checked by attempting to arrange going for drinks with Captain Tozi on the first evening of leave that said sergeant was scheduled for. Tozi made excuses as to why she could not and her entire brigade was gone that evening for a span of two hours and change. Long enough to head to the safehouse, talk and return.

That was not proof, but bribing a servant for gossip about that evening’s leave among the delegation escorts had yielded two more pieces of information: the sergeant had not been with any of the other soldiers that night and that it was usually her habit to go drinking with her colleagues when she could. Still not proof, but an increasing number of pointed fingers.

The trouble was that she’d not been able to find out how Ledwaba called the meeting. There were too many ways for her to do it, and a great many of them subtle. Following her had proved too difficult, given how careful she was about being followed, so Song was forced to let her disappear in the Tratheke streets to avoid being discovered.

After that initial discovered, Song had run into the wall of there no longer being contact between the conspirators. And why would there be? The Grinning Madcap was still in port, but until Tristan was grabbed there was no point in meeting with the Nineteenth save perhaps turning the screws on them. Lieutenant Apurva’s death had made them too cautious to take such an unnecessary risk regularly, however, so Song was forced to take a different angle.

If investigating neither the Nineteenth nor Sergeant Ledwaba would get her what she needed, she must get it from the mystery conspirator instead. The first obstacle there was that they were a member of the delegation, and thus not only of superior rank but certain to have their service records locked up tight – lest Asphodel get to them and attempt to seize an advantage in the negotiations.

Fortunately, Song had an in.

With his niece gone to the country, Commander Osian Tredegar had freer hours. While the silver-eyed woman believed he might have accepted her request for a private conversation out of curiosity, she made clear it was Thirteenth business potentially involving Angharad to ensure he would. Song believed she had made a good impression on the man so far, and displayed the tolerance asked of her when it was needed. It was now time to collect on those investments.

“I need you,” she said, “to obtain the service records of the rest of the delegation.”

Commander Osian Tredegar frowned at her.

“Why?”

“I have reason to believe one of them is conspiring with outside forces to hinder the Thirteenth’s work,” Song said, shamelessly putting Angharad in the line of fire. “Which of them is the traitor, however, is not yet clear.”

The handsome older man drummed his fingers against the table.

“You think it could be Brigadier Chilaca,” Commander Tredegar stated.

“I cannot yet state it is not,” Song honestly replied.

Gods, let it not be. Toppling a brigadier could not be anything but messy work.

“And if I were to ask about whether this has anything to do with Lieutenant Apurva going missing?” he probed.

“I have seen no evidence that it does,” Song replied.

She could have simply lied, of course, but they would have both known those words for what they were. Offering a precisely phrased truth instead was not an attempt at deception but a mark of respect for Malani customs. The older man hummed.

“How bad?” he asked.

“It might make it all the way to the Conclave.”

A sigh.

“Your brigade,” Commander Tredegar grunted, “is almost violently unlucky.”

Then he folded his arms across his chest.

“I cannot show you the papers without drawing attention,” he said. “What I can do is read them myself and recite the information for you afterwards.”

Not ideal, unless Osian Tredegar had perfect recall, but it would have to do. Song inclined her head.

“My thanks, Commander Tredegar.”

 “None are needed,” he said. “This is a favor, Captain Ren, and I intend to call it in before too long.”

Song’s jaw clenched but she nodded nonetheless. Hers was not a strong bargaining position.

“I will find you after evening meal,” the older man said. “Try to find an excuse for it, as I expect it will take more than once for me to ferry all that knowledge to you.”

It took three instances and floating a rumor that Song was trying to learn how to make rifle suited to her contract – which was, in truth, something she would like – before she had the whole slate of records writ down in her notes.

The good news was that Brigadier Chilaca looked very unlikely to be a member of the Ivory Library.

The bad news was that if the man wasn’t up to his neck in bribes, Song would drink down her inkwell.

Chilaca was a Stripe, though from what Captain Oratile had defined as the ‘lower’ track: he had worn the black for decades and risen up the ranks before being sent to the Academy for polishing. Looking at his postings before the Academy, it was clear he had mostly served as an in-between for free companies and Garrison forces serving in the same regions. He was noted to be a skilled mediator, apt at finding common ground between hostile officers.

That at and what must be an impressive network of favors and friends had seen him recommended to the Academy.

His rise afterwards had been, fast, if in brusque spurts. Preventing open war between two free companies at the border of Tianxia and the Someshwar had him promoted two full ranks, and his history was dotted with such heroic diplomatic feats. He was also, however, constantly moved around and there were three different recommendations he should not be allowed authority over supply details.

Reading between the lines, Brigadier Chilaca was one of the Watch’s finest diplomats but he couldn’t seem to help himself skimming off the top and building patronage cliques, so the higher-ups kept him moving around to make the best of his skills while avoiding the worst of his sticky fingers.

It went some way in explaining the mystery of why a man by the rank of brigadier, a post usually belonging to the commanding officer of a regional Garrison capital serving directly under a Marshal, was being used as a diplomat. Song would hazard a guess that he was a brigadier in name only, mostly so the rank would raise his diplomatic profile, while an officer theoretically his subordinate truly discharged the duties involved.

The combination of Chilaca having friends all over Vesper and being eminently corrupt meant that, while he did not have the character of a man who would join a clannish faction like the Ivory Library, it was entirely possible he had been bribed by them to look away. In turn that meant Song would have to work around him until she had actionable proof, at which point he should turn on the Library – else his reputation, and thus his value to the Watch, would plummet.

Looking through the rest of the delegation, only two potential suspects stood out. The first was a Savant by the name of Shu Gong, a woman in her forties who had spent most of her career in research halls run by the Peiling Society. What made her stand out was the strong background in theological studies and the lack of Trebian Sea service for someone assigned to an important delegation on Asphodel. It smacked of someone pulling strings to get her a seat.

Song was currently watching her badly barter over a glass necklace’s price, which was admittedly not the height of conspiratorial activities.

Aside from a general desire to unmask the traitors, Song would admit to hoping that Lieutenant Gong would be the culprit because the second suspect would be a lot more difficult to deal with: Captain Domingo Santos was Brigadier Chilaca’s personal Navigator, assigned for the talks.

While Akelarre service records were notoriously sparse – in that regard second only to those of the Krypteia – the man in question had served at two particular Watch fortresses on the Tower Coast of the Imperial Someshwar. Which seemed a minor detail, until one considered that Sergeant Ledwaba had served at the same fortresses at the same time. That could be a coincidence, admittedly.

Captain Santos, however, had reportedly twice taken his leave at the Lordsport. Where the Grinning Madcap was awaiting its prisoner. That too could be coincidence – a Navigator seeking the sea was not great twist, and there was an Akelerre chapterhouse in the port – but the confluence of possible coincidences still had Santos as the leading suspect in her heart.

Lieutenant Shu Gong’s insistence on paying twice the going price for a gaudy necklace of false Asphodel glass beads was, unfortunately, leading Song’s mind to the same conclusion reached by her heart.

Spying on a Master of the Akelarre Guild was not something undertaken without due precautions, so Song finished off her skewer and left Lieutenant Gong to continue getting fleeced. She must concern her finest source of information, who coincidentally should be returning from the palace within the hour.

Song sat her down for tea and snacks when she arrived, scrupulously refraining from asking anything about the Lord Rector, and asked Maryam what she would suggest should one intend to begin spying on Captain Santos.

“Don’t get anywhere near his room, it’s sure to be trapped, and try to get servants to do the spying for you,” Maryam opined. “We’re not quite due purging you of Gloam yet, but you’re already getting noticeable to my logos – to a Master you’d be like a bull hiding behind a curtain.”

“Flatteringly phrased,” Song reproached.

It was, however, good to know that she stood out to the sixth sense of Navigators. It made tailing Captain Santos through a crowd much less feasible than she would have assumed.

“Well, if you want flattery I’ve got something else for you,” Maryam happily said.

Her Navigator then laid out the offer made by Evander Palliades, which had Song sighing. She had to accept, of course. Not only would Maryam sacrifice half of Malan at the altar for a good look at a skimmer, investigating the possible aether disturbances under the isle was a worthy use of her Navigator’s time. Song had no good reason to refuse her save that it would mean returning to the palace herself, and that would be a terribly childish reason to do so.

Was she some kind of wanton weathervane, to be at risk of succumbing to his charms against her own decision otherwise? No, Song could control herself. She could keep a professional distance, and if he tried otherwise she could make her stance on the matter clear and firm.

“Fine,” she sighed. “Angharad should be returning either tonight or tomorrow, anyhow, if I need a second pair of hands I will not be alone.”

Maryam grinned at her.

“Thanks, Song,” she said. “I mean it.”

The Tianxi waved her away. She would not have accepted was there not good reason for it.

“Any word from Tristan?” Maryam asked.

“Not since he reported getting hired by the Kassa,” Song said, keeping the terms vague. “I expect that when there is progress he will send word.”

He had left a message after finishing that burglary job for the Brazen Chariot, handing papers to Hage, and passed thanks along when she’d written out Tozi Poloko’s contract for him. He had not mentioned what his approach would be there, but she suspected she would be hearing of it soon. She had taken steps to ensure she would, which made it all the more important to keep her next appointment.

Maryam squinted at her, sensing the turn in her mood.

“Ah,” she said. “That’s tonight?”

Song nodded.

“Break a leg,” the signifier said, then sneered. “Or preferably all of theirs.”

There was a reason that Song had not invited Maryam to drinks with the Nineteenth.

—

They tried to learn Tristan’s location within the first ten minutes, naturally, but when Song remained vague and hinted it might be the Lordsport they did not insist.

Captain Tozi Poloko had taken her up on the offered drinks, if slightly late, and though the Izcalli’s own Mask and Skiritai were otherwise occupied in the city she was still accompanied by Izel Coyac. Song had been prepared for an intricate dance of intrigue and lies, for the need to obfuscate as much as she could about what Tristan was up to while learning as much as she could about what the Nineteenth was doing, but that proved entirely unnecessary.

Tozi had called for drinks mostly so she could rant about how awful her test was.

“I should have let you talk me into the cult investigation,” Captain Tozi darkly said. “It has been nothing but dead ends for us.”

“I heard you’ve been working with the lictors,” Song tried.

The Izcalli sneered, fingers scratching at the stubble beginning to grow atop her head. She would need to shave her head again soon.

“For all the use they’ve been,” Tozi said. “The sum whole of their contribution has been leading us to fresh corpses and telling the locals it’s the basileias that are responsible for the deaths.”

Which explained, at least, why the capital wasn’t teeming with rumors about some contracted killer running wild. Song had been wondering at the absence of such fearful talk.

 “Which could be true, in their defense,” Izel noted.

Tozi rolled her eyes.

“The deaths are too spread out,” she denied. “And they’re not helping any of their little crime families rise either.”

Song sipped at her water.

“Have you found any pattern in the deaths?” she asked.

“More that we’ve found what the pattern isn’t,” Tozi sighed. “It’s not political, for one. Out of the twenty-two deaths there’s been corpses both from supporters of the Trade Assembly and the Council of Ministers. It’s not the basileias, either, because they avoid touching highborn and two of the dead have been minor nobles from outside Tratheke with no ties to anything in the city that we can find – meaning they’d be crossing a line for no profit.”

“Were they all public figures, then?” Song asked.

That would be a pattern. And it occurred to her, not for the first time, that if the Nineteenth Brigade finished its investigation before Tristan returned from his infiltration, they might well be crammed onto a boat back to Tolomontera before they could make trouble.

Song had not intention of sparing them the consequences of their treachery, but they would keep at Scholomance until the Ivory Library conspirators were handed off to the Krypteia to have every name squeezed out.

“I wondered the same,” Izel told her with a smile. “But no, unfortunately. There are two dead that were largely unknown even locally, a minor shopkeeper and a day laborer.”

“The deaths are random, as far as we can tell,” Tozi sighed. “Which makes them impossible to predict, and trying to track down our killer through boots on the ground hasn’t been going well.”

It would, given that Tratheke was a sprawling city even if large swaths of it were empty. A cabal of four to sniff out a killer gone to ground would have its work cut out for it.

“We can’t even tell how the murderer gets there,” Izel said. “The last death was on the third floor of an edifice, behind two locked doors and with at least ten possible witnesses on the way up. There was no sign of forced entry, and as with every death it took only one blow.”

“They’re a damn ghost,” Tozi bit out. “Probably a man, going by the height and strength, but the killing blows weren’t dealt by a blade. They cut through bone and metal jewelry alike they’re made of paper.”

“So a contract to sneak in and another to make the kill,” Song noted. “Or at least a contract with an effect that can serve for purposes.”

“Or a contract to sneak in and some Antediluvian weapon to strike,” Izel opined. “The First Empire did leave arms behind, though precious few, and the entire capital is an Antediluvian treasure trove.”

“Izel has a favorite theory, as you can probably tell,” Tozi drily said. “Not that it’s getting us any closer to catching our target.”

The larger Aztlan rolled his eyes.

“Tozi thinks believes we are dealing, if not quite with a Saint, with someone whose contract is consuming their mind,” Izel told her. “It would be why there is no recognizable pattern for the kills, the reasons being followed are not a human’s.”

“It’d explain that contract being so powerful, too,” Tozi insisted.

“It would also mean that the killer is far down the journey to sainthood,” Song slowly said. “Should they reach the destination…”

“It would get ugly,” the other captain grunted. “Very ugly. I’m entirely aware an hourglass has been flipped, Song.”

“You do not seem overly worried,” she observed.

The other two shared a look.

“We have some notion of how we might trap someone ridden by their god,” Izel finally said.

“Gods can be easier to trick, if they’re hungry enough,” Tozi said. “It’s just a matter of setting out the right bait.”

“My best wishes,” Song said, raising her cup.

She meant it, too. The Nineteenth would need to be disbanded and severely punished, but she would not root for some god-blessed madman against them. They were still doing Watch work well in need of being done. The conversation did not last long after that, the pair both tired, and after Izel excused himself to the latrines Captain Tozi stayed only long enough to finish her cup before retiring for the night.

Song found out the hour and decided it was late enough Angharad was unlikely to arrive tonight, electing to retire as well. She could use the sleep. Only she was intercepted in the hall before the stairs up, the dimmed lamps of the hallway a soft surrender to the dark.

“Captain Song. A word, if you please?”

Song fought not to tense when she saw Izel waiting at the end of the hall, arms folded and face serious. No, even if they suspected her they would not strike at her in Black House.

“Of course,” she said.

The tall Izcalli waited until she was close to lean in, lowering his voice.

“I have come across information that the same organization that tried to abduct Tristan Abrascal on Tolomontera has a presence on Asphodel,” he whispered. “He needs to be very careful, wherever he is, else they might grab him off the street.”

Song’s eyes narrowed at him. What exactly is your game here, Izel Coyac?

“The Ivory Library,” she said, testing the air. “You know of them?”

He hesitated, then nodded.

“I hear they research contracts,” Izel said. “They have ties to some of the great nobles of Izcalli, among others, and I know for a fact that my father made deals with them during the Sordan War.”

Implying that was how he had heard of them, and not by dint of being their hireling. And giving me a first glimpse of why you are working for them when you keep expressing qualms, Song thought. Some debts followed you into the Watch, and while Song would offer the man no sympathy she could spare a single speck of pity.

“My thanks for the warning,” she said. “I will take measures to protect him.”

He looked relieved, passing a hand through the stubble atop his head.

“I’ve not shared this with anyone in the Nineteenth, so there is no cause for worry of a leak,” he said. “I thought it best kept quiet between us.”

He thought it best that his fellow traitors did not know he was sabotaging them, he meant. Still, Song put on a thankful smile and nodded and sent him on his way before anyone could see them talk. She was silent all the way up, lost in her thoughts.

It occurred to her that perhaps she was going about this the wrong way after all. She had been planning to unearth the Ivory Library traitors to deal with the Nineteenth, but it was beginning to look as if leveraging the brigade to dig out the traitors might be more feasible.

And she knew exactly where to start.

—

Song Ren woke in the early hours in the morning to someone knocking at her door. Thoroughly disgruntled, she threw on a robe and padded to the door with a pistol in hand. Just in case. Ready to snarl until her tormentor went away, she was given pause when on the other side was not a servant but a familiar face.

“Angharad,” she got out, blinking in surprise.

A moment while her brain caught up. The Pereduri nodded, looking faintly apologetic.

“I thought you’d arrive tomorrow.”

“I paid the coachman to ride through a few hours of night instead,” Angharad Tredegar replied, pulling at her creased traveling dress.

The noblewoman cleared her throat.

“Apologies for waking you,” she said, “but I thought you want to know as soon as possible.”

Song cocked her head to the side in silent invitation.

“The cult of the Golden Ram has tried to recruit me,” Angharad told her.

And just like that, Song was entirely awake.

“More than that, they offered a bribe,” she continued.

Angharad produced a small object wrapped in worn paper, still warm from having been carried against her body, and at the other woman’s invitation Song unwrapped it. For a moment she saw she was seeing wrong, for this could not possibly be, but her eyes did not lie.

Song went very, very still.

“Gods,” she hoarsely said. “Do you know what that is?”

“I was told it is a taste of what the Golden Ram can offer,” Angharad replied. “That it would heal me for a span of eight hours should I consume it. Why, is it harmful?”

“Worse,” Song said. “That, Angharad, is a god’s blood.”

The ichor of a god manifest.

And not, as far as Song Ren, something that gods ever gave willingly.