Teeth shattered most satisfyingly under her boot, the mantic whimpering as it fled. Angharad added a flourish to her wrist purely for effect, spearing the spirit from behind and nailing it to the deck before setting a fang-strewn boot on its head and ripping her saber clear. She flicked the ichor off the blade, eyes scanning the lower deck for enemies. Her comrade-in-arms did the same from her left, his own sword slick with black blood.

“We’re past the worst of it,” Cozme Aflor decided. “The gun ports are closed.”

How the scavengers had managed to get the cannon holes open in the first place was a mystery, though not one it was her duty to solve. She would settle for gladness at the mantics no longer crawling through them like a tide of vermin. Though the fighting was still hard above, where the Saint had fled, it seemed that the lower deck was near swept clean. The last stragglers from the hold had barricaded the door and now the same blackcloaks that’d stormed the deck to close the ports were gathering around the hole in the floor to take shots with their muskets.

It wouldn’t be enough to clear the numbers that’d gathered down there, but it would thin the herd.

“And with few dead,” Angharad said. “I must admit to having underestimated watchmen.”

Even seasoned Malani crews would have panicked at the sheer number of spirits that’d climbed the ship, but the men and women of the Watch had responded with calm discipline. They’d formed into squads, put their back to a wall and swept forward with powder and steel.

“You’re not so bad yourself, Tredegar,” the older man grinned.

With his salt and pepper beard and roguish smile the Cerdan soldier might have set another woman’s heart aflutter but here he was very much barking up the wrong tree. He was a loyal retainer and skilled at arms, however, so Angharad refrained from rolling her eyes. He’d proved a good man by standing in the defence of others and that earned him consideration.

“My skills have not rusted,” she simply replied. “And yours are worthy of praise: we did not let a single one through.”

Through to where was made plain by her glance back, where the ship’s arsenal had been turned into a cutter’s room. The Bluebell’s surgeon – Angharad hoped she was no Liergan doctor, for those were known to be deadlier than the plague – was seeing to the wounded, her door guarded by only a pair of blackcloaks. More were unneeded, given the veritable phalanx of passengers that’d gathered to take up the duty as well. Near a dozen in all, protecting not only the wounded but also the cowardly: of the infanzones only Lady Ferranda had stayed out the surgeon’s workroom to fight.

Lady Isabel was to be forgiven, given that she was no trained fighter and capable enough to serve as the surgeon’s assistant besides, but the Cerdan brothers had shamed themselves by hiding. By the occasional looks of contempt thrown their way by their shipmates, it had done their reputation no favours. There are no true nobles in Sacramonte, Angharad reminded herself, trying to temper her own scorn. Long gone were the days of the Second Empire, with only the dust of greatness remaining. Besides, she would not let her growing interest in Lady Isabel unfairly sour her opinion of those courting her.

She was no longer a girl, to think that her every rival must be a sot or a devil.

“Good work all around,” Cozme affably agreed. “Now we just need to settle in and wait for the Watch to clear the upper deck.”

Shouts above punctuated the sentence, followed by musket shots. The fight there had been raging before the first mantic ever set foot in the hold and by the sound of it had yet to abate. Angharad paused at the man’s words, weighing the demands of honour. She was a guest and so owed protection by her hosts, which did not demand she fight on behalf of the Watch. Yet she also owed them a personal debt for the way they had defended her at the docks when the Guardia came to take her, and it would be the height of ingratitude to stay her hand when she could return the courtesy.

The words exact are a sword, Anga, her father had once told her, so when wielding them you must hold on tight to the spirit of honour lest it slip your grasp. She had never loved her father’s lessons, for they were of men’s things – landholding and intrigue, squabbles about estate boundaries and cattle drinking rights – but he had been wise in his own way. Softer than Mother, who’d been born harsh and whittled sharp by a life out at sea, but in matters of honour she thought him wisest. Vesper would be a fairer place if more acted like him and Angharad would not dishonour the grave she’d dug him by betraying his teachings now.

“If there is a fight to be had, my blade will not shy from it,” she said, squaring her shoulders. “It has been a pleasure, Master Aflor.”

The older man’s face betrayed nothing of his thoughts as he nodded back politely. He did not offer to accompany her, nor had she expected him to. It would have been improper of him, as his life was not his own to risk: he had come here as the retainer of the Cerdan brothers, to put his flesh between peril and their own. Parting ways without further ado, Angharad tightened her grip around her sword and made for the stairs. Half a squad of blackcloaks was already there, the noblewoman’s earlier benefactor – Celipa, the one-armed sailor – leading them. The grizzled officer was in talks with a blond young man and Angharad caught the tail end of it without meaning to.

“-rave of you, but that thing’ll chew you up,” Celipa said. “Best you just stay out of the way. The captain will make his move soon.”

“I am not entirely helpless, tia,” the young man replied. “Besides, aid appears in great need.”

“Having a contract doesn’t make you a fucking god, boy,” Celipa retorted. “It makes you meat with a fancy trick.”

“Then let him come with me,” Angharad cut in as she approached. “I assure you, my lady, I am far helpless.”

The grizzled woman turned on her a gimlet eye.

“I already told you I’m not a godfucking lady, girl,” Celipa grunted, then sighed. “But I know that stubborn look on your face. Bloody Tredegars.”

She muttered something about blackpowder and ramming under her breath, then glared at them half-heartedly before stomping up the stairs. Angharad smoothed away a smile, having been reminded of the old sea dogs her mother liked to keep around. However loud the bark, they were never quite as dour as they liked to pretend. Turning to the man, she looked him up for a weapon – a short hatchet, touched by ichor in a way betraying use – even as she offered her hand.

“Lady Angharad Tredegar,” she introduced herself.

Introductions were in order if they were to fight side by side.

“Brun of Sacromonte,” the man replied, shaking it.

He had a common look about him, Angharad thought, but there was a steadiness to his bearing that was calming. His grip was firm, a sign of good character.

“Hurry up, you two,” Celipa called out.

The man’s lips twitched, a sentiment she fully returned, and they passed the rest of the watchmen to join Celipa and another where they were kneeling near the top of the stairs. It was not, however, a blackcloak that waited there. A long musket laid along the line of the floor, the mysterious stranger that’d approached Angharad earlier keeping her silver eyes on the ruckus above. From where she stood Angharad could see little more than the dark sky and the flashing lights of lanterns but the woman, Song, was positioned to see it all.

“She’s taken another two shots and whatever the captain’s doing to the sea seems to be working,” Song announced without ever looking away. “She’ll scuttle back up the mast soon so we should run out on my mark.”

“The two of you best listen to her,” Celipa turned to say. “It’ll do wonders for your lifespan.”

“You will be joining the fray as well, then?” Angharad asked, looking past her.

Song nodded.

“We need to put the Saint down as quickly as possible,” she said. “The longer she’s about the higher the chances she tears up sails.”

For the daughter of a famous explorer Angharad admittedly knew shamefully little about seafaring, but she knew enough to predict what might happen to a sailing ship bereft of sails.

“Get ready,” Song murmured.

Angharad tensed, legs coiling.

“Now.”

The three of them ran out onto the deck, right into Hell’s bastard cousin. A sweep of twenty blackcloaks had holed up in the Bluebell’s forecastle, muskets out and scything through anything that approached, but the remainder of the deck was bloody chaos. Strands of some sort of oily webbing were crisscrossing the length of the floor, some even hanging from the masts, while mantics threw themselves at a squad of blackcloaks with blind fury. They must have been chased out of the aftercastle, which had been ripped apart, and now the corpses of scavengers and sailors were messily strewn across the deck. Blackpowder clouds billowed thick as claw and blade clashed half-blind in the shivering lantern light, spirits and men furiously slashing at each other.

“SAINT UP THE MAST!”

Angharad saw no trace of the rampaging spirit they were being warned about, or indeed of much of anything at all. It was like stepping into an angry beehive.

“Don’t walk on the webbing,” Song shouted into the din. “It attracts them.”

“To the forecastle,” Angharad shouted back. “We can plan from there.”

“I’ll take the front,” Brun volunteered.

The noblewoman blinked at the courageous offer – there was no telling what lay on the other side of the powder smoke – and before she could answer the man was moving. They could do little but follow, hurrying as much as they could without stepping onto webbing. There were snarls from the side of she ship, a pair of mantic leaping over the railing. Brun’s hatchet split one’s head open before it could even bring up its claws, the butt of Song’s musket catching the other in the flank and smashing it down onto the deck. The Tianxi reached for the sword at her side but Angharad move quicker. A calm thrust through the dazed spirit’s soft skull finished it.

“We need to keep moving,” Song said, but not before offering a nod of thanks.

They’d caught the attention of the musketmen on the forecastle, enough that when they emerged from a choking cloud of powder a few shots were sent their way to clear their path. Angharad cursed as claws ripped at the back of her boots and scratched her heel, kicking at the spirit’s face until its eyes popped wetly. A pair of blackcloaks even came their way swords in hand, a gaunt man she recalled having seen in the hold accompanying them, and the three cleared their way through a pack of snapping mantics to join them.

“No,” Song suddenly shouted. “Galatas, your-”

There was an unearthly screech from above as Angharad’s eyes went to the gaunt man, seeing a moment too late what Song had noticed: the edge of his left foot was touching webbing. Half a hundred mantics turned their way in the moment that followed, though it was the whip-fast shape that landed on the deck that made Angharad’s breath catch in her throat. She’d not had a good look at the Saint before, when it fled up, but now she beheld the full horror in trembling lantern light. A girl’s body with nine burst-out spindly legs, the torso a nightmare of melded flesh and a once-human head now marred by huge wet eyes. Ribs peeked out of her flesh, webbing leaking out of them, and Angharad almost retched at the sight.

There was a reason the Sleeping God’s diviners taught that spirits and men should never share a single flesh.

“Run,” Song hissed.

Shots sounded, but too slowly. Before the powder blew the Saint had already impaled one of the blackcloaks and thrown aside the other like a sack of radishes, the fool who’d touched the webbing tripping as he tried to hurry backwards. Two musket shots tore through the Saint’s torso, tearing bloody holes, but she just shook off the blackcloak she’d impaled and casually ripped through the other one’s shoulder.

“Salt munitions,” a voice called out from the forecastle.

The Glare-drenched salt, Angharad knew, was as poison to most spirits. But the spirit was already moving, ready to scuttle back into the smoke and dark to ready for the snatching of more lives, and so she made her decision. Honour had its demands. She grabbed Song’s shoulder before the other woman could run.

“Get the wounded to the forecastle,” she ordered. “Have Brun help.”

“What are you-”

Angharad did not look back, striding out saber in hand. The Saint looked about to finish the blackcloak with the stomach wound, so the Pereduri calmly stepped on the strand of webbing before her. The Saint paused, neck twisting sharply to look back, and Angharad felt her stomach drop. Death, she had courted death, and now it was coming on blood-drenched legs to take her. Her body moved by rote, back straightening as the flat of her saber lightly tapped her left shoulder in a duellist’s salute. She glimpsed-

(The legs tore through her belly, turning to open her up)

-and stepped lightly to the right, pivoting even as the spirit screeched and slashing at its back. Leathery flesh parted under good Pereduri steel, splashing ichor even as the Saint lashed out blindly. Left leg, Angharad thought, catching the twitch early. A step back, leaning away, and the pointed tip passed half an inch below her chin. She threw her weight forward, pushing with the back leg, and struck with the strength of her entire body. The saber carved through the leg she’d aimed at, one of the four the Saint was standing on, and the maddened spirit tipped back. A glimpse-

(Over the shoulder, the tips of the legs going through Angharad’s eyes)

-and she slid down under the Saint as front legs twisted over the spirit’s shoulders, nailing the deck where she’d just stood. Landing in a crouch, she left a shallow cut on the spirit’s chest as she rose. From the corner of her eye she caught the twitch a moment before the Saint moved, pivoting to sweep from the right with three legs. Angharad simply stepped out of the swing, air whipping about her face, and she felt the dread drip out of her heartbeat by heartbeat. Eight legs left, the Saint coming at her relentlessly, and yet there was nothing to fear. She was back home, doing the Reprimand in the fighting yard.

It was a mad spirit coming at her from all angles instead of swinging stones, yet it was just the same. Watch, listen and move. Be as the wave, unhurried yet inexorable. A shot clipped the Saint’s shoulder and the spirit pivoted, but Angharad clicked her tongue and thrust shallowly into the creature’s side. For pain, for attention.

“Eyes on me,” she chided, and the spirit turned back with a skittering shriek.

A glimpse told her a mantic was to come upon her from behind, but also what would follow. Angharad moved to the side of a puncturing leg, pivoting and slashing at the Saint’s back even as the head of the scavenger come for her burst into gore: the blackcloaks on the forecastle were covering her back. The Saint bent back, wildly scrabbling forward with half a dozen legs, but the Pereduri took to the left and ducked under a lateral blow that would have shattered her ribcage. It was not just aiming poorly, she realized as the spirit struggled to turn while she slashed at her back legs, but not aiming at all. Like the stones swinging at the end of ropes that she had trained with back home, the trajectory of the Saint’s blows did not change after they began. She’s faster than her own senses can follow.

That made her predictable, Angharad thought with a wolfish smile, and she knew how to punish predictable.

Left, blindingly and blinded quick, the point ripping into the wood as Angharad stepped back. Right, as the twitch had told her, but a spirit that could not even control its own strength could hardly control the distance: the Pereduri dove forward, letting the Saint’s swing offer up two of the legs jutting out of her chest cleanly. With a heave and grunt, Angharad cut through the base of both as the spirit let out a deafening screech. She went wild, legs hacking at the front of her, but Angharad had already slipped to the left. Musket fire lit up the night, tearing smoking holes into the Saint’s back, and the spirit shuddered in pain. Salt shots, Angharad thought.

The Saint turned towards the forecastle, legs convulsing, and leapt. Only the gaunt man from earlier was there, elbowing watchmen aside as he traced something in the air and the billowing darkness of the Gloam formed into a Sign that merely glancing at had Angharad nauseous. At the apex of her leap, the Saint hit thin air as if it were a solid wall and let out a shrieking moan of surprise as she tumbled back down in a sprawl.

“FINISH IT!” a blackcloak shouted.

Musket fire bloomed and Angharad sprang towards the downed Saint, black-slicked blade raised high. Others came too, watchmen with pikes and swords as well Brun and a graceful Aztlan man wielding a spear. They hacked at the spirit’s legs while she flailed in pain from the musket fire pouring down from above, Angharad only joining the fray reluctantly. For all that she knew this was no true honour duel, the disparity in numbers still made the business feel disreputable. She thrust into the spirit’s back, dipping away from a flailing blow, and as she did noticed that webbing was trailing across the deck in thick rivulets.

Frowning, Angharad took another step back and realized that the oily trails were connecting with the earlier ones, spreading somehow, and that mantics were flocking to the web.

“Something’s wrong,” the noblewoman called out, “the Saint is-”

Her words were good as drowned out by the musket fire, but even that racket was chased out when the Saint’s death throes bloomed into a sky-piercing shriek. She staggered away from the sound, ears ringing, and watched in horror as the Saint’s wounds began to close and fresh legs burst out from the stumps. All over the ship mantics were melting into the webbing, flesh dissolving. The Saint rose, crushing a pair of blackcloaks with a casual swing as Angharad kicked a scavenger that’d snuck up to her side, but the gaunt man from earlier was back. Cheeks flush with colour he traced that same foul Sign between the spirit and the blackcloaks, only this when the Saint struck there was a crack.

A scream, then the Sign shattered and Angharad saw the man’s forearm turn into blackened pulp.

“No,” the Pereduri shouted, seeing their victory turn to ash.

She glimpsed-

(Sweeping her legs)

-and leapt above a swing, just in time for the edge of a blow to catch her shoulder and smash her back down in a spinning crash. She saw it coming then, too quick for a glimpse to help at all, the two legs coming down to nail her belly to the deck. Only there was a musket shot and the very tip of a leg blew as it came down, the stump smacking into the other and nudging it just to the side of Angharad’s ribs. It tore through her freshly mended coat instead, the Pereduri catching sight of a pleased smile under silver eyes before she hurried to rip her way free. Song had saved her life, somehow landing that preposterous shot.

She would not waste the chance she’d been given, the noblewoman swore, and was gritting her teeth to throw herself back into the melee when suddenly a door burst open. The room under the forecastle, Angharad saw, which had been locked and barred all this time. The captain’s quarters. Now it was wide open and a fat, dark-skinned man in a Watch cloak strode out, strands of Gloam following him like eager pups. The Saint struck at the captain but found the same Sign it had twice faced waiting. Only this time it was the spirit’s leg that was pulped when it hit thin air, and the captain calmly began to circle the Saint as he traced the same symbol anew.

Once, twice, thrice more the Saint broke herself on seemingly nothing until she was caught in a four-sided box.

“Grenades,” the captain ordered.

Angharad watched as half a dozen watchmen on the forecastle took out, lit and threw the Tianxi metal orbs over the lid of the invisible box the captain – a member of the Guild of Navigators, he had to be – had formed. Seconds later, before the Saint could think of trying to climb out, there was a blinding thunder and ichor sprayed all over transparent panes of nothing. The fat captain frowned, then spat to the side as the smoke dispersed and revealed nothing more than twitching shreds of meat.

“Salt her and box the remains,” he called out. “Peiling Society still has that bounty up on incomplete Saints.”

Angharad swallowed. Incomplete. That spirit had been incomplete? Sleeping God, putting down Saints wasn’t even considered the most perilous duty of the Watch. The blackcloaks fanned out from the forecastle in good order, a squad tending to the broken spirit’s remains, and as the noblewoman scanned the deck for dangers she saw that the fight was done. What mantics had not been devoured by the Saint were fleeing hastily, scuttling back into the dark waters. Few of the watchmen bothered to strike at them, and none with muskets. They were saving their powder, Angharad thought. And just like that, with nary a cheer from the victors, the battle was over.

Most looked punch-drunk at the suddenness of the end, though it did not prevent a few of the younger sailors from crowding her. The dark-skinned noble blinked, taken aback by the excited chatter. She had, it seemed, impressed through her duel with the Saint.

“It was like nothing I’ve seen before,” a boy that could not be older than fourteen said. “They’d be mad not to want you in the Skiritai!”

Angharad was only passingly familiar with the Circles, the seven societies within the Watch where only the most elite watchmen were inducted, but she had heard of the Skiritai Guild. ‘Militants’, its members were called, or even more bluntly ‘Swords’. They were the finest warriors of the Watch, which made the boy’s words a weighty compliment.

“I have had fine training, but I claim little experience with the horrors of the Old Night,” Angharad demurred.

“You must have a damned impressive contract,” a fair-haired woman her age said. “It was like you moved to dodge it before it even struck!”

Angharad’s lip thinned. Inquiring of contracts was impolite, and to the watchwoman’s honour she coughed in embarrassment. There might be a time where the Pereduri would be forced to speak of her contract with the Fisher, but even then she intended to hold back the truth and claim her gift was one of quickened reflexes. Lying sat ill with her but she had little choice. Foretelling contracts were strictly forbidden in the Kingdom of Malan, the High Queen’s decree punishing them by death, and one day Angharad must return home to take vengeance. The secret must keep, however dishonourable the keeping of it.

She was saved from the need to answer by the arrival of comrades-in-arms, the young blackcloaks retreating to give them privacy. Brun of Sacromonte, steady soul that he had proved to be, came to her while wiping his hatchet clean of fresh ichor. He’d not shied from fighting. Song, her long dark hair held in a plaited braid, had slung her musket on her back. She was pristine, save for a smudge of grease on her chin. Angharad wasted no time in acknowledging the truth, offering the Tianxi a deep bow.

“I owe you my life,” the Pereduri said. “I am in your debt.”

“And we are all in yours,” Song replied, shaking her head. “If you had not held on against the Saint until Captain Sfiso arrived there would be a great many more corpses on the floor.”

Angharad disagreed, for her life had been saved in the specific while she had only helped in the general sense, but she would not make an argument of it. One’s honour lay in one’s hands, not the eyes of others. She would remember the debt and repay it regardless of what Song might say.

“You have my gratitude nonetheless,” Angharad said. “I am only grieved the captain could not come sooner.”

She let an unspoken question hang there, which Brun caught easily enough. The Sacromontan smiled.

“I asked the same,” he admitted. “They tell me Captain Sfiso came so late because he was seeing to the rest of the mantics.”

Angharad’s brow rose.

“He wove Signs around the ship, a ring of wind that kept more of them from climbing aboard,” Song said. “An impressive display. He must be a member in good standing of the Akelarre Guild.”

Though most called that Circle the Navigator’s Guild, its true name was the one Song had used. But its members, known as Navigators, were in some ways the most famous of the Watch so the parlance had stuck.

“He turned the tide as soon as he appeared,” Angharad acknowledged. “Watchmen are not to be trifled with.”

Though it would have been proper to continue with some casual talk, the noblewoman made her excuses not long after. She felt exhausted to the bone and her coat was half a ruin. Making her way below she offered Celipa a nod – returned – before heading to the arsenal, where the ship’s cutter was seeing to the worst of the wounded. Near the door Isabel was catching her breath, the leather apron she wore stained with blood from her time assisting the surgeon. The infanzona saw her coming and a pleased smile tugged at her lips.

“I hear you made something of a stir upstairs,” Isabel said. “Congratulations are in order.”

“I only did my duty,” Angharad said, debating whether or not to play up humility a bit.

Perhaps not. The dark-haired beauty seemed more taken by boldness than the opposite. A gentle touch on her arm, warm through her sweat-stained shirt, jolted Angharad straight out of her exhaustion.

“You’ve ruined your coat again,” Isabel laughed.

“A casualty of war,” she solemnly replied.

“I will have my maids mend it,” Isabel told her, a teasing glint lighting up those lovely green eyes. “Though if you keep making a habit of that, I’ll start wondering if it is all a way to keep me close.”

“Entirely for your protection, of course,” Angharad smirked.

“Protection, hmm?” Isabel mused. “Is that what they call it in Peredur?”

Angharad heartbeat quickened. This was the closest either had come to acknowledging her attraction, and that Isabel did not seem put off in the slightest – she’d even brought it up! – seemed promising indeed. She cleared her throat.

“It is my duty as a peer to teach our customs to all interested,” she smoothly replied. “It would be my very great pleasure to offer… lessons.”

Isabel’s lips twitched.

“I’ll consider it,” she airily replied.

Their moment was interrupted by hoarse scream from the arsenal, Isabel flinching at the loudness.

“I must return to Doctor Balbir’s side,” she said, laying her hand on Angharad’s arm again. “Be well.”

It was an effort not to lean into to the touch, but the noblewoman mastered herself and offered a dignified nod back instead. She watched Isabel disappear past the threshold, feeling giddy as a girl. How long had it been since she’d last been so taken with another? Too long. The unrelenting pursuit of assassins had drained the joy out of her life and it could only be a victory to claw some small piece of it back. In too great a vigour for her original intention of finding a corner to sleep in, Angharad instead strode the length of the lower deck. The Cerdan brothers were seated in a corner, pointedly alone save for their valet, but Lady Ferranda was speaking with a pair of Someshwari.

Angharad joined them for a short chat, exchanging introductions and compliments. The man of the pair, rather rounded in shape and lacking in muscle, was called Ishaan and of noble birth. The other, short and shapely, was named Shalini. They had come together.

“We’ve known each other since were kids,” Shalini said, smiling like one to whom smiles came easy and often. “I couldn’t let him wander off into adventure alone.”

“She’s a much better shot,” Ishaan admitted. “There were plenty who had an eye on her talents back home.”

He looked, Angharad thought, a little guilty at that.

“Serving some dusty old raj as a showpiece champion or going into the Watch with you,” Shalini said, rolling her eyes. “What a difficult choice that was, Isha.”

Angharad shared a glance with Lady Ferranda, the two amused by the obvious affection between the pair. Making gentle sport of them would have been a pleasant way to pass the time, but the Pereduri caught sight of two men towering over another across the deck and frowned. Two Aztlan, one a bear of a man with a broken nose and the other the graceful spear-wielder she’d glimpsed above, were flanking a dark-haired man standing by some sort of cabinet. Were they taking advantage of the Watch’s distraction to break hospitality?  Making her excuses with the others, Angharad strode over briskly. All three turned to her.

“Good evening,” the noblewoman flatly said. “Does there happen to be some trouble?”

The big man scowled at her.

“Fuck off, Malani,” he said. “We’re just-”

“Be polite to our friend here, Ocotlan,” the other Aztlan interrupted. “Good evening, Lady Tredegar.”

“And to you,” Angharad reluctantly replied.

The big man had not liked being interrupted but he did not argue. He stood, Angharad thought, as if he were wary of his younger companion.

“Tupoc Xical,” the pale eyed Aztlan introduced himself, offering a hand. “Formerly of the Leopard Society.”

The noblewoman shook it, manners demanding as much, but her eyes sought out the dark-haired loner. He had the Sacromontan look about him, his scruffy dark hair and tan skin paired with deep grey eyes. He was also rather disheveled and very obviously of common birth. He met her gaze with mild curiosity and little else.

“Tristan,” he introduced himself. “A pleasure, my lady.”

“Shared,” Angharad replied, more politely than truthfully. “Am I to understand there is no argument between you gentlemen?”

“None at all,” Tupoc smiled. “I was only discussing a book with Tristan here. We seem to share an appreciation for Alvareno’s Dosages.”

“Indeed?” Angharad pressed, suspicious.

There was something familiar about the Aztlan’s polite manner.

“Master Tupoc was requesting medicine for a friend,” Tristan added. “It is my pleasure to help the brave souls that fought above.”

Suspicion lingered but the Sacromontan looked to be speaking honestly. The dark-haired man knelt to open his cabinet, revealing some sort of intricate medicine box within. Taking out two small vials, one half-full and the other empty, he palmed a fat syringe and began to extract from the full.

“You’ll need to dilute it with water,” he informed Tupoc, “else your friend Leander will fall into stupor. Two measures, preferably.”

The Aztlan nodded.

“Leander fought with us earlier,” the pale-eyed man told Angharad. “His arm was wounded when his Sign was broken by the Saint.”

Galatas, Angharad deduced, must have been the gaunt man’s surname.

“Is he not in the doctor’s care?” she asked, surprised.

“The doctor won’t be following us on the island, Malani,” the big man grunted. “Do you think the arm’s going to grow back?”

The Aztlan was leering at her most unpleasantly but she must admit he had a point.

“The stump will be tended to and cleaned, but something will be needed for the pain when we journey across the island,” Tupoc said. “You have my thanks, Tristan.”

The grey-eyed man smiled widely and happily. What a kind soul, Angharad thought. He must be a physician’s apprentice to take such joy in helping others. He did have a meticulous air to the way he moved, as if measuring every gesture.

“The honour is mine, Master Tupoc,” the Sacromontan replied, then rose to his feet.

His clothes, though clean, were shabby. The edge of his shirt was touched with ichor, a sigh he’d not been helpless in the fight.

“I should go see if the surgeon’s stocks are running low with anything,” Tristan said. “With so many wounded it is a distinct possibility.”

“Praiseworthy,” Angharad replied, impressed.

“Indeed,” Tupoc smilingly agreed.

The grey-eyed man took his leave, taking his medicine cabinet with him, and Angharad’s eyes turned to the lingering pair of Aztlans. As she had suspected, they still had business with her. One of them, anyway. The large man with the broken nose and the garish tattoos she dismissed, for all the muscle in the world would not change that he held himself with fear of Tupoc Xical. Said man, she realized after taking a longer look, seemed somehow… unnatural. His skin was without a single blemish, his face and limbs perfectly proportioned. It was as if some Tianxi artist had drawn a man rather than anything born of a woman’s womb. Yet it was the eyes that unsettled her most, pale things that they were.

“I am impressed,” Tupoc plainly said, “by the way you handled the Saint.”

“I could not have slain her without aid,” Angharad replied.

“Neither could most on this ship, blackcloaks or not,” Tupoc said. “It does not matter. The fight let me take the measure of you, Lady Tredegar, and I am pleased with what I saw.”

The noblewoman did not smile, did not thank him or answer at all. She recalled, now, why Tupoc’s pleasant demeanor felt familiar. She had known a girl, once, whose father had been a lord of the court at the feet of the High Queen. He had been smiling and polite and the soul of courtesy, the sole instance Angharad met him, yet somehow she had known that his smile would not waver even if he had to order the death of everyone in the room. Tupoc was the same, measuring those around him for usefulness and dismissing those that were not. Cold eyes, cold blood, Angharad thought. She knew a snake when she saw one and Tupoc Xical was only biding his time until the bite.

“I have been gathering comrades for the trials,” the Aztlan elaborated, impatient of her silence. “Leander fought in part to prove worthy of this company, which I intend to be without dead weight. I would be pleased to have you join our number, Lady Tredegar.”

“I thank you,” Angharad said, “but I have already found companions.”

“The infanzones have already lost one of their sworn swords,” Tupoc told her, “and they will find the trials more perilous than they think. I urge you to reconsider.”

Angharad met the man’s pale eyes, face a blank mask. She thought of the sound her blade had made, near the docks, when it had opened the redcloak’s throat. Of the wet, dying gurgle that’d hissed out. She held the death close in her mind and then smiled.

“I thank you,” Angharad evenly repeated, “but I have already found companions.”

Tupoc drew back half an inch before stopping himself. Pleasantness fell from his face in patches, like cheap cosmetics in sweat, and he gave her a long look.

“Unfortunate,” Tupoc Xical finally said. “I will not make this offer again.”

He inclined his head politely.

“We will meet again, Lady Tredegar.”

“Of that,” Angharad softly replied, “I have no doubt.”

She watched the pair leave, and when exhaustion began to creep back decided that she would have to find somewhere with her back to the wall to sleep. She had a feeling a knife might just sprout there otherwise.

—

The last leg of the trip to the island of Vieja Perdida, also known as the Dominion of Lost Things, was not restful.

The Watch crew cleared out the last of the mantics hiding in the hold before summary repairs were made and sails raised again. The Bluebell was limping where it had once run but they were assured by the captain that it would only make a difference of hours and they would not be greatly hampered in their taking of the trials. Angharad shared her misgivings about Tupoc Xical with her fellow nobles and found them taken seriously even by the Cerdan brothers, who had somewhat warmed to her since the fighting. They were not unaware that their reputation had sunk in the aftermath and were taking pains to be polite, though sometimes their unpleasantness still slipped out.

The infanzones sought out helpers of their own, among which Angharad was pleased to count Tristan. A physician, even a middling one, would be of great help on the island. She herself did not have much time of her own, as her actions against the Saint had lent her a degree of fame and her company was in high demand – which seemed to please Isabel, who often sat with her as she entertained other passengers and took a long walk with her on the deck. A watchman approached them at the end of the last, the sailor informing them that they were soon to be in sight of the Dominion.

“I must see to my affairs, then,” Isabel mused. “Angharad?”

“Go ahead,” she replied. “I want a look at this island before we touch the shore.”

“How quickly you leave me,” Isabel pouted, but it was nothing but teasing.

The Pereduri leaned against the railing, her mended coat making the cool wind nothing but pleasant as she settled in to wait. Her solitude was not to last, however, as she was approached by another passenger. Another woman, Aztlan and no older than twenty. Pretty, Angharad thought, with full lips and dark eyes.

“You must be the woman of the hour,” she smiled, offering her hand. “I am Yaretzi.”

“Lady Angharad Tredegar,” she replied, taking it.

The other woman’s grip was firm and lingering.

“I could not resist introducing myself, after hearing so much of your valour against the Saint,” Yaretzi said.

The talk that followed was light and pleasant. Angharad had never been one to disdain the admiration of a beautiful woman, especially one whose eyes were appraising her so frankly, but she knew she must cut this short. Setting her cap at another taking the trials was already somewhat foolish, but indulging in a flirtation with a second? That was courting trouble. Besides, what if Isabel saw and misunderstood? No, best cut this short indeed. Angharad was fairly sure, from the way Yaretzi was staying so close and batting her eyes so coquettishly, that she was not misreading friendliness as interest.

“I am told we are soon to arrive at the Dominion,” Angharad slid into a lull of the conversation. “We should see to our affairs before then, I think.”

“Of course,” Yaretiz agreed. “We shall talk later, I think.”

The Aztlan woman smiled rather flirtatiously, offering a slight bow.

“Should circumstances allow,” Angharad mildly replied.

Her solitude was returned to her just in time, for it was moments later that she first caught sight of the Dominion of Lost Things. The island was startling large, and though its hulking dark shape was touched with but little light – specks that must be the Watch fortress and the docks – she could make out its silhouette. Lowlands leading up to a handful of slender mountains, thick woods peeking out on the sides. How long would it take to cross from one end to the other? At least a week, she thought. More intriguing were the hard angles she glimpsed jutting out of the plains and peaks, manmade structures. There must have been old ruins. Angharad stayed on the deck, eyes peeled on the island, until the Bluebell was close enough to signal the docks with lantern lights. Her fate awaited her on those shores and she would not fail to meet it.

—

The stench was heavy on the wind.

Before they even docked, before ropes were thrown and the cog secured in that ragged harbour, Angharad knew what it was she was smelling. But she fought it all the way, trying to wrestle the knowledge down so it would disappear in some dark corner and never be seen again. The first thing she saw as she followed the others out onto the docks was the fires. A dozen of them, large as could be and burning bright. The smoke was thick and cloying, rising in tall columns as blackcloaks fed the flames with logs and charcoal. No one came to greet them as they crept out, the group hesitating for the absence, and the Bluebell’s crew were of no help: they were busy unloading crates and had no time to spare for this sort of business.

“There should be others here,” Augusto Cerdan frowned. “We are the second ship and the smaller one. Has the first wave already gone ahead and begun the trial?”

They have, Angharad thought. Sleeping God, they have. She knew the smell, the memory enough for sweat to trickle down her back as she remembered the screams. The bright bonfire of everything and everyone she loved disappearing into smoke.

“We must ask,” Isabel firmly said.

Before anyone could protest she peeled ahead, maids trailing in her wake, and approached a bearded old man in a black cloak who was shovelling coal into a fire. She smiled sweetly at the watchman, curtsying as she gave her greetings. Amused, the blackcloak paused in his work.

“The captain’ll be here to speak to you in a bit,” he said. “Don’t you worry your pretty little heads.”

“That is good to know,” Isabel said. “But may I ask where those who came with the first ship have gone?”

The old blackcloak laughed, then pointed his shovel at the sprawl of fires.

“You’re looking at them, girl.”

And Angharad finally looked horror in the eye. Allowed her gaze to stray among the flames where she made out limbs, the twisted shapes of broken and mutilated bodies. Faintly she heard the echo of screams long gone silent as the ghost of Llanw Hall burned on the wind.

“It’s a bad year,” the blackcloak shrugged. “All forty died on the first day.”

Tristan needed a way in.

The infanzones had claimed a corner of the hold and were entertaining the sole foreigner they’d decided was worth their time, mere feet away but far beyond his reach. The thief did have to admit the Malani they’d picked was a fearsome specimen, with two inches of height on him and a build hinting she could handle that saber she was dragging around. Unlike the noblewoman he was unlikely to get invited for refreshments, however, so he’d have to find another angle. Fortunately one was there for the taking: the infanzones had brought attendants with them. Six people in all, and one would be his key.

The soldiers, as soldiers did, went to dice the moment their masters ceased paying attention. Even the grim-faced Malani huntsman in Villazur service went, joining a tall man in Ruesta colours and the man Tristan would kill before this was all over: Cozme Aflor, thrice accursed and may the fucking devils of Pandemonium eat him whole. There had already been a game going near the mass of crates in the back of the hold, so after the soldiers joined Tristan simply did the same. The welcome was lukewarm until he flashed some coppers, which were in short supply. Most were playing for buttons or trinkets.

“We’re playing Augur,” a dark-haired woman enthusiastically told him. “No matches, Sacromonte rules.”

“Which are nonsense,” a scarred Malani complained. “Why would the Lovers’ Stars make you lose?”

Considering most the circle was Sacromontans, she won herself a few unfriendly stares with that.

“We call them the Rat King’s eyes,” Cozme smiled, stroking his beard. “He is not a god whose attentions are kind.”

Tristan smirked. It was an old legend that the Rat King had been but a pack of rats, once, but that they had devoured one of the Manes – those great pristine gods so beloved of the infanzones – and become a deity even those old things feared. There were a thousand gods worshipped and bargained with in the mud of the Murk, but few as beloved as the Rat King. He was as a patron to the lost and beggared, those who dwelled in shadow and filth. Not the kind of god that would look well upon the likes of Cozme Aflor.

“It’s the usual way,” the same dark-haired woman insisted. “Play or leave.”

The grizzled Malani sighed but picked up the dice, dropping them in a wooden cup before shaking it. Tristan had played Augur before, it was the simplest of dicing games, and so he was not afraid of losing too badly. He was not here to win anyhow. Betting low, he made sure to stay in the game as the dicers began to chat. The pushy dark-haired one who’d lit up at the sight of his coppers was called Aines, and now he recognized her from earlier. She was the woman married to the dust addict. Said man was napping, which spared him the sight of his wife losing badly at Augur.

Gods but Tristan had never seen someone so genuinely terrible at a game of chance.

He was grateful for it, as her emptying pile of buttons loosened tongues. Winning always put folk in a fine mood. Information slowly trickled in. The huntsman come with the Villazur was named Sanale, though he spoke little save when the other Malani addressed him in some foreign tongue. Tristan knew a little Umoya, but whatever they spoke only seemed to have so much in common with the best known tongue out of the Isles. Inyoni, the older woman with the scars who’d complained about the rules earlier, was a great deal chattier in everyone’s shared Antigua. The thief asked casually about the other two Malani she’d come with earlier in the day, soon surprised at easily getting an answer he’d figured he would have to finesse out.

“The boy’s my nephew,” Inyoni said. “I’m coming along to keep an eye on him.”

“Family is the most important thing,” Aines agreed.

The man in Ruesta colours rolled his eyes at them. This one was called Recardo, and though he was not as large as the Aztlan legbreaker it was a close thing. Closely shaved, he had the kind of well-proportioned face that Tristan knew was considered handsome. He was also, to put it in a single word, a shit.

“Women’s talk,” Recardo mocked before pushing a copper on a bet below four.

Aines bet two buttons on above nine, solid odds she had somehow already lost thrice on.

“There’s no need for rudeness,” Cozme drawled, pushing his own bet on eight precise.

He liked to look like a good man, Cozme Aflor. Tristan had been young but he remembered that much. The others on the List had been demanding, often rude, but Cozme had always been kind with his father. Told him with a smile that it would be over soon, that he just needed to get through it. He’d still had that same smile on his face when pulling the trigger. The thief’s gaze must have lingered, for the bearded man glanced at him curiously. There was not a speck of recognition on the Cozme’s face, not that he had expected one. He’d been but a child when they last met. Tristan smiled, burying his hatred deep.

“What is it like, working for infanzones?” the thief asked, feigning fascination.

Cozme did not hide his smugness.

“Exhausting, but rewarding in its own way,” he claimed. “Though in truth I serve not the brothers but one of their uncles, so they must listen to me in all things.”

Tristan doubted that very much but nodded as if admiring. Recardo, who’d been listening to them, laughed.

“The perks are shit when working for the Cerdan,” the big man said. “Now me? I get to look over Lady Isabel and her pretty little maids, there’s a real prize.”

It was not the first time tonight he mentioned the maids, which he seemed to be laying claim on to an entirely disinterested audience. The huntsman Sanale eyed the other man, then muttered something to the other Malani. Tristan smothered a smile when he recognized the words in Umoya, which translated to something like ‘crow-meat’. A grinning Inyoni rolled the dice, a three and five. Aines cursed disbelievingly, Cozme smirking as he claimed the pot. Recardo looked none to pleased at having lost, his coppers thinning.

“We ought to get the valet in there,” the big man said. “Go get him, Cozme.”

“Gascon attending to the brothers is why I can sit here in peace,” the bearded man replied, shaking his head. “Besides, he’s not as bad with money as you think.”

And like that Tristan had what he wanted: names and faces for all six attendants. Recardo seemed like the kind of man that would be easy to get talking when plied with liquor and flattery, but entirely too unreliable to be used. Neither Sanale nor Cozme could be his key either. The Malani was quiet and distant while Tristan was not sure how well he’d be able to hide his hatred if he spent too long around the other man. That left the personal servants. Since the Cerdan valet was even now polishing the boots of the brothers, Tristan’s gaze moved to the Ruesta handmaids. It’d have to be one of them.

Now he just needed to get rid of one last problem.

“Four radizes on below five,” Fortuna demanded in his ear, draped over his shoulder. “This one’s a win, I can feel it in my bones.”

Tristan grimaced. He could not risk even a whisper, not so close to so many people. Irksome when he was itching to point that she did not, in fact, have bones.

“Come on,” Fortuna insisted. “When have I ever steered you wrong?”

Every single time he’d gambled, he silently replied. He put two coppers on six exact instead.

“Wait, no, you’re right,” she muttered. “This is better. All in, Tristan. Bet everything.”

Fortuna, as befitting of the Lady of Long Odds, only had two stratagems in games of chance: doubling down or going all in. He ignored her, which proved warranted when a moment later two fives were rolled and he lost his coppers. He then used the loss as a pretext for retreat, forcing himself to ignore Fortuna’s indignant howling.

“We had them, Tristan,” the goddess bellowed. “Our luck was turning around, I’m sure of it. We just needed to keep at it a little longer.”

Abuela had taught him that gods always craved something. It was in their nature: they were aether given face through mankind’s touch, leaving them with hungers that they could only satisfy through men. It was what gods got from contracts, a way to sate those hungers, and the same reason that if he listened to Fortuna he would bet on bad dice until he was destitute. It was that one in a hundred thousand victory she craved, the Long Odds come true. To her losing a thousand times for that single unlikely win would be nothing more than suffering through overcooked greens to get at a juicy side of pork.

“We’ll try again later,” Tristan murmured, pretending to be brushing his knee so he could hide his mouth.

“You always say that,” Fortuna pouted, “but then we never do.”

She was pouting, so the storm had passed. She’d stay snippy about it for a bit then before the turn of the hour entirely forget. With that seen to, he turned his attention back to the handmaids. Both were near their mistress, who was playing at court with the other nobles and ignoring them so long as she did not need anything fetched. One, a short dark-haired woman whose name he had learned was Beatris, was finishing up mending a coat with needle and thread. The other, a redhead whose name was Briceida – information obtained through Recardo’s boasting he would get her in bed – was paging through a book with a bored look. Tristan got closer but not enough to earn more than an indifferent glance from either, waiting for an opportunity.

It came when Beatris began to put away her needle in a neat box, a sight he answered by immediately borrowing luck.

The ticking began in the back of his mind, a clock’s moving gears, and a heartbeat later the box slipped through the maid’s hands. Needles and threads spilled all over the floor, the woman letting out a horrified gasp, and even as he rose to help her Tristan released the luck he’d borrowed. Fortune snapped back, lightly so for the lightness of what he’d taken, but it returned with unerring aim. A wooden bobbin rolled under his foot and he slipped with a started yelp, falling forward. Tristan landed on his knees, only a hand keeping his face off the bottom of the hold, and did his best to ignore Fortuna’s hysterical laughter.

“Sweet Manes, are you alright?”

Sighing, the thief looked up at Beatris’ face – she was trying to hide her amusement but failing – and dragged himself back up.

“Nothing was wounded save my pride,” he wryly replied. “Would you like a hand?”

“That is kind of you to offer,” the maid said, sounding surprised. “It would be appreciated.”

The threads had rolled away in every direction and needles were hard to pick out in the gloom of the hold, so it was genuine work to get them back. The other maid ignored them as they scuttled about, at first, until finally she closed her book with a loud sigh and got up. Brushing back red curls, she bent and picked up a single bobbin of blue thread as Beatris was reaching out for it. It was dropped into the box almost contemptuously before Briceida turned a sneer on the both of them.

“Careful the vagrant doesn’t pocket some of Lady Isabel’s things, Beatris,” the redhead said, then her lips quirked cruelly. “Though maybe he’ll cut you in so you can finally afford a decent dress.”

“I’ll take responsibility if there is a mishap, Briceida,” Beatris curtly replied.

“Drop things less, then,” Briceida advised. “Your breeding is showing.”

And on that parting shot she flounced away, leaving dark-haired Beatris struggling not look furious. It passed after a moment and the maid turned an apologetic look on the thief.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“What for?” Tristan snorted. “She seems a horrid bitch.”

A gamble, but he liked his odds. Beatris’ mouth closed but she was not quite able to silence the laugh startling its way out of her throat. Under Tristan’s smiling gaze the maid convulsed a few times, then erupted into giggles.

“She really is,” Beatris admitted. “You’d think she were a king’s daughter instead of a drapier’s.”

Ah, Tristan thought. So it was like that. Drapiers were wealthy men and the pressing reason one’s daughter would be serving as handmaid to a lady was so she might use that foothold in noble circles to marry up. Meaning Briceida was a maid only until she found better, while Beatris would be a servant for life. Their status – and treatment – would be starkly different. Good for him, though. An enemy, especially a common one, would make it easier to forge ties.

“My sympathies,” the thief told her, finding he meant it.

The dark-eyed maid looked up at him for a moment, then hummed. Bringing her hand to the side of her dress as if to straighten it, she discreetly curled her fore and middle fingers. The thief hid his surprise at the sight of the Mark of the Rat being made, pretending to scratch at his sideburns while returning it. Beatris smiled.

“Had a feeling you might be,” she said.

“Born in Feria,” he told her.

Feria District was of the nicer parts of the Murk. He’d not stayed there – without his father, there had been no affording the rent set by the Cerdan – but telling Beatris he’d cut his teeth in rougher places like Araturo and Cayerar would do him no favours. The dark-haired maid’s smiled grew more genuine.

“I am as well,” she told him. “The north end, near Araturo.”

“East for me, around Weeper’s avenue,” he shared.

She looked impressed, though she should not have been.

“Before they prettied it up,” he clarified.

These last few years the noble House of Cerdan had cleaned up some of the many streets they owned in Feria. Mostly so they could raise the rents, throwing out the old tenants and replacing them with wealthier migrants that couldn’t find rooms in the ever-overcrowded Quays. A lucrative racket, by all reports.

“Figures,” Beatris drily said, eyeing him up and down.

He grinned back. Tristan was cleaner than most, for a dirty thief would not be allowed into anywhere worth robbing, but he still had filth under his fingernails. He’d not bathed in a few days even if his clothes were clean. Not so for the maid, who even smelled faintly of lilac. Before he could tease her about that, an interruption bowled them over. Lady Isabel Ruesta was barely taller than Beatris and just as dark-haired, but she was hard to mistake for the other. The infanzon had an indolence about her particular to those that’d never done a day’s work in their life.  

“It was lovely of you to help Beatris,” the Ruesta told him, smiling and laying a hand on his wrist. “May I have your name, sir?”

It was an effort not to allow distaste to show on his face.

“Tristan,” the thief smiled back. “It is my honour to meet you, Lady Ruesta.”

The infanzon tittered.

“Call me Lady Isabel,” she insisted. “It is the least I can do for someone who so gallantly helped my maid.”

She shot Beatris a look of condescending fondness.

“She is not usually so clumsy, I swear to you.”

Beatris bent her head before her mistress, murmuring apologies that were airily dismissed. Practice kept Tristan’s smile from growing visibly stiff.

“It must be the ship,” the thief said. “Journeys have their difficulties.”

The noble brat nodded.

“Too true,” she said, smile brightening. “Yet they are so very exciting!”

She patted his arm again.

“I do hope to see more of you, Tristan,” the Ruesta said. “We shall talk again.”

She flounced off as suddenly as she had flounced in, returning to her nest of nobles. The grey-eyed thief waited until she was settled to turn to Beatris and roll his eyes.

“Would it be rude,” he said, “to offer my sympathies twice?”

The dark-haired maid blinked, then turned an intense gaze on him.

“No,” she slowly said. “But you mean-”

Beatris hesitated.

“Did you not find her charming?”

“The opposite,” Tristan frankly replied.

Beatris’ face twisted in surprise, to his own. She bit her lip.

“Forgive me for the indiscretion,” the maid said. “But are you perhaps…”

She gestured vaguely, but the meaning itself was clear enough. It was not particularly polite to ask strangers if they were homosexual, however, so he cocked an eyebrow.

“Why would that matter?”

Beatris bit her lip again, then leaned closer.

“She has a contract,” the dark-eyed maid whispered. “I don’t know the terms, but it seems to charm people – only those that are attracted to her, though, at least I think.”

The thief felt sick at the realization that the fucking infanzon had been turning a contract on him the entire time she was pretending to play nice, jaw clenching. It couldn’t give her too much control over others, he knew, else she would be in breach of the Iscariot Accords and the Watch would have purged the entire Ruesta family. Yet the thought that she had been seeking to influence his mind was still nauseating. He hid his anger, lest someone notice it, but there had been no avoiding the maid’s eyes. It’d be safer to concede an answer to keep her on side, he decided.

“I do not deal in attraction,” Tristan told her. “Not physical, at least.”

“Asexual?” Beatris asked.

He shrugged. The thief had never much cared to put a name to his inclinations – or lack thereof – but he supposed it fit well enough. He’d caught feelings once or twice over the years, but it had not changed his distaste for sex. For all that he’d remained vague, Beatris significantly warmed to him after. Was she truly so desperate for company that would not be charmed by her despicable mistress? It must be so, for as the two of them sat near the nobles’ travelling trunks the dark-haired woman gossiped away at him with great eagerness. Tristan swallowed a smile of triumph when the talk turned to the infanzones.

“She’s been stringing along the Cerdan brothers for about a year now,” Beatris noted. “Making them fight for her attention, knowing they want her hand in marriage to settle their inheritance dispute.”

“The brothers are at odds?” Tristan casually asked.

“Hate each other, more like,” Beatris snorted. “The only reason they’re taking the trials is to chase Lady Isabel. If it weren’t for Cozme Aflor coming along to keep them in line, I’d be worried about them trying to bump each other off.”

“He was boasting about them having to listen to him earlier,” the thief shared.

“He’s full of shit,” the maid replied. “I talked with the maids of a Cerdan cousin when Lady Isabel last called on Lord Augusto and they told me word in the house is that he’s being sent as punishment. He used to be in high favour but botched some kind of affair with House Ragoza.”

“He’s here to make sure they both come back,” Tristan surmised.

“The poor bastard,” Beatris agreed. “It’s cruel to play with them so, but I can understand why the lady doesn’t want to marry them. Remund was a real bastard even before he got his contract, but the talk since he got it is worse.”

He cocked his head to the side.

“Apparently he trains using it on servants,” she murmured. “Some sort of light he can make shackles with, but it burns the skin. One showed me marks.”

How was it, Tristan wondered, that even knowing they were monstrous he was still angered at hearing of the petty cruelty of Cerdans?

“And the elder brother’s as bad?” he asked.

“I still have family in Feria,” Beatris said, “and they passed on rumours. He was placed in charge of the Cerdan properties there a few years back, rents and such, and he’s got a… reputation.”

The implication there was an ugly one. Tristan wished it was the first time he had heard it spoken, or that it had even the slightest chance of being the last.

“How bad?”

“It’s said he doesn’t force the girls into bed,” the maid admitted. “But he’ll hold off on collecting a debt or a rent if he’s kept company.”

Kept company. What a gentle way to put it. They were both children of the Murk, so they knew well that in life some choices were not really choices at all.

“Pieces of work,” Tristan said, the hatred in his voice old and lovingly tended to. “I’m almost rooting for Ruesta to make them bare knives.”

“She won’t,” Beatris said, shaking her head. “For the same reason I know she won’t marry either: she’s keeping her reputation pristine so she can get the husband she does want. An older cousin on her mother’s side, from a branch of the Livares.”

Tristan’s brow rose. The House of Livares was one of the founding families of Sacramonte. Isabel Ruesta did not lack for ambition, to seek marriage into even one of the lesser branches.

“She’ll need more than contract to win that,” he opined.

Beatris nodded.

“It’s why she decided to take the trials,” the maid said. “The cousin is taking them as well, gone over on the first ship. She’ll be pursuing him throughout the whole mess.”

“While playing with the Cerdans the whole time,” Tristan muttered. “Infanzones. Like it won’t be dangerous enough already.”

“She’ll pick up a few others to toy with,” Beatris predicted. “Already she’s sunk her hooks into that poor Malani girl.”

“The one with the saber?”

“That’s the one. Some kind of fallen noble from the Isles, I think,” the maid shrugged. “Already smitten and getting used to prick the brothers.”

“At least she looks like she can handle a blade,” Tristan said. “Another sword arm can’t hurt on the Dominion of Lost Things.”

“I suppose,” she doubtfully replied.

“Though I expect you’d be safer than most without,” the thief said, tone carefully idle. “I’d be surprised if the infanzones hadn’t made a pact to share their soldiers.”

He hoped not, for it would complicate getting at Cozme and the Cerdans, but that was not the way of the world. Nobles always closed rank, hid each other’s vileness.

“All but Lady Villazur,” Beatris absent-mindedly confirmed. “She’s been putting off answering. But safety is a… relative thing.”

The dark-haired maid turned an anxious but hopeful look on him. Tristan had been asked enough favours by the more desperate than he to recognize when someone was about to do it.

“I saw you dicing earlier,” Beatris said. “Did you perhaps chat with a man named Recardo?”

The large Ruesta soldier, Tristan thought. The same who’d been warning everyone off Lady Isabel’s two maids, since he had a ‘claim’ on them.

“You came up,” the thief said, not beating around the bush. “He seemed very certain his advances would be accepted.”

“I’m worried,” the dark-eyed maid quietly said, “that he’s certain because he won’t care if I am accepting.”

Tristan stilled.

“You are a lady’s handmaid,” he slowly said.

“I’m not a drapier’s daughter, Tristan,” Beatris tiredly replied. “He wouldn’t dare on Ruesta grounds, but out here? I’m just some girl plucked out of the Murk because I resembled Lady Isabel when we were children. So long as he does it out of sight…”

She must have been body double as well as a handmaid, he thought. Only now Beatris was shorter and broader than Isabel Ruesta, so her value had taken a sharp dive: the two resembled each other no more than any other pair of dark-haired women close in age.

“So you’re looking to make friends,” he said.

“I can be useful to you too,” Beatris firmly retorted. “I already proved it with all the things I’ve been telling you, haven’t I? Besides, I’m a way for you to get in with their group and that’s exactly why you’ve been sniffing around.”

He eyed the maid, a smile tugging at his lips unbidden.

“A proper rat you are,” Tristan praised. “Name your terms.”

She straightened her back.

“Keep an eye out for me when he’s prowling,” the maid said. “If I’m sent out alone, make an excuse to follow. I don’t expect you to win a fight against a soldier, but if you just delay him long enough I can run…”

Then she could get back to the others and make a ruckus. Lady Isabel would have to act if confronted with such a situation, else she would lose all honour and her reputation would be ruined. Who would serve a noble that did not protect her own handmaids? Still, more likely Beatris was betting on Recardo not being willing to take the risk of trying anything if there was a witness given the consequences of getting caught. A practical solution. Only he needed a little more from her.

“I’ve made another friend,” Tristan said. “A former soldier. I want him to be invited as well.”

The maid hesitated.

“It’s to your advantage as well,” he pressed. “Two of us watching out for you, one more pair of hands if Recardo tries his luck – and a pair trained in fighting at that.”

The promise of someone that might be able to handle the large Ruesta soldier in a fight was what tipped the decision, Tristan decided as he watched her. The dark-haired maid nodded, first with hesitation but then briskly the second time.

“They’ll start looking around for people to grow their numbers tomorrow,” Beatris said. “I attended to Lady Isabel this morning while they discussed it. I’ll make sure you and your friend get in.”

“Then we have a bargain,” Tristan replied. “On my oath, may a hundred gods bite me should I break it.”

Beatris returned the promise in kind. It was said that in ancient times the great sages of Liergan had known how to make such oaths binding, but even if the tale was true the words had long outlived the learning. Now it was simple ceremony. Before they parted ways, Tristan lightly laid a hand on her arm to stop her.

“I have a wonder,” he said.

“Yes?”

“If a great misfortune was to strike Recardo,” Tristan asked with the softness of a feather, “would you then also consider our bargain upheld?”

Beatris breathed in sharply, dark eyes searching his face. She hesitated for a long moment, only for her back to straighten again.

“The hungry bite, the beggared snatch,” she softly quoted back.

The cornered fight, Tristan finished. So went the Law of Rats, and though they might have left the Murk the Murk had not left them. She did not need to speak the word for him to hear the agreement. Nodding his understanding, he bade her a silent farewell. Closing his eyes as he listened to her footsteps moving away, Tristan made himself go over the conversation again. He had made no obvious mistakes or betrayed his interest in seeing half the infanzones aboard dead, he decided. A victory then, however uneasy it made him. He would have to ponder a way to get rid of Recardo if the opportunity came.

The pact between the nobles to share their soldiers meant killing the man would be useful anyhow.

Now he only needed to sell the bargain he’d struck to Yong, on whose behalf he had also bargained, but he did not anticipate conflict there. The soldier had plainly told him he sought only to get to the third trial, nothing else mattering to him. Using the infanzones for safety, at least for a time, would be a boon. The Tianxi was laying slumped in a corner and reeking of booze when Tristan found him, but his eyes were open and he was studying the lay of the hold.

“Alliances are forming,” Yong said, tone slurring. “Look.”

The thief sat before following the pointed finger, wrinkling his nose at the smell of liquor. His ally, however drunk, was correct. Groups were forming. The first around that disturbingly perfect-looking Aztlan that came recommended. The large legbreaker from the Menor Mano was sitting with him, as was the pair from Asphodel: both the young noble with acne and the gaunt exhausted man Tristan had been warned about. Leander Galatas, here on recommendation by the Navigator’s Guild and might hold knowledge of Signs. The twins were eyeing them up as well, visibly considering tying themselves to that crew even as they spoke with the Aztlan woman he knew nothing about.

On the opposite end of the hold another alliance was coming together, looking a lot more convivial. The two younger Malani that Inyoni was keeping an eye one were chatting with the pair of Ramayans that’d also come together, the lot of them all close in age and well-dressed. Inyoni’s nephew looked nervous, always looking around as if expecting to be jumped, but all four were armed and even the chubby-cheeked Ramayan boy looked like he knew how to handle his pistol. With a veteran like Inyoni behind them, they would be a crew to reckon with. Three forces, Tristan mused. The infanzones and their attendants, Tupoc Xical with his recruits and this band of five.

The rest, he suspected, would be leftovers. The oldest two on the boat were seated close but not talking and no one had approached them. Meanwhile the married couple was arguing in a low voice and Marzela… where was Marzela? Probably hiding in some corner. Looking for Brun, Tristan was unsurprised to see the man Fortuna had warned him about landing on his feet. He was chatting with a flattered-looking Briceida, not a trace of sneer on the redhead maid’s face. That left only the Raseni whose name he had never learned and the well-armed Tianxi recommended by the Rookery, the two of them talking when he glanced their way.

A conversation soon ended, though, and they went different ways.

“Did you get anything out of the maid?” Yong asked.

“A bargain,” Tristan murmured. “We watch her back against the Ruesta guard and she gets us in with the infanzones.”

The Tianxi solider let out a whistle that was a little too loud, drawing eyes to them. Tristan pushed down a squirm of discomfort.

“Good work,” Yong praised. “I was thinking we’d have to work our way in with Tupoc’s crew but the nobles are a better horse to ride.”

“He approached you?” Tristan asked.

“Came around,” the drunk said. “But he’s gathering killers and I don’t want to be one of them unless I know why.”

The thief grunted in agreement.

“He’s not the only one that got curious,” Yong continued. “The Raseni’s been keeping an eye on you all afternoon.”

Tristan forced himself not to look at her and give the game away.

“She speak to anyone so far?”

“That Tianxi girl that walks like she’s done Republic drills,” the soldier began to list. “Brun, that terrified girl you rubbed elbows with. Oh, and the Ramayan gunslinger – but only before the pair started cozying up with the Malani.”

Looking for allies? If so, she was not doing well. The thief glanced her way and found she was standing alone. It was hard to tell anything about her, given the way Raseni dressed whenever they left their city-state. The woman wore a grey dress that went down to knee-high boots, embroidered leather gloves and layered grey veils that reached halfway down her torso and were kept in place by a painted wooden circle atop her head. The only opening was for the eyes, a dull copper mask carefully worn there to keep everything covered except the eyeholes.

It was said the folk of Rasen thought their island the only untainted land in all of Vesper, hiding their bodies outside it so they would not lead evil back to their home. All Tristan could tell about the Raseni was that she was about of height with him, tall for a woman, and that those gloves and boots were worn from use. The boots in particular were – the thief stilled.

“Yong,” he murmured. “Look at the Raseni’s boots.”

“They do look comfortable,” the Tianxi agreeably replied

“What colour would you say the stitches are?”

The soldier shot him a strange look.

“Dark blue?” he finally said, shrugging.

So they were. Tristan had not met many Raseni, but back when he’d run messages for a Roja frontman near the docks he’d learned a few things about them. Like the way they never wore anything blue below the belt, since it drew the attention of evil gods. There was no way a Raseni religious enough to observe full veiling would not know that. Which means I’m not looking at a Raseni. Hitching himself up, the thief brushed his trousers clean before walking away from a baffled Yong. Unhurried, Tristan crossed the hold until he reached the false Raseni and leaned against the wall to her left.

“I do not believe,” the stranger said, “that we have been introduced.”

No accent. Her Antigua had that cadence to it common to those who’d learned the language late, but nothing about the way she spoke hinted about where she was from. It was, he mused, an aggressively unaccented way of speaking and so almost certainly practiced. He didn’t immediately reply, instead leaning his head back against the wall. When he finally spoke, his tone was barely above a whisper.

“I am trying to think,” the thief said, “of a reason for why you’d pick Rasen of all places as way to hide your identity. I can’t seem to find one.”

He looked up at the ceiling, the play of shadows lined by the lantern lights.

“In Old Saraya masks are worn by certain trades,” he said, “and surely hair dye would have been easier than going around in a full Raseni veiling if you only sought to hide your identity.”

“Are you accusing me of something?”

“You’re wearing blue under the belt,” Tristan plainly said. “Raseni do not.”

“Not unless we have been exiled,” she replied.

A tense moment passed.

“Did you think I’d buy that?” he curiously asked.

A sigh, then she shuffled on her feet.

“I should have sprung for the boots without stitches,” she muttered.

He hummed. Her eyes were blue, he glimpsed through the slits of the copper mask.

“You’re not going to introduce yourself?” she asked.

“You’ve kept an eye on me all day,” the thief said. “You already know my name.”

A guess, but one he liked his odds on. She did not deny it.

“So the Tianxi’s your ally,” the stranger said. “Thought as much.”

“You had to be looking close to notice that,” he said. “What is it you’ve been looking at us for?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” she lightly replied. “Besides, that’s ahead of us. Here and now I would like to offer you a deal.”

He cocked his head to the side.

“Your silence,” the veiled woman offered, “for knowledge that might save your life.”

Tristan eyed her searchingly but there was no face to read, only dull copper and cloth. It might end up useful leverage to out her as an impostor, he considered, but it was not certain. Most here did not have a reason to care. Better to get something certain than hold on to something he might never use. And if she told him something useless? Then he would still have learned something, only about her.

“Agreed,” he replied.

“The noblewoman picked up by the infanzones,” the stranger said, “has ten silver lines tattooed on her left arm.”

“So she’s a Malani swordmistress,” Tristan frowned.

They were dangerous folk, he’d heard, feared even by the bloodthirsty champions of Aztlan warrior societies.

“No,” the woman said. “It’s on the wrong arm, in the wrong colour. She’s a Pereduri mirror-dancer.”

Wasn’t Peredur part of the Kingdom of Malan? One of the islands.

“There’s a difference, I take it,” the thief said.

“Swordmasters gain their lines in honour duels. Bloody fights, but deaths aren’t common. On the High Isle, to win a line you’re taken to the shore on a specific day of the year.”

“To duel?”

“In a manner of speaking,” she said. “There’s a kind of lemure there called grey mirrors. They prey on lone travellers and fishermen, taking their form and then eating the body to gain some of its memories.”

Tristan’s disbelieving gaze, against his will, went to the noblewoman they were talking about. Blissfully unaware of the attention, she was telling a story to the Villazur.

“You can’t be serious.”

“They wait until the mirror takes the form of the one trying for the line,” the stranger evenly said, “then toss it a sword of its own, for fairness. They win or die, facing themselves year after year.”

If the Mala- the Pereduri could only take such a trial once a year and she had ten stripes, she must have begun when she was still a child. Ten, eleven? Young.

“Don’t ever face that woman sword in hand,” the stranger warned, “unless you are looking to die.”

That was knowledge well worth a secret kept, and Tristan did not hide his appreciation. He’d come out ahead in this bargain, perhaps even a little too much. Best to even the scales, lest he be in the stranger’s debt.

“The Ruesta girl has a contract that charms others,” he murmured. “Though there are restrictions.”

The veiled woman stayed a silent for a moment.

“That,” she finally said, “could be trouble.”

It was obvious enough he did not bother to voice agreement. Besides, he’d got what he came here for and more. It was time to take his leave.

“Since you have my name,” Tristan said, “it would only be fair for me to receive yours.”

She shot him a considering look, as if debating what she would use.

“Sarai.”

“It’s been worthwhile, Sarai,” he said, inclining his head.

“So it has,” she agreed. “We’ll speak again on the island.”

Surprisingly, he found himself looking forward to it. He’d barely taken a step away from the veiled woman when he heard a gunshot, body tensing as he went for his knife. He realized a moment later that it had come from the decks above, though he’d not been the only one alarmed: there were several others on their feet and just as wary. A second later another shot sounded, then what had to be a dozen more. They did not stop.

“We’re under attack,” Cozme Aflor shouted. “Arm yourselves!”

Pirates? Surely not, for what kind of a fool would attack a Watch ship when they carried few goods and were certain to be full of soldiers? Even as the travellers of the hold went for their weapons, Tristan’s gaze swept through them again as instinct had him counting the heads. Shit, the thief thought. Marzela was still missing. The same terrified girl he was certain had been drawing on her contract compulsively since coming onboard. A sinking feeling in his stomach, Tristan brushed past the pair of Ramayans and climbed atop one of the crates in the back. He heard a man’s voice laughing, asking if he was going to hide, but he ignored it as he crawled forward.

The back of the hold was a tightly packed mass of crates, but over one’s edge Tristan saw some sort of cloth peeking out. Cursing again he crawled closer, seeing then it was not cloth at all. It was some sort of webbing, like a spider’s. And behind that crate, nesting among threads of webbing, was horror. What had been Marzela barely clung on to human shape, milky blind eyes having grown all over her head while spindly legs ending in claws had ripped their way out of her sides and torso. She held herself in her own arms, the skin webbed together, and when a noise of terrified disgust ripped its way out of Tristan’s throat she suddenly twitched. She’s waking up. Milky eyes swam into focus and the thief threw himself back.

“SAINT,” he shouted. “SAINT IN THE HOLD!”

He didn’t even see what hit him, a keening sound filling his ears as pain exploded across his back and he tumbled through a broken crate. Fuck, his shoulder. Tristan rose out of a spill of seeds just in time to see the Saint scuttling through the hold while half a dozen people fired at it, carelessly slapping down the Aztlan legbreaker when it stood in her way. The god wearing Marzela let out a moaning sound when shots tore at its flesh, but it would take more than musket balls to put it down. Not that it seemed inclined to stay at the bottom of the ship: bleeding black ichor, the monster climbed up the wall to the ceiling and ripped its way clean through the wood.

“Oh spirits,” someone moaned.

Even as it climbed through the hole, the Saint let out another keening moan before disappearing. A moment later Tristan got a glimpse of what the blackcloaks had been shooting at all this time. Mantics. Of all the bloody things, it was mantics. Leering creatures barely two feet long, dragging themselves on long clawed hands as their disturbingly humans faces bared fangs. Only the scavengers were gone wild, spilling down into the hold by the dozens and savagely going for those closest to them. Tristan backed away from the mess, watching as Tupoc Xical calmly finished putting together a spear and harpooned the closest lares without batting an eye.

Violence broke the spell of surprise, the rest of the hold exploding into action. Keeping an eye on the infanzones, Tristan saw that they were already moving towards the upper deck. Looking to the blackcloacks to save their necks, no doubt. But they were leaving fighters behind, only Cozme heading up with them, and the cold place in the back of his mind saw the opening. The mirror-dancer was sticking close to Isabel Ruesta, and since the infanzones were sharing soldiers that meant… The thief moved towards his medicine cabinet. While mantics kept slithering down and fighting sounded above, he discreetly grabbed a small vial from the upper right compartment and felt out the lining of the door.

There were long needles, just like he’d learned in Alvareno’s Dosages, and he palmed one.

A look told him that Beatris was on her way up with her mistress and that Yong was fine – though visibly drunk, he was reloading his pistol without fumbling – so there was no need to stick his neck out. Better to wait for his moment, and until then take the opportunity he’d been handed. That crone Celipa had promised to see him beaten if he got into the crates, but now one was open and no one likely to be paying attention if he had a look at what was inside the others. Even as he uncorked the vial he’d taken and dipped the needle in the brown, viscous Spinster’s Milk within he snuck into the back of the hold. The vial was tucked away carefully, as was the needle, and he turned his attention to the mystery.

He’d been thrown into seeds earlier, but prying open other crates showed him the rest of the goods. At least two full of muskets, powder and swords, another of trinkets, but there was a lot of food. Some was military rations but also dried meats and a large amount of those cheap seeds, the kind that didn’t come from Glare-crops and so ended up used only to feed poor men and darklings. What does the Watch garrison on the island need with so much food? Something to keep in mind, though he best end this before he was caught. Leaving the cover of the crates, Tristan returned to find the tail end of a fight. Most the travellers had gone up like the infanzones, leaving only a handful behind to hold the stairs as mantics kept slithering in through the hole in the ceiling.

“Tristan,” Inyoni called out. “Hurry, we’re closing the door.”

Clutching his knife tightly, the thief tiptoed around the pack of scavengers being kept at bay by swords and a musket fixed with a bayonet. The noise caught their attention, and unlike the others he’d not earned their fear by piling up a few corpses: they came at him hard. Waddling forward with deceptive quickness the mantics moved to cut him off as he broke into a run, and though he leapt over the first that tried to bite his leg he was caught after he landed. Claws ripped into his trousers and he hissed in pain, slashing at the creature’s eyes. It howled in pain as he ripped through flesh, releasing him just fast enough he was able to run to the bottom of the stairs before the rest could do more than nip at his heels.

“See, I told you he was too slippery to die,” Inyoni drawled, idly slashing away at the mantics.

It held them back, Tristan saw. It wouldn’t have earlier, when the Saint had been there and they were gone entirely rabid. Now they were capable of fear again.

“Too slippery to fight, too,” Recardo grunted.

That got him contemptuous look from the remaining two, Inyoni’s nephew and the acne-ridden noblewoman from Asphodel. Best to nip that in the bud, he still had a use for a decent reputation.

“I was looking to see if the Saint left anything behind,” he lied. “She looks like a spider, so I was concerned of eggs.”

Ah, and away went the contempt.

“Shit,” Inyoni’s nephew quietly said. “Were there any?”

“Couldn’t find some, but I can’t be sure. I didn’t want to risk touching the webbing,” Tristan said, feigning reluctance at the ‘confession’.

“That was wise of you,” the Asphodel noble reassured him. “Nothing come of a Saint is harmless.”

“We can all pat ourselves on the back later,” Recardo cut in. “Let’s close this damn door and bar it shut, we’ve wasted long enough.”

Tristan smoothed away his smile. He’d known the Ruesta soldier would be there. See, every other infanzon would have a sword hand already with them. Cozme for the Cerdan brothers, Sanale for the Villazur and finally the Pereduri for Isabel Ruesta. Recardo was bound to be the one they left behind, and they had to leave someone behind so it wasn’t too obvious they’d abandoned everyone the moment danger arrived. Reputation and honour, yes? So now he only needed to play his part. How fortunate that Recardo was such a prick he hadn’t even had to bait out an insult.

“They’ll attack when there’s fewer of us,” Tristan said. “Like scavengers always do. The last of us will have a fight on their hands.”

Inyoni nodded, about to speak up when Tristan sniffed. He painted offended pride on his face.

“Recardo and I can take the role, if he so doubts I can handle a knife,” the thief said.

There was no argument. None of the others would clamour for the place of danger, and Recardo couldn’t even begin to try wiggling out of this without withdrawing his careless insult from earlier. Which the man would not, because he was a prick. And so as the others began to withdraw up the stairs, Tristan palmed the long needle he had put away earlier. To be safe, he waited until the third time the mantics came after them. He half-slipped on the stairs, drawing the scavengers after him eagerly, and even as he scampered back up the stairs in the chaos he pricked the large man in the fat of the leg. Recardo yelped and glared down, but Tristan withdrew quick enough it looked like a mantic had been at fault.

The thief scampered up, the two of them keeping the creatures away as the others disappeared up the stairs one by one. Tristan waited. Spinster’s Milk was an extract from a breed of lemures commonly known as Caotl’s Spinsters, horse-sized scorpions that’d earned the sobriquet because their venom was not mortal. As if needy spinsters, the beasts instead paralyzed their prey so they could eat them alive bite by bite. So Recardo did not die, as that would have been much too suspicious. Instead he slowed, limbs growing numb, and then made a mistake. When time came to avoid a snap of teeth the large soldier misjudged the length of steps and down Recardo went.

Tumbling down the stairs and into the pack of hungry mantics, who would conveniently eat the evidence.

“Hurry,” Inyoni hissed into his ear, dragging him by the shoulder. “He’s dead, kid, there’s no helping him.”

The thief made sure to protest once that he could still save his beloved comrade Recardo before allowing himself to be talked into abandoning him. He was not an amateur, so he did not smile as the door closed behind him.

One, Tristan Abrascal counted.

They were waiting for her at Fishmonger’s Quay.

Every street had a pair of redcloaks watching passers-by, forcing any hooded or veiled to show their faces before they were let through. Angharad, keeping to the alleys, saw how they compared the faces to small pieces of parchment. She was only able to get close enough to see it was a drawing, but that told her enough: her hunters knew what she looked like and where she was headed. Worried, Angharad decided on patience. She spent one of her last three silver arboles on a ratty room and a meal at an inn two blocks off the edge of the Quay, figuring she would have a better shot come night.

After the streetlights dimmed and the guardsmen tired she would make a run for the Bluebell. She got directions to the ship at the cost of breaking a second arbol to buy sailors ale with coppers, then settled in to wait. The naps she took on the straw mattress were intermittent, somehow leaving her more tired than when she’d begun, all the more so when she was jolted out of the last by angry shouts. Awake in an instant, she drew her saber and made for the door. Cracking it open just enough to peer through, she saw a gaggle of redcloaks whose officer was loudly arguing with the innkeeper and his pair of toughs.

“-paid up for the month, you don’t get to come in here and hassle my patrons,” the innkeeper was snarling.

 Angharad did not hold out hope: one side had swords and muskets, the other clubs. The argument would last only so long as the Guardia officer let it. She stole a glimpse ahead, saw they would be taken utterly by surprise and steadied her breath before bursting out. Defence is delay. The redcloaks had swords out but not before she got a head start, only two at the back going for their muskets instead. Angharad kicked a table in the closest man’s leg, tripping him as he shouted curse, then ducked low as a shot whizzed past her head. A stolen glimpse told her there was no ambush ahead so she ran out into the night, boots thumping against the pavestones.

The redcloaks followed.

In a city so large as Sacromonte it should have been the easiest thing in the world to lose them, but for all that she could steal away for slices of an hour the enemy always caught up to her. They never seemed to know exactly where she was, but neither were they far off. Contractor, Angharad shivered in realization. They had hired someone whose spirit-given gift could find her. Knowing of it was little help, the hours stretching into a torment of constant running and hiding.  She was exhausted, as much from the flight as the constant drawing on her own contract to avoid ambushes.

The Fisher was not as some other spirits, whose prices were constant: she had sworn a single oath in return for his gift. Yet that did not mean taking glimpses was not tiring, slowly turning her thoughts feverous. It felt as if her brain was swimming in warm water, pressure slowly building behind her eyes. How long could she last? She did not know, but salvation came without warning at morning’s cast. Just as the streetlights returned to their full glare the redcloaks fell behind. No longer was their hunt aimed, instead stumbling about as if she were no longer tracked.

Relief brought tears to her eyes and she crawled into dark alley smelling of trash and human filth to collapse behind a pile of broken planks. What felt like a heartbeat after she woke to the sound of movement, drawing her saber, but before her was no man. It was a red-eyed rat, large as a cat and watching her unblinkingly. Behind it, scrawled on the wall, she saw a bloody mark she had missed in her earlier exhaustion: seven rats whose tails were tied in a knot, itself swallowing up a skull. It was raw work, little more than outlines, but somehow she knew exactly what she was looking at the moment she saw it. Swallowing loudly, Angharad dropped her blade. It clattered loudly against the ground.

“Manifold apologies, honoured elder,” the noble hurriedly said. “I did not mean to disturb your shrine.”

The red-eyed rat watched her still, unmoving. An apology would not be enough. Grimacing, Angharad slowly reached for her abandoned saber and pressed her palm against the edge. It cut shallowly but drew blood, enough she was able to hold out her hand and drip red on the stone before her. After the third thick droplet fell the great rat finally moved, darting forward to lick at the red while Angharad let out a relieved breath. Her offering had been accepted; rare were the spirits that would turn on you immediately after accepting a gift.

In the moment that followed the noble felt her blood cool, as if a cold tide were washing through her veins. The Fisher’s presence filled her. He felt neither angry nor worried, only… expectant. The spirit was watching, and the red-eyed rat stilled for a moment before licking up the last of her blood.

“Good manners,” it praised in a voice that was like a like a thousand chitters threaded into a single, desperate scream.

Angharad struggled to keep her horror off her face, a struggle that she lost when the massive rat suddenly began to retch. It convulsed, as if dying, and spewed out what she thought to be red bile. Only the bile was in the shape of a rat. The Fisher’s approval rose at the sight and his presence withdrew, shivers strumming down her spine in his wake. That moment of distraction was enough for the red-eyed rat to be gone from her sight, leaving only the scrawled mark on the wall and the bloody little abomination at her feet. Sheathing her sword, Angharad rose tiredly and pressed the cut on her palm closed. She would have taken the time to dress it if not for the blood rat beginning to scurry away.

Gritting her teeth, the dark-skinned noble cast aside her hesitation and followed the boon the spirit had granted her.

It stayed always in the corner of her eye, moving so quick that she could not spare so much as a glance at her surroundings as she followed. Weaving through a maze of dirty alleys she ran, slowly coming to realize that she was being led in the direction of Fishmonger’s Quay. The little creature kept away from the glow of lamplights and palestone pillars, its path labyrinthine, but through shadow after shadow Angharad was led to an end. The stink of sewage filled her nostrils, making her gag, and as she had a dry retch she saw the little blood rat glancing at her once before scurrying to the edge of a sewer gate.

There it broke apart, turning into drops of blood that slid into the cloying vileness.

Minding her manners, Angharad offered the sewer gate a shaky bow of thanks before covering her mouth. She carefully stepped to the edge of the alley, eyes squinting at the lamplight’s glow she had somehow grown unused to. Dealing with spirits was never simple as you might wish. For the first few glances she was lost, until she peered further out and saw a pair of bored redcloaks inspecting everyone passing through the street. Only, Angharad saw, she was already past them. Heart beating in relief and excitement, the noble turned to the sewer gate and bowed again.

“I will remember this favour, honoured elder,” she promised.

In the heartbeat that followed a gun was cocked behind her and Angharad Tredegar was duly reminded that dealing with spirits was never simple as you might wish.

“Don’t move,” a woman’s voice harshly ordered in Antigua. “Turn around and show me your-”

If she ran for it-

(The ball tore through her back, a line of burning pain.)

-Angharad threw herself to the side, the shot catching the edge of her coat. In a single smooth spin she unsheathed her saber and faced the redcloak, who judged she would not be able to reload in time and dropped her musket in favour of the straight sword at her hip. The noble timed her breaths with her steps, her body moving with the fluid grace of years of practice. There was no need to steal a glimpse of the future when she could see it writ in the lay of her enemy’s movements. The redcloak’s blade came free, striking out, and Angharad calmly twisted her wrist to deny the blades contact before snapping it back into place. Her back foot pushed her forward in a clean, textbook strike that opened the redcloak’s throat.

The other woman fell down with a wet gurgle, the sound drowned out by the Guardia killers already coming this way. Angharad ran for it, the directions she’d bought last night just enough for her to avoid charging off in the wrong direction. This cursed hovel of a city had no signs, as if Sacromontans expected all to know their way around. The docks were close, only a few blocks away, but the ruckus had seen people empty the streets so Angharad could see the redcloaks running after her. Only a dozen, at first, but more were coming from seemingly every street. She hurried, sweat pouring down her back as she struggled to stay out of musket range – shots kept sounding, keeping the pulse of fear in her belly alive – and finally reached the long stone dock she’d had described to her.

An old cog was waiting at the end of it, its sails painted black like all the Watch’s ships, and Angharad felt her spirit rally. Close, so close now and… The shot came from closer, the window of some warehouse behind, and though she threw herself down in time it was straight into a pile of crates. Mercifully empty, she thought even as her aching shoulder toppled two into the water, but she got tangled in the net keeping them together. Ripping her way free cost her precious time, the pack of baying hounds nipping at her heels reaching the dock.

“Stop her,” a man shouted. “Manes be my witness, if you keep fucking missing her-”

The Bluebell was a mere thirty feet away but the Guardia were so close she could almost feel them breathing down her neck. Half-turning, she saw a man reaching for her arm and twisted away but then there was a shot and… and the redcloaks stopped cold. It’d come from the front of her, Angharad realized belatedly, and there she found a grizzled old woman holding a smoking pistol in her only hand. She’d unloaded in front of the redcloaks, a warning shot.

“Angharad Tredegar?” the old woman called out.

“Yes,” the noble replied, the word half a sob of relief.

“We’ve been waiting for you, girl,” the blackcloak grunted. “Get on the bloody ship, we’re going to miss the tide.”

Angharad took a hesitant step towards the Bluebell, then saw her hesitation reflected on the face of the redcloaks looking at her and was emboldened to take a second. Before she could take a third a Guardia officer pushed his way to the front of the pack, a moustachioed young man whose shoulders were dripping with ornate braids and medals.

“What are you idiots doing?” the man shouted. “Take aim, she’s-”

“She’s under the protection of the Watch, boy,” the old woman interrupted from above. “Turn around before this gets unpleasant.”

Angharad slowly took another step back, trying not to draw anyone’s attention as she was uncomfortably aware that there was no cover at all on the dock: it was all bare stone. There were at least a dozen muskets in the crowd and with that many people aiming at her a glimpse would not be able to save her life.

“Boy?” the young man repeated, turning red. “It’s captain to you, you old bitch, and you best disappear back into your ship before I-”

Angharad took another step back but this time she was noticed and half a dozen muskets were turned on her. Yet in the time that’d passed the blackcloaks had not been idle and now sailors leaned over the side of the ship to aim their own muskets down at the redcloaks. She counted nine, a number that had her stomach clenching. Were there not more sailors on the ship?

“Before you what?” the old woman sneered. “You so much as take a shot at us, boy captain, and it’s a war you’ll have on your hands.”

“A war I’ll win,” the mustachioed man retorted. “I have the numbers to storm your ship if you do not desist.”

He seemed confident, and as Angharad glanced as the still-swelling numbers of redcloaks – more were still coming from the backstreet – she had to admit he was right. Not all of them had firearms, but all were armed and there had to be forty by now. The blackcloak laughed scornfully at the threat.

“And what do you think’ll happen, after?” she asked. “Once word gets to the Rookery that Sacromonte has broken the Iscariot Accords, that you attacked a Watch ship in the discharge of its duties?”

A ripple of unease went through the guardsmen.

“Our orders are absolute,” the officer flatly replied.

“They’ll recall every company from Broken Gates to the Weeping Light, boy,” the one-armed blackcloak said, “to burn this fucking city to the ground. To make an example of Sacromonte.”

She scoffed.

“Only whoever owns you won’t want that war on their head,” the blackcloak said. “So instead what’ll happen is that they’ll send all your heads to the Rookery in a basket as an apology before denting their treasury for reparations.”

Unease turned to dismay, a few guardsmen even taking a step back. The officer’s face was bright red with anger but he had no answer.

“I wonder how the infanzones will like paying up for your mistake,” the old woman added with a nasty little smile.  “Surely they’re forgiving souls? They wouldn’t take it out on your families after you die.”

And that was the shot that sounded the rout. Another officer, older but with only half as many gaudy medals, took the captain aside and spoke in a hushed voice. It was a done deal anyhow, the rank and file already putting away their weapons. Whatever loyalty they had it did not stand stronger than the prospect of having their heads cut off. For all that was she was grateful, Angharad could not help but feel a thread of contempt. True soldiers would not have balked in the face of threats. It was the weakness of Sacromonte that it did not have proper ruling nobles, a weakness that trickled all the way down.

“I’ll remember this,” the captain snarled, tearing away from the other redcloak.

“And we’ll remember you, boy captain,” the blackcloak called back. “You ought to be a lot more worried about that.”

The Guardia cleared out in haste, as if ashamed of being seen driven away, and Angharad at last let out her breath. She’d made it. The old woman called out for her to hurry and she raced up the ramp, seeing that hidden behind side of the ship there’d been another dozen sailors. They were putting away muskets and orbs of metal bearing fuses that Angharad recognized as zhentianlei, those dreaded Tianxi grenades. No wonder the one-armed woman had not feared the redcloaks: packed tight as they had been on the docks, without cover, it would have been a slaughter. The noble offered said blackcloak a short bow of gratitude.

“My thanks for your protection, my lady,” Angharad said. “I will not forget it.”

“The name’s Celipa, and I’m no lady of any kind,” the old woman snorted. “You owe me nothing, girl. You’ve got blood in the black and you’re kin of Osian’s besides.”

She blinked.

“You know my uncle?”

“We were both part of the hunt for the Hull-Eater,” Celipa told her, then tapped the stump of her missing arm. “After a thrall took a bite he helped set me up on the Bluebell.”

Angharad choked. The Hull-Eater, as in the great spirit whose claws rent ships apart and whose army of crazed thralls had famously turned some ancient fortress into a den of horrors? Its death a few years ago had been widely celebrated back home, but Uncle Osian had never so much as hinted he’d been involved. She could hardly imagine a man her mother had always considered – however fondly – to be useless in a fight anywhere near such a monster. At loss about anything to say, the noble got out something about how her uncle was a dutiful man while Celipa herded her across the deck towards broad stairs descending into the belly of the cog.

“I’ll be two days before we get to the Dominion,” Celipa quietly said. “Use the time to find allies, Tredegar. Loners always die early in the second trial.”

It would have been ungrateful of her to demand that a woman who’d saved her life address her properly as Lady Angharad, so the noble bit down on the sentence before it could leave her lips. Instead she nodded her gratitude at the advice before traversing the lower deck – the kitchen, dormitories for the crew and the arsenal – to make her way to the hold at the bottom. There she found the travellers she would share a journey with, having haphazardly claimed corners and cots. All eyes were on her from the moment she entered, the cost of being the last to arrive, but she kept her back straight. It would not do to show weakness.

A sweeping look at the hold told her there had to be more than twenty people in there, but what drew and kept her eye was the well-dressed quartet being attended to at the back of the hold. Two men and two women. The men’s close looks and identical red and blue cloaks outed them as kin, but the other two were dissimilar: one tall and lean, her short blond hair pulled in a bun while the other was a sultry dark-haired beauty with beautiful green eyes. Nobles, she instantly knew. Infanzones, as Sacromontans called them. The beauty met Angharad’s eyes, smiling sweetly, and then addressed an older girl at her side in servant’s livery.

A few steps later the handmaiden was offering Angharad an elegant curtsy, bowing her head.

“Lady Isabel invites you to introduce yourself, my lady,” the girl said.

Angharad acknowledged her with a polite nod, gathering herself for a moment before approaching her fellow nobles. The men looked bored at her approach, one of them even seeming irritated, but Lady Isabel’s smile was yet sweet and her leaner companion looked curious. As the invited party, Angharad introduced herself first.

“Lady Angharad Tredegar of Llanw Hall,” she said, lightly bowing. “At your service.”

“How genteel,” the green-eyed beauty exclaimed, putting a hand to her heart. “I am Lady Isabel Ruesta, Lady Angharad, but you must call me Isabel.”

“It would be my very great pleasure,” Angharad replied, struggling to keep her gaze off the flattering cut of Lady Isabel’s dress.

Most her lovers had been cut more from the cloth of the other noble lady here than lovely Isabel’s, but Angharad could appreciate beauty in all its forms. Including form-fitting dresses of yellow brocade. As a willful distraction, she turned to the woman by Lady Isabel’s side.

“Lady Ferranda Villazur,” the lean woman introduced herself, tone cool. “A pleasure.”

Angharad returned the courtesy, though she was barely done speaking when one of the men cut in.

“You have the Malani look but the name does not fit,” the noble drawled. “Strange.”

Angharad’s expression grew stiff and the implied accusation of being an impostor.

“That is, Remund, because she is not Malani,” the other man scoffed. “These are Pereduri names.”

He then offered her a bow and a practiced smile. At second look he looked older than the rude one, his face sharper and more refined.

“I am Lord Augusto Cerdan,” he said. “Please forgive my brother’s rudeness, Lady Angharad. He never did learn his courtesies.”

“It is nothing, Lord Augusto,” Angharad briskly replied, her mood soured.

It was soured even further by Lord Remund’s appraising gaze on her.

“Ah, Peredur,” the infanzon said. “I had quite forgot about it. You’re not much paler than the other Malani, though. I expected more of a difference.”

Angharad’s jaw clenched. Peredur was not like the other isles of the Kingdom of Malan. It was nearly impossible to conquer without a great fleet so Angharad’s ancestors, unlike the Malani, had not swept across the island in a storm of iron and flame. They had instead settled the land and allied with the ancient dwellers of Peredur, twined the blood and slowly grown into a single people. And the ancient Pereduri had been men of pale skin, so to this day some ignorant souls expected Angharad’s people to be much paler than the Malani. The polite ones, anyway.

The less polite liked to imply that the ancient Pereduri had been hollows, darklings. Utter madness. The isles were drenched in the light of the Glare, no hollow could have lived there without burning! Besides some savage tribes encountered in the colonies had proved that some peoples of light skin were not soulless, turned pale not by the embrace of the Gloam but simply born with such flesh. Yet it suited some to imply the people of Peredur were descended from slaves and savages, the same hordes that allied with devils to bring about the Old Night.

“Alas,” Angharad frigidly replied, “it seems I must disappoint.”

“Remund,” Lady Isabel chided, gently slapping his arm. “Be nice.”

“Oh, I suppose,” Lord Remund groused. “The pleasure is all mine, Lady Angharad.”

Isabel seemed more amused than anything, which brought a glimmer of satisfaction to the younger Cerdan’s eye that Angharad recognized. Ah, she thought. Perhaps her appreciative gaze had not been as subtle as she thought. From the corner of her eye she saw Lord Augusto eyeing the Lady Isabel and his brother with evident displeasure before brushing it away with a forced smile. He made a chiding comment about immaturity, injecting himself between the two. Angharad almost winced.

“It appears your coat was scuffed,” Lady Ferranda said, drawing back her attention. “A traveling misfortune?”

The other woman’s steady gaze lay where the stray shot had caught her overcoat earlier. Angharad had no intention of mentioning her troubles to these strangers, fellow nobles or not, but then she suspected that Ferranda Villazur was well aware she was not looking at a simple scuff.

“There was a mishap with my trunk,” Angharad replied, carefully avoiding a lie. “I will be travelling light.”

“Oh,” Lady Isabel gently said as she drew away from the brothers, “that simply won’t do. Lady Angharad – or may I call you Angharad?”

Charmed, she returned the Sacromontan’s smile.

“Of course.”

“Then call me Isabel, Angharad,” the beauty firmly offered again. “My maids can take care of mending your coat, they are very clever with their hands.”

She hesitated for a moment, but the bandage she had put over her wound on yesterday should not show under her shirt. Besides, it would be suspicious to refuse.

“I would be much obliged,” she said, shrugging off her coat.

“Beatris,” Isabel called out, summoning another handmaid. “Do mend Lady Angharad’s coat for her, would you?”

“Of course, my lady,” the dark-haired maid replied, curtsying before she approached.

She took the coat when Angharad offered it. Isabel slid a look a Lady Ferranda.

“You really should have brought a maid, Ferra,” she said. “Your man does not look like he knows how to use a needle.”

“Sanale serves a different purpose,” Lady Ferranda replied. “I can take care of my own affairs, Isabel.”

“There is no need for that hired sword, I assure you,” Lord Remund smiled. “I will be seeing to our safety, as will our good Cozme. One of the finest soldiers in Cerdan service, second only to my own finer blade.”

“If only your rapier were half as swift as your boasts,” Lord Augusto mildly said. “Though he speaks true, Lady Ferranda, that it is our duty as sons of Cerdan to see to your safety through this trial. We must never abandon woman in need.”

“How kind,” Lady Ferranda replied, her tone savagely even.

She did not seem impressed, Angharad thought, but then it was not on her that Augusto’s eyes had lingered. Lady Isabel smiled back at the older Cerdan, but in the following moment let out a little noise of surprise before flowing forward. Warm fingers grasped Angharad’s left arm, pushing up the sleeve of her shirt and baring the ten silver lines tattooed there over dark skin.

“A tattoo,” Isabel said, her touch soft. “What might it mean, Angharad?”

The looks the Cerdan brothers sent her were distinctly unfriendly. Lady Ferranda cut in before she could gather her wits enough to answer.

“Swordmistress,” the tall woman said, breathing out in surprise. “Those are the marks of a Malani swordmistress.”

They would have been, were they black and on Angharad’s right arm instead, but after that early buffoonery from Remund she was disinclined to explain the nuance.

“It is a similar tradition,” Angharad simply said.

Suddenly the Cerdans looked rather more wary of her. Wary enough to try to send her away, she figured, but whatever intention there might have been it immediately came to naught. Lady Ferranda’s eyes lit up at her admission, leading into the first smile Angharad had seen out of the other woman.

“You must stay with us, then,” Ferranda Villazur firmly said. “I happen to have a great many questions about such practices.”

—

Much as Angharad was used to the company of other nobles, she was also used to her family’s title being among the lesser in the room. Though Mother had been wealthy and of some renown as a captain, Llanw Hall was no great estate. Compared to the great izinduna families some of her tournament competitors had come from, the House of Tredegar had been ants. It had therefore been a skill worth cultivating to be able to tell who the powerful people in a room were. Playing court with the four infanzones let her fall back into the habit and it was, if not comfortable, then at least a little nostalgic.

The House of Cerdan, she learned, was by far the greatest of the noble lines involved here. Though it was not one of the founding families of Sacromonte, who traced their descent back the heyday of the Second Empire and good as ran the city, it was not far below them. While Augusto and Remund were not of the main line, they were great-nephews to the lord of the house and therefore not men to discount.

They also despised each other.

Watching them descend into thinly veiled snapping for the third time in an hour, Angharad cocked an eyebrow at Lady Ferranda. The tall noblewoman sighed, waiting until Isabel leaned forward to play peacemaker between the brothers before she answered.

“There is an inheritance involved,” she murmured. “Remund is younger but has obtained a contract. Marrying well would settle the victor.”

And Lady Isabel Ruesta would be, Angharad deduced, a very good marriage indeed. Not only was she a great beauty but she was the sole daughter of the Ruesta, a house of undistinguished descent but which happened to be very wealthy. No wonder the brothers went at each other like rabid dogs whenever one drew her attention over the other.

“Poor Isabel,” Angharad sympathized.

Lady Ferranda shrugged. She was a woman of few words and tread with care around the others. Unsurprising, given that the Villazur were the least of the three houses by a fair throw. She had been quite frank about her intent to use a strong performance in the trials to gild her family’s name and bring it back into the eyes of her fellow infanzones, perhaps even securing an advantageous husband. She had been preparing for this venture for years, going as far as to obtain the services of a man called Sanale which she claimed to be a Malani huntsman.

“Where from?” Angharad idly asked.

Given the reputation of Malani marksmen, it was not an uncommon claim even among those who’d never so much as seen the Isles.

“Does it matter what particular island tossed him out?” Remund chuckled, rolling his eyes.

“Uthukile,” Lady Ferranda replied, ignoring him.

Angharad leaned back in the seat she had been offered, taking a look at the elaborate beadwork hanging off this Sanale’s cloak where he sat among the servants. She could not see his face, but the colours of the beads were distinctive to the Low Isle. It seemed a credible claim.

“I was taught they are the finest shooters and trackers in Malan,” the noble acknowledged.

And therefore all of Vesper, though it would be impolite so say as much. Terrible seafarers, however. Mother had always mourned so few took to ships given how good they were with muskets. Lady Ferranda straightened, visibly pleased, and Isabel pouted.

“You take it all too seriously, Ferra,” the dark-haired woman claimed, then daintily rose to her feet. “And I must admit I grow weary of this dreary hold. Shall we go for a walk?”

Augusto, the older Cerdan, wasted no time in mimicking her and offering his hand.

“Too right,” he said, “you and I can-”

“No need, brother,” Lord Remund cut in. “You stay and rest, I will escort our fair lady.”

Lady Ferranda looked as if she had a dawning headache, but she stayed out of it and Angharad decided it might be best for her as well. The Cerdans argued, growing more irritated and worse at hiding it. Isabel then cut through the backbiting by offering Angharad a sweet smile.

“Would you do me the honour, Angharad?” she asked. “I never did get you to tell me of Peredur.”

The glares that earned her felt like they would burn through her clothes, which irritated her enough she accepted out of spite.

“I am at your disposal, of course,” she said, smoothly rising to her feet.

The brothers’ faces darkened, but they were not so impolite as to insist when an invitation had been clearly given and accepted. Angharad offered her arm for Isabel to take and they headed for the stairs, though her eyes strayed to the side as they moved. She’d heard Lord Remund mentioning other Malani earlier but now she was finally seeing them. Seated between crates, talking in low voices, a young pair of youths were tucked away. Behind them a scarred older woman was napping. The man of the pair, narrow-faced but built like a fighter, kept glancing around.  As if looking for something.

Or someone, Angharad realized with a trickle of cold dread. Her pursuers had known she was headed for the Bluebell, for these trials, and tried to stop her getting on the ship. But would they truly stop there when assassins had dogged her steps all the way from Peredur? It had not occurred to her until now that there might be a hired knife waiting for her on the ship. Uncle Osian’s letter had implied that there were few rules during the trials, that much was allowed. Perhaps even murder. The thought had her tensing enough that Isabel noticed. Thankfully, she misinterpreted the reason.

“They can be a little much,” the dark-haired beauty admitted. “It will do me some good to have some fresh air in good company.”

“Have they always been like this?” Angharad asked, grateful for the change of subject.

They rose up the stairs, drawing the attention of the sailors on the lower deck as they passed. No one tried to stop them, as a few hours past an officer had come to tell them it would be allowed for a few travellers at a time to come up for air so long as they stayed out of the way.

“They were sweeter, once,” Isabel wistfully said. “But we all have duties now. It complicates matters.”

Angharad inclined her head. She had never held any interest in men, but the contrary had not always been true. Her status as the heiress to Llanw Hall had sometimes made it a difficult affair to decline without giving offence as a lady. The lives of nobles did not belong to them alone.

“Sometimes I wish I could be free of all this,” Isabel confessed as they went up the last of the stairs. “That I might find love where I please instead.”

As if by fate’s whim, she finished the sentence just as the two of them took to the deck and the sight of it caught in Angharad’s throat. Lovely Isabel in her yellow brocade, with eyes like emeralds and her delicate face framed by dark hair like raven’s wings – all of it with the Trebian Sea spread out behind her as far as the eye could see, waters touched with golden lucent streaks as the great mirrors and devices in firmament above spread shards of the Glare’s light across an entire sea. It was an unearthly sight, one that dried Angharad’s mouth and left her half a babbling fool. She swallowed. Isabel smiled.

“But I must be boring you,” she said.

“Never,” Angharad insisted, cursing herself for the unseemly haste of the reply.

Isabel, if she had noticed, was kind enough not to comment as she led them to the edge of the ship. There they leaned against the side, letting the wind ruffle their hair as the Bluebell sailed across the tranquil waters of the Trebian Sea. It was a strange sight compared to the dark waters around the Isles, where the darkness of the Gloam ran deep. Unlike her own people, the powers that bordered the Trebian Sea had never had to fear a ship disappearing into the dark and returning years later – if at all. The lights coming down from firmament were only thinly of the Glare but they were enough to prevent most storms from forming and, more importantly, prevent sailors from catching Gloam sickness.

Rare were the seamen of this sea who were severed from the Circle by lack of exposure to the Glare, turning into pale hollows without an immortal soul to reincarnate.

“Look, it’s so far already!” Isabel enthused, pointing in the distance.

Angharad followed the finger to the sight of two beams of Glare falling from firmament onto a cluster of distant, lesser lights like swords cutting through the dark. Sacromonte, unlike most great cities of Vesper, had not been raised under some blessed machinery of the Antediluvians that doled out light in patterns. It stood under simple pit of Glare. The light that touched the city’s noble districts came from a hole ripped into firmament, coming raw from the unblinking sun that had turned the Old World to ash and dust. 

“You should see the Isles, one day,” Angharad chuckled, shaking her head. “They are all under one great pit whose light covers all but the furthest edges of Peredur and Uthukile. It can be seen from weeks away if there is no Gloam storm hiding it.”

“I would much like to travel, one day,” Isabel smiled, “but surely our corner of Vesper does have some charms?”

Angharad bit down on a very smitten answer by forcing herself to look away. A shape on the horizon delivered her beleaguered spirit a reply that would not make a fool of her. She nodded, pointing at a crooked and half-submerged tower jutting out of the sea in the distance. It glittered with great broken mirrors and aether machinery.

“Certainly, there is nowhere else where so many ancient wonders remain,” Angharad said.

Though many were now broken as the tower must be, their purpose lost to centuries or their intricate mechanisms beyond even the finest craftsmen of Tianxia. The Antediluvians had built their miracles in the ancient times of the First Empire, untold centuries ago, and Vesper had gone through many a ruin since.

“I would have thought fresher delights able to be found,” Isabel told her, tone gone a little tart.

Angharad coughed, embarrassed, as she tried to read the other woman’s face to no avail. The dark-haired beauty sighed, idly laying a hand on Angharad’s arm. The noble cursed the knots in her tongue that were stubbornly refusing to undo. And to think she’d been complimented on an artful seduction by her last lover!

“Tell me of Peredur,” Isabel asked, perhaps taking pity.

Angharad gratefully did, speaking of the stony and barren shores where forests of ships nestled in secret inlets, of the green rolling hills and deep forests that grew as one travelled east. Isabel seemed fascinated, always asking more, and though it all felt like it had only been a moment the ache of her arms against the side of the ship told it had been much longer than that. It was time to take their leave, but Angharad begged off going back down with her companion. She spoke of wanting to have a last look around the deck, though the truth was that she wanted to put herself together.

It was a sweet parting and Angharad closed her eyes, letting out a long breath. She had been much too obvious and was ashamed of herself. It had been improper behaviour for a lady of her breeding and a poor idea besides, given how Isabel Ruesta had some rather insistent suitors after her. Regaining her calm, she opened her eyes to see the ship approaching the ruined tower she’d sighted earlier. In the waters around it, tucked under dark ripples, ghostly shapes were swimming. She squinted, leaning further over the side, and made out a stripe going down a spine that bore the ghostly light and some spindly arms. From the fresh angle she could even see that some of the creatures were swimming besides the ship.

“Mantics.”

Angharad nearly leapt out of her skin, drawing back and reaching for her blade as she turned towards the woman who’d addressed her. Tianxi, she saw, and wearing her dark hair in a braid down her back. A fair girl no older than Angharad herself but whose silver eyes were unsettling. The more she saw them, the more she grew convinced they were not of a natural shade. The Pereduri noble’s hand stayed close to her sabre’s hilt for the other woman had a weapon of her own: a straight sword in the Tianxi style, a jian.

“I beg your pardon?”

“They’re called mantics, the creatures you’re looking at,” the stranger elaborated. “Lierganen claim they feed on the corpses of sailors who died too young. They are scavengers, however, lares and not lemures.”

Most nations did not speak of the world as Malani and Pereduri did, all spirits under the Sleeping God, but instead used the old Lierganen terms. ‘Lares’, for beasts that partook of aether but were not necessarily hostile to men, and ‘lemures’ for those that hunted mankind out of hatred regardless of need.

“Thank you for the lesson,” Angharad slowly replied.

She even half meant it.

“The interesting thing,” the stranger mused, “is that they are said to avoid ships.”

Angharad frowned.

“Some are following us,” she pointed out.

“And have been for several hours now,” the stranger agreed. “It is the third time I have come up to look.”

The noble took a wary step back. This no longer felt to her as a meeting of happenstance, idle talk between shipmates.

“Who are you?” she asked. “Why are you approaching me?”

“I simply wanted to have a look at the woman shots were fired over,” the Tianxi calmly replied. “As for my name, you may call me Song.”

Angharad’s fingers closed around the hilt of her blade.

“You’ve had your look,” she said.

“So I have,” Song agreed. “And you are as interesting as I thought you might be, so I leave you with a warning.”

The Tianxi made to leave, pausing only before she passed Angharad.

“Do not let yourself think this ship is safe. At this rate, there will be trouble long before we reach the island.”

And on that ominous note, the dark-haired stranger walked away. The noble watched her go, the grip on her sabre loosening only when this ‘Song’ disappeared below deck.

The wind brushed against her face, and Angharad was left wondering if it had always been so cold.

The Bluebell was a sturdy old cog, its sail painted the black of the Watch.

Tristan was the first to arrive, which went against him. The sailors on watch were asleep at their posts, napping on crates yet to be loaded, and they’d not been pleased to be woken up. Even less pleased had been their officer, a one-armed crone named Celipa who’d had to be fetched from her bed since she was the one with the roster.

“You look like you’re fresh off the street, rat,” she glared.

“You have the eyes of an eagle, tia,” Tristan flattered. “A rat is what I am, and like one I will disappear quietly into your hold should you let me.”

Her mood was not improved, sadly, and neither was his since Fortuna was now snickering behind him.

“If his name isn’t on the roster, throw him into the sea,” Celipa ordered her men. “I don’t care if you beat him first. Or take his cabinet.”

By the unpleasant smiles on the face of those two well-built sailors, he would be beaten bloody given half a chance. Charming. It was still better than to stay out in the Murk and risk the Hoja Roja catching his tail. They wouldn’t stop at bruises.

“Who are you supposed to be, rat?” the crone asked.

“Tristan Abrascal,” he charmingly smiled.

She was, again, visibly unimpressed. Her lips quirked into a nasty little number as she trailed her finger down the roster, sneaking an expectant glance at him, but then she froze.

“On there, yes?” Tristan pressed.

The old woman looked him up and down, disbelieving.

“Whose brat are you?” Celipa asked. “You must have blood in the black.”

“My blood is buried shallow, tia,” Tristan replied, smiled turned sharp. “May I come aboard or not?”

The crone snorted, but he knew put-on when he saw it. Something had spooked her. 

“Go on, then,” Celipa said. “Down in the hold, you can claim a cot if it’s on the ground.”

“Much obliged,” the thief smiled.

She turned to spit into the waters of the Shoal.

“If I see you try to get into a crate, rat, you’ll get that beating you just ducked,” the crone warned.

It was not the warmest welcome Tristan had ever received, but it was far from the worst. The cog was mostly empty, its crew out in the city, but an armed man pointed him down the two sets of stairs to the hold after eyeing him suspiciously. There were a few sailors sleeping on cots down there, but otherwise it was only a few crates and empty room. Cogs were trading vessels, but this one looked made to ferry men instead. Tristan stepped about quietly, looking for an empty cot with a wall at its back. Fortuna had been pleased with the amusement of watching him get browbeaten earlier, but now that it had passed the goddess was remembering to be offended on his behalf.

“At her age,” Fortuna mused, “it would take only a slip to break her hip.”

“So I can sprain an ankle before taking the trials?” Tristan murmured, careful not to wake a sailor as he shrugged off his cabinet’s leather straps and set it down. “I think not.”

The luck always went hardest after him when it was used to hurt another.

“Every slight should be avenged, no matter how small,” Fortuna said, tone disapproving.

He rolled his eyes at her. Even destitute gods breathed arrogance, never learning the beggar’s virtues. It was in their nature, Tristan had come to suspect, and the nature of gods did not change. Fortuna was the same now as when he’d first met her, nothing more than a terrified boy on the run. The years they’d shared had changed her not a whit.

“I’ll think on it,” he lied.

She huffed.

“Sometimes I think your blood is cold as a lizard’s,” she complained. “Does nothing move you to revenge?”

Tristan smiled without joy, thinking of the five names carved into the marrow of his bones. His List.

“Only the one thing,” he answered. “And it is very far from this boat.”

He cast a look around after, wary of having spoken so long into what others would see thin air. The few sailors down here were still asleep, to his relief. Talking at the unseen was a good way to out yourself as a contractor – or a lunatic, though admittedly some days that line was razor thin. Fortuna sighed, then gestured for him to settle down in the cot. She would, as she’d had for years, keep watch over his sleep. He smiled again, meaning it this time, and slipped under the bedding. Back to the wall and a goddess watching over him, the thief fell straight into slumber.

—

Tristan woke to the sound of a man coughing.

“Company,” Fortuna whispered into his ear.

It could not have been more than a few hours since he fell asleep, early in the morning. Yet the light of a lantern – the cold glow a sure sign the oil was mixed with palestone powder to lend an echo of the Glare’s pale light – was licking at the sides of the hold, held up by a bearded sailor ushering in a ragged band. The one who’d coughed was the first to limp into sight, a toothless old man still clutching his mouth. He was jostled aside by a scowling mass of a man whose leather vest left the arms exposed, revealing intricate patterns of ink. Menor Mano, Tristan recognized, eyeing the tattoos. This one had been a legbreaker.

“Careful,” the sailor warned the big man in a low voice. “Any fighting on the Bluebell will get you shot and thrown overboard. No warnings, no second chances.”

The legbreaker’s scowl deepened and he glared at the sailor.

“Keep walking, blackcloak,” he said.

The sailor snorted, reaching for the pistol at his side.

“You’re one of the paid seats, not the recommended,” he replied. “Mouth off to me again and I’ll put a shot between your eyes.”

The big man’s face contorted in anger, laying bare his broken nose and the flat Aztlan look of his face, but with a snarl he turned away and stalked off.

“Thought so,” the sailor muttered, then turned a cool gaze on the rest. “The same rules apply to you lot. Don’t make me say it again.”

None of those remaining seemed inclined to challenged him. A pair that must be a couple, given how closely they held each other, shied away from the sailor’s gaze as if afraid of being hit while a girl around Tristan’s age looked like she might start crying. It made the two who seemed unconcerned with argument stand out all the more. A bespectacled old woman looking half asleep and past paying attention to much of anything, then to her left a Tianxi of middle age who looked unimpressed. Tristan studied the cast of the man’s shoulders and the way he stood ramrod straight, lips thinning. Soldier.

“Go on, then,” the sailor grunted. “Find somewhere to sleep. The rest will arrive in a few hours.”

They shuffled in tiredly, revealing the last three who’d stood behind. A blond youth with the City’s look about him, looking at his surroundings with polite curiosity, and a pair of short Tianxi twins in their forties. Women both, their dark hair kept in low ponytails with the side of their heads shaved. The cut would have outed them as Meng girls even if their smiles had not revealed blue-tinted teeth. It was a custom of Meng-Xiaofan members to chew strands of dewroot, a sweet-smelling herb said to soothe pains and sharpen wits – at the price of dyeing teeth and sometimes even tongues blue.

As the newcomers settled across the hold, some of them waking disgruntled sailors, one of the twins caught him looking and shot back a quick once-over that led into a snort. She leaned close to her sister for a whisper, the two of them then turning to offer him that Meng grin of porcelain in white and blue. Tristan straightened, muscles tensing as they moved towards him and the blue open robes in Tianxi style they wore over practical City tunic and trousers trailed.

“Pinch me, Ju, I must be dreaming,” the closest twin grinned. “Look at what we’ve got here.”

The other twin looked him up and down, making a show of it.

“Back to the wall, dirty fingernails and a crow’s nest for hair – oh my, Lan,” she snickered. “Smells like rat in here, doesn’t it?”

“She’s not wrong,” Fortuna conceded, ever the traitor.

Yet Tristan’s shoulders loosened, for all that the words were close to insult. It was to be that kind of a conversation; he was back on familiar grounds. Putting on a wicked look, he snorted back. Sniffing the air theatrically, he the gasped in surprise.

“And here I thought it smelled like dust and floating corpses,” he told them. “But I suppose it might just be that foul herb you’ve been chewing.”

There was no need for either side to make the Sign of the Rat, not when the two had the Meng look good as a branded and they’d sized him up in a breath, but it was worth establishing neither were mere mud from the Murk: they were proper gutter, from the wrong side of men’s laws. The tacit admission on his part he knew the main trades of the Meng – drugs and paid deaths – visibly put the sisters in a good mood. Only a fool would talk of trust between rats, but the gutter was a shared tongue. The thief invited them to sit, smile still on his face, and noted the elegant fold of their legs as they did. Sellers, he decided, or someone facing the front. That kind of presentation was learned.

“Tristan,” he introduced himself.

“You have our names,” Ju said.

Not likely the real ones, but he was hardly offended. It was only good sense on their part and he might have tried the same if he’d not had his own written true on the Watch’s passenger list.

“So I do,” Tristan said. “And the pleasure of your company, at an unexpected hour no less.”

He got twin inscrutable looks at the implied question there.

“More interesting is that you were already here, Tristan,” Lan replied. “We were given a precise hour to arrive, see, after coin talked.”

An implied question of her own, with an offered trade tacked on. Given how little he knew of this whole business, the thief had no qualms in trading: it could only be to his advantage. As was only proper between rats, he paid up front.

“A teacher had my name placed on the list,” he told them. “I am uncertain if it is reward or punishment.”

One of the twins – Ju – had a small nick in the skin near her left ear, he noticed. Looked a little deep for a shaving miss, which was interesting, but mostly it would let him tell them apart in a pinch. Both sisters grimaced.

“A hard teacher, if they might think the Dominion of Lost Things a reward,” Ju said. “But also not just anyone, if they could get you on this ship with only their word. We paid for it, see. We need the prize.”

He chewed the inside of his cheek. The ‘prize’ to passing the trials, aside from not dying a horrible death, was to be inducted straight into the ranks of the Watch. They must have had death dogging their shadow, to believe being part of the Meng-Xiaofan would not be enough to assure their safety.

“I have left a burning bridge behind myself,” he carefully admitted. “Unknowingly, I earned the Roja’s ire.”

Lan leaned in, suddenly grinning again.

“Well now, that makes you a friend to these poor sisters,” she said. “No admirers of ours, the Hoja Roja. Not since we were sent to open a shop in the Murk.”

Tristan cocked his head to the side, curious, and lightly traced a finger across his throat. Ju shook her head.

“Merchandise,” she told him. “Dust, whalechew and pipe poppy.”

He let out a low whistle.

“The Roja runs the parlours for those in the Murk,” he said. “I thought the Meng stuck to the docks?”

“Noise was made back in the Republics that we should cut out the middlemen,” Lan said, tone bitter. “We warned against it, told them it was a mistake, but why listen to us? We just live here.”

“Then when the Roja went blood-mad, they cut their losses,” Ju cursed. “The lizard sheds the tail in the tiger’s jaws, they told us.”

It was Tristan’s turn to grimace. Reading between the lines, the Meng-Xiaofan had cut loose the people they’d sent into the Murk as an ill-fated attempt to cut into the Hoja Roja’s trade. Tossed in their heads as appeasement so knives could be sheathed and business return to usual.

“There can’t be many of you left,” he said.

“Two,” Lan replied, tone curt.

And he was looking at them. No wonder they were desperate enough to take the trials as a way out. It was grim talk and he was at a loss as to where to go from there. With grace that only further convinced him they’d had front-facing roles, the twins guided the conversation away from the pit.

“You’d think that for the ramas we paid the accommodations would be nicer, at least,” Ju sighed, looking around.

Tristan hid his surprise. A gold rama was worth three silver arboles, each of which were worth thirty-four copper radizes: he’d only rarely had truck with arboles, much less their golden sisters. And so he sniffed a detail of interest, for though he could believe sisters that’d been in the Meng could scrape together ramas the twins were not the only one who’d come tonight. The thief’s gaze moved to the remainder of the ten that’d been guided in, skimming over the legbreaker and the woman with spectacles, lingering instead on the toothless old man, the shivering girl and the couple. The latter’s clothing was threadbare, shabby. All were thin. Tristan doubted they could scrape a silver together between the lot of them.

“There are other ways to get in,” he deduced.

Lan followed his gaze to the old man and she chuckled.

“That one you have wrong,” she said. “We saw him settle with our own eyes, though he paid in books instead of coin. You’re not wrong about most the rest.”

“They’re paid for,” Ju smiled, mirthless. “It’s for bets, you see. How far they’ll get, how well they’ll do. Large sums by large men.”

Tristan’s hands clenched. An old and familiar anger flared in his belly.

“Palace side?” he asked.

Lan shook her head.

“Gutter,” she said. “The Menor Mano went heavy this year, I hear, but there’s others.”

The anger simmered down. It was not infanzones making sport of gutter lives, only monsters doing as monsters did. The thief hummed, considering the arrivals with fresh eyes.

“So who was I wrong about?” he asked.

Ju cocked a plucked eyebrow.

“Burned a bridge, you said,” she invited.

Fair, Tristan thought. He’d gotten more from them than the other way around.

“Robbed someone out on a contract for the Orelanna brothers,” he said. “It ended in a corpse.”

He saw the shift in the way they sat, the rise in wariness but also the birth of a degree of respect. He’d been a resource, before. Now he was a potential asset.

“That’ll get a man killed, sure enough,” Lan amiably said.

Ju cleared her throat.

“The pretty blond, he’s the other one that paid his way onboard,” she said. “His name’s Brun.”

It took a moment for Tristan’s eye to find the youth in question, as he was tucked away between crates. Back to the wall, with an angle on most the room that let him look in without being seen in return. Not exactly shopkeeper’s habits, these. Brun caught his look, offering a smile in reply. The thief looked away first.

“That one’s dangerous,” Fortuna murmured, leaning against the wall. “And he’s got someone with him. They’re loud.”

Tristan stiffened. Someone, to the Lady of Long Odds, would mean someone like her. Another god. He’d known there would be others with contract on the ship, but it was not a pleasant surprise.

“Someone to be careful of,” the thief warned the twins.

They traded a look, then Ju nodded thanks for the warning. They did not ask why he would give such warning. Asking about someone’s contract was the cat-killing sort of curiosity.

“They let in the desperate at night,” Lan said, “but the rest will be coming soon. The real contenders.”

“The infanzones,” Tristan evenly said. “They have seats promised to them under old accords.”

Even a rat like him knew that, mostly because the infanzones themselves trumpeted it about. The yearly trials on the island were a way for young aristocrats to prove themselves skillful and daring, to jostle with each other for pre-eminence. The names of those who had gone and how far they’d made it were made public, spread around by criers at the Vermilion Festival every year. Rumour had it that making it as far as the third trial could get you bumped up in the line of succession.

“Fifteen,” Ju agreed. “Mind you, noble asses won’t even fill half of those. They bring guards and servants.”

He wrinkled his nose. Another pack to steer clear of.

“They aren’t worth a worry,” Lan dismissed. “Nobles will play it safe, make it to the beginning of the third and then take the way out.”

There were two of those. The trials on the Dominion of Lost Things were meant to forge recruits for the Watch, but your average infanzon had no intention of renouncing titles and wealth to join the blackcloaks. So instead they took the paths of retreat the Watch had arranged on the island, safe places where a participant could desist from going any further.

“It’s the recommended candidates that’ll be dangerous,” Lan continued. “They’re here for the prize and they won’t be afraid to kill to make it.”

Tristan thinly smiled and the older woman looked somewhat abashed. He was, after all, almost certainly one of these recommended candidates.

“I hear most are foreigners, usually,” the thief said, returning the earlier grace.

“Heard that too,” Ju hastily agreed. “Though I’m not sure how many there will be.”

“There’s at most a hundred seats open every year,” Lan noted, “and we heard seventy-three were filled this time. There are two ships, though, and one sailed off yesterday.”

The other twin cocked a brow at him.

“Did you get a look at the passenger list?”

Tristan shook his head.

“But I saw it being read,” he told her, “and it can’t have been too long. Around thirty names.”

The twins hummed. Like him they were curious as to how numerous their batch would be. The conversation drifted after that, staying friendly but of light nature. Neither side had more they were interested in trading, and it was too early in the venture to begin talking of the kind of alliances that would mean life or death when bodies began dropping. The twins took their leave before long, going around the hold to gladhand the others – the couple in particular, he noted. He ought to do the same, feel out the others for enmities and alliances. The large bruiser was asleep and not the kind of man he’d want to work with besides, so he had a frank look at the others.

The two greyhairs were out of the running for now. The toothless old man was still coughing, looking half a step into the grave, and though the old woman seemed spry she bore spectacles. Should those be broken, she might well be half blind. Disinclined to work the couple when the twins were already at it, Tristan considered the last three. ‘Brun’ was to be avoided, Fortuna’s warning heeded, which left the girl shivering in a corner and the Tianxi with a soldier’s bearing. The girl first, he decided. Her curly brown hair trembled with the rest of her when he sat down close, offering a smile that she visibly forced herself to return. She flinched when he rested his back against the wall. With that pointed chin and those wet eyes, she looked like a terrified bird.

“Tristan,” he introduced himself.

“Marzela,” she replied.

The thief had held little truck with sympathy – either given or received – since burying his mother, but he knew how to feign the appearance of it well enough.

“Rough night?” he gently asked.

The girl had a full-body shiver, swallowing loudly.

“I shouldn’t be here,” she burst out, unable to help herself. “It’s not even my debt, but they said…”

“You were forced to come,” Tristan said.

Marzela nodded, eyes shining with tears.

“I haven’t seen either of my parents in years, but the moneylenders said it didn’t matter,” she whispered. “The law says it’s my debt too.”

“Did you try to flee?” he asked, eyes studying her closely.

Now that he was closer to the girl, he could tell there was something… off. More than just fear. She kept flinching without obvious reasons for it, like she could hear or see something he could not.

“They had pistols,” Marzela replied.

You’d have had a better chance with bullets than the trials, Tristan thought. You should have run. Her hands were trembling still, one rubbing her forearm as if to calm herself, and that was what let him put it together. She wasn’t just rubbing but tracing a pattern with a finger. Something complex, a symbol of some kind with intricate lines. Again and again she traced it, never noticing even as she told him that she’d been promised the debt would be written off if she survived the first trial. Tristan smiled and nodded at all the right places, mind spinning. Marzela had a compulsion, a tic. One of the most obvious signs someone had just come into a contract and their god had strong hold on them.

The thief ought to know, it’d taken years for him to unlearn the habit of flipping a coin that did not exist.

“It’ll be all right,” Tristan comfortingly lied. “We will be many on the island. With arms and numbers there will be some safety.”

Marzela twitched again, beginning to look at the ceiling before she stopped herself. A contract that enhanced her senses, perhaps? Whatever it was, she seemed to be drawing on it at all times and that was dangerous. First to herself, but in time perhaps to others as well. The thief suggested she try to sleep before rising back to his feet, but neither of them much believed in her promise to try. Tristan then moved towards the soldier, who’d settled against a crate and was pulling at a copper flask. The smell of liquor – cheap and strong – wafted up as soon as he approached, the Tianxi offering up a sardonic smile.

“My turn, is it?” the man said. “At least you’re not quite as obvious about it as the twins.”

Tristan sat down slowly, as to be sure he would not be provoking a man he now saw was armed. The sword sheath across the Tianxi’s lap was empty, but there was the bulge of a pistol tucked under his coat. And my life for a sparrow’s that he’s got more knives than I do tucked away.

“We’ll be sailing out soon,” Tristan replied, caught out but unrepentant. “Before we do I would know the lay of the land.”

“Practical of you,” the man said, not offended in the slightest. “What’s your name, boy?”

“Tristan.”

“Yong,” the other said, offering a nod of a greeting.

Tristan returned it, wary of this stranger who was putting away rotgut like water but whose eyes were still sharp.

“You’ve nothing to worry of me, Tristan,” Yong plainly said. “I was not sent here to play red games.”

The thief’s eyes narrowed. A lie, at least in part, for the twins had told him of those who’d paid their way onto the ship and Yong had not been one of them. Deciding that the man’s easy temperament allowed for a gamble, he decided to press.

“Yet someone sent you,” Tristan said. “Your seat was bought by another.”

The Tianxi grimaced.

“Those two tell you that, did they?” he said, jerking his chin towards the twins. “You’d best be careful not to trust them too much.”

Tristan trusted no one at all, save perhaps Fortuna, but saw no need to tell the man as much.

“And why’s that?”

Yong lowered his voice.

“Do you know why they’re talking to the couple so much?” he asked.

Tristan shook his head.

“The husband, Felis, he’s got scales on the arm and he’s been…”

Yong trailed off, mimicking scratching his arm, and the thief could not entirely hide his revulsion. Skin flakes that looked like scales and incessant scratching were symptoms he was familiar with, as would be any child of the Murk’s: the man was a dust addict. The twins would not have missed that, not with dust being one of the merchandises the Meng-Xiaofan pushed. If he goes into withdrawal and they have dust on them, they good as own him, Tristan thought.

“There’s no clean shoes in the Murk,” the thief finally said, quoting half an old saying.

Shit clings to all our soles, the other half went. It was not absolution or forgiveness, but blame was like misery: one of those rare things there always seemed to be enough of to go around. Best to be careful with it, and with the Tianxi as well. It was why he’d phrased his answer to have a hanging question.

“All I need is to get to the third trial,” Yong bluntly said. “I’ve no interest in anything else.”

“Not even a black cloak?” Tristan casually asked.

Too casually, he realized with a silent curse as Yong’s eyes narrowed.

“Might put one on if it’s offered,” the man said. “You?”

Honesty or vagueness? Honesty, he finally decided. Their interests were not at odds and it was always best to stay on the good side of men with pistols and knowledge of how to use them.

“I don’t have a choice,” the thief admitted. “I’m in it to the end.”

“Seems like we might have a thing or two in common,” Yong casually said.

The offer hung in the air. It was too early to commit to alliances, Tristan knew, and yet did not decline. What were the odds he’d get a better offer? He was a rat, not the kind of sought-after soul that would be able to pick out their companions when the real recommended arrived. He wants something, the younger man decided. I’m fit and I look like I might be able to handle myself in a fight, but he might get better if he holds out until the others begin to arrive. Which meant Yong wanted something that a rat was in the best position to give. Far from unsettling him, Tristan found the thought a reassuring one. An ally without a use was just fodder. The suspicion that he wouldn’t just be a body to throw in harm’s way settled his doubts.

“It seems like we do,” the thief agreed.

The Tianxi smiled.

“Good,” he said. “Then I have a suggestion to make.”

Tristan’s brow cocked. So now came the price.

“I obtained the name of a sailor on this ship who likes gifts,” Yong said.

Someone that could bribed. Always useful.

“And what would be gotten, for that gift?” Tristan asked.

“To sit in a corner as the rest of the travellers board,” the Tianxi said. “Being given names and stories by our friend.”

For a heartbeat, Tristan wondered how he was being had. He was being sent to learn information that might well save his life, so why would Yong ever allow someone else to learn it in his stead? It made no sense, unless… He’s a bought seat, Tristan realized. They won’t let him out of the hold even for a bribe. But I’ve got a recommendation, so they just might. It wasn’t a rat that Yong had been after but someone who the blackcloaks wouldn’t confine to the bottom of the boat.

“I like him,” Fortuna decided. “He’s clever.”

Yong pulled at his copper flask again, the stench of liquor spreading. He’s also likely a drunk, Tristan thought, not that the goddess would consider that a black mark on anyone’s record. But a drunk was something he could work with, so he would.

“Let’s get our friend that gift, then,” the thief smiled, and the soldier smiled back.

—

Lucia looked rather straight-laced, for a woman taking bribes. Her face was stern in that way that people became stern when they were uncomfortable and looking to take it out on someone else.

“You’re going to be peeling potatoes,” the sailor told him. “So sit on the bench and shut up.”

As Lucia easily had a stone on him in muscles and belly fat while Tristan had a fondness for avoiding arguments with people who’d be able to snap his neck, he dutifully sat on the bench and shut up. The sailor passed him a peeling knife and dropped a misshapen potato onto his lap, grunting in satisfaction when he began to deftly peel away. He was three in – a pittance, compared to the barrel of hundreds they were working through – when she finally deigned to address him.

“They’ll be coming in two batches,” Lucia said. “The foreigners first, most at once, and then the noble brats.”

Though she was still glaring at him like he’d emptied her pockets instead of the very opposite, Tristan’s fondness for the sailor could not help but mount. Anyone who held the infanzones in such open contempt could not be entirely bad. He’d caught her wording, though, and a question made it to the tip of his tongue. There it lingered, long enough the woman noticed.

“Out with it,” she grunted.

“You said foreigners,” he said. “Not recommended.”

She nodded, looking approving for the first time since they’d met.

“Most years we only take in foreigners that got recommended,” Lucia agreed, “but this one’s different. Some seats were handed out for companies to sell.”

Tristan brow furrowed.

“Why?”

“The better question, boy,” the sailor replied, whittling away at the potato skin, “is why you’re on this ship when last month one full of recommended from Sacromonte sailed straight for the Rookery.”

His brow furrowed even deeper. The Rookery was the common name for the great island-fortress that was the seat of the Watch, said to be as a city of blackcloaks. Watchmen were trained there in a great war camp.

“I’m the only one from the city to take the trials,” Tristan slowly said.

“That’s got a recommendation, anyway,” Lucia shrugged.

He rocked back in surprise. What was Abuela up to? The more he learned the more obscure her motives became. His companion lost interest in the conversation, and with a curt gesture told him to start peeling again. They stayed on the deck for an hour, working away until the others began to arrive. The bulk of the first wave arrived as a group, escorted by a pair of blackcloaks. Tristan watched them carefully from his corner of the deck. Lucia, for all that she seemed to enjoy none of this, delivered on her promises without qualms.

“See the Aztlans?”

Tristan nodded, eyes moving to the only two among the pack whose skin was the light brown common to those from the Kingdom of Izcalli. A woman in her twenties and a boy that couldn’t be older than Tristan himself, eighteen. The boy had pale eyes, but what drew attention to him was how eerily perfect he looked. Every part of his body symmetrical and proportioned, like he’d been sculpted instead of born. It made his skin crawl to look at.

“Don’t know much about the girl, but the boy’s called Tupoc Xical,” Lucia said. “Recommended, he’s some sort of prodigy trained by the Leopard Society. He’s got a contract too.”

Not a likely ally then. Izcalli’s societies were bloodthirsty bastards one and all, always waging their famous flower wars.

“The two Ramayans got recommended because they have family in the black,” the sailor continued, pointing at a pair of youths.

Of the many peoples of the Imperial Someshwar, the Ramayans were those Tristan knew best: they held the great cities on the empire’s south eastern coast, so their trading ships sometimes came as far as Sacromonte. He’d never seen any dressed so colourful as these two, though. The girl of the pair had no less than three pistols at her hips, making her a rather more impressive sight than the chubby-cheeked boy looking like he was about to keel over.

“Then you’ve got the three from our corner of the Trebian Sea,” Lucia grunted.

A girl with unfortunate acne wore the jacket and cravat typical of the Asphodel Rectorate, one of Sacromonte’s closest neighbours, and a Raseni veiled from head to toe in grey was carefully staying away from her. Not unexpected, given that Rasen and Asphodel were said to war with each other incessantly. The last was a tall and thin man with heavy circles around his eyes.

“The man’s from Asphodel too,” Lucia quietly said. “Leander Galatas, a former sailor. Be careful of him.”

Tristan cocked his head to the side, eyes questioning.

“His recommendation came from the Navigator’s Guild,” she said. “Odds are he knows some Signs.”

The thief’s belly clenched. Learned men insisted that the Signs were not truly magic, merely a way for the initiated to manipulate the Gloam, but Tristan had heard stories. Winds called from nowhere, men set alight with but a word. And of those who used the stranger arts going mad, hollowing from the inside as the Gloam devoured them. He silently nodded. The first arrivals disappeared into the belly of the ship but Tristan stayed, waiting as the last four of the foreigners trickled in over the following hour. First a pack of three dark-skinned Malani, a younger pair whose air and clothes screamed ‘money’ with a scarred older woman behind them that had a fighter’s look. A guard, he figured.

“The younger two were recommended,” Lucia said. “I heard there’s a Malani swordmistress coming, but it shouldn’t be one of them.”

The last to arrive was Tianxi, a girl his age with a sword at her hip and a musket slung over her back. Her eyes were a startling silver shade.

“She was recommended by the Rookery,” the sailor provided. “And she’s got a contract for sure.”

The stranger’s eyes swept over the deck, neither hurried nor slow, and for a moment Tristan would have sworn they lingered above his head. Then she walked on, disappearing below deck. Lucia frowned.

“There’s supposed to be one more,” she said, “but at this rate the infanzones will be getting here first.”

Her prediction came true. But half an hour later, Sacromonte’s noble sons and daughters arrived in a colourful procession. There must have been half a hundred people crowding the docks, some mounted but most brought by carriages that servants in livery promptly began to unload. The two carriages at the front did not bear colours he recognized.

“Villazur and Ruesta,” Lucia told him.

Tristan hummed. He knew of the Ruesta, a family sworn to one of the great houses of Sacromonte – though he could not recall which one. Their wealth was famous. He’d never heard of the Villazur.

“The Ruesta girl’s a bloody idiot,” the sailor growled. “Brought three people with her, and would you believe that two of them are maids.”

“The Villazur?” he asked.

“Better,” Lucia conceded. “Got some Malani huntsman, I hear.”

He was about to ask about the rest when the Villazur servants moved aside, revealing a sight that snatched away his breath. Painted on the sides of the last two carriages was a red tree on blue.

“Cerdan,” Tristan hissed.

Lucia slowly nodded.

“Brothers,” she said, “with a valet and-”

He didn’t hear the rest of the sentence because blood was rushing to his ears. Helping down some noble waste from his carriage was a man that Tristan Abrascal would recognize even if his eyes were plucked out of his head. It’d been years, so the hair was longer and the beard touched with grey, but the burn scar near the ear looked the same. Tristan could still hear the casual drawl, smell gunpowder and blood. Hear his father weep. Cozme Aflor. So that was why Abuela had put him on this ship, sent him into these trials. She was giving him two of the Cerdan and the man whose name was at the bottom of his List.

Fortuna’s hand on his shoulder brought him back to himself.

“-id. Kid.” Lucia said, sounding impatient. “What’s with you?”

“Nothing,” Tristan lied. “Our bargain is done. My thanks.”

The sailor blinked in surprise. He slid the peeling knife into his half-done potato, fingers clenching, and dropped it back into the barrel.

“There’s still one missing,” she said. “We’ll be waiting for her until midday at least.”

“This is enough. One won’t make a difference.”

“Fine,” she grunted. “But you best not come complaining later.”

He shook his head and briskly took his leave, wanting to be in the hold before the nobles arrived. Fortuna walked by his side, red dress trailing on the floor behind her like a river of blood, and Tristan forced his jaw to unclench.

“I was wrong,” he spoke under his breath as he reached the top of the stairs.

“What about?” Fortuna lightly asked.

“There is only one thing that moves me to revenge,” Tristan Abrascal murmured, “but it appears it is not far from this boat after all.”

Angharad dropped to the ground as the shot sounded.

The stranger who’d stood in front of her was not so quick and his face exploded in a shower of gore – Sleeping God, she thought, sickened – as she reached for the long saber at her hip. There were a few screams at the grisly sight, but already the people of the street market were scurrying away into alleys. Angharad grit her teeth. This place was not like her home, like Peredur: there was no honour in Sacromonte, this horrid city of filth and rats. No one would help.

Slowly, so that the sound would not give her away, Angharad unsheathed her saber as she crawled towards the edge of the stall that was her sole cover. She should look now, before her would-be assassin could reload their musket, but Angharad instead kept staring at the corpse of the man she had come here to meet. She found herself avoiding the sight of the gaping red wound made by the ball, gaze shying away, and lingering on the dark skin so much like her own.

The stranger had been Malani, by his accent, not Pereduri like her. Not that the rest of Vesper ever thought of the Duchy of Peredur as anything but a petty province of the Kingdom of Malan – her thoughts were straying, she chided herself. Fear had a way of doing that to her. Angharad mastered herself, breathing in and out slowly the way she had been taught. This was no display duel, no tournament of skill where the violence would end when blood or surrender ensued, but she had learned to kill her fear there and she would kill it today as well.

Her breathing calmed, her hand steady around the grip of her saber, Angharad popped her head out to look and-

(The musket ball went through her skull.)

-and she kept rolling, a shot whizzing above her as a lightning-quick bite of pain tore at her shoulder through the dyed cloth of her jacket. She was bleeding, but she rolled all the way behind another stall even as she heard a man curse in Antigua. Angharad’s lips tightened as she felt disapproval waft out of that deep place within her. The Fisher had drawn on their pact when she had failed to, granting her that glimpse of what lay ahead, but the old spirit approved of neither fear nor recklessness. He would not twice extend his hand this way.

“Come out,” a man’s voice called out from her right. “If you do, I’ll make it quick. Won’t be that kind if you make it hard, girl.”

Angharad ground her teeth. She was a peer of Peredur, even if her title had been struck down, and the last of the House Tredegar. Did the man expect she would simply roll over and die when he asked? She drew on her pact, feeling as if she had touched cold water with the bottom of her feet. In her mind’s eye she saw herself rise, but to her surprise the shot that took her in the chest did not come from the right but the left. There were two assassins, not one, she realized as she released the pact. Both of them with muskets. She hesitated. The odds were uncomfortably steep against her. Attack, her mother had taught her. Defence is delay.

Angharad’s fingers stumbled across a metal goblet, a cheaply made thing of iron, as she groped along the ground. It must have fallen when the peddler owning this stall fled. Closing her eyes, she tossed it to her right. Before it could hit the floor, she drew on her pact again and glimpsed the muzzle of the muskets following the sound. Without hesitation she rose, glimpsing two silhouettes in the dim lamplight aiming their guns at her bait. Shadows filtered through the banners and poles of the street market, hiding her for most of a heartbeat as she began to run. A click, a snap, a shot: a ball went whizzing past her as she ducked under another stall. She drew on the pact again, eyes turned unseeing as she moved, and coldly smiled. It was the nearest assassin that had shot, as she had hoped.

Angharad released the power, leaping over a clutter of pottery and keeping the killer now reloading her long musket between her and the assassin still ready to fire. The man of the pair shouted for his accomplice to move, but he was too late. Angharad kicked a stall of colourful ribbons into the woman’s knees and she rocked back with a shout of pain, dropping the ramrod she’d been using to reload. Angharad met her eyes, grey to brown, and saw the fear there. She did not relish it, did not allow herself to, and swung her saber in a clean stroke.

It ripped through the assassin’s throat.

Angharad drew on her pact, the Fisher’s quiet approval easing the coming of the glimpse. Smoothly the noblewoman caught the shoulder of the dying assassin before she could fall, keeping her body in the path of the panicked shot that followed from the other assassin. It didn’t pierce through, having hit the middle of the back, and Angharad let the body drop as she leapt over the stall before her. The man was a tall and thin Lierganen and his fear spread across his face like ink soiling water. He did not lose his wits, though and kicked the last stall between them towards her. It toppled piles of dyed cloth, but Angharad had been quicker and she was already leaping over it.

Her landing was off and she wasted a moment steadying her footing, long enough for the man to strike at her with the butt of the musket. Right into her shoulder, she swallowed a groan. That would bruise. She struck his chin in return, the guard of her saber crunching bone satisfyingly as the side of her blade bit into flesh, and with a hiss of pain the assassin dropped his musket. In his eyes Angharad saw the knowledge of his own death as the gun clattered on the floor, but she did not strike. Could not. The edge of her blade rested against the side of his neck.

“Pick up your weapon,” Angharad ordered, her Antigua crisp.

The man went still, eyes flicking to the blade and then back to her. The fear drained, replaced by a smirk.

“It’s true, then, about you Malani nobles,” he said. “All about honour. Won’t strike an unarmed man.”

Angharad did not answer, simply withdrawing her blade and taking half a step back.

“Fucking fools you are,” the man mocked. “Worse than an infanzon. I’ll just leave, and what are you going to-”

The point went through his eye and into his skull, Angharad snapping her wrist to withdraw the blade cleanly. There was some debate among scholars whether a ‘fair chance’ to take up one’s weapon should be considered three or five breaths, so she had waited a full five. She did not like to walk too close to the line in matters of honour.

“I am not Malani,” she coldly informed the corpse as it toppled.

She was of Peredur, and the people of the High Isle had their own ways. She knelt to wipe the blade on his tunic before sheathing it, idly going through his pockets. A few copper coins, powder and shot. She took the coin, as she would need them for the corpse price and it had been won cleanly by blade. The other assassin bore even less coin and a small dagger. The noblewoman returned to the cooling body of the man who had died trying to pass a message to her, the forever nameless Malani, and set the copper coins above his heart in a circle. It was an old custom: the coin was for anyone to take who would be willing to see the body properly burned or buried.

Feeling dirtied for putting her fingers to a corpse she had not made, Angharad forced herself to look through the dead man’s pockets for a message. To her relief, a pocket within his blood-splattered coat contained a folded letter. It was from Uncle Osian, there was no mistaking it: the small red seal keeping the letter closed displayed the two-tailed snake of House Tredegar. Osian, her mother’s youngest brother, had been allowed by her to keep using the family arms even though he had gone into exile to join the Watch. Though they were estranged, Mother had always said it was more by reason of distance than bitterness.

That distance was now why her uncle was the sole surviving member of Angharad’s family, for the Sleeping God moved in mysterious ways. She took the letter, not yet breaking the seal, and tucked it away beneath her coat. She looked around warily, still alone for now. The city guard might be hopelessly – and infamously – corrupt, but even they would not simply ignore killing in the streets of Sacromonte. Best be gone by the time they arrived.

Angharad took to the streets, going back the way she had come. Cortolo District was a maze of slender canals and curved bridges, its stone facades painted in shades of red and yellow that looked vivid in the warm light of the great pillars of palestone. Those relics had been laid down every few blocks back in the days of the Second Empire and she had found them a wondrous sight at first, for her homeland had nothing like them. Only the Lierganen at their height had been able to afford the luxury of letting stone pillars soak in the Glare for decades. She had since shed the wonder: the warm glow of the pillars had weakened over the centuries, and now there were always shadows between their reach.

The glories of the Second Empire were long gone, broken by great wars with the devils of Pandemonium and the even more brutal wars between the powers that had emerged to claim primacy after the fall of Liergan. Another century, Angharad thought as she passed through a grove of orange trees, and the Glare in those pillars would fade entirely. Sacromonte was far fallen from the peerless jewel of the Trebian Sea it had once claimed to be, and it fell a little further every year. The young noblewoman ignored the few street merchants who called out to her as she found the street she had been looking for, recognizing the painted eyes in red and blue on the side of a baker’s shop.

It made her uncomfortable that people – commoners – would call out to her in such a way. And there were so many of them… Angharad had visited many cities in Malan, when she duelled still, but not even the capital of the kingdom was so thick with people as Sacromonte. It made her feel cramped, somehow. The inn she was staying at was one her uncle had directed her to by letter, a small but clean establishment where she was assured of the hostess’ discretion. The middle-aged matron, a stout woman by the name of Luna, welcomed her with a smile as she passed the green-painted threshold.

“Lady Maraire,” the hostess said. “You’ve returned early. Will you be in want of a meal, then?”

Angharad’s answering smile was stiff. It was not a lie, the name she had given. No peer of Peredur could be recognized in the rolls of the kingdom’s nobility without first taking a Malani name, her own being Anwar Maraire. It had been the compromise honour allowed her between the secrecy Uncle Osian had urged her to and the dishonour inherent in deceiving one whose roof you stayed under. It sat ill with Angharad, for all that she knew it was necessary, and Luna’s graceful manners in referring to her by the name and title were as a twist of the knife every time.

“I do not yet know,” Angharad replied. “I have correspondence to attend to before I can give you answer. Is the solar vacant?”

“It is, my lady,” Luna nodded. “And I tidied it up this morning too. Enter as you please.”

Angharad thanked her hostess and went up the stairs. She slipped into her room, long enough to shed her jacket and grimace at the red staining her pale shirt. The ball had nicked the back of her shoulder, deep enough to bleed her if not to touch muscle. Mother had shown her how to dress a wound when she’d been a girl and still dreamed of her following in her footsteps as a sea captain, so she clumsily cleaned the wound and wrapped a bandage from her trunk around her shoulder. The dark-skinned noblewoman still had two clean shirts and she wasted no time putting one on, but that’d been her last jacket. There was nothing left now but a formal dress and an overcoat, the latter of which she decided on.

The trunk was half-empty, she saw with a pang. She’d been able to bring precious little with her when she had fled Malan, only what friends of the family had been able to salvage from the townhouse in Indawen before it too was seized. Clothes, coin, a few of her father’s jewels and a handful of books. There were fewer of the last than she’d begun with, as she’d had to sell a few for local coinage after docking in the Sanguine Port. Angharad was not so callow as to be unaware that showing she had gold and jewels in a port could get her robbed or worse. She still had all three of Yibanathi’s books of poems, at least, her very favourites in all the world.

The first of them had been a gift from her very first love. Arianwen had been as exacting an opponent on the duelling field as she had been a companion off it, something that had first drawn but ultimately chased away Angharad. Still, the hard words of their parting had since lost their sting and it was now with mostly fondness that the noblewoman ran a finger across the spine of the book. It would have been easy to lose herself in reminiscence, Angharad knew. Easy and dangerous. If she lived in the past, she would be buried with it. She closed the trunk, her haste making the sound harsh, and crisply took her letter before leaving the room.

Down the hall, past the three other bedroom doors of the inn, she found the small solar’s door open and the shutters on its window pulled back. She closed the door behind her, though there was sadly no lock. The chair and writing desk by the window were worn but comfortable and well-tended to, much like the rest of the inn, and Angharad unclasped the sheath at her belt before seating herself. She sighed, leaning back as the scent of lemons and oranges drifted through the window on a subtle breeze. After a long moment, readied, she broke the seal on the letter and opened it.

The looping and elegant calligraphy of her Uncle Osian filled a few paragraphs. Like on every other instance, the older man failed to properly greet her as the Lady of Llanw Hall. Angharad’s fingers tightened, her teeth grit as for a moment she smelled ash on the wind and heard screams in the distance. It took a long moment for her to calm, for her breathing to even out. Her home was gone, her family was gone, everything and everyone she had ever known. And now even here, in this shitheap of a city halfway across Vesper, assassins still hunted her. The rage was familiar by now, a comforting burn, and she embraced it.

Angharad Tredegar would have revenge on the man who had destroyed her family one day. She had sworn it, on that calamitous night where she had lost everything, and the Fisher had heard her oath. The old spirit would see it through at her side, their contract a bond only death could sunder.

Calmed anew, Angharad resumed reading. It was not long before she winced. She had hoped her uncle might come to her here in Sacromonte, but it was not to be: Osian wrote that he had not been allowed to take leave from his work, as it had reached a critical juncture and he was the head of the endeavour. As always, her uncle remained vague on what exactly it was he did for the Watch. He was captain in rank, but Angharad knew that he was not part of one of the many free companies out in the field on contracts.

Her uncle was not much of a fighting man, her mother had always said, but he’d always been clever with his mind and his hands. He’d written of spending much time in the Rookery once, one of the great fortress-islands of the Watch, so Angharad had come to suspect he might be a member of one of the seven Circles – one of the scholarly societies, probably. That meant influence among their ranks, from what little she knew of the workings of the Watch, as though all watchmen were counted as members of the order less than a tenth of them were ever inducted into one of the Circles.

Uncle Osian tersely apologized for being unable to come himself but wrote he had meanwhile made arrangements on her behalf and learned of her enemy.

You were followed from Malan, niece, he wrote. Your ship was asked for by name at the Sanguine Port and silver flowed freely for men who had answers about where you had gone. I fear that the enemy pursuing you is no mere peer or izinduna but instead a high noble, perhaps even a member of the High Queen’s court. I am told by my acquaintances that the Guardia was not simply bought; its officers were ordered by one of the great families of Sacromonte to kill you. Avoid the redcloaks at all costs.

Angharad’s lips thinned. It was worse than she had thought, then, and she had not thought it good in the slightest. She had her own suspicions as to the rank of the man who had ordered the end of House Tredegar, and though they were still only suspicions to have it confirmed her enemy was wealthy and powerful only served to strengthen them. If the city guard itself was hunting her, she thought, then she must leave Sacromonte before long. It would be her death otherwise. Hopefully, then, her uncle had not simply written to tell her he was leaving her to her fate.

She carefully read the rest, eyes narrowing when he cautioned her that he could not intervene too blatantly as her situation was a ‘Malani matter’ and the Watch was not meant to intervene in the affairs of nations without invitation. That might be true in principle, she thought, but hardly in practice. Yet her uncle might not have the influence to force such a matter, and if her foe was influential enough Osian’s allies and superiors might not be willing to intervene on his behalf. It was dire news, but she took it as calmly as she could. Angharad had known it would be a possibility. Yet her uncle, it seemed, was not to abandon her.

After trading favours I have secured an opportunity that could place you beyond the reach of your enemy, no matter how powerful, Uncle Osian wrote. Your name has been added to the list of candidates that are to undertake the yearly trials on the island of Vieja Perdida. It would be a perilous undertaking, I will not pretend otherwise. Fewer than one in five survive. Yet to succeed would make you a fully-fledged member of the Watch immediately, robbing your foe of the ability to frustrate attempts at more traditional enrolment.

It would protect you, Angharad. Even great lords do not dare offend the Watch and your oath need not be a lifelong one. I urge you to take shelter among our order until you are fully grown and ready to face your enemy. There is little more I can do, for I have traded what I have to trade and now find myself short on debts owed. The man who handed you this letter is trustworthy and knows how to have coin made available to you should you need it. If you would send me a letter in answer, he can handle the matter for you.

May the Sleeping God dream you kindly.

Captain Osian Tredegar

Below were scribbled directions to the ship that would take her to the trials should she wish to attempt them, as well as a note that the two days to embark were the seventh and the eighth of the Fourth. Today and tomorrow, Angharad realized with a start. She must have been too slow in finding her uncle’s agent. It was a troubling notion that she might have had a part in the man’s death, and not the sole one that Uncle Osian had brought at her door. He wanted her to join the Watch and she could understand why well enough.

He was right that it would afford her a great deal of protection, and that the oath would not take all of her life: watchmen swore in sevens, and after seven years Angharad expected she would be either dead or ready for revenge. It also meant, however, that she would formally be leaving her title as Lady of Llanw Hall behind. Blackcloaks could not hold titles while they served, and often not even after. She closed her eyes, gritting her teeth.

“It is already behind you, fool girl,” she harshly whispered.

The high courts of Malan had struck her title down before she even fled the kingdom. Her mother had been accused of high treason and her father of corruption – something or other about taxes – so the High Queen of Malan had given her assent to the removal of her family from the rolls of nobility. In the eyes of the law, Angharad was no longer a peer of Peredur. The title she claimed was a meaningless one. And yet the thought of surrendering it felt like hot coals in her belly. She thought of ash and screams again, shivering. It felt like a betrayal to abandon the title when she was the sole survivor of that horror.

Could she really spit on the memory of her parents in this way?

No, she decided. Her situation was not yet so dire that she could not attempt to write her uncle again for another solution. She still had coin enough to last a few months and even if Osian’s agent was dead her uncle could still be contacted through the great offices of the Watch in Sacromonte. Folding the letter and tucking it away in her coat, Angharad opened the drawer on the side of the desk and took both paper and ink. She had a quill of her own, in her trunk, and she rose to fetch it. The door opened and Angharad froze: at the top of the stairs, a man in a red cloak was standing with a pistol in hand.

Another was coming up the stairs behind him, and a moment of perfect stillness followed as Angharad met the guardsman’s eyes. The pact came easy, telling her she was but a moment away from a shot being fired at her.

“Shit,” the red-cloaked man swore, raising his pistol and his voice. “It’s her.”

Angharad shut the door just in time, the ball tearing into it with a spray of wooden shards. Keeping a foot on the door, she hastily snatched up her sheathed saber as another shot thundered against the wood. She could hear men shouting about breaking down the door. They must have thought it was locked instead of simply being held. Going through the corridor would be suicide, she thought, even if there were only two of them. Which she doubted. That left… Angharad glanced at the window, dipping into her pact. She grimaced. She’d get shot. The timing was slightly off. She released the pact and pulled at it again, trying to find the right moment.

The door was about to be knocked down by two men using a bench, she saw. It was now or never.

Angharad, holding her sheathed saber in hand, hurriedly crawled atop the table and pushed her way through the shutters even as the door was smashed down behind her. She fell through and down into the street even as the guard in the street below hastily snapped a shot at her and missed by a wide margin, ball ricocheting inside the solar. She landed on her feet, crouching down with a shout of pain but gritting her teeth as she forced herself to move. She dipped into the pact and coldly smiled at what she saw.

The red-cloaked woman in front of her had a long cudgel in hand, but she dropped it to unsheathe a short sword. It was a mistake. Darting forward before the cudgel hit the pavement, Angharad smashed the pommel of her saber in the woman’s throat and, as she began choking, slipped behind her. The shot that came from the solar window took the guardswoman in the belly. There were screams and shouts inside the inn, red-cloaked guards forcing their way back out to pursue, but Angharad took off at a run. She might not know the city, but a head start was a head start.

She ran until she was out of breath, across bridges and markets, until she was sure she had lost the men and women of the Guardia. Only then did she allowed herself to hide in a shady nook, near a palestone pillar, and belt her sheath properly again. Gritting her teeth, she found herself leaning her forehead against a brightly painted wall. She’d been found. By now the redcloaks would have confiscated the last of her worldly possessions, leaving her with a wealth of three silver arboles in her pockets and the clothes on her back. That, and her saber, was now the sum of what Angharad Tredegar owned.

She would have wept, were she not so angry at them for the unfairness of it all.

But there was, she remembered, one last thing on her. The same letter she had tucked away, the salvation Uncle Osian had offered. With trembling fingers, Angharad took it out and unfolded it. At the bottom of the letter, scribbled, was the name of the ship awaiting at Fishmonger’s Quay. The Bluebell. The young noblewoman breathed out, found her center, and tucked away the letter once more.

“Bury the past,” Angharad murmured, “or be buried with it.”

It was as simple as that. There was no refuge left to her save for audacity, and she would not meet whatever fate awaited her cowed or trembling.

Angharad straightened her back and strode back into the light.

None of the skeleton keys were working. The landlord must have sprung for good locks, which was admittedly sensible of the man considering that Tristan was currently trying to rob one of his patrons.

“You should have started with the lockpicks,” Fortuna said. “Told you, didn’t I?”

She was leaning against a dingy wall in the weak light of the sole lantern in the hallway, long red dress sweeping to the ground and her tone openly bored. She’d not lowered her voice in the slightest, which would have risked waking up their friend on the other side of the door if anyone but Tristan could hear her. They couldn’t, anymore than they could see or touch her – Fortuna herself still had the senses, but she had grown far too weak to touch the material world. As far as he knew Tristan Abrascal was the sole contractor to the Lady of Long Odds in all of Vesper, and he knew much. Fortuna was not the kind of goddess that disliked the sound of her own voice.

“And to think I was once mistress of queens and emperors. Entire festivals were thrown to earn even a single approving glance from me, Tristan,” Fortuna mourned. “Now all I may call on is a single orphan, one with terribly middling thieving skills.”

He rolled his eyes. All the old gods like to claim they had once been the greatest deity to ever crawl out of the ether to make pacts with men – or even rule over them, back in the times of the Old Night – but in his experience most of them were no more glorious than the dusty thieves and beggars of the Murk they made contracts with.  

“Love you too,” Tristan murmured back as he reached for the lockpicks.

Mere possession of that neat leather sheath would be enough to earn him a whipping before he was thrown into a cell, should the Guardia catch him with it. Not that they ever had. He opened it to reveal a well-oiled set of tools, one which he knew to be starkly expensive when crafted with such quality. They’d been a gift from Abuela, though like all her gifts he’d had to earn it on his own. He slowly inserted the tension wrench into the lock, as not to make enough noise to wake the man on the other side of the door, and began to work the pick. Quickly he raised an eyebrow.

The landlord of the Azulejo was a wealthy man, for the hostel was the largest in all of Estebra District and Estebra was by far the wealthiest of the half-dozen districts known as the Murk. It seemed, however, that in this instance the size of the establishment had worked against the landlord. Almost a hundred rooms meant that it would have cost a king’s ransom to have good locks on every door unless they were bought in bulk from one of the great workshops. Those mass models were identical: even the good ones all had the same weaknesses. Fortuna, resting a hand on the wall, leaned over his shoulder to have a closer look. He could feel her breath against his cheek, warm and soft.

An illusion, he thought, but one so convincing as to outstrip even the truth.

“A Gongmin lock?” the goddess asked. “You know those. What’s taking you so-”

With a muted sound – thank the gods for whichever servant was being dutiful about keeping these well-oiled – the lock popped open. He offered Fortuna an angelic smile, to which she rolled her eyes. The goddess could be considered a great beauty, he knew, with those shimmering eyes and that hair of gold, yet even as a young boy he’d not been fooled by her appearance. The Lady of Long Odds was essentially a collection of terrible habits made into a deity, after all, and she was not particularly good at hiding this. Not that Tristan minded. His was not the kind of life that some ancient and glorious Mane would have ever deigned to grace with a pact, much less one as close and intimate as the one he shared with Fortuna. Besides, the mere thought of being bound to one of those pristine old monsters was enough to sicken him. Let the infanzones keep the privilege, may they choke on it and each other.

The tools went back into the sheath and Tristan folded it closed before stashing it away in the stitched inner pocket of his coat. He made sure that the skeleton keys he’d put away in another pocket were still wedged among feathers, so that they would not make noise as he moved, and then laid a finger on handle of the blackjack at his hip. He did not like killing, not strangers anyway, which was why he preferred it to the knives most in his trade used. The small weapon of leather and lead was a good fit for his hand, and he’d had practice with it, though if Tristan had his way there would be no violence tonight. In and out with the cabinet he’d come to steal, the man in the room none the wiser until tomorrow. Ideally. Tonight, however, was a test of Abuela’s.

Those did not tend to be painless, for all that they inevitably ended up teaching him valuable lessons.

Tristan slowly cracked the door open, a sliver of dim light from the lantern in the hall slinking through into the dark. He’d looked into other rooms over the last few days so that he would know where the beds and tables were positioned, and from what he could see through the crack there had been no change in arrangement. The table was in the corner to the right, with a single chair, which meant the bed ought to be just outside his angle of sight: left corner, close to but not outright propped against the wall. From the corner of his eye he saw Fortuna wink at him and he smiled back. She’d earlier agreed to keep watch outside the room, after some wheedling.

Tristan opened the door a little wider, crept through and then softly closed it behind him. The young thief waited silently until his eyes got used to the darkness, pricking his ears. The steady breath of a sleeping man was all he heard, along with a body moving around under covers. The room itself was fairly bare. On the right there was the table and chair he had glimpsed earlier, with what looked to be a few papers and a writing kit. On the left there was the bed, a wooden frame with a straw mattress. At its foot was a trunk provided for the guests to stash their personal affairs. Tristan saw a pistol and arming sword placed atop it, over a half-folded black cloak. The last detail had him going still as a stone. The sleeping man was one of the Watch?

If so, this was turning out to be a blunder. Stealing from a blackcloak was a bad idea even at the best of times, for they were talented killers one and all, but if it turned out that Tristan was obstructing a contract then it wouldn’t be the man alone that came for him: the entire free company he belonged to would become involved. Even worse, it was said that the Watch was bound by ancient treaty never to take contracts within Sacromonte save at the invitation of the infanzones so he must have stumb- his thoughts halted, and the young thief turned a considering eye to the sleeping man. It was Abuela that had sent him on this test, he had forgot in his surprise, and Tristan had long suspected that Abuela herself was one of the Watch.

There must be more to this than met the eye. And if the man was here on a contract, why was he alone? The infanzones, the nobles that ruled Sacromonte, they had their favourite companies to contract with when they needed work done in the City. None of those companies were small, each storied and famous and near an army in its own right. And none of them would put up one of their men in a place like the Azulejo, Tristan thought. So was the man here on private business? No, the thief decided, else he would not have dared to bring with him the black cloak that was as a badge of office for the Watch. Tristan’s eyes narrowed. He had only suppositions, but too many details were not adding up.

His gut was saying deserter and Tristan Abrascal trusted his gut.

Which meant he was now free to steal from the stranger once more, if a great deal more warily. A deserter’s knife would kill him just as dead if it slipped through his ribs. From the corner of his eye he saw that Fortuna had gotten bored of keeping an eye out for him and followed him into the room. He swallowed a sigh at the sight of her curiously peering at the papers on the table: it’d only been a matter of time until she wandered off, though he’d hoped for a little longer. The goddess glanced his way, crooking a finger to summon him, but he shook his head. He’d come for the cabinet Abuela had sent him after, nothing else. No good would come of getting involved in Watch business any more than he already was.

He wasn’t seeing said cabinet, unfortunately, but then he’d not moved much. He crept a little deeper into the room, eyes seeking, and found what he was looking for but a few moments later: bare as the rented room was, there were no real hiding places to speak of. The cabinet had simply been nestled by the side of the trunk, half-covered by the cloak. It was easy to recognize from the description he’d been given, slick dark wood with leather stripes to make it easy to carry on one’s back and burnished copper hinges. Inside were pieces of glass and metal, Abuela had said, so he would need to be careful when moving it lest it make a ruckus. Fortuna was looking his way still, insistently gesturing for him to come at her side, but he shook his head at her with growing irritation.

He crept closer to the foot of the bed, angling so that the trunk would hide him as he began to grasp the wooden cabinet. A tentative nudge established it was not all that heavy, intriguingly enough, so Tristan quieted his breath and slid aside the edge of the cloak so that he could begin moving the chest without dragging the black wool with it.

“Tristan, you need to read this,” Fortuna quietly said. “The man is on a contract.”

The young thief turned in startlement, finding the goddess’ face grown grave in the dark. He noticed, a heartbeat too late, that her eyes were going wide. The cold muzzle of a pistol touched the back of his neck.

“A thief, are you?”

The voice was calm but anger lurked close to the surface. The Aztlan accent was faint but noticeable, mostly in the way that the words clicked against the tongue. Tristan swallowed, then painted a winning smile on his face. He was not yet dead, which meant there was still time to dig himself out of the grave he’d dug himself into.

“All men are thieves, arguably,” he replied. “It is only that the rich name it rent or tax instead, so that we might forget what it is.”

A snort of reluctant amusement.

“So you’re a Republican thief.”

Presumably the man meant in political philosophy rather than race, as even in the dark it would be difficult for Tristan to pass as Tianxi.

“Nothing so grand,” Tristan denied. “I am a loyal son of Sacromonte, sir. My faith goes to the Law of Rats.”

The hungry bite, the beggared snatch, the cornered fight. So went the Law of Rats, as written in the famous poetess Ilaria’s verse. There was not a soul in the city that had not heard the poem and to many of the Murk it was as much the writ of the world as any decree of the infanzones. Tristan made to turn, to have a better look at the man holding a pistol to his neck, but the stranger clicked his tongue disapprovingly.

“None of that,” the watchman said. “Not unless you want the trigger pulled.”

Tristan went still. In front of him Fortuna stood, eyeing the man and shaking her head. The stranger was not bluffing, the pistol was fully cocked.

“It may be that you are of the City,” the man said, “but this is not petty theft. The room has a good lock and I do not have the looks of an easy or wealthy mark. What are you here after, boy?”

Tristan hesitated.

“So you were sent,” the man stated, tone confident.

Too confident, really, the young thief frowned. He glanced at Fortuna, who had no answer to give save a grimace. Did the other man possess a contract with a god as well? If so, this conversation was even more dangerous than he’d thought and it had begun with a pistol pressed against his neck.

“Who was it that did the sending?” the man asked. “Give me a name and you won’t need to die tonight. It’s your master that is my foe, not you.”

Maybe if he’d been looking at the face, it would have made a difference. Tristan would have been able to see the Aztlan features, the darker skin and broad chin. It wouldn’t have been the voice alone, speaking words he’d heard before. Maybe not the same, not exactly, but didn’t they all mean the same thing? Landlords and bosses and infanzones, all looking down from across the table with that merciful smile. Just give us names, they asked. You will be spared, forgiven, absolved. But give us the names. Give us your cousins and your neighbours and your friends. Give us names so that we might feed on all who defy us, and you will be eaten the last. Tristan knew better than to believe in the promise. His father had died teaching him that lesson.

“Careful now,” the man said, tone cold. “Know when you’re beaten, boy.”

Tristan Abrascal smiled. Fortuna smiled back, a goddess adorned in gold and blood, her teeth pale as ivory and sharp as knives.

“I do,” he replied, and borrowed luck.

The ticking in the back of his head began, like the moving gears of a clock, but the noise was drowned out by that of a trigger being pulled. The flint came down, but instead of striking the pan and igniting the powder it snapped clean off. Tristan’s luck had been the very finest, for the flintlock to misfire so catastrophically. He’d have to pay for it later. The man cursed and the young thief turned as he rose, blackjack already in hand. The blackcloak took the strike on his chin well, turning with the blow and it was Tristan’s turn to curse. He wasn’t sure he’d win a real fight, he’d been hoping to end it quick. Instead, the ticking in his head still trotting forward at that same steady pace, he was dragged by the man onto the bed.

Entangled in the sheets like a farce of hateful lovers, the two of them wrestled as they tried to keep away the other’s weapon and strike clean – Tristan with his jack, the man with the butt of his pistol. He landed a blow, and a solid one, on the side of the man’s head. The Aztlan was stunned, but not so stunned that he did not smash the pistol into Tristan’s stomach. Gasping, the thief drew back and was unceremoniously kicked in the chest with bruising strength. He tumbled out of the bed even as the man rose, half-getting up from his sprawl only to have the broken pistol thrown in his face. He bit down on shout. And fuck, he could see the man reaching for the pistol still on top of the trunk. Thinking fast, Tristan tossed back the pistol that’d just bruised his chin.

The man’s arm rose to protect his own head, but it hadn’t been the blackcloak Tristan was aiming at: the pistol atop the trunk went tumbling down to the ground, powder and shot spilling all over the floor. Snarling, the Aztlan instead reached for the sheathed sword. The thief panicked, for a moment, because what was a blackjack going to help against a blade?

“The sheets,” Fortuna hissed.

Body moving without hesitation, Tristan snatched the sheets off the bed and threw them at the watchman even as he drew the sword. The stranger hacked blindly at the cotton, ripping into it, but it wasn’t enough. Forcing himself to go forward instead of back as his instincts screamed he should, Tristan’s fingers tightened around his blackjack and he raised his arm. He darted in quick, smashing into the side of the man’s head once more. The blackcloak stumbled, still hacking away with the blade, and Tristan wasn’t quick enough to avoid getting his left arm nicked. Gritting his teeth, he hit again. The man toppled over the trunk, falling back and over it as the thief followed. He hit again and again, the jack impacting the sheet-covered face until it came back red and the man was no longer moving.

Tristan stayed there, kneeling and panting.

“Fuck,” he rasped out.

Ripping away the sheet, he winced at the bruised and bloody mess he’d made of the Aztlan. Had he killed him? A finger under the nose showed the watchman was still breathing, but he’d taken bad hits. There was no telling, and Tristan had read two books on medicine but he was far from a cutter – much less a real doctor. His fingers closed around the handle of his blackjack. Should he?

“You aren’t getting up,” Fortuna noted.

“He saw my face,” Tristan quietly said. “He doesn’t have a name, but he saw my face. If he’s part of the Watch they could come for me.”

He’d never killed someone who couldn’t fight back before. He hesitated. In the back of his mind, the ticking continued. He would have to even those scales soon, he knew, or the price would get worse.

“Mercy is always a gamble,” Fortuna said, tone sympathetic.

Tristan breathed out slowly. The decision was made.

“There’s already been enough of those tonight,” he said, and set down the blackjack on the floor.

Arms tightening, he snapped the man’s neck the way Abuela had taught him it should be done. The death was swift and hopefully painless. Mercy any greater than that should not be asked of rats. Tristan rose, taking back his blackjack, and steadied himself. He avoided looking at the dead man, instead reaching for the cabinet he’d come for. It was as light as he’d felt, and clearly filled at least in part with some vials by the noise it made when moved. The leather straps were easy to slide over his shoulder, so he did and found the weight further eased. Now was not the time to look at what was inside, curious as he was.

Tristan suddenly winced: the ticking in the back of his mind that had never ceased suddenly quickened. Shit, he’d dallied for too long.

Fingers clenched, Tristan warily released the luck he had borrowed. Like bowstring, the power of his pact with Fortuna snapped the opposite way it had been dragged. He had gained luck, and so now he must suffer misfortune. Cautiously the thief cast a look around, trying to gauge where the blow would come from, but for a few heartbeats nothing happened. Then there was a faint clicking sound, as the well-oiled lock that he had picked to enter the room opened again: the door swung open half a foot, just enough for the woman passing by it to glance curiously. She froze, dark eyes going wide as she saw the shape of the corpse on the floor and Tristan standing with his ill-gotten goods.

Well, Tristan faintly thought, that was going to be somewhat difficult to explain. He opened his mouth to speak, but already the woman was running down the hall and shouting. Fuck. It was more than time to get out of here.

“Take the papers too,” Fortuna said.

He goggled at her. How would that help anything?

“It will make things wo-”

“Trust me,” the goddess urged. “Take the papers.”

Cursing under his breath, he brushed aside a quill to snatch up the sheath of papers and crammed them into the pocket of his coat. It would be difficult to run without wrecking whatever lay inside the cabinet, he thought, but with any luck he wouldn’t need to. Back in the hall he heard shouting downstairs, where the woman was naming him a murderer – not undeservedly – and patrons were shouting in dismay. There were roughs in the landlord’s employ down there and going through would see him caught or killed even if it was the quickest path to a door out of the Azulejo. Thankfully, Tristan had not come by the front door and had no intention of leaving that way either.

Hurrying to the last door down the hallway he pushed it open with no resistance, shutting it behind him. It was empty save for the furnishings, identical to the room where he’d killed a man save for one salient difference: the same open window above the table that he’d come in through. He’d had to cut through the hinges of the shutters earlier, but now the way was clear straight to the rope he’d left dangling. He climbed up without hesitation, wood groaning under his weight, and began by pushing through the cabinet. Once it was through, grunting with effort he slid one of the leather straps onto the curved hooks bound to the rope. It dangled a bit outside, he saw, but held.

Tristan could hear people running up the stairs, even through the door, and he hastened through the window himself. Feet first, he wiggled through the opening and felt nothing at all under him for a delicious heartbeat before tightening his grip on the rope and pulling himself close to the wall. It was not so long a fall that he would not survive it, should he drop down into the alley below, but he might just break a leg. That sort of thing tended to make running away harder, he’d heard. He slid the cabinet back onto his back and climbed down, quirking an eyebrow when a glance above found Fortuna leaning through the window with a smile.

“They’ve found the body,” the goddess told him. “And they’re opening all the doors.”

He sighed. If they found the rope, and they likely would, they’d know to pursue in the streets. It was a descent of about twenty feet, far from hard even after being nicked by a blade, and he was done with it before they’d opened the door. He left the rope there – it had not been cheap, but he didn’t have the time to bring it down– and began to make his way through his escape path. The way out was always the first part to plan out, when thieving. There was no point in stealing anything if you got caught with the goods in hand. He moved out at a brisk pace and kept to the alleys, even though the main streets would have been quicker, moving in a vague diagonal towards the east.

Estebra District was the nicest part of the Murk as well as the wealthiest, so here the lamplights were kept glowing on the main streets through the night instead of dimmed or snuffed as they would be in the rest of the Murk. Best to stay out of that, too much risk of someone seeing his face even if the roughs didn’t catch up. It seemed like they would not, after all. At first Tristan heard shouts out in the street, but a quarter hour later there were only the noises of Sacromonte at night reaching his ear: the burn of the lamplights, the quiet talk of the offal men clearing the streets and the occasional sounds of revelry drifting out of some bawdy house.

No one respectable was out at this hour, which had always amused him. Was the firmament any less dark during day than night? It was only the lamps that made a difference, lamps and the notions of men. The thief did not slow his footsteps until he’d reached the eastern border of the Estebra District, near one of the gates that would lead him into Araturo. There a lone man carrying a nice cabinet might find himself preyed upon, should he not be careful, so Tristan found an empty alley whose mouth was near a lamplight and settled in the shadows to have a look at what he’d taken. It had better be worth it, he thought, for Abuela’s test had seen him kill a man.

He would not blame her for a deed done by his hand, but she had hidden things from him. If he’d known there was a watchman involved… Too late for regrets now, he reminded himself. Fortuna was seated atop what looked like a pile of iron scraps, her red dress somehow artfully draped as if it were a throne, and it was with eagerness she looked at the cabinet when he set it down.

“Treasures, do you think?” the goddess asked.

“I heard vials within,” Tristan murmured back.

“There are elixirs worth as much as diamonds,” Fortuna insisted.

That was true enough, but Tristan doubted any of them were to be found in hostels of the Estebra Districts guarded by a single man. The cabinet of slick dark wood was kept closed by copper latches that popped open after he exerted some strength, revealing an elaborate interior. There were twenty-three small drawers, each marked with a carved symbol, that filled the four sides of the box. The middle of it was hollow, pincers of brass holding small vials containing liquids in shades of grey and green.

“A medicine box?” Fortuna said, sounding skeptical.

The symbols were familiar, Tristan thought. He opened the drawer at the top left and his brow rose when he found within a neatly wrapped bundle of small dark leaves. Perfectly oval, none larger than the tip of a finger. Black verity, he realized, and very carefully wrapped it back without his fingers touching any of the leaves.

“A poison cabinet,” Tristan replied, frown deepening. “And one I know how to use. It looks much like the one drawn in Alvareno’s Dosages.”

Were he a gambling man, and he was, he would wager that the drawers and vials would perfectly match the diagram the book had displayed, including the various herbs and substances suggested by the author. Which went some way in explaining why Abuela had insisted he read and commit the work to memory a few months back, well before she had ever brought up this test, but still left him confused. What use did he have for a poisoner’s kit? He was a thief by trade, not a killer. Tristan’s hands were far from clean but he did not go out of his way to stain them.

“A little more exciting,” Fortuna conceded.

Still frowning, Tristan reached for the papers he’d taken. Perhaps they would shed some light on this. He brought them closer to the light of the street, breathing in sharply when he saw that the very first seemed to be a contract. Had he really killed a watchman out on a job? He kept reading, going through the cramped lines of lettering, and then softly cursed.

“Told you leaving them would be worse, didn’t I?” Fortuna drawled.

“He was employed by the Orelanna brothers,” Tristan hissed. “Everyone knows they’re a front for the Hoja Roja. This is going to get me killed.”

The Hoja Roja were either an association of upstanding landlords and merchants or one of the most successful guild of crooks in the Murk, depending on who you asked. They were also notoriously touchy about honour, and prone to answering slights with grisly executions.

“At least it wasn’t a Watch contract,” Fortuna noted. “So look on the bright side, there’s only the one band of brutal killers after you for this.”

The Aztlan, whose name had been Yaotl Cuatzo, had apparently been bought to kill a god gone feral that’d made a lair in some property near the eastern border of Estebra District. If Yaotl had still been one of the Watch that would have been very illegal, and the Orelanna brothers did not have the reputation of men foolish enough to put their names on illegal contracts. Most likely the man had been a deserter or a washout and the brothers had bought his services intending to pretend they’d not known should trouble come of it. Tristan wouldn’t get the Watch for him after this, which was weight off his back, but that was cold comfort when the Roja was a death sentence on its own.

“I can’t pawn this,” Tristan sighed, looking at the box. “They’ll know it went missing and ask around with the fences.”

The thief liked some of the men and women who bought the goods he stole, but he would have been a fool to trust any of them.

“You could keep it,” Fortuna said.

She liked to hoard things, that goddess of his, regardless of the wisdom of keeping them. It was said to be common in destitute gods like her.

“Sooner or later it would be found,” Tristan murmured.

He had no home, only hiding places, and those were only his so long as no one cared to take them from him. Hardly safe. Was abandoning the cabinet the only path left to him? He balked at that, considering he’d killed a man for it. Besides, it might not even be enough. The Roja would ask around the Murk for who had been planning jobs in Estebra, he thought, and he’d not thought to hide that much from the people he bought his supplies through. Perhaps if he stole again tonight to cover it up? He grimaced. Tristan was tired, needed to get that nick looked at and he had not cased anywhere properly. It would be risky. And there was a chance they would find him anyway. When they did… He bit his lip. Something was wrong. Abuela’s tests could be harsh, but they were never pointless or cruel.

There must be more to this than he had seen. He kept looking through the papers, finding only some personal correspondence and an order lodged with a local butcher for a large quantity of meat. The very last page, though, was in a different handwriting. One he recognized.

Tristan, my dear child,

They will hunt you. I sent you knowing this and knowing you would see my actions as a betrayal.

There is a ship named the Bluebell, at the Fishmonger’s Quay, and before it will stand a man holding a list of names. Yours is one of them.

That is your only way out. Cross the Dominion of Lost Things, survive the trials, and you will be beyond the reach of any in the City.

I will await you at the end of the isle,

Abuela

His fingers clenched. His breath shuddered. None of it had been an accident. If he’d not killed the Aztlan then Tristan would have made an enemy instead, and the threat would perhaps have been even worse. There had been no ending, when he entered that room, that led him back home. Fortuna stood at his shoulder, though he had never heard her rise. She’d not bothered with the pretence.

“The Dominion of Lost Things,” the goddess read. “What is that?”

“An island,” Tristan replied. “Proving grounds for the arrogant and the desperate.”

The Lady of Long Odds watched him with an excited grin, leaning against his side.

“So we’re going?”

In a burning house, a burning life, the only way out was through.

“One more gamble,” Tristan Abrascal quietly agreed.