The galleon cast a long shadow across the dock, all of them waiting standing within it.

It was barely three in the morning, and though Tristan was not unused to keeping night hours few of his companions shared the habit. Maryam kept leaning against him, half falling asleep on her feet, and he could only roll his eyes. Had she refrained from visiting the Abbey last afternoon she would be better rested, but now that Captain Yue had given her those eerie rings that helped with her Signs she was near obsessed with practice.

Tredegar shuffled to his left, earning a curious glance as he absent-mindedly caught Maryam’s sleeve so she would not tip over. The dark-skinned noble had been uneasy since they left the Rainsparrow Hostel, tightly wound enough she’d looked like she wanted to decline when sailors had come down the ramp to take their bags onto the ship. There was something up with Tredegar these days, and he was growing increasingly sure it wasn’t some petty schoolyard affair.

Someone laughed closer to the water, one of the instructors. Sound carried far out here, and the Allazei docks were somehow both empty and swarming. There were but a handful of garrison soldiers keeping an eye from their posts by the docks, but the great galleon called the Gallant Enterprise was a hive of activity – though now that the black-clad sailors had brought in all the crates it was the ship’s deck that was the heart of it.

Not that the Thirteenth was alone on the docks, far from it, for all that the talk was sparse and quiet. Odds were that they’d only be sharing a ship with the others on the dock for a few days, but Tristan still found them worth assessing.

Captain Wen had made it clear that should some disaster strike the student brigades could call on the Asphodel watchmen or the diplomatic flotilla, doing so without a great need would wreck their performance on the yearly test. The only people the Scholomance cabals would be able to call on were the instructors and each other. In other words, the muster that’d showed up here would be the available roster for their time abroad.

He was far from the only one to have realized that. Song had been reading everyone’s contracts from under the brim of her hat and the others were looking at the Thirteenth just as intently – if without magic silver eyes. It was just the four of them standing together, too, as their patron had abandoned them in favor of an omelet cornet and ‘conversation with people I actually like’.

Some of those out there Tristan was passingly familiar with.

The Fourth kept clannish distance from everyone else, almost glaring, but Tristan noticed they were less skittish with each other than they had been at the start of the year. If Bait was to be believed the monthly fights for who got to have a name were mostly halfhearted formalities nowadays and the unpleasant names stuck on them had been used so much any sting had long been sanded off.

Tupoc caught him looking and stared back with unblinking pale eyes, subtly mouthing ‘in your sleep’ before slicing a finger across his throat. Charming as ever.

A new detail about the Fourth was how their patron, Lieutenant Mitra, was standing with them staring off at the distance. The Someshwari was narrow-faced but broad-shouldered, mostly standing out because of his unkempt hair and beard – both which spread about in long, disorderly strands. He also looked rather gloomy, helped along by eyes bearing dark circles. A glint of light caught on the ring he bore, prompting Tristan shake Maryam awake and discreetly gesture that way.

“Does the ring mean anything?

She blinked at him a moment, smacking her lips, and only then actually began seeing the things around her.

“Um,” she eloquently replied. “Silver is the mark of a Master of the Guild?”

He cocked an eyebrow, his next question silent. He was no Akelarre, to know whether a ‘Master’ should be counted some grand dignitary or messenger boy.

“The captain on the Bluebell was a master as well,” Maryam said, blue eyes now fully awake.

At that he hummed, nodding his thanks. Captain Sfizo had supposedly kept a horde of crazed lares from continuing to flood the ship before almost casually caging the Saint – though admittedly only after several had wounded it for him. Still. Lieutenant Mitra was not one to trifle with, then. Hage had once mentioned that most Akelarre did not take up ranks higher than captain by old custom, preferring to sort themselves by hidden ranks inside their guild instead.

Song leaned in close to both of them, pitching her voice low.

“This Qianfan, you know him?”

Their gazes moved to the brigade standing closest to the Fourth, the Eleventh. That one bore relatively few surprises, but the Tianxi just mentioned had been one.

Captain Imani Langa and Thando Fenya were mostly accounted for, as was their Skiritai hatchet man: a Sacromontan by the name of Salvador who Tristan would be giving a very wide berth. The man reeked of coterie in all the worst ways, and Tredegar apparently holding in him high esteem from shared Skiritai classes only made him deadlier to the rat’s eye. A killer who knew when to keep it in the sheath was twice as dangerous.

Their fourth member was the aforementioned Qianfan, a tall Tianxi boy – and a Navigator student, hence Song’s question to Maryam.

“Barely in passing,” Maryam replied. “He’s one of the most frequent visitors to the Abbey cells.”

Like the Thirteenth, the Eleventh had been abandoned by their patron – he was one of the two chatting with Wen, a heavyset Lierganen man with a shaved head and face displaying fierce jowls and the broken jaw of a street tough. A deceptive appearance, as Lieutenant Joaquin was from the Peiling Society and a mathematician of some repute as well as their designated Mandate instructor.

That decision was made all the more interesting by the identity of the third patron in that little circle: Captain Oratile was a Stripe, the patron to the Nineteenth and also the chosen Teratology instructor. That the dark-skinned Academician would not be the one teaching them Mandate had come as something of a surprise.

The Nineteenth seemed surprised when she left them behind to join the other patrons, perhaps hinting at a soft hand overseeing them. Tristan looked that way the least, for… practical reasons. Tredegar cleared her throat softly, dark eyes staring the Nineteenth’s way, and he almost winced in advance.

“That girl is still glaring at you,” Tredegar told him.

Cressida Barboza, as it turned out, had not gotten the last Aetheric Warfare slot or forgiven him for his role in that outcome. Their captain wasn’t getting involved, at least – Tozi Poloko, she of the ridiculous haircut and lying eyes. Song liked the Izcalli officer some, but something about her reminded Tristan of those merchants that gouged desperate youths on bread prices and made it seem like a favor all the while.

Beside the captain towered Izel Coyac, a broad-shouldered man with powerful arms and stubble for hair. Umuthi, Tristan had learned when he asked around, and regarded by other tinkers as both a skillful hand with a tool and a rather friendly fellow. Going by the hairlessness and what he suspected were bindings under the tunic at chest height, Coyac was also corregido – a man once believed a woman.

The last of them, Kiran Agrawal, was another of Tredegar’s seemingly endless Skiritai acquaintances. The Someshwari spearman was friendly enough he’d come over to greet her, and he had the grooming habits of someone born to coin. No one else kept their beard and mustache that neat. Mind you, the jewelry alone would have told Tristan that: it looked like real gold. Song had quietly noted him to be a contractor, though she’d not elaborated.

“Pretend you don’t notice,” Tristan whispered back.

“A spurner lover, Tristan?” Tredegar teased. “Already?”

Much as he balked in being made a figure of fun by someone who had thought Isabel Ruesta was in any way a good idea, getting scathing would only draw attention to them.

“We had a slight disagreement over class scheduling, that’s all,” he vaguely replied. “Nothing too heated.”

“That is not a heatless glare, Tristan,” Tredegar told him. “I have some expertise in spurned glaring, and would rank this firmly in the upper half of the species.”

“How is Captain Imani, Angharad?” Song mildly asked.

The Pereduri coughed into her fist, looked away and commented on the mildness of the breeze so early in the morning. Tristan shot Song and grateful look that she pretended not to notice, then let his attention drift to the last pair waiting on the docks. They stood away from the other instructors close to the ramp leading onto the galleon.

Commander Osian Tredegar, Angharad’s uncle, was one of those roguishly fashionable types that infanzonas would cause a minor society scandal with before setting aside for a more respectable marriage. He was rich but also an Umuthi, which was a shame because Tristan was not fool enough to try lifting the gold of someone who could make aether traps. Rather amusingly, Commander Tredegar had been trying to get out of a conversation for the last fifteen minutes but the other side was not taking the hint.

Sergeant Kavia was a short, middle-aged Someshwari whose rank was suspiciously low. Her looks were unremarkable and her black hair kept in a bun, but she bore a bejeweled shield on her back along with two swords at her hip and one of those strange bladed Someshwari circles called chakram. That one had Skiritai written all over her, in Tristan’s opinion.

Alas, whether or not Commander Tredegar would eventually be able to escape with dignity from that conversation was to remain unknown, as shouts from above ended their common wait. A Watch officer on the deck of the galleon shouted for them to come aboard and be received by the commodore, which gave the older Tredegar an excuse to hurry up the ramp. The rest of them began to follow after.

“There should still be an instructor missing,” Song frowned.

Tristan almost smiled. He could understand why she’d believe that, as nearly all of their shared classes and the covenant ones had a face to them. Lieutenant Mitra for Theology and the Akelarre, Lieutenant Joaquin for Mandate and the Savants, Captain Oratile for Teratology and the Stripes. Even Captain Wen for Saga and the Laurels – poor Thando, sole Arthashastra student and about to inherit Wen’s full attention for hours at a time.

Sergeant Kavia should be covering Warfare and the Skiritai, which left Commander Tredegar for the Umuthi and thus one seat glaringly empty.

“I’d be rather surprised,” Tristan said, “if the Mask were not already aboard.:

—

It was tradition for the captain to welcome passengers aboard, and Song suspected that most would have been eager to rub elbows with the collection of covenanter instructors boarding the Gallant Enterprise even should they be disciplined to humor mere students. Commodore Trivedi instead looked at them all as if they were a tedious chore. Either the woman was well-connected enough to think the passengers beneath her, or commodore was likely the highest rank she would ever attain.

Competence alone was not enough to make it into admiralty ranks.

“Welcome aboard,” Commodore Trivedi blandly said. “My officers will bring you to your quarters. Accommodations will be made for your… classes, but I will not brook any wandering around and getting in the way of my men.”

She paused, forced a half-hearted smile.

“I may extend dinner invitations, should time allow. Dismissed.”

Some of the instructors seemed amused, others irked, but it was Captain Tozi that drew Song’s eye. There was something like contempt in the other woman’s gaze. They did not linger on deck, however, for Commodore Trivedi’s word was law on her own ship – and another few, as she led the entire diplomatic flotilla headed to Asphodel. Naval lieutenants escorted them into the belly of the beast, Song taking in every scrap of detail she could. And one truth became obvious quick enough.

Unlike the last galleon they had been on, the Gallant Enterprise was a fighting ship.

It was not a groaning old dog coming apart at the seams but a modern warship with fortified decks and forty gleaming culverin cannons. There were around hundred sailors crewing it and by the looks of it almost as many soldiers.

The students were promptly assigned quarters above the cargo hold, splitting three cabins between them. Luck of the draw had the Thirteenth score one of the smaller private ones and the Nineteenth the other, thus inflicting the sharing of close quarters with Tupoc onto the Eleventh. Song offered the gods due thanks for this, burning an offering to Menshen Zhu for having kept both evil spirits away from her door.

She bunked above Angharad while Tristan took the bed below Maryam’s, the four of them unpacking their affairs as much as they intended to for the length of the trip. Beyond a short stop at the port Lavega, where the Gallant was to link up with the rest of the flotilla, it was not planned for the ship to make landfall before reaching Asphodel – meaning they’d be splitting their time between this room, the dining hall and whatever could be borrowed for teaching purposes.

Wen knocked at their door shortly after, informing them they were to return to sleep but that there would be a wake-up call in a few hours. The instructor had agreed that classes were not to be skipped even on the first day. There was no argument from the Thirteenth, Maryam’s short spurt of wakefulness already turning to smoke, and they gladly collapsing onto their narrow bunks after snuffing out the lamp.

Song woke when the ship passed through the Ring of Storms, the noise and movement stirring her out of sleep, but she went back to sleep before they were even through.

At the seventh hour Captain Wen hammered at their door, tossing a bag full of grain biscuits and salted meat when Angharad sleepily opened the door. The Pereduri narrowly caught it.

“Water barrels are down the hall,” Wen told them. “You have forty-five minutes to ready for class.”

They rushed to eat and dress, Song and Angharad padding away to the barrels to wash – a handful of the others were there as well, looking as if the manner of their awakening had been no gentler than the Thirteenth’s. Song returned with a clean face and neck but to a sight that had her wondering if she was still asleep: Tristan, sitting on his bed, was feeding a rotund black cat a piece of biscuit from the pack.

“Is that Mephistofeline?”

“It’s either that or one of the lard cuts grew fur,” Tristan replied.

Mephistofeline, indifferent to the insult, kept eating up the crumbs and biting at his fingers.

“Well,” Song muttered, “I suppose we know who your instructor will be now.”

“And Cressida Barboza’s as well,” the thief muttered. “That I could have done without.”

There was a loud snore as Maryam twisted in her covers, arm slipping past the edge of the bunk bed and hanging loose.

“You let her go back to sleep,” Song accused.

“She cursed at me in her native tongue,” he drawled back. “I’m not getting anywhere near her when she does that – not as long as she sleeps with a hatchet under her pillow, anyway.”

The silver-eyed Tianxi sighed.

“Fine, I’ll take care of it,” she said.

There was an unloaded musket to use as a stick. Song paused when reaching for it.

“That biscuit is coming out of your share, by the way,” she said.

He snorted.

“If you’d tried one, you would know it’s not great loss.”

Ship rations rarely were any good, admittedly. It was a narrow thing, but Song was able to ensure her brigade was awake, dressed and not starving by the time Sergeant Kavia came to gather everyone. She counted the heads, as if they were sheep returning from a wander, and then led them through the depths of the ship. There she bade them good luck and knocked at the door.

And that was how seventeen students found themselves crammed into a small room smelling vaguely of anchovies just before the turn of eight, as the door had opened to reveal the rictus grin of one Captain Wen Duan. Saga, it seemed, was to be the first class.

—

None of the other students had dealt with Wen before, save for Tupoc, and it showed from the sheer amount of baffled, offended and sympathetic looks that the Thirteenth received within five minutes of everyone being stuck in a room with the man.

The Eleventh was told to sit further back because Captain Imani was ‘too distractingly Uthukilen’, Tupoc was complimented on having managed to trick so many people into listening to him since they’d last met and Captain Tozi Poloko’s surname was almost certainly deliberately mangled in pronunciation. Not that the Thirteenth was spared, as Maryam was informed he’d known livelier corpses. After rounds of insults barely camouflaged as him taking attendance, to Song’s relief the captain actually deigned to begin teaching them something.

“While you are all living monuments to staggering levels of ignorance about the world around you,” Captain Wen Duan casually said, “I’m not paid anywhere near enough to put in even a token effort in mending that sad reality.”

He reached behind his bench, taking out a bulky cloth sack and setting it on his knees before pushing his glasses.

“We’ll settle for you gaining a modicum of understanding about the nation we are all sailing to.”

Untying the ropes around the head of the bag, he reached insides. The better part of seventeen gazes followed the gesture.

“We’ll start with the basics,” Captain Wen said. “Can one of you tell me what the capital of Asphodel Rectorate is?”

Hands rose, Song’s one of them, but she paid closer attention to the faces than who Wen would pick. Captain Tozi was no surprise, and neither was Thando Fenya – he was a Laurel, after all. More interesting was Alejandra Terrero from the Fourth. Not all Navigators concerned themselves with the lay of the seas, but it seemed like Tupoc’s signifier might be one of them.

“Fenya,” Wen said. “Amaze me.”

“Tratheke,” Lord Thando said. “The name is derived from words in the Cycladic cant meaning ‘singing box’.”

A noise of approval. Wen reached inside the bag, producing a small orange.

“Tratheke is where we will dock and where three out of four assessment tests will take place,” he said.

He then turned a look on Thando.

“Here,” the bespectacled man said. “Have a praise orange.”

To the Malani’s honor, he caught the orange that Wen tossed him and mostly hid his confusion. He best start getting used to the feeling, as Thando Fenya was the only Arthashastra Society student headed to Asphodel and thus he would be suffering the undiluted Wen Duan dosage during the afternoons.

Song almost pitied him for that. Almost.

“All right,” Wen said. “Now, who runs the place?”

Now that was an interesting question, she thought. In principle, the answer was the rector of Asphodel – currently Lord Rector Evander Palliades the Third, ninth ruler of the relatively recent Palliades dynasty. The Rectorate, despite the name, was effectively a monarchy in practice. The complicating factor here was that, reading between the lines of every book on Asphodel she had got her hands on, the office of rector in general and the Palliades family in particular had been losing their grip on the reins of power for the last eight decades.

Thando’s hand went up again, though it went ignored, and this time it was Tupoc’s hand that went up along Captain Tozi’s.

“Poloko,” Captain Wen said. “What have you got?”

“Lord Rector Evander Palliades,” she said, then frowned. “Second of his name.”

Wen tossed her an orange, which she caught with a pleased smile.

“Don’t go smiling, that was a shame orange for getting it wrong,” the captain told her. “Song, try to redeem your covenant.”

The look Captain Tozi turned on her for that was rather cool. Ugh, and she was the captain Song most wanted to cultivate ties to. The Tianxi cleared her throat.

“Asphodel is ruled by its lord rector, but the office is advised by the Council of Ministers, an advisory body made up from great nobles,” she said. “The Ministers have a degree of control over courts and the treasury.”

Wen only cocked an eyebrow, evidently considering the answer incomplete, so she pressed on.

“There is also the Trade Assembly, an association of the wealthiest merchants of Asphodel, whose leading magnates control the trade keeping the Rectorate afloat,” she continued. “While they have no official authority, they have a great deal of informal influence.”

The reason the Palliades were still rectors even though their blood claim was weak and there was mounting discontent was that the Ministers and the Assembly were at each other’s throats. The heart of it was about land: the nobles controlled great estates they guarded jealously, keeping the magnates from turning their wealth into power by buying land. Both sides tried to pull the Palliades their way to check their enemies, allowing the family enough leverage to continue squeaking through,

Captain Wen nodded.

“This is a praise orange,” he informed her before tossing it.

She snatched it up despite his best effort at lobbing it low enough it’d slip her grasp. Tupoc got a praise orange as well for identifying the island of Arke and its iron mines as both the source of much of Asphodel’s current wealth and the reason it had been fighting with the Duchy of Rasen regularly for the last two centuries. Captain Tozi redeemed herself by explaining that the city of Tratheke was built out of massive Antediluvian ruin, which many believed to have been a university of sorts.

Imani was thrown a shame orange for a lacking answer regarding the closest diplomatic ties of the Rectorate were – according to her, Sacromonte and the Watch.

“Sacromonte backs the Rectorate, and encourages it to fight Rasen as standing policy,” Wen agreed. “You’re right about that. But the old ties to the Watch have grown weak – Asphodel is mostly clear of monsters and the Rookery now buys grain through the City instead. Who’s stepped into that gap?”

Song knew the answer, as it was good as plainly writ in Trade in the Trebian, Ninth Sails Edition, which was why she knew the way the question had been phrased was a trap. While Thando Fenya correctly identified Tianxia as a growing trade partner for the Rectorate – the southern republics were famously gluttons for iron – he was still thrown a shame orange. Song took some small pleasure in elaborating on his answer when prompted.

“The Kingdom of Malan imports large amounts of cattle from Asphodel,” she added, “as the native breed of sheep is highly prized in the Malani heartlands.”

Something about it producing fine wool without taking sick in the warm weather. Which meant the Malani had ties to the Council of Ministers, as only the nobles had large enough estates to raise cattle on that scale. And since the Trade Assembly controlled the iron shipping to the Republics, which kept them rich enough to compete with the nobles, the magnates had ties to Tianxia. It was no wonder that the Watch believed there would soon be war in Asphodel, given that two powers stronger than the nominal ruler of the state were in bed with foreign interests.

Song knew better than to believe the Republics were anything less than cutthroat in their efforts to dominate the Trebian trade.

“Now, perhaps I am too hopeful a man but I choose to believe that the lot of you are capable of understanding the basic implications of what has been said here,” Captain Wen said. “Now, consider this: the Asphodel Rectorate has unveiled the existence of a functional Antediluvian on its home island, the capacity to build cutters and that it secured a large cache of tomic alloys.”

He paused.

“Then consider further that all of these great and mighty boons are inside land that is ruled over directly by the lord rector of Asphodel, allowing young Evander Palliades to entirely cut out the aristoi and the magnates.”

Captain Wen leaned in.

“What does that sound like to you?”

“Blackpowder,” Kiran Agrawal grimly said.

“Elaborate,” Wen said.

It was another than answered – Angharad, to Song’s mild surprise.

“A great source of revenue not hampered by the Council of Ministers would allow the lord rector to muster funds and soldiers to assert authority over the nobility again,” she said. “To call the magnates to heel would then be trivial.”

“You two can split the orange later,” Wen mused, setting it down on a barrel. “Broadly speaking, that assessment’s correct – the Palliades have a chance at ruling Asphodel in more than name again, if they survive the next few years. That Lord Rector Evander kept secret the shipyard find until the very last moment indicates he understands the dangers ahead.”

The bespectacled man rolled his shoulder.

“There will be eyes on you from the moment we dock at Trathekes,” Wen warned them. “Traditionally, the Watch can be said to be on the side of whoever holds the seat of lord rector. In practice, however, the power of the countryside aristoi means our men at Stheno’s Peak had to cultivate good relationships with them to be able to move unhindered through their lands.”

“Surely,” Bait slowly said, “neither these ministers nor magnates would try to hinder us when our contracts are to the benefit of Asphodel.”

Wen laughed.

“There’s war coming for that isle, boy,” he said. “If it looks like the Lord Rector will win it, the old nobles will reach out to their Malani friends and the merchants send letters to the Republics – they know a resurgent Palliades family will bury them. There’s not a scrap of sharp steel on Asphodel that will not be scrutinized for allegiance, and though you are students you wear the black.”

He clicked his tongue.

“Behind you stands the weight of armies and fleets, children,” he said. “Your personal opinions matter little, but these grand men will dissect your every step like augurs trying to read in such entrails the intentions of the officers above you.”

And if the Watch decided to back a faction, Song read between the lines, it might very well tip the balance their way. Malan and the Republics were powerful, but the Watch was closer – and could more easily commit more of its strength. Yet the Watch could not take sides, as Professor Iyengar had told them in that first lesson. To do so would be a poison lethal to the order.

“You will have to tread lightly,” Wen Duan said. “Which is why we’re now going to spend the rest of this morning learning names .”

Skeptical looks.

“Whose names, you ask?”

“No one asked that,” Tristan muttered.

“Ah, my first volunteer,” he happily replied. “And, of course, it is the names of every great family, trade cartel and court official on Asphodel.”

He cracked his hands.

“And in case you were wondering, every mistake will be punished.”

Angharad found herself, against her will, spellbound by the sight of Captain Wen Duan eating an apple.

Not for any messiness or lack of manners but because he was shaving slices off it, one small bit at a time, and popping them into his mouth – without looking at his hands or paying attention to either the apple or the folding knife. It was like looking at a man walking the edge of a cliff in a windstorm. Surely, any moment now, Wen would cut himself. That he stubbornly did not was impressive, but also frustrating in some abstract away.

“You know, I’d be miffed about your uncle throwing his weight around the Thirteenth so much if he weren’t bribing me again,” Captain Wen said.

Angharad grimaced, which was about the only thing she could do without collapsing in exhaustion afterwards these days. She had tried to raise a cup of water this morning and it’d felt like her fingers were made of rubber. She’d barely been able to grasp the cup, much less move it.

“Surely,” she tried, “it is merely a gift of thanks for your-”

“Nah, it was pretty bribe-shaped,” Wen mused. “It’s not like he just slid me a bag of gold under the table, he’s a classy man your uncle, but it had those definite bribe characteristics. I should know, those were the only good thing about the Dominion. The frequent probes are what senior officers use to sell the assignment to suckers who volunteer for the tour.”

Angharad choked.

“You mean to say that the Watch knows about bribes on the Dominion,” she said. “That they allow this?”

“It’s official policy, even,” Wen said. “You just have to report them. That way the infanzones keep sending their little darlings, certain that pouring gold into our pockets will give their brats an edge to survive and come back covered in glory.”

It was a relief to learn that Uncle Osian might not have broken the law by paving her way on the Dominion, although Angharad was leery at the notion of any involvement with bribes. Hypocrite, she chided herself. You sneer at gold when you’ve been bought and sold with promises thin as air. Eager to leave that dark thought behind, she cleared her throat.

“Thank you for visiting, Captain Wen,” she said.

The corpulent Tianxi narrowly avoided carving out a tenth of his thumb, instead producing a thin slice of apple he swallowed with a pleased smack of the lips.

“I’m patron to the Thirteenth,” he shrugged. “Which you are still part of, as far as I know.”

She grimaced again.

“That uncertainty,” Angharad delicately said, “is why I wished to speak with you. While I had been considering transferring to another brigade, the situation has changed.”

Another miraculous dodge, another slice of apple.

“Heard about that,” Captain Wen agreed. “A motion that went through all the hoops, even passed a vote in the Conclave. Someone must have called in pretty juicy favors for that.”

He paused.

“So now you’re stuck on the boat you were hoping to leave and you’re coming to me to…”

He squinted at her through those gold-rimmed glasses.

“To learn what has been going on since you started rooming with the Thirty-First, I’m guessing.”

“That is not inaccurate,” Angharad admitted. “I know only rumors of what happened with the Forty-Ninth, or even of the assault on Song. It appears reconciliation took place in my absence.”

Which had her jaw clenching, just a little bit. If there had been such grace and artfulness to be found in the brigade, why had it only made an appearance after she left? Was she truly so disliked none of them found it worth trying when she’d still had a foot in the cottage? Wen narrowly saved the side his forefinger from a rather nasty scrape, chewing on his slice.

“Could be,” the large man said.

Angharad patiently waited, but all he did was shave off another piece and eat it.

“If you might elaborate,” she said.

“I won’t,” Wen Duan bluntly told her. “You misunderstand what I am to you, Tredegar. I am not your informant, and my taking your uncle’s coin does not mean I am beholden to you in any way. If you want to know what the others have been up to, ask them.”

He leaned in.

“If you want advice, I’ll give it,” Wen said. “If you need a message passed it’ll be, well, not a pleasure but something I can probably pawn off to Mandisa so close enough. You are not owed a thing more.”

Angharad grit her teeth.

“I did not mean to imply-”

“No, but you did nonetheless,” he easily cut through. “Choke it down and keep moving, kid.”

He carved up a shallow bit of apple, the tip of the knife whispering against a nail, and took up the piece.

“Anything else?”

Angharad breathed in and closed her eyes. There was throbbing in the back of her head, near the nape, but the headache was a constant companion now. Part of her wanted to wait longer to pursue this, until she was further down the road to recovery. She had only revealed it all to her uncle last night, there were still over two weeks left before the ship to Asphodel departed. But that voice was the part of her flinching away from the work, from the embarrassment of the necessities that yet lay before her.

So Angharad swallowed her pride, well aware she would be getting used to that taste over the coming days.

“I would ask for advice,” she finally said.

“Never pair a Lanka red with monkfish,” Wen replied without batting an eye. “It feels light enough when you try the bottle, but it isn’t. Spoils the taste completely.”

It insulted her Pereduri pride somewhat to have let him spring that on her.

“On the matter of resuming a place in the Thirteenth, more specifically,” Angharad said.

“Ah, that,” he smiled. “I’ll tell you, then, that the real meat of that situation is a choice you have yet to make.”

Wen Duan pushed his glasses back up his nose.

“Are you trying to return for Asphodel, or for good?” he asked. “Either way you’ll need to sit down with Song, but those would be different conversations.”

Asphodel, Angharad almost replied, but she held her tongue. To speak in haste was rarely wise.

“Do you believe she would be inclined to accept a temporary arrangement?” she asked instead.

“Not without you coughing something up,” Wen bluntly said. “You had two selling points, Angharad: your sword hand and your connections. The way I hear it, the hand’s going to be on the mend and she gets to lean on your connections regardless. What is it that you bring to the table?”

“I will recover in time,” Angharad said. “By the time we leave for Asphodel I will be able to walk with a cane, and depending on how long we stay there-”

There she gave him a quizzical glance, hoping for an answer.

“Depends on your test and how quickly you finish it,” Captain Wen said. “Could be a week, could be months.”

Angharad’s lips thinned. A week on Asphodel after a few days on a ship – the Rectorate was not far from Tolomontera, accounting for fair winds – would not be enough for her to meaningfully recover. A month more and she would be largely back in good health, they had told her, but before that… Straining herself too early might well extend the length of her convalescence.

“I am not sure what I can offer in trade,” she admitted.

“So think on that, then, before you face Song,” Wen said. “It’d be best for you to abandon any notion of you having the larger end of the stick.”

He gave her a look that was hard to decipher.

“That episode with the mara did no wonders for your reputation,” the bespectacled captain said. “You might be on shakier footing than you think.”

Angharad licked her lips.

“What is being said?”

“That you acted the fool, and nearly got yourself killed,” he said, folding the knife and pushing himself up. “Neither of which is untrue.”

Wen bit into the remains of his apple, scarfing the juicy flesh down and swallowing it in a great gulp.

“You’re still on a visitor limit for the next few days, to avoiding straining you,” he said. “Do you want the Thirty-First added to the list of those allowed? Several visited while you were unconscious.”

“Please do,” Angharad replied.

He nodded, then idly tossed the apple core into the empty chamber pot in the corner of the room. He had a deft hand at that, she noted, for a man wearing spectacles.

“It’s not the end of it all, being on the back foot,” Captain Wen told her. “It’s where most everyone starts, Angharad. You’ll find a way to muddle on.”

Angharad mutely thanked him and he nodded back, strolling out of the room. The noblewoman collapsed back down onto her pillows the moment he left, closing her eyes as a ram pounded against the inside of her skull. Even conversation was tiring, these days, but she dared not sleep, not until she had found something she might bargain with the Thirteenth with.

It was a long day of chasing dead ends after that, and a long night.

—

Tristan had seen murders whose aftermath was less grisly.

He’d put up the scarecrow at the edge of the field, planting the pole deep in the ground and crossing it with a long branch at shoulder height. The head was a ball of cloth filled with straw and the cheapest hat he could find– a simple cap – but he’d clothed his masterpiece in a loose brown tunic with tied up bundles of straw shoved under to fill up the frame. It had been very convincing, in his opinion.

Not to the magpie, apparently, because it had gutted the thing.

The scarecrow had been brutally decapitated, his head on the ground bearing the marks of having been pecked open thought the cloth. Straw peeked out mournfully through these holes. The cap had been pulled off, ripped up around the edges and abandoned in the dirt. Worse was the fate of the scarecrow’s body: eviscerated, the tunic carved open at the belly with straw spilling out on the ground like entrails.

For that to have happened, Tristan knew, the strings keeping the straw bundles together would have needed to be pecked open. This… outrage was not mere happenstance: he was being sent a message.

“I don’t see any seeds,” Maryam said, taking a bite from her apple.

She chewed as loudly and obnoxiously as she could. Tristan frowned. It was true, none of the seeds he had sown that morning remained. As last time, the bird had been meticulous in removing them all.

“I know,” he said.

She swallowed, loudly.

“I don’t think your scarecrow idea worked, Tristan,” Maryam opined.

“I know,” Tristan replied through gritted death.

He pulled down at his tunic to hide his irritation. This was but a setback.

“I have only just begun,” Tristan Abrascal announced. “If I have to bribe Ferranda’s own tinker to make me traps, then by the Manes I will.”

He turned to glare at the cottage rooftop.

“Your days are counted, bird,” he called out. “This is far from over.”

He was a dignified man, so he did not shake his fist. This restraint was rewarded by the reveal of his enemy: on the rooftops there was a flicker of movement, dark feathers on tiles, and then an answering birdcall. It was the sound a door hinge would make if it could cackle.

“Yeah?” he grunted. “Well, let’s see how you outwit the latest traps out of Tianxia then.”

A rusty cackle gave answer.

“I think this might be my favorite thing to have happened all year,” Maryam confessed.

—

Captain Tozi Poloko held the kind of contract that nobles waged private wars to control.

While Song had never before heard of the Three Hundred Ninety-Ninth Brother, the god could not be a trifling one: it was no small boon, granting Captain Tozi the power to discern the most likely source of her death for the next three hours. It was a boon contract on top of that, so the Izcalli would not need to pay every time she looked for her death.

The price was not particularly onerous either, for someone of means anyway. Tozi Poloko was to raise a shrine to the Three Hundred Ninety-Ninth Brother every year until her death, but the Centzon word used could also mean ‘altar’. The implication there, Song thought, was that it did not have to be a particularly large shrine.

“Our patron will be teaching Teratology while we are on the Gallant Enterprise,” Captain Tozi said, as she broke the chicken bone with her bare hands and eased off the meat. “It is unclear to me if these lessons will continue while on Asphodel.”

In search of a cheap, private eatery with decent food Song had reached out to the finest source at her disposal and been recommended by Captain Wen the ‘Thirteenth Poultrayal’, a Lierganen rotisserie with one of the most audaciously blasphemous names she’d ever heard of. The owner was a taciturn, scarred man with a hook hand who could roast a fine chicken but categorically refused to put oil in all his lanterns or fix the chairs so they’d stop wobbling.

The lighting inside was flickering and smelled faintly of olives, though that did nothing to hinder a woman with eyes like Song’s from taking in the sight of Tozi Poloko.

The Izcalli was short and slender, almost boyish, and her haircut only strengthened the impression – shaved, save for a narrow, raised stripe of hair going all the way down her back and two small spots above her ears. The mark of Izcalli nobility, of the warrior kind: the cuachic was an honor granted to highborn who’d distinguished themselves in a flower war. The spots being there meant Tozi was descended from such a warrior but had not fought in such a flower war herself.

An elaborate and eye-catching hairdo, which along with the studs in her lips and nose did much heavy lifting in drawing the eye away from small, wet eyes and severe eyebrows.

“They will, though not as regularly,” Song replied. “Our own patron told me as much when he mentioned he will be teaching Saga over the journey.”

Captain Tozi popped a piece of chicken into her mouth, looking thoughtful as she chewed. She’d ordered half of one and torn into it happily, Song satisfying herself with chicken bone broth and what might just be the worst tea she’d ever drunk.

“I expect all four patrons will be instructors, then,” Tozi said. “I know the Eleventh’s patron is a Savant, I don’t suppose you know who’s behind the Fourth?”

“Their man is a Navigator,” Song told her. “A lieutenant by the name of Mitra.”

Tristan apparently had a source inside the Fourth Brigade willing to pass some information, so Song had in turn passed the Mask a list of questions. It was unfortunate that Maryam’s inquiries to Captain Yue about where this Lieutenant Mitra stood in the Akelarre internal hierarchy had been turned away, but then the signifiers were known to prize secrecy.

“Theology for the Navigator and Mandate for the Peiling Society robe, then,” Captain Tozi mused. “I wonder if they’ll send us a Skiritai or a Stripe to cover Warfare.”

Song was inclined to believe it would be a Skiritai, since any Stripe important enough to be sent with a diplomatic delegation to Asphodel was likely to have better use for their time than teaching classes. Mostly likely whoever was sent to train the Skiritai students would double up and teach Warfare on the side.

The Thirteenth, Nineteenth and Eleventh all numbered four students – while the Fourth numbered five, as it was in Tupoc’s very nature to be contrary – so seventeen Scholomance students would be sailing to Asphodel. Every covenant was sure to have at least one representative among the students sent, meaning every covenant would need to either send a teacher or charge one of the brigade patrons with that duty.

“Have you heard anything of the tests awaiting us?” Song idly asked.

She sipped at her terrible tea as Captain Tozi eyed her. Had this even been brewed with tea leaves or just something ripped out of the nearest bush?

“Rumors,” the Izcalli said. “Our patron says there’s sure to be an investigation among them, though. The Rectorate likes to hire the Watch to deal with contract-wielding criminals. Did you hear anything?”

Tozi Poloko had contributed enough unknown information to be worth cultivating as a friendly acquaintance, Song decided, so she cracked open the door a bit.

“I was informed at least one of the tests would take us outside the capital and into the countryside,” she said. “At a guess, an exorcism contract.”

The brown-eyed Izcalli grimaced, as well she should. Exorcism contracts were about removing an aether intellect’s influence from a physical area, and while they were not necessarily dangerous they had a reputation for being unpredictable. Those hiring the Watch usually could not tell the difference between a piece of an old god gathering strength or a lesser spirit that’d gorged on aether and decided to make mischief.

It meant taking exorcism contracts was like rolling dice. Uncle Zhuge had advised to avoid them unless she put together a brigade particularly skilled with such matters, which Song had not. While she had a Navigator, she lacked a Savant skilled in the relevant areas.

“Here’s hoping that the Leopard Society prick gets the short straw, then,” Captain Tozi drily said.

“I will raise a cup to that,” Song fervently agreed, and did.

—

“There,” Captain Yue said. “Try it on.”

It did not look like much, at first glance. A brass ring, a wide flat band. A closer look revealed, however, that there was a stripe going across the middle of the length. Etched cryptoglyphs, so small Maryam’s eyes could barely make them out – and her mind struggled to comprehend them where she could. The Izvorica did not even need to extend her nav to feel the conceptual symmetry laid there, like a subtle steel grip.

“What do they mean?” she asked instead of obeying.

“We don’t know,” Yue admitted. “Only around half of Antediluvian cryptoglyphs are understood, and no find ever allowed us to make out the meaning of these.”

“But you know the effect,” Maryam guessed.

“I do,” Captain Yue said, “and so will you. When you put it on.”

She plucked the ring from the unnecessarily ceremonious cushion it had been placed on, warily trailing her thumb down the length of the cryptoglyphs. They felt cool to the touch, like a pond come spring. Sliding it on, Maryam braced herself for something that never came. Moments passed.

“It had no effect,” she said.

“It’s not a magic ring, Maryam,” Yue said, rolling her eyes. “It is a device. Wrap your nav around it, as a string.”

Cheeks slightly flushed, she did. Now Maryam felt… something. There was some sort of conceptual symmetry at work but besides being felt it did not appear to, well, do anything. She wrapped her nav in a string around the ring three times before turning to her mentor with a cocked eyebrow.

“Stop,” Captain Yue said. “Now pull your nav back.”

Maryam frowned at pulled with her mind, as if to unwind the bob of nav she had woven around the ring, only the ring held the nav firmly in place. She stilled in surprise.

“Ah, so it works,” Yue grinned.

“What is this?” she breathed out.

“I’ve decided to call them rake-rings,” Captain Yue said. “Think of the ring as a gear that turns only one way. When the nav is pulled away from you, it gets stuck in the teeth. Take off the ring and your nav is released.”

“So long as I have it on, it prevents the entity from pulling at the nav I’ve woven around the ring,” Maryam quietly said, heart beating against her ears. “I would be able to trace Signs with what was bound without interference.”

“It will do more than that,” Yue said with a sly smile. And as this creature is strong, it might break a ring eventually. I’ll have a set made for you and you can weave around them like a pulley, distributing the force.”

The Tianxi grinned.

“Tools,” she said, “are how we took the world from spirits and animals. This is no different.”

Only the name still struck Maryam as odd, for why not call them gear-rings or pulley-rings instead? It was only thinking of a second meaning for rake she put it together.

“And when struggling against the rings the entity will hurt itself on the ‘teeth’,” Maryam said. “Like claws raked across its flesh.”

“Small wounds,” Yue agreed. “Drops of blood for you to swallow.  It won’t be able to help struggling, Maryam, even knowing it’s hurting itself. That is its nature.”

The Izvorica shivered at the light in Captain Yue’s eyes, which was neither cruel nor kind but coldly pleased in the way that a clock might be pleased when its gears ran smoothly. Caring only for the beauty of the function, indifferent to whether a finger was lost fixing the little pieces.

“It will feed itself to you, Maryam, one piece at a time.”

—

It was a pleasant visit, all things told, but to entertain four stretched Angharad’s limits.

Zenzele was the one to notice, leaning to the side and whispering into Ferranda’s ear as Shalini continued gesturing animatedly through her story. The victory of Lindiwe Sarru’s team against a lemure from the Steel list was the talk of Allazei, apparently, and the Someshwari gunslinger had been mightily impressed by the manner of the great chimera’s death – and that there’d been no casualty among Lady Sarru’s team.

“I know the woman they got the grenades from,” Rong contributed when Shalini stopped for a breath. “It cannot be done without dabbling in alchemy – there is a Glare effect – but the formula is supposed to be simple firepowder otherwise. Not all that difficult to make.”

“For a Tinker, perhaps,” Ferranda said. “Besides, I do not believe Angharad will be returning to the Acallar anytime soon.”

“I have had word from the Marshal,” Angharad said. “I am expected to begin attending when I can walk with a cane.”

The infanzona looked horrified.

“To fight?”

Angharad cleared her throat with some embarrassment.

“To serve as a new exercise,” she admitted. “I am to head into the arena and be protected from beasts by a squad.”

A pause.

“Marshal de la Tavarin will grant the right to draw again from the lists to any company that completes the exercise.”

“Oh, that’d be so useful,” Shalini muttered. “Are you allowed to fight at all?”

“Only with firearms, save in the defense of my own life,” Angharad said.

Zenzele cleared his throat from the other side of her bed.

“Interesting as that is, we will soon be expected by Philani at the Dregs,” he said. “You can scheme the details of her return another time, Shalini.”

The woman in question blinked, seemingly surprised, then glanced Angharad’s way. Whatever she saw there had her biting the inside of her cheek.

“Of course,” Shalini said. “I’ll swing by tomorrow, Angharad, my story’s not entirely done anyhow.”

“I will look forward to it,” she smiled.

Zenzele mustered the others out the door like a particularly polite sergeant, but even though she rose to her feet Ferranda did not take her leave. This was not unexpected – there had been talk between them of Angharad joining the Thirty-First, but also of obligations dictating otherwise. The infanzona was owed a resolution to that conversation. A silence stretched out between them, almost tense.

“I hear there was no permanent damage,” Ferranda finally said.

Angharad’s lips thinned.

“It is believed that I lost some memories,” she replied. “A minor loss, the Akelarre called it, but how would I know if it were otherwise?”

It was a fearful thing, to hear you had somehow been made less but would likely never learn exactly how.

“I looked into maras,” Ferranda said. “It could have been much, much worse.”

“That is true enough,” Angharad muttered. “My uncle was… firm in telling me as much.”

“If there was anger, I expect it was born of worry,” the fair-haired infanzona said, crossing her arms. “I truly am glad you were spared the worst, Angharad.”

The Pereduri’s brow creased. That made twice, now. That was the difference between wishing well and preparing the ground.

“You have bad news,” Angharad guessed.

Ferranda Villazur’s face, ever prone to severity, hardened.

“Our talk about your joining the Thirty-First should be considered laid to rest,” she said.

The surprise, Angharad thought, somehow stung worse than the words. She had not thought Ferranda the kind of woman to be moved by the rumors Wen mentioned, but perhaps that was unfair of her. Reputation mattered in Scholomance, Angharad had to acknowledge as much even if some took the obsession too far.

“I must remain with the Thirteenth for several more weeks at least,” she said. “Still, there are yet years ahead of us on this isle.”

“Laid to rest for good, Angharad,” Ferranda flatly corrected.

The noblewoman stilled. For good? That was… No, rumors would not put those words in the infanzona’s mouth. What had happened? Her bafflement must have been obvious, for Ferranda’s jaw clenched at the sight of it.

“You…”

Ferranda’s voice turned cold and clipped.

“Bad enough you headed out into Allazei alone without warning any of us, but that is far from the worst decision you made that night,” she said. “You wandered into a layer, Angharad, had an encounter with a parasite and after being lucky enough not to die outright you brought it back to the house.”

 There was cold anger in Ferranda’s eyes.

“Rong and Zenzele slept mere feet away from a dollmaker and never knew, because you never said a word about it all. If Song had not figured it out we might not have realized anything until the mara attacked one of them in their sleep.”

“I,” Angharad began, then swallowed. “There was-”

She bit her lip. How much could she tell Ferranda without revealing too much?

“You put my cabalists in danger,” the infanzona sharply said. “I do not care what your reasons were, Angharad. If not for a stroke of luck, your ill-considered stunt might well have gotten other people killed.”

Crisply she folded her hands behind her back.

“Recklessness is one thing when it is only your life on the line, but you brought others into the danger you courted. I cannot in good conscience seek to recruit you into the Thirty-First Brigade.”

Angharad swallowed, eyes shying away from the other woman’s burning gaze. She found herself looking down at her lap like a chided child, but how could she resent that when she had no defense to muster? She had… Ferranda was right to be angry. Neither Rong nor Zenzele had cause to pay for the decisions that Angharad had made, was yet making. She had brought trouble to their doorstep and never once warned them of it.

“I understand,” she forced out.

A moment passed, then she heard Ferranda sigh.

“I do not mean to sever all ties between us, Angharad,” she said.

The Pereduri’s head rose and she found the infanzona’s expression had softened the slightest bit.

“I draw a line now so that I need not ever do so again,” Ferranda said. “There can no longer be a question of your sharing a roof or brigade with us, but nothing else need change. I don’t expect Zenzele or Shalini would obey that order even were I inclined to give it.”

No, Angharad thought. Not matter the good intention, it could not be so neat as that. When a clay cup was shattered putting the pieces back together would not also put the water back inside. She had broken the trust extended her, it should not be easy for things to return the way they had been.

“I understand,” she repeated, like a child or a fool.

Ferranda let out a long breath.

“I should have waited longer before telling you,” she finally said. “Zenzele was right.”

Another prick of pain, to hear that Zenzele disagreed not with the word but the time of their speaking.

“No,” Angharad softly replied. “I am glad you did not. If you had visited more than once before telling me it would have felt…”

A lie, in some indescribable way.

“Your affairs are free to remain in the house as long as you wish,” Ferranda said, not. “I understand your ties to the Thirteenth are… uncertain, at the moment.”

The sound Angharad let out at that was half a sob. No matter how long she stared at the walls, she had found nothing that Song and the others might want of her. She closed her eyes, forced herself to calm. To break out weeping before Ferranda would shame them both. The other noblewoman waited in silence until she’d gathered herself, her breath steady even if her eyes still strung.

“Arrogance never really feels like arrogance, does it?” Angharad murmured. “Only like pride, until it breaks on you.”

Ferranda’s eyes were far away. Angharad suspected she knew where, and with whom.

“The gods delight in a well-laid plan,” the infanzona replied. “In that moment before you set out, when you have it all figured it out. It’s what ruins you, I think – being so sure that with a little cleverness, you can have it all.”

The infanzona smiled mirthlessly.

“Fate is a blind and cruel horse,” she said. “It will throw you off when you least expect it.”

“It is not fate that was blind,” Angharad tiredly said.

“Maybe,” Ferranda shrugged. “But what does that change? In the end, when you end up laid on your belly with the breath kicked out of you, there’s only one person who can decide whether you’ll get back on your feet.”

“Is that what you did?” she asked.

Ferranda snorted, looking away.

“I’ll tell you if I ever figure it out,” she said, sounding wistful.

The infanzona’s hand came to rest on the pommel of her rapier.

“A good day to you, Angharad, and my wishes for swift recovery.”

The Pereduri nodded at her listlessly. Ferranda hesitated for the barest instant, then nodded back. The door closed behind her, too soft a sound to echo as part of Angharad wished it might. At least there would have been something clear-cut, a sharp note. Instead she had only half-ends to wrestle with, bastard things that resisted easy definition. Little had changed, she thought, but much had changed around it.

Now the ground beneath her feet was revealed to be sand, and she still did not have a single fucking thing to offer the Thirteenth in a bargain.

What did she even have to her name? Now that Angharad looked back, it felt as if she had been standing on others her whole life. Coin and influence not her own had fed her, clothed her, fetched her the finest teachers and opened the way for her to ply her blade against others. Her skills, her victories, they were her own. That would never change.

But now she could only see that every paving stone on the road she had walked to those victories was set down by another.

Even now, the same uncle who had left Llanw Hall to make something of himself in the Watch was putting it all on the line for her. Using his every great deed, a lifetime’s worth of toil and perhaps even that life itself, as paving stones for Angharad’s road. It was an odious thing, to see how much she had taken and taken and taken while giving so little back.

Yet more odious was to face the truth that she did not know how to pay back any of it.

What could pay with, her blood? House Tredegar had been struck from the rolls, its holdings seized and the only wealth Angharad had to her name was handouts from her uncle and the Watch. She could not pledge a sword hand bedridden, and even when she left that bed how much would that steel truly be worth? Blades and muskets were not rare things, on Tolomontera, and neither were skilled hands to wield them. And spirits, what else was there to her?

Even her contract was-

Her contract. Angharad licked her lips. Her small glimpses, they were a fine tool but not of much use to anyone but her. But the gate she and the Fisher had opened on the Dominion, the visions that went down the winding path? Those could be of worth to others.

If they knew about them.

If Angharad abandoned, at least to the Thirteenth, the delicate conceit that her contract was about heightened reflexes. If she put her life in their hands, for sooner or later they would learn that foretelling contracts were forbidden under pain of death in Malan – and Angharad would return to Malan, there could be no doubt of that. For revenge, and for her father.

Angharad Tredegar closed her eyes, biting the inside of her cheek, and warred with herself. A blind and cruel horse, Ferranda had called fate. She might be right about that, Angharad thought.

But it still had a saddle on, for those willing to ride.

—

There were so many clocks in the solar it felt like they were growing out of the walls.

Fancy sorts made of gold and shaped like a pearl-inlaid music box, simple brass tickers, hanging dials and even an overlarge hourglass on a hinge you could flip. The ticking was like a dull, constant roll enveloping you from every direction. Fortunately, Professor Sizakele was interesting enough a teacher that the noise tended to fade into the background.

“Asphodel, huh.”

The professor was, at the moment, forty years old. From twenty to fifty she did not change all that much in body shape, save for filling her loose back robes in slightly different places. The hair grew, though, which was why she kept bound it in elaborate crisscrossing ribbons.

“I know little of the gods of the Rectorate,” Tristan said. “The few Asphodelians I met swore by no great names.”

The professor snorted, leaning back into her large cushion chair. It suited her well as a grown woman, but when a girl of ten her shoes barely reached the edge.

“That’s because the Rectorate has no great gods,” Professor Sizakele told him. “Do you consider yourself pious, Tristan?”

“I’ve never met a god more reliable than a good set of lockpicks,” he said.

Fortuna had wandered off to have a look at whatever petty devilry Cozen was up to, so he could afford to say this without retribution.

“Good, good,” the professor smiled. “Because the Orthodoxy’s just an old racket.”

He coughed in surprise at the bluntness of that.

“It got dressed up in nice clothes over the centuries, but at the core it’s just a list of the gods that agreed to play by Second Empire rules. Those that wouldn’t bow and scrape, pay obeisance to Liergan being the heart of the world…”

She slid a finger across her throat.

“The empire killed gods?” Tristan asked, surprised.

All gods not surrendered to the night were welcome in the Orthodoxy, that was what the priests always said.

“By the shovelful,” Professor Sizakele said. “Not so many when they were consolidating their hold on Issa, but by the time they began expanding north into the Trebian Sea the emperors had grown heavy-handed. Asphodel was a regional power, back then, so it they were particularly thorough.”

He cocked his head to the size.

“So they killed the gods that could be trouble,” he said.

A cocked eyebrow was turned on him.

“Say the rhyme, boy,” Sizakele ordered.

He almost rolled his eyes, but at her current age that might get his finger slapped with the stick. Instead he cleared his throat.

“Salt and silver,

both harm the lesser

while river and line,

will bar the divine

but only bane and guile,

can slay the vile.”

The dark-skinned woman nodded in approval.

“There you have it,” she said. “A god manifest can be shot, but all that does is kill the face on a concept. Men keep praying, so another will form. The Second Empire was not so half-hearted: they slew the gods, sure enough, but then they brought over their own to fill those empty boots.”

“The Second Empire fell centuries ago,” Tristan pointed out. “What happened to those imported gods after?”

“Most broke and went rampant,” Sizakele said. “It’s no coincidence that the old rectors of Asphodel granted the Watch the right to run a private fortress on their land. Nowadays it’s more of a supply depot, but there was a time gods needed hunting in those lands.”

“So young gods would have the run of the roost, now,” he said.

“Some of them bearing old names, but that’s the truth of it,” she agreed. “It doesn’t help that the foundation of Asphodel is cracked.”

He cocked an eyebrow.

“Marble and grain are what Asphodel’s known for,” he said. “They still sell well as far as I know.”

Sizakele dismissed his words with a wave.

“That’s trade,” she said. “Stripe concerns. Why does Asphodel call itself a rectorate instead of a duchy, like their old rivals in Rasen do?”

“The capital was built out of some sort of ancient Antediluvian place of learning, or so the word goes,” Tristan said. “What does that matter?”

“Because First Empire fiddled with the fabric of the aether on Asphodel, as it their wont,” Professor Sizakele told him. “They are said to have made it stable, almost stale, and they left the aether devices ensuring this behind when they were chased out of the region by the Old Night. The Antediluvian libraries and the machinery were what made Asphodel a power to reckon with, once upon a time.”

“Only then the Second Empire rolled in,” Tristan finished.

And the Lierganen’s approach to conquest might be called magpie-like, if magpies dabbled in the occasional mass grave.

“They took everything that wasn’t nailed down and a few things that were,” Professor Sizakele confirmed. “Including much of that old machinery. The aether on Asphodel has been volatile ever since – prone to inducing flashpan gods instead of letting them coalesce properly.”

“Weak gods, then,” he tried.

“And lots of petty scavengers,” she said. “That’s nothing to celebrate for your brigade: gods are never as dangerous as when they are hungry and desperate.”

“But such lesser deities will be harmed by salt munitions and silver,” Tristan said. “They can be killed.”

“For a given value of killed,” Sizakele said. “If you kill Asphodel’s god of wealth, it will die. But what forms to replace it will have a lot in common, perhaps even the same name. The only way for a god to truly, fully stay gone-”

“Is conceptual poison,” Tristan finished.

Bane and guile, the rhyme called it. Killing the very concept at the heart of a god, either by tricking into acting against its nature or forcefully subjecting it to its ‘bane’. Like water for a god of fire, war for a god of peace. Conceptual harm had an echo in the aether, so it had lasting effects.

“So it is,” Professor Sizakele said. “Though if you’ve grown so bold as to interrupt me when I talk, it is time we moved on to a fresh set of lessons.”

She rose from her chair, went rifling through the closest clock-laden shelves and produced a large leather-bound volume that she loudly dropped on the table before him. Tristan squinted but there was no title on the surface.

“And this is?”

“Maduna’s Compendium of Banes,” Professor Sizakele viciously smiled. “We best get started, there’s a few hundred pairs for you to memorize.”

—

Maryam had not set foot in the Abbey since that first day.

Why bother, when the boons of the place would never be enough for her to reach a second year at Scholomance? Now, though, things were different. And not just because the senior signifier of Tolomontera was accompanying her down the stairs circling the endless pit of dark.

The ten rings in her pocket weighed less than a knife, but to her they felt heavy as all the world.

At Captain Yue’s instruction she kept descending, past the cell that had her number on it and down into the depths of the dark. All the way down to the bottom, where the silence grew oppressively loud and even the scuff of her boots against dusty stone felt like a scream. The last room was not a room: it was a long, broad stripe of stone extending into a dark nothing like a hanging tongue.

The absence of a guard rail should have unsettled her, given how it meant a single slip was all it took to fall into the abyss, but there was something… solid about the darkness here. Settled. Captain Yue clicked her tongue.

“I’ll never get used to this place,” she said. “The Gloam is too tame here, it’s unsettling.”

The older woman’s words felt too loud in the quiet, almost painful to the ear. Maryam swallowed.

“Why not my cell?” she asked.

“It works better down here,” Yue said. “And if the pit speaks to you, I’ll be there to stop you jumping.”

“Stop me from what?” Maryam croaked out.

“Not wasting my time, evidently,” Captain Yue said, rolling her eyes. “Go on, then. We don’t have all day and there’s not long left before you leave on that galleon – if adjustments are needed, I must know today.”

She grimaced and looked away. This fresh horror aside, Yue was not wrong about time growing tight. Not only a week and three days were left before she was to sail away on the Gallant Enterprise. Maryam breathed out, reaching into her pocket. She put on five rings, at first, each of them with a band of cryptoglyphs on the outside and a number engraved on the inside. Her left hand weighed down with brass, she reached for her nav.

The daily practice was paying off: her soul-effigy moved swiftly and precisely, more a dip pen than a brush. She wrapped the thread of nav around the rings in a simple but strong pattern, a five-wheel pulley pulled tight. Short of how much it’d take before the entity pulled back, but not much.

“Trace,” Captain Yue instructed. “Give me a Sphere first.”

Her hand moved, trailing Gloam, and she almost let out an incredulous laugh at how easy tracing the Sign was. Even easier than it had been in the layer. The sphere of pure Gloam formed with a pop, Yue letting out a hum of approval at the indication the working was hermetic.

“Release,” Yue said, and Maryam flicked her wrist.

The Gloam dispersed like scattered smoke.

“Six rings now,” the scarred captain instructed. “We need to find your first ceiling.”

Maryam had been told that in time she would be able to weave in another ring with but a little effort, but she was not yet there. She had to undo the entire spool of nav, put on the sixth ring and only then trace anew. Another Sphere, just as easily crafted – though Maryam almost felt like the Gloam came too easily.

“Seven,” Yue said.

She did not even make it to tracing before the entity began to fight her. Though it felt as if her hands should be pulled to and fro, that was a deception of her mind – her brain expecting physical consequences to a purely metaphysical struggle. Yet she still clenched her fingers, gritting her teeth as she struggled to keep her focus while the entity pulled wildly against the rake-rings. She could feel its anger, its fear.

She could feel when it cut itself struggling, the force pulling suddenly going slack afterwards as it fled.

Captain Yue had said that the creature hurting itself would return things to Maryam, but she felt nothing of the sort. Frowning, she slid her focus down the length of her nav looking for a change while her physical hand rested on the hatchet at her belt. The touch of the steel was familiar, was-

Jakov laughed, the great bearded bear of a man adjusting her wrist as he stood behind her.

“A clean snap, little queen,” he said. “Always a clean snap, else you’ll lose your bets whether my warriors are drunk or not.”

Her knees hit the floor.

“Run,” he snarled, blood dripping down his face, crimson streaks in the beard. “Go, Maryam. Your mother swore-”

Thunder and smoke, powder, and Jakov screamed-

Palms against the stone, Maryam Khaimov emptied her stomach on the ground. Jakov. Oh gods, Jakov. The first of the captains to join the Wintersworn, the kindest. The laughing man who’d taught her to throw axes so she could win rings off of drunken warriors at feasts. He’d been so proud, when she first nailed five throws in a row. She could almost see him lying on the ground, half his skull a blackened ruin from where the cannon shot burned it.

How long had it been, since she thought of Jakov? Too long. Bile rose up in her mouth again.

Captain Yue stood there and did not say a word. Maryam did not look at her, closing her eyes until she could think of anything at all but that wild laugh forever silenced.

“Two bits of memory,” she got out. “Connected, but not close in time.”

The first from the early days, the other from the very last.

“Emotional connections will have much stronger pull than time, which the Gloam cares little for,” Captain Yue noted.

She nodded, breathing in and out. A few more heartbeats passed.

“Your first ceiling is six rings,” Yue simply said. “For now, that is the amount of power you’ll be able to operate at. If you need more you can put on further rings, but expect a fight – and this sort of backlash afterwards.”

Maryam nodded, still panting.

“Take off the seventh, we’ll drill you while on six,” the older woman instructed. “I’ve no intention of sending you out of Tolomontera before you have the novice’s arsenal firmly in hand, Maryam. We will be coming down here daily until you do.”

The novice’s arsenal: the three basic Signs taught to every signifier intending on violence. Befuddlement, an Acumenal Sign that she already had some proficiency in. The Bayonet, straightforward Ancipital violence inflicted by touch. And last of the three, Burden: a minor Didactic curse that worked most anything that could be said to live.

Even though work lay ahead of her, Maryam’s heart was beating with something like joy: a year ago, wielding anything but a sloppy Befuddlement would have been a fool’s dream.

“Let’s get to work, then,” she said, and got back on her feet.

—

First, Tristan used a baited trap.

They were simple things, uncomplicated enough he was able to build his by hand. A well-positioned weighted basket with bait hung on a string so that, when the bird pulled at the bait, the string would make basket fall down and trap it. It took about half an hour for him to adjust one of the kitchen baskets for the purpose, then just as long talking his way out of Song being very unimpressed at the kitchen table now being occupied by a pile of potatoes.

Concessions had to be made, namely peeling an unreasonable amount of said potatoes, but he got his way. The bait was laid, a bowl of carrot seeds the bird would never be able to resist, and he went to sleep in a fine mood. Excitement only rose when he padded out into the garden come morning, a curious Song following, and they found the basket tipped over. No movement inside, but he would not be fooled: he raised the basket only slightly, so the magpie could escape.

Only there was no magpie inside.

“Is that a dead mouse?” Song frowned. “I thought the bait was seeds.”

“It was,” Tristan replied, glaring at the eviscerated mouse.

Even more insulting, the bowl was emptied of the seeds that had been the actual bait.

“That is one clever magpie,” Song said admiringly.

Song, he darkly thought, was going onto the list. Tristan cracked open the book on traps he’d rented from Silumko, who was clearly gouging him on the price and enjoying every moment of it. A simple bait trap had not been enough, so he would move on to something more elaborate: a funnel trap.

That took longer to build, and involved the use of more nails and pieces of wood than he would have liked. At least both were cheap and in great supply, since the Umuthi students might well riot if it were otherwise.

The result was a little rickety, as Maryam helpfully pointed out, but it held. A funnel trap was essentially a cage made of slightly spaced planks with bait inside and an entrance that the bird could squeeze through on the way in but not on the way out. His enemy, consumed by hubris, would not be able to resist entering to feast on the bowl of carrot seeds.

“Pride,” he told Fortuna, “will be the end of it.”

She rubbed her chin.

“Do magpies even eat mice?” Fortuna asked. “Maybe it was a warning, Tristan.”

She paused.

“Like the coteries back home, you know,” she said and put on her best gritty air.

She squinted and made what she thought a grim grimace but was in practice more of a pout.

“Back off, rat, or you’ll get it like the mice.”

“It’s a bird,” he flatly.

“A bird that’s winning, though,” she pointed out.

Come morning, he found a long twig abandoned halfway through the space between two planks as well as a toppled and conspicuously empty bowl.

Another dead mouse had been shoved into the funnel trap’s entrance.

“Where is it even getting all these mice?” Song wondered, passing him a cup of peppermint tea as he stood there in mute horror. “I have seen no sign of any around the cottage.”

She paused.

“Do you think it’s hunting them out in Allazei and flying them back here after?”

“I don’t know,” Tristan muttered, “but I do know this: no matter how clever it is, it won’t be cleverer than birdlime.”

—

It would have been proper for Angharad to journey to the cottage for this talk, but though her health had starkly improved – the headaches remained, but much of the pain in her bones was gone – she found it difficult to walk for more than a minute or two at a time. And with a cane, too. The journey to the north of Port Allazei was still far beyond her without the same kind of escort helping her to the Acallar, but that escort would not be able to find the hidden cottage.

The Thirteenth had, thus, come to her instead.

They came early on seventhday, though she’d had time to break her fast with her uncle earlier still. He was gone by the time Song knocked at the door, easing it open when Angharad bade her in. Her… not quite former cabalmates looked in fine health. Song wore her regular’s uniform as neatly as she ever had, and for once Tristan looked largely free of bruises. Even the dark rings around Maryam’s eyes had thinned.

“Have you ever had churros?” Tristan cheerfully asked before she could greet them.

She blinked.

“I have not,” Angharad said.

He presented a handful of wrapped pastry sticks.

“Would you like one?” he asked. “I got too many.”

A pause.

“Though it would have been the right number if Maryam did not have opinions on cinnamon that are factually incorrect.”

“I enjoy it in moderation,” the blue-eyed woman flatly said. “That is not moderation.”

“I now wonder if I should,” Angharad gamely said.

The thief waved his pastry sticks in a manner that might have been meant to be alluring but mostly had Angharad wincing at the spill.

“Take the churro, Angharad,” Song sighed. “He’s never going to shut up about it otherwise.”

The irritation there would have been on her face a few weeks ago was so slight now she wondered if she was imagining it entirely. Angharad took one of the offered pastries, nibbling at the top. It was still warm, if barely, and though the taste was quite sweet she rather enjoyed it.

“It’s good,” she admitted.

Tristan grinned.

“See, Song, that’s three people officially on the rolls of the Thirteenth who had some. That means-”

“It is not, nor will it ever be, a brigade expense,” Song informed him.

Her face was stern, but Angharad read an undertone of amusement to her tone. It was not an argument but teasing, and the sight of it brought a pang. If she had stayed, would she… No, that thought was a dead end. No amount of stirring the cauldron would change what had gone into it. She ate another bite of her churro, which now almost tasted bittersweet.

“Please, sit,” she invited. “You have my thanks for coming.”

After they sat, she did not belabor the matter with small talk. All here were aware of why she had requested the meeting.

“I had made arrangements to leave the Thirteenth, but the situation has changed,” Angharad frankly acknowledged. “I now find myself in a position where remaining with the brigade is a better course.”

Song’s face might as well be stone, and Maryam gave no reaction save for the thinning of lips. Tristan only smiled encouragingly, but Angharad knew that was skin-deep. If Maryam refused her return he’d not hesitate a moment before supporting her.

“I am not unaware,” she continued, “that I am not making this request from a strong bargaining position.”

She paused, leaving room for someone to intervene. She was not surprised by who did.

“You’re a swordswoman who can’t use her sword,” Maryam mildly said. “What, exactly, would you be contributing if you were taken back in?”

The brush with the phrasing Angharad herself had used during the argument at the cottage did not feel like a coincidence. The noblewoman swallowed, then breathed out. Pride would not get her through this.

“I apologize,” Angharad said.

Maryam blinked.

“While I spoke no lie when we last argued,” the Pereduri continued, “I phrased the truth cruelly, and did so on purpose. It was unworthy of me and underserved by you, so I owe you an apology.”

The blue-eyed woman frowned at her.

“That is to your honor,” Maryam said, tone the faintest bit sardonic. “But it does not answer my question.”

“No,” Angharad acknowledged, “but it needed to be said nonetheless.”

She clasped her hands on her lap.

“I will be able to move around with a cane much more comfortably by the time we reach Asphodel, but is true that I will not be fighting fit for some weeks after that,” she said, fingers tightening. “Which is why I offer the use of my contract instead.”

Surprise all around. None dared cross the line and ask, regardless of the implied invitation.

“While I have implied in the past my contract relates to reflexes, this is incorrect,” Angharad said. “It lets me see what is yet to come.”

She licked her lips, heart thundering. Never before had she spoken of her bargain with the Fisher in such detail.

“Small glimpses come easily to me, mere moments ahead, but should I concentrate I am able to have a vision stretching out much further.”

“How much further?” Song quietly asked.

“You don’t know?”

Angharad’s eyes flicked to the one who had spoken: Maryam, whose face was shadowed. Not angry, but perhaps on the threshold of it. Tristan’s brow had risen as well. Ah. They would think it unfair if her own contract had been spared Song’s eyes while his own had not. With reason.

“Her contract is difficult to read,” Song replied. “As if I were looking through water. I caught words enough to know it lets her see things, but not much else.”

A pause.

“My own god advised against digging, and was uncharacteristically serious giving the advice.”

Tristan let out a low whistle, eyeing her curiously.

“You are not contracted with a second-stringer, then,” he said. “I’ll back up Song’s question – how far ahead?”

“I have seen through an entire skirmish and the beginning of the pursuit after it,” Angharad said. “Perhaps fifteen minutes in all? I expect I could go further, the span did not feel like much of a weight.”

It was only a feeling, but she suspected she could go easily twice or thrice as long. It had been the repetition that scraped her raw, not the length of the spool.

“The cultist ambush out in the woods,” Song slowly said. “When your eyes bled.”

Angharad inclined her head in agreement.

“It was the first time I used the ability. My spirit’s tutoring was… not gentle. I used it many times in a row then, but now I do not believe I could do so more than once in a day without harming myself.”

The question that followed was not of the kind she had expected.

“Malani killed all Izvoric who could foretell, when they claimed land back home,” Maryam said, voice grown cold. “Are the laws so different for your own kind?”

Angharad swallowed.

“They are not,” she said. “By the laws of the Kingdom of Malan, to hold the contract I do would see me killed.”

And that got a second round of silence. Song, she thought, must have at least suspected. Not so the others, who did not quite seem to know what to make of this. Unwilling for the quiet to stretch out into trench too wide to cross, the Pereduri spoke up.

“I would pledge the use of that vision to the brigade,” Angharad said. “Even for personal matters, if our duties should allow.”

Swallowing her pride, she bent her head.

“Please.”

It was a long moment before anyone spoke.

“I would not tolerate your refusing orders,” Song said.

“I would not ask it,” Angharad said.

Even fevered by the mara, she had been forced to concede it had been too much to ask. The silver eyed Tianxi inclined her head.

“That is a start,” she said. “But while I may be captain to the Thirteenth, I will not welcome you back into its fold against the will the others. Tristan?”

The thief shrugged.

“I’ve never had trouble with Tredegar, personally,” he said. “I won’t argue against her reenlistment, so to speak, but I won’t argue for it either. Maryam?”

Blue eyes sought Angharad’s own. She did not grimace, though it was no great pleasure to be at the mercy of someone who made no secret of their dislike for her.

“Part of me wants to make you squirm,” Maryam said, “but what would be the point? It’d be a poisonous kind of satisfaction. I’d not be holding you to account for anything, just swinging the axe for the pleasure of it.”

The Izvorica’s jaw clenched.

“Your contract, I would know the boundaries of it,” she said.

“I have yet to learn them,” Angharad admitted.

“Then I will ask up to an hour a day of you,” Maryam Khaimov replied with a twisted smile, “so that you may be subjected to tests meant to do so.”

So that was her price. Something to hold over her, a sense of mastery. She won’t use it every day, Angharad told herself. The phrasing had left the door open to infrequency. And the hard truth was that Angharad’s bargaining position was best described as ‘on her knees’.

“I swear,” Angharad said.

Maryam wrenched her eyes away, then turned to Song. With a still-clenched jaw, she nodded at the Tianxi – who held Maryam’s gaze for a long moment, as if making sure, before nodding back. Only then did she look to Angharad.

“Well then,” Captain Song Ren said. “We’ll have to see about moving your belongings back in the cottage.”

—

Imani Langa had reserved a private room for four at the Crocodilian, a tavern whose main attraction was large tables and more-than-decent food at a decent price.

The Malani likely expected Song to show up with Angharad in tow, considering their social ties, but Song would have been mightily disinclined to indulge that assumption even if the Pereduri did not now look like someone had spat on her boots whenever Imani Langa was mentioned. As the captain of the Eleventh had sent word she would be bringing Thando Fanyu with her, Song Ren in answer brought the natural enemy of both spies and nobles.

“I asked around for the basics, and if that lot were any more suspicious their own shadows wouldn’t turn their backs,” Tristan Abrascal opined. “Langa’s got dagger-hand writ all over her and Fanyu’s made too little a splash for a noble with such good connections. They’re keeping a low profile on purpose.”

Song’s lips carefully did not smile. There was a certain satisfaction in having him speak out loud the words it would be improper for him to speak. The gray-eyed Sacromontan was leaning against the wall out in the hall, arms crossed, while they waited for the tavern-keeper to return from the room.

“Rattle their cage,” she murmured. “Langa is too smooth for us to get anything out of her otherwise.”

He flicked a look her way, nodded.

“What are we after?” Tristan asked.

“Where they stand in the coming lay of the land,” Song said.

Four brigades were headed to Asphodel, and while Song believed she had a decent grasp of where the Fourth would fall and where the Nineteenth stood regarding them both, the Eleventh was yet a mystery. Imani Langa had ties to Angharad, however soured, and so did Lord Thando Fanyu. Perhaps even the sort of ties that could be used to leverage the Thirteenth now that the mirror-dancer was associated with them once more.

Knowing whether or not the Eleventh was best kept at a distance would go some way in informing which contract the Thirteenth should aim for on Asphodel.

The tavern-keeper, a dark-skinned man with a pot belly and yellowing teeth but an admittedly impressive forked beard – finely groomed, unlike the oil-smudged leather apron around his waist – peeked his head through the door a moment later.

“It is ready,” he said. “Go on in.”

The Crocodilian was not so large a tavern that the space in the back truly warranted the name of ‘private room’, Song mused. Two thirds of the edifice was the main hall with its large tables, while the rest was split in two halves by the narrow hallway they were standing in. On one side was the kitchen, busily steaming, while on the other two doors waited. At a guess, the man’s own chambers and the small, almost cramped private room they were now ushered into.

Captain Imani Langa and her second were waiting inside, neither rising as Song and Tristan entered but nodding greetings instead. They had a pitcher and clay cups on their side of the square, slightly crooked table and as the Tianxi slid into one of the rickety chairs laid out for them she answered the owner’s inquiries by ordering a cup of the Crocodilian’s infamously mediocre cider. Tristan, to her surprise, ordered a chao vegetable stir.

“Captain Song,” Imani Langa smiled at her. “It is not in the Galleries as we first discussed, but I am glad to finally share a table with you.”

Song stretched her lips and inclined her head in what might be taken as agreement.

“Circumstances demanded my attention,” she said. “I look forward to deepening our acquaintance on Asphodel, Captain Imani.”

The other Stripe inclined her head back, then half-turned towards her companion.

“If I might introduce-”

“Thando Fanyu,” Tristan slid in. “Laurel, diplomacy track. Blood ties to the top brass of the Singing Jackals.”

He leaned in.

“Any truth to the talk you tried to get in as Skiritai but couldn’t make the cut?”

Thando Fanyu was not fair of face and, just like the gold bangles hanging on his ears and the riot of rings on his fingers, it was a distraction that made him harder to read. Not so much, however, that Song missed the suppressed twitch of anger that Tristan’s words brought.

“There is not,” Thando flatly said. “You are, I believe, Tristan Abrascal of Sacromonte. The apprentice of a Mask.”

“Congratulations,” Tristan drily replied, “you can recognize an accent and add up the obvious. I’m surprised the Jackals could spare sending such a promising prospect to Scholomance.”

Thando’s eyes tightened, but the cut was not as deep – or he was mastering his temper. Either way, there was nothing to gain in pushing further right at the start. Song cleared her throat and Tristan made a point of rolling his eyes before leaning back. He was, she suspected, perhaps enjoying this a little too much.

“I have made it a point to meet with the other captains who will be heading to Asphodel,” Song said. “I believe it wise to pool information, considering what we might be headed into.”

Imani cocked her head to the side.

“And what would that be?”

She had been right earlier: Langa was too smooth. Enough so that Song could not tell whether she was behind had right now. The Malani was practiced, very much-

“Either you’re outing yourself as pretty much useless or you’re yanking us around for good reason right now,” Tristan said.

Thando Fanyu stiffened in a way that told of irritating sharply risen.

“Your manners are-”

“What someone avoiding trying to answer the question would get hung up on,” Tristan drawled. “So it’s yanking around, then, is it? You could have at least waited until I got my food if you were going to waste our time.”

Imani Langa said nothing, only cocking an eyebrow at Song. Not so easily cracked, then. A different angle was required.

“Our patron will be teaching Saga while abroad,” she shared.

“Ours will be responsible for Mandate,” Imani calmly replied.

The food and drink arrived mere moments later. Song tasted her cider – aggressively mediocre, like pressed apple with rotgut rationed in – and she kept an eye on Tristan as he began digging into his plate. Using utensils, not chopsticks. The other two sipped at their glasses of ale, but only for a moment. The talks soon resumed.

“I visited the library in the Galleries,” Imani said, “and was interested to learn some of the books I sought had already been borrowed.”

“Oh?” Song replied, giving her little to work with.

“Access to those of them without a copy would be a fine gesture,” she smiled. “A pooling of information, as you mentioned.”

“I don’t know how it’s done in Malan,” Tristan said, “but back in the City, when there’s a trade both sides offer up something.”

“Trust, Master Abrascal, is earned,” Imani said. “One gesture at a time. Demanding it is pointless.”

“I agreed,” he cheerfully said. “How’re you to earn it, then? I’m all ears.”

“We called for this meeting in good faith,” Thando began, tone harsh, “If you-”

And Song learned, watching with mild horror, exactly why Tristan had ordered the chao vegetablestir. Almost all of those had peas, and as Thando Fanyu spoke the thief’s hand wielding the fork ‘slipped’. The oily pea bounced off the table, landing on the nobleman’s sleeve, and there was a heartbeat of stillness.

“Oops,” Tristan insincerely said.

From the corner of her eye Song saw Thando’s hand twitch towards the knife at his side, but her gaze was resting where it should be: on Imani Langa’s face. As she watched the Malani glance at her second, who was on the edge of crossing a line, Song got the barest glimpse of the calculations taking place behind those dark eyes.

Imani did not want to break with the Thirteenth, even though Tristan was causing the incident and her own second was the one being provoked.

“Thando,” she said, putting a hand on his arm. “Do not.”

Her gaze turned back to Song’s side of the table, cooled.

“I expected better of the Thirteenth, given how well Angharad spoke of you.”

Song’s hand itched to drum against the table, but there were witnesses. She could not indulge.

“Interesting,” Song said. “She has hardly said a word about you, Captain Imani.”

The Tianxi rose to her feet. She had what she’d come here for.

“Tempers have frayed, for which I apologize on behalf of my cabalist,” Song said. “Still, it might be best if we reconvened another day.”

“Agreed,” Imani Langa replied.

“Come, Tristan,” Song said as she rose to her feet.

“Sure, sure,” he said, sliding back his chair. “You can have the rest of my plate, Thando. It’s pretty good.”

The Malani’s jaw clenched. How many times in his life had he been so casually and persistently insulted, Song wondered? Not often enough to be unaffected. A useful weakness to keep in mind. This time she turned a stern look she actually meant on the thief, as there was no reason to continue pulling at the man. Tristan only smiled innocently, following her out as she offered the Eleventh a polite parting nod.

They were hardly four steps past the closed doors when Song hummed.

“Did you catch it?” she asked.

He folded his hands behind his neck, walking besides her.

“Langa wants something to do with us,” Tristan said. “Enough to let my prodding go when she could have leveraged it instead.”

He paused.

“The whole thing reeks, Song.”

“To the very Heavens,” she agreed. “I think it might be time for us to take a closer look at the Eleventh.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Tristan hummed. “Give me a few days and I’ll see what I can dig up.”

Song nodded, eyes gazing ahead. Pieces were missing, but she could already tell: there was blood in the water. It only remained to see who was the shark and who was the meal.

—

It was to be their last night at the cottage.

Given that the Gallant Enterprise was to leave on the early tide, it had been judged wiser for them to spend the following night at the Rainsparrow Hostel. It meant that Tristan had only one last shot at victory before he was made to slink off abroad in defeat, like some disgraced Someshwari general. It was why he was lying down in the bushes, hidden under a carpet of leaves.

“And you are quite certain,” Tredegar murmured, “that this is a magpie and not a spirit?”

The noblewoman was supposedly from a line of distinguished hunters on her father’s side, so she had been brought in as an advisor. She was sitting in the bush to his left mostly, as far as he could tell, because she wanted to avoid Song. Angharad’s reluctance to talk to their captain seemed to spring from the discomfort of not truly wanting to be under her command while being aware her return had been somewhat of a favor, a disparity she was not navigating with a surfeit of grace.

Maryam thought it was a good laugh to watch, though, so arguably morale-wise it evened out.

“Song confirmed it’s not a god or a lemure,” he replied.

“Song cannot see what is inside an animal,” Angharad said. “Or a woman, for that matter.”

Right, that misstep with the mara. Intriguing that the mirror-dancer had decided to wander into the Witching Hour when she should know the risks, but that wasn’t his trouble. Layers did not grow on trees, he doubted there would be any for her to repeat that stupidity with on Asphodel.

“You think it’s possessed?” he asked.

“I believe that even for a magpie, admittedly clever birds, it displayed great cunning,” Angharad said. “Perhaps too much of it. Whether ‘tis possession or something else, I cannot say.”

He chewed on that for a long moment.

“It only worked around traps out in the open,” he finally said. “Obvious ones, in a way. If it is only a bird the birdlime will be enough.”

She wrinkled her nose. The noble must not have found the use of that sporting, which it was not. Birdlime was, well, in practice that varied from place to place but the gist of it was that it was a sticky substance you could spread on a surface that’d catch the bird when it landed on it. The poor man’s recipe was the one made of holly bark, but that took most a night boiling then weeks stocked in a moist place. Tristan had sprung for a recipe with oil and turpentine instead, which did not need anywhere as much handholding to be usable.

He’d made enough to lay a flawless trap out in the garden: he’d put out a large flat rock, covered the thing in birdlime and then set down a small wooden bowl full of seeds on it. There would be no tipping that bowl, and no feeding on it without landing on the rock. The magpie’s hours were numbered.

“Oh,” Angharad breathed, pressing herself down against the grass. “There it is.”

She was right. The magpie had landed in the grass, barely a foot away from the baited stone, and it was hopping around. This was the best look Tristan had gotten of his enemy, and despite having known of it in principle he was still surprised by the bird’s size. Magpies were smaller than crows, at least the kind in Sacromonte, while this one was the size of cat. And not small cat, either. It was a handsome creature, its feathers lustrous and the streak of white on its sides and back of elegant cut.

It was also sniffing at the birdlime, as if suspicious.

“Either Malani magpies are much smaller than other breeds,” Angharad noted, “or that creature reeks of spirit.”

“It’ll take the bait,” Tristan insisted.

He’d not even finished the sentence before the magpie flew off. Angharad’s face was so forcefully solemn she might as well have burst out laughing. Tristan, gathering the dregs of his dignity, hazarded the theory that it might return. And it did! It returned to drop a large piece of dry bark on the limed stone. It then landed on the bark, pushing down on it as if experimentally, and let out a triumphant cackle-call before gorging itself on the carrot seeds in the bowl.

“I should have brought a musket,” Tristan darkly said.

Tredegar cleared her throat.

“Have you much improved your shooting of late?” she delicately asked.

“This is why you keep getting into duels, Angharad,” he informed her, then cleared his throat. “But point taken.”

He might have managed with grapeshot, but he wasn’t getting a cannon up those stairs alone. Or getting a cannon at all, unless he robbed the garrison fort. Or a ship. Huh, a ship might be doable. The thief considered the smug magpie, so cocksure in its temporary victory. It’d never see grapeshot coming. At this point he was coming around to the notion that this might not be your average sort of magpie, so it might be argued to be his duty as a valiant man of the Watch to take care of the situation.

“Have you considered negotiating with the spirit?”

He turned a stern look on the noblewoman.

“Angharad,” he said. “This creature has ravaged my fields, destroyed my works-”

“Traps,” she drily said. “It broke your traps.”

“Destroyed my works,” he sternly repeated, “and massacred presumably innocent rodents. You would negotiate with this fiend?”

“Sometimes,” Angharad gravely said, “we must make compromises with the night.”

She beamed at him expectantly, as if expecting him to be impressed.

“Treason, then,” he grimly said.

An odd flicker in her eye, then a half-forced smile.

“I do not think you will catch that bird with a bullet,” she told him. “Try as you will, of course, but were I you I would attempt an offering instead.”

He hummed, considering her still oddly serious face. Considering what he had read about Tredegar’s father in her dossier, she might actually be giving out good advice. He also recalled there’d been campfire talk about how many of the maze gods took to her, during the Trial of Ruins.

“I am almost out of seeds anyhow,” Tristan said. “I suppose at this point there is little to lose.”

He headed back inside with her, bravely facing Maryam’s cuttingly arched eyebrows as he took their nicest bowl, the ceramic one with the nice Izcalli wave patterns, and filled it with a third of the remaining carrot seeds. There was no trace of his foe when he returned alone – Angharad had elected to watch from inside, removing herself from the negotiations – save for the sight of the empty bait bowl.

Ceremoniously he made his way to the center of the garden, putting down the bowl with a bow and then sitting in the dirt out of reach.

“God of the land,” he called out, “I come to bargain.”

He sat there in silence for what to be a solid five minutes, mustering patience, before there was another of those short cackle-calls. The large bird flew out of the trees a minute later, landing on the other side of the bowl. As if they were seated on different sides of a table. Tristan’s lips twitched.

“It has come to my attention that-” he began, then frowned. “How much do you actually understand, truly?”

The magpie trilled.

“You can’t be a god,” he noted. “Song would have seen it. So… a possessed bird, some Gloam-warped magpie?”

The magpie hopped left, then right, and picked at the rim of the nice bowl.

“Terms, then,” Tristan conceded. “I would like you to stop eating the seeds I sow.”

Skeptical trilling.

“In exchange,” the thief offered, “I will fill this bowl with seeds once a week.”

The magpie kicked the nice Izcalli bowl, rattling it a bit. Tristan sneered.

“You’re not going to walk,” he said. “I could just stop sowing carrots, and where does that leave you?”

Cackle-call answered him.

“Fine,” the gray-eyed man muttered. “I’ll also leave out an apple every two weeks. How about that?”

The magpie hopped back and forth, then trilled – and took flight.

“It appears negotiations have broken down,” Tristan said.

He’d have to look into how much a cannon cost. Not a naval one, one of those smaller ones you put on a wooden support and could aim with a single man. Those could probably load grapesh- the thief almost topped forward from the sudden weight, wings flapping against his ear. He yelped ,covering his head as the magpie messed up his hair and dug its sharp talons into his uniform. Having made itself comfortable at his expense, it then stayed there.

Having no apparent intention of leaving.

“It occurs to me,” Tristan said, “that we might not have been having the same conversation on both ends.”

The magpie trilled into his ear, mussing at his hair with a wing. Gods the thing was heavy. Not as much as Mephistofeline, but then that was true of most ship anchors.

“Are we… allies?” Tristan hazarded.

A cackle-call. That seemed confirmation enough.

“You’ll need a name, then,” he said.

A pause.

“Rations,” he suggested.

The beak cruelly pecked at his scalp until he put up his hands in surrender. It was, clearly, clever enough to realize some implications. Or at least read his sense of mischief.

“Something that will make everyone else uncomfortable, then,” he mused, and there was a trill of approval.

Half an hour later, when Song strode into the garden angrily asking why her favorite bowl was missing and the bedrooms reeked of turpentine, she found him stroking the oversized preening magpie in his lap. It has very soft feathers.

“What is this?” Song asked.

“This,” Tristan proudly said, “is Sakkas. He’s with us now.”

Sakkas let a trill of agreement.

“No,” she flatly denied. “Change the name.”

“Too late,” Tristan grinned, “he’s taken to it now.”

The magpie let out a pleased cackle-call, Song blanched and Tristan only grinned wider. Yes, he decided as he stroked his bird, this would do nicely. It would do nicely indeed.

Song put on her formal uniform for the hospital visit.

It was a gesture of respect, at least to her people, and she suspected that were she awake Angharad would understand better than most. Malani lived and died by appearances, after all. By now the way to the healing ward was almost painfully familiar, but she refrained from heading there directly after her Strategy class ended. If she did, the odds were decent she would run into the Thirty-First on a visit of their own.

The prospect of making stilted small talk with Ferranda Villazur and her cabal over Angharad’s unconscious form was rather unpalatable, so she held back until late in the afternoon.

Tristan was busy losing a battle of wits with a bird – one that her eyes confirmed was no lemure, thankfully – and Song had not even bothered asking Maryam if she wanted to join her on the visit, so it was alone she stood as she reached the gates of the hospital. The bored pair of guards at the gate waved her in after asking for her brigade seal, hardly even glancing at it.

The gray-robed attendant at the front was rather more dutiful, noting the number on the seal and asking who she sought to visit and why.

“Angharad Tredegar,” Song replied. “Merely to look in on her.”

The other woman nodded, writing it out in Antigua. But a few years older than Song, the stranger had the Cathayan look and must have been raised back in Tianxia for she had a thick eastern accent.

“Wendi?” Song curiously asked, accenting the word as they did out east.

The gray-robed attendant started in surprise, then smiled.

“I lived in the republic until the age of ten, yes,” she replied in Machin.

The eastern dialect was older than proper Cathayan, but shared common roots with the dead tongue that Cathayan had been carved out from – it made everything said in it sound rather stiff, which was why in plays the common conceit about characters from the Republic of Wendi was that they were pompous blowhards. Likely it did not help that the Duchy of Wendi had been the last Tianxi realm to become a republic.

“By the accent I would call you a Mazu girl, but the name tells me otherwise,” she continued.

Song’s lips thinned. It had not been safe for the Ren to stay in Jigong, after the Dimming. Part of the deal her grandfather had cut was for the authorities to allow the family to head into exile. Her father had relatives in the Republic of Mazu, who had granted the Ren use of a country estate before distancing themselves from the family as much as they could without breaking zunyan.

While Song had been raised almost entirely by those born in Jigong, it was not the first time she heard that there was a tinge of the Mazu crispness to her way of speaking. Exile took its toll in small ways as well as the great.

“Is my cabalist in a private room?” she asked, firmly moving away from the subject.

The estate in Mazu had but a small household guard protecting it. It was secrecy that had let it remain untouched, and Song had no intention of speaking on the matter of where exactly she had lived before enrolling in the Watch.

“She is in one of the wards, yes,” the attendant briskly replied. “While there is no guard, only restricted access, you will have to undertake a Judas test before entering after leaving.”

Wise, considering the dangers of possession. Song placed her hand against what appeared to be a nail-sized piece of brumal silver – worth as much as a diamond of the same weight – and waited out the appropriate length of time, casually eyeing the attendant’s open ledger. She glimpsed there the names of Ferranda Villazur and Zenzele Duma writ on different lines, as well as “C. Tred.” appended at the end of those same lines.

As Ferranda was not formally Angharad’s captain, Song realized, the infanzona had likely been refused entry and been forced to seek permission from someone who could grant it. Captain Wen should have been the one consulted, but with Angharad’s own high-ranking uncle present the gray robes must have felt comfortable bending the rules some.

The notion of Ferranda having to jump through some hoops amused, unkind as the thought was. While the other captain had not poached so much as picked up, it had not endeared her to Song either way.

The attendant from Wendi marked an X after Song’s name when the Judas test ended, then declared her free to visit. The directions led her to a ward across the hall and further down than the one where she had been laid to rest after the attack, but it was not a long walk. The door did not make a sound as she cracked it open, well oiled, and neither did it when she closed it behind her.

There was only a single oil lamp lit inside, but Song did not reach for another: it made little difference to her eyes. Laid on the bed was Angharad Tredegar, tucked under her sheets.

Her wrists were tied to the head of the bed by shackles.

Song sighed and slid into the seat to the right of the bed. The other woman was, well… physically she looked mostly fine. A small burn on her palm where the brigade seal had touched flesh and some bruising on the cheeks from when she had been wrestled down onto the ground. Calling what had followed the outing of her possession a brawl would be doing it too much honor.

The parasite in her mind had bade her to run and she had, but Song shouting about possession mobilized a garden’s worth of students in a heartbeat and Angharad was wrestled down without truly fighting back – she’d not been so far gone as to turn on watchmen. Save for some attempts to buck those holding her down, the Pereduri had given them little trouble before the garrison arrived to seize her.

Whatever the officers had done after taking her away, though, left marks: her face was wan, her expression sickly and she covered in old sweat. No visible wounds, but how much did that really mean when dealing with an aether entity? The door was soundless, so it was the change in the air that tipped off Song – her hand reaching for her pistol by reflex, until she caught sight of a black coat and forced herself to pull it away.

The stranger stepped through, raising an eyebrow.

“Ancestors, it’s dark in here,” the man who could only be Commander Osian Tredegar said. “Light another lamp, would you?”

“Sir,” she said, rising to her feet and saluting.

“This isn’t a parade ground, at ease,” the man snorted. “The lamp, yes?”

Song swiftly got to it, sneaking a look at Angharad’s uncle from the side as she reached for the matches. The two Tredegars only shared some looks – mostly the nose – but the ring on Osian’s hand bearing the two-tailed snake of House Tredegar confirmed the relation. He was, Song noted, taller than Angharad and in fine shape for an Umuthi. Very fine shape, she noticed, eyes lingering on those broad shoulders. That finely cut beard lent him the look of a distinguished older man, and he had an easy smile.

A smile currently directed at her, because she had been caught looking.

Clearing her throat and looking away with burning cheeks, Song lit a second oil lamp and tried not to turn into cinders from sheer mortification.

“Sit,” Commander Tredegar invited, still smiling. “As her captain, you are entitled to know of her health.”

Song slid back into her seat, yet feeling like she should be snapping a salute as she did.

“I am surprised to see her still bound,” she admitted.

“Standard procedure after possession,” Osian Tredegar dismissed as he settled in a seat on the other side of his niece. “Tomorrow they will test her again with brumal silver to confirm she is free of the parasite, but there is no expectation that anything remains.”

“Glad news,” Song said, and meant it.

“Some of the few to come out of this mess,” the older man sighed. “You have my thanks for acting when you did, Captain Ren. It was a… close shave, I have since been made to understand.”

Song almost winced. A close shave with an aether parasite was sure to leave marks even if you survived it.

“Yes, that is about the right reaction,” Commander Tredegar agreed, seeing through her restraint. “The dollmaker did a number on her: she will not be able to walk without help for weeks and it will take weeks more before she is anywhere near a fighting fit.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“That may cause difficulties with her Skiritai class,” Song said.

“Between the coming departure for Asphodel and her having psychosomatic wounds, she will be exempt from the monster-fighting,” Osian Tredegar said.

There was enough confidence in his voice that the should sounded like a will, which Song was aggrieved to admit she found rather attractive. He probably did not even write poetry, she told herself. There was no need to admire him too much.

“I expect Marshal de la Tavarin will find something else to occupy her,” she said, definitely not blushing.

“No doubt,” Commander Tredegar agreed. “The man’s dossier has more seals stamped on than a tourney board and any Skiritai that lives past sixty has a record to make Ramayan novels seem tame.”

Song made a disgusted moue at the mention of those things masquerading as literature. The Yellow Earth was right to try and have them banned, they were blatant propaganda: the ‘charming’ Ramayan captains always ended up tumbling doe-eyed, beautiful Tianxi maidens from an old noble family dispossessed by wicked, greedy revolutionary merchants. Which were not at all like the virtuous, appropriately money-oriented Ramayan merchants exalted by such tales.

Even worse, the authors cribbed from each other’s monologues. Song could forgive propaganda but not plagiarism.

“A fearful thing to consider,” she drily replied.

He smirked, settling more comfortably in his seat, and did not deny it.

“It was good of you to come and visit,” Commander Tredegar told her.

His tone sounded approving, which she did not think warranted.

“I am still her captain,” Song said.

“On paper,” the older man said, then cocked an eyebrow. “I must admit that Angharad was rather vague on the reasons why she believes there must be a parting of ways between you. What happened?”

Song’s lips thinned. In principle, she did not have to answer that question. While Osian Tredegar was a superior officer, he was not her superior officer. He would be when they left for Asphodel, however, so even had she been truly reluctant to tell him she would have been wary of poisoning the well.

“We had a disagreement over the death of Lady Isabel Ruesta,” she finally said. “It took place back on the Dominion but she since learned details of it.”

The dark-skinned man frowned, though not at her. He was fighting to recall the name, and after a few moments the frown went away.

“The infanzona with the borderline contract,” Osian Tredegar said. “Some sort of supernatural charm?”

Song nodded. Close enough. It was interesting to hear that Isabel Ruesta had been marked as an edge case. Mind control contracts were forbidden under the Iscariot Accords, but the Accords’ throughline was that they should govern only supernatural matters – and the most insidious part of Isabel’s contract, how it trained perception, was not something forced on by the contracted god.

The contract helped setting that perception, certainty, but it did not force it onto a mind. To declare it illegal on that basis would have been difficult, given that purely mundane social maneuvering could achieve much the same effect.

“She took a bullet to the head,” the silver-eyed woman mildly replied.

Commander Tredegar snorted.

“Well, these things happen when you go around using charm contracts on people,” he said, then raised an eyebrow. “I take it my niece was involved with Lady Ruesta?”

“Despite every attempt at fostering better judgment, yes,” Song darkly replied.

To her surprise, she was faced with what appeared to be genuine sympathy.

“Her mother had dreadful taste in lovers as well,” Osian Tredegar sighed. “Angharad comes by it honestly.”

He paused.

“Given the fool gallantry that infects Peredur like an honorable outbreak of the clap, I expect my niece would take poorly to a woman she was courting having an accident.”

“You seem indifferent to the notion,” Song observed.

“If the Ruesta girl was using a contract on Angharad, I’m more likely to give a medal than a reprimand to whoever put an end to it,” Commander Tredegar said.

Though there was an implicit invitation there, Song kept silent. After a moment, the dark-skinned man inclined his head in acknowledgement. He would not press the matter and she had no intention of speaking further on it.

“Despite your disagreement,” he said, “she seems to believe staying with the Thirteenth for Asphodel is the wisest course.”

“She implied as much,” Song warily said. “We were discussing terms when I noticed the discrepancies in her behavior.”

Commander Tredegar grunted in acknowledgement, and she was glad he did not ask any further. It was to his honor that the man knew where to draw the line in where to meddle – while the commander could have forced Song to take in his niece without any terms at all, the Tianxi would have been rather soured on the affair if he had.

“Regardless of where that matter falls, I am to give you a hand in the coming months,” Osian Tredegar said. “Colonel Zhuge arranged for my appointment as the Umuthi instructor, which grants me some influence in choosing which brigade will get which assignment when we reach Asphodel. You will be provided the opportunity to choose when the time comes.”

“You have my thanks,” Song said, inclining her head.

He smiled thinly.

“I have no intention of ever crossing Shilin Zhuge,” he said. “He might have that scholarly Tianxi pleasantness down to an art, girl, but he also puts up on his wall the calligraphy of rivals whose careers he buried.”

Commander Tredegar leaned.

“However polite it may be, it is still a row of bloody scalps.”

Now that was uncalled for. It was only proper for a respected scholar to display calligraphy and reflect on the hand of those encountered. She cleared her throat.

“One’s handwriting reveals much of one’s character, and thus helps grasp their virtues and flaws,” Song said, a tad reproachfully.

Just a tad. He was still a commander.

“So the Tianxi claim, yes,” Osian Tredegar drawled. “I must confess to a degree of skepticism on the matter.”

He dismissed the conversation with a wave of the hand before she could reply, rising to his feet.

“I have already taken up too much of your time,” he said. “I will leave you to your visit.”

“That is kind of you,” Song said.

Part of her was considering if she should stay longer than she had first planned since he might be there to pay attention to the length of the visit. Perhaps she should have brought a book. The tall man slowed by the door, then half-turned with an idle look on his face.

“Oh, one last thing,” Commander Tredegar said. “I am curious – do you have any notion of why my niece might have entered a layer?”

She blinked in surprise.

“None,” Song said. “She would not have done so on purpose, I expect: another of the Thirteenth entered a layer by accident, earlier this term, and in the aftermath our Navigator made it very clear how dangerous it is.”

She cocked her head to the side.

“Is that where she encountered the mara?”

“We cannot know for sure before she wakes,” Osian Tredegar precisely replied, but his face was grim.

He inclined his head.

“Thank you for your time, Captain Ren.”

“And yours, commander,” she murmured, returning the gesture.

The door closed behind him with nary a sound and her silver eyes flicked to his niece’s sleeping form as silence settled on the room. What have you been up to, Angharad?

Song Ren found she had no idea, and that worried her more than she cared to admit.

—

Angharad woke with a headache drumming against the inside of her skull.

She groaned, her body throbbing with a dull pain settled deepest in her bones. Eyes fluttering open, she found herself looking at a stone ceiling bathed in lantern light – she tried to get up, but the muscles of her midriff were like jelly. She twitched once, then fell back onto the pillows propping her up. A hand came to rest on her forehead.

“Easy now.”

She craned her neck to the left, but it was as if she were watching through a looking glass. She blinked forcefully, feeling filth caked up on the corner of the eye, and the vagueness came into focus. Osian Tredegar was standing over her. There were dark circles around his eyes. Angharad tried to speak up but her mouth was dry at sand. She licked at her cracked lips, but it helped nothing. She coughed.

“Wait a moment,” Uncle Osian said.

He leaned back while Angharad’s tongue sought the wet of her own spit, trying to remember how she had ended up here. It came to her after a heartbeat. The layer, the ambush. Song drawing a pistol on her, then the distant recollection of ripping down a curtain of silk and being tackled into a bed of flowers.

 “How long?” she managed to rasp out.

“Three days,” Osian replied, then clicked his tongue. “Lean back a little.”

She obeyed as best she could, even that small movement difficult. He poured the water into her mouth, gently, and part of her could not help but think of that woman in the layer. What had her name been? Miren. Miren, she’d been called. Angharad drank down gulp after gulp until he eased off the skin, then licked her lips. They were just as cracked as before, only wet. She leaned back down into the bed, letting out a rattling sigh.

“My bones hurt,” she got out.

“It is a psychosomatic injury,” Uncle Osian told her. “Your bones have not been physically hurt, but the damage done to your soul is resonating with your body.”

A pause.

“Bones and aching are good signs,” he added. “Sharp, localized pain is often the herald of permanent damage.”

Angharad swallowed.

“What happened?”

“Captain Ren figured out you were possessed and called on help to wrestle you down until the garrison could take you into custody,” her uncle said. “The first purging attempt went poorly, so you were drowned before a second was made.”

Her fingers clawed into the sheets.

“Drowned?”

“In sea water,” he added, as if that were the part that mattered. “A temporary measure, Angharad. You were immediately resuscitated, as is done with sailors. It weakened the mara enough it could be expunged without… drastic measures.”

“Drowning is not drastic?” she asked.

“No,” he mildly said. “It is not the silver casket, or trepanation. Count yourself lucky the parasite did not have longer to burrow into you, else there would have been no choice but to use these.”

Angharad’s eyes were weak, everything out of her direct stare trembling, but that mildness warned her and watching her uncle’s face confirmed it: he was furious. A tight, contained sort of fury but fury nonetheless.

“Uncle?” she asked.

“I am told,” Osian continued with a forceful calm, “that the entrance wound into your soul was unusually neat. Such injuries, I am again told, usually occur when the soul is attacked while outside its mortal shell. As it would be when walking a layer.”

She swallowed. The urge was there to walk the line, try to dance around with words, but she pushed it down. Angharad could barely even think straight, and he was owed better anyhow.

“The Witching Hour,” she admitted. “It felt like a small cut, nothing more. I did not know my opponents were maras.”

Was that why they had moved so strangely? It must be why they had vanished after scoring a single blow, anyhow. Commander Osian Tredegar leaned back his chair, face calm as a windless pond but his dark eyes burning.

“Do you know what a mara does to someone, when given time?”

She weakly shook her head.

“To enter it first takes a bite of your soul,” Uncle Osian said. “Then it presses itself into that gape, replacing it, and begins spreading through you like roots.”

His tone was the sort of even that came from forcing yourself not to shout.

“It eats your memories, your very being to spread,” he said. “First the parts that know its existence and how to get rid of it. By then, it has influence enough it can begin to nudge you – urge decisions that are felt to be whims or fancies.”

His fingers drummed against the arm of the chair, just a little too hard to be quiet.

“After that the mara begins eating the parts of you that know how to talk,” Osian said. “Then those that know how to move. When it has that, it will make you head into isolation so it can hollow you out entirely away from witnesses.”

He closed his eyes.

“Men call the creatures dollmakers because that is what returns afterwards: a doll moved around by the mara, passing as whom it used to be while the parasite looks for its next prey.”

The fingers had ceased drumming. Now they were clutching the end of the armchair, hard enough it creaked in protest.

“What in bloody-handed Branwen were you thinking, girl?” he snarled. “Heading into a layer on your own, without a Navigator or so much as an ally to pick you up should you be unable to walk home afterwards. Are youtrying to get yourself killed?”

Angharad looked away. She was not a child, to be chided so.

“It went fine, until the very end,” she said.

“You were fucking hours away from no longer knowing how to talk, Angharad,” Osian half-shouted, then closed his eyes.

He took a deep breath, ripped his hands off the chair and closed them into fists before setting back down gently. His teeth were clenched when he began talking again, but his voice had lowered.

“If your captain had not, with admirable wits, caught on to your situation you would currently have all the vocabulary of ten-year-old child,” Osian said.

She looked down at the hands in her lap.

“I underestimated the risks,” she admitted.

“You overestimated yourself,” he harshly corrected. “As things stand, it might well be months before you cease having shaking fits. Even when you grow able to stand you will require the use of cane.”

She breathed in sharply, panic rising.

“But it is not…”

“Permanent?” Osian finished. “No, lucky you. The senior Akelarre in port lent a hand and tricked the mara into leaving with only minor damage. Some memory loss was inevitable the moment it ate part of your soul and your wits will remain fragile for a few days yet, but most of the damage was psychosomatic. When the mara ripped itself out of your soul, it was not gentle.”

Angharad bit her lip. Part of her felt like weeping, if only out of frustration. At having lost things she would not even remember, but worse yet at what it meant that she would be unable to move around without a cane. She could not head back into the Witching Hour. To try that dark night without being able to run was suicide in long form.

And as that realization did sink it, she closed her eyes and let her head sink into the pillow.

She swallowed the sob, for what good would it do? This was it, then. She had failed so utterly she could not even try again. Her last chance of seeing her father, of ever freeing him, had just slipped through her fingers because she was the sort of fool to hesitate when shown the same face twice in a dream. The sounds that ripped themselves out of her stole the wind out of her uncle’s sail. She heard him sight, and when she opened his eyes he was rubbing at the bridge of his nose.

He looked as exhausted as she felt: another failure for the pile.

“Why?” he tiredly asked. “Tell me that, at least. Why did you insist on going gallivanting through a murderous aether nightmare? You entered through the same passage as the boy in your brigade, it was not a coincidence.”

“I-”

Cannot was on her lips, but it would be a lie.

“It was not for me,” she finally choked out. “But on the behest of another.”

Her uncle’s eyes hardened.

“No teacher would be fool enough to send you into a layer so unprepared,” he said. “Who?”

“I was not forced,” Angharad said.

“That does not mean you were not leveraged,” he flatly replied. “Who, Angharad?”

She lowered her gaze.

“It might be unwise to say,” she got out.

There was a long moment of silence, then Osian Tredegar softly cursed.

“It’s the ufudu, isn’t it? This all reeks to Hell of the Lefthand House.”

It was over, then. Even the suspicion was enough to finish this. She was finished. What point was there in hiding anything now, in even trying to lie? Angharad swallowed, then nodded. She felt so sick to the stomach that if she spoke she would start to throw up and never stop.

“They shouldn’t have anything on you that,” he began, then stopped. “Llanw Hall. Someone survived. They stole someone out of the ashes?”

“Father still lives,” she croaked. “I was shown a drawing of him with an arm missing. But uncle he’s – they tell me he’s kept in Tintavel.”

Beyond the Watch’s reach. Beyond everyone but the Lefthand House’s.

“Gwydion,” Osian Tredegar said, speaking the name like it was the worst sort of curse. “Of course Gwydion survived it all and now comes back to haunt us all. I should have bloody known.”

“The Watch can’t get me into the Black Mountain,” Angharad desperately said. “But the Lefthand House-”

He cut her off with a sharp gesture.

“Will deliver just enough of what they promised you to keep you on the hook and never a drop more,” Osian said. “To them things are most profitable with your father inside Tintavel and you willing to do most anything to get him out.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Angharad snarled back. “I’m not a fool, uncle, I know I can’t trust the ufudu.”

She clenched her fist.

“But what else is there?” she desperately. “What else am I supposed to do, just leave him to die in there? I can see no other way. Crooks they may be, but they are the only ones offering.”

“What did they ask you to do?” Osian asked.

She hesitated.

“Child,” he gently said, “either you can tell me now or we can have that conversation with a Mask in the room.”

She licked her cracked lips.

“The Infernal Forge,” Angharad said. “The one the Lightbringer is said to have tossed into the aether when Tolomontera fell to the Watch.”

“Of all the raving lunacies,” her uncle said, rubbing at his forehead, then frowned. “No, no. Of course the High Queen is after one, word is the Krypteia smashed her last a few years back. The ufudu are even toeing the lines of the Iscariot Accords – they’re not taking the device, they’re coming into its possession.”

Angharad frowned, lost.

“What do the Accords have to do with this?” she asked.

“Having Infernal Forges is forbidden under them, save for those in the Watch’s vaults and those within the walls of Pandemonium,” Osian said. “But the wording had to be careful, for many were hidden in the wake of the Second Empire’s fall  and no power would agree to unknowing possession being an Accords breach. Else having one buried in your countryside could get you interdicted.”

“So it is allowed?” she slowly said.

“No,” he said. “Having one in your nation’s ‘possession’ is not illegal but using them, studying them, hiding them and seeking to obtain an Infernal Forge is.”

Angharad blinked, confounded.

“But I am being solicited for this task,” she said, “surely…”

“Surely, if proof ever emerges of it, the High Queen will apologize for the actions of a cell of rogue ufudu and execute those involved as an apology,” Uncle Osian said. “If the Forge makes it to a hidden facility, she will line up some minor noble ‘aiming to usurp her’ to take the fall and lose his head should the Krypteia sniff out the lair and bring proof of its existence too solid to deny.”

Now she felt sick in an entirely different way.

“That is obscene,” she said.

“It has happened at least twice I know of,” Osian replied. “Not in my lifetime, but the last was as recent as the second decade of the Century of Sails.”

Not even a hundred years ago.

“It is the Queen Perpetual herself who signed the Iscariot Accords,” Angharad insisted. “With her own hand. The sheer dishonor of breaking her own word…”

“Oh, she ever respects her word,” Osian mildly said. “Only sometimes her subjects do not. Out of her sight, of course, and she rectifies this when it is brought to her attention. What else can be asked of her?”

Angharad opened her mouth to object, but the older man gestured curtly.

“We can have that talk some other time, when the both of us are better rested,” he said. “The ufudu is the one that sent you into the layer?”

“They said the Infernal Forge should be in one of them,” Angharad said.

“It might well be,” Osian said, “but you are unsuited to finding it. A sword only gets you so far in a layer. Navigators are the answer and they have tried and failed to obtain the Forge in the years Scholomance was closed. Although…”

He frowned.

“Aether responds to strong emanations,” Osian said. “A focused enough sense of need could have served as a compass of sorts. One growing stronger the more urgent the need became. Were you given a date?”

“The end of the year,” Angharad quietly said.

She bit her lip. It was out now, but part of her could not help but tremble at what was yet to come. But there was a wild hope, that her uncle might help her through her failure. If he lent a hand, surely…

“Uncle, I know I cannot-”

“No,” he coldly cut, “you cannot. I will not turn my back on my oaths to the Watch and ignore this.”

Horrible as that end was, there was also some relief. It was out of her hands, now.

“I will confess it all, then,” she tiredly said.

“Had you done anything worth confessing, that would be good of you,” Osian mildly said. “But you have not. The worst you can be accused of is not immediately reporting an agent of the Lefthand House, but that is not against the rules on Tolomontera.”

“So you want me to… cease,” she said.

He eyed her for a long moment.

“I could ask,” he said. “But you won’t, will you?”

Her fists clenched, however weakly. Angharad said nothing. It was better than lying.

“If you return to the layer in this state, you will die,” he plainly said.

“Then I will arrange for others to do so on my behalf,” she replied. “Beg and bargain as I must.”

“That will also get you killed,” Osian said. “It will make its way to someone who will look into it – either some Mask student looking to pass their class, or some Stripe looking to raise their score. You will be a commendation on their record by year’s end.”

She gritted her teeth.

“I cannot just abandon my father to die in a cell,” Angharad told him. “I know it would be wiser, uncle, the clever thing to do. But it is not who I am.”

She breathed out.

“I have only weeks until I must leave,” she said, “and while on Asphodel my search will have to end. I cannot-”

“That,” Osian Tredegar softly said, “is not entirely true.”

Her eyes fell on him, light as a feather. He passed a hand through his hair.

“That cache found on Asphodel,” he said. “It is suspected to include an Infernal Forge, though the Rectorate has not reported as much.”

Angharad swallowed.

“You mean…”

“I will not turn on the black, not even for my blood,” Osian said. “But were it to be obtained from the Rectorate instead, that would be… a pill I can swallow.”

“You mean it?” she breathed out.

His expression hardened.

“Do not pin hopes on this,” Osian Tredegar said. “I will report suspicions that the Lefthand House got their hands on a Forge the moment their agents sail with it. That is as far as I will to bend, and ancestors willing the Second Fleet will catch that ship on its way back to Malan.”

He grimaced.

“But as far as that, I will help you,” he said.

“Thank you,” Angharad almost wept. “Truly, uncle, there are no words-”

“Do not thank me too soon,” he quietly said. “For this I want an oath of you.”

She leaned in, so quick it hurt her tender neck.

“Never again,” Osian said, “will you ask me to bend my oath to the Watch, or do the same.”

Slowly she nodded.

“And whoever that ufudu is?” he said. “We will cut their throat when the business is done. I’ll not have the sickness spreading any further.”

A few weeks ago, Angharad might have balked at that. No longer.

“I will wield the blade myself, when the time comes,” she promised.

Osian breathed out.

“All right, then,” he said. “Tell me everything.”

She did.

Treachery was afoot: the carrot seeds were gone.

Maryam might have been complicit in the crime, for when informed of this she offered no aid. Only profuse mockery, including some very unkind moralizing about how he who lived by petty larceny was doomed to be defeated by it. Petty. Petty! For once he was in full agreement with Fortuna, this was unacceptable talk. No, Tristan would have to thoroughly investigate this matter and prove her treason, rightfully relegating her to taking Theology notes for the both of them next class.

Now, if only his only ally in this grand work were not utterly incompetent.

“Maybe she used her eldritch Navigator powers to disappear them,” Fortuna suggested.

She was sitting atop a tree branch, the red trail of her dress trailing as she swung her legs.

“You are a goddess,” Tristan reproached. “How is anything eldritch to you?”

“I was only phrasing it this way for your sake,” she ineptly lied. “I think your field was cursed to be barren by a witch, it is the only reasonable explanation.”

Tristan wondered if she was being blatantly wrong on purpose. Even odds, he figured: it might simply be that she had not been paying attention to the entire affair beyond the amusement of outrage. The thief knelt in the dirt, carefully feeling out the soil. He had sown seeds rather liberally yesterday, but there was not so much as a single stray one left. Whoever had done this had acted methodically, and with malicious intent.

“Could be a devil ate them,” Fortuna suggested.

He rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“I resent that this last guess is the closest we have come to a working theory,” Tristan admitted.

“You need to listen to me more,” the Lady of Long Odds happily said. “I have all sorts of ideas.”

Not unlike a mangy dog had fleas, and about as respectably.

“It could have been foreigners,” he finally said.

It was a long and honored Sacromonte tradition to blame foreigners for troubles ranging from the rising price of bread to why your daughter had been caught half-naked with the neighbor’s son in the back of the shop. It would have irresponsible not to consider foreign involvement, one might argue. If they were an infanzon.

“I am no longer sure I want to be involved in this,” Song Ren drily said.

He flicked a glance back, finding the Tianxi standing at the edge of the garden with steaming mugs of tea in her hand. Tristan squinted her way, not having caught the approach. Had Maryam sent her accomplice to sabotage the investigation?

“I don’t know what it is you’re thinking, but I am almost certain I should feel insulted by it,” Song noted.

“Your help would be most welcome,” Tristan said, not openly adding as soon as I am certain you are not part of this conspiracy.

Fortuna, lending her ‘help’, immediately leaped down from her branch began crowding the captain. She stepped in too close, peering into Song’s eyes like some nosy tia trying to find out their color, and gestured at one of the mugs as if asking to take it. To Song Ren’s honor, she had never once fallen for this cheapest of ghost trickeries.

Unfortunately for Song, Fortuna had taken it as a challenge.

Purely for spite of his goddess, Tristan rose to his feet and ambled over to take the tea. No, he realized, not tea. At least not the proper kind: this was brewed… peppermint? Surprised but not displeased, Tristan actually took a sip for reasons beyond politeness. Peppermint was good for digestion and stomach pains, as well as tasting fine enough.

“I have run the numbers for the brigade funds,” Song said. “I believe we could go as far as ten ramas.”

Tristan chewed at his lip thoughtfully.

“Hage will bleed us if he realizes I’ve gold to slap on the counter,” he said. “The easiest way to avoid that would be asking for something in particular, not merely going fishing.”

She hesitated for a moment, brushing back her long braid.

“Ask about the local criminals,” Song finally said. “The rest we can get from the official reports on Asphodel, but that kind of knowledge will not make it onto them.”

Tristan gave an absent-minded nod. It had been an unpleasant surprise to learn that they were headed to Asphodel in three weeks, leaving them to scramble for preparations. Song had borrowed books from that fancy hidden Stripe library, but books would only get them so far. Hage was almost certain to have access to Mask reports on the Asphodel Rectorate, or Krypteia gossip just as good, and Tristan approved of asking about the local coteries.

“We’ll need to know our way around the underground no matter which of the contracts we end up getting,” he mused. “Getting the lay of the coteries in advance is a good investment. I would not be surprised if the Masks had a contact on the ground, either.”

Song’s impressively well-connected uncle had leaked to her in the letter how assignments would work: there were four contracts outstanding, and it would not be decided until they reached Asphodel which brigade received which. The man had not gone into details  about the contracts – could not or would not – but had mentioned that two were investigations, one an exorcism and the last a hunt.

Only the exorcism was likely to take them out of the capital, and not far. Even then finding the remnants of an old god was sure to be easier when you had a way to reach out to the people who could tell you which of the latest disappearances had been paid for.

“I expect that might be beyond our means to buy,” Song said, “but if the opportunity knocks…”

“Barely a day rich and already a spendthrift,” he teased.

She rolled her eyes.

“Maryam’s ties to Captain Yue could end up fruitful as well,” Song noted. “As the senior signifier on the island, she might be in the know for Asphodel affairs.”

“We lose little by asking,” Tristan shrugged.

The two stood there in silence for a long moment, sipping at their mugs. Song was the one to break it.

“Not a single seed left, I see,” she said.

Those last two words were not a figure of speech when coming out of Song Ren’s mouth. Tristan was not yet sure to what extent she could discern details, but she could read book script from across a room without any trouble. Part of him itched to ask how that would pair to, say, a telescope but theirs was not so comfortable a relationship that he could.

“Such meticulous extermination can only be the result of an enemy attack,” Tristan said.

“There are probably at least two birds, yes,” Song agreeably replied.

He paused.

“A what now?”

Song considered him for a moment, then her lips twitched.

“Maryam didn’t tell you.”

“Her treacheries are endless,” Tristan coldly said.

“She told me she saw a bird up on the roof yesterday,” Song informed him. “A magpie, by the description, though an unusually large one.”

“And she failed to tell me this because…”

A rusty groan, one of the drawing-room windows being cracked further open from the inside. They had been getting eavesdropped on.

“Because I thought it would be funny,” Maryam called out.

“See,” Fortuna mused, leaning against his shoulder. “I told you a witch was behind this.”

“Bruja,” Song slowly said. “Did she just call Maryam a witch?”

“Nothing less than she deserves,” Tristan sniffed.

He turned a squinting look up at the roof, but there was no trace of the alleged magpie. How had it made it up here, anyway? Sakkas had said that this place could only be found by those who already knew where it was, but no lock was perfect. If the Gloam working laid into this place was as a surrounding curtain, birds might have simply flown over it.  Or perhaps the magpies had nested there for generations? An impressive lineage, if true, though Tristan could not recall ever seeing or hearing a bird here before.

“A recent arrival, do you think?” he said.

“I am uncertain,” Song admitted, sounding fascinated. “It could be that an animal is not enough of a ‘mind’ to be turned away by the defense and our presence drew interest. More might come if that is the case.”

“A siege, then,” he muttered, then cleared his throat. “I will have to draw from brigade funds.”

A wary look.

“What for?” she asked.

“To make a scarecrow,” Tristan fiercely replied. “I yet have carrot seeds: I might have lost a battle, Song, but the war has just begun.”

“I was right,” Maryam called out through the window.

—

It was a mark of Captain Yue’s rank that she had a solar inside the walls of the chapterhouse.

Though not a small building by any means, much of the insides of the Akelarre headquarters was taken up by the Meadow so private rooms were virtually unheard of. There were dorms for Navigators to sleep in, libraries for restricted works and a few small study halls, but all these were shared. The captain’s large solar on the upper level was not, though Yue had crammed so many devices and books inside that a room as large as the cottage’s drawing room somehow felt cramped.

Maryam had learned, over the last few weeks, to tell when she was in for a pleasant afternoon by gauging the enthusiasm on the scarred captain’s face when she was ushered into the solar. Briskness meant it was drudgework ahead of them, checking options off a list not out of belief they were possible but to be through, while on the opposite end of the scale a broad grin meant things were going to get… exciting.

Like being rowed out into a shallow part of the bay and dropped into the sea with stones tied around her feet exciting.

“Ah, Maryam, just in time,” Yue grinned, and the Izvorica almost cursed.

It was going to be one of those, then. The older woman hurried her in, closing the door behind and guiding Maryam past a fresh pile of books – nearly all of which had iron girding and a lock, meaning they were from the deepest part of the restricted library – and the same half-eaten plate of fried rice that had been balancing precariously on the end of a table for three days.

The sheer number of precious instruments in here, from astrolabes to orreries to a set of beautifully engraved ring dials, had been intimidating at first. There was a fortune’s worth of devices surrounding her, many of them of intimidatingly fine make. Nowadays, though, they mostly felt like the clutter that they were. Yue eased Maryam into the usual cushy armchair, then headed across the room to a large, broad silhouette under a pale sheet.

“That is new,” Maryam noted.

“So it is,” Yue happily said. “Had it brought up this morning.”

She theatrically tore off the sheet, which she had obviously put there herself for this very purpose. What lay under looked halfway between a water maze and an Izcalli calendar: an upright stone disk, almost man-sized with layered circles within. Each circle was connected to another by some shallow notch and at the heart, instead of a large motif of an Izcalli calendar, was a gaping hole the size of the Izvorica’s head.

Captain Yue presented it with a flourish, visibly pleased with herself.

“Well done,” Maryam hazarded. “I am… impressed?”

The older Navigator wrinkled her nose.

“At least some put effort into the lie,” she complained, then sighed. “Think, Khaimov. Does this remind you of anything?”

To Maryam’s mild shame, it took another few seconds before catching on. It was the size that had distracted her: the other disk had been barely the size of two fists, and the patterns on the surface significantly more complicated than these.

“The Kuru Maze that Professor Baltazar showed us on our first day,” she said. “The device that lets one gauge their Grasp and Command.”

“You could consider this beauty the bastard cousin of a Kuru Maze,” Yue said, patting the disk.

“I don’t feel any conceptual symmetry from it at all,” she frowned. “The draw of a Kuru Maze is that it restricts manipulation of Gloam. This looks, well, like…”

“A big chunk of rock,” Captain Yue cheerfully said. “Because it is. Not a drop of anything conceptual here. It’s an Izcalli invention called a stele stone.”

“Ominous,” Maryam noted.

The Kingdom of Izcalli – and all the other Aztlan states, to be fair – had a fondness for carving skulls onto everything and their naming sense tended to the funerary. Even Captain Totec had a saltshaker sculpted to look like a dancing skeleton he was inordinately fond of.

“You know how it is with Izcalli,” Yue said. “No matter how sound the scholarship, their scholars don’t take anything seriously until there’s a body count supporting it.”

“The Kingdom of Izcalli is the leading light in metaphysical anatomy,” Maryam loyally said. “No one else understands souls half as well.”

“Yeah, they sure burned a lot of candles studying those,” Captain Yue drily said. “But I seem to recall the man who initiated you into the Akelarre is from Izcalli, so I’ll let you off this once.”

She slapped the stone again, like a farmer at market endorsing their prize pig.

“Stele stones,” Yue said, “are made when a significant number of people die on top of them.”

Maryam blinked, having not expected it to be so literal.

“They used to make these from physician’s floors,” the Tianxi said, “but these days I understand some lords have a racket of ordering their dying serfs to go and lay on top of them so they can sell off the stones.”

The Navigator shrugged.

“It does assure steadier supply.”

Captain Yue’s notion of good and evil tended to run along ‘things that make my work easier’ and ‘things that make my work harder’, which meant she had all the sympathy of an iron rod but also that she was remarkably lacking in bigotries.

“And the advantage to lugging around corpse rocks is…”

Maryam trailed off leadingly.

“Think it out,” Captain Yue said. “The stone used here is basalt, which on the Ban scale of aether sensitivity is lower-middle.”

Maryam hummed. To qualify as middle sensitivity on the Ban scale, a material must be affected by aether phenomenon not directed at it. The study of the effect of metaphysical forces on physical objects was usually considered a part of alchemy, but inevitably it was a matter of interest to both the Peiling Society and the Akelarre Guild and as a result the terms for it were drawn from a dozen different disciplines.

It was a real mess of everyone borrowing from each other and contradicting each other’s works.

The Ban scale had been used by Cathayan architects for over a century before the Akelarre adopted it, justifying this by noting the imprisoned scholar-concubine who’d first created it had been a signifier and thus the scale had always been part of their scholarly wheelhouse. While not the most exact out there, the Ban scale had the benefit of being made into a series of rhymes that translated well to most the major languages of Aurager – and thus was remarkably easy to memorize.

Lower-middle meant the material in question was affected by nearby aether phenomenon, but not unduly sensitive. For example a cutter, with its aether engine, could dock at a basalt dock and there would be no trace left on the stone. A death on top of the stone slab, though? That strong, instant release would leave some kind of mark.

Yue had mentioned physicians as the original source, which likely meant painful ends at the hands of cutters. Many deaths, though, and evidently the Izcalli lords out there seemed to think that sending the sick to die on the stone would work just as well. It’s not about the nature of the death, then, it’s about the numbers.

“Saturation,” Maryam said. “Stele stones are basalt saturated with aether.”

Yue cocked an eyebrow.

“And what would be the use of such a thing?” she asked.

“You called it the bastard cousin of a Kuru Maze because those constrict the use of Gloam,” she slowly said. “This would do the same for… aether?”

“Are you asking me or telling me?” Yue said.

She chewed at the inside of her cheek.

“Nav,” she said. “Logos, I mean. It goes through the aether, so a stele stone is meant to constrict the use of one’s logos.”

“Good,” the Tianxi smiled. “That is essentially correct.”

She waved a hand.

“The reality is slightly more complex – the maze carved on the surface is because of metaphysical continuance, a concept you won’t be learning about for some time yet. Suffice it to say that moving your logos through the channels in the stone is more difficult than, say, simply wrapping it around the disk.”

“Why are we testing my logos at all?” Maryam asked.

It was one of the few parts of signifying she’d never had any trouble with. She was, she fancied, a much defter hand with hers than most of her peers.

“Because I told you to,” Yue easily replied. “Come, I will show you how it functions.”

Maryam was always careful sending out her nav with Captain Yue around, knowing herself a candle besides a bonfire. It would have been easy for the other woman to snuff her out without even meaning to. Yue had asked her this time, though, and would be careful. It was an odd feeling, how the other woman coaxed her soul-effigy – like being a raft being pulled along in a galleon’s wake.

Yue guided her all the way to the opening of the stele stone, then goosed her nav as warning. Maryam withdrew, did not follow her in. Instead she tried to feel out what tracing the pattern did to Captain Yue’s nav, what coiled and what tensed. When the captain withdrew, after what could not have been longer than thirty heartbeats, she was faintly panting. Yue brushed back her braid on her shoulder, smoothing it back into place to hide the burns on her cheek and ear.

“It is a good control exercise,” Captain Yue said. “We will not teach logos manipulation until third year, as it’s much too easy for a beginner to rip out their own soul, but if my theory is correct you will have little choice in learning the basics early.”

By now Maryam knew better than to ask her to elaborate. If she intended to, she would have. Instead she gathered herself and felt out the entrance of the stele stone pattern. All she had to do was trace it, not fill those wide furrows, but to make one’s nav was fragile had its dangers: Maryam slid in a rope, not a string. Immediately she felt the saturation’s effect. Most objects were inert when felt out with nav, like dull contours in a world of colors.

The stele stone instead buzzed like flies’ wings, and she had to keep a firm grip on her nav lest it be swept astray.

She was surprised to find it rather easy, at least at first. She just had to thread in her nav, which took concentration but not much difficulty. Halfway through the first loop she began to grasp what Yue had been hinting at by ‘metaphysical continuance’. Maintaining the thread she had woven while continuing to push forward was significantly more difficult than she had thought. She had assumed the trouble would rise like the slope of a hill, but two thirds of the way through the first circle she felt like she had to climb a wall instead.

“Fuck,” she muttered.

“Further,” Yue quietly said. “You need to finish the first ring.”

Gritting her teeth, Maryam pushed on. She might not have made it had she not realized she could cannibalize her own earlier work. She could thin the rope and make it into string. It eased the pressure, though she still only barely made it to the notch leading to the second circle. She threaded past it by a hair, breathing out, and – the pull took her by such surprise she tumbled all the way back to halfway through the first circle.

“What in the-” she snarled, firming her grip.

The pull gave when she pushed back, but as she tried to reclaim the grounds lost she felt as if something was pushing against her. A hand on her shoulder, a pulse of Gloam.

“That’s enough,” Captain Yue said. “I have what I need, withdraw.”

Maryam was tempted to rip herself out, but forced herself into a controlled retreat instead. One should never treat their soul-effigy lightly. When she came back into herself she was panting, covered in sweat, and Yue eased her back into the seat. She spent some time gathering her bearings while Yue puttered about pouring something into cups, pressing a metal goblet into her hand. Maryam took a sniff.

“Brandy?” she asked.

“It will take the edge off that brutal migraine you’re about to have,” Yue said. “Drink.”

Maryam grimaced but did. It burned going down, but there was a faint aftertaste of apricot that took the edge off the lingering in the mouth.

“What was that?” she asked. “Something fought me, it felt like. Was it the stele stone?”

“The stone had aether presence but not consciousness,” Yue replied. “It cannot fight you.”

She leaned back against one of her tables, though she had to push back a strange overlarge bronze compass.

“What has puzzled me about your condition from the start,” Yue said, “is its seemingly contradictory nature.”

“I don’t follow,” Maryam frowned.

It seemed rather plain to her: her Command was lacking because it was sabotaged by an aether entity.

“First we established through layer diving that the cause of your measure imbalance is an aether entity,” Yue elaborated. “Seemingly straightforward, if an unusual case. But then I put you through about a third of the possession tests known to the Akelarre Guild and none of them turned up a thing.”

The Izvorica’s eyes widened in alarm.

“You said I wasn’t possessed,” Maryam said. “That those were-”

“To ascertain the nature of your ties to the entity, yes,” Yue dismissed. “And they were. Possession is a layman’s term, ultimately, evoking some dollmaker hollowing a man and walking around with his face and memories. In practice relatively few aether entities are capable of this.”

“You thought it was some lesser parasite,” she slowly said. “One that a possession test would unmask.”

“An unusual case, as I said: an entity that gorged on your emotions unhindered for so long it became something nearly unique,” Yue agreed. “Only you have none of the physical markers of this. Therefore, I resorted to the submersion test.”

“An individual submerged in the sea with no physical tie to above will achieve metaphysical isolation,” Maryam quoted. “You wanted to establish whether it had an anchor to me.”

“And it did,” Yue smiled, “else you would have been capable of signifying under water without trouble just as you did in the layer. Thus we established that the entity had an anchor on you, but that your body showed none of the usual markers. Now, it might have been that we simply needed to get into the more invasive possession tests…”

Maryam swallowed. Sticking needles in her body and making her Sign during was not considered invasive? Making her eat a lodestone, Sign and then throw it up had been one of the easy tests? Gods. She was almost afraid to ask.

“… but that is a brute method answer, Maryam, forcing a circle into a square peg. I found a more elegant solution: what if that anchor was on a material part of you without being a physical part?”

And there the reason for the use of the stele stone became clear.

“My logos,” Maryam breathed out. “Shit, it latched onto my logos. I use it to signify, so every time I trace a Sign-”

“It contends against you, ‘pulling’ the other way, and thus in practice reducing your Command to that of a child’s,” Yue finished. “Interestingly, that it latched on to your logos it also likely why it hasn’t slurped up your soul despite being tacked on to you for years.”

Maryam swallowed, mouth suddenly gone dry.

“Pardon?”

“Think of your logos as a straw, permitting only so much to be drunk at once,” the older woman said. “The most fascinating part is, however, that the parasite seems to have adapted to you to some extent, feeding solely on emotions that you reject or suppress. It grew nearly symbiotic.”

“And screws up my signifying,” the Izvorica flatly said.

“And that,” Yue agreed. “Happily for you, the violent reaction the entity had to your using the stele stone confirms another part of my theory.”

“It’s a bit of an asshole?” Maryam suggested.

Yue smiled thinly.

“It goes two ways,” she said. “Through your logos it can feed on you, but…”

“I can also feed on it,” Maryam said. “You’re sure?”

“It will not be possible to confirm it until I have some particular equipment prepared,” Yue said, “but I believe the chances are very high.”

Maryam licked her lips.

“What would it do, feeding on it?”

“Retrieving your past aether emanations, for one,” Yue said. “Though they will not be as linear and differentiated as when you emanated them. Secondly, well, think of it this way – though we Akelarre manipulate Gloam and navigate aether, we are ultimately creatures of the Glare. This entity, however, is not. It should perceive Vesper in some fundamentally different ways.”

“That sounds dangerous to absorb,” Maryam said.

“The mind is a wonderfully elastic thing,” Yue said. “It will take what it can and a little more, then the rest will be buried or shed away. I expect, at the very least that devouring the entity will make major qualitative improvements to your logos.”

On top of restoring her Command, presumably. That did sound tempting.

“And it would be safe?” Maryam asked.

The captain burst out laughing, hiccupping and slapping her knees until she was almost tearing up.

“Oh gods no,” Captain Yue chuckled. “Anything but. But the alternative is it being forever latched onto your logos, so the notion of there being a choice here is largely decorative.”

She was, Maryam grimly conceded, not wrong about that. She made herself breathe out, calm.

“Equipment, you said,” she tried.

“Worry not, my dear,” Yue grinned. “It will be ready before you take that ship to Asphodel. I greatly look forward to the results.”

The Izvorica nodded, then hesitated.

“Out with it,” the captain said.

“Song mentioned that the entity she encountered had a soul,” she said.

“Yes, as you mentioned before,” Yue acknowledged. “While Song Ren’s contract is an interesting tool, she has not real grounding in metaphysics. I expect she saw the traces of some soul the entity ate before latching on to you, or emanations fresh enough they could be confused for you.”

“And if you are wrong?” Maryam asked.

“Then I get the pleasure,” Captain Yue grinned, “of starting this puzzle from scratch.”

—

The Emerald Vaults was not large enough an establishment to loan private rooms, but their garden did have small gazebos that lent an appreciable degree of privacy.

Though they had agreed on six at the beginning of Warfare, Song arrived ten minutes early. Lierganen tended to have their evening meal late, but given the widespread provenance of the students – and indeed of watchmen in general – one could not assume the dinner room would be empty even at this hour. She was lucky: only one of the gazebos remained unoccupied, and she promptly claimed it before someone else could. Talk on the terrasse was too likely to be overheard, it would not suit at all.

Only a few of the tables were occupied, she saw as she followed the servant in, with black-clad youths sharing tapas and drinks. She recognized few faces within, the only one of note the towering Someshwari man that was the captain of the Twelfth. Song received a few curious looks, but now that there was gossip about the Forty-Ninth she was not as interesting a subject of rumor as she had been – at least until the Thirteenth’s involvement in that affair came out.

The servant in neat livery bowed after presenting her the last of three gazebo and she nodded in confirmation. It was pretty piece of work, a round pavilion of whose skeleton was intertwined metal and wood with silk sheets hung as walls to curtail sight and sought. Song ordered a cup of Sanxing green tea and settled into the cushioned seats, readying herself to wait.

To her mild amusement, she had barely tugged her coat back in place when Angharad arrived – just slightly less early.

The dark-skinned noblewoman must have swung by her lodgings, for despite having had Skiritai class this afternoon she wore a fitted regular’s uniform. Like most clothes, Angharad wore these well: she was tall and shapely, which did not hurt, and had the effortless posture of someone whose fingers had been smacked when she did not sit straight as a child. The gloves were new, though. The same she had worn in Warfare.

The braids had been redone recently, Song noted, and her face was schooled into a polite society mask. A taught thing, that. Song would know, having learned the same at her mother’s knee.

She had always seen just enough of herself in Angharad Tredegar to make mistakes over her.

“Song,” the Pereduri greeted her.

“Angharad,” she replied. “Please, be seated.”

They hardly waited three breaths before a servant was with them, asking what might suit the lady. Wine, to Song’s mild surprise. There was some small talk, but short and halting. Neither of them felt like getting into it with the conversation that loomed. Their orders arrived together, perfectly timed, and the servant retreated after another bow. Song sipped at her tea. Exquisite, as everything served in the Emerald Vaults always was.

“I received a letter from my granduncle,” she said. “It shed some light on what you implied when we spoke yesterday.”

Uncle Zhuge had been unusually loquacious in that letter, even. He usually preferred to speak instead of committing anything to paper, the well-honed instinct of a man who had spent decades in one of the most cutthroat Garrison postings around. This time, though, he had laid out details – even if through implication and idiom, careful to give nothing a Mask reading that letter might be able to use. Reading between the lines, the situation on Asphodel significantly had changed due to the Rectorate’s find beneath their island – long believed emptied of all Antediluvian treasures.

Instead all the great powers were eyeing that shipyard and the find of tomic alloys hungrily. Diplomats, spies and saboteurs would be sailing the way of Asphodel even as he wrote and civil war on the island was nearly sure to ensue. As the Watch had contracts with the Rectorate, the tests were now likely to take place during civil strife. A significantly greater of risk for the students than what had been desired.

The trouble, after that, had been making the massive bureaucracy of the Watch actually do something about it.

“My uncle informed me it was a significant effort to get the tests pushed up,” Angharad shared.

Song almost hummed. Vague talk, likely repeating the words of the man in question. The Pereduri had not actually been told the details, then, despite having one of the main actors present. Song’s own letter, despite becoming a veritable garden of euphemisms when reaching the matter of politics, had been rather more informative on the subject.

“It would be career suicide for them to try and take this back, if you were considering it,” Song told her. “They had to bring a motion to the Conclave while it was in session.”

Angharad blinked.

“I thought Tolomontera under the authority of the Obscure Committee, no longer the general Conclave,” she said.

Song nodded.

“That is correct,” she said. “But that committee was granted that authority by a sealed session – meaning it cannot be formally appealed to the way an open committee would be. In other words, since it does not openly exist it cannot be directly petitioned.”

“Surely the Conclave would dismiss any motion regarding these matters regardless,” Angharad frowned. “It would be contradicting its own grant of authority otherwise.”

“Indeed,” Song agreed. “And the first quarter of any session of the Conclave is usually dedicated to dismissing such improper petitions. Theirs was added to that docket directly – the trick, you see, was to have it dismissed in the right way.”

The Pereduri looked a little lost, so she took pity on her.

“There are two manners of dismissal,” Song explained. “The first is ‘peremptory’ – that is, immediately thrown out. The second is ‘assignation’, when the Conclave deems there is already a committee in charge of this matter and sends the petition to them.”

“The dismissal being of the second sort would see their petition sent to the Obscure Committee,” Angharad slowly said. “Is that it?”

Song smiled and sipped at her tea. A simple sentence but not so simple an achievement. The Conclave was a cutthroat arena of rival factions, so unless votes were mustered for your improper petition in advance – by reaching out to factions that would whip up the votes, or brokers that could deliver a bloc beholden to them – such petitions were always dismissed peremptorily. Uncle Zhuge had made a veiled reference to playing off two Garrison factions against each other and trading some favors to free company brokers.

They had still only narrowly reached the threshold for assignation, a mere five votes above the line.

“Essentially,” Song replied. “The powers brought into the matter were not insignificant, Angharad. If they were then humiliated by the motion they supported being retracted by the very officers that brought it forwards…”

“They would take revenge for that egg on their face,” Angharad flatly said. “Wielding the very same influence that was called on.”

There had been no way for Uncle Zhuge to know that Song’s brigade would come so close to splitting at the seams within a month of making it to Scholomance. He had assumed competence on her part, and it shamed her that she had proved him wrong.

“Part of the bargain struck between our sponsors was aid and preferential treatment from your uncle, given his direct involvement in the journey,” Song delicately said. “It is not impossible for his part to be held up while you are not part of the Thirteenth. There are other brigades going to Asphodel.”

Angharad snorted.

“Which am I to choose – Tupoc’s lot, the Eleventh or the Nineteenth?”

Song hid her surprise. The Forty-Ninth, which had been the fourth on her uncle’s list, had been disbanded and thus could not feasibly participate. She had not known who would replace them, however. Osian Tredegar must have told his niece.

“I was under the impression you were on fair terms with Captain Langa,” she said instead.

Angharad’s lips thinned.

“Not so fine as that,” she curtly said. “I would not go under Imani Langa’s command.”

Song sipped at her delightful tea, choosing her words with care. Were Commander Tredegar not present on the island and one of the leading officers of their expedition to Asphodel besides, she might have been tempted to wield strong words here. With the man in consideration, though, she could not. Osian Tredegar had proved himself a fierce and ruthless actor in the defense of his niece.

“I will take your word on it,” Song said. “Yet this brings us to similar trouble: were you to sail out with the Thirteenth, you would be under my command.”

A pause to let her light words sink in.

“You have expressed an unwillingness for this in the past.”

Angharad’s jaw locked.

“I would not shame you by refusing an order before others, but I-”

“No,” Song flatly interrupted. “Allow me to be perfectly clear: if you walk around as part of the Thirteenth and I am made responsible for your actions, you will be subject to my authority. If you cannot tolerate this, there are two other brigades for you to pick from.”

“I have given my reasons for not wanting to be under your command,” Angharad stiffly said.

“That is your prerogative,” Song said. “As it is mine to refuse taking on a soldier who has told me they’ve no intention of obeying me.”

“And the others will?” she bit out. “Tristan and Maryam-”

“Are none of your concern,” Song coldly replied.

“You cannot go to Asphodel with only three cabalists,” Angharad replied just as coldly.

Ah, predictable. Song had seen that one coming, and indeed spent part of the day wondering who she should round out the Thirteenth with should Anghard not intend to accompany them. A fighter, it would have to be, but who would agree? The difficulty was in finding someone who would be willing to leap feet first into the pit when they could instead wait and take their test when better prepared.

The solution had, therefore, been to find someone already in the pit.

“I expect it would take me somewhere around an hour to secure another Skiritai,” Song said. “There happens to be one deeply in my debt and eager to clear his name.”

One of the few ways Muchen He’s reputation could be salvaged when it came out what the Forty-Ninth had been involved in would be a display of trust from his purported victim – like, say, Tristan Abrascal publicly welcoming him into the Thirteenth Brigade. Rumors that Muchen had been Song’s spy and collaborator would begin sprouting without even need for sowing.

That the man would accept was not really in doubt; if Song would have to ask still was.

Angharad frowned but did not call her a liar. There was still enough respect between them for that, or at least the Pereduri thought it possible she might not be lying despite knowing little of the affair. The Pereduri grimaced.

“I am not wrong, for not wanting to take your orders,” she insisted.

“Neither am I for refusing to be responsible for someone else’s cabalist,” Song replied.

She drained the rest of her cup.

“Good tea,” she said. “There is still time before we leave, Angharad. You know my terms – if they do not suit, speak with the other captains.”

She made to rise, but Angharad put a hand on her forearm to hold her back.

“That is,” the dark-skinned woman said, then swallowed, “please sit down.”

“It seems to me this conversation has come to a natural end,” Song gently said.

She flicked a steady glance at Angharad’s gloved hand. She withdrew it as if burned.

“I understand how what I asked would be unacceptable for you,” Angharad said. “It’s, I-”

She sighed, kneading her forehead. The sign of weakness was so unlike her that Song slowly slid back into her seat.

“I was overly confrontational, given what I requested,” Angharad said. “For that I apologize. I slept poorly and find myself in a difficult mood.”

Song’s eyes narrowed. That was one time too many she acted out of sorts. It would be irresponsible not to investigate, a failure of her duty as a watchwoman.

“Your gloves,” she said. “Why are you wearing them?”

Angharad blinked.

“It is a cool day,” she said.

No cooler than the last.

“Did you buy them today?” Song pressed.

“I,” Angharad frowned. “Yes, I think?”

Memory irregularities. Second string.

“Ah,” Song said, putting on a pleasant smile. “Let us continue the conversation, regardless. Would you call the waiter?”

Angharad jerkily nodded, leaning out of the gazebo to catch the man’s eye, and the moment she was facing the wrong way Song smoothly drew her pistol and pointed it at her chest. Angharad stiffened.

“Song, what in the name of-”

“Do not turn,” Song calmly replied, “or I will pull that trigger. Your brigade plaque, is it on you?”

“In my pocket, yes,” Angharad angrily replied. “What is this?”

“Take it out,” she said.

Visibly furious, the Pereduri began to reach for it but Song clicked her tongue.

“Take off the gloves first,” she said.

Angharad blinked, as if confused.

“What?”

“Take off the gloves first,” Song slowly repeated.

“I don’t understand,” Angharad slurred, speaking if through molasses. “What do you-”

Song cocked her pistol. Fear should push through.

“Take off your gloves and put the plaque in the palm of your hand,” she ordered. “Right now.”

Angharad blinked in confusion, but she tugged off a glove and plucked out the silvery plaque.

“What now?” she scorned, holding it up. “Am I to-”

The smell of burning flesh stole the words out of both their mouths. Third string. A heartbeat later the creature began screaming through Angharad Tredegar’s mouth and it all went to the dogs.

For once in her life, it brought Song Ren no pleasure to have been right.

Angharad should be in bed.

Safely under her sheets back in the Triangle, the door locked and trusted comrades in the rooms around hers. Or at a tavern by the docks, drowning her fear in the noise of revelry. Or even with her uncle, who had sought her company but she had forced herself to turn down with precisely spoken words – every last one tasting of ash on her tongue.

Instead she was out here in the dark, a fool on a fool’s errand. The golden Orrery lights were distant, disdaining to light her travels, so Angharad Tredegar carried with her an isle of light. A lantern, shuttered down to the very barest slice, casting a trembling circle of paleness around her. Like a fairy ring from the old tales, keeping the spirits out.

Not that the monsters stalking this night would heed it. Angharad was a long way from home, and here the old laws of Peredur were but whispers on the wind.

She had followed the boulevard for what felt like hours. A broad, nameless road of great pavement stones turned smooth by time and rain. Straying would have been faster, through ruins and empty canals, but Angharad knew better. She felt the eyes on her, waiting beyond the cast of her lantern. Patient, silent. Hungry. Let them come out in the open, if they wanted her. Let the nightmares step into the light.

Captain Phalani had warned her they hunted as a pack, so she knew better than to believe the beast was alone when it slunk into sight.

The lycosi stepped out of a gutted house’s belly, its walk somehow like a spider’s crawl– weightless and too-quick, unnatural to the eye. It was furred and had a wolf’s head, but there ended the resemblance to the lupines of the Dominion.

The lycosi stood tall on bent legs not much like a hound’s: the proportions were off, the lower part of the leg almost as long as the upper. More like a man’s arm than a beast’s leg. The back legs were thicker at the leg, for leaping, and mangy gray-black fur hung loose on the frame. It had no ears, instead curved horns not unlike a ram’s, and its eyes were an eerily round black. A serpentine tongue hung loosely from the opened maw of yellowing fangs, its legs ending in almost overgrown claws curving like a hawk’s.

It approached without hurry, bait to draw her eye while the others crept up from behind.

“My people,” Angharad told the lycosi, “they despise wolves.”

The Pereduri breathed out, straightened her back and slid out her saber. She should be in bed. Wandering Port Allazei alone at night, it was a fine way to get yourself killed. And yet her she was.

“My mother, she said it is because our soil is poor and cattle is as much our lifeline as the sea,” the mirror-dancer said. “My father, though, he said the root is deeper. An old story.”

She gently put the lantern down on the ground. Its light narrowed, the pale shrinking and ceding the rest of the world to shadow.

“In those days before the Isles were bound as one, there was once a great ruler called Queen Branwen,” she said. “Have you ever heard of her?”

The first came from behind, claws scraping so lightly against the stone there was hardly a sound. But hardly still was, and the mirror-dancer had a keen ear.

The monster stepped into the light, the monster bled.

The fur was thick and the skin beneath tough as leather, but a single stroke split open the lycosi’s shoulder – it drew back with a whine, spilling black ichor.

“There are as many tales about Queen Branwen as there are grains of sand in an hourglass,” Angharad said, “but the most famous is not of her rise but her old age. When her might had waned and younger, hungrier queens came for her lands.”

The dance had opened in earnest and she saw them now, lurking beyond the rim of pale. Black eyes and wicked horns, the pearly glint of open maws. Right and left, charging. The bait looming at her back, skulking ever closer. The wounded one, just beyond the edge of the light. All patient, but so was she.

One and two and three, like the rocks swinging on ropes in the backyard that was now as much a land of the dead as this graveyard city.

Angharad stepped forward at the very last moment, the charging lycosi crashing into each other – shoulders tangled, spinning away with growls. And in that moment where they had been as a single ball of fur and fury, they stood between Angharad and the skulker like a wall.

She slid into that opening smoothly, going for the wounded beast – which fled, away from the lantern’s light and towards a collapsed shop on the edge of the boulevard. Trap, she decided, and did not follow. A fifth must be lying in wait. Angharad withdrew back to the circle, spinning her sword hand to limber it.

“Aged was she, Queen Branwen, but she met her rivals on the field,” Angharad said. “And three of these hungry young queens did she fell, before the last speared her through the throat.”

The runner had not returned, and the hidden one remained out of sight. The three that remained fanned out, spread around the fairy ring of pale. Left-middle-right, moving to encircle. No matter how quick Angharad was, she could only face one direction at a time.

“But Branwen’s daughters dragged her corpse away from the battlefield,” she said, “and as their mother had taught them, put the body in a great bronze cauldron they had never before been allowed to touch.”

Angharad softly laughed.

“And after a night in the water, Queen Branwen rose from the cauldron a living woman.”

It happened like this: Angharad Tredegar moved to the left, towards that edge of the circle, and the monsters moved with her. Left-wolf, watched, eyes cunning. Middle-wolf snarled, but right-wolf cut before it. It darted past the rim of the light, howling, and-

(A skull split open, right-wolf dropping, but from behind middle-wolf leaped.)

-and Angharad Tredegar clicked her tongue. Right-wolf had gone low, legs all askew, and she took the blow it offered. Waiting until speed and mass forbade turning back, then flicking her wrist and slicing through the leg just below the articulation. And as in the glimpse, the beasts sprang their trick. Left-wolf moved, to bait a pivot from her, while middle-wolf leaped.

Pin and strike, as old a song as the world had known bloodspill.

Only, as the lycosi she had crippled tumbled further down the boulevard, Angharad swung around her back foot and raised her saber point first.

When the middle-wolf leaped, she extended her arm almost gently and stepped into the kill: the point pushed into the beast’s throat just below the maw, clean and deep, before Angharad pivoted outwards. She ripped the blade out just before the now-dead lycosi fell past her, turning to face the last unwounded.

“Thus was the power of the cauldron, won from a great spirit in her youth: so long as Queen Branwen did not break with honor, should her daughters lay her to rest in the waters for a night she would live again.”

That dark-eyed beast licked its chops, gaze darting between its dead fellow and the crippled one. A snarl and it slowly backed out of the light. Angharad loosened her stance, an eye on the one whose leg she had cut through.

The lycosi that had left the light bolted. Ran for it without whimper or growl. Clever thing.

A glance behind told her the beast whose shoulder she had wounded had, too, disappeared into the dark. The fifth and last never even came into sight. She turned to the last, three-legged one. It was limping away.

 “From summer to winter, Queen Branwen fed the crows,” Angharad said. “Always she stood her own champion, her word iron, and though twice more she was slain twice more she returned. She buried so many crowns the tale goes they are found by plows to this day.”

Angharad followed behind the beast, calmly. Her steps on stone rang of the inevitable.

“So when winter brought truce, her rivals plotted,” she said. “They sent a beautiful singer to Branwen’s daughters, to seduce them, and whisper thus: if your mother cannot die, how can you ever rule after her?”

The beast had wits, more than most lemures. It grasped it would not be able to lose her after mere moments. It slowed, feigned tripping even as it bled ichor all over the stone.

“We cannot slay our mother, Branwen’s daughters replied. All the world curses such an act. You need not lay a hand on her, the singer whispered. Only, when she dies anew and you bring her to the cauldron, open the gates of your hall and flee. She will not return, and none will ever curse your name.”

Angharad stepped into the trap, approaching, and saw the lay of the attack in which muscles tensed. Left back leg, the front right leg at an angle: fangs, belly height. She struck half a moment before it attacked, splitting open the skull between the horns and spilling brains and black all over the cobblestone. It died before it could even grasp what was happening.

She stood over the corpse, softly panting, and closed her eyes. Pricked her ear, but nothing crept through the night.

“Spring came, and Queen Branwen fed the crows,” Angharad said. “Yet her rivals were not without mettle, and she was slain once more. Her daughters brought her to the cauldron but, seduced by the singer’s words, opened the gates of the hall and fled.”

She flicked the ichor off the blade, reaching for the cloth tucked away in her coat and wiping the steel clean. Ichor left to linger was death on a good blade, worse than blood or seawater.

“And during the night,” Angharad murmured, “a wolf crept into Branwen’s hall. Past the cold hearth and the empty tables, until it found a corpse in a cauldron. And it ate, the beast, ate its fill. Gobbled her up until nothing was left.”

She sheathed her saber.

“Queen Branwen did not rise again Her kingdom fell, her daughters reigned over nothing and were accursed as traitors,” Angharad said. “And wolves? Wolves we despise, for their fangs know nothing of honor and dishonor.”

She walked away from the corpses without a single glance back. Perhaps the creatures would know better than to trouble daughters of Peredur, when they next hunted in the night. Or perhaps not. Perhaps Father was right, and the only bargain to be had with wolves was the exchange of violence. Blade and fang, order against disorder.

As a girl, Angharad had scorned the daughters. Of course she had, seeing herself in the fearsome Branwen who so fed the crows. Now, though, she must wonder. Did it make her one of the daughters, that a pretty singer had charged her with treachery? Yet a fear lurked beneath that answer, a deeper whisper.

Or was she now the wolf, blind and bloody fangs in the service of the wicked?

Angharad took up her lantern, resuming her journey, but not before pulling at the collar of her coat. It felt cold out, all of sudden.

—

How could a woman find the footsteps of a ghost?

Angharad had been given a map by a liar’s hand, but those lines of ink on paper proved too weak a lantern to catch the trail of Tristan Abrascal. The thief had marked a rooftop with a stolen grenade, shattered a roof to fall into the hidden path below it, but these parts had many roofs and many of them were broken.

Her haystack was made of needles.

She rode the nameless boulevard as long as she could, but it spat her out in a rat’s nest of small, cramped alleys twisting every which way. As if trying to flee some ancient shame, each wriggling like a worm. The liar’s map only bore the broadest strokes, boulevards and avenues, and what lay in between was like most of Imani Langa’s words: empty. So were these streets, surrendered to silence and dust.

Out here it was only her, the lantern and what lay waiting in the dark.

Angharad raised her lantern to peer through the broken shutters of a once-shop – was there anything on this island but ruins and ruination? – but the darkness was shallow. It fled before the slice of light, too weak to be a gate into the Witching Hour.

Shallow, she realized, but not silent.

Dark eyes went to the edge of the window, and there she found a drop of water sliding past the edge. Down the wall, but the droplet refused to be swallowed by the dust. And when her gaze slid back up to the windowsill it was to see a rivulet. Then a second, the streams spilling down until the empty window was as a gutter mouth spilling a river.

Angharad drew back warily, but the scent caught up to her. Salt. Seawater, it was seawater. So far from the docks that seemed impossible, but… No, there was an answer. One she dreaded, but an answer nonetheless.

“Fisher,” she said. “You are here.”

What the wind whispered in her ears was not words, for the Fisher did not speak in them. It was what her mind forced them to be, for that was a burden it could bear – buckle under, but bear.

“You are lost.”

It was the sound of thread being pulled taut, of a life on the edge of a knife. Angharad swallowed. He did not mean the streets the lantern light was lapping at. A question burned tongue and it was not wise to ask it, but she must.

“Tintavel,” she said, licking her lips. “It is old, but you are older yet. Can you… do you know how to break someone out of it?”

“Strength is the key to every lock.”

She grit her teeth.

“You know nothing, then,” she bit out.

The Fisher did not answer, but neither did it leave.

She could see his mark from the corner of her eye. Water flowing just out of sight, just out of the lantern’s reach. So dark one might think it liquid night, gone when she looked, like a mirage. Swallowing, part of her wishing that the attention of the spirit she was bound to were in any way a comfort, Angharad headed deeper into the dark.

And whispers came with hers.

“Your father,” the Fisher said, and the word was almost fond, “once told me them. The words you offered to the dark.”

Angharad flinched, gaze chasing after the too-quick water. She could smell nothing but salt.

“My father spoke to you?” she asked.

She had suspected, else how could he send her down the right path, but to hear it said…

“Branwen’s tale,” the Fisher said, ignoring her startled question. “Would you like to hear it?”

“I know it already,” she said.

A laugh like teeth clenched so hard they cracked.

“You only know the lie.”

Angharad shivered. Cold or fear? It did not matter. The answer was not in doubt.

“The truth,” she said, “is always better than the lie. Always.”

“Nothing is always,” the Fisher said. “But Branwen tried.”

And so Angharad ventured into the dark, carrying with her only three things: trembling light, steel and the tale of an old monster.

“There is only one law, the eldest law, and its name is extinction. But the Crow-Queen was clever, and the clever fear always fear to end.”

Three corners Angharad turned before she understood that the street had curved and she was now behind where she had begun. Her jaw clenched. What lay ahead of her, save growing more deeply lost? She could not read the lay of this maze at all. It was as if the dark was fighting her, turning her away.

“Branwen wove a net out of maybe, and journeyed to where the world cracks,” the Fisher said. “There she cast the net and caught her death, like a fisherman catches fish.”

Angharad was no navigator, or even much of a huntress. Neither was she a roof-treader, a thief for this manner of night, and surrounded by walls that seemed to close in from beyond the ring of pale she felt as lost as the Fisher had claimed her to be. She could not read the lay of the maze, no. And she did not have the strength to open that lock. So what could she read?

Ebb and flow, she thought. Not thief’s work but a mirror-dancer’s. That much she could do.

“The Crow-Queen pulled it up wriggling and laughed. She could not die if her death was not free to catch her, so she fashioned a cauldron of bronze and a lid for it. Her death she threw inside, and tightly bound the lid with chains so it could never escape.”

Ambling through the maze, Angharad stopped looking for paths and instead let herself feel it. Like Mother had felt the tides and winds, a knack beyond what charts and compasses could tell her. A battle had taken place here, and treading those cobblestone streets with her hands trailing against the walls Angharad could almost see it unfold in her mind’s eye.

Tristan catching sight of a member of the Forty-Ninth, hiding. Sniffing out the ambush. Where to from here? Not through, not back. They would catch him, or follow. Up, Angharad thought. She ran her hand up the stone wall, looking for purchase. There were arches across, that would be the way. She climbed, the loose masonry of the old houses making it easy, and followed the shade within her mind.

The Fisher went with her, the water ever just out of sight but his words always reaching.

“Branwen, clever queen, grew fat and happy. Made daughters. Rivers went dry and mountains became hills, but she did not die. This was known, and her secret coveted for few are clever and many are hungry.”

Tristan, from his perch, would not fight. No, first he would watch. Count his foes, learn what he would be headed into. And then what? Not run, there was no point. The enemy had a contract. He must first cripple them so they could not catch up. Angharad moved across the grass-and-vines strewn rooftops, moving towards the thickest knot of streets. The natural confluence of the maze, where the Forty-Ninth would have laid their ambush.

The noose Tristan had fought to slip. 

“The Crow-Queen did not share her secret, for if she did the prison of her death would be known. Thus she was warred on, but could not die. Yet her daughters could, and though the queen won her wars many of her daughters were slain.”

It would have happened here, Angharad thought. The girl Fara taken unaware, silenced. Muchen He catching on, climbing. Blades coming out. Angharad, two rooftops deeper, finally found she found what she was looking for: a roof with rough hole at the center. Collapsed, from its jagged shape, and recently enough that no vine had spread through it.

Angharad made the jump across the street easily enough, wondering if she could have made it silently. Not if wearing a cloak, she thought. Tristan had, when he silenced the Malani girl he’d then crippled.

“Branwen’s daughters asked for her secret, that they might war for her deathless,” the Fisher said. “But the queen refused. Convening in secret, they decided thus: if they could not be made deathless, they would instead take their mother’s deathlessness.”

Standing on that same rooftop with the breeze at her back – and it was the right roof, the faint scorch marks around the rim of the collapse made that clear – Angharad took a moment to look back behind her. At the battleground, seeing how carefully Tristan had threaded the needle and played an entire brigade like pieces on a board before being caught.

Angharad had been taught how to use her surroundings in a fight, maneuver with the terrain, but in the end all her methods sprang from the strength of her arm. What the thief had done, weaving his weaknesses into a rope, it was tactics she would struggle to match. And improvised, too.

The Sacromontan might not be a fighter, but that did not mean he was not dangerous.

“They betrayed her,” Angharad quietly said. “Like in the story I told. Branwen’s daughters.”

“They ate her,” the Fisher said. “To eat her deathlessness.”

Angharad flinched. Not only kinslayers but cannibals? Few crimes were fouler.

“After, the daughters stood in a circle and chose one of them to test. But the daughter was struck dead, for the secret was not in Branwen’s flesh, and they wailed. Fearful of what they had done, they sought to bury their sister with honor.”

Her fingers clenched. She could see it, how the threads pulled together.

“The cauldron,” she said. “They opened the cauldron to bury her in it.”

The Fisher laughed and it was a dreadful thing: a cold wind rattling through the door, a lover’s kiss refused.

“Branwen’s death sought her, at last,” the Fisher said. “It found her in her daughters, and that settling changed them. Broke and rent them, bent their names.”

She could feel the old spirit’s glee.

“The hungry, empty things that were thus made they called wolves. And so their kind is reviled, for they carry in them treachery and death.”

Angharad did not reply. Her gaze moved to the hole, the gaping maw. It was flooding: entire rivers of seawater coming from beyond the lantern’s light, falling past the edge. The curtains disappeared into the dark. It was the way into the Witching Hour, the Fisher was telling her as much.

And more troublingly still, he wanted her to go inside.

“Tristan,” she quietly said, “said he could not use his contract within. Is your strength greater than his spirit’s, then? Or will you be barred entry as well?”

“You do not listen,” the Fisher said.

He sounded irritated, if a mountain could be irritated.

“Then tell me again,” she bit back.

“What rules you, Angharad Tredegar?” he asked.

She blinked, opened her mouth. Closed it. Angharad had loved stories, as a girl. And she could see the lesson in the Fisher’s, however bloody the telling.

“Fear,” she said. “Branwen died because of fear. Hers and that of her daughters.  That is your meaning. All this, elder, to chide me?”

“Fear is the bridle of failure,” the Fisher said. “Are you the horse or the rider?”

Silence. Her fingers clenched.

“I do not fear Imani Langa,” she said. “I do her bidding only-”

And then he was gone. Every trace of water, every whisper, every touch on her soul. Feeling strangely empty, Angharad was left to look down at the pit of darkness. Alone again with her lantern and the dark. It had not been a lie, what she said. She did not fear Imani Langa. But perhaps it had not been the truth, either, for she feared what lay behind the ufudu. The reach and power of the Lefthand House, what it could grant and withhold.

The Fisher did not care, she thought, that was she was striking a bargain with a servant of Malan. It was not in his nature to care for such things. What mattered to him was the why. That she acted not for her own purposes but out of fear. Angharad swallowed.

Yet what else could she do? Nothing. There were only dead ends ahead, save for the dark at her feet.

“Defense is delay,” Angharad whispered.

It was the voice of a woman trying to convince herself.

She stepped forward.

She fell.

—

Not knowing how she came to be there, Angharad stood above and under Hell, looking up.

Smoke filled the sky, canvas to ruinous red light as the Grand Orrery’s pale glare failed to pierce through – instead showing as a harsh, austere glare made out behind the curtain. And beneath her, ancestors…

She froze, choking on her own breath.

Smoke and screams on the wind. Salt in the air, the distant crash of the sea and… no, this was not Llanw Hall. She was atop a hill, but one crowded by houses and warehouses. Not looking down on river and fields of green. In and out she breathed, until her heart had calmed and her hands no longer trembled. She could feel sweat on the small of her back, as much from the wet heat in the air as the cold water that had filled her belly.

The Hell beneath her was of a different kind. It was a city swallowed by battle, a tide of fire and steel and blood. Tolomontera looked… not young, but younger. Now that her heart was no longer thundering she recognized where she was: the summit of the Old Playhouse, at the very top of the stairs. East of the docks, and from this perch she could see a city falling.

The ramparts around the docks had wooden protections atop them – hoarding, Song had called them – but large swaths were aflame. The battle had spilled past the docks, into the streets, though there was still fighting around the edges. Thunder rolled out from the bay, drawing her eye. Anchored in the water were a dozen carracks, shrouded in smoke from the cannons. They were not the only ships. There were wrecks in the water, and crowding the docks were Watch galleasses flying black banners.

Tightening her fingers had Angharad realizing she still held her lantern. Swallowing dry spit, she turned her gaze north. Fighting there as well, not far past the tip of the Triangle. There were not as many lights as by the fort that was to become the Watch barracks, where a large pitched battle was taking place, but she could see a Watch force had driven deep into the city.

 She shivered in the wind, despite the heat. Far west, at the edge of the city, there were lights and smoke as well. The Watch must be attacking Allazei from land on a second front.

From up here it felt like a dream, or perhaps the sketch of some errant nightmare. If she went below, though…  But she must. It had taken more than a night’s span to take Port Allazei, yet Angharad doubted she would have so long in this half-dream. The Witching Hour would spit her out sooner or later, so she must hurry. Though not without care. Maryam had said death in here would kill her in truth, and though Angharad knew herself a fine blade there was little she could do against a company’s worth of muskets, or grapeshot.

If either existed yet. The cannons out in the water were slow to fire and seemed to miss the ramparts as often as not.

Her gaze dragged further north, where she must go. The Infernal Forge was her desire, and she knew who held it: the King of Hell himself, or at least his reflection in this aether-place. Lucifer, the liar had told her, was the one to cast the treasure into the aether for spite of the blackcloaks. She must find him before he did, and where he must be was plain: the hulking silhouette in the distance, glaring down at the port. Scholomance, not yet called that.

Where would a king be, if not in his palace?

So down Angharad went, down the steps and into the ancient nightmare.

The Old Playhouse stood broadly between Hostel Street and the bottom of Templeward, so she cast her path northwards. If she reached Templeward, she could follow the street to the tip of the Triangle and make her way from there to Arsay Avenue. That should take her straight to Scholomance, here as it did in the waking world.

It was a dreamlike thing, walking through these empty and hauntingly familiar streets.

And though the city felt like a ghosts’ assembly, it was not: torches ahead, none of them burning pale. They must belong to hollows, for darklings saw in the dark better than men but not perfectly: they, too, used torches to get around.

On approach, she understood her mistake. Now and then, Templeward Street was one of the largest streets in the city, one of the great arteries. It was only natural for hollows to be barricading the bottom of the street, stacking a hodgepodge mixture of plank palisade and mounds of furniture. Angharad did not dare come too close – they were sure to have warriors watching the side streets – but even from a distance she could see the defenses bristling with spears and crossbows.

Armed men in coats of mail and leather were shouting and-

The barricade burst into shards of wood and flesh. Angharad saw a cannon ball bounce on the cobblestones past it, whisked out of sight. Half the warriors fled, but a woman in a plumed helm raised a banner atop the barricade and shouted in a hollow cant. The warriors began to rally, until the second cannon volley raked through what was left of the barricade and carved bloody furrows through the defenders.

Gone was the piled furniture, leaving behind a carpet of broken wood, and gone was the bravery of men.

The sight had her swallowing in fear, but she mastered it. This nightmare was not for her, for she was but a passenger through this nightmare. The violence was the key to this lock: when the Watch – for it must be them manning the cannons – were done bombarding, they would storm the street. When the fighting lines collided, Angharad would cross Templeward into the Triangle and make her way north from there.

It now struck her as suicide to stay on the great street, which was sure to see much fighting.

She drew back a few blocks and began to circle past the height of the broken barricade, keeping her ear pricked for further cannon fire. None came. The rooks would be advancing soon. As she closed in on the side of Templeward, she realized that the darklings had emptied the street for fear of cannons. They had scattered into the houses and shops on the sides, into the alleys. She hid herself, quieting her breath and kneeling close to the ground. Waiting.

When it began, it was not with war cries but with screams: no fools they, the blackcloaks had brought up their cannons and leveled the houses on either side of the shattered barricade.

Thunder rolled, scything through the houses in sprays of wood and stone. Walls and rooftops collapsed, the hollows trapped within screaming. A few charged out bearing swords and spear, chain mail and plumed helmets gleaming red in the light of the fires, and Angharad got her first glimpse of the Watch at war.

Black-cloaked men and women, companies of pike and sword with the front led by bulky, unwieldy muskets. Officers shouted, the Watch frontline knelt and before the darklings came close enough to even throw spears a volley erupted in plumes of smoke.

Only corpses were left in its wake.

“Reload,” an officer with captains’ chevrons shouted in Antigua. “Down the avenue, fourth company! We don’t know how long Colonel Vidal will hold.”

The Watch was pushing north, she realized, to reach the fighting deeper into the city. Some earlier offensive must have gone wrong. No matter: this aether playacting was no war of hers.

Angharad waited until she heard crossbows twang and war cries resound before she sprang into movement, running out of the dead end into the street then across Templeward. She heard shouts in hollow tongues behind her, even a shot whizzing past, but did not slow. There was no light on the other side, only a winding street turning north. That corner would be her salvation, keeping her out of the sight of the-

Two men, facing away. Keeping guard. One tall, the other slender – both garbed in steel with red plumed helms. They heard her coming, as much from her running as the shouts, and were already turning when she stumbled onto them. Taken aback, Angharad stepped back and it gave the taller one time to raise his spear. The other one fumbled for his sword even as her saber cleared the scabbard. The tall one thrust the spear, forcing her further back, and at the head of the alley she glimpsed a woman aiming a crossbow.

Cursing, Angharad rolled under a spear thrust as the bolt went wide only to catch a kick in the stomach. Grunting in pain, she gripped the boot with her free hand and used it to trip the man – who went toppling with a shout. She rose, another bolt whistling past her, and found the slender one had his sword in hand. She feinted high and he backpedaled, so much that her follow-up came short.

Instead of carving halfway through his jaw with the swing she only cut the lip, the tip of the saber instead hitting the edge of his helm and sending it tumbling off his head.

The warrior moaned in pain and fear, drawing back, and Angharad aimed her blow. Only it sank in, then, what she was looking at: a pale-skinned boy, his lip cut and brown eyes wide. Utterly terrified. He’d barely known how to use his sword, and now she could see that how chain mail fit him ill. Too large, too loose. He was not even a hollow, Angharad reminded herself, but some illusion of one.

Neither sparing nor killing him held any meaning at all.

And still her blade halted against his neck. She grabbed him by the hair, instead, and tossed him onto the other man as he tried to get up. From the corner of her eye she saw crossbowwoman was aiming, so she fled. More shouting, none of which she understood beyond the anger, but as she headed deeper into the Triangle the sounds became distant. They must not be pursuing.

She knew better than to slow her steps.

Running through the streets of the dark mirror of a city she had come to know, the Pereduri stayed off the avenues as she cut north towards the upper half of the Triangle, then once there adjusted west closer to Regnant. There were few lights along it, so if she was lucky… but she was not. A quarter hour in she was forced to hide by a large column of armed men going down Regnant Avenue and its surrounding streets, grim-faced and singing in hollow cants.

She took refuge on a rooftop, pressing down against the tiles as the edge of the column filed past her.

Their arms and armor were disparate: chain mail and leather cuirasses paired with spears and warhammers and arquebuses. Not an army so much as a patchwork of them, few of which matched. There were so many banners she could hardly tell them apart, like a cloth mane on the snake of steel that was their column. Once the main body of the procession had passed, the narrower breadth meant they stuck to Regnant alone and she was able to slide down from her perch.

The journey resumed.

Unwilling to risk running into another column, she headed back northeast. Back towards the upper third of Templeward, as the narrowing near the summit of the Triangle made the distance between it and Regnant mere minutes now.

She saw the fighting before she heard it, columns of smoke and firelight. Near the tip of the Triangle, the same men the blackcloaks further south on Templeward sought to relieve. How had the blackcloaks made it so deep into the city? Killing her curiosity, Angharad forced herself to think. It was hard, as if her very mind was wading through water. Tiredness, perhaps. Could a soul even get tired?

Her best shot of getting at Arsay Avenue, she decided, was to skirt around the edge of the fighting. It was less likely to be guarded.

She headed towards the sights, sound soon catching up. Powder shots and screams echoed across the cobblestone, all below hellish lights writ on smoke. Lightning struck in the distance, thunder rolled and in that spurt of light Angharad saw the corpses ahead. Strewn across the street like discarded dolls, half a dozen blackcloaks lay unmoving on the stone. Her steps stuttered but she pressed on, raising her lantern higher.

They had been killed from behind, she read in the lay of the dead. Struck as they fled by blades and arrows, though the arrows were then ripped out.

One of the corpses let out a rattling breath, blood bubbling from the corner of her mouth, and Angharad reached for her saber before realizing  it was not a corpse at all. Kneeling by the survivor, she gently turned her over on her back as the blackcloak moaned in pain. The woman was tanned, for a Lierganen, and her faced dirtied with soot.

Lying face down there had been no visible wound on her, but now Angharad could see a gaping hole in her belly. A gunshot, and from close up. The survivor’s eyes fluttered open, unfocused, and stayed on Angharad’s coat. Black as her own ragged uniform.

“Water,” she croaked. “Please, wat-”

She began coughing, spitting out blood. Hers was not the kind of wound one survived without a fine physician and a great deal of luck – neither of which were at hand. It was an uncomfortable notion to go through the affairs of corpses, but Angharad forced herself to look for a canteen among the dead. A man with sergeant’s stripes had one, and after unscrewing it Angharad took a sniff. Water.

She knelt back by the survivor’s side, easing a trickle into her mouth. She slowed when the woman choked, but soon the ragged breathing eased some.

“Thank you,” the survivor rasped. “Ma’am. Sorry, I can’t see your rank. My vision’s swimming.”

“I am a student under Marshal de la Tavarin,” she replied. “To become Skiritai.”

She would not lie even to the ghost of a ghost.

“Militant,” the woman breathed out, as if awed. “Never met one of you before. I’m Miren, Miren of Saraya. Third Regiment, under Colonel Vidal.”

The same colonel the Watch forced had mentioned earlier. Her guess had been right, then, it was this same regiment that the blackcloaks sought to relieve.

“What happened, Miren?” Angharad asked.

She coughed again, struggled for her breath.

“The devils opened the gate, like that Mask said,” Miren said. “Let us in. We rolled the defenders on that big street, Templeward, and the colonel drove us north. To secure the tail end some long road that crosses half the city, leads straight to the Lightbringer’s palace.”

Arsay Avenue, Angharad thought. The very road she was headed to.

“You did not make it there,” she said.

“No,” Miren bitterly laughed. “The plaza, it looked empty. We didn’t see the man until the vanguard was close enough to shoot.”

Angharad blinked.

“One man?”

Miren feebly tried to reach for the canteen and Angharad gently pushed her trembling hand down before pressing the metal rim to her lips again. After a few moments of drinking, the dying woman sighed.

“Sunless House,” she panted. “Sunless House. It was fucking archbishop, straight out of the Fall.”

“What happened?” she asked again, tone gentle.

“They went mad,” Miren said, hands shaking. “Some started clawing at their own eyes, screaming about how nothing is real, and the others…”

She drily swallowed, trembling.

“They turned on each other,” she whispered hoarsely. “I saw Rolando put a dagger in his own sister’s back and Cassander shot our captain in the head. Without a word, just shot him.  None of them saying nothing, their eyes all white, and…”

She was sobbing, Angharad lay a comforting hand on her shoulder, but Miren shook her off.

“It didn’t stop after men died,” she got out. “They tore into the bodies like animals, gorging on the flesh. I ran. Gods, I know I shouldn’t have but-”

“You did well,” Angharad murmured.

“He was standing in the middle of it,” Miren feverishly whispered, as if she hadn’t heard. “Just a man, dark hair, soft face. Arms behind his back, looking at us like we were dogs doing a trick. Just one man and he stopped the entire regiment cold.”

Misery Square, Angharad realized with a shiver of dread. There was only one large square in that part of the city, and it was Misery Square. Only Angharad was getting a whiff of the horrors that had earned it the sobriquet.

“The back of the column broke and ran,” Miren rasped. “Only hollows were lying in wait, ambushed us. It was a slaughter. I… someone shot me, didn’t see who.”

She licked her lips and Angharad eased a trickle into her mouth again.

“You don’t live through a gut shot like that, do you?” Miren quietly said.

Angharad swallowed, shook her head.

“I won’t make it back to our lines,” the soldier said. “And it, it hurts ma’am. Please.”

The Pereduri flinched.

“Please,” Miren begged.

It is not real, Angharad reminded herself. Just the impression of a night on aether. How long had it taken the real Miren to die, lying face down against the stone with that hole in her belly? An hour, two? How long before cold numbness triumphed over the pain?

“Close your eyes,” she said.

“Thank you,” Miren whispered, and did.

Angharad slid her saber out of the sheath, as quietly as she could.

“I read, once, that in the summer the streets of Saraya are as a carpet of flowers,” the noblewoman said.

Miren smiled.

“Like snow made of petals,” she said, “falling from the-”

Angharad slid the blade between the third and fourth ribs, deep into the heart. Death was not instant, almost never was. Angharad held her hand, whispering to think of the flower blooms in the light as Miren bled out. It took short of two minutes, the rook already weak from the gunshot. Eyes burning, Angharad forced herself up and ripped the blade free. She cleaned it with the cloth, sheathed it with hands that suddenly felt fragile.

“Rest well, Miren of Saraya. Until the Sleeping God wakes,” she whispered.

Angharad stayed well clear of what was not yet Misery Square.

—

Miren had warned her so she moved carefully, but they still took her by surprise.

She was mere minutes away from the dead watchmen when the ambush was sprung. The only warning was the twang of a crossbow loosing a bolt, and Angharad threw herself a shop door, bruising her shoulder but avoiding death. The darklings swept down the street, a throng a dozen strong bristling with arms – and there were more crossbows at the back. Shapes on rooftops, too, moving more like devils than men.

Unlike other darklings, none of these shouted war cries in their hollow cants. And though they moved swiftly, there was a stiffness… to the movement.

Staying out in the street was death, so Angharad kicked at the door she had smashed into. The latch broke, and inside she found – Miren? The sight gave her pause for half a heartbeat, just long enough for the woman to slash at her shoulder with a knife. Coat and flesh parted, Angharad letting out a hiss as the false blackcloak grinned in triumph. She drew back half a step, readying to charge in, and checked on the other warriors…

Only to find them gone. All of them. She glanced back through the door and found only darkness inside, the false Miren vanished.

“What is this?” Angharad hoarsely whispered.

Sword high, she stepped through and-

-Angharad stumbled through a doorway, landing on her hands and knees. She barely had the time to glimpse golden light on stone before she threw up. It was as if her stomach was being wrung out of her, squeeze by painful squeeze. When the last foul heave passed her lips she was left panting, looking down at her own sick, and drew back on her knees. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve.

The wound, she remembered, patting at her side.

Only there was no mark on her coat, and when she shrugged it off to pull up her sleeves no trace of the cut on her flesh. Only the soul entered a layer, Maryam had said. Only a soul could be wounded within. It was only a cut, Angharad reminded herself. Certainly nothing good, but hardly a death. It was not as if a soul could bleed out.

She rose to her feet, legs trembling, and her head swam with vertigo. Angharad sucked in a breath, part of her wondering if the air here had always been so hot. Above the golden light of the Grand Orrery moved, and with that sight came a delayed realization.

Angharad was back, out of the Witching Hour.

She had failed.

It was barely six in the morning when Maryam got back to the cottage.

She’d been bundled off to the chapterhouse last night to sleep it off, against her protests. Just because her eyes had felt hot and she had slurred her words was no reason to have her slung over some watchman’s shoulder and carried to the Meadow. Or so she would have liked to say, but even when sleeping on grass surrounded by running water she’d had vivid nightmares about being strangled and eaten alive.

Captain Yue had ‘accidentally’ ordered her shaken awake at the crack of too early, then ‘apologized’ by making her breakfast over what was a very thinly veiled interrogation about how Maryam had managed a Sign the previous evening.

And Maryam had managed a Sign. Thalassic, no less. The giddiness she still felt at that had been enough for her to suffer the horrid rice porridge that Yue was under the impression served as an edifying breakfast. It had taken a veritable sea of tea to wash it down, but at least the Tianxi stocked the good stuff and she had deigned to dip into her personal reserves.

“I have a theory,” Captain Yue mused. “Consider yourself free for the evening, it will take me some time to gather the necessary materials.”

Maryam glared at her half-heartedly.

“The last time you said you had a theory, I nearly drowned.”

The knot keeping the stones tied to her ankles had been much too tightly made.

“And from that we learned the entity has a physical anchor on you,” Captain Yue happily said. “Isn’t that worth throwing up a little seawater?”

“Tell me I won’t drown this time,” Maryam demanded.

The Tianxi considered that for an uncomfortably long amount of time.

“Not on seawater, I don’t think,” Yue said.

“Not on any kind of water,” she insisted.

“There’s water in nearly everything, Maryam, don’t be difficult,” Captain Yue complained.

So Maryam had her afternoon free, though apparently it was not a feasting day so much as a last meal. Regardless, as she gave it good odds that Song would want to retrieve their affairs from the Ninth’s storehouse as quickly as possible, this was fortunate happenstance. Song thought so as well when the Ivzorica joined her for a spell in the kitchen.

“Tristan will be coming as well,” Song said. “He will need to pick up a shift at the Chimerical tomorrow to make up for it, but Hage appears to be flexible in such regards.”

The devil, Tristan often complained, was flexible in all manners save that of remuneration. He had apparently gone out of his way to find out the usual rates of Sacromontan day laborer so he could offer measurably below them. Song sipped at her tea, humming in pleasure. The Tianxi had offered a cup, but Maryam was already filled to burst with Yue’s own. Still, she grinned at the telling detail.

“Tristan now, is it?” Maryam said.

No longer Abrascal. She did not bother to hide her satisfaction, which saw Song rolling her eyes.

“We have come to something of an understanding,” Song replied. “I will not presume on its length or strength.”

There was a salty joke in there, but sadly the Tianxi was almost as boring as Tristan in that regard. It was a shame Tredegar had gone over to the Thirty-First, Shalini was always good for that kind of a laugh. Someshwari claimed to be the finest lovers in the world – though only their part of the Someshwar, of course, not those deluded others – so their humor tended to run more earthy than the Tianxi or Lierganen ever let themselves be when sober.

“You’re allowed to smirk, you know,” Maryam told her.

To her delighted surprise, Song flashed her a wicked smirk.

“You may applaud,” her captain said.

Lips twitching, Maryam offered her a few polite claps as the Tianxi took a theatrical bow. She had not seen Song so… loose since their early days on the Rookery, and even back then there had been something coiling beneath the humor. The last few days had knocked something loose inside the other woman and Maryam did not dislike it at all.

“Where is Tristan, anyhow?” she asked.

“Out in the garden,” Song replied. “He should be sowing the carrot seeds, by now. He began weeding before I woke.”

And Song was not a late riser.

“Tristan the farmer,” Maryam mused, pushing back her chair. “That I have to see.”

“Tell him to get the dirt out of his hair before Theology,” Song called out.

She had not even mentioned the knees this time. Song truly was in a good mood. Taking the front door out, Maryam swung around to the long length of earth and greenery leading up to the edge of the hollow their cottage was nestled in. Tristan was walking back and forth across a rectangle of cleared earth wearing a loose shirt and trousers, a bag tied to his belt as he tossed seeds by the handful.

Her throat caught at the sight. For a moment she was riding down the valley road, while in the distance farmers plowed the earth before sowing barley and millet. She could almost hear the cattle bells in the distance, smell the shit and mud. Swallowing drily, Maryam licked her lips. Fool girl, she told herself. It is more than just a sea away. Leave it in the grave where it belongs.

If there was anything left of the world she had known as a child, she would only find it beyond the Broken Gates. What was with her today? She’d not had that nightmare since leaving the lowlands either. Had the Sign shaken loose some memories of home? Forcing herself to breathe in, she reached for the comfort closest at hand.

“Are you not meant to plow the ground first?” she called out. “Already cutting corners, Abrascal.”

Tristan, who for once appeared not to have heard her coming – even odds Fortuna had been chattering in his ear – turned with a start of surprise. Then her words sunk in and he turned indignant.

“It is not necessary with carrots,” he called back, sounding defensive. “The seeds are small enough for broadcast.”

She grinned and closed in, for there was blood in the water. She stayed at the edge of the broad rectangle of beaten hearth he had delineated in deference to his efforts, though.

“Sowed a lot of carrots in Sacromonte, did you?” she drawled.

“I read it in a book,” Tristan sneered back. “Besides, who are you to give me advice? If you’ve so much as touched a plow in your life, I will eat the rest of this bag.”

He shook the plump length of cloth, which was at least half full. Amusing as the thought of force-feeding him like goose might be the thief was, uh, not entirely incorrect. Had Maryam ever touched a plow? There were the yearly land ceremonies, but her older siblings had always done the symbolic plowing of the spring ground.

“My family lived on trade,” she finally defended. “Not fields.”

“And yet you meddle in my affairs,” he scornfully replied. “As usual, the humble farmhand – backbone of this country, and indeed of all countries-”

“Did you pay for that book?” Maryam challenged.

“I don’t have to answer that,” Tristan immediately said.

“The speech wouldn’t work as well if started with ‘the humble thief’, huh,” Maryam said.

He looked away, but not before she caught the corner of a grin on his face. To what would be Song’s relief there was no dirt in his hair, though he must have done the weeding on his knees before getting to sowing. The nape of his neck shone with sweat, though. It was appealing, in a rough tumble sort of way. Also very unlike him, as Tristan was a city man to the bone.

“You’re going to smell like sweat all morning if you don’t wash,” Maryam said.

The gray-eyed man rolled his shoulder.

“That was rather the point,” he admitted.

She cocked her head to the side.

“I thought Song had finally squeaked into your good side.”

“It is not about her,” Tristan dismissed. “I took drugs last night and aim to sweat them out. Field work is as good a means as any.”

Her brow rose.

“Was the mixture so dangerous?”

“There was poppy inside,” he said.

“I have seen you take poppy before,” Maryam pointed out. “Everybody uses it – my mentor once told me the Navigators have yet to encounter a land where it is not used.”

“That does not make it any less dangerous,” Tristan flatly replied. “Out in the Murk, they sell poppy in small dried sticks – clavos, they’re called. Nails. Because to shred and smoke one is to put a nail in your coffin.”

He grimaced.

“Poppy sinks its claws in you, Maryam, like few other things.”

For all that Song half-seriously made digs at his cleanliness, Tristan was perhaps the man neatest in his personal habits the Izvorica had ever met. No drink or drugs, he held gambling in distaste and disapproved of being spendthrift. That had her willing to wave away his words as a continuation of his habits, but there was something about his face… A tightness around the eyes, a half-clenched haw.

Tristan was not weaving guesses, he was talking from experience. And whatever that experience was, it troubled him still.

“I will take it I must, but I have seen the coffins of too many who used it nailed all the way shut to ever be pleased about that. The sooner I am rid of the dregs in my body, the better.”

Slowly she nodded. It must have been someone he knew, Maryam decided. It was wise advice besides, even beyond the poppy.  Some ceremonies of the Ninefold Nine involved drinking ergot wine or consuming vision mushrooms, and it was known certain practitioners took to their use a little too strongly – often they went mad, shattering their minds. A disease of the will, her mother had called it.

The thief leaned back, reaching for the small brass chain protruding from his pocket to fish out Vanesa’s watch.

“It is running late,” Tristan said. “I should stop and wash up.”

Absently nodding, Maryam’s gaze flicked to the side. There had been movement. Wind in the trees? No, higher up. On the roof, nestled close to the stargazing tower, she saw another twitch of movement. A bird, she realized. Large and black-feathered with streaks of white on its side and back. A heartbeat later it was gone, hiding in a tuck of the rooftop. How charming! She would have to look into the species. Maryam had always liked feeding birds.

“Maryam?”

She shook her head, turned to face her friend.

“I didn’t catch that,” she said.

“Have you thought about you’ll do with your cut?”

She cocked her head to the side.

“My cut of what?”

Tristan grinned broadly.

“Ah, Song hasn’t told you yet,” he said. “Clever woman that she is, she pocketed part of the bounty payout before the rest was seized by the Watch. The third they promised her.”

Now that was glad news indeed. So long as no one thought to ask them to cough it back up, anyway.

“How much?” Maryam asked.

A second hooded cloak was in order, and perhaps a proper throwing axe. The hatchets in the Watch armories were well balanced but not made for that purpose.

“It’s better when you see it from the black,” Tristan mused. “Come on, Khaimov, I’m about to make your day.”

—

Professor Artigas was a skilled speaker and her subject matter hardly uninteresting – aether, both its properties as a substance and the realm from which it flowed – but Angharad found her attention waning again and again.

Her sleep had been restless, drifting in and out for hours at a time, and staring at the ceiling had done nothing to abate her fears. She must speak with Imani Langa, and urgently. Only the ufudu had answers for her. Surely Imani would realize that the departure for Asphodel changed things. It was a mercy when class ended, freeing Angharad from the guilt of being a poor student.

Ancestors, Scholomance demanded so many readings. At least Marshal de la Tavarin seemed to remember what watchmen were supposed to be for. Rong was almost vibrating with excitement when Professor Artigas dismissed them, only a warning look from Ferranda preventing them from asking for an introduction to Uncle Osian.

Mentioning her uncle’s arrival at breakfast had so energized Rong Ma they had barely touched their bowl, instead asking question after question – few of which Angharad had answers for, her uncle having been all but estranged from House Tredegar as she grew up. She was going to have to find out what a fire ship was, and if it was true her uncle had sailed one into the Hull-Breaker’s maw. Perhaps Rong would save her the trouble of asking, even. Angharad had offered an introduction, some time back, and would deliver it. But not today.

She was not yet ready to look Osian Tredegar in the eye.

Ferranda lingered behind after the others packed away their affairs, the fair-haired infanzona turning a steady look on her. Angharad straightened. Ferranda Villazur’s face was on the plain side, but it was well suited to conveying severity.

“Something happened last night,” Ferranda said, which was not a question. “Should I be concerned?”

Angharad paused a moment, choosing her words before she answered.

“My uncle has made arrangements that run contrary to my intentions,” she admitted. “I must look into them further, but it may be I cannot join the Thirty-First at the end of the month.”

Ferranda’s eyes were searching as sought something on Angharad’s face. After a moment she nodded.

“Keep me informed,” she said, then after hesitating continued. “Do you need help?”

I may have mere weeks to accomplish what should have been the labor of a whole year, Angharad thought. Help is too feeble a word for what I need.

“I am not yet certain,” she replied instead.

Ferranda pressed no further. Angharad’s gaze slid away from her, towards another table. The Thirteenth Brigade looked exhausted, but also in a fine mood. Song smiled at something Maryam said, while Tristan rolled his eyes at them both. She felt a pang at the sight. It had been freeing, to leave the cottage behind, like having the wind at her back.

Now it looked like it was no longer her the wind favored.

“Rumor goes they were involved in a skirmish last night,” Ferranda quietly said. “Something down at the port that involved the Forty-Ninth.”

The same Forty-Ninth that had been noticeable absent in class today. Angharad had not told the infanzona of the bounty on Tristan’s head, those who would collect it, as it was not her secret to share. The enmity between the Thirteenth and the Forty-Ninth, however, was common knowledge – if not the reasons for it.

“It seems to have ended well for them,” Angharad said.

She was glad. To turn on a fellow student for something as petty as coin was without honor, and the Forty-Ninth had pursued that black mark most eagerly.

“Song’s the kind of woman who lands on her feet,” Ferranda noted. “She would never have made it to Scholomance otherwise.”

That was not untrue. And yet. Song calls herself captain yet keeps secret a curse that could harm all under her command, Angharad countered in her thoughts. The Pereduri was not so two-faced as to blame another for keeping secrets, but her own were not a literal curse that might spread to others around her. One all members of the Thirteenth save her had known about, once more proving her the sole fool under the roof.

Well, at least Tristan seemed to have learned of it on his own. Angharad could hardly take offense to a Mask digging up secrets.

“She is one of those I must speak with,” Angharad admitted. “Her uncle and mine struck a bargain.”

“Ah,” Ferranda murmured. “That kind of arrangement.”

She did not answer, leaving the infanzona to read into her words however she wished. The Thirteenth turned at her approach – Maryam’s face hardening, Tristan’s hand disappearing under the table – but she was greeted with polite enough nods, if little enthusiasm. She returned them stiffly.

“Song,” Angharad said after. “I require a word with you.”

The Tianxi narrowed silver eyes at her.

“What about?”

Angharad frowned at her, wondering if the other woman was playing the fool or simply had not yet heard from her patron. If Colonel Zhuge had not come to Tolomontera himself, she supposed the matter might have been entrusted to a letter instead.

“Matters best not spoken of in the open,” she finally said. “Would a table at the Emerald Vaults this evening suit?”

“I have other commitments,” Song evenly replied. “Tomorrow evening, however, does suit.”

Angharad nodded, parting after agreeing to discuss the particulars of the hours tomorrow at Warfare. The rest of the Thirty-First had gone on ahead, but Angharad walked to the front gates with Ferranda for company – though she was in no mood for small talk, which the other woman sensed and respected. Ferranda Villazur was not someone afraid of silences, befitting her skill as a huntress.

Angharad made her excuses when they were out on the plaza, mentioning she was to look for Salvador. Which was true, because her fellow Skiritai should be able to lead her to whom she truly needed: his captain, Imani Langa.

The Sacromontan often waited for her out in the plaza so that the two of them – and sometimes Shalini – might head to the Acallar together. Today proved to be no exception, the taciturn man seated on the bench by the statue of some ancient Sologuer royal – only he was not alone. Imani Langa stood beside him in a tailored regular’s uniform, speaking quietly as Salvador nodded. Both their heads rose at her approach.

“Ah, Angharad,” Imani smiled. “Just the woman I was looking for.”

“Imani,” she evenly replied, stomach squeezing tight. “Salvador.”

The Sacromontan nodded back, then rose to his feet. He shot a look at Imani, whose face remained a pleasant mask, then offered Angharad a nod goodbye before turning a clean pair of heels on them. They waited until he was well gone to speak again.

“Sit with me, Angharad,” Imani said, lowering herself onto the bench.

“Standing will serve.”

“Sit with me,” Imani repeated, “and smile. So that we do not draw attention.”

Begrudgingly, Angharad did – making sure to keep some distance between them.

“My uncle arrived last night,” she said.

“I heard,” Imani idly replied. “And the Thirteenth is headed for Asphodel soon.”

“As are you,” Angharad said.

“And the Fourth,” she agreed. “But no longer the Forty-Ninth, I hear. They are to be disbanded. I believe the Nineteenth is next line for that assignment.”

The Pereduri frowned, trying to recall the time she had spoken with the Nineteenth’s leader. Captain Tozi, had it been? The woman with that very Izcalli haircut.

“I do not know the details,” Angharad said, “but we will be away from Tolomontera for months.”

“We?” Imani lightly said. “I believed you set on transferring to the Thirty-First.”

“Things have changed,” she said. “My uncle made arrangements. I will be heading to Asphodel.”

Imani leaned back against the bench.

“Smile, Angharad,” she said. “As if engaged in flirtation with a pretty girl, not looking for an excuse to draw on me.”

The noblewoman breathed in, forced herself to calm. Only then did Imani continue.

“A bold choice,” Imani said, “but yours to make. Still, it seems to me a mistake to put off your labor until the last months of the year. When the other cabals are gone on assignment, many more eyes will be on you.”

Ancestors, that had not even occurred to her. If all the others left around the same time there would be what, at most twenty-eight students left on Tolomontera? As Imani was hinting, it would be devil’s work to get around unseen. And I will need a Navigator’s help, most likely. How many will even be there to request aid from? Neither Tupoc’s second nor Maryam would be eager to lend her a hand, if they even could.

“I need more time,” Angharad said. “I leave in mere weeks, and if what you say is true about the end of the year-”

“Then transfer,” Imani replied.

“There would be consequences,” Angharad told her. “For my uncle.”

“That tends to be the way, when choices are made,” Imani replied. “You have until the end of the year, Angharad. That will not change.”

She grit her teeth.

“Do you not understand-”

“It is you who does not understand,” Imani Langa coldly interrupted. “You were offered a bargain and took it. Now it becomes obvious to you that your decision has costs, and you are balking. This not a tragedy, it is a tantrum.”

“Am I to see my uncle buried and demoted for your sake, then?” Angharad hissed.

“For the sake of obtaining the help of the Lefthand House,” Imani corrected. “Unless you believe you can reach beyond the walls of Tintavel without us. A fortress that none ever escaped from.”

“Prince Wandile did,” Angharad pettily replied. “After his father sent him there to die.”

So the text of The Madness of King Issay went. The King of Hell himself spirited him out after Wandile swore to rise in rebellion against his father, setting blood against blood and thus sowing the seeds of their great kingdom’s fall. Some argued that part of the tale to be an allegory for taking bad council, and Mother had been firmly of that opinion, but Angharad would not lose the opportunity to correct Imani on an almost-lie if she had it.

“Save for one ancient prince, should one believe that part of the tale literal,” Imani dismissed with a roll of her eyes. “Do you believe your situation improved by the correction?”

“It was not worsened,” Angharad replied, the squared her jaw. “I will not harm my own kin for the promises the Lefthand House dangles ahead of me, Imani.”

She was not so much of a fool that she would be unaware the ufudu might just be intending to play her and cut her loose afterwards. What recourse would she have if they did?

“And should your father die in a cold, dark Tintavel cell would that count as harm?” Imani mildly asked.

Angharad’s jaw clenched. She forced herself not to reach for her blade.

“Do not push me too far, ufudu,” she said.

“Then do not waste my time,” Imani replied. “It is too late to back out now, Angharad. Simply accepting my offer you became complicit in the eyes of the Watch.”

“I could turn you in regardless,” Angharad said.

“You could,” Imani agreed. “At which point I will surrender, be made prisoner and kept in a cell until the Lefthand House trades me for a captured Krypteia agent. You, on the other hand, will be added to the list of those to hunted on sight in Malan – and the House of Tredegar will crumble to dust while your father rots in a cell.”

The ufudu rose to her feet.

“The end of the year, Angharad,” she repeated. “There will be no delay.”

A smile, as empty as the others before it.

“Still, I recognize there have been changes in your circumstance. Accordingly, I offer you aid.”

Reaching in her pocket, Imani took out a folded piece of paper and presented it. Angharad, grimacing, took it up.

“What is this?” she asked, not opening it yet.

“A map,” Imani said. “Your cabalist, Abrascal – he disappeared when fighting the Forty-Ninth and reappeared on the other side of a red line. There is only one way to easily explain that.”

“He fell into the layer,” Angharad quietly confirmed.

“The map leads to the house said fighting collapsed,” Imani said. “A good start, I think, for your search.”

And with her piece spoken, she left. Angharad stayed on the bench as the other woman walked away, ignoring her goodbyes as she stared down at the folded piece of paper in her hands. No matter how much she thought about it, how much she turned the pieces around looking for different angles, there was only one way to end this without betraying either her uncle or her father.

She needed to obtain the Infernal Forge before the ships left for Asphodel.

—

Song had not meant to stay long in the Galleries.

She was returning a book she’d borrowed from the private library, but had decided on a whim to rise to the uppermost level to have a look at the bounties. The Thirteenth had not yet done this week’s, though she was inclined to take one of the easy ones like on the previous week. The Warfare teachers had a recurring bounty to sweep their training fields for lemure nests, which earned only a pittance but could be knocked out in about an hour.

There were four such training fields, one for each contingent, and the bounty was always put back up within two days of being cleared: there was almost always one up for grabs.

With no Academy class this afternoon the lounge was nearly empty – only four other Stripes, seated around a table. Two she was acquainted with, Captain Anaya of the Twenty-Third and Captain Philani of the Thirty-Eighth, but she barely knew the others in passing. It made their staring all the more unexpected. Had word of the skirmish with the Forty-Ninth already spread? Song had expected the garrison to keep a tight lid on it for the first few days.

It was an egg on its face that a ship aiming to traffic a Watch student had been allowed to remain docked for such feeble reasons.

A glance at the bar told her that the usual servant was gone, replaced by Colonel Cao herself. The Stripe instructor stood behind the counter with a bottle and cup, writing into a slender manuscript. It was usually best not to disturb her without reason, so Song averted her gaze quickly. Ignoring the lingering stares from the others, she headed to the bounty board and skimmed through the contents.

Another of the Skiritai hunting bounties was gone, and more interestingly one of Tinker ones. Someone was being bold. Retrieving old materials from ruins out in the northwest paid very well on success, but also risked returning with nothing while a lemure attack was a near certainty.

A Warfare patrol was back up, as expected, and Song was unsurprised it had not been taken. It was the sweep for the field of the red ribbons, which was deeper in the grounds Scholomance and through a small thicket of trees. Not only did it take longer to sweep through, this one had the occasional lemure waiting in ambush.

That was enough to make her reconsider: Song’s arm was near enough healed, but after last night she was willing to set aside excitement for a time.

As she stood there wondering if she should instead grab one of the garrison patrols – never too long, but it was a spin of the wheel where or when you ended up on top of earning only ten coppers a head – she heard footsteps approaching. She angled herself to get a glimpse and found it was Captain Anaya. The Someshwari was a scowler by habit, but had a smile painted on when she came. Interesting.

“Captain Song.”

A hand offered, and taken.

“Captain Anaya,” she replied, shaking it briskly. “What can I do for you?”

The grip released.

“I only came to offer my congratulations,” Captain Anaya said.

Song cocked an eyebrow.

“What on?”

Theology this morning had not led her to believe word was out about the Forty-Ninth yet, despite their absence earning the Thirteenth many questioning looks, so best learn what rumor going around. Only the Someshwari cocked an eyebrow, nodding jerkily at the counter behind them. No, Song realized as she looked there. Not the counter but the slate with the scores.  Two dozen names were on it now, those leading the pack, but the topmost had changed since yesterday.

SONG REN – 23

It took every ounce of her self-control not to show a reaction. Hand on the chisel.

“Ah,” she said. “That.”

Below her the expected names had not changed. Vivek Lahiri at six and Sebastian Camaron at five. Yesterday, Song had been in sixth place with Nenetl Chapul having beaten her to four points and two other captains catching up to her score of three. She had, overnight, gained almost four times the score of the now runner-up.

“Any truth to the rumors of the Thirteenth’s involvement with the dust-up by the docks?” Captain Anaya idly asked.

A fishing expedition, then.

“That would be for the garrison to announce,” Song replied.

Other captain’s brow rose. It was not a denial, which was good as confirmation, but also a warning against further questions. Song stepped forward, taking one of the patrol bounties – she must, now that she knew about the score – and nodded at Anaya.

“Always a pleasure.”

“As you say,” Captain Anaya agreed.

The Galleries staff needed to be informed when most bounties were taken, so that word could then be passed onto those who had put them up. In this particular case, so the garrison could decide when tomorrow the Thirteenth would be slotted into its patrol schedule.

Since there was only one such person here, she now had an excuse to go to Colonel Cao.

She slid into a seat facing the other Tianxi, waiting for the colonel to finish tracing her characters. Chunhua Cao looked up after a moment, seemingly unsurprised by Song’s presence.

“Bounty?” she asked.

Song presented her with the patrol sheet. The colonel took it, reached for a ledger under the counter and dragged it up before cracking open. She made a quick note inside.

“Word will be passed to Captain Wen by seven about the schedule,” she said. “Make sure to consult him.”

“I will,” Song said, then swallowed. “Ma’am, if I may ask.”

“May you?” Colonel Cao drily replied. “Well, give it a shot.”

“My score,” Song said.

“You were told on your first day here that I would dock and award points as I see fit,” the colonel said.

Depending on whether you can impress or appall me, Colonel Cao had said.

“So the points are for last night,” Song said.

Colonel Cao drummed her fingers against the countertop.

“You broke up a trafficking ring that had set up shop under the garrison’s nose, and more importantly you did so while leaving survivors to interrogate and thus provide actionable proof,” the colonel said.

“I did not do it for score,” Song honestly said.

“No,” the colonel said, “you did it to keep your cabal from exploding in your face. But that doesn’t matter, Ren, because at the end of the day what you did was good for the Watch.”

She smiled thinly.

“That’s why you get twenty points instead of five,” Colonel Cao said. “Because you cleaned up our guts a little, contributed to the health of order, and that’s worth more than a dozen bounties.”

She poured herself another cup.

“You did good,” Chunhua Cao said. “I had my doubts when they told me one of the Ren would be in our first batch, but you haven’t cracked under the pressure – on the contrary, you seem to be rising to the challenge.”

Song swallowed.

“Thank you,” she made herself say.

“Don’t thank me, girl,” the colonel snorted. “I won’t pick you up if you stumble. That would rather defeat the purpose of this class.”

She sipped at her liquor.

“I saw you’ve been looking into Asphodel histories,” Colonel Cao said.

At Wen’s recommendation, given that their test would be on that very island. Which she suspected Chunhua Cao would know.

“Fascinating reading,” Song replied, perhaps less than honestly.

“For a Laurel, maybe,” Colonel Cao snorted. “It was a sound notion, but I recommend you grab another two books on your way out of the Galleries.”

The older woman flipped over the bounty sheet and quickly wrote out two titles in Cathayan. Trade in the Trebian, Ninth Sails Edition and Balancing Acts. She only added an author to the second, ‘Inez Espinoza’.

“You’ll find the trade logs in the records section,” she said. “It’s an Arthashastra count of estimated volumes and goods traded within the Trebian Sea, and between whom, for the last decade of the Century of Sails.”

That sounded most intriguing, in truth. Song cleared her throat.

“And the other?”

“Inez Espinoza is probably the finest political mind ever produced by Old Saraya,” Colonal Cao said. “She wrote Balancing Acts after spending twenty years as first regent then right hand to her nephew, so her examination of the balance of power in the Trebian Sea is sharp enough to cut.”

Lips twitched.

“It’s also quite disparaging to the Watch, which does not make it any less accurate.”

“I was under the impression,” Song slowly said, “that Asphodel is well on its to becoming a backwater. Of little import to anyone but their old Raseni rivals.”

“We live in interesting times, Ren,” Chunhua Cao smiled, and it was not a pleasant smile. “Not kind or good, but interesting indeed.”

She blew on the ink, closed the ledger from earlier and put it away.

“It is only a recommendation,” the colonel said. “Do as you will.”

Song took that for the dismissal it was. She picked up the books on her way out, but all the while a question dug away at her mind. Wen had recommended she read up on Asphodel in preparation of the distant yearly test, so why did Colonel Cao now seemed convinced that Song would need to borrow the books today?

—

Captain Wen Duan was like a truffle hound for small, delicious eateries. By the time their time in Scholomance ended, Tristan firmly believed that the Thirteenth was going to have hunted him down through all the best food shops in Port Allazei. The large man bit into his egg tart, scarfing it down with an indecent noise. He then remembered he was meant to be scorning them.

“What am I, your clerk?” Captain Wen complained.

Wen Duan always complained, Tristan had learned. The trick was in reading the undertone of the complaint. The signs were there if you looked for them. The overweight Tianxi was eating, which was not unusual, but he was swallowing before replying – which he did not usually bother with when he was out to anger you. Wen was always messiest when going for the throat.

Some of the things Tristan had seen that man do to churros should be banned under the Iscariot Accords.

“I would not dare make that claim,” Song serenely replied. “I will divest you of the letter immediately, if you’ll allow.”

He squinted at her through his spectacles, as if inspecting the words for something to take offense at and failing to find fault. Tristan made sure not to look too closely at the man, as the way he was dwarfed the small bakery’s sole table might have set his lips to twitch.  He was twice the size of it, and must have struggled to squeeze himself into the corner.

“Letters, actually,” Wen grunted.

He inhaled the rest of the egg tart, chewing enthusiastically.

“Colonels all around, Ren,” he added. “The garrison sent the patrol schedule, but you also have a letter from the Rookery.”

The second sign Wen was in a good mood, Tristan noted, was that though complaining to them about something they were in no way responsible he was not actually obstructing them. He was volunteering relevant information, and soon slid the pair of letters across the table for Song to take. Tristan filed away that Song’s great-uncle, whose rank she had kept vague, was a colonel at the Rookery.

That was no small connection. Professor Iyengar had taught them colonel was the highest rank most careerists could aspire to. In the Garrison only three ranks stood above it – lieutenant-general, brigadier and marshal – while in the free companies there were only two. Arguably only one, even, as being a warrant captain was the same thing as being the captain-general of a free company only with a command either too small or too recent to deserve representation on the Conclave.

All that and being a colonel not on some forlorn spit of rock but the Rookery itself, the heart of the Watch, meant that Song’s patron was no one to trifle with.  The Conclave only held session twice a year, but a colonel would be on the island-fortress all year long. There was a great deal of influence to be had there, if you were halfway clever.

He doubted Song would so blatantly look up to a fool, so he would err on the side of cleverness.

“Thank you,” Song politely replied, claiming the letters.

She tucked away the one with the formal correspondence seal, instead opening the simple folded paper from the Stripe instructor. Her brow rose, but her expression was pleased. He made an inquiring noise.

“We have Templeward east to west, beginning at six tomorrow,” she said.

Well now, Tristan thought.

“That’s not a chore your instructor assigned you, it’s a victory strut,” he said.

“Chunhua Cao doesn’t pick the patrol schedules,” Wen corrected. “Giving you a plum like that is the garrison sending a message.”

He disappeared another tart. Tristan eyed his rounded belly, wondering how there could be room for so much spite in there with the meals he ate. After a too-loud swallow, Wen cleared his throat.

“It would have been a bad look for them if the ship got away with Tristan, so you’re in good odor with the officers at the moment,” the bespectacled man said. “Enough so, even, that no one’s thought to ask if the six rolls of gold collected were all there was to the bounty.”

Song stilled.

“Six?”

Wen frowned at her.

“Six,” he repeated.

“Then someone helped themselves to one,” she said.

It was, Tristan thought, very flattering that someone had effectively been willing to sink the equivalent of five hundred ramas into having him abducted. If you counted everything Tristan had ever owned in his entire life, it would not warrant even a third of that sum. The expense was so flattering the thief had decided he would take the time to acquire a particularly nasty poison to feed this mysterious individual as a way of expressing regard.

“It won’t be a garrison man,” Wen mused. “If one gets caught helping themselves in a mess like this, they’d be whipped out of the ranks.”

“Then it must have been someone from the Fourth,” Song said, then looked like she had swallowed a lemon. “Tupoc Xical ran for the ship with me, it cannot be him.”

Wen shrugged.

“Not worth pursuing then,” he said. “The Fourth earned the right to wet their beak a bit, getting involved on the right side. Their name’s not on as many lips, but on lips they are.”

The rat could only admire Xical’s unerring ability to always end up having the right enemies at the right time. It helped the man made so many of them, no doubt. Maryam cleared her throat.

“There was another cabal out that night,” she reminded Wen. “Might I ask what they earned?”

That earned his attention well enough.

“That’s still up in the air,” the large man replied. “The Forty-Ninth is dissolved, that much is certain, but I hear the punishments are being hotly debated.”

He leaned back against the wall.

“Most of the time, selling out one of our own earns you the short drop and sudden stop,” he said. “But Tolomontera has only three rules, by design, and none of them forbid this. So there are some calls for leniency.”

Tristan’s stomach clenched. Song had recounted Muchen He and Captain Ramona being crippled, but with Lady Knot around that only meant so much.

“How much leniency?” he asked.

Wen shot him a look that was almost reassuring. It was a distressing sight.

“Not that much,” he said. “The Ramona girl and Tengfei Pan, they had dealings with outsiders to sell you. They get handed fourteen-year contracts in a Desolation free company, and if they live through it their record is expunged.”

Tristan winced. He had little sympathy for any in the Forty-Ninth, but the Desolation was a living nightmare – endless plains of ash and dust prowled by mad gods and monsters that grew as large as mountains. The constant need to man that border was, many agreed, the leading reason the Imperial Someshwar had failed to swallow up its smaller neighbors before they coalesced into successor-states too large to easily overwhelm.

“It’s the other three that are being shouted about,” Wen continued. “They were part of the deal, but did not strike it. There’s been arguments for them being expelled, but as usual this brigade trips itself up.”

The three of them traded puzzled looks.

“How, exactly?” Tristan frowned.

The fat man looked thoroughly amused.

“The fellow cabalists of the students who tried to murder Song were not expelled, which some are calling the precedent to follow here.”

“The fault of those students was ignorance, not anything else,” Song objected.

“And what is that, save a different degree of complicity?” he shrugged. “Or so the argument goes. The other side’s pushing for them to be expelled.”

“And if you had to pick a horse,” Tristan leadingly said.

“They’ll get a mark on their record and a slap on the wrist,” Wen bluntly said. “The Desolation sentence, it’s not just a harsh punishment – it’s a way to bury this. They can’t justify the same or a hanging for those three, and if they’re expelled their patrons are sure to lodge protests with the Obscure Committee.”

“Which means the harbor irregularities around the Palmyran would be dredged up in the investigation,” Song said.

Ah, Tristan thought. Someone was covering their ass.

“Which then means someone pretty high up in the Tolomontera food chain would get demoted,” Wen agreed. “If they give the leftovers a second chance with a mark on their record, they cover themselves going forward – either the idiots bother you again and now there’s rope to hang them with, or they avoid you like the plague and the career of promising students was salvaged.”

Good enough, Tristan mused. The garrison was using him as bait, but it was also ridding him of the worst of his enemies and backing him in a broader sense. This must be what it felt like, to live in the Old Town and have the Guardia on your side – unless it burned their fingers, anyhow, but that was just the way of the world. How odd, to have the guns on your side, but not at all unplea-

“For the garrison to use him as bait is unjust,” Song bit out. “It is failing in their duty of care over a student twice over, and-”

“And you should make your peace with it,” Wen advised, “because kicking up a fuss is going to make those same officers now patting you on the back lose that friendliness in the blink of an eye.”

Her interruption had been so unexpected – and almost absurd – that it’d taken a while for Tristan to push down the surprise. This was a dead-end road, though, so now he spoke up.

“Song,” Tristan said, and when she turned he shook his head.

No one made demands of the Guardia save the nobles who owned them, and trying was a good way to get your legs broken. Better to take the pat on the back than push their luck and have it replaced by a knife. Song’s lips thinned, but after a moment she nodded.

That she seemed genuinely angry on his behalf was… well, something.

“Thank you for your advice, Captain Wen,” she stiffly said.

Wen eyed her for a moment, then sighed.

“Pick your battles, Song,” he said. “There’s a satisfaction to shouting down into the well, but it’s no replacement for a bucket.”

“Is that how you ended up on the Dominion?” Tristan asked. “Shouting into a well?”

Wen snorted.

“I guess you could say the well shouted back,” he said. “And that’s all you get from me, rat.”

He picked up another tart.

“Now off you with you lot,” he said. “I have an important social call to make.”

“Hungry for some turron?” Song idly said.

Wen glared at her through his golden spectacles. It seemed an innocent question, but by that reaction must have been anything but.

“Khaimov, you are fast become my favorite of this sorry lot,” he replied.

“You are my favorite captain as well, sir,” Maryam assured him.

A pause.

“Although Yue almost drowned me, so it’s more coronation than contest.”

“Fucking Hell, it’s Mandy all over again,” Wen muttered. “Out, before I volunteer you three to clean the barrack latrines.”

It did not sound like an empty threat, so retreat was wisely agreed on. They hastened onto the street, close enough to the docks to hear the waves lapping at the shore, and Tristan looked up at the Orrery lights. It was getting late. Maryam saw the same thing.

“If we want to be back at a decent hour, we should head out soon,” she said.

“Let’s,” Song agreed. “It is a business long overdue.”

—

It was not a long walk to their destination: a house on Septim street, to the east of the large workshop the Umuthi Society had built for their students.

They used those tall arched windows to orient themselves, made easy by the colored lights that shone out of them. Sometimes the glass panes trembled, and there was smoke enough pouring out the workshop chimneys it looked like the Tinkers had imported a slice of Hell. Despite its proximity to the eastern end of Templeward, the neighborhood was not all that frequented a part of Allazei – mostly, Tristan would guess, because there were more warehouses than homes around here. Song agreed when he shared the thought.

“I expect there must have once been a gate connecting the docks to here,” she said. “Only the Watch wants from Allazei a fortress, not a trade port, so I expect it was walled in.”

“The garrison uses warehouses north of the barracks,” Maryam shared. “It would explain why they do not care about these falling part.”

Song had mentioned a green roof and a basement, and though the former was not that uncommon Septim Street only had one green-roofed house with a cellar door on the side. Much less a padlocked cellar. Tristan knelt by it, not unaware that the tools that would let him make quick work of this were likely on the other side of the padlock.

“Can you open it?” Song asked.

If not, they had brought the tools to smash it open. Tristran pushed up the padlock, read the maker’s mark and snorted.

“It’s a Gongmin lock,” he scorned. “Of course I can open it.”

He did not need proper thief’s tools for a Gongmin, only a pair of slender hairpins. A bit of a struggle until he found the angle, a hairpin digging into his palm, but then it popped open with a most satisfying click. He turned to look back, getting a polite clap from Maryam and a horrified look from Song.

“I thought Gongmin locks were fine work,” she said. “My father’s own study uses one.”

“They’re good quality but still workshop-made,” he said. “Once you know the way to pop one, you can do it to all of them.”

“Point to our house being behind the terrible work of an ancient murderous cultist,” Maryam noted. “Let’s see you pop that with hairpins, Tristan.”

He rolled his eyes, but it might be something to ask Professor Sizakele about. Late in the lesson, she was chattier when getting old. Setting the padlock aside, Tristan huffed and pulled up the cellar door. There was no light below, but they had brought a pair lanterns as well as their bags. A short flight of stairs led them into a rather small basement, all bare stone and smelling of wet.

Their possessions were, amusingly enough, neatly stacked in a corner of the basement with the most delicate of them put away in a wooden chest so they would not be damaged by the rain day. Unlocked.

Tristan quickly the only two possessions he truly cared about – his delightful tricorn, immediately put on, and Yong’s pistol getting tucked away – then drifted to the opposite corner with a lantern. There the Ninth Brigade was keeping the goods they did not want to risk being caught with, which were…

“Mostly drugs,” he called out, picking through the chests. “Some bottles that could be either alchemy or poison, some lemure body parts and…”

He frowned, leaning forward. Stacks wrapped in waxed cloth.

“Books,” he said, paging through. “Restricted lore, I assume.”

Not that all of them were that, he discovered after paging through some volume in Samratrava that had appended illustrations displaying naked people in a variety of positions that seemed more fitting for contortionists than lovers. All things given, one seemed a lot less likely to get hurt listening to the book with the bleeding eyes drawn on the cover than the one encouraging you to do that while also doing the split.

“Some of this stuff could sell well,” Tristan noted. “Song?”

The captain frowned.

“I am inclined to leave it,” she said. “Taking back our belongings from the Ninth is one thing, to take theirs is another.”

That was, in truth, the way he was leaning too.

“They slapped us around like they meant to, so they should now let it go so long as we don’t make a fuss about taking back our things,” he agreed. “With Tredegar gone there’s really no reason for us to have bad blood with Camaron and his lot.”

“He robbed us,” Maryam argued. “It would only be fair to do it back.”

“Hatchets are not always the solution,” Song told her.

How Maryam, who could barely use a cooking knife without losing a finger, was apparently deadly when throwing hatchets was something Tristan would need to look into.

“Then we set this house on fire,” she said. “There will be no proof it was us.”

“Except for our belongings being back in our hands,” Tristan pointed out. “It’s not worth the trouble, Maryam. Mind you, if they’d had gold lying around…”

A little interest on the loan of their possessions would not have been going overboard.

“But they do not,” Song sternly said.

“They do not,” he agreed.

Maryam conceded, though she groused all the while, and they packed up their belongings. As Song had told them, none of Tredegar’s possessions were there. Bold of Sebastian Camaron to try and poach someone who had publicly humiliated his own enforcer, but then the boy had seemed like someone raised to believe consequences only happened to other people.

The three took back to the street, heading towards Templeward, and only when they were near that large boulevard did Tristan allow himself to indulge in his curiosity.

“What’s your letter about, anyhow?” he asked. “Best to check before we head back to the cottage, I would not want to have to return tonight.”

Song shot him a look that made it clear she was not fooled by the pretense in the least, but reached for her letter anyway. She broke the seal and unfolded the letter, eyes flicking left to right. A long moment passed.

“Ah,” she said.

“Ah?” Tristan asked.

“It appears our journey to the Asphodel Rectorate is not so distant as we were made to believe,” Song Ren said, “and that I have a great deal to speak with Angharad about.”

Even with Ferranda’s help it took Angharad an hour and a half to prepare herself for the evening.

Her hair was pulled back into neat braids bound by glass beads, her eyebrows freshly plucked and her eyes painted with black henna. The most care, however, had gone into fashion. Angharad had decided to hew close to Pereduri fashion, in part because she simply could not afford a dress’ worth of inyosi fabric. Malani wax-print, as it was called away from the Isles, was expensive even in the heartlands of Malan: out here the price of even a single bolt was ruinous. Ingwenya cotton would suffice, and in her opinion breathed better anyhow.

Besides, with House Tredegar being struck from the rolls of nobility it was debatable whether Angharad was still allowed to wear wax-print. As she was no longer a subject of the High Queen her sumptuary laws should not, in principle, still apply. And yet. It was Malani fabric, and a daughter of the Isles who would wear it. Part of her hesitated. Some habits, she thought, would be long in the shaking.

Pereduri gowns tended almost universally to the low-waisted and tight, with personal inclination expressed through necklines, sleeves and skirts. Angharad settled on an Izcalli cut, a straight line beneath her collarbone that left her entire neck and much of her shoulders bare. The cut was popular in Malan as well, though not sleeved as she chose: puffed at the shoulder and slimming down to end at the wrist.

It left the first few silver stripes on her arm bare, as much a decoration as the pair of orange Uthukile bead bracelets matched the red and yellow stripes of the dress fabric. A wide cowhide belt circled her waist, fitted with her saber’s sheath. And that made for accessories enough. She had chosen, in deference to her means, not to pay a visit to a jeweler.

For an unmarried noblewoman the traditional skirts would be paneled, with the train just short enough one could easily walk, but Mistress Lerato had instead suggested a loose wrap that would show off a parted red petticoat and elegant soft leather boots. I rarely get to dress a woman with such long legs, the seamstress had said, it would be a waste not to use it.

The effect was just a touch scandalous, the sort of thing Mother had loved wearing, so in a fit of nostalgia Angharad agreed even though the boots were really quite costly – made by another shop on Templeward, recommended by Mistress Lerato. A wardrobe appropriate for formal occasions was always expensive, she reminded herself, but no less necessary for it.

Still, she was glad of the wrap skirt and parted petticoat when she made her way to the guesthouse near the eastern end of Templeward – there would have been no handmaid to pick up a longer trail if it dirtied on the street, and to use duelist’s straps for anything but their stated purpose was quite uncouth.

Having parted ways with Ferranda halfway down the street when her soon-to-be captain ducked into a clockmaker’s shop to browse the trinkets, Angharad was alone when she arrived at the Colored Arches at precisely ten before seven. Shortly before she was expected, though still late. Lord Thando had informed her the gathering would begin before but she was to come later, to allow for any last moment objections to her presence to be raised should there be a need.

If one was raised and upheld it was always possible that she would be dealt the humiliation of being refused at the door, but Angharad doubted that would be the case. Odds were at least one soul within might enjoy insulting her, but most would not and that would carry the day – why force bad blood with all of them where there had been none? Simpler to refuse her the invitation in the first place. Not unaware she was dithering out of nerves, Angharad straightened her back and finished making her way down the street.

The Colored Arches, to her mild surprise, looked more like a tavern than the kind of banquet hall she had been expecting. It was a long, sloping building whose wooden façade had been recently built but was painted a discreet dark green. Its only mark was a hanging sign displaying a hut made of colored streaks of light, a similarly discreet reference to one of the eldest spirits of Malan: the Cloud-Brewer, known to delight in harvests and feasts.

She rapped her knuckles against the painted door only once before it opened.

A man in dark green livery promptly ushered her in with a smile, welcoming her in the crisp Umoya of the Middle Isle’s heartlands. Dark-skinned as only the folk of those Glare-scorched lakelands could be, the servant cut a neat and friendly figure as he guided her through a short antechamber where another servant wiped her boots and she was offered a basin of warm water to wash her hands from the stink of the streets. Her black cloak – she had elected not to further thin her funds by having one made – was skillfully taken off her while the first of the servants led her towards the door.

“Lord Thando Fenya asked for the honor of bringing you in, my lady,” he said. “He should be along momentarily.”

“Thank you,” she said, inclining her head, then cocked an eyebrow. “Yanga or Madevu?”

He looked surprised at the mention of the two principal regions of the heartlands, but pleasantly so.

“Madevu, my lady,” he said. “Near the city of Inende, at the beginning of the cataracts.”

“Oh, further west than I would have guessed,” Angharad told him. “I never had the pleasure of visiting Inende, alas, as the dueling circuit always chose Ukuzi for the contests.”

A shame. Ukuzi was remarkably easy to reach, being at the confluence of several great rivers, and the second largest city of the heartlands was a bustling center of industry. Yet the expanding reach of stone and steel had swallowed much of the surroundings. In contrast, the western reaches of Madevu were still wild and the great waterfalls there were said to be a thing beauty.

“There is no better road than a river,” the man quoted with a chuckle. “Besides, my lady, it rains much the year in Inende. It is from the High Isle’s westerwinds.”

Was it now? Angharad had never heard such a thing before and was rather charmed that Peredur’s occasionally temperamental weather seemed to be passing to its neighbors as well, but before she could ask of these westerwinds the door opened. A servant offered her a smile, brushing back her bound hair, and stepped out of the way so that Lord Thando Fenya could go through.

The man, she would admit, cut a finer figure than she would have expected of a man not blessed with particularly good looks. His long-sleeved doublet and matching puff trunk hose were in colorful inyosi fabric, displaying eye-catching geometric patterns in blue, white and red but over it he had thrown a long, open black jerkin that went down to his thighs. She had not noticed this morning, but the inside of his collar has some subtle blackwork sown to match it.

He had so many gold rings on his fingers and tinkling bangles on his arms he would hardly have been able to wield a sword even if he had one belted at his hip instead of a bejeweled dagger.

“Lady Angharad,” he happily said. “And early, I see!”

“Am I?” she asked. “I can wait, if there is need.”

“I would never dare,” Thando chuckled. “Come, let me show you to the salon.”

She smiled back, turning to nod her thanks at the servant whose name she had never learned – only to find him gone, along with all the others who had lent her a hand. Impressive training. Thando walked her down a short hallway, then through an open door to an almost wistful sight: a richly decorated drawing room filled with nobly born peers of her age. Just like a tournament evening, she thought.

Thando stepped in ahead of her and theatrically swept his arms, claiming attention from all the guests.

“It is my great pleasure,” he announced, “to introduce Lady Angharad Tredegar of Llanw Hall.”

Angharad gave a shallow curtsy – not the lady’s curtsy but the duelist’s, one hand on her saber – and was met with a retort volley of curtsies and bows. A quick look through the room told her that, counting herself and Thando, there were eleven guests in the hall. At once more and fewer than she had been expecting. Only two servants stood within, waiting to the side with alert faces, though one immediately approached her with a tray of crystal glasses.

“A Totochtin red, my lady, if it please you,” the servant offered.

“It does,” Angharad replied, deftly claiming a glass.

Ancestors, it really was like a circuit evening – there too, no one would be caught dead drinking Malani wine. The Isles were known for their beers and liquor, not the fruit of the vine. As her tacit sponsor for the evening, Thando did not throw her to the wolves but instead stay with her to make introductions and ease her into mingling. Pure happenstance, of course, that this came with the side effect of deepening their association in the eyes of the other.

She could not tell if he was still trying to recruit her, but he was going out of his way to make ties – and to make them in the eyes of these guests. You have enemies here, Thando, she thought. Or at least foes. One did not wage a war of maneuver with scarecrows.

As if to test her, or warm her up, they began with one of the easier figures – and one passingly familiar from the general classes.  Lord Kasigo Njezi, a fresh-faced man with a boyish grin, was from the Twenty-Third Brigade. His doublet was ingwenya cotton, like her dress, and subdued in pattern if not in color. His hose was an unremarkable pale cream, drawing the eye instead to his elaborate boots – soft, knee-cavalier boots in calfskin with beadwork rims.

Unlike Thando, he had slender sword at his hip.

“I had hoped to see you on these evenings,” Kasigo said, shaking her hand enthusiastically.

That it had not even occurred to him to offer to kiss it was, Angharad would admit, somewhat charming.

“It is a missed opportunity not to have earlier conversed,” she replied.

Lord Kasigo, she learned, was a Laurel – diplomat track, like Zenzele, who he seemed acquainted with. And not unaware of the feud binding him to Musa Shange, by the look he shot Musa at the mention of Angharad’s friend. The way he changed the subject to the coming Theology report after that, almost hasty, let her place him in the pecking order here: he was at the bottom, relying on being inoffensive to maintain his position at the table.

She steered them out of the conversation not long after, pretending not to notice how Thando’s calculating eyes took her measure all the while. He must have judged her fit for greater challenges, who they ought out afterwards: a pair, of which knew only a man she misliked.  Musa Shange was the first to talk, and she had to admit he looked like a woodprint of a courtier: his doublet thin and with an elongated diamond of an opening to display his muscled chest and stomach, paired with an open jerkin richly lined with fur and tapered hose.

Musa wore no jewelry save for a heavy ivory medallion hanging on a golden chain, inscribed with a prayer to the Sleeping God on one side and what must be the Shange heraldry on the other, but what did that matter when not a single article of clothing he wore would have fetched less than gold?

“Lady Angharad,” he drawled. “We meet again.”

“Lord Musa,” she replied, inclining her head. “Good evening.”

At odds or not, it was only with the man’s assent she had been able to come here tonight. That warranted manners from her, and even some cordiality. The other Skiritai promptly committed the courtly equivalent of stepping on Thando’s foot by introducing his companion before the other man could.

“I present you Lord Zama Luvuno,” Musa provided. “Signifier for the Eighth Brigade.”

Any brigade with a number below ten was not to be trifled with, much less a Navigator who she might have thought a soldier from the contour of his silhouette. Angharad traded a curtsy for a short nod. Lord Zama was not much inclined to conversation, it seemed.

“Lord Zama is royal blood twice removed,” Thando added, not to be cheated of his role entirely.

That would make him two generations of descent from the child of one of the Queen Perpetual’s many consorts – a diluted relation, admittedly, and by the laws of Malan not royalty at all. Her Majesty’s blood, however, carried a certain prestige no matter how rare the drops had grown. The man was handsome enough in his golden doublet that Angharad understood why the High Queen might have wanted one of his kin as consort. Not her sort of dish at all, but it had been well-cooked.

Lord Zama rolled his eyes at the words, but nodded in confirmation. That made twice.

“Apologies,” Angharad began, “but are you perhaps…”

The man nodded again. Mute, then. Unfortunate, as Angharad barely knew anything of sign language – and not of the one in common use, anyhow, but the naval one taught to her Mother. Izcalli finger-talk was considered the Vesper standard, and was significantly more elaborate. No pun intended, although she would take it.

Unfortunate twice over was that Lord Musa evidently did know finger-talk, and signed something at Lord Zama that had the man chuckle. Angharad spent most of the ensuing talk trying to ferret out the nature relationship between the two as Musa translated for the other lord. Not one between the sheets, unless they were skilled at keeping those signs away from prying eyes, but it was friendly enough. Something was itching at her, though, and it took her a moment to realize what.

Musa was treating the other man like an equal, which she’d almost never seen from swordmaster.

Neither is vassal to the other, she decided. She knew little of the Eighth Brigade, but it was well-backed enough that the Ninth’s own connections warranted no precautions from Lord Zama. While chewing on that, she almost missed when the talk turned to the ‘Abbey’, the site of the classes for the Akelarre students. It was Musa translating for Lord Zama that dragged her back into the moment.

“He wonders if you were aware that your fellow cabalist Maryam has not stepped foot in the Abbey proper since the first day,” Musa said.

“She has found other instruction, I hear,” Angharad shrugged. “I am not greatly involved in Maryam Khaimov’s affairs.”

“It would be strange to have a Triglau in one’s cabal,” Thando mused.

“Agreed,” Musa said. “Though I suppose being able to bring a servant even in Scholomance would have its uses.”

Chuckling, even as Angharad frowned.

“She is a student,” she reminded them, though she did not go as far as saying ‘same as us’.

It was too close to a lie for comfort.

“No one says otherwise,” Musa dismissed, “but service is in their blood, Lady Angharad. Left to their devices, they would collapse back into barbarity and destroy all the industry we brought to their lands.”

That might be true, Angharad assessed, but was being spoken with a phrased certainty that was making her rather uneasy – so was the way Lord Zama nodded, as if this were known fact.

“She is Izvorica, not Triglau,” she informed them instead of arguing the point. “A people within the greater whole, I understand, but distinct.”

Lord Zama’s fingers flashed in a quick sequence, Musa snorting at the sight.

“Pereduri indeed,” he translated.

Angharad was beginning to dislike Lord Zama.

Thando, perhaps sensing the rising tensions, eased them out of the conversation and by claiming he was in need of drink. Angharad followed him towards the tray-bearing servant, enjoying the respite.

“As I mentioned this morning,” he murmured, “this hall is heavy with the opinions of the south and the heartlands.”

“You do not share their thoughts, then?” Angharad asked.

“My kin are career watchmen, which makes me abolitionist by default,” Thandi said, though he did not sound all that enthusiastic about it. “But it is, well, did you ever hear about that mess up in Isilide about four years back?”

It took her a second to place the name. A city, well in the north of Malan but short of the Low Isle.

“The riots that had cloth workshops set ablaze,” she recalled. “An accident, I heard.”

Disorder always brought ruin.

“It was no accident,” Thando flatly said. “The lady of Isilide opened new wax print workshops and manned them with slaves. It is a profitable trade good, Angharad, but also profession. Skilled workers with lifelong training and patterns kept within their families. The new workshops paid not a soul inside and so they sold their cloth at half the price.”

Which would have been death on the old workshops. Only nobles were allowed to wear inyosi, so the greater profit in it for merchants was in truth from sales abroad. Even if the new wax print was of lesser quality, traders would likely choose it – the margins would be strikingly better, and it wasn’t as if some Someshwari lordling would be able to tell the difference.

 “So they set the workshops on fire?” she said, appalled.

“And threatened to do the same to any opened in years to come,” Thando said. “They were feted as heroes in the city, so the lady had to back down.”

Angharad felt torn – on one hand, to rise against one’s sworn lady was dishonorable. On the other, there was honor in acting to defend one’s kin and calling. Thando shrugged, taking the glass of red from the tray he had come to fetch.

“I will not speak to the souls of these Izvorica,” the Malani said after a sip, “but slavery is mostly to the benefit of the rich. Besides, it is not good for the health of a realm to have too many slaves.”

Slowly she nodded. That much seemed plain truth: the Izcalli had more slaves than anyone in the world, though they called them serfs, and their nation was constantly wracked with unrest. Besides, Mother had mentioned that the western colonies were all the property of the crown and the greatest izinduna – though lesser lords were beginning to form associations to pool their means in order to sponsor their own.

“What happened to them?” she asked.

“The workers?” Thando blinked. “As I told you, the lady backed down. A few arrests were made for appearances but that was all.”

“The slaves, I mean,” Angharad said.

“Ah,” Thando grimaced. “They were, I hear, inside the workshops when those were set aflame.”

Angharad breathed in, looked away and drank deeply of her wine. One could go for a long time sifting through that for a speck of honor.

“Come,” Thando said, sounding almost sympathetic. “This one should be more to your tastes.”

The Pereduri felt a twinge of resentment at how well he had pegged her when she was introduced to Captain Emeni Maziya of the Twenty-Ninth, a wonderfully tall woman whose green and yellow off-the-shoulders gown bared impressively muscled shoulders and the contours of a generous figure. Malani preference for high-waisted gowns could be forgiven, when serving to prop up such a… cause.

“A pleasure,” Angharad smiled, bending to kiss her hand.

A hand with callouses to match the iwisa at her hip, she noted, a round-headed mace that saw more use in ceremonies than war but would crack a skull nonetheless. And a woman would not, Angharad mused, get hands like these without regularly swinging it around.

“Flatterer,” Lady Emeni laughed. “You see, Fanyana? This is how it’s done.”

Her companion, Fanyana, was a sullen man with a plump face and a tightly buttoned jerkin that was a veritable riot of silver scrollwork and silver buttons. Even the long sword at his hip was silver, be it the sheath or grip. His hair was a neat cloud that Angharad suspected must have taken twice as long to style as her own.

“I am not so free with my lips, Emeni,” he stiffly replied.

The man was taller than her, Angharad realized, but stood so stooped one hardly noticed.

“Lady Angharad,” Thando stepped in, “I give you Lord Fanyana Khosa.”

A pause.

“Yes, from those Khosa.”

Angharad almost goggled at the man. The same House of Khosa who were the once-kings of the March, last of the Malani highborn to kneel when the High Queen unified the Middle Isle? Angharad saw little of those great warrior kings in the scowling man, but she supposed it was not her place to judge. The House of Khosa had been an unbroken line of izinduna since the Union War, and such a thing merited great respect.

To be a lord or lady on the rolls one needed only to be born nobly, but to be induna was something greater – set above by the Queen Perpetual, marked as great. That distinction it was something that could be passed to your children, but not by their own unless they earned the honor anew the same way you had. That is to say by owning land on the Isles, commanding troops and carrying out a deed worth the recognition of the court.

The Khosa had achieved this without fail since the Century of Loss, Angharad could believe in that even if the Khosa in question did not so far impress.

Alas, as they chatted on the most neutral matter Thando had been able to offer up – whether or not the Uthukile winter storms were the single worst on Vesper – Angharad was grieved to deduce that the bountiful Lady Emeni was likely involved with Lord Fanyana. While she would never complain at such a woman leaning forward so frequently, it was not for her eyes but the red-eared Khosa’s that the charms were being displayed.

Lady Emeni also seemed acquainted with Ferranda, asking of her health, though Lord Fanyana was visibly indifferent to the matter. He thinks it beneath him, Angharad decided. He might not even be wrong, given his birth. More interesting was when the charming captain mentioned her recent tea with Captain Nenetl of the Third, a hint as to where she stood. A foe to Musa Shange, almost certainly, given the infamous enmity between Nenetl Chapul and Musa’s own captain.

If Angharad was to look for allies here, Emeni Maziya was a good start. That and she must be careful not to make too much of a mess pressing her intentions, else Lord Fanyana was likely to oppose her on the simple grounds of misliking crassness.

Still, Lady Emeni’s continued advances were so cheerful a seduction that the Pereduri left their company rather cheered. Lord Fanyana was a gloom cloud, but not entirely without humor – his quip about the great curse of the Towers Coast being called the Imperial Someshwar had been quite droll.

“Ah, the last four are together,” Thando mused. “Into the breach, Angharad.”

He hesitated.

“Do not take the twins personally.”

As forecast, the last four guests were standing by an elegant Tianxi landscape while sipping at their drinks. Three of them women, the sole man introducing himself so happily and so eagerly that Thando did not even have the time to preempt him.

“Awonke Bokang, Third Brigade,” he said, shaking her hand. “Capital to meet you.”

His doublet was positively dripping with colored beads in the Uthukile style and he wielded a Low Isle accent thick enough it would not flinch under bombardment. He was Umuthi society, she soon learned, and most interested in the saber her uncle had gifted her. So was the second of the lot to be introduced, Lady Lindiwe Sarru.

That one Angharad had already known the surname of, for she was Skiritai.

“Impressive work with the chimera yesterday,” Angharad told her, trading duelist’s curtsies. “It was skillful strategy how your crew trapped it into the house.”

“And you with that satyrian,” Lady Lindiwe replied. “It was rather satisfying to see one handily dispatched after the last chewed up most of that crew on our first day.”

“Salvador’s contract allows us to take risks most cannot,” Angharad demurred.

She took a close look at the woman for the first time, noting that for one who spoke Umoya like a southerner it was unusual for her to be bearing a saber a hand’s span longer than Angharad’s own – and even though Lindiwe Sarru was shorter than her! Her dress was classic Malani court attire, high-waisted yellow inyosi fabric with dark brown double lines adorned by matching rings. The high collar and layered sleeves paired with a long train, almost trailing behind, had been the fashion in the capital last she heard.

Not so the two green skirt ribbons fluttering on her side, which no matter how dainty could only be duelists’ straps – meant to hike up the skirt and tie it back to the belt to free the legs should there be a need for a duel.

“A surfeit of humility,” Lady Lindiwe frankly said. “Still, I am glad to finally have another Skiritai among us. Next time I ask have these little evenings moved on the evening of the week I did not spend the afternoon in a fighting pit, perhaps I will get fewer comments.”

Ah. Angharad had wondered why the event was moved by a day, though for the same reason freshly outlined she had not been inclined to complain.

“I would not count on it.”

She turned to the speaker. The twins, Thando had called them, and they were very much that. More to Angharad’s delight, the pair were slender beauties with sultry dark eyes wearing silver bands with striped veils going down their backs.

At first glance they seemed to be wearing the same striped black and white ingwenya dress, but it was an illusion – the positions of the black and white were reversed, on both the veil and their elegant paneled dresses. Their wear was different from her own Izcalli cut not due to the cloth but by virtue of having silver netting over where Angharad’s shoulders were bare, and the pearl necklaces they wore: one broad, halfway down the shoulder, and the other at the base of the beck.

As with everything else, they contrasted shades with each having one necklace of black pearls and the other in pale.

“If I might introduce the ladies Branwen and Morcan of House Emain,” Thando said. “They may even, at some point this evening, deign to reveal which is which.”

“I would not count on that either,” the rightmost twin noted.

Even if she had never heard their names, that faint undertone to the Umoya would have told Angharad they were Pereduri as surely as the low waist of their dresses. They both cocked eyebrows at her and offered their hand to be kissed, which presented Angharad with the delightful dilemma of which knuckle to grace first. She chose the first to address her, to an inscrutable expression from both beauties.

The leftmost twin then addressed her in Gwynt, which Angharad grasped parts of. Something about ‘gray’, ‘region’, and a term meaning ‘sea-and-stone’ that was an old-fashioned byword for Peredur itself. The lady spoke quickly and in an antiquated manner, however, so Angharad was soon lost.

“I did not understand you,” Angharad replied in the same tongue.

The twins shared a look, one of them sighing.

“Evidently,” Lady Emain replied, in Umoya.

“It was a pleasure, Lady Maraire,” the other Lady Emain added.

The use of House Tredegar’s name on the Malani rolls of nobility was a clear dismissal, which Angharad would admit stung a bit. She had hardly met any others from home since leaving it, to have such a distance put there from the start was something of a blow.

As did the fact that she had come across beautiful Pereduri twins only for them to be… unnecessarily scathing, to put it gently. Between Emeni being taken with the Khosa earlier and now this, the dinner was looking to be slim pickings. It was a little unfair of the world to make it so. Neither Lord Bokan nor Lady Lindiwe seemed all that surprised by the way the ladies Emain had acted, or the way they then walked away after the barest sketch of a curtsy.

“I think Morcan is the one with the small black pearls,” Lord Awonke noted as they watched the pair retreat. “She glares like I am insect, not a rat.”

It was an effort for her lips not to twitch.

“She has to be Branwen,” Lady Sarru contradicted in a murmur. “She only implied that my entire bloodline are fresh-faced upstarts underserving of nobility the once, which would make her the friendly twin.”

“Is House Emain so ancient?” Angharad asked. “I would not call myself unlearned in the matter of the peerdom but I am not familiar with the name.”

Admittedly it sounded like a name from southwestern Peredur, which she was less learn in, but if they were a great house she was certain she would know of them.

“The sisters are descended from two war captains that came to Peredur during the First Landing,” Thando provided. “Or so is claimed.”

That was a hallowed lineage, Angharad would concede. Most of the first ships to land to make shore on the duchy’s stony beaches had been slaughtered by the old lords of the land, save for a few distinguished captains who raised driftwood halls after either wedding or vanquishing the locals. Often a little of both. In a sense those captains had been the eldest nobles of Peredur, though few of these ancient houses were now prominent.

Given that Peredur was said to have been the first land reached by the ships of Morn, which kept sailing to the Middle and Low Isle after a grisly blooding, it was an old argument that their bloodlines could be considered the first nobles not only of Peredur but of all Malan. And thus the noblest of all, by some interpretations. Mostly from those who would benefit from such an honor.

“If they had anything to boast of but their blood, they would,” Lady Lindiwe drily said. “I would not be surprised to hear House Emain rules naught but a manor and a stony beach.”

Angharad slid her a look. Some might describe the lands of House Tredegar in such a manner, though of course there was more to them than that. She was debating what to say when a bell was gently rung, drawing the attention of the guests to the same smiling man who had greeted her at the door.

“Dinner is ready,” he announced. “If you would follow?”

Handed the opportunity to let the matter lie, Angharad took it.

—

A single, long table was to host the veritable banquet they were served.

As the guest of highest birth, Lord Fanyana Khosa sat at the head of the table and the rest of them settled five on each side. Angharad found herself between Thando and Lord Zama, which at least simplified the matter of conversation. On the other side the closest were Lord Kasigo and Lady Emeni, both of which were glad sights. Well, for the pleasure of the eye more one than the other but conversationally speaking the balance was closer.

Malani feasts were long, drawn-out affairs and this looked to be no exception. The first service was a traditional chicken and vegetable stew, exquisitely spiced, and in its wake maize beer was brought out. Angharad had finished her wine, so she accepted a cup. With the beer now on the table, conversation began in earnest. News from abroad, at first, as was custom.

“It may be war is brewing in the Someshwar,” Lord Fanyana shared, living up to his seat. “The Ramayans are squabbling with the Upani over their eastern enclaves.”

That was met with some cheer, as war in the Imperial Someshwar tended to be good for business. With the roads made unsafe by roving armies, sea trade always picked up. That and should the war last too long Sunflower Lords were like as not to get involved, which would then see steel and powder rise sharply in value.

By the time fresh steamed bread was served along with curry, the discussion had moved instead to Thando’s intriguing mention of a flurry of diplomatic delegations between the Ten Republics.

“It is an open secret that the Sanxing were busy courting the central republics to support their colony plans when the Dimming happened,” Lady Emeni opined. “Like as not, now that the situation in Jigong has hit the bottom of the barrel they are taking the pulse of the current sentiment.”

More than a few glances slid Angharad’s way at the mention of Jigong, which was understandable. She was still nominally under the command of a Ren, something which everyone present seemed to understand the meaning of. It might not have been so at the beginning of the year, the Pereduri supposed, but Professor Yun Kang had ensured otherwise.

“It is said that Song Ren of the Thirteenth is a direct relation of the man behind the Dimming,” Musa lightly said.

Angharad sipped at the beer. Only to be expected that Musa would be the one to bring her into this, so she had been keeping one eye on the rest of the table. One reaction stood out: Lady Lindiwe Sarru rolling her eyes. No friend of Musa’s, then. She’d not had the opportunity to learn what brigade the other woman belonged to yet, but it was now her intention to.

“Chaoxiang Ren was her grandfather,” Angharad replied. “Though she was born years after the event in question, of course. Her personal honor is unstained.”

Murmurs of agreement all around, but the general sentiment was plain: bad goods, broken goods. No fault of hers, but best kept at arm’s length. She pushed down the urge to argue. Angharad’s  disinclination to share more on the matter saw the subject move on, towards talk of unrest in the Kingdom of Sordan over terms of peace. The Treaty of Concordia had been signed eighteen years ago, and seen Sordan become a tributary of Izcalli while the port of Concordia was ceded to Malan. Some Sordans were said to be agitating for the trade port’s return to the fold.

“We would not need to hold it at all, had they not bent over the for izzies during the Sordan War,” Lord Awonke snorted. “Without a royal fleet base in the Trebian, Izcalli is sure to try to close the Auric Strait when they next have themselves a war.”

Angharad had never been all that interest in matters of greater policy, but it was common knowledge that one of the main goals of the Queen Perpetual over the last two centuries had been ensuring that the Auric Strait, connecting the Straying Sea to the Trebian, could never be closed to Malani ships by the Kingdom of Izcalli. Or anyone else, for that matter.

“Everyone shafted Sordan during the peace of Concordia,” Lord Kasigo opined. “Malan, Izcalli, even the Watch when they brokered the whole affair. They have reason to be angry, not that it will lead to anything but the royal fleet anchoring a squadron in bombardment range of their capital.”

Lord Zama signed, Musa leaning forward to read his fingers before speaking.

“Or the Grasshopper King sending Doghead Coyac to scare them back into submission,” Musa conveyed.

Some snorts, but Angharad raised an eyebrow.

“I am unfamiliar with the name,” she said.

“One of the leading generals in Izcalli, rumored to be the throne’s favorite,” Lord Fanyana informed her, for once looking engaged. “He led the Izcalli forces in the Sordan War and by all appearances he is one of the finest military minds of our age – at the Battle of Narba he defeated three armies in a day.”

“And he is said not to be Izcalli by birth, only Aztlan,” Lady Emeni added. “Scandalous, yes?”

It was, given that the Atzlan realms around Izcalli were more likely to yield serfs than high-ranking generals when the Sunflower Lords got their say. The traditional round of sport was had at the expense of the Izcalli inability to build so much as a barn without having a round of civil war and emptying a Someshwari village. When the roast mutton, pumpkins and carrots were served – cattle being on the plate signaled this was the main service – conversation turned to the latest about everyone’s associations.

In other words, gossip.

“I hear that fallen noble from the Nineteenth, Barboza, got into a fistfight with a cabalist from the Twelfth,” Thando shared. “There was shouting about a bathtub.”

“Lierganen nobility,” one of the Emain twins noted. “Almost a lie.”

There was some laughter at that, and Angharad near smiled. The ladies Emain, while openly indifferent to the talk of politics, seemed much more interested in this sort of talk. Lord Zama, noticing her cup was empty, silently offered to fill it with maize beer again. It would have been rude to refuse, given his higher rank, so Angharad nodded. It was only her second cup, she still had room.

The Pereduri ladies then traded a few sentences in Gwynt between themselves, which had Thando leaning towards her.

“How well do you understand that?” he asked in a murmur.

“Not well,” she admitted. “The only word I caught was ‘mouse’, though it could also have been ‘thistle’.”

“Unfortunate,” he said. “I had hoped someone would finally understand their asides.”

Angharad hummed.

“A curiosity, if you would,” she said.

He cocked an eyebrow.

“Her brigade?” she asked, discreetly gesturing towards Lady Lindiwe.

His smile was knowing.

“Tenth Brigade,” he said. “Closely tied to the First.”

And the First, from what Angharad recalled, was foe to both the Ninth and the Third. Yet Lady Lindiwe had been quite cordial with Lord Awonke, who was actually of the Third, and that might mean the enmity there ran very shallow. So it might be possible to muster both of them for the same cause, Angharad thought. What she needed to find out was how likely that pair was to support Zenzele being invited purely to pull at Musa’s ear.

She drifted back into the conversation after nodding Thando her thanks, finding out that talk had turned to how that ‘Tupoc fellow from the Fourth’ had managed to get the captains of the Thirty-Sixth and Thirty-Eighth so frothingly angry that the latter had drawn a pistol on him right there in the Galleries. That prompted Angharad to share a few choice stories from the Dominion. Half the table shook with laughter when told them about his almost ending up in a cage, and booed how he called himself a defender of the weak when stepping in the way of an honor duel.

Sleeping God, the man had only been on the island a few weeks longer than her. How was he already this disliked?

By the time of the next service – dumplings and sour milk – she felt like she had a handle on the currents of the table. She sipped at her cup of beer, filled anew by Lord Zama even though she had barely touched it, and considered the levers she might pull at. The following service should be dessert, followed by a second round of mingling over drinks, which would let her try her hand at getting Zenzele his invitation. The only way for it was to gather enough supporters that Musa refusing would make him look worse than accepting, and the count for that was… troublesome.

The Emain twins were likely to sit it out, and Lord Zama unlikely to slight the man he was friendliest with. Lindiwe, Awonke and Emeni were a solid foundation if she could sway them. Thando would likely help, for a price, and Lord Kasigo would side with the victors. That meant the man she needed on her side, the hinge of it all, was Fanyana Khosa. That would be tricky to achieve, but Angharad found herself hiding a smile as she sipped at her beer.

It felt exciting, to be back here in this room. Doing what she had been raised to do, with people she understood. Another breath of fresh air.

Dessert was traditional, sweet corn pudding, and when Lord Zama again filled her cup with beer Angharad realized she had made what her father called the beginner’s mistake: being so taken with her own schemes she had failed to consider there might be others afoot. Maize beer was not a strong drink, but the kind served at feasts was stronger than the usual kind. She had not had enough to make her drunk, but enough to loosen her limbs some. And if she drained that cup, then the refreshments later? Then she would be.

So now she must consider another question: why was Lord Zama trying to get her drunk?

The easy guess was that Musa might try his hand at another challenge tonight and had decided to get the odds on his side, but that did not seem much like the man. While not exactly without wiles, Angharad thought Musa Shange would simply be too proud to claim a victory in this manner. There was something more to it. What did Musa want? With her, likely little. But his captain had charged him with courting Angharad for the Ninth.

That was the thread Angharad needed to follow to unwind this to the source.

Horse trading of gossip continued over the pudding, Angharad not touching her beer and digging in s quickly as was polite to fill her belly further. A shame, as she rather enjoyed the delicacy and would have preferred to savor it. What is the angle at work, she wondered, and how can I use it for my own purposes? What had her at a loss was that Musa hardly even glanced at her, more interested in table talk about the Forty-Fourth having run into blem and ran with the legs tucked between their legs, and did not seem to be moving to muster against her.

He was not pulling strings, or maneuvering. Was all this simply Lord Zama having a surfeit of hospitality? She had her answer when the last of the plates were cleared and the servants brought in small cups of distilled palm wine. A liquor on the stronger side. And Musa rose to his feet, smiling, to offer a toast.

“To our latest addition,” he said, raising a glass to Angharad.

The man was trying to get her drunk, no doubt about it. She could not refuse a toast to herself, so she matched him – as did most the table – and drank the palm wine. Only she used an old trick of her father’s refraining from swallowing. She then pretended to chase the strong liquor with maze beer, instead spitting out the liquor into that cup. Musa wanted to achieve something by getting her drunk, and so far her only hint was that two at the table had not drunk of the toast.

The first was facing her, so it was the natural choice.

“Do you not enjoy palm wine, Lord Kasigo?” she idly asked.

The fresh-faced man looked embarrassed.

“I was raised Serene Redeemer,” he replied. “I do not drink alcohol.”

He brow rose. To a Universalist with her all Redeemers were hardliners, but the so-called ‘Serries’ were one of the starker sects of the faith. Their claim to fame was a doctrine that the soul must be kept serene to be closer to the Sleeping God, emptied of earthly distractions. Like drink and music, most famously. So taken aback was she that a moment passed with her at a loss as to what to say, Kasigo stepping in.

“It is uncommon in noble households, I know,” he said, “and I imagine yours was quite different. Most Pereduri are Universalists, yes?”

And before Angharad could open her mouth, the second to abstain stepped in.

“Ah, Kasigo, I must stop you,” Lindiwe Sarru smiled. “You approach a mistake.”

The man shot her a surprised look.

“Do I?”

“Indeed,” she said. “Tredegar, you see, is not from a noble household.”

Dead silence followed, filling the room to burst. In it, Angharad could hear of a noose pulled tight.

“Pardon?” she evenly asked.

“Correct me if I speak untruly,” Lady Lindiwe said, tone pleasant for all the strong language, “but was House Tredegar not  struck from the rolls of nobility, its holdings placed in the care of the crown?”

Eyes cold, Angharad met her gaze. Lindiwe – no, Sarru now, the Pereduri owed her no further courtesies – was being quite obvious in seeking to force a duel.

“All titles are set aside when taking the black, Sarru,” she replied. “Is that untrue?”

She laughed.

“Must I explain to you,” Sarru said, “the difference between a title being set aside and stripped?”

“It seems it is I,” Angharad flatly replied, “who must explain to you the meaning of the word courtesy.”

“Manners are one thing, lies another,” Sarru said. “Everyone here joined the Watch while titled, and by this virtue warrant invitation to such a gathering. Everyone except you.”

She had two threads to pull: Musa’s captain wanted her in the Ninth and Lindiwe Sarru had not been drinking. Intending a duel from the start? Yes, she decided. Though giving great insult, the other woman was not speaking with particular venom or anger. She was simply speaking the words needed to get what she wanted.

And Angharad saw no way to slip out of the noose.

“Your words stain my honor,” she said. “Withdraw them.”

“No,” Sarru happily said.

Stiffly, the Pereduri rose to her feet.

“Blades, then.”

“First blood?” Sarru asked.

“Surrender,” Angharad coldly denied.

“A woman after my own heart,” she laughed, rising as well.

The rest of the table erupted, but more in excitement than outrage. The only to look miffed was Lord Fanyana, though more at the mess than the words. Angharad stepped aside servants were sent for to prepare the drawing room for a duel, ignoring Thando’s quiet words as she closed her eyes and tried to put it all together.

Musa would not want to help Sarru, who was friend to his own captain’s foe. So why had he asked Lord Zama to get her drinking? Even had she imbibed another round or two of palm wine she would not have been made incapable, only…

Sloppy.

Musa was not helping Sarru, he was harming Angharad. He must have figured out Sarry would press for a duel and wagered that with some drink in her she would make a mistake and gravely harm a member of the Tenth. Which would draw both the First and the Tenth down on her head, and that of any brigade she was part of. Ferranda would not be able to withstand such grand enmity, not when the Ninth was already at odds with her.

But Captain Sebastian Camaron could, and would no doubt extend his protection with a smile – should Angharad join the Ninth Brigade.

“What a snake,” she murmured. “I almost missed it.”

“Angharad?”

She opened her eyes, finding Thando Fanya frowning at her.

“The captain of the Ninth reaches into this room,” she said. “Perhaps he should be taught a lesson.”

“Dueling a friend to his foe will do no such thing,” Thando said.

“No,” she agreed. “That will have to come later.”

To their honor, none of the servants looked uneasy when told to prepare for live blades being bared. Nor should, they since nearly all of them were Malani. The only detail left to put together, Angharad thought, was why Sarru was so eager for a duel. She could not ever recall giving the woman offence. When offered a pin to steady her skirts by a woman in green livery, Angharad took it and slid it in after some adjustments.

Her stride would not be fully free and she disliked fighting in soft boots, but it was nothing crippling.

She handed her sheathed saber to the officiant – Lord Fanyana had been volunteered – and after Sarru did the same, she gave the noblewoman a cool glance. Her duelist’s straps had pulled her skirts, revealing fighting boots Angharad could only envy. There could be no doubt she had come with this in mind. The two of them stood there, no one else close enough to overhear, as their weapons were inspected.

“This all seems most unwarranted,” Angharad said.

“Does it?” Sarru mused.

“What have I ever done to earn your ire?”

Lindiwe Sarru’s smile was a cold thing.

“I tire, Tredegar, of hearing talk of butter,” she said. “Of the mirror-dancer among us, how she must be the finest Skiritai in our year. Praise after praise after praise.”

Her dark face tightened.

“Time to give them something else to talk about,” Sarru said.

She shot the other woman an incredulous look.

“Gossip is what this is all about?”

“If you do not grasp that in this school rumors are the only currency of status, then you are a very great fool indeed,” Sarru scorned.

Lord Fanyana returned their sabers, which was for the best. The only answers Angharad had it in her to give now would lead to this ending in a corpse. The center drawing room had been cleared of furniture, everything put up against the walls, and the great round carpet on the ground was designated the dueling. The rest of the guests kept to the sides as the two of them walked to the center of the carpet, Angharad’s stride angry.

She forced herself to smooth out her anger. Giving her opponent power over her mindset was the first step to defeat. They turned to face each other.

“Draw,” Lord Fanyana said.

Angharad slid out her blade.

“Begin.”

She pulled on her contract and-

Nothing? No, everything was there. Everything but the woman she was facing, who was missing from the glimpse entirely.

-the power of the contract withdrew, and now there was a triumphant grin on Lindiwe Sarru’s face.

“I knew it,” she quietly said. “Not your reflexes, but those of others. You can read how muscles will move, it’s how you always know how to kill the lemures.”

Angharad forced herself to put on a hint of dismay and bury her relief very, very deep.

“There will be none of that with me, though,” Sarru told her. “I’m a shadow, you see.”

And then it began.

Sarru was shorter than her, but the longer length of her blade would make up for it some. It will be either lightened or slow, Angharad as the other woman fell into a high guard. Best to learn which quickly, for it would inform her approach: she took a middle guard took, stepped forward and then to the side. Sarru moved to keep facing her, her stance seemingly easy to keep, and Angharad tried a feint – towards the chest, then sweeping down to the foreleg.

Sarru smoothly moved a step back but her blade did not so much as twitch. Slow, Angharad decided. She was limiting her movements to keep from committing to a mistake she would not be able to take back. Then victory lay in offence.

Angharad Tredegar breathed out and moved.

Quickstep, closing range, and a cut to the arm – Sarru parried, all crisp textbook clean, and the riposte went for her face. Snorting, Angharad slapped aside the blow and wove past her guard. She would have had her knee kicked out under her for it, if she’d not circled first. Sarru moved to match, Angharad feinted, forced her blade low to protect her knee, then pivoted again. The Malani struggled to keep up, half a beat behind, and Angharad kept up the pressure.

Blow to the neck, getting an awkwardly angled block, and she slammed the pommel of her saber on Sarru’s chest. She drew back with a pained groan, guard askew and Angharad saw the opening. The golden road. Draw back the blow, press the blade and then thrust her wrist: the base of her blade would come to rest against Sarru’s throat, death blow withheld.

Her hand moved, and then it all went to shit.

Lindiwe Sarru pressed back against her press, sweeping back with – she shouldn’t have been able to, the weight of her blade working against the strength of her wrist, but here we were – her own blow, Angharad ducking under what should have been victory and getting elbowed in the face. She rolled back, narrowly avoiding a blow that would have sliced up her flank deep, and smoothly rose in a high guard.

“Your saber’s not heavy at all,” Angharad said. “You were baiting me the entire time.”

“Candlesteel alloy,” Sarru smiled. “Meant for the slaying of spirits, but your blood will suffice.”

“Come and draw it, then,” she scorned. “Or is the only sharp edge on your tongue?”

A twitch of anger, and with nothing left to hide the Malani finally went on the offence. A feint that Angharad ignored, a blow she turned aside but she had good footing and a quick wrist: they both danced away rather than choosing to slice up each other’s cheek. Perhaps it was time to find out how Sarru dealt with saber locks, Angharad mused. The other woman was not slight, but the Pereduri would pit her arms against the other woman’s any day.

She tried not to think too deeply on how she was beginning to enjoy herself.

The noblewoman slid forward, stride smooth, and – and the door burst open. Angharad stilled halfway through a saber stroke. As did Sarru, though not so quickly she did not bring her blade to edge of Angharad’s guard. The rat.

It was a man, she saw, in Watch black. Regular’s uniform with cloak over it, and on his collar was pinned a golden braid. A commander’s mark, she had learned in Mandate. What is a commander doing he– and then the face sunk in. The short hair, the brown eyes and tall stature. The neatly trimmed beard with a hint of gray and the Tredegar nose.

“Uncle?” she croaked out.

Commander Osian Tredegar – he had been a captain, as far as she knew! – swept the room with his eyes and spared the situation what could only be called a deeply unimpressed look.

“Disgraceful,” he said. “This is Scholomance, not the royal court. Sheathe those blades before I have you both running laps around the harbor until the sweat leaves some room inside for common sense.”

She flinched back, lowering her blade. Sarru shot her a look, as if wondering whether this had been arranged.

“This is matter of honor, Commander,” she said, “it is not-”

“It is not the place of officer of the Watch to duel,” he calmly interrupted her. “It is, in fact, strictly against regulations.”

A thin smile.

“As you are still students this is not a breach, but it proof that you are still very much arrogant children,” Osian Tredegar said, then glanced at Angharad. “Sheathe that bloody sword, girl. I’ll not say it again.”

Feeling very much like she should be looking down at her boots, Angharad did. All the others had been silent, until Lord Fanyana cleared his throat.

“If I may ask for your name, sir?”

“Commander Osian Tredegar,” her uncle replied. “Umuthi Society, currently on assignment for the Obscure Committee.”

The handful of watchmen charged with overseeing Tolomontera? His words earned a ripple. The Emain twins were the only ones visibly unimpressed, trading sentences in Gwynt. Her uncle fixed them with a steady look.

“Oh, but I know who you are,” he said, baring his teeth. “Sticks with bad hair and noses up in the air? You must be Ceridwen’s daughters.”

A snort.

“She was a snobby brat as well,” Uncle Osian said. “There is a reason she was pushed into a pond on the night of her debut.”

Far from being offended, to Angharad’s horror the pair were now looking at him with almost starstruck expressions.

“No offence was meant, Commander,” the leftmost twin assured.

“Mere curiosity,” the other added.

“I’m sure,” he replied, rolling his eyes, then turned his gaze onto the rest. “Considering that my own niece was involved in this foolishness, I will turn a blind eye this once. I invited you, however, to ask your brigade patrons what participation in honor duels while serving a term in the Watch will do for your prospects.”

From his tone, it was nothing pleasant. Perhaps, if Angharad was very lucky, no one would think to mention during his stay that this was the second duel she was fighting in less than a month.

A vain hope, with Wen Duan around.

Part of her, she would admit, took delight in all these better born sorts shuffling awkwardly out of the drawing room like embarrassed children. Sarru was the last to leave, leaning in for parting words after sheathing her sword.

“This is not over,” she said.

“So close to a lie, Sarru,” Angharad chided.

She snarled as she pulled away, a servant closing the door behind her and leaving Angharad to stand alone with her uncle. Who was looking somewhat unimpressed with her.

“What made you think this was a good idea?” he asked.

 “My honor was impugned,” she stiffly replied. “What else should I have done?”

A long moment passed.

“Sleeping God, you sound like your mother,” he sighed. “Our father used to say she took to the sea because she’d picked all the fights there were to be had on land.”

Shaking his head fondly, Uncle Osian pulled her in tight and she leaned in eagerly. He was, she notice just not quite tall enough to rest his chin on her head. He made to withdraw after a moment but Angharad tightened her grasp, leaning her forehead against his shoulder, and he relented. It was a long while before they parted.

“Look at you,” he grinned, looking enchanted. “So tall now! When I last saw you, you did not even reach my chest.”

“I was only nine,” Angharad laughed.

And a lot more interested in her live steel lessons than her visiting uncle at first, although that’d changed when he began giving gifts. That Izcalli paperweight in the shape of a two-tailed snake had been her favorite, keeping a place of honor on her desk for years. Osian’s brown eyes took her in, scrutinizing.

“You’ve your mother’s nose and build,” he said, “but the rest is all your father’s, I’m afraid.”

She straightened in pride. Gwydion Tredegar’s good looks had made him the darling of Pereduri peerdom, once upon a time.

“Would that I had gotten his charm as well,” Angharad ruefully said. “I would end up in fewer duels.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Osian snorted. “Malani lordlings are like tomcats – lock a couple of them in a room and some fur’ll always go flying. We have to train it out of them before the Watch can get a use of the virtues.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Besides, your mother saw to it you know you way around a blade, which I wager will serve you better in the long run than any amount of wiles.”

“It has helped me on Tolomontera,” Angharad admitted.

He beamed.

“I had a feeling you would do well here,” Osian said. “The Militants prize talent above all and they’ve the cleanest inner workings of any covenant.”

A thoughtful pause.

“It helps that most of their chief officers are complete lunatics,” he added.

“Are you sure you should be telling me this?” Angharad asked, half-serious.

“Nothing you won’t learn in Mandate eventually,” Osian dismissed, “though I expect they’ll coach it in nicer language. Still, enough about the Watch. How have you been? Are you enjoying your time with the Thirteenth?”

Ah. Angharad cleared her throat embarrassedly.

“I have been settling in,” she said. “I did not expect there to be quite so many scholarly classes, but I am keeping up with the work – still, I must confess that Warfare and my covenant classes remain my favorite.”

“I wish,” he said, sounding somewhat chagrined, “that your favoring the fighting pit full of monsters came as a surprise.”

She blinked in surprise. How strange, why would he? Still, she set that aside for the embarrassing part.

“As for the Thirteenth Brigade, we are to part ways,” Angharad said. “We have had differences too difficult to reconcile, so I will be transferring to the Thirty-First for at least a few months.”

Her uncle’s face clenched.

“I – you,” he said, then licked his lips. “I’m sorry to hear that, because it won’t be possible.”

The noblewoman frowned.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“You must stay with the Thirteenth for at least the next few months,” he said.

She goggled at him.

“Why?”

“Because in three weeks you will be leaving for the Asphodel Rectorate as part of that brigade, heading out for your yearly test,” Osian said.

She almost laughed at the absurdity of the words, until she saw his face was dead serious.

“Uncle, I have not been on Tolomontera for a month,” Angharad said. “How could I possibly be ready for this test?”

“That has been taken into consideration, and you’ve been given an easier assignment because of it,” Osian said. “But the timetable cannot be moved, Angharad. I had to step on quite a few toes to get it changed.”

“Help me understand,” she quietly asked.

“The Thirteenth was picked for one of the Asphodel assignments when it was formed,” he said, “because the Rectorate is a quiet spot in our backyard. Unfortunately, the situation as changed.”

He grimaced.

“At the turn of the year, the Rectorate announced that it discovered an Antediluvian shipyard beneath the island,” Osian said. “Which would be bad enough, but there was also a massive imperial cache inside among which was the largest find of tomic alloys in a century.”

Angharad breathed out, parsing the implications. Great wealth, of course, but more importantly-

“They will be able make skimmers,” she said. “The old kind from the First Empire, not the smaller modern ones.”

“They already can,” Osian grimly said. “When the Rector revealed all this to the diplomatic envoys of every successor-state, he also showed them the first skimmer the shipyards made – no larger than a caravel, but my friends in the Deuteronomicon tell me the aetheric engine’s twice the size of anything the Tianxi can make.”

“And this brought enemies to their doorstep,” Angharad guessed.

“That’s one way to put it,” he snorted. “The Krypteia are predicting that within six months there will be civil war with foreign power involvement. Whoever gets their hands on those shipyards tips the balance of the Trebian Sea their way, Angharad – you must go now or you’ll be heading into bloody mayhem.”

“I would not have to go at all, if I were not part of the Thirteenth,” she carefully said.

He grimaced again.

“That is unfortunately untrue,” he said. “Your killing the Cerdan boy ensured the Obscure Committee won’t send you to Sacromonte and it’s been judged the odds are too high you’ll get assassinated if you’re sent to the Riven Coast – that house has friends among the pirate kings. Asphodel is the only destination in the cards for you.”

“Surely there are other brigades taking tests there,” she tried.

“Four will be sent,” Osian agreed.

“Then,” she hesitantly tried, “would it not be possible-”

“It’s too late, Angie,” he softly interrupted. “I burned most the favors owed me last year so I did not have the pull for this on my own. I had to get help from Colonel Zhuge.”

“I am unfamiliar with the name,” she admitted.

“He is the officer who recommended Song Ren,” her uncle said. “A well-respected Stripe with a command on the Rookery. I had to lean heavily on his connections. We made… arrangements, and they all involve your being part of the Thirteenth.”

A reluctant halt.

“I gave my word.”

Angharad bit her tongue, better to swallow the sharp words wriggling on them. It was a grave disrespect for Uncle Osian to make promises on her behalf, but she owed him debts greater than words could convey. She would have died a hundred times over, if not for his interventions.

“I have already told Song I intend to leave the Thirteenth,” she finally sighed.

“I cannot stop you from doing that,” Osian frankly said. “But if you do, Angie, the wheels come off the carriage. Colonel Zhuge pulls his support, almost certainly, and what follows will be… unpredictable. Messy.”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose, mind wandering.

“I’ll be pulled out of the trip, at least,” her uncle said. “Buried in a workshop for a few years even if I don’t get demoted. You’ll still be going to Asphodel, but if the patron and those who gave recommendations for the brigade you join get involved-”

Osian trailed off, frowning.

“You are sailing there as well?” Angharad asked.

He nodded.

“I’m part of the delegation negotiating for tomic materials and the designated Umuthi instructor besides,” Osian absent-mindedly said. “I’m to discreetly lend a hand to Song Ren on Asphodel using those appointments. Zhuge let me be the face for this whole deal so if it crumples it’ll be coming down on my head, but-”

“I’ll do it,” Angharad said.

Ancestors, how could she do anything less? After all he had done for her it would have been abominable to turn on him. His head swiveled her way.

“I could try to get you transferred to another of the brigades going,” he tried. “The colonel will get snippy, but I could still hold up my end of the bargain with him.”

“I don’t suppose the Thirty-First is one of them?” she asked, but it was half-hearted.

She would not wish this debacle on them, and if they were not involved she could not conceive of asking them to be. It would be a poor repayment of their kindness indeed to drag them into this. Osian shook his head.

“The Fourth, Eleventh and Forty-Ninth,” he said.

So Tupoc, Imani Langa or the band of fools after Tristan’s bounty. To think Song would be still be the finest pick of the lot. And then it hit her: Imani Langa. The bargain she had struck, the Infernal Forge for a letter to her father and aid freeing him. She could not get the damned thing if she was not on Tolomontera. Panic rose, but she fought it down. Imani was bound for Asphodel as well, she would have to understand.

Wouldn’t she? What if she didn’t?

Angharad dimly realized that was on a ship seaward bound, and the lights behind her were growing dreadfully distant.

She could feel the eyes on her as she walked down the hall.

Whispers and stares, smirks and anticipation. Word of Song’s exoneration from the death of four students had made the rounds of Scholomance like a circling vulture, first as rumor then as fact. Every single brigade patron on Tolomontera had been instructed to report the facts as determined by a formal investigation – and four cabals were promptly disbanded, their handlers transferred away. The way Song heard it, the events becoming ‘official’ had actually lessened interest as the truth was quite time compared to some of the rumors.

Until word began going around about Professor Kang’s unfortunate encounter, anyway, which made the whole affair juicy all over again.

The other cabals had been gossiping about the coming confrontation for days, placing bets like it was to be a dog fight. It was a minute-long walk from door to door in this last hallway, a straight line with no obstruction, but the end still felt like it had snuck up on her. Song paused before the threshold, breathed in. It was not hesitation if she was just catching her breath.

Tristan casually stepped between her and a pair of gawkers, fiddling with his pistol and hiding her face from them as if by happenstance. Song hid her surprise – they had reached something of a truce over the last week, but the friendliness was but a layer and one that tended to thin whenever Maryam was not present.

She did not acknowledge the kindness and neither did he, which made it easier to swallow.

Raising her chin, Song made herself stride through the threshold. The almost crypt was better lit than usual, lanterns having been set down on the sides, but it was otherwise unchanged. Rows of desks and pillars, a menagerie’s worth of stuffed corpses and glass cases, and up front on the dais the desk and – huh. A tall, dark-skinned woman with brown eyes and hair pulled into knots encircled by golden bands at the base. No sign of Yun Kang.

Song walked to the usual desk almost in a trance, barely even noticing as the others joined her. It was barely five minutes before the last students walked in and the professor in front pushed off the desk.

“You, in the seat by the pillar,” she said, pointing at a chubby Someshwari. “Close the door.”

She turned to the class without checking to see if she was being obeyed.

“You may call me Professor Cence,” she said. “As Professor Kang is not yet capable of walking without assistance, I will be teaching this class in his stead.”

A pause for that to sink in.

“He should be returning next week,” she added. “If not, I will likely be returning.”

Whispers buzzed like a hive freshly kicked. So many stares were directed at the back of Song’s head it felt like they were pressing against her scalp. A hand was raised from the back, getting a nodded permission from Professor Cence to speak.

“Is it true he tried to get a student killed?”

Song turned, finding she did not recognize the one who spoke – an Izcalli boy with no contract to reveal his name. Impossibly, the weight of the stares grew. Even the professor glanced her way, before returning her gaze to the other student.

“Accusing a member of the Watch of a crime without proof usually fetches a caning,” Professor Cence mildly said, adjusting the collar on her uniform. “Given the rumors, I will spare you discipline this once. There will be no second chance for any of you.”

That killed any boldness students might have been inclined to. The dark-skinned professor wasted no time digging into the lessons after that, picking up where Kang had left. Song felt a little cheated by the fact that she was not as interesting a lecturer as the man trying to kill her, though the lack of constant questions thrown her way more than made up for it.

The Tianxi found herself ignored the first two times she raised her hand to answer a question opened to the class, as if Professor Cence was overcorrecting for her predecessor, but she was allowed to explain the process by which crops grew in Gloam-covered lands – skotosynthesis, feeding on darkness – and received an approving nod for it. Song did not raise her hand again for the rest of the lecture, even after the quarter-hour break that separated the two sections.

Part of her winced at what was to come, but it was necessary and her own design besides. She still waited until they’d walked out the gates of Scholomance, out of sheer practicality.

“Here will work,” Song quietly said.

Maryam nodded under her hood while Tristan gave a too-sharp grin. He was the only one of the three who enjoyed it, when they erupted into a loud argument – Song accusing him of stealing brigade funds, him accusing her of being cursed and Maryam playing peacemaker for a few moments before being called half-hollow and joining the fray. It was loud, vicious and utterly mortifying to be part of but it did what it was meant to accomplish: dozens watched as Tristan made to strike her and was held back by Maryam.

There had been witnesses enough, Song decided after they stalked off, that by the time she attended class in the Galleries this afternoon rumors would have spread. Enough that Ramona would be willing to believe her when she offered to sell Tristan Abrascal to the Forty-Ninth.

—

Tristan Abrascal slept like he was trying to burrow into the ground, even when drugged. Curled on himself, as if trying to wedge himself into the cracks of the world. Song checked his pulse, fingers lingering not a moment longer in deference to his dislike of being touched, and withdrew with a satisfied nod. The mixture and dosage were the thief’s own work, but he had asked her to check on his pulse once in a while to ensure he’d not accidentally killed himself.

The heartbeat was not slowing or weakening, so as far as she could tell he’d be fine.

Song left him in his corner, behind the crates, and climbed back up the ladder into the pale light of the Orrery. The shrine she had picked as the meeting point was small, barely large as the cottage’s kitchen and only two stories high. The selling point was that the door had been bricked in so it could only be accessed by climbing a rope to the roof and then taking a ladder down inside. Even more useful was that time had torn town everything around the strangely empty shrine for two blocks, giving her a wide open field to defend. Song lay down on the roof, pulling her coat close as she waited with her loaded musket.

All that was left to do was wait, and laying there alone her head felt full of too many thoughts. Instead of letting it wander, she made herself go through the plan again.

Looking only at martial might, dealing with the Forty-Ninth was not overly difficult.

Since Song was the one setting the meeting, all she needed to do was pick a good perch surrounded by open grounds, let them pass the point of no return then spring an ambush. Muchen He was the real threat among the brigade, so opening the fight kneecapping him with salt munitions was a must. Four would be left after that: Captain Ramona, Tengfei Pan, Huang Pan and Fara.

Huang Pan was a Savant, chubby and lacking a fighter’s calluses. As a fighter, he was a nonentity beyond his ability to pull a trigger. The Malani woman, Fara, had been somewhat of an unknown before Song made some inquiries and learned she was Arthashastra Society. Historian track, according to Zenzele. Able to fight but not a fighter and not contracted. Marginal threat.

Neither Ramona nor Tengfei would be so easy to handle, both being trained and physically fit.

The Thirteenth would be at risk of losing that skirmish of four against three, and even should they win the odds that someone would get killed were unacceptably high. If helped was sought, however? Song figured that Angharad alone would be capable of sweeping through the whole Forty-Ninth if Muchen was incapacitated. If Song reached out to the Thirty-First at large, if striking from ambush the outcome was already decided.

The complication preventing that was, ironically enough, their worst fighter: Huang Pan.

As a means of tracking, Song would consider her fellow Tianxi’s contract average. The Six-Sided Plum Blossom had granted Huang the ability to divine whether a single specific entity – object, living or divine – was in one of the cardinal directions or not. The range to the ability was nine li, the old Cathayan measure translating to short of three miles. It must be a truly ancient deity, for it not to use the imperial scales. Or at least one whose worship had hit its peak before the Second Empire.

Regardless of that interesting detail, it must be said that to hunt a fugitive Huang Pan’s contract was helpful but in practice still inferior to a well-trained hound. As a scouting tool, however? Now it became a headache. To meet the Forty-Ninth Song had naturally been forced to set a meeting place, which meant that after they approached Huang Pan could be asked to use his contract on it.

He could then confirm whether any member of her cabal was in that location, which was Tristan had to be there. None of it would have been possible without his presence, and thus assent.

Now, assuming Captain Ramona was not fool – and Song did not believe her to be one – she would also have Huang check for potential threats the Thirteenth was known to have some ties to. Like, say, Angharad Tredegar or Ferranda Villazur. Maybe even Tupoc, as he’d stepped into a confrontation between their cabals once. They would be immediately caught out and the Forty-Ninth would simply leave, the entire plan falling apart at the start.

That meant the only two people who could be there were Song and Tristan, the latter tied up as prisoner. As trust between herself and the Forty-Ninth was understandably low, Song had demanded that only two of them come take the merchandise as any more than that would make it trivially easy to double-cross her at the last moment and simple take Tristan. It wasn’t as if Captain Ramona would actually pay her so much as a copper if she could avoid it.

Of course, Muchen He backed by either Ramona or Tengfei could still likely beat her in a fight if they got close enough. But Song had known neither of the latter would come.

Across the open field, Song glimpsed Muchen He approaching with a hooded figure slight enough it should be Fara and smiled a hard smile.

As she’d expected. If Tengfei came with Muchen, Ramona would fear they’d go around her and sell Tristan themselves to get Tengfei Pan his captain’s seat back. Only if Ramona came with the Skiritai instead, she was risking Tengfei getting the support from the other two to double-cross her from the back instead. The Lierganen captain coming to Song had made one thing clear: her hold on her cabal was weak, and if she did not bring home a victory Tenfgei would supplant her again.

It was somewhat heartening for Song to realize her brigade was not the only one drowning in internal strife.

Song did not allow her musket’s muzzle to peek out over the edge as she gauged the winds, saw the curls of force in the air she would need to work with to shoot Muchen He in the head. Her finger never touched the trigger, but it was a calming thing to know she could snatch his life right out of him should she wish him. Only when they were less than a hundred feet away did she call out.

“Hands out in the open,” Song said. “No sudden movements.”

“We come in peace, Captain Song,” the hooded figure called back.

The voice confirmed her to be Fara. Good, Song could handle her if that came down to blades.

“I’m sure you do,” she said. “Do it anyway.”

Muchen, she saw in the dark, looked amused and somewhat approving. When they came close enough not to need to raise their voices, he was the one who asked how they would do the trade.

“I have him in here,” Song said. “Fara will come up to help me bring him out.”

“Ramona insisted on him being tested,” Muchen replied.

“Tested for what?”

“Being awake, and this being a trap,” the other Tianxi said. “Simple needle test, nothing inhuman.”

Song made a show of considering it, even though she had already suspected they would want something of the sort and prepared. There was a reason Tristan was drugged.

“Fine,” she conceded, “but there’s a change of plans.”

“A third is all you’ll get,” Fara snorted. “The captain was clear on that.”

“And a third is what I intend to get,” Song sharply replied. “I will be coming with you down to the port, to verify I am truly receiving such a sum.”

“That was not the deal,” Muchen said.

“It is the one on offer,” Song coldly replied. “Take or leave it.”

They hemmed and hawed, tried to argue, but deep down all knew the Forty-Nine would fold. They were in too deep and her demand was not unreasonable.

Ten minutes later the three of them – carrying a fourth – were on their way south. When they joined the rest of the brigade, she was greeted by Tengfei Pan leveling a pistol at her head.

“Lovely,” he said. “A third of the bounty just handed itself back to us.”

What a waste of a handsome face, she thought. She flicked a glance at Ramona, whose sharp scarred face was unreadable.

“My condolences,” she said, at least halfway meaning it.

Tengfei snarled, but his arm was pulled down by Muchen.

“Think,” the other man flatly said. “She has been methodically cautious so far, do you truly think she came to us without contingencies?”

Song deliberately ignored Tengfei, knowing it would anger him more than anything she might say. Irrelevance was the pond he saw himself drowning in.

“I have come to ensure my share will be correctly split,” she told Ramona. “Shall we get on with it, or do we first need to indulge another tantrum?”

“I don’t know,” Captain Ramona mused, tapping her chin. “Teng, you got another one in you?”

He did not.

—

Trading in flesh, Song learned, was brisk business.

They hid in a gutter warehouse by the docks, Tristan unceremoniously stashed behind a pile of rubble. Tengfei Pan was sent out to the Palmyran, slipping through a crumbling part of the wall and returning a quarter hour later with the caravel’s captain. The tall Someshwari woman was well into her fifties but she still had smooth skin a girlish air about her, helped along by her golden nose ring and long braid. She did not introduce herself, but then she did not need to. Chameli Kalra had a contract with the Sixfold Matrimonial Snake, so her name hung in golden letters above her head.

To constrict others with a touch was a fearsome power, Song mused, but Captain Chameli’s price was an unpleasant one: a trickle of venom, fed directly into her belly. Even recurrence immunity would only help her so much with that.

“This the boy, then?” Captain Chameli flatly asked.

“That he is,” Ramona replied. “And drugged too. Song?”

“He drank a full dose of mafeisan,” she lied. “He should be out for at least another hour.”

Tristan should, in truth, be awake by now. The poppy milk should have worn off on the way, according to the dosage he had himself measured.

“That makes things simpler,” the captain approvingly said. “We need to be careful: some galleon docked an hour ago and spat out a hundred sailors, it shook the harbor guards awake.”

“We need to move him tonight,” Ramona said. “When goes missing people will look.”

Eyes flicked to Song, who shrugged.

“I have the cabalists in hand, but our patron is a bloodhound,” she said. “He’ll come sniffing around.”

Captain Chameli grunted.

“I never said we wouldn’t do it tonight,” she replied. “Only that I’ll need one of my boys to bring a barrel first. We’ll make it look like he’s water supplies.”

“Handling that part is on you,” Ramona said. “We’ve fulfilled our end of the bargain.”

She raised her hand, rubbing thumb and forefinger. The Someshwari scoffed.

“You get paid when he’s on his way, not a moment before,” she said. “Wait here.”

They waited in strained silence as the Someshwari strode away, disappearing into the dark. Even had talking so close to the docks not been a risk, Song suspected they would have stayed silent. She could feel the tension in the air, the coil tightening. To the Forty-Ninth, this was the end of a long and rocky journey.

Which was true enough.

Captain Chameli was back, quicker than last time, with a satchel bag a thick-bearded Aztlan man whose arms were like steel bands. He was carrying a wooden barrel, which he set down without even a grunt.

“Where’s the meat?” he asked.

Tristan was pointed out to him, and it was distressing how easily the sailor pulled him up and stuffed the barrel with his body. The Someshwari captain provided a lid with two breathing holes on it, which the sailor stuck in with a single knock. He then hoisted up the barrel experimentally, for the first time showing some strain, and put it down.

“I can,” he told his captain. “Just not at a run.”

“It’ll do,” Captain Chameli grunted. “Get him going.”

That had the Forty-Ninth ruffled, several reaching towards weapons, until the older woman rolled her eyes at them. She tossed the satchel bag at Ramona’s feet.

“The coin is in there,” she said. “I’ll stay until you are finished counting.”

The Lierganen student knelt and popped open the buckles, everyone – even Song – leaning in to look at the inside of the leather bag. What awaited was stacked rolls of the largest gold coins had ever seen, which Ramona began removing. She reached out and was handed one by Huang, who then flinched when Tengfei glared at him. Ignoring the byplay, Song tested the weight and studied the coins. Ten a roll, larger than even the largest coins from the Imperial Someshwar.

They were stamped with the image of a thicket of olive trees on one side and a griffin rearing up on the other, betraying the Sacromontan origins. These were, Song realized with a start, selvas. Tribute coins, they were called, as they were minted to be worth five golden ramas coins and so useless for day-to-day use. Of the Sacromonte currency they were the rarest coins, as despite the name tributes paid to the city were usually in ingots instead of actual coinage.

There were ten rolls inside, which meant the Forty-Ninth had just been handed a sum of five hundred ramas. That was the yearly income of a wealthy trader, she thought, or an aristocrat with a respectable estate. It was, she calculated a heartbeat later, more than half over what a brigade of four would receive over an entire year at Scholomance. Gods, no wonder they had been willing to take so many risks. Even some of the princelings would think twice for such a sum.

There was a thump as a roll was thrown at her feet, then a second.

“There,” Ramona said. “As agreed, a third.”

It was not, Song almost said. Counting the roll already in her hand, three coins should be removed from another roll then two silvers provided from elsewhere. Approximately. On the other hand, by the cold looks she was receiving from the cabalists of the Forty-Ninth she suspected pushing her luck would end badly. Instead she tucked away the roll she held in her belt bag and crouched to add the other two.

It was overfull, part of a roll peeking out, which felt almost obscene.

“All finished?” Captain Chameli drily asked.

“I am,” Song said. “Ramona?”

“All paid up,” the Lierganen replied. “A pleasure doing business with you, captain.”

“Sure,” the Someshwari snorted. “If we meet again, I won’t know you.”

Without so much as a nod to any of them, Chameli Kalra turn to show them a clean pair of heels and walked away. They watched her disappear into the shadows of the street.

“Well,” Ramona mused, “they can’t all be charmers.”

A snort from Fara.

“Let’s head back,” Muchen grunted. “Staying here is a risk.”

“Agreed,” Song said, putting on feeling.

She took the lead, taking them towards Coatl Street – to the right of the cut through the Triangle they’d taken to get to the docks, but similar in length. None objected, though the pace she took was brisk enough she had to slow for a panting Huang. Bringing irritation to her fore, she let them pass before her save for Captain Ramona who stayed at her side. They still reached the place in time.

Song’s eyes lingered on mottled red shutters that looked only a stiff breeze away from falling off their hinges. The corner of Coatl Street and Lippy Lane, the door by the stooped red shutters. This was it.

“Well,” Ramona cheerfully said, “that was a productive night, wasn’t it?”

A prelude to their parting ways.

“It’s not over yet,” Song Ren replied.

In a single, smooth gesture she drew her pistol and shot Muchen He in the back of the knee. Skiritai were Skiritai, so he caught the movement – and though he could not move quickly enough, a porcelain arm sprouted to covered his knee. The salt munitions tore through it like it was wet paper, blood and bone shards splattering the ground.

There was an utterly still moment, as if no one else could quite believe what she had just done.

“What the f-” Ramona began, but then the door flew open and chaos reigned.

A bolt of darkness struck Huang Pan in the side, his sleeve catching with black and oily flames, while Tupoc leaped out through the doorway with a loud whoop – his segmented spear glinting in the light. Song tossed away her pistol reached for her blade while Captain Ramona drew hers, Tengfei Pan letting out a surprised yelp when someone threw what sounded like a rock at his head.

Fara took a skillfully thrown hatchet in the leg, Maryam stepping out of the same alley as Tupoc’s signifier.

“Ren,” Ramona snarled. “You cursed-

She moved as she spoke, swinging wildly, and Song’s lip curled with contempt. Losing your head was no way to keep it. A step back, ceding the ground, and Ramona swung again – Song caught her wrist with her free hand, tugging her already overextended form forward. She smashed her guard into the other woman’s nose, shattering something and cutting into the cheeks.

Ramona stumbled back, shouting, and Song kicked her in the stomach. That tripped her, and as she fell Song calmly approached as she kept an eye on the rest of the skirmish. Tengfei had been beaten by someone, likely Tupoc, but the Izcalli was now putting his spear at the wounded Muchen’s throat.  Maryam had needed help from Expendable to take down Fara, but they had that handled and Huang Pan was kneeling with his hands behind his head.

No longer on fire, at least.

“It’s finished,” Song said, kicking the sword out of Ramona’s hand.

The captain tried to reach for her pistol, but this time Song’s boot hammered into her chin. She swallowed a scream and did not try again. Maryam, hood down and bloody hatchet in hand came to join her.

“This the captain, then?” she asked.

Song was too slow to answer, another stepping into her shoes as the Fourth moved to secure the wounded of the Forty-Ninth.

“The very one,” Tupoc drawled. “She’s having a rough night, our friend Captain Ramona.”

Song knelt by her, the Lierganen’s bloodied face thick with hate. She spat.

“You fucked it all up,” Ramona gasped. “It was a perfectly good deal, the rat for the gold, and you just-”

“All are free under Heaven,” Song coldly replied. “We’ve killed kings to teach Vesper that lesson, Ramona. Did you truly think I would abjure it for coin?”

“Ugh, now it smells all sanctimonious in here,” Tupoc drawled, leaning against his spear and fanning his hand before his face. “Have the decency to just torture her instead, would you?”

She ignored him.

“The warehouse with our effects,” Song said. “Where is it?”

“Fuck you,” Ramona rasped. “What are you going to do, hi-”

Before Song could so much as reply, Maryam drew her hatchet at hacked into Ramona’s foot – it sank between two toes and bit down until it hit bone, the Lierganen screaming hoarsely into the night. The Izvorica, cold-eyed, then wrenched it out to the sound of a second scream.

A heartbeat of silence, then a low chuckle from Tupoc.

“That one’s on me,” he confessed. “I didn’t think Khaimov was listening.”

He was again ignored.

“Tristan’s still on the ship,” Maryam evenly said. “I’m not wasting my time being pleasant about this, slaver. If you want to enter Watch custody with limbs still attached, answer the fucking question.”

Ramona, shivering in pain and bleeding, looked up at Maryam Khaimov and saw only ice staring back. She shivered again. Song said nothing when the gaze returned to her, merely cocking an eyebrow.

“Soulless fucking hollow,” she spat, then grit her teeth and turned to Song. “Septim Street, a few minutes east of the tinker workshop. The house with the green roof, the stuff’s in the basement.”

Maryam’s hand rose again.

“It’s all I know,” Ramona snarled.

The Izvorica was eyed the other foot, but Song caught her gaze and shook her head. It was one thing to use violence as part of an interrogation, another to toy with a prisoner. Maryam grunted, then leaned down to wipe her hatchet on Ramona’s clothes. The Lierganen flinched, in no small part because the other woman chose to do it an inch below her neck.

“Once again, the Tianxi ruin everything,” Tupoc complained. “You could have let her strike the other foot, at least, make it match.”

Song would admit, to her mild shame, that on grounds of pure symmetry she considered it for half a moment. Instead she rose to her feet and dusted off her coat.

“There will be garrison officers waiting for us on Regnant Avenue,” she said. “We only need one of them to confess to have a reason to search the caravel.”

With a full company of armed watchmen, which would put every sailor on that cursed boat under arrest when they found a student imprisoned inside. They’d get to cool their heels in a goal for a few days before the Watch had them all shot and the Palmyran was appropriated as criminal property.

“Try the Malani first,” Tupoc said. “She’s already had to pay up with Lady Knit, she’ll do anything to avoid doing it again.”

That was, unpleasantly enough, probably good advice. Song opened her mouth to reply when she was interrupted by a ruckus in the distance – a few streets down, lanterns were being lit at the docks and shouts echoing across the cobblestones.

“Song,” Maryam urgently said, “what’s happening?”

Fuck, Song thought, silver eyes dipping between the islands of lantern light to see what it was that had men shouting.

“The Palmyran is trying to sail away with Tristan on board,” she hissed. “Tupoc, get the prisoners to the Watch and tell them we need to move now.”

The Izcalli raised an eyebrow even as she reached for her musket.

“And what are you going to be doing?” he asked.

“Stopping them,” she said, and broke into a run.

—

Tupoc was not one to listen to sensible orders, so Song was not surprised when he ignored hers and followed her down the street as Maryam trailed behind them. The surprise was that he’d bothered to order Alejandra Torrero to do what Song had asked of him before taking off.

The real insult was that she’d had a head start and he was still pulling ahead of her.

He was the first to run through the covenant pillars, but Song better saw what was happening out on the docks. The Palymran was still at the leftmost dock, but it was leaving. The dockworkers were arguing with a pair of large sailors untying the knots keeping them moored – and there was only one left – but neither were actually trying to stop them. The caravel was allowed to leave whenever it wished, this was all just very irregular.

She was the second past the pillar, but she slowed and Maryam shot past her as she brought up her musket. She’d hoped she would not have to fire it tonight – her arm was still fragile – but there was no time to hesitate. Slowly walking forward, she took aim and pulled the trigger.

Red bloomed on the first sailor’s forehead.

As he dropped the dockworkers threw themselves down and the other sailor panicked, reaching for a cutlass as Song began to reload. Clean, powder, ball, aim. The man was halfway through hacking down the ropes when Song’s shot pulped his throat. She broke into a run after that, hoping to catch up after the others, but horror caught in her throat when she saw Captain Chameli on the caravel deck with a blade out – and cutting the rope on her end.

Even as she ran, the Palmyran began to push off the docks.

“No,” Song shouted.

She was too far, she’d never get there in time, but the others – a glance told her they were short too, Tupoc reaching the very end of the dock as the caravel came clear of it. She saw him hesitate to leap for a moment, then back down. Maryam, who had fallen behind, was bent over and muttering when Song caught up to her.

A Sign hung before her, but by the time Song was close enough to feel its hum in the air it had collapsed.

“Come on,” Maryam whispered. “Come on. Work.”

She drew the Sign again, trails of oily darkness, but it dissipated. The Izvorica yelped, smoke wafting off the tip of her fingers. Maryam’s face was the picture of anguish, eyes rimmed red, but even so she tried again.

“Work, damn you,” she hissed. “I know you can.”

The Sign thickened, buzzing like an angry hive, but Song could already tell it would fail. It felt angry, out of control. Maryam’s mind had clouded. When it shattered, it was into jagged shards that melted a strip of the signifier’s sleeve. The Izvorica swallowed.

“Maryam,” Song said, “you cannot-”

“Work with me,” Maryam croaked out. “Please, just this once. Work with me.”

The plea echoed, rang like a bell into a world suddenly gone quiet.

And this time, when Maryam Khaimov reached for the dark, it came to her like an eager hound.

Fingers traced the Sign in hurried strokes, hers and the other’s both, until the Sign hung in the air like suspended obsidian – large as a torso, rippling like water.

“Come back here,” Maryam snarled, and slammed her fist through the Sign.

Only instead of screams and melted flesh Song saw the Gloam collapse into a spinning sleeve of crawling characters, hovering an inch above Maryam’s sleeve. In the distance, between the stripes of Orrery light, strands of Gloam coalesced into half a dozen torrents of darkness that slammed into the sails of the Palmyran.

They swelled inwards, pushed by the Gloam winds, and the caravel slowed to a crawl before stopping outright. There was shouting, which only grew louder and more panicked when the masts groaned and began to bend backwards under the furious winds – the caravel’s aft smashed into the dock with a thunderous crack.

And then the Gloam was gone, Maryam dropping to her knees and throwing up all over the docks. Song reached out for her, hesitantly, but between heaves the Izvorica slapped away her hand.

“Go,” she forced out. “Ship.”

A whoop ahead: Tupoc had not hesitated at all, it seemed. She could not afford to either.

Behind her the harbor guards were shouting, and she dared hope they would muster to storm the ship. She must buy them time to get there. Leaving Maryam behind, she ran for the edge of the docks. The caravel was not a large or a tall ship, but it was still too high for a mere leap to get her onto the deck. She had to climb the back rigging, hearing on the deck above a pistol being fired and someone screaming in pain.

She climbed over the edge to find a sword being swung at her, tumbling forward as it sliced through the air. She threw herself into the sailor’s leg, tripping them down, and then rolled away just as someone took a potshot from the forward deck. She turned just long enough to rip out her pistol and unload it in the tripped sailor’s belly, rising to her feet as she watched Captain Chameli standing at the wheel with a furious look on her face.

The Someshwari woman was looking at the docks, which were being swept by a tide of armed blackcloaks.

“Lazar,” the captain shouted. “Get the boy. We need a hostage.”

The sailor answering the call was a one-eyed, skinny cabin boy who ran towards what should be the captain’s cabin. Song ran after him, around Tupoc laughing as he swept his spear between two sailors with cutlasses. One of them was now missing most of her teeth. The cabin boy, Lazar, got to the door before she could and wrenched it open-

And got a chair smashed into his face, Tristan grunting with effort.

The cabin boy dropped and the gray-eyed thief blinked in surprise, as if surprised at how well that’d worked. Though he should have been a bound prisoner the whole time and untouched, he had somehow gotten a massive bruise on his cheek and a cut on his scalp. He was also no longer tied up, so Song had some guesses as to how that had happened.

“Song,” he said. “What in the Manes is-”

Song saw the light of the flint spark just in time, grabbing him by the neck and throwing them both down. The bullet tore into her coat and she felt a flash of heat, but when she rolled over she barely felt any blood. A graze, not a hit.

“Shit,” Tristan said, helping her up. “Come on, we need to jump into the-”

Vision swimming, she yanked him out of the way of the swing. The large sailor from earlier, the one who’d carried the barrel. He looked furious and- once, twice, thrice. A volley was unloaded into the man’s back as blackcloaks swept the deck screaming for everyone to kneel. Song did, punch drunk but hardly deaf, and a heartbeat later Tristan followed suit.

“Fuck me,” the thief murmured. “We did it.”

“We did,” Song said, if he caught the surprise in her voice he was kind enough to say.

—

In the end, only two sailors from the Palmyran survived: the cabin boy with the missing eye and the woman whose teeth Tupoc had shattered.

Both were clapped in irons after being dragged off the ship, bruised and bloody, and the rooks keeping guard were looking at them as if they were vermin. Song helped Tristan off the caravel, the thief limping – though he’d deemed his leg not broken – and leaning against her. He was noticeably uncomfortable at the touch, so she set him down by Maryam’s side. The blue-eyed woman was no longer emptying her stomach, but there were traced of bile on her chin and she still looked nauseous.

The docks were getting crowded, she saw, as another few prisoners were dragged in by hard-faced blackcloaks. The Forty-Ninth were made to kneel under the pillared temple that served as the gate to the docks, watchmen with muskets in hand looking over them.

Tupoc’s second had duly notified the garrison officers that Wen had asked to be waiting, which meant Song was able to secure the withdrawal of the Thirteenth and the Fourth with but a conversation. She was too tired to deal with Tupoc quite yet, even though manners demanded she should make an attempt, so she doubled back.

Song still had one conversation left before the curtain call. Maryam was passed out and snoring when she returned, the gray-eyed thief watching over her like a hawk.

“It might be best if she slept at the Meadow tonight,” Song whispered. “I have never seen her wield Gloam on such a scale before.”

Tristan looked down at the Izvorica fondly.

“Leave her for a bit more,” he said, then groaned and stretched out. “We are due a talk, anyhow.”

Song inclined her head. They did not go far, only to one of the many stone benches near the dock walls. He sat first and she kept room between them when following. For a moment they sat there in the dim lights of the Orrery, watching the stripes of pale carving across the distant dark.

“I owe you,” Tristan said, sudden and blunt. “What do you want for it?”

She did not answer immediately. The urge was there to ask him to stay with the Thirteenth, but she knew better. He would accept, she thought. The Sacromontan was, in his own way, ruthlessly scrupulous about debts. He would do it, but then Tristan would see being part of the brigade as chains and her as his debtor.

And he was not the kind of man to ever trust a debtor.

“I would like,” Song finally said, “for the two of us to have an honest conversation.”

He studied her for a moment.

“Are you sure it can’t be anything else?” he asked, tone almost whining.

“Certain,” Song drily replied.

His goddess leaned over his head, saying something Song could not hear, and she could see his cheek muscles tremble the slightest bit as he forced himself not to react.

“Proceed,” he said. “I think I have a concussion, anyway, which is about two thirds of honesty.”

She hesitated, but not even a heartbeat. Breath before the plunge.

“I can see your goddess,” Song said. “And your contract.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her.

“I’m aware.”

The red-dressed goddess leaned in too close and tried murmur something into Song’s ear. The closeness was overly familiar, but the knowledge that she was not truly ‘there’ helped make it somewhat tolerable.

“I cannot hear her, however,” Song noted.

“Lucky you,” Tristan frankly said.

Her lips twitched at the utterly outraged looked on the redclad goddess’ face, and the apparent furious berating that ensued. Not that the levity was destined to stay for long.

“I have never heard of anyone being visited so often by their god without turning into a Saint,” she said. “I have been expecting you to turn into one for months, and…”

She frowned, looking for the right words.

“That you did not turn into one was almost as alarming,” Song admitted. “It meant you were breaking the rules, somehow, and I could not hope to predict the consequences.”

The thief stared at her, grunted.

“It’s been-”

Song raised a hand to interrupt him.

“You don’t need to tell me,” she said. “I do not bring up the matter to seek answers of you. It has been pointed out to me that I have not earned the right to ask them from you.”

He grimaced.

“I can understand the concern,” Tristan said, and it was an olive branch of sorts.

He bit the inside of his cheek.

“It’s been this way for years,” he said. “If I was going to turn into a Saint, I already would have.”

“That is reassuring to hear,” she admitted. “I expect having been exposed her wiles for years will have inured you some.”

He slowly blinked.

“Her what now?”

“Her wiles,” Song repeated, stressing the syllables in Antigua. “Did I mispronounce it?”

“Oh Manes,” Tristan muttered, “you can’t hear her.”

“I cannot,” Song hesitantly confirmed. Again.

The thief met her eyes square on and laid a hand on her shoulder, face seriously.

“Song, Fortuna is terrible,” he said, tone heartfelt. “And I don’t mean it in some eldritch way, I mean that she is bad at existence.”

Song paused. Opened her mouth, then closed it. Swallowed.

“She couldn’t trick a child into doing her bidding even with an entire barrel of candied dates,” Tristan said, taking back his hand. “She has lost arguments to pigeons.”

Pigeons. As in plural?

“So all the talking,” Song trailed off.

“Today she’s mostly been complaining about how Hage banned her from the Chimerical and insisting I should buy Maryam some blue ribbons we saw on Templeward,” he said.

A pause.

“They’re overpriced,” he added. “I’m not paying silver for those.”

Song felt a little faint. The goddess, Fortuna, she was only one of the troubles between them but certainly one of the larger ones. A constant presence she must pretend not to see, a poisonous whispering ghost trying to tip the thief past the line of Sainthood.

To learn she had been rhetorically defeated by at least two pigeons was something a blow to her believed understanding of the situation.

Song passed a hand through her hair, somewhat at loss as to what she should say. Apologize, for having never asked? It seemed meaningless when they both knew he would never have told. She settled on something simpler, if no less true for it.

“My god is also a jackass,” she told him. “I sympathize.”

His face went still, for a moment, and then to her surprise he burst out laughing so loudly it echoed across the water. He swallowed it, held it in, but then their eyes met again and it escaped his belly as Song found herself joining in. By the time she stopped her cheeks ached and her belly hurt. It took a while for the two of them to gain back their breath, the pants their only sound aside from the quiet lick of the sea against the docks.

“All right,” Tristan suddenly said. “Fine.”

Her heart caught.

“Fine?” she asked.

“I make no promises for how long,” the thief said.

“I did not ask for any,” Song serenely replied.

Tristan grunted, sounding displeased.

“I already bought the carrot seeds, it’d be a waste not to use them,” he argued.

“It would be,” she agreed.

He scowled at her.

“The lack of smugness makes it worse,” he complained.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Song Ren lied.

Tonight, she decided, had been a good night.

Tonight was the night.

Song rose early and made breakfast: eggs, bread, bacon rashers. Not at all a meal she enjoyed, but it was hearty fare and the others seemed inordinately fond of it. Tristan stumbled in a few minutes later, his hair in no way distinguishable from usual even though he had clearly just got out of bed.

“Fancy,” he said after a peek at the pan, sliding into a seat at the kitchen table.

“The eggs only had a day left,” she replied.

He took his eggs scrambled, mixed with onions and tomatoes if there were any to spare. There were just enough of the latter left from the potage that sprucing up his eggs did not feel like a waste, so into the pan they went. He waited until the bacon was added to his plate before thanking her, cutting his own slice from the loaf. Just a little diagonally, to the left of straight. Ugh.

She tried not to visibly react, but he was suddenly all smiles. The little bastard had definitely noticed.

Maryam only emerged when they were both done with their plates, dressed for the day and freshly washed. Song heated her rashers again and made her eggs cooked on both sides, which went to show that bad taste could cross the ocean. It was one of these historical tragedies that outside Tianxia only the Someshwari seemed to understand eggs were best eaten as omelets.

“Ooh, you even put in the herbs,” Maryam enthused.

With her mouth full, which rather evened out the expression of appreciation in Song’s book.

“I’ll leave the dishes to you two,” she said, getting up. “I need to get ready for the day.”

She paused and carefully did not look at the man in question.

“Will you be needing the washbasin, Tristan?”

A pause, long and thoughtful.

“Did you cook the breakfast we like just to be sure I’d feel guilty enough to agree?” the thief asked.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Song Ren lied. “I’ll leave a clean cloth for you. And a comb.”

“The things a man does for bacon,” Tristan gravely said.

“You can’t cross her, she’s the only one who can make it crunchy but still bendy,” Maryam whispered.

Confident in her victory, Song retreated upstairs as they began bickering over how Tristan overcooked his and she ‘slurped up raw pig entrails’. Uncle Zhuge had never mentioned the importance of maintaining cooking superiority when preparing her for captaincy, which was sane and reasonable but still somehow felt like an oversight on his part.

The Tianxi fetched the clothes she had laid out, closed the door to the washing room and shed her night clothes before scrubbing herself thoroughly with cloth and soap. She rinsed and wiped before checking on her braid in the copper mirror, finding it a little loose. She pulled it up and combed her hair freshly before braiding it anew, in that easy pattern Mother had taught her as a girl.

When she was finished she put on layer after layer, checking on the buttons and adjusting the collar. The combat fit for today, though her belt was downstairs with her guns and sword. Song gave herself one last once over in the looking glass, facing a neat profile with a severe edge to its cast. The impression she wanted to give, now most of all.

Her interlocutor would only see any hint of weakness as an invitation to take liberties.

Giving a satisfied nod, she changed the water of the washbasin and put away her nightclothes after folding them. She dipped back into the room to place a clean cloth folded where it could not be missed, along with a small comb and even the soap.

The latter was a long shot, but a girl could dream.

—

Tonight was the night.

Angharad had been looking forward to it ever since Lord Musa handed her the formal invitations, so she rose already in a good mood. The house was small enough the smell of breakfast spread through every nook and cranny, Angharad padding into the kitchen in her nightdress to find Rong’s usual: warm rice porridge, a traditional Tianxi meal. They made the same thing every morning, which she would have come to find tedious if not for the many plates of toppings spread around the porridge bowls on their cramped kitchen table.

Eggs, chopped turnips and carrots, some sort of ruddy bean paste, stripes of cooked chicken and fish, sundry spices: the porridge stayed largely the same, but could be made to taste rather differently according to what one sprinkled in.

Rong Ma was setting down the last plate when she arrived, and they nodded a greeting before sliding onto a stool. The room that was both their kitchen and their drawing room was smaller than most, a consequence of having one bedroom more than most houses on the street. It made for crowded common space but appreciable privacy when such was wished for.

“Good morning,” Angharad greeted them, claiming her own stool. “Were you out late? I didn’t even hear you come in last night.”

“Shalini tossed me out at the eleventh hour, so no,” Rong drily replied. “As if she wasn’t going to be up burning candles over those novels of hers whether I tinkered or not.”

Not for the first time, Angharad eyed the other blackcloak for any resentment at their once workshop having been turned into her bedroom only to find none. The Tianxi seemed to find it somewhat inconvenient to have to walk back and forth between the houses, but remained otherwise indifferent. It had been a relief not to end up on the wrong foot from the start.

“I think we’re not supposed to know about those,” Zenzele noted, walking into the kitchen.

He slid into the stool between them, immediately reaching for the eggs. He was an egg hog, Angharad had learned, though surprisingly light on spices. Mother would have called the way he ate hollow food.

“Are they not explorers’ journals?” she asked. “That seems an odd thing to hide.”

They were in Samratrava so the actual contents were unknown to her, but the covers sometimes had ship outlines on them.

“Something is getting explored in those books, all right,” Rong muttered, sprinkling turnip liberally.

“They are Someshwari filth about brave Ramayan merchant captains seducing pretty foreigners while becoming fabulously wealthy,” Zenzele amusedly explained. “Every other book an evil Tianxi admiral gives a monologue before losing to superior Ramayan charm and cunning.”

“The Yellow Earth tried to get them banned back in the Republic of Wendi on account of them being royalist propaganda, but they sell too well for the courts to allow it,” Rong sighed. “That’s Wendi for you – they’d sell pieces of the Circle, if the profits were good enough.”

“Tianxi are not alone in such habits. Pillow books about noble swordmistresses being captured and ravished by savage Sunflower Lords are quite popular with some circles, back in Malan,” Angharad admitted.

She then slid a slightly guilty look Zenzele’s way. Women’s talk, that, not the sort of thing one discussed around husbands. The dark-skinned man only cocked an eyebrow.

“The books for men are horrid,” he told her.

He popped an egg into his mouth, swallowed.

“Tree metaphors, Angharad,” he said, voice harrowed. “Tree metaphors as far as the eye can see.”

She choked on her mouthful of porridge, choking until Rong slapped her back. She sent them a grateful look and the meal was polished off with haste. The three were up earlier than trek to Scholomance would warrant, in part because the Tianxi tinker wanted to pick up some affairs from their workshop and Angharad had an appointment of her own. She began to bring away the dishes, as was her duty – unlike under Song, in the house tasks were split but did not rotate – but Zenzele stopped her.

“I’ve nothing but a lazy morning ahead,” he told her. “Leave me the dishes and see if you can get in early at the shop.”

“Ah, that’s right,” Rong said, turning to eye her. “Your dress for the banquet.”

“I planned my time so I could hold up my end,” Angharad insisted.

“I misplaced mine, so I need something to spend it on,” Zenzele said, shooing her off. “Away with you.”

“I cannot-”

“Tell me if Musa uses the wrong fork at any point tonight and we shall call it even,” he said.

It would have been graceless to push the matter further, so Angharad gave in. She returned to her room for a wash and a quick change. After her goodbyes, it was a matter of moments before her boots hit pavement.

—

Song had believed Tupoc Xical to be setting the time and place largely to inconvenience her, so it was a surprise to find he was actually hard at work.

Near the southern end of Regnant Avenue, just short of the barracks, were a few blocks’ worth of courtyard houses. The Lierganen equivalent, anyway, which was smaller and meant for a single branch of a family instead of the tree. The Watch had forbidden them from being used as housing so that the barracks wouldn’t be shooting at students if they had to turn their cannons north, leaving a row of surprisingly decent training spaces in the form of stone courtyards far from any lemures that no one had claim over.

And training was actually what Tupoc was using the house he’d directed her towards for.

Song stepped through the threshold to the sound of wood clattering against wood, finding a half-naked and barefoot Tupoc batting away the shaft of his cabalist’s spear. Expendable – Velaphi, that tragedy of a contract revealed his true name to be – growled and stepped in, trying to hammer into his captain’s chest with his grip. The Izcalli deftly danced around the blow, kicking him in the back of a knee and clicking his tongue as the amber-eyed man stumbled.

“Temper,” Tupoc chided. “Either fight with the beast or fight with your head: the middle ground is the worst of both worlds, and the gods know your best is still so terribly mediocre.”

Resting his spear against his shoulder, he then tapped a thoughtful finger against his chin.

“Also, stop holding your spear as if I were a warthog looking for a spit,” the Izcalli added. “If you flick and duck against a human, they’ll just gut you.”

“I’m not used to fighting people,” Expendable bit back.

“Pick fights with strangers,” Tupoc suggested, then revealed he had known she was there the whole time by flicking a sly look her way. “Why, hello there stranger!”

She almost rolled her eyes. The only reason she refrained was that he fed on others reacting to his antics, much like some discount Izcalli devil.

“Tupoc,” Song replied, the nodded a polite greeting at the other man. “Expendable.”

The Malani pulled down his hat over his eyes before turning her way and returning the nod, sweat glistening around his neck. Unlike Tupoc, he was fully dressed in a regular uniform.

“Captain Ren,” Expendable nodded back to you. “Good day to you. I was just leaving.”

The courtyard walls had iron spikes nailed into them, almost like makeshift racks, and the Malani hastily put up his spear there. Song entered the courtyard and moved out of the threshold to make room for him to leave, getting a grateful nod as Expendable all but fled her presence. Song turned to Tupoc, silently cocking an eyebrow.

The pale-eyed Izcalli was standing by a barrel in the corner of the courtyard, dipping a cloth inside and washing off his sweat. When he noticed her expression, he laughed.

“I have told my cabal you are a meddlesome witch who can read their thoughts with but a glance,” he casually informed her.

Most of the half-naked men Song had seen in her life had been gravely wounded, but she had seen enough aside from that to know that there was nothing natural about the perfect symmetry of Tupoc Xical’s upper body. And when she used perfect, she meant perfect: as far as her eyes could tell there was not a single asymmetry or imperfection across the whole of him, be it the muscles of his belly or the corner of his eyebrows.

“A pointless waste of all our times,” Song replied.

“Irritating you is always worth my time, Song,” Tupoc feelingly said.

The Izcalli dunked his head into the water barrel. Song’s eyebrow cocked even higher, as while he leant down she got a glimpse of his back and found there was a tattoo between his shoulder blades. An elaborate golden coin, displaying some sort of three-headed creature made of bones. Not any Izcalli coinage she knew of. He emerged after a few seconds, shaking his wet hair – which ended up settling perfectly with barely a brush of his hand – and sighing with pleasure.

“You wanted something?” Tupoc asked.

For you to put a shirt on, you immodest harlot, she almost said. That would guarantee he went half-naked in her presence whenever it was even remotely possible for months, however, so she refrained.

“I have work for your brigade,” she said. “Tonight. I’ve come prepared to offer appropriate payment for it.”

Setting down the cloth, the Izcalli padded away on the stone to pick up a larger towel and dry himself. He kept it hung loosely on his neck afterwards, which was no shirt but better than nothing.

“So you did lose Tredegar,” Tupoc mused. “Her sitting with darling Ferranda seemed significant but it was no sure thing. Unlike your needing to hire muscle.”

There had been no avoiding his figuring that out, but it was an open secret by now anyway. Song had come prepared to take it on the nose.

“She will be leaving the Thirteenth,” she acknowledged, then moved on. “The opposition I would hire you against is a-”

“No,” Tupoc easily said.

Song’s brow rose.

“No?”

“Without Tredegar you’re not nearly as interesting,” the Izcalli shrugged. “Maryam might warrant a second look if that spite ever translates into power but Tristan, you?”

He snorted.

“There is nothing more boring than a game I’ll win every time,” Tupoc said.

Arrogance, Song thought. He was better with a spear than she was with a sword – or a spear, for that matter – but he was not better than a bullet. If she caught him at a distance, or in a place where she could snuff out the lights, Song was confident in killing him. Idly, she wondered if he was truly refusing or trying to goad her into something unwise. By the way he was standing, loose-limbed and watchful, it might just be the second.

He’d love an excuse to get her in the ring, she suspected. He seemed like the sort who thought that you could only get someone’s measure by crossing blades or something equally asinine. Unfortunately for Tupoc Xical, she was less than interested in playing his games.

“If you do not let me finish my offer,” she said, “you will regret it.”

Pale eyes light up with glee.

“Are you threatening me, Song Ren?” Tupoc smiled.

Smelling a fight, he must think. It would be satisfying to pull out the rug under him.

“Of course not,” she replied. “If I were threatening you, Tupoc, I’d be telling you that the only thing it would cost me to ruin you is an inkwell and a stack of papers.”

She leaned in.

“A sheet in front of every door on Hostel Street, with your name and the knowledge that you cannot touch bats and spiders.”

The Izcalli stiffened for the barest of moments, tried to play it out as stretching. They both knew she was not fooled in the slightest.

“Admitting you can read contracts?” Tupoc mused. “Bold. A girl could get killed over that.”

They’re already trying to kill me, Song thought. Maybe Nianzu had been right, maybe there was no winning this, but they would not bury her cringing. What was the, if she spent her life toeing the line only to end up dragged into a hole so vengeful children could torture her to death? She had used her contract without truly using it, and that had to end.

“That won’t put your secrets back in the box,” she said. “How long will the little show with your cabal work, if they know killing you is easy as putting a spider in your bedroll while you sleep? The fear would be gone, Tupoc, and not only for them. For everyone.”

Because Tupoc, clever as he was picking his battles, only still drew breath because he was strong enough to fight those battles. So long as he was too dangerous to be worth tangling with over small matters. If that balance shifted even slightly, it all came down on his head. Pale eyes hardened.

“I would kill you over that,” he said.

Calmly, like it was a common and simple thing. No more difficult than drawing water from a well.

“You’d try,” Song shrugged, unimpressed. “But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not here to threaten you. I’m here to give you a gift.”

“Well, you certainly have my attention,” Tupoc drawled. “What do you have for me, Song?”

“One,” she said.

“Copper?” he said, looking her up and down. “I’m not unwilling, mind you, but it will take more romance. At least two candlelit dinners and perhaps some of that sultry Someshwari poetry.”

She eyed him with open disdain.

“I’d bed Tristan first,” she said. “At least I would not be risking rabies.”

“All right, with talk like that I’ll bargain down to the one dinner,” Tupoc conceded.

“One reading,” Song said. “Your choice.”

He opened his mouth to try to put a knife in her, but she had seen it coming from miles away.

“It cannot be a member of the Thirteenth Brigade, past or present,” she told me.

“Tredegar’s leaving you,” the Izcalli drawled, as if she had needed a reminder. “And still you’d extend her protection?”

“Congratulations,” Song said. “You can understand Antigua. We will make a civilized man of you in a decade or two, at this rate.””

“And if I insist?” Tupoc smirked.

He asked in Centzon, because someone somewhere had failed in their solemn duty to beat an acceptable personality into him.

“The terms remain unchanged,” Song replied in the same, cocking her head to the side. “Were you somehow under the impression that your pompous smugness would make a difference?”

A small twitch, almost impossible to miss, but with eyes like hers almost was more than enough.

“I could refuse,” Tupoc said.

Trying it out as a threat. He did that often, she had noticed. Putting the words out to see if the other would react, then playing them off a jest if they did not land as he liked. The parry to that was simply not to buy in.

“You could,” Song agreed. “But you won’t.”

Because what I offer is of great worth, and you are only probing to see if I am desperate, she thought. He hummed, stroking his hairless chin. He stretched it out, as if deliberating, but she could see in the way he stood that the balance had settled.

“And what kind of gift would you want in exchange?” he asked.

“The only thing you have to give,” Song said. “Violence.”

“Now you sweet-talk me,” he complained. “Who against?”

Song told him, and why, getting an impressed whistle as answer.

“And here I thought you were the boring kind of ambitious,” Tupoc said. “That sounds like an interesting evening.”

A beat.

“I could strike that bargain,” he said. “There is only one question I’d like answered first.”

He leaned in.

“My contract, you can read it all?” Tupoc asked.

“I have no reason to answer that,” Song said.

“I’ll walk on the deal,” he casually said.

Yet his eyes were cold, belying the truth of it. The Tianxi smoothed away her displeasure. Typical of the man, he had waited to leverage her until the deal was all but done – until there was something for her to lose. She would admire the deftness, were it not wielded to her detriment.

“I can,” Song conceded. “Though I do not necessarily understand the words.”

He seemed amused.

“What’s tripping you up?” the Izcalli said. “I might be of help.”

She rolled her eyes, called the bluff.

“Yekayotl,” she said. “I could not find a proper translation.”

“You wouldn’t, it is not classical Centzon,” Tupoc chuckled. “Temple dialect. It means ‘perfection’ as a finite state of being.”

Song frowned, surprised in two different ways. The first that he would share this at all, the second at the implication. Tupoc Xical’s contract had him forever towards moving towards yekayotl, which meant his god believed his current body to be perfect. Or perhaps a ‘perfect slate’ that any deviation from was corrected by his contract.

What he did was not healing so much as pulling on aether to fix the slate – which explained why he was capable of both ‘healing’ his wounds and purging poison. Poison was not part of the slate, so it was burned out.

It was a surprisingly narrow range of immortality he boasted, Song mused. A thousand cuts would force him to draw too much on his contract, likely killing him or inflicting sainthood, while the instant death of being shot through the head would kill him before his contract could begin mending the slate and so void the pact to his god by way of death.

Much anything else, though, he would survive. And anything lost would return in time, warding him from the accumulation of wounds and fractures that years of service in the Watch inevitably brought. Though she burned with questions – had he ceased aging, why was food still necessary when poison had no effect, how had the ‘perfection’ been decided on – she held her tongue. There was a difference between being told the meaning of a single word and pawing at the deepest secrets of his contract.

“I do not know what you did to catch such a god’s attention,” Song said, “but it must have been impressive.”

Tupoc laughed.

“They always believe that,” he ruefully said. “That because my lord Grave-Given is great and worshipped by millions, he must love only the most faithful priests and famous champions. That is a misunderstanding of what he is, Song.”

“And what is that?”

“Death,” Tupoc said. “Nothing before, nothing after. That is all the Grave-Given takes into his eyes: your death. You want to know how I drew his eye, Song Ren?”

He grinned.

“The darklings thought I was dead, so they threw me in the pit with the rest of the corpses,” Tupoc said. “They swaddled me in death, broken and delirious, for three days and three nights. I drank rainwater by licking at rotting skin, heard them feast and sing above as carcasses burst and I was choked by graven flesh.”

He leaned in.

“He came to me on the last day, when the shit and sickness had seeped into my wounds. When I was good as blind and more than halfway dead.”

Tupoc laughed, drew back.

“That is what a prayer to the Grave-Given is, Song. Not glory or honor or all the pretty feathers those society fucks put in their hair. Death is the only currency of any worth, and a man should know what he’s willing to spend his only coin on.”

Those pale eyes burned with fervor.

 “Else he is good only for filling the pit.”

Song’s hands clenched.

“Why tell me this?” she asked.

“On the Dominion,” Tupoc said, “you walked around like an arrogant child. Now, though?”

He stretched out, folded his hands behind his head.

“You have the walk of someone who got a glimpse of the pit,” Tupoc said. “It has me curious.”

Words to haunt a woman in the dark of night, those.

“What is your coin worth, Song Ren?” Tupoc smiled. “I look forward to finding out.”

She forced herself to stay until she had his agreement to the deal, and not a moment more.

—

The tailor Lerato ushered her in even though she had come half an hour early, pressing tea into her hand and telling her to sit while she tended to another client. The middle-aged, homely Malani woman – southern, by the accent – intended for Angharad to sit in the front but their voices were overheard and the client in question called out.

“Is that you I hear, Lady Angharad?”

A voice she was familiar with.

“Lord Thando,” she called back. “A pleasant surprise.”

He was as pleased to see her, so instead she found herself ushered into the back to sit on a plushy armchair while Thando Fenya saw to the last details of his outfit for the very same evening she was to attend. The colorful doublet in geometric patterns was an almost nostalgic sight, though longer than she was used to. Perhaps in deference to the cool evenings.  

The matching puffy trunk hose worn over breeches was pure Malani ostentation, however, a fashion that had never taken in Peredur where a nobleman was expected to be able to ride and run.

Given that Thando was somewhat plain of face and flabby-eared she would have thought the elaborate stylings might draw the eye to that plainness, but between his golden earrings and the cut the outfit rather distracted from it instead. Impressive work, though she wondered what manner of jerkin he might complete it with.

Lerato made adjustments to the shoulder fit of the doublet while they chatted, the Malani seemingly in a fine mood.

“- quite happy to hear you would be invited,” he said. “There are too many nobles from the south and the heartlands, I feel, some Pereduri blood will do the evenings good.”

“Am I to understand that House Fenya is of northern bent?” she asked.

“Our holdings are closer to the heartlands, in truth, but I was raised on the coast of Mirror Bay,” Thando said. “We own land and manors in the region.”

As did half the noble houses in Malan. Those that could afford it, anyhow: Mother had always balked at the prices, laughing that she would get more use of another carrack. They traded pleasantries about what the lands of Llanw Hall had been like – wet, more poetically said – and commiserated about how scorching weather could get in the heartlands.

The conversation turned to whispers once Lerato left the room.

“I must congratulate you on finding the shop,” Thando said. “We have been keeping it something of a secret.”

The nobly born, he meant.

“It was recommended to me by Zenzele Duma,” she said.

“A well-dressed man, Duma,” Thando approved, thumbing his ear absent-mindedly. “A shame that having him in the same room as Shange is apt to get one of them killed.”

Which would be unproductive, so only one could be invited. As Musa Shange had blood ties to prominent izinduna and greater connections within the Watch besides, so she expected from where they stood the choice had not been all that difficult to make. She could not even deny that Lord Musa had reason to be angry with Zenzele, much as she preferred the latter man to the former.

“It seems to me there are few enough of us,” Angharad delicately said, “that brokering some manner of peace would be to everyone’s advantage.”

The Thirty-First had done her many kindnesses, over the last two weeks. It was only proper for her to return them if she could.

“Ambitious,” Thando noted. “Some would call such an attempt ill-fated, but it does not seem impossible to me.”

Merely very difficult, he was implying.

“I have dabbled in ambition, should the occasion call for it,” she replied.

“Then I advise you to linger after your time,” the Malani said. “Unless I am mistaken – and I so rarely am – Musa is to visit the shop this morning.”

Given that there was only so much time left before she needed to link up with the others to begin the journey towards Scholomance, Angharad found that news heartening. Lerato could not have many visits lined up before the hour grew too late for it, meaning her odds of catching Musa were quite good. Thando finished the last of his fittings mere minutes later, and while the seamstress went to fetch Angharad’s dress the man leaned in and lowered his voice again.

“Tread carefully tonight,” he whispered. “You are Musa’s better on the dueling field, but I expect he might be a finer blade at such affairs.”

She scrutinized his face, finding it unreadable, and nodded. He had made a choice that did not please her, on the evening she fought that duel, but it had not been perfidious or unreasonable. She would not reject an expression of goodwill from him.

“It is not my first soiree,” Angharad said, “but I thank you for the warning.”

Lord Thando took his leave after settling his bill and adding a hefty tip, which she made a note to imitate.  With Uncle Osian’s gift, she could afford it. Angharad had withdrawn her part from the Thirteenth’s account after moving into the shared house, but much of that she had offered Ferranda. It was only right if she was to eat the Thirty-First’s food, draw from their powder horns and have her clothes watched by their laundress.

Her dress was exactly as she had desired, and she tried it on while Lerato prodded her with pins one more time.

“A little tighter around the waist, I think,” the seamstress muttered. “You have the shape for it.”

It did not take long for the adjustments to be finished, but Angharad claimed another cup of tea and chatted with Lerato until her next patron arrived. And, luck of lucks, it was another familiar face: tall, braided Lord Musa Shange bent his head to pass the threshold. She feigned surprise at his arrival, which he seemed amused by, and was extended an invitation to remain and chat while Mistress Lerato saw to his clothing.

Small talk about classes – more their shared Skiritai hours than the common ones – that stayed of little import, until Angharad thanked him for the invitation. He demurred receiving the thanks, as extending it had not been his decision alone, which was the opening she was waiting for.

“How are invitations decided on, anyway?” she casually asked.

“Nothing formal,” Musa said. “General accord, I suppose, is the most accurate description.”

“So any Malani nobly born that is not strongly objected to,” Angharad leadingly said.

His full lips quirked. He had caught the meaning.

“A stain on one’s reputation would disqualify,” he said.

She put on a smile.

“And these gatherings, are they are crowded affairs?”

“One might say the exclusivity is rather their point,” Musa replied.

A polite but thorough parry to her indirectly pointing out there were few highborn of the Isles present on Tolomontera. Angharad had not expected him to be easily moved, anyhow: this was more to gauge the strength of his distaste for Zenzele. Firm seemed to be a good word for it, though not so strong he extended his anger to those trying to work peace between them.

He would not have been smiling so amusedly at Angharad’s attempts otherwise.

As with Thando, the other Skiritai waited until Mistress Lerato had left the room to turn the conversation to subjects he would rather not be overheard. Unlike Thando Fenya, however, Musa invented blatant busywork for her rather than wait.

“It is an old conceit that who we were before the Watch does not matter,” Musa said, “but I expect you will know better by now.”

Angharad frowned.

“One can fall short of an ideal without renouncing it entirely,” she said.

“How genteel!” Musa exclaimed. “But that is perhaps kinder than is deserved.”

He shrugged.

“It is tempting, I’ll admit, to swallow the lies the Watch tells about itself,” Musa Shange idly said. “Purpose and honor, the hard souls standing between Vesper and the dark. Even the covenants cut pieces off the grand delusion and claim it for their own, as if to make it easier to swallow. Yet they are very much lies, in the end.”

Angharad shot him an appalled look.

“If you believe this, why enroll at all?”

“Why do men do anything?” he laughed. “I can rise high in the Watch. Higher than I ever would have in Malan, where the best I could hope for was being my sister’s sword.”

The lordling languidly shrugged.

“I do not mean to slight the black, Lady Angharad, only acknowledge the truth of what wearing the color means,” Musa said. “It is not some sacred calling but a career like any other.”

“Only a fool would attend the classes we have simply for the salaries promised us,” she said.

“Salaries,” he chuckled. “No one sent here who will ever matter cares a jot about that, my lady. Consider instead how few covenanters there are in the Watch, and how widely spread they are across Vesper.”

He waved around.

“Anyone who survives their years here will have ties to dozens of their fellow covenanters, a well-trained cabal to rely on and multitudes of contacts across all walks of the Watch,” Musa said. “Scholomance does not graduate mere cabalists, it is forging the ruling class of the Watch for the next century.”

“And filling more than a few graves with these supposed chosen ones,” Angharad flatly said. “Supposition is one thing, but looking at the facts it is clear we are being trained for steel and not politics.”

“With the Watch, they are one and the same,” he said. “Though I will grant that the use of that accursed maneating school is… noteworthy. I expect there is some kind of game afoot with the god within.”

“There may be some truth in what you say,” Angharad acknowledged, “but there is much room for misunderstanding in painting an object seen only through a curtain.”

He only seemed amused, which had her eyes narrowing.

“Besides, I fail to grasp why you would bring up this theory to me at all,” she added a tad sharply.

“You are strong and well connected,” Musa Shange calmly said. “Someone that might go far in the Watch, with a little foresight.”

He idly picked at his sleeve.

“Which is why I find it wasteful for you to wander about so blindly,” the Malani said.

Her jaw tightened, but he raised a hand in appeasement.

“Do not swallow the lie, Angharad Tredegar,” he said. “The Rooks will devour you whole, if you let them. Instead of considering the many ways you might serve them, you ought to consider how it is the order can be made to serve you.”

The tall man smiled.

“I will be an important man, one day,” Musa said. “And I will have earned that rank, not merely inherited it. That is the Watch can give me.”

He pushed off.

“Think on what it is you want, my lady,” he added. “And if going under Ferranda Villazur is truly the best way to get it.”

Angharad was beginning to suspect she was headed to a very different kind of gathering than she had thought she was.

Song had not thought it possible to eat an orange tauntingly before this morning, but Captain Wen Duan was expanding her horizons.

He jammed his thumb in the middle through the peel, half-ripping it open, and by the way Commander Salimata Bouare was looking at him she’d order him hung and quartered if she ever had the right. Song was not entirely sure she disagreed, considering this was the second orange Wen was subjecting to this treatment and he had gotten pulp on her covers.

Her patron sat to the left of the bed, precariously balanced on a stool requisitioned from the hospital since all the chairs had been dragged to Song’s right. He had a small bag on his folded legs, containing one last orange yet spared his torments, and a folded red handkerchief he was refraining from using in what Song could only call an act of social violence.

To her right, three sat and one stood. The Someshwari contractor by her bedside, the two scribes a little further back and the Commander Salimata leaning back against the wall with her arms folded and a steel-denting scowl. She had been in a hard mood from the moment she arrived, not that Wen’s antics were helping.

Song was surprised to realize, when hearing her speak, that the dark-skinned woman was not Malani. Given that lilting accent and the elaborate earrings marked with prayers to a patron god, she must be Jahamai – from that far eastern realm bordering Pandemonium. They were not a traveling people, making them a rare sight, but Song supposed some must join the Watch.

It was the blackcloaks that still garrisoned the fortresses around Hell’s capital, after all, their order had ties to that ancient and wealthy country.

The commander had remained largely silent during the interview, trading dark looks with a smiling Wen while the elder of the two scribes – also dark-skinned but this one definitely Malani – asked the questions and the younger wrote down the account. Now that Song had been wrung out of every detail she could remember, however, the commander had finally spoken. Song rather wished she had not, and was not alone in this.

It was almost, but not quite, deserving of the ensuing citric war crimes.

“She has been very clear,” Captain Wen said, “that she will be responding only to questions provided in advance. I don’t give a shit what they want, she’s perfectly within her rights.”

She had expected Wen to be irritated at being dragged to the hospital at the crack of morning – it was barely five – but, defying her expectations, he had been almost jaunty. Mind you, Wen’s good moods always came at the expense of someone else’s so it was no surprise he was being a stone in the senior blackcloak’s boot.

“The request was made by the patrons of those slain,” Commander Salimata acknowledged, “but it is not unreasonable.”

That lilting turn to the syllables would have made her sound pleasant even if she were ordering someone whipped to death, Song thought. Wen’s jaw clenched.

“Song Ren an enlisted officer,” he bit out. “Are you refusing to uphold her rights under the Watch charter?”

Song was almost fascinated by the sight. The tall, grim-faced commander was not the highest officer of the Tolomontera garrison. Her rank would put her at the head of a battalion, at least six hundred men, while Song figured an island of this size should be held by a regiment of at least a thousand and a half. Whoever commanded the garrison would be a colonel. A commander, though, would still be one of the three highest-ranked officers on Tolomontera.

And Wen Duan was coming after her with the verbal equivalent of a scream and a table leg.

“I have not done this,” Salimata coldly said. “I have passed along a request to your student, Duan. And it is not for you to decide in her name.”

Cool brown eyes turned to Song.

“Captain Ren?”

Song knew better than to believe an attempt to get around her patron was in any way a compliment being paid.

“I may be willing to answer the question if I am allowed to read it first,” she replied.

“That is not what was asked,” Commander Salimata sternly said.

No, it was not. They wanted it asked blind in front of a truthteller because someone thought her an utter fool.

“It is what I have to give,” Song replied.

The older woman stared her down.

“Four students are dead,” she said. “This is not a trifling matter, girl.”

“Yes,” Song agreed. “My attempted murder should be thoroughly investigated.”

Commander Salimata scoffed, then looked away. Her gaze came to rest on the younger of the two scribes.

“Give her the slip with the question on it,” the commander said. “Song Ren refused the request made by the patrons of the Thirty-Fourth and Forty-Eighth but acquiesced to the question being put forward for her consideration.”

The young Tianxi scribe nodded, cleared her throat and fumbled with her pen as she hesitated whether to first put down notes or hand over the slip. She almost tipped over her inkwell, the other scribe leaning over to catch it at the last moment, and Song felt a twinge of pity at how arctic Commander Salimata’s stare turned at the sight.

Eventually she was handed the folded paper, which bore a question about as loaded as Song had been expecting: were you the first to use lethal force? Wen cleared his throat, so she bent back and showed him the contents. The resulting laugh was unkind.

“You have a reputation as fair woman, commander,” he said. “This is disappointing.”

Commander Salimata was unmoved.

“It is information that would relevant when passing judgment,” she replied. “That the question was asked in an attempt to sully Captain Ren’s reputation is irrelevant.”

Song’s haw clenched. It was not irrelevant to her.

“If it’s asked by a truthteller during an official investigation, it’s on her record for the rest of her career,” Wen flatly said. “Most officers won’t care even if she was cleared of all faults.”

Her eyes whipped back to the large man and Song’s throat caught. She had not, in fact, known that. Meaning Wen had just saved her from a permanent stain on her record. It was a disconcerting thing to feel genuine gratitude towards the man.

“I was not appointed to manage reputations,” Commander Salimata replied. “I was appointed to find out the truth. Captain Ren, the question?”

“I decline answering it,” Song replied with forced calm.

“Mark that down, girl,” the commander said, glancing at the younger scribe. “We proceed with the agreed-on questions, then. Lieutenant Kumar, if you would?”

Lieutenant Kumar Dalal – she’d learned the surname by looking at his contract – was a short and acne-ridden Someshwari. Nodding at the implied order, he began to explain the broadest lines of this truth-telling contract. Song had already read through it while they set up, but it would have been impolitic to say so.

The concepts were not too difficult to grasp. Lieutenant Kumar, after touching someone, could make ‘wagers’ about them for the following nine minutes. If he won the wager with his god, he received an infusion of ‘life’ – vitality, Song thought, though the exact meaning of that was unclear. If he lost the wager, his god broke one of his fingers.

It was one of those fond of slapstick humor.

Lieutenant Kumar touched her wrist after asking permission, then explained that he would be making the same wager every time: that Song would not knowingly lie when answering the next question she was asked. Given that he then raised his left hand upright, the results would be obvious and immediate if she did. To Song’s eyes a ghostly red hand formed around the lieutenant’s, two translucent fingers delicately seizing Kumar’s forefinger.

The lieutenant read off the four names of her attackers.

“Were you ambushed by the students I just named?” he asked.

“Yes,” Song replied.

Eyes went to his raised hand, which did not display a snapped finger. The older scribe’s pen scratched against paper.

“Did you have reasonable cause to believe them intent on killing you?”

“Renshu expressed his intention to kill me and none of the others contradicted him,” Song replied.

No finger snapped. Furious writing.

“How many of the four did you kill?”

“Only one,” she replied. “Liu.”

“How did the others die?”

There was the question she’d had changed. The original phrasing had been ‘what killed the others’, but without knowing the nature of the contract she was going to be subjected to there had been no way to tell if she would be forced to out Maryam’s connection to the entity. She had argued that her lack of knowledge about the involved entity might force her to lie by accident, which had Commander Salimata agreeing to a change.

“They were attacked by an entity that slew them through the use of Gloam,” Song carefully replied.

And now the last question.

“Have you had contact with this entity before?”

“Not knowingly.”

And that was the end of that. Lieutenant Kumar exhaled, his acne now much sparser, and the ghostly red hand that had been holding one of his fingers faded. He was no longer using his contract. He was dismissed by the commander and left after a polite nod. Commander Salimata checked over the work of the scribes, then nodded in satisfaction.

“As I have no reason to believe Song Ren is a danger to other students, I formally revoke the house arrest she has been under,” the dark-skinned woman said.

Good, she would be able to attend class. And handle the more important conversation awaiting her afterwards. As soon as the revocation was written down, the scribes were dismissed to join Lieutenant Kumar.

“My thanks,” Song said.

“None are necessary,” Commander Salimata replied. “You are hiding something, but it is clear you truly were attacked by the missing students and survived by chance.”

She paused.

“We cannot retrieve the bodies, so it is unlikely there is more firsthand evidence to be gathered,” she said. “I will conduct interviews with the implicated patrons and cabals this afternoon, but I expect that the case will be ready for the tribunal by the end of the day. Fifthday morning at the latest.”

Probably tomorrow, then. In her experience the Watch bureaucracy rarely moved any faster than it was made to move.

“Should I be determined to be without fault,” Song said, “what can I expect?”

“The brigades involved will be dissolved, the patrons reassigned away from Tolomontera and the cabal captains referred to their covenant for any further discipline,” the commander replied. “A mark will be added to their dossier regarding the matter and taken into consideration should there be any further altercation with you.”

Well, that should settle any thought of taking revenge on her for the inconvenience. Maryam had read this right, which was some comfort. Yet the absence of one name mentioned had her stomach clenching.

“And Professor Kang?” she asked.

“As an enlisted officer, Yun Kang used his right to decline being asked questions under truthteller,” Commander Salimata replied. “He denies any involvement. As there is no direct evidence of his involvement save a secondhand report, there will be a note made on his dossier but no further discipline.”

It was an effort to keep her face calm.

“None at all?” she forced out.

Commander Salimata frowned at her, then glanced at Wen. He mutilated the last orange in response, and when the gaze returned to Song it had inexplicably thawed.

“Yun Kang was assaulted at his residence this afternoon,” the commander informed her. “He was savagely beaten and right his leg broken in nine different places.”

The gaze cooled again as it was turned on Wen.

“He even has to be treated in the barracks, given the risks, since the primary suspect for this assault cannot legally be barred from having access to this room,” she said.

Song paused, then slowly turned towards her patron. The bespectacled man popped a slice of orange into his mouth, loudly chewing before he swallowed even more loudly. Had he truly assaulted another blackcloaks on her behalf? Gods, she was… it was not a fine thing to attack someone else wearing the black, obviously, and quite illegal. Yet.

“It is insulting I would be considering a suspect at all,” Captain Wen replied without batting an eye. “I was having coffee while it happened, as you know. There are three witnesses.”

“Yes, I am well aware,” Commander Salimata bit out. “The girl from Tariac, your old friend from history track and a devil. Do you take me for a fool, Duan? A beating might have been overlooked as a settling of accounts between officers, but you took a smithing hammer to his leg.”

“Spurious accusations,” Wen affably replied. “But I imagine whoever did it figured there was poetry to Yun Kang having an aching reminder of the need to watch his step for every step of the remainder of his misbegotten fucking life.”

Song let a noise of surprise, almost squirming when the commander’s furious gaze was turned on her.

“I do not understand. Can Professor Kang not seek Lady Knit’s services?” she hesitantly asked.

“It’s been over a day,” the dark-skinned officer sighed. “She will count every break as a different fix. The price for so many boons would be…”

“Ruinous,” Captain Wen grinned, biting into a slice of orange with relish.

Commander Salimata visibly reined herself in.

“You walked a fine line, Duan,” she bit out. “You often do. Best hope you never trip, or the next hole you will be buried in will make the Dominion look like a paradise.”

He shrugged.

“It’s been a pleasure, Salimata, but I believe we’re done here.”

“For now,” she said, then turned her gaze to Song. “A good day to you, Captain Ren. It is unlikely we will meet again, so I wish you fruitful years in the Watch.”

“And you,” Song replied.

The silence she left behind her was heavy. Song cleared her throat.

“If I were to ask you what happened in Tariac,” she leadingly said.

“I’d be forced to tell you to mind your own business, only not as nicely,” Wen replied.

Well, she could take a hand. Especially if it was handed to her rather insistently.

“Have you decided what you’ll do?” he conversationally asked.

“Attend class,” she said.

He actually looked amused at that.

“And then?”

She bit her lip. Song had not slept well, after Maryam’s departure, instead spending much of the night staring at the walls. But an idea had taken root, however dangerous.

“I need your help,” she said.

“Eh,” Wen said, promising nothing. “Ask, at least.”

“Do you have access to the harbor logs?” Song asked.

The large man pushed up his glasses, looking quite interested.

“Not officially,” he said. “But it can be done. Why?”

“I need you to find out something for me,” she said. “And to serve as a witness while I sign some documents.”

Wen Duan sighed.

“And this came so close to being interesting,” he mourned.

—

The garlic rice wasn’t as good as it had been last night, but after some time over the fire it was hot and fragrant.

Maryam fetched a few stripes of salted fish from the pot to prop up the breakfast, grimacing all the while. They tasted like chewy seawater leather, though given how ridiculously cheap saltfish was she knew she would have to get used it. It was hard to argue with meat that could be had for coppers and would last until the Time of Fraying so long as you kept it cool and dry.

“If you keep glaring at it, it’ll flee back into the sea,” Tristan drily said.

The glare moved up from the fish to the rat.

“I’ll not suffer backtalk from a man who asked if we have vinegar to dip that in,” Maryam said, jabbing an accusing finger.

His grin only got wider.

“What did you even eat for meat, if you couldn’t stomach fish?”

“Goat, mostly,” she said. “Pork or beef when it was slaughter season.”

She took a bite of the rice, swallowed.

“It’s the fruits I miss the most,” she admitted. “Volcesta is at the top of a valley full of orchards, the streets were thick with hawkers’ carts every morning. You could get a whole bushel for city-coins.”

He cocked his heat to the side.

“City-coins?” he asked.

She ate another mouthful of rice.

“Most kings made their own currency,” Maryam told him, “but many were trash so the coinage was only used within their own city.”

The hills around Volcesta bore iron and copper but nothing else, so the Khaimov had been some of the worst offenders among the Izvoric. Traders often refused to take Volcesta coin at all unless it was knife-money, copper shaped into a dull knife. Mother had often made sport of Father for never using his own currency if he could avoid it.

“Thus, city-coins,” he said. “As opposed to…”

“Trader-coins,” she replied. “Those had weight, size and make set by law. It was a drowning crime to pass false ones, or reason for war if done by a king’s hand.”

“It seems madness for no one to own that,” he mused. “Sacromonte fought a dozen wars to ensure the only coinage stamped in the Trebian Sea is its own. Even the mints abroad are run by the House of Fabres.”

Maryam had heard about that. Captain Totec had more than once groused about ‘Sacromontan robbery’ and how it was a self-inflicted wound by the Watch.

“The Treaty of Blancaflor, yes?”

The great bargain that had ended the myriad small wars Sacromonte had fought against the Watch when it first began to expand through the Trebian Sea. He nodded.

“It’s half the reason any island out there still listens to the Six,” he said. “Everyone knows the City’s only got the largest fleet of the Trebian Sea on paper.”

From what little Maryam knew of the treaty, it had been considered a coup by both sides – though Sacromonte’s influence had waned over the centuries, and the granted rights that had once been a jewel on its crown were now as a drowning man’s driftwood instead. The blue-eyed woman polished off the last of the rice, leaving only two stripes of salted fish on the side of plate.

She’d get around to them eventually.

“Is there truly nothing you miss from Sacromonte?” Maryam asked. “You rarely speak of it fondly.”

“Because it’s a shithole,” he bluntly replied. “I regret some of the food, but I’ll learn to make it myself. I don’t intend to ever return there save to settle private affairs.”

“I find that difficult to understand,” she admitted.

“The evil you’ve known, it was imported,” Tristan shrugged. “Mine was born and bred just across town.”

He was finished with his plate, fish and all, and rose to put it away. She sipped at her water, delaying the inevitable.

“Are we to meet Song anywhere in particular?” he asked from the kitchen.

“Directly in Theology,” she replied. “She did not know how long the interrogation would take, so she said we should meet her there instead.”

“Hopefully she’ll not kill another four students on the way,” Tristan drawled. “I expect they’ll be less forgiving the second time.”

It was a tasteless jest but not one meant to prick – and yet Maryam found herself grimacing. Because it hadn’t been Song who killed most of her ambushers, was it? It had been some thing calling herself the Keeper of Hooks, like there was anyone alive still deserving of the title. Like Maryam’s own soul had not been a funeral pyre for centuries of Craft-lore.

Only Song had said she saw a soul inside, so what if the thing was not a thing at all? Her heart clenched.

“It was not such a barb as to warrant that face, surely,” Tristan said.

His face was still smiling, but those gray eyes had cooled.

“It isn’t about Song,” Maryam said, hand reaching for her wooden fingers. “There’s been…”

She sighed.

“We can talk about it properly some other time,” Maryam said. “I would get answers from Captain Yue first.”

He watched her silently for a moment, then nodded.

“As you say.”

He sounded not resigned, she thought, but… unsurprised? As if it were only to be expected, and that was what did it most of all. That fraying rope becoming ever more frayed, until one day she’d pull at it and find there was nothing at all. Maryam set down her cup.

“We didn’t talk last night,” she said.

An eyebrow raised.

“We did little else,” Tristan replied.

“We talked about Song, and plans,” Maryam corrected. “We didn’t talk.”

That gave him pause, she saw. He flicked a glance to his right, irritation flickering across his face.

“Your goddess?” she asked.

“I thought I heard a fly buzzing,” he airily replied.

Maryam would not have believed him even if he’d not then immediately tensed like he was refraining from shielding his head being slapped at.

“Fine,” he said, clearing his throat. “Please, continue.”

“I’m not sure I am the one who should be talking,” she honestly said. “You are the one angry with me.”

He looked surprised, as if he’d not been walking around with that chip on his shoulder since yesterday. She almost sighed.

“You came yesterday with your fists up, ready for a brawl,” she told him.

“Because I knew we would-”

“This has nothing to do with Song,” she flatly said, “and you’ll not be getting out of this conversation by bringing her into it.”

A beat passed. He smiled, prepared to put on the charm, and Maryam felt like punching him in the face. She would not, but thankfully there was an alternative.

“O great goddess,” she called out to the air. “Maryam Khaimov promises you a fitting boon should you knock that false smile right off his face.”

His eyes widened before he suddenly blanked his expression.

“Like that would-” he began then flinched, turned to his left with a glare, “-ouch, pinching, really? Are you a child?”

“Thank you, o great one,” Maryam solemnly said.

“She’s just flattering you, you vain idiota,” he complained, swatting at the air. “Just leave, would you? We’re having a conversation.”

After a heartbeat he let out a sigh, putting his elbows on the table, then gray eyes turned on her.

“That was uncalled for,” he said.

“So was preparing to give me the Ferrando Villazar grin,” she flatly replied. “Is it really too much to ask that you do not flee this conversation?”

His jaw clenched.

“That is rich, coming from you,” Tristan bit back.

She could see the moment where he realized what he had said, the way he forced his gaze not to dip down towards her hand, and knew in a heartbeat what it was about. The fingers, of course. For all that he made fun of Tredegar’s precious honor, he was no less particular about debt than the Pereduri.

“I will be more insulted,” Maryam said, “if you say nothing.”

His entire face clenched, like he was preparing to take a punch on the jaw.

“It is not fair, or true,” he said. “And so not worth mentioning.”

“Do it anyway,” Maryam said, and it was not a request.

Gray eyes met her blue. Silence stretched out like a rope pulling taut until Maryam began to open her mouth – only to be cut off at the last moment.

“You dragged me into this brigade,” Tristan bit out, “and then left me in it the moment things went south.”

“Because I left that night,” she quietly said.

He grit his teeth.

“Because you left that night,” he agreed, almost conceded. “But that is just the shark’s fin. I don’t need you to hold my hand, Maryam, but I expected us to at least be in the same fucking boat. Only whenever there’s knives out in the Thirteenth, you walk.”

“I only left-”

“You walk out in your head,” he cut through. “Bite the anger and stop listening, stop talking. You get angry with Song, you chew it. You get angry with Tredegar, you chew it – maybe spit out a few fishbones her way. There’s only so many times I’m willing to ease the blades for a cabal I only joined for you in the first place. If you don’t care, why in the Manes should I?”

Maryam opened her mouth to argue the point, to make him see, but she made herself close it. She was not like Tristan or Song, who could walk into a room full of strangers and within an hour find the levers to pull on half of them. She did not have the eyes for that, the talent. But she thought that, sometimes, that same knack turned around on them. They so often thought of conversation as a test, something you won or lost.

It was not, so instead of arguing Maryam listened. Made herself see it. The two of them had been a pair, on the Dominion. The same side, and though they had kept their own secrets they had moved in the same direction. Not so on Tolomontera, Maryam must admit. She had been lost, and whenever she had not been furious with Song helping her had been her compass’ north.

He was not wrong, to feel left behind.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

It had some part of her aching, the genuine surprise on his face.

“I’ve been,” she began, then hesitated. “My Signs failing, it has weighed on me. It could see me thrown out of Scholomance, and it seemed like there was no fix. But helping Song, it felt like blackcloak work. Steadying the cabal, being a good watchwoman.”

She sighed.

“I think I’ve found a way, for my Signs,” Maryam said. “I don’t need…”

To be what holds Song up, to be the useful one, she did not say. I don’t need it as much.

“I have my own way,” she finally said. “It won’t happen again.”

He slowly nodded, face inscrutable. Did he believe her, did he understand? She could not tell and it felt tiring, all of sudden, to always wonder. And maybe she had been sitting on some unfair words as well.

“I admire it, you know,” Maryam said. “How when everything falls apart, you keep a cool head. See only what you need to and go for the throat.”

An eyebrow cocked.

“But,” Tristan said.

Her fist clenched, wooden joints creaking.

“You need to be able to put it down, Tristan,” Maryam quietly said. “When you come home, at least. You can’t always be on war footing, like a single toe across the line means the knives are out. It’s exhausting.”

He stayed silent. Licked his lips.

“I don’t mean to,” he finally said.

“I know,” she replied. “But you don’t fight it, either. And I know why you do it, that it served you, but-”

“It is exhausting,” he murmured.

“When you manage me, you don’t,” Maryam said. “I can tell, Tristan. It just means I have to go digging to get what you truly think, and it can be amusing but more often it is a chore.”

A half-hidden wince, like he’d gone to smooth it away before realizing what he was doing and stopping.

“I’d rather have the ugly parts, if it means you being honest,” she said.

A slow nod.

“That is,” he began, then bit the inside of his cheek. “Not what I was taught. Or how I am.”

His eyes dipped low.

“I can try,” he said. “But I do not think you truly understand what is expected of a Mask.”

“Then tell me,” she gently said.

He looked away.

“I’ll think on it,” he said. “I – some of my teachers speak differently than others.”

Maryam breathed out.

“It’s all I ask,” she said.

Her hands, she realized, were trembling. Sometimes you only realized how much you would miss something when it began to slip through your fingers.

She was glad to have caught it early enough.

“So much talking, these days,” Maryam weakly jested.

He smiled back just as weakly.

“Still beats the Terror Hole,” Tristan said.

They looked at each other for a moment, then a chuckle ripped free of her. It bubbled up into laughter, the gray-eyed thief matching. It hadn’t been all that funny, but the release felt good. Like purging a fever. Maryam asked for the time, after the last of the laughter died, and found they were nearly late.

How unfortunate, she did not have time to finish her plate. The fish would have to wait.

“Fortuna is calling in her boon.”

Her eyes swiveled the thief’s way, finding him leaning against the kitchen counter with a smirk.

“Already?” she asked. “I am all ears.”

He cocked his head to the side, as if listening, then nodded.

“All the fish on your plate,” he said. “Cram it into your mouth and swallow.”

Maryam cleared her throat.

“O great one,” she tried, “surely-”

“Quibble and I’m to get one more stripe from the pot.”

The Izvorica grimaced, looking down at her plate.

“It figures you’d contract with an evil god,” she muttered, and reached down.

Let it not be said that Maryam Khaimov did not do her duty. Her hateful, hateful duty.

—

Given that he was to sit with Song Ren again, it felt appropriate for the Theology class to be largely about contracts.

It was a gripping enough subject that even the touchy Professor Artigas found nothing to scowl at as she began her lecture, some students even leaning in. She first outlined the elementary terms, first what qualified as a god and then as a contract – for the latter, ‘any power leant by a god with a fixed price and duration’. Tristan found himself wondering how she would classify contracts at large – the nature of the effects perhaps, or of the gods? – and would admit surprise at the answer.

“Price,” the blonde wrote on the slate. “Given the near endless diversity of gods and boons, the only functional way to classify contracts is by price.”

Intrigued murmurs, followed by that impeccably styled hair bobbing as the Navigator traced a Sign and glued the loudest offender’s hands over his mouth. That put an end to it right quick.

“The simplest manner of contract is the ‘boon contract’,” she said, writing out the two words. “The god will lend the contractor an ability in exchange for an oath to enact a specific deed for them – the eponymous boon – usually on a fixed timescale. Once that deed is enacted the ability will often, if not always, be rescinded.”

She hummed.

“Boon contracts are most common with the weakest and most powerful of gods, that is to say aetheric intellects that are too thin to maintain several more complicated contracts or ingrained enough they can shrug off the risks of a bad investment.”

The professor underlined ‘boon contracts’, then lowered the chalk.

“’Exchange contracts’, sometimes called ‘scales contracts’, are the most common contracts on Vesper,” Professor Artigas said. “By our count, somewhere in the vicinity of seven in ten are of this kind. The underlying principle is straightforward: the contractor is granted by the god access to an ability, but every time it is used a price must be paid.”

She snorted.

“Gods prefer such arrangements largely for the same reason the wealthy enjoy becoming landlords,” the professor drawled. “A proportionally small investment may yield great dividends over time. As few gods will prevent their contractor from pulling overmuch, most cases of sainthood spawn from exchange contracts.”

Tristan cocked his head to the side. So he was bound to Fortuna by an ‘exchange contract’, in the eyes of the Watch.  Another slash of chalk followed by words.

“Legacy contracts,” Professor Artigas announced. “By far the rarest. The only people able to reliably secure them are Izcalli royals, Circle priests from select reincarnation sects and Sacromonte’s own House of Arquer. Legacy contracts are unique in that the god contracts not with an individual but a bloodline.”

She shrugged.

“All contract lore is kept secret, understandably, but what surrounds legacy contracts in particular,” she said. “I can tell you that the price is fixed in advance and identical for every signatory onto such a contract, and that direct descent from the original contractor is almost always a requirement. As a rule, such contracts are often among the most ‘powerful’ in a direct sense but they often carry debilitating costs.”

One more slash.

“Caprice contracts,” she said. “Only less rare than the legacies because they cover a wide range of what we can only call oddities. Some gods were formed or subsist from concepts that do not easily lend themselves to prices – either by boon or exchange. We call these ‘caprice contracts’ because the god may demand a seemingly insignificant price, which simply happens to lead their contractor in situations that serve as prayer to them.”

She paused.

“A god that feeds on brawling, for example, might require habitual insolence of their contractor,” Professor Artigas said. “We will delve into more elaborate, and arguably insidious, examples of this later.”

There was no need of further Signs to keep the class spellbound, and the three hours were gone in the blink of an eye. Tristan had never taken so many notes in his life, but the subject warranted it. Few men were more dangerous than contractors, out in the world.

The thief watched Tredegar, who had sat with the Thirty-First and nodded a goodbye only to him out of the remains of the Thirteenth – returned in kind – bustle off with Ferranda’s lot. She really had changed ship, hadn’t she? Good on her. She seemed happier for it, and he was happier not wondering if he was ever going to cross some line of honor that’d require her stabbing him. Everybody won.

Except Song, and that was no tragedy.

Arrangements for the conversation he was not looking forward to were made quite easily.

“I need to pick up something in the Triangle,” Song told him. “If you know of an agreeable place to eat, we can meet there and I will invite you.”

Tristan quirked an eyebrow.

“Not Maryam?”

The Tianxi shook her head.

“It would defeat the point of the conversation to have it with a mediator,” she said.

The conversation had no point, he thought, but it was not worth the argument to say as much. He agreed and revealed the location of the paella place, getting a happy smile from Maryam. It would not last, so he did not let himself enjoy it.

An hour and a half later, he was sitting in the nook with his back to the wall while Song polished off the last of her paella. She’d seemed to enjoy it, to his mild surprise, though she admitted to preferring the spices of Tianxia to the palette of Liergan. The thief had half-heartedly tried to open the conversation when the plates were served only to get a dry look for it.

“You should get to enjoy the meal, at least,” Song had said.

Now that it was over, however, it was time to pay his dues. To his surprise, she suggested they stroll closer to the docks first. Eventually they found a bench in the shadows, overlooking the stone piers and the six ships docked. Most of them were empty, though the largest carrack had some blackcloaks on the deck and the caravel at the left end had someone in the crown’s nest. He settled as comfortably as he could, leaving a solid foot of space between them on the bench.

“I apologize,” Song Ren suddenly said.

He side-eyed her.

“For?”

“Blaming you, that night,” she said. “For a great many things, but none more than what we did to the traitor. I was as much part of that decision as you.”

Tristan grunted in acknowledgement. An apology was not nothing, only nothing much.

“Maryam tells me you want to leave the Thirteenth,” she said.

He shrugged.

“Better for all of us, I think,” Tristan replied. “Though I’ll at least stay on until next month, like she asked.”

“I’ll not make trouble for you if you want to transfer,” Song said. “I have been considering, however, how to convince you to stay on.”

A dose of bluntness, he thought, might save them a frustrating hour of going around in circles.

“There isn’t a way,” he said. “I am sitting here mostly as a courtesy to Maryam.”

“It would not be convincing if you wanted to be convinced,” Song ruefully replied. “But I expect I may need some more time, for that, so to buy my way to that conversation I have been giving thought to your situation.”

He frowned at her.

“Only even if I killed the entire Forty-Ninth overnight,” Song Ren calmly said, “it would not be the end of your troubles, really. A temporary solution at best.”

Tristan stilled, watching her face, and found no trace of a lie there. She had seriously considered it. It began to dawn on him he had walked into a very different conversation from the one he was expecting.

“The bounty’s the real problem,” the thief cautiously agreed. “But I know of no way to have it pulled.”

“There isn’t,” she agreed. “Whoever it was that put it up, they have enough influence within the Watch they cannot easily be forced away. Yet there is, fundamentally, a constraint on the collection of the bounty.”

She leaned back, pulled her coat closer.

“To get you off Tolomontera, they need a ship,” Song said.

He hummed. It was an obvious enough thing, but with the two of them sitting in the afternoon breeze looking at the docks the Tianxi’s implications were made just as plain. The Ivory Library had no way to know when the brigades they had contacted on the island might grab him – which meant either they had a place to stash him as a prisoner or the ship he was meant to be stolen away on must remain in the harbor.

“You think you found out which one,” Tristan guessed.

“That small caravel at the east end of the docks,” Song said. “It’s called the Palmyran and it is not a Watch ship, strictly speaking. It is contracted and owned by the Peiling Society but does not fly the black.”

He frowned.

“And they let it dock at Port Allazei anyway?”

“Someone pulled strings,” she said. “On record, they are bringing restricted supplies for Scholomance. They were also meant to be gone a week ago but the garrison is choosing not to pursue the matter.”

“Someone got bribed,” Tristan flatly said.

“I expect not,” Song replied. “Being caught endangering the isolation of Scholomance would be a career-ender. Given that ships on contract for the Watch have some right to use Watch ports when necessary, I might simply be enough of a headache to evict the Palmyran that the garrison prefers waiting it out.”

A pause.

“They must not seem much of a threat, as the crew numbers only twelve and none save the captain – a retired watchwoman – are allowed to leave the docks,” she said.

He let out a low whistle.

“That’s a small crew, even for a caravel,” Tristan said. “All it takes is one bad storm away from port and they’ll be in real trouble.”

“A larger ship would have seen the College accused of trying to get private troops inside Port Allazei,” Song informed him. “The influence of your enemies has limits, clearly.”

“Always good news,” Tristan drily replied.

She was doing him a good turn, sharing that, and it should not go unacknowledged.

“Thank you for the information,” he added. “I’ll keep an ear out for anything that might be of use to you.”

“I have been giving thought to your situation,” Song repeated.

The conversation did not feel like it was ended, at least on her end, so he remained seated even as silence wafted on the breeze.

“I would clear them out entirely,” she abruptly said. “The Palmyran, the Forty-Ninth. End them in one stroke.”

“The catch being?”

“The means I have in mind would require a great deal of trust from you,” Song said. “And at the moment I expect you trust me about as much as you do Tupoc.”

Tristan cleared his throat.

“You still beat out Tupoc,” he assured her.

But then so had Boria, the maneating god inside that pillar back on the Dominion, so the true worth of that achievement was debatable. In Tristan’s defense, the ancient abomination had been quite personable if you tuned out the leg-chewing noises.

“As sound an endorsement of my performance as captain as I have warranted,” Song ruefully replied.

His brow rose. Tristan did not move to defend her, wondering if that had been the ploy, but her look was not expectant.

“So, as the intermediary step, I considered what might make you extend me some measure of trust,” she continued, looking out at the water.

He glanced at her, gauged her mood and decided on another sliver of honesty.

“I’m not sure why you would bother,” he frankly said. “We dislike each other and Maryam will stick with you when I leave.”

A bitter pill to swallow, but swallow it he had. To his surprise, the Tianxi chuckled.

“I have wondered that as well,” Song admitted. “If it was not childish of me to cling to the Thirteenth as it first came to these shores instead of letting events take their course and building one without so many…”

“Cracks in the foundation,” he suggested.

“So to speak,” she agreed.

“And?”

“And it smacked of vanity, wanting to convince you to stay,” Song admitted. “So I went over whom I might replace you with.”

“There’ll be plenty of takers in the coming weeks,” Tristan predicted. “Once a few brigades bit it, there will be floaters to pick from by the dozen.”

“I am not unaware,” she said, then breathed in. “But if I wanted to pick from the bottom rung, I would never have gone with Maryam to the Dominion. I am a Stripe recommended, Tristan – that I can fill out a cabal is not in doubt, only the quality of those I can fill it out with. We set out to look for diamonds in the rough.”

“Not a lot of spare Tredegars lying around,” he said.

“Not only her,” Song Ren said.

He cocked an eyebrow. It was a little late for flattery.

“Wen called you one of the most talented on the year’s roster,” she said, “but I did not truly agree until I had to think who to replace you with.”

She snorted.

“Since coming to Port Allazei I have met students with underhand skills, students with an eye for tactics and capable of diplomacy,” Song said. “Some even have two.”

A steady look.

“Only one with three,” she said. “I will not pretend there are not those whose skills I hold in higher esteem, but in the end it is telling I would need two replacements to fill the hole you leave.”

Tristan matched her gaze, gray against silver.

“Is this where I blubber out thanks for a half-baked compliment and swear eternal servitude?” he mildly said. “I appreciate the flowers, Song, but they change nothing.”

“I don’t expect them to,” she said. “I am acknowledging a fault, Tristan. I believed I knew what the brigade I wanted to lead should be like, and treated any deviation from that as a flaw. I should have learned to lead the Thirteenth that existed instead of the one I desired.”

He hummed.

“May that insight serve you well in the days to come,” he said.

She seemed amused.

“It is almost refreshing to be disliked so openly,” she said. “Both Tianxi and Stripes prefer such things buried.”

“You’re not the worst person I know,” he admitted. “But you are not someone I want to take orders from.”

“I expect not,” she acknowledged. “But what you do want is to get rid of the troubles dogging your step, so I prepared this for you.”

She straightened and reached inside her coat, taking up a sheath of folded papers. Quirking a brow, he took them when offered. Three copies of the same thing, he saw, then read through.

‘To see the truth of things’, followed by a list of what that meant. Gods, illusions, through Gloam and Glare and even natural darkness. Seeing at a distance and the ability to read contracts as golden letters in the appropriate language. ‘Luren’, a minor god whose origins were unknown. Then- gray eyes rose.

“Was is this? Tristan asked.

“The exact terms of my contract, as far as I know them,” Song said. “Signed and attested by my patron, Captain Wen Duan. It is a formal document, usable before a tribunal.”

Tristan blinked and looked down, certain he must have missed something. There was only one sentence for the price.

“You don’t know,” he slowly said. “You don’t know what your own damn price is?”

She had the decency to look embarrassed.

“I did not set one when I took Luren’s contract,” Song said.

“You must have set a boundary, at least,” he insisted.

“Take anything you want,” she softly quoted.

He choked.

“How are you not a Saint?”

Even as a desperate, bleeding child minutes away from dying he’d bargained terms with Fortuna’s voice. The luck he needed to survive the day, and she had demanded misfortune in equal part for it. And now he was being told that Song fucking Ren had just handed some shady Tianxi god a blank slate to write his price on?

“I have only speculation,” Song stiffly replied. “Either the price is already paid but unnoticeable, or it is to be a single act yet to be requested.”

And part of him was fascinated by that, by the implications, but the mindful part kept walking down the street. Such a document, if distributed, could finish sinking her reputation. Song already had a target on her back because of her surname, if she was also known to be able to read everyone’s contracts any contractor with something to hide would want her dead. And any brigade tempted to take her in anyhow because of how very useful her contract was would hesitate if her price was revealed as, well, ‘take anything’. Her god could ruin her in an instant, should he feel like it.

Tristan lined up the bits of information, considered them. Placed them on the balance to weigh against the risks.

“It could kill your career,” he finally acknowledged, “but it would not kill you. It is leverage, not a knife at your throat.”

“I thought you might say that,” Song acknowledged.

She reached inside her coat again, handing him a second folded paper. Antigua again, this one a… confession, more or less. An introduction, then the meat of it.

‘I have entreated Tristan Abrascal to take part in an operation against his would-be abductors on the Palmyran and their helpers in the Forty-Ninth Brigade, to take place on the coming thirdday. This will put him at their mercy on my behalf. If he is not then rescued from their custody, the reason is my betrayal. I will have gone against my word, committed trafficking of Watch personnel and broken my charge of care and protection as captain of the Thirteenth Brigade. This I confess, and let it be considered admission before any tribunal of the Watch.’

Signed, again witnessed by Captain Wen Duan. Like with the last paper, she handed him two copies.

“If this is not enough to arrange for my death in response to betrayal, I would be surprised and disappointed,” Song said.

Idly Tristan considered that the greatest spread of damage would be leaving one letter with Zenzele, with instructions to hand it to Angharad Tredegar should he disappear, then arrange for the second to be sent to the offices near the docks. Whether she got honor-stabbed or hanged was the only bet left after that. There was one detail that could unravel it, though.

“How do I know this is truly Wen’s signature?” he asked,

“Ask him,” she shrugged. “You have time to make certain.”

Tristan hummed. Did Wen dislike him enough to leave him out to dry if he was abducted? Maybe. But the man was also a Watch loyalist to the bone and would not countenance a Scholomance student being grabbed off the street no matter who it was. Assuming Song was aiming to betray him he must also assume Maryam would be silenced somehow, so she could not be counted on, but overall the balance of events was still…

In his favor. And getting rid of his hunters would make it much easier to find another brigade.

“All right, Song,” Tristan said, eyes moving to the sleek silhouette of the Palmyran. “What’s your plan?”