It was a half-hour walk, most of it following the road to Scholomance.

Angharad had paid little attention to the path once they left the paved avenue, busy quietly seething at the fact they had been robbed. Sebastian Camaron had not lied. When they’d returned to their room at the Rainsparrow Hostel they found it just as empty as he had said. Even the clothes she had acquired yesterday gone.

Once more, she owned nothing but what she wore.

Incomprehensibly, Angharad was not allowed to kill the man responsible for this even though she knew his name, face and he had confessed to the crime. It made her blood boil. This was what honor duels were for – burning out evil, reminding the nobly born that their station was not only a privilege. That it came with rules of conduct.

Only beginning to taste blood forced her to stop biting at the inside of her cheek, though mercifully distraction was offered soon after.

“This is it,” Tristan announced. “Never saw it from below before, but there’s nowhere else like that in the city.”

When the Sacromontan had spoken of a hidden cottage, Angharad had expected some charming but worn-down building tucked away in an alley between larger ruins. Instead she was looking at… well, there wasn’t exactly a word for this as far as she knew. In a way it reminded her of the Trial of Ruins, the way devils had stacked temple over temple until the pile became something it its own. This was humbler work in scale, she thought, and more… architectural. Not a mere pile haphazardly grown.

The edifice was three city blocks long and three wide with matching height, roughly a cube, but it was not a single entity. Someone had stacked small rectangular residences one atop another to fill the cube, though the work was imperfect. Like with poorly lair bricks there were empty spaces between the residences, forming alcoves and makeshift halls. Some of these were filled with stairs, some kept empty as corridors and pits. The structure went so high she could not see what the roofs looked like, but even from down here she could see they were of differing heights.

There were no doubt many things to look at in there, Angharad thought, but glaringly missing was the reason they had come here in the first place.

“The cottage,” she tried, “must be well-hidden indeed.”

Tristan threw her an amused glance. Perhaps her attempt at diplomacy had been a tad transparent.

“There’s something here,” Maryam announced. “I could not tell you what, it is far beyond anything I have ever seen, but the aether around here is too smooth. Like something is keeping it from having ripples.”

The Triglau inspected thin air, until suddenly wincing and rubbing the bridge of her nose. Some Navigator trick, no doubt.

“The archbishop’s trick still works, then,” Tristan said. “That’s good news should we get past it. I’ve never come up from the bottom, but I expect if we enter through that opening-”

Angharad followed his finger, then frowned. There was nothing but a rampart of walls, windows and doors.

“What opening?”

“I do not see it either,” Maryam admitted.

All their eyes went to Song, who was frowning.

“I see it,” she said. “Like a crack in the facade, two stories high. Only I do not think-”

The Tianxi winced.

“I try to think of passing through and,” she began, then paused for a long heartbeat.

She suddenly flinched, then cursed.

“I can think of finding a path,” Song slowly said. “And see the opening is there. But I cannot think the two things put together.”

Angharad shivered. Only madmen wove in Gloam, and madder still those who trifled with their works.

“Lucky for us,” Maryam assured them. “It means we’re dealing with an Acumenal Sign –  that is to say, one that affects senses or perception. The archbishop laid an illusion, not a curse.”

“Tell that to my migraine,” Song sighed.

“Tristan,” Maryam replied without batting an eye, “this is an illusion and not a curse.”

Angharad coughed into her fist to hide the amused twitch of her lips. The gray-eyed man put a hand to his heart, affecting a wound.

“That was most unwarranted,” Tristan said.

“That is true,” Song noted. “As you’ve already been detained, the warrant has been served.”

Angharad would have liked to add something – making sport of Tristan was most enjoyable, and he ever took it in stride – but for the life of her could not think of something clever to add. Served, something about lowborn service? No, that was clumsy. Wincing at her own gracelessness, Angharad cleared her throat.

“Have any of you a notion of how we are to enter that veiled opening?” she asked.

Eyes went to Maryam, who shrugged.

“Like Ilija’s brothers in the woods, only without the man-eating monster,” she said.

There was a brief heartbeat of silence as the three of them shared glances. Ah, so she was not the only one lost. Reassuring. Tristan cleared his throat.

“Pretend I’ve never heard of this Ilija,” he said.

Maryam squinted at them.

“Ilija and his seven brothers are sent to cross woods by a witch, every night for seven nights,” she tried.

At the lack of reaction, she pressed on with a frown.

“Only Ilija knows the way so they walk in line holding the belt of the brother in front, that way they cannot get lost and the monster cannot grab them?” she continued, increasingly desperate. “Only then the monster starts eating the last in line and pretending to be them until only Ilija survives?”

“Horrifying,” Tristan cheerfully replied. “But in a refreshingly novel way, as I have never heard this tale before.”

“I could swear hearing Lierganen have the same story with the names changed,” Maryam muttered. “Or was it Izcalli?”

She shook her head.

“Regardless,” she said, “in the absence of belt simply holding each other’s clothes in a line should suffice. We need to focus on the act of holding the cloak, not the movement, while Tristan guides us to the right place.”

“And once we have been in that cottage, we will have broken the illusion on our minds if Abrascal is to be believed,” Song said. “That seems feasible, if everything goes as said.”

“Even if the Sign still works on you after and we can’t use it as a hideout, we could still use the place as a stash for things we need kept safe,” Tristan noted. “It won’t be a wasted trip.”

It was somewhat undignified, but they gathered behind the Sacromontan like ducklings. Maryam behind him, Song behind her and Angharad herself at the rearguard.

The journey that followed was strange, but not unpleasant.

The noblewoman knew that she was walking forward, headed somewhere, but the only time she let the thought fully form she was brusquely jolted out of her reverie by Song tugging at her coat. Even considering the ground beneath their feet, whether it was pavement or rubble or rust, seemed to get her lost inside her own mind. Angharad learned to focus her mind on holding the back of Song’s uniform, letting her feet move without direction.

“This is close enough. We are on the grounds.”

Angharad allowed herself to see the ground beneath her feet, overgrown grass, and let go of Song’s uniform. A glance back showed she was barely past a wide set of stairs, stone and rust descending into the dark, and then she was staring at what the others were.

Tristan had not lied, for amidst the garden – half wildly overgrown weeds, half dead earth – stood a charming cottage. And a rather large one, the cobblestone structure two stories high and rising into a turret. It was larger than the cottages in the countryside by Llanw Hall, and considering the stone walls and tiled roof it was also much better built.

“That is larger than I expected,” she said.

“Don’t flatter him,” Maryam laughed.

Angharad choked, wise to the implication, but of all things Tristan shot them a puzzled look. He was a man and a common birth, so surely he would understand bawdy humor.

“Come,” Song said. “Let us have a better look.”

The door was unlocked, which seemed to relieve Tristan. The inside of the cottage was, well, dusty. Their boots left footsteps as if walking in soot, and Song sneezed. But aside from the ravages of time, the cottage seemed quite pleasant. The bottom floor was the entrance, a drawing room by beautiful glass windows overlooking the garden and to the side a kitchen of respectable size.

They found stairs by the kitchen, leading up, and five rooms waiting there. Two dilapidated bedrooms, a locked and barred door that would require some ingenuity to get open, a reading room stocked with rows of books and a small storage. Within the storage was a ladder going up, which after climbing Tristan informed them led to a small stargazing room inside the turret.

“It will take some effort to make livable,” Song said, “but the space is there, at least.”

“I vote in favor,” Maryam announced, leaning against a wall.

She strung out the word vote teasingly.

“My opinion should be clear,” Tristan said, dusting off his shoulders.

The room up in the turret must have been no less dusty, for he was quite filthy.

“Angharad?”

The Pereduri wrenched her gaze away from the disaster and cleared her throat.

“It is a fine enough place,” she said. “I have no objection.”

Song nodded.

“It is settled, then,” the captain said. “Which leaves us to begin the work.”

She glanced at Tristan.

“Abrascal, take stock of the kitchen,” she said. “Do we have plates, cutlery, pans? Everything necessary to cook.”

The gaze moved to Maryam.

“Find out if there’s a broom in this house or anything to clean. If not, we will need to buy necessities – and find a source of water, if you can. I cannot believe a man of the rank of archbishop would have built a house without one.”

The Triglau nodded. Angharad stood at attention, waiting for her turn. She got it.

“Angharad, find out how much of the furniture is broken or rotten,” Song said. “We will likely need to replace parts of it.”

Song glanced at them, eyebrow cocked.

“I will make a list and look for a key to our mystery room,” she said. “Let’s get to it.”

It took them about half an hour to get the answers, to mixed results. The kitchen was still stocked on everything but food, though a shelf had collapsed when Tristan touched it and would need repair. They would need fuel for the cookpot, too. Most of the larger furniture had kept well, Angharad reported, and there was not a trace of rot or insects in the house. On the other hand, the chairs were either collapsed or about to and testing a bedframe with her boot had resulted in the thing coming apart at the seams.

Maryam found a broom and a mop as well as several copper buckets, but only the buckets were fit to use. There was a water well behind the house, she revealed, but it would need new rope and bucket to be of any use. Song, to the Tianxi’s visible irritation, did not find a key.

“It isn’t as bad as I expected,” Song opined, adding the last note to her list. “It is mostly the bedding that will be expensive. And if we organize properly, we should get most of what we need here in a single journey.”

Angharad cleared her throat.

“Can our brigade funds cover the expenses?” she asked.

“I do not know,” Song admitted. “Nor am I too versed in the prices for the food and supplies sold on Regnant Avenue. I need to visit the brigade vaults and find out the sum at our disposal.”

“We all have business in town,” Tristan noted. “Though in different places. Shall we split up and meet at the Rainsparrow Hostel when done?”

That seemed sensible enough, Angharad thought, until she considered the details. Both she and Maryam were headed to the farrago warehouse, so should the cabal be split… She opened her mouth to suggest a different arrangement, but she had been too slow.

“Agreed,” Song said. “Abrascal, with me. You two can pick up your affairs.”

Angharad’s eyes strayed to Maryam, who was looking back at her with the same lack of enthusiasm at the prospect of the common journey.

And to think the day had been looking up.

—

The poets liked comparing cities to living things, to beasts.

Only the pretty ones, mind you: leopards and wolves and eagles, the kind of creature some noble might proudly use as heraldry. Sacromonte tended to get the griffin, owing to old statues and a popular epic by Salivares that waxed on about the ‘lion-blooded city rising on eagle’s wings, twice-noble’. Pretty beasts, griffins. Tristan had once read they were so territorial they sometimes drove themselves to extinction by smashing the eggs of their own kind, so despite his best efforts Salivares might have stumbled onto some deeper truth.

Tristan was no poet, but he’d come to agree with them in a broad sense if not in the specifics. There was something alive about a city, be it sick or hale, and you could follow that pumping blood to the heart of the creature. Here in Port Allazei, he was finding that the vital center lay in a rough triangle of streets of which Hostel Street was the bottom. But it was on another side of the triangle that Song led him, after they parted ways with the others.

To the west of Hostel Street, past a narrow lane, lay Regnant Avenue. Paved and wide, it cut from southwest to northeast. On the bottom end lay the barracks and fort of the Port Allazei garrison, while along its length were nestled a multitude of shops and trades. Butchers and bakers, greenmongers of all kinds, but also proper tradesmen like smiths and tailors. There was even a shop that could only be called an armory, selling firearms of all kinds and powder by the barrel.

“Hard to believe they’re selling soldier’s arms out in the open like this,” Tristan noted as they passed by. “It is against the law in Sacromonte.”

Pistols could be bought by anyone with the coin, and even muskets so long as they were fowlers – hunting guns, better at killing birds than men – but the kind of muskets that might be used in war were not to be found. The Six strictly controlled their make and distribution and had banned their sale in the city by foreign traders. It was one of the rare laws the Guardia was heavy-handed in enforcing, and every year would-be smugglers got strung up for having tried their luck.

Sometimes the Six received complaints from other powers, but everyone knew they’d rather have those than face confederales armed with more than butcher’s knives.

“Sale is legal in Tianxia, usually,” Song told him. “It is owning them that is restricted. Most of the Republics have decreed that there should be no more than one such musket per household.”

“That’s still a lot more gun than infanzones would ever be comfortable us having,” Tristan said.

“That is because they are yiwu trash,” the Tianxi replied in the casual tone of someone stating a commonly known fact. “A people armed are answerable to, and the only answer to affronted dignity is uprising.”

The thief eyed her with surprise.

“I thought you a moderate, as far as these things go,” he said.

She had certainly wasted no time cozying up to nobles on the Bluebell.  The silver-eyed woman snorted.

“I am no Yellow Earth fanatic, arguing that we must liberate all Vesper by powder and sword, but I am certainly no royalist,” Song sneered, speaking the word with utter disdain. “Jigong spent most of the Cathayan Wars either under the Imperial Someshwar’s boot or being sacked by it. We have seen the true face of kings, Tristan, and care little for it.”

Song shrugged.

“Still, most of Vesper keeps nobles,” she said. “In time all will be free under Heaven, but until then we must keep to what is instead of what will be.”

“Practical,” Tristan conceded.

“The northern republics have to be,” she said. “Unlike the Sanxing, we do not have the luxury of sharing borders only with each other and the sea.”

The Three Stars, that word meant. The three southernmost republics of Tianxia, which also happened to be the largest and most powerful of the lot. They were the victors of the Cathayan Wars, as much as anyone could be called that, and had led the liberation of what was now Tianxia from Izcalli and the Someshwar. He flicked a glance her way, having caught the faint distaste at their mention. She did not elaborate, however, and he did not ask.

It had been a surprisingly cordial conversation and Song had grown more congenial since the cottage – and a demonstration of him being useful – but Tristan was under no illusion that the nature of their rapport had changed.

Having come to Regnant Street from further west and gone up its length to the northeast the pair had begun to approach the junction to the last third of the triangle: Templeward Street. They were not to go all the way, as their destination was the brigade vaults somewhere ‘inside’ the triangle, so he asked the Tianxi about it. Song laid it out for him, precise and methodical.

If Regnant Avenue had been concerned with practical goods like food and supplies, she said, then Templeward was concerned with the thoroughly impractical. In a word, luxuries. Song elaborated when pressed, listing a teashop with a garden terrace, a draper of silks and velvet, a clockmaker and no less than three launderers. And that was not even the whole of it, she assured him.

“There was a shop of curios and antiquities,” Song said, the two of them finally leaving Regnant for a side street. “And more structures further south the street I did not take the time to inspect.”

“That is an extravagant amount of extravagance,” Tristan flatly replied. “Even accounting for the presence of Watch princelings with coin to spend.”

Even assuming, generously, that a tenth of the four hundred students and change attending Scholomance were wealthy and feckless enough to buy silks and clocks for their quarters on the island, that was a mere forty souls. There were much too many shops catering to the wealthy for the wealth actually present. The garrison might indulge as well, he adjusted as a moment. But only the officers would be able to afford it, and there cannot be that many.

“It might not be as excessive as you think,” the Tianxi said. “For one, I expect the clockmaker will do brisk business with Umuthi students. It may be that some of these shops have similar uses.”

Tristan hummed, considering that. If covenant classes gave their students assignments requiring to dip into the luxury shops the entire affair might be sustainable, barely. Maybe. He’d have to get his hands on ledgers to be sure and he suspected those fine shopkeepers would not simply hand them over if asked.

“Seems thin on the ground,” he finally said.

He kept a careful eye on Song, wondering if offense would be taken. Instead she sighed, nodding.

“My guess is that it is an investment on the part of the owners,” she said. “Next year more students will come to Scholomance. We may be too few for them to truly profit now, but…”

Tristan picked up where she trailed off.

“In a few years, they will have the numbers and be established with students in a manner that would be difficult for latecoming competition to overcome,” he mused. “There is sense to that. So Port Allazei feels empty because it is as boots were are not yet filling, so to speak.”

“It is only a guess,” Song said. “We know unfortunately little of this place.”

And Song more than he, Tristan thought as he followed the Tianxi turning a corner to the right. She had guided them without once getting lost, not familiar with the streets but having clearly found landmarks to orient herself by. It was cleverly done, he thought, and he could only be glad one of their cabal had taken the opportunity to get the lay of the land.

“You should mark this neighborhood well,” the Tianxi said gesturing around them. “It is empty at this hour, but last evening many of the houses were full.”

Tristan cocked his head to the side, eyed sliding over the winding rows of stone houses with faded red tiles for roof. There were precious few ruins and collapsed buildings here, he had noticed, and many houses had wooden shutters or drapes. A sign they were inhabited.

“The shopkeepers live here,” he said. “Some officers from the garrison as well, I wager.”

“Their families as well, for both,” Song told him. “I have seen no young children, but some older ones were afoot playing in the street.”

“Rich living, having both a shop and home,” Tristan said. “Enough I doubt they own either.”

“I do not know if the Watch charges rent, in truth,” Song told him. “Regardless, I came across more than one student taking a look at empty houses last night. I imagine many brigades will be moving into the neighborhood over the coming week as the hostels begin to cost coin.”

The conversation petered out as they turned another corner and came in sight of what could only be the brigade vaults. He was mildly amused to see the blackcloaks had appropriated an old temple for their treasury: the tall house of yellowing stone still had alcoves on the sides where worn pedestals for statues stood. A pair of watchmen flanked the front gate, eyeing them as they approached, and demanded to be shown their brigade plaque before allowing them entry.

After they did one of the guards hit the great wooden gate with the pommel of his sword, thrice, and after a moment Tristan heard the sound of a metal latch being pulled up. The pair of them were ushered into the building without further ceremony.

Within a heartbeat of entering his footsteps stuttered, as did Song’s.

Every wall and ceiling of the once temple’s antechamber was covered with bas-relief of human skulls. Not an inch was spared, not a nook or cranny. The blackcloak who had gestured for them to enter let out a happy little laugh, grinning at their faces.

“I’ll never get tired of that,” she said. “Come on, kids. Coin’s inside.”

Song obeyed, face already a smooth mask of calm, and Tristan followed. Except for the same unfortunate taste in relief, the room past the antechamber was nothing remarkable. It had been filled with four desks, each of which was manned by a blackcloak clerk, and chairs had been set down for them to fill. Song asked a bored-looking Someshwari clerk about the Thirteenth’s funds while he sat by her side, learning that the vault currently held twenty-five gold ramas and that the same sum would be added on the first of the following month so long as they remained four members.

Tristan stared at the brown-skinned clerk, stunned. Twenty-five gold a month? For four of us, the thief reminded himself. It was still a significant sum, but not as large as it would be for a single man.

“I will withdraw five ramas,” Song said. “Three in kind, one in silver arboles and for the last two thirds in coppers.”

Song had to show her plaque again and to sign for the withdrawal, but there were no other formalities to go through. A watchman headed out back, and after some wait they were handed a fat pouch of coin. Tristan frowned. The brigade vaults would be difficult to burgle, given that there appeared to be only one way in and out of the old temple and a similar bottleneck to access the back of the building where they were keeping the funds, but fooling the clerks did not seem overly difficult.

All you needed was a plaque from that brigade, a name – the clerk had checked for Song’s on a list after she gave it – and some care. Biting his tongue, he waited until they were out of the temple and then out of earshot to speak.

“I would recommend we get our coin out of there as quickly as possible,” he bluntly said. “It is much too easy to steal from.”

Song frowned.

“You exaggerate,” she said.

He took it as the invitation to contradict her that it was.

“I don’t,” Tristan replied. “With about ten coppers’ worth of cosmetics, a change of clothes and your face I could empty one of the vaults today.”

He had expected for his words to be dismissed, or perhaps an argument to follow, but what Tristan got instead was Song Ren stopping so she could face him full and turn that unsettling silver stare on him. He cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Whose?”

“Pardon?” he asked.

“Whose vault, Abrascal?” Song asked.

Wait, was she really…

“The Forty-Ninth’s,” he said.

Silver eyes narrowed.

“Keep talking,” Song Ren ordered, and the thief grinned.

—

Angharad found the farrago warehouse to be a strange mixture of the laudably organized and the reprehensibly chaotic.

The building, though nestled between old and elegant stone structures, was mostly wood and recently built. It fit in appearance what one’s imagination would muster at the words ‘port warehouse’, a broad rectangle filled with crates and barrels forming broad alleys to walk through. There did not, however, appear to be any kind of order to the goods within beyond that shallow bottom line.

Just past the door a harried-looking woman of middle age sat at a desk, frowning down at a ledger she was messily crossing with lines. Past her a brown-skinned watchman was idling on a crate, blowing at a steamy mug of tea.

“If you don’t have a paper slip, leave,” the woman said, eyes still on the ledger. “This isn’t a shop, it’s-”

Angharad cleared her throat and approached, Maryam trailing behind her. The Triglau was not her preferred company, but she too had business here. Song’s assignments were apt, if not particularly pleasant. Still, fifteen minutes of walking in silence was better than the same spent sniping so the Pereduri felt it in bad faith to complain too much.

“I have a letter,” Angharad said, producing her uncle’s words.

The disheveled woman – a sergeant, by the pin on her collar – looked up from her work. Her stare slid past the noblewoman, coming to rest on Maryam, and there the watchwoman’s eyes widened in surprise. Before tightening again, in irritation.

“You again,” she bit out. “I told you last time, girl, I don’t care if you have a name and a plaque I won’t let you-”

Angharad frowned at her companion. What business had Maryam had here? The Triglau cut through the watchwoman’s words by revealing Tristan’s paper slip.

“Fine,” the woman sighed. “You, Malani, give me that letter.”

The Pereduri glowered at her, but the sergeant only snorted and snatched the paper from her hands. She brought it closer to her lantern, eyes scanning the lines, then grunted.

“I remember those,” she said. “The long crate and the casket. Sergeant Chen’s shift.”

The watchwoman blew on the pages where she had been crossing out words, drying the ink, then began thumbing through the ledger. After a moment she let out a little noise of satisfaction.

“Three hundred and three,” the sergeant announced.

She then eyed Maryam.

“I guess you weren’t full of shit after all,” she said. “Still, rules are rules.”

The Triglau’s pale face betrayed not a speck of her thoughts as she approached.

“So they are,” Maryam said. “Here’s mine.”

She offered up the paper, which got a quick look.

“One hundred and twelve,” the sergeant called out. “You hear both of those, Bibi?”

“Don’t call me that,” the brown-skinned man mildly replied, putting down his mug. “Three o three and hundred twelve, I heard you.”

Rising, he stretched his limbs and sighed.

“Come on, you two,” the watchman said. “Let’s not dawdle, it wouldn’t do for my tea to get cold.”

Angharad almost rolled her eyes. Such professionalism. Maryam, however, lingered by the desk.

“I don’t suppose,” she said, “that you happen to remember what time I came by?”

The sergeant eyed her strangely.

“Just a lick before five,” she said. “Is your memory going, girl?”

“Just curious,” Maryam smiled.

‘Bibi’ made an impatient noise and the Triglau pulled away. The pair of them followed after him, into the depths of the poorly lit warehouse. Angharad cleared her throat.

“You have been here before?” she asked.

Maryam’s face tightened. So it was as Angharad had suspected: the Triglau had, out of spite, tried to get at Uncle Osian’s gift. To steal it, destroy it? Who knew. Sharp anger bloomed. For one meant to be part of the same cabal to-

“I spent the night in an Akelarre chapterhouse with only one way in or out,” Maryam quietly said. “And left it around five thirty when Sergeant Mandisa came to fetch me.”

Angharad’s steps stuttered, as did her righteous anger.

“The sergeant lied?” she whispered.

“I don’t know,” the Triglau replied, openly frustrated.

She must be anxious indeed to be this blatant in her emotions. Maryam rarely deigned to show more than dislike when Angharad was about. Still, it appeared she had been too swift in her accusation. Though never spoken out loud, the thoughts shamed her. The noblewoman was reluctant to give apology regardless.

What good would it do?

The blackcloak led them first to Maryam’s cloak. Soon they were standing before a large open crate filled with straw, partitioned into smaller compartments. Numbers were carved in front of each compartment and the watchman slid a finger across until he had found one hundred and twelve. Digging into the straw, he yanked out a heavy black cloak with a lightly embroidered hood.

“All yours,” he said, and handed it over to Maryam.

The Triglau slid it on without a word. To Angharad’s critical eye it was too broad at the shoulders and slightly frayed at the hem but Maryam had implied the acquisition to be inexpensive. It occurred to her, after a moment, that it might be the hood – she had seen precious few on cloaks here – that interested the pale-skinned woman. The streets were largely empty, at this hour of the day, but Maryam had still drawn stares on their way to the warehouse.

Angharad had yet to see another Triglau on Tolomontera, and doubted she would.

“Now the rest,” the watchman hummed, putting a spring to his step.

Her uncle’s gift was deeper in, but a lantern had been hung close so they saw well enough. Their guide stopped by a hollow between two tall crates, leaning in and removing a plain wooden casket that he set down to the side. With a grunt he then pulled out a long wooden crate about five feet long but less than a foot wide and hardly even a foot long. The watchman got it clear out for them, then popped the lid open with a length of metal. It still lay atop the contents, though, revealing nothing to Angharad’s eager gaze.

“There’s your goods,” he announced. “The casket I set aside too. You’ll be inspected on your way out, so don’t get grabby.”

Gritting her teeth and the implied accusation of thievery, Angharad glared at his retreating back. She hoped his tea was tepid. Maryam cleared her throat, eyeing the crate, and the Pereduri knelt with a sigh. Setting the lid aside, she let her brow rise when she saw the contents.

Muskets lay in a bed of straw, four of them and unusually long. In a corner of the crate there was a silken red pouch. Angharad reached for that first, finding it heavy to the hand and clinking. Coins? She loosened the strings, peering inside, and found the gold luster of Sacromonte coinage – ramas. At least twenty pieces, she decided, perhaps more.

Good, she could repay Tristan by the hour’s end. The debt had been weighing on her.

“Useful gifts,” Maryam said, tone approving. “May I?”

Angharad glanced her way and found her kneeling by the muskets, hand just shy of taking one. She shrugged her assent and the Triglau took it, inspecting it curiously. It was only when she glanced inside the barrel she let out a surprised noise.

“Is it deficient?” Angharad asked.

It seemed unlike her uncle to send a broken gift, but perhaps he had been fooled by some merchant. Mostly she was puzzled at having been sent muskets at all, given that she was not a trained shot.

“There are grooves inside the barrel,” Maryam said. “Those are rifles, not muskets.”

“I do not know the difference,” the noblewoman admitted.

“They shoot further than muskets and more accurately, I think,” the Triglau said. “Though I hear they are also delicate things, and slow to be loaded.”

She then flipped around the rifle, showing Angharad the side of the wooden heft.

“That’s a word in Umoya, isn’t it?”

The Pereduri cocked her head to the side, reading the isibankwa discreetly carved there. She nodded, for it was.

“It means lizard,” she said.

“Lizard,” Maryam skeptically repeated.

Angharad’s lips quirked. It seemed that she, too, had a story to tell. If her own happened to be better told than the Triglau’s well, she would be satisfied in that.

“It is from an old Malani tale, almost old as Morn’s Arrival,” she said. “When the Sleeping God was yet the Waking God and making the world, he created mankind. First he decided they were to be as mountains and rivers, undying, and sent the fastest of all birds to tell them these news. But the bird, arrogant, stopped by a river to gorge on berries as it knew even so it would still make fine time.”

How long had it been since Father had told her that tale? She could not remember the years, only that she had been young. It was one of the rare tales from Malan he’d liked. Perhaps not so coincidentally, most Redeemer priests believed it to flirt with heresy.

“The Waking God grew angry at this laziness,” Angahrad continued, “and sent out a lizard to tell mankind they were instead to be as trees and animals, mortal. Only the bird saw the lizard, and in haste took flight.”

She cleared her throat, for Father had there made sounds and mimed the action but she saw no need to mimic that performance for Maryam Khaimov. Who, it must be said, was listening with seeming interest. It was more than Angharad had hoped for.

“The bird was so fast it would still have arrived first, so the God turned its feathers to silver and the weight made it fall it into the river. The lizard arrived first, announcing death, and in shame the bird took oath never to leave water – so turning into the first fish.”

Angharad hummed, pleased she had recalled it all without flaw.

“That is why we are mortal,” she finished, “and why fish die when they leave water.”

“So the rifles,” Maryam slowly said, “are named after the quick-footed giver of death.”

She nodded. The Triglau looked greatly pained.

“That is,” she admitted with great reluctance, “pretty catchy.”

Angharad did not quite allow herself to be smug, though she conceded to a quirk of the lips. No more, however. It wasn’t as if her uncle had named the rifles, though perhaps he had mentioned the tale to whoever did. As neither intended to carry the crate out, they removed the rifles and Angharad put away her uncle’s generous gift of coin. Only after putting the lid back on the crate did she recall the slender wooden casket, retrieving it and setting it atop the lid.

There was a latch, so Angharad knelt again to work it open. It popped open with a sharp tock, revealing red cloth wrapped around a long and thin object. She undid the knot and the wrap, heart beating against her throat, and only stopped when the whole of the sheathed saber was revealed.

 It was, Angharad mutely thought, a beautiful piece.

Practical in its use of leather and steel, made for use and not mere ceremony, but the chape – the metal tip at the end – was sculpted into a pair of harps. As for the locket it was made of the traditional rings of steel, but over them the two-tailed snake of House Tredegar was stamped in elegant silver.

Fingers trembling, she pulled the saber halfway out. Steel flashed in the lantern light, the blade pristine save for a discrete maker’s mark near the cross-guard that looked like a stalk of wheat. The guard was steel but touched with silver tips suggesting a forked tongue, the grip fine leather wrap ending in a rounded, angled pommel. Gorgeous work.

Her eyes burned.

Clearing her throat, she slid the blade back into the sheath. It should have made her happy, this gift. Her uncle must have spent a fortune on it and it was a loving gesture besides. Only, looking at the elegant work before her, she could only think of the saber she had left behind on the Dominion at the bottom of some dark cliff. Her father’s gift, traded for lives and honor.

It was unfair to compare the two, a disservice to Uncle Osian to… Angharad swallowed, mouth dry. And yet. Her last scabbard, it’d had rings on the chafe instead of the locket. Four of them? Angharad breathed in sharply. No, five. She could not remember. Not for sure.

Something like panic seized her by the throat. She could not remember.

“A valuable gift,” Maryam said, leaning against a wall of crates. “Your uncle is a fine kinsman.”

Angharad closed her eyes, trying to get her breathing even. She would not shame herself by weeping for no reason. She needed to get up, to move – Maryam had not said it, but there was an expectation in the Triglau’s voice that they were to leave now. Take the gifts and go.

Only Angharad’s limbs were lead. Her fingers shook against the scabbard, the silver rugged to the touch. She licked her lips.

“Do you have family, Maryam?” she asked.

Her voice came out rough. A moment of silence followed. Angharad did not quite dare face the other woman. Breathe, she told herself, eyes still closed. In and out, in and out. Only her heart was a horse gone wild, its eyes white.

“My aunt may still live,” Maryam finally said. “I am unsure.”

It helped, listening to someone else speak. Thinking about something else, anything else. The Triglau’s voice was unreadable.

“But not your parents,” Angharad said.

“No,” Maryam Khaimov softly said, “not my parents.”

She heard Maryam push off the crates, lightly step forward. It was cowardice, but Angharad did not open her eyes even when she felt the other woman looking. She was shaming herself enough already. Only instead of the barb she was steeling herself for, she heard Maryam kneel next to her. Not so close she could feel the warmth, but enough if she reached out she would find the other woman.

In and out, Angharad ordered herself. Breath by breath, until her heart calmed. Not that her limbs ceased trembling. The Pereduri felt sweat on her back, as if she had been fighting for her life. She spoke, if only so that she might know something else than the dull, panicked rattle inside her head.

“Was it us?” she asked, voice gone throaty. “Malan, I mean.”

Is that why you hate us all to the bone? Maryam did not answer, at first, and Angharad almost flinched. Fool she, to ask about such a-

“My father,” Maryam said, “died of gout. His heart gave.”

Angharad hid her surprise. Gout was called the rich man’s disease and with good reason. Was Maryam from a wealthy household?

“It’s my mother the Malani got,” she said. “Only they were not, Angharad Tredegar, content with killing her.”

The pause there felt like a blade leaving the sheath.

“They stripped her, beat her and impaled her on a wooden stake.”

Angharad swallowed.

“I am told,” Maryam softly said, “that it took her hours to die.”

Sleeping God, impalement? It was a rare punishment these days, reserved only for the worst of rebels and traitors. The practice was a holdover from the dark days before the Peace of Nine Oaths, when a thousand kings had ruled the land with red laws and redder hands.

“I am-” Angharad began, then stopped.

Sorry? She was, for impalement was a cruel way to die. Cruel enough that Maryam’s mother must have done something to earn it, but could such a thing really be earned?

And though Angharad could say that she was sorry, she also knew that the word would mean nothing to Maryam coming out of her mouth. No more than some induna bemoaning the end of House Tredegar would mean something to Angharad, for what weight did the word hold when it was the only recompense offered?

If the apology of the lips did not reach the hand, it had only the worth of a breath.

“I do not know what to say,” she finally admitted.

She could not see it, but she felt it – Maryam clenching like a fist, something in her tightening until it creaked.

“That might be the wisest thing you ever said to me,” she replied, tone sharp. “What is it about that saber that picked at your scabs, Tredegar, that you saw fit to pick at mine?”

She did not want to answer, not really. But it was owed, if not by honor then at least by right. Angharad opened her eyes, breath almost steady, and found her uncle’s saber waiting for her.

“I had a saber, on the Dominion,” she said. “It was a gift from my father.”

A noise of acknowledgement.

“Song told me you lost it fighting off the cultists,” Maryam said.

I lost it refusing the Fisher, Angharad thought. And that loss was not forced on me, I was a choice. So why does it now unmake me, looking at the arms that would replace it? The Pereduri stared at her uncle’s gift, breathing out slowly. Steadily.

“It is not about the saber,” Angharad whispered. “Only – only that sometimes I think the cruelest part of a death is what follows after it.”

Her stomach clenched. It had been months now since she last dreamt of screams on the wind, but right now she could almost smell the smoke.

“Seeing it happen, that grief, it is…” she trailed off, licked her lips. “Like putting a hand to fire, Maryam. It hurts, and it stays, but it is a candid sort of hurt.”

She felt Triglau’s heavy gaze on her but did not meet it.

“It is what comes after that creeps in through every crack,” Angharad confessed. “A song my mother loved found on a sailor’s lips. Speaking a courtesy my father taught me. Hearing children laughing and thinking of…”

She swallowed.

“My cousins, Maryam, they were just boys.”

Angharad wearily laughed.

“There is no vigil that will keep you from that, the remembrances the world springs on you. Thorns in the flesh. And still I would hold them tight, drive them in, because otherwise…”

She let out a ragged breath.

“My saber’s scabbard, I-,” she stammered. “I can’t remember how many rings there were on the chafe. Four, I think, but it might have been five. And it is a fool thing to be undone by, but I cannot remember.”

Her finger clenched until her nails dug into her palms.

“I did not care enough to mark the detail, when my father first gave it to me,” she whispered. “I was pleased with the gift, with the blade and the occasion, but it was not a treasure to me.”

She had known nothing, then, less than nothing.

“Only by the time I stepped onto the Bluebell,” Angharad continued, “it was the last thing I had of him. It mattered then – should always have mattered, but in the throes of plenty I never gave a thought to lack. So now here I am, wondering how many rings there were on that scabbard.”

How wretched, that she would be here kneeling besides a stranger who despised her and the words would simply not cease leaving her mouth.

“I simply do not remember, Maryam,” she said. “I am a tree shedding leaves, one by one. Small things, now, but that will not last. How long before I forget what my mother’s face looked like, the sound of my father’s voice?”

Maryam Khaimov did not answer, did not so much as move a finger. Perhaps that was why Angharad had said it all – she was confessing to a statue, not a woman. Maryam’s silence was as resounding as in a temple to the Sleeping God. A pale hand rose before the both of them, the other woman silently tracing a symbol against thin air. A circle, and something more intricate within it. There was the slightest sighs in the air.

A moment of silence followed.

“Five rings,” Maryam said. “Your scabbard had five rings on it.”

And though no explanation followed, Angharad believed her.

“My people do not call themselves Triglau,” Maryam said. “All those born below the Broken Gate are of the Izvoric, so I am Izvorica.”

The pale-skinned woman rose to her feet. She opened her mouth and Angharad found hesitation there, suddenly overcome.

“It doesn’t help,” Maryam brusquely said. “Remembering it. It’s just carrying their coffins on your back.”

“Some weights are worth bearing,” Angharad said.

“I used to think that too,” Maryam replied.

They did not speak another word to each other until they found the others.

When Song suggested they go to the Emerald Vaults for breakfast and conversation, it was not really a suggestion.

She had that look on her face, the one Maryam had learned meant the decision was already made and arguing was at your peril. Not that any of them were inclined to argue, the Izvorica least of all: she was still recovering from the inside of that coffeehouse. Feeling out such a strange shop with her nav had been habit, barely even a conscious decision, but what she’d felt… It had been like standing in the middle of rapids, the currents in the aether strong and wild. Lucky her there had not been rocks, else her spirit-effigy might well have been wounded.

The inside of the Chimerical had not been the overly cluttered study of a widowed trader it looked like, but something carefully arranged to stir the aether within. Maryam had known such a thing was possible, of course, at least in principle. She was no Umuthi tinker, but she understood the basics of how aether machinery functioned – through conceptual symmetry movement was induced simultaneously in both aether and the material, creating motion or some other expression of energy.

The devil of the Chimerical, this ‘Hage’, he’d accomplished what would take the finest mechanical minds of Vesper years of research and a fortune in material with a stuffed alligator and potted plants.

A sense of awed dread carried her most of the way to the Emerald Vaults in silence, which Tristan took notice of. He slowed his stride as they approached the hostel that was their destination, as if waiting to enter together.

“What’s wrong?” he quietly asked.

Maryam licked her lips.

“That coffeehouse was arranged to confuse signifiers,” she said. “I got too curious for my own good.”

It was impolite, she knew, but Maryam still sent out her nav to feel him out. Tristan always felt the same to her sense: like fire hidden away in a dark bottle, known only through heat and glint. Always warm to the touch. The thief’s eyes were narrowed when she found them.

“How bad?”

She shook her head, heading that off at the pass.

“That the devil can do this at all means he could have done much worse,” she said. “This was slapping a child to teach them manners, not an attack.”

Not harshly, but firmly enough the lesson would be committed to memory. Tristan slowly nodded.

“Wen already knew Hage,” the thief said. “And he said earlier that the Chimerical ‘opened here’, as if it has existed in places other than Tolomontera. There is more to that devil than we know.”

“This island has more secrets than the sky has stars,” Maryam complained. “Come on, let us catch up to the others before Song declares martial law in the name of breakfast.”

The woman in question was waiting impatiently in the entrance hall of the Emerald Vaults, which was opulent enough Maryam understood why Song had so wanted them to stay there. When they were escorted into the garden, she noted it was not a blackcloak but a man in servants’ clothes that led the way. They were settled on the edge of a large terrasse overlooking a field of purple and silver flowers sown with lanterns of wrought iron.

Everything about this place was irritatingly pretty, even the elegant wooden table they shared covered by an intricate gray tablecloth.

A servant was there in a matter of moments, asking their favored drink and preference in breakfast: freshly baked honeybread, a plate of fruits with buttered white bread or fresh fish on eggs with Sarayan spices. Song seized on the honeybread with her equivalent of unseemly haste – waiting for a long, pointed moment then immediately speaking – while Maryam went for the fruits and the other two for the fish.

“I shall soon return with the drinks,” the woman smiled, bowing low.

Maryam stiffened, though not because of the words.

It was difficult to explain the sense to someone who had not forged their nav – not unlike telling a blind man of colors, she suspected. Mother had described it as terazije-vid, the scales-sight. To be able to feel weight and worth with the mind’s eye, like the fox in the story of the Weeping King. Disloyal as the thought was, Maryam preferred the way Captain Totec had told it. We are as fish in the river, he’d taught her,sensing the current by being one with it.

And what she sensed in the current was someone trying to mark Angharad Tredegar with their nav.

She sent out her own spirit-effigy, slapping away the attempt, and the intruder immediately gave ground. Tredegar flinched, batting away from her ear a fly that did not exist, and Maryam’s gaze swept the terrasse. The garden overlook was hardly crowded, but neither was it empty: six other tables were occupied. Two singles and four shared, and though she looked for the guilty party no one revealed themselves by expression.

“Maryam,” Song prompted.

“Tredegar has the attention of a signifier,” she replied. “I drove them away.”

The Malani stiffened.

“Have I been cursed?” she worriedly asked.

The Izvorica almost rolled her eyes. As if it were so easy to curse someone with Gloam. Even the most bare bone of curses, those that were essentially Ancipital Signs – concentration and manipulation of raw Gloam – simply sliding a bubble of Gloam somewhere important in a body and hoping it got sick, took at least a few minutes of concentration and refinement if you did not want to be terribly obvious about having done it.

“No,” Maryam said. “At a guess, they were trying to get an impression of your soul so you would be easy to pick out of a crowd.”

“And you prevented this,” Tredegar slowly said. “Acting in my defense?”

It was easier to take offense to the surprise than read into it, so that was Maryam did.

“My name’s on the same cabal list, Tredegar,” she coldly replied. “Triglau can keep their word too.”

From the corner of her eye she saw Tristan wince. The noble’s lips thinned.

“I did not mean to impugn your honor,” she carefully said, “but to thank you for your efforts on my behalf.”

Song was staring at her hard enough it was going to bore a hole into the side of her skull, so Maryam held back and simply grunted in acknowledgement of Tredegar’s words.

“Well,” Tristan said. “That seems as good a segue as any into the first meat we must carve up, ou-”

Whatever he had been about to say, it was not to be. Not because of the return of someone’s impudent nav or even the servant from earlier but by a tall and neatly dressed young man in a formal Watch uniform. Lierganen, Maryam assessed. Mustachioed as was so often their way, fit and dark-haired. He bowed and offered a charming smile.

A glance around the table told Maryam none of them had any idea who he was.

“My apologies for the boldness of the approach,” he said, “but I could not help introducing myself.”

“Could you not?” Song pleasantly replied. “Your life must be very difficult.”

She even smiled politely at the end, like she’d not just told him to fuck off, and Maryam swallowed a grin. Song was most enjoyable when someone had just stepped on her toes, as this one had. The man’s smile grew a little strained.

“I am Captain Tristan Ballester of the Forty-Fourth Brigade,” he bravely continued, then entirely dismissed Song and turned his smile onto Tredegar.

Song looked like she was seriously considering strangling him, Maryam noticed, and the grin slipped out.

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing Lady Angharad Tredegar?”

The Malani’s face was like a bland wooden mask.

“I am she,” Tredegar replied. “Can I help you, Captain Ballaster?”

“Please,” he easily said. “Call me Tristan.”

Their own Tristan was eyeing the stranger with the faintest of frowns, trying to figure out the angle at work and more than willing to be forgotten about until he had.

“I come to congratulate you on your stunning victory last evening, my lady,” Captain Ballaster continued.

His eyes flicked up and down Tredegar’s uniform, quickly but visibly, and Maryam almost had to shove her fist into her mouth not to start laughing when she realized what was happening.

That dog was not just barking at the wrong tree, it wasn’t even the right forest.

“Alas,” Captain Ballaster gallantly said, “I must inform you that you prevailed twice over for your grace and beauty have triumphed over my-”

“No,” Song flatly said.

The man paused, turning his gaze back to her.

“I don’t follow,” he said.

“No,” Song repeated. “You do not get to interrupt my morning meal for your attempt to talk my cabalist into dallying beneath her.”

“Excuse me?” Ballaster bit back, straightening his back.

“Ah, at last we are of a mind,” their captain replied. “You are, indeed, excused.”

The man’s cheeks reddened but when he glared angrily there was not so much as a hint of give in Song Ren. She stared him down, letting the weight of her words and the ensuing silence wilt him before the eyes of the entire room – because this entire debacle had, naturally, drawn the attention of every last soul on the terrasse.

If Tristan felt like fire in a bottle to her nav, then Song was a millstone: heavy, plodding on with a deceptive slowness. It was all too easy to forget its nature was to grind anything it caught to dust.

Captain Ballaster further reddened at the continuing silence, looking at Tredegar and finding only an unsmiling, expressionless face. He cleared his throat, now unpleasantly aware of the eyes on him. Any longer standing there and he would be a figure of fun among Scholomance students by the day’s end.

“Some other time,” Ballaster said, then offered Tredegar a nod. “Lady Tredegar.”

The Malani’s lips quirked into something falling short of a smile and she did not answer, letting him retreat with his tail between his legs without once glancing his way.

“Double Death Brigade indeed,” Tristan noted. “What with the way Song just murdered him twice.”

Maryam choked and Song tried to send him a disapproving look but it was difficult for her to manage one while flattered. Tredegar was the one frowning.

“How lacking in manners, to approach a lady in such an unsuitable setting,” she deplored. “I wish we had not been quite so rude in return, but he did seem likely to linger otherwise.”

“If we are to look for allies,” Song firmly said, “we can do that better than that.”

The man was now back at his table – he was one of those eating alone – and was carefully not looking their way. Some of the other students were whispering as they shot unsubtle glances his way. The drinks arrived mere moments later, Maryam soon sipping happily at her xocolatl. The cool, spicy brew lingered against the roof of her mouth and washed away the last dregs of unease from their visit of the Chimerical.

“Something about meat on the table,” she prompted Tristan.

He nodded, setting down his cup of pressed oranges.

“Enemies,” he said. “I found out several things last night and I expect Tredegar did as well. Shall we take stock?”

“Let us,” Song approved. “Though we must discuss classes after, as Captain Wen requested we make haste in choosing electives.”

Tredegar was invited to begin, which was how Maryam learned she had not simply gone around picking honor duels for the pleasure of it. If the man from the Ninth Brigade had been stabbed while taking a swing at old acquaintances from the Dominion then the Izvorica was inclined to forgive the trouble brought to their doorstep. She liked Ferranda, always had, and Song had once implied to her that Zenzele’s contract was a very useful one.

Between that and Shalini Goel’s deadliness with pistols, even if their fourth cabalist was a bag of onions they would still make fine allies.

“Captain Nenetl was markedly friendlier afterwards, and intimated the possibility of deeper acquaintance between our cabals,” Tredegar continued. “The other significant approach was Captain Imani Langa.”

“Eleventh Brigade, the one who honed in on you early,” Tristan said, leaning forward. “What was she after?”

Tredegar hesitated for a moment.

“To recruit me,” she said. “You say she captains the Eleventh? She did not mention this.”

He nodded.

“Then it appears Lord Thando extended me an offer on her behalf earlier in the night that I ignored,” Tredegar noted, then embarrassedly cleared her throat. “I also believe some of her interest in me might be of a personal nature.”

Maryam sought out Tristan’s eye. He discretely mimed a low-cut dress and a shapely figure. Oh dear, the Izvorica grinned. She gleefully caught Song’s attention, cocking an eyebrow at the captain. On the Dominion the Tianxi had more than once bemoaned Tredegar’s infatuation with the brightly colored snake going by Isabel Ruesta and it now appeared that Angharad Tredegar was to have enduringly terrible taste.

It was the most likable Maryam had ever found her.

Song, predictably, grimaced unhappily at the Tredegar’s obvious interest.

“If that woman is not Krypteia, I will eat my hat,” Tristan shared. “She has had training in tradecraft.”

“It would be unwise to deepen that acquaintance,” Song stated, eyeing Tredegar.

The Tianxi did not, however, outright forbid it. Going easy on Tredegar again, or worried about giving orders that would not be obeyed? Hard to tell. With Tredegar’s part of the tale out of the way, they got to Tristan’s and there matters grew convoluted.

“So Tupoc Xical is spying on us,” Tredegar coldly said. “I should have expected it. He means to be a foe on Tolomontera as well, then.”

“Or he is assessing how dangerous we would be should we come after him,” Song said.

“He had Ferranda tracked as well,” Tristan pointed out. “And more thoroughly than you. That has me leaning Song’s way.”

The same was true of Maryam.

“Xical goads others so he can get a read on them,” she said. “Only then does he risk fights, when he has the lay of the land. I do not think this is any different, only that the nature of Scholomance means he can no longer rely on insults and provocations to learn what he wants.”

Song nodded her way in approval.

“Either way,” the Tianxi said, “there is no gain in going after him unless we have good reason to believe he will come after us. A reconnaissance of our own might be in order, but no more than that. It is the other threads you’ve picked out that concern me, Tristan – that a member of the Nineteenth Brigade, this ‘Lady Cressida’, helped him bring in his spy.”

“An ally of his?” Maryam guessed, then shrugged. “Hard to believe, I know, but…”

“To some souls strength is preferred to character,” Tredegar agreed. “That part I do not doubt. It is that Tupoc Xical would make bargains unless there was a great need I find dubious.”

Maryam conceded the point with a nod. At least on the Dominion, Xical had only allowed himself to dally with accords when he was a leading force within them. The moment he no longer had his hand on the steering wheel, come the Trial of Weeds, he had walked out.

“It could be the Nineteenth has another stake in this,” Song said, sneaking a look at Tristan.

The thief hummed, not denying the possibility.

“Help Tupoc’s cabal and ours get into a fight, then swoop in when losses are taken to collect on my bounty?” he said. “It’s not a bad plan, if that is what they intend.”

The Tianxi sipped at her tea, thoughtful.

“The meetings you mentioned Captain Ferranda has been arranging might be an avenue to learn information on the Nineteenth,” Song decided. “Gossip between captains is certain to be informative, if not necessarily accurate. I will attend the next one and see what I can learn.”

Maryam cleared her throat.

“The Nineteenth could be trouble down the line, but the Forty-Ninth is a threat in the present,” she pointed out. “We need to deal with them.”

“I am most impressed you were able to escape them, Tristan,” Tredegar said. “Some sort of grenade was involved, I understand?”

The thief licked his lips.

“It’s more complicated than that,” he admitted. “The roof broke when I blinded their Skiritai, and then I fell into what I thought was a basement but proved to be something else.”

“The ‘accidental crossing’ they detained you for,” Song said, silver eyes narrowing.

Maryam breathed in sharply.

“That they what now?” she said, seeking Tristan’s face for fresh bruises.

He always got bruised, it was like the man was made of peaches.

“You were in jail?” she demanded.

“I was in detainment, Maryam,” he replied without batting an eye. “That is completely different.”

She met his gaze, distinctly unimpressed.

“Did they lock the door?”

If they locked the door, it was a jail.

“I’m not going to dignify that with a response,” he haughtily replied.

Tredegar cleared her throat.

“If I may ask,” she said. “Where did you cross into, Tristan?”

“The watchmen called it a layer,” he said. “It is some sort of… place in the aether, an impression made by a particular time, and supposedly there are several here. The one I visited is called the ‘Witching Hour’, a dream of the night the Watch invaded Tolomontera.”

Eyes went towards her at his words, even Tristan’s, as save for Song she suspected none of them knew much of anything about metaphysics. Maryam herself only knew so much, having come to Akelarre teachings later than most. Besides, she must acknowledge that the Navigators were not as concerned with the academics as the Peiling Society.

Signifiers taught mostly in practicals, but that practical knowledge was admittedly still be more than anyone else at the table would. Maryam bit her lip, worrying it as she chose her words. An impression was one of those concepts that could not easily be explained without drawing on several other concepts.

“Do you know what an aether well is?” she finally asked.

Hesitant nods all around. Song was the one who volunteered a concrete answer.

“It is a naturally occurring phenomenon where aether flows into reality in great quantities,” she said. “Tolomontera is one such place.”

The Izvorica nodded. A simplification, but essentially correct.

“Aether is both a realm and an element,” Maryam told them. “The word is used to refer to both interchangeably, which can be confusing, but the simplest way to put it is that the material world has an immaterial mirror, which we understand as the ‘realm of aether’.”

She licked her lips.

“The realm is called that way because it is made up a single element, aether, and that element leaks into the material world through places we call aether wells.”

Maryam found the attentive gazes a little unsettling. Even Tredegar looked heedful. Particularly Tredegar, honesty compelled her to admit.

“You will have heard from all sorts that your emotions taint the aether, which might have you wondering how anger at stubbing a toe can reach such an immaterial realm,” she said. “The simplified answer is that your soul straddles the line between material and immaterial, reaching into both.”

Awakening her blind soul into a nav, a soul-effigy, had been the first step on Maryam’s path to being able to wield the powers of the world. To weave Gloam without first doing this was possible, but it would condemn one to petty tricks and ugly death.

“We do no matter much,” Maryam told them. “A single soul’s emanation is nothing, a drop of water in a sea. It would take thousands of deaths either all at once or in the same small place for an impression to be made on the aether and something like a god come into existence in the immaterial.”

She grimaced.

“Only the rules are different near an aether well,” Maryam said. “There is physical aether here, the element leaked into the material, and that is much more susceptible to impression. Enough a sufficiently bloody battle – like the invasion of Tolomontera – would do the trick.”

“So Tristan did not journey through time,” Tredegar slowly said. “Only tread the grounds of this… dream of the past?”

“There is no such thing as going back in time,” Maryam firmly said. “Only forward, and aether cannot even do that. Besides, there have long been arguments about whether what Gloam does is actually-”

She paused, breathed in. Prune the irrelevant, Maryam reminded herself. It was frustrating, like having to explain the intricacies of cliff-climbing to someone who had never so much as seen a hill. She had not realized until now how much of what she took for granted relied on knowledge uncommon, how deep the teachings of the Akelarre Guild truly ran.

“No, he did not journey through time,” she repeated. “The impression, the layer, it is real in the same way that your soul is real. But it is like a memory, a remembrance of what was. The complication here is the physicality of it all.”

She mulled the explanation, sliced off the unnecessary like peeling an apple.

“A layer is real like a soul is real,” she finally said, “because it also straddles the line between the material and the immaterial.”

“But my body was there,” Tristan slowly said. “Wasn’t it?”

She wiggled her hand.

“When you walk around this terrasse, does your soul also move?” she said.

He coughed.

“Yes?”

“No,” she said. “Your soul is where you are, always, with no movement being involved. In the layer, the reverse was true: your soul was the one moving around and your body was where the soul was, always, without movement being involved. But in the same way that if you got stabbed, your soul would be unharmed…”

“If he had been wounded inside the layer, his body would be unmarked,” Tredegar said.

She nodded.

“Should someone get decapitated in there, they will very much die,” Maryam took pains to make clear. “But their corpse will not be headless, the death will come from harm to the soul.”

The Izvorica leaned back into her seat.

“It is why the place where you entered is not the same where you came out,” she told Tristan. “You entered the layer through a weakness in the material, slipping in, and after your soul moving around some you slipped out by another-”

“And since soul and body are one, it was as if he had been transported from one place to another,” Song murmured. “That is…”

“Difficult to believe, I know,” she admitted. “If it helps, layers are exceedingly rare and near unknown outside the environs of aether wells.”

Song shook her head.

“Potentially useful,” she said. “A way to move around the city unseen.”

She winced.

“That would be extremely dangerous, Song,” Maryam said. “Flesh heals naturally but souls do not. They have to be mended by hand, and even then they will never be the same.”

The Tianxi looked displeased but did not argue. Maryam foresaw in her near future a thorough questioning on the risks and possibilities of traveling through a layer, until Song was satisfied she had been either right or wrong.

“The watchmen that found me were worried, Song,” Tristan reminded. “They tested me with the brigade seal to find out if I was possessed by a ‘mara’.”

Maryam whistled. There were dollmakers here? They should have been warned the moment they came off the boat.

“Nasty things,” she said. “We should be very careful if there are some on Tolomontera – their kind lingers near boundaries to steal bodies and minds.”

If there truly were several layers in Port Allazei, their presence made sense. They’d hate the Grand Orrery, but having so many thresholds around would be like a honey to their sense.

“They are sort of lemure?” Song asked.

Natural aether intellects that failed to become gods, Maryam mentally corrected. Or signifiers that… crossed lines. Only both of those answers would have begged questions she could not or would not answer, so instead she nodded. It was close enough, practically speaking.

A pair of servants arrived with plates of food, setting them down with nary a sound, and by unspoken accord the conversation came to a halt. Maryam eyed her silver plate with surprise, as it bore more of a bounty than she had expected from an island tucked away in the middle of nowhere. Oranges and pomegranates, figs and persimmons. Even a mango diced into artfully arranged little cubes, which had her nostalgic.

She’d been a fiend for mangoes as a girl, her father’s hall has kept those large baskets of them. More than once she was switched for pilfering some, hiding up in the branches of the oak in the courtyard to gorge herself on the sugary flesh like some squirrel. Only Mother withering the oak with a touch of Gloam had broken her of the habit.

She dug in with gusto, though she spared a few looks for the plates of the others. Song’s honeybread looked appetizing enough, she thought, the Tianxi methodically eating it piece by piece while drinking sips of her tea to extend the meal. Yet Maryam could not countenance how the other two might be so eager to eat eggs with fish, of all things, and those reddish spices aplenty. Maryam had never taken to fish, which she’d rarely had as a girl.

Volcesta – the town of her birth – was in a valley commanding passage from Dubrik to the sky road so they had eaten more like the hillfolk than the kings of the coast. Fruit and cattle, not fish and wheat. Before the Malani began bringing their own cattle over from across the sea her father had grown rich trading them sheep and goats at the forts on the shore.

Maryam was forcefully ejected from that train of thought by the sight of Tristan cutting into his eggs, trailing yolk all over the fish and slathering a piece of it in the yellowness. He caught her gaze and raised an eyebrow, raising his fork as if to offer a bite, and the Izvorica forced a smile when shaking her head. She would try a mouthful of the tablecloth before subjecting herself to that.

Busying herself with her plate, she polished off the filling meal of fruits and bread then leaned back to sip anew at her xocolatl until Song finished the last of her honeybread. She was amused to notice the Tianxi had only drunk half of her cup of tea, everything carefully measured. Sometimes Maryam thought that if Song Ren got shot in the gut it would be the messiness of it that troubled her most.

Setting down her green tea after one last sip, Song cleared her throat.

“I intend to take an elective class,” she informed them.

Maryam cocked an eyebrow.

“You knew that before ever seeing the list, didn’t you?” she accused.

She had yet to trace the borders of what the Tianxi did and did not know of Scholomance. Sometimes it seemed she was in on every secret, others that she was just as lost as the rest of them.

“My uncle recommended that I take Strategy,” Song admitted. “It is a study not only of stratagems but also of warfare on battalion scale and larger. Watchmen inducted into the Academy in the traditional way are taught something similar.”

Tristan squinted at her.

“How large is a battalion?” he asked.

“Six hundred to a thousand soldiers,” the Tianxi replied without missing a beat. “It is the most common kind of independent detachment under the Watch, led by officers of commander rank.”

Song’s lips quirked in a subtle hint of satisfaction, as they often did when she was asked questions she knew the answer to. Maryam, though, thought she had replied too quickly. Song had answered by rote, regurgitating something she had read off a page or heard from a superior officer. It might even be true, but the Izvorica knew better than to trust anything a power like the Watch wrote and said about itself.

The foot put forward for everyone to look at was never the limping one.

“Ambitious,” Tredegar said, and she sounded approving. “Do you intend to seek a field command under the Garrison after your time in a cabal?”

“If the opportunity arises,” Song acknowledged. “Such positions are fiercely fought over, however, so it is more likely I will eventually raise my own free company.”

Tristan let out an interested noise at that. Maryam would admit to some surprise, as though it was true the free companies were largely free of the Conclave’s edicts she had not thought the Sacromontan particularly fond of Song’s captaincy. They would grow into it, and each other, but it would take time.

“That sounds like it would require a great deal of funds,” he said. “How do you intend to secure them?”

Ah, it was Maryam’s mistake. Her viper had only smelled coin and grown curious about what treasures Song might have tucked away. The Izvorica was as well, admittedly, so she cocked an inviting eyebrow at their captain.

“Cleverly,” Song calmly replied, and changed the subject. “Have you given thought to an elective, Tristan?”

The thief nodded.

“Medicine,” he said.

Maryam made a noise of surprise. She was not the only one, for though Tredegar was pleased – as if she had a right to approve or disapprove of his decisions – Song’s face was forcefully even in that way it tended to be when she was keeping emotion off it.

“I would have thought Alchemy your pick,” Maryam admitted.

“I got much more use out of the medicine than the poisons, on the Dominion,” Tristan shrugged. “And unless one of you intends to take that class…”

Maryam did not, and Song had already her eye on a more ambitious track. Which left Tredegar. The hint flew right over the other woman’s head and instead she beamed at Tristan.

“It is a worthy and respectable occupation to be a physician,” she told him.

“People trust doctors with all sorts of things they shouldn’t,” Tristan happily agreed. “Besides, if I pull out painkillers most will assume I’m a Savant pick instead of Krypteia. That ought to make it easier to get around.”

That beam was wiped right off Tredegar’s face, and if it happened to find its way onto Maryam’s instead then that was mere happenstance. Song, at least, looked somewhat impressed.

“It is a decent enough pretense,” she said. “It might not last long, however, if you are asked about your preferred field of study. The Peiling Society is one of scholars.”

“My precise field of study is avoiding being caught out in such a manner,” Tristan mildly replied.

Tredegar cleared her throat, which Maryam was mildly grateful for. It distracted the two before that deceptive mildness could be turned into something sharper by Song’s continued prodding. The Tianxi did not mean it an insult – she was poking holes so they might be filled with something stronger – but Tristan would only see it as a stranger doubting his competence. Or worse, trying to dig up his secrets.

You had to trade with him, Maryam had understood that from the moment a strange boy approached her in the Bluebell’s belly. Anything else he would see as tax, and the infanzones had taught him to hate those to the bone.

“I was told you had poisons on the Dominion but, given the source, had not put stock in the accusation,” Tredegar said, frowning. “How did you use them?”

And there went Maryam’s gratitude. Though it did seem like an unusual blunder for Tristan to speak of poison before the Malani, so she glanced at him with a frown. The utter lack of a wince on that face was reassuring.

“As bait for lupines, and I fed a dying hollow a large quantity of volcian yew knowing the airavatan would eat him,” Tristan easily replied.

Not a single lie spoken. You prepared that well in advance, you rogue, she fondly thought. How long had he been waiting to sow that seed?

“I am unfamiliar with volcian yew,” Tredegar admitted, taking the bait.

“It is a poison for lemures and lares,” Tristan elaborated. “It did not kill the heliodoran beast – I had nowhere enough for that – but it did make it go blind, which let us trick it into its doom.”

And what a coincidence, Maryam amusedly thought, that the explanation of what the poison was would so neatly dovetail into a reminder of his most visible and selfless act of valor on the Dominion. That would feed right into the Malani obsession with equating action and character, the rotten disease teaching them that only good people did good things and only bad people acted badly. Tristan had done good things, so he could not be bad.

And he had not, by a sane woman’s reckoning. Maryam considered every death dealt by his hand deserved. She would not have kept silent otherwise.

“I heard that Ocotlan was killed by poison but that the dealing hand was Vanesa’s,” Tredegar slowly said. “Did she…”

“She plundered my stores without asking,” Tristan flatly replied. “Though I would have flavored his drink without a second thought had she asked. He was a brutal thug and half the reason she was forced to take the trials besides.”

His hand twitched, like he had forced himself not to reach for the brass watch he’d inherited from the old woman. For all that he liked to pretend himself beyond grief or regret, she had never seen the thief without it.

Tredegar nodded, thoughtful, and the stormclouds went away. Song had watched them all the while, not saying a thing even though their captain had come across just enough to undo Tristan’s nimble footwork had she so wished. But she had not, because Song knew that if Tristan was made to leave then Maryam would leave with him. So the Tianxi had kept silent and let it play out. But she never lied either, so that if this all blows up Tredegar will find her easy to forgive.

There was always an angle at work, with Song. She was not angry of it; it was a desirable quality in a captain.

“I intend to take Seafaring, myself,” Maryam said, half so they might move on in full.

Song eyed her curiously.

“You dislike ships,” she said, and it was not a question.

You would too, if you had seen hundreds of prisoners dragged into their holds never to return, Maryam thought.

“I am a Navigator,” she replied. “It is not a rule among the Akelarre Guild that a member should be capable of, well, navigating – but there are certain expectations nonetheless.”

The navigation a signifier was expected to be capable of was that of Gloam storms, preventing the ship and crew from being swept away and swallowed by the dark, but since many of her guildsmen spent most of their career on ships it was common practice for them to be capable of traditional navigation as well. It also allowed them to charge a higher price when hired onto trading ships to ward off Gloam storms, by far the most regular and lucrative work the free companies of the Watch undertook.

Sailing on merchantmen up and down the Tower Coast was not the kind of contract that brought in a fortune all at once – like killing an old god or digging out a cult – but it was solid, constant and largely riskless income. Those contracts were the bread and butter of free companies and why the name ‘Navigators’ was better known than Akelarre out in Vesper.

“It is a worthy thing to overcome one’s discomfort by effort,” Tredegar offered up.

No condescension was meant, Maryam knew that. It still felt like she was being patted on the head by a woman who thought herself her better. Swallowing the sharp reply on the tip of her tongue, the blue-eyed Izvorica forced civility.

“What elective are you considering?” she asked.

Song’s grateful look stung. It was not unreasonable of her to dislike Tredegar. She had the right if she so wished.

“I am inclined not to take one,” the Malani said.

Of course she was, Maryam derisively thought. Angharad Tredegar was already perfect, what was there to improve?

“Should my hand be forced I might learn Samratrava or Centzon,” Tredegar continued, “but before having a grasp on the demands the Skiritai Guild might make of my time I am reluctant to make such a commitment.”

That was, the Izvorica unhappily conceded, not all that unreasonable. Somehow she doubted the Militants would have the most intellectually demanding of classes on the island, but there was little doubt they would be the most physically brutal.

“Captain Wen mentioned that we yet have a week to pick an elective, but that there are no guarantees seats in them will remain,” Song told them. “Keep that in mind before giving me your decision. His request was that I pass him the choices as swiftly as possible, so if any of you are certain…”

She trailed off, inviting answer. Maryam was sure and told her as much. If she was to ever sail a cutter she would need to be trained and her discomfort was nothing in the face of necessity. Tristan committed to training as a physician a heartbeat after, and though Song did not mention it Maryam saw her scribble her own name by the Strategy class on the list. Tredegar decisively maintained her indecision, bold bravery that closed the matter of classes for now.

“We should take stock of our funds,” Maryam suggested after. “I think we could all use a little coin to burn so we might get our affairs in order before classes begin.”

“Ah,” Tristan said, “that remind me.”

He went fishing inside his cloak, removing a slip of paper which he then handed her under the puzzles gazes of the others. On it was written the number 112 and an ink seal – crossed keys inside a circle – had been stamped at the end.

“Your cloak,” he said. “They wouldn’t let me keep it in detainment so I paid for it to be kept in a warehouse. The farrago warehouse, they called it.”

She beamed at him. With a hood to pull down, she might be stared at less in the streets.

“The same warehouse where my uncle’s gift is being kept,” Tredegar noted. “We can settle both affairs as once.”

The Malani then eyed her with surprise.

“I did not know you had bought a cloak, Maryam,” she said.

The Izvorica bared her teeth.

“At that price, why, it was robbery,” she replied.

Song cleared her throat.

“It seems to me that the both of you should head there while Tristan and I-”

She was interrupted by the sound of wood scraping on tiles obnoxiously loudly. Maryam turned to see someone stealing a chair from the nearest table and wedging it between her and Song, back first.

The one doing it was one of the most handsome men she had ever seen.

Lierganen, his dark hair going down to his neck, smooth tanned skin and striking blue eyes. Closely shaven and meticulously clean, the man’s regular uniform drew the eye to lithe muscles and broad shoulders. The stranger sat, facing them and leaning his elbows against the back of his chair, and though his teeth were perfect Maryam could not help but think they looked sharp as knives.

“This is no way to make acquaintance, sir,” Tredegar coldly said.

“We are already acquainted,” the man said. “By name, if nothing else.”

He leaned over and casually took Song’s cup, bringing it to his face to take a sniff and then making a little moue before setting back down on the tablecloth.

“Jigong green?” he said. “Insipid.”

Before the baffled Tianxi could call him to task for it, he smiled.

“Captain Sebastian Camaron,” he introduced himself. “Ninth Brigade.”

Ah, Maryam thought. Shit. It was going to be one of those conversations, wasn’t it? The princeling of princelings glanced at Tredegar.

“You struck my man last night, made a fool of him,” Captain Sebastian said.

“Unbecoming modesty,” Angharad Tredegar replied without batting an eye. “I assure you, he hardly needed my help at all.”

“That’s funny, it is,” he chuckled. “You’re funny, Tredegar.”

He cocked his head to the side.

“Were you like that, before they butchered your family and put a price on your head?” he asked. “Or maybe you’re one of those sorts that put a smile on grief.”

The Pereduri went very, very still. Sebastian Camaron kept smiling.

“My aunt, she says only a fool picks a war in dark,” he said. “So, I looked into you all while your fat waddler of patron came to make terms with her.”

Deftly taking a small silver spoon, he rapped it against the side of Song’s cup – then pointed it at Maryam.

“The worst signifier on the isle.”

Her teeth clenched. It stung all the more to know that he may, in truth, be correct. The spoon moved to Song.

“The most hated surname under Heaven.”

To Tristan.

“Nobody.”

Only then did he look at Angharad again, no longer smiling.

“And Angharad Tredegar, surely the costliest niece in the entire history of Vesper,” Captain Sebastian Camaron said. “You are the only one here worth a second glance here, Tredegar, and by all indications you happen to be the worst fool of the lot.”

The captain rapped the silver spoon against the table pensively.

“Vexing,” he decided, “is what this is. Chasing you out of Scholomance is pointless – who takes heed of a broadside fired into a sinking ship? On the other hand, you manhandled Musa last night and then went about swaggering about at my brigade’s expense.”

Sighing, he rapped the spoon against the table again. Like punctuation.

“My tia agreed on terms with Captain Waddles, so I will heed them out of respect for her,” Captain Sebastian said. “You must be disciplined, of course, but after that I wash my hands of… this.”

The disdain in the last word, spoken as he eyed them all, was a heavy thing.

“I advise against coming to my attention again,” Sebastian Camaron said.

Song’s eyes were cold.

“And what will happen,” she said, “if we do?”

No, Maryam thought. That’s what he wants you to say, Song. So he can make his threat. The man laughed.

“How bold the illusion of safety makes even the least of us,” he mused. “You are not protected, Song Ren. It would be for the best you shed that particular delusion before it gets you hurt.”

Sebastian Camaron pushed back the chair and rose to his feet, contemptuously tossing the spoon onto the tablecloth.

“Twenty-seven, Rainsparrow Hostel,” he said. “Your room, yes? It will be empty when you return.”

The captain of the Ninth Brigade smiled.

“This time I choose to leave the Thirteenth Brigade with the clothes on its back,” Sebastian Camaron said. “That is the last mercy you’ll get from me.”

Then he beamed at them, nodded a goodbye like an old friend and walked away whistling a jaunty tune. They watched him go in silence. Even after he left the terrasse, not one of them spoke until at last Song broke the silence.

“Tristan,” she said.

The thief turned her way.

“Song?”

“It appears we’ll be heading to your cottage early,” she said, “for we are in need of new accommodations.”

It was pleasant out.

The Grand Orrery lights were blue and bronze, brushing softly against the pavement stones, and a breeze too soft to push against the morning mist trailed down the street. If Song were a fortunate woman, she would be sitting in the delightful garden terrasse of the Emerald Vaults, sipping at a cup of Jigong green as she waited for Angharad to join her so she might give a full report over her evening at the Old Playhouse. They might share some of the honeybread Song had heard so much about from Uncle Zhuge, perhaps even have a word about the tension with Maryam while waiting on her to return from the Akelarre chapterhouse.

But the Ren were cursed, beloved only of misery, so instead Song she was headed to a detainment house to get Tristan fucking Abrascal out of it.

The Watch did not call it a jail, which was a balm on her heart as if a member of her brigade had gotten thrown into jail before classes even began Song might just have to throw herself into Allazei Bay to end this debacle early and spare herself further indignity. A god for opponent could be overcome, but not a pig teammate. Only the thought that this might not be of the thief’s fault kept her from growing too furious with Abrascal, who might have been the victim in whatever affair saw him tossed into not-a-jail.

Abrascal deserved a fair hearing, regardless of her concerns about the man.

The same Watch clerk to tell her he had never come back last night had been kind enough to give her directions to the detainment house that’d sent word they had him, so at five forty-five sharp she showed up at its door dressed neatly, freshly bathed and combed with her coat buttons polished. From the outside the building looked more akin to an inn than some gaol, save for the two half-asleep watchmen lounging by the door. They straightened when she approached, though their gazes remained bored.

“Plaque,” the taller of the two asked.

Wordlessly she presented the silver seal, which the watchman examined before giving back.

“Thirteenth, huh,” he snickered. “Lucky you. You’re here for the kid that ended up on the wrong side of a red line?”

Tristan Abrascal, I am going to murder you, she swore. Gods and Circle, could you really not make it a single day?

“I am sure it is only a misunderstanding,” Song lied, smiling politely. “May I enter?”

The guard lazily waved her in. The Tianxi found that her earlier impression had some truth to it: the building had clearly been an inn at some point in the past. The common room seemed much the same as before, though stripped of some tables in favor of weapons racks, and what must have been the rooms for lodging in the back were now for holding students under arrest. Inside a handful of blackcloaks sat at the table by the hearth, two of them reading while others chatted over steaming mugs of tea.

One of them, a woman of Someshwari looks, glanced back and then rose at the sight of her.

“Thirteenth?” she asked.

Kuril accent, Song noticed. Unusual, as that mountain people rarely left the continent, but some were said to turn to mercenary work during lean years and the Watch recruited heavily from soldiers of fortune – both the Garrison and the free companies.

“I am Captain Song Ren of the Thirteenth Brigade,” she confirmed. “Here for Tristan Abrascal.”

“Leftmost room,” the Someshwari said. “He’s with Sergeant Hotl, you can go right in.”

Song nodded her thanks, then moved to put an end to this mess as quickly as possible. She was but a few feet away from the door when she heard Abrascal shout from inside, jaw tightening in quicksilver anger. It was one thing to hold a member of her cabal, another to beat them. That would not be tolerated. Hand on the chisel, Song reminded herself, but wrenched open the door harder than necessary.

Only to be faced with Abrascal sitting with Sergeant Hotl over a game of cards, moaning as he lost a hand to the Aztlan blackcloak. Loudly enough neither noticed her arrival. His calamity god was lounging against the wall,  able to look at Hotl’s cards though such a thing was no doubt beneath her. Abrascal had been shouting at his loss, not a beating, and so the world was righted: Song was allowed to be furious at him once more.

“Three valets?” Tristan groaned. “The torture rack would have been kinder.”

“Do not tempt me,” Song coldly said, entering and closing the door behind her.

At last they noticed her, Sergeant Hotl chuckling and Abrascal straightening like a child caught pilfering sweets. The gray-eyed man shot her what he must think was a winning smile, which had her tightening her jaw. She hated that most about him, the way he played it all off – as if it were a game, a jest. As if this situation was not deadly serious, a potential black mark on their cabal’s reputation they might be working off for months.

“Your plaque,” Sergeant Hotl asked, leaning back in his chair.

 Song dutifully handed it, glancing lightly above Hotl’s head at the rows of golden letters hovering there and further unfolding beneath her gaze. Written in Centzon, not Omeyetl, so easy enough to read. She only had moments to peek at his terms before he returned the plaque, but it was enough to glean that the contract seemed to concern memory. Sergeant Hotl – Itzcuin Hotl, she learned through the terms – asked for her name and nodded after receiving it.

“Your man here is in detainment for being found past a red line by one of the western patrols, Captain Song,” the sergeant told her. “He told his tale of how he got there and it seems to check out with an accidental crossing. We had the details investigated.”

Song, standing ramrod straight before the two, bent her neck to nod.

“Am I to understand that an accidental crossing is a lesser offense than willful one?” she asked.

“It’s not an offense at all,” Sergeant Hotl said. “He’s been detained because while he passed a Judas test he could have been brainbent. He’s spent a night contained without going into a mania episode, however, so that doesn’t appear to be the case.”

The Judas test, Song had read, was one of the Watch’s means to determine if someone had been possessed. Sixty-six seconds exposed to brumal silver, a metal that induced allergic reactions on the flesh of individuals ridden by gods. That explained why their brigade plaque was silvery – though it must be an alloy, brumal silver was wildly expensive – but now why Tristan had needed to be tested for possession in the first place.

That interrogation could wait, Song decided.

“He is cleared of risks, then,” she said.

“He is,” Sergeant Hotl conceded.

She glanced at Tristan.

“Up,” she ordered. “You can attempt to convince me this was not your fault over breakfast.”

He was thoroughly underserving of the Emerald Vaults’ honeybread, but the world was an unfair place and she would not deny herself petty pleasures. Only the thief did not move and Hotl cocked an eyebrow at her.

“Your man is also the reason two students are in the hospital,” the watchman said. “He’s not going anywhere until your patron comes to collect him.”

Song turned a look on Abrascal, silently demanding an explanation.

“The second’s not even my fault, really,” he complained. “The house collapsed and the man got hit by loose masonry standing in the street like a fool.”

“The house collapsed because you threw a grenade at the roof,” Sergeant Hotl reminded him.

It was evidently not the first time they’d had this conversation. Abrascal’s calamity god, whose name burned Song’s eyes even to glance at when she glanced at the hovering contract, was laughing at something. Perhaps glee at violence done in her name?

“It was just fireworks, which I threw at a Skiritai student,” Abrascal peevishly said. “And he’s just fine, you told me, even though he was blinded, deaf and on the roof when it fell. I threw the damn thing and still got bruises.”

The thief glanced at her.

“It’s unfair that other people also get to have a Tredegar,” the gray-eyed man seriously told her. “I much preferred it when we had a monopoly on that sort of thing.”

Song always disliked it when she agreed with something he said. It made her feel like she had joined a particularly embarrassing circus. The Tianxi cleared her throat.

“Our patron has yet to arrive on Tolomontera,” she told the sergeant. “We have no notion of when they might, meaning Tristan might remain in your custody long past the beginning of classes.”

A pause, an encouraging smile. Smiles tended to get you further than frown when you were a young woman. Unless you had a musket out, anyway.

“Would it be possible for me to undertake the necessary duty as his captain and have him released to my care?”

“You’re behind,” Sergeant Hotl replied. “Your patron arrived late last night and sent word that Tristan here is not to be released under any circumstances until he arrives.”

Song breathed in. She did not enjoy looking the fool, which she had just made herself pass as. Hand on the chisel, she reminded herself. If anything, that their patron had finally arrived was fine news. She had many questions to ask him.

“Would you happen to know when they are to arrive, then?” she politely inquired.

Before the sergeant could answer, the sound of small commotion in the common room drew their attention. Song barely had long enough to turn before the door was brusquely opened and a man was revealed to her eyes.

“Shit,” Tristan said.

It took her a moment for her to recognize the man who entered the room, but only that, and once more she joined the circus.

Lieutenant Wen had not lost so much as a thimble of weight since the Dominion, his belly still barely tucked into his black coat and gilet. Her fellow Tianxi was holding a brace of fresh churros through a small folded cloth, one recently bitten into – he was chewing loudly, and did not bother greeting anyone in the room after entering. Sergeant Hotl got to his feet and saluted.

“Sir,” he said, “I am-”

Wen raised a finger, silencing the Aztlan officer, then noisily swallowed. Song would have thought that the end of it, but he then wiped his hand on his coat and went looking inside a pocket for his pair of gold-rimmed spectacles. He carefully put them on, resting them on his nose, and Sergeant Hotl opened his mouth again. Only to be silenced by a finger again.

Lieutenant Wen took another bite of churro and made them all wait in silence as he chewed and swallowed before finally letting out a pleased sigh.

“Ah, that’s much better,” Wen happily said, then turned a steady look on the room. “All right, my morning has now become tolerable enough to suffer through this. Proceed, sergeant.”

“Sergeant Hotl, sir,” the Aztlan said. “I relieved Sergeant Gentry, who wrote and sent the report you received, but I have familiarized myself with the details.”

“It’s a pretty straightforward case,” Lieutenant Wen amiably said. “Tristan’s a shifty little prick, but it’s the Forty-Ninth that picked their fight and he didn’t break any of the Scholomance rules on purpose. I have been told of the situation so there’s no further need for Garrison involvement.”

“As you say, sir,” Sergeant Hotl replied. “I’ll just need you to sign him out and he’s all yours.”

The fat officer bit into a churro again and Song only barely hid her twitch. Wen’s absolute lack of manners, the deliberate flouting of politeness, never failed to infuriate her. Especially in a Tianxi who should know better.

“Let’s,” Lieutenant Wen said. “The others should be waiting for us on Hostel Street by now, and I’m not giving these brats my entire day.”

—

Mere minutes later they were on the street, walking back towards their lodgings.

Song had never quite settled on whether Lieutenant Wen was yixin or not – that is, Cathayan of race but raised in a foreign culture. The blue-lipped twins on the Dominion had been that and almost proud of it, but the large officer was more difficult to place. Tristan could not seem to look at Wen without visibly wanting to wince, so Song took it upon herself to break the silence.

“A pleasure to meet you again, Lieutenant Wen,” she said.

“Captain Wen now,” the man corrected with a hard grin. “Who would have thought those years of formal complaints about Vasanti would end up paying off? I was a lone voice of truth ignored by a negligent commander, Ren, a veritable unsung hero.”

He bit into his churros with relish, letting out indecent noises as he did. Song still could not quite put a finger his accent in Antigua, which sounded like Erlangi but not quite as throaty. Not from a southern republic, that much was certain, but he didn’t sound like he had been raised speaking Machin either – the dialect of the eastern republics was too particular to the ear to mistake.

If he were yixin it would explain the manners, she thought. That and him being an asshole, which he manifestly was.

“Happy news,” Song politely replied. “I must admit I did not expect to see you so soon after the Dominion, much less have you named as our Scholomance patron.”

“It was a surprise for me as well,” Wen replied. “Here I was at the Rookery, summoned before a tribunal to determine if I was to be demoted, and instead they cleared me in less than an hour before offering me a position I’d not even applied for. Out on the first boat I was, Mandisa with me.”

“You must have distinguished yourself during the crisis,” Song said.

The man bit into his churros again.

“Nah,” he said, mouth half full. “I’m thinking instead that someone on the Obscure Committee has it out for your cabal. Since I recommended Tristan here be shot in my report on the Trial of Ruins, they’re hoping I’ll get you all killed.”

Song swallowed. Had she been the one to cause this? She’d heard rumors that a sitting member of the committee ruling over Scholomance had kin in Jigong, though they were only rumors. Abrascal was finally moved from muteness, which at least distracted Wen from her temporary distress.

“Shot, really?” he complained. “That was hardly warranted.”

“You miss all the public executions you don’t ask for,” Captain Wen philosophically replied. “Thought I might get lucky and get you tossed into a Garrison camp as a compromise, but apparently you’re the pet of someone high up in the ranks.”

“The word you are looking for is pupil,” Abrascal sharply replied.

There was genuine heat in his eyes, a rare sight. Unlike the dark glee in Wen’s, who looked like a man who’d just found a new favorite toy.

“Did I hear correctly that Sergeant Mandisa accompanied you?” Song asked, steering away from the explosion. “Might she have been promoted as well?”

“No, Mandi’s still a sergeant,” Wen grumpily said. “I had to pull strings to get her out of the Dominion, too, they wanted to assign me a sergeant from the Tolomontera garrison.”

It was not a long walk back to Hostel Street and the first stretch of it was spent in silence, so when they turned the corner Song was not surprised to find they were in sight of the Rainsparrow Hostel. Out in the street before it stood the three waiting for them: Maryam, who at last looked properly rested, then the chatting pair of Angharad and Sergeant Mandisa. Both a display of tall, attractive dark-skinned women with a lethal streak to them.

Not Song’s cup of tea, but she could understand why they were drawing lingering stares even at so early an hour.

Wen had finished the entire brace of churros by the time they joined the others, which she would not have thought possible if not for the evidence before her eyes, and seemed in a marginally better mood. A silver lining.

“Wen,” Sergeant Mandisa greeted him. “Done bullying the rooklings?”

“It’s not bullying if they deserve it,” he replied.

He spent a moment on greeting Maryam, politely, then Angharad with some genuine fondness. Mandisa did the same with them, teasing Tristan with a grin before offering Song her hand to shake. She took it.

“Congratulations on being named captain,” Mandisa said. “I hear you can get the position formally conferred if you graduate with it.”

That was Song’s aim, yes. Cabalists were outside the general chain of command of the Watch, unable to use their ranks to command regulars, but they were also answered directly to the high-ranking officers they were assigned to and could not be commanded by anyone else. It was the best, quickest way for her to be able to take on the kind of work that would restore her family’s name.

“I will endeavor to live up to the privilege,” she replied.

“Look at you, saying the Stripe sayings,” the sergeant grinned. “Cute as a button.”

Song did not scowl, but it was a near thing. She was nearly twenty, far past the age for such childish compliments.

“All right,” Captain Wen said. “I need to brief the brats and I hear the Chimerical opened here so I’ll be taking two birds with that stone. Mandisa?”

The tall sergeant wrinkled her nose.

“No thank you,” she said. “I’ll go see if our luggage is there yet, straighten out the rooms.”

“Much appreciated,” Wen said, then turned his eyes on them.

He grinned unpleasantly.

“Come on, it will be a learning experience.”

—

Despite the ominous words, it turned out the Chimerical was a little shop tucked away in a corner a mere few streets away from the tall facades of Hostel Street.

It looked dingy. The wooden front was stooped and dirty, the sole glass window caked with old dust and the shop sign faded. Once a chimera had been painted in gold, but time had worn away much of the body and all the heads save the serpent’s. The silhouette of the lemure would have been unrecognizable if not for the name of the place, which was writ on the straw welcome mat. It took two attempts for Captain Wen to wrench open the thick wooden door, and then the smell wafted out.

Strong, bitter and lingering.

“This is a coffeehouse,” Song said, genuinely surprised.

The Malani drink was wildly popular in Izcalli and swaths of the Trebian Sea, but it had never gained much of a following in the Republics. Tea was bound to too many of the rituals that maintained society.

“The only one on Tolomontera,” Captain Wen agreed. “Don’t spread the word.”

She was first in behind the captain, narrowing her eyes at the inside. The Chimerical was not any neater there, and still uncomfortably cramped. The entire shop was little more than three tables in walled booths and facing a counter behind which she glimpsed the tools to make coffee – roaster, mortar and sundry copper pots for the boiling. Yet the smallness of the shop would not have been so oppressive, Song thought, if the proprietor had not decided to fill it with a multitude of knickknacks.

A stuffed alligator hung from the ceiling, a row of green jars with froggy legs floating in preservative were by her head, a large globe whose painted borders matched no existing nation turned slowly, no fewer than seven Izcalli dueling spears were put up like trophies and was that potted nightshade in the corner? With every look she found further cluttering claptrap, none of it arranged sensibly or even in a way that was pleasing to the eye. It was genuinely awful.

“Oh,” Angharad said, coming in behind her with wide eyes. “How charming!”

Song was mistress of herself, and so she did not shoot the other woman and betrayed look. However deserved one might have been. Instead she followed Wen as he claimed the booth furthest in, whose table was currently occupied by a prodigiously fat black cat. It flopped belly up the moment the captain stroked it, purring loudly as Wen showed more affection towards the animal in an instant than she had ever seen him express towards a person not Mandisa over the length of their entire acquaintance.

“Good boy,” the captain praised. “You’re a good boy, yes you are.”

Maryam, who had caught up to her while Abrascal and Angharad stared at the globe and excitedly discussed something while pointing at a sea that Song was somewhat convinced did not exist, came by her side and shot the feline a skeptical look.

“More buoy than boy, that one,” the signifier muttered her way.

Song was startled into a snort, which she politely turned into a cough.

“The owner appears absent,” she said. “Perhaps we should-”

“Take a seat, by all means.”

It was a near thing, but Song refrained from reaching for her blade. The voice came from behind her, the counter where she could have sworn there had been no one. Now there stood a tall old man, his brown hair touched by strokes of gray. Dressed in a slashed rusty jerkin over a high-collared gray doublet and matching hose, a jauntily angled black beret spruced up with an ostrich feather atop his head, the proprietor met her gaze soberly.

His eyebrows, she could not help but notice, looked much like the ears of the stuffed grand duke owl to his left.

Wen abandoned the cat, which meowed plaintively at the withdrawal of belly rubs, and turned to the owner. He looked surprised at the sudden appearance, so perhaps it was common practice. A trapdoor behind the counter, perhaps? There did not seem to be a back room for the proprietor to live in, much less a second story.

“Hage,” Captain Wen greeted the man.

“Wen Duan,” Hage replied, his impressive eyebrows rising. “Back from exile, I see.”

“I simply cannot be contained,” Wen happily said, then patted the meowing cat’s head. “What is this beautiful boy called?”

“Mephistofeline,” the proprietor replied, smiling broadly. “Prince of Hell, felonious claimant to the throne of Pandemonium.”

And everyone save Wen went still, as beyond a row of neat white teeth was a maw of fangs. Devil, this Hage was a devil. Mephistofeline broke the silence by leaping down the table and landing with an undignified thump.

Song had half expected him to bounce.

“The Office of Opposition will try to assassinate you again if they hear that,” Wen amusedly replied.

Hage dismissed the words with an indifferent wave.

“It will give Asher something to hiss at,” the devil said. “Your usual?”

“Please,” Wen said.

The devil turned his gaze – placid brown eyes which he was not using, not really – on them.

“Your orders?” he prompted.

 “I’ll invite you this once,” Wen told them. “Do as you please.”

“Do you have Uthukile beans?” Angharad hopefully asked.

“I’m not a savage, girl, of course I have Uthukile beans,” Hage said. “Southern Tsenda, heart of the riverlands.”

The Pereduri perked up, the words evidently having meaning for her. Song had never heard of Tsenda, though she did know the ‘riverlands’ referred to a region near the border between the islands of Uthukile and Malan. It was the wealthiest and most populated part of Uthukile, on account of being furthest from the coast of the Low Isle and its infamous storms.

“Then I would have a cup, if you please,” Angharad said. “Unadorned.”

The devil nodded approvingly then moved on to the rest of them.

“I will have the same as Captain Wen,” Maryam volunteered.

A cocked eyebrow and a nod. The devil turned his eyes on Song, who forced a smile.

“I do not suppose you have tea?” she asked.

Hage sneered, turning a look on Wen who held up his hands defensively.

“She’s from the old country,” he said. “You know how they are.”

Definitely yixin, Song thought. It might explain why he appeared to care little about her surname even though as the Thirteenth’s patron he was sure to know her bearing it was no coincidence.

“You can have a cup of Totochtin gold, two sugars and my contempt,” the devil said. “Boy?”

“Water, thank you,” Abrascal drily replied.

Hage stared at him, muttered something about sacking Liergan a sixth time and dismissed the Sacromontan’s existence as he puttered about taking care of the orders. Abrascal sighed and she flicked him a curious look. He scowled.

“Coffee is a drug,” he told her. “Take it for long enough and you will have headaches if you stop.”

“You will find no argument from me,” Song told him.

She could not, the Tianxi suddenly realized, ever seeing Tristan take so much a sip of liquor without it being pushed on him. The dedication to keeping a clear mind was admirable, and perhaps went some way in explaining how someone whose contract was a glorified coin flip was still alive. His calamity god appeared to be wandering around eyeing the knickknacks, though Song could not spare more than a sneaking look without risking being caught looking.

They all squeezed into the same booth, Wen taking up a side by himself while the rest sat to face him. The captain eyed them with clear displeasure.

“I knew that this would be a headache and half when I accepted the position,” he said, “but somehow you have surpassed my expectations.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“I haven’t even been on this island for a day and I’ve already had to deal with two feuds on your behalf,” the captain bluntly said. “Would either of the people who started one of those care to explain themselves?”

Abrascal smiled but said nothing, so Angharad gallantly charged into the breach.

“It was an honor duel,” she said. “And I ended it at first blood.”

Wen eyed her balefully.

“That’s what you say happened,” he said. “What I had the patron of the Ninth Brigade yelling in my ear about was that you casually crippled and humiliated their Skiritai two days before the start of classes.”

Song had asked her to make an impression, and Angharad had. It was always a pleasure when an order was followed so exceptionally. Only Wen did not look equally pleased.

“I had to do a lot of dancing to make it so there wouldn’t be a price put on crippling each of your arms this morning,” he said. “You’re lucky that Lady Knit didn’t ask for a high price to get that boy’s arm working again.”

Song cleared her throat, the baleful look turned on her for it.

“Lady Knit?”

“The goddess running the hospital here,” Wen said.

She’d thought that might be the case. Some surprised looks from the others, a fresh reminder that outside the Republics gods were not usually considered citizens.

“They have mundane chirurgeons as well,” the captain told the others, “but if you want a miracle Lady Knit is your port of call. Not that I would recommend using her services too often.”

Wen then turned back to Angharad.

“I argued you were provoked, but still had to pay up so the situation wouldn’t get out of hand,” he said. “As punishment, the Thirteenth Brigade will not be attending the gathering in Misery Square this afternoon.”

Song stiffened. Given that every other Scholomance student was meant to be there, their absence was sure to be remarked upon. She had meant to capitalize on the repute Angharad had won them, too, firm up the alliance with Captain Ferranda’s brigade and deepen the acquaintance with the Third. All those designs were smoke if they were barred from attendance, and after the talk about the Thirteeenth would no longer be of their mirror-dancer’s spectacular victory but instead of the cabal’s mysterious absence.

“Is it not possible,” Song delicately said, “to change that punishment to another, sir? A fine, perhaps.”

Better to lose brigade funds than brigade connections. The coin would come back but not the opportunities.

“You misunderstand me, Ren,” Wen told her. “Scholomance had and has only three rules: as your patron, I was assigned here to advise you and serve as an intermediary. I cannot, in fact, give you orders or punishments. No one can aside from the garrison and your teachers, and even the latter’s authority is limited.”

He sipped at his coffee again, then set it down.

“I negotiated a settlement with the Ninth’s patron, but you are in no way bound to follow it,” he continued, breaking off another piece of shortbread. “What I can tell you is that, if you don’t, those remarkably well-connected brats will come after you with all they’ve got. I gave the Ninth a win and mitigated your gains at their expense, so they agreed to keep your troubles schoolyards ones in exchange. No bounties, no leaning on outside connections. You can do with that deal what you will.”

Song hesitated.

“It sounds,” Maryam ventured, “like a decent enough bargain. I do not think we want to pick a war so early, no?”

“If the best they can muster is to threaten us with forces beyond them, then we need not bow our heads,” Angharad opined. “On the contrary, let us raise the banner and have others opposed to their brigade flock to it.”

“We’re not fighting just them or their friends if they put up a bounty,” Tristan objected. “We’re fighting everyone who needs coin, and I’m guessing that’s a much longer list.”

None of them were senseless in their opinion. It was a heavy fight to be picking so early and against an opponent whose strengths and means were yet unknown to them, but Angharad was not wrong in noting the Ninth seemed to be overplaying their hand – which smacked of posturing, of weakness. But there was more to the decision than that.

“We cannot be the first to openly fight the Ninth Brigade,” Song evenly said. “Using their captain’s connections they want to reign as the princes of Scholomance, which means the first to challenge their rule must be made an example of to cow the rest. They certainly will cross lines to accomplish this, a complication we do not need when we already have so many plaguing us.”

Angharad’s lips thinned.

“The Third Brigade-”

“Is looking for a catspaw to hamstring their rivals,” Song sharply cut in. “We are outsiders brought in so cousins do not come to blows directly, not allies. If they form a coalition against the Ninth it will be a different matter, but that is not the situation.”

The Tianxi stared down the other woman. Angharad looked away first and Song’s face betrayed none of her relief at the challenge ending there. Her command of the situation would slip if her most reliable supporter within the cabal began arguing her decisions too much. She turned to Captain Wen and nodded.

“Thank you for negotiating the settlement,” she said.

As if summoned by the lull in conversation, the devil owning the coffeehouse appeared with a silver serving plate. Porcelain cups for all, save for Abrascal who received his water in a tin goblet. Wen’s usual proved to be not only a small porcelain cup of coffee but with a small plate of shortbread cookies sprinkled with some kind of crystalline powder. Sugar? Either way, Maryam immediately helped herself to one and ignored the coffee entirely. Song eyed her own delicate white cup, the coffee within covered with a layer of golden foam. The Totochtin League was, if she recalled correctly, a coalition of city-states nestled against southwestern Izcalli that the kingdom allowed to exist mostly so it could wage flower wars against it, regularly raiding it for prisoners and loot.  Did they grow coffee? She’d had no idea.

Hazarding a sip, she found the taste rather mild – a little smoky and very sugary in aftertaste. Like a sort of sirup. It was warm and not unpleasant, but lacked the attractions of properly prepared tea. Angharad downed her own cup like a soldier putting away liquor, swallowing without a hint of discomfort and smacking her lips afterwards.

Song had not had a good look, but what she’d just guzzled down had looked not unlike liquid black tar. Malani.

“What of the situation with the Forty-Ninth?” she asked, setting down her cup.

Wen took a sip of his own and sighed in pleasure, then set down the delicate porcelain and broke off a small piece of shortbread to scarf it down. Only after that did he bother to reply.

“I know their patron, Dionora Cazal,” Wen said. “We were inducted into the Laurels at the same time. She tried to bully me into offering a fine for their wounded, but she had thin grounds for asking.”

“It is their brigade that ambushed me,” Abrascal evenly said. “Their captain schemed as much from the moment he came to the Old Playhouse.”

That Tristan had evaded an entire cabal at the cost of little more than bruising was, admittedly, impressive. The man was not incompetent.

“That’s what I heard, yes,” Wen mused. “They were after some sort of bounty and they were the ones to attack, so as reparations I offered them one copper and for Tristan to write an insincere apology letter.”

Song choked. She had not expected much, given that the Forty-Ninth was attempting to collect on the head of a member of her cabal and that made peace unlikely, but she had not expected Wen to actively provoke their opponent. She should have known better. Wen was not help, fool of a Ren, he was another disaster in need of handling.

“How insincere are we talking?” Tristan asked.

Captain Wen opened his mouth to answer but she cut in before he could.

“Never mind that,” Song said. “There is to be no truce with the Forty-Ninth, sir?”

He shook his head.

“And Dionora still ran off with the copper I flipped her when making my offer, so I expect you to retrieve it on my behalf,” he solemnly said. “We cannot allow ourselves to be robbed this way, the brigade’s honor is at stake.”

Assaulting a superior officer would be a black mark on her record, Song reminded herself. Maryam, perhaps taking pity on her, cleared her throat and changed the subject.

“We were told that our patron would explain how our year at Scholomance is to function, sir,” she said. “Given that classes begin tomorrow, I would appreciate that explanation.”

Wen reached inside his coat, taking out a sheath of papers. He picked one out of the lot, setting the rest aside and unfolding the one he had chosen for them all to see. On it appeared to be the layout of a schedule over seven days, each split in half.

“There are five general classes,” Wen said. “Those are obligatory for you to attend as part of the education common to all Scholomance students.”

His finger went to firstday, the morning half.

“Mandate,” Wen said, “is a study of the Watch itself. The nature of its rights, privileges, duties and functions. A lot of the students with blood in the black will know these things already – some of them, anyway – but it is necessary learning for the likes of you.”

The finger moved to the second day of the week, morning again.

“Saga, which as far as I’m concerned is the most important of your classes. It involves both recent history and the study of modern Vesper with its underpinnings. You are to be taught about the world we’re sending you into, how it works and how it got to become that way.”

Third day of the week, still morning.

“Teratology,” Wen said. “The study of monsters – lemures and lares. Biology, behavior, habitat. How to kill or use them, their weaknesses and wants.”

Fourth day.

“Theology, the study of gods. I hear it’s to be taught by a Navigator, so expect a grasp of basic metaphysics to be thrown in as well: Gloam, Glare, aether.”

Fifth day, morning like all the others.

“The last, inevitably, is Warfare,” Wen said. “Not only will you be taught to fight and kill in the ways of our order, you will also be made to study skirmishing tactics on a cabal scale.”

“That leaves the afternoons empty,” Song noted.

“Those belong to your covenant,” he said. “Sometime today a letter will be sent to your lodgings, outlining where you are to meet tomorrow afternoon and be introduced to your fellow covenanters. Your schedule for the rest of the year will be outlined by your instructors then.”

“And the last two days of the week?” Maryam asked.

“Those are yours,” Wen said. “You are allowed to take one of the electives if you like – all are taught on sixthday morning – but you will get no special privilege from studiousness save what you learn.”

He picked out another paper from his sheath, unfolding it and setting it by the first. It was a list, Song saw. The electives. Fundamentals, Medicine, Seafaring, Alchemy, Strategy, Languages.

“If you’re looking to learn a language in particular, tell me and I’ll arrange for it,” Captain Wen said. “More or less every language spoken in a successor state can be taught, but if you want something rarer it’ll depend on whether there is a teacher for it.”

Slow nods all around.

“Fundamentals?” Tristan asked.

“It’s to catch up your sort,” the captain answered. “Reading, writing, numbers. Bare bones on the nations, languages and the history of Vesper. Enough of the fundamentals you won’t embarrass the Watch when out in the world on our behalf.”

The Sacromontan hummed but said nothing more. If he had felt insulted by that he hid it well.

“Professors in the general classes will regularly give you assignments, which you can fail,” Wen informed them. “If so, you will be tasked with redoing the assignment. Failure to complete all your assignments to the teacher’s satisfaction before the end of the year will see you forced to retake the class the following year.”

A pause.

“Fail to complete a class twice and your time at Scholomance comes to an end.”

A method forgiving of failure, Song thought, though perhaps there was a reason for it besides a surfeit of tolerance for incompetence.

“I was informed that there is to be a yearly test whose failure could also see us expelled,” Angharad said.

Captain Wen waved that away.

“Settle in for a few weeks, then we’ll talk about the test,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about that for a while.”

He raised a finger.

“What you should be worrying about,” he said, “is that from tomorrow onwards staying in the hostels and dining will no longer be free. Unless one of you is secretly rich, I’d start either making gold or looking for somewhere else to sleep.”

Song had not acceded company funds last night, preferring instead to take the measure of Port Allazei, but somehow she suspected that the prices for the rooms would be just expensive enough that staying in them would make it difficult to buy anything else.

“There are other accommodations in Allazei?” Angharad asked, surprised.

“No,” Song said with certainty. “He means the ruins.”

“There’s a city’s worth of walls and roofs out there,” Wen shrugged. “Figure something out.”

He drank of his cup again and repeated the same ritual with the shortbread. Maryam’s own shortbread was long gone, Song noticed, but she had not so much as sipped at her own coffee.

“Finish your drinks and wait outside,” Wen ordered. “I need to speak with your captain in private.”

“Ah,” Abrascal smiled. “The secret Stripe perks I’ve been hearing about.”

“It wouldn’t be the Academy if they didn’t stack the deck,” Wen easily replied. “Go on, then, get going.”

The thief drained his water and Maryam discreetly hid her full cup behind the empty goblet, ignoring Wen’s unimpressed look. Angharad was the first out, speaking her goodbyes, and the rest followed in her wake. The devil named Hage nodded a goodbye from behind the counter, which he was wiping, but did not bother to say anything. After Wen finished another round of coffee and shortbread, he wiped his mouth.

“Start reading up on the Asphodel Rectorate,” he said. “I’m supposed to be all mysterious about it, but that’s most likely where the Thirteenth will be sent for its test.”

Song nodded, mind spinning. She had looked for a library last night, or at least archives, but there did not appear to be either in Port Allazei. Most likely it would be in Scholomance proper.

“Now, as an Academy candidate you get a carrot and stick handed to you,” Wen continued, picking a piece of paper from the pile and handing it to her.

Song unfolded it, finding on it a string of seven numbers.

“Am I meant to know the meaning of this?” she asked.

“It’s your key to the Academy account at the bank,” Captain Wen replied. “From now on, if you hand in the class assignment of one of your cabalists at least two days early the professor will make a note of it and pass it on. At the end of each month you will be allowed to withdraw ten coppers from the Academy account for every instance it happened.”

Carrot and stick, she silently echoed. Now Song had something to ask of her cabalists and something to reward them with. Something to withhold as well, if they refused. It seemed an easy request to make of them, for some additional funds, because it was.

The point, she thought, was to get them used to listening to her.

“Thank you for the information,” she said.

Captain Wen shrugged.

“If any of your lot want to take an elective, try to get the word to me this afternoon,” he said. “You can register for another week yet, but a fair number have limited places and the only rule is first come first served.”

“I will see to it immediately,” Song said.

The officer grunted, but did not dismiss her quite yet. He looked almost reluctant when he spoke.

“Be careful with the professors,” he finally said. “I hear some might have it out for you over that whole…”

He gestured vaguely.

“The Dimming,” Song flatly said. “My family’s responsibility for it.”

“That,” Captain Wen casually agreed.

Song licked her lips.

“You seem,” she said, “remarkably unconcerned by that.”

She did not hope. She knew better, by now.

“I’ve got a barbarian heart,” Wen told her in accentless Cathayan, “as you fine folk from the old country love to say. What do I care for the woes of the Republics?”

Song kept the wince off her face. That was, admittedly, the literal translation of yixin.

“Besides,” Wen said, “I hear they called your grandfather a hero, for that first hour. He refused to collapse the three-legged tower onto the city and spared thousands, didn’t he? If something hadn’t gone wrong up in firmament and put out a Luminary, he’d be the most beloved man in Jigong.”

He didn’t do it to spare strangers, Song thought, clutching the knowledge in the darkest recess of her heart. He did it because he knew my mother was down there. Her pregnant mother, belly swollen with the second of Song’s brothers.

It was why she could not hate her grandfather without loving him: if he had not ruined them all, Song would not be alive to despise it.

“I will be careful,” she said, throat tight.

Wen studied her for a moment.

“Finish your coffee before you go,” he ordered.

Time to compose herself before meeting the others, a kindness. Forcing her to drink something she disliked, an unkindness. Captain Wen Duan laid out in a sentence, she thought. By the time she took her leave she was calm again, hand on the chisel. The others were lounging outside the shop, their chat guttering out the moment she stepped out the door.

“I have some information,” Song announced. “And we need to make some decisions.”

“We’ll have the free time for it, while everyone else is at Misery Square,” Maryam idly said.

She did not look at Angharad as she did, but then she did not need to. The Pereduri stiffened.

“Well,” Abrascal said, pulling at his collar. “I had a thought about that. There is a place I found that I believe we should go to while everybody else is busy. Somewhere I found last night, which I believe  could be of use to us.”

“Useful what way?” Song frowned.

“Wen told us to look for a place to sleep,” he said. “How does a cottage with a garden sound like?”

Very fine indeed, which meant there was a hidden defect. She was not alone in that understanding.

“Now give us the catch,” Maryam amusedly said.

The thief cleared his throat.

“It may or may not have once belonged to an archbishop of the Sunless House and be hidden by means of Gloam sorcery,” Abrascal said.

Song studied him for a long moment, then sighed.

“How large a garden?” she asked, and Tristan grinned.

Adarsh Hebbar was quick on his feet and not half so careless as he looked.

He also was not heading back to Hostel Street, if the way he headed straight for the broken shrines behind the Old Playhouse was to be believed. Tristan had to wait and let him get ahead, as the stairs back down to the street were open ground with little room to hide, but he hurried after the Varavedan the moment line of sight was broken.

The shrines were more rubble than ruin, but there were enough spans of columns and roofs left he could move from cover to cover. Adarsh, constantly looking back to see if he was being followed – but never in the right places, always in the open instead of the corners – entered a row of collapsed houses in all haste. A blunder. Buildings were only good at shaking off pursuers when you knew all the ways in and out, a row of ruins with more wind than walls would not help him in the slightest.

Tristan cut in through a collapsed wall to catch up, then kept close as they ghosted through the ruin together. Close enough that when silver Orrery lights swept ahead he could see the nerves on the bespectacled man’s face, those thick brows knotted into a constant half-flinch. Did he know he was being followed? Tristan did not think he had been seen but a contract might not care for that.

This island was not going to be kind to him, he could already tell. Anyone here could have a contract, it made situations difficult to gauge properly.

Adarsh seemed to have some notion of where he was heading, leaving the ruined houses for a narrow alley leading up to a town square. A better choice than the houses, as the alley was so narrow it’d be near impossible to hide in. Which the Varavedan must have been counting on, as he stopped after reaching halfway in to wait and see if anyone followed.

Tristan immediately gave up that game as lost, instead circling around through a larger street to the left that was full of broken statues and quickening his step on the way to the town square. The place was not so large as it had seemed, for at its heart what must have once been a few trees around a large pillar was now a thick copse touched by rubble.

The trees were a decent place to place his ambush, Tristan decided, and he found a tall root overlooking the easiest path west. Hiding there, he waited and was eventually confronted with the sight of absolutely nothing. Adarsh was not coming. Had the man played him, baited him into circling around before running back towards the Old Playhouse? If so, the thief was reluctantly impressed.

He moved towards the head of that narrow alley, risking a glance in, and found a silhouette in there – thankfully looking the other way. Ah, Adarsh wasn’t gone; he was still trying to catch out his pursuer. If there was a contract at work here, it must not be a precise one. Taking this for the opportunity it was, Tristan moved the site of his ambush to a once-shop at the left side of the alley head.

There was a large window there, and by the looks of the marks in the stone beneath it there must have been a wooden counter wedged in. Long gone, that, but the window would serve to keep an eye on Adarsh’s movement and the shop door should lead Tristan straight behind him. The thief settled in to wait, but did not need to: mere heartbeats later he heard hurried steps in the alley.

The Varavedan did not come out, though. Instead he stopped on the left edge of the shop window, less than two feet from where Tristan was waiting. The thief had an almost direct look at Adarsh and went still as stone so movement would not draw his eye. The tanned man sagged against the wall, relief plain on his face. He took off his spectacles and pulled up the hem of his cloak, cleaning them with the cloth. 

Which was when Tristan reached through the window, snatching his collar and dragging him in through up to the shoulders. Before Adarsh could so much as scream he had a knife against his throat.

“This doesn’t have to get ugly,” Tristan said, tightening his grip. “You just need to answer my questions.”

He forced the Varavedan to bend at a bad angle the way Abuela had taught him – Adarsh had less than an inch on him, it was easy – not so much of a bend it would hurt but enough it’d be hard for the other man to get enough of a footing to fight him off. The Varavedan swallowed loudly.

“Bhosdike,” the man cursed. “I don’t know who you are, but this is a mis-”

“Your name is Adarsh Hebbar,” Tristan cut in. “You have been taking notes about who speaks with Ferranda Villazur and Angharad Tredegar. Why?”

The man slumped, as if the fight had just gotten beaten out of him.

“Bait,” he said, and for a moment the thief tensed before relaxing at what followed. “Just call me Bait, that’s my name now.”

The bitterness in his voice was the detail that let Tristan put it all together at last. The man being a terrible spy, the individuals he had been writing about and now the mocking name forced on him?

“You’re with Tupoc Xical,” the thief accused. “Fourth Brigade.”

“With is a strong word,” Bait replied. “Can I put my glasses on? I don’t want to drop them, they’re very expensive.”

“No,” Tristan refused. “It would make it harder to blind you.”

The man shivered.

“I told himno, you know,” the Someshwari whined. “I’m a Savant, we don’t reconnoiter. That’s for Masks and Militants.”

“And then he punched you,” Tristan said, trying hard not to be amused.

A valiant effort, but the cause was doomed.

“He doesn’t do it himself anymore,” Bait mournfully said. “It’s Expendable now, she’s next in the ladder.”

“Ask about the names,” Fortuna demanded, suddenly wedged against him and leaning past the windowsill to peer at their prisoner. “Tristan, don’t you dare not ask about the names.”

There were more important questions, the thief knew. Truly. Still.

“Explain the names,” he ordered.

“Xical says it’s to keep us motivated,” Bait sighed. “We fight every month and the one who does best gets to use their real name while the rest of us get one of the placeholders.”

Bait, Trista learned when prodding further, had placed second behind a Navigator called Alejandra. He stood above the inauspiciously named ‘Expendable’, who herself ranked above the even more unfortunate ‘Acceptable Losses’.  Apparently Tupoc had struck some kind of bargain with Lady Cressida from the Nineteenth to get Bait into the Old Playhouse, under instruction to pretend he was part of no brigade.

Entertaining as Xical’s general inability to refrain from being terrible was when turned on others, there was something off here. This wasn’t the Dominion, there should not be souls so desperate that Tupoc felt like a good idea.

“Why do you stick with him?” Tristan asked. “You cannot be forced to be part of a cabal.”

“You think I’d stick around if I had a choice?” Bait said. “It’s either him or sticking with the spares.”

“And your lack of alternatives springs from…”

Bait grimaced.

“My father was a colonel in the Twelve Hundred Sleepless Slayers,” he said. “Only he was, uh, caught embezzling from company funds and selling information on the side.”

A free company of the Watch, Tristan deduced, likely somewhere out in the Imperial Someshwar.

“And that makes you pariah how?” the thief asked.

“He was selling it to the Rana of Kuril so she could underbid on contracts,” Bait said. “The company didn’t look kindly on that – they hung and quartered him, then tossed my family out. I was already on my way to Scholomance when it happened so I thought they’d decided to spare me, but no. They sent word ahead to Tolomontera: there’s not a student here with family in the black that doesn’t know what my father did.”

Tristan almost winced. The Watch was as a tribe, tolerating quarrels within itself but fiercely punishing any conspiracy with outsiders. This had the sound of a thoroughly poisoned well.

“And a man who calls you Bait is better than trying a spare cabal?”

“Well,” Bait slowly said, “he is a Stripe.”

“I am aware of that particular miscarriage of a decision,” Tristan said, “but why would it matter to you?”

“Academians can get perks for their cabal as part of their covenant class,” the bespectacled man said. “Enough to get a real edge. I was warned that by the time the yearly test comes either you’re under a Stripe or you’re fodder.”

Perks for the cabal, was it? That sounded like someone running a game to Tristan. No doubt there’d be prices for the boons, drawbacks. It felt like a way for those officer candidates to tame their cabal, get the wild beasts used to looking up to the hand feeding them. Why the Stripes would want this was easy enough to figure out, but why had the other cabals agreed?

“Useful information,” Tristan noted. “My thanks.”

“And what do those help me? You took my notes, so I’m about to be the new Expendable,” Bait sighed. “Captain Tupoc is not forgiving of failure.”

The thief smiled, not that the other man could see it.

“Why, Bait, there is no need for such glumness,” Tristan said. “I can tell we are kindred souls, you and I.”

A pause.

“Yes,” Bait tried, though it sounded like a question.

“Naturally I will return your notes to you,” the thief said. “We are friends, aren’t we? I like to help my friends.”

Bait twisted around to glance at him as much as he could, which was not very much.

“Could you,” he hopefully said, “take your knife off my throat then, friend?”

“No,” Tristan said.

He paused.

“Bait, in the spirit of our long and sincere friendship I would ask of you the tiniest of favors.”

“Oh no,” the man groaned.

“That page where you noted who Angharad Tredegar was speaking with,” Tristan said. “You will carefully remove it and replace it with a list that makes no mention of Captain Imani Langa.”

The Varavedan frowned.

“Why?”

Because she was the most dangerous of them by far and he wanted Tupoc Xical nowhere near someone who was a genuine threat to the Thirteenth.

“We’re really not that sort of friends, Bait,” the thief chided, tapping the flat of his knife against the hollow of the man’s throat. “Try again.”

“Good as done,” Bait croaked out.

“That’s lovely to hear,” Tristan beamed. “I don’t think there’s any need for either of us to mention this conversation to Tupoc, is there?”

“Never,” the Varavedan fervently said.

“Your friendship is a great comfort in these trying times, Bait,” the thief said. “So much that I think in the coming days I might seek you out again so we can have comforting conversations.”

“Please do not make me a spy,” Bait desperately asked. “I am very bad at it.”

Tristan sighed, as if that had actually been his intention. Like Tupoc would not sniff out the man before the hour was done – by the nervous sweat alone, if nothing else. Bait almost looked like he’d been in the rain.

“All right,” he said. “But I might have some academic questions to ask a Savant, on occasion. I trust you can help me with that, at least?”

“It’d be my pleasure,” Bait hastened to reply.

Tristan strongly suspected that assertion would not survive being asked what a heresiarch was. Still, now that he had liberally used the stick he should offer up some honey.

“When we have these little talks,” Tristan said, “it would naturally be my role as your friend to share things with you. Rumors, secrets – perhaps I might even get information for you, if you are tasked with obtaining it by Tupoc.”

“That could be helpful,” Bait admitted, sounding pleased.

“It will be,” the thief replied.

That was how you kept people on the hook, by giving them things they wanted. It was even odds whether Tupoc would sniff out this arrangement or not, but even if he did there could be a use for that.

“I am about to let you go, Bait,” Tristan announced. “But before I do, I’m afraid there is one last spot of bad news: I’m going to need your cloak.”

The man blinked in confusion.

“Why?”

“It has a hood,” the thief informed him, “and you’re about the right height.”

—

With Bait cut loose and a new cloak stashed away, Tristan decided to call it a night. It would not do to linger too much out here. He had yet to see lemures or even lares, but it was only a matter of time.

It was simple to cut straight south in the direction of Hostel Street than double back to the Old Playhouse, so Tristan took to the streets under the Grand Orrery’s strange lights. The earlier silver had turned pale, almost like a lantern’s glow, but from the way the shadows were moving between walls the false star above must be heading east. No other slice of light seemed close, so the thief expected a span of dark sometime on the way back. That prospect kept him on his toes, enough that he noticed it.

The first time he saw movement on the rooftops could have been happenstance, but not the second.

Tristan was all for exploring this mazelike ruin of a city and would hardly begrudge a soul standing atop a collapsed dome for better view of the surroundings, but when someone flicked a glance down into an alley to see if you were there and then precipitously hid when you noticed things got a mite suspicious.

“Someone’s in trouuuuuuble,” Fortuna sing-sang.

“Check the roof,” he murmured, pressing himself against the wall.

The thief had taken the most direct path back to Hostel Street, past a long-dry canal and now through a knot of narrow alleys reminding him of the Murk, but it seemed that’d been a mistake. It’d been predictable, and predictable was always the worst pick when there were people out to grab you. He should have remembered that. Fortuna’s head popped out through the wall an inch away from his face, grinning.

Ugh. He would never get used to that.

“They jumped down, but I heard people talking in the street on the other side,” she told him. “At least three.”

Best to assume the worst and assume an entire cabal of seven were after him, then. It could be more than one brigade out there, admittedly, but Tristan was inclined to believe that given their advantage in odds they’d not be inclined to split the bounty on his head with another cabal. The gray-eyed man breathed out, brushed away the early stirrings of fear. If he was to be hunted, best it be among alleys. He knew his way around that kind of battlefield.

“Oh, I just realized,” Fortuna chortled. “Maze of streets. Rat. You’re like a-”

“Don’t you dare,” Tristan hissed.

“- rat in a maze!” she proudly finished.

He would have to ask Bait about the feasibility of trading in your god for another. Freshly irate, the thief got to work. First he best get off the street, lest he be herded into dead ends by superior numbers. He would have risked that against coterie thugs, but would not against Scholomance students. A glance to the side revealed there was a round window in the wall he’d been pressing against – which Fortuna had pointedly not used – and he climbed onto it.

A half-collapsed arch curved over the alley, just out of his reach, but he got around that by anchoring his foot on a slightly jutting jamb stone and throwing himself at the arch. His fingers scrabbled against the rough, worn bricks but with a grunt he dragged himself atop the arch. From there it was only a small climb to the flat roof from which he had just been spied on, now deserted save for the weeds growing on it. Thank the gods he’d not worn the formal uniform with those shiny, slippery boots. He’d be on the ground groaning right now if he had.

Tristan crept towards the opposite end of the roof, where Fortuna had said she heard voices, but when he risked a glance over the edge the alley was empty – not so the street just past the corner, where he caught sight of someone moving. Eyeing the roof on the other side of the alley, another of those flat brick surfaces cracked open by weeds, the thief decided to risk a leap. Given how cramped the alley was the risk came not from the leap itself but the landing: stone or not, there was no telling how solid that roof was.

Cloak trailing behind him, he landed atop the brick with a merciful lack of immediate collapse beneath his weight. Wasting no time he crept for the edge, now at a better angle to look at the people past the corner. There were three of them, he counted. One was the tall Tianxi from earlier, Captain Tengfei of the Forty-Ninth Brigade. So that was where he’d gone to after stalking off.

With Tengfei were two more: another Tianxi with a chubby face, shuffling nervously on his feet, and blonde Lierganen girl with a scar across the nose and a hard look about her. They were whispering, but loudly enough Tristan could mostly make out the words.

“-don’t see him,” the woman was saying. “Too many alleys to hide around here, we should have waited in the Mangles.”

“He would have fled right back to here,” Captain Tengfei grunted back. “We have him surrounded, Ramona. Muchen will sweep from behind and-”

Four, Tristan counted. Four of them confirmed. Tempted as he was to simply keep fleeing by rooftop, he first wanted to know if they had a way to track him. These Mangles – the name for the large field of broken, overgrown shrines between here and the Old Playhouse, he figured – sounded like a bad place for them to catch him. The captain and the Lierganen girl both had muskets and blades, the nervous one a pistol.

Any of those could end him in an instant if they found him out in the open.

A flicker of movement stirred him out of his study. Not down there but closer to home. Another rooftop, flanking the one he had first climbed from the other side – some was climbing over the edge, black-cloaked. Keeping calm, Tristan looked for cover. The edge of the roof was too low to hide him fully, but to his right a pack of weeds had grown tall enough he was able to flatten himself behind them. Unless the Orrery lights swept straight across him, he should be hard to make out.

He could not see much himself, in that position, but there was a way around that.

“That’s the same one that jumped down earlier,” Fortuna said. “She’s looking down into the same alley but from the other side.”

Tristan subtly nodded. A curse in Umoya sounded in the distance.

“He’s gone,” a woman called out.

“He can’t be, we fenced him in,” Captain Tengfei called back. “He’s just holed up in a house. Huang, confirm it.”

By the provenance of the voice, it ought to be the nervous Tianxi boy who answered.

“I don’t have much left for the night,” Huang said. “Are you sure you-”

“Do it,” Tengfei snarled.

A sigh, then a moment of silence.

“Not north,” Huang said, then waited another heartbeat. “Not west. Only four uses now.”

A contract that confirmed whether someone – something? – was in a direction or not, Tristan guessed. Or something along those lines. If he could get them to spend these last ‘uses’, waiting them out became an entirely viable way to get rid of them. They could no more afford to spend the night out here than he could.

“I’ll sweep the houses with Muchen,” Ramona said. “You two take the sides to prevent him slipping away.”

“I give the orders here, Ramona,” Captain Tengfei flatly replied. “We might both be Stripes, but only one commands.”

“Careful, Teng,” she warned. “You got us the bounty and that got you the seat. It doesn’t mean you have to stay in it.”

If this was what the competition was like Tristan was beginning to feel rather more confident in the Thirteenth Brigade, horrible number aside. He waited until he heard movement, the Forty-Ninth beginning the search, and then turned a questioning look on Fortuna.

“She’s still on the roof,” the Lady of Long Odds confirmed. “Back to you, though, she’s looking at the other alleys.”

No time to waste, then. Tristan rose smoothly from the cover of the weeds, one step to the side and then two step backs. The woman who’d cursed – Malani, he could see from the dark skin even in this gloom – had her back turned to him. She was studying the street he’d used to get to the alley she first found him in, looking intently at a collapsed house full of bushes. Tristan leaped across the alley to the next roof, muffling his steps the way Abuela had taught him, and as he advanced to the next slowly took out his blackjack.

Eight long, quiet strides as he angled himself right and then the thief leaped again, onto the roof where his enemy was. A heartbeat after making it across he waited, looking for a reaction, but she had not heard a thing. Instead the woman crouched down at the edge of the roof, squinting at a bush being made to move by the faint breeze. Tristan took his time approaching, careful not to make a sound, and then he struck.

The blackjack took her in the right temple, knocking her unconscious with a faint thump, and Tristan slid an arm around her waist to prevent her toppling over the edge. It was harder than he had thought – her cloak hid that she was plump of body – but he laid her down on the roof, smoothing his breath as he waited for a shout from the streets below. None came. He had not been noticed. Good, he could afford to search her then.

Rifling through her affairs got him seven silver arboles, a good knife, a loaded pistol of Watch make with ammunition for five shots and a set of matches whose use he only understood after discovering that there was something in the inner pocket of her cloak. A round, cast iron grenade. Could be useful, he decided, pocketing it along the rest save for the knife. That one he put to work, putting his blackjack away and turning the stranger on her back – carefully ensuring she could still breathe – and pulling back the cloak to expose her legs.

He took off her right boot, revealing a worn yellow stocking he took off as well. Tristan leaned in, taking her knife and sharply slicing across the back of her heel. Quick and deep, so he would fully cut through the tendon. She stirred, feeling the pain even when unconscious, but it was not enough to wake her. It was enough to ensure she would never walk with that leg again, however, it the tendon was not healed.

It was tempting to simply kill her so she would not trouble him again, but the risks were too high for the gain. Dropping her knife on her back, Tristan palmed her pistol and crept away. Putting a bullet in the back of the man with the contract should be enough to ensure he was able to flee, he thought, though he’d have to wait for an opening. Best to leave this particular rooftop first, he had already lingered here too long.

A stripe of golden Orrery light swept across the nest of alleys, cast by some distant star, and Tristan ducked down as he swallowed a curse. He’d be a lot easier to see so long as the light stayed, he might even already have – half a man’s body was already over the edge of the rooftop, and the thief would never have known if he’d not looked because not a sound had been made. He met dark eyes, the lithe Tianxi – not one of the earlier two, this one must be ‘Muchen’ – holding a naked straight blade between his teeth to keep his hands free.

Tristan, naturally, shot him.

He’d aimed for the right shoulder, barrel snapping back as the powder caught, but the shot dragged to the left. Center of mass, right in the chest, and the thief was already hoping it wouldn’t be outright lethal when there was a blur. A milk-white hand with a lotus on the palm formed in front of the Tianxi, turning into a shower of tinkling porcelain shards but catching the bullet. A heartbeat later the man was on the roof, sword in hand, and Tristan grimaced.

If that wasn’t a Skiritai student he’d eat his hat. Time to run, tracking contract or not. The likely-Muchen flicked a glance down at his unconscious comrade and frowned.

“I will have to cripple you for that,” he calmly said.

Tristan took a step back, narrowing his shoulders and putting fear on his face.

“Please don’t,” he pleaded, throwing the pistol at the man’s feet. “I surrender.”

Shouts below, the others of the cabal catching up, and Tristan took another step back as the Tianxi swordsman thinly smiled. He angled his torso so his cloak would pull in front of him, hiding his hands.

“A foot for a foot,” Muchen said. “It need not be painful.”

Fuck, this was hard to do blind and he wasn’t sure about the length.

“Would you take a bribe?” Tristan baldly asked, playing for time.

The Tianxi laughed.

“You’re worth enough we won’t have to dip into brigade funds at all this year,” Muchen replied. “You think coppers will stay my hand?”

A burn on his fingers told the thief it was now or never, face twisting in pain the Tianxi mistook for fear.

“Maybe not,” Tristan admitted.

But the stolen grenade he’d lit under his cloak might, so he threw it at the other man’s feet. Only the utterly ridiculous prick was already moving, the flat of his sword about to lob the grenade back his way, so Tristan borrowed luck.

The ticking began in the back of his mind.

It all happened so fast he could barely make it out. A spark flew off the end of the wick and caught the bottom, spreading the fire there, and even as Muchen began to lob the grenade it exploded. Not with powder but with noise and blinding light, like fireworks, and the Tianxi screamed in pain. Tristan released the luck, opening the eyes he’d closed and finding it was all dark. Had he been blinded? No, the pale light from above had simply stopped. Too strange a turn of luck, he thought, for that to be the whole. He’d used the draw to hurt someone, more or less and-

From beneath his boots the stone began to crack.

“Fuck,” Tristan feelingly said, and fell.

—

Falling through the roof was hard enough on his legs, but then the floor gave as well and it all went to shit.

Tristan rolled around with a groan, feeling out his limbs. He was glad to see nothing was broken, though his left leg hurt like Hell and his chest was going to be a mass of bruises – a couple of loose stones had fallen with him, thankfully none so large that his sternum broke. Pushing through the pain the thief forced himself to move, unsure whether or not the Skiritai had fallen down here with him.

It was dark in this presumed basement, and he could not see the firmament above. He felt a sliver of fear at the thought that the collapse might have sealed the house over his head, but it was too early to give in to panic. Reluctant as he was to burn air, he needed to see so he reached inside his pockets and produced the matches. Striking one, he took in as much of his surroundings as he could before it guttered out.

Loose stones and rubble everywhere around him, in a room no larger than a carriage, and no sign of Muchen. The good news, that. The bad ones were that above his head seemed to be a ceiling of solid stone. Which meant he’d not only fallen down but to the side as well – he’d not felt that, but directions were hard to make out when falling in the dark. Four matches left. He struck another to try and examine what direction he might have come from, finding only that to his left was thickly packed rubble and to the right solid stone.

Three matches left.

Cursing, Tristan began crawling around the two directions he had not yet explored. Ignoring the throbbing of his fresh collection of bruises the thief tried the wall behind and found it to be solid stone, though there was metal bolted in. Torch holders by the shape, gone rusty by the feel of the metal. A dead end. With only the front left he tried that wall and found more masonry. His stomach clenched.

Was he buried alive? No, he could still try to dig his way out through the rubble. It was risking a landslide in a room so small it would be impossible for him to move out of the way. But was there even another choice? He couldn’t just wait here, running out of – air? Against his knees, he’d not felt it because the coat and cloak were so thick. Fingers trembling, he felt his way down the masonry until he found a metal grid. Not hesitating, Tristan cracked a match.

Two left.

A rusty grate, barely in its hinges, blocked access to what looked like some kind of dry sewer tunnel, covering the entrance to a low and narrow tunnel. Large enough for him to squeeze through, if barely. When the match went out the thief evened out his breath, settled his mind. He did not have his tools on him, but that grate looked on its last legs. He wrapped his cloak around his fingers and pulled at it, grunting with effort until one of the hinges gave. He broke all those he could, and though one resisted his best efforts he was still able to pry open the grate.

Into the tunnel he went, crawling on his belly as he felt out in front of him with his fingers. There was dried filth at the bottom, so long there it felt more like dirt than anything else, and when Tristan found the first clump of weeds his excitement rose. Weeds didn’t come from nowhere, the wind carried seeds. He must be close to an exit. A few seconds later he came at a crossroads: left, right, front or back the way he’d come. Reluctantly, the thief cracked another match.

One left.

Only he saw near nothing for a faint gust of wind from ahead put out the flame before he could take in much. Tristan paused, awaiting Fortuna’s laughter even as relief poured in from having gotten the answer he needed anyway, but nothing came.

“Are you here?” he whispered.

A long silence.

“Red is the least fashionable color,” he tried.

Silence continued, the thickness of it clogging his throat, and Tristan force himself to swallow. Fortuna was not here, but why? He’d not pulled on the luck anywhere as strongly as he had on the Dominion. Was it something about Tolomontera, an old Antediluvian device that prevented her from coming to him? She will be back, he told himself. I just need to get on the streets again. Ignoring the cold sweat on his back, the thief began crawling forward again.

The dark ahead was so deep it was his only hand that told him of the drop.

Carefully he felt out in greater detail, finding more and more emptiness, then risked peeking out his head and looking around. Above was another grate, thick squares large enough to put a hand through, and though those he made out the faintest hints of light. A way back up, he thought with relief. Now the trouble was finding out how to get there. Further feeling out let him figure that he was at the edge of a tall drop, facing an identical tunnel across that gap.

The drop and the shaft going up to the grate both seemed wider than the tunnel he was in, but not so wide he would not be somewhat squeezed. He could leverage his way up there, then, if he was careful. Only if he slipped he had no real notion of how long the drop would be. It might well kill him. The rat reached for his knife.

“Rat King,” he murmured, praying up at the street. “Prince of scraps and scrabbling, gutters and grimed, smile on me this once. They are big and I am small, so help me scurry off.”

Tristan pulled down his sleeve and cut at his forearm, wiping the wet blade against the edge of the drop. He felt not warmth or weight, but then he never had: that was not how the Rat King did business. Besides, he was far from Sacromonte, much too far for the god to lend a hand. It had been as much to harden himself to the risk as to seek aid he’d done it, Tristan would admit as much to himself. Sheathing the knife, the rat got to work.

He wriggled out, wedging a foot on the edge of both tunnels, and from there began the climb. His body ached, bruises throbbing, but he bit his tongue and pushed on: feet on one wall, back on the other, pushing himself up slowly but surely. Sweating and aching, he made it inch by inch until he was in arm’s reach of the grate above. He reached out for it, cursing when he saw the iron grid could be pushed off but there was a large padlock preventing it.

The muscles of his back trembling, Tristan slipped a hand through the grate. The lights above were strangely dim so he could barely make out what he was doing, but he felt out the padlock carefully. A simple key lock, roughly made. Shoddy workmanship and the metal was something softer than iron. Copper, maybe? The opening for the key was wide and from what little his fingers could tell the inside of the lock was the same metal as the outside.

The pressure on his knees was mounting, the trembling of his getting worse as he got tired, but Tristan forced his breath to stay even. His palms were dry, his eyes open, and he reached for his knife. Slipping his armed hand through, he angled it as best he could and slid the tip knife into the padlock’s keyhole. It was large enough the blade went right in, but he couldn’t just shove it in and turn – it’d snap his knife, steel or not.

He felt out the insides with the blade, looking for the right angle, and gently began to wiggle it. Shoddy padlocks used simple teeth, rarely more than two plugs, so if he got the angle just right… One click, Tristan heard. Now he must find another, but the trembling of his legs shivered up and made his hand unsteady. Holding his breath not to miss the noise he began wiggling the blade again and – one, two. Tristan turned the blade.

Only for his boot to slip some, turning a gentle turn into a snapping sound. He almost screamed in frustration as he felt his knife’s blade break, biting his lip until it bled not to make a sound as he got his foot back in place. Putting away the remains of his blade, he reached for the padlock with his hand and – loose? Breathing in, the thief pulled at the shackle and it gave. Manes, he’d gotten it done just before the snap.

Off went the padlock, then he pushed the grid aside as quietly as he could and dragged himself up onto the street. Resting on his belly, every limb aching and drenched in sweat, Tristan pressed his face against cool stone and did not even care he was smudging his cheek with dirt.

He stayed there breathing in the dark for a long moment, eyes closed but ears pricked. He did not know what had happened to the Forty-Ninth, but he doubted the collapse of the house had been enough to kill all of them. If Muchen had died, would he be responsible by Scholomance’s rules? He was uncertain, but surely that they had been the ones to come after him would count for something. Breathing out, the thief, forced himself onto his knees as his cloak fell around him in curtains.

He glanced up at the lights, and that was when he realized he was in trouble: that wasn’t the Grand Orrery.

Or rather it was, but the false stars were nothing like the way he knew. They were without color, pale and veiled and casting only the faintest of glows onto Tolomontera. Like a lantern with a cloth atop it. Fingers clenching, Tristan looked around what he had thought to be a street but was nothing of the sort: he was on a flat roof, surrounded by what must be a hundred of the same, and from the angle of the horizon on the distance must be at least three stories high.

The city around him was Port Allazei, but it did not look the same. There were no Glare lanterns, only torches, and the buildings did not look as worn – or abandoned. People still lived here, and he thought he could hear the noises of a city asleep on the wind. Panic welled up, but Tristan mastered it. It could be he had gone through some kind of Gloam storm after falling into the house’s basement, but this might also be some sort of dream. Something not real.

The rough stone of the roof felt real under his hand, but it would if this were a dream. He had to believe that.

“First the edge of this… whatever this is,” Tristan muttered to himself. “Then we decide if it’s all worth screaming about.”

Fortuna’s silence only deepened the shadows of the night.

Moving across the rooftops was not difficult. The heights of the roofs were uneven, but they were also all roughly rectangles so there was always a path to climb if he went around. Like giants’ stairs, they were. The Orrery lights above were so dim he found it difficult to orient himself, but the lights down in the city served as the north to his compass. He must have begun near the middle, and but a few minutes into the straightforward but laborious process of moving across he was given pause.

There was a cottage.

Tristan had grasped the shape of what he was on, more or less. The overall layout must be that of a cube made up of stacked rectangles, small houses piled atop one another over several stories like some childish god had been at play. The fit was not perfect, with roofs of different heights and some space between the ‘houses’ forming pits, but he’d thought he had this figured out. Only now, in the middle of this landscape of roofs, there was a bowl with a cottage in it.

Not a small one, either – neither the cottage nor the bowl. The latter was maybe one story deep and large as a town square, only over the roofs a garden had been made: green grass swallowed by fields of flowers in purple and blue and red, their colors weaving in and out so skillfully he could hardly tell where one ceased and one began. A small stony garden path led to a neat cobblestone cottage, at least two stories high though one side went even higher with a little turret atop.

That turret bore a weathervane that Tristan was almost entirely sure was not moving according to the wind.

That smacked of danger to him, but also of answers. And whether this was a dream or his being cast out of his life, answers were what he needed most. The thief lowered himself down into the garden, landing softly on the grass, and crept closer to the cottage. There were great curved windows overlooking the garden – of glass, and the transparent kind! – so he went around, past the door, and eyed the cobblestone walls. The stones were smooth, but he might be able to climb up and enter through the turret.

Then the door opened.

Tristan ducked into a bush, but there was no one at the door and it stayed open. The faint lights from inside painted the doorstep. Fuck. All right, so this was a Gloam-witch’s house and he’d been caught creeping around. Swallowing, Tristan straightened his back and got out of the bushes. Best to pretend he’d always been going to come in through the front. He got back on the stone path, reached the threshold – there was a straw mat he dutifully wiped his boots on – and entered the devil’s den.

The first thing he noticed was how richly filled the cottage was. Fine furniture in polished wood, but also cushioned chairs of filigreed copper, silver mirrors and even a bookshelf casually bearing a fortune’s worth of colored leatherbound books. Everywhere seemed laden with trinkets, some precious like a music box in ivory but others as common as dried flowers and a shoddy mounted owl.

The lights inside were soft and warm, coming from candles set in cups, and the moment Tristan stepped inside the door closed behind him.

He did not need to ask where he was supposed to go, as past the entrance was a drawing room by those tall windows he had earlier seen and at the table there a man sat with a pot of tea. And two cups. The stranger was not yet looking his way, so Tristan took his time to study him – average height, dark hair and an air of softness about him. So pale he must be either a hollow or kin to Maryam’s people.

“Do come and sit, young man,” the stranger said. “It has been too long since I had a guest.”

The man’s voice was smooth and deep, almost musical, and Tristan’s shoulders loosened the slightest bit. Not because of the voice, but because even hollows did not usually lay hands on a guest without good reason. It was an assurance of safety to be named a guest, however slight one.

Silent, the Sacromontan padded over on the thick carpet until he sat on the thick padded armchair facing the other man. Finally facing him, Tristan’s eyes skimmed over a long face and straight nose touched by a bump. Classic Trebian islander looks. And he must be a hollow, else why live in a house without any Glare lights?

The armchair, to his discomfort, was almost sinfully comfortable. He didn’t know what was inside those cushions but it certainly wasn’t straw.

“You seem shy, for one of such bold wanderings,” the man said. “Might I have your name?”

“Tristan,” the thief replied, unwilling to give more. “And I must confess I did not come here on purpose.”

The other man hummed.

“Not your purpose, perhaps,” he said. “But a purpose, most certainly.”

Tristan squinted at him.

“Would you happen to be a priest, by any chance?”

A soft, almost pleased laugh.

“Once upon a time,” the man agreed. “I have withdrawn from the life, though not so thoroughly as I had thought if you can find me out so easily.”

He paused, smiling in a flash of pearly perfect teeth.

“Call me Sakkas, Tristan,” he said. “Would you like a cup of tea?”

The thief considered the phrasing, then leaned in.

“Is the tea poisoned, Sakkas?” Tristan politely asked.

The dark-haired hollow laughed, not offended in the slightest.

“My dear boy,” he said, “you are a lucent standing but an hour’s walk away from the Lightbringer’s own summer palace. In what world would I need poison to dispose of you?”

Tristan made himself smile, as if he had been aware he was apparently in viewing distance of the fucking King of Hell. Sakkas didn’t sound like someone selling a line, either, but instead as if he were stating a simple and well-known truth. Most distressingly, the thief found he believed the priest. So he swallowed, nodded, and let the hollow pour dark fragrant tea into a cracked ceramic cup. Sakkas encouraged him to try it and Tristan did.

He’d been prepared to fake a smile, but to his surprise it was genuinely delicious. Nothing at all like the Tianxi and Someshwari leaves he knew – tasted fruity, and sweet without being sugary.

“It’s very good,” he admitted.

Sakkas beamed.

“Strawberries, young man, the secret is strawberries,” he said. “I make my own jam from those that grow in the garden.”

Tristan took another sip, mirrored by the hollow across the table, then set down his cup on a saucer.

“Thank you for the tea,” he said.

“You are most welcome,” Sakkas easily replied. “Though as you earlier mentioned a purpose yet unknown, I expect you have some questions for me.”

“I do, if you would allow it,” Tristan slowly said.

He had not given his entire name on purpose, and though the man did not seem like a god in man’s guise he would not ask questions if they need be traded for boons.

“I do enjoy a mystery,” the priest affably said. “Ask away.”

The thief hesitated, then bit the bullet.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“This is the city of Allazei,” Sakkas said. “Once capital to a kingdom of some import, now the seat of infernal enterprise.”

The Prince of Lies again. Perhaps that was the thread he must pull at to unravel the truth of where he was.

“And what,” Tristan asked, “would that enterprise be?”

“That depends, I suppose, on whom you ask,” the priest mused. “The princelings out there will tell you that the isle of Solomontera is where a great empire is to be founded – it is, after all, where we raised the monstrous palace that is to be its seat of power.”

Solomontera, the thief noted, and not Tolomontera. Sakkas did not seem the kind of man who misspoke, so it must be another name for the island. An older one?

“You don’t believe that, though,” Tristan said.

He was sure of it. It had been a kind manner of condescension the man spoke with but condescension nonetheless.

“That the forges of Hell will spew out an endless tide of devils, sweeping over the world as the vanguard to our kind?” Sakkas snorted. “Hardly. It is not in the nature of the Morningstar to raise thrones, only to topple them.”

“Then what is he after?” he asked, gesturing around.

“As an archbishop of the Sunless House, I suppose I should be telling you that the Lightbringer’s plans matter little for no matter in whose service ours is a holy work,” the dark-haired hollow said. “In putting out the lights we will end the Tyranny of Bounds and release all souls from imprisonment, as is our sacred duty.”

Tristan went very, very still. He had heard of the Sunless House before, like all Lierganen. The Thirteenth Betrayal, the cult that had gnawed at the insides of the Second Empire for decades – maybe even centuries – before bringing it down on the head of the last emperor. No hollow cult was as feared or despised on the Trebian Sea, not even centuries after the Watch had put down the last of them. And now he was sitting across an archbishop of their kind, one of their great warlord priests.

He forced himself not to swallow, but the other man’s brown eyes had a knowing glint.

“You don’t sound like you believe that either,” Tristan said, pressing on.

“I am an old man, Tristan,” Sakkas replied.

“You don’t look it.”

It was hard to put a number, given the smoothness of his appearance, but the thief would have guessed no more than in his thirties.

“I look however I care to,” the archbishop dismissed. “Mastery of one’s flesh is one of the lesser mysteries. Suffice it to say that I was young when this city was young, and it is no longer that.”

“And what does that mean?” Tristan asked.

“That I know what it looks like,” Sakkas said, “when someone sits by a window waiting to die. And that is what the Lightbringer does, watching as we all squabble at his feet – princes drawing kingdoms on maps of places they have never been, Origen’s pupils hollering for holy war and the devils trying to make themselves into a court like a jigsaw puzzle where every piece bites.”

The dark-haired man shook his head.

“I know not what he intends, but the Morningstar lost all interest in Solomontera once the last stone of his palace was set down,” the priest said. “He knows the Watch has called on the great powers and they muster a host to kill us all, yet he only waits.”

Sakkas might well be right, Tristan thought. He did not yet know whether this was a dream or not, but if this was a glimpse of a time past then the island really had come into the possession of the Watch. A change the thief doubted would have come by peacefully.

“So why stay here?” Tristan asked. “Take a ship, leave.”

“It is a lucent disease, the fear of impermanence,” Sakkas amicably said. “You draw bounds between ‘before’ and ‘after’ that do not exist, find loss in the indivisible. Does water fear to become snow?”

It might, Tristan mused, if it could think it all. Souls were forever bound to the Circle Perpetual, spinning and spinning until they had become unto gods, but a death was still a loss. You kept nothing of what you had been, once you returned to the Circle. Stripped clean of anything that might ever have mattered to you. No, death was something to fear. But that wasn’t the way hollows thought.

They didn’t really see death as being death, it was why they seemed so unpredictably violent: the stakes they played with just weren’t the same as other people’s.

“So you’re sitting here by your window,” the thief said. “Sipping at tea and waiting for the tide to catch up.”

“So I am,” Sakkas easily agreed. “Yet we have spoken of me quite enough, I think. What is it that brings you to these shores, Tristan?”

“I am lost,” he admitted. “And very far from home.”

“No one is ever lost,” the priest laughed. “There are no right or wrong paths. You are ever where you should be.”

“I’m not even sure I am when I should be,” Tristan drily replied. “Much of this seems strange to me.”

He had spoken the words casually but kept a careful eye on the other man’s face. What would he think, how would he react? With benign amusement, was the answer, unless the priest was better at feigning emotion than Tristan was at ferreting out.

“Time is largely a lie,” Sakkas assured him. “Do not worry too much of it.”

This was not unlike, the Sacromontan mused, being comforted by a shark. The intention was there but the teeth were no less bloody for it.

“Yours is a very soothing kind of nihilism,” the thief decided.

“And your skepticism is very amiable,” Sakkas complimented. “It is important, the understanding that knowledge is not iron but a reed: it breathes, changes, bends. A mind of iron is ever fated to break.”

Tristan finished the last of his cup just as the first roll of thunder struck. Sakkas unhurriedly rose to his feet, pulling open a window, and in the distant sky they saw flickering lights. Not that of the Orrery but of Glare lanterns against clouds. Ships, Tristan thought, come to the port. And they had announced themselves with cannons so they came not in peace. Time to go, the thief decided.

“It has been interesting,” Tristan honestly said, setting down his cup. “But I must leave. I fear the consequences of lingering here.”

The priest smiled, leaning on his elbows to watch the signs of his approaching doom as if he were enjoying the view.

“The tide has finally caught up, I think,” Sakkas said, then shook his head as if slinking out of reverie.

He glanced back at Tristan.

“I should give you a gift to commemorate our meeting. I expect there will not be another.”

Tristan stilled.

“That’s not necessary,” he said.

“It was done long before you came here,” the archbishop easily said. “I lay here a mystery, you see, a line in the sand: none may find this house who have not tread its ground before.”

Sakkas shrugged languidly.

“You are not lost, Tristan,” he said. “Home is where you make it.”

The thief hesitated. It was a fool’s thing to ask, but the curiosity burned.

“What will you do?” he asked, licking his lips.

Sakkas smiled, grandfatherly for all his apparent youth.

“I am the last archbishop of the Sunless House, my boy,” he said. “I have partaken of the eldest law and made it into my bones, sung the words that eat themselves.”

The air shivered, as if the world itself were flinching what had been spoken, and Tristan found he could not look away from Sakkas’ dark eyes. They were pits of darkness, endless and cold and unhurried the way only something beyond time could be.

“If the Watch comes to my doorstep, I will help them remember why they should be afraid of the dark.”

Tristan forced himself not to run to the door, but it was a narrow thing.

—

The garden felt sinister now, the reds deeper and the purples poisonous as he hurried down the path.

There ought to be a way down from this place, Tristan thought as he found a lower edge to the hollow the cottage was tucked away in. In his haste he misjudged a stone, and when he put his weight on it to push himself up it gave in a spray of powdery mortar. With a grunt the thief fell back down into the grass, shielding his face with his hands so the stone would not smack into it. When he sat up with a groan after, though, the grass under him felt coarser.

As it should be, since he was no longer in that hidden garden.

Around him were ruins, gutted houses and streets akin to the Port Allazei he knew. Excitement rising, Tristan looked up and finally let out a relieved breath: the Orrery above was the one knew, the colorful false stars. Gods, but he’d never thought he would have been pleased by that eerie sight. So what had happened? Had any of it been real, or was it all some sort of Gloam delusion? Tristan rose and went patting around for his knife, finding it missing.

Yet he could have lost that when he fell through the roof, strange as it was he was now nowhere near that place. It was only when he dug up the matches that he got a definite answer: there was only one left, like in the dream that had not been a dream at all.

The thief swallowed nervously, for this sort of thing was well past his understanding. He needed to find Maryam as quickly as possible and find out how long had pas– remembering Vanesa’s watch, Tristan fished it out. An hour and change past his leaving the Old Playhouse. More or less equivalent to the time that would have passed if he’d never been… elsewhere.

How did it work? Had it- no, he thought, shaking his head. To guess without a grounding in the matter was just stirring air. Maryam first, then he could panic. The thief found a collapsed house that made for an easy climb and got onto the tiled roof, finding the direction the lights of Port Allazei were in – straight ahead, and from where he stood he could even see that a new ship appeared to have docked. Tall and slender, its sails lowered as dockworkers unloaded its contents by lantern light.

Tristan headed straight that way, putting a spring to his step as he entered a stretch of pale light.

He kept a wary eye for lemures, for he was tired enough to get sloppy, and was rather relieved when at the end of the street he found a patrol of blackcloaks. Eight of them, led by a tall Someshwari woman with lieutenant stripes on her collar. Tristan hurried their way, but about halfway through the street his steps slowed. They had seen him, but instead of a wave or a jest what he got was the watchmen spreading out in a line with their muskets raised. A second later he saw why.

Between them, in the middle of the street and going across houses, was a painted red line. Something told him he wasn’t the one on the right side of it.

“Manes,” he cursed under his breath, then cleared his throat and called out. “Apologies, lieutenant, I did not cross the line on purpose. I was caught in-”

“Hands where we can see them,” the Someshwari lieutenant harshly ordered. “Now.”

Grimacing, Tristan did as bid. How could he talk his way out of this? They did not seem overly inclined to shoot him, but neither did they seem overly disinclined.

“Don’t make sudden movements,” one of the men barked.

“They are the very last thing on my mind,” Tristan assured him.

Not so much as a flicker of amusement on anyone’s face, all of them keeping the muskets pointed and unwavering.

“Do you have a plaque?” the lieutenant asked.

“I do,” the thief said, hoping he had found an end to the canal. “Thirteenth Brigade. My name is-”

“Take it out,” the lieutenant interrupted. “Slowly, with your bare hands.”

Bare hands. Was there something unusual about the plaque’s making, then? Tristan carefully reached inside his cloak, producing the round silver seal and holding it up to their lantern light.

“And now?” he asked.

“Now we wait,” the lieutenant said. “Soggy?”

“Started the count, lieutenant.”

The one to speak had been a tall Malani in the back, who was now looking at an open brass pocket watch. A long moment of silence passed, muskets pointed at him and unwavering, and Tristan bit the inside of his cheek when he realized he should have been keeping count from the moment he saw ‘Soggy’ looking at his watch. He began late and made it to thirty-four seconds before the Malani closed his watch.

“Your hands, boy,” the lieutenant said. “Show them to us.”

Tristan did, not yet putting away the seal, and finally the tension lessened. Guns went down, several breathing out in relief.

“Congratulations,” the watchwoman said. “You are not being ridden by a mara.”

“Ridden,” Tristan said. “As in being possessed?”

“If you’re lucky,” the one called Soggy grimly replied. “But you didn’t burn under the Judas test, so your soul is clean. On which layer did you end up?”

Tristan choked. He could guess what the ‘layer’ was, but the implication here surprised him.

“There’s more than one?”

“Soggy,” the lieutenant sharply said. “Shut your mouth. You, boy-”

“Tristan Abrascal, tia,” the thief provided.

This time she let him finish, nodding.

“Tristan,” she said. “What did your surroundings look like?”

“The Orrery was dimmed,” he said. “And there were torches in the city.”

“Second layer,” she immediately said. “Yours was just a shallow dive, you should be fine. Have yourself checked by a Navigator anyway if you can, it pays to be prudent.”

“A dive into what, lieutenant?” he pressed.

She frowned, as if irked he would ask, but did not deny he had a right to.

“Tolomontera sits atop one of the largest aether wells in Vesper,” she finally said. “All that loose aether, it means that if enough taint is put out in a short amount of time it’ll make an impression into the local fabric, a layer. You wandered into the one we call the Witching Hour.”

Tristan remembered what Tredegar had told him of Brun’s confession, of how his little god had loved nothing more than the burst of flavor in the aether when men died. And so he knew where the taint for this Witching Hour had come from.

“It’s from the night the Watch took this island,” he said.

He got a sharp look for that.

“Clever kid,” the lieutenant said, though it did not sound like a compliment. “You avoided a bad end this time, Tristan Abrascal, but I wouldn’t count on a repeat if you wander back in.”

She leaned closer.

“If the mara in there don’t take you, a stray bullet will.”

He stilled at that revelation and she smiled nastily.

“Did you think you couldn’t die in there? Aether’s just as real as you are, boy, a shot of it in the head will kill you proper dead.”

She gestured for ‘Soggy’ to come, ordering him to check the plaque and mark the number so his patron could be informed he had been out of bounds – though she seemed to believe him when he told her it was entirely unwilling.

“Welcome to Scholomance, Tristan Abrascal,” the watchwoman said afterwards, patting his shoulder. “Best be more careful about where you step, if you want to last through the year.”

“To join the court of cats,” Tristan hummed, “is most easily done.”

There were exactly forty-two people down in the Old Playhouse, barring himself and Tredegar. Of these ten were servants, which he suspected would not count as people according to many of those folk in fine black cloaks chatting beneath pavilions. The guests he’d get back to later, because it was worth picking out the strong and the weak, but Tristan could already tell the servants were a thread worth pulling at.

None of them wore livery, so they weren’t in the service of nobles. Neither did they wear black, so they shouldn’t be Watch – unless they were currently not on shift and looking to make a few silvers on the side by playing servant to students. Most blackcloaks would balk, he figured, pride offended by taking orders from wealthy children, but in a garrison of the size needed to hold Port Allazei there ought to be at least twenty willing to take that in the teeth for the money.

Only it couldn’t be that, because playing servant was one thing but cooking was another. That food, those drinks, they had to come from somewhere. Soldiers with a side racket wouldn’t be able to deliver an evening like this even if they organized. And they wouldn’t have had long to organize anyway, because why would they even try to before students arrived and the opportunity came up? Scholomance had been closed for centuries.

The thief followed those neatly dressed men and women with his eyes, leaning in the shade of a tree cast in Orrery light. Down below Tredegar circled around the last ring and traded greetings with guests. Tristan picked a wild rose and pulled at the petals one by one, Fortuna amusing herself by alternating ‘hates you’ and ‘loves you not’. Tristan couldn’t see someone leading the servants yet, but he could already tell this was no ramshackle outfit.

A blonde woman behind the pavilion was counting bottles as they left the crates, keeping a tally and giving instructions about how full the cups going out should be. The two slender Aztlan men by the food – same nose and eyes, brothers? – were not only cutting and passing the pigeon pies and pastries but keeping an eye on whether or not the grilled cutlets were still warm. It was not their first time hosting a party like this.

So what in the Manes were trained servants without an obvious master doing on Tolomontera?

“Hate you,” Fortuna happily called out as he pulled the last petal.

She brushed off her spotless dress, only now beginning to pay attention to her surroundings.

“Your Pereduri’s been noticed by the hosts,” she noted. “And why are we hiding up here, anyway? You should be down there dazzling people with my wit.”

Tristan’s gaze left the small Someshwari servant taking away the cloak one of the guests – a dark-haired woman who had no sleeves on her overcoat, turning it into some sort of doublet, but wore a wine-red undershirt with cowl sleeves that was so long it emerged past the belted as a sort of skirt. Watch fashion was only marginally more respectable than the noble kind.

“So I can see who has been waiting for Tredegar to arrive,” he said.

He parsed through the crowd, looking for the right kind of attention. Not passing curiosity or flicked glances but, in a word, recognition. Someone down there was waiting for Angharad Tredegar, and no matter how good you were you still needed to look to know someone was there. So Tristan looked for them in turn, sifting through the guests as Angharad Tredegar began to speak with their hosts.

Bored, he counted. That smirking pair? Making fun of her clothes. One was promising, he – ah, no, it was Tredegar’s ass and legs the man kept looking at. Sex and thus. But that Someshwari man with the contrasting brass spectacles and bulging arms who was discreetly writing into a notebook, now there was a suspect. He was looking as much at the hosts as Tredegar, but it was worth investigating. A second sweep gave him no one else, sadly, although – huh, how long had that Malani been eating the same prawn?

The one with the belt of colored beads and the golden bangles around her arms. There were three large Cathayan prawns in the bronze vessel she had been handed and only one was eaten, the others forever being nibbled on at an angle that just so happened to let her study Tredegar discreetly. And after a heartbeat the Malani flicked a look his way – surprised, he only barely ducked behind the tree in time.

“Contract,” Fortuna said, confirming his first thought. “And with a prickly bastard, too. He’s looking for me.”

“Can he find you?” Tristan whispered back in alarm.

“As if,” she snorted. “There’s so many gods in here it would be like picking a nipple out from a pile of tits.”

Though he had once spent two months working at a brothel Tristan Abrascal had never seen a ‘pile of tits’ and counted himself lucky in that regard. Sounded ghastly. Yet knowing that to react would only encourage the goddess, he ignored the words beyond the useful information conveyed.

“Is she still looking?” he asked.

Fortuna hummed, picking at her sleeve.

“No, but I think she’s keeping an eye on the stairs,” she replied.

So the Malani was still trying to learn who had been looking at her. Spy, Tristan decided. Or at least someone with training in the craft. It might be he had found his first fellow Krypteia student.

“It is a good thing I never intended to use them, then,” Tristan said.

The lodges didn’t fill the entire ring on every tier, more along the lines of two thirds – as was only sensible, if this had truly been a playhouse once. No one wanted to watch a play from seats situated behind the actors. Tristan doubled back to the other end of the ring he was on, keeping away from torchlight and carefully avoiding ever looking in the contractor’s direction, until he had reached the edge just by the stairs leading above.

There he had to sneak behind the pavilion where the man with the guest book still waited, but the Lierganen looked abjectly bored and half asleep. A wall had prevented passage, once, but it had long ago crumbled and as Tristan peered over the edge he found that below was a nook of bushes and grass but also something more: three wooden outhouses. There were green lanterns by them, perhaps to mark their location.

The thief checked to see if anyone was around, and when not took the opportunity offered. He lowered himself atop the roof of the leftmost outhouse, then leaped down into a bush with only muffled sounds. It turned out to be thornier than anticipated, but the Watch cloak and coat were mercifully thick and the cloth was hard to tear. Good quality, that, Tristan mused as he rolled out and began brushing off twigs and leaves. Tugging his collar back into place, he casually walked out and took in the layout.

The party had a simple enough layout: stage, food tables, drink tables and a surfeit of chatting princelings. Nothing arduous to navigate, the trick would be positioning himself so he could keep an eye on Tredegar and the marks in play without being too obvious about it.  Tristan began eyeing the food tables speculatively, wondering if there might be time for pigeon pie or one of those – huh, were those cutlets beef? They certainly smelled like it.

That couldn’t be right, though.

“Sleeping God, I cannot have had that much wine.”

The thief’s gaze was ripped away from the cutlets and onto the source of a familiar voice. Zenzele Duma looked much healthier than the last time Tristan had seen him, the eye he had lost in Cantica now replaced by a false one the same color as Tupoc Xical’s. Nice. Malani did have a knack for being theatrically vengeful. The lordling wore the formal uniform, fitted to him and with some golden locks of rope thrown in around the shoulders.

Sergeant Andres hadn’t offered those, so there must be other cloth shops in the port. Another mark for the servants here not being watchmen.

“Tristan,” Zenzele Duma said. “Is that you?”

“Zenzele,” the thief said, then gestured for him to get closer.

Looking worried, the Malani leaned in.

“I don’t suppose,” Tristan asked, “that you would happen to know where those grilled cutlets are from?”

“I,” Zenzele began, taken aback, then paused. “No?”

“Unfortunate,” the thief muttered, then cocked an eyebrow. “Not even if you, you know…”

He gestured vaguely, implying contract without mentioning anything of the sort.

“I am not sure there is anyone in all of Vesper that feels strongly enough about grilled cutlets for that to work,” the lordling replied.

He was, Tristan saw, fighting back a smile. Which was fair but also missing the point. Those cutlets were beef, not pork. Pigs and chickens you could raise in a ruin like Port Allazei – practically speaking the Murk was a ruin and both were common there – but cows needed grazing lands and those cutlets smelled fresh. The meat could be imported, of course, but how costly would that be on an island closed to trade ships?

No, most likely another part of Tolomontera was inhabited. Somewhere with decent land for cattle that must also be easily defensible, because there were bound to be some pretty nasty lemures on the island and the Watch wouldn’t bleed their own garrison for fresh milk and meat. They could have gotten both from goats without half this trouble. If it’s the Watch behind this at all. Was there a colony somewhere out there, another Cantica? Hopefully with fewer slaves and devils this time.

He would have to look into it. Until then, best distract Zenzele.

“I thought Malani were all about cattle,” Tristan said. “Isn’t the name of your coinage derived from-”

“The words sound similar, but they do not have the same root,” Zenzele flatly replied. “You are, evidently, attempting to distract me.”

Still inconveniently perceptive, then. That hadn’t stopped being a pain. A pause, then the Malani came closer and even lowered his voice.

“Were you even invited?” the nobleman asked in a whisper.

Not worried or irritated, that face, but scandalously eager. The thief did not mind throwing him a bone.

“The world is an invitation, Zenzele,” Tristan airily replied. “Though if you’ll excuse me, I need to take care of something.”

If he was going to be skulking the rest of the evening and leaving early, he best help himself to a meal first. Zenzele’s lips were twitching as he casually waved the man goodbye, getting a nod back. Keeping to the edge of the crowd, avoiding anything more elaborate than nods and smiles, Tristan sought out with his eyes both the Someshwari wearing spectacles and the Malani with the bead belt.

The former was by a small garden table, fumbling his attempts to fake eating a croquetas while trying to discreetly write in his little notebook. He was still watching Tredegar, but the sight of him accidentally dropping the same croqueta on a page for the second time had the Sacromontan somewhat reconsidering how much of a threat he might be.

That notebook better not be full of dreamy drawings of Angharad, or Tristan was going to have to break his legs – for wasting his time, if nothing else.

As for the Malani, it took longer to find her. She was, the thief found, positioned much as he was: on the edge and looking in. He forced himself to look right past her when he found her, lest her contract be drawn his way again, and then helped himself to the nearest plated food to justify standing where he was. It was a bronze vessel with three peeled Cathayan prawns – each long and thick as a finger – marinated in reddish sauce.

She’d chosen such a good spot to stand in earlier he had moved in the same without realizing. She was definitely suspicious. Tristan took a tentative bite of the prawn and found the taste strangely sugary. Until the spices hit, a heartbeat later, and then his mouth was aflame. Gods, it was even spicier than Old Town chorizo. It was like eating a torch only it didn’t have the decency to go out. He put the prawn back and discreetly coughed into his fist.

Fortuna, seeing the expression on his face, began cackling.

“You look like they’re making you swallow hot coals,” she said. “Start moving around a little and it could pass as a fresh form of dance. One, two, three, four, to the left and-”

“A cup of water, sir?”

He’d not even noticed the man approaching with a tray of cups, distracted by both an intangible hyena and the very fires of Hell he had foolishly allowed entry into his mouth. Lierganen, he immediately thought, early thirties. Curly brown hair and blue eyes, fit but not muscled and the callouses of work but not killing work. The thief put on a smile, coughing again.

“Please,” he got out.

He took the offered cup, slowly drinking. Merciful relief.

“You may well have saved my life,” he seriously said.

“All in a day’s work,” the other man replied.

Taking a second look now that he was no longer dying, Tristan saw what he missed on the first pass. Rings around the stranger’s eyes, only half-hidden by powdery cosmetics, and the edge of a tattoo under the man’s left sleeve. Tristan could not make out the whole of it but could hazard a guess from what he saw. Green ink, a rearing horse and a rider holding what should be a sword – Old Saraya’s arms, which was a common tattoo on their sailors.

The man did not look like a sailor, but it might just be common practice in that region and the thief had simply only ever met Sarayan that were sailors. Either way, the conversation was as good a hook to get into it with one of the servants as he was likely to get. Sympathy, he decided, would serve best as the opening line.

“You look like someone whose shift has been going on for six hours too long,” Tristan noted.

The man snorted.

“Try ten,” he said, then cocked an eyebrow. “Sacromonte?”

Tristan knew that accent, the way it softened z into s, and it confirmed the tattoo’s hint.

“Born and raised,” the thief said. “If I don’t miss my mark, you’re Sarayan.”

“From the Queen of Cities herself,” he proudly said.

Not that anyone but the inhabitants of Old Saraya still called their capital that. When the Grand Canal broke back in the Century of Crowns, the city built at one end of it had withered on the vine. Nowadays the Malani had seized the lands on the other end and sometimes made noise about clearing the waterway, but with Sacromonte willing to make war over the matter nothing ever came of it. The Six had spent centuries bullying their Sarayan rivals into irrelevance, they would not tolerate a resurgence.

“You’re a long way from home,” Tristan said, draining the rest of the cup.

The Sarayan asked for it silently and set it on the edge of his drinks tray.

“Not as far as you,” the man snorted. “Though I take your meaning; this is a little further out than the Islas Reales.”

Ah, Sarayans. Centuries since their island empire had turned to dust and still they called the island chains closest to their shore the Royal Isles. Old Saraya was no longer even a kingdom, but to hear them talk you’d think they were the Second Empire come again.

“It has been a strange few years,” the man admitted, then offered his hand to clasp. “Arnau.”

“Ferrando,” Tristan replied without batting an eye, shaking it.

It was simply the first name that had come to mind, but now that it was out… It’d be foolish, but the notion was simply too sweet to resist.

“Ferrando Villazar,” the thief winning smiled.

If Ferranda came at him with that rapier of hers he would just have to trade information for mercy.

“Well met,” Arnau replied, then rubbed the bridge of his nose with a groan.

“Should I leave you to rest?” Tristan asked.

Using the tired for information was always a coin toss and he was not yet so pressed for time he must forge on here.

“Please don’t,” the man said. “As long as I’m talking with a guest they’ll not get on my case for not making the rounds.”

“Rough boss?” he casually asked.

“She’s been working us to the bone,” Arnau grunted. “Thinks a success tonight means all those little Watch pricks are going to keep hiring us through the year.”

So definitely not a watchman himself, Tristan noted. As he’d thought, the servants were not blackcloaks. And they seemed to be running their own enterprise. Did the Watch allow others property rights on their island? Odd.

“No offense meant,” the Sarayan hurried to add. “You just don’t seem like…”

“I was brought along by exactly such a little Watch prick, don’t you worry,” Tristan grinned, then let the amusement bleed away and sighed. “You’re not the only one working. I’m supposed to find out a pair of names, but I honestly have no idea how.”

A lie, but servants always knew more than they showed. If Arnau could let him get answers without having his face known, Tristan would prefer that route.

“Try me,” Arnau said. “Which two?”

Ah, a bite. Tristan’s hand left the cover of his cloak, discreetly indicating the Someshwari with the wiry spectacles.

“No idea,” the Sarayan admitted. “The second?”

He now pointed the Malani with the colored beads belt and the golden bangles.

“Captain Imani Langa,” Arnau immediately said. “Eleventh Brigade.”

“That was quick,” Tristan said, not hiding his surprise.

“She’s captain to one of the money bags that hired us,” the man explained. “She’s come around once or twice and Jinjing told us to treat her like a queen.”

Jinjing being, Tristan guessed, their leader. The one putting the screws to her crew. Why such a thirst for coin, he wondered? It could be simple greed, but Tolomontera was surely not any thinking woman’s idea of a place to strike it rich. Perhaps there was some kind of bargain with the Watch, a rent or a cut.

“That makes one,” the thief happily said. “Many thanks, Arnau.”

“It is all in the Circle,” the man dismissed. “Besides, nostros y-”

“-el resto,” Tristan finished.

Us and the rest. Emperor Viterico’s famous answer to the Aztlan queen that had called him a madman for making war on her over the dead of a single handmaid. She was Lierganen, Viterico had replied. There is us, and there is the rest. The lowest of Liergan stood above even the kings across the water. It had been the boast of empire once, the Second Empire’s destiny of conquest manifest. But after the empire’s collapse, when entire provinces were swallowed by the dark and once-conquered kingdoms broke away and began gobbling up territories, the meaning shifted.

Us and the rest, men still said, but now it was in solidarity. The last children of Liergan, beggared inheritors of the great empire that had united Vesper, and though they were a mightily squabbling tribe they shared root and blood. Cousins over foreigners, that was what the words meant nowadays. Tristan saw the pull of that dream, of its shared inheritance, but he had been taught better.

Men will do all manners of foolish things for an empire, even a dead one, Abuela had laughed. Where was that brotherly love when Sacromonte sought to rule the waves, when Saraya tried to unite the Chelae or the Duquesas burned every port that did not fly their banner? The mighty nail that dream to their banners and wave it still because they know men will cut off their own hand for it and call it patriotism.

So no, Tristan had not bought into the lie. But he was not above using it, not in the slightest, or encouraging it. He slipped a pair of coppers against Arnau’s palm under the tray. He did not even pretend to refuse them before spiriting them away.

“You shouldn’t have,” the servant half-heartedly said, as if by rote.

“It’s all in the Circle,” Tristan echoed with a shrug.

Arnau hesitated.

“If you’re spending someone else’s coin,” he said. “There might be a way to get that other name.”

The thief leaned in, careful not to look too eager.

“Estevan out in front, the man with the guest book,” the Sarayan said. “He’s charged with remembering all the names and the faces. He’ll hold out for silver, though. Used to be a lord’s man, has ideas.”

Tristan did not, unfortunately, have silvers to spend. He was even running low on coppers – only five left, the cook had mostly paid for the sergeant’s boots getting ripped in mutton jerky – but it should be worth a look regardless. He thanked Arnau, discreetly disposed of the Lightbringer’s own prawns and considered how he might best go about approaching this Estevan.

“This is an evening for honorable company, Zenzele Duma,” a voice called out. “By what right do you attend?”

Some Malani noble was having a tantrum, which Tristan would have been entirely indifferent to if it did not involve an acquaintance. Which it did, unless there was another Zenzele in attendance. As the Malani lordling was not an ally Tristan would have been only marginally concerned by the situation, but of course it could not be that easy. Standing by Zenzele and Ferranda – so she’d made it after all, good on her – was Angharad Tredegar.

His fellow cabalist looked faintly disapproving, which on her was a look that could mean anything from someone speaking out of turn to an imminent duel to the death. Fuck, should he get involved?

No, that was looking at it wrong. Tredegar wasn’t out of her depth here, she was in her exact depths. What had she been trained for, if not honor games and ritualized stabbing? He didn’t even have to worry about her going too far if she got into a fight, the Pereduri would keep to the precise letter of her word. She was a shark in her native waters, right now, while he’d be a rat on a plank while trying to instruct her on how to swim.

This was not a problem, it was an opportunity.

Zenzele and the whiny noble got into it publicly, which drew everyone’s eye. The guests settled in for the show, a few of them moving to the first ring so they could look down at this as if it were a play put on for them, and that was a fine cover for heading up. Tristan went up with a pair excitedly chatting, slipped into the garden and doubled back towards the small pavilion where Estevan would be waiting with the guest book.

Only it turned out he was not the only one that notion had occurred to.

A tall Tianxi was speaking in irritated tones to the greeter, an interesting enough sight Tristan crept close and slipped into a bush to be able to listen in.

“Three arboles?” the Tianxi was saying. “That is absurd. I am asking for a name, not the key to your sister’s bedroom.”

“I was willing to be bargained down to two,” Estevan coldly replied, “but for that comment it will be full price. Pay or leave, I will debate no further.”

The Tianxi, who was tall and broad-shouldered but not all that muscled – not a fighter, perhaps? – looked furious and tried to argue but the servant was unmoved. Cursing all the while, the Tianxi paid and Tristan leaned in curiously to hear what had been worth that price.

“Her guest is called Tristan Abrascal,” Estevan said. “Gray eyes, dark brown hair, around five feet nine. Skinny but not sickly. Wearing the fighting fit, he has on him a knife on and something else strapped to his leg.”

The thief went still in the bushes, watching a glint of triumph come to the Tianxi’s eyes. It had been for him the other man was looking. Well, it seemed like he had found the first brigade out to abduct him. More worryingly, it also looked like they had just found him.

The thief stayed in the bushes until the Tianxi was gone, the servant sneering at his back and muttering something no doubt unkind, as he considered his options. Tristan’s neck was on the menu now, but that’d always been going to happen. It was simply unpleasant timing. In the distance, down below, there was shouting and something that sounded like Tredegar’s voice.

Ah, she was definitely going to cripple the sneering Malani then. Tristan was going to have to learn his name and brigade in case this came back to haunt them. Still, as Tredegar was being so enterprising about stepping into danger he should honor the spirit of their company and do the same. Rolling out of the bushes under the greeter’s bewildered gaze, Tristan rose to his feet and brushed leaves of his cloak as he offered the man a hard smile. 

“Good evening, Estevan,” he said. “I have some questions for you.”

The neatly dressed man froze for a second when he realized he had just been caught selling information about someone by that very same individual. His face immediately closed down, and he straightened his back.

“Master Abrascal,” he said. “What can I help you with?”

“Oh, Estevan, all sorts of things,” Tristan happily said. “And you’ll do it, too, or I’ll be walking straight to the nearest Watch officer to tell them you’re a participant in the attempted abduction of a blackcloak.”

His face did not so much as twitch, but his eyes dilated.

“Doubtful,” he said, sounding confident. “The man I did business with-”

“Is Watch,” Tristan said. “He’ll get a reprimand, and that’s it. But he’s wearing black, my friend. I cannot help but notice you’re not. How do you think that will go for you?”

To his honor, the other man showed no hint of fear in the face of what was a very real threat. But he was afraid, Tristan decided, and his next words betrayed as much.

“What do you want, Abrascal?” he bit out.

“Two names,” he said, “and the matching brigades.”

Estevan said nothing, but irritatedly gestured as if to tell Tristan to get on with it.

“The Tianxi who asked you about me,” the thief said.

“Captain Tengfei Pan, Forty-Ninth Brigade,” Estevan flatly said.

The thief filed that away. Forty-Ninth, was it? He must be a latecomer.

“A Someshwari with brass wire spectacles and big arms,” Tristan said.

Estevan did not answer, only watching him expectantly.

“I’m waiting,” the thief reminded him.

“And you will keep waiting,” Estevan said, “until you pay me two arboles. A name for a name, Abrascal. Anything more costs you.”

Tristan hummed. He could have repeated the threat, but there was a chance the man would call him on it and in truth he did not have to want to leave here just to follow through. Fortunately, Estevan had given him a second lever without realizing it.

“I’m a generous man, my friend,” the thief smiled. “I will even pay you three.”

Rightfully wary, Estevan frowned.

“Pay upfront,” he demanded.

“I already have,” Tristan said. “I am giving you three arboles by not informing Jinjing that you are taking bribes on the side. Somehow I’m guessing you’re not cutting her in on those, are you?”

By the sour look on Estevan’s face, he was not. The man spat to the side, into the same bush Tristan had rolled out of. Fair. He was getting robbed out of a decent bribe.

“Adarsh Hebbar,” the greeter said. “He’s not in a brigade yet.”

“Come now,” Tristan said. “Such a thin report for three arboles? That would be most unfair of you, Estevan.”

Estevan looked like he wanted to punch him in the throat, but the thief only smiled. He had little care for the anger of a man who had sold him out and then tried to shake him down.

“He’s Varavedan,” the greeter bit out. “Unarmed. And he’s a guest, not invited. Came in with Lady Cressida of the Nineteenth.”

The Nineteenth Brigade, was it? Another potential foe to investigate. Tristan was almost beginning to sympathize with Song: they were accumulating enemies at an impressive rate. The fact that this Adarsh was Varavedan was worth noting, but ultimately of no use to him. Varaveda was one of the most powerful realms within the Imperial Someshwar, but it was also landlocked. Tristan had never met any and knew little of their ways.

The thief could have pushed Estevan further for details on this Cressida, but it would not be worth the time and trouble. Best end this now and return to more important matters, so Tristan found the other man’s eyes and smiled.

“Our accounts are settled,” he said. “Let us part ways here.”

The man glared angrily.

“You think I’ll forget this, Abrascal?”

“Try to,” Tristan honestly advised.

“You-”

“It would inconvenience me,” he said, “to have to spend an afternoon on killing you without leaving a trail. But you must understand, Estevan, that is all it would be to me.”

He stepped closer, into the dark-haired man’s face, and the servant stepped back.

“An inconvenience,” Tristan softly said.

He smiled again and the man flinched.

“Do we understand each other, my friend?”

Estevan swallowed, all the more loudly for the silence between them. There was laughter in the distance, something amusing the crowd, but the thief did not look away. The other man nodded, hands shaking.

“A good evening to you, then,” Tristan said, and left him.

He had a duel to watch, though he suspected it might not last all that long.

—

A butter knife.

Tristan was not sure he would have been able to cut cold butter with one of these, much less a Malani swordmaster. Even one with only three stripes to Angharad’s ten. Mind you, the thief would not have bet on himself against a fledgling Malani swordmaster with three limbs if it came to a swordfight. Given how excited the guests became after the humiliating victory and this Lord Musa Shange – Ninth Brigade, that one, which he gathered was going to be a problem since their captain was a well-connected prick with a reputation for being vindictive – it was not all that hard to get a few of them talking.

The difficulty was to do it without getting seen by the captain of the Forty-Ninth, who was roaming about and having curt conversations with others while his eyes wandered, all the while Tristan himself kept an eye on this Adarsh Hebbar. The trick was to let himself be seen above in the gardens or near one of the nooks, then go around and while the Tianxi furiously search take the time to help himself to a plate and some conversation

No great secrets were revealed, though as he tore through a few cutlets – delicious – he was surprised to see the number of people who were glad for Lady Ferranda.Or rather Captain Ferranda Villazur, she was now called, of the Thirty-First Brigade. Ferranda was friendly with many other cabals by dint of having suggested that every two weeks a sort of conclave should be held between captains willing to share information on the perils of Port Allazei.

It was only sparsely attended, Tristan read between the lines, and he doubted any secrets of worth were being traded. But it had allowed a few of those in attendance to avoid wandering into dangerous parts of the city by accident and for that she had won gratitude. Lemures and lares were apparently quite common if you ventured far enough from the inhabited part of the city, Tristan learned, save on a road to Scholomance that the Watch kept clear by regular patrols.

The thief kept using the name of Ferrando, knowing that Captain Tengfei would be looking for him under another, though he refrained from using the false surname. Too likely to get him caught, however amusing it might be for a while.

That effort and staying out of sight paid off, Captain Tengfei eventually losing patience and wandering up into the ring gardens without his first arranging a sighting. After some minutes passed the man did not come back, which was no sure thing but allowed Tristan time for further boldness. Time to move on Adarsh, then, before he too decided to leave. The Varavedan kept scribbling in his notebook by the garden table, eyes still on Angharad and her fresh escorts.

Ferranda and Zenzele had evidently decided they were in her debt for the earlier public execution of Musa Shange’s reputation. A butter knife, gods. He wouldn’t have believed it if not for his own eyes. If he ever had to kill her he’d need a better plan than poison, that hadn’t worked out too well for Brun and Yaretzi.

Tristan also needed Adarsh’s notebook, so a distraction was in order. He cast a look around to find something of use, and to his mixed feeling it appeared as if Lucifer’s fiery vengeance might be. He took aside one of the servants wandering about and told him that Adarsh – who was discreetly pointed at – had been asking if there were any Cathayan prawns left. There were not on the table, but the woman assured him that there were some in the back.

Given the professionalism of the servants, within a minute a bronze vessel with the prawns was offered to the Varavedan – who looked surprised and asked a question, but when the servant looked around for Tristan she found the thief was gone. Hiding, in fact, behind a conversing pair a few feet away from them while feigning to be drunk and getting his bearings. Readying himself for the opening, Tristan watched Adarsh bite into a prawn and… not be set aflame.

Someshwari, right, fuck, the thief thought. They sold half the spices going around the Trebian Sea, the other half proverbially being crammed into everything they ate.

Only the man’s eyes widened with delight instead, and he positively devoured the prawns before calling for the same servant to come back. Having been exposed to Fortunat from a young age, Tristan was highly skilled at pretending utter coincidence had been a grand plan and he promptly stepped into the opening. While Adarsh addressed the servant, facing that way, Tristan discreetly passed behind him with his face angled so the servant would not be able to see it.

He swiped the booklet from the table and promptly disappeared into the crowd. He ducked out into the garden above, cracking open the pages once he was out of sight, and frowned down at what he saw. Only three pages were in use, each titled with a name. Ferranda Villazur on the first and third, Angharad Tredegar on the second. Beneath them were a mix of names, numbers and words in Samratrava that he could not decipher.

The numbers, though, were imperial. And they were telling: none above fifty, several repeating. Brigade numbers. The man was keeping track of who talked with Angharad and Ferranda, though he did not seem to have everyone’s names or brigades. Perhaps to fill in the blanks he might be using physical descriptions in his native tongue, explaining the Samratrava. Either way, this was concerning.

Adarsh Hebbar had clearly been sent to keep an eye on those two, and despite the utter lack of subtlety he had gathered quite a bit of information.

From up in the ring garden Tristan had a clear view of the Varavedan realizing his notebook was missing, but instead of anger or throwing a tantrum he was surprised to see Adarsh pale. The man looked around for it feverishly, and when he found nothing turned to the garden ring at a fast pace. He was not searching for a culprit, Tristan realized, but preparing to leave. That complicated things.

Hiding so Adarsh went past him, Tristan ripped a page from the notebook and found Arnau again. He asked to borrow charcoal to write a note for Angharad, keeping it brief-

Imani had eye on you since you talked with hosts. Careful. Ferranda is liked, good ally. Avoid Forty-Ninth, enemies. Am following lead, don’t know when back.

-and forked out another pair of coppers to make sure Arnau delivered it to Angharad unseen. The man was more than willing. Thanking him, Tristan hurried after the retreating Varavedan spy as quickly as he could without drawing attention. He kept his distance as Adarsh went all the way up to the rings, where he pulled up the hood on his cloak and walked into the night.

Well now.

Time to have a pleasant conversation with his new friend.

The watchwoman handling the ledger at the front of the Rainsparrow Hostel was named Valentina, and she helped them with the enthusiasm of someone whose hour would otherwise be ferociously boring. It turned out that one of the warehouses Angharad had noticed on Hostel Street was earmarked for student supplies, including a set of three fresh uniforms.

“You could pick up your field kit as well, but I’d wait until you spoke with your patron for that,” Valentina said. “They’ll advise you on what else to pick up at the same time.”

“Is there a way to learn who our patron is to be?” Angharad politely asked.

If there was a proper way to go about her affairs she would prefer to follow it, but in the absence of such guidance she was being left to guess. Angharad never much enjoyed guessing. Father had loved riddles, and often deplored her general dislike of them.

“Normally the officer who sorted you out should have sent you straight to them,” Valentina mused. “It probably means yours hasn’t arrived at Port Allazei yet. I hear the Master of Arms is running a few days late, they could be a passenger.”

Tristan leaned close to the Pereduri, though not quite enough to touch or even for his breath be felt. Sometimes she thought him half a ghost, to so rarely let himself be felt.

“Is your uncle not supposed to be coming soon?” he murmured.

Angharad bit down on her excitement, knowing it premature. Uncle Osian being their patron would be a grand thing indeed, but for him to have acquired the wealth he’d allegedly spent on her protection he must either be highly placed in the Watch or heavily indebted. Either way, could he truly afford to spend years on this island out in the middle of nowhere?

“It would be a pleasant surprise,” she finally replied.

She did not lower her voice, as speaking privately when engaged in conversation with a third party was impolite. The noblewoman then lowered her head in thanks to Valentina.

“Thank you for the advice,” she said.

The older woman dismissed her words with a vague gesture.

“No trouble,” she said. “And if you’ve the time, I recommend that you spend a few coppers getting your informs adjusted at the warehouse. There’s a tailor there and it’ll help with impressions if you’re to dine with free company princelings.”

Tristan leaned in, like a hound with a nose to the scent.

“Been hearing a lot of ‘princelings’ this and that being thrown around,” the man said, his Sacromonte accent suddenly gone thicker. “Don’t suppose you could help a friend out as to the meaning?”

Valentina eyed him amusedly.

“Most don’t take Murk mud as a slip to flash, boy,” she said, then raised an eyebrow. “What gave it away?”

Had Tristan noticed something, then? Angharad was somewhat at a loss as to what it might be.

“You put your ledger entries in the middle,” he replied. “Like all coterie bookkeepers.”

“It’s neater that way,” Valentina said, sounding peeved. “And if you align it to the left the Tianxi always get pissy.”

Cathayan, Angharad remembered, was read from right to left. She said nothing, content with staying out of Tristan’s way given that he did not seem to have given offense. The watchwoman sighed.

“Something to keep in mind, and well worth a warning,” Valentina said. “Since you’re both obviously fresh to the black, I’ll let you in on the way things go. After a few decades, free companies end up one of two ways: corpses or filthy rich.”

Angharad frowned, for that seemed a narrow case, but in truth she could not recall ever hearing of a small free company. Only half a dozen operated in the Isles, and of those a mere two were based near the Kingdom of Malan – those two, however, could field armies and fleets that would dwarf those of any single izinduna. An alliance of great lords would check them, surely, and the High Queen could destroy either with a single order. Yet it could not be denied they were both powerful forces.

Supposedly the continent knew smaller free companies, particularly in Izcalli and the Someshwar where there was always work for Rooks, but even these would be at least a few hundred men strong. More soldiers than Mother had ever commanded even when leading an exploration flotilla.

“Any company that had the pull to send students to Scholomance will have been around for ages, and it’ll have leading officers wealthy as lords,” the watchwoman continued. “It’s their kids they’ll be sending here, black-cloaked princelings used to having the run of private armies.”

Valentina leaned her chin against the palm of her hand.

“I’m pretty sure that Thando boy is from the Singing Jackals, and by reputation they’re a real piss-in-your-porridge kind of outfit.”

Angharad’s brow rose, for that name she had indeed heard of. The Singing Jackals were the largest free company to take contracts in Malan, said to be headquartered at an island off the south-east of the Middle Isle. They were also, more importantly, rumored to have connections with the High Queen’s court. Even if this Lord Thando did not turn out to be an enemy, he would know that House Tredegar had been struck from the rolls of nobility.

A discomforting thought.

They both thanked Valentina for her words and took their leave. The warehouse first, Angharad silently decided, but she could use a distraction from her worries. She turned a look on Tristan as they began to walk.

“You mentioned,” she said as they walked out of the hostel, “that the bookkeeper of these ‘coteries’ write ledger entries in the middle of the page. Why is that?”

He looked at her with that strange look of surprise he sometimes put on. It came and went at the oddest times, she had yet to figure out the reason for it.

“Coteries never run a single set of books,” Tristan explained. “The scriveners will fill the middle, then when they’re to send the numbers up the ladder they’ll copy them on the left side and cut that part of the page off.”

Angharad almost asked why they would not simply buy a second book to write the copy in until she recalled that these coteries were petty criminals and paper was not inexpensive.

“Then what is the last third for?” she asked.

It was not a long walk down the street, but it struck her as odd such an important location would be so deserted. Of the half-dozen people in black cloaks moving around Hostel Street only two were young enough to be students, the others likely from the local garrison.

 “Depends who you ask,” Tristan snorted. “Bookkeepers, they’ll tell you it’s so there’s room to put their notes and corrections in.”

The expectation was clear.

“But,” Angharad gamely said.

“If you ask coterie boys, they’ll tell you it’s the ghost ledger,” the man said. “The real numbers, which the bookkeepers skim off of and hide in their notes.”

The noblewoman frowned. Even criminal bookkeepers should have greater integrity than that. And if not morals, then at least sense.

“Are coteries not brutal killers?” she asked. “It seems unwise to rob them.”

“A good bookkeeper’s precious enough coteries bosses usually let them get away with skimming if they keep it small and quiet,” Tristan said. “It’s hard to find folk learned in numbers willing to run Murk books.”

“I do not understand,” Angharad admitted. “Even the poorest would attend-”

Ah, she realized awkwardly. Other realms did not have the isikole, the four years of schooling all children of the Isles went through except if their parents secured an exemption – as Mother had for her. The poor of the Sacromonte likely could not read or write the way they would in Malan, much less do arithmetic. Tristan looked intrigued.

“Is it true all Malani children are made to attend school, then?” he asked. “Sailors said as much, but I always figured they meant children from good families. Or those who could pay, at least.”

“I was told that in the larger cities some children slip through the cracks,” Angharad admitted. “But the attempt is ever made. The isikole is one of the foundations of the kingdom.”

Not that all such schools were the same. Some nobles donated to the red roofs raised in their lands, or paid for more roofs to be raised so they would not be as crowded. The lessons stayed largely the same, however, though if one cared for rumors it was said that in Uthukile any school teaching children The Peace of Nine Oaths – the seventh of the nine Great Works – would keep accidentally catching fire until it ceased to do so.

Angharad had never read the work but Father said it covered the many wars between the kingdoms that had united the Low Isle and the Middle, often painting the former as the devils of the tale. Malani books will always teach Malani lessons, he had told her. The work was said to be more flattering to the ancient Kingdom of Peredur, perhaps because its many princes had warred with each other more than they ever did the rulers of the Middle Isle.

Angharad shook her head, chasing off the reverie. The Isles were far away, and she would not see them again for many years. They would keep while the current matters would not.

The warehouse was a stooped pile of masonry that seemed almost expectant, though the inside was covered with wood paneling. The front was a long counter behind which several doors stood closed, manned by a tall Someshwari woman who was half-heartedly playing a game of Patience, cards laid out in front of her. She looked up when they entered, no more pleased with them than she was with her game.

“What do you need?”

“We are freshly arrived,” Angharad said. “We come for our uniforms.”

“Stay here, I’ll see if Sergeant Andres has the time,” the watchwoman said, then narrowed her eyes at them. “Don’t touch my cards.”

Angharad cocked an eyebrow at her and nodded, saying nothing as the Someshwari yanked open one of the doors and disappeared into a dimly lit hall beyond it. Tristan, who had promised nothing, leaned over the counter to have a look at the cards.

“She’s stuck,” he reported.

“She is on shift,” Angharad said disapprovingly.

If the Someshwari was so bored, she should have found something useful to do instead of waste her time in such a manner. Card games were for evening parties, not the hours sworn to service. By the time the watchwoman returned Tristan had distanced himself from the counter, though they still both got a suspicious glare.

“He’ll see you,” she said. “Plaques.”

They duly handed them over, and after snorting at the number she handed them back. They were ushered into a cramped room at the back of the warehouse, full of closest and stacks where piles of black clothes of differing sizes waited in quantities that could be described as significant. Sergeant Andres turned out to be a white-haired old man with a limp, Lierganen in looks, accompanied by an assistant – a small girl that could not have been older than twelve.

“Sit, sit,” Sergeant Andres wheezed. “Let’s get you properly attired.”

The old man had a leather stripe marked for measures and began with Tristan, taking notes about shoulder length and the span of his legs while sending off the girl to fetch the sizes. As soon as the Sacromontan was sent off to dress in closet the sergeant was on her, Angharad standing patiently as he took her measures. It was a familiar feeling, though Emyr – Llanw Hall’s household tailor – had been half this Andres’s age and much sprier.

“I hear that the uniforms can be adjusted for a fee,” Angharad said, glancing down.

“Which?” Sergeant Andres asked. “There are three kinds, my girl, though I could certainly work on all three if you feel the need.”

It turned out that Angharad had already encountered two of the kinds of uniform without knowing it. The combination Song and Maryam had taken to wearing on the Fair Vistas – tunic, undershirt, trousers and cloak – was what Sergeant Andres called the ‘regular uniform’.

“Most students come already owning such a set, or even a few,” the old man said. “If that is not the case for you, they can be bought here at a discounted price.”

She nodded, grateful for the information, and got a frown in reply.

“Did your patron not inform you of this?”

“I am told they might not have arrived on Tolomontera yet,” Angharad said.

Sergeant Andres tssked disapprovingly.

“You’re not getting someone from the garrison, then,” he said. “Unlucky you, though given that number on your plague you asked for it.”

Angharad did not roll her eyes at the Lierganen superstition, but it was a near thing. The sergeant kept talking as Tristan returned and was measured again, explaining how the combat uniform – the fighting fit, he called it – had a similar foundation to the regular but wore over the tunic a knee-length overcoat of impressive thickness and collared cloak. Sergeant Mandisa had worn that same kind of coat back at the Old Fort, Angharad recalled.

Once she and Tristan had both been fitted for such a uniform, the old man measured them for the formal kind.

“It is rather decorative,” Sergeant Andres said. “Unsuited to exercise. They’ll only have you put it on for a few ceremonies a year, so if you take proper care of it you might not need a second for your time at Scholomance.”

The centerpiece of the formal uniform was a collared long-sleeved black jacket, buttoned in silver and reaching halfway down Angharad’s thighs. It sat tightly over a pale shirt, belted at the hip, pulling tight at her belly with a silver buckle. She’d had her pick of color for the stripes going down the side of her baggy trousers – choosing green – but the stiff, polished black boots they were tucked into were not negotiable. The old man offered her additions for it.  

“A fitted capelet is most common,” he said. “Though the ornamental pauldron is popular, and cloth wraths for the leg have been in some demand – matching your stripe, of course.”

He casually added that these would have to be bought with personal coin or brigade funds, which was when Angharad frozen. She realized, all too late, that she did not actually have any coin on her – not that she had any left – and had not formally requested Song’s permission to draw on brigade funds. In truth she was not even sure that such a thing could even be done instead of withdrawing brigade coin from wherever it was held.

Shuffling away from the old man awkwardly, she cleared her throat as she saw Tristan pack away his formal uniform. Did he not intend to wear it? It was certainly her choice for the evening.

“I know that look,” the gray-eyed man said, leaning in. “Is it about a dead body or a loan?”

Angharad cleared her throat again. Why would she need help with a dead body? Presumably, she would have been the one to make it, making any need for aid well past.

“It occurs to me I have no funds on my person,” she reluctantly admitted. “I was wondering if perhaps…”

“Loan it is,” Tristan said. “I’ll cover you for the fitting, but I doubt I have enough at hand for that fancy pauldron you were eyeing.”

Disappointing, Angharad would admit to herself. It was most striking and would have added a certain flair to her jacket. Still, she would not complain of a favor being done to her.

“Thank you,” she said. “Shall we agree on the rate?”

The man coughed into his hand, as if choking.

“I am not going to charge you interest on a couple of coppers, Angharad,” Tristan said.

He seemed somewhat appalled.

“I’m not a–” he began, then smoothly changed tack halfway through the sentence, “- well, I’m not that kind of thief.”

The reminder of his past crimes was unfortunate, though his honesty was praiseworthy.

“You do me honor,” Angharad stiffly said.

“I do you for the price of a couple unripe tomatoes on Cato street,” he replied, tone dry. “Let us not get too excited here.”

He seemed unaware of that statement he was making by refraining from a rate: that he considered her honorable enough to put a debt above all other considerations and repay it as promptly as she could. An honor reserved for only long-standing friends among nobles. A heavy compliment, and one whose severity made her uneasy. She had not considered them so close, though by accepting she would state it was so. On the other hand by refusing she would insult them both, which was no better.

That Tristan must be entirely unaware of how neatly he had trapped her only made it worse. It was like being beaten at tabula by someone unaware they could capture your pieces.

“Thank you for the loan,” Angharad forced out.

He was of her cabal, she would have needed to learn to treat him as trusted comrade regardless. This was merely another reason to do so, not some skilled maneuver she had fallen to. With funds secured she had her formal uniform adjusted by the old watchman, who used her as a lesson for the girl that might be as much an apprentice as an assistant. Tristan declined to have one of his own tailored, to her surprise. He was skinnier than most clothes his size would account for.

Sergeant Andres did quality work and at an impressive pace. Angharad was much satisfied with the way her shoulders were let out and the trousers better fitted to her legs. As they were done with time to spare before the evening began, their next destination was all the more obvious: the bathhouse was on the right end of Hostel Street, which Sergeant Itoro had earlier mentioned.

There were separate public baths for men and women, but Angharad was also pleased to find there were bronze bathtubs in private alcoves. Tristan did not resist the suggestion of a wash, or when she strongly suggested he comb his hair.

“A doomed effort, but I shall make a valiant attempt,” Tristan assured her with a grin.

Angharad went back and forth carrying a bucket to fill her own bathtub with near-boiling water from a great tub, rejoicing at the thought of a proper bath after all this time at sea. The heat and humidity of the room were oppressive at first, but she grew used to it after settling in for soak with a jar of fragrant oils – lavender and jasmine – for her hair and a sweet-smelling soap . A pleasant surprise, that latter part, though she supposed it sensible that good Trebian soap would be cheaper when dwelling within the Trebian Sea.

Though she could not spare the time to truly luxuriate, Angharad left her bathtub feeling cleaner than she had in months. She carefully dried and braided her hair – in a simple way, though she would ask Song help for a more elaborated do on the morrow – and then tried on her new formal uniform.

Eyeing herself in the mirror of the bathhouse changing room, Angharad decided it would do. The fit was still a little tight around her shoulders, but that was on purpose. The cut made her seem curvier than she truly was but was not uncomfortable and left room for bindings. Satisfied she was presentable, she belted her saber and doubled back to the front hall.

Tristan was waiting there for her, leaning against the wall in his own fresh clothes. The fighting fit for him. She would have thought that unwise were she not looking at it, but in truth thickness of the overcoat made him look bulkier while allowing the wrinkles in the cloth to seem intended. In a formal uniform he would have looked like a skinny rat, Angharad mused, but under the overcoat and collared black cloak he looked like a true man of the Watch.

“Shall we?” the Sacromontan asked.

She nodded. It would not do to be late. They returned to the Rainsparrow Hostel to put away their dirty clothes and those unused, but Song had left a message for them with Valentina. Maryam was asleep, she wrote, and so she asked for them to leave their affairs in a storage instead. Song herself volunteered to bring their property up to the room when she returned from her exploration of Port Allazei. It was inconvenient, but Angharad decided not to be a lout and conceded the matter.

Besides, Song had left another line and a half at the bottom of the paper. Learn what you can about the other cabals, she instructed. Look for potential allies. If you cannot make friends, then make an impression. Angharad slowly nodded to herself. This she could do. It was not so different from Mother telling her to be friendly with the daughters and sons of houses she wanted to be on fair terms with. Tristan had already put away his affairs when she emerged from her thoughts, waiting for her outside.

“I asked around about where this Old Playhouse is when you were still in the baths,” Tristan told her out in the street. “It is only a few minutes of walk from here, I broadly know the way.”

“Then lead on, Tristan,” Angharad said, pulling at her collar.

It felt tight, but not as tight as the coil in her stomach.

—

The walk took longer than anticipated, largely because they took their time to look around.

And why not? It was yet early and this was their first look at Port Allazei. Angharad found the streets strangely broad, as if this were a city made only of avenues, but soon realized that the neighborhood around the docks was much different from the rest of the city. It was maintained and inhabited, seemingly full of barracks and warehouses and shops. Further out, revealed by stripes of light in red and gold, she saw how Port Allazei crumbled into ruin. Collapsed walls, trees piercing through broken roofs and vines so thick they covered the cobblestone streets like a carpet.

“A dead city,” she said.

“But still used,” Tristan replied. “There are paths through the ruins kept carefully open. The Watch runs patrols here.”

“What against?” Angharad wondered.

“That,” he mused, “is the question, isn’t it?”

The Old Playhouse was near the edge of that ring of inhabited city, enough that beyond it were a handful of collapsed shrines whose debris made the streets unusable. From a distance the structure looked like nothing more than a sloping stone hill split by sets of stairs, though lights and drifting sounds made it clear that it was the right place. The pair hurried up the side of the hill, and once they reached the crest – at the apex of the stairs – their steps stuttered.

“I expected something like a Liergan playhouse,” Tristan said.

“So had I,” Angharad admitted. “This is… different.”

Even as far as the Isles the Second Empire had built a few of their famous playhouses, those massive half-circles of stone benches leading down to a raised stripe of marble where the actors played out their roles. Angharad had not gone to the capital as part of the dueling circuit so she never saw Navaron’s Eye, but she had gone to Kalundi in the southwest and there the Lierganen had built an impressive edifice that still stood strong centuries after the last stone was laid.

The Old Playhouse was nothing like what she had seen in Kalundi.

It did not rise but instead descend, at least in a manner of speaking. Ancient artisans had taken what must have been a low but wide hill and carved the outside, the great length of stone covered with now-faded reliefs and strange symbols. Three sets of stairs rose up the slow, wide and pristine, and at the summit of the hill was where the road veered off: the inside had been hollowed out. Three concentric rings of lodges – the largest being the highest – filled the inside, almost like tiers.

At the very bottom one last ring, a circle on the floor, must be the stage for the playhouse.

Once upon a time the lodges were meant to be separate, for between them stood small walls topped by flat roofs of delicate ironwork made to look like vines, but nature had since decided otherwise. Grass emerged from cracked tiles, trees had overtaken walls and vines bearing fragrant flowers covered everything like a tapestry. The three rings looked like long gardens full of little nooks, and indeed were being treated as if they were.

On the bottom floor a handful of cloth pavilions had been raised and tables set beneath them, laden with glasses and small plates of colorful bites. The tables were attended by a few servants in plain clothes, but the true draw to the eye was the guests: every last one in Watch blacks, but each uniform tailored and subtly different. There must have been thirty of them, none looking older than Angharad by more than a year or two.

They chatted and laughed by the pavilions, though some seemed to be taking pleasant walks around the lowest ring of lodges. It looked, Angharad thought, like a garden party. The same kind she had attended for much of her life, though the guests were admittedly more varied.

“There’s Tianxi down there, so it cannot be a strictly noble gathering,” Tristan noted. “And going by looks, no one nation is leading the pack – odd, that. This should be someone’s game.”

Angharad’s gaze narrowed.

“It isn’t. Have you ever worn a tailored uniform, Tristan?”

“I’ve never worn a tailored anything,” he amusedly replied, “unless you count my stitching rips back together.”

Truly, not even a shirt? How expensive could it possibly be to have a shirt tailored, the Pereduri wondered?

“Getting it fitted to you does not take long, not even work more elaborate than what the tailor did earlier,” she told him. “Yet a simple fitted of uniform is not what they are wearing down there. I see at least half a dozen different styles – see the man with the silk half-cape, or that girl with the layered sleeves? That sort of thing takes time, a skilled artisan and coin.”

Gray eyes narrowed.

“Fashion,” he said. “You mean this is blackcloak fashion.”

In a way, that was a relief. It meant that when Angharad saved up enough coin to acquire finer clothes, there would be shops suited to her need. The notion of the children of mere military officers being a sort of Watch nobility seemed odd, but it was also logical in a way. The Rooks could not recruit their captains entirely from foreign nobility, it was natural they should rear up their own.

“Come,” she enthusiastically said. “Let us find out more.”

This was an event arranged on school grounds, not a proper reception, so Angharad did not feel slighted that no servant was waiting for them was they began the trek down. The pair winded through the garden paths of the first two rings, going round and round, until they came across a small pavilion at the beginning of the third where awaited a smiling Lierganen man in a neat but plain tunic. He was holding a small book and a sharpened length of charcoal.

“Good evening,” the servant said, his Antigua smooth to the ear. “Might I assume that one of you comes bearing an invitation?”

“I do,” Angharad said, producing the letter.

She passed it to Tristan, who passed it to the man without batting an eye. The servant inspected it for a moment, then inclined his head.

“Lady Angharad Tredegar and…”

“Tristan Abrascal,” he completed. “Thirteenth Brigade for both.”

The wince on the servant’s face at the mention of the number was gone so quickly she almost thought she had imagined it.

“Master Abrascal,” the man completed. “I welcome you on behalf of Lord Thando and Captain Nenetl, who arranged this small get-together.”

He paused, allowing time for them to nod their thanks.

“Please enjoy and mingle with the guests as you please,” the smiling man continued. “There will be a small speech at the close of the evening, but no other demands will be made on your time. This is an informal event.”

The servant moved out of the way, inviting them to proceed through the ring garden, and Angharad put a spring to her step. Tristan followed but she felt him glance back after a moment, letting out an interested noise. She cocked a questioning eyebrow.

“He’s writing in that little book of his,” the Sacromontan said. “Too much for it to simply be our names and brigade. I’d give it good odds he’s some kind of sniffer taking a look at everyone come through for our benevolent hosts.”

“He could simply be jotting down our arms and bearing,” Angharad said, a touch reproachfully.

The man flicked a glance her way.

“Could be,” he agreeably replied.

Tristan was hiding his doubt skillfully enough it would have been unfair to be miffed at him. Very unfair. It was purely accidental when the overgrown roots of a tree forced Angharad to cut ahead and her saber’s sheath slapped against his leg. He yelped, rolling his eyes at her most insolently, but then his face turned serious.

“We are getting close to strolling guests,” he said. “I expect that at an evening like this I’d be a stone around your neck, so I’ll make myself scarce.”

Angharad stiffened, back going ramrod straight.

“You are my guest, and neither unmannerly nor foolish,” she said. “None can honorably object to your presence at my side.”

“I think that might be the nicest compliment someone has paid me in years,” Tristan amusedly replied. “But there’s no need to feel as if you are abandoning me, Tredegar. I’m here to watch your back and look into things, both of which will be easier if you are not holding my hand.”

Angharad almost contested the matter, but she knew it would be guilt speaking if she did. Guilt at having felt a silver of gratification at the prospect of being able to enjoy herself with peers for an evening without the need to shepherd a lowborn man through high society. It was not desertion, she told herself, if to separate served their purposes better. It was following a plan.

“Then let us do so,” Angharad said. “Shall we leave together, at least?”

“Best not,” Tristan said. “I might duck out early to follow the trail.”

She cocked her head to the side.

“And what trail would that be?”

“The servants handling all this,” he said. “Where are they from?”

That, Angharad thought, was an interesting question. No student should be allowed to bring servants, she thought, and birth would make no difference in this. Strictly speaking Angharad had not been a titled lady since her house was struck from the rolls of nobility in Malan, but she had since given up the title anyhow by enrolling in the Watch.

It was a fine line for her to even be called Lady Angharad, though by not attaching the name of a holding – such as her lost Llanw Hall – it could be considered that to call her a lady was merely a courtesy title. Besides, she had been invited by an alleged ‘Lord Thando’ so she was clearly not the only one using such a styling.

“Then Sleeping God watch over you, Tristan,” Angharad told him.

“Draw first, Tredegar,” he easily returned.

Was that a traditional Sacromontan blessing? She would commit it to memory, it had a rustic charm to it. They parted ways after a bend in the gardens, each taking the different side of a lightning-struck tree, and within moments she had lost sight of the gray-eyed man. Even knowing Tristan had once been a thief, she thought that his knack for disappearing into the background was rather impressive.

Continuing down the garden path alone, Angharad greeted a few other guests wandering the opposite way as she came across them. Merely polite greetings, not even introductions, as that would be improper before she had found her hosts. She lightly went down the last flight of stairs and headed for the pavilions, few eyes turning to her – though some did – and before she could even begin her search she was intercepted.

The pair approached her together and she must admit that they were, at first glance, a humorous match.

The man was a short, skinny Malani with flabby ears dragged down by too many golden earrings. Though his face was more plain than ugly, he had a large wart at the corner of his left eyebrow that drew the eye. The woman, by contrast, was as tall as she was corpulent. Aztlan of look, though more tanned than either Tupoc or Yaretzi had been, she had startlingly delicate features. Like a doll’s face had been screwed atop a rounded waterskin.

A second look, though, corrected the impressions. The Aztlan – Captain Nenetl, she would guess – had the callouses of someone who had trained in the sword for years and she moved with a fluidity belying her size. As for the likely Lord Thando, there was an intricate green tattoo on the side of neck whose pattern she dimly recognized. Those sharp geometric shapes within curving patterns were a mark of honor, an award given out by izinduna to those who had done a great house an even greater service.

A man to be wary of, if he was her enemy.

“Lady Angharad, I presume?” the Aztlan woman asked with a smile.

Her teeth were crooked, one broken, but her voice was smooth as honey. She was one of those fortunate souls blessed with a natural speaking voice.

“Indeed,” Angharad replied, sketching out a short bow. “Would I be speaking to Captain Nenetl?”

“Nenetl Chapul,” she confirmed. “Captain of the Third Brigade. And by my side-”

“I can introduce myself, Nenetl,” the man snorted, then offered Angharad a bow. “Lord Thando Fenya, at your service. It is always a pleasure to encounter a fellow Malani on these distant shores.”

A long history of having been given such ‘compliments’ by Malani nobles allowed Angharad to keep her smile from going stiff. The man would not have meant any offense, even if any Pereduri worth their salt would have found it. Instead she tried to recall if she had ever heard of House Fenya but drew a blank. It was not a famous house, at least.

“The pleasure is mine,” Angharad replied. “I am as surprised as I am pleased by your invitation.”

The two shared a smirk.

“Your presence is not unexpected,” Lord Thando amiably said. “We make it a point to keep an eye for any promising recruits from the Isles.”

“She doesn’t know who you are, Thando,” Captain Nenetl said, sounding amused. “Your ‘we’ must seem rather mysterious.”

“I must confess I am somewhat at a loss,” Angharad said.

Only somewhat because she had been warned of the man’s possible connections earlier.

“Ah, my apologies,” Lord Thando said, yet smiled like a well-fed cat. “House Fenya is not well known but you might have heard of the Singing Jackals.”

The noblewoman’s brows rose. So Valentina’s supposition had been accurate.

“I have,” she said. “The largest free company to take contracts on the Isles.”

“The largest of all the free companies, some say,” Lord Thando proudly told her. “My uncle, Captain-General Wela, leads it. My line has long been a source of high officers for the Jackals and it is our company’s practice to recruit from Malan first and foremost. There was great interest when your name came up, Lady Angharad.”

The Pereduri’s face smoothed into a pleasant mask. Was she about to be shamed, outed as a fallen noble on her every first Tolomontera evening? The others had convinced her that this evening was not likely a trap laid by either of this pair, but she must remain wary. Wary enough to keep smiling even as she prepared for the knife.

“That is flattering, my lord,” she said.

“Do cease, Thando, you can try to poach her for your cabal on your own time,” Captain Nenetl drawled. “Most here in the Playhouse will know more than they should, Lady Angharad, as many are from families whose blood runs black. I myself am the granddaughter of a brigadier from Lucierna – the closest Watch fortress and the seat for this region’s Garrison administration.”

“Though with the son of Lucierna’s own marshal being a student, she cannot claim to be the best connected in that regard,” Lord Thando added.

“He is not here tonight,” Nenetl replied, a tad sharply.

They were not allies in truth, Angharad decided, merely a pair that had chosen to pool their resources to arrange the evening. That was reassuring. If this was not a common front, it was less likely to be a vessel of ambitions not common – and Angharad had done nothing to earn hatred from the officers of a fortress she had never heard of before tonight. Her two hosts made conversation with her a little longer, but they had an obligation to entertain and soon took their leave. Before doing so, however, Lord Thando took her aside.

“I am of the Eleventh Brigade,” he told her. “Do come to us if you encounter any trouble at all, Lady Angharad. It would please our captain greatly to welcome you as one of us.”

Song had been entirely correct, it seemed. The open attempt at poaching from another cabal felt unseemly, but she reminded herself that to do so was not against the rules of Scholomance. That it felt uncomplimentary might simply be her wariness of the man coloring her impression. Angharad wasted no time after that in heading towards the tables, for her throat was parched and in truth she could do with a nibble.

Besides, Song had asked her to learn what she could about other cabals and it was easier to approach strangers around such gathering places. Before she could so much as consider a drink, however, she was stopped by the sight of a familiar face. Lady Ferranda Villazur, her hair pulled in the usual bun that did no favors to her strong chin, stood there in a tailored formal uniform as she picked out a cup of wine.

“Ferranda,” Angharad called out, surprised.

The infanzona turned in surprise, a smile lighting up her face when they recognized each other.

“Angharad!” she exclaimed. “I had not heard your ship arrived. This is a most pleasant surprise.”

“We docked but a few hours ago,” Angharad replied. 

“Just in time, then,” Ferranda said. “This evening has been on the cards for weeks, you would have lost out in missing it. All the leading brigades have people here, and I expect there will be much wheeling and dealing over drinks.”

She snatched up a cup, offering it with a questioning look. Angharad took it – by the smell it was red wine. The dark-skinned noblewoman cocked an eyebrow.

“Are you then here to intrigue as well, Captain Ferranda?” she teased.

A guess, but Ferranda Villazur was sponsored by the Academy and so likely the leader of her cabal. The infanzona laughed and did not deny the title. A confirmation.

“We are rather beneath their notice, at least for now,” she said. “Most brigades past thirty are latecomers, the chaff of this harvest. We are close, as the Thirty-First Brigade, but still in the range.”

A raised eyebrow was directed Angharad’s way.

“What plaque did you end up ordering, anyhow?”

“We did not order,” the Pereduri said. “We claimed Thirteenth Brigade.”

Ferranda winced.

“My condolences,” she said.

“Is the number truly so unlucky?” Angharad asked, reluctantly amused. “You are not the first to react this way.”

“Thirteen years, emperors and treacheries,” the infanzona quoted. “There is no luck worse than-”

She was interrupted and half bowled over by a tall man in a formal uniform, who Angharad found as familiar after a heartbeat.

“Ferra, you will notbelieve who I just ran into. Tristan is here. Abrascal, I mean, not the man from the Forty-Fourth.”

Lord Zenzele Duma was openly enthused as he recounted this, a look at odds with the grimness of his face. There was thick scar where he’d lost his eye, though the hollow was not empty: a rounded metal eye filled it, skillfully painted over. Only it was not in the warm brown of the Malani lord’s own gaze but an eerie pale that Angharad would not soon forget.

It was the color of Tupoc Xical’s eyes, after all.

“Oh, apologies,” Zenzele began when he realized he had interrupted. “I am – Lady Angharad?”

“That would make two of us,” Angharad drily replied.

He laughed, even as Ferranda rolled her eyes, and offered his arm to clasp. Angharad did, mood much improved by the warm reception. She had not known where they would stand, once the common threats of the Dominion no longer hung over their heads.

“A most welcome surprise,” Zenzele said, then leaned it. “I do not suppose you could tell me why the first words out of Tristan’s mouth were a question about the provenance of the grilled cutlets?”

The Pereduri paused. The silence stretched and she was forced to smile embarrassedly.

“I fear not,” Angharad said.

The pair traded a knowing look.

“Still underfoot, then,” Ferranda said. “As was to be expected.”

“Well, he is a Krypteia student,” Zenzele replied.

“We can’t all be good upstanding Laurels like you,” the infanzona teased.

“You are to be of the Arthashastra Society, then?” Angharad said. “I did not think to ask before you left Three Pines.”

“I am,” the nobleman replied, reaching for a drink. “Diplomat track, though our patron tells me the distinction grows muddled here on Tolomontera.”

“Ironic.”

All three of them turned towards the source of the word. A Malani, Angharad saw, and one who had high birth stamped on his bearing. The stranger was tall and lithely muscled, braids going down halfway to his back and his uniform barely cousin to what it must have once been. His black overcoat was made loose and without buttons until the waist, wide open and revealing a thin red silk shirt that bared a slender stripe of skin down to slightly above his navel. He wore a silken half-cape and a blade at his hip.

A lovely saber, and though somewhat ornate Angharad noted the leather grip was worn.

“I beg your pardon?” Ferranda asked.

“It is ironic,” the man smiled, “for the likes of this one to believe he could ever be a diplomat.”

Zenzele frowned.

“I do not know you,” he said. “What I have done to earn such words?”

“I am Lord Musa Shange,” the man sneered. “That name will mean nothing to you, but this should help: my mother is sister to the mother of Lady Arafa Sandile.”

Angharad had only heard that name once, but even had she not clearly recalled it the way Zenzele stilled would have told her who was being spoken of. The other half of the arranged marriage he had fled from, the one with a daughter of the proverbially wealthy House Sandile.

“Yes, that Arafa,” Lord Musa coldly said, the reaction not escaping his notice. “You broke the heart of my favorite cousin, Duma. Shamed her in the eyes of every lady in Malan by running off with some whore instead of wedding her as was your duty.”

Zenzele was a fair fighter with sword and pistol, Angharad knew, but she had never considered him a threat. It was not without reason the man had gone into a scholarly covenant.  The look that came to his face when Ayanda was called a whore almost had her reconsider that opinion: searing hatred, like closing a fist around hot coals.

It was the look of a man who would make it slow.

“So you are a dog of House Sandile,” Zenzele disdainfully said. “That explains the manners.”

“I would return your insult, but even dog would be a compliment to the likes of you,” Lord Musa said scornfully. “I see at least your strumpet did not even make it to Scholomance – though what else could be expected of a bedwarmer? – but it offends me to see you walking about as if you belong here.”

The Malani noble leaned forward.

“This is an evening for honorable company, Zenzele Duma,” he sneered. “By what right do you attend?”

The altercation had already begun drawing eyes to them. Other guests turned to watch, some even drifting closer, but Lord Musa did not seem to mind.

“It is not for you to decide who attends the evenings of others, Malani,” Ferranda coldly said.

“It is not for a Sacromontan to speak when real nobles converse,” Lord Musa dismissed.

Lady Ferranda’s hand drifted to her rapier, which the man noticed with a smirk. As if daring her to draw, Angharad thought. Musa Shange’s words and actions were not dishonorable, for he was avenging the slight on a kinswoman’s honor, but they were… needlessly provocative. He did not speak like a man who was seeking resolution: he was picking a fight. Not that he would have the time to get into one, Angharad noted as she watched who was approaching from the corner of her eye.

“And what appears to be the trouble here?”

The hosts made their appearance. Captain Nenetl, who had been the one to speak, seemed irate. Lord Thando’s face was but a pleasant mask – in mood, if not in looks.

“You let in an honorless cur, Thando,” Lord Musa said, ignoring the Aztlan entirely. “An honest mistake, I am sure, but it need be remedied.”

“That is a grave accusation,” Lord Thando said. “What has you make it?”

“It does not matter,” Captain Nenetl sharply interrupted. “No trouble is to be allowed on Playhouse grounds.”

“Is honor trouble to you, Nenetl?” Lord Thando lightly asked.

The glare she turned on her fellow host was dark indeed, and in a heartbeat Angharad made out the whole shape of this. She had seen that game unfold a dozen times before, after all, just outside dueling grounds when noble children gathered for games almost as pointed.

Lord Thando had not arranged for this, but now that it was happening he was weighing the benefits and choosing accordingly. Which was worth more: the favor of his Lord Musa, or of Zenzele’s cabal? Captain Nenetl evidently saw nothing to gain in allowing this at all and was glaring at the man with heat, but she was only half the hosts. She could not put an end to this if she stood alone.

And as Lord Musa Shange raised his voice to tell the other guests of Zenzele’s misdeeds, her old companion defending himself as best he could – calling Musa a thuggish fool, the ‘old matter’ of indifference to Rooks – Angharad knew that a duel was in the making. Lord Musa had pushed hard for it and would not give up. Reckless, she thought, only half-listening to the public argument. He provoked Ferranda as well, as if the fight matters more than who he is to be fighting. But why is he so sure he will win?

It was when Lord Musa turned to address guests up in the garden, half-cape fluttering, that Angharad found her answer. Hidden away under the silken cloth, she had glimpsed a sheath. A parrying sword, she realized. Musa Shange was a duelist. That was why he thought victory certain, and Angharad was not sure he was wrong. The noblewoman hesitated.

A lesser noble’s place was not to meddle in the conflicts of great lords, she had always known that. Yet Zenzele was no great lord, Lord Musa neither, and this was not Malan. Yet Angharad did not speak only for herself, she was part of a cabal, and to intervene… If you cannot make friends, make an impression, Song had tasked her. Would it not be doing both, to lend these two a hand? The warmth of their greeting was no reason to act, she knew that, but surely this could be considered a strategic decision.

Surely, she repeated, setting down the cup of wine she had yet to touch and leaning towards Ferranda.

“Bait,” Angharad whispered. “The man is a duelist.”

The infanzona’s eyes narrowed.

“Certain?”

The Pereduri nodded and the other woman cursed.

“He wants to kill Zenzele’s reputation,” Ferranda guessed. “Right from the start. Make him a pariah with Malani for the rest of our time here.”

It occasionally served to remember that for all that House Villazur had been minor nobility, Ferranda had been raised to be its lady and been familiar with the likes of better-born men like the Cerdan brothers long before they came together to the Dominion. She was no fool, for all her lack of dutifulness, and hardly blind.

“He wants a fight,” Angharad agreed. “And will get one.”

The infanzona’s jaw tightened.

“I cannot ask you to-”

“You forget,” she cut in, “who that Sandile coin was spent on.”

Before Ferranda could answer she stepped away, idly coming to stand before the still-orating lord. Musa Shenge frowned at her interruption.

“Step asi-”

“You claim,” Angharad said, “to speak for House Sandile?”

“I do,” Lord Musa replied. “By virtue of shared blood.”

“Good,” she nodded. “Then we have matters of honor to settle.”

Zenzele, who had been watching her with surprise, caught on first.

“Lady Angharad,” he stiffly said. “I can settle this myself.”

“Then do so when I am finished with him,” Angharad mildly replied, matching Musa’s gaze. “An assassin in Sandile employ poisoned me and attempted to murder me in my bed, Musa Shenge. If you carry that house’s honor on Tolomontera, I call you now to answer on their behalf.”

Lord Musa laughed.

“Found another girl to trick, Duma?” he mocked, eyes flicking Zenzele’s way. “You must be halfway decent in bed if she’s willing to die for you.”

The noblewoman’s face tightened. It was, unfortunately, still too early in the process to slap him across the face.

“My name,” she said, “is Angharad Tredegar. Insult me again and I will not consider honor satisfied with first blood.”

Musa eyed her with an insolent smile.

“That accent – Pereduri, is it? I thought I smelled rotten fish and mediocrity, there’s the mystery solved. As for first blood…”

The Malani pulled back his overcoat’s loose right sleeve, revealing three black lines tattooed on his arm with the first beginning at the wrist. There were murmurs in the crowd, for Lord Musa had just revealed he was not simply a duelist but three duels deep into becoming a swordmaster.

“Perhaps it is you that should worry of that, Tredegar. Trot along now.”

Only he did not get the answer he had expected, for Zenzele let out a quiet laugh and answered Ferranda’s quiet question with a nod as Angharad herself began to unbutton her jacket. She would have dropped it on the ground, but a passing servant took it up instead and folded it neatly. Praiseworthy service. Without a word, she rolled up the left sleeve of her white undershirt. Ten silver lines were bared, the last at her elbow.

Lord Musa Shange went still.

“Let us have an exchange, Musa,” Angharad calmly said. “In deference to your inexperience I would offer to use my left hand, but I am as able with it as my right. So how am I to make this sporting, I wonder?”

Her gaze cast around the tables, past the bottles and glasses and the dishes. There was a cutting knife by the roast she considered, but right besides it was what would cut deepest. Angharad took a step towards the table and deftly took out a butter knife, wiping it clean against the edge of the butter dish before turning back to her opponent. There were a few laughs and much excited conversation. Lord Musa went red-faced.

“You dare,” he hissed.

“What are you complaining about, Shange?” she said. “I am to use the tool for its stated purpose: cutting through butter.”

It was too much of a provocation. The man drew his blade – a single-edge saber like hers – then revealed his offhand. The traditional parrying blade for dueling, which meant he was a classical Malani fencer. The kind of opponent she was most familiar with facing. Angharad untied her sheathed saber from her hip and tossed it at the man’s feet, adding the insult of throwing the blade as well as the sheath when requesting a duel.

It had the implication she believed herself capable of killing him with what she yet held, in this case a butter knife.

And more than that Lord Musa, having pulled ahead of the formalities in the throes of his anger, was forced to sheathe his saber back to be able to undo his parrying blade’s sheath and toss it at her feet. The fumbling earned him some unkind laughter from the crowd, further reddening his cheeks.

“First blood or surrender,” Angharad stated. “Let us hope you will last at least two passes, after all that strutting.”

“You will have no mercy of me,” Musa snarled.

Angharad loosened her stance, widening it and pointing down the butter knife. Even for a duel to first blood it would have been arrogance on her part to take up that particular armament, if not for one thing. The Malani raised his blade and Angharad glimpsed-

(Three steps, she feinted for the side and he stepped in to hit her forehead with his own.)

She breathed out. Talon School, then, only they were so eager to throw hands during bladework.

(Three steps, she feinted to the side. When he stepped in she moved quicker, kicked out his knee. He struck up, cutting into her flank with the parrying blade as her knife slid on the coat.)

Thick cloth, she thought, the butter knife would not bite at all unless the angle was just right. But she had seen enough to act. Angharad raised her weapon, and as Lord Musa sneered she stepped forward.

One step, two, three – feint to the right.

Fluidly, like a snake striking, Musa Shenge snapped forward. But her polished boot was already moving, kicking out his knee under him. Half a stumble forward, the angle spun off, and his left hand struck – only Angharad had stepped aside, caught the wrist of his saber hand and without batting an eye bent the arm behind his back. Lord Musa shouted in pain and surprise, forced down to his knee, and Angharad aimed the blow perfectly.

The thin point of the butter knife went right through the seams of the coat, into flesh.

“No,” the Malani rasped out. “How-”

Angharad’s fingers tightened around the butter knife and she ripped it out of his shoulder. The man screamed, blood spurting out and splashing his coat. She stepped away before she could be stained, flicking the blood off the dull blade as stumbled back up to his feet. She looked him up and down as he took a fearful step back, his hand on the spurting shoulder.

“Go clean yourself up, Musa,” Angharad said. “A nobleman should have standards.”

She had not aimed for an artery so he should live. If he was lucky, he might even keep most the range of motion with the arm. He pulled back, as if wanting to flee but too ashamed to give way publicly.

“And one last thing,” she called, stopping him in his tracks. “Should you ever again imply I am my friend’s bedwarmer, the ensuing first blood will be a blade halfway through your brains. Nod if you understand, Musa.”

The look he shot her had brimstone enough to rival Pandemonium, but he was too fearful of the wound bleeding him dry to draw this out. Musa Shange nodded, gritting his teeth.

“Good boy,” she thinly smiled. “You may leave, now.”

“This will not be the end of it, Tredegar,” he snarled. “The Ninth Brigade will have answer.”

“I shall endeavor to find a larger butter dish, then,” she shrugged.

He looked as if she had slapped him across the face. Arguably it would have been kinder on her part to do so. Angharad was no great wit, but victory made derision easy to even the clumsiest of tongues. And as Lord Musa Shange slunk away like a whipped dog to get his shoulder looked at, it was as if the entire crowd exhaled. Noise erupted, not the uncouth clamor of a mob but the contained excitement of good society at the aftermath of a spectacle.

When she turned to face her acquaintances Zenzele’s face was resigned, and Ferranda’s unreadable. Angharad hesitated, now considering she might have pushed the matter further than either desired. It had been in their name, not hers, but… She was interrupted by their approach.

“Thank you,” Zenzele quietly said. “But I’m afraid I might have dragged you into greater trouble than you know.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Is there something unusual about this Ninth Brigade?” she asked.

“Its captain is Sebastian Camaron,” Ferranda said. “He is the son of Lucierna’s marshal.”

“I have heard that Lucierna is near this island, and of some importance in the Watch,” Angharad acknowledged. “But he is only a student while at Scholomance, surely.”

Zenzele leaned closer.

“Around a quarter of the soldiers garrisoning the island was transferred from Lucierna,” he whispered. “And much of the supplies coming to Port Allazei first go through there.”

Angharad’s eyes narrowed. She understood that family came first, but what they suggested sounded rather beyond the acceptable lines.

“I doubt either of us could have beaten a fledgling swordmaster,” Ferranda said. “You have my deepest thanks for your intervention, and our hand in friendship twice over. Yet I would not be offended if you made peace with the Ninth, Angharad, I want to make this clear. Our troubles need not be yours.”

“Song is captain, so that is not my decision to make,” Angharad admitted, then flicked a glance at the stairs Lord Musa had fled up. “Yet I see no need to make apologies to a man who implied me a whore and insulted the duchy of my birth. If not for the rules of Scholomance, I might well have killed him.”

She had never killed in an honor duel back in Malan, but had she been given such strong insults she might well have done so.

“He did come on strong, didn’t he?” Zenzele mused. “Knew the rules about killing and so thought himself beyond consequence, I imagine. We will all need to learn the lay of this place.”

Neither would hear of parting ways after this, and so when she began the rounds it was with the help of the pair to make introductions. It was a whirlwind of names and faces, most of which were excited to speak about the duel and gossip but nothing more serious. Angharad was not overwhelmed. It was little different from being introduced to any other social circle, though instead of a cousin or an aunt it was Zenzele and Ferranda who made the introductions.

She did not learn much of use, in truth, save that the captain of the Forty-Ninth Brigade – a tall Tianxi – was insistently curious about who else was part of the Thirteenth Brigade. Suspecting enmity for Song, she avoided the matter and turned the questions around until he left in open irritation. She encountered her hosts again, naturally. Lord Thando found cool reception from all three of them, and gracefully excused himself. He knew the ways of this game and that his choice would have consequences before making it.

Captain Nenetl, on the other hand, found better welcome and she herself was noticeably friendlier than when she had first met with Angharad. It soon became evident why.

“I expect dear old Sebastian will be on your backs about this,” Nenetl idly said. “He always has been – if you’ll forgive my language – a right prick.”

All three facing the Aztlan captain were highborn, so the picture was not difficult for either to paint. Nenetl Chapul, whose grandfather was a powerful officer in Lucierna, saw the captain of the Ninth Brigade’s even more powerful connections there as an inconvenience. It would be best for her if he were sidelined, perhaps even recalled, and she came to hold the greatest influence over the Luciernan contingent.

Captain Nenetl seemed quite interested in making ties with those who might oppose her rival, and though all knew better than to commit to anything the conversation was promisingly friendly. Perhaps a dinner would soon be organized.

Once they parted ways, Angharad realized with a start that she was smiling. Not at how the night had gone, though it had gone well enough to her eye, but because she felt… at ease. Comfortable. The faces and the rules were not the same, but she knew this place. This kind of night. It was almost like coming home, in a way, and it would have been a lie to say she was not enjoying herself.

If not for the black everywhere, she might think she had never left Peredur.

It occurred to her then she had not seen Tristan in at least an hour, but a look around yielded no trace of her comrade. Had he already left? Most likely he had, ever underfoot as Ferranda said. There was no need to feel guilty. Still, she excused herself from the other two so she might claim a new drink and perhaps have another look around for the Sacromontan. Only within a moment of taking her first sip of some pale cup of wine, Angharad was approached.

“Ah, the heroine of the hour is all alone. I must take advantage.”

She turned at the words, and then paused to take in the sight.

The stranger was nearly as tall as Angharad herself, though narrower at the shoulders and not as strongly built. She was, however, blessed with a full figure that the cut of her uniform made evident – she wore the same kind of collared, knee-length tunic as Maryam but it was tailored to flatter and instead of buttons a very narrow open oval beneath the collar dipped almost down to her sternum. It did not reveal anything save a stripe of smooth, dark skin but hinted at much.

Fitted black trousers and slender boots matched the black of the stranger’s tunic, though there were red accents on the side of the trousers and her belt was a length of intricate colored beads. She wore not a cloak but a velvet capelet, and the golden bangles around her wrists clattered together with a pleasant tinkling sound as she offered her hand.

“Captain Imani Langa,” she smiled.

Angharad took the delicate fingers, bowed and pressed a soft kiss against the knuckle. When she straightened it was to find Captain Imani’s smile had broadened.

“Lady Angharad Tredegar,” she replied. “The pleasure is all mine.”

“A bold claim, after the entertainment you have just provided,” Imani laughed. “It is a rare thing to see even a fledgling swordmaster made such thorough sport of.”

The accent was faint, but grew distinct the more the other woman spoke. Uthukile, Angharad decided. Imani Langa was from the Low Isle and being raised speaking the Matabe dialect had left her with an accent in the Umoya they now spoke.

“I was blessed with a thorough education,” Angharad simply replied, then paused. “Would be I be wrong in believing you of the Low Isle?”

“Sharp of you. Only on my father’s side, as it happens, though I was raised in a hold near the border,” Captain Imani said. “I must compliment you on the lightness of your own accent, though those pretty silver lines on your arm rather reveal your own provenance.”

Only Pereduri could become mirror-dancers, though in truth Angharad did not know if this was ancient law or merely custom.

“Uthukile and Peredur felt like different ends of the world, once, but now the distance feels almost petty,” Angharad mused.

“No matter how far, we islanders will bring our bickering with us,” Captain Imani drily replied. “Why, only yesterday-”

She had a most mysterious smile, Angharad thought, but she was prevented from further pondering it when a servant apologized for interrupting them and presented her with a folded letter.

“From your Sacromontan friend,” the servant said. “Apologies again, ladies.”

“It is nothing,” Captain Imani dismissed.

Angharad unfolded the paper, finding an ungainly scrawl in Antigua waiting for her.

Imani had eye on you since you talked with hosts. Careful. Ferranda is liked, good ally. Avoid Forty-Ninth, enemies. Am following lead, don’t know when back.

Hiding her surprise, Angharad folded the paper anew and tucked it away as she replied in kind to Imani’s smile. Some details she filed away – Ferranda’s popularity and that the Forty-Ninth would have to be disposed of – for these could be addressed later. The first detail was the most concerning. There were many reasons she might have drawn Imani Langa’s eye earlier, and whilesome of them rather flattering others were rather more dangerous.

After a little more conversation the other woman suggested they go for a walk in the garden ring, Angharad’s stomach tightening in dismay as the balance settled in favor of sinister.

She could not even enjoy walking arm in arm in a field of flowers, bodies brushing together, for she had to be wary of contract and poison. With an inviting smile Imani led her past a crumbling wall, out of sight, but Angharad knew this would not end in soft kisses and wandering hands. She kept her body from tensing, for it would give away that she knew the attempt was coming, but was wondering how to explain having fought twice in one evening when the other woman’s hand rose towards the neckline of her bare skin of her tunic, fingers reaching for something-

“Daughter of the Isles, you are called to service,” Captain Imani said.

And from the generous cut of her uniform she produced not a knife but a small copper coin, pressing it into Angharad’s hand. No, not copper. It was wood, only polished and lacquered. On one side was carved a helmet-turtle’s shell, on the other a slender crown. Angharad knew of only one wood that kept so vivid a color without needing to be painted: this was Malani ironwood. Too precious a thing to be wasted on a token, unless you were in the service of Malan itself. Angharad swallowed drily.

“You are an ufudu,” she breathed out, and immediately felt like sinking into a hole.

It was one thing to call an agent of the Lefthand House a ‘turtle’ behind their back, the jokes about their emblem well worn in every corner of the Isles, but the High Queen’s private hunting hounds were not for the likes of her to disrespect. Even the highest of the izinduna feared their knives and knack for digging up the most deeply buried of secrets. Lady Imani, thankfully, did not seem offended by the foolishness Angharad had blurted out.

“I am a finger of the left hand,” Imani acknowledged. “The House has tasked me with passing to you a message, and with it an offer.”

Angharad’s jaw clenched. What was it that the same court that had struck House Tredegar from its rolls now had to say to her?

“Her Perpetual Majesty did not condone the killing of Lady Anwar Maraire, whom she yet remembers fondly,” Lady Imani said. “Circumstance forced the disgrace of House Tredegar, but those whose hand was at work on that night are even now being hunted.”

Angharad stilled. She could not have said whether she was starkly, deeply relieved or the most furious she had ever been in her life.

“A prisoner was taken at Llanw Hall,” Lady Imani said. “We know their name. The soldiers who slew your house are known to us as well. Hired men.”

“What,” Angharad slowly said, forcing her tone not to waver, “do you want?”

“There is an object on Tolomontera that is the rightful property of the High Queen,” the dark-eyed beauty said. “The Lefthand House asks that you retrieve it on our behalf and deliver it to my hands.”

The Pereduri’s eyes narrowed.

“You are on Tolomontera as well,” Angharad said. “Why would you need me?”

“Because,” Lady Imani amiably smiled, “I am not a mirror-dancer whose Watch connections make above suspicion.”

Meaning it was hidden somewhere dangerous and the Watch would be on the lookout for movement around it. A fool’s bargain by any fair measure. And yet a survivor. A cousin, she wondered, a servant? Sleeping God, just knowing she was not the last… All that and a trail she would be able to follow when she returned to Malan. The Lefthand House was playing her, and only a fool would let them.

Was Angharad a fool?

“Think on it,” Lady Imani said. “And when you decide, come find me.”

“Where?” she croaked out.

“The Emerald Vaults, room seventeen,” Imani said.

The dark-eyed beauty stepped away, yet smiling.

“I will be expecting you.”

Am I a fool? Angharad wondered, watching the other woman walk away. And she dreaded the answer not because she did not know, but because deep down she already did.

She was, and it was no choice at all.

“Not here,” Song firmly said.

The watchwoman at the desk was leaning in, eyes bright at the prospect of gossip. Maryam would not have minded airing out Tredegar’s dirty little secrets, but it was not worth the fight with Song. There was nothing to gain there save the joy of spite.

Up the stairs they went, to a stone hallway with burnt orange carpets. She was charmed to notice little hopping rabbits were hidden in the patterns, frolicking about merrily. There were numbered doors alternating on each side of the hall and stairs leading up at the left end. It never failed to impress Maryam how skilled mornaric – the sailing peoples – were at building upwards. It must be because there were so very many of them in such small spaces, she mused.

Their room was at the right end of the hall, opposite the stairs. Number twenty-seven, though there could not be that many rooms in the hostel. Some kind of local superstition?  Tristan unlocked the door and Maryam was amused to realize she had never noticed him taking one of the keys. Not that he would need it if he truly wanted to enter a room. He’d shown her his kit on the Fair Vistas, between the lockpicks and the skeleton key there was not much short of an aether lock that would ward him off.

The last in, Maryam closed the door behind her. Their room was spacious and clean: six beds, two rows of three against either wall, and for each row a dresser and washbasin. There was a wooden trunk at the end of every bed, a key laid atop it, and facing the street was a broad double window with open shutters. Orrery lights filtered in, coming to rest on a small writing desk stocked with ink and paper, and four unlit oil lamps hung from long iron rods nailed into the walls.

Maryam’s gaze lingered on the slice of silver light lingering atop the writing desk, sending out her nav to taste it. To her spirit-effigy the aether felt… clandestine. A light for thieves and secrets, for ambushes. Every false star of the Grand Orrery carried a will, an order, as if no two Ancients had been able to agree on what it was they were building. Shaking off the thought – and Tristan’s curious look – she slid her pack off her shoulder and let it slump to the ground.

Gods, but she was tired. Her every limb ached. Yet Maryam barely had a moment to roll her aching shoulders before Song turned to Tredegar.

“Kindly elaborate,” the Tianxi said. “What trouble are we in?”

We, Maryam marked. Song was all too eager to drag them all into the Malani’s entanglements. Tristan picked a bed by the windows, abandoning his pack on the floor and dropping down on the sheets. Maryam snatched up her bag and sat on the bed by his, keeping an eye on Tredegar – who was clearing her throat in embarrassment.

“I have been invited to an evening of light refreshments,” Angharad said.

“A grave peril indeed,” Tristan opined.

Maryam swallowed a grin. Ever quick to bite, her viper.

“Full retreat, every woman for herself,” she tacked on without missing a beat.

The Malani – Maryam would not refer to her as Pereduri in her thoughts so long as the girl called her Triglau, for she wasIzvorica and Triglau was a word whose meaning spanned a dozen peoples – narrowed her eyes at them. Stiff-backed, Tredegar passed her invitation to Song questing hand and the Tianxi studied it while the noblewoman deigned to explain her meaning to the rest of them.

“One those who invited me is a noble bearing a Malani name,” Tredegar said. “I have reason to suspect they would be a foe to me.”

Malani were dogs eating their own children, who were they not foes to? They would steal the lights from firmament itself to bejewel their High Queen’s crown, if they but had the reach. All eyes were on Tredegar, even Tristan bothering to sit up on his bed, but now the Malani hesitated. No blabbermouth when it came to her secrets, this one.

Maryam might have reluctantly approved of that, if those secrets were not likely to get them shot at.

“If we are to face your enemies with you,” Song gently said, “it is only reasonable for us to be told of their grudge and nature.”

Hand-holding, Maryam scorned. How gentle a touch this was compared to the Tianxi’s talk with her on the ship. No, that was unfair, the pale-skinned woman decided after a moment. Maryam had brandished her fists first and there was no kindness in a brawl. And most damning of all Song had read the Malani right, for she squared her jaw and got to unpacking her secrets. Maryam would argue with many things, but never victory.

“I belong to House Tredegar of Llanw Hall,” Tredegar said. “Mere months ago, it was butchered savagely and struck from the rolls of Malani nobility by the High Queen’s court.”

Maryam frowned. She had thought that the Duchy of Peredur had its own nobility, called ‘peers’ instead of ‘lords’, but did somewhat recall hearing of Pereduri nobles taking Malani names. Perhaps it was related.

“I know not why,” Tredegar said, jaw clenched, “only that they murdered my kin and parents and spared not even our servants. It was…”

Angharad Tredegar breathed in, breathed out. It would not take shovelwork to dig up this one’s pain. The Izvorica took no pleasure in her grief, but neither could she muster much pity for it. How many mothers and fathers had been butchered and bought on House Tredegar’s behalf, made into meat and cattle to pay for parties and roof tiles and pretty belt buckles? It was evil, what had been done to Angharad Tredegar.

But what of it, when evil had paid for the very boots she wore?

“I survived,” Tredegar continued, tone pained, “and thanks to preparations of my father and the help of an allied house I was able to flee Malan by ship. Assassins have pursued me since.”

A pause.

“The false Yaretzi confessed to having been hired for my murder.”

That revelation came as a surprise. Tredegar had not mentioned it the night when she slew her would-be killers. Maryam looked away, surprised by a pang of sympathy. She knew a thing or two about running ahead of Malani killers, starving and lost. When she looked back to the noblewoman she found her looking away, a faint look of shame on her face. She had missed something.

“Scholomance will not be so easy to infiltrate as the Dominion,” Song finally said. “And even should a student be suborned, killing is forbidden.”

“Abduction isn’t,” Tristan said.

The brown-haired man was still sitting cross-legged on his sheets, but for all the apparent looseness of his stance Maryam saw how his eyes revealed it a lie. They were calm, like a clock ticking on. She would not soon forget that night out by the raised stones, the way his hands had shaken but his eyes stayed unwavering as he spoke of buying his way out of the grave. You could trust a man like that, who rode fear without letting it ride him. It was the only kind of man you could trust, really.

“If I had to arrange it,” Tristan continued, “I’d have Lady Angharad dragged onto a ship and shot in the head the moment we crossed the Ring of Storms.”

Tredegar inclined her head at him, not offended in the slightest by what someone else might have taken a threat. Unsurprising. Malani never gave their word without thinking of ten ways to break it without staining that pile of loopholes they called honor. Still, in staring at the horizon those two had missed the pebble in the boot. Maryam cleared her throat, rising to her feet.

“It’s not a trap,” she said

Tredegar frowned even as the blue-eyed woman went to lean back against the dresser.

“The book downstairs,” Maryam continued. “The one that watchwoman got your invitation from. It had a few more invites tucked in, didn’t it?”

“It did,” Song immediately agreed.

After a moment Tredegar nodded in agreement.

“I bet if we go down and look, all of these will have different names,” she said. “I’d even bet that if we went to one of the other hostels – the Emerald Vaults, Song?”

The Tianxi inclined her head, arms folded.

“If we go to the Emerald Vaults, their ledger in front will have the same set of invitations wedged in,” Maryam said. “The hosts will have them everywhere. There’s no telling where students would be sent to sleep after getting here, so the surest way to reach them is to have those letters waiting in front. Likely they invited all the nobleborn students and you made the list.”

“Then you offer a silver or two for passing word your invitation was received and you’re sure to learn of it on the quick,” Tristan mused. “It’s a sensible method.”

And one that needed no servants to work, just coin. Tredegar bit the inside of her cheek, looking sour. Disapproving of how close it sounded to bribery, Maryam guessed.

“The blackcloak did say I was lucky to arrive in time,” the Malani finally acknowledged. “That implies the evening has been planned for some time and there would not have been much time to scheme between receiving news of my survival on the Dominion and our arrival here.”

The frown deepened.

“But how would they know of my coming, if not through my enemies?” she asked.

Naive, coming from a girl whose watchman uncle had padded every blackcloak pocket on the Dominion to help her survive. No one at Scholomance would be without patrons in the Watch. Even Maryam had one, though he was worlds away from the Trebian Sea and his influence accordingly thin.

“The same way I got on the Bluebell,” Song replied. “Connections in the Watch. I expect your being a mirror-dancer is on your record and that will draw attention. This might well be an attempt at forming ties – or even poaching – rather than anything more nefarious.”

It would have been pleasant to entertain the fantasy of Tredegar being traded for another cabalist – a Lierganen or Tianxi would be best, they tended to be the most tolerable – but Maryam knew better. Song would not allow it.

“I’d still say you pegged it right, Tredegar,” Tristan mused, stroking his beardless chin. “Maybe the ones throwing the party don’t want your head in a basket, but where there’s one noble there’s always more. If a Malani highborn arranged the party…”

“There will be more in attendance,” Tredegar said, fists clenching. “Almost certainly. I must decline attending, then.”

Maryam shook her head, the gesture drawing their eyes. She eased off the dresser, which she had felt begin tipping.

“It is better to siege than be besieged,” she quoted. “If you hole up behind your walls, your enemy is left master of the land.”

“A Triglau war manual?” Song asked, sounding curious.

“The words of a general,” Maryam said, meaning my mother.

Her eyes moved to find Tredegar’s.

“If your foe is as rich and powerful as you think, are they truly someone you can outlast?”

It had been a slower death, retreating to the hill-holds, but still a death. Mother had seen the truth of that even as the kings spoke of ceding Zarla’s Drift and all of Dubrik to the Malani, of abandoning the flat grounds where their muskets reigned to bleed them across the goat paths instead. They would tire of the raids and ambushes, the kings said, and either the mornaric would leave or the old trade would resume. Only the Malani had not tired, had not left. They had built forts, brought settlers and cannons and priests. 

And when the kings finally grasped the Malani were there to stay it had been much, much too late.

Tredegar blinked in surprise, but slowly nodded. There was a tension there that made Maryam uncomfortable, for it was hard to name.

“Fancy,” Tristan drawled. “Back home, we just say that the best way to know what’s inside a beehive is to kick it.”

Maryam would have taken him at his word, if not for the sly glance he sent their captain after.

“That is not a Sacromontan saying,” Song flatly said.

“A Sacromontan is saying it,” Tristan said. “So, you know, by the transitive property of things-”

“That is a law of mathematics,” the Tianxi interrupted, sounding baffled. “How do you even know about-”

Bickering erupted, irritated on one end and gleeful the other, until it was cut right through. Tredegar had chuckled, at first, but it turned into a streak of laughter and then something deep from the belly. Maryam eyed the Malani warily, for the sound was less mirth and more a wound being lanced. She was purging, and when the last chuckles left Tredegar she looked exhausted. All eyes stayed on her.

“Apologies,” Tredegar said, voice hoarse. “I am… tired, I think.”

“It has been a long few weeks,” Maryam said, tone cautious. “For all of us.”

She sent out her nav, feeling out the Malani, but she felt no different from usual in the aether: a mind sharp and narrow, like a blade. Tredegar nodded something like thanks and Maryam’s jaw tightened. She did not want gratitude, not for such a small gesture.

It felt too much like being in the wrong.

Song, who had been leaning against the wall with folded arms since the talk began, suddenly pushed off. Her face was resolute.

“We all have stones hanging around our necks,” Song told them. “It is how we ended up on the Dominion of Lost Things in the first place. I will not pry at secrets – not even a captain can demand this – but threats that might trouble us all are a different matter.”

She paused, silver eyes sweeping through their cabal.

“Angharad has shared hers. It is time for the rest of us to do the same.”

“Are you to start, then?” Tristan idly said.

Too idly, Maryam thought. It was the kind of shallow cheer pulled over anger or irritation. Tristan Abrascal had spent most of life with only firmament above his head and nothing but his feet keeping death from catching up.  It would not be anytime soon he stopped seeing a captain as anything but a hindrance to pay lip service to.

“If you would like,” Song evenly replied, not rising to the bait. “I am a Ren. We are responsible for what the Republics call the Dimming.”

Maryam had long been fascinated by tales of Tianxia, whose Luminaries sounded not unlike the work of the Ancients painting the highlands in wandering light. The Republics were a wealthy realm, she had read, because they lay under great mirror-conduits bathing hundreds of miles of towns and fields in golden light. As there were nine such Luminaries but ten republics, a lottery arranged which land would be left in the dark until the next draw.

But in the latter half of what mornaric called the Century of Sails, one of these Luminaries had been broken.

“Your family broke a ninth of Heaven, you once said to me,” Angharad quietly said.

Face blank as a porcelain mask, Song nodded.

“Chaoxiang Ren, my grandfather, made the decision that brought down the three-legged tower of the Republic of Jigong and broke a ninth of Heaven,” she continued, tone entirely without emotion. “Jigong has since been condemned to the dark as punishment and will forever remain so.”

She swallowed.

“All bearing the name Ren are reviled, regardless of relation to my line, but I am of direct descent,” she said. “My kin had to flee Jigong but hatred heeds no borders. My countrymen will sometimes seek to do me harm without greater reason than my name, and those of Jigong may well attempt to take my life outright.”

That legacy was half the reason they knew each other at all. The sheer novelty of her being warned off sitting with someone at the mess hall had been enough to ensure that Maryam would seek out the Tianxi eating alone in a corner and being treated like she had the plague. The Izvorica had spent a week at the Rookery, waiting for Captain Falade to have the time to appraise her obscuration and decide whether her patron’s recommendation would be accepted, only three days of which had overlapped with Song’s own stay on the fortress-island.

It had been enough for them to strike an alliance of sorts, if only because the way the other candidates waiting at the Rookery treated them made it plain they were short on potential associates. Silence hung in the wake of Song’s words, the severity of her words having made this feel all too real.

Tristan passed his hand through his hair and sighed.

“I have no knowledge of why I am being hunted,” he said, which Maryam suspected was actually true. “But I will say this: I am an orphan and not through happenstance. I will repay that favor tenfold to those responsible – and on that list is the name of a powerful infanzon. That pursuit may yet bring down enmity on our heads.”

That was more than she had expected him to say. Wise of him to steer clear of the name of Cerdan, given that Tredegar was not a fool incapable of basic addition, but sooner or later that would out. Still, by the approving look the Malani was sending him at the mention of bloody vengeance Maryam thought if he played that conversation right he might well end up without a sword in his belly. Tredegar was not a hypocrite in ways too obvious – she would not condemn someone’s revenge in the same breath she swore her own.

Eyes turned to Maryam, the last of the lot, and the blue-eyed woman worried her lip. She had secrets but none that came with foes and her ambitions would remain her own. She did, however, have a… situation.

“I have no great enemies, save what my color will earn me,” Maryam finally said. “But there may be a danger closer to home.”

The pale woman closed her hand into a fist, the wooden fingers she had been fitted with in Three Pines creaking. Half the time she forgot she had ever lost them, then she tried to flip a coin and it was as if she was the world’s worst bungler.

“There is something odd about my signifying,” Maryam admitted. “I have great facility with Autarchic Signs – the rarest and most difficult of the Arts – but struggle with even the simplest manifestations. That is…”

She trailed off.

“There is no such thing as a safe anomaly, in signifying,” she said. “It is a lit fuse whose length I do not know, and if I do not find the root of the trouble there is not telling what will happen when it reaches powder.”

That was the first lesson of signifying, the one every Navigator learned. There is no harmless way to use the Gloam. You have drunk poison and it will kill you: the only question left is how long it will take. Maryam knew it had to be the unusual nature of her obscuration that was responsible for her block, but it should not have – she breathed in, stilled her mind. Now was not the time and this was not the place. She would seek out the local chapterhouse and with it a Navigator’s guidance.

“In time,” Song spoke into the silence, “I hope that we will share details of contracts and Signs so that we might plan accordingly.”

Before anyone could add anything she raised a quelling hand.

“It is early days and we are yet strangers,” she said. “Such things should not be forced. Besides, we have a more urgent consideration.”

Silver eyes moved to Tredegar.

“If you would reconsider attending the evening, there are opportunities there,” she said. “This alleged gathering at Misery Square tomorrow is meant, I feel, for the late and the desperate. The skilled will already have formed cabals and attending such a soiree will reveal who the most influential of our rivals are to be. And regarding foes, it would be best to reveal them by…”

“Kicking the beehive?” Tredegar lightly suggested.

Tristan grinned her way, his pleasure matched by Song’s chagrined look. Maryam resented the Malani’s occasional wittiness, which made her harder to dislike.

“If you are to have enemies, it would be best to learn now and prepare to fight them,” Song pragmatically said. “In this I agree with Maryam – it is better to seek them out than to let them find us. That said, it would be imprudent to send you alone.”

Tredegar flicked the Izvorica’s way, then Tristan’s. A beat passed.

“We should bathe before attending,” the Malani told Song. “And see about getting a fresh uniform, at least.”

Maryam smiled even as Song’s lips thinned. The Tianxi seemed to enjoy it a great deal less when it was her being given accidental insults.

“I cannot be the one to go with you,” she stiffly said. “My name may well be barred from entry, and if it is not then other Tianxi might walk out in answer to my presence – more likely I will be asked to leave, and you would then stand alone.”

Tredegar frowned.

“I would be an entirely different sort of scandal,” Maryam idly said. “Unless, of course, you would ask me to attend as your slave.”

She eyed the Malani with a smile, skin-deep pleasantry, as that frown deepened.

“I would not,” Tredegar said.

“Wise,” she replied.

So not entirely senseless. Perhaps some hope should be allocated to Song’s promised efforts, though Maryam would not hold her breath. Their stare off was interrupted by a chuckle.

“Why yes, Lady Tredegar, it would please me to be your escort at this evening of refreshments,” Tristan drawled. “You do know how to make a man feel special.”

Tredegar cleared her throat.

“Your help would be most welcome,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” the gray-eyed man smiled. “You’ll hardly even notice I’m there.”

Maryam leaned his way.

“I could do with a spare cloak,” she whispered.

“Try to find out if there’s a pawnshop,” he whispered back, “and if they take silverware.”

“What was that?” Tredegar asked, eyes narrowed.

“He was wondering what to wear,” Maryam lied without batting an eye.

“I am not used to the company of nobles,” Tristan added, feigning shyness.

It was little like watching a cat slap a bowl off a table and then pretend it’d been just as surprised as you were.

“Let us find out what the possibilities are, then,” the noblewoman said. “Come, Tristan, the watchwoman downstairs should have some answers.”

The Sacromontan was quickly browbeaten into joining the expedition, looking back mournfully at his still-packed bag, but when he turned to glance at Maryam it was not sympathy she offered. Something with a hood, she silently mouthed. He rolled his eyes, Tredegar dragging him out shortly after, and Maryam was left to stand alone under Song’s disapproving stare.

“Maryam.”

“I will not apologize,” she gravely said, “for thriftiness.”

“Maryam.”

The Izvorica raised her hands defensively.

“I mean, why even have a thief if we don’t ask him to steal things?”

Song sighed.

“If the two of you end up in a goal,” she said, “I’ll leave you there until classes begin.”

That was fair, Maryam conceded.

—

After Maryam put away her clothes in her trunk – neatly, but not so neatly as Song’s meticulous smoothing and folding of everything she owned – she stayed kneeling by the bed, eyes closed. Her limbs ached, a dull throb that somehow urged her to both move and stay still.

“I was thinking of having a look around the port,” Song said. “Would you be interested?”

“I was thinking of napping,” Maryam said.

The Tianxi’s brow rose.

“Did you not on the ship?”

“I keep having dreams I don’t remember,” she admitted. “And when I wake up I’m more tired than when I went to sleep.”

“You need a Meadow,” Song flatly said. “The rings around your eyes have been getting worse.”

The Tianxi wasn’t right, but there were always rules around Meadows. Maryam would try rest in a proper bed first and simply seek guidance from a signifier. It might be something in the local aether that was affecting her like this.

“It was nowhere this bad on the Dominion,” Maryam said. “And I am less than fond of ships, it can’t have helped.”

A pause.

“I will leave you the room and the key, then,” Song said. “But you must tell me if your troubles persist.”

Maryam halfheartedly agreed, and within moments of being alone was lying on the bed. She rose only to close the shutters and then promptly buried her face in the pillow again.

When she woke groaning, a trail of sweat down her back and her heart pounding with dread, she was left to wish she had taken Song’s advice. She changed, wiping her face and neck clear in the washbasin first, and when she came down the stairs found it was no longer the same blackcloak at the desk. A little talking let her figure out that she had been sleeping for at least three hours, not that her aching body could tell.

She left the key at the desk for Song when she returned, then went to take her captain’s advice. The man at the desk gave her a direction for the Akelarre chapterhouse, though it was vague and he admitted never having gone himself. It proved little trouble, for a direction was enough: chapterhouses always had tall walls, enough they stood out from the buildings around them. Maryam had to wander around for a time, looks and whispers trailing her wherever she went, but a few minutes of walk to the west and she found what she was looking for.

Most chapterhouses were built the same way: a fat, stout square bastion whose sole entrance was at the end of a narrow ramp reaching halfway up the wall. It made getting anything in and out difficult, but the Guild cared for secrecy over practicality. The Navigators had not remained the leading practitioners of Gloam sorcery for five hundred years by being careless with their secrets. Here the structure was granite, and all the old houses around it had been pulled down into rubble as if to forbid cover.

Breathing out, Maryam set up the ramp and past the open gates of the chapterhouse.

There was no writing desk inside, no ledger or list – not even ink for a quill. Instead the square room, covered in obsidian tiles of subtly varying shades, counted a bench on either side and an open door past them. There was nothing at all to stop Maryam from going right through, save for the middle-aged man sitting with crossed legs on the left bench and reading a book. Lierganen, she saw by the skin, and while his hair was long and wild his beard was neatly cropped.

He did not look up as she entered, absent-mindedly turning a page.

The man was not wearing a cloak but he had a regular’s uniform, tunic and trousers and boots, and a small knife strapped at his side. No embroidered officer’s stylings on the shoulders, but Maryam went still as stone when her eyes found his left hand. The signet ring on his hand was silver. The Akelarre Guild had ranks, but the ones that mattered weren’t the ones you got on your clothes. Your signet ring was what told you where stood, and silver meant you were a Master within the Akelarre Guild.

No wonder the man wasn’t taking guarding the entrance seriously. If he had taken the time to prepare the room with Signs, he would be able to fry her mind without even bothering to look up from his book. Intrigued by what such a skilled signifier might be reading – a metaphysics study, perhaps, or some ancient book of lore – she risked a glance at the title emblazoned on the front. It was…

‘The Sunflower Lord’s Lady’.

Maryam let out a small sigh. A romance serial. One of those cheap and tawdry ones, too, which watchmen always seemed as eager to trade as liquor and gossip. At the sound of her disappointment, the man finally looked up from the page.

“Maryam Khaimov,” he said, dark eyes knowing. “Come for the Meadow?”

She blinked in surprise. Were there really so few Navigator students on the island that he would recognize her at – fool you, Khaimov. However many Navigators there might be, she would be the only Izvorica. Of course he had recognized her.

“For the night,” she agreed.

The man nodded.

“You know the rules,” the Master said, eyes already back on his book. “Barefingers get only one night every five days. And if you are to stay over, there will be no avoiding sitting with Captain Yue this time.”

Maryam’s brow rose.

“This time?”

The blackcloak’s eyes stopped moving across the page. He looked up, face gone serious as he watched her face for something. Whatever it was, he did not seem to find it.

“What is my name?” he asked.

“You never mentioned it,” Maryam flatly replied.

His lips thinned.

“I did,” the Master retorted. “When you visited for the first time, two hours ago.”

The blue-eyed woman froze.

“I,” she began, then swallowed. “I was sleeping in my room. I cannot have been here.”

Unless, of course, the Eclipse was coming early and she simply did not remember. It would be ridiculous, she had only obscured a single organ but… Ridiculous was not impossible, and her obscuration was unusual. The wild-haired man closed his book with a snap, rising to his feet.

“You need to have your obscuration assessed immediately,” he said. “Yue has the Meadow, follow me.”

Maryam swallowed, mouth gone dry, and meekly nodded. The man flicked a wrist behind them, Gloam running off the obsidian tiles in thick rivulets and forming into a Sign hanging in the open space of the chapterhouse gate. Not a Sign she knew, but Maryam could feel its malevolent pulsing without even calling on her nav.

“Come,” the man said. “And before either of us forgets-”

He caught her eye.

“My name is Baltasar Formosa. Remember it, as I will be your professor in the Akelarre classes.”

—

A Meadow was, against what would be the expectations of most outside these walls, exactly what the name implied: a small field of greenery with a stream running through it.

Most chapterhouses used flowers and herbs from the surrounding lands, and there was no true rule as to what must be within save that it must live and there must be water running through. Maryam had known some chapterhouses to turn their Meadows into medicinal herb gardens or to grow spices, but Captain Yue evidently preferred nature to run its course. The land here was prickly green grass and wildflowers, overgrown ferns crowding the edge of a small tinkling stream. The vines on the wall were digging into the stone, like fingers looking for weakness.

The only sign of order was the small mattresses laid down on both sides of the river, their sheets neatly made and their pillows in place. Maryam allowed herself a pang of longing at the sight but mastered herself, for she might have come to rest but now the purpose had changed. Professor Baltasar had led her briskly through the cramped halls of the chapterhouse and was now taking her straight to a woman sitting cross-legged in the grass.

Captain Yue hardly even looked thirty, though it could be hard to tell with Tianxi. She was broad of shoulder but slightly built, black hair pulled in a braid on the left side of her head – and half-hiding the nasty burn scars on her cheek and ear. Her black coat was open, revealing a billowy white shirt, and her boots had been carelessly tossed behind her. She breathed out, then opened curious brown eyes without needing to be told of their approach.

“Baltasar,” she said, voice smooth as silk. “You bring me our last errant pupil.”

The professor grunted.

“That remains to be seen,” he said. “She just told me she’s never seen me before. Apparently she was sleeping in her room when I saw earlier.”

Captain Yue cocked her head to the side and Maryam straightened beneath her gaze, not quite sure why she felt the need. She felt a tenseness in the air, a weight, but she did not dare send out her nav. The captain bore silver on her ring finger, she might well smother Maryam’s spirit-effigy without noticing. The older Navigator let out a hum.

“She’s not possessed,” Captain Yue finally said. “Have her emanations been varying on the way here?”

“Stable,” Professor Baltasar replied.

“Then you have brought me something interesting,” the Tianxi happily said. “Sit with me, Maryam. Let us find out if you have begun going mad.”

The tanned man leaned closer.

“Try not to interest her too much,” he whispered. “She is not malicious but her curiosity can be… callous.”

The Izvorica slowly nodded. The professor left with that warning, sparing the captain a nod which she airily dismissed. Maryam stood there a moment, awkward, before clearing her throat and sitting by the other woman as offered. Captain Yue offered her hand, which Maryam reluctantly took. Her stomach clenched.

“Loosen up,” the captain said. “Do not take the reins of your logos even if you do not move it.”

She breathed in, breathed out, and then Captain Yue’s nav – the logos, Navigators called it – was under her skin. It was like a cat’s tongue, rough and warm, as it rose up her arm examining every inch. Up to the shoulders, then the head where she lingered long, then down the other arm and the rest of the body down to the sole of her feet. When Captain Yue finally withdrew Maryam was left feeling raw, like an exposed nerve.

“Nothing has breached containment,” Captain Yue informed her. “Your brain will soon be fully obscured so I would begin considering which organ will follow, but there is nothing that would cause a sudden onset of mania.”

Maryam let out a slow, relieved breath.

“It is quite fascinating, seeing someone who began with their brains,” the Tianxi mused. “It’s not unique, of course, but that you did it before puberty without going violently insane is most impressive.”

The Izvorica closed her mouth, biting down on the reply that it was the tradition in the land of her birth and her mother had done the same. She had been warned not to attract this one’s interest.

“Your dossier mentions a block when it comes to manifestations,” Captain Yue continued. “How do you do with Didactics?”

“I cannot get them to work at all,” Maryam admitted, then defensively added, “but I have had some successes with Acumenals.”

The Tianxi hummed.

“It will be difficult to tell whether you have mangled your logos somehow or there is a mental element to your difficulties until you have begun obscuring a second organ,” Yue said. “Have you planned your journey in that regard?”

Journey, that was that the Guild called it. A pretty word, but its real meaning was ‘death’. Gloam was a poison that would kill you, sooner or later, drive you mad and hollow you out. Only the ancient practitioners that had founded the Akelarre Guild had discovered the process of obscuration, and it had changed everything. Simply using Gloam spread the damage all over your body, slowly saturating with few external signs until a sudden onset of mania.

To obscure, however, was to saturate a single part of her your body with the Gloam.

Not only did confining it to a single organ somehow allow a signifier to concentrate much more of the Gloam inside it than should be possible, it also yielded a stark improvement in manipulation capacity – and, depending on where had been obscured, some affinity with a part of the Arts. Maryam had obscured her brain, which would help her with Autarchic Signs. Those confined within the signifier, with an emphasis on the mind.

Most Navigators never obscured their brain. It was difficult, dangerous and rumored to lead to… instabilities, especially if done early in one’s career. And of course it was, for Maryam’s teacher had never hidden from her what obscuration was, when you stripped away the mystical trappings. The controlled hollowing of a part of the body, he’d called it. We turn ourselves into darklings, piece by piece. Maryam shivered at the memory and licked her dry lips.

“If not a bout of mania,” she said, “what can explain Professor Baltasar having seen me earlier?”

“Tolomontera is sitting atop one of the largest aether wells of Vesper,” Captain Yue said, sounding pleased. “Odd happenings are not only likely, they are to be expected.”

She paused, thoughtful.

“Perhaps your presence caught the fancy of some entity in the aether?” she said. “Or it might have been a reflection of you from a different time, or even a part of your soul strengthened by lower order entities?”

The captain was warming up to the subject the more she spoke, eyes alight.

“I cannot wait to find out,” Captain Yue enthused. “To think I would be so lucky as to be handed so delightful a puzzle this early in the year.”

Callous curiosity, Professor Baltasar had called it. Maryam’s estimation of the man’s judgment went up a notch. Perhaps some of the thought showed on her face, for the captain’s enthusiasm was visibly pulled back.

“But I have held you back long enough,” Captain Yue said. “Pick whichever bed you will Maryam. The Meadow is open to all.”

Tiredly thanking the other officer, Maryam dragged herself up. She picked the bed furthest from the captain, but after that huddled under the sheets without even taking her boots off. Head on the pillows, she felt the grass around her breathe and the water flow – the currents of the world quieted, the encroaching dark kept at bay.

She was out in moments and it was the best night of sleep she’d had in months.

Before her house’s demise, Angharad had only twice journeyed at sea longer than a week.

Once while Mother showed her the northern coast on the way to visit their distant kin in House Bethel, the other time heading to the isle of Seler Seithenyn. On both occasions she had sailed with House Tredegar’s trading carrack, the Swift Alder, which as Mother had liked to tell her was neither swift nor made of alder. Though she had made smaller trips to southern Malan several times a year, in truth most of her time out on the water had been when training her footing had been out on smaller fishing boats borrowed for a day, so Angharad would confess to knowing less of ships than a daughter of Rhiannon Tredegar should.

She did, however, know a great deal about ports.

It has once been the hope of her parents that the largest town sworn to Llanw Hall, Patrwm, might be grown into a port to rival Port Cadwyn to the south. The town was nestled against what the locals called Tredegar Bay, and what her father had taught her was a natural harbor. Deep waters allowed for easy anchorage, and the promontory of Hare’s Rock protected the bay from storms. The smallness of the bay and the lack of good roads to neighboring territories had worked against the town, but both these could be remedied with works.

Yet Mother had known that though House Tredegar’s fortunes had risen enough under her stewardship that these works could now be afforded, it was unlikely they would be finished in her lifetime. She had, therefore, instructed Father to see to it that Angharad would be educated in the necessities of a trade port. The noblewoman was not above admitting she had resented the exercise, which had involved much coin-counting and squabbling about rights and privileges – men’s work! – but she had made the bare bones of an effort to learn.

It was how she could now look at Port Allazei and decide it was not a very good port. It was, to start, entirely unprotected. There were no breakwaters or landbridges to protect the jetties from the storms, and though that might be forgiven given what Song had said about how the Ring of Storms kept the elements at bay the state of those docks was not so easily set aside. The waters here were deep enough the galleon could boldly sail in, but the jetties it approached were nothing but twenty thin, spindly lines of stone jutting out from the city.

The causeway they all led into was hemmed in by low walls leading to what appeared to be some kind of overly large customs office, leaving so little space past the docks the causeway would be constantly crowded should the harbor be even halfway filled. As things stood there was only a pair of carracks docked, moored at opposite ends of the jetties. The captain of the Fair Vistas seemed intent on claiming one of the middle jetties, keeping her distance.

Angharad eyed the port again and sighed. The Pereduri was yet awed by the Grand Orrery’s towering spire and looming Scholomance – its towers jutting out like teeth biting into the dark – but the city at their feet appeared to be little more than an overgrown ruin with second-rate docks.

“And what sets you to sighing so despondently, if I may ask?”

Angharad flicked a glance at the man who’d addressed her. Tristan Abrascal still watched his tongue around her, as the lowborn often did around nobles, but she thought it a good sign he sometimes unbent enough to tease her. She walked a fine line around the man herself, not yet certain of the boundaries. In the world beyond the Watch they would have been kept distant by blood and title, but now they both wore the black. How much did birth matter, once you put on the cloak? She was not yet certain, and so she refrained from offering the man used of her comb even though she’d twice had the half-jest on the tip of her tongue over the last week.

“Those jetties are much too narrow,” Angharad opined, leaning against the railing as they stood up on the forecastle.  “It would be difficult to unload large cargo here.”

The gray-eyed man considered Port Allazei in turn, his stare measuring. Sacromonte was one of the greatest ports in the world still, for all its faded glory, so he should be able to see what she had.

“Or even just a large amount of it,” Tristan finally agreed. “This is no trade port.”

His words had the woman past him stirring from her quiet doze.

“It’s meant for defense,” Maryam said. “That wall looks short now, but they would have built…”

The pale-skinned woman frowned, biting her lip.

“Ograda od dasaka,” she said, flicking a glance at Song.

The Tianxi asked Maryam something in a language that sounded like Cathayan, but slightly off. Maryam replied in the same, looking relieved, and nodded.

“Hoarding,” Song translated. “Like a wooden walkway atop the wall, covered by a roof and with arrow slits in front.”

Arrows? How very Century of Loss.

“The jetties are narrow so few warriors can get out once,” Maryam said. “The causeway is small so the press pushes the invaders into the water. This place was built to fight.”

What a wonder, Angharad thought: Maryam Khaimov could speak without adding some sly implication. Perhaps it was Tristan’s presence, for she did seem to make something of an effort to curb her tongue around the Sacromontan. The noblewoman debated making an effort at pleasantry with the Triglau but could not bring herself to offer a surfeit of politeness when she was so certain it would be returned by rudeness.

“I’m no military man,” Tristan noted, “but those walls look to me like any galleon could level them with its cannons from far enough arrows would mean nothing.”

“Tolomontera is an ancient land,” Song said. “It has been settled since at least Morn’s Arrival.”

By which the Tianxi meant the walls had been built in a time before blackpowder made many once-great fortresses into little more than rubble-in-waiting.

“You seem correct in your assessment about the impracticalities around cargo,” Song continued. “There is a lighthouse west of here with a beach where some ships were dragged ashore. I imagine that is where the Watch unloads what the port does not allow for.”

Angharad leaned back, trying to get a glimpse of this lighthouse, but they were close enough to Port Allazei now that the Orrery lights made it difficult to see beyond their span. In truth she suspected that even out at sea she would not have seen what Song did, for those silver eyes seemed to pierce through darkness and illusion alike. One of the Fair Vistas’ fighting contingent – a young man by the name of Emiliano – came to them and shyly passed along Captain Krac’s compliments and that they were soon to dock. Which they could all see, but was only polite to convey.

Emiliano, tall but hunched over, mostly looked at her while speaking and blushed all the while. Angharad replied politely, as was due, but made sure not to smile. Though she would prefer to think watchmen above such things, it was her experience that young men taken with her sometimes took smiles as encouragement. Such a thing could sour, should they then try their luck and learn her interest ran strictly to the fairer sex. It was simpler to keep a distance.

“Our compliments returned to Captain Krac, and my personal thanks for the lending of books,” Song replied. “The trip was swift and pleasant. We have our affairs in hand and will require no escort.”

Emiliano tried to linger, but Song’s cocked eyebrow was a fearsomely disapproving thing and he was soon routed. Song, Angharad thought not for the first time, seemed comfortable in command. Almost as if she were nobly raised, though of course such a thing would not be possible in Tianxia. Angharad was not certain it was wisest for her friend to lead, regardless of Scholomance rules, but she would not deny it was a relief for the burden to be on another’s shoulders.

It would not have occurred to her, for example, to send them all back to their cabins to gather their affairs ahead of docking so they would not get in the way of the sailors as the galleon pulled into port. Her private concerns aside, it was pleasing to have someone with knowledge of the waters they were sailing with their hand on the helm.

The galleon skillfully slid into place close by the jetty, where dockworkers were thrown heaving lines to secure the ship. Heavier hawsers followed until the Fair Vistas was pulled tight and tied. A plank was thrown down after, and a sailor saw them out. Angharad was a little surprised at the informality of it, which must have shown on her face.

“Something wrong?” Song asked.

“I thought the captain would see us off, or at least the first mate,” she admitted.

Maryam let out a snort from behind her. The sound was unkind. Angharad’s teeth clenched, for after weeks of this her patience was waning thin with the other woman. Having been born to a savage land was no excuse for having refused to learn manners since.

“We do not warrant such attentiveness,” Song said, not unkindly. “We are Scholomance students, Angharad, nothing more. Captain Krac commands a galleon, a respected position. We are beneath her notice.”

The noblewoman’s lips thinned, but after a moment she conceded the point. She was used to more amiable treatment from crews, as either the captain’s daughter or a paying passenger, but she was neither on the Fair Vistas. She was but a soldier under the Watch, the same as any other watchman the captain might be ordered to ferry by her superiors. She turned to watch Tristan come down the plank, the man’s stride unhurried as he bit into what looked like a leathery piece of jerky.

Angharad sent him a questioning glance.

“Traded for it,” he idly said. “Want a piece?”

“I will hold out in hope of a decent meal at our accommodations,” she replied. “Though I thank you for the offer.”

“I ever admire optimism,” Tristan told her.

Angharad frowned, for though this sounded a compliment she could not help but feel she had been made sport of. Tristan Abrascal was clever with words, though she sometimes thought he might be a little too clever with them. The kind of cleverness that led men to get in too deep. Regardless she was left with no time to spare for thought on the matter when Song took the lead, hoisting her bag and striding onwards towards the end of the jetty.  Angharad followed, sailors leaving the galleon in their wake and beginning to organize with shouts.

The dockworkers, stout men and women that seemed of mostly Lierganese stock, paid them little attention as the four walked down the causeway towards the structure flanked by walls she had earlier marked a customs house. Angharad had been wrong in this, as she now realized deeper consideration of the matter would have yielded. The island belonged to the Watch and was closed to all others, who would such taxes be levied on?

No, the edifice ahead was something else entirely. It would have been only somewhat accurate to call it a gate, for though it was that it was also much more. The structure seemed about a hundred feet wide and thirty tall, an elegant pale hall on each side supporting a layered rectangular roof of stone. The roof must have been topped by bronze statues, once, but the elements had worn them down to bare bones. It was the wide space between the halls that drew the eye, for seven pillars filled it from floor to ceiling and each was a delicate wonder.

They approached, almost warily, and Angharad’s eyes could not help but flick from one to another. Each was exquisitely carved deep gray slate, marked prominently with the colored heraldry and words of a noble house – though she did not see any lineage’s name. It took her a shamefully long moment to piece it together. Seven houses, watchmen setting aside noble titles? These were not noble lines but the covenants of the Watch. Her steps slowed and she was not the only one.

“Which is which, do you think?” Tristan mused out loud.

“I know mine,” Maryam said. “It’s there.”

She pointed at the rightmost pillar, where lay a blue crescent moon within a white circle. Angharad found the words of the Akelarre Guild ambiguous – Beyond the Horizon.

“The Academy is in the center, as always,” Song shared, tone dry.

Its crest was two diagonal yellow stripes across a hand, Angharad saw. Their words were A Duty and Privilege, though it seemed someone had painted a black line across all the words save ‘privilege’ and it’d only mostly been scrubbed out. The Pereduri marked the sight of a golden tree emblem which must be the Umuthi Society – whose name came from the Umoya word for tree – and its motto of A House of Steel.

She could hazard a guess at which covenant the green laurel wreath belonged, and perhaps the white quill as well, but her attention was commanded by what must be the Skiritai Guild’s pillar. Angharad stepped closer and her fingers gently trailed the simple heraldry, crossed silver falchions. She shivered at the words she read beneath: Gods Bleed, the Militant simply said. The fewest words of any writ beneath a crest, and so lacking in embellishment they felt more like an oath than a boast.

 She was shaken out of her reverie by Tristan’s soft laugh as he stood by the leftmost pillar. What Angharad had thought to be heraldry was only some unevenness in the stone, the pillar’s sole imperfection. Going around to join the Sacromontan, she saw what he had found. Hidden in the shade of the roof a simple black carnival mask had been carved into the slate. Hunt the Night, the Krypteia scrawled below.

Something about the stillness of the gate – even the halls on the side were empty, all bare stone – straddled the line between reverence and eeriness. It was, Angharad thought, as if they had entered a shrine not to some god but to the Watch itself. The spell only broke when she caught sight of movement past the gate. There the causeway continued for a few dozen feet until it ran aground of a squat, square building whose sloping windows were all shuttered tight.

Past the building was a crossroads, both sides of which led deeper into Port Allazei, but black-cloaked watchmen stood guard by a low barricade in the way. More stood guard before the edifice, and one of them caught sight of their crew beneath the gate. She whistled sharply to catch their attention before gesturing for them to approach. Song moved first, the rest following.

“You lot came with the ship that just arrived, I take it?” the tall woman asked.

She had the Tianxi look, much like Song, but her accent was Someshwari. She must have come from those bloody borderlands between the Republics and their greater neighbor.

“We did,” Song agreed.

“Then in you go, ducklings,” the watchwoman said, gesturing at the open door past her. “Straight to Sergeant Itoro, he’ll sort you out. He’s the one at the desk in the back looking like he could use some sleep.”

“Don’t we all,” another blackcloak muttered. “Fucking double shifts.”

There was some laughter from the others, and before Angharad could decide whether this was soldier’s humor or she should be appalled at the lack of professionalism they were ushered through the threshold. Most of the ground floor was a single room, flanked by wooden stairs to the left and what must be a private office at the back. The great room was a collection of desks, most of them groaning under the weight of paper stacks and surrounded by shelves bearing even more of it.

No wonder the shutters were all closed, a single gust of wind in here would mean hours of work.

Sergeant Itoro was not difficult to find. As dark-skinned as the Malani name had implied, he was perched behind a desk with four large manuscripts on it and scribbling on a piece of paper when they approached. He did look like he could use some sleep, Angharad mused. The rings on his eyes were even darker than those around Maryam’s, though given the paleness of the Triglau’s skin Angharad had wondered if hers were merely faint rings standing out from contrast.

The watchman was also, well, small. He could not even be five feet tall, Angharad thought, and was slightly built. They stood before the desk, waiting patiently as he finished the last of his scribbling with a flourish, and only then did he look up at them. Dark eyes took them in, then he cleared his throat.

“Students?” he asked.

“Yes,” Song replied. “We were told you would sort us out.”

The small man blew on the paper he’d been scribing, then set it aside and reached for the topmost of the books on his desk. He cracked it open, lines and lines of ink revealed to Angharad’s eye, and dipped his quill in an inkwell.

“I am Sergeant Itoro,” he said. “You currently stand in the gatehouse of Tolomontera, which you will not be allowed to pass through again this year save for your test. Do you have your affairs at the ready?”

His gaze swept through them, earning nods back.

“Good,” he said. “Now, I must give you a warning. If any of you is not truly a sponsored student whose name is on my list, you are in breach of Watch law for setting foot on a closed island. You will be caught, tortured for information and summarily executed.”

He paused to let his words sink in, leaving Angharad to wonder why watchmen always seemed to threaten execution when she first encountered them. At least it seemed a rote speech for this one, unlike Lieutenant Wen’s elaborate pantomime with Sergeant Mandisa back on the Dominion.

“Give yourself up now and you will be able to keep your life,” the sergeant suggested.

The Malani waited a moment, as if to give them the opportunity to confess. Tristan cleared his throat, getting a hard look from Song that he blithely ignored.

“Has anyone actually ever given themselves up?” he asked.

It would be uncouth to ask, of course, but then Angharad had not. It was purely coincidental her own curiosity would be sated as well. Good man.

“One of the Garrison recommendations thought it’d be a fun lark to pretend she was, make a stir,” Sergeant Itoro mildly replied. “I hope she had a good laugh, I really do. Good enough it’ll carry her through ten years of serving as a rower on a Watch galleass.”

Only Angharad and Maryam were properly sobered up by that answer. Rowers died like flies, and at times were hardly treated better. In Malan there was such a lack of men willing to take up the role that criminals were used by the royal fleet.

“I’ll need your names for the records,” the officer said. “We can handle cabal matters after.”

Sergeant Itoro was efficient about jotting them down, then blew the lines on the ledger and once satisfied the ink would not smudge closed it and reached for another.

“Good, now the welcome speech,” the Malani said.

He cleared his throat.

“There are only three rules on Tolomontera,” he said. “First, students of Scholomance may not kill each other. Second, the sections of Port Allazei marked with red paint are not to be entered. Third, every student of Scholomance must be part of a registered cabal.”

This, Angharad thought, smacked of lawlessness. The well born could be expected to behave by virtue of their education – well, most of them anyhow. Infanzones had not impressed her on the Dominion. Still, what was to guide everyone besides nobles here on Tolomontera? Officers, she told herself. Is the Watch not an army? It felt like a lacking answer. Sergeant Itoro tapped his fingers against the thick leather-bound ledger without seeming to notice.

“To elaborate on the third rule, a cabal must be made up of at least four students but no more than seven. Anyone who is not in a cabal when classes begin will be placed in one made up of fellow spares as assigned by – well, either myself or Lieutenant Bao depending on who has the shift. I do not recommend this.”

Song looked about to speak up, but the sergeant raised a warding finger and her mouth closed.

“A cabal assignment is not permanent,” he continued. “You may at any time request a transfer to another, and should the request be accepted by their captain you will be added to their rolls so long as it would not bring their number over seven.”

He leaned.

“Cabal themselves are not permanent,” he continued, “for should one at any time have fewer than four cabalists its captain will have fourteen Scholomance days to recruit back up to four. If they fail, the cabal is dissolved and its members will be given a grace period to join another cabal. Failing that, they will be assigned to a cabal of spares.”

He paused.

“Ren, you had something to say?”

“The four of us intend to form a cabal,” Song replied.

He shrugged.

“That is your prerogative, and I’ll mark it, but first it is mandated that all students should know their rights,” Sergeant Itoro said. “There is no need to worry if you do not know anyone. Classes will begin in two days, but tomorrow all students present on Tolomontera will gather at Misery Square so that they might mingle and form cabals as they wish.”

His dark gaze sharpened.

“Regardless of what you may have been told, even by a patron, no student can be compelled to be part of a specific cabal and any such agreement made before coming here – even if legally binding – is null and void,” he said. “The purpose of Scholomance is to form a generation of exceptional cabalists, not gild the name of cliques outside these walls.”

Sergeant Itoro squinted at them.

“Knowing this, I now ask whether the four of you want to form a cabal,” he said.

Song nodded, Maryam close behind, and after a heartbeat Angharad followed suit. It was Tristan who held them up.

“I have been told,” he said, “that should a Stripe be part of the cabal they are considered the captain by default?”

The look Song threw him was unkind but Angharad would admit it was a fair question. It implied a certain lack of trust, admittedly, but to inquire about rules was not outright an accusation.

“That’s correct,” the small man said. “It’s considered part of their classes to lead you. You’ll get a deeper explanation of how cabals function when you meet your school patron, but I can say captaincy is not necessarily permanent. An incompetent leader can be voted out and replaced.”

The gray-eyed man nodded.

“Good to know,” he said. “I’m in as well.”

Sergeant Itoro nodded, finally opening the second ledger.

“All cabals are registered under a number,” he told them. “You will be issued a silver plaque with that number stamped onto it, which serves as your identification and the only way for you to access cabal funds.”

Three or eleven might suit, Angharad thought, though the hopes were swiftly dashed.

“The numbers one to fifty were forged in advance, but most students arrived weeks ago so it is slim pickings left,” Itoro said. “You may ask for any number under one hundred not already taken to be forged as a plaque, but that may take a few days.”

Given the warning Tristan had received from his enigmatic mentor, it seemed to Angharad they would have to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

“Which numbers are left?” she asked, leaning forward.

The small man hummed, thumbing through his ledger. He began at the last page, Angharad saw, but all the lines were crossed on it. On the second there was one free.

“Forty-four,” Sergeant Itoro offered.

There was a pause.

“No,” Song flatly said.

Angharad started in surprise at the firmness of the refusal. She leaned closer to Maryam.

“Why?” she whispered.

The Triglau snorted.

“Tianxi superstition,” she said. “Four sounds like-”

“Death,” Song sharply said. “It sounds like the Cathayan word for death. Very bad luck. My ears work just fine, you two, and I tell you now I refuse to be the captain of the Double Death Brigade.”

Truth be told Angharad thought that ‘Double Death Brigade’ sounded respectably fearsome, but she suspected that opinion would not be well received.

“Surely there must be another plaque left,” she said instead, smiling at the watchman.

The Malani had been paging through his ledger while they talked and nodded at her words.

“One other,” he confirmed.

“It’s going to be four, isn’t it?” Tristan grinned.

“No,” Sergeant Itoro said. “That one’s taken.”

Song blinked in disbelief.

“It is?”

The watchman traced the line with his finger, following it to the matching list on the opposite page.

“Yes. It was claimed by Captain Tupoc Xical,” Sergeant Itoro said.

A chorus of groans ensued, not the least her own.

“Well,” Maryam noted, “at least the man knows what he’s about.”

“An acquaintance?” the sergeant asked, openly curious.

“We went through the trials on the Dominion of Lost Things together,” Song answered.

Sergeant Itoro let out a low whistle.

“Heard this year was a real bloody mess,” he said. “Good on you kids. It’ll prepare you better for this place than anything silver spoon free company princes got up to.”

He cleared his throat.

“Still, there’s a reason this one’s the other left,” Sergeant Itoro said as he presented them the ledger.

Following his finger, she saw it was by the number thirteen. Ah, Lierganen did think that number bad luck she recalled. Something about the Second Empire’s fall.

“So Double Death it is,” Tristan said.

Song glanced at him.

“Thirteen is a good gambling number,” she told him. “What do you have against it?”

“First off, there is no such thing as a good gambling number,” he firmly replied. “And second it’s the worst possible luck, Song. We might as well just name ourselves ‘those unlucky bastards’.”

Maryam cleared her throat meaningfully.

“Women can be bastards too, Maryam,” the gray-eyed man amiably informed her.

“You’re letting us all down, Tristan,” Maryam said. “Just gird your loins and call me a bitch.”

“I’m not going to do that,” he replied.

The Triglau leaned back, catching Song’s eye.

“Song, my vote’s on thirteen.”

There was a pregnant pause as the Sacromontan narrowed his eyes at his friend.

“Does it count if I do it on the inside?” Tristan finally asked.

Angharad frowned down at him.

“It most definitely does,” she sternly said. “I will vote for thirteen as well, Song.”

Tristan threw her a betrayed look but it was deserved punishment. A gentleman should not refer to a lady in such a manner, not even in his thoughts or if she was not truly a lady at all. Sergeant Itoro, though they were wasting his time, seemed too amused to chide them for it.

“You can get a plaque forged,” he reminded them. “Anything under a hundred.”

“There will be no need for that,” Song smiled. “We will take the number thirteen. Thank you for your patience, sergeant.”

“It’s either this or doing the rosters, so by all means feel free to keep arguing,” the small man shrugged. “If there are no further objections, I’ll be putting you down for the Thirteenth Brigade.”

The Malani looked hopeful of another argument, but Tristan sighed and caved in. Twice now Angharad had heard someone call the cabal a brigade, which meant it was no coincidence.

“If I may,” she said, “why is it that you refer to the cabal as a brigade? I thought them to be-”

“The Watch doesn’t use ‘brigade’ as a name for a military formation as the Kingdom of Malan does,” Sergeant Itoro cut her off. “We do have the ranks of brigadier and brigadier-general but the first is an administrative rank and the second commands a division, not a brigade.”

“That seems…”

Angharad trailed off, looking for a polite word.

“Pointlessly complicated,” Tristan suggested.

She sent him a disapproving look at the rudeness, however accurate. The small Malani chuckled.

“The Watch’s built from the bones of older beasts, boy,” Sergeant Itoro said. “After the fall of the Second Empire, the wandering bands of Rooks called themselves brigades. When the Watch began to gobble them up the word came along with them, though nowadays it’s for covenanters only.”

He dipped his quill in his inkpot and began writing their names down, stopping at – Angharad leaned forward. Hers?

“Tredegar,” he muttered, then leaned back his chair.

“Soaps,” he called out. “Look in the correspondence box. Don’t we have something for a Tredegar?”

“Get up and check,” a woman called back from the back office.

“What’s that, Soaps?” Sergeant Itoro mused. “Noon and midnight shifts until the end of time, you say?”

Rather inventive cursing answered him. There was the sound of someone cracking open a chest and then some ruffling. A mere minute later a rather tall Tianxi – a head taller than Song, who was not short – strode out, braids askew and a pink stripe on her face like she had been resting her cheek against a table. She had a small letter bearing a red seal with the two-tailed snake of House Tredegar, perking Angharad up.

“For an Angharad Tredegar,” ‘Soaps’ said, passing the sergeant the letter. “Anything else?”

“Plaques for the Thirteen Brigade,” Sergeant Itoro said. “Four of them.”

The woman stomped back through the door to the backroom but Angharad paid it no mind. The small man passed her the letter, which she cracked open. It was not much, only a few lines.

“My uncle confirms he is on his way to Tolomontera,” she told the others. “He also sent me a gift as congratulations for surviving the Dominion, which he entrusted to the local garrison. I need only go to the appropriate warehouse and show this letter to collect it.”

“You’ll need your plaque as well,” Sergeant Itoro informed her. “It should be in the farrago warehouse even if your uncle’s Watch – at the left end of Hostel Street, the building made of kiln bricks right before the turn.”

Angharad inclined her head in thanks. ‘Soaps’ stomped back out of the backroom, returned with a cloth bag she dropped on the table besides the sergeant’s ledgers.

“I only asked for four plaques,” Sergeant Itoro said.

“So I went above and beyond, you might say,” the Tianxi smiled.

She retreated, seemingly in a better mood now. The small man sighed.

“Take your plaques,” he instructed them as he reached for his third book. “I’ll see what I can do for lodgings.”

Tristan’s hands were quickest, undoing the knot keeping the bag closed with what Angharad could only call suspicious deftness, and he held it open for the rest of them. Song reached inside, withdrawing a glint of silver, and Angharad was second. Her fingers closed around a round seal, which she drew out and studied more closely as Maryam went fishing.

The silver was rough more than polished; on one side the number thirteen was encircled by a sleeping, snakelike dragon while on the other a thick stripe ran around the edge of the circle with words engraved in what must be Cantar – the mother tongue of Antigua, now spoken only by scholars. She flicked a curious look at Song, who hedged.

“It is Cantar from the Union period, which I cannot read perfectly,” the Tianxi warned.

“That is still more Cantar than anyone else here can read,” Angharad pointed out.

Seeming pleased, Song flipped her plaque to study the back.

“Thus,” she slowly began to translate, “we – they?- have learned the… secret, mystery? Language, maybe. Of things that breathe and do not, but with the suffix for ‘being’ attached. The rest is numbers, but not a number.”

“Thus I have learned the language of all living things; its name is violence,” Sergeant Itoro softly quoted. “So spoke the harvestman of ruin, toppler of thrones.”

Tristan choked and Song looked surprised. The sergeant traced a circle against the table, an Orthodoxy superstition meant to disperse ill luck.

“Our school words,” the Tianxi slowly said, “come from Lucifer?”

From who? Sleeping God, she could not be serious. For some reason the man seemed to find that hilarious, laughing his fill before wiping his eyes.

“Ah, youth,” Sergeant Itoro said, and none quite dared to ask more.

Gathering herself, Angharad saw that his third ledger was open and he seemed to have made some notes in the margins while they were looking at the seals.

“You will be lodged in the Rainsparrow Hostel,” he informed them. “A single room with six beds. The baths are down the street, if you are so inclined, and all three of the taverns on the street will serve you if show your plaque.”

Before any of them could inquire as to crude necessity of payment, the Malani elaborated.

“Everything is free until classes begin,” he said, “but the taverns keep a drinks tally for each brigade and will charge you if you get too expensive.”

“And after the classes begin?” Angharad asked.

He shrugged.

“You’ll be assigned a patron, they will fill you in as to the practicalities of life in Port Allazei,” Sergeant Itoro said.

Angharad nodded, displeased at the brush-off but aware she was in no place to make demands.

“I was advised to seek rooms in the Emerald Vaults,” Song said. “Could something be arranged?”

The small man snorted.

“You and everyone else, Ren, only they got here weeks earlier,” he said. “It filled up ten days ago. No nice single rooms with a balcony and bath for you.”

Alas, Angharad deplored. Cheated of the comforts of civilization once more, though at least Song had made a valiant attempt on their behalf. Sergeant Itoro scrawled a few words on paper and handed them to the silver-eyed Tianxi, referring to her for the first time as Captain Song.

“Good luck,” Sergeant Itoro told them, and so they were dismissed.

They left the office, back to the street, but Angharad stilled at the threshold. She thought for a moment she had gone mad, for the world looked like a fever dream, but she had not: everything truly was wreathed in green. The false star above that was painting the world in its color slowly passed above them, leaving a light tinged by gold in its wake. Angharad swallowed. The Grand Orrery’s cast had been pale since they left the ship, as if they were under direct Glare, so she had entirely forgot that they were not below a pit.

“That is going to take some getting used to,” Maryam grunted. “It even feels different in the aether.”

Troubled one and all, they put a spring to their step. Though they had not been told of the exact location of the Rainsparrow Hostel, it turned out to be unnecessary. Hostel Street was not all that long, a mere ten edifices – three taverns, two warehouses and five hostels for travelers much larger than those Malani law mandated be built by the side of royal roads. They were stone, too, and the facade positively dripping with statues of sparrows hinted strongly as to their destination.

By unspoken agreement they decided to first claim their room and set their bags down there instead of wandering about burdened.

The Rainsparrow Hostel was an old mass of worn granite three stories tall, its front facade boasting a dozen large double-windows facing the street. Between each of these a statue of a hawk – nesting, flying, clawing at the unseen – was fixed, most of them in fine state. The doors were wide open, leading into a tiled antechamber left empty save for a narrow writing desk behind which sat a bored blackcloak with a massive ledger before her.

Song handed her the paper Sergeant Itoro had scrawled on and was met with a raised eyebrow.

“Itoro must like you, to claim a sixer on your behalf,” the watchwoman said. “I suppose we still have the room – you can have twenty-seven.”

She marked down their names and cabal in her ledger, asked to be shown their plaques and only then went rifling inside her desk to remove two small iron keys.

“Second story,” she said. “Right end of the hall. Oh, and there’s one last thing.”

She cracked open her book to the last page, unmarked, but there a few letters were tucked away. The watchwoman idly traced through them before seizing on.

“Tredegar,” she said. “You’re in luck, you got here in time.”

Angharad took the offered letter, blinking in surprise.

“You seem quite in demand,” Maryam said.

The tone made it ambiguous whether that was an insult or not, so Angharad’s lips thinned as she opened the letter. Unsealed, and she could see why. It was not private correspondence, strictly speaking.

TO LADY ANGHARAD TREDEGAR,

You are cordially invited to an evening at the Old Playhouse on the twenty-eighth of the twelfth, for light refreshments and informal company. We-

She scanned through the rest of lines, lips tightening as she found the very last. Raising her gaze afterwards, she saw expectant looks waiting.

“I have been invited for an evening at the Old Playhouse,” she said. “It appears to be some kind of party.”

“So why,” Maryam said, “do you look like someone just socked you in the stomach?”

Just past the end of the paragraph, the part mentioning she was encouraged to bring a guest along, was the names of those who had invited her. Captain Nenetl, went one.

But the other went Lord Thando. A Malani name. A Malani noble’s name.

“Apologies, Song,” Angharad said. “It appears that I had enemies waiting here as well.”

Song had found Captain Alejandra Krac’s cabin a haven of elegance and learning.

Lined with heavy rows of books and two hung maps – one of the Trebian Sea, the other of Radamant’s Reefs – it boasted simple but pristine furniture and a few personal trinkets. Song had always appreciated that so many in the Watch disdained luxury, like Tianxi officials.

“I must confess Coyol’s works have ever been a chore to me,” Captain Krac noted as she slid the borrowed volume back into the right spot. “His histories of the unification of Izcalli are the most reliable, certainly, but those eschatological tirades grow tiresome.”

The captain was a tall and thick-set woman, with round cheeks and serious gray eyes. She was missing half the fingers on her left hand, bearing intricate wooden prosthetics in their stead, and was nimble enough in their use it was hardly noticeable. Maryam was not nearly so skilled yet.

“I find them worth suffering for the lack of Toxtle partisanship,” Song replied.

The House of Toxtle were the first Aztlan kings to unify most of what was now the Kingdom Izcalli into a single realm, putting an end to the bloody era their scholars called the ‘Rule of Jaguars’. To shore up their delicate position the Toxtle had undertaken a remarkably sophisticated effort to create a cult around themselves, including arranging for historians to present their rise to power as inevitable and ordained by the gods. It was nigh impossible to find a contemporary work not dripping with praises for the mighty, peerlessly righteous House of Toxtle.

Coyol, the third son of a conquered king, had been rather skeptical of this alleged fatefulness and too well connected for the Toxtle to suppress his works.

“Besides,” Song continued, “has there ever been an Izcalli work that did not holler about the coming end of days?”

Captain Krac did not smile, for she was not that kind of woman, but her stern face was faintly touched by rue.

“I suppose if they keep at it long enough they’re bound to be correct eventually,” the captain said. “I would offer you another pick from my shelves, but I fear you would not be able to finish it.”

Song immediately straightened to attention.

“We are soon to arrive, then?”

“It is my navigator’s estimation we will reach Tolomontera by midmorning tomorrow,” Captain Krac confirmed. “We have made good time.”

A hint of pride in the older woman’s voice, not underserved. Even if they had been lucky with the winds the Fair Vistas has recently lost a third of its crew to the Gloam. To exceed expectations in such a situation spoke to a tightly run ship.

“I would suggest you prepare your company for arrival,” the captain said, and it was not a suggestion.

It was a dismissal, and Song took the hint from the very busy woman who had extended her the courtesy of this conversation. She nodded, thanked Captain Krac and retired to the guest quarters. Abrascal had been plotting in a corner with that ever-grinning cook last she saw, which hopefully would keep him and the goddess following him like a playful cat busy for a while still. If she recalled correctly, which she did, Angharad should currently be charming the ship’s fighting contingent.

Effortlessly and in complete ignorance of what she was doing by being so friendly and polite while wiping the floor with everyone in spars. 

She even had a way even with the old sea dogs, those that sneered at anyone spending more than a month a year on land. As for the young men, well, Song suspected the Pereduri would be leaving a broken heart or two behind when they departed tomorrow. Mind you the Tianxi found it difficult to muster sympathy for any boy fool enough to genuinely believe Angharad’s eyes kept flicking to the muscled arms of that Aztlan watchwoman because she was ‘curious about the tattoos’.

Song put a spring to her step, lips still twitching at the utterly transparent excuse the noblewoman had gotten out when teased about her lingering eye.

With the other two members of her cabal occupied, she was now freed to have an overdue conversation with the third. It was to Maryam’s door that her steps took her, for she knew it the signifier’s habit to retire to her cabin for time alone an hour before dinner. Song was early for that, but with Abrascal in the wind she suspected the pale-skinned woman would have retired ahead of the usual.

Song could not blame her. Watchmen were better learned that most in matters of Gloam and Glare, but Maryam was still stared at by much of the crew even after over a week at sea. Open distrust from strangers wearied the soul, no matter how unearned. Two sharp knocks against the door earned only silence, at least until there was the sound of movement behind the door and Maryam called out asking who it was.

“Song,” she replied. “I require a moment from you.”

The Tianxi waited a little longer before the other woman cracked open the door, dark hair disheveled and looking somewhat grumpy. Song cocked an eyebrow but said nothing. Though Maryam insisted she meditated before dinner, it often looked like she’d just woken from a nap when she was interrupted. The pale-skinned woman flicked a glance back and forth across the hallway – more out of habit than distrust, Song suspected – and only then opened the door all the way.

“Come in,” Maryamsaid. “Mind the candles.”

The Triglau moved out of the way and Song entered as bid. All their cabins were the same, the Tianxi had seen when they were assigned, save for Abrascal’s which was in a corner and so slightly more cramped. All held a bed, a trunk, a small table with a stool and a worn dresser. Only Maryam had propped up the table and stool in a corner, laid her blanket on the ground and placed candles in a loose circle around it. Perhaps she trulyhad been meditating, Song mused.

“Will this take long?” Maryam asked. “I can’t afford to burn my way through my allotment.”

“It should not,” Song replied.

Her gaze swept around for a place to sit until she heeded Maryam’s invitation to sit on the edge of the bed.  The other woman stayed standing, leaning back against her dresser. She was, Song only now noticed, barefoot. Silver eyes flicked over the candles, noticing the faint pale hue to their light – Glare-touched, all of them. Interesting. She knew little of signifying, as the Akelarre Guild was tight-fisted with its secrets, but she did know it was an art of the Gloam and not the Glare. Why use such candles, then?

“We will be arriving early tomorrow,” she said.

Maryam grunted in approval.

“Good, I could do with sleeping in a proper Meadow,” she said. “I couldn’t let down my guard an inch on the Dominion, it’s been exhausting.”

The Akelarre Guild was allowed to hold private land on most Watch grounds, Song had learned, in part so that they could build these ‘Meadows’. Their purpose was obscure, save that Navigators rested in them regularly and seemed to count themselves better off for it.

“I imagine the Navigators will have a chapterhouse at the port,” she replied. “Though it is what follows after our arrival I come to speak to you about.”

A pause.

“There has been bickering.”

Maryam cocked an eyebrow.

“There has,” she said. “You should bury the hatchet with Tristan. He’s really quite sweet, you know.”

Song carefully kept her thoughts off her face. Sweet? The man was grenade with a lit fuse. Not once since the scales were ripped from her eyes had Song ever known a god to manifest as often and as clearly as that golden-haired goddess did around Tristan Abrascal. He must be either a madman or halfway to being a Saint, though eerily enough he showed none of the usual signs of incipient sainthood.

Song’s subtle inquiries with some of the Sacromontans during the trials had yielded no recognition for a goddess in the guise of a golden-haired woman in a red dress, which was even more worrying. The easiest way for a god to thrive without being known and willfully worshipped was to have been born of an event so catastrophically momentous it burned in the minds of thousands still.

Which meant Tristan Abrascal likely was a madman riding a calamity god, and though Song would not shy from using him she also had every intention of holding him at arm’s length until he inevitably got himself and quite a few other people killed.

“That is not what I meant,” Song said.

Maryam thinly smiled.

“I know exactly what you meant, Song,” she replied. “That was a warning to keep walking. Best you heed it.”

The Tianxi’s jaw tightened. Maryam was usually an agreeable woman.

“I understand your issues with Angharad’s background, but-”

“No,” Maryam harshly said. “You don’t. You think you do, and I won’t deny the gods dealt your family a hard hand, but you have no fucking understanding of this at all and I will get very angry with you if you ever again pretend otherwise.”

Song’s lips thinned, but she held her tongue. You are stone shaped by the chisel of life, she recited. Will it be your hand wielding the tool, or theirs? If she gave her anger to others, she relinquished the chisel – and that was unacceptable. Maryam’s words were no way to talk to a superior officer, but strictly speaking Song was not that until their cabal was registered.

Moreover, her earlier dealings with the other woman had been along the lines of a partnership without rank involved. It would take time for the adjustment and Uncle Zhuge had warned her that as a rule hierarchy tended to be played loose within cabals.

“We have fights enough waiting for us,” Song finally said. “Can you, at least, cease provoking her?”

Maryam’s face closed down like a house come winter, and she knew immediately she had made a mistake.

“So you’ve decided to change ships now that you no longer need me,” Maryam stiffly said. “Fine. Best I knew it now, I suppose..”

Song stiffened at the accusation.

“I have done no such thing,” she said.

“Have you had this talk with Tredegar?” the Triglau smiled.

There was no joy in it.

“I intended to-”

“That’s a no,” Maryam cut through. “Allow me to be clear, Song: she gets no apology from me for the discomfort of being reminded her people treat mine like chattel. And Stripe candidate or not, you are in no position to make me.”

Song met her eyes, for anger was a personal matter but not so a challenge to authority. If that stone cracked there would be no mending it – and Song would not be captain of their cabal in name only. She kept her voice clear, calm, free of anger. Hand on the chisel.

“A direct order from a captain,” she said, “is not refused without consequence.”

“There’s no ink on paper yet, Song,” Maryam replied. “And even when there is, we both know that there can be transfers to other cabals – without or without your captain’s permission. If I don’t stick around, do you think Tristan will?”

Even one departure might be the death knell of a cabal as small as theirs, Song thought, but two would be for certain. A cabal must count four students or be dissolved, and while perhaps one departure could be replaced in time two would cause questions to be asked. If Song stuck with Angharad they would no doubt find another cabal willing to take the both of them in, but that could not be. She needed it to be her name on the reports – Captain Song Ren – or there was no point to any of this.

It was not a threat without teeth but going belly up now would be the end of her captaincy before it even began. No one obeyed an officer they’d bent. Song measured her words, matched anger to need and found the right stride. She could not slip, not even a moment.

“You would peddle a murderous street rat with a rampant god and a Triglau signifier who can only use Autarchic Signs,” Song evenly. “Do you think it would take me more than half an hour’s work to make it so that not a cabal on Tolomontera would be willing to touch either of you even with plague gloves on?”

“I can do more than that,” Maryam hissed.

“Not well,” Song bluntly replied. “Now, let me be clear, I do not want to do this. There is no gain to be had. But if you set out to do me harm, Maryam, I will answer by throwing a torch at every single bridge you’ve so much as glanced at.”

She sneered back, but the Tianxi knew it a front. Maryam had reasons to want to attend Scholomance just as urgent as Song’s own. Now she had laid out the consequences, made it clear that an attack would be met with worse. She must now make it clear there were no chains, that she was not cornering Maryam either. A house with a lock that only one man may open is called a prison, Master Shijian had written.

“If you truly want to part ways, I will not keep you. I only require that we proceed in a civilized manner,” Song continued. “We will arrange a trade with a cabal suiting you and settle the matter without harm to either party.”

Now to address the accusation. She leaned forward, face intent.

“I came to speak to you on matters of bickering first because I have known you to be level-headed and because your provocations are purposeful,” Song continued. “Angharad Tredegar gives offense by accident, Maryam. It does not excuse her, and she is not excused, but it does mean it shall take more than a single polite conversation to begin curtailing the issue.”

She met Maryam’s blue eyes.

“Do we now understand each other, Maryam Khaimov?”

The two matched gazes for a long moment before the Triglau looked away.

“I grew angry too quickly,” Maryam finally said.

“And I approached the matter poorly,” Song acknowledged.

She had underestimated the delicacy of the matter, thinking of the other woman’s level-headedness as an absolute instead of a choice. She had broken zunyan, if only by accident. Maryam passed a hand through her long dark locks, letting out a sigh. The other woman looked tired, Song decided. There had always been rings around her eyes, but they seemed darker now.

“I’ll try to refrain from pulling at her tail too much,” Maryam said. “But if she so much as-”

“I would not expect you to answer an insult with silence,” she cut in. “Nor will I ask.”

Maryam let out a noise that might have passed for agreement and the silver-eyed woman decided it would have to do. She rose from the bed, then hesitated a moment. No, it could wait. She nodded at Maryam, but the Triglau frowned at her.

“Your hand,” she said, extending hers.

“I was not going to ask,” Song stiffly said.

She was not so thick-skinned as to request a favor after an argument.

“I’m still angry with you,” Maryam bluntly said, “but not enough to risk your health. Your hand, Song.”

The Tianxi cleared her throat, somewhat embarrassed, and gave it. Maryam’s fingers clasped her own and the signifier closed her eyes. A moment passed then Song felt a faint ripple go up her arm – like a shiver, hair-raising and swiftly gone. Maryam let out a long breath, opening her eyes and releasing Song’s hand.

“The concentration is nearing dangerous again,” Maryam said. “Did you purge at all while on the Dominion?”

Song’s lips thinned.

“Twice,” she said. “Once during the Trial of Lines and again after we reached Three Pines.”

“You might be at a high tide, then,” Maryam said.

The Tianxi smothered a grimaced. That or the curses were gathering quicker.

“Purge tonight,” Maryam advised. “The salt in sea water should make you harder to reach but there’s still a risk.”

Song nodded and gave her thanks. A look at the candles told her that their conversation had lasted longer than anticipated and perhaps to Maryam’s material detriment. Song barely used her own candles, given her eyes, so it should be a fitting apology to gift the other woman most of her allotment after dinner. The Tianxi took her leave, briskly heading for her own rooms. There should be time enough for a purge before dinner, though she would look tired afterwards. Still, better to do it early than late. She tended to get nightmares if she did it too close to falling asleep.

Locking the door behind her, Song took from her bag a green pouch and a wooden bowl. First she untied the strings on the silken pouch, carefully spilling some of the salt to trace a circle on the floor. She would have to buy more soon, she was nearly out. She would make a note in her ledger. Then came the bowl, a simple wooden piece whose insides were blackened as if sprayed with acid. Song filled the bowl with her water jug, then stepped inside the salt circle and sat down cross-legged.

The bowl she set down at her side, and after taking a long breath dipped the fingers of her left hand in the water. She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing. In and out, letting her senses trail off until there was nothing but her breath and the dark.

And, after an eternity, there was the smell.

Like offal, like rot and hate and shame made into a stick of incense. Song forced herself to ignore it, to focus on the steadiness of her breathing. It was only when her fingers were touching the dried bottom of the bowl that she opened her eyes again. There was not a drop of water left in the bowl, and fresh black scarring from the curses she had purged from her body.

When she had been a girl the purge was only needed once every few years, but nowadays it was twice a month. It was getting worse with every season, for an endless sea of hatred and misery was being poured into the Gloam by every Tianxi who’d lost to the Dimming.

By all those lips the name Ren was snarled as a curse, until it had become exactly that.

Song slumped, suddenly exhausted, and allowed herself a moment of bitterness at the unfairness of it all. She had not even been born. But only a moment, and then she put herself back together piece by piece. Like putting on formal dress, layer by layer until she was armored against the world. Song was not her brothers: she would not let the weight of duty break her back as it had theirs.

Song Ren would wield the chisel and she would win.

—

Come early morning on the morrow they were all sent to their rooms by First Mate Javier, who instructed them to stay inside until told otherwise. Song and Maryam, better learned on the subject of Scholomance than the other two, guessed why without difficulty.

“We are soon to reach the Ring of Storms, then?” Maryam asked.

The tall, exceedingly mustachioed – all Lierganen seemed convinced that nailing an entire ferret above their upper lip was somehow distinguished – officer nodded.

“We have the clouds in sight,” the first mate said. “Any moment now we’ll be hitting the storm front.”

“Ring of Storms,” Abrascal repeated, eyebrows raised. “Now there’s an ominous name. Might I ask what it is?”

“A ring of storms,” First Mate Javier drawled back. “There is one encircling Tolomontera, which must be crossed to reach our destination. There’s no need to worry – it is barely a mile wide, we have sailed through worse – but obviously we can’t have you underfoot during a storm.”

“Of course,” Tristan Abrascal smiled, nodding low.

Song’s eyes shortly dipped to the golden-haired woman standing by his side, whispering in his ear something that made the man’s jaw tighten ever so slightly. The Tianxi wrenched her gaze away immediately, though, for twice now the goddess had almost caught her looking and she would rather keep the details of her contract hidden. As usual, Abrascal was a headache.

Song breathed out, tightened her grip around the chisel. That was not impartial. The deity’s presence was, however, taxing in how it forced her to pretend blindness. It was one reason she avoided Abrascal, and why he sometimes irked her more than he strictly deserved to. If at least she could hear the goddess Song might have a notion of what manner of entity she was dealing with, but for now she could only try to sketch out the deity’s machinations through her mortal hand’s deeds.

“May I request being told when we’ve passed the Ring?” Song asked. “I would not want to miss the sights.”

“It’ll be your first time, won’t it?” the first mate mused. “Fair enough, the works are certainly worth a look. I’ll see about sending you a man.”

She duly thanked the officer before he took his leave and they retired to their cabins as ordered.

Song had been disposed to wait patiently but found herself restless. She could have gotten ahead in her correspondence, but writing in a storm would only lead to spilled ink and unintelligible characters. She had already folded her clothes twice and checking on her pack one more time held little appeal. If she’d had a book she could have made use of the time, but as things stood it felt like she was throwing away hours.

Pacing back and forth did not help.

Eventually she sat on the bed she would have remade regardless and made to practice Feng’s List. As one of the first scholar-diplomats the Republics sent to Malan, An Feng had written several of the definitive texts on learning Umoya. Feng’s List was a highly respected speaking exercise, a series of words that helped the speaker learn Umoya’s three tones and six accents.

“Muthi,” Song carefully enunciated, burying herself into the exercise.

It kept her mind from drifting until the ship began rocking from the storm. Her voice weakened as her hands tightened against the sheets. What this what it would feel like, to be a head of cabbage in a cart tumbling downhill? Utterly powerless, at the mercy of a pile of wooden planks held together by nails that, right now, felt all too small. She forced herself to continue Feng’s List, and when she finished it to start again. And then again, until the storm passed.

She was not certain how long it took, save that however short a span it might have been it had still taken all too long. Yet fairer weather prevailed, and as the rocking calmed there was a quiet knock at her door. The first mate had sent a sailor, as promised, and Song felt so relieved to be allowed out that she had to force herself to wait and remake the bed instead. Hand on the chisel.

She climbed to the bridge once she was better composed, finding it wet and smelling of salt but filled with cheerful crew. The crossing must have gone well. The forecastle was nearly deserted, so Song took the stairs up and found a spot out of the way to lean against the railing. The Tianxi stayed there in silence, savoring the gentle stir of the wind against her hair. The earlier nerves bled out drop by drop, leaving her sagging against the wood until she remembered she was still out in the open.

She recognized Angharad by the sound of her steps, which were oddly cadenced. Not sharp like a soldier’s or with a sailor’s lurching swagger but something closer to a fencer’s gait, light and ever ready to spring into movement. Angharad made a noise upon catching sight of her, then came to join her at the railing. The tall Pereduri’s elbows came down, coat sweeping back as she put her weight on the wood. Nodding a greeting – which Song returned – the other woman smiled and cast a curious look ahead. The Tianxi cocked a questioning eyebrow.

“You had me curious,” Angharad said.

A look at the horizon, then she snorted.

“Still do, in fact. It will be hours yet before we reach Tolomontera, what is it that you would look for on the horizon?”

“We’ve left behind the last clouds of the Ring of Storms,” Song said. “Soon we should catch our first glimpse of the Grand Orrery.”

Angharad rocked along with the rocking of the galleon without even noticing, the Tianxi noted. She envied her that comfort: though not prone to seasickness, Song would never be at ease standing on a rickety hunk of wood surrounded by angry water as far as the eye could see. She found it difficult to understand how seafarers could be so fond of a life where no amount of skill or valor would make a whit of difference if the day’s luck decided you were to capsize and drown.

“I have never heard of this Grand Orrery,” Angharad said. “An Antediluvian wonder?”

Song nodded.

“Some say it is the very reason for the existence of the Ring of Storms, that it tames wind and weather the rest of the way to Tolomontera by pushing out all the wildness onto the Ring,” she said. “I do not know if this is true, but it was described to me as a wonder like no other.”

The Pereduri cocked an eyebrow.

“Is an orrery not some sort of mechanical map mimicking the movement of the stars?” she said. “Something not so dissimilar was built on the ceiling above the Trial of Ruins, you might recall. I struggle to believe another such device would be all that exceptional.”

Song smiled.

“You will not struggle long,” she said, and a glance at the horizon saw her smile widen. “There, we see the first of it.”

The Tianxi pointed at a distant silver light near the line of the horizon, Angharad marking the sight with a skeptical look.

“It seems to me you point a star, Song,” she said.

“I do not,” she replied. “Look closer.”

The noblewoman did, frowning but trying to understand what she might have missed. It was Angharad Tredegar’s willingness to learn that had settled the matter of who she should recruit. The mirror-dancer would not entertain the thought that nobility was fundamentally unjust – she did not know the principle of zunyan, that partiality in dignity was a violation of the Circle – but that inflexibility did not extend to her actions. Angharad admitted her faults and tried to mend them, a rare thing regardless of birth or what land one hailed from.

The troubles with Isabel Ruesta had almost made Song reconsider her choice, for she would not yoke herself to someone whose every principle bent for a pretty face, but there had admittedly been… extenuating circumstances. Besides, the past was now buried.

Unlike Isabel, who’d had to do with being tossed onto a campfire.

“It moves too quickly,” Angharad suddenly said. “Stars are too far for us to easily grasp their movements, but this one’s can be caught by the naked eye.”

“It is not a star,” Song agreed. “It is a light large as a manse being moved by machinery. I expect within a quarter-hour we’ll be seeing the first ring.”

They stayed together on the deck, small lengths of conversation split by lengths of comfortable silence, as more and more lights joined that first silver pinprick – which grew larger and larger as the ship approached. The sailor in the crow’s nest shouted something that sounded like ‘first ring’in mangled Antigua, her warning before they got their first real glimpse of the Grand Orrery.

Churning white waters came first, and then they saw that from the depths of the Trebian Sea rose a massive circle of gold angled to the side.

There were two of them, in truth, with a slight space between. Each was broad as a man was long and slowly turning. It was a sight surreal, seeming more a monster than a machine for all that Song the truth was otherwise.

“Sleeping God,” Angharad murmured, sound awed. “How large is that ring?”

“The diameter should be at least four hundred miles long,” Song said. “There are several more, all of them orbiting a device at the heart of Tolomontera.”

As the ship sailed closer false stars bloomed one after another, gargantuan golden rings moving the great orbs of colored light – blue, silver, green and gold and a dozen colors more – according to some eldritch purpose. Like jewels set in a crown the lights were shepherded by rings of differing sizes and angles and make. Some were delicate, eerily delicate like steel wire the size of tower, others like thick bands of gold. It was half an hour more of staring in wonder as the crew busied themselves around them before the pair saw their first light up close.

The colors were trapped inside magnificently intricate globes of gold and brass, as finely wrought as lace and varied in shape. Some looked almost like spinning tops, others like spheres tightly trapped in bands of brass and one was but an intricate hollow ring. None were smaller than a great mansion, and all cast their light towards the heart of the device. In the distance lay a massive tower of gears, broad at the base and thinning at the middle only to bloom into an impossibly complex flower of machinery at the summit. Colors flicked inside panes of glass, like storms caught in bottles.

The heart of the Grand Orrery, the lights of Scholomance.

“A wonder like no other,” Angharad murmured. “You spoke true enough, Song.”

“Tolomontera is not so great a sight, I fear,” Song replied. “But keep some of that awe tucked away, as I expect Scholomance will be just as astonishing a sight.”

She patted the other woman’s shoulder and retired, leaving Angharad to stare at the horizon. Soon enough they would be in sight of their destination, and before they did the Tianxi intended on checking her pack one last time. Song would not be caught unprepared by what was to come.

—

The man’s hair was permanently scruffy, so there was no bed hair to use in telling if he’d truly napped through the storm or if his clothes were habitually rumpled.

“One of these days,” Tristan Abrascal said, “you’re going to have to tell me where you’re getting all these maps.”

“Doubtful,” Song replied without missing a beat.

Were she a more poetic soul, Song might have mused over any uniform being put on Abrascal’s stringy body somehow turning messy as a reflection of his soul’s mutinous streak. As it was, instead she fantasized about him being put through a laundry wringer so the rolling pins might iron out every wrinkle and at least some of the terrible ideas waiting behind those gray eyes.

Ambushed by the man on her way back from her cabin, the Tianxi had been presented with an unfortunately reasonable request which had led her right back in it – and now to be pressing down the edges of a slip of paper against the top of her dresser.

Far from offended, Abrascal’s face creased in amusement at her dismissal. It was discomforting how untroubled he seemed by everything, and how closely that matched the Fangzi Yongtu’s description of a man with rules but no principles. You will know them thus: they neither exalt nor condemn, wandering the land without knowledge of the righteous and unrighteous. Like animals they will feed on benefits and flee calamity, heeding no dignity but their own.

Father would have called him a shady bastard instead, which was somewhat less of a mouthful.

Song followed Abrascal gaze as he stared down at the sketched map of Tolomontera – little more than sketched lines – and wondered what it was he was looking for. Seen from above, the island of looked like a fat-heeled boot inclined slightly upwards.

Its southern shoreline ran from the northwest to the southeast in a diagonal cut, all stony beaches and grassy lowlands leading up into increasingly steep hills and finally plateaus – the Ariadnis Tablelands – that were a maze of deep ravines and caverns. Near the collar of the ‘boot’ tall mountains rose, swallowing up about a third of Tolomontera, and atop these squatted the massive silhouette of the Grand Orrery’s heart. It was in that great clockwork spire’s shadow, due south, that lay the hulking shape of Scholomance.

The ancient school fed straight into Port Allazei, which covered most of the boot’s heel and where the Fair Vistas was headed.

“Unless there are farms on the plateaus, that island can’t feed itself,” Abrascal finally noted. “And that port is much too large to still be inhabited.”

“The Watch keeps a presence on the island, but it is otherwise abandoned,” Song acknowledged.

“So we’re looking at an empty ruin of a port city,” Abrascal grunted. “That could into either a blessing or a curse, depending on how we play things.”

Why, Song silently deplored, must it be only this one that showed interest in planning ahead? She would have preferred the quality in another.

“Once we have registered, our priority should be securing provisions and lodgings,” she acknowledged.

Then Abrascal could find out who was trying to sell him, Maryam could get that sleep she seemed in dire need of and Angharad could be sat down for a conversation about how her family’s exploits at sea had likely been funded by slave trade gold and that meant she must watch her words around someone whose kin might well have been sold to fund Tredegar glories.

Then she could begin seeing to her own affairs, which were ever too many.

“Food and a hiding place, huh,” Abrascal grinned. “Why, Mistress Ren, we’ll make a rat out of you yet.”

Ugh. And to think Maryam genuinely found him charming. There was no accounting for taste.

“We may not have much time before classes begin,” Song told him, ignoring the grin. “If so, we will split off to get everything done in time.”

The dark-haired rat leaned forward, rubbing his chin.

“Am I getting Tredegar or Maryam?” he asked.

She would grant that the man was not slow on the uptake. Only a fool would have thought it a sound notion to partner those two if they were to split into pairs.

“You would be comfortable working with Angharad?” she asked.

Though strangely enough he looked aggrieved, Abrascal nodded. Good. She had expected those two to be at odds, but they were cordial enough. That Maryam would be half her trouble was a thoroughly unpleasant surprise.

“I will likely put the two of you on provisions,” Song said. “We’ll see after we dock.”

Between she and Maryam they should be able to sniff out anything too dangerous while choosing a place to stay. Meanwhile Abrascal would ensure that Angharad was not robbed on prices and she would ensure he didn’t get robbed period. The street rat nodded, brow creasing in thought. They were finished with the map, so she tucked it away and politely stated they were done with her rooms.

Soon they would be in sight of Tolomontera, and though Maryam was napping Angharad would be on the deck waiting for them. Abrascal did not object and they headed up together. She found Angharad on the forecastle earlier and the three settled there – the Sacromontan asked about the Pereduri’s experience at sea, as surprised as Song when Angharad revealed it was precious little.

Though she had, apparently, been trained to duel on a ship’s deck in the bay just beyond her family manor.

“The trick is to move with the waves,” she explained. “The footing must be looser than usual.”

Song did not quite have the heart to explain that her advice would be largely useless to anyone who had not spent most of their life refining the art of war. Abrascal was nodding regularly with a fixed smile on his face, for example. And though Song herself had begun the standard training of Jigong militia at the age of ten – and insisted on being taught the sword as well as the spear, against tradition for women – she would admit to being somewhat lost as well.

She had preferred firearms even before her contract ensured she would be a deadly shot.

Silver eyes scanned the distance and there she found what she was looking for. She might not see perfectly in the dark, but she saw at least as well as any darkling – the horizon was not the stretch of black for her it would be to the others.

“Straight ahead,” Song said, drawing Angharad out of some complicated hand movement. “We arrive.”

Her belly clenched in anticipation, for it was on these approaching grounds that her life’s work was to begin, but when she first glimpsed Tolomontera she found there was no room left for nerves. A hundred times Song must have surveyed the worn sketch of a map she’d obtained from Uncle Zhuge, but it did not prepare her for the true sight of it in the slightest.

It was, she thought, as a drunken scholar’s description of the likeness of an island. Rising above the waves Port Allazei with its long, thin stone jetties looked like some city of the dead – vines, grass and trees had returned to reign when men left. The lights of false stars swept in intricate cycles of colored night and day, slices of silver and green claiming swaths of ruin while behind the lichyard city waited the hungry silhouette of Scholomance.

Its great dome loomed tall, surrounded by a cluster of lesser ones and towers enough for a dozen cities – all laced with tall arched bridges and connected by strange, winding rooftops. Hardly a light was lit within the ancient palace, but it hardly mattered for squatting above on tall mountains the Grand Orrery unfolded like the open arms of some sky-swallowing god. Lights flickered and roiled, clouds drifting lazily below as its gears turned and turned without respite.

Song trusted her own eyes, they were of all the world the only thing she would never doubt, but even staring at Tolomontera she could not quite bring herself to believe the island was real. Not until the galleon docked, nestled gently against the stone jetty, and her hand found the chisel again.

There was work to do.

Tristan woke to the gentle rocking of the ship.

It was dark inside the cabin, his bedding pulled tight around his body in deference to the coolness of sea winds. The thief’s eyes stayed closed even as he pricked his ear, every groan of the old galleon keeping him on edge: it sounded like someone walking on an old floor.  Though the Fair Vistas was large enough he had been given his own cabin and it had a lock on the door, Tristan had spent a great deal of his life picking locks.

They were not any real indication of safety.

Not that he had solid reason to fear for his, as an inducted watchman on a Watch ship headed for a Watch school. There was just something about the almost-silence and the dark of the cabin that… And that sound was not just creaking wood. Movement, Tristan thought as his eyes flew open and he threw himself out of the bed. A knife hit the headboard with a sharp thud, half an inch from his face, and as he threw his bedding at the attacker the thief reached for the knife under his pillow.

It wasn’t there. Shit. Tristan ripped out the knife in the headboard just in time to get kicked in the stomach. He staggered back, striking blindly, and heard a snort as his wrist was caught. He moved with it but it was twisted behind his back. He kneed his attacker in the side but they ignored the blow and kicked his footing down from under him. Dropping to the floor, he rolled and covered his ribs from another kick before cutting at the side of their leg.

It drew blood, going through a thin layer of cloth, but his triumph ended when a heel was placed on his throat. When they didn’t immediately push in his pharynx and kill him, he realized something was wrong – not that he had time to spare for thought, pushing away that foot and headbutting between the opponent’s legs. A woman, he learned from both what he hit and the faint grunt of pain before he got kneed in the face and rocked back. Scrambling away, he rose to his feet and…

And his leg gave. His limbs were trembling, like he’d been-

“Contact poison on the knife’s grip,” Abuela said. “That was your first mistake.”

Well, that explained why Fortuna hadn’t woken him up. She avoided Abuela like the plague.

“Ow,” Tristan eloquently replied, flopping to the ground.

His limbs were in open rebellion, the louts, and his face was most definitely going to bruise.

“Which?” he got out.

“Shellfish toxin, my own recipe,” she said. “You will be fine in an hour. Save for the bout of diarrhea, which we shall call the price of getting sloppy.”

Tristan let out a whimper. The runs, really? There was no privacy on a ship, everyone would hear. The humiliating punishment would have been confirmation of who he was facing even if he couldn’t more or less make her out in the dark. Even absent a lantern he glimpsed the silhouette of her as she sat on the edge of his bed. Abuela was rather short, five feet and change, but her impressive mane of snow-white hair made her seem taller – the mid-length wavy bob looked almost regal.

Sharp, red cheekbones with cheeks pulling tight and a jutting chin finished the distilled look of a Sacromonte family matriarch, which her stern maroon eyes helped sell. Abuela looked frail, all wrinkled skin and bones, until she kicked you in the stomach and it felt like you’d been hit by a cart.

“Now,” she said. “What was your second mistake?”

The thief forced himself to think even as his limbs twitched uselessly, lying on his side and looking up at his teacher. The dosage must have been very precise for the toxin to weaken his limbs but leave his tongue just fine.

“I should have cried out for help,” he realized after a heartbeat.

“Yes,” Abuela agreed. “You are of the Watch now. You need to learn to use that, to shake off the habits of the Murk.”

He’d not even thought about it. Back home calling for help was a gamble at best and when you were a thief the odds that the reinforcements would be on your side made it the kind of gamble only the Lady of Long Odds cared for. Tristan slowly nodded. The others, Maryam and Tredegar and even Song would have come to his aid had they heard. He knew that, intellectually. But it was not yet an instinct.

“You always said not to grow roots,” he said.

He shied away from outright asking. He had not done well enough in her test to earn the right to ask whatever he wanted – he’d be taking whatever she cared to throw his way, nothing more.

“The others will be taught by their covenants that a cabal is a sacred thing,” Abuela told him. “Comradery beyond law and reason. It is not.”

She leaned forward.

“You do not have the luxury of that lie,” the old woman said. “You are to be a Mask, Tristan Abrascal. A creature of angles and lies, necessity’s bastard son. The Krypteia is despised by the other covenants because we are, in truth, as much a check on them as we are on the Watch’s enemies.”

He could not quite see it, but he felt Abuela smile.

“Care for them, if you like,” she said. “But do not ever forget that should they betray the Watch, it is you that will be called on to put poison in their morning tea.”

And part of him rebelled at that, not even at the killing but the unfairness of it – that everyone else might get a home while he would only ever have a room – but another part accepted it without batting an eye. Of course it would be that way. All his life Abuela had taught him to use the crowd without being part of it, this was just but an extension to an old lesson. She was not the kind of woman whose teachings made exceptions, not even the Watch got a pass.

There was a sharp comfort to that, a knifelike relief. Some things did not change.

“Your performance tonight was only middling,” Abuela continued, “but I did promise you answers before sending you down the path to the Dominion. You may ask.”

Tristan swallowed, a hundred curiosities crowding his throat until it felt fit to burst. He must pick carefully, he told himself, for she would not be patient forever. Something important, a useful secret. And yet what ripped itself past his lips was anything but.

“You trained me for this,” he said. “All this time, you meant me for the Watch.”

“Yes,” Abuela simply replied.

“Why?”

“Why put a knife to the whetstone, a till to the land?” she asked. “Because that is their purpose and nature. When I found you, Tristan, our hunt was already carved into your bones. Now you will chase them with skill as well as hatred, that is all I changed.”

His jaw clenched. It had the ring of truth to it.

“Scholomance,” he pressed. “There are other ways to join the Watch, or even that school. Why send me to the Dominion of Lost Things?”

“You could have been enrolled on my word alone,” Abuela casually admitted, “but you would have lost your chance at Cozme Aflor. A name on your little List, yes?”

“Yes,” Tristan hissed.

It had been weeks yet he still savored the memory of his knife cutting that throat like the finest of meals. The Cerdan brothers had only been interest on an old debt. Cozme Aflor, he’d been the fifth of a balance in need of settling.

“And what did you learn from him?” Abuela asked.

“It is still Lord Lorent that runs their house of horrors,” Tristan said. “It’s out in the Trebian Sea somewhere but the staff may have changed. Professor Ceret is being used as a children’s tutor, of all things.”

He grit his teeth.

“And I know the god, now,” he said. “Cozme called it the Almsgiver.”

A thoughtful pause.

“Not a name known to me,” Abuela said. “A sobriquet, I imagine, as it would have been foolish to use its real name. Still, that is useful information. You did well.”

And it fell into place, just like that.

“You used me to get at them,” Tristan said. “In a way that can’t be traced even if the Cerdan have people in the Watch. It wasn’t just about me, it was about what I could get for the Krypteia.”

“And you got us a name, dear,” the old woman smiled. “You did not disappoint.”

“And Lieutenant Vasanti, was she another bird to catch with your one stone?” he coldly asked. “She hated me from the moment she knew you’ve taught me, Nerei.”

His eyes narrowed.

“If that is even your name.”

Abuela considered him for a long moment.

“It is not the one I was born to,” she told him. “Yet it is the one I have kept the longest and which I prefer, as it was earned and not given.”

“She called you an abomination,” Tristan challenged.

She laughed, sounding almost pleased.

“I am the last of the fifty servants of the Changing King, eater of his name,” Abuela replied. “For this men came to call me Nerei Name-Eater, crowning me heresiarch. One day you will learn the meaning of that word, Tristan, and understand that fear is the least of what it deserves.”

And though he knew not why the whisper of the syllables in the air – heresiarch, king in heresy – sent a shiver down his spine. It was as if the word itself were a dreadful thing, poisonous to the touch.

“Vasanti Kolanu sought to unearth things best left buried and was thrice chided for it – twice by myself, once by one of your fellow students,” Abuela idly continued. “She took poorly to the lesson.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Tristan quietly said. “Did you set me up to kill her for you?”

Abuela smiled.

“What do you think?”

“I think you’d say you left it up to chance,” the thief said. “But you know how I am and you know how she was, so chance was never part of it. I cleaned up your loose end for you.”

“You did not take her life yourself,” Abuela said.

“Neither did you,” he said. “But that’s now how you taught me to do it because it’s not how Masks work, is it? I did you a favor. That means you owe me.”

“Bold,” she said, but did not deny him. “And what would you use a favor on?”

He grimaced.

“There’s a man in Sacromonte,” he said. “He was married to one of the trial-takers-”

“Pietro Ragon,” she said. “The General-Killer’s wayward husband. Run off with Hoja Roja money, I believe.”

He was not even surprised she knew. Gods, Abuela even knew more than he did – he’d not known the surname of Yong’s husband or even that he had one.

“Yes,” Tristan said. “Yong was in a red game, under terms that if he got to the third trial they would write off the loan and spare him. He did get there, but…”

“You want me to make sure,” Abuela said.

“And to tell him about what Yong did,” he said. “I will myself, one day, but I understand I might not be able to return to Sacromonte for some time.”

“It is a wasted favor,” she told him. “The coteries scrupulously observe all the terms of the red games.”

Tristan frowned.

“It’s the Hoja Roja,” he skeptically said. “They’d cheat their own mothers for drinking money.”

“True,” Abuela said. “And yet I did not lie.”

Ah, a riddle-lesson. A puzzle whose pieces he must find and put together by asking the right questions.

“The red games themselves are nonsense,” the thief said. “Yet plenty of the largest coteries do them. What is it they get out of it?”

“It is gambling,” Abuela said.

“A senseless kind,” Tristan pointed out. “It is expensive to buy seats and they do not even see the deaths. Paying a fortune for reports seems like a poor game. Why not have their indebted fight to death in a pit, if that is their itch?”

“Why indeed,” Abuela said.

He cocked his head the side. He’d been looking at it the wrong way by wondering why the Roja would suddenly grow a conscience. They had not. It was simply that the choice was not theirs to make.

“They’re not gambling with each other,” he said. “There’s a god involved.”

Abuela smiled.

“The coteries bet on the manners of death,” the old woman said, “and if they predicted correctly they earn boons from their patron.”

He blinked.

“That is ritual sacrifice, or close enough,” he slowly said. “Forbidden by the Iscariot Accords.”

“The deaths happen on Watch grounds, under Watch auspices,” Abuela said. “It is a narrow line, but they walk it – as they have for over a century now.”

And the Watch let it happen, Tristan thought, so there would be more deaths to feed the gods they used to keep the Red Maw contained. Red games, red fates and red hands all around. Gods but it was an ugly business. But Maryam had broken the machine and that should put an end to it. There was no more seal to strengthen, no need left for an altar. That was something.

“So Pietro Ragon is safe because if they welch on the terms of the bet the god will get angry with the coteries,” the thief mused. “That only means the debt is written off, though. The man might still be in trouble.”

“Minor troubles,” Abuela said. “Worth using a favor on?”

Tristan sighed.

“Yes,” he regretfully. “Please tidy it up for me.”

To his surprise, the old woman looked approving.

“Tying off all your loose ends properly is the mark of professional,” she said. “A sensible decision, worth the reward of a warning.”

He swallowed.

“I’m listening,” Tristan said.

“You are a wanted man,” Abuela said. “A price has been placed on your head – taken alive.”

He did not hide his surprise.

“The Cerdan?” he asked.

They should not know of him, at least not enough to put coin on his death. His killing of Remund Cerdan was still a secret to all but Maryam and a dead woman.

“No,” Abuela said. “It is from inside the Watch, someone with connections. Scholomance will not be safe.”

“Students are allowed to fight each other?”

He’d thought the trials of the Dominion an outlier, not the rule.

“Yes. Not to kill, but much anything short of that,” the old woman said. “Abducting and selling you would not be against the rules, strictly speaking.”

He would have rubbed the bridge of his nose if he could. They’d not even docked at the bloody island and already other students had it out for him.

“I don’t suppose there is anything you could do?” he tried.

“Do not worry of any hands but that of other students,” Abuela said. “That is what I have done.”

He slowly nodded his thanks. She was running interference with whoever was behind this, then, but could no more dip her finger into Scholomance affairs than his mysterious enemy could. It was not a pleasing compromise, but he would live with it. Would have to. Abuela leaned forward, patting his shoulder.

“One last word of advice,” she said. “Do not wait for plaques to be forged. Take whatever they have on hand.”

Though he had no notion of what a plaque would be, Tristan filed the advice away. If she had bothered to give it out it was worth heeding. Still, the mysteriousness was worth a dig.

“Cryptic,” he said, rather proud at the double-meaning.

Even in the dark, he could feel the unimpressed look he was being fixed with.

“That hasn’t been funny in at least a century,” Abuela sighed.

Tristan would have made a rude gesture back, but his limbs were still flopping about. He really must ask her for that recipe next time they met, he could think of all sorts of uses for it. The old woman rose to her feet, brushing off a piece of lint from the loose shirt she was wearing. Those are the same shirts and trousers most the sailors are wearing, he noted.

It only occurred to him then that the Fair Vistas was days away from any land and had not slowed enough for another ship to dock.

“Have you been on the ship the whole time?” Tristan asked.

“Have I?” Abuela mused. “I wonder. You might learn if you saw me leave.”

The thief glanced at his useless limbs and sighed.

“Can you tell me where my knife is, at least?”

“Yes,” the old woman agreed.

He was unsurprised when she walked away without another word, unlatching his lock and quietly closing the door behind her. Tristan rolled onto his back, wiggling his ass to find if he might be able to sit but instead landing with his cheek pressed to the floor.

“For a proper prostration you’re supposed to be on your knees with your hands past your head,” Fortuna said. “Still, I’ll give you points for trying.”

“Thank you for the help, as always,” he sarcastically said. “Would it have killed you to give me a heads up before running for it?”

“I didn’t run for it,” the Lady of Long Odds lied. “I was just busy with other things.”

“Funny how you’re always busy when she comes to visit,” Tristan said.

“Coincidence,” Fortuna dismissed.

He rolled again, looking up and finding Fortuna seated atop the trunk holding his affairs. She had changed the style of her dress again – though still blood-red, it now bore a high collar and a pale mantle before descending into puffy sleeves. The skirts were more closely cut, still hiding away her feet but no longer trailing behind. She had gone heavier than usual on jewelry, too: the loose belt around her waist was a golden rope set with red jasper and over her mantle she wore a gold choker alternating rubies and pearls.

“Your mood has turned,” he noted. “Are you that afraid of her god?”

He did not for certain Abuela had a contract, but had always assumed. It was either that or she was half-ghost, able to appear and disappear at will. Fortuna glared at him.

“I fear nothing,” his goddess insisted. “She is discordant, Tristan. It is… imagine the worst sound you know, made into a song.”

“Discordant,” the thief repeated. “As opposed to ‘harmonious’?”

The word she used to mean becoming a Saint. Fortuna looked away without answering, which was as good as a confirmation. What was the opposite of sainthood, then? Maybe having a soul so hostile to divinity it hurt gods to be in its presence. Tristan itched to know what a heresiarch was, but it seemed like the kind of question that was dangerous to ask. He would have to be careful, gauge the dangers and put a scholar in his debt.

“I am starting to look forward to Scholomance,” Tristan mused. “It seems a place full of opportunities.”

And enemies, but of where was that not true? The thief’s stomach gurgled ominously. Ah, the side-effects of the shellfish toxin Abuela had warned him about. Tristan tried to move his hands and got some of his fingers to twitch.

Now he would get to find out which came first: working limbs or the runs.

—

Breakfast on the Fair Vistas was odd.

The galleon was the largest ship Tristan had ever been on, but Captain Krac – don’t try to joke, the first mate had warned them, she’s heard them all and she’s got a temper – had arranged matters so they got to eat between sailors’ shifts. The four of them were usually alone in the common room, a strange feeling in a ship that felt crowded even when running on a skeleton crew.

The morning cook was an old Sacromontan bastard missing an eye and most of his teeth, which he’d had replaced with obviously fake silver. He and Tristan had taken to each other instantly, smelling the rat on the other, and as a consequence the old man simply cocked an eyebrow instead of asking about his black eye or… nightly affliction. Tristan trudged out with his plate and mug, nodding his thanks, only to immediately be ambushed by his own crew.

“Did you somehow lose a fight with your bedframe?” Maryam asked, lips twitching.

He glared halfheartedly at the Triglau. Having shed any pretense of disguise, like Song the pale-skinned woman was now entirely in Watch blacks. A collared tunic with silvered buttons that went down past her knees, black breeches tucked into tall leather boots. With a dark headband to keep back her bangs, she looked very much like the blackcloak she’d been since they first met.

She also sounded amused, because Tristan was cursed to be surrounded by women who took delight in his pain. He sometimes suspected he might have crossed some great god of femininity in a previous spin of the Circle.

“I was visited last night,” the thief grunted back, setting down his plate.

He claimed the empty spot by Song, facing Maryam and Tredegar – who only offered him a nod, tearing into her meal with polite gusto. To his continuing bemusement, the noblewoman seemed to enjoy ship fare. More than him anyway: he was used to the fish and cheese, but he could have done without the ale. Unfortunately Captain Krac had rationed drinking water until the next rain, so he was left to drink that fermented swill regardless of preference.

“By the runs, I hear,” Song drawled. “Apparently the crew though you were getting attacked.”

Song wore much the same as Maryam, though unlike the Triglau she wore the accompanying black cloak even when inside. By the looks of it she’d freshly remade that long braid going down her back.

“Was it the dipped biscuits?” Tredegar asked, sounding sympathetic. “I saw some the crew offering you some, but that is risky business. My mother always said you should never eat shipboard food you haven’t seen the cook nibble at.”

In truth that seemed rather sound advice, like most of the advice Angharad Tredegar attributed to her mother. Some kind of famous Malani explorer, he’d been told, but ‘Sizani Maraire’ rang no bell. A month ago he would have thought Tredegar’s concern a false one, perhaps a verbal knife being twisted, but Tristan had learned better. The noblewoman was painfully earnest, which somehow made this worse.

It was a little early for a man to be besieged on all sides in such a manner but Tristan had long known that life was full of injustices.

“I did get attacked,” Tristan said, gathering together the last shreds of his pride. “Abuela came in the night, beat and poisoned me then left behind some crumbs of information.”

Angharad Tredegar straightened on the bench, eyes hardening.

“We are guests on this ship, under the protection of the Watch,” she said. “To attack you is-”

“I appreciate the concern,” Tristan cut in, surprised to realize he mostly meant it, “but it has always been this way with her. She is a hard teacher but not unfair.”

“Ah, a lesson,” the dark-skinned woman nodded. “I understand.”

The thief squinted at her. Usually people disbelieved him when he mentioned Abuela’s methods – one Orthodoxy priest had thought she was a pimp beating him, something Fortuna hadn’t let go for months – so he had to admit some mild concern over Tredegar’s absence of concern. Mind you, her parents had tried to feed the Pereduri to a monster once a year since she was eight so her standards might be skewed at tad.

Maryam leaned across the table, frowning at him, and slowly came to rest a finger on the bridge of his nose. He went cross-eyed trying to look at what she was doing until she withdrew her finger.

“You’re not emanating any different in the aether,” she said. “You shouldn’t be cursed. That I can tell, at least – it isn’t my specialty. And while I’d like to make fun of you for getting beaten up by yet another crone, I’m rather stuck on the detail that this Abuela of yours apparently showed up on our ship in the middle of the sea.”

Tristan shrugged.

“It’s Abuela,” he said.

“That’s not an explanation,” Maryam informed him.

“Give it a few years,” Tristan honestly replied, “and it will be.”

It had been something of a shock as a boy to realize that the sweet old lady that’d obviouslygotten lost in the Murk and needed to be warned off the Menor Mano boys – out to rob her and sell her off to a Trench crew – had never been in any danger at all. She had, if anything, been the danger.

Song cleared her throat.

“You mentioned information?” she asked.

This isn’t over, Maryam mouthed to him from across the table. Chwop billy tang, the thief mouthed back, nonsense just legible enough she’d think she had failed to read his lips right. Song was cocking an eyebrow at him by the time he looked to her again.

“Apparently there is a price on my head,” he said. “Some people might be after me at Scholomance.”

A pause.

“As a prisoner,” he clarified. “Not a corpse.”

“Already?” Maryam mused, chewing her cheese. “That’s probably some sort of record, Tristan. Our cabal is already breaking fresh grounds.”

“Take this seriously, Maryam,” Song said, tone gone flat.

Tredegar looked unmoved at the thought of further enemies but Song was openly irritated. Tristan and the Tianxi did not get along particularly well – that the noble on their crew would be easier to deal with than the republican had been a most unwelcome surprise – though he’d concede her dislike did not color how she treated him. She was a professional, which he could respect.

“Difficulties mount,” Song sighed. “Tristan, kindly investigate the matter after we dock so that we might decide how it would best be resolved.”

“That was already my intention,” Tristan shrugged.

Best to go to his would-be abductors before they went to him, as choosing the grounds was a lot likelier not to end in him with shackled in some ship’s belly.

“I’ve also been advised to take whatever plaques are on hand instead of waiting for new ones to be forged,” he said. “Though I’m not sure what it means.”

Maryam’s face gave no hint as to her thoughts and Tredegar was politely attentive, which had yet to stop being… unsettling. It was Song who had answers.

“When our cabal is registered on the school rolls, we will be granted funding and identification plaques to access it,” she said. “I only know so much of Scholomance, so I cannot tell you more.”

Tristan hummed.

“How do you know so much of Scholomance, anyway?” he asked. “Maryam does not seem to.”

He flicked a glance at the pale-skinned woman, who shrugged.

“I don’t,” she said. “The Navigator that recommended me hasn’t been this far south in years and before I was offered a candidature I lived on one of the guild’s island outposts. Not the sort of place where juicy gossip gets traded.”

Maryam was not, of course, a member of the Akelarre Guild. Like Song she was a member of the rank-and-file of the Garrison, though Maryam had been recruited by a Navigator and only ever stayed in outposts under the authority of the Akelarre Guild. They had clearly been grooming her for the covenant before offering her the shortcut of joining by graduating from Scholomance.

“Much like all of you, I have a connection in the Watch,” Song admitted. “My great-aunt’s widower, a member of the Academy. He is the one who recommended me.”

“And he’s got something to do with Scholomance?” Tristan pressed.

“He is of sufficient rank to know some things, but only so much. The school is some kind of private fiefdom within the Watch,” the Tianxi said.

“My uncle mentioned meeting me in Scholomance as soon as he can,” Tredegar said. “I could ask him about this.”

Ah, yes, the famous Uncle Osian. He of the apparently unlimited funds and jolly bribery. Tristan thought it more than passing odd the Pereduri officer would be willing to sink a fortune in helping a niece he’d apparently only met twice, but that might be the orphan in him talking.

“If we’re to register it will probably be the same day we dock,” Tristan said. “Unless he’s already there and waiting for you we’ll have to make the decision blind.”

Tredegar acknowledged the reply with a nod.

“It would be foolish to dismiss a warning from a high-ranking member of the Masks,” Song noted. “Let us heed it if we can.”

“We could ask Ferranda and the others if they know anything,” Maryam suggested. “They should be getting there about a week before we do.”

Mostly bad luck on their part, that. While Lady Ferranda Villazur had accepted the offer of being recommended for Scholomance by the Academy, she’d been told that the best way to have the formalities finished in time was passing through the Rookery. As a consequence, while Ferranda and the two she intended to make a cabal with – Shalini Goel and Lord Zenzele Duma – had departed on the Bluebell days ahead of the Fair Vistas’ expected arrival, the four of them should have arrived at Scholomance long before the others did.

Only the Fair Vistas had been a week and a half late, a third of her crew missing when she docked at Three Pines. They’d run into a Gloam storm, of all the bad luck. If they’d not had a skilled Navigator with them the storm would have likely taken every soul on board. There was a reason Tristan and the others had all gotten individual cabins instead of being made to share.

“I approve of reaching out in principle,” Song said, “but it might be difficult to find them in practice. The number of students attending should be slightly above four hundred.”

Tristan let out a low whistle.

“That is a lot of dangerous people,” he said.

Maybe some of those who’d got in through connections would be softer, but anyone making cut for Scholomance was bound to have an edge to them.

“The school itself might be as dangerous as the competition,” the Tianxi said. “We must be very careful when we arrive. Already our… situations come with enemies, we cannot afford to make fresh ones.”

Tredegar cleared her throat, which earned her a fondly raised eyebrow from Song.

“Yes?”

“Then we should remember that Tupoc will have had weeks there to dragoon some followers,” she said. “He will no longer be alone.”

Tupoc Xical had left a day before the Bluebell, that was true. The Aztlan had gotten in good with a cabal during the battle for Cantica and one of the members had insisted that Tupoc get to sail with them.

“They’re supposed to go through the Rookery as well,” Tristan pointed out. “He might get there at the same time as Ferranda’s lot, but not much earlier. Certainly not weeks.”

Tredegar shook her head. To his surprise, so did Maryam.

“Did you not have a look at their ship’s hull?” the Pereduri asked.

Tristan shook his head. He had stayed away from the docks in Three Pines, wary of attracting the attention of the cabal before it departed. If one of them was a Mask, they might get curious about the odd details surrounding Cozme’s death.

“It was metal,” Song provided. “I have seen others like it before, though rarely and only flying Watch flags.”

“They are tomic ships,” Tredegar said. “That is to say, the hull is made of a tomic alloy. You might know such ships better by the name of ‘skimmers’.”

The thief blinked. He had heard that name before.

“As in the magic ships that never lose their way and can fly?” he skeptically said.

“They cannot actually fly,” the noblewoman said, sounding faintly disappointed. “But the metal is an Antediluvian alloy with strange properties that cut through Gloam and aether. They ‘skim’ on the surface, thus the name.”

“That’s only mostly true,” Maryam noted.

She got a hard look from Tredegar at the phrasing for that, innocently smiling back. Those two were taking to each other worse than he and Song, and he was not even sure he could entirely blame the noblewoman for it. When she angered Maryam, it was usually by accident.

Maryam was most definitely doing it on purpose.

“You can have a tomic ship that’s not a skimmer,” the blue-eyed woman continued. “Most aren’t. There are some that don’t even make the entire hull with alloy, just the keel. It’s why you can get rich raiding First Empire ruins and finding no artefacts: even a door frame made of tomic alloy will be worth a fortune if you strip it out and sell it.”

Interesting he had never heard of that around the docks, but then that kind of trade would have been a little rich for his blood.

“The ship in port was one of those?” Tristan asked.

Maryam nodded.

“It just had the metal hull,” she said. “Mind you, it’s still quicker than anything made out of wood.”

“Except Malani ironwood,” Tredegar mildly added.

She sounded rather satisfied she could correct Maryam in turn. The Triglau rolled her eyes.

“Except the magic wood Malani sell to no one, yes,” Maryam agreed. “For a ship to be a skimmer, however, it needs not only a tomic hull but an aetheric engine. That is much rarer, and even though they surpass everything else in service no one makes skimmers anymore.”

“Are the engines truly that difficult to make?” Song asked, sounding surprised.

How Tianxi of her, Tristan thought amusedly. Like it was no trouble to make even shoddy copies of Antediluvian wonders. Half the Six were on top of the infanzon pecking order mostly because they’d got their hand on some First Empire treasure and could work it well enough.

“I can only guess, but I would say it’s about coin,” Maryam said. “The aetheric engines we can make are nowhere as good as those inherited from the First or even Second Empire, so the largest ships we can make are still smaller than caravels.”

Tristan was no sailor, but he had worked around the Quay long enough to learn a thing or two about trade ships. Caravels were known to be sleek, quick and needed only a small crew but they were a rare sight in the Trebian Sea because a caravel also could not carry much cargo. Hulks, carracks and galleons were a lot more profitable to run unless your goods were small and needed to be moved quickly. Caravels were mostly Malani and Ramayan ships, meant for exploration across dark and distant seas.

“So the skimmers we can make are expensive, too small for war and too expensive risk on exploration,” Tristan summed up.

“They also need a dedicated shipyard on special grounds and the materials for the engine are almost as rare and expensive as tomic alloys,” Maryam said. “The great powers probably can afford to build some skimmers, but for what? The old ones keep well, so most nations have legacy ships still in service that make anything they could build look like children’s toys.”

“The Republics might buy them,” Song noted. “Most of the fleet from the times of the Kingdom of Cathay has been sunk or stolen.”

“No one will sell the Republics ships,” Tredegar said, not unkindly. “Tianxi are already very quarrelsome at sea, no other power would want to strengthen their position.”

Tristan choked.

That was more than slightly amusing coming from a Pereduri, of all things. The Kingdom of Malan was infamous not only for producing more pirates than all the other great powers put together but also for its tendency to anchor war fleets just out of bombardment distance of whatever small nation they wanted to establish trade with. It was an old sailor’s joke that any land discovered by the High Queen’s ships would soon have to take either her gold or her lead.

“Tianxia has been involved in many quarrels at sea, I am sure,” Song calmly replied, a delicate rebuke. “Regardless we have strayed from our original conversation. I take it your point is that on such a ship Tupoc will arrive long ahead of us, or Ferranda’s crew for that matter?”

Tredegar nodded.

“He will make a cabal, or take one,” the Pereduri said. “We should be prepared to face him.”

“He’s a Stripe, so the only one of us who should share classes with him is Song,” Tristan said.

The Tianxi shook her head.

“Only about half the lessons will be handled by our covenants,” she said. “There will be general classes as well, where we might run into him.”

Which meant they would, because Tupoc would not be able to resist poking at his old friends from the Dominion.

“I’m told we’re not allowed to kill other Scholomance students,” Tristan said. “But also that not much short of that is disallowed.”

Tredegar perked up, gaze turning to Song.

“If I cut all his limbs off, do you think they would grow back?”

The thief quietly swallowed, mouth gone dry. The tone was hopeful, like a little boy who thought he might get lamb for supper. Like she was not casually speaking of chopping off a man’s arms and legs. Gods, every time he thought he was getting used to her.

“Perhaps we might try diplomacy first,” Song mildly replied. “Either way, unlike Ferranda’s crew he is best avoided if we can. I expect he will find his fellow students have much less patience for his antics than circumstance forced us to keep back on the Dominion.”

Tristan hummed.

“We are going around in circles,” he said. “There’s no point in making a plan if we do not know the lay of the land we’re headed into.”

“That is… not untrue,” Song reluctantly conceded.

“It will not be too late to decide once we get to Scholomance,” Tredegar said.

She rose from the bench, picking up the plate she had emptied before anyone else at the table.

“I was promised a spar by one of the officers I do not want to be late for,” she informed them. “If you will forgive me, I must take my leave.”

“I might as well accompany you,” Song said. “I finished the book Captain Krac lent me, I should return it before asking for another.”

He and Maryam waved them off, their own meals still unfinished. After they had left to return their plates to the cook, leaving the two of them alone, he cocked an eyebrow at his friend.

“You know much of skimmers,” he leadingly said.

“A Navigator is needed to run them properly,” Maryam replied, a little too casually. “Preferably a Tinker from the aether branch as well, but always an Akelarre guildsman.”

He said nothing, only biting into his salted fish.

“And I might have a personal interest in them,” she admitted.

The grey-eyed thief cocked his head to the side.

“May I ask why?”

Maryam considered him a long moment, then sighed.

“There’s somewhere I need to go,” she said. “And it is, I think, the only kind of ship that could get me there.”

“This place of yours – dangerous?” he idly asked.

“Very.”

“Secret?”

“There are no maps in existence.”

“And, I assume, forbidden?”

“By both gods and men,” she agreed.

“Sounds,” Tristan Abrascal mused, “like an interesting place to visit, one of these days.”

Blue eyes on grey. A moment passed, then her shoulders loosened.

“Maybe I could be talked into bringing you along,” Maryam Khaimov smiled.