He’d never liked the Rookery.

It was a purely personal dislike, Captain Osian Tredegar would admit if pressed. He had spent half a year down in the Lanes after enlisting, becoming fit for deployment, and though that had been a foul time it was also long enough ago he hardly remembered. His antipathy nowadays came from the fact that since he’d been inducted into the Umuthi Society he had only ever returned to the Rookery for a fresh squabble over funds with Conclave bureaucrats.

The worst part was, of course, that these squabbles were largely meaningless. The Conclave’s army of clerks and bookkeepers could not actually make any decision, only pass recommendations to the Conclave itself. Which would then proceed to make no decision at all, because it did not directly allocate funding to the works of the Clockwork Cathedral whose continued funding Osian was sent to argue for. The Conclave, in practice, did not actually decide much of anything.

At the founding of the Watch the chamber had been small enough to be functional but over the years the assembly had simply become so large it was not practical for it to decide on anything but the broadest strokes of policy. Execution of those policies was then passed on to committees who ended up wielding the power the Conclave had invested in them with… varying degrees of oversight.

There was some truth to the complaints from the captain-generals that some Garrison regions were essentially rival free companies funded by Conclave coin.

But fair or not it was committees that ran the Watch, and it was such a committee that had ordered Osian Tredegar to sit in a cold damp hall and wait for his name to be called. There had been ten of them out here when he’d arrived, but one by one the other rooks had gone into the small room tucked away in a forgotten corner of the Old Chantry.

And one by one they had left, until there remained only him and the monster.

She looked like a frail old woman but Osian knew better. Fenhua had sent him word last night, warned him that he was looking not as some retired cloak but fucking Nerei Name-Eater. The worst part was that he would never have guessed if he’d not been warned. Even now he almost doubted himself, looking at how she seemed to ache from the wet cold and shiver in her shawl.

There were some who said that creature was older than the Republics, that she’d fought in the last assault on Pandemonium.  Nerei glanced at him, as if sniffing out his thoughts, and offered a warm toothless smile. Ancestors, but she looked like someone’s favorite grandmother.

“I’m sure it will be soon, dear,” the Name-Eater assured him in a faint Sacromonte accent. “There is no need to be so tense, I am certain your niece will be fine.”

Osian stiffened, for he had never spoken a word to Nerei and he’d certainly never said anything about Angie around that monster. His hand habitually drifted to where his pistol would be, had he not been ordered to leave it behind at the Old Chantry’s gates.

“Oh, no need for that,” Nerei chided him. “Such a lovely girl, your Angharad. I’m sure she will be a darling friend to my Tristan. And a mirror-dancer, how precious! They rarely leave Peredur nowadays.”

“I am not without friends,” Osian coldly replied.

His work on the Isibankwa had put him firmly on the good side of his superiors. They had already done him favors, but he should be able to squeeze out a few more.

“Or debts, of late,” Nerei said, tapping her wrinkled chin. “That was most amusing to hear. To think it took the Wednesday Council itself to curb your enthusiasm!”

Osian grit his teeth. The ruling council of the Umuthi Society had not officially spoken with him at all, Professor Akia had sat him down in private so there would be no mark on his record, but the Name-Eater was a Mask and that breed always made a point of rubbing your secrets in your face when they could. Not that he would let himself-

The door opened, the same middle-aged watchman as always leaning through.

“Captain Osian, Officer Nerei,” he called out. “The committee will see you now.”

Osian bit down on his words, trying to smooth the anger off his face.

“Come, dear,” Nerei warmly said. “Let us find out what it is the Obscure Committee has to say.”

Breathing out, Osian Tredegar forced himself to calm down. The monster had just been toying with him the way a cat would with a mouse. She had no true interest in Angharad, he told himself as he followed behind the thing wearing the form of a little old woman. He must keep his mind on the Obscure Committee waiting ahead. Not that it was truly called that, at least on paper.

Its formal name on the rolls was ‘Lesser Committee for the Trebian Northwest’, the kind of name that got made fun of at parties when officers mocked Conclave bureaucracy over cups of wine. It was an oft forgotten detail, however, that the ruins of Scholomance lay in the northwest of the Trebian Sea. Though a ‘lesser’ committee would naturally not have authority over the greater committee overseeing the same region, its existence as an independent entity meant it was not subject to that greater committee’s authority either.

In practice, that meant Scholomance and all matters connected to it had been made the private fiefdom of the four people Osian found waiting inside the small, cramped room. That alone would have been worth wariness but altogether more dangerous was that this authority had apparently been granted to them by a sealed vote of the Conclave, meaning the matter was kept secret.

The Obscure Committee was called that because more than nine tenths of the Watch would have absolutely no idea it existed even though it now held great power and influence.

There were four high desks inside the room, covered with stacks of paper and inkwells, and the four members of the committee sat behind them. The watchman from earlier closed the door, leaning back against it, and Nerei trudged forward to stand before the desks. Osian followed, moving to her right but putting enough space between them he would have been able to draw and fire his pistol in time.

If he still had it.

The gesture did not escape the attention of the leftmost sitter, who raised an eyebrow at him. Brigadier Anju Laghari was a middle-aged woman of plain looks, her wavy brown hair going down to her neck. She was built like a barn door, broad-shouldered and muscled enough to wrestle a bull, and by the looks of the scar around her neck someone had once tried to hang her. Most importantly Anju Laghari was an Academian, a Stripe.

The Academy was the largest of the seven covenants, about as large as all the others put together, so its claiming one of the committee seats had never been in doubt. There was another edge to that blade, however: competition within Academy ranks for the appointment would have been brutal. That meant Brigadier Laghari was as much a political creature as a military one, for all that she looked like she should be leading some charge in the Bleaklands instead of sitting at a table.

And by the disgusted look she sent the monster at Osian’s side, she was no fonder of the creature than he.

“Officer Nerei,” Brigadier Laghari said, her voice sounding like she gargled rocks, “this is revolting. You look like someone’s grandmother.”

Nerei smiled.

“Where lies the trouble, dear?”

The brigadier shivered.

“I saw you eat a man’s entrails with my own eyes, back in seventy-three,” Laghari flatly replied. “Head right in the belly, like a pig with a trough. Put on a shape that I won’t want to shoot.”

The old creature cocked her head to the side, noticeably not moving to obey. Osian had no idea if by right she should, and neither would most in the room: ‘officer’ was the placeholder rank that the Krypteia used when they were not assigned to a duty and thus not forced to reveal their actual rank to the watchmen around them. Anju Laghari might be a sitter on the Obscure Committee, but if Nerei was of higher rank she would not actually need to obey her.

Only one person in the room was likely to know, and all eyes went to him.

At the rightmost desk sat Lord Asher of the Krypteia. He looked like a handsome man in his fifties, his short salt and pepper beard lending him a distinguished air. His clothes were perfectly tailored, their buttons gold, and if not for the polished cane in his hand Osian would have never guessed he had a limp. Lord Asher also wore spectacles, which he never took off because no matter how well a devil took care of the shell they wore the eyes tended to look a little off after a century.

Osian made sure not to look at the rings on his hand or the charming smile on his face. There was no telling if the rumors that Lord Asher was a founding member of the Krypteia were true, but there were records of the man going back centuries and when devils got that old they grew warped. The young ones, fresh out of the forges in Pandemonium, they just wanted tainted aether of any kind. The old ones who annealed grew discerning and addicted to particularities, specific tastes.

First love, fear of water, paternal pride – any of the endless corners of mankind’s soul. No one knew what Lord Asher was addicted to, but most figured it was secrets. He had certainly been in the Krypteia long enough to get his hands on a trove fit to topple an empire. As for the devil’s own rank, well, who knew? The Masks never gave that kind of information forced, and even then sometimes lied.

“Let us be courteous, Nerei,” Lord Asher warmly smiled. “Change for the brigadier.”

The old woman laughed, and after a heartbeat she fluttered. There was no other word for it, as if she had for an instant become made of a hundred thousand slices of paper moving with the wind. When the blur passed the old Sacromontan woman was instead a small Someshwari boy clutching at his too-large clothes, sending a gap-toothed grin up at the Stripe. He could not have been older than five.

Anju Laghari went red with rage, fumbling for a pistol under her desk.

“Change right now,” she hissed.

“D’you want to shoot me now, Brigadier?” Nerei asked.

The cutesy tone, just like a little boy’s, made Osian’s skin crawl. It was like looking at a crocodile wearing a person’s face.

“Asher,” the brigadier snarled, turning to the devil, “this is a threat. She can’t just wear my grandson’s face and-”

“Perhaps,” Lord Asher politely smiled, “next time you will remember to be more careful with your phrasing, Anju. Always a lesson worth learning, no matter one’s age.”

The brigadier was livid and likely to press the matter, Osian judged, but it would not get to that. The sitter next to her cleared her throat. The sound was irritated.

“This is not the Academy, Laghari,” Captain Isoke Falade said. “Your whims are not orders, and we have wasted enough time indulging your sensibilities.”

The committee seat the Guildhouse had got its hands on had been filled by an Akelarre rather than a Skiritai, which was no surprise. The Militants had well-earned their reputation for general awfulness at Watch politics, in part because of the high attrition rate in even in their most senior officer ranks. The Navigators, on the other hand, were arguably the oldest of the seven covenants and they were everywhere.

They always had favors to call on, and they were more than willing to cover for the Skiritai if they got to speak for both of the Guildhouse’s guilds in exchange.

Their representative on the committee was Captain Isoke Falade, a seemingly frail old woman in her seventies wearing humble grey robes.  Her head was nearly shaved and she looked half-blind, pale cataracts in both her eyes, but she was always smiling and cocking her head to the side as if she could hear things no one else did. Given that she was rumored to be one of the most skilled signifiers alive, that was entirely possible.

Despite the seemingly low rank, Isoke Falade had in her time served as Captain-General to the infamous Dawnchasers and survived a decade attached to the court of the High Queen. Long before Rhiannon’s time, so Osian’s sister never knew her, but no one survived at the feet of the Queen Perpetual without learning how to get their hands dirty. A good thing, that. Angharad was headed for the Skiritai Guild, so Captain Falade would be on his side for the coming review.

That and he had bribed her personally, as well as the Skiritai who’d recommended his niece. It always paid to be sure, usually in gold.

Osian’s eyes moved to his other ally in the room, seated besides the signifier. Professor Fenhua He was Peiling Society, not Umuthi like him, but the College always stuck together against outsiders – especially around budget time. Fenhua was a tall and willowy beauty, their long dark hair flowing behind their back as they offered a sunny smile. Their robes were pristine silk in the traditional Jigong fashion, with billowing sleeves and discreet touches of color, every part of them meticulously neat.

Fenhua He’s specialty was epistemological foundationals – attempting to establish objective truths about the aether – and that was as much of an opposite from Osian’s work in the Clockwork Cathedral as one could find but they got on well regardless. Sharing a war room during the hunt for the Hull Breaker had left them with some ties of friendship, at it had most who took part in those months of horror. Fenhua caught his eye and winked, forcing Osian to swallow a grin.

Yeah, Fenhua had his back.

“If Officer Nerei causes such unseemly emotion in our colleague, let us finish our business with her as quickly as possible,” the professor said. “Shall we move to review the candidature of Tristan Abrascal, Scholomance candidate under Krypteia sponsorship?”

Osian cleared his throat.

“Captain Osian,” Lord Asher acknowledged him. “You have a question?”

“Sir,” Osian nodded. “May I ask why I am to be in the room when this Tristan Abrascal is to be reviewed?”

“He and your niece will be joining the same Scholomance cabal, should the reviews end positively,” the devil amiably said. “It was judged unnecessary for the questionings to be kept separate.”

Osian’s lips thinned, but he nodded. Though he misliked the possibility of some Sacromonte rat dragging down Angie with him, he would gain nothing by arguing a decision that would have required a majority vote to pass.

“If that is all, let us proceed,” Captain Falade sleepily said. “We have all read the reports from Lieutenant Wen and Sergeant Mandisa as well as the transcripts from the observers manning the Panopticon Mirrors. The boy effectively led the crew that collapsed the Red Eye’s prison and the mountain with it, though it was not his hand that did the actual deed..”

A heartbeat of silence, then the assessments began.

“He should be shot,” Brigadier Laghari plainly said. “He buried two Watch fortresses, led to the deaths of dozen of our rooks and broke a seal we have no real replacement for. A bullet to the brains is the least of what he deserves.”

Lord Asher smiled.

“There we must disagree,” he said. “As far as I am concerned, Tristan Abrascal is the only individual to have ever passed the Trial of Ruins – if I could, I would amend every preceding file on record as having retroactively failed.”

“Fucking sneaks,” Brigadier Laghari sneered. “You always-”

“You are boring me, Anju,” Professor Fenhua sighed. “All acts undertaken in the trials that do not break the rules qualify for amnesty, as you well know. Stop wasting our time on a tantrum.”

They leaned forward after, eyeing Nerei curiously.

“You have it in your written recommendation that your little maskling was likely involved with forbidden experiments classified under the name ‘Theogony’,” Fenhua said. “Elaborate. I would know if he is a potential danger to fellow students.”

Osian hid his amusement. A transparent fishing attempt, not that they were likely to be called on it. Nerei beamed up at Lord Asher, looking for permission. The monster looked like a child playing in their parents’ clothes, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Spirits but it was obscene.

Lord Asher nodded.

“House Cerdan ran a red shop out in the Murk,” Nerei brightly said, “contracting with the local co-caw-coteries for a supply of fresh bodies and running experiments that were in breach of the Iscariot Accords.”

The shape of the five-year old preened, as if the child was proud of having said all those difficult words without tripping.

“To what aim?” Professor Fenhua asked.

It was not Nerei that answered, this time.

“We are yet uncertain,” Lord Asher said, sounding ever so slightly irritated. “Like every other fool out there they tried to make a stable Saint, but they also attempted some exotic contract accommodations.”

He paused, sending the Tianxi a knowing look through his spectacles.

“They used forceful aether taint as a base for their research,” the Mask noted. “Nothing you would be interested in.”

The devil spoke true, all trace of interest leaving Fenhua’s eyes as Osian swallowed bile. Forceful aether taint was a pretty way of saying torture, most of the time. All humans not severed from the Glare tainted the aether around them by their very existence but most of those emanations were so faint they could barely be proved to exist, much less studied. Sharp emotions and sensations were a way to make that taint stronger, and nothing was easier to inflict than pain.

“We had’em, but they closed their lair and ran away,” Nerei pouted. “The Cerdan set up shop on some secret island, but we can’t seem to find their clubhouse!”

“They likely have help from one of the Six,” Lord Asher said. “We are pursuing the matter.”

“Interesting, but ultimately irrelevant,” Captain Falade said. “Our purpose is to ascertain whether or not the boy’s place in Scholomance should be rescinded. Despite Brigader Laghari’s bluster, I see no valid reason for that to be the case.”

“Neither do I,” Professor Fenhua said. “Asher, shall we assume your vote?”

“Never,” the devil seriously said. “I also vote against rescinding.”

Brigadier Laghari grunted in displeasure but argued no further after casting her vote for. She could tell a losing battle when she was fighting one.

“You’ll all be singing a different song in a few years when we are putting down the Red Eye for the eighteenth time and we can’t send anyone to a firing squad to answer for the costs and casualties,” she warned.

Osian let out a noise of interest, catching their attention.

“I heard the Dominion was sitting atop an old god, but I thought it dead from the disaster with the mountain. It survived to fragment?” he asked.

“Our signifiers have ascertained we are dealing with at least a dozen shards capable of agency,” Captain Falade said. “Pandemonium’s last surprise killed the central intellect; at a guess the fragments will be spending the next twenty years cannibalizing each other in an attempt to reform it.”

“The devils laid a skillful trap,” Professor Fenhua noted, then their tone turned teasing. “Why, it might even have been the work of-”

There was a creaking sound, the wood of Lord Asher’s cane giving under his grip.

“-the Office of Opposition.”

Those devils that served as Hell’s answer to the Krypteia, Osian recalled, though it seemed from Asher’s smiling anger that there might be old history there he knew not.

“It was not,” the old devil said, tone clipped.

“If you say so,” Professor Fenhua said, smiling like someone who had just scored a point.

“No matter whose work it was, it failed to kill the god,” Brigadier Laghari dismissed. “Now every shard is going to become patron to a different tribe and that entire island is going to become a clusterfuck of bloodletting for a decade. A clusterfuck we will need to wade into, I’ll remind you, because reports made it clear that the Red Eye made it down to the seabed. We can’t let that thing reform and grow any further.”

“Aw,” Nerei grinned, “is nani angry because her friend Commander Artal is going to have to stay and do his job instead of getting a nice cushy promotion?”

She made a soulful look with the small boy’s doe eyes.

“That’s neshpotism, gramma,” Nerei solemnly said, wagging her finger. “Very bad.”

Brigadier Laghari’s face reddened and the flash of rage in her eyes was entirely unfeigned.

The Academy’s prominence and occasional bouts of arrogance made it unspoken tradition for the other covenants to join hands and knock them down a peg whenever the occasion arose, but not even that was enough for Osian to find himself rooting for the Name-Eater. He was not alone in this.

“Disrupting the proceedings is reason enough to be barred from the room,” Captain Falade said. “I will not warn you again, Officer Nerei.”

The monster nodded, pouting as she clutched her too-large clothes to her scrawny chest. Professor Fenhua cleared their throat.

“Let us proceed onward, then.”

“Which brings us to your niece, Captain Osian,” Lord Asher said. “She makes an interesting case.”

Osian straightened his back. Interesting was never a word pleasant to hear coming from a Mask’s mouth.

“I have not read the full reports,” he carefully said, “but what I got my hands on seems a glowing recommendation.”

“If you try to rob my colleagues out of an eighteen-year-old mirror-dancer, Asher, there is going be a veritable shitshow to deal with,” Captain Falade warned him. “After that report from the cabal in Cantica there was already a fit about the Stripes getting the Xical boy, we won’t get cheated twice on a single draw.”

Brigadier Laghari looked faintly smug.

“I do not doubt her value,” Lord Asher dismissed, “but I do find it concerning that her contract appears to be with a second-order entity. Peredur is full of things best left buried.”

Osian’s jaw clenched. He knew not the nature of Angie’s contract, but the whole thing reeked of Gwydion. Rhiannon had been much too taken with the triumph of winning the darling of the season to ever dig into her husband’s past, but Osian had always found him suspect. A young man from a fallen house that was barely peers suddenly becoming the flower of Pereduri society when he made his debut? No, Gwydion had been wildly suspicious even before Rhiannon’s enemies began having a rash of mysterious accidents all involving spirits.

If the man’s meddling hurt his daughter from beyond the grave, Osian was going to get his hands on the body just to feed it to stray dogs. Thankfully, he had anticipated that the Krypteia would dig and stacked the game well in advance.

“There has been no conclusive proof it’s a genuine god of the Old Night she contracted with,” Professor Fenhua mildly said. “More likely it is some ancient oracular river-god that was missed during the High Queen’s purges.”

It took effort for Osian not to do the intellectual equivalent of pretending he could not see something right in front of him when the purges were mentioned, the trained reflex still there after all those years. It was not acknowledged that such purges had ever happened, in Malan. Or that it might be in anyway unusual that the High Queen had ruled for over five centuries.

Lord Asher shrugged.

“Absence of proof is not proof of absence,” he said. “All worries could be put to rest by allowing the Krypteia to-”

“No,” Osian burst out.

All eyes went on him. He licked his lips, ignoring Nerei beaming up his way with that childish grin.

“I mean,” he said more calmly, “that as Angharad Tredegar’s personal sponsor, I do not consent to interrogation by the Krypteia.”

As if he would let the Masks anywhere near her. Knives were the least of what their interrogators had in store.

“That settles the matter, as far as I am concerned,” Captain Falade mildly said. “Professor Fenhua?”

“It is my professional opinion that Angharad Tredegar’s reported contact with the Red Eye is highly unlikely to have resulted in contamination even if she is truly contracted with a second-order entity,” the willowy beauty replied. “I have no objections to her candidature.”

With a senior signifier and Peiling professor coming down on his niece’s side, there was no one left in the room with the professional standing to argue further. Lord Asher’s brow furrowed, but the devil said nothing more.

“I have concerns as well,” Brigadier Laghari announced, drumming her fingers against the desk. “Not about the girl’s contract, but of the potential trouble that Captain Tredegar brought to our door on her behalf.”

The Pereduri did not grimace. He had been forewarned this would likely be brought up during the review.

“I am willing to answer any question, Brigadier,” he evenly replied.

The older Someshwari hummed.

“You’re a senior officer but not all that highly ranked in the Umuthi Society,” she said. “Yet you have disbursed a sum that is around-”

She glanced down at a paper, then let out low whistle.

“Well, around the budget for our entire Dominion operation for a year,” Laghari said. “Where is the coin coming from, Tredegar?”

“That seems an unnecessary intrusion,” Professor Fenhua said. “Surely there is-”

“Sustained,” Lord Asher cut in.

Captain Falade said nothing, leaving Osian to sigh.

“As some of you may know,” he said, “the Clockwork Cathedral allows its members to register inventions with them, giving all rights over the Watch in exchange for a flat portion of revenues in perpetuity.”

One in a hundredth, which could mean either a pittance or a king’s ransom depending on what was registered.

“What did you invent?” Laghari asked, sounding interested.

To say Osian had ‘invented’ the rifle would be untrue, for there were already some in the Republics and allegedly in the northern Someshwar, but he had invented the Isibankwa-pattern rifle. Which was accurate nearly a third further than the Tianxi attempts and could be made at half the price. Most importantly, the casting process required only a few tool changes from the current Watch musket workshops. That would save the order millions over the next decades, something he would not gain coin from but had earned him many an indulgence from the Wenedsday Council. Unfortunately, his rifles were not yet being made on any large scale.

The first workshop had only just been refitted last month.

“A weapon, but it is only registered and not yet in service,” Osian admitted. “I borrowed from the Watch on future revenues.”

“Huh,” Captain Falade said, sounding amused. “How far ahead?”

No one came to his defense this time, not even Fenhua. They looked as curious as the rest.

“By the Cathedral’s estimates, I have borrowed the next eighty-three years of revenue,” Osian said, coughing into his fist embarrassedly.

All four of them were veterans, so the only indication of surprise was Fenhua’s lips slightly twitching.

“Well,” Brigadier Laghari grunted, “if you were splashing that much gold around, it explains the mess in Ixta. I won’t weep over the cutters cutting each other, but I was given to understand you nearly caused a major diplomatic incident in Sacromonte.”

Osian’s jaw set mulishly.

“I only paid for retaliation on whoever was targeting my niece,” he said. “I did not give instructions to-”

“A mansion belonging to a house of the Six was torched, Tredegar,” Laghari flatly interrupted. “The coin was tracked back to one of our payhouses in the city and House Salavera lodged a formal complaint with the Conclave.”

If the infanzones wanted to play the hirelings, Osian disdainfully thought, they should not complain of being treated as such. Besides, their hands were hardly clean: after the incident, in a fit of spite the Salavera had ordered all their contacts in the Guardia to join in the hunt on Angharad. It was half the reason Osian had done more than pretend to obey when Professor Akia had told him to pull the contract and steer his niece towards Scholomance instead.

“I was not aware that we now answered to Sacromonte yiwu trash,” Professor Fenhua sneered.

“Maybe not in your libraries, but some of us live in the real Vesper,” Brigadier Laghari flatly replied. “We import more than half the food for our Trebian holdings through Sacromonte, Fenhua. We don’t poke at the Six without a good reason.”

“Our order has a long history of taking in lost souls with nowhere else to go,” Lord Asher smiled, never quite showing his teeth. “I do not believe you want this to change, Anju, so what is it that you are proposing?”

“That we don’t rub their face in the girl joining the black any more than we need to,” Brigadier Laghari said. “Let the offence die down some by sending her cabal somewhere quiet and out of sight for its first test. We can take the temperature before their second year, see if the storm has passed.”

“There is some sense in that,” Captain Falade conceded, pawing at a stack of papers and ripping out a sheet with a noise of satisfaction. “And here: the Asphodel Rectorate requested for us to find their latest cult, it seems a fitting assignment.”

Osian’s brows raised in alarm at the suggestion. Rooting out a hollow cult was supposed to be a quiet assignment? Professor Fenhua noticed his expression and let out a snort.

“Bored nobles playing cultist, not a true cult,” Fenhua assured him. “Last time we caught them they were dealing with some fertility god for party favors. There’s not much trouble to be found in Asphodel. Captain Osian.”

“An acceptable compromise,” Lord Asher mused. “Under this constraint, I vote to maintain Angharad Tredegar’s candidature for Scholomance.”

The other three agreed, one after the other and like that it was done. It would be all right, Osian told himself. He had been to the Rectorate once or twice, if barely beyond the port, and it was a faded power. A backwater past its prime, more concerned by its petty squabbles with other third-raters than its own diminished standing. As quiet as it got in Trebian Sea.

How much trouble could one really get in somewhere like the Asphodel Rectorate?

Four, Tristan counted as the blade went through Augusto Cerdan’s throat.

Though he allowed himself a moment to bask in the satisfaction of yet another Cerdan put in the ground, some precautions were in order. Clearing his throat, he leaned in to politely ask Shalini to shoot Augusto in the head twice more just to be sure. The gunslinger snorted but shot the possibly dead infanzon in the head and heart a heartbeat later. By simple hand, not using her contract, as the unnecessarily flashy spinning of her pistols proved.

Tredegar gave them a mildly disapproving look, but Tristan was unwilling to take a risk with a Red Maw contract. With reason: a heartbeat later, Augusto’s corpse began shriveling up.

It shook and warped and ate itself from the inside, until the cadaver was little more than brown leather with a massive stomach wound going through it. When it finally stopped moving, cracking open like a clay left to dry in the Glare for too long, a hush fell over their group.

“I take back the snort,” Shalini finally said. “Well done, man.”

Tristan tipped his tricorn back. It was not every day he got to arrange the desecration of an infanzon’s corpse and come off better for it. Tredegar cleared her throat, looking embarrassed. Like some slip of a girl at her first dance instead of the whirlwind of death that had casually torn through a man and coldly executed another on a technicality. The thief doubted he would ever get used to that gap.

“Yes, indeed,” Angharad said. “I had thought him dead.”

Fair be fair, she had stabbed him to death. And she was owed some courtesy for scratching another name off his list without bringing any suspicion onto him.

“I expect any of us would have been, in his place,” Tristan said. “But Lord Augusto contracted with a god of the Old Night, and these are made of sterner stuff.”

The gods that had ruled Vesper before Morn’s Arrival might have been toppled from their thrones but even their remnants were fearsome things.

“Eh,” Fortuna sniffed disdainfully, leaning on his shoulder. “We could walk that off too, I’m pretty sure. Ask the girl to shoot you too.”

The Lady of Long Odds went ignored, as was her due. By the flicker of gratitude on Tredegar’s face she seemed to believe he was being polite instead of truthful, which was mildly amusing as for once he had been entirely forthright with her.

“The hollows with Lord Augusto spoke of a hidden passage out of Cantica hidden nearby, one of them even finding it,” the thief continued. “If you give me a moment to look we should be able to leave this town behind at last.”

“That would be lovely,” Lord Zenzele croaked out.

He’d been helped out of the alley by Ferranda, who looked rather worried at the state of him. Not without reason, given his gut wound and missing eye, but Tristan gave him decent odds of surviving now. Had they been out in the wilds the Malani would have been good as a corpse, but now the Watch was here. The bleeding alone shouldn’t kill Zenzele and with a proper physician taking care of him the Malani should be able to avoid infection, the complication most likely to send him for another spin of the Circle.

It took Tristan a little under a minute to find the hidden passage out Cantica. It was nothing more than a shallow gap under the palisade, just large enough to squeeze through if you were willing to eat some dirt, but it would serve well enough. Earlier it had been concealed by a rock and an angle in the dirt – someone had raised a slight slope on the side to make it less obvious to the eye – but the fleeing slave hadn’t bothered to put those back after she messed them up going through.

After calling out his find to the others, Tristan allowed the tension in his shoulders to loosen. With the passage found there would be no talk of riding out the Watch assault in the gaol, and so no need to explain Cozme Aflor’s corpse. The thief honestly believed he would have been able to talk himself out of that grave, but it would be best never to step in it if he could.

Though the tallest among them – Zenzele and Angharad – looked somewhat queasy at the prospect of having to go through that narrow a gap, no one argued against leaving Cantica. It yet remained a risk they might get caught between the Watch sweep and some fleeing cultists, or worse some feet-dragging devils. They set up a rearguard to cover themselves and began crossing, Tristan the first through. Dragging his belly through the dirt, the thief emerged into faded yellow grass.

He made room for Ferranda Villazur, dusting himself off as he got onto his feet. There was no sign of the hollow girl from earlier, but then if she had any wits at all she’d still be running. Song had mentioned something about the Watch encircling the town, but unless the garrison in Three Pines was much larger than the supplies on the Bluebell had implied the encirclement would not be airtight. She had a shot at making it through.

Fishing his tricorn out of the bag he’d put it in for the crossing, the thief patted the worst of the dust off it and put it back on. Much better.

“You do know that hat is a decade out of fashion, yes?” Lady Ferranda amusedly said.

The infanzona looked bruised and tired, but like him the relief at escaping Cantica was lending her a second breath.

“The current fashion involves feathers, Villazur,” Tristan disdainfully replied. “If I were meant to be a bird, I would have been born one.”

The infanzona traced the Circle on her left shoulder, lips twitching.

“That’s heresy,” she informed him. “Palingenesism, to be exact. Only Someshwari cults argue the Circle can spin us into animals.”

“Well, they must have the right of it,” the thief easily said, “for how would you explain the Cerdan if not a past life as some manner of pig?”

She choked, and was still laughing when Song emerged from the gap and asked what they were speaking about.

“The heresy inherent to the porcine condition,” he told the Tianxi.

“I am impressed that you would admit to being pig-headed,” Song replied without batting an eye, “but it is hardly heresy, Tristan. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“Harsh,” Ferranda appreciated.

And now the nobility was conspiring with foreigners to take advantage of good, honest Sacromontan folk. Typical. Instead of allowing himself to be further tarred and feathered, the thief – as honest a profession as any in the City – suggested they start a makeshift camp if they were to remain out here until the Watch was finished with Cantica. There was no telling how long it would take, after all.

Song pointed out a pit meant for burning trash that he’d missed a dozen feet to their left and Ferranda volunteered to get a fire started. She recruited him as labor, seeming surprised when he admitted he knew little of how to use a flint and tinder. It wasn’t his fault, the thief thought with irritation, that his lessons about lighting fires had been strictly about arson – an exercise that usually required more elaborate tools than sharp rocks and kindling.

There was still some leftover trash in the pit, mostly animal bones and pottery shards, but luckily there were some logs left as well. It was enough for the infanzona to get a fire going while he served as a glorified windbreak for her efforts, though they might need to venture out for firewood if the flames were kept going for long.

The rest trickled in one after another, the only trouble coming with Zenzele. He needed help on both sides, Tredegar pushing him from one and Shalini dragging him up from the other. The tricky part was doing that without ripping his wounds open further, but they seemed to manage decently enough. Though the seven of them kept their weapons close, as they settled around the somewhat stinking fire they unbent some.

The battle was not finished, the shots and shouts from inside Cantica made that much clear, but their part in it was. Even if there were still devils or cultists around, they were much mor likely to be hiding than looking for a fight. Wary as they still were, the heat of the fire and the relative safety greased the wheels enough for conversation to start. Mostly about what had taken place since they parted ways.

That led to an unpleasant surprise.

“Lan ran for the south when the cultists came out of the woods,” Ferranda said. “One of them winged her with a musket shot, and though Lady Angharad tried to help her back up-”

“I was too late,” Tredegar sadly said. “The bullet caught her in the face. Death was instant.”

Tristan’s jaw clenched and he ignored Maryam’s searching gaze. Lan had not been a friend and barely a companion, there was no need for pity. He was surprised, that was all. The thief had honestly thought Lan would make it to the end, clever and careful as she was. And she almost had, but almost never counted. If she had not run, then… well, there was no telling. Perhaps the cultists would have fired at the others instead, killed Song or Ferranda.

Instead Lan had made herself the standout target and paid for it. All it took was one mistake.

“Now that we know the Watch has encircled the town, I wonder if the cultists were not fleeing blackcloaks,” Song said, looking into the flames. “They were quite intent on following us into the town, desperate almost.”

“I imagine we will be able to ask the rooks if we survive the night,” Shalini sighed, then quirked an eyebrow at them. “And what were you lot up to? You are missing two.”

“The Watch’s shelling of Cantica effectively announced the end of the Trial of Weeds, and thus any possible justification for maintaining the truce,” Zenzele Duma calmly said. “I sought justice for Ayanda against the last remaining architect of her death.”

That got everyone talking, the Malani lord withstanding the storm of worry and cheering and disapproval with remarkable aplomb for a man who must be barely staying conscious. Maryam was praised for doubling back and helping him after Tupoc made his escape – ignoring her insistence that she was avoiding the same cultists they ended up fleeing – and with that skein laid out the conversation turned to Tristan’s part.

“I ran after Cozme, but he’s quick and my leg is wounded,” the thief said. “I had to stop when I encountered two devils headed for the front gate, and after that I headed to the gaol to wait this all out. The other two caught up to me there.”

“I have not seen Cozme Aflor since he ran off,” Zenzele mildly said. “He might well be dead.”

Tristan carefully did not smile at the lordling, who was beginning to grow on him. Malani, he thought, were rather reliable when you had them in your debt. Zenzele Duma would now consider them square for the thief having seen to his wounds earlier, but that was fine by him. Those two sentences had been more than fair payment for the service.

It didn’t matter if they weren’t entirely believed, as between he and Zenzele they had enough people invested in their telling of it being true that there would be no argument. Song’s silver gaze lingered on them both, but she had no horse in this race so why bother? The sole danger came when he glimpsed doubt in Tredegar’s gaze – more directed at Zenzele than himself, interestingly enough. Whatever her suspicions, they never passed her lips.

It looked like Tristan might just have got away with it.

—

They all saw it when the ambush was sprung south of Cantica.

The night broke as a thunderous volley lit up the woods along the dirt road, screams resounding all the way to their fire. Though they tensed, several bringing up weapons, no one came their way. The shots were irregular after that, as if the blackcloaks had been freed to fire at will, but large pillars of pale light rose from the depths of the woods. Glare lanterns, and not small ones. The fighting went on for a few minutes more but not much longer than that.

It must have been a massacre.

Angharad could not much muster much sympathy for cultists and devils, though she felt a pang of worry at the thought that some slaves might have been caught up in the slaughter. Hopefully most would have stayed inside Cantica, where the watchmen would see to their safety as they swept through the town. That part of the battle must be close to done as well, for it had been some time since a shot had last sounded within the palisade. What parts of it were not aflame, anyhow.

Angharad wondered if Tristan even realized his careless gesture had turned half the town into Yong’s funeral pyre.

They had been encamped around the fire for barely more than an hour when finally they saw movement. A party that must have come through the front gate was approaching at a brisk pace. A dozen men, which had them all reaching for arms until Song made out the black cloaks. Even more reassuring, two of the watchmen seemed to be carrying a stretcher. Their company got on their feet as the blackcloaks approached nonetheless, a tall woman with the Someshwari look to her approaching ahead of the rest.

“Sergeant Hina,” she brusquely introduced herself. “We were sent to fetch you and pick up your wounded, but first I need names and a headcount.”

That much was easily provided while Zenzele was helped into the stretcher under Ferranda’s watchful eye. The sergeant, openly tired and her cheek touched with ash, squinted down at a paper in her hand that might be the Bluebell manifest and sighed.

“Were there any other survivors?” Angharad asked.

She suspected not, given how very exactly Zenzele had spoken about Cozme Aflor. The only thing that had stilled her tongue was that she could honestly think of no reason for the other noble to want the man dead.

“Tupoc Xical,” the sergeant replied. “He joined in the scrap with the Saint around the town square and made enough of an impression the cabal sent in by Commander Artal is personally debriefing him. No others were found.”

Tupoc. Of course the smug Izcalli was still alive. What, Angharad indignantly thought, was it going to take to kill that man? Zenzele’s face was cold even as he lay down on the stretcher, but he did not seem truly angry. Perhaps he had expected it, for deep down the Pereduri suspected none of them had truly thought Tupoc would die in the chaos.

Chaos was where he thrived most.

“Now I’ve a few items to cross off my list,” Sergeant Hina said. “Ferranda Villazur, your attention.”

Lady Ferranda tore her gaze away from Zenzele, looking surprised.

“You have it.”

The sergeant cleared her throat, and when she spoke it was in the voice of someone reciting something by rote.

“Given the casualty rates this year and your performance during the trials, Captain Mateo has been instructed to make you two offers,” the older Someshwari said. “One of them is going back to Sacromonte on the next ship out.”

Ferranda’s lips thinned. She had already expressed having no intention of returning to her house and responsibilities.

“And the other?”

“The captain is in town,” Sergeant Hina shrugged. “Speak to him and find out.”

The infanzona hesitated.

“So I will,” she said.

“Good,” the sergeant nodded, gaze going through them until it came to rest on Tristan. “Tristan Abrascal.”

Angharad was mildly surprised to find he had a surname, given he had not used it even when naming himself to the sergeant. How odd. There would have been fewer doubts about his skill as a physician had he demonstrated having a background fitted to such a trade,

“Possibly,” Tristan said. “Who’s asking?”

The Watch officer rolled her eyes.

“An officer was supposed to meet you in Three Pines, but sends word she cannot,” the sergeant said. “She was summoned to the Rookery and will seek you out herself afterwards.”

The Sacromontan was usually a guarded man, Angharad had found, and so it was all the more noticeable when his emotions were laid bare for half a heartbeat. Hope and fear and anger, all in one, so intertwined she could hardly tell them apart. And then it was gone in a heartbeat, all tucked away behind a pleasant smile. Curiosity itched away at Angharad. Who was it that had the grey-eyed man looking so raw – family, a lover?

“Understood,” Tristan said.

“Right,” the sergeant nodded. “We’re all finished here, then, save for those of you with that last bit of business.”

“Business,” Shalini repeated. “Whose?”

“Not for me to decide,” Sergeant Hina said.

Her gaze swept through them.

“You are all free to come into town,” the sergeant said. “Cantica has been secured and in an hour or two we’ll be sending the wounded to Three Pines in a convoy. You’ll be sent off with them.”

She then sought out Song with her eyes, Sarai after.

“That said: Song Ren, Maryam Khaimov.  Captain Mateo sends word that the trials are officially at an end and thus you are no longer bound to secrecy. Who is it you need?”

“Much appreciated, sergeant,” Song calmly replied. “We need only speak with Lady Angharad and Tristan, unless-”

“No,” Sarai – Maryam? – said, sounding mildly amused. “I have not changed my mind.”

Song sighed.

“Lady Angharad and Tristan,” she confirmed.

“I’ll leave you four to it, then,” Sergeant Hina said, offering a nod. “Least I can do, given the sheer nerve of what you did. Been the talk of the barracks for weeks, I don’t mind telling you.”

Angharad flicked a glance at Tristan, finding him unsurprised. Song had told the noblewoman she would have an offeror her at the end of the trials, had Maryam told him the same? Both Shalini and Ferranda looked intrigued that they were not being kept back, but little more than that. Exhaustion blanketed them all. As for Zenzele, one of the watchmen was making him drink from a flask and he was not paying attention to much of anything.

Goodbyes were short, given that they should only be parting ways for a short time, and when the watchmen marched away the others went with them.

It left the four of them alone around the fire, and for lack of anything better to do as the silence thickened Angharad sat back down. She and Tristan on one side, ‘Maryam’ and Song on the other. The pale-skinned of the two women glanced at the other, as if to urge her on, and Song cleared her throat.

“I would have preferred to have this conversation over warm meal and with walls around us, but the gods are fickle things,” she said. “I must begin by clarifying something: not all trial-takers are equal, no matter the year, but this one particularly so. Several among us were, in a word, ‘recommended’.”

She paused as if to let that sink in. Finally they were to learn what all that secrecy had been about, Angharad thought. Well overdue.

“To be specific, the both of you were recommended as candidates to attend Scholomance when it opens in a few months,” Song said.

The Pereduri cocked an eyebrow. She had heard of Scholomance, the ancient school of the Watch that had closed for reasons much speculated on, but failed to see why she would be interested in attending such a place even if it opened anew.

“I thought the purpose of these trials that one would be inducted directly into the ranks of the Watch,” she said. “Why would anyone choose to become a student instead?”

“Ranks is the right word,” Song told her. “That is what survival buys you: a place in the rank and file of the Watch, serving as a soldier of the Garrison or enrolling with one of the free companies. It will be years before you will be considered for an officer’s rank, much less a position of influence.”

She paused.

“Students of Scholomance, upon graduation, are ordained as members a covenant – what you will have heard called the seven Circles of the Watch. In your cases, the same covenant willing to sponsor your candidature in the first place.”

The silver-eyed woman flicked a glance at Tristan.

“Krypteia,” she said, then turned to Angharad. “And Skiritai. That is where you are headed to, should you accept.”

The grey-eyed Sacromontan did not look surprised at the news, unlike her. She very much doubted that her helpless uncle was a member of the Militants, the finest soldiers of the Watch, so he must have pulled strings somehow. Between his apparently having some strings to pull and the false Yaretzi claiming he had spent a fortune assassinating her would-be assassins, Angharad was beginning to realize she knew much less about Osian Tredegar than she had thought.

“How long?” Tristan asked. “The education, that is.”

“Five years,” Sarai – Maryam – replied. “Students will be split into classes according to covenant and taught by veterans from it.”

“There is more to it,” Angharad said. “You said you would have an offer for me, Song, but this is not it. I expect a watchman will make this offer again, formally. What is it you want from me?”

“Tredegar’s got it right,” Tristan said, cocking his head to the side. “What’s the deal, Maryam?”

The two women traded glances.

“This offer was made by a member of the Watch, Angharad,” Song finally said. “I have been one for two years now.”

Angharad stilled, so many pieces coming together. No wonder the Tianxi had been able to get her hands on a map of the Dominion of Lost Things. The Watch would not deny one of their own.

“A little longer for me,” Maryam said, “but it doesn’t matter much. What does is that the two of us are headed for Scholomance when it opens.”

Tristan let out an amused noise.

“By the ends of these trials I will be wearing a black cloak,” he said, sounding like he was quoting someone. “Clever.”

Maryam smiled back.

“I try,” she said, her false humility distinctly smug.

Though the pair was droll to watch, Angharad did not let it distract her.

“You did not need to take these trials to qualify for Scholomance,” she stated. “You got in by other means, the same way most the others students will have. So why come here at all?”

Blackcloak or not, Song had come very close to dying several times during the trials. Given that Sarai – Maryam, she reminded herself – was hardly a fighter, the risks for her must have been even starker.

“For the same reason every cheap mercenary company in Vesper has man waiting next to gaols and gallows, Tredegar,” Tristan said. “They’re looking to recruit from the desperate because no one else will come anywhere near them.”

Angharad met Song’s eyes, and she saw the shadow of a wince in them even though it never reached her face.

“No one attends Scholomance alone,” the Tianxi said. “Students are tasked with forming a cabal on the first day, which will undertake the yearly test assigned to all students of Scholomance. The vast majority of students will come from free companies or large Garrison fortresses, so they will be sent together as a ready cabal. There are fewer free candidates, and of those…”

“I am Triglau,” Maryam bluntly said. “Half of them assumed I was a candidate’s servant, the other half wanted nothing to do with an ignorant savage from the north. I signed up with Song because she’s about as badly off.”

And that was what befuddled Angharad, for Song did not seem like she should be in such straits – not with her skills, her contract or her character.

“What did you do?” she frankly asked.

“I was born,” Song replied. “I am a Ren of Jigong, Angharad. My family is disgraced beyond what words can convey – and cursed for it by five hundred thousand tongues. No Tianxi will come anywhere near me if they have a choice, and my mere presence would be a stone around the neck of anyone dealing with the Republics going forward.”

A pause.

“I am also recommended by the Academy and would be the captain of any cabal I am part of unless there is another Stripe candidate to choose from,” she added. “Between that and my family’s blackened name, there were few takers. None I would willingly take as comrade.”

“So we looked at the other conduits bringing in Scholomance candidates,” Maryam said. “Those that aren’t as pretty. The Dominion was the most brutal proving ground this year, and so the most likely to have hidden gems in it.”

“Now you’re just flattering me,” Tristan grinned at her. “Do go on.”

“We agreed on one candidate each, as four is the smallest accepted number for a cabal,” Song said, meeting Angharad’s eyes. “I picked you.”

And it would have been a lie to say there was not something of a thrill to the words, to such a skilled person deciding she was the finest pick, but Angharad was not sure she could accept. Not when one day she must leave the Watch to take her revenge.

“Song,” she swallowed. “I-”

The silver-eyed woman rose to her feet.

“Come,” Song said. “Walk with me.”

—

Tristan did not bother to watch the pair leave.

He’d not mind making a common cause with Tredegar, even knowing that on occasion he would have to step around her sensibilities, but that was not his trouble to arrange. Instead he sat there with Maryam, warming his hands with the fire.

“How big do cabals get?” he asked.

“Seven at most.”

“You should have tried to grab Zenzele and Shalini then,” he mused.

Ferranda would not be recommended, although he had some suspicions about the offer she was about to be made by this Captain Mateo. Maryam wiggled her hand in a hedging gesture.

“It was a favor done to us to be allowed to take the trials at all,” she said. “If not for putting ourselves in danger we might not have been allowed.”

The thief hummed with understanding.

“So taking too many of the spares would be pushing it,” he said.

The first reason he could think of for the Watch drawing candidates through something like the Dominion would be so they could bulk up the number of ‘free candidates’, meaning that sucking up too many people was likely to be frowned upon by their superiors. Maryam nodded. They sat there in comfortable silence for a moment, the crackling flames keeping them warm.

“Why me?” he asked.

Her brow rose.

“I thought you were joking about the flattery,” Maryam said.

He met her eyes.

“Why me?” he simply asked again.

She snorted.

“I was thinking of trying Ishaan and Shalini, at first,” she said. “Song could tell she has contract troubles, it might have been an angle to rope them in. Only when I was thinking about how to go about it, this rat walked up to me.”

His lips quirked.

“Your disguise needed work,” Tristan said.

“You had me curious,” Maryam said. “Even more after we talked near the docks. And I knew with the map in my head I could join up with the Ramayan crew at any time, so I could afford to hold back and watch until my curiosity was sated.”

“And then you stuck with us when the groups split,” he said.

She softly laughed.

“It’s easy with you, Tristan, even when you make it hard,” the blue-eyed woman said. “You have no idea how rare a thing that is for me.”

He swallowed, faintly embarrassed.

“Me as well,” he admitted. “I have not-”

It was so artless a confession he did not even have the words for it.

“It won’t be easy, even if Tredegar signs up,” Maryam suddenly said, eyes serious. “The tests in Scholomance, they make us compete against other cabals. Most of them will be larger, better trained. And the school itself…”

She grimaced.

“There’s a hundred rumors about why they closed it, back at the Rookery, but the one that everyone seems to believe is that the casualty rates were unsustainable.”

And unsustainable was no small word when spoken by the lips of the Watch, an institution so large that should all its free companies be counted it might be said to have a larger army than some great powers. Mountains of bodies, it meant. Seas.

“That will be tricky to navigate,” Tristan mused. “I wonder what makes it so deadly? They would not purposefully be wasteful, I feel.”

Maryam’s eyes brightened.

“You’ll still come?”

The rat leaned forward, gently touching her hand. The one where two fingers were missing down to the phalange, spent to save his life from his own cleverness.

“I was always going to agree, Maryam,” he gently said. “You paid upfront.”

Softly, almost hesitantly, she clasped his hand back. It had been years since someone simply held his hand like that. Had it been as long for her, he wondered? Looking at the faint wonder on her face, he thought it might have.

And that he did not want to take back his hand scared him more than anything else on this island had.

—

They did not step past the edge of the woods, but they went far enough that the light of the fire seemed on a distant shore.

Song had well weathered the Dominion of Lost Things, Angharad thought. Her collared coat was barely scuffed, her pinned hat singed at the edge but no more. She was hardly even bruised, and the most unkempt part of her was that her long braid was starting to come undone. That was a rare thing: this island, it had swallowed so many of them and even those it spat out had not come out the same.

Angharad thought of the grief in Zenzele’s eyes, of bent-back Shalini bearing Ishaan’s weight and Ferranda leaving all of the Villazur behind. None of them were the same person that had stepped onto the Bluebell, were they? Something inside them had been cut or ripped or burned, and now who they were would walk with that wound until they died.

It was not all tragedy. Tristan and Maryam had been strangers a week ago and now they were joined at the hip, eyes never straying too far from each other. They talked like they’d known each other for years, with that same rare fondness Mother had reserved for comrades she had shed blood with. And Angharad herself, she…

Looking at pale stars above, at the shivering night and the fire that felt like some faraway land, Angharad felt like a stranger still. Peredur was yet home, however forbidden to her. But she had been lost, fleeing across Vesper port by port, and she no longer felt that. She no longer woke smelling smoke, hearing screams on the wind, and though the deaths would never leave her they were no longer the fullness of her shadow.

She had changed. They all had, save for Song Ren.

Song who was the same woman she had been on the deck of the Bluebell that first evening, speaking a cryptic warning that went unheeded. Had she ever really lost her cool, even when they almost parted ways over the matter with Isabel? There had been anger, yes, but controlled. The Tianxi had been mistress of herself still.  Song had walked through lines and ruins and weeds without a mark, without a loss. Silver as untarnished as that of her eyes.

The Tianxi was looking into the woods, at whatever secrets the dark might hide, when she finally broke the silence.

“You were added late to the Bluebell’s manifest.”

“My uncle’s work,” Angharad said. “A man I thought half a stranger but might be that a great deal more.”

“It caught my attention, the shared last names,” Song admitted. “But only so much. It was when the redcloaks cordoned off an entire dock to catch you and nearly got into a shooting match with the Bluebell that I truly became curious.”

“I have an enemy,” Angharad simply said.

There was a cold look on the other woman’s face as she gazed into the dark.

“I do not have that luxury, myself,” Song Ren said. “To cram all the evils inside one man so I might pull a trigger on him and end it in a stroke. I trying to fill a pit, Angharad, that gets deeper with every breath I take. We broke a ninth of the Heavens and my brothers they think they can just-”

She breathed in, sharply, then breathed out.

“It is not an enemy I face,” Song said, voice becalmed. “But I understand what it is, to seek the Watch as a means and not an end. In that we are the same. You hesitate because to join a covenant is not something that is easily taken back.”

“I had thought to enroll for seven years,” Angharad admitted.

“Spend seven years as a footsoldier in a free company or a guard in some Garrison fortress and you will be no closer to your ambitions,” the silver-eyed woman told her. “You will be able to set some coin aside and make a few petty contacts, but nothing more. Seven-year contracts are not held in high esteem.”

“But the Circles are,” Angharad said.

“Call them covenants,” Song said. “Only outsiders call them Circles. The Watch is as a nation of its own, you will learn, with its own tongue and customs.”

“Covenants, then,” Angharad dismissed. “I might know little of the Watch’s workings, but I do know this: to join a covenant is not sworn in sevens. It is until death.”

“Or retirement,” Song said. “That is a right usually awarded only to those who have served for decades, but it can be earned earlier by great deeds. And we will have the opportunity for these. The Watch opened Scholomance again for a reason, Angharad. They are preparing for something.”

The noblewoman frowned.

“For what?”

“I do not know,” Song admitted. “But what I do know is that as a Skiritai, you would become part of a covenant between the finest killers in all of Vesper. One that will be inclined to do you favors even after retirement.”

“I cannot afford to spend five years in a school, Song,” Angharad quietly said. “To let the world pass me by. My house deserves better than that.”

“The tests the Watch will send our cabal on, they are not some schoolyard brawl,” she said. “We will be sent out in the world on genuine contracts. Able to raise our names, to make allies and earn funds.”

And it was tempting, put that way. Yet it was taking a chance. That Song was right and she would be able to earn retirement, that she would win enough to justify the spending of years, that… so many things. Perhaps too many of them. But then Angharad had been taking chances ever since she first began running towards the Bluebell, hadn’t she?

There was no perfect answer. Insisting on one had seen the Guardia kick in her door and seize the last of her possessions in Sacromonte. The temptation was still there to refuse, to look for a path that would give her everything she wanted and cost her nothing, but Angharad had learned not to trust that voice.

Last time it had left with nothing but a saber and the clothes on her back.

The fire looked so far away, she thought, but home was further away still. And she would need to cross more than water and darkness to return, for though putting on a black cloak would stay her enemy’s hand they would remain out there. Waiting, plotting.

How much was she willing to pay, to go back home? How much was she willing to leave behind?

At least this much, Angharad Tredegar learned.

“All right,” she murmured. “I’ll do it.”

And somewhere, the Fisher laughed.

The woods around Cantica had been cleared, leaving no true cover close to the palisade.

The five of them instead gathered around a half-abandoned firepit about thirty feet out, roughly to the west of the town. It had a rack propped up over it that Ferranda said was for smoking meat, and they all felt a little sick at the thought of what kind of meat that might mean. Devils were said to prefer eating men whilst they lived, but they were not above feasting on corpses. Regardless of that understated horror, the pause was most welcome. They were all tired and out of breath, in stark need of reprieve.

Not that it was only that, for now that the enemy was out of sight Angharad’s oaths were put to the question.

“This was badly done, Tredegar,” Shalini bit out. “You-”

“She didn’t promise a thing, Goel,” Lan cut in. “Our good lordling swore to return me unharmed, yeah?”

The Tianxi pointed at the cut on her neck.

“He let her out of the oath before he even agreed to it.”

Eyes turned to her and Angharad shrugged.

“I expected him to catch the detail and amend the wording,” she admitted. “I agreed because the oath was easy to negate regardless: we could simply warn the Watch that one of the trial-takers feigned their death, then point at every other deceased from the Bluebell manifest and specify it was not them.”

So long as Augusto was not outright named, the oath was not broken.

“Huh,” Shalini finally said. “He’s the one who asked for that wording, I’m surprised he didn’t think of that.”

“He was on edge,” Lan told them. “Even more than you’d think. He kept talking to himself and the cultists avoided being anywhere near him.”

“I do not think his contract did heal him,” Song said, and that earned instant attention.

Angharad knew more about the Tianxi’s pact than most, but by now most everyone had figured out that those silver eyes gave her insight into the workings of spirits.

“The Red Eye, it is a god of feeding,” she continued. “When Felis bargained with it his wound was not healed, he closed it with some sort of red crystal that fed on his body. Why would Augusto Cerdan get a better bargain, when he would have bargained from even worse a position?”

“He had a hole through his body, Song,” Ferranda flatly said. “He no longer does.”

“I don’t think that’s actually true,” the Tianxi replied. “I think that his wounds are still there but that he can fill them up – but that, like the Red Eye, he must keep feeding for them to stay filled.”

Lan let out a low whistle.

“So the old god’s a loan shark,” she said. “Our boy Augusto has to keep what, eating human flesh so what grew back doesn’t whither? No wonder he thinks the Watch will blow his brains out if they catch him.”

“Something like that,” Song agreed. “I imagine his pact lends him a way to feed at a touch, if the cultists feared coming close.”

“We should take care to avoid getting close to him, then,” Angharad said.

“You say that like you are not planning to kill him before night’s end,” Ferranda said. “Though I will admit I am not sure how you would get around the terms.

“That oath does seem pretty straightforward,” Shalini agreed, cocking an eyebrow. “Tredegar?”

The terms were simple enough, that was true. She was to commit no violence against Augusto Cerdan nor allow her companions to do the same, or attempt to imprison him nor allow her companions to do the same, until twenty four hours had passed. Only he had not though to anchor the oath in-

In the distance, the night lit up with thunder.

No, she realized. Not thunder. These were cannons. And the shattering cacophony inside Cantica revealed exactly what they were being turned on, sowing fire and screams. The five of them went still, like rabbits before a wolf, as bombardment began in earnest from north of the town. Where they had been headed.

“Those are guchui rounds,” Song finally spoke into the silence.

Shalini breathed in sharply.

“Thunder shells?” she said. “I thought the Republics kept a tight lid on those.”

“They sell them to the Watch,” Lan said, with strange certainty. “Sometimes the crates are kept in Sacromonte warehouses until they can be distributed to the right Garrison force.”

Angharad could feel the capital letter on Garrison, even in Antigua. It was not unwarranted, for though the free companies of the Watch made up the majority of its numbers the ruling council of the blackcloaks, the Conclave, commanded the single largest number of soldiers in black cloaks. They must, to protect their Trebian territories and uphold their duties under the Iscariot Accords.

The soldiers of the Garrison were considered second-rate compared to the more glamourous company men, Angharad knew, but that only meant so much. Getting bit by a hound instead of a wolf was hardly kinder on the hand.

It occurred to the noblewoman a moment later that Lan, given her unseemly origins, might well be so certain because she had participated in robbing the Watch. It was somewhat embarrassing it had taken her so long to catch that, but for all the woman’s Sacromontan quirks she had to admit that Lan did not act much like she had imagined a criminal would. She was clean and well-spoken, not constantly drunk and disorderly, and as far as Angharad could tell she was not constantly lying.

It would be a stretch to call her an honorable woman, but Angharad would hesitate to say she was even half as detestable as the likes of Augusto Cerdan, to whom she had once so thoughtlessly granted the presumption of honor.

“If the Watch is shelling Cantica, it’ll be to soften up the opposition before they storm it,” Shalini said. “That means they have troops on the way, probably come from Three Pines.”

“Which means we could take refuge with them if we head north,” Lady Ferranda said. “That seems the wisest course left open to us.”

“That path takes us by the postern gate,” Angharad said. “The others will be trying to evacuate through there, it seems to me we could attempt to join up on the way.”

She had expected to have to fight some of the others for this, particularly Shalini and Ferranda, but they found the two quite agreeable to the suggestion. Zenzele is still with the others, she realized after a moment. It was Lan that objected, though in words carefully coached to give no offense.

“I do not mean to linger overlong,” Angharad assured her. “Only to ascertain if we might bolster our numbers on the way north.”

“There will be a lot of rats trying to leave that sinking ship, Lady Tredegar,” Lan warned her. “We’re just as likely to run into enemies as friends.”

It was true, she knew, but yet worth trying. As everyone save Lan shared her opinion, there was no further debate and they headed out briskly. Cantica was not so large that it would take long to get past the town, and they were already on the right side to reach the postern gate anyhow. It was but the work of minutes to make their way there on yellow grass, weapons out and eyes wary. The postern gate was carefully hidden from the outside, made to look part of the palisade, but their crew had the advantage of having Song among it so Angharad hardly worried of finding it.

Even that hardly proved unnecessary, as there was no missing the gate when they got there: it was wide open.

Eyes sweeping their surroundings, Angharad found nothing but an expanse of empty yellow grass from the edge of the woods to their west and the palisade to their east. The open grounds continued to the north in a wide curve until they reached the continuation of the beaten earth road leading to the port of Three Pines. Inside the town, past the palisade, they could hear the roar of flames and the occasional shot as the Watch’s bombardment continued to methodically demolish Cantica.

“They might have left it open after Augusto let them in,” Lady Ferranda said.

“Smells like ambush,” Shalini grunted back, shaking her head.

“No sign of our companions,” Lan said. “We should move on.”

Angharad hesitated. She liked the look of this no more than Shalini, but an empty field was no reason to leave behind comrades. They could at least-

“Movement,” Song suddenly said, musket rising.

Only she was not looking at the open gate, Angharad realized, but the woods.

From which a cultist warband was charging out.

—

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there in the dark, with only a shuttered lantern with company, but it was a relief when someone craned their neck past the edge of the trap door.

“I hope you’re down there, because if you aren’t I’m going to have to drop him and I’m not sure he’ll live,” Maryam called out.

“Please do not,” Zenzele Duma croaked. “I will most definitely die.”

Huh, he thought as he got on his feet. The Malani had lived, fancy that.

“I’ll admit,” Tristan called back, “even opening with a sword in the back, I figured Tupoc would kill you.”

“Stop taunting him and help me get him down that ladder,” Maryam said. “The last shell hit just a few blocks away, I do not care to stay out here.”

He opened the lantern’s shutters and moved to lend a hand as had been requested. And a hand was most definitely needed, for Zenzele Duma looked as if he had been thrown down a hill made of blades. He no longer bore his coat and his shirt was ripped clean through, revealing a nasty gut wound as well as a deep cut that went from the side of his torso to right below the hollow of his neck. Tristan thought one of his arms might be broken as well, for he used only one to move down the ladder, but found it was truly because the Malani was cradling something in his hand.

It was only when Zenzele turned to be helped down the last rungs that the thief saw the worst wound of them all: his right eye had been ripped through, roughly enough it must be the work of nails and not a blade. Tristan swallowed.

“Not a pretty sight, is it?” Zenzele weakly laughed. “And I did not even kill the bastard while he might well have killed me, had cultists not come looking because of Cozme’s shot. That and Lady Sarai’s priceless help, of course.”

“Call me Maryam,” she said as she came down the ladder, closing the trapdoor behind her. “I suppose that game has finally run its course.”

She glanced at the Malani, not harshly but without much kindness either.

“And it was luck on your part, Duma. If I hadn’t run into them myself I wouldn’t have doubled back and found you lying there.”

Tristan helped the man to lower himself and sit against the wall, still clutching something in his hand.

“Try stabbing the head first, next time,” Tristan advised. “Works better than the back.”

Zenzele convulsed, letting out a ragged wheezing sound.

“Sleeping God, Tristan, don’t make me laugh,” he said. “I think it makes my inside bleed.”

The thief mercifully spared him further amusement, finding Maryam looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

“I did get something from him, yes,” Zenzele muttered, seeming to talk to no one in particular. “He will remember it.”

And the dark-skinned man finally loosened his grip, smiling as he revealed the eye on the palm of his hand. It was cut up and red, but Tristan had seen that eerie paleness often enough to recognize it. That was Tupoc Xical’s eye, he was sure of it. Zenzele murmured unintelligibly after that, staring at nothing as he sagged against the stone.

“He dips in and out of things,” Maryam said. “I don’t suppose you have anything left for pain?”

“Clean out,” Tristan said. “I can clean some of his wounds and bandage them, at least.”

“Please do,” she said.

Blue eyes moved to the corner, where the shadows half-cloaked Cozme’s body. Zenzele had been too out of it to notice.

“Did you get what you wanted?” Maryam quietly asked.

“From him? Enough.”

In the pale lantern light, the sharp cast and colors of her hardly seemed a woman’s – like sapphires cast in marble, too angular to have been born and not carved.

“But did you get what you want?” she asked again.

He breathed out.

“It is not finished,” he said. “There are four others left before the account is settled.”

She sighed.

“I suppose it was too much to hope you would be done with it,” Maryam said. “Will you try for Augusto?”

Tristan shrugged.

“The Watch will have him marked for death,” he said. “I see no pressing need to pull the trigger myself.”

“So you can be taught,” she drily said. “Promising.”

The thief licked his lips, unsure of what he had to say but certain of the need for it.

“Before,” he said. “When I left you behind, I-”

“I do not care for apologies,” Maryam told him. “I have… I understand the demands the past can make, let us leave it at that. If your actions bring you sorrow, Tristan, do not repeat them. The past is a dead thing.”

He passed a hand through his hair, feeling so very tired.

“I’ll not excuse or justify,” Tristan finally said. “But when I go for the second name, it will be in a manner that does not lead me to regrets.”

She studied him for a moment.

“My mother always said that no amount of regrets will built a cairn, but she was a hard woman,” Maryam said. “Too hard, in some ways. It was why her men gave her up to the Malani at the end.”

He hardly dared breathe, for never before had Maryam spoken a word of her past.

“It matters, that you regret it,” she said. “But only so much. Remember that, next time you stand at that same crossroads.”

The pale woman reached for her bag, claiming something inside, and offered it to him. Even in this trembling light, Tristan could not mistake it for anything else: Yong’s pistol, the grip held towards him. The same he’d left in the mud when he ran after Cozme.

The rat swallowed, licking his cracked lips.

“You picked it up,” he dumbly said.

Maryam pressed it into his palms, closed his fingers around it.

“Once,” she warned.

—

Before Angharad could so much as open her mouth, Lan fled.

Back the same way they had come: straight south, as fast as her legs could carry her. The noblewoman hesitated then moved to join her, looking at the others. Song caught her by the shoulder.

“We have to go back in the town,” she said. “Now.”

Angharad gaped. There was bravery and then there was foolishness. If everyone was fleeing Cantica, then there might be devils headed for that very postern gate right now. She was not the only to think this madness. The cultists were gaining on them, even if they were still far out. At least a dozen of them, all running.

“That’s going to get us killed,” Shalini said. “Every second we are not running south we-”

A shot rang out and they all flinched.

“Into the town,” Song hissed. “They have muskets, we can’t stay in the open.”

Heart in her throat, Angharad turned and saw exactly what she feared: Lan was on the ground. It was her the cultists had been aiming at. She was still moving, struggling to get up, but the shot had clearly hit here.

“Don’t you dare,” Song began, but she was already running.

She glimpsed ahead and banked hard to the left to avoid getting shot in the gut, Song putting a bullet in the shooter’s head a heartbeat later. Her legs burned but she ran, glimpsing again. She had to slide low, boots ripping into dead grass to avoid another shot. Song was reloading, could not silence the enemy twice in such quick succession.

Lan turned to her, her side bleeding, and got on her knees. Angharad scrambled back up, glimpsing again, and saw the shot before it happened.

“Du-”

The bullet took Lan in the cheek, as if some invisible maw bit through flesh and bone, and it was mercy the impact spun her around. What little of that death Angharad had just seen she would not soon forget.

“-ck,” she finished, nauseous.

“Come back, you damn fool,” Song snarled.

They were going for the door, all three of them, but only Shalini had her eyes on it. Song and Ferranda had their muskets out and were firing at the cultists, covering her still. Three of the warband had split off to go after her, Angharad saw, but she was faster. Her legs were longer. She left them behind, the one who came closest shot in the leg by Ferranda, and Song slew another hollow musketman without batting an eye.

She caught up to them just as they got to the open postern gate, hollows close on her heels. Shalini was ushering them one after another, eyes calm. Angharad passed her, feeling a hand pat her back, and the Someshwari moved so quickly after that she barely even caught it. A heartbeat, then smoked billowed and Shalini had two pistols in hand.

Two cultists dropped dead, the others tripping into them, and the Someshwari slammed the door behind them. She locked it after as Angharad stumbled forward, panting from the fear and run and the companion she had failed to protect. If she had been just a little faster, cut it closer with the shot she had slid to avoid… Ferranda squeezed her shoulder.

“You tried,” the infanzona said. “Eyes up, Angharad. We’re not out of trouble yet.”

She swallowed, shaking off the other woman, but a look around told her that Ferranda Villazur had the right of it.

They were not out of trouble yet, for before the mud of Cantica’s streets was filled with corpses.

The sight of that silent spread of death filled her with more dread than the sound of cultists trying to jostle the postern gate open behind them, slamming fists against the wood and unloading their muskets. It was not the bombardment that had done this, they could all see it plain. The heaps of hollows and devils had been killed the hard way, cracked and cut and pierced. Some devils looked like their torso had been pulped, the remains disgusting to behold.

“Manes,” Ferranda breathed out. “What did this?”

In the distance there was a shrill scream, the sound of it like walking on broken glass. They all flinched.

“Whatever it was, it is no longer here,” Song said. “Best to get gone before it returns.”

In the distance, another shell lit up the dark as it hit Cantica. The bombardment was tapering down, but it was not yet done.

“We need to leave this town,” Angharad said, then sighed. “Again.”

“The main gates, then,” Shalini said. “I don’t think our friends outside are going to be letting us pass through.”

As if to agree with her, a cultist unloaded into the door again. Not that muskets would help any there, Angharad thought.  The door was thick, solid wood. Odd that they would waste powder on it when that was plain to see.

“I see no better plan to be had,” Song finally said. “Ferranda?”

“Sounds better than joining them,” the infanzona said, nodding at the corpses.

They set out as quickly and quietly as they could. The fastest path would be south of the main street, but that was too likely to find them a fight. They kept two streets off instead, even if would take them longer with all the detours. Much of the town was on fire, now, and they hardly needed a lantern to seen. It was why Angharad saw him at the same time he saw them.

Walking down the street alone, humming, Mayor Crespin had not a mark on him save for some ash on his clothes. Even his shell was pristine, knuckles barely scuffed though there was some blood around his mouth and under his fingernails. The four of them slowed at the sight of him, Ferranda quietly cursing. Angharad’s lips thinned. There was no fire on this part of the street, only dark and empty houses with tiled roofs on both sides.

“I don’t like the look of that fight,” Shalini admitted.

They would, Angharad suspected, have a choice of whether or not it was to be fought. Before she could call out, the approaching devil broke the silence.

“You returned,” Mayor Crespin said, sounding baffled. “Why – nay, it matters not. Let us put an end to our pointless palaver. Cantica has breathed its last, I must make arrangement.”

Angharad’s jaw tightened.

“I will get close,” she said. “Try to get shots in, pinning him is our best chance.”

“Your best,” Crespin replied, revealing rows and rows of teeth, “is not enough.”

There was a sharp whistling sound, a for a moment Angharad hoped a shell was falling. Instead the devil’s hand reared up, catching what she realized was a stone. Polished and the size of a small fist, but very much a stone. The devil let out an amused noise.

“A slinger?” he said, tossing the stone behind him. “How nostalgic.”

He was looking up at the roof to their side, and Angharad followed his gaze. There was a man up there, in a black cloak. She caught a glimpse of Aztlan features under the cloak, then the watchman raised a hand. He snapped his fingers and there was sudden buzzing sound.

Mayor Crespin’s arm down to the elbow, the same that’d caught the stone, was pulped.

The devil screamed, legs ripping free from his shell like it were paper, but liquid darkness formed a circle with something inside it just above his head. Angharad’s gaze shied away from the Sign, even as the devil turned limp for a heartbeat. A heartbeat was all it took, for another blackcloak emerged from the dark of an alley behind the mayor. They bore a long spear – no, a harpoon. The head was barbed.

The Sign above the devil dissolved a heartbeat before the harpoon went into his back.

Crespin screamed and struggled but the watchman danced away. The harpoon did not move, however, as if stuck in the air, and the devil was stuck on it.

“All yours, lieutenant,” the blackcloak said.

A woman, Angharad caught. There was a Tianxi lilt to her words. The slinger above chuckled, taking his time to place another stone on a leather strap at the end of a rope and swing it. The stone hit the devil in its head this time, despite Crespin’s desperate struggles. The lieutenant snapped his fingers and buzzing sound returned, even louder.

A heartbeat later, the devi’s torso was black mulch and Angharad swallowed, unsure whether she felt disgust or awe.

“Impressive, isn’t it?”

The noblewoman nearly leapt out of her skin, reaching for her saber until she found a knife lazily pressed against her throat. There was a fourth blackcloak next to her, and from the shouts of the others they had just noticed it as well. How? They had been in the middle of the alley.

“Don’t think too hard on it, Tredegar,” the blackcloak teased as they drew back the blade, face hidden under the hood. “You might sprain something.”

“You know who I am?” she got out.

“I read the docket for the recommended,” the watchman said. “Headed for the Skiritai, is it? You’ll have to work on your awareness, else they might decide you need to be taught.”

“I will,” Angharad slowly said, “keep that in mind… sir?”

“Sir will work,” the watchman said. “The four of you surviving should count as a Trial of Weeds complete, given the circumstances. Congratulations in advance.”

“The Watch is already inside the town?” Song asked. “You are still shelling it.”

The Aztlan with the sling, the one the other had called lieutenant, leapt down from the roof and landed in the mud with a wet squelch.

“Not the regulars, girl, just us,” he said. “We are cleaning house with the worst of the lot before the palisade is breached and the proper sweep begins.”

There was another of those ear-splitting screams in the distance.

“Enough chitchat,” the lieutenant grunted. “Chameli is taking too long with the Saint.”

“There’s a Saint here?” Ferranda asked, sounding worried.

“The priestess leading the warband pulled a little too deep,” the watchman that had put a knife to her throat said. “Useful in cleaning up the devils, but she’s a feeder. Those are always tricky to kill.”

Song cleared her throat.

“Lieutenant,” she said, “I understand that you have a charge, but if one of your squads could spare-”

The blackcloak with the harpoon, who had just ripped it out of the mayor’s remains, let out a snort.

“Crews?” she said. “There’s only us, girl. The commander knew it’d be excessive force already.”

“Five of you,” Angharad slowly said. “Five of you did what we saw at the entrance?”

“It was getting boring in Three Pines,” the lieutenant shrugged. “It’s good to stretch our legs now and then.”

That hadn’t been what – the chatty one she had called sir clapped her shoulder, overly friendly.

“I would recommend hiding out in the west of town until it’s over,” they said. “We already cleaned it up. Don’t go through the main gates.”

“Why?” Angharad asked.

“The regulars set up a killing field there,” the lieutenant said. “They’ll shoot on sight.”

He whistled sharply afterwards, striding away without another word. The harpooner followed, and the Navigator had never come out in the first place.

“Good luck,” the chatty one said waving back as he followed, walking backwards. “Try not to die, I have coin riding on you and Duma making it to the end!”

The four of them were left there standing in the street, as if a storm had just blown through. Sleeping God, Angharad thought, remembering the carper of corpses. Five of them. Shalini cleared her throat.

“West, then?” she tried.

It seemed a sounder notion than being shot by their own rescuers, at least.

“I know a place,” Angharad said.

—

By the time Tristan finished seeing to Zenzele’s wounds the Malani was alert again.

Pain was a fine enough anchor, and there was only so gentle the thief could be when cleaning wounds that serious. He was thanked, afterwards, and that courtesy extended to the young lord pretending he could not see Cozme’s corpse in the corner of the room. Tristan had considered throwing in the gaol in the back, but Zenzele had already known what he intended and could out him for it should he wish.

It had also been pretty funny to watch the Malani have to pretend there wasn’t a dead man a couple of feet away from him, which might have weighed on his decision more than was strictly wise.

“The shelling has stopped,” Maryam noted. “I expect the Watch will assaulting the town soon.”

“Now would be the time to get out, if we do not want to be stuck between the hollows and the rooks,” Tristan agreed. “Lord Zenzele, would you feel up to the trip?”

The man hesitated.

“If you help me,” he finally said. “We risk cultists coming here to hide if we stay much longer anyhow, and I mean no insult but I do not be believe we would prevail in such an encounter.”

Tristan, who had over the last few days been savagely beaten not once but twice by greyhairs, saw no grounds to argue that point. He was honestly unsure if Lord Zenzele might not be the best fighter of them still even in his state.

“We could take on one hollow,” Maryam firmly said.

“Two, if they’re children,” Tristan added.

Zenzele convulsed again, breath wheezing.

“What did I say,” he gasped, “about making me laugh?”

It was more laborious than difficult getting him out of the gaol after that, Maryam heading up to drag him by the shoulders while Tristan stood below to push him up by the waist. The thief got out with the lantern in hand while Zenzele leaned against Maryam for support.

“Should I ask what happened to Cozme Aflor?” the Malani lord casually asked.

“Lost him in the chaos,” Tristan just as casually replied. “Who knows? He might have fallen down some stairs.”

“Very sharp stairs indeed,” Zenzele muttered, and asked no more.

Large swaths of the town were on fire, but the southern part – close to the main gates – seemed to have been the least ravaged by the bombardment. To Tristan that reeked of leaving a hole in the barrel so you knew where the water would go, even more so when he risked climbing atop a half-wrecked house and stood on the roof to have a look at the rest of Cantica. There was a hole in the palisade to the north of the town and the Watch seemed to be sweeping towards the south street by street.

He climbed down to tell them as much and Zenzele grimaced.

“They are driving the hollows out into the open grounds to the south,” the Malani said. “They must already have men in place there, they left a path out so they will not have to dig them up street by street.”

“That will become good news in a while,” Tristan said, “but until then it means that every surviving hollow and devil in Cantica is being driven our way.”

A heartbeat passed.

“We could go back in the hole,” Maryam reluctantly said.

Zenzele Duma looked as if he did not know whether to laugh or cry.

“That would be even riskier than we thought,” Tristan said. “It’s a good place to ride out the Watch sweep, and there’s former slaves with the cultists. At least some of them will know the place.”

“Heading towards the gate would be worse,” Maryam said. “Everyone else will be doing the same.”

“We could try to hide-”

“Stop,” Zenzele hoarsely whispered. “We need to hide right now.”

His eyes were wide but clear, and though he was looking at thin air that did not necessarily mean he was raving. Tristan caught Maryam’s gaze and nodded, the two of them helping the Malani limp towards the back of the piles of lumber.

“Quick, he’s close now,” the lord said.

“Who?” Maryam asked.

“Augusto Cerdan,” Zenzele replied. “Black chords for all three of us, he wants – needs, maybe? – us dead.”

That, Tristan thought, sounded like a very useful contract. He’d not even said anything and still he found Fortuna sitting on a roof and glaring down at him as he helped lead Zenzele into a small dead-end alley behind the wood piles. He sneered back at her. If she did not want him to have contract envy, then perhaps she should have offered better goods.

It was a very expressive sneer, as proved by his goddess’ outraged cry.

While the thief had no great love for dead-end alleys, it was the best they could do as a hiding place in a hurry and if it came to running it was likely Zenzele was dead anyway. The two of them lowered him behind a barrel of dirty rainwater, his back to it so his legs wouldn’t stick out, and the thief handed Maryam the lantern so she could shutter it. Just in time, as they all heard urgently speaking voices approach.

“It’s close to here, I swear,” a woman’s voice said in Antigua.

Tristan crept to the edge of the alley, crouching low, and risked a look. Five people had come from the west of Cantica, and though he could only make them out partly through the gap in wood piles the thief saw enough. Three armed and scarred men, cultists. A fair-haired woman in rags and badly bruised, likely a former slave.

And, as Zenzele had warned, Augusto Cerdan.

“It had better be,” Augusto said. “If you wasted our time, perhaps it will lead to our deaths – but I assure you, it will lead to yours first.”

Ah, infanzones. How lucky for the rest of Vesper that they now got to experience their particular charms.

“My brother helped dig it,” the woman insisted. “We’ll have to crawl, but it gets us past the palisade.”

Tristan stilled. Some kind of tunnel out? No, anything that large would have been noticed. More a crevice to squeeze through, likely widened as discreetly as the slaves could. While the thief would have preferred it should that crew be headed for the gaol – it would have been child’s play to lock them up inside – he would settle for them showing him a way out of this town. A glance back showed him that Zenzele was safely tucked away behind the barrel and Maryam doing her best to hide herself behind him.

There was hardly anywhere for him to hide even were he inclined to try, it was better to move.

Tristan crept away silently, moving behind one of the wood piles. The hollows had no lantern but one of them did hold a torch, which he kept high while the sole woman among them began patting away the bottom of the palisade past the lumberyard. Careful to position himself so someone wandering in from the north of the town, the thief settled in to wait them out. They hardly seemed to be paying attention to their surroundings, but that did not mean they were not dangerous.

One of the cultists said something to Augusto, too low for Tristan to overhear, and the infanzon gestured impatiently at him.

“So go and piss, then,” the Cerdan bit out. “And do it out of my sight, none of us need to see whatever tumor passes for your cock.”

The other two cultists laughed, speaking quickly in a cant. The tone, though, was universal. They were making fun of the third, and not nicely. The cultists stomped away angrily, scowling, and that was their luck turned. Because when Tristan realized the man was headed their way he was able to move around the wood pile and keep himself out of the sight, but the moment the cultists saw there was an alley he headed straight there.

And hollows saw better in the dark, so he was sure to see Maryam even if he missed Zenzele.

Fuck, Tristan thought, palming his blackjack. Even if he took out the man before he could shout, the others would notice in short order. They’d have to grab Zenzele and flee immediately, else they would be forced into a fight they were sure to lose. Augusto alone might have been enough to kill them, with that brutal contract of his, throwing in warriors too was smothering all hope. Biding his time, the thief circled entirely around the wood pile as the cultist walked past it and ended up at the man’s back.

Grunting as he approached the alley, the man propped his spear against the side of the shed at the corner and reached for his trousers. Tristan followed, steps silent and arm raised, as the cultist reached the alley and-

“Found it!”

And it all went to the dogs. The cultist turned to look back, catching Tristan with his hand raised, and the thief struck but it was already too late. The man got off half a shout before the blackjack his the side of his head, and he moved with the hit besides. Dazed but not unconscious. Cursing, the thief struck down at the crown of his head but the hollow got his hands up in time and tackled him. They rolled on the ground even as the cultists shouted out in cant.

“Move,” Maryam growled.

Obeying half on instinct, Tristan elbowed the cultist and threw himself off. A heartbeat later Maryam impaled the man with his own spear, right in the belly. The thief scrambled to his feet, looking back at the others as she coldly finished off the dying man, and saw trouble. The other two cultists were headed their way, Augusto elbowing them aside to take the lead.

“Is that you, rat?” he called out.

“We need to draw them away,” Tristan murmured to Maryam. “They might miss Zenzele.”

She nodded.

“Lord Augusto,” Tristan called out, smiling winningly. “What a coincidence to run into you here. Why, I was hoping-”

“Take him alive,” Augusto ordered the cultists. “Unless you’d prefer me topping off on one of you.”

Neither men look pleased at the threat, but they were more fearful than angry.

“It seems we got off on the wrong foot,” Tristan said, edging away from the alley. “I shall, uh, leave you to your business. Good luck you, my lord.”

Maryam raised the spear, which she seemed to have some training in using, and withdrew with him as the hollows approached. Both were armed, and no doubt better fighters. It’d be best to run now, it would also get them running after without first looking-

A strangled, coughing last came from the alley and Tristan almost cursed. There was no way the cultists had missed that, Zenzele was good as dead.

“You fool,” he hissed. “What was so funny it was worth slitting your own throat?”

“They’re all fucked,” Zenzele croaked back.

A heartbeat later a shot took the lead cultists in the throat, blood spattering wood, and the other one barely had the time to turn before death was on him. He thrust his spear but Angharad Tredegar pivoted around the blow like they were dancing, arm striking out like she knew where his neck was going to be an entire second before it got there. The cultists’ head fell on the floor, his body staying upright for a moment after, and the mirror-dancer did not even stop moving.

Just like that, easy as snuffing out a candle.

“You again,” Augusto snarled, stepping back in fear. “You got out, what are you doing-”

“That is none of your concern,” the Pereduri replied.

She was not alone. Shalini and Ferranda stood by her side, and by that perfect shot earlier Song must not be far either. Had Lan ditched them? Likely, if they’d gone back into the town. She was too clever a rat to let herself be talked into that. Feeling rather outnumbered, the infanzon cast a look around and found the same thing Tristan had just noticed: the woman left while they were all distracted. Whether she’d found her crevice or just legged it he had no idea, but good on her.

Wisest thing anyone had done all night.

“I am still protected by your oath,” Augusto called out. “You and all your companions, even those two. If you try to imprison me, you reveal yourself without-”

“Get on with it, Lord Augusto,” Tredegar said. “Your voice irritates, I must admit.”

Tristan’s hand went for his pistol, Yong’s pistol, but something about the pleasantness on Tredegar’s face stopped him. She did not usually feign a good mood, when denied something, and they all knew she badly wanted Augusto Cerdan dead. Instead he stepped forward, up to her side, and waited to let this play out.

It did not feel like a done thing, not yet.

—

Angharad watched as Augusto Cerdan slunk away, smirking, and wondered what he even thought he might achieve by going towards the palisade. Ultimately, she did not care enough to ask. Glancing at the Sacromontan who had just joined her, she inclined her head in a greeting he returned.

“Tristan,” she said. “I believe you own a pocket watch. Might I borrow it?”

The Sacromontan eyed her curiously, but he nodded and fished out the piece. It was simple but lovely work, Angharad found, polished bronze that popped open with ease. She marked the position of the needles, the lateness of the hour. It was four fifteen past midnight. The Pereduri delicately pushed the hour needle forward, all the way around the watch twice until it came to rest at four fifteen again. Nodding her thanks at Tristan, she handed him back his watch as he watched her bemusedly.

“Song,” she said. “If I could have the use of your musket?”

The Tianxi cocked an eyebrow but passed her firearm without asking why. Angharad aimed it, trying to recall what little she knew of using guns, and Song sighed.

“Like this,” the other woman said, leaning close to adjust her stance with gentle nudges.

Angharad raised the gun until it was of a height with her cheek, the butt near the crook of her elbow, and breathed out before placing her shot and pulling the trigger. Flint sparked, powder caught and smoke billowed out.

The bullet took Augusto in the back of the knee, though she had been aiming for the leg.

“Thank you,” Angharad politely said, passing the musket back.

Song looked baffled, opening her mouth then closing it, and the Pereduri left her behind as she strolled after Augusto. The Cerdan was screaming and rolling on the floor, his shot knee a bloody ruin. Though his cloak was in the way he ripped clear his sword when he heard Angharad coming. Wordlessly, she unsheathed her saber.

“You bitch,” Augusto snarled. “You took an oath, you-”

“Followed it to the word exact,” Angharad mildly said. “Is it no fault of mine that you bargained poorly.”

Twenty-four hours had passed on Tristan’s watch: she was, thus, free of her oath. She stood there patiently, waiting for him to drag himself up on his pulped knee. The only reason she had shot him was so that he would not be able to run into the woods and hide. With a hoarse scream Augusto Cerdan got up, leaning on his sword for help.

“We will begin at your leisure,” she informed him. “Prepare as you will – no others will intervene, it is yet a matter of honor.”

Something halfway between hate and disbelief bubbled up onto his face as he realized that this was not simple killing but exactly what she had promised: an honor duel.

“You demented fucking girl,” he breathed out. “You’re still on about Gascon even now?”

Most scholars agreed that if an opponent was capable of talking without difficulty, they should be considered fit to fight. Disinclined to walk too close to the line, Angharad flicked up her sword in a slow movement. A warning, which Augusto heeded. Screaming, he charged at her. The man was fit and from the way he held his blade had been schooled in swordplay, but he was wounded and raw.

It did not matter: even at his best there would have been no doubt about the outcome.

Angharad stepped around his blow, coat trailing behind her, as her footing drifted and she placed her blow to the man’s stumbling back. She slashed through his cape and clothes, carving into muscle and bone, and Augusto dropped with a scream. She moved around his flailing, careful to avoid his touch. Song had said it was all his contract required to be used.

“You can’t,” Augusto snarled. “You promised, Tredegar, promised. You have to let me go, Malani can’t just lie-”

The point of her saber went right through his throat, a clean thrust.

“Pereduri,” Angharad coldly corrected. “As you once told your brother, there is a difference. Had you believed your own words, you might have lived through this.”

She ripped out her blade, and with it the infanzon’s life.

Angharad did not offer a blade salute, for the corpse was underserving of the honor, but she went through her pockets and dropped her last handful of coins on his chest as custom dictated. That was the real choice, wasn’t it? The Fisher pretended that it was either black or white, that she could either follow her father into the grave or damn herself to his tune, but that was not the truth of it.

No empty salute, but copper for the grave.

That was a choice, just like when she used the words exact. To judge who deserved honor in spirit and who deserved it to the letter was not a not some cliff she was tumbling pas the edge of, some disease or addiction. It was just a choice. There was nothing mystical about it. And maybe there would come a day where the hate and fear cracked her faith, where the remembrance of the screams on the wind had her cast away her honor for a ruinous oath, but that was not an excuse. She knew better.

That was the first and last lesson of mirror-dancing: to fight yourself was to lose.

That was why no stripe was added after the tenth, no matter how many times one danced with the mirror afterwards. Theirs was not the boast of Malani swordmasters, each line a fresh victory, but a simpler declaration. To be a swordmaster was to prevail over others, to be a mirror-dance was to prevail over yourself. To surpass your limits, your weaknesses. The tenth time the mirror was danced was merely proof the dancer had chosen their path and would walk it until the end found them.

For the moment the dance began, defeat began walking your way from the other end of the road. There was no telling when it would find you, where and facing who, but what did that matter? The mirror always won, eventually. You could not win against yourself forever, no more than you could win against tide and storm. But it wasn’t the end that mattered, it was the fight.

And Angharad, as she sheathed her saber, decided that she yet had it in her to fight.

It was a tight squeeze, but Tristan limped out into the alley.

He was third out of the hole in the wall the mayor made trying to murder Tupoc – an admirable undertaking, regardless of one’s politics or stance on people-eating – and the two that had come out ahead were as much keeping an eye on each other as the empty alley they stood in. The first, Lord Zenzele Duma, was cut of typical Malani cloth: tall, dark eyes, wide nose. Yet his cheeks were gaunt from grief and his soft noble features were gainsaid by the recent flint to his stare.

He was unharmed save for a bit of soot on his clothes.

In contrast Tupoc Xical, though as eerily perfect as usual, had suffered from the fight. Ironically not from the devils, two of which he had slain with whoops of joy, but from the volley the cultists had unloaded blindly into the Last Rest: he’d been shot twice, one bullet in his right shoulder near the edge of his breastplate and the other in the opposite thigh. Either should have knocked the man out of the fight but Tristan could see that the shoulder shot, from which Tupoc had casually ripped out the bullet, already looked like it was mending.

Not as quickly as it allegedly had in other circumstances, though. Was it because he had two wounds this time? Can the contract only heal a limited quantity of flesh at a time? Either way, while the Izcalli was steady on his feet he had chewed up limbs and his spear needed two arms to use. No wonder he was keeping a careful eye on Zenzele.

Maryam was next out of the hole in the wall that Mayor Crespin had meant to be in Tupoc’s head – with such a keen eye for popular policies, it was no wonder the devil had been elected mayor – and she coughed from the smoke as he helped her into the street. She’d gotten a bad knock on the head when the devil was tossed into the firing line that Tristan had been a nominal participant in, but her eyes no longer seemed as dazed.  She nodded her thanks.

“Your leg?” she rasped out.

“Good enough to walk,” Tristan said.

He’d got a bad roll of the dice when he pulled on his contract to force Cozme Aflor to get stuck on their side of the inferno: a chunk of collapsing ceiling had hit the man’s feet, which had flavored his backlash. The spray of wooden shards from a splintering board had hit mostly flesh, but he’d still had to tie cloth around his leg just above the knee to prevent his trousers being soaked in blood. They had not moved far from the hole in the wall, so when the last of them squeezed through he overheard the talk.

“My thanks for the help,” Cozme panted out, patting his clothes into order.

He he’d lost his musket during the chaos, by the looks of it.

“If you had not tugged me back, that chunk of ceiling would have caught my head.”

Tristan winced, which the older man took as sympathy, but was in truth over the prospect of how vicious his contract backlash would have been over that. The thief nodded back at Cozme, too on the edge to feign deeper companionship.

“We need to move,” Zenzele Duma cut in, voice tense. “I do not see Lady Angharad or the others, which means-”

“We make our own way out,” Tupoc cut in with a drawl. “Obviously.”

It seemed such a petty, pointless offence that Tristan was tempted to dismiss it as Tupoc being habitually unpleasant but the watchfulness of the Izcalli’s eyes revealed that to be a lie. A test, Tristan decided. He’s prodding Zenzele to see how close the man is to drawing on him. By how the Malani’s hand tightened around the grip of his sword, the answer was very close indeed.

“The postern gate is on the west side of town,” Tristan said. “The most direct route takes us through a street just short of the town square, however, so I would suggest cutting across town and circling around the north instead.”

“A longer trip will be more dangerous,” Cozme said.

There was crashing sound to their side as another chunk of ceiling collapsed inside the Last Rest, prompting a furious scream from the mayor and panicked shouting from the cultists still contesting the legitimacy of his election. Maryam cleared her throat.

“Let’s argue further away from that,” she croaked out, pointing at the mess.

Sound advice, which they all took. Heeding the thief’s suggestion of cutting east across town instead of keeping west, where the alleys often turned into dead ends meeting the palisade, the five of them fled. Tupoc took the lead, likely as much to keep his distance from the others as because he preferred the vanguard, and while Maryam kept Cozme distracted Tristan drifted towards the back.

Before he could so much as speak a word, Lord Zenzele Duma frowned down at him.

“You are a headache, did you know?” Zenzele said. “Half the people I speak to think you are a champion in the making, the other half that you are a feckless poison.”

Tristan cocked an eyebrow. Not even a poisoner – which admittedly he was – but poison outright. A bold claim.

“And you?” he asked.

“I am uncertain,” Zenzele grunted. “Which is disconcerting for more reasons than you know.”

Oh? That smelled of a contract, a morsel he might have liked to nibble at in other circumstances. Unfortunately, he must keep to greater concerns.

“I am a rat, that is all,” Tristan shrugged. “But, it seems to me, a rat who might share some interests with you.”

Bait had been set out but Zenzele Duma did not bite it. Instead the Malani noble kept silent, eyes flicking back and forth across thin air as if parsing out the invisible. An ill omen.

“What is it that makes you want to kill Cozme Aflor so very badly?” Zenzele suddenly asked.

Tristan stilled. He had been excruciatingly careful never to be outwardly hostile to the man. Even when he had spoken against Cozme during the discussion in the town square, it had been as part of several – and Yong’s broadsides at him afterwards should have distracted most from remembering it besides. Even now, approaching the Malani, he had not given a name. And Tupoc is the one who tried to get me killed for Jun’s death, so he should be the first guess.

This was the work of a pact, and the thought that one might allow Zenzele Duma to see through his every façade was… uncomfortable. Like learning your shirt had been split open at the back the whole time.

“Guesswork,” Tristan said, forcing his tone to be dismissive.

But he had hesitated for a second too long, he already knew, and Zenzele rolled his eyes.

“You want to use me,” the noble stated. “Send me after Tupoc while you go for him so he cannot intervene.”

That was an unpleasantly accurate read of his intentions.

Tristan swallowed, looking for anything at all on the man’s face he could use but finding no purchase. Zenzele Duma’s grief had been open, his hatreds were known and his recent friendships were obvious, yet the thief found through these nothing at all to move him. The thief looked away, deeply unsettled. Everything he had learned, been taught, told him that Zenzele Dum should be easy to leverage. Instead he was finding that the man’s forthrightness had whittled away every grip, leaving him too slippery to move.

“I owe him a debt,” Tristan reluctantly said. “The bloody kind.”

Zenzele considered that.

“As a servant of the Cerdan or on his own account?”

“Oh, very much his,” Tristan murmured.

Zenzele grunted.

“You do not strike me as man to whom hate comes easy,” the Malani said, rolling a shoulder. “I will presume it was earned.”

He spat to the side, into the mud of the street.

“I want Sarai’s help,” he said. “Wounded or not, he might well kill me otherwise.”

Practical of the man.

“She is no fighter even with Signs,” he warned. “But a distraction can be arranged.”

The noble looked like he wanted to push for more, but Tristan was only willing to promise so much and it must have shown on his face. There were other ways to line up his knife with Cozme Aflor’s back, this was simply the most expedient.

“Fine,” Zenzele said. “Signal me when the time comes.”

Tristan nodded back. However tense the conversation he found that in practice they had barely spent half a street quietly speaking. Tupoc had them turning a corner short two streets short of the piled lumber hiding the gaol, to head straight north as the thief had earlier suggested and no one cared to contest any longer. It was there they first ran into more than the distant sound of musket shots: a dozen slaves, bearing makeshift clubs and field tools, filled the street before them. They turned, faces alarmed, and before anyone could so much as raise a weapon Tupoc stepped forward. He lowered his spear, saying something in the same cant he had used earlier, and it gave the hollows pause.

Their leader, a grey-haired woman with broad shoulders, asked something harshly. Tupoc shrugged, replying, and there were a few more terse exchanges before the hollows began to make room for them to pass through the street.

“Tupoc?” the thief asked.

“I made it known we have fought devils as well,” the Izcalli said. “That earned us some goodwill.”

“They will let us cross?” Cozme asked.

“So they said,” Tupoc cheerfully said. “Though I would keep my weapons in hand, were I you.”

The hollows seemed as wary of them as the other way around, both sides eyeing each other until their group of five had passed the former slaves. The five of them hurried once they were clear, the hollows watching them go. Tupoc gestured for them to slow as soon as they had turned a corner.

“They also let us pass because they are heading for the battle,” the Izcalli said. “Their captain seems to believe that the Red Eye cult is winning.”

“Slaves and savages against a pack of devils?” Cozme skeptically said. “It will be a massacre even with the numbers on their side.”

“There are still sounds of fighting in the distance,” Maryam pointed out. “Something must be evening the scales for there to be no clear victor.”

“We saw the warband that is now attacking Cantica when we made our way here,” Tristan slowly said. “They had a priestess with them, a woman the other cultists seemed to fear.”

“Pacts with old gods are dangerous things,” Tupoc said, tone unusually serious. “That which has no restraint in price yields none in power.”

That last sentence had sounded oddly cadenced, likely a quote. They began moving north again, skirting the edge of town to get around the fighting in the middle, but soon ran into cultists against. One cultist, more specifically, marked with ritual scarification from head to toe and trying to harangue a group of cowering slaves hiding out in the garden behind a house into joining their way. He turned his anger and his spear their way, shouting in some cant, but whatever he might have been about to say was cut short.

Cozme shot him in the gut without missing a beat.

He blew the smoke off his pistol’s barrel as the slaves screamed in fear, some scattering while others flattened themselves behind rows of cabbage.

“That should have been bladework,” Tupoc tightly said. “Someone will have heard you.”

“There are shots all over town,” Cozme dismissed.

“But not from here,” Tristan said. “Let us pick up the pace before someone thinks to question that.”

He slid by Maryam as their strides quickened. She cocked an eyebrow his way and he wasted no time quietly filling her in on the bargain with Zenzele. She grimaced.

“I will not use a Sign on Tupoc,” she murmured. “It is too dangerous.”

He did not hide his surprise. She had not mentioned him to be dangerous in that regard before.

“That spear of his,” Maryam said, “I saw it go right through a devil’s carapace. I think the head is candlesteel.”

“I have never heard of it,” Tristan admitted.

“Izcalli will not reveal how they make it,” she said, “but supposedly it has something to do with their infamous candles. The material is death on aether – even the solid kind devils are made of – and it’s only marginally kinder to Gloam, so no Signs anywhere near him.”

Considering Leander Galatas had exploded his own arm when a Sign of his broke back on the Bluebell, that seemed wise.

“Any kind of distraction will do,” he whispered.

A moment of hesitation, then she nodded.

“I will not be sticking around,” Maryam informed him. “The moment they fight, I run.”

“I expected no less,” he said. “Besides-”

In the distance there was a burst of fire and light as a burning house collapsed, stopping them in their tracks as the brightness revealed a slice of nightmare near the town square. Screaming devils twined in red string were fighting against others of their kind while scarred cultists in a phalanx kept away more of the creatures from their wildly laughing priestess, whose hands seemed to direct the puppeteered devils. Steel and powder faced a tide of claws and ripped shells, more hollows with makeshift weapons streaming from all sides to throw themselves into the fight.

“You might have been right about taking the long away around,” Cozme conceded into the silence.

“Kind of you to say,” Tristan replied. “But let us-”

For the second time in less than a minute he was interrupted, again by the collapse of a house near the town square. Only that one had not been on fire a moment ago. With a faint whistling sound a second shell fell down, striking the melee at the heart of the town. The impact flattened a devil and turned three men to pulp.

Far to the north the night filled with light as the Watch’s cannons began raining down fire on Cantica.

Why would they, Tristan began to think, but before he finished the question he already had the answer. Maryam had told him that in Three Pines the Watch had some kind of Antediluvian wonder that could see things afar. Of course they had used it after the collapse of the mountain, and used it on Cantica in particular – it was where survivors would be heading. They must already know that the devils broke the terms and that the town was being conquered by the cult of the Red Maw.

The devils had been right, in a way: the Watch had written off the trial for this year. Only they’d been written off with it.

“We need to get out of this cursed town right now,” Cozme hissed.

“Everyone will be rushing to the postern gate now,” Tupoc calmly noted. “It is closest to the town square.”

Meaning going that way was certain death. And looming trouble for Angharad’s crew, if they used that side of the town to circle north towards the meeting point. Which he thought most likely, since the other group would be expecting them to leave through that same gate. That might well turn into a disaster, the thief thought, but it was not one he could do anything about.

“Straight to the front gate,” Tristan said.

The world went bright.

It was a heartbeat before Tristan realized he was on the ground, his ears ringing. The house ahead of him was a shattered, burning wreck and he threw up on the ground. He could barely focus his eyes as he crawled away, limbs trembling. Had he dropped something? His bag was still on his back, but… He saw silhouettes moving, someone helping him up. Maryam, he saw, looking worried.

“-r me?” she was asking. “Tristan?”

“Yeah,” he croaked. “That’s me.”

“You were lucky,” she said. “If that had hit ten feet to the right, you would be pulp.”

“Lucky,” he repeated, rasping out a laugh.

The others were… Tupoc was on his knees but pushing himself up. Cozme seemed fine, though he was looking strangely at Zenzele who… had his sword in hand as he moved behind the Izcalli.

“That,” Zenzele Duma coldly said, “will do.”

He rammed the blade into Tupoc’s back, but the pale-eyed man twisted at the last moment. It was a wound, not a kill, and with a laugh the Izcalli swatted Zenzele’s leg. They fell, wrestling. A curse, and Tristan watched with wide eyes as Cozme Aflor bolted. He cursed in turn, pushing himself off Maryam, and his eye caught a glint of light on metal. His pistol lay where he’d fallen, flames reflecting off it. 

Yong’s pistol, the last piece of the bridge had had burned.

Cozme was getting away, every breath furthering the distance.

His stomach clenched. Tristan looked at Maryam, found those blue eyes on him, and swallowed.

“Go,” she said. “Finish it. I will collect if we live.”

He licked his lips.

“You know where I’ll be,” he said.

And off he ran after Cozme, snatching Zenzele’s abandoned lantern as he went.

—

He ran through the nightmare, pursuing an older one.

Smoke and fire and screams, Cozme Aflor’s silhouette just far enough ahead with every breath he suffered the fear of losing him. The man was heading straight for the front gate, in as clean a line as he could, but the thief knew it would not work. Both devils and cultists would be heading for the postern to the west, but once one side had the clear advantage of that skirmish the losing one would be headed to the other way out.

To Tristan’s surprise, it proved to be the devils that lost out.

Cozme hastily stopped and slid behind a couple of barrels come loose from a pile as a pair of devils still in their corpses came running out of a larger street, bickering in Antigua as they ran for the front gate. Tristan saw the grimace on the older man’s face even before he slid down by his side. Cozme stiffened, hand reaching for his blade, but Tristan lay a finger on his lips. The older man bit the inside of his cheek, remembering that evils had uncanny hearing, and conceded with a curt nod.

They waited until the devils were out of sight.

“Why did you follow me, rat?” Cozme bit out when he finally felt safe.

A shell hit a few blocks to the east, both of them flinching as a house shattered.

“You think I want to be in the middle of that brawl?” Tristan replied. “I want out of this town place, Aflor.”

“Find your own way,” Cozme grunted.

“My way was the front gate, same as you,” Tristan replied, sounding impatient. “Only it won’t work, will it? It’ll be full of devils with the same bloody idea.”

Another shell fell, further away. They still tensed at the sound. Tristan licked his lips, made himself look nervous.

“Look, I might know a place to hide out away from the bombardment,” he said. “Found it with Xical and Tredegar.”

The mustachioed man stared at him.

“The underground gaol,” he said. “The one where you found first found the slaves.”

Tristan nodded.

“It should be empty now,” he said. “The cultists would have hit it first, those prisoners were sure recruits.”

Cozme slowly nodded, face never wavering, and a heartbeat later Tristan had a knife at his throat. Gods, he’d not even seen the other man unsheathing it. Groggy as he was from the shell earlier, that was sloppy of him.

“Why?” Cozme asked suspiciously. “Why run after me to share this and not simply go yourself?”

Tristan bit his lip, made himself look aside. Look how embarrassed I am, he thought.

“Because I can’t defend the place,” he said, feigning bitterness. “If cultists go there, or a devil-”

“They will trounce you,” the older man finished, sounding thoughtful. “And the foreign girl’s near as useless, it’s true, so she was not worth bringing along.”

A shell hit something a few blocks over, screams sounding out. Cozme took away the knife.

“All right,” he said. “Lead me to the gaol, Tristan.”

—

The place stank of mud and filth, but that was only to be expected.

It was large enough that the two of them could have a few feet between them, and through the open hatch half-covered by wood they could see the bombardment still lighting up the night. Until the Watch was done hammering away at Cantica, it would have been madness to leave their hiding place. Maryam should be headed this way as well, soon enough, so Tristan must end it before then.

He did not want his friend in the middle of this.

The bare stone room they sat in was about ten feet long and teen feet wide, a rough square, and there was nothing inside save for the open door leading into the deeper gaol full of shit and straw. Tristan had Zenzele’s lantern at his side, almost entirely shuttered so it could not draw attention.

Cozme still had his sword and knife, but no longer his musket and his pistol had not been loaded since he’d killed a cultist with it. Tristan himself was down to his blackjack and knife. He did have needles in his bag, but a subtle blow with them would be nigh impossible in a place like this.

Cozme Aflor was a fit man with two inches on Tristan, and though in his fifties the soldier was a hardened killer grown long in the tooth doing the dirty work of House Cerdan: in a straight fight Tristan would lose, and what could there be but a straight fight in a room of bare stone?

Fortunately, Tristan still had the last of Abuela’s gift. Two vials: bearded cat extract and medical turpentine.

He palmed his vial of bearded cat extract and quietly uncorked it, dripping the liquid into the shuttered lantern. The entire dose went in there, enough to drive a dozen men mad for an hour, but it would barely be enough for what he needed. The dose he could deliver by a needle or a knife would be too slow to act, but Alvareno’s Dosages was full of interesting notes about the substances it recommended for a poison box.

Like, for example, that when left near a source of heat for the correct amount of time bearded cat tincture turned into a kind of volatile smoke very sensitive to temperature. Tristan discreetly got rid of the empty vial and waited for Cozme to be looking up through the hatch to take off his tricorn. The other hand he kept on the lever that moved the shutters.

“Cozme,” he whispered.

The moment his enemy turned, he pulled the lever. The shutters opened and with the difference in temperature – hot in, cold out – white smoke came billowing out furiously. Tristan covered his face with his tricorn, throwing himself back, but still felt smoke lick at his skin in the few heartbeats before it dispersed. His skin grew red and welted wherever it was touched, the sensation deeply unpleasant.

It was probably why Cozme Aflor was screaming, as it’d gone right into his eyes.

Most of the mind-altering properties were lost when the extract was made into smoke – it caused barely a tingling sensation, instead of hallucinations and violent bouts of emotion – but it did become significantly more acid. Tossing aside his hat, Tristan found Cozme clutching at his eyes and palmed his blackjack, coming closer to aim a blow.

The man moved, though, and what should have been a hard strike on the side of the head instead caught his shoulder. Cozme reacted swiftly, grabbing his wrist and yanking Tristan forward. Keeping silent save for grunt of efforts, the thief wrestled with the old killer. An elbow hit his chin and he hissed in pain, striking at the flesh under Cozme’s ribs in retaliation, but then the mustachioed man headbutted him.

Vision swimming, Tristan rolled away only to hear the sound of a knife leaving the sheath. He kept rolling, Cozme blindly stabbing at the ground where he had just been, and grit his teeth. He’d heard Cozme beat a god in a knife-fight, out in the maze. Even with the other man blind he doubted he would win.

“I knew there was something off about, you little shit,” Cozme snarled. “Who was it that hired you, the Ruesta?”

Tristan drew further back and held his breath, but he knew that would not last long. The older man’s eyes were closed and cringing, but he might still be able to see some and the pain would pass. His gaze swept the room, finding it bare save for one thing. Swallowing, he bet on a gamble: Tristan threw his blackjack against the wall to Cozme’s left, and while the man struck blindly there darted to right. Where he snatched up the lantern, swinging the mass of forged iron Cozme’s head even as the man turned back his way.

It caught him right in the cheekbone, crunching most satisfyingly as Cozme Aflor dropped to the ground.

Oil went spilling, aflame, but hit only stone. It would keep. Tristan dropped the lantern, just carefully enough it wouldn’t spill, and kicked the knife out of Cozme’s hand as the man lay moaning on the ground. He kicked the man in the stomach, making him curl, and took his sword out of the sheath before tossing into the other room.

In the distance, the fires of the blackcloak artillery burned.

Tristan went about it methodically. Boot coming down he broke the right knee, the older man screaming hoarsely. Then he broke the left arm, at the elbow. That should be enough to prevent Cozme overpowering him. Finally baring his own knife, he sat on the man’s chest and rested the blade against this throat.

“Fool,” Cozme croaked. “The bitch is dead, do you really think the Ruesta will still pay you?”

“I have no agreement with House Ruesta,” Tristan said. “Our business, Cozme Aflor, is much older than that.”

The man blinked, eyes red and tearing.

“Who are you?” Cozme rasped.

“My name,” he coldly said, “is Tristan Abrascal.”

It had been years, more than a decade, but still the old killer remembered. It barely took him a moment. Tristan might have cut him, if not for that.

“The violinist,” Cozme said. “Tomas Abrascal, gods. You’re the son.”

“I am the boy who was hiding under a table when you put a bullet in his father’s head,” Tristan told him. “He’d been so strange, those last few weeks. Mother kept crying and I worried, thought he might sick. So I followed him, thinking as children do that I would protect him.”

Cozme rasped out a laugh.

“Manes,” he said. “He was close to losing it, so we brought him in through the trap door.  There weren’t any guards in that house – you saw that fucking slaughterhouse, didn’t you?”

If Tristan lived to be five hundred years, he would not forget what he had seen down there. Children in pieces, strapped to stables and hooked to copper wires. Barrels of limbs, pools of blood. Men with more parts sown on than not and that… thing held up in the air by golden chains so no part of it could touch the ground.

“I told them a second entrance was a terrible idea,” Cozme said, “but Ceferin insisted. We couldn’t keep bringing people in through the warehouse, people would ask questions.”

“Theogony,” Tristan said. “That’s what you four called it, when you had your little talk. What were you doing down there, Cozme? What was it all for?”

“I don’t know, kid,” Cozme tiredly said. “I just ran the guards, Ceret was the one with the grand plans. They put me in charge of finding Murk folk who already had contract, then Lord Lorent introduced them to the Almsgiver.”

Tristan stilled, for at long last he had the fifth name on his list. The name of the god that had its filthy hands all over this butchery, that had contracted with his father knowing it would kill him.

“The god that gave out the contracts, this Almsgiver,” he said. “Was it a Mane, Cozme?”

“I don’t know,” Cozme replied, too quickly.

“Tell me,” the thief hissed.

The older man laughed, only laughing harder when Tristan pressed his knife harshly against his throat.

“You’re going to kill me anyway, Abrascal,” Cozme said. “Your threats mean nothing.”

Tristan slashed through his eyes, the man screaming and struggling. Cozme was stronger, but blind and in pain. It was not a straight fight.

“Pain always means something, Cozme,” Tristan replied. “Tell me.”

“I don’t fucking know, kid,” the older man rasped. “I was just ran the guards.”

Whether that was true or not he could not tell, but he sensed he would get no more out of Cozme. A dead end, but he was not yet out of questions.

“You were there when they closed it down,” Tristan said. “Moved out. Where did they go, Cozme? Where are they butchering children now?”

“Somewhere out in the Trebian Sea,” Cozme laughed. “I never asked. Never cared. I’d paid my dues, I was on the rise.”

“Not for long,” Tristan thinly smiled.

Else he would not have been send to the Dominion of Lost Things, risking life and limb for favor.

“Never for long,” the man said. “That’s the way, isn’t it?”

The thief’s lips thinned.

“Do you even regret any of it?” he asked.

Cozme snorted.

“I lived like a lord for years,” he said. “Rich, respected. I might even have married into a good family, if I hadn’t got cocky at the end. Regrets, Abrascal?”

He was laughing.

“You think you’re the only one with mud on your shoes, rat? Regrets, gods.”

The blinded man offered a red, ruinous smile.

“The hungry bite,” Cozme Aflor rasped, “the beggared snatch, the cornered-”

Tristan twisted, cut his throat before he could finish the words. He watched the man gurgle, blood spill out, and said not a word as his father’s executioner died. Father, he had been half-mad at the end. One eye gone yellow, a leg growing warped. It had been a mercy in some way, what Cozme did, and for that Tristan did not make his death slow.

But he did not make it quick either.

And only when the gurgling ended, when Cozme went still and his began to stiffen, did he finally tear his eyes away.

“Three,” Tristan softly counted.

May his father be spun smiling by the Circle into his next life.

He sat by the corpse, silent, waiting for Maryam to join him – perhaps with Zenzele, if the man still lived. And when he closed his eyes, when he thought of the sound of that trigger being pulled and Father’s brains splattering the floor mere inches away from his little feet, of the way he had bit his lip until it bled so he’d not make a sound, the scales felt slightly closer to even.

“Laurent Cerdan,” he whispered into the dark. “Lauriana Ceret. Ceferin.”

All old names, worn from the speaking. And now there was one more to add.

“The Almsgiver,” he tried out.

It sounded, Tristan thought, like a promise.

She could not tell the difference between it and a dream before she woke.

/The lock popped open with a soft sound, Yaretzi brushing past a kneeling form and creeping in with a rag in hand to cover Angharad’s mouth with it./

Angharad woke up looking at the ceiling, asleep and then not. It had been a glimpse, the Fisher pulling at their contract once again. The spirit had only ever done this to prevent her death, yet the noblewoman stayed lying down and looking at the ceiling as she heard the lock pop open. She should move, she thought, but could not quite bring herself to. Angharad’s mind was clear, awake, but her limbs were still dozing. It would have been easier to move the entire world than to move them.

A flicker of movement, then she found Yaretzi’s dark eyes above and a ragged cloth was being pressed against her face. There was a scent to it, sickly sweet, and Angharad dimly realized she was being drugged. Finally that tore through the veil of somnolence and panic rose sharply in her breast – Angharad tried to rise, to fight off Yaretzi, who pushed her down and cursed.

“-eight, nine,” the Izcalli was counting through gritted teeth.

Ten, Yaretzi reached, and Angharad felt a different numbness in her limbs. She tried to shout, but the sound came out slurred as if she were deep in her drinks. The Izcalli holding her down eyed her warily.

“Another five seconds just in case, I think,” Yaretzi said. “It is only Spinster’s Milk, dear, it won’t kill you.”

Angharad kept struggling, but it was as if her limbs had turned to lead. She could no longer feel her own jaw. Yaretzi glanced back at the door the noblewoman hadn’t heard closing and Angharad’s heart clenched at what she saw found there. Calm-eyed, holding a mostly shuttered lantern, Brun leaned back against the wood. She tried to say something, but between the poison and the cloth she got out only a formless moan.

“You told me your contract almost never breaks when used on a sleeper,” the Izcalli challenged.

“Almost,” Brun indifferently replied. “It could be because she has a contract herself.”

His hand was on his hatchet, fingering the haft in an unknowing tic. Yaretzi sighed.

“That’s what I get for working with amateurs,” she said. “I need to make a sweep to see if anyone noticed us, keep an eye on her meanwhile.”

The fair-haired Sacromontan shrugged. His accomplice narrowed her eyes.

“I need to ask her questions,” Yaretzi said. “So no accidents, Brun, or we have a problem.”

“Understood,” Brun simply said.

Even as the Izcalli rose and left, Angharad realized that what she had thought indifference in Brun’s voice was no such thing. His tone had not once changed since he came into the room, always in the same flat near monotone. The blonde traitor came to stand by her bed, idly pushing her back down when she tried to force herself up. She was so weak, her limbs like a child’s. The pair meant to kill her – they must, for they must know that otherwise she would slay them for this – but fear was slow in in coming.

Anger burned in its stead, like embers in the belly. Why, she tried to ask, a scream of outrage and confusion. What came out was a muted, slurred whergh but Brun understood her regardless. Emotion touched his face, but she thought it looked shallow. Regret only a fingernail deep.

“I am sorry it must be you,” Brun said. “You have treated me kindly and do not deserve it. But there is no one else I would get away with, and I am… too close.”

Another flicker of emotion at the last two words, this one deeper than the last. Fear, Angharad saw.  That was as afraid as she had ever seen the man.

“If I take Yong or Sarai, Tristan will knife me in the night,” Brun explained. “Shalini is now being watched like a hawk and Lan, well, she knows of me. She will have taken precautions. Already she has tried to kill me once.”

Angharad let out a noise a denial at the false accusation, just another traitor reaching for absolution. Brun shook his head at her.

“She bought Spinster’s Milk from Yaretzi,” he said. “I expect she put it in my waterskin, a small dose that would slowly add up, as I did not notice until that test on the Toll Bridge.”

That was… she had thought Brun seemed clumsy, when she watched him chasing the invisible spirit. But why would Lan – it took a second for her mind to catch up to the truth he had good as admitted. You killed Jun, she tried to say.

“Jush kwid jewn.”

“It was nothing against her,” Brun shrugged. “She was closest and the twins had just fought Tristan, which I thought would muddy the waters.”

Sleeping God, how much had she missed? Was she struck with blindness, the only fool among a pack of wolves? It felt like she had been struck in the belly, the breath wheezing out of her. Twice Brun had killed, and now she was to be the third. And she did not even know why. Some of that must have shown on her face, for the man sighed.

“I owe you for distracting the cultists during the Trial of Lines,” Brun acknowledged. “And I suppose the knowledge won’t be going anywhere.”

The man considered her with cold eyes.

“There is a festival in the Murk,” he said. “A week where lamplights are repaired, many of them taken down at once, so nowadays people hang small red paper lanterns and make small games in the streets. The Trench sends miners back to the city around that time, and my mother loved making the lanterns. It was one of the few things we did together.”

It was, Angharad thought, horrifying to hear what sounded like such a personal story in such an utterly detached tone.

“When they died, well, that is a long story,” Brun said. “But I clutched to one of those paper lanterns like it was the last thing I had. Prayed to it, almost. And someone heard me.”

The blond man’s eyes went unfocused as he glanced to the side, as if he were staring at something Angharad could not see. Brun frowned before turning his gaze back to her.

“A young god,” he said. “Farolito, the god of that nameless festival. I am his first contract.”

Brun shrugged.

“He wanted to help,” he said. “But gods are not men, especially when so young.”

He glanced to the side again, looking annoyed, then back to her. He is being visited by his god.

“I would have died if not for the pact,” Brun clarified. “But he did not realize what he was asking, nor I what I was giving. I wanted to hide, for the vultures to leave me alone, and so he let me press calm into others. Empty them of everything, like the moment after the end of a festival. To do this I must be able to feel their presence, so I could.”

So that was the truth of the strange lethargy that had taken her. And of how he had been able to feel their pursuers during the Trial of Lines and the flight to Cantica.

“In exchange,” Brun tonelessly continued, “he took what he loves of the festival: emotions. Not the entire length of them, only the strong parts, and I thought it a bargain. I would never fear again, never weep in the dark.”

He paused.

“I was wrong.”

The simple, matter-of-fact way he spoke those three words sent a shiver down her spine.

“It feels worse when I use my contract,” Brun said. “As if all of Vesper is growing quieter, every noise falling away. And the noise, it does not return. I began to forget what it felt like to feel anything at all, and could not even muster fear that one day I would simply lay down and not care as I starved.”

The blond man clicked his tongue, hand swatting away at something only he could see.

“He is not an evil god,” Brun dutifully told her. “He meant no harm. And we found a loophole together: I could no longer feel my own emotions, but I could still feel his.”

And with dawning horror Angharad began to understand where the tale was heading.

“We tried many things, we did,” the man said. “Did you know, Lady Angharad, that in the moment a man – one not owned by the Gloam, not dimmed – dies, their presence in the aether is searingly bright? All the colors and emotions of their weave, there then gone.”

He raised his hand and snapped his fingers, the sound a sharp contrast to the serene face.

“There is nothing Farolito loves even a hundredth as much as a death save for the festival, and that is only once a year,” Brun said. “So I did what I must.”

It never ceased to astonish Angharad what manner of ugliness could fit under the mask of I did what I must, as if behind that excuse lay an endless pit dug for horror’s sake. The blond man cocked his head to the side.

“I rationed it, used the pact only when I must,” the Sacromontan said. “Every six months, more or less. It was still dangerous and I decided the Watch might be able to help, to fix it. I chose the Dominion as my way in so they cannot refuse me when they find out what I do.”

That was, her uncle had told her, the virtue of these trials: that to pass them saw you enrolled directly into the ranks of the Watch. Brun sighed.

“But I have had to use my contract so very much,” he said, sounding faintly irritated. “To find enemies, to grasp who was lying to me or trying to get me killed. And so the world grew quiet.”

The blond man met her eyes.

“Jun was to tide me over so I would last the rest of the journey with the infanzones,” Brun said. “Aines was because it was starting to grow difficult feigning emotion.”

His gaze was unblinking.

“I used my pact too much when we ran from cultists on the way to Cantica,” the Sacromontan said. “Making sure Song was not leading us into an ambush. At this rate, I might have to kill a blackcloak in Three Pines. Accepting Yaretzi’s offer was the least risky-”

The door opened and Brun reached for his hatchet, but Angharad’s half-formed hopes were dashed: it was only Yaretzi returning. The Izcalli carefully closed the door behind her.

“No lights under the doors,” she told Brun. “More interestingly, Tristan is no longer in his room and neither is Augusto Cerdan. It seems we are not the only ones cleaning up before the vote. I told you, my dear: that boy is most definitely a hired killer.”

“He is a rat to the bone,” the man said. “You mistake him.”

“How has he convinced so many people of that?” Yaretzi complained. “After Lan traded me his suspicions for the Milk I knew the little bastard was too dangerous to leave sniffing around, but no one would bite. The best I could manage was to send Ferranda after Isabel in the hope she stumbled into whatever they’ve been doing about the Cerdan. Thirteen Heavens, my darlings, that boy has gone around half the trials lugging around the exact same poison box Watch assassins use. How has no one outed him for it yet?”

Yaretzi turned to smile at her, like they were friends sharing a confidence, and Angharad felt like ripping out her teeth. Death was crawling closer to her with every word and she kept waiting for the fear to come, but the warmth of anger yet kept it out. Like keeping your hand so close to candle flame it began to burn, chasing out every other sensation.

“He must be fresh to the profession,” Yaretzi told her. “As a rule you should bring only the substances you intend to use, it is much less obvious.”

Brun shifted on his feet.

“You made your sweep,” he said. “Let us finish it.”

“Soon, soon,” Yaretzi said. “I told you, I need her to answer some questions first.”

The Izcalli idly unsheathed a knife, then knelt by Angharad’s side. She tried to get up, but her limbs had grown so feeble they did not even need to push her back down. The point of the steel was drawn across her cheek and came to rest under her eye, lightly enough it did not cut skin.

“The tiles in the kitchen of Llanw Hall,” Yaretzi said. “What color are they?”

Angharad clenched her jaw as much as she could, which still had her tongue lolling in her mouth. Yaretzi eyed her, then sighed.

“Torture is very messy, dear, I do hope you won’t force me to resort to it,” the Izcalli said. “Let us try again with something easier, then. Your uncle Osian – where is he getting all the coin? Did your mother perhaps bury a fortune somewhere, tell him of the location?”

Angharad blinked. What coin? Yaretzi’s eyes narrowed impatiently.

“The man has been spending gold like it is copper, my dear,” the Izcalli said. “He put out an open contract matching whatever price is on your head for the skull of any assassin trying to take yours, and he’s known to have paid out at least ten times. I heard so many assassins slew each other trying to catch you in Ixta that the guilds in the city are still at war.”

Angharad choked. Ixta? The sleepy little port town on the Emerald Coast where she had spent exactly three hours waiting on the docks before changing ships? Yaretzi let out an irritated sound.

“Useless,” she said. “Do you know why he pulled the open contract, at least? Did he run out of coin? It happened when you arrived in Sacromonte and I know you received at least one letter from him there.”

Angharad leaned forward, as if to give answer, and Yaretzi came closer. Only when she tried to spit on the other woman her tongue would not move, so only specks of spittle flew and the rest stayed bubbling on her lips. Yaretzi withdrew with a sigh.

“Ayanda was not nearly this much trouble,” she complained. “So eager to talk, that girl, she gave me everything I needed the first day. It must have been her contract that got her recommended for the Krypteia, because she did not notice in the slightest when I doused her waterskin with Milk. Not much – just enough to slow her down some. The same dose I traded Lan.”

Yaretzi shrugged.

“After that it was just a question of waiting for her to stumble and be caught by those Red Eye savages.”

Looking at the smug pride on the Izcalli’s face, Angharad felt genuine hate for one of the few times in her life as she remembered the bleak grief on Zenzele’s face. How broken must you be, to make a living out of inflicting suffering?

“Don’t be jealous, dear,” Yaretzi chided. “House Sandile offered a tidy sum for the death of the little bitch who stole the husband of their matriarch’s favorite niece, but it’s not even half of what is on offer for you. I just decided to collect on the girl first after seeing you go up against that Saint. It seemed likely you would pick up wounds saving fools anyhow.”

Yaretzi wagged a finger.

“Only you kept surviving, you inconvenient darling you, and even when I got close you kept living through my attempts,” she said. “I tried to off you discreetly during the trial with the clockwork god and then again in the stairs with Ishaan, but you are a most difficult creature to kill.”

“Fugh yew,” Angharad snarled.

“I don’t tell you this to boast, my dear,” Yaretzi patiently said. “I tell you so might understand that I am not some hired thug but a professional, an anointed daughter of the Obsidian Society under brokered contract. It is our rule that learning knowledge which only the mark would know serves a proof of the kill, but when that is not feasible one may also present the head instead.”

She leaned forward.

“Tell me the color of the kitchen tiles in Llanw Hall,” Yaretzi said, “and your uncle will receive a corpse with the head still on it. I understand Malani have some funerary customs relating to eyes, no? Would you not prefer to ease his grief while you still can?”

“Aye ashm noth,” Angharad bit out, “Malani.”

And she would not help this creature to get away more cleanly with her crimes. Perhaps she could not fight, but she could at least try to make enough of a mess that these animals were caught. Song, Song would see to it. The silver-eyed Tianxi would not let this go, the sole comfort Angharad had in this ugly mess. She tried to rise again and found some sliver of strength yet remained to her limbs. Yaretzi clicked her tongue in disappointment.

“Fine,” she said, sheathing her knife. “It was always a long shot, and it’s not like torture is reliable when one cannot take their time. Brun, try not to make too much a mess. I’ll hold her down for you.”

Angharad half-raised her arm, but she was brushed aside like a child and pushed back into the mattress by a bored Yaretzi. That boredom somehow insulted her more than the rest of this put together. That she was a chore, not even a foe. Brun, face twisting with something like relief, approached with his hatchet in hand. Angharad met his eyes, burning with indignation, and the blond man stilled for a moment. His green eyes flicked to Yaretzi, almost considering, but then he sighed. The hatchet rose all the way.

Death came down for her as a sharp length of steel, only to slow.

A whisper sounded in her ears, rising to become the nearing beat of wings until it blotted out everything else and a strange power rippled through her body. Above her a single, beautiful peafowl feather drifted down from the ceiling and Angharad realized that her limbs no longer felt numb. The mayura’s blessing, it had cleared the poison. The spirit’s power left her, the hatchet coming down viper-swift again, but Angharad was no longer helpless.

She grabbed Yaretzi by the collar, dragging her in the way, and took vicious satisfaction the way the Izcalli’s eyes widened in utter surprise.

“Fuck,” the assassin cursed, the blow taking her in the shoulder with a wet thump.

Angharad kneed her in the stomach, Yaretzi stumbling back with a wheeze, and as she rose pushed the stumbling Izcalli into a surprised Brun. The back of his knees hit the bedside table, tipping her sheathed saber to the ground, and she caught it with the tip of her toes.

“Assassins,” she shouted, only halfway through realizing there was no use.

The door was closed and the owners of the two nearest rooms were in front of her. Brun yanked his hatchet out of Yaretzi’s back, earning a hoarse scream, and as he turned to hack at her Angharad deftly threw up her saber with her toes – she caught the scabbard just as his blow came down, slapping aside his forearm with it so the hatchet went by her shoulder. Yaretzi struck from the other side, knife back in hand, but Angharad halfway unsheathed her saber to strike her chin with the pommel of the sword and knock her back. She glimpsed-

/Brun hacked at her back, biting into her spine and sending her/

-and turned with a blow she would not have seen, getting out of the way just in time for the hatchet to take Yaretzi in the arm as she turned around Brun’s back and finished unsheathing the blade. She kept the scabbard in hand. Her knees almost buckled as a wave of apathy hammered into her mind, but elbowing Brun in the back had the sensation vanishing into smoke. She finished turning around to face them.

Brun was a skilled fighter, she thought, but it was a raw sort of talent. He had not been taught that being predictable in a duel was death. The Sacromontan pushed away from her from to make distance, so that he might have enough room to swing his hatchet, but Angharad had begun swinging even as she turned: the edge of the saber caught him at temple height and a slight angle, splitting his eye like an egg and sinking into the skull.

Death in a stroke.

Angharad calmly kicked his back as she ripped free the blade, brain spraying as it sent the corpse falling into Yaretzi’s way and forced the Izcalli to draw back nearer to the door. The assassin licked her lips, Angharad watching as it sunk in for the other woman that she was two wounds in and standing alone.

“You took an oath,” the Izcalli suddenly said. “Not to do violence on other trial-takers. If I no longer fight you, you cannot-”

Angharad threw the scabbard at her face. The knife went up to slap it aside, and that was all it took: the point of her saber went straight into Yaretzi’s heart, pinning her to the door with a thump as the assassin let out a wet gurgle.

“You knowingly broke the rules of the Trial of Weeds, assassin,” Angharad politely informed her. “You no longer qualify as a trial-taker.”

She broadened her stance, preparing to rip out the blade, but before she could the door burst open and the corpse flew at her. Smothering a sound of surprise, Angharad struggled to hold on to her saber as someone forced their way into the room – only to find Song levelling a musket at her, Sarai right behind her and sloppily pointing a pistol as she held up a lantern.

“You- oh,” Song said, taken aback.

There was a heartbeat of silence.

“Are we quite sure,” Sarai began, eyes lingering on the two cooling corpses, “that she was the one needing rescuing here?”

Angharad’s jaw locked.

“The mayura’s blessing saved my life,” she stiffly said. “They came at me with a poison and Brun’s contract.”

Her stare firmed as she turned to Song after saying thus.

“A jest,” Sarai said. “I meant no offence.”

Angharad did not reply, eyes staying on Song and silently asking why she had not warned anyone of Brun’s contract. It would have been a much stronger suspect than Ishaan’s, and while she could understand wanting to keep the power of her own eyes quiet that did not excuse warning no one at all.

“I do not know what it does,” Song admitted. “Did, now, I suppose. It was written in some sort of Sacromontan street jargon, half the words weren’t even recognizably Antigua.”

The noblewoman gave a slow nod and felt a knot in her shoulders loosen. Had Song been one of the pack of selfish schemers she was being forced to deal with, she was not sure what she would have done. So much of what she had taken to be truth before coming to this island was… Nobles acting like wolves, loyalty a hangman’s noose and honor in the strangest of places.  She had thought Peredur the model of the world, once, but now she was forced to wonder how much she might have missed.

Angharad swallowed, mind was still awhirl with all her killers had said. ‘Yaretzi’ was a confessed liar, so much of what she said about others could be discounted, but her talk of Tristan – and that he had been accomplice to Isabel, who she knew did have troubles with the Cerdan brothers – rang uncomfortably true.

Remund had disappeared after spending time alone with him, for which they had yet to receive account. No one had thought to take that up since both men were expected dead, but perhaps there was a need after all. Angharad felt a great exhaustion settle on her shoulders like a mantle, and with it a vicious urge: to out every dirty little secret this misbegotten island carried, to finally have it out and done.

Sarai cleared her throat.

“We should wake everyone else, have it known now the pair tried to kill you,” the pale-skinned woman said. “Else accusations might turn ugly come morning.”

“There is more to tell besides,” Angharad wearily said. “Brun effectively confessed to the murders of both Jun and Aines while Yaretzi admitted to being a member of something called the Obsidian Society as well to poisoning Ayanda with something called Spinster’s Milk.”

Sarai let out a noise of surprise.

“Zenzele won’t take that well,” she warned.

“He must be told regardless,” Angharad replied.

Though first, she decided, she should drag the corpses out into the hall. The blood was soaking her floor. Wiping her blade on Yaretzi’s back, Angharad went to pick up her scabbard and sheathed it. She was about to go looking for her boots when someone turned the corner: Shalini, looking haggard but with both pistols up, stumbled into the scene and froze. A heartbeat later Ferranda followed, blade in hand, and then Zenzele half-tripped past them as he pulled on his boots.

“Huh,” Ferranda said.

The Someshwari lowered her pistols. Shalini’s eyes flicked back and forth between them and the dead.

“What happened?” she asked.

“They attempted to kill Angharad in the night,” Song told them. “It went poorly.”

“No shit,” Shalini amusedly said. “I could have told them how that’d go if they’d asked.”

“And the other two of you?” Zenzele asked with a frown, finally dragging his boot up.

A pause. Angharad turned to the other two women, cocking an eyebrow. What had drawn them to her room? She had thought the sound would not carry. Sarai sighed.

“At Song’s request, I put a Sign on Lady Angharad’s door that would break if someone opened it,” she said.

“They had me at their mercy for quite some time,” Angharad neutrally said.

She appreciated the gesture, but not the presumption. Besides, why her of all people?

“I slept through it breaking,” Sarai admitted, sounding embarrassed.

She reddened under the number of incredulous looks thrown her way.

“Look, it’s not a Sign I have fully mastered and I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in days,” she said. “I ended up waking up later and noticing it was gone, so I went to get Song and we found…”

“Predictable consequences?” Zenzele drily finished.

Whatever else might have been said, it was forced to wait. More were joining them, the rising sound of talk in the hall drawing them. Tupoc first, who made a point of theatrically gasping as the sight of the bodies then, Lan and Cozme.

Angharad face them, face still flecked with blood.

“Let me get dressed,” she sighed, “and then I will tell you everything.”

—

It was not long to explain, for all that it had felt an eternity when the pair had her prisoner.

Zenzele’s face went bloodless when he was told his beloved had been drugged into demise at the behest of House Sandile, Shalini laying a hand on his arm, while Tupoc looked slightly miffed. Remembering Yaretzi’s confession regarding the stairs, Angharad made her amends there.

“I did not believe you when you claimed Ishaan was pushed by her,” the noblewoman said, addressing Shalini. “Yet she did, and I apologize for my mistrust.”

The other woman grimaced.

“We looked pretty shady at the time,” she replied. “Water under the bridge.”

As for Ferranda, Angharad was too tired to keep secrets any longer.

“Song and I found a secret passage in the gate shrine and overheard your conversation with Isabel when you accused her,” she bluntly said. “Yaretzi has since confessed that she directed you after Isabel in the hopes that you would stumble into some alleged plot against the Cerdans she was weaving with Tristan.”

Ferranda Villazur drew back in surprise.

“I – are you sure? Tristan?”

“I am certain she said it,” Angharad said. “She also confessed herself a murderer and a liar, so I put little stock in her words.”

The grey-eyed man was a criminal of some sort, and prone to tricks, but he had also demonstrated a certain sense of honor. Several times he had risked his life on behalf of others to no clear gain.

“The boy is suspicious,” Cozme grunted. “He came back and Remund did not.”

“He came back with a belly wound from falling down that slide with your Cerdan,” Sarai flatly replied. “Had to be treated for lockjaw, you can ask the blackcloaks. Your boy Remund wasn’t quite so lucky and he’s still impaled somewhere in the maze as far as we know. Nasty way to go.”

She did not sound all that sympathetic.

“Where is he right now, then?” the mustachioed man pressed. “Yong cannot leave his room, but where is the rat?”

“Investigating the activities of the townsfolk, as I requested of him,” Song flatly said. “I find it somewhat interesting you do not ask where Augusto is, as he is also missing.”

Cozme straightened.

“Augusto is no longer my responsibility, but Remund was-”

“Nobody cares about your brats, Cozme,” Lan interrupted, tone impatient. “Tristan could have slit both their throats in the middle of the street and most of us would have clapped. Tredegar, get on with it. What about Brun?”

Cozme Aflor looked more than a little angry, but he had no friends in the hall. Angharad laid out the rest of what Yaretzi had told her, prompting an interested noise from Tupoc at the mention of the Obsidian Society.

“They are famous assassins in Izcalli,” he informed them all in a rare display of concord. “They are a cult of the Skeletal Butterfly that takes killing contracts, they’ve been around for centuries. Rumor has it they even slew a Grasshopper King once.”

She moved on to Brun, after that, and revulsion rose as she described his contract and how it had slowly turned him into a murderer. The description of its effects had Shalini grimacing.

“I felt something like that on the night Jun was killed,” she admitted. “When I had the watch. I thought I was just tired and never entirely fell asleep so I said nothing save to Ishaan, but everything Lady Angharad speaks of is something I have felt.”

Lan looked murderous, an unusual look on her face, but then what did Angharad know? Both Yaretzi and Brun had accused her of poisoning him before the Toll Road, something the Pereduri had mentioned and the blue-lipped woman not denied. Angharad had thought herself aware of most the undercurrents in their company, wise to its workings even if she occasionally missed pieces, but that illusion had just been most thoroughly stripped away. Others had danced around her so deftly she never even noticed she was attending a ball. No more of that, Angharad coldly thought. She would not be made such a fool again.

Tupoc, who was closest to the stairs, suddenly tensed. He raised a hand at the rest of them, demanding silence as he raised his spear.

“Someone just came in,” he whispered.

Lord Zenzele glanced at their group, then down below.

“It is Tristan,” he said.

He had used his contract, she thought. Tristan must have a tie to someone in here.

Tupoc did not put the spear down.

“Xical,” Angharad warningly said, hand going to her blade.

“Three in a night would just be greedy, Tredegar,” Tupoc chided her amusedly.

He put the weapon down, however, just as someone began hurrying up the stairs. The loudness of it was startled her. Tristan was a light-footed man, yet now he stomped up at a run. The scruffy grey-eyed man erupted past the threshold, steps stuttering when he saw them all gathered in the hall.

“Oh,” Tristan said. “Everyone is here. Good.”

His eyes flicked to the corpses, unmoved at the sight. He did not even ask.

“Finally showing up, are you?” Tupoc drawled. “Lateness is becoming a habit with you.”

“Tupoc, shut the fuck up,” the man said, and there was a ripple of surprise at that unusual boldness. “We do not have time for this. I was just in the town square, where our hosts – every single one of which is a devil – were having a spirited conversation about eating us all.”

The silence was instant and complete.

“Then on my way back,” Tristan ferociously continued, “I passed by the postern gate where I happened to catch Augusto Cerdan letting in a warband of cultists. This happened-”

He produced a small timepiece, popping open the lid to see. It felt vaguely familiar.

“- three minutes and change ago,” he finished. “By now I expect they will be moving to free the slaves.”

Noise erupted all at once, half a dozen people speaking up. Song’s voice cut through, clear and calm. Trained, Angharad thought. Song Ren had been trained for command, or at least leadership.

“Dress and arm yourselves,” she said. “Everything else can wait.”

Some grumbling, but Angharad cut through it by hurrying to her own room and picking up her bag. Enough followed suit at the sight of her that the rest were pressured into doing the same. It had been a mostly symbolic gesture on her part, as her affairs were already packed, and she was back within moments. Just in time to hear Song and Sarai interrogating Tristan.

“- one was older than the others, called Akados, and some of the other devils accused him of wanting to ‘anneal’ through slaughter,” the man said. “I have no real notion of what that might mean.”

“Older devils eventually become fixed shapes in the aether,” Song absent-mindedly replied. “Their kind calls that process annealing, like the smithing term.”

She would know, the Pereduri thought. The Republics allowed devils citizenship, sometimes even to serve as bureaucrats.

“What does it mean, a fixed shape in the aether?” Angharad asked, stepping close.

“What she said,” Tristan supported.

She fought down the flicker of fondness. His eyes had not wavered at the sight of the corpse and too many black rumors yet hung over his head. Angharad was done putting trust in smiling strangers.

“It means no matter how many times you kill them they’ll crawl back out of the aether eventually,” Sarai grimaced. “Old devils are nothing to trifle with, though this one should yet fall short of the threshold.”

“If it is old enough to be discerning about the kind of aether it feeds on, it must be getting close,” Song warned. “I expect if it fed on the simpler aetheric taint of murder rather than ‘slaughter’ it might have finished the process.”

Angharad cocked her head to the side.

“Is this… discernment why devils in stories are afflicted with strange compulsions?” she asked.

Children’s tales had clever heroes outsmarting them by spilling beads the devils then had to count, tricking them into suicide for being unable to find a rhyme for their sentence.

“More or less,” Song said. “But that conversation can wait until we are in a place of safety. Tristan, you have your affairs?”

“Everything I care to carry,” the grey-eyed man said, then paused.

He turned to Sarai.

“Yong?”

She grimaced.

“He cannot stand,” she replied.

“Then we will have to carry him,” Tristan flatly replied. “Lady Angharad, if I might ask for your help?”

A worthy cause, Angharad thought, and so she nodded her head.

She was the one who knocked, a muted voice telling her to enter. Yong was lying in his bed, half-naked but his torso so thoroughly covered by bandages he might as well have been wearing a shirt. Only his arms and part of his shoulders were left bare – the expanse of skin drawing attention to the loaded pistol he was pointing their way. The barrel wobbled when he began coughing wetly, and his eyes were watery. He recognized them after a moment, lowering the pistol and setting it on the bedside table.

“What happened?” he croaked. “I heard voices.”

“Brun and Yaretzi tried to off her,” Tristan bluntly said, jutting a thumb Angharad’s way. “She killed them instead, I hear, and outed all their dirty little secrets.”

Angharad eyed him, reluctantly amused.

“Tristan went to spy on the townsfolk and found out they are all devils,” she contributed. “Augusto Cerdan, the honorless cur, has also let in a warband of cultists.”

The timepiece snapped open, then closed. Angharad could not shake the feeling that she had seen it somewhere before.

“About five minutes ago,” Tristan said. “We need to get moving or we’ll be hip deep in devils and darklings soon.”

Yong let out a rattling breath.

“My stitches won’t hold,” he said. “I cannot move.”

“That is why we came to carry you,” Angharad said.

“You mishear me,” Yong said. “It is not that I cannot walk – I cannot move. The physician told me I am to stay abed for at least two weeks.”

“That physician was a devil who wanted to eat you,” Tristan pointed out, quite reasonably in your opinion.

“I saw the stitches in a mirror,” the older man replied. “They cover much of my back, and if they rip there is no question that I will die.”

“I do not dismiss your concerns,” Angharad assured him. “We will ask for the help of others and take great care. But we most move, Yong.”

“She’s right,” Tristan quietly said. “The devils will come here for certain, it’s where the meal is.”

Yong stared at them for a long moment, then breathed out.

“I know,” he finally said. “I know. And it would be an ugly way to die.”

He clenched his fingers.

“I expect I won’t be able to move much,” Yong said. “I may have to trouble you to carry word for me, Tristan.”

The younger man stilled, face closing like a shutter.

“Your husband?”

Angharad frowned, for the Sacromontan sounded like he hoped he was wrong. Yong nodded. After a grimace, Tristan nodded back. She could not help but feel as if she were intruding, somehow. The Tianxi’s stare moved on to her.

“I require some privacy,” he told her.

“I understand it is unpleasant, but you will need help to dress,” she said, trying to be delicate.

“Some matters require privacy,” he gently replied, eyes flicking to the chamber pot.

Ah, Angharad thought with some embarrassment. Indeed she would prefer not to be there for that.

“Yong,” Tristan began, but the veteran raised a hand.

“Don’t,” he said. “We have said all we need to say. Nothing has changed.”

The grey-eyed man looked like he wanted to argue, but instead he let out a long breath

“I guess it hasn’t,” Tristan said, voice soft.

He sharply nodded, then walked away. Angharad followed him out, carefully closing the door behind her. Tristan leaned against the wall, folding his arms, and the frown that had never quite left deepened at the sight of how grim he looked. How his jaw was clenched.

“He lied,” she said.

She had suspected as much, but now knew.

“He-”

A shot sounded from behind the door.

Tristan flinched.

“He chose to make it quick,” the man hoarsely said, “instead of ripping his stitches and suffering hours of agony before the same end. It was…”

Tristan licked his lips.

“It was his choice to make.”

He sounded, Angharad thought, like a man who was not sure who he was trying to convince. She should have been angry at being deceived again, but Angharad could not muster it when she saw the grief in cast of face. Tristan pushed off the wall, a slight tremble to his hand.

“If you’ll excuse me,” he got out, “I need to make sure my friend died with the first shot.”

For he had not, Angharad realized with faint horror, Tristan would have to finish the job himself. She watched him open the door, glimpsed the billow of powder smoke and red on the wall, then looked away.

She kept her eyes on the stairs as she heard him see to his dead friend, fighting not to throw up.

—

No one asked what had happened to Yong: seeing Tristan lay his body to rest on the bed was enough to quell that urge in even the most curious among them. Angharad’s gaze swept through their company, finding them assembled and as ready as they would get.

She swallowed, gaze still shying away from the room where a man had taken his own life.

“We are to proceed, then,” she said. “Song has shown all of you the map, so all should know where we are to gather: half a mile north of here, by the marked stones.”

“It has all been said before,” Lord Zenzele mildly said. “Shall we?”

She threw him an irritated glance but nodded. Yet before she could take a single step down the stairs, a metallic sound drew her eye – and that of most present. Tristan had gone back into Yong’s room and tipped a lantern. Oil spilled over the corpse of the veteran, spreading a tide of softly lapping flame.

“I am not leaving him for the devils to eat,” the grey-eyed man evenly said. “Besides, it can serve as a distraction for our escape.”

Several looked like they wanted to argue but the oil was quite literally already spilled and now the bedding was catching aflame. There was no time to waste, not that they had been rich in minutes before.

“Hurry,” Angharad said, cutting through the silence. “If they do not yet know we are onto them, they soon will.”

She moved down the stairs, knowing that action would cut through any urge to argue: no one wanted to debate with a departing back. She heard steps follow behind, adjusting her scabbard on her hip so it would not hit the wall, and in moments she’d reached the common room. There her steps stuttered for she found she was not alone. Angharad moved out of the way so the man behind her – Tupoc – could follow, but her eyes never left the man she was facing.

Only Mayor Crespin was not truly a man, was he?

The devil wearing the corpse of a bearded, middle-aged man was waiting by the exit, flanked on both sides by two closed shutters. He leant against the door, square in their way should they want to leave.

“I hear fire,” the devil said.

“We hear of plots,” Angharad replied, the others coming down behind her.

Lantern light ate away at the shadows of the room, muskets rising and blades leaving scabbards. The mayor seemed unmoved by their numbers.

“’tis a poor notion,” Crespin said, tone dipping in a formal, almost antiquated Antigua. “Yet my kin agreed, so it must be done.”

In the distance, she heard shots. The mayor twitched. As he should, if the cultist warband was loose in town and gathering their slaves against them.

“You have greater worries than we, I think,” Angharad said. “Can you truly afford this distraction?”

The devil seemed amused.

“Why should I worry of a scapegoat skipping all the way to the altar?” he asked. “It was not us that killed them so, good blackcloaks, but arrant cultists of the Eye.”

Her jaw clenched at the mockery.

“It need not come to violence,” she tried one last time.

“You are lucents,” Crespin told her, not unkindly. “No thing done to you may be named violence.”

There was no bargain to be had here, not with a creature such as this.

“Walk away,” Angharad said, slowly unsheathing her blade. “While you still can.”

Mayor Crespin twitched, lifeless eyes looking her up and down – not with a lover’s appraisal but a butcher’s, tracing the cuts in the meat.

“Alive, if you can,” the devil ordered.

The shutters exploded into wooden shards, devils bursting through them. Shots sounded from behind Angharad, billowing plumes of smoke as her allies fired their guns, and one of the silhouettes was swatted down – but rose a heartbeat later, half of its face missing and revealing cracked chitin. Crespin was still leaning against the door, having merely cocked his head an inch to the side to avoid a bullet.

“Focus fire on the wounded one,” Song called out from behind her, voice completely calm. “Crack the carapace.”

Leaving tactics in good hands, Angharad strode out to meet the enemy with allies at her side – Tupoc on one side, Zenzele the other. A dark-haired woman with a tanned, weathered face leapt at her like an animal. It was a startling jump, impossible with human legs, but momentum was a universal shackle: Angharad slid under the leaping form, letting her pass by, and then pivoted cleanly to open her from shoulder to spine.

Skin parted like parchment, but under it some kind of oily chitinous carapace refused to give under her blade. She left a long scar and the devil screamed, but she was turning around furiously within a heartbeat. Painful, then, but not a wound. Angharad caught a glimpse of Tupoc impaling a devil through the stomach, nailing the false man to the floor, and of Zenzele struggling with a bald old man. Rapid fire from the back still nailing the fourth attacker to the ground.

Crespin watched all, indifferent.

She had no more attention to spare. Her devil let out a furious clicking screech, skin rippling as it struck at her. A simple slap that would have hit her shoulder, and though quick it was predictable. Angharad caught it with her blade angled to go through the wrist, her training moving before her mind, only instead of cutting off the hand she almost lost her blade. Even that slight, awkward blow had been like getting kicked. Lips thinning Angharad drew back her blade, scarring carapace again, and glimpsed-

/Skin rippled, a leg ripping its way out and piercing her throat./

-in time to half-step out of the way of the jutting, thin limb that lanced out of the devil’s back. Angharad aimed her swing carefully, and finally the blade bit through: steel ripped through the horrid appendage, dropping it as the devil screeched and scuttled back. The severed leg twitched on the floor, bloodless and seemingly boiling. The sight of it inspired a deep, visceral disgust in her.

Her devil foe was twitching uncontrollably under the shell, two more legs ripping their way out as it skittered away in fear of her. Tupoc’s own opponent lay on the ground, convulsing – Sleeping God, what was that segmented spear made of? – and the Izcalli was giving a bloodied Zenzele a hand driving back his own as the firing line pinned the fourth to the wall with shots and burst its belly open into a spurt of disgusting pale flesh. They were winning, she thought, but one of their foes had yet to take the field.

“Pathetic,” Mayor Crespin said. “Useless castings one and all, a waste of His Infernal Majesty’s grace.”

“Stathera,” her devil whined, “they are-”

Crespin moved, fast enough she saw but a blur, and then he was holding the wounded devil by the throat. Without batting an eye, he tossed his comrade at the firing line. Angharad let out a cry of warning – she heard Cozme draw his sword, cursing, and a glimpse of Tristan fumbling with a pistol she had last seen in Yong’s hand.

The distraction cost her, for in that heartbeat Crespin casually grabbed a table and smashed it down on her.

Angharad brought up her hands to shield her head and was hammered into the ground, dazed. The wood splintered atop her. Hissing in pain she kicked off the piece pinning her down, rolling out of the way just in time to see Crespin ram his way through the counter and rip out a long and sharp piece. His eyes turned further away, where the tossed devil was fighting the others in a messy sprawl, and Angharad saw what he was looking at: the lanterns.

Devils saw in the dark. Humans did not. Without the lanterns, they were all dead.

With a cry she threw herself forward, hacking wildly at his arm, and the devil turned at her with an irritated look – a slap caught her in the belly, near cracking a rib and sending her tumbling away on the floor. She stopped only when her shoulder hit the wall, just under one of the windows. Through which, she saw with surprise, a musket was being aimed. Angharad had just long enough to drop her sword and cover her ears so she would not go deaf from the shot.

A dozen muskets unloaded into common room, the cult of the Red Eye announcing their entry into the fight.

Snarling, Angharad reached out through the window and dragged a man through it by his collar – wincing at the tenderness of her ribs – to smash his face into the floor. The hollow flailed, shouting, and as she rose she snatched her blade back even as her booted heel came down on the man’s neck to snap it. Someone tossed a javelin her way and she narrowly ducked behind the still-closed door. Two cultists leapt inside the inn through the windows but a heartbeat later Mayor Crespin darted out of the smoke to rip one’s jaw out, nonchalantly gobbling down the flesh and bone as the cultists screamed – the older devil was driven away by musket shots, but he would be back. More cultists leapt in, swords high as they ran into the smoke.

There was no winning this, Angharad thought, eyes trying to find the rest of her companions but finding only an anarchy of powder smoke, steel and hateful blows. She opened her mouth, thinking to call for a retreat, but her words were drowned out.

A chunk of the ceiling dropped, revealing a burning inferno above as smoke swept out. The fire Tristan had set earlier, she recalled as she pushed down a hysterical swell of laughter.

“To the door with me,” she shouted over the roar of the flames.

Through the swirling smoke she saw silhouettes moving – some of them running towards her, others fighting. Ferranda leapt over burst of spreading flames, Lan hurrying behind her, and for a moment Angharad thought she saw Cozme headed her way as well. Only another chunk of ceiling fell in the way, the man drawing back with a shout, and he was dragged away by Tristan. Song was at her side a moment later, bleeding from the arm.

A chunk of it had been ripped out.

“We need to go,” the Tianxi shouted over the din. “Crespin broke a wall, the others have a way out.”

Angharad risked one last glance back, seeing a silhouette crossing the smoke. Short, coughing her lungs out. She brushed off Song’s hand on her shoulder, hurrying back to help Shalini out of the smoke as the Someshwari held on to her side.

“Open it,” she shouted at Ferranda.

The infanzona ripped open the door and Song ran through first, pivoting within moments and shooting at someone they could not see. They followed in the Tianxi’s wake, finding a dead cultist slumping against the wall with his musket on the floor as the rest hesitated, split between the devils inside and the fleeing company.

A bestial scream coming from inside burning wreck of the Last Rest was what settled the matter.

One of the cultists spitefully threw a javelin their way, but the others turned their muskets to towards the devils as the five of them fled into the streets.

—

There was little safety to be found out here, for chaos had seized the town.

Houses all over Cantica had been set aflame, and as they roared high slaves fled into the brutal melee between the cultists and the devils. Not all slaves were running for safety, however, many instead taking whatever lay around as weapons and joining the Red Eye cult in fighting the devils – some of which had lost patience and ripped their way clear of their shell, moving through the smoke like ghosts and ripping apart men as muskets sounded and spears bit into chitin.

“Manes,” Lan breathed out, “it’s a full-on uprising. We need to get out of here.”

“Stay close,” Angharad called out. “We head for the front gate.”

Of their party, only the Tianxi twin was not a fighter. The rest of them clustered around her: Angharad and Ferranda in front, Shalini and Song behind. They ran two blocks down before someone took notice of them, a cultist shouting and pointing their way to draw the attention of the mob of escaped slaves around him.

A heartbeat later Song put a shot between his eyes, which had half the slaves scattering as his body dropped.

They ran away before the other half, visibly enraged, could catch them. They turned a corner through a veil of smoke, following the curve of the palisade towards what should be the front gate. Twice more they ran into hollows, but the first time they were fleeing slaves who gave their company a wide berth and the second lot – three spearmen in mail – were chased off by a few shots. They were lucky, Angharad realized: the front gate was far from the fighting. The worst of it was deep in Cantica, where hollows had been kept imprisoned and the cultists now fought the devils.

Soon they were standing by the gates, which were yet closed. A wooden gatehouse by their side should carry the wheel that would open the gate, so the five of them carefully moved towards the simple wooden house nestled to the right of the gate. There was not a soul in sight, and barely any light: theirs came from the lantern Lan had lit and the inferno rising in the distance. The older Tianxi took the lead.

“Unlocked,” the blue-lipped woman said, testing the gatehouse’s handle.

She pushed it open, stepping into the dark with her lantern high, and in that same breath she was grabbed.

Angharad let out a shout of alarm, rushing forward through the doorway, but there was a flash as a musket was fired and Shalini only narrowly dragged her out of the way as a bullet whizzed right past her shoulder. Between the shot and Lan’s toppled lantern she caught a glimpse of what lay inside: at least three cultists with swords and muskets, pointing them at the door.

“See? I told you they would go for the gate, like rats leaving a sinking ship.”

Fury rose, bursting out as a snarl as she ripped her way out of Shalini’s grasp and recognized that voice.

“Augusto,” she hissed.

She could not see him, he was hiding out of sight, but by where the voice came from he must be the one who had taken Lan.

“I have a knife at your pet’s throat, you Malani bitch,” Augusto replied. “And enough men with me you have no hope of forcing your way through.”

Angharad glanced at Shalini, silently asking whether her contract would make a lie of that, but the short Someshwari grimaced and shook her head. However fast her hand, it was not faster than a finger already on the trigger.

“You have nothing to win by this,” Angharad snarled. “And know that if you kill Lan, I will personally torch that gatehouse with you inside it.”

The chokepoint of the door worked both ways: their muskets would keep his band in just as theirs would keep her company out. The Cerdan chuckled.

“He did this for leverage,” Song quietly said, lowering her voice so the men in the gatehouse could not hear. “He wants something from us.”

“Oh, he’ll kill us if he can,” Ferranda just as quietly said. “That was no warning shot. But I wager our Red Eye friends did not trust him with nearly as men as he would have liked, so he came ready to bargain.”

“How much is that rat’s life worth to you, Tredegar?” Augusto called out. “I happen to be in the mood to trade.”

Lan was under her protection, Angharad thought with a clenched jaw. She felt Song’s eyes on her, saw the objection that lay there, and ignored it. She would have no truck with expediency.

“What do you want, Cerdan?” she asked.

“An oath from all of you,” he said, and her brow rose. “You are to tell the Watch that you killed me, and if one of you breaks that oath you are to kill them for it.”

She frowned. Why would he need this? Angharad, unpleasant as the notion was, was not even entirely certain the blackcloaks would execute him for letting in the cultists. Tupoc had worked with them, and evidently felt safe in the assumption they would not. So he fears they will execute him for something else, she decided, and the answer soon came as to what that might be.

“You contracted with the Red Eye,” she evenly said. “Down in the maze. The Watch will kill you for it.”

“I am not hearing agreement,” Augusto called out.

A heartbeat later she heard Lan let out a cry, then struggle. Her fingers creaked around the grip of her saber, but to charge through that doorway was death.

“He cut me,” the Tianxi said, sounding like she had a hard time keeping calm.

“And I will do it again, until I have what I want,” the Cerdan said. “The rat for the oath.”

“I don’t understand why he wants it,” Shalini muttered. “It won’t get him off this fucking island, and it’s not like the blackcloaks will hunt him if he goes off with the cultist tribes.”

“He does not intend to stay on this island,” Ferranda guessed. “He would go back to Sacromonte.”

“The Watch will kill him for that contract,” Song said. “Unless…”

Unless he intended on killing them first, they all thought. To lead an army of cultists against Three Pines and seize a ship by force, sailing back to Sacromonte without them, and there hid behind the protection of House Cerdan.

“He’s gone mad then,” Angharad said. “A single warband and whatever slaves he press-gangs to take on a fortress of the Watch? They will make meat of him.”

Then she saw it, the lay of the scheme.

“No, not mad. He is thinking like a warlord,” she breathed out. “He would use the victory here to gather other tribes to his banner, try to unite them against the Watch.”

Even then the odds were against him, and her companions looked as skeptical as she felt. But that was why he wanted the oath, she thought. So he would have time to muster the tribes and yet still strike at Three Pines with the advantage of surprise. Perhaps he intended on feigning he was a late survivor and opening a gate as he had done here, or any other half-dozen schemes. It did not matter, Angharad thought.

If he wanted the stars in a cup, then she would make that promise.

“I will take your oath,” Angharad said.

“Angharad,” Song hissed.

She met those silver eyes squarely.

“I will take that oath,” she repeated, “and so will everyone here. In exchange for this you will release Lan unharmed.”

Doubts on their faces, but she would not brook contradiction in this.

“Good,” Augusto said. “How honorable of you, Malani. Swear to it, and I will do the same.”

Angharad did, and under her quelling eyes the others did the same. Lan was sent stumbling through the doorway, bleeding shallowly from the neck. Ferranda grabbed her and pulled her out of the line of fire. There was another spurt of laughter from inside the gatehouse.

“Shall we now bargain for us to open the gates for you?” Augusto called out. “Unless you want to come and try yourself.”

What she wanted, Angharad thought, was to take a lantern and set that gatehouse aflame. But that might break the mechanism that would let them out, and she was not sure strength alone would be enough to force open the gates. Her other choice was to pass by the heart of Cantica and try Tristan’s postern gate, but that was no true choice. She was not sure exactly where it was and the path was likely to be dangerous.

That and Augusto was certain to follow behind and try to rally cultists against them, now that he knew where they were.

They were the entire reason the man was here, Angharad realized. He had been afraid enough of them slipping out of Cantica in the chaos that he was sitting out the battle entirely.

“Speak your terms,” Angharad said, ignoring the rising anger of her companions.

“So pliant,” Augusto taunted. “You should have been like this from the start, Tredegar. I’ll have another oath from you for the privilege of my tolerance.”

“Then speak it,” she replied, losing patience.

He must have heard it in her voice, for he wasted no more time.

“You are to commit no violence against me nor allow your companions to do the same, or attempt to imprison me nor allow your companions to do the same,” Augusto said.

“Under that oath you could walk out and kill me and I would be allowed to do nothing about it,” she said. “I refuse.”

“Fine,” he snorted. “The same terms, but violence is allowed in your own defense and that of your companions.”

“That is a lifetime oath,” she noted. “I will accept it only within the confines of Cantica.”

“The entire island,” Augusto shot back.

Angharad’s eyes narrowed. He thought to play word-games with a daughter of Peredur? It would cost him.

“Until twenty-four hours have passed,” she offered.

A heartbeat of hesitation.

“Agreed.”

They took the oath, and a few moments later the gates began to open.

Angharad smiled, humming the first few bars of The Fair Wife, and considered the death of Augusto Cerdan.

It was a small mark, barely the width of half a palm, but that ‘C/C’ might just get them all killed.

“Trouble,” Lady Angharad Tredegar slowly repeated. “What do you mean?”

Tristan saw the change in the noblewoman, the way her previous sulk immediately turned into a straightened back as she unconsciously made enough room to be able to draw her saber. It was interesting that someone of her birth had learned such a habit – the kind you usually saw in legbreakers and killers who had been in the service of coteries for years, who knew death might come for them at any moment. Someone had tried to kill Angharad Tredegar, he figured, and taken more than one swing at it.

The thief cleared his throat.

“Would you like the short explanation or the long?” he asked.

The Pereduri blinked, as if surprised he would even ask.

“The long, of course,” Angharad seriously said.

“Huh,” Fortuna mused, cocking her head to the side. “No one ever asks for the long explanation. I think something might be wrong with her, Tristan.”

A beat.

“I mean, she just willingly signed up for you talking more to her, she must be a masochist at the very least.”

It was not possible to strangle an incorporeal goddess, Tristan knew. He had tried enough to be certain. Hiding his surprise – Fortuna wasn’t wrong about thew first part at least – the thief cleared his throat again, placing his thoughts in order.

“A lamplight is not a complicated thing to make,” he finally said. “In essence, it is an iron post about twenty feet high – broader at the base, for stability – with a cylinder of grass and iron screwed on atop it. There is an oil reservoir inside and a wick to light.”

Tredegar was, by all appearances, listening quite attentively. As if interested. It began to occur to him that Fortuna might actually be a right, an unsettling prospect at the best of times.

“The oil itself is cheap,” he said. “Almond oil, but they do not need to be Glare-grown – just cut with infused dust or stone. Iron is cheap in Sacromonte because of the Trench, and an iron post is not a complicated to forge, so lamplights are relatively cheap to make and have been for as long as anyone can remember. It is not a popular good to trade in because there is, as far as anyone can tell, no coin to make in it.”

“But,” Angharad said.

Malani nobles were said to have a better eye for coin than most, he recalled. Or at least their lesser branches.

“Enter Chabier Calante,” Tristan said, “to whom the very Prince of Lies is favorably compared in some parts of the Murk.”

The Pereduri’s brown eyes moved to the lamplight by which they stood, finding the ‘C/C’ impressed into the metal. Her brow rose.

“Decades have passed since then and tales have eaten away at the truth of the matter,” Tristan continued, “but some elements always remain: Chabier Calante was a trader, a Trebian merchantman, and by way of what he believed to be an opportunity came into a large number of Pili cannons – the barrels, to be precise.”

Angharad cocked her head to the side.

“I have read of those,” she said. “Tianxi artillery. Powerful but infamously imprecise. Their use cost the Republics several engagements at sea.”

“I doubt the man would have cared,” Tristan said. “But he was tricked anyhow: the reason he got the barrels so cheaply was because they had been miscast. Some sort of thinned junction, it made the bottoms prone to exploding after the second shot. Even worse, the republic he meant to sell these to averted war by way of treaty at the last moment.”

“So he was ruined,” Tredegar said.

She sounded rather approving.

“Most would have been, but Chabier Calante was bold,” Tristan replied. “Around that time, the City was looking to expand its lines of lamplights into the Murk. Chabier had a stroke of inspiration: by sticking the miscast barrels atop a shorter, hollow base of scrap iron, he would be able to build lamplights for a pittance.”

“Surely the quality would be greatly lessened,” Angharad frowned.

Tristan shrugged.

“The story goes that when the contract bids were made to the infanzones, his offered price was almost half that of his competitors,” the thief said. “Chabier’s description of his shorter, squat lamplights as ‘built hardened against the savagery of the commons’ was allegedly found rather charming. They awarded him the contract.”

The noblewoman’s face hardened.

“This borders on corruption,” she severely said. “It is, at the very least, incompetence.”

Tristan wondered what it must be like, to live in a world where either of these things were a real hindrance in holding onto power you were born to.

“Lamplights with that newly minted mark of ‘C/C’ sprouted over about half the Murk the following year,” Tristan said. “All of Soliante, Araturo and Careyar.”

“I do not know these districts,” Angharad told him. “I was lodged in Cortolo and spent some time in Fishmonger’s Quay.”

Tristan let out a little noise of curiosity.

“Cortolo’s one of the nicer parts of the Old Town,” he said. “I’m surprised you were able to get a bed there, most foreigners end up near the ports.”

“My uncle recommended an acquaintance,” Angharad said.

Ah, the blackcloak relation. More likely he had recommended an inn with ties to the Watch, Tristan thought.

“They are districts near the western edge of the city,” he said. “Far from Cortolo, and indeed the eyes of the infanzones. Chabier Calante became very rich from this deal, a man of means, but as the months turned into a year word began trickling in: his lamplights kept blowing up, the top exploding in showers of fire and broken glass.”

Angaharad’s lips thinned. She was, Tristan realized, genuinely angry at the thought of something that had happened in a foreign land decades before she was born.

“It was the parts from the Pili cannons,” Tristan said. “Constant heat warped them, and by doing so turned them into makeshift grenades that blew the top off their own lamplights.”

“What happened after Chabier Calante was arrested?” Tredegar asked.

“He wasn’t,” Tristan mildly said. “Chabier suppressed news a few more years by paying a coterie to frame another for the explosions, which kept him in good odor long enough to marry into a noble house and prepare.”

“Prepare how?” the Pereduri said, sounding baffled.

“By the time it came out his lamplights were essentially a self-inflicted bombardment of Sacromontan streets,” Tristan said, “he had replacements lined up for the pieces whose manufacture just so happened to enrich enough powerful infanzones that not only did he go unpunished, he actually grew richer.”

Angharad Tredegar looked as if she had just been slapped, something that took great effort not to smile at. He could not help it, she was taking it all so personally.

“He should have been hanged,” the noblewoman stiffly said. “And all involved in awarding him the contract stripped of their offices and titles in public disgrace.”

You don’t even notice it, do you? That even in your finer world, you would hang the commoner and let the nobles get away with a slap on the wrist. Tristan could not find it in him to be irked over it. It was the kind of blindness you were born into, as much a defect as a limp or a stutter. Tredegar looked slightly embarrassed by her own outburst, coughing awkwardly.

“This lamplight is one of the repaired pieces, then?” she asked.

Tristan grimaced, for now they got to the bone of it.

“Chabier’s name would not still be cursed for his trick after decades passed had it ended there,” he said. “The replacement pieces, you see, did not work all that well either. The glow of the lamplights tends to wax and wane, and some trouble with the wicks means they can go dark for hours at a time without warning.”

Tredegar was not a slow woman, for all her self-inflicted fettering.

“You said earlier that the glow of these lamplights is perfect,” Tredegar slowly said. “It is not the same as those you know, then?”

“No,” he grimly said. “It is not. The upper half does not look quite the same either, the mark is in a different place.”

He grimaced.

“I think,” Tristan said, “that we are looking at the originalcast. Chabier’s first batch.”

“And you said that within a year these pieces exploded,” Tredegar quietly said. “Those in the Murk were used every day?”

He nodded.

“Then even if the people of Cantica light these only the necessary amount to prevent Gloam disease, they should have broken by now,” Tredegar stated, and he was surprised by the certainty in her voice.

Ah, he should not have. Her mother had been some sort of explorer, hadn’t she? No one knew Gloam disease better than those who ventured out into the dark seas.

“There could be other explanations,” he warned. “If the town has only existed for a year or two, for example.”

“It would not have become the crux of the Trial of Weeds were it so recent a creation,” Tredegar noted. “Nor would it have so many established trades on the main street.”

A fair point, he thought as she paused.

“Though I suppose they could have private sources of Glare light,” she said. “Within their own homes. It might be that the use of the lamplights is restricted to the Trial of Weeds.”

“The lamplights are half of what keeps out cultists and lemures,” Tristan disagreed. “The Watch does not seem to be protecting Cantica from raids, by the corpses out front, so they would have used them defensively at least. Besides, think of the costs. Every single family in a small town like this having a private light? It would represent a fortune in coin.”

And Cantica did not seem like a wealthy town.

“I have no notion of the costs involved,” Tredegar admitted. “Much of Peredur is covered by Glare light from the pit above.”

“It’d be cheaper near a pit, like your home or Sacromonte,” Tristan said, “but it would be quite expensive out here on a nowhere island, where all is imported. I doubt even the Watch garrisons on the Dominion have such luxury.”

“Then the people of Cantica ought to be darklings by now, and they are not,” the Pereduri said, her voice gone flinty. “They are hiding something from us.”

It was interesting to witness it, the exact moment when white turned to black in Angharad Tredegar’s mind. Before then the townsfolk had been their hosts, honorable souls deserving of every courtesy. Now they were schemers, looming threats. It would have been easy to mock the woman for it, call it simplicity, but Tristan had seen naivete and this was not it. It was trained mindset, something she had been taught.

Would it not be a useful skill to a noble, being able to decide in a heartbeat that one of your formerly esteemed peers was a hateful foe without taking the betrayal personally?

He was coming around to thinking that Angharad Tredegar was a lot like a thoroughbred trained for the races. Splendid at what she was meant to do – swording people and being mannerly – but somewhat at a loss outside these bounds. Which was only natural: using a racer like a mountain mule was a good way to scrap that very expensive horse. Besides, Tredegar would not be at a loss forever. She was not without cleverness, given time to find her footing she should turn into a singularly dangerous woman.

But for now she was merely very dangerous, so the thief intended to find her a racing course to put that danger to use. What to say, what to hide, what to leverage? Tristan sketched out the angles, then made his decision.

“This cannot be spread around blindly,” Tristan told her. “Some would panic and tip off the townsfolk we are onto them.”

“If we are in danger,” Tredegar said, “we must warn the others.”

The thief feigned hesitation, preparing to concede down to the compromise he had wanted from the start.

“Only those we both agree on,” he offered.

After a heartbeat of hesitation Tredegar nodded. It would serve, given the Malani obsession with keeping their word.

“We need to find out what they are hiding,” the noblewoman said. “What kind of dark pact has kept them from becoming hollows without Glare light.”

“I have a guess as to what might be going on,” Tristan said. “But considering who I believe has the answers, I will need your help.”

Tredegar cocked an eyebrow.

“My help?” she skeptically asked.

He nodded.

“We need to find Tupoc,” Tristan said.

“He despises me,” the noblewoman informed him. “An entirely mutual feeling, I assure you.”

The thief doubted that, in fact – at least on the Izcalli’s side – but now was not the time for that talk. Or ever, really.

“It doesn’t matter,” Tristan said. “Tupoc Xical is not going to answer any question I ask him, because he and I both know that if I press him he will savagely beat me and dump my unconscious body somewhere humiliating.”

Tredegar opened her mouth and then closed it, speechless..

“You, on the other hand,” Tristan continued, “can savagely beat him should he attempt this, which he is equally aware of. That capacity is the required foundation for having any kind of halfway polite conversation with Tupoc Xical.”

The noblewoman squinted at him.

“Tristan,” she said, “are you attempting to use me as some sort of street tough?”

That was absolutely what he was attempting to do, yes. Outright lying to the woman whose entire way of life was bound to the concept of honor seemed a mistake, so he decided on a different angle.

“Be a pal,” Tristan tried. “Do it for justice.”

A heartbeat passed.

“I am not sure whether I should be offended at the implication,” Tredegar muttered, “or relieved that someone is finally asking of me something I know for certain I can do.”

“That uncertainty,” he sagely advised, “is the garden where friendships bloom.”

Angharad did not stab him for that, which was good as agreement in his book.

—

Tupoc Xical, spear assembled and at the ready, loomed over them from the rooftop.

The pale-eyed Izcalli was perched at the edge of the tiles, surveying the streets of Cantica like a hunting cat waiting for the right prey to pounce. Tupoc was bound for the cages and likely the grave unless he found the secret that would spare his life, so it hardly surprised Tristan that the man had decided trying to rustle up votes was a waste of time better spent on getting the lay of the land in Cantica. Indeed, the thief was counting on it. Everyone else, including him, had dabbled elsewhere.

“Good evening,” Tristan cheerfully called out.

The Izcalli sneered down.

“Less so now that you waste part of it,” he said. “Run along, rat.”

A full two seconds passed.

“Lady Tredegar,” Tupoc greeted with a nod.

It was almost impressive how excruciatingly deliberate he had made that pause.

“Your manners are lacking as ever,” Tredegar frostily replied.

“They match the soul they are offered to,” Tupoc drawled.

Insult and compliment all at once, Tristan thought amusedly. How crafty.

“We ask only for a conversation,” the thief said.

“We?” the Izcalli snorted. “How the mighty have fallen, Tredegar. Are you now cowering away in fear of the dark with this one?”

Angharad Tredegar cocked her head to the side.

“Shall we,” she mildly said, “speak of fear, then, Tupoc Xical?”

The eerily perfect man went still, a statue of flesh and blood, and Tristan hid his surprise. Tredegar had something on the man, she must have for him to react this way. How? Nobody had something on Tupoc, the Leopard Society man was like a pile of razor blades fashioned into a man’s shape. Tupoc leapt down from the roof, landing in a smooth crouch that was just close enough to force Tristan to take a step back, but the thief hardly even cared. This was just too delicious.

That Angharad Tredegar, of all people, would come into the power to hold Tupoc’s feet to the fire was enough to make his day.

“Do not waste my time,” Tupoc said. “What do you want?”

Tredegar cleared her throat, turning her gaze to Tristan. This had gone remarkably quickly, the thief mused, and he had not had to suffer nearly as many condescending threats against his life as he had been expecting.

Angharad was already proving a remarkably useful stick to shake at people.

“To trade in secrets,” Tristan said. “You have been looking over Cantica for hours now, Xical. Where is it?”

The noblewoman at his side frowned.

“Where is what?”

Tupoc snorted.

“The place where the bodies are buried,” the Izcalli said. “Where our beloved hosts are keeping their dirty little secrets.”

Tristan cocked an eyebrow.

“And?”

“On the right side of town, near the palisade, they keep large piles of lumber for firewood,” Tupoc said. “Only the wood is old while the tracks that come and go in the mud are fresh.”

“So and underground cellar, most likely,” the thief mused. “They are keeping something down there.”

Tredegar looked uncomfortable.

“I have been told,” she hesitantly said, “that Cantica might be keeping darkling slaves. If such a cellar exists, it might be a gaol of sorts for the disobedient.”

Tristan stilled for a moment, fitting the pieces. If his growing guess about what the people of Cantica actually were proved true, then it was only sensible that hollow slaves would be kept around to work the fields and do the busywork. He had thought that the streets were empty because the townsfolk were keeping away from the trials, but Glare lamplights would force hollows off the streets.

“That would be a boon,” Tupoc said. “Tortured slaves always tell on the masters when given the opportunity, hollows most of all.”

Tredegar, he saw, was struggling between a polite dislike of slavery and her inability to approve of a slave turning on their lawful superior.

“Time to have a look at thar cellar, then,” Tristan said, rolling a shoulder.

“Trade means I get something as well, rat,” Tupoc said.

The thief nodded.

“Your question?”

“No question,” Tupoc said. “I am coming with you, that is my price.”

“No,” Tredegar immediately denied.

Tristan said nothing, which after a heartbeat earned him a glare and a reproachful Tristan from the swordswoman. Mentioning that Tupoc seemed like a splendid scapegoat should anything go wrong with their little trip was unlikely to sway Tredegar, so instead Tristan tried a different approach.

“Why do you want to come?” he asked Tupoc. “You could easily trade for us telling you what we learn afterwards instead.”

The Izcalli’s pale eyes narrowed, a grudging look seizing his face. Tupoc recognized the offered branch for what it was – a way to talk himself into coming along – but resented being given at all anything by the likes of Tristan. This was turning, the thief mused, into a most satisfying interlude. Squirm some more, he thought, smiling pleasantly at the other man.

“This trial,” Tupoc said. “There is something wrong about it.”

“There is nothing wrong about being called to account for your own deeds,” Tredegar bit back.

He dismissed that with an irritated gesture.

“I mean in the way it is done,” the Izcalli said. “What prevents any group with half the votes from killing off everyone they dislike regardless of the stated purpose of this trial? It is supposed to weed out the unworthy but it is too easy to rig, even with a way to get out of being killed.”

“Ah,” Tristan exhaled. “You think there is something out to kills us beyond each other.”

“We are forbidden from fighting each other and the townsfolk,” Tupoc said. “But what if there was something else inside the walls with us?”

Something that could walk under the light of the Glare, something that would not reveal itself before it struck. Tristan had slowly but surely come to the same conclusion, but on a larger scale than Tupoc was considering. The Izcalli was yet thinking of this as a hunt when he should have thought of it as a racket.

“Attacks in the night would punish us for lingering too long,” Tredegar quietly said. “Force us to balance the righteousness of executing the deserving and the risks we incur to the innocent in doing so.”

Something the blackcloaks would be most interested in learning about their company before welcoming them into its ranks. Is the hidden rule that hunting the killer during the night gets you spared? It would be a way to preserve talent that had burned too many bridges but might still be useful to the Watch.

A rule to preserve the likes of Tupoc Xical, in other words.

“I want answers, same as you, but that is not why I want to go with you,” Tupoc said. “It occurs to me that my foe might just be tempted into an attack should it look like we are about to uncover Cantica’s secrets.”

Tredegar breathed out.

“That is what you have being doing,” she said. “Standing alone in an attempt to bait them out.”

Ah, Tristan thought. The blinders went both ways. He saw the affairs as a racket, so it had not occurred to him that Tupoc might be trying to outfox the hunter. It was good Tredegar had caught it, for it finally allowed him to understand what exactly it was the Izcalli had been doing all this time.

“He will coming along whether we like it or not,” Tristan told Angharad. “He is dead if he does not find the hidden rule, there is nothing we can do that will be worse than the outcome should he miss that opportunity.”

The noblewoman stared at him for a long moment, face reluctant, but he did not blink. Tredegar sighed.

“Though you will be accompanying us,” she flatly told Tupoc, “you will not be of our company.”

An important distinction to her, he expected. Perhaps she would not be bound to offer him aid in battle if he was not a ‘companion’.

“You are hurting my feelings, Lady Tredegar,” the Izcalli grinned.

“Count your blessings that an oath prevents me from hurting anything more than that, Xical,” she bit back.

And without another word she walked away, leaving the two of them standing face to face.

“Looking for fresh coattails to ride, Tristan?” Tupoc idly asked. “Yong seems to have finally shaken you off of his.”

“I am going to find out what she has on you, Tupoc,” Tristan affably replied, “and walk around this town shouting it at the top of my lungs.”

With the proper courtesies now observed, they hurried to catch up to Tredegar.

—

The piles of lumber were exactly as they had been told: large, old and much too frequently visited to truly be what they pretended to be.

The three were careful to avoid walking in the mud and leave tracks – rather, he and Tupoc were and Tredegar observed the same route without asking why – as they approached. The place was deserted, likely to avoid drawing attention in the first place, but they avoided staying out in the open anyhow. The faster they were done here the better. Though they swept around looking for the expected lookout, none was there to be found.

“We are taking too long,” Tupoc grunted. “Best we start looking for that cellar.”

The part where the lumber was stacked was dry ground, so tracks were not so easily found, but after they began going around testing them Tredegar soon let out a noise of surprise. Her stack was easily moved, lifted one-handed, and though the Pereduri was a strong woman she was not that strong.

It was hollow, glued together, and there was a trap door beneath.

“Promising,” Tristan said.

They moved aside the false pile. Tupoc tried to prevent it from being too obvious they had moved it from a distance, but Tristan suspected that was a lost cause. Secrecy would only be had by speed. Pulling at an iron ring, Tredegar opened the door and revealed a lightless stone chamber below. Tristan knelt at the edge, peering down, and frowned. The stink of human filth was strong, but he saw little aside from bare stone.

“We will have to go down,” he said. “I do not suppose either of you has a lantern?”

“Matches,” Tupoc replied.

It would have to do. There was a small makeshift ladder leading down and down they went one after another, the Izcalli taking the lead. Once Tredegar closed the trapdoor over their heads, Tupoc scratched a match. Flickering light revealed the boundaries of the small chamber they were in: stone on all sides except one, where instead a door of thick iron bars faced them.

“You were right,” Tristan murmured to Angharad. “It is a gaol.”

There was a padlock on the door, the same kind as the cages in the town square, and as they got close the match guttered out. Tupoc scratched another, revealing the dozen darklings laying down on a floor covered by filthy straw and dust. Most were half-naked, all bruised and several look like they had been cut. Or clawed at. Tredegar went stiff with outrage, Tupoc remaining unbothered. Tristan instead studied the prisoners inside, finding that thought most were either asleep or unconscious one woman in rags was look at them with wide eyes.

Blue eyes, he saw, and the sight of that with pale skin had his belly clenching with something unpleasant.

“You’re not them,” the woman rasped out in accented Antigua.

“The townsfolk of Cantica,” Tristan said. “They are the ones who put you here?”

She feebly nodded.

“Masters,” she said. “I took more rations, for my brother, and they said I am a thief. Put me here.”

“You are a slave, then,” Tupoc said.

His voice was soft, almost gentle. His match died and he struck another, revealing that his pale eyes were as cold as they’d ever been. A Leopard Society man at work, the thief thought.

“All slaves,” the woman said. “We work fields. Cut wood. Serve.”

“The lamplights,” Tristan said. “How often are they lit?”

The woman coughed, rasped out that she did not understand. Tredegar’s face was a painting of anguish. Tupoc spoke a few words in a language Tristan did not know – a hollow cant? – and then repeated the second part of the thief’s question.

“Once a year,” the woman said. “A few days.”

She coughed again.

“Can you,” she began, licking her lips. “Can you let me out?”

“As soon as we have the key,” Tupoc lied without batting an eye. “Do you know why the townsfolk have not become like you? Why they are still of the Glare?”

The slave shook her head, then hesitated.

“This place,” she said. “Those who come here do not come back. Maybe this. Please, won’t you let me out?”

Pity was never any help, Tristan knew. It was best set aside.

“There are stories of Triglau tribesmen sacrificing men to gods so they might avoid going hollow,” Angharad quietly said.

He traded a skeptical look with the Izcalli before the match went out, another scratched into life. Malani sailors had many a wild tale about the folks of their far-flung territories – always spoken of as a tale told them, of course, to avoid lying.

“The town might have something like a candle,” Tupoc said. “It would not support many without regular blooding, but that might explain why we have seen so few townsfolk.”

We have seen few townsfolk, Tristan thought, because this is not a town. Not anymore than this gaol is a gaol: it is, in truth, a larder.

“We need to leave,” the thief said. “We have been down here too long and she has nothing more to tell us.”

Tupoc nodded. Tredegar looked torn, but there was a reason the Pereduri had said precious little since coming down here. She knew she was in no place to make promises.

“Please,” the woman rasped, crawling their way. “Please.”

Tristan wrenched his gaze away. Tupoc was the last one up, as he had to keep scratching matches, and that was a mercy.

He was the only one of them those hoarse pleas were not making flinch.

—

Tristan had half-expected an ambush the moment they were back to standing among the lumber piles, but there was not a soul in sight. Not even a rat. The thief hummed, trying to remember if he had seen any animal at all since coming to Cantica. Not one, he thought. Not a single cat or dog, much less a rat. There would be cattle somewhere, for there was a butcher’s shop near the main street, but the lack of anything else was telling.

It went on the tally, along with the way the townsfolk never showed their teeth when smiling and kept conversations short – when they could not avoid talking entirely.

“We should split up,” Tristan suggested. “If we stay together people will ask where we have been.”

Tupoc gave no argument, as was only to be expected. Half the reason the Izcalli had come was because he’d wanted to be attacked, he would not insist on sticking together. Tredegar hesitated, still shaken by what she had seen below, but nodded after a moment.

“Let us meet again at the Last Rest,” she told him. “We must talk.”

Tupoc snorted dismissively at them and stalked away, disappearing into the bowels of the town. Tristan nodded his agreement at the noblewoman, then invited her to head out first. He waited until she had turned the corner to follow suit, every second growing tenser. He was the easiest prey of the three, he knew, and if someone was lying in wait… Only when he sped away from the hidden cellar after having put the hollow pile back in place there was no sudden attack. There was, indeed, no trace of anyone at all until he was close to the main street again.

There he ran into a couple out on a walk, the both of them silently nodding back when he gave a cheerful greeting.

“Not a chatty folk, are they?”

He almost leapt out of his skin. Maryam was sitting on a small bench by the side of the road, tucked away into a slice of shadow as she looked on. He had missed her entirely, which did nothing for his nerves. Calm, he told himself. You have already discovered part of the trap.

“That they are not,” he said.

She moved over to make room for him when he approached, sitting by her side almost close enough to touch. Tristan hesitated a bit, then bit the blade.

“How is he?”

Maryam grimaced.

“His chances are half and half, the physician says,” she replied.

Tristan grimaced back. Not only because Yong’s life was now a coin flip but also because he was no longer certain that the physician could be trusted to speak the truth in the first place.

“We have trouble,” Tristan said.

Blue eyes narrowed at him. He swallowed, remembering the pleas that had followed them up the ladder before trailing off into a ragged silence just as heartbreaking.

“Once, just once, I would like to have a light-hearted conversation with you,” Maryam demanded. “How goes it, Maryam, lovely weather we’re having isn’t it?”

“Delightful,” he replied, unable to follow her mood. “Cloudy with a chance of devils, you might say.”

She stilled; all humor stolen right out of her.

“Inside the walls?” Maryam whispered, leaning closer.

“I think every single person we’ve talked to since arriving in Cantica has been a devil,” Tristan said, and it was almost a relief to finally say it out loud. “They all smile without showing their teeth and a many of them avoid actually talking.”

Not all devils were skilled at mimicking voices, their kind growing more adept at deception as they aged.

“It’s the eyes that give them away, usually,” Maryam contested.

It was. Eyes were fragile, especially when you emptied out the body behind them to wear it over your misbegotten form, so they tended to dry out our rip. In modern times devils were said to wear spectacles over them to hide the detail, but half of Cantica wearing these would have been a dead giveaway.

“I was taught to check the teeth,” Tristan replied. “The careful ones keep the human teeth, but if you look deep enough you can see their own creeping up behind.”

He had never seen the true body of a devil with his own eyes, though he had seen diagrams in books. Something neither quite crustacean nor insectile but every inch a nightmare, all chitin and pincers. They had to fold themselves very carefully to fit inside a carcass, and should they lose their temper they were apt to rip through the fragile shell allowing them to walk around under Glare light. Maryam shivered.

“If the Watch allowed them to settle here, they should be signatories of the Iscariot Accords,” she said.

Relatively few things had been asked of Hell’s regents, when peace was made and the Accords signed. The two large concessions had been the sealing of Pandemonium – the birthplace of devils – and that their kind would cease to eat humans and wear their skin. Modern devils, those that some nations allowed within their borders, wore skin taken from corpses. Fresh corpses, so the shell had not decayed, but they took only from the already dead.

The devils here should not be meaning to eat them, Maryam meant.

“I’m guessing they eat whichever poor bastard in a cage gets picked to die,” Tristan mildly said. “They would need the bodies to replace the shells that rot or get torn, anyhow.”

Shalini had been promised that Ishaan would get burned, but he now had some doubts. More likely something would get burnt, and next year Ishaan Nair would be one of the faces greeting whoever made it to the Trial of Weeds.

“The man running the Last Rest is very young,” Maryam said after a moment. “Doesn’t even look twenty. If that was a choice made because they only have so many shells to pick from…”

“Then they are not given free rein to devour us at will,” Tristan slowly finished. “That is something, at least.”

“But not much. We need a way out of this place if it all goes to – well, you know,” she embarrassedly finished.

Hell, he amusedly realized she had been going to say.

“I expect there is more than a single way out of this place,” he said. “A town of this size cannot do with a single gate.”

She nodded.

“Find it,” Maryam said. “I need to warn someone meanwhile.”

Song Ren, he thought.

“I am to meet with Tredegar at the Last Rest in a while,” he said. “To discuss plans.”

“I will be there,” Maryam said. “And see if you can find Lan before joining us, she was looking for you earlier.”

It was his turn to nod. Lan had sharp eyes, he would not be surprised if she had noticed something stank about Cantica. And someone had warned Tredegar about the likely slavery, hadn’t they? That rather sounded like the dealer buying herself a friendly mirror-dancer. Tristan suddenly hesitated, Maryam cocking an eyebrow.

“Out with it,” she asked.

“There are slaves here,” he said. “I found an underground gaol with Tredegar and Tupoc, it is how I put the last details together.”

That the prisoners in that gaol never returned because the devils ate them. Maryam sighed, passing a hand through her hair.

“There are slaves in many places, Tristan,” she said. “My own father kept several. You need not tread so lightly about it.”

Tristan almost told her she would not say as much if she had seen how the slaves in the gaol were treated, but he bit his tongue. Maryam had seen more of Vesper than he had. They had never said as much, but they both knew this. She knew full well the ugliness of slavery. It had been him that was unprepared: it was one thing to know of the hollows in the Trench, how they were treated no better than beast of burdens, but another to see such a thing with his own eyes.

“It is a foul thing,” he finally said, exhausted.

“And fouler yet when made into a trade,” Maryam softly agreed.

Neither said any more than that.

—

Lan was hanging around the slate where all the names and numbers had been writ in chalk, staring at them in what Tristan suspected was an attempt at figuring out who had tried to put who in a cage. The thief himself was rather curious who had named him, but he had significantly larger swords hanging above his head at the moment.

“Tristan,” his fellow rat greeted him without turning. “What have you been up to, I wonder?”

“Seeing the sights,” he drawled. “You?”

Lan eyed their surroundings. No one was all that close, most the others inside the Last Rest to eat or drink, but the shutters were open and sound might carry. She gestured for him to follow, the two of them moving into the alley to the side of the inn.

“Brun is up to something,” she said, lowering her voice. “And I think Yaretzi is part of it.”

The thief eyed her.

“I’m listening,” he said.

“They’re always talking,” she said. “And they have the two rooms besides Tredegar’s.”

“He has no reason to go after Tredegar,” Tristan pointed out. “Not only would she promptly kill him for it, she has a high opinion of the man and people listen to her.”

“Maybe it’s about Yaretzi, then,” Lan impatiently said. “They’re up to something, Tristan.”

The thief grimaced.

“I still believe Brun is the killer,” he finally said. “No one else fits. But I think I might have been more certain in the moment than was truly warranted, Lan.”

She eyed him coldly.

“You don’t really think that,” the blue-lipped woman said. “You just think this is too much trouble to deal with on top of whatever you disappeared to sniff out.”

That was, he silently conceded, not entirely unfair of her to say. It certainly weighed on the scales – Brun was something to deal with when the threat of devils was no longer hanging over their heads. But it was not a lie either to say that he had thought twice since threatening the other rat.

“Even if he was out to kill someone again,” Tristan said, “why would Yaretzi help him?”

Lan hesitated.

“What else would they be doing?”

“An alliance, for fear of ending up in a cage,” he said. “Or dead.”

The thief shook his head.

“Bring me more,” Tristan said, “and it could be acted on. But you don’t have enough, Lan.”

And however sharp her eyes, he thought, wanting her twin’s killer dead was not like to keep them clear. Lan licked her lips, the blue on her tongue faded darker, and scoffed. She stalked away angrily, but they both knew that for the concession it was. Tristan watched her go and sighed.

He had a gate to find.

—

To his utter lack of surprise, when Tristan slid into a seat across the table from Angharad Tredegar her minder was at her side. Song studied him calmly with those unblinking silver eyes, weighing and taking his measure. The thief wondered if Maryam, who was sitting on his side of the table, was to be taken as his minder.

There might even be a grain of truth to that.

“We must decide on what we tell others,” Song Ren evenly said. “And do it soon, as people have already begun to retire to their rooms.”

Tristan glanced at Maryam, wondering exactly how much of their own path to Cantica she had told her – colleague, accomplice? The relationship there was still nebulous.

“That we have reason to expect that there will be an attack in the night,” Tristan suggested.

And then the idea came to him, quick and silver bright and so utterly tempting he could not resist.

“And that we should be ready to retreat from the Last Rest if trouble finds us,” he added.

Tredegar’s brow rose.

“You believe the night attack will be so dangerous?”

“He’s right,” Maryam said. “It could be a god they made a bargain with or a pack of devils, we cannot know. What we do know is that the Watch expects that attack to be capable of taking on fighters sharp enough to make it through the first two trials.”

“I would prefer to stand our ground,” Angharad admitted, “but some of us are not fighters so I’ll not deny it might be wiser to retreat and draw the enemy onto better grounds.”

And there was the shape of his opportunity. Dozens moving around at night, with violence and chaos afoot?

“We should pick two different locations for folk to gather at,” the thief casually said. “If we get dispersed, or are pursued, it might not be easy to gather in a single place or wait for everyone. I found a postern gate on the side of town, that can be one location. The front gate for the other?”

“That seems wise,” Tredegar nodded.

Silver eyes on him, but he did not flinch. Maryam would not have told her, he chose to believe that. Gods, how could he not when she has lost fingers to save his life?

“Each of us can head to one such place should the worst come,” Tristan said. “I imagine I should take the side gate, since I am the one who found it.”

A shrug, the Pereduri agreeing.

“And now we tell the others,” Tredegar breathed out.

She seemed tired, at long last.

“It would be best to split that duty up, each of us talk to only a few,” Tristan said. “Our hosts might notice something is happening otherwise.”

It was only sensible, so naturally they agreed, and he ignored the weight of Song’s piercing silver eyes as he rose.

“I need a favor,” he whispered to Maryam.

He got something like a smile, cold and entirely savage.

“I thought you might,” she said. “I’ll take care of it.”

Tristan did not begin with him, that would have been too obvious. He did not need to rush anyway, as Tredegar was now on poor terms with the man and so unlikely to approach. As for Song, well, Maryam just happened to want a word with her at that moment. Cozme Aflor was third on his list and already eyeing him warily by the time he sat across the man. The explanation was short, the mustachioed man then seeking Song’s eyes across the room and getting a nod in reply.

“Keep it quiet,” Tristan murmured. “Augusto will not be told and if there is chatter the townsfolk may notice we are onto them.”

“Of course,” Cozme nodded, stroking his mustache. “I will be most careful, Tristan.”

“I’ll see you there,” he smiled.

That ‘there’ did not happen to be a place where anyone but the two of them would be gathering was not something his father’s executioner needed to know.

Not yet.

—

As the last of them began going up the stairs, Tristan lingered just long enough to watch darkness begin to creep through the shutters. Night had come to Cantica, the lamplights ringing the town doused one after another. Alas, there would be no sleep for him.

His work was now beginning.

—

Patience did most of the work.

The thief waited until the innkeeper doused the last of the lights inside the Last Rest and left. There had been no doubt that the devil would, as a simple look at the size of the kitchen compared to the floor upstairs confirmed there was no chamber built for him to sleep in. Tristan waited for minutes more, then crept down the hall and the stairs. The windows were shuttered but the door was unlocked – cracking it open, he peeked through.

The streets were dark and empty, but there were lights in the distance.

He snuck out, closing the door behind him. The lights, he saw when got out to have a better look, were from torches. The town square, he thought. Tristan stayed off the main street as he went, keeping to alleys and passing behind houses. He could not risk going out in the open: not only did devils see in the dark but they were said to have uncanny senses. His method got him close to the square, but the particular alley was a dead end. Tristan could dimly make out voices, but he was too far for anything useful.

Grimacing, he eyed the side of the house he was hiding behind. There was a way up, with a little work. An empty crate – which creaked under his weight enough to have him wincing – got him a foot higher, enough he was able to wedge a foot against a jutting plank and grab at the edge of the tiled roof. Only the work was shoddy, he discovered, and if he held onto the tiles to pull himself fully onto the plank they were like as not to come loose. Swallowing a curse, the thief looked around for something to use and found a shovel with a bent head. He crept back down, took it and then tried to keep the crate’s groaning as a minimum as he wedged a foot against the plank again.

Using the shovel as a counterweight, he pushed himself so he could stand on the jutting plank. He was careful not to let the shovel fall, propping it against the wall, and then climbed the rest of the way onto the roof. Creeping up the tiles, he pressed himself against the cool clay until he had reached the top of the roof – and from there found a commanding sight of the town square below. The thief breathed in sharply. There were only a few torches, held up by the handful of pale-skinned hollows in the square, but there must have been more than fifty people in the square.

All of them looking like children of the Glare, but as he watched them mill around the cages Tristan could not help but feel they were slightly off. They weren’t moving quite right, arms and legs sometimes bending more as the confirmation of movement than the reason.

“- not seeing anything.”

A man’s voice but stilted. Like it took too much care pronouncing every syllable.

It was also coming from behind him, down in the alley.

Tristan held his breath, pressed close against the roof and prayed. Some shuffling down in the alley. There were at least two of them.

“It was a rat,” another voice said. “The thralls are getting fat, I tell you. They don’t hunt them as thoroughly as they used to.”

By the sound of it, one of the devils below kicked the shovel he’d left propped up.

“We better not have missed anything,” the stilted voice said.

A scoff that sounded ever so slightly of clicking mandibles.

“None of it means anything until Akados gets here,” the devil said. “The fresh casts listen to him like he’s some duke of Hell.”

“As if,” the stilted voice snorted. “He’s not even an elder, he-”

A crate was kicked, Tristan almost flinching at the sound.

“Still dangerous,” the other devil said. “Watch your wagging.”

Angry hisses, then he heard the pair walking away. Tristan held his breath until his lungs burned and his eyes watered, releasing it only when he was dead certain neither was close enough to hear him. That had been uncomfortably close. If he’d been just a little slower to climb… There was no time for fear to set in, however, as the crowd below coiled with unspoken tension. It was not hard to put a face to the source, as the devils around him all fell silent.

The devil wore the skin of middle-aged man, Tristan saw, with broad shoulders and a balding pate. He had a vaguely Malani look about him, and by the looks of the clothes the thief thought he was likely the town butcher. If that is not Akados I’ll throw away my hat. The devil deftly leapt up to sit atop one of the cages, the crowd of his fellows rippling around him. Tristan’s lips thinned: no man could have moved like that. It was simply not something people’s legs were capable of.

Mayor Crespin, or at least the devil wearing that skin and name, came to stand in the middle of the square and cleared his throat.

“Now that all are in attendance,” he said, voice slightly buzzing, “we can begin. We have a hunt and a hunter to choose this night.”

“Do we?”

The crowd shivered. The butcher, the one Tristan thought might be this ‘Akados’, had been the one to speak.

“It seems to me,” the butcher continued, voice slow and lazy, “that the rooks are in disarray. Their mountain collapsed; their fort was buried. This year is a loss to them, good as written off.”

A scoff from another in the crowd.

“They gave us rules when they stranded us here,” the other devil said. “A hundred years playing their game and the term is ended. Why should we risk the guns of the Watch instead, Akados?”

“To feed,” the devil replied, voice hungry for all the laziness. “Not the scraps they allow us, but to truly eat to our heart’s content as we were made to. Not nibbling at dun souls or breaking up a soul in pieces like biscuit – a proper meal.”

Dun? Tristan frowned. It meant dark, he recalled, or perhaps drab. He might mean the hollows. Rather more worrying was that the oldest devil in Cantica was attempting to talk the others into what sounded like a massacre of the trial-takers and there was not a great deal of opposition to it. Still some, however.

“Everyone knows you anneal from slaughter,” a devil called out. “You just want one to get closer to being evergreen, but what is that to us?”

Akados laughed.

“We all want a slaughter, Vane,” the devil replied, baring the teeth of a man and the pincer-like teeth of a devil behind them. “To feel them writhe in the Empty Sea, to partake of the colors. I will gain, true, but who here would not?”

A challenging look.

“They will not come after us with powder and shot for a year that is already scrapped,” Akados said. “We are not so easily replaced. And if we can get away with it, what is staying our hand?”

Reading a crowd of devils was like trying to read foreigners through a panel of silk, Tristan thought, but were he inclined to bet he would have said the crowd was already halfway talked into it. It was only a matter of time now: too many of the devils went eerily still whenever feeding was mentioned, the expressions of the shells gone slack with want.

It was, Tristan mused, time to get the fuck out Cantica before they all died.

The arguing would at least serve to cover the sound of his sliding back down into the alley. Tristan crept away, more hastily than he had come for he now felt the urgency biting at his back. Could he still pull things off with Cozme, now that he would not have the time to lay his ambush as he had planned? Maybe, he thought. He would need to take stock of things before deciding.

Yet even as he snuck his way back to the Last Rest, the thief forced himself to take a detour. Angharad Tredegar would be leading her lost lambs out through the front gate, but Tristan had his sights set on the postern – for more reasons than one. It would be best to first see if there were guards near it. Likely not devils, he thought, but perhaps hollows. Foes nowhere as fearsome, but perfectly capable of raising the alarm.

Steps silent, he turned the corner on the wooden sidewalk and risked a glance. The thief hissed in a breath, catching sight of movement and drawing back. He looked again, more carefully, and was relieved to see it was only one man with his back turned. The relief lasted only until he recognized the ragged cape he was looking at. With a soft cry of triumph, Augusto Cerdan ripped open the postern gate and swiftly moved aside.

This was, Tristan dimly thought as cultists began pouring into the town, going to be a problem.

“Gods be my witness,” Mayor Crespin harshly said, “but if I either of you draws a sword I will have you shot.”

Angharad’s lips thinned, back straightening as she glared down at the man. She had already given her oath, what manner of honorless cur did he take her for? Cantica’s mayor, a middle-aged man with a bushy black beard whose wildness contrasted with the tidiness of his dated woolen green tunic, looked unimpressed by her anger.

“Glare all you want, girl, but I’ve permission from the commander in Three Pines to dispose of any of you who get rowdy,” the man said. “You think you’re the first kids with chips on your shoulders who’ve blown through here?”

“I have no intention of breaking my word,” Angharad curtly said.

Crespin held her gaze a moment longer – how flat they looked, she thought, almost lifeless – before grunting in what could have been either approval or dismissal. The mayor’s dark eyes then moved to Augusto Cerdan, who was yet grinning.

“I only reached for my blade because I felt in danger, good sir,” Augusto said. “I would not dare to break your laws.”

Mayor Crispin eyed the infanzon a moment longer.

“You’re lucky we don’t give out beatings for smugness,” the mayor finally said. “Go stand with the rest.”

That wiped the grin off Augusto’s face well enough. The mayor, stroking his beard, glanced at them one last time then peeled away. The two town guards that had been looming over their discussion leaned their muskets back against their shoulders. Men with much nerve, the Pereduri thought. There were only a handful of them, to pen in five times as many trial-takers, but at no point had they shown fear at the possibility of a fight breaking out.

Angharad supposed that living on this nightmare of a place must do wonders for building one’s bravery.

“You, the new arrivals,” Mayor Crispin called out. “Send me one in front. The remainder goes with the crowd.”

The dark-skinned noblewoman turned in surprise: she’d not noticed anyone coming. Angharad let out a startled noise at what she found: Tristan, Yong and the pale-skinned Sarai. The latter looked like she had done best of the three, at least until Angharad noticed the missing fingers. The others looked like they had been savagely beaten and Yong had clearly been shot but the three were well enough to move. They were warmly welcomed by the rest of their company, Yong more so than the rest – his acquaintance with Lady Ferranda and Lord Zenzele was of long date.

It was Tristan who limped to the front as they had been instructed, the sole part of him that did not look like it had been tossed down a mountainside the worn leather tricorn on his head. The Sacromontan had decent taste in that regard, at least.

“Tredegar,” the grey-eyed man tiredly greeted her, offering a nod.

“Tristan,” she happily replied. “I am pleased you made it through.”

How he had done so was a question for later, she decided. There must have been another path through the maze, one that could be pried open without ten victors.

“You can have your reunion later,” Mayor Crespin said, brusque but not unkind. “Tristan, is it?”

“That is my name,” the Sacromontan agreed.

“Should we be expecting further survivors?” the man asked. “The girl here says all the people she ran the second trial with are accounted for.”

“Our fourth is dead,” Tristan replied, face subtly tightening. “As far as I know, there are no others left.”

Angharad could not, in that moment, recall the old man’s name. Franco, Frecho? She had been told it at some point, she knew, and a slight well of shame came at the realization she had not cared enough to remember.

“Good,” Mayor Crespin said, then paused.

Tristan was looking at him. The grey stare was even, almost mild, but Angharad shifted uncomfortably at the sight. It was an unsettling sort of calm – the kind that came right before someone smashed a glass against your head or bared a knife.

“Not good,” Crespin corrected, “but simpler for us. If everyone is there we can get the Trial of Weeds going.”

Tristan cocked his head to the side.

“Do you need anything else of me?” he asked.

“No,” the mayor grunted, then flicked a glance her way. “Same with you, Malani. You can join the others.”

Angharad smoothed away her irritation at the inaccuracy and inclined her head in acknowledgement, keeping the other trial-taker company on the short walk. No words were shared, the only sound their boots squelching in the shallow mud. Song was waiting for Angharad when she returned, gesturing for her to come closer while Tristan disappeared into the crowd.

“Shalini gave them Ishaan’s body,” the Tianxi whispered in her ear. “They’ll burn it tomorrow, after firewood has been gathered.”

“She agreed to part with it?” Angharad whispered back, honestly surprised.

“They didn’t give her a choice,” Song replied. “They wouldn’t allow a corpse to be dragged around for fear of disease.”

Which was, the Pereduri admitted, a fair concern. Having her hand forced in such a manner explained why the Someshwari looked in a foul mood, however, ignoring Zenzele’s attempts to engage her in conversation. Ferranda stood with them, the trifecta having kept together on the march, and Angharad felt a pang of envy. Everyone she had passed the first trial with was now dead or estranged, save for Song – even Brun, who she thought herself on good terms with, now preferred to stand with Yaretzi and quietly converse rather than renew their acquaintance. Mayor Crispin cleared his throat, putting an end to the small talk, and all eyes went to him.

“First off,” the bearded man said, “since I heard the sanctuary got buried I’ll first ask you this: is there anyone here who would withdraw from the trials?”

He waited for a moment, to utter silence.

“Last chance,” he said. “If you get to hear the rules of the Trial of Weeds, the only ways you’re leaving this island are in a coffin or a black cloak.”

Still silence. The man shrugged.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” the mayor said. “Follow me, I’ll give you the rules once we get to the town square.”

It was not a particularly long walk, though the lackluster streets made it rather unpleasant. They stuck to the sides as much as possible, closer to the occasional wooden planks than the mud in the middle of streets. After four minutes of passing shops, houses and a large inn the mayor slowed as they reached their destination.

The square looked almost out of place given how cramped the rest of Cantica was, all pressed against the palisade walls with narrow streets and rough wooden houses. In contrast the town square was a wide and open space paved with thick square stones. Spread out across it, facing the center, were three large iron cages.  Each was taller than a man and long enough you would be able to walk inside.

Padlocks hung on their open doors.

There was a ripple of unease through their company, which Angharad would freely admit to sharing in. If there had been beasts in the cages they were now gone, and if they were meant for people then…

“Here we are,” Mayor Crespin said. “Come close now, and no chatting. I won’t be repeating myself if you miss anything.”

Dutifully, their company assembled at the edge of the paved square while the bearded mayor came to stand between the cages. Crespin spat to the side, into the mud.

“Now, the Watch is supposed to give you some spiel about the nature of the third trial before sending you off our way,” he said. “But I’m no watchman, and I’ve only heard bits and pieces of the speech over the years.”

He shrugged.

“So I’ll be giving you my own understanding of it instead.”

The bearded man swept through them with his gaze.

“The Trial of Lines is a test of skill,” he announced. “If you don’t have a plan or lick up to people who do, if you don’t have the training to make it to the sanctuary quietly or the strength to fight your way through, then you end up dead.”

Angharad winced at the bluntness of his words, but there was the ring of truth to them.

“Now the Trial of Ruins, it’s a pot,” Mayor Crespin said. “They throw you into the water and turn up the heat to see what you’ll do when it starts to boil: do you fuck over your allies, do you break or run or rise up to the occasion?”

Glances were sent this way and that at the man’s words. Tupoc only grinned at the unspoken accusations, entirely unruffled, and a flattering amount of looks went her way at the last part. Angharad straightened her back, allowing herself a sliver of pride.

It did not last.

“There’s not many of you this year,” the mayor bluntly said, “so you must not have been great swimmers.”

There was the ring of truth to that as well, Angharad thought. Near thrice their current number had walked out of the Bluebell.

“Now, the Trial of Weeds isn’t like the first two,” Mayor Crespin said. “If you got here, you’re good or you’re lucky: either way, the Rooks can use you.”

He smiled, just a shallow stretch of the lips that had precious little mirth to it.

“No, this place is about ripping out the weeds before they get into the Watch, so to speak, and the winnowing is left to your own hands.”

Another ripple of unease.

“We’re not going to put any you in these cages,” Crespin said. “You are.”

Few of them liked the sound of that.

“Tonight, in the time before you retire to your rooms, each of you will be taken aside asked to give three names,” the man said. “One for each person you think should be put in one of the cages. The three of you named the most times will then be escorted into their cage by the town guard come morning.”

Angharad frowned, then cleared her throat. It earned her an unfriendly look from Crespin.

“What happens should two of us be named an equal number of times?” she asked.

It would not matter unless the third position was the one shared, she thought, but should that happen it was possible a draw would need settling.

“You get to share the cage,” the mayor replied without batting an eye.

That was, Angharad silently conceded, callously fair.

“Come morning, you’ll gather up here again,” Mayor Crespin continued, “and after the chosen enter the cages then you get to vote on which of the three will die.”

“You can’t be serious,” Shalini replied. “You want us to kill each other?”

The man shrugged.

“You’ve already been killing each other, I imagine,” he said. “Now is when you call each other to account for it.”

He chuckled.

“I’ve seen the smile drop off the faces of all sorts of clever sorts, when it sunk it that they might have to pay for their bloody tricks after all,” Mayor Crespin said. “The way I see it, this test is for them. If you throw your allies to the wolves, well, you best be clever enough to talk them out of hanging you after.”

The mayor shrugged.

“What use would the Watch have for you otherwise?”

Half a dozen of them spoke up at the same time even as Angharad’s fingers tightened around the grip of her saber. This was madness, she thought, how could they be expected to – Mayor Crespin’s hand rose, and silence fell again. No one wanted to risk missing a piece of the rules.

“It doesn’t end there,” the bearded man said. “After that’s done, each of you will get asked a question in private: should another round be played?”

You could have heard a pin drop.

“All it takes is one yes,” Crespin said, “for there to be another.”

“That is absurd,” Augusto bit out. “How many of us will die for petty grudges?”

It was uncomfortable, Angharad thought, to be forced in a position where she agreed with the man.

“As many as you lot care to kill,” the mayor said, indifferent. “The Trial of Weeds ends when refusal of another round is unanimous. After that we’ll hand you fresh supplies and you get to toddle on north to Three Pines to join the Watch.”

Though Angharad could feel indignation about to erupt, their company held on to silence a little longer. Crespin liked toying with them. They proved right to, as the mayor chuckled a few heartbeats later.

“One last thing,” he said. “There’s one last rule, which is a secret you will have to find on your own. A way for someone in the cages not to die even if they get picked. Sniff around for it however you will, so long as you remember the rules: no violence against my folk, or each other.”

Mayor Crespin offered them a nod.

“That’s the whole of it,” he said. “My people will find you to ask the names, don’t try to go to sleep before you’re given leave.”

He walked right through their crowd, forcing them to part as if to make a point, and for a few heartbeats silence followed in his wake.

Then chaos came screaming out.

—

The first thing that happened was that Tupoc Xical walked away.

Without a word, ignoring the jeers from Ferranda and Zenzele. Angharad searched his face for fear as he walked past her, for regret, but found neither. He looked, to her dismay, thoughtful. He knows he is certain to be sent into a cage, she thought, so he is going on the hunt for the hidden rule that might save his life. He must have committed to that decision before the mayor was even done speaking. It was a tortured thing to admire Tupoc’s composure – he would not have needed to be composed, after all, were he not a feckless traitor.

Everything admirable about him was intertwined with the worst of traits. In a way his qualities made it easier to despise him, Angharad thought, for Tupoc was capable of acting with honor she he want to. He had the skill, the discernment.

It was a choice for him to be heinous.

“We should all agree now on who we send into the cages,” Yaretzi was saying. “The trial thrives on mistrust, should we simply be open with-”

“How would we know if someone’s lying?” Lan casually asked. “We’ll give our names in private, the mayor was clear about that.”

Yaretzi turned a gimlet eye on the older woman, Angharad only then noticing that one of her turquoise earrings was missing. It must have fallen during their flight to Cantica.

“Trust,” Yaretzi began, but derisive laughter cut the sentence short.

“There is still a murderer among us,” Zenzele, who’d been the one to laugh, cut in. “There should be no talk of trust, Yaretzi.”

“Chaos is to no one’s advantage,” Song opined. “Some semblance of an agreement can only help.”

“You sit on more secrets than anyone here, Tianxi, and some are fresher than others,” Zenzele Duma flatly said. “I will not invade your privacy by pressing, but do refrain from taking us for fools. I will not be a tool for your schemes.”

Song met his eyes with her unblinking silver gaze, face hardening.

Angharad’s brow rose at the tension. That was a strong claim, but a lord of Malan had spoken it so he must not believe it a lie. And he has a contract that would let him sniff out secrets, she thought. Zenzele had seen her own vengeful oath, though he had not known what it was. And now he says that what Song keeps to herself dwarfs even that. A sobering thought. Yet secrecy was not deserving a scorn: had Angharad told them all she was pursued by assassins?  No, not even when she had foolishly feared that Zenzele Duma and his lover might be killers sent by her nameless foe.

“There is ruin in all our wakes, Lord Zenzele,” Angharad said. “To chase each other’s shadows is a game without a victor.”

The dark-skinned noble – taller than her even with his hat in hand, though not by much – fixed her with a steady look. Ferranda elbowed him, after which he gave Angharad a curt nod and wrenched his gaze away. Song looked about ready to speak again, but it was another who stepped in first. Master Cozme Aflor’s flair had never quite recovered from the loss of his hat, but the older man still cut a respectable figure with his finely groomed mustache and beard. The cuts he’d suffered on the Toll Road only added to it, the bandages around his arm lending him a wounded veteran’s look.

It was with his hand on the pommel of sword – loosely, resting and not threatening – that he went to stand before everyone.

“I have made mistakes,” Cozme Aflor bluntly said. “I own that.”

A burst of shrill, mocking laughter.

“Oh, sweet Manes,” Augusto Cerdan said. “To think I’d see the day where you bent that stiff neck enough to beg for your life, Cozme. The voyage was worth it just for that.”

The older man glanced at him with distaste, then ignored him.

“I tried to keep my oaths to House Cerdan beyond what was wise,” Cozme said, “but never did I bare a blade on any of you, or take revenge for a contract being used on me without provocation.”

A meaningful look was thrown at Shalini there, who sneered back.

“If you feel it has grown cold outside, then you should have thought twice before walking out,” the Someshwari replied.

Brun cleared his throat.

“One does not lightly leave the service of the infanzones,” the fair-haired man said. “Defiance is not without costs for Sacromontans, Shalini Goel.”

The short Someshwari eyed him with surprise, and some abashment at the reminder that she had come here as the close and trusted companion of a noble while Cozme was merely a retainer. Angharad, though she kept an eye on the talks, was instead taking measure inside her own mind. Tupoc was headed for a cage, that much was certain. He had made too many enemies. The only question worth asking was who else would be headed there.

“Let us not pretend being a soldier for a house right beneath the Six is the same as being a rat,” Tristan flatly said. “Pity is a fine thing, Brun, but Cozme Aflor never gave a shit about anyone but his charges until that bridge was thoroughly burned.”

“And he should be killed for that?” Brun challenged.

A harsh laugh.

“You will have to forgive Tristan,” Yong said. “He’s grown used to deciding who lives and dies.”

That earned the pair measuring looks – it was an obvious break in a previously cordial relationship – but Angharad was yet running down the list. No one, she thought, had made more foes than Augusto Cerdan and Cozme Aflor. It was near a sure thing that the two of them would be sent to the cages along with Tupoc. Only Yaretzi, who had fought Tupoc and been accused by Shalini, could even begin to come close.

“Everyone with a gun has that same power, Yong,” Lan blandly said, “and I see you carry two.”

“I don’t think this is going well for you, Cozme,” Augusto loudly whispered. “Perhaps you should… go with the current, old friend. It will be faster.”

Angharad almost winced – there was no almost about it for the older man – as she remembered when she had last heard that sentence.

“To consign someone to the cages does not mean death,” Angharad pointed out. “A mark of shame, perhaps, but not an oath to send them into the grave.”

“Well said,” Yong grunted. “I have been told I might be bleeding out, so I’m to look for a physician. I will, however, leave you with this: Tupoc, Augusto, Tristan. Make of it what you will.”

He began limping away after. Sarai, whose face was flushed pink with exhaustion, traded a look and a nod with Tristan before slipping away from the crowd to help Yong limp forward. The veteran looked as if he wanted to refuse, but after a moment conceded and slung an arm around her shoulder as they disappeared into the town.

“That was most unwarranted,” Augusto complained. “I’ve hardly even spoken with the man.”

“Hardly must have been enough,” Angharad evenly replied.

He cheerfully flipped her the finger, seeming unworried even though he was sure to be bound for a cage. Is this bluster, or is he genuinely without fear? Cozme, whose speech had been diverted by sundry distractions, cleared his throat and claimed attention once more.

“I have said my piece,” the older man said. “I can now only trust in the fairness of those assembled here.”

“I truly misspoke when I called you a cock,” Augusto mused. “How could you be such, when you have such a talent for fellatio?”

The infanzon chuckled.

“I trust in the fairness of those assembled here,” he repeated in a nasal voice. “At least get on your knees first, if you’re going to be working at it so hard.”

Cozme’s cheeks reddened in anger as he reached for his sword, not quite unsheathing it, and even Angharad felt her jaw tighten at the uncouthness of. Augusto had somehow become even more odious since the Toll Road, and no longer cared to keep his venom in check. By the looks on the face of those around here, that was doing him no favors. But then he would have been headed for a cage even if he turned sweet as honey, Angharad thought.

As Mayor Crespin had said, the Trial of Weeds was a reckoning for the other two.

“Talking here is pointless,” Shalini said. “Half of us can’t trust the other and there can be no serious talks with snakes coiled in our laps.”

“She’s right,” Lady Ferranda said. “And so was Yong, in his own way.

She paused.

“Tupoc, Augusto, Cozme.”

“I’ll be taking that up with the Villazur, when I return to the city,” Augusto mildly said.

The fair-haired infanzona cocked an eyebrow.

“That’d be quite a trick, without a head,” she said, and walked away.

Shalini went with her, and Zenzele flicked them a glance before clearing his throat.

“Consider Tupoc a given,” the Malani. “The rest bears thought.”

He then tipped his head at them politely and hurried to catch up after the others. There were still many of them left, Angharad saw. Of the fourteen they numbered there were still eight standing here in the square. But the moment Shalini and the other had left the prospect of keeping this out in the open had died. Even though there were numbers enough here to decide the matter if they wanted to, the illusion of unity had shattered.

Everyone would be cutting their own deals, as if this were the High Queen’s court.

Angharad met Song’s eyes and traded a small nod. They were done here, both agreed, and within a minute had taken their leave.

—

However cramped the planks on the side of the street, they were preferable to walking in the mud. Even if it made speaking as they moved somewhat awkward.

“I have a degree of acquaintance with Sarai,” Song told her. “I will seek her and find out what happened when our company and hers parted way.”

Angharad could read between the lines. The two women were acquainted, but the Triglau was less than fond of Malani. Understandable, if somewhat unwarranted – Angharad had never owned a slave nor traded in them. Their first conversation after the reveal of her origins had been… less than skillful, admittedly, so the Pereduri said nothing on the subject.

“I am rather curious what tunnel they found to escape,” Angharad admitted. “It must have been unknown even to the Watch.”

“They are a canny lot,” Song said. “I expect it will be an interesting tale.”

Angharad nodded, then cleared her throat awkwardly.

“I expect I should speak with Lord Zenzele first,” she said.

She delicately did not mention that her fellow islander had taken a clear dislike to Song. Said Tianxi eyed her from the side.

“He is not wrong,” the silver-eyed woman said. “I keep a great many secrets.”

“Your eyes bind you to such a fate,” Angharad shrugged.

It was, if anything, reassuring that Song was not prone to voicing the many hidden things that her eyes were certain to reveal by simple virtue of being in their presence. Angharad would much rather that pact be held by a woman inclined to secrecy than a blabbermouth. Song looked away, stepping through the shadow cast by the lamplights above.

“More than merely that kind,” she said. “I joined the trials on the Dominion for a particular purpose, Angharad, and thought I am yet bound not to speak of it the time approaches where I will be able to tell you.”

“That is not necessary,” Angharad assured her. “I do not begrudge silence, save if it causes harm.”

“It is necessary,” Song replied, sounding almost amused. “I intend to make you an offer when we reach Three Pines, and when I make it I would not have you think our entire acquaintance was a ploy.”

The Pereduri appreciated that, truly. All this scheming and lying, how exhausting it had become. Sifting through every sentence for ten meanings, every offered hand a trap. Even the closest to a pleasant diversion Angharad had found had been… Her jaw clenched at the memory of how Isabel and looked, her face a red ruin. Song’s open admission that she was keeping secrets and would offer a bargain was refreshing, a clearly drawn line in the sand.

She could do with more of those in her life.

“You have saved my life on more than one occasion,” Angharad said. “Whatever else may come to happen between us, Song, you may be assured that I will always hear out any offer you have to make.”

The other woman studied her for a stretching moment, steps stuttering on the planks, and it occurred to Angharad that Song was actually quite striking. Silver eyes set in a face of pale gold, the cut of her slender and elegant. Bearing a plaited braid and folded leather hat, she seemed almost like a huntress of story. A passing thought, almost absurd. No huntress out of a story would have been so intent on cutting her rations precisely that she ended up with leftover string-thin slices of bread that she never actually ate.

That and she snored, though the noise was amusingly dainty.

“Words worth remembering,” Song finally said.

They left it at that.

—

The inn they had walked past earlier was called the ‘Last Rest’.

The words were carved above the door in scrabbly Antigua, the townsfolk apparently being unacquainted with the notion of hanging a sign. If not for the large and open shutters she would not have known the place for what it was from the outside. The ground floor was a common room full of long tables, with a fireplace at the back and a bar counter. Behind that counter a door led into what looked like a kitchen, while a little to the side rickety stairs led to a second story.

Song had gone across the street, where the town physician and gravedigger – an efficient combination, Angharad had mused – was allegedly having a look at Yong’s wounds. Sarai would be waiting on him, as good a time as any to talk.

The three souls she had been on the hunt for, however, were in the Last Rest’s common room. Having claimed the end of the table near the fireplace, they were sitting with warm meals and what appeared to be tankards of ale. Moving their way, Angharad noted that while Shalini appeared to have claimed one of Zenzele’s sausages she had in exchange surrendered her beer. Ferranda had traded nothing, but was poking at her peas with a distinct like of enthusiasm. Angharad could not blame her, they were horribly common fare.

It was Ferranda Villazur who first saw her coming, and when Angharad gestured towards the open space by Zenzele’s side with a raised eyebrow the infanzona gave a shrugging nod. Permission enough, the noblewoman decided. Loosening her sword belt, she pulled it off and set it down to the side before sliding onto the bench by Lord Zenzele. The man in question swallowed his drink, then smiled her way.

“Lady Angharad,” he said. “Come to get a meal out of them as well?”

“I would not mind,” she admitted. “Is it expensive?”

She did not have much coin left, and to be honest the thought of coin had her a little dazed. How long had it been since she last paid for something? Not even two weeks, and yet it felt like an entire world away.

“No cost.”

Angharad tensed at the voice coming from behind: she had not heard someone approach. Turning, she found a startlingly young man that could not have been older than seventeen looking at her with mild boredom. He wore a leather apron over a roughspun brown cote – a long-sleeved tunic in an antiquated style – and his messy black hair went down to his shoulders. He must have been Lierganen, by the tan, but she could not place the accent.

“As part of our charter with the Watch,” the man said, “we provide room and board for all trial-takers as well as run the Trial of Weeds. You want a meal?”

Angharad slowly nodded.

“What is available?”

“The meal,” the man drily replied. “With or without beer.”

“It is barley beer, Tredegar,” Zenzele told her. “Criminal stuff.”

It did not seem to hinder him any from getting started on the second drink.

“Maize beer is a Malani obsession, Duma,” she amusedly replied. “My people make barley wine like civilized folk.”

“I’m sure you think you’re interesting,” the innkeeper said, sounding like they were anything but, “but I’m still waiting on an answer.”

Angharad asked for a meal, without ale, then cleared her throat.

“What is to be the arrangement for rooms?” she asked.

“Usually we split you lot between here and the Warm Coffin across town, but there’s barely any of you this year so you’re all going upstairs,” the man said, jutting his thumb towards the stairway near the counter. “Take whatever room you want, then come back and ask me for the key. There’s numbers on the doors.”

“Thank you,” Angharad nodded.

The man snorted, then walked away.

“I do not suppose the Warm Coffin’s owner would be any more polite?” she drily asked.

“It’s closed,” Shalini got out after swallowing a large mouthful. “Ferranda asked when we heard about the meal.”

“He seems young to run an inn,” Angharad said. “Even for a border town.”

“That we did not ask,” Ferranda replied. “Still, I would wager it had something to do with the cultists impaled before the gates. The entire town seems on edge, they might have been attacked recently.”

That made a great deal of sense, she thought. With the landslide burying the Watch garrison near the mountain, the cult of the Red Eye might have thought it opportune to try a raid on Cantica. It would also explain how few people they had seen out on the streets. The innkeeper was back with her meal: sausage, peas and sliced almonds. She thanked the man, asking for his name, and got a raised eyebrow as only response.

“Tried that too,” Zenzele drily said. “Not the friendliest of fellows, this one.”

Shalini, who had polished off her entire plate and had begun eyeing that of her neighbors, let out a grunt.

“He might not see the point in getting friendly when the trial could kill any of us,” the Someshwari said.

Ferranda discreetly used her wooden fork to empty most of her peas onto Shalini’s plate, smiling winningly at the other woman when Shalini turned to cock an eyebrow, but the grim mood brought on by the reminder of the Trial of Weeds was not so easily lifted.

“It is a bloody affair,” Angharad agreed.

“And it now brings you to our shores so you might know where who we will name,” Lord Zenzele said.

“That is of some import,” she said, “but my greater concern is to ascertain where we will stop.”

Looks of surprise.

“Barring a surprise or a miracle, Tupoc Xical will die come morning,” Angharad said. “My question to you is this: will the trial end there?”

The three traded looks, and again she felt a pang of envy at how closely they now kept. A few days ago they had been strangers.

“I had thought,” Zenzele slowly said, “that you would want a second round if only so that Lord Augusto might follow in Xical’s wake.”

Angharad shook her head.

“I can do my own killing,” she flatly replied. “I do not need a trial to do it for me.”

The oath she had given to Mayor Crespin was straightforward: she was to do no violence to trial-takers or the townsfolk while a guest in Cantica, unless attacked first. The moment they stepped out of the town the infanzon was no longer protected.

“That is,” Lady Ferranda hesitantly said, “to your honor.”

“You’re not the only one with grudges to settle, Tredegar,” Shalini said. “Putting Tupoc’s head on spike hardly needs selling and Augusto could do with getting his breathing rights revoked, but there’s a murderer still on the loose and I will see her face justice.”

Angharad stilled.

“Her?” she asked.

“Yaretzi tried to murder Ishaan on the way to the temple-fortress,” Shalini said. “You might not believe me, but I saw what I saw. I would have her put in a cage for it, then in a grave.”

“Do you have proof she murdered Jun and Aines?” Angharad asked.

“No,” Shalini admitted, “but how many vipers can there possibly be among us?”

Ferranda sighed.

“I do not agree, and did not vote accordingly,” the fair-haired woman said. “I am yet convinced that another was behind the deaths, acting through catspaws. I have heard… rumors about Yaretzi, however, that are suspicious.”

Isabel had said that ‘Yaretzi’ was a foot shorter than she was supposed to be. Ferranda did not seem to be putting strong stock in the other infanzona’s words, but neither was she dismissing them. Angharad cocked an eyebrow at Zenzele, leaving the question implied.

“Looking back, I find some of her behavior during the Trial of Lines unusual,” Zenzele admitted. “She was very used to roughing it, for a diplomat, and though she struck a friendship with Ayanda she showed little grief when the cultists took her.”

Shalini looked away at that. She and Ishaan had refused to pursue the warband to take back Zenzele’s lover, Angharad knew. It might have been the sounder call, but it seemed that a growing acquaintance with Zenzele Duma was shading the nuances of that decision in retrospect.

“You are both committed to pursuing Yaretzi’s execution through a second round, then?” she asked.

Shalini nodded briskly. Zenzele followed suit a heartbeat later.

“There will be a death every round, and three of us in cages on every instance,” she quietly reminded them. “You may not find the support you seek before a great many bodies have piled up.”

Ferranda hummed.

“A question best revisited tomorrow,” she said. “Once Tupoc is dead, we can decide how far this is to be pushed.”

Shalini looked mutinous but she kept silent. By unspoken accord they turned to lighter talk as Angharad went through her meal, wolfing down the bland fare. Hunger was the finest spice. Others drifted in as she did, alone or in pairs. Cozme, freshly bandaged, came over to the table to share with them the news that Yong was being cut open – he had a bullet in the back that must be removed – and might not be upright tomorrow. By the time Angharad finished her meal, the absences were more noticeable than those present. Besides Yong, only three were missing.

Tupoc, Lan and Augusto.

Parting ways with the three, Angharad grabbed her saber and went upstairs to pick a room. The stairs led up to a tiny hallway forming a broad L, she found, whose longer length faced the street. Between the two sides there were around twenty doors with a number painted and all were open save for the three nearest to the stairs. The Pereduri suspected these would be locked as well, but did not check. Instead she looked around for which room seemed most comfortable, hoping for a mattress that might not be stuffed straw. She was not the only one with such a notion.

“Comparing the rooms, are we?” Brun asked, lips twitching into a smile.

The blond Sacromontan looked tired, holding his pack loosely, but was still steady on his feet. That tended to be the way with him.

“Straw everywhere, so far,” Angharad admitted. “Have you found anything?”

“Same for the mattresses, I expect we should give up hope for that,” he said. “No windows anywhere, but the three rooms in the corner have a dresser as well as a bedside table. That appears the pinnacle of luxury around here.”

Angharad sighed. It was better than nothing, she supposed. The two of them trudged back past the stairs, turning the corner of the L into the smaller length of hall. While she hesitated Brun stole a march on her, claiming the middle of the three rooms and tossing his pack on the bed. Slightly irked, she walked past him and took the room at the very end of the hall. A twenty-one was painted in white on the door, the key she would need to claim.

Brun was waiting for her in the hall when she came out.

“Have you eaten yet?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Shame,” Brun said. “Was it any good?”

“Do you enjoy peas?” she drily asked.

“More than I enjoy starving,” the fair-haired man amusedly replied.

“Then I expect you will most adequately fed,” Angharad told him.

She could not bring herself to give a better compliment, as it would have been dangerously close to a lie. They made their way back down together, encountering Yaretzi going up as they did. Since the stairs were too narrow for two the Izcalli gallantly went back down to give way, while Brun instead climbed back up to cede her passage in turn. Angharad thanked the other woman with a nod, but no more than that. Given the chances that ‘Yaretzi’ was some kind of impostor, it was best to keep her distance.

When she claimed her key from the innkeeper, a dark-haired woman in her thirties – her clothes as old-fashioned as the young man’s – was waiting for her.

“Alix,” she introduced herself. “I handle Mayor Crespin’s affairs. You are Angharad Tredegar, correct?”

Angharad nodded confirmation.

“I need three names from you, then,” Alix said, picking up a chalk and slate.

After a heartbeat of hesitation, she gave them. Tupoc Xical, Augusto Cerdan and Cozme Aflor. After the first round  and Tupoc’s death Angharad saw no need to continue this vicious trial, but that was not in her power to decide. Perhaps talks could be had tomorrow, after the execution. After going back up to lock her door, when returning to the common room she found that Song was seated with Sarai and a reluctant-seeming Ferranda – something Angharad decided she wanted no part of. She took to the streets instead, feet itching to move for all her exhaustion.

They would not be allowed to retire to their rooms until all had given three names anyhow.

Cantica was smaller than she had thought. Two large inns, the Last Rest and the Warm Coffin, swallowed up quite a bit of the room inside the area walled in by the palisade and ring of lamplights. The rest was rough wooden houses – all their shutters were closed, and Angharad saw precious few of the townsfolk out on the streets – and a handful of shops. The people of Cantica were polite but distant, most of them not even bothering to reply to a greeting beside a curt nod.

The shops were not much to look at either. A half-empty general store and a smithy were nestled one against another, while further down the street a carpenter and a baker made up the rest of the town’s ‘main street’. Angharad found Lan sitting in the alley by the bakery, perched on a crate as she tore into a loaf of black bread. On a whim, she sought out the other woman.

“There are warm meals at the Last Rest, you know,” Angharad said.

The blue-lipped Tianxi smiled.

“You can’t move while eating those, though,” she said. “And there’s a lot to see in a place like this.”

Angharad cocked an eyebrow, somewhat skeptical.

“Is there?”

Lan hummed.

“How many people do you think live in a town this size?” she asked.

Angharad blinked.

“Around two or three hundred,” she guessed.

“Probably closer to four or five,” Lan said. “But you’re in the right area. How many of those people have you seen out in the streets?”

Angharad thought back, slipping into a frown.

“Fewer than fifty,” she said. “And no children.”

“Common sense to keep your kids indoors when you’ve got a dozen heavily armed lunatics on the prowl,” Lan said, “but why so few people are out and about is what has me curious. I figure it’s about the lights.”

The Pereduri blinked, putting the pieces together.

“You think hollows live here?” she asked, appalled.

“No,” Lan said, biting into the bread and swallowing a chunk. “I think people live here, and they keep hollow slaves. Do you know a lot of farmers who’d go out there and till a field when there’s cultists on the loose? They’re using expendables, is my guess. And the Watch allows it, because if Cantica’s turning a profit they can get some tax money out of this place.”

Angharad swallowed.

“And now that the lamplights are lit,” she said, “the hollows stay inside so the touch of the Glare will not hurt them.”

The other woman nodded.

“It’s just a guess,” Lan admitted. “But I find it mighty interesting there’s hardly a house in this town where the shutters are open but that all the shops – the rich parts, the people with coin – are open and their owners around. It paints a picture.”

It did, Angharad thought with a grimace. The Watch did not practice slavery, but Cantica was not the Rookery. It was a colony with a charter, and if the legalities were anything like those in Malan then this town would be something like a vassal state paying tribute. Not, strictly speaking, part of the Watch or its territories.

“Would that at least one part of this misbegotten island was not filled to the brim with sinister secrets,” Angharad bit out.

Lan eyed her, seemingly amused.

“Then you won’t be interested in what I overheard keeping an eye on our friend Augusto,” she teased..

Angharad blinked.

“Why were you following Augusto?” she slowly asked.

“Because Tupoc said he’d kill me and make it look like an accident,” Lan cheerfully replied. “I lost him two streets over, near the butcher’s shop.”

Angharad considered the other woman as she kept tearing into her loaf of bread, rather conflicted. On one hand, Lan was a sneak who looked into everyone’s private affairs and riffled through their bags when given half an excuse. On the other hand, she was so open about this and her generally mercenary nature that Angharad could not quite bring herself to actually consider her a sneak. If a viper told you it was a viper and that it was going to bite you, then proceeded to bite you in the exact way it had informed you it would, could it really be considered treachery?

Angharad cleared her throat.

“Please,” she said, “may I hear what Augusto was doing?”

If the other woman had brought it up, it would be worth hearing.

“Free of charge, since you’re a good sort,” Lan easily said. “Our boy was talking with the town guards earlier, asking about the gates of Cantica. More precisely whether there are other ways in or out of this place.”

Angharad’s eyes narrowed.

“Are there?”

“I didn’t hear the guard’s answer,” Lan said. “But I think his lordship has seen the writing on the wall for the Trial of Weeds, and now he wants to pull a runner before he ends up losing his head.”

That was, Angharad darkly thought, despicably plausible of the man.

“Perhaps I should have a look at where he is, then,” she flatly said.

“Good luck with that,” Lan said, biting into the bread. “And I mean it. You can smell the crazy on that boy, and it’s not even the entertaining kind.”

Not quite sure how to answer that, the noblewoman kept her face blank and offered her most polite goodbyes. Lan only seemed all the more amused, though her eyes were already far away.

The Tianxi was not done sniffing around Cantica for secrets, Angharad could tell.

—

She did not find Augusto in time.

The infanzon had made himself scarce, and Tupoc was no longer by the butcher shop when she passed close. In truth she did not have long to look around, as a town guard accosted her in the street and told her to return to the Last Rest.

“May I ask why?” Angharad politely said.

“The votes are all in,” the woman replied. “The names and numbers are on the slate by the door. Once everyone has seen them you’ll all be allowed to turn in for the night.”

Though Angharad believed she already knew the results, she supposed there was no harm in taking a look before going on the hunt for Augusto again. Besides, it might be interesting to see the numbers. She thanked the guard and briskly made her way back, finding most of their company out in the street and looking at a slate six feet high. The writing was the same as that of the mayor’s helper – Alix, was it?

Angharad stepped around Zenzele to come closer to the slate, noticing from the corner of her eye that Song was there and looking worried. Why? Her look at the slate revealed that eleven out of the fourteen of them had named Tupoc, putting him at the top of the list. It was, in truth, fewer than she had expected. Augusto was second and had been named ten times, which seemed reasonable to her. Cozme’s name was the third, she saw, but there she blinked.

Five times. He had only been named five times.

And the name under his was a scrawled ANGHARAD with a four besides it.

She had come within one vote of ending up in a cage, the Pereduri dimly realized. All this time speaking with others and never even noticed she was resting on the knife’s edge. Under her Tristan had been named four times as well, another injustice, and then of all people Brun had been thrice named. Yaretzi being named thrice was slightly less startling, but it came as a blindside that the last name on the list would be Song – named twice.

Perhaps Angharad should have tried to match votes to faces, to piece it all together, but her eyes kept returning to her name right under Cozme’s and how close she had come to being sent into the cage in his stead. Feeling stares lingering on her back, the Pereduri flushed in embarrassment.

Four votes, Sleeping God.

Augusto and Tupoc she could understand, but who else had she offended to deserve such a slight? Was Cozme two-faced enough to ask for her mercy and in the same breath try to have her encaged? The Pereduri’s jaw clenched. He likely was. And that still left one more among the fourteen who had wanted her put on display like a wild animal, having never said a word to her face.

Her mood significantly fouled, she ignored Song calling out for her and strode away. Absence of company would do her well. A minute or two of walking around with enough of a scowl that the townsfolk gave her a wide berth calmed her down, enough that when she caught sight of a familiar silhouette she did not avoid him. Tristan, after all, also had four votes to his name. She did not believe him any more deserving of such slander than she.

The scruffy man was leaning against the side of a house, Angharad saw as she approached, and looking up at one of the pale lamplights that ringed the entire town of Cantica to keep away lemures and strike fear in the hearts of darklings. The man flicked a glance her away as she came near, offering a polite nod that she returned.

“Missing home?” she asked. “It must have been quite the change, leaving Sacromonte for the first time.”

“There’s fewer lights in my parts of the city than you’d think,” Tristan replied. “But there is something nostalgic about this, I’ll admit.”

His lips thinned.

“These are the exact same kind of lamplights they use in the Murk.”

Angharad had not been long in Sacromonte, but long enough to hear of this Murk. The city’s slums, though there were wild and colorful rumors about what went on there. She cocked an eyebrow at the man, for this did not seem a detail worth staring at.

“I imagine they must import them from Sacromonte,” Angharad said. “It is the closest city to the island and the Watch has ancient ties to it.”

“I figured that as well,” Tristan agreed. “Only, Tredegar, those lamplights are in pristine state. Their glow is perfect.”

“And what does that mean?” Angharad asked.

“Either nothing at all,” Tristan quietly said, “or that we are in very serious trouble.”

Maryam woke up halfway through the hall, which helped a lot.

Even groggy as she was she could stumble forward while leaning on his side, which was a distinct improvement from carrying her on his back. Tristan had been worried about her, as being knocked unconscious was rarely the end of one’s troubles, but though she had a hard time focusing her eyes her mind seemed all there. Enough to insult him, anyway, which he took as a good sign.

“You carried me,” Maryam doubtfully repeated. “Did you happen have a cart at hand?”

Tristan glared. He was not that skinny.

“I can still leave you behind,” he threatened.

“But then who will catch you when you leap off a cliff for the third time?” she shot back.

“It was really more of a fall this time,” he argued. “And not, by the strictest definition, a-”

“If you have breath enough to talk,” Yong bit out from ahead, “then run faster.”

The older man was not doing well. He was barely ahead of them even though Tristan was helping someone. There was a hole in the back of his coat where Vasanti had shot him, perhaps an inch to the side of the spine – it was a ragged, red thing. The thief could not easily tell with the coat on, but he thought it might be high enough a lung would be a at risk.

Gods, let it not have pierced a lung. That was an ugly way to die.

The ground shook beneath their feet again, a reminder that Yong’s anger was not senseless. A glance behind told him that the cavernous room at the top of the pillar was still there, but for how long? Sooner or later the weight would drag the whole thing down like a spear into the Red Maw’s heart. Cutting out the chatter, the pair followed after Yong as best they could.

It was a close thing, but when the hall behind them snapped like a twig they did not fall with it. They’d pulled ahead enough, though Tristan knew better than to stop. He’d glimpsed the parting gift of the devils and it was not going to stop at the pillar spearing down: without that structure serving as support, the entire mountaintop was going to crumble inwards.

It would be best if they were not there to crumble with it.

It was a strange thing, their race to the end of the hall. On the one hand fear – and the cloud of dust behind them – kept them wide awake and attentive, death looming ever close. On the other, the length of the hallway was aggressively monotonous. It was all bare stone in a dim light of no clear source, perfectly symmetrical and utterly empty. The kind of sight that made you fall asleep.

Thrice the thief found his gaze drifting, seeking corners and angles, and he thought he might have been tiring until he realized what he truly was doing: looking for Fortuna. There was no trace of her, not leaning against a wall and smirking or even effortlessly keeping pace with him in her red dress. She was just gone. Tristan felt his breath shortening, a dim fear seizing him by the throat.

“Tristan.”

What if she never came back? What if the way he’d pulled on the contract had killed her? She was a small god, near forgotten, and if he’d taken too much from her she might have…

“Tristan,” Maryam hissed. “Focus, we’re nearly there. We’re going to be fine.”

The thief came back to himself, his back covered in cold sweat, and bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. The pain centered him, kept him in there and now. He could not think about this, about how he might have lost the only person who’d never left, who could not die – he could not think about this.

Maryam was right, they were nearly at the end of the hall. All around them stone shuddered, the distant hallway falling apart as dust and dirt clouded sight but not the cacophonous noise. Ahead of them waited a smooth iron gate, and Tristan could but pray that it was not locked for if it was then they might well be dead. Yong was the one to reach it, and though there was no handle for him to push when he touched it the gate began opening on its own, sliding into the wall.

It was an unsettling sight, though not unsettling enough to stop him from taking refuge in the room past the gate.

The room was, he found when following after Maryam, little more than a glorified antechamber. There were racks on the wall from which nothing hung and two doorways on the sides leading into other halls. More importantly, though, was the broad gate – twice as long as it was tall – covering the entire back wall of the room. There were broad stripes of cryptoglyphs on the ground before it, beyond their understanding now that Francho was dead. Tristan’s teeth clenched.

It had been a quick death, he told himself.

“It must lead outside,” Yong said, eyeing the wall-gate as his breath came in pants. “There was nothing at the end of the hall in the projection we saw.”

The ceiling above them rumbled, softly lapping away at the silence.

“We cannot go through so long as there is a landslide,” Tristan said. “We’ll have to wait.”

The Tianxi grimaced.

“And if the landslide blocked the door?”

“Then we will try one of the other halls,” Maryam said. “We are not yet out of options, Yong.”

The veteran looked away.

“I suppose not,” he said.

Tristan cleared his throat.

“If we are to wait, then I would have a look at your wound,” he said.

The Tianxi turned, eyes cool.

“I can move just fine,” he said. “That is not necessary.”

Yong had never declined that offer before. The thief knew why he now had – though much had happened since, their conversation at the summit of the pillar was still fresh in his mind. Irritation rose.

“Disdain won’t stop your bleeding,” he coldly replied. “But if sanctimony is the hill you want to die on, by all means spare me the waste of bandages.”

He almost winced after saying it, seeing the way the other man’s face tightened, but he did not look away. It had not been the right way to handle that, and were he less tired he might have finessed his way into something better, but Tristan had been brutalized enough by his day he wasn’t sure he cared. Worse, he was pretty sure that the poppy was beginning to fade.

The dull ache in his everything was something of a hint.

“Would you have preferred picking out the hill for me?” Yong replied just as coldly. “That does seem to be your favorite racket.”

“All right, that’s enough of that,” Maryam said, stepping in between them with a tired look on her face. “Tristan, you left everyone in the dark as to your actual plan until the last moment. He’s got a right to be angry.”

A pause, then her eyes met his.

“I am too,” she frankly said. “This just isn’t the time or place for us to have that talk.”

His lips thinned. If Francho hadn’t been killed, would either of them even… Maryam turned to Yong with a smidgeon more sympathy, but only that.

“You know he’s never turned it on any of us,” she flatly said. “It’s childish to pretend he’s trying to do anything but keeping you from bleeding out. You can still be angry after he’s helped you – I am.”

“You don’t understand,” Yong said.

“Neither will the bullet in your back,” she brutally replied. “You need to get that seen to, and there’s only one of us who knows how.”

It was hard to argue with that, even though Yong looked like he wanted to. It was in a slightly sullen silence that they set about the examination. Yong laid out his coat and clothes on the ground, stripped down to the waist, and laid down with his belly on the coat. Kneeling by the older man, Tristan rinsed his hands in booze and leaned close. The Tianxi shivered when a droplet of drink fell onto his back.

“Cold,” Yong muttered.

Tristan did not answer, his face pulling into a frown. He wasn’t as familiar with gun wounds as those from knives or cudgels – he’d worked as a cutter’s assistant, not under a military surgeon – but he knew he wasn’t looking at the good kind of wound. If it had been a musket instead of a pistol he was shot with, Yong would have died. Reaching for a rag from his bag, he soaked it in alcohol and after cleaning the wound set about checking how deep the ball had penetrated. Yong’s shivering moan of pain went ignored.

The thief stopped almost immediately, letting out a noise of surprise.

“Tristan?” Yong croaked out. “What is it?”

The grey-eyed man grimaced.

“I’m going to have to feel out your ribs,” he said. “It’s going to hurt.”

The Tianxi cursed.

“Give me the bottle,” he said. “I-”

“You’re already drunk,” Tristan sharply said. “I’m not letting you thin your blood any further, you’ll kill yourself.”

“Fuck,” Yong quietly muttered, then breathed in. “Do it.”

He forced himself not to hear the man’s groans as he felt out the ribs, pressing the flesh enough to feel the lack of give beneath and – Yong let out a scream. Tristan’s fingers pulled away. He’d learned what he needed to anyway.

“You have been,” Tristan said, “extremely lucky. It may yet kill you.”

Maryam cocked an eyebrow at him.

“Well,” she said, “I guess there’s a reason you’re not in charge of morale around here.”

“I’m not convinced he should be in charge of medicine either,” Yong groaned from the ground, laying his forehead against his coat.

He stayed like that for a few breaths, mastering himself, then raised his head again.

“All right,” the Tianxi said. “Tell me.”

“When Vasanti shot you from behind, she hit your rib,” Tristan said. “It’s the reason why there’s currently not a hole in your lung.”

“We may need to work on your definition of lucky,” Maryam noted.

“No,” Yong quietly disagreed. “He’s right. I’ve seen men get shot in the lung, this was fine luck. Now give me the bad news.”

“The impact shattered your rib and broke off at least one large piece,” the thief said. “I’d need to open you up to be sure – and that might well kill you even if I was a real physician – but I think that right now the bullet is what’s keeping that piece from stabbing into your lung.”

Maryam had nothing pithy to add to that. Yong swallowed.

“What can I do?”

“Nothing,” Tristan honestly said. “If we get you to a Watch surgeon in Three Pines they can remove the bullet and the broken off piece, but trying the same here with a knife would be like…”

The only words that came to him were too light, too teasing.

“It would be kinder to use the knife to slit your throat, let’s leave it at that.”

The veteran slowly nodded.

“How long do I have?”

The calm, Tristan thought, was the worst part of it. Yong had an almost serene look on his face, like the thought of dying didn’t move him at all. Like all he was wondering about was the schedule, the details of the marching orders to his grave. Maybe it was about knowing death, Tristan thought. That old friend walked with all the children of the Murk, but none of them knew it the way a soldier would. Someone who’d seen a hundred lives be snuffed out in a heartbeat, washed away by a wave of smoke and lead. Maybe it wasn’t so scary when you’d seen so much of it.

Somehow, he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe that.

“I can’t tell,” Tristan admitted. “Depending on how the rib broke that piece could be wedged tight in place or it could be on the edge of coming loose. Could be hours, could be days, could be a year.”

The thief licked his lips.

“Avoid moving too fast and getting hit in the torso, that’s the best advice I can give you.”

His gaze broke away from the Tianxi’s as he reached for his bag.

“I’ll bandage it,” he added. “It might help some, and we need to keep that wound from getting infected as long as possible.”

The wound going bad might kill the other man before the rib piece did. Yong’s forehead went back down and he did not say anything after that.

None of them did, waiting in silence until the last of the rumbling above passed.

—

The last iron gate parted open at a touch, both sides fleeing into the wall – though one got stuck halfway through, some unseen metal gear letting out a strident cry as it tried to force the matter and ended up breaking for it.

Wary as that sound had made them, they still hurried out into the small natural cave past the gate. The iron wall closed behind them, save for the part that’d got stuck. Yong’s lantern showed there was a worn fire pit in here and some coal drawing on the walls along with words in a language Tristan did not know. At least one of them was a name, he figured, written above a pretty obscene drawing of a man thrusting his phallus at an airavatan’s buttocks.

“Charming,” Maryam drily said.

“It hasn’t been used recently,” Yong said, eyes on the pit. “Still, it looks like hollows know of this place.”

Tristan drew back to lay his hand on the iron gate, who confirmed his suspicions by not moving an inch. It only opened from the inside, then. The hollows had never gotten into the pillar. By the time he returned the other two had moved on, leaving the cave and stopping on a ledge right outside of it. Tristan joined them, inhaling the faint breeze with a smile as he pressed down his tricorn. Above them the veiled lights of firmament shone, cold and unmoving stars. They had made it out.

For a long moment they stayed there, savoring the simple truth of that.

Tristan was the first to stir. His gaze turned below, where a great dark forest spread out – through there was a ring of light nestled in its heart, to the northeast. The glow was pale enough it must have Glare to it. Some kind of Watch outpost? He was not the only one who had begun looking around, as Yong made clear when he let out a soft curse in Cathayan.

“It looks like we won’t be getting to sanctuary,” the Tianxi said.

Their gate out of the mountain was facing the Watch fort on the other side, but it did not need to when even from where they stood they could see the aftermath of a massive landslide gone down that slope. The blackcloak fort had been on that same side, they all knew, which was less than promising. Feeling Yong’s gaze grown colder when it moved back to him, Tristan held his hands up in protest.

“We don’t know that the place got buried,” he said. “And even if it did, Wen told me they have a vault below. Odds are it has a hidden passage they can use to get out of the mess.”

“You had best hope they do,” Yong said. “Else they might shoot you for this at Three Pines.”

Tristan was not the one who had caused the collapse, but he was disinclined to pass the blame onto Maryam.

“Vasanti caused all this,” he said instead. “She forced us at gunpoint to trigger the trap the devils left behind because of her obsession with controlling the Antediluvian device.”

Yong looked unconvinced and he felt Maryam’s blue eyes on him. She said nothing, tacitly agreeing to his take on events. Since the Tianxi had been down during most of the confrontation with Vasanti, potentially unconscious, he was in no position to argue the tale.

“It doesn’t matter,” Yong said. “Even if they get out we won’t be finding them out in the dark. They’ll be headed to Three Pines, at a guess.”

The port at the northern end of the island, Tristan thought, and likely where the Trial of Weeds ended.

“Or that place,” he said, pointing at the distant ring of lights in the woods. “Sarai, what did the map say about it?”

“Sarai?” Yong mildly said. “And here I thought her name was Maryam.”

Tristan grimaced. Shit, he’d let that slip during the mess inside hadn’t he? He sent his friend an apologetic look, which she dismissed with a hand.

“You can call me Maryam too,” she told the Tianxi. “Though I would ask you both to use Sarai in front of others.”

She got the nods she was seeking, then sighed.

“And the map did not say anything about what that place is,” she said. “It was marked, however, and a road through the woods that ultimately leads to the port goes through it. We have nothing to lose by taking a look.”

“If it’s a Watch outpost they might have surgeon,” Tristan told Yong. “Given how far the port is, it seems our best chance at keeping your ribs out of your lung.”

A little explicit for his tastes, but that ought to remind the man of how much danger he was in with every step he took.

“It does seem the wisest course,” Yong said. “If there are blackcloaks there, we may also learn what the Trial of Weeds is meant to be.”

“It’s settled, then,” Maryam said. “Let us get moving before the rest of this mountain comes down on our heads.”

“Or worse,” Tristan fervently agreed. “Lieutenant Wen warned me about cultists out here, they’re the worst of the lot.”

It’d be a stroke of luck if the landslide had taken care of that for them, so he felt safe betting on the opposite.

—

There were remains of what the Antediluvians must have used to get up and down mountain once upon a time, some kind of half-buried machine whose sharp glittering spikes rose out of the dirt. None of them would have any idea how to get such a thing working – if it still worked at all – so instead they went down the old-fashioned way. Hollows clearly camped in the cave on occasion, so it was just a matter of finding the path they used to come here.

It turned out to be a glorified goat trail snaking down the mountainside, narrow and made even steeper when the earlier collapse had shaken off loose rocks. Tristan was no stranger to heights but he still stepped warily, for a single slip here would likely be enough to kill him. For the better part of an hour they descended, the path widening as they got closer to the bottom, until finally they were able to leave the narrow trail for a bit.

They’d heard the waterfall long before they saw it. Tucked away in the mountainside, it spat out the end of some river from the maze onto the rest of the island. There was a crossing through the water, a loose path of jutting stones that the wet had turned dangerously slippery. They took their time moving across, which was the reason Tristan even noticed something was amiss. Frowning, he clutched the side of the stone he was standing on and went fishing in the foamy water.

What he got for his trouble was a ripped doublet.

“Tristan?”

“Found something,” he told Maryam.

He held up the dripping doublet into the lantern light, catching blood on the edge of the rips. The thief let out a low whistle when he realized it wasn’t a simple case of the doublet having been torn: it was the same hole on both sides, more or less, so it was the remains of an impalement he was looking at.

“Old clothes?” Maryam said, taking a closer look. “Didn’t think you were that hard up.”

“I’ve seen that doublet before,” he said. “So have you.”

She blinked.

“The colors,” she slowly said.

“House Cerdan,” he confirmed. “It belonged to the elder brother, I believe.”

“So there’s a half-naked infanzon corpse somewhere in the maze,” Maryam said. “This has not been a good year for the Cerdan.”

Tristan smoothed away his smile. Yong had not disapproved of his taking revenge earlier, for all that the man had not known the details, but that had been before their disagreements. It was best kept under wraps now. Besides, he thought, what was Yong actually-

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” the Tianxi called out.

Yong had crossed all the way to the other side of the waterfall, at the edge of the lantern light, and was standing by a dead tree. The thief couldn’t make it out well, so he tossed the doublet back into the water and set about catching up. A waste – it was good fabric, might have fetched silver in the right shop – but he did not want carry any more weight than he had to. Maryam let out a startled noise within moments of reaching the other shore and Tristan soon saw why: there were footprints in the mud.

Someone had crawled out of the water onto the shore. The real surprise, though, was by the tree Yong was still closely studying.  It was not dead the way Tristan had first thought. While he was no woodsman, he knew what a dead tree looked like. Dry wood, bark gone grey and dry if there was still any at all. The tree instead looked like it’d been scourged: there were slight furrows, as if a thin cutting whip had been wielded at it, and only around these marks was the tree dead. The rest of it looked fine, untouched.

“Contract,” Yong said.

“Contract,” Maryam agreed.

“Contract,” Tristan concluded.

And it did not look like the pleasant kind.

“Augusto Cerdan got impaled by something large, if his doublet is any indication,” the thief said. “It seems to me he might have struck a pact – any pact at all – to live through that.”

“If it truly was a bargain with the Red Maw, the Watch will kill him for it,” Maryam noted.

Tristan had been hoping the champion of the downtrodden would take care of this for him – really, Tredegar, how hard could it possibly be to off someone you’d publicly sworn to kill in a duel? – but he’d settle for the Watch instead if that was on the table.

“They might have,” Yong said, “if they were not under several tons of rock.”

Tristan grimaced. A fair point, even if its tone was slightly accusing.

“The only way off this island is the port at Three Pines,” he said. “They would check before letting him onto the boat, surely.”

“Our ship should stay until all the trial-takers are arrived or believed dead, anyway,” Maryam said. “We’ll have time to tell the blackcloaks of our suspicions”

“If we live to inform them,” Yong said.

“That is the plan,” Tristan reminded him.

“You always do have one of those, don’t you?” the Tianxi said.

Though the man was smiling, it was not a compliment. Irritation could wait until they were in a safer place, Tristan reminded himself.

“The path to the outpost won’t walk itself,” Maryam said. “Still, let’s keep an eye out for the Cerdan as we go. I doubt anything capable of that-”

She pointed at the mangled tree.

“- is going to be all that friendly,” she finished.

Yong hesitated.

“We cannot know for sure it is a Red Maw contract,” he said.

I would want to kill him even if it isn’t, Tristan thought. The more diplomatic ‘that contract seems dangerous regardless’ was on the tip of his tongue, but he was not so blind as to be unaware that if it came out of his mouth Yong was unlikely to agree. Best let Maryam take care of it instead.

“Yong, it’s a maze full of starved and half-mad gods,” the blue-eyed woman said. “The Maw was the worst, sure, but there were plenty of things in there almost as bad.”

Tristan saw in the muscles of the neck that the veteran was about to glance his way, so he looked away first. A moment passed, then Yong sighed.

“Fair enough,” he conceded. “I won’t shoot on sight, Maryam, but neither will I approach him if we find him.”

An awkward silence stretched on after that, until Tristan cleared his throat.

“We should fill our waterskins before moving on,” he said. “We might not get another occasion any time soon.”

A few minutes for that and then they were back on the trail.

—

They found no further traces of Augusto Cerdan on the way down, not for lack of looking.

There was no telling if he had made it off the mountain, though Tristan’s instincts whispered that he had. The man would not have made it this far if he was the kind to lay down and die. The thief could respect that kind of mettle, in truth, so as a gesture of goodwill he would try to kill Augusto standing instead. So long as it was not particularly inconvenient, anyway.

The woods below were no easier to navigate than those in the Trial of Lines had been, though at least the thief had gotten used to such journeys. Their pace remained slow. Tristan had not noticed on the mountain, where the prospect of taking a tumble down the cliff had kept all their movements sedate, but Yong was at the edge of his rope. His breath was labored and his hair drenched with sweat. By unspoken agreement he and Maryam let the man take the lead so he could set the pace. She held the lantern, though, to relieve him of the weight.

The thief fiddled with his hat, adjusting it unnecessarily as he debated calling for a halt so the Tianxi might rest. It might be better to wait a little longer, he thought, perhaps until they reached the road. Maryam had guided them in what was the right direction according to the map stored in her head, but a direction was the most she had been able to provide: until they hit the supposed road through the forest, they would have no real notion of where they actually were.

“Lights,” Yong suddenly rasped out. “Maryam, kill the lantern.”

She snuffed it out in a moment and they huddled together behind a bush, peering through the leaves to watch the approaching lights Yong had picked out. And no wonder he had, the thief thought: there were a great many of them. At least ten torches were being held up, though not a single one of them burned pale. Hollows, he thought. Cultists. So much for his half-formed hope they had run into the other group of trial-takers.

Assuming they had lived through the mountain’s collapse.

His suspicions were confirmed when the torches came closer, all their shoulders tensing as a warband of pale-skinned cultist began gathering in a small clearing slightly ahead of them. There was a great deal of talk going on, and though they were not close enough to hear the words being spoken they were close enough to see the situation unfold. Two silhouettes in chain mail coats, both armed with long swords, were squaring off in an argument. One kept gesturing further in the woods, as if insisting they go off, while the other refused.

Both looked close to drawing blades, and though they kept flicking looks at the black-robed priest watching them from the back she said not a word. Tristan had flinched when he first saw her face in the torchlight: it was a ruin of red scars, near every inch of it covered by hungry maws. All the other cultists, of which there must be at least two dozen, were very careful around her – as if the slightest of gestures might bring about her ire.

“They have muskets,” Yong murmured. “At least ten of them.”

“There might be more,” Tristan replied just as quietly. “Wen told me they take them from Watch patrols.”

None of them were comfortable staying so close to the enemy but there was little choice. Had they bolted earlier maybe they might have had a chance to sneak away, but it was too late now. They would not slip away unseen when trying to shake off the cultists in their own favorite hunting grounds.

“I think one of them is saying they need to pursue people,” Maryam said. “They might have found the others.”

“Or the Watch garrison from the other fort,” Tristan said.

“Could be either,” Yong muttered. “And they like their sacrifices, the Red Maw, so why is the other one arguing against it?”

It took half an hour before they got an answer. A smaller band of five or so cultists joined the rest, two of them carrying a pair of wooden poles to which someone was bound. Though they were far and the torchlight flickering, Tristan would have recognized that mangled face even if the colored undershirt hadn’t given the game away.

“Oh, that poor bastard,” Yong said.

Unlike the older man, Tristan did not find it in him to muster pity as he watched Augusto Cerdan get carried into the crowd. Instead his eyes were on the ripped undershirt, which was still stained with blood and revealed the flesh beneath. And there was something… off about that flesh. It looked like a wound, only it was nowhere as deep as it should be – the infanzon had been impaled – and the wounded flesh looked oddly stringy. Like strung-out pieces of red yarn.

The cultists cheered the captured, the triumphant hunters earning much praise and backslapping from the rest. The only sullen face was the armored man who had been arguing to leave in pursuit, and the moment his dark eyes lingered on Augusto the thief knew what would happen. He wanted to vent his anger and there was a designated victim at hand. The cultists strolled up with a sneer and kicked the Cerdan in the ribs, the infanzon letting out a groan of pain.

Those boots were simple leather, lacking armor, but the thief imagined that would be of little comfort to Augusto. Some cultists cheered the blow, acclaim that the sneering armored man wasted no time in chasing again. Two more kicks, the noble wriggling in pain, until the man turned to face the crowd and speak in some hollow cant. Whatever he’d said prompted laughter.

Then Augusto Cerdan’s hand struck out like a viper, fingers sliding inside the cultists’ boot, and the laughter went away.

The hollow let out a terrible scream, bloody furrows forming across every visible inch of skin and digging deep. After two heartbeats he fell, twitching and bleeding, and as the rest of the cultists drew their arms in an uproar the infanzon began laughing on the ground. He was, Tristan realized, no longer wounded. Not on his face, not where he’d been impaled. It was all smooth and healthy skin, though still caked in blood. His companions went still at the sight, having noticed it as well. Does he feed on the living?

The thief bit his lip. Whatever the Cerdan had gotten out of the tree he’d fed on, it had not healed him in full. Only now that a man had been turned into a bloody mess did he look untouched. What he feeds on must shape what he gets from it, Tristan thought. It sounded like a powerful contract, for all that flesh to flesh contract seemed to be required, which likely meant there was more to it. No god would grant such power without thorns and a steep price to swallow.

The cultists swarmed angrily, several hitting a still-laughing Augusto with the bottom of their spear or the flat of their sword, but they would not kill him. He was a sacrifice. Some seemed to be arguing for mutilation, however, and blades were bared.

Then the priest came out of the shadows, stepping fully into the torchlight, and silence fell over the clearing.

The young woman spoke softly, cultists hurrying to obey. Augusto was cut free of the poles and dragged upright, the infanzon grinning wildly as the priest stepped closer. She leaned forward, face so close to the man she must have been able to smell his breath, before suddenly smiling. She pressed a soft kiss against his cheek, almost girlishly, and Tristan breathed in. Only she did not fall screaming, to the Cerdan’s visible surprise.

The priest raised up his hand, announcing something in the hollow cant, and after a heartbeat of utter surprise the cultists hurried to kneel before them.

“Well,” Maryam quietly said. “I think we can now safely assume our friend Augusto has a Red Maw contract, can’t we?”

—

It took another half hour for the warband to move on after that distressing bit of theatre.

Augusto obviously did not understand the hollow cant, but several of the cultists appeared to know some Antigua. There was a lot of gesticulation accompanying the words, but some kind of understanding was eventually reached. The infanzon stole the sword and cloak of the armored man he’d mutilated to the protest of no one, sticking close to the priest and talking animatedly as the hollows headed deeper into the woods. The three of them remained in hiding for minutes more after the last was gone, just in case.

“That,” Tristan mildly said, “is going to be a problem.”

“He probably can’t heal from a bullet to the head,” Yong opined. “I’d just need to get close enough.”

“That would mean getting close to the hollows,” Maryam said. “Best we leave him to the Watch, I think.”

“I won’t argue that,” Tristan grunted. “I’m not sold on following them too closely, though.”

“Best we give them a head start,” Yong agreed.

“Can’t be too much of one,” Maryam warned, “else we risk running into them while they’re on their way back.”

That was a risk, Tristan acknowledged.

“Any idea where they’re headed?” he asked.

“Same way we are,” she grimly replied. “It’s safe bet they are also aiming for the road through the woods.”

“Then we go around them,” Yong said. “Circle past their position and then take the path the rest of the way to the outpost.”

It seemed a reasonable plan, so they settled on that. Giving the cultists an hour to pull further ahead was what was decided on, and Tristan volunteered to keep watch if the others wanted to rest. Maryam did not waste a heartbeat accepting, using her pack as a pillow and cocooning in the bush. Yong did too, after some hesitation. The thief settled against a tree, blackjack close to his hand, and leant his back against the bark. The last of the poppy was fading, so at least he was at no risk of falling asleep: it was hard to contemplate lying down when your body and soul were as a single giant bruise.

It was boring, looking out into the dark and staring at every shaking leaf, but it needed doing anyway. He checked Vanesa’s watch regularly, more than he needed to in truth. It was less risky than letting his thoughts drift. It was when he was having a look for then tenth time that the silence was broken by a croaking whisper.

“How long?” Yong asked.

“Twenty-three minutes,” Tristan said. “Over half left, you can go back to sleep.”

“Can’t,” the Tianxi admitted. “The pain keeps waking me up.”

Going by the loud snoring, Maryam was having no such trouble.

“I don’t have anything left to take the edge off,” the thief said. “If you have a hard time moving, we may have to risk the drink.”

Risky, given that Yong was likely still bleeding inside, but less risky than moving at a slug’s pace in a forest full of Red Maw fanatics armed to the teeth. The older man breathed out.

“I can still take it,” he said. “I’ll make it to the outpost, at least.”

Tristan nodded, though he was not sure if the Tianxi saw him in the dark. He said nothing more.

“You don’t regret it at all, do you?” Yong suddenly said. “Sending the watchmen into a trap.”

Half a dozen replies were on the tip of his tongue, ways to wiggle out of the growing enmity between them. I also warned them about the trap, he could have said, or Vasanti was going to kill me otherwise, I had no choice, or Wen forced my hand in exchange for his protection. Degrees of truths, degrees of lies. Only Yong had saved his life. More than once. And that would only have weighed so much, if honesty was likely to get him killed, but it wasn’t.

So he told the truth.

“No,” Tristan said. “I regret letting down my guard at the end, not thinking to keep a watch on the second lift, but nothing else of how things unfolded.”

He could almost feel Yong’s jaw clench.

“You made those men into a distraction,” the Tianxi said. “Good as sacrificed them.”

“This isn’t Diecai, Yong,” he tiredly said. “I’m not your gloryhound general throwing away conscripts for a victory: I did it this way because I thought that plan had the best chance of us living through it.”

“No, Tristan,” Yong quietly replied. “You know that is untrue. It is why you kept me in the dark until it was too late. You chose that plan because it had the best chance of you surviving. There were other options, options I might have chosen had I known. They were simply more dangerous for you.”

And that was the truth, Tristan knew. He’d forced Wen’s hand by telling Boria because he did not trust the lieutenant to protect him against Vasanti otherwise. And he knew he could have tried to sell out Wen’s demand – the destruction of the device – to Vasanti in exchange for safe passage through the pillar. It would have put him at risk, but the old woman had never shown hostility against the rest of his crew so they likely would have been safe. The danger would have been all on him.

There’d been other plays, other tricks to attempt, but he had not truly considered them because Yong was right. They had been more dangerous for him.

“The hungry bite, the beggared snatch, the cornered fight,” Tristan softly quoted, looking up at the dark canopy above. “I am what I am, Yong.”

And he would make no apology for that. There was a long silence.

“Fear I can forgive,” Yong finally said. “We all own some of that devil’s hide. But you put me on their side, Tristan.”

He did not need to ask who they were. They, the thief knew, was not a name or a place or a title. It was an idea: the people who make the plans that send other people to die, that send you to march across a plain to your death and it meant nothing at all. They was what Yong had really wanted to kill back in the Republics, when he’d killed that general.

“There are no sides, Yong,” Tristan simply replied. “At end of the day, a grave will only fit one.”

Good men, bad men, kind men, cruel men – that was just paint, pretty color you slapped over the truth. There were the living and the dead, that was the whole of it. You kept out of the grave however you could until your luck ran out.

“That’s not a way to live,” Yong said. “That’s just a way not to die.”

“I’m not an ambitious man,” Tristan replied. “I’ll settle for that.”

The veteran said nothing, but the silence was not an empty one. It felt, Tristan thought, like a door closing. He resisted the urge to fill the void, stilled his tongue.

“One day,” Yong said, “you’ll look back on your life. And on that day I hope you’ll find more than corpses lying in your wake.”

The soldier sighed.

“We can leave it at that,” he said. “All of it.”

The thief closed his eyes, breathing out. He had known from the start that it was sheer greed to try to keep too many of his companions. Survival had costs, sometimes in coin less obvious. To feel disappointment here, to feel regret, it would have been a kind of vanity.

Tristan was vainer than he’d thought.

—

When the hour passed they began to take the long way around.

Opening the lantern’s shutters all the way was too risky so it was with only a thin slice of light to guide them that they ventured into the dark. And Maryam, despite her best efforts, could only guide them so much: she had a map tucked away in her memory, not a compass, and in these damn woods everything looked the same. Without any landmarks to rely on they found a curving path was not so easy to maintain. Twice they got turned around, the first time doubling back to cross a shallow river and the second getting stuck walking around the edge of a steep hill for twenty minutes.

They pushed on for three hours before finally slowing down when they came in sight of old ruins: three large worn pillars atop a platform, crowned by a circle of stone that was more than half gone.

“I don’t suppose that was on the map?” Tristan asked.

“No,” Maryam grunted. “Most of the ruins we encountered weren’t. This island has too many to count, I expect.”

“Maryam,” Yong softly said. “Shutter the lights.”

She did so without batting an eye, pulling close to him, and as the Tianxi took cover behind a tree the thief mirrored him behind another. Moments later a pair of cultists came out of the thicker woods ahead – both armed with spears and wearing leather, long hair going down their backs. They were talking rather loudly, ambling around until they both leaned against pillars and started what Tristan just knew was complaining even if he could not understand the language. That intonation was universal.

“Trouble,” he whispered. “Go around?”

“I think we’re at the edge of their guard picket,” Yong whispered back. “If we get them quietly, we can press on straight to the road.”

Tristan mulled on that, hesitating. Their attempted curve around where they thought the cultists might be had probably ended up closer to the outline of some demented ziggurat, but he agreed with Yong’s assumption that theirs had broadly been the right path. It was tempting, the knowledge that instead of risking another hour going around this pair or waiting them out they might instead solve the problem and press on before their foes caught on.

“Maryam?” he asked.

“They’ll know we’re out here if we kill any of them,” she whispered. “But I think the risk is worth it – they’re obviously waiting on something, if they are posting guards. It might be they’re making camp.”

Tristan was not so sure a camp was being made – hollows often kept odd hours, unmoored from the Glare as they were – but it was true that guards being about meant the cultists were no longer on the move.

“All right,” the thief conceded. “We drop them quiet, then.”

The pair might not be paying much attention, but they weren’t blind and whatever friends they had out there would not be deaf. Tristan circled around their back, using the trees as cover until the angle of the pillars covered his approach. He crept out of the trees then, steps excruciatingly careful, and saw Yong follow close behind – sword already out, tucked under his arm. Controlling his breath, the thief reached for his blackjack and palmed it as he pressed himself against the pillar. He turned to meet Yong’s eyes, raising a hand and then beginning to pull down one finger after another.

Four, three, two, one-

They sprung out from behind the pillar just as one of the cultists snorted out a laugh at what her companion had said. Eyes widened, mouths opened and Tristan cracked his blackjack across the woman’s temple as hard as he could. She dropped and he rushed forward to catch her even as the other hollow’s attempted cry turned into a wet gurgle, Yong slitting his throat. The thief lowered the unconscious cultists, tucked away his blackjack and cleanly snapped her neck the way Abuela had taught him.

The two of them stayed there a moment, breathing under the starlight, and traded a nod. Cleanly done all around. Tristan went riffling around the corpses and found a sheathed knife that fit his palm well tucked away on the woman’s belt, claiming it to replace the one he’d lost. Yong gestured for Maryam to join them and Tristan rose, rolling his shoulder. The bruises from Vasanti’s beating – beatings, really – had him wincing, but it wasn’t as bad as when it had been fresh. Another day or two and he’d be fine.

“That was bracing,” Maryam said, catching up to them. “Shall we-”

A call came out of the woods, to their left, and it all went to shit when a cultist walked out from behind the trees – he was calling out, a laugh on his lips, but froze when he saw them. Yong went for his pistol but the hollow was quicker, screaming out a warning, and three more of his friends came storming in.

“Run,” Tristan hissed.

They fled, the cultists baying after them.

A shot went wide, whizzing into the dark. Trees flashed on both sides at they ran, the shouts of cultists close behind. Were they even heading in the right direction? He had no idea, and there was no time to stop and ask. There were torches behind them soon, close on their trail. The thief could only guess at how many hollows had joined the hunting party, but it was too many to fight. Would have been too many even if they were all hale instead of wounded and exhausted.

Then Yong tripped.

The Tianxi had been slowing for a while, his breath coming in rough pants, but he still hit the root at running speed and fell right into a tree. Swallowing a hoarse shout, Yong rolled on the ground as Tristan cursed and doubled back to help him up.

“Come on,” the thief hissed, offering his hand. “They’re getting-”

Yong took the hand, let himself be hoisted, but almost immediately collapsed.  He cursed in Cathayan.

“My ankle,” he said. “It’s sprained.”

Maryam joined them, warily eyeing the approaching torches.

“What’s happening?” she whispered.

The older man’s face was calm, the same way it had been up in the hall when he had learned his life was on a knife’s edge.

“I can’t run,” he said, then breathed out. “Get moving, I’ll draw them to me. It will buy you a chance.”

The shouts were getting closer.

“Yong,” he said. “I-”

“We have said,” Yong replied, “all there is to say. Run.”

And he wanted to argue, to insist, but the shouts were getting close. The torches burned bright in the dark, heralds of death. Maryam took his arm.

“Tristan,” she whispered.

Shame, the rat told himself, was a luxury. He swallowed, nodding jerkily at the Tianxi, and broke for it. He saw Yong loading his musket with steady hands before running out in the dark, the last he would ever see of the man. Maryam stuck close to him as they ran for a minute, then two. Tristan swallowed, forcing his eyes to stay peeled ahead. Else he would trip as well, and be left behind just like-

“Fuck,” Tristan snarled, and turned around.

Greedy, Abuela’s voice chided. It would get him killed. But even as Maryam called out from behind, cursing as well before he heard her running after him, he found someone waiting for him in the gloom. Sitting on a branch above, long red dress trailing like a curtain of blood, Fortuna smiled an impossibly perfect smile. He almost sobbed in relief.

“You,” he croaked.

“You took a chance,” the Lady of Long Odds simply said. “Now ride your prayer to the end, Tristan.”

He swallowed and nodded, Maryam catching up with him as he did.

“We are going to die,” she told him.

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not.”

A pause.

“I’ll abandon you if it looks bad,” she frankly said.

“I’m lucky you came at all,” he replied just as frankly.

She grimaced.

“You are,” Maryam said, then muttered. “And I thought Song had picked the idiot.”

She peeled ahead anyway.

“Come on, he hasn’t fired yet so they don’t know where he is.”

The torches were close, terrifyingly close. When they found Yong he was but a few feet away from where they’d left him, standing with his back against a tree as he held his musket. He saw them coming, his face twisting into something that was both hope and anger and not quite either.

“You-”

“Shut up,” Tristan cut in. “You’ll draw them. Maryam-”

She grunted, taking up one of the Tianxi’s arms while he reached for the other. They hoisted him up between them, dragging him away brusquely enough he would have had to fight them to stop it.

“It won’t work,” he got out, voice sounding raw. “They’re-”

In the distance, shots sounded.

Their pursuers hesitated. They dragged Yong, forging forward as quick as they could. The opportunity was not to be wasted. The pursuers began arguing, at least until shots sounded again – at least a dozen, continued. A real fight. The others or the Watch garrison? Either way, under Tristan’s disbelieving stare the pursuers slowed, stopped and then turned around.

Towards the fight.

The thief choked out an incredulous laugh as he watched the torches get further and further away. Only then did he notice they had gotten back to the branch where Fortuna was perched, having not moved an inch since he last passed her by. A spinning golden coin drew his eye, the goddess snatching it out of the air. She met his eyes, golden eyes alight.

“Lucky you,” the Lady of Long Odds grinned.

—

They made it to the path from the map, stumbling like children, and then followed down the beaten earth. They saw not a soul on the way.

—

The supposed outpost turned out to be a small town, ringed in lamplights and waiting square in the middle of path. That should have been a relief, only there was a slight complication.

“Well,” Tristan said, eyeing the impaled corpses. “I’m willing to go on a limb and call this a bad sign.”

Yong snorted from his place between them.

“Those lamplights give off Glare,” Maryam said. “It shouldn’t be hollows inside, at least.”

“Plenty of wolves hunt by pale light,” Yong replied. “Let me off, you two. I think I can hobble and we’ll look weaker if you’re holding me up.”

And there were people to look weak to, as the Tianxi had seen. A pair of guards came their way, bearing muskets and steel breastplates over padded tunics. Their helms were old-fashioned, going down the back of their necks, but it was hardly comparable to the old relics that the cultists bore. The three of them tensed as the guards approached, though the two men were still holding their muskets up instead of pointing them.

“You with the Watch?” the shorter one called out.

They shared looks, then Maryam shrugged.

“We are,” she called back.

“Come on, then,” the same man said. “The others are inside and we’re closing the gates for night.”

“Trap?” Yong murmured.

“If it is, I’d rather have Tredegar doing my fighting for me,” Tristan opined. “She is much better at it.”

Assuming the mirror-dancer still lived, which was hardly certain.

“Agreed,” Maryam snickered, then sobered. “Besides, they might have a town physician.”

Yong grunted his doubt but did not argue. They met the guards halfway, getting eyed back just as much as they eyed the pair while they walked together to the gate.

“Rough year, the way your friends tell it,” the chatty one said.

“You could say that,” Tristan easily replied. “Seen a few, have you?”

The man snorted, his smile never showing his teeth.

“You don’t need to be cagey, the others already told us you don’t know shit about the Trial of Weeds,” he said. “This town is called Cantica. We’re a colony under the auspices of the Watch and your last stop before the final trial.”

“We’ll be getting an explanation, then?” Yong asked.

The guard shrugged.

“The mayor will tell you everything there is to know,” he said. “Most of us don’t know the details.”

The guards slowed when they came near the gates, which had the three tensing up again.

“While inside Cantica,” the chatty man said, “there is to be no violence against trial-takers or our folk. We won’t have our town to be the pissing match for maze grudges. Understood?”

“Understood,” Tristan agreed, and the others echoed him.

Twenty more feet had them past the gates, which the guards stayed behind to pull closed as they were ushered on. The destination was obvious: there was a crowd gathered in the street, but not of townsfolk. The survivors of the Bluebell stood before a hard-faced man in neat clothes that must be the mayor. There were fewer survivors than Tristan would have thought, and at least one of those present to the thief as a surprise.

Smiling insolently in the face of Angharad Tredegar dark’s glare, Augusto Cerdan toyed with the hilt of the sword he’d taken from a cultist.

This, Tristan thought, was going to get messy.

The cliffside path was narrow but dry, which was the only reason they lived.

They ran down into the yawning dark, the trembling light of Zenzele’s lantern revealing a thin stripe of the grounds ahead as they tried to outrun the tide of falling stone. When the path abruptly turned to the right, tucked into the mountainside, the Malani noble almost toppled off the edge – Cozme yanked him back, almost falling off himself when Ferranda ran into his back. If the stone path had been even slightly slippery all three would have tumbled into the void.

“Careful,” Angharad shouted, dragging the infanzona back by the collar. “We need to-”

Dust exploded a dozen feet above them in a tall plume, rocks going flying. The eleven of them had clustered at the corner, forced together by momentum, and it took a moment to extricate themselves. Tupoc pushed to the fore, ripping Zenzele’s lantern out of his hands, and deftly led the way down. Angharad flicked a glance back as the others began moving again, picking up speed on the narrow path, and grimaced as she saw that Shalini was still carrying Ishaan’s corpse on her back.

The Pereduri did not bother to suggest she should put it down: the look on the other woman’s face was not one to be argued with.

“Come on,” she said instead. “The landslide is catching up.”

They set out down the cliffside again. The same turn that had near kill them was likely the only reason they lived, Angharad realized as she heard a rolling thunder in the distance and a tide of death rushed past the path they had been running down not minutes ago. Most of the landslide was facing the slope where the sanctuary had been waiting, and they’d just given it the slip. Not that they were out of danger: most was not all.

The first rock was the size of a fist, and it bounced off Yaretzi’s shoulder as she let out a grunt of pain. Angharad glimpsed ahead, feeling her blood run hot – she had used a vision earlier, there was only so much more she could borrow of the Fisher’s power before it killed her – and moved before the glimpse was even finished. She seized Song by the shoulder and pressed the two of them against the mountainside just before a boulder the size of a horse tumbled right past them.

A heartbeat later and all that would have been left of Song was red paste and screaming.

“Ahead,” Tupoc shouted, voice without a hint of mockery for once. “I see shelter.”

He spoke true, for the cliffside path there ate into the mountain as a short tunnel – the peak’s slope served as a wall and ceiling, and under that cover they huddled together as death rumbled above. They waited, pressed tight under the shelter as stone and dust spilled past them in spurts. How long they waited without speaking a word Angharad could not be sure. Eventually, though, the last of the falling ended and their breaths began to ring loudly in the silence that followed.

“I think that was the worst of it,” Lord Zenzele finally said. “My lantern, Xical.”

“Try not to walk it off another cliff,” Tupoc helpfully advised. “It makes it harder for the rest of us to see.”

“Enough,” Angharad tiredly said. “Peril has not passed; another landslide could begin at any moment.”

“And parts of the path down could now be blocked with stone,” Song grimly said. “Let us not be caught with our trousers down.”

Zenzele Duma snatched his lantern back a little more strongly than was warranted, but they all pretended not to see. His hatred of Tupoc was entirely deserved. Their company began heading down again, far from slowly but short of the reckless pace from earlier. As Song had predicted, the spill had touched the path. Small chunks, mostly, and piled of dust. They stepped carefully around sharpened shards, the trouble coming when they found a rock taller and broader than a man balancing precariously in the middle of the path.

“It’s too narrow a space to squeeze through,” Lan said.

“Agreed,” Song replied.

Angharad did not argue. Instead she turned to Tupoc, drawing the Izcalli’s eyes.

“Assemble your spear,” she said. “We’ll push it off the edge together.”

The man’s pale eyes assessed the stone.

“Could work,” he agreed.

It was more difficult than it sounded, largely because the path was narrow and they were many – the others had to withdraw so the pair would have enough room to push. Angharad’s hands were slick with sweat and twice her grip slipped against the cool metal, but they bent their knees and pushed until the stone slowly began to tip forward. Gravity did the rest of the work.

“Nothing like a spot of exercise with death hanging over your head,” Tupoc cheerfully said afterwards.

Angharad ignored him, brushing past his shoulder. She held no lantern, but Zenzele helpfully passed his and she took the vanguard for the rest of the way down. There were more small stones the further down they got, but no more large ones. It had been stark odds for one to land across the path as it had in the first place. Half an hour of brisk descent led them at the bottom of the mountain, the tall silhouette of it looming in the distance as thick woods spread out before them.

She waited at the tree line with the lantern in hand until the others caught up, spilling down the path one after another. Shalini, Angharad saw, was last by a wide margin. Ishaan’s corpse was heavy and she had slowed down with exhaustion from carrying it.

“The landslide didn’t reach this far,” Lan observed, one of the last to catch up. “I’d say this is as safe as we’re going to get outside a sanctuary.”

“Agreed,” Lady Ferranda said. “This is where we make our plan, if we are to stick together.”

“Is there a plan to make?” Tupoc shrugged. “There will be no rest. We take the Trial of Weeds, or we die in the dark. It is a simple thing.”

He sounded almost pleased, further proof the man was half mad and half jackal. Worse, Angharad was not convinced he was wrong.

“I have no intention of joining the Watch,” Isabel sharply cut in. “The blackcloaks must recognize that a natural disaster undid their trials and prevented us from seeking the promised sanctuary. Surely there is a way to reach the garrison.”

“You could climb back up and start digging out the fort,” Song drily replied. “By all means have at it, Ruesta.”

Cozme snorted. It had not escaped Angharad’s attention that since Augusto’s demise the mustachioed man had taken open pleasure in any backtalk directed at the infanzona.

“Helpful as always, Song,” Isabel bit back. “Do you think I am alone in not wanting to take the third trial? Lady Ferranda-”

“Can speak for herself,” the other infanzona said.

Ferranda’s plain, lean face was smudged with dust and her bun had spit out strands of hair but her eyes were sharp and she stood straight. Isabel, still red in the face with sweaty locks pressed against her forehead, was not faring so well. The two noblewomen matched gazes.

“So speak,” Isabel said, sounding confident. “Should we not find the Watch, Lady Villazur? Your family will be awaiting your return, as mine does.”

The other woman’s jaw clenched. Ferranda did not answer for a long time, looking for all the world like a woman standing on the edge of a precipice.

“I am thinking,” she finally said, “of taking the third trial.”

Surprise rippled through half of them, Angharad not the least. Had Ferranda not come to the island to gild her family’s name? And win the right to keep a lover, she recalled. Now that Sanale had passed, it seemed that Ferranda Villazur was not eager to return to her house without him. The dark-skinned noble kept her disapproval off her face. To serve your house only on your own terms was not true service, but it was not her place to comment.

“I will be doing the same,” Cozme Aflor casually added, rolling his shoulder with a wince. “It seems to me that I am in a need of a change of careers.”

Angharad cocked an eyebrow and Tupoc let out a small, nasty laugh. Brun looked amused as well, though as was his wont he kept quiet.

“You’ve run out of Cerdans to lose, so I suppose you might as well,” Tupoc grinned.

Cozme’s eyes on him were cold, the same way they had been when he pulled a knife on the champion of the vermin god. What kind of a man had he been, before House Cerdan took him in? Not the kind to take insults lying down when he had no master to protect, Angharad thought, so she cleared her throat to command attention before matters could get out of hand.

“Is there any among us who does not desire to take the Trial of Weeds?” she asked. “Save for Lady Isabel, I mean.”

There was no answer and she realized a heratbeat too late that she had blundered. Even if there were such individuals, they would hesitate when being put on the spot like this – it was clear that most of their group wanted to press forward, and who would want to be left alone in the woods? She cleared her throat again, faintly embarrassed at the misstep.

“It seems to me,” she tried, “that there will be a Watch garrison at the northern tip of the island, the port town called Three Pines. I imagine that given the circumstances the Watch would not press into service those who reach that safety.”

Isabel smiled at her, pretty in her visible relief.

“That seems a compromise all can live with,” she said.

“It’s a pretty plan,” Shalini broke in, Ishaan’s corpse yet on her back, “but you’re forgetting something. When that mountainside fort got buried, we lost more than a sanctuary: we lost the watchmen that would tell us what the Trial of Weeds actually is.”

There was a moment of damning silence as the truth of her words sunk in. That was, admittedly, something of a hindrance. Song was the one to end the paralysis, reaching for her bag and dragging a scroll out.

“We cannot know the details,” the Tianxi acknowledged, “but neither are we entirely in the dark. Here, come closer.”

Her map, Angharad realized. Song unfolded it in the light of the lantern, everyone crowding around the paper.

“We should be somewhere around here,” Song said.

Her finger was resting on a small, marked place on the northern side of the mountains splitting the island – the very same they had crossed by beating the maze. And not far from where they were, Angahrad saw a slender grey line going through the woods that made up most of the northern third of the Dominion of Lost Things.

“A road?” she asked.

“I do not know for sure,” Song replied, “but I believe so. More importantly, it goes through here.”

Her finger followed along the grey line until it reached a drawing in the midst of the woods that looked like a small fortress.

“Is that a Watch outpost?” Zenzele frowned.

It might be, Angharad thought. The road went through it and continued all the way to the norther tip of the island, to Three Pines.

“I don’t know,” the silver-eyed sharpshooter admitted. “But it is something, and even if it is empty we can use the grounds to rest with some safety.”

“We won’t make it there tonight,” Ferranda said.

“Not unless we march through the night,” Tupoc agreed. “I do not hate the notion, but I’ve no doubt there will be whining.”

He snuck a look at Shalini, who glared back.

“We should at least push forward for another hour,” Angharad said. “I do not know if there are cultists on this side of the island, but if there are then the commotion of the landslide is sure to have drawn them out.”

She flicked a glance at Tupoc, who shrugged.

“I only dealt with the one war party and its bishop,” the Izcalli said. “I gathered from them the island has rival tribes, but not where they might dwell.”

“Hollows are one thing,” Lan easily said, “but there will be lemures in the woods and a bunch of us are bleeding.”

“Then we keep going until we find defensible shelter,” Angharad suggested. “We’ll keep a watch through the night.”

Nods all around. She would have preferred to press on to the possible outpost, but it was true that might take hours yet and much of their party was either wounded, exhausted or both.

“That will be most interesting,” Tupoc noted.

She frowned at him, reluctant to indulge him and ask. He answered anyway.

“Have you forgotten,” the Izcalli said, “that the murderer is still among us? I do wonder if we’ll be waking up to another corpse.”

The mood had been turning hopeful but that reminder skewered it thoroughly, which only amused the man all the more. It was with that dark truth hanging over them that they headed into the woods, taste for conversation snuffed out like an errant candle. Now every leaf shivering in the wind loomed like a hungry lupine and every time one of them came to close to another backs tensed for fear of a knife. Dangers within and dangers without, Angharad thought.

She was not sure which she should be wariest about.

—

Within fifteen minutes of starting, Angharad was quite done with traipsing through the woods.

Back home the rest of the kingdom often spoke of Peredur as a pristine land spared the scars of industry, unmarred by blast furnaces and smelt mills. Izinduna visited the High Isle for hunting trips and private retreats. That talk was about the heartlands of the duchy, however, the old Brenhinoedd – the ‘Kingsland’. Her own Llanw Hall was of the coast, and the rocky shorelands were simply unsuited to such sport. Like most seaside nobles, the closest Mother had ever come to chasing a stag was shipping venison sausages south to Port Cadwyn.

Her fatherhad been skilled hunter, as was fashionable in high society, but regrettably Angharad had never taken him up on his offers to learn the pursuit. Perhaps if she had she might have developed a fondness for the woods instead of a rising, deep-seated hatred. She was getting tired of walking about tripping on roots and getting whipped in the face by branches when Tupoc – reliable in his bastardry – waited until the last moment to release them. After getting smacked most indecorously in the breast by a branch, Angharad surrendered her place to Ferranda lest she be tempted to run the Izcalli through. Why, he would gasp out. Why, Tredegar? And she would look him in the eyes and say: my tit, you utter animal, you branch-whipped my tit.

Deciding that vivid fantasies of murder were perhaps a sign that her patience might be running out, Angharad drew back by slowing her steps and let Ferranda pass her by. Cozme too, as she did not care to keep the man company. That left her by Lord Zenzele, who did not much talk and often glanced back worriedly at Shalini. She was still trailing at their back, though Brun was making it a point to slow his steps so she would always have someone in sight. A good man, Brun.

It both helped and hurt when they reached the road Song had shown them on the map, a small path of beaten earth that was in disrepair but still usable. It was easier for Shalini to walk on the road, but their overall pace quickened as well. By the time the turn of the hour neared, the gunslinger looked fit to drop and Angharad was sharing the worried looks with Zenzele.

“I do not know anything of Ramayan funeral customs,” she said in a whisper. “Would she be offended if I offered help?”

“She’s Someshwari, Tredegar,” Zenzele grunted back. “They get offended at each other’s accents.”

Which was true, if somewhat impolite to speak out loud. It was an old jest in Malan that while all Someshwari agreed they were an empire no two had ever agreed on who should rule it.

“She cannot take much more of this,” Angharad said. “See how her legs are shaking.”

“We could make a stretcher with sticks and blankets,” Zenzele suggested. “We would not be saying anything, it simply happens to be impossible to use one of those alone.”

She side-eyed him.

“Hold up only the front and drag the back on the ground after tying the body up,” she countered.

The man looked faintly embarrassed, as well he should. It had been a shallow lie, a lie of ignorance or lack of forethought, and so not the same as willful mistruth. Yet even shallow lies were enough to tarnish one’s honor if regularly indulged in.

“To use one of those alone and well,” he corrected.

True enough. Angharad nodded her approval.

“I can surrender my bedroll to the work,” she offered, “but we will need-”

“Halt,” the call came from ahead.

Song’s voice. After one last look at Shalini the Pereduri moved to the front of the column, where the others were assembling. Song, raising her own lantern, had stopped by the side of the road and was casting light on a path to a small clearing. That would not have been worth a rest, had the edge of the clearing not been touched by a small hill from which rose a ruined tower revealed by cold starlight. A thick, stout octagon of stone that jutted upwards, its roof long gone and broad stairs leading to the yawning door halfway up its heights. A few good swords could hold stairs like that for an hour, Angharad thought.

“A most suitable place to camp,” the noblewoman said. “It is a fine find, Song.”

“I have an eye for those things,” the Tianxi replied with the faintest hint of irony.

Some chuckling. It had been an open secret before that Song’s contract had to do with her silver eyes, but the way she had seen through illusions in the temple-fortress and later when helping Ferranda on the Toll Road had made it into open knowledge. In a way, Angharad thought, that was the finest safeguard to what the Tianxi’s contract could truly do. Why wonder if she could see contracts, when she could already see through illusions and past the veil of darkness?

“My thanks for your efforts, Mistress Ren,” Cozme Aflor said, affecting gallantry. “Shall we get to it? I expect we could all use the rest.”

Angharad might have disliked the man, but she would not argue with the truth.

—

Everyone pitched in their supplies without argument, which was a pleasant change from the Trial of Lines.

By the looks of it they had enough for two meals, including the one they were about to have. None of them had bothered to bring much food, as the expectation had been that the sanctuary on the other side of the maze would provide them with fresh supplies. Water should last longer than that, at least through the day tomorrow, and they would keep an eye out for streams in the forest.

Though it was a risk, they decided on having a fire: it was the surest way to keep away animals. The inside of the tower was dry and spacious enough that everyone would be able to fit around the flame, keeping them warm through the night, and they could use a warm meal after their trials of the day. Besides, several of them needed to rinse wounds and Angharad might be no physician but she knew in the absence of alcohol boiled water was the best  substitute.

As tasks were settled on with rough efficiency, the Pereduri noblewoman volunteered to gather firewood. She knew the basics of woodcraft but little more than that, and was willing to leave such affairs in the hands of those more fitted to it. It was not demeaning work, even though Tupoc tried to imply as much with his smirk. Had she not been taught that the best blade should go the best hand? She was not so arrogant as to think that her hand would always be the finest.

Still, the man was irritating enough she walked out before hearing who else would take up the chore. It was a short walk down the stairs, which were set into the side of the hill, and from there to the clearing. The forest was dry and there was plenty to pick up from the ground, so Angharad rolled up her sleeves and got to work. It was a few minutes later, while adding to the respectable pile at the bottom of the stairs, that she got company. Turning as she heard footsteps, Angharad caught sight of a silhouette framed in moonlight.

In that ghostly glow Isabel Ruesta’s elegant curls and green eyes seemed almost unearthly, a spirit’s impossible beauty. And Isabel was very much a beauty, even visibly exhausted and on the verge of tears. The Pereduri straightened at the sight of her.

“What happened?” she asked.

Isabel shook her head, padding down the last of the stairs.

“It is nothing,” she said. “I came to help you, not-”

“Tears are not nothing,” Angharad gently said.

She laid a comforting hand on the infanzona’s arm. Isabel hesitated.

“Ferranda is being quite odious,” Isabel finally admitted. “And Cozme is all too happy to pile on.”

“There are limits to the allowances given by grief,” the noblewoman frowned. “Ferranda should mind her manners.”

“Who would make her?” Isabel wetly chuckled. “No one remains who cares for me in the slightest, Angharad. Kind Recardo never even reached the island, and my maids…”

She shivered, silver-touched tears trickling down her cheeks. Angharad pulled her close, Isabel fighting for half a heartbeat before sobbing against the Pereduri’s chest.

“They were as family to me,” the dark-haired beauty murmured. “I’ve known them since I was but a girl. Beatris looked so much like me back when we were children that we might as well have been twins, and Briceida… Gods, Briceida only came to the island so that I would be able to help her marry her sweetheart.”

Another sob as Angharad rubbed her back.

“And now she is dead.”

“It will be all right,” she soothed.

“No, it won’t,” Isabel muttered. “They despise me in there, Angharad, and after I tell them of my contract they will surely argue I must be cast out and-”

The reminder that the infanzona in her arms was not simply a pretty girl was like being drenched in cold water. Angharad half pulled away, breathing in sharply. Are my thoughts my own? Emotions, Isabel had told her, made her use her contract against her well.

“Isabel,” she slowly said, “are you…”

Green eyes watered as Isabel shook her head.

“I am fighting it down,” the infanzona swore. “It is hard, but I am controlling it.”

A moment passed as Angharad searched herself, finding that she was still wary even after that assurance. That was, ironically, how she came to decide that Isabel was telling the truth. Were she under the contract’s influence she would not have such doubts. She slowly eased back into the embrace, Isabel’s head coming to rest on her shoulder. Ignoring that warmth, Angharad laid out the bounds of honor in her mind. It was, she found, a tricky affair.

“Our pact was that you would reveal your contract when we reached the next sanctuary,” the Pereduri finally said. “It is to your honor that you would hold up your end of the bargain regardless, but you need not speak until we reach that.”

It might well be that Isabel was right and she would be cast out if she revealed her contract. This was not Angharad’s crew, her word was not law among the band of survivors. She would not force the infanzona into almost certain death against the letter of the bargain they had struck simply because the way to sanctuary would take longer than expected. She would still keep to the other part of the pact, revealing anything should she suspect Isabel of using her contract on another. If she were, Angharad thought, she would not have been driven out of the tower in tears.

“I do not want to break trust between us again,” Isabel whispered.

She had raised her head, so instead of mumbling against Angharad’s shirt her breath was a warm whisper against the Pereduri’s neck. She looked down, Isabel meeting her eyes. The faint redness left behind by the tears only turned more vivid the shade of the infanzona’s eyes, and before she knew could think twice she was leaning forward. Isabel’s lips were warm against hers and she fell into Angharad’s arms like she’d always been meant to be there. The kiss lit up a greed inside her belly and soon Angharad was pulling her closer, hand on her waist as – Isabel pulled away, breath labored.

“I am,” she began, then hesitated. “My control may slip, if we go continue.”

Angharad almost laughed. As if desire was not already setting her hands to roving, to pulling down those silken trousers and stealing moans from Isabel’s swollen lips. The contract could ask nothing of her that she was not already demanding.

“Let it,” she replied, and pressed Isabel back until the infanzona was up against a tree.

Pinning her against it she leaned forward, nipping at Isabel’s neck, and her fingers began to gently trail up her legs until – the sound of a throat getting cleared stilled her, ice creeping down her spine. She turned to find Song standing on the stairs, her silver gaze wintry. She pulled away, forcing herself not to make it hasty as if she were a child caught stealing from the pantry.

“Song,” she said, clearing her throat. “I had not thought you would-”

“Neither had I,” Song sharply replied. “An evening for disappointment, it seems.”

Isabel smoothed down her doublet, looking remorseful.

“She was only comforting me,” the infanzona said. “Please do not-”

“You strike me as sufficiently comforted, Ruesta,” the Tianxi said. “It might be best you finish gathering firewood on your own, while Angharad brings up her half of the work.”

Angharad’s lips thinned. She did not enjoy being talked down to as if a fool, but she was not unaware that in a sense she had broken her word to Song – she had promised the other woman she would not talk with Isabel alone, and though she had not sought out the conversation she had allowed it to happen. Encouraged it, even. Much as she would have preferred to defiantly lead Isabel into the woods instead of saying nothing, it would have been a black mark on her honor.

“What we discussed stands,” she told Isabel instead. “But Song may well be right in the other regard.”

Isabel looked away, seemingly insulted and not without reason. It had not been gallant of Angharad to begin something before disavowing it, even though honor demanded as much. It was with the distinct feeling that she was slinking away that Angharad began picking up her pile of firewood, bringing it up in the tower. She passed by Song’s cold gaze, which remained on Isabel, and by the second journey the infanzona had gone into the forest to gather more wood. Song said not a word, and Angharad did not feel up to assaulting that frosty silence.

The discomfort followed her inside when she was done. Shalini was sitting between Ferranda and Sanale, the three of them pulled close as the pair tried to draw smiles out of her, while in the opposite corner Brun and Yaretzi chatted quietly. Angharad might have sat this way with Song, if not for what had happened outside. Or she might have sat with Isabel, if not for the same. Her lack of restraint had cost her twice over.

For a heartbeat she felt like sitting with Yaretzi and Brun anyway, to try to steal back some sliver of comradery, but then the thought soured in her mouth: Yaretzi, she had heard, might not be called Yaretzi at all. According to Isabel she was much shorter than the Watch had been told, perhaps some sort of impostor. Throwing away the thought, Angharad instead sought out her bedroll. If she could not have company, she could at least have rest.

It was adding insult to injury to realize that Tupoc had apparently thought the same, and she fell asleep sulking.

—

Angharad was entirely awake by the sound of the third shot.

Scrabbling for her sword, pleased beyond words that she had slept with her boots on, the Pereduri ripped it clear of the scabbard just as a lantern exploded into bright flames. Lan fell to the ground with a shout, patting away at her clothes, and Angharad ducked behind the wall as another shot tore through the doorway. Cozme stood on the other side, pistol in hand, and nodded at her while the rest of the group scrambled. He must have been the one on watch when the enemies – hollows, she assumed – attacked.

“I’ve counted at least five muskets,” the mustachioed man said. “They hit the lanterns first, but they haven’t tried to come any closer.”

Angharad frowned. That seemed odd, given how the cult of the Red Eye was obsessed with taking prisoners to sacrifice.

“Did you see how many there were?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“They stayed in the dark,” Cozme said. “No lights.”

Behind them Song ordered those with muskets to flank the doorway and the rest to gather their packs in case there was a need to run, getting a rush of gratitude out of Angharad for her intervention. The glance she spared behind her revealed a looming trouble after she’d made sure that Lan was no longer aflame: with the fire still burning they were not out of light, but of the three lanterns they’d had left only one had been spared a bullet. Zenzele’s, she saw, which was bad luck. It had the least oil left in it.

The man in question joined Cozme on the other side of the door, while Ferranda pressed herself behind Angharad.

“Are they approaching?” the infanzona asked in a whisper.

Cozme risked a glance through the opening, then hastily withdrew and shook his head.

“Nothing,” he said. “They might be-”

(Angharad ran down the stairs as fast as she could, shots lighting up the woods – one, two, three, six – and reached the clearing before the first howls sounded, hounds charging out of)

She breathed out shallowly, ignoring the rest of what Cozme had been saying. The cultists had brought war hounds, that was why they had not yet tried the doorway. The Malani had used such tactics in olden times, back when swords and shield walls were the lay of Vesper – hounds unleashed before the charge to scare and scatter the enemy’s ranks. Should she warn the others? She could think of no way to do so without revealing her contract.

“Angharad.”

Song, standing in cover behind her while the others finished packing up the last of everyone’s affairs – Brun and Isabel went about it briskly, but Lan was using the opportunity to have a look at everyone’s packs – handed her the coat she had left behind as well as her sword belt and scabbard. Angharad nodded her thanks, shrugging on the coat as Ferranda took her place by the doorway.

A month ago she would have cared little for that coat, for it was not a gift from her family in a sense greater than Mother’s coin having paid for it, but after having been cut and shot in it so many times she’d grown passingly fond of it. More importantly, she thought as she adjusted her sword belt, this was an opportunity.

She’d passed her blade to Song to have both hands free for the belt, and when claiming her saber back she leaned close.

“They have hounds,” she whispered. “I counted six guns.”

Song nodded subtly and nothing more need said. The Tianxi squeezed past Ferranda to take a long look out, only ducking back in when a cultists out in the woods fired. The sound and billowing smoke had them all ducking back into cover, Song clearing her throat afterwards.

“I counted twelve,” she said. “Half with muskets, half with leashed hounds.”

Curses abounded.

“Twelve is not so many, even with dogs,” Zenzele opined. “We can break them.”

“Are you volunteering to be first down the stairs, my lord?” Brun drily asked.

The Malani hesitated.

“I will go,” Angharad cut in. “But we must first decide on whether we fight or run. This all smells to me of a trap: if they have hounds, why have they not yet released them to dig us out?”

“They must be scouts,” Ferranda grunted in approval. “Lady Angharad is right, they might well be pinning us in here until the rest of the warband arrives and they can storm the tower.”

Several agreed with her, after a thought, and the conviviality of it was what told Angharad something was wrong. No one had been taunted or implied to be a coward, so what was… She found Tupoc standing very still with his back to the wall, pales eyes unblinking as they stared right in front of him with a strange expression on his face. Angharad thought him touched by a contract, for a heartbeat, until she realized he was paralyzed not by a contract but something altogether simple. Fear. That strange expression, it was fear.

Most absurd of all was when she saw what had finally given pause to Tupoc Xical: hanging on a string coming from the tower’s broken ceiling, a small spider was in front of him. It rose an inch and the unflappable Izcalli flinched, trying to press closer to the wall. Angharad felt an incredulous laugh bubble up her throat at the thought of a man who constantly courted death near shaking in his boots before a spider smaller than her thumb, but then she thought again. Was this simple fear, she wondered, or something more?

Spirits gave boons, but they also claimed prices.

Regardless, she still had a use for Tupoc Xical. Angharad deftly reached out, catching the spider in her hand and crushing it. The Izcalli’s shoulders immediately loosened, but there was a new kind of wariness in his eyes when he met Angharad’s. Oh yes, she thought. Definitely a price.

She looked away first, but it did not feel like a defeat in the slightest.

“- bait the shots, then those of us with muskets fire a volley into the hounds,” Song was saying. “We make for the road after, head north to the outpost as fast as we can.”

“Is Lady Angharad truly willing to charge in alone?” Brun asked. “I have not heard this from her.”

“I am,” she said, stepping in. “Though once the cultists have wasted their shots on me, I expect I will be joined by others in the melee.”

“I will be right behind her,” Tupoc easily said. “Worry not your pretty head, Sacromontan.”

The fair-haired man looked like he wanted to roll his eyes, but said nothing.

“If we are in agreement,” Song said, “then we should take all our packs and ready for the fight. There is no telling how long we have before the rest of the cultists arrive.”

None argued against that. Song, she thought, had a knack for clear thought in such matters. A captain’s qualities, though she hid too much of her thoughts to easily earn trust from others. Angharad went back for her affairs only for Lan to kindly offer to carry them for her, as Angharad would be running. She accepted the other woman’s offer gracefully, finding herself at loose ends while the others moved about. The other who had finished early was Yaretzi, the Izcalli already having had her pack at the ready.

The two of them stood in silence, until something occurred to Angharad.

“I have a question about Izcalli spirits, if you would allow it,” she quietly said.

Yaretzi cocked an eyebrow.

“I only know so much, but by all means,” she replied.

“Is there one,” she said, “with a strong ties to spiders?”

The Izcalli, whose name might not be Yaretzi at all, cocked an eyebrow and threw a speculative look at Tupoc. Angharad grimaced. Perhaps that had not been as subtle a question as she thought.

“Many small gods,” Yaretzi said, “but among the great I can only think of the Grave-Given. His favored messengers are creatures of the dark: bats, owls and spiders.”

“And what does this Grave-Given trade in?” Angharad asked.

“Death and order,” she replied. “His judgement shapes where the Circle Perpetual will send a soul to be born again.”

Just another spirit playing tricks, the Pereduri mentally dismissed. The Circle was the work of the Sleeping God, far beyond what mere spirits would be able to influence. Still, it was said that some entities on the continent could meddle in the matters of death, the moments before a soul returned to the Circle. Perhaps this Grave-Given was one. Though what such a spirit would want with the likes of Tupoc, she thought, I cannot imagine.

Yaretzi looked like she wanted to speak more of it, but Angharad was saved the need of evasion by the last preparations coming to an end.

“Form up,” Song called out. “We are finished.”

Angharad nodded a farewell at a rueful Yaretzi, resting her hand on her blade, and went for the doorway. Tupoc waited on the other side of the gap, ready to follow in her wake. Song, musket loaded and at the ready, sought her out.

“Ready?” the Tianxi asked.

She nodded.

“You?” she asked.

Song nodded back.

“Then,” Angharad said, “let us not waste any more time.”

Breathing in, she unsheathed her sword and ran out the doorway.

—

The first shot came before she took her second step out.

Angharad did not flinch nor slow, knowing it would mean death. The bullet hit stone as she raced down the steps, ricocheting wildly. Two more plumes of smoke billowed out and she leaned into the rush, almost falling forward rather than running, and felt something whiz right past her head as the other short went wide. Three, she counted, and kept running. Halfway down. The fourth shot was not for her, far behind, and revealed that Tupoc was following behind. The fifth came from right to the left of her, smoke blowing past the twisted branches of a tree, and Angharad screamed as she felt warmth and pain bloom on the side of her cheek.

She tripped forward, landing in a roll at the bottom of the stairs as the six shot was drowned out by the barking of the hounds being released.

Only the shot had come from behind, not ahead, and ten feet ahead of Angharad a cultist screamed as a bullet took him in the chest. His musket fell to the ground, firing aimlessly, and she gasped in relief as blood began trickling down her cheek. The hounds ran out of the woods, a tide of teeth and rage, and she smoothly rose with her blade at the ready. Above her shots sounded, the volley Song had arranged downing half the dogs in a single breath, but other shots peppered the trees and ground instead.

A heartbeat later Tupoc was at her side, spear spinning lazily, and a heartbeat after thatchaos took the reins.

Angharad danced back, spearing a hound through the head, while Tupoc batted away another with the bottom of his spear and kicked the third in the head. A shot from ahead, curses from the woods and after that the melee seized her whole. Cultists came pouring out of woods, bearing axes and swords, shouting war cries in their strange tongue as Tupoc laughed and Angharad snarled. Teeth ripped at her coat and she turned an axe blow to run the man through, ripping her blade free with a squelch as the rest of the company charged down the stairs behind her.

They came for her fervently, as if she were a proving ground, and Angharad met them with cold focus: faces marred with that strange red eye flashed one after another, shots illuminating the dark as she slashed at a man’s face and caught a woman’s wrist before her axe could rip into her side. She threw the axe-wielder to the side, into Cozme – who opened her throat with a knife without batting an eye – and then somehow, suddenly, the cultists were retreating. Running back into the woods.

Only not all of them had come out with blades: there was a shot from deeper in the woods, then one from the tower a second later.

Angharad ducked, hardly alone in that, but it was not her that’d been aimed at. There was a shout from behind and she turned to see Brun leaning over a fallen silhouette. Angharad’s heart leapt into her throat. No, she thought. No. Only she must have spoken it out loud, as the others parted around her as she moved.  She stumbled forward, blood dripping down her blade and hand, and knelt in the grass besides the fallen body.

Half of Isabel Ruesta’s face was a red ruin, the shot having taken her in the eye.

She must have been spun around by death, Angharad thought, for she was facing the wrong way: the tower instead of her killer in the woods. Brun laid a hand on her shoulder.

“We need to move, Lady Angharad,” the man said. “The cultists gave up too easily, the rest of their warband must be close.”

“He’s right.”

Song was coming down the stairs, her musket in hand. Her face was a blank mask, betraying nothing of her thoughts. She had not been fond of Isabel, Angharad knew, but must have known better than to speak of it now.

“Now we run or we die,” the Tianxi evenly continued. “Say your farewells, but do not linger. It is behind you, and life ahead.”

A cruelty, Angharad thought, but meant kindly. She was saying it so others would not. Looking down at the corpse that had been Isabel, she brushed back the curls over the wound and swallowed. She thought of that first evening on the Bluebell, when she had seen the infanzona standing on the bridge like a jewel set in a crown of stars, and allowed herself grief. She closed the remaining eye, wiped a half-formed tear from her own and rose to her feet. Shalini, she saw, was carrying Ishaan’s corpse on her back again.

Angharad put down Isabel Ruesta in the last of their fire , leaving her to burn, and on her back instead carried the weight of yet another failure.

—

Zenzele’s lantern died out half an hour in.

They stumbled forward in the dark during what felt like hours but could have been any amount of time at all – exhaustion stretched seconds into minutes, every breath into an odyssey. Only Song’s unfailing eyes kept them from drifting about aimlessly, the Tianxi surefooted as a cat as she led them through a sea of looming trees and threatening silhouettes. They’d left behind the beaten earth road, afraid the cultists would hunt them down it.

Limbs burning and eyes tearing up, Angharad forced herself to follow closely behind Song. It was only once they climbed up a steep hill, clutching at root and stones, that the Tianxi’s steps finally stuttered. There was no need to ask why: in the distance, over the crown of trees, pale lights burned tall and proud.

“The outpost,” Angharad breathed out. “If it is that.”

“There is,” Song replied, “only one way to find out.”

The promise of an end to the road, of some semblance of safety, brought strength back to their tired limbs. They picked up the pace as much as they could, Shalini once more trailing behind. Once they were close enough the light began to cast shadows, they risked going back to the beaten earth road. It shortened the last leg of their journey, until at last they felt the touch of Glare-infused light wash over their skins again. Blinking away the blinding brightness, Angharad found she was not looking at a fort.

Atop a flat hill a tall palisade had been raised, ringed by even taller lamplights. Through open gates the noblewoman saw the bones of a small town: houses and shops, muddy streets and even some kind of great hall. And there were people inside, moving about. Closer to that as well, for outside the open gates two men were keeping guard in padded tunics and breastplates as they loosely held muskets. It was not them that kept her gaze, though, or even the town itself.

Along the last of the road to the gates, two dozen wooden spikes at been raised on either side. Most were bare, but nine were adorned with the impaled corpses of men whose skin was too pale to be anything but darklings. Some of the dead were fresh enough they still dripped.

“Well,” Tupoc mused, “they seem like lovely folk. Shall we go and introduce ourselves?”

It wasn’t, Angharad thought, as if there was much of a choice. It was either trying the town or trying the cultists again. She itched to cast her mind forward, to seek vision of what would unfold if they approached, but she had already burned her candle too bright. Anymore of that and it would be her that burned instead.

They would have to do it the hard way instead.

“Let’s,” Angharad replied, and stepped into the light.

The thing about weakness was that there was absolutely nothing redeeming about it.

Everyone loved a good picaresca story, in Sacromonte. Tales of a roguish man of scandalously common breeding getting the better of his betters. Swindling greedy merchants out of their wealth, tricking vain ladies and pompous lords into humiliating themselves. And it was not a taste that ended at the borders of the Murk or even the Old Town. Infanzones, they liked the songs and poems about rats same as the rest of the city. Their smile, though, it had a bit of smirk to it around the corners.

Because they understood that the stories were just that, that when a witty wastrel won in the stories because life in the streets taught them to be clever it was just what people wanted to be true. In the world they lived in the clever rogues got caught, shot in the head and dumped in the canals. There was nothing meaningful about being poor and hungry and afraid no higher meaning to it. Weakness was not a trial with a reward at the end, it was just being weak.

And Tristan was weak.

He wouldn’t hide from that truth, that would just get him killed. He’d always need the edge: the poison and the dagger, the lie and the quiet feet in the dark. He’d always be the rat, scurrying around the boots of men. He’d almost forgot that, in these trials. He’d won too many petty victories, found too much respect in the eyes of others. He’d been awakened from that dream, though, and though it had been a rough awakening he was almost thankful Lieutenant Vasanti for it.

There was nothing like bargaining your treatment down to torture to remind you of your place in the order of things.

Yet Tristan had lived, bought his way out of the grave again, and now he must ensure that he would not be thrown back in it once his enemies had what they wanted from him. Once he was no longer useful and their reason for taking the finger off the trigger passed.

So in the dark before the other rose, after what little sleep he had stolen from his bruised and aching body, the rat scratched up a plan against the walls of his mind. What did he want? To live. To keep his crew alive if he could. Maryam first, then the others.

Under pale light he might have been ashamed of that brutal truth, but alone in the dark with the pain he felt not a flicker of guilt. It would wait until he no longer tasted blood in his mouth.

Second, Vasanti must die or be forced off the board. The old lieutenant must be put in a position where she could no longer come for him, not even if she burned all her last bridges to get one last swing at him. She had already tried to get him killed twice and her hatred of Abuela would have driven her to try again even if Tristan had not indirectly helped her slip a noose around her own neck.

Two wants was enough. More would be greedy, scattering his focus. So what was in the way?

The god in the pillar. Lieutenant Wen, who would not suffer violence against blackcloaks until it was dealt by the hand of the law. Vasanti herself, who was sure to sabotage him if she could – until she could do worse. Yong, who would turn on him if selling Tristan’s hide guaranteed getting to the third trial and keeping his husband alive.

Maryam? No, her own wants came after the Trial of Weeds. She was a help. Francho would murder to survive, and perhaps even for convenience, but so would most everyone Tristan had ever known. The old man’s contract would be even more important than Yong’s musket and Maryam’s Signs anyhow.

There were greater dooms looming in the distance, the Red Maw and his oath to Wen and whatever awaited beyond the Trial of Weeds, but these did not matter. One grave at a time.

Tristan turned in his cot, grey eyes open as he looked at the stone above him. He was not alone. Fortuna, sitting against the wall to his side with her dress like a pool of silk at her feet, kept him company in silence. Golden eyes under a golden crown he thought, taking in the sight of her for the span of a breath. Like a painting come to life. His eye returned to the stone, the claws inside his mind scratching at the walls.

He stayed like that a long time, his body a dull ache, until finally he saw how the pieces fit together. Only then did the rat close his eyes.

“To join the court of cats,” Tristan Abrascal softly sang, smiling.

Sleep snuck up on him.

—

In the small hours before morning, before the others woke, Tristan was handed a small cup of milky white poison.

It didn’t look that way when they sold on the streets. The black tea that the coteries served in their dens was as dark as the name implied and socorro tincture, that purported miracle drug that claimed to heal anything from the cough to impotence, was red-brown. Both of those were cut with other substances, especially socorro – which every charlatan and street witch from the Murk to the Orchard claimed to have a potent family recipe for. It all came back to the same plant, though: the poppy.

Tristan had seen the fruits of that bud hollow out too many men to ever trust it, but he made himself drink the extract anyway.

The thugs had left few visible marks during his talks with Lieutenant Vasanti, but he had been savagely beaten and his body still felt like it. If he was to be able to move the way he needed to, he would the pain taken care of. Hence, poppy extract. It would not make up for the sleeplessness lurking behind his eyes, yanking his thoughts one way and the other, but he would handle that himself. The few bruised, intermittent hours of sleep he had grabbed after making his plans would have to tide him over until he could collapse.

“I recommend against marrying the poppy to substances from your box,” the Watch physician said, stroking his sparse beard. “Though I expect you know better than that.”

“I do,” Tristan said.

There was nothing left in there but the bearded cat tincture and the medical turpentine anyhow, not after Vanesa’s last farewell. He had already moved the last vials to his bag along with the few medical supplies he’d wheedled out of the Watch, abandoning the box itself as dead weight. And to think mere days ago he had killed a man for that pile of broken wood. How quickly such worth was spent, though that should not have come as a surprise.

In Sacromonte, lives could always be had on the cheap.

The Watch doctor nodded a farewell at him, then packed up his kit and left. The thief rolled his shoulders a little, wincing at the sensation, then finally turned to meet the gaze of the other man present. The one he needed to bargain with so he might begin setting the board, and fortunately the one who had wanted to speak with him. Best to begin with that, if only to fish for leverage.

“You wanted a word?” Tristan said.

“Something like that,” Lieutenant Wen replied.

The Tianxi with the golden frames was, for once, not eating. He might have called that an ill-omen, were Wen not already inherently such.

“I am all ears, then.”

Wen studied him for some time, then sighed. He went fishing around the pocket of his vest, pulling out a bronze grandfather pocket watch tied to a chain. It was a simple but lovely piece, still ticking away dutifully. The thief stilled, for he had seen it before – most often during the Trial of Lines.

“That is Vanesa’s watch.”

“It is,” Lieutenant Wen said, and threw it.

Tristan panicked, but even dulled his reflexes were better than most. He caught the chain, then the rest, and sent a dark look the fat Tianxi’s way. Not that the watchman seemed to care.

“It’s yours,” Lieutenant Wen said.

He frowned, looking for the trap.

“Why?”

The watchman snorted.

“Because the old girl must have emptied your stocks killing that Aztlan tough,” Wen said. “He died quick and ugly.”

Tristan smoothed away his worry, painting confusion on his face instead.

“My stocks?”

The lieutenant sighed, taking off his spectacles to clean them with a ragged silk kerchief he dragged out of his sleeve.

“Alvareno’s Dosages is a required reading for Cryptics, you shifty little prick,” Wen amiably said. “I know a poison box when I see one.”

Tristan swallowed. There were only so many reasons for the lieutenant to know that.

“Are you…”

Wen had spoken contemptuously of Masks before, but that might have been to hide his tracks.

“Do you think I’d tell you if I were Krypteia?” Wen replied, amused.

A fair point, the thief mentally conceded. The Tianxi dismissed the notion with a wave a heartbeat later.

“I never cared for the cloak and dagger games,” Wen said. “I’m a good Arthasastra boy, we don’t partake.”

Tristan slowly blinked. As in the Arthasastra Society, the Circle of the Watch that trained diplomats?

“You’re a Laurel,” he said, not hiding his skepticism.

“Historian track, to be exact,” Lieutenant Wen amusedly replied. “Our society’s got the broadest remit of the entire College, Tristan, we’re not all translators and negotiators.”

Wen had seemed unusually well-versed in the history of the Watch. Besides, even if the man was lying it hardly mattered. Fingers closing around the watch, feeling the faint ticking beneath, Tristan bowed his head.

“Thank you,” he said.

The older man stared him down.

“She died well,” Wen said. “Sometimes that’s the best you can hope for.”

There’s no such thing as a good death, Tristan thought. We all shit ourselves and get thrown in a canal when the rot starts to stink. There’s nothing noble about rot, Wen. It’s just the meat that used to be a person going bad. But the thought of leaving Vanesa’s watch in the hands of strangers seemed disrespectful, somehow, so he put it away inside his own pocket. There would be time to fasten it properly later.

“You’ve buttered me up properly,” Tristan acknowledged. “Shall we now tuck into the meal?”

“A poor choice of words, on an island with a history of cannibalism,” Wen noted, sounding amused. “But if you insist.”

Manes, was there anything on this island that didn’t eat people? It was bad enough Tristan was going to have to rely on the fact for his plans. The lieutenant, at last satisfied with spectacles that had been largely spotless when he began cleaning them, slid them back on. It made his eyes colder, somehow, for them to be framed in gold.

“Do you still intend to try for the lift?” the lieutenant asked.

It was phrased as a question, a choice, but Tristan knew better. Wen had extended him help and protection only in exchange for his sabotaging the aetheric machine above. If he went back on his word now there would be consequences. The maze is suicide for us anyhow, he thought. Yong, Maryam, Francho and himself was not fine enough a crew to make it all the way across even if they had some idea of a usable path.

“I do,” Tristan said, “but we both know that Vasanti’s new plans mean mine need to be adjusted. I have a concern.”

Bait.

“You’re afraid that she’ll find the lift,” Wen stated.

Bait taken. I’m not, Tristan thought. She thinks she has the solution to the front gates and the last thing she needs is more dead blackcloaks. She’ll be religious about sticking to the tiles room and walking right back out.

“It would be the end of my plans,” Tristan said. “I need to take some precautions, Wen. And to do that I need access to the pillar.”

Wen frowned at him.

“There are only two stone keys to that door,” he said. “Vasanti keeps both on her.”

And she was unlikely to share them even if politely asked. Fortunately for them there was no need to go begging.

“There are only two known keys to the door,” Tristan corrected.

They’d not found the stone button in his boot. The fat Tianxi blinked, then let out a startled laugh.

“You have a third,” he deduced. “So what is it that you need from me, then?”

“To get up there unseen,” Tristan said. “Vasanti means to hit the pillar come morning, so it’s certain to be under guard right now.”

“I could arrange that,” the lieutenant agreed. “Get my people in place, tell them to look elsewhere.”

He then narrowed his eyes from behind that thin lens of glass.

“And I will, if you tell me what you’ll be up to in there,” Lieutenant Wen said. “I won’t be party to attacks on watchmen, boy.”

Wen’s line in the sand. Wen’s lever. Learn what people love and you will know how to move them, Abuela’s voice whispered into his ear.

“I don’t have anything I can hurt the Watch with,” Tristan lied. “I only intend to jam the door with the broken lock.”

The lieutenant studied him, looking for the lie, but he wouldn’t find it. Tristan’s mind felt like a door without a hinge – every passing thing winding through, without regard to need or sense. The Tianxi might as well have tried to read a whirlpool.

“Sensible,” Wen said. “And the god inside?”

“Another concern,” the thief smiled winningly. “Which leads me to my final request.”

Lieutenant Wen cocked an eyebrow over his spectacles.

“This ought to be good.”

“I need,” Tristan said, “a human leg.”

And given how many watchmen had died fighting the god earlier, at least he could count on supply beating demand.

—

“You should have asked for an arm,” Fortuna opined. “It would have been easier to carry.”

Tristan duly ignored her. He’d glimpsed the leg he now carried wrapped in cloth earlier and noted it was half-charred, likely hacked off a corpse on the great funeral pyre the Watch had made outside the Old Fort – in the same place Inyoni had been burned. They must not have had enough wood to keep it blazing long enough for all the corpses to be turned to ash.

As the nearest woods were full of bloodthirsty cultists, this was understandable.

With Wen giving a few orders the thief’s path up the rope ladder was cleared and there was no one keeping watch on the stairs. Good. He could afford no witnesses for this. The last stone button unlocked the door, and once it popped open he hastily claimed the key back before shoving it into a pocket. No teeth sought to chomp down on him, so Tristan went ahead with the first part of his plan: tossed the leg out into the room.

“Dinner’s served,” he called out.

“Wow,” Fortuna muttered. “That got dark.”

He’d told Wen he needed the dead flesh to hide his scent, keep the god off him. The truth was that he needed it for the very opposite reason: he needed the god to come, and the smell of meat was his best chance at ensuring that.

“I need you to keep watch out in the tile room,” Tristan told Fortuna. “The moment it gets close, tell me.”

He would need to be able to close the door in a heartbeat when the god approached, as he doubted that offering of a leg would keep the deity from trying to eat him.

“I don’t want to be alone in a room with a dead leg,” Fortuna whined.

“You won’t be,” Tristan assured her with a winning smile. “There will also be a terrifying ancient god trying to eat us.”

“Ugh,” the Lady of Long Odds sniffed. “It better not get anything on my dress.”

Tristan opened his mouth, about to ask whether her dress could actually be dirtied – or cleaned – but then he caught the gleam in her eye and his mouth snapped shut. She was only trying to get a rise out of him. Not that she stopped afterwards, complaining about everything from the lighting being unflattering to the leg facing the wrong way, but at least she kept watch as he had asked.

The minutes passed, one after another, and his shoulders tensed. If he could not speak with the god, if he could not join that cat’s court…

But after more than half an hour had passed, the leg did what it was meant to.

“Company,” Fortuna warned, then cocked her head to the side. “Oh, that looks nasty.”

She fled into the wall a moment later as darkness slithered into the room on quiet feet.

Tristan pushed the door until it was but a finger’s breadth away from closing. He felt like a child closing the closet door to keep the monster at bay, but the monster here was not of his own making: through the thin length kept open he glimpsed the god moving, all slimy dark scales past a flash of yellow eyes. It was the teeth that had him shuddering in revulsion, though still startlingly human-like for all that each was the size of a hand. The god gobbled up the dead leg with nary a sound.

“It’s lost a leg,” Fortuna whispered in his ear. “Must have been salt munitions, it’s not healing.”

However slight her whisper, it was still heard.

“The vermin has learned unexpected tricks,” the god chuckled.

Its voice was smooth and lovely, almost like a singer’s. It made you want to lean in, to listen closer. Tristan grit his teeth. The Red Maw had not made a meal of him, neither would this lesser thing. The thief put himself together, breathing out and steadying his back.

“God of the land,” he smilingly said, “I greet you.”

The god – that horrid reptilian thing – laughed, laughed like a infanzona who had just seen a little monkey do a clever trick.

“Oh, Tristan,” the god crooned. “Is it a test you’ve come for, like those the shackled beasts below offer to you lost souls?”

It came closer, until its humid and fetid breath came like a whisper through the crack.

“Come closer and I shall give you a game, I promise.”

And the voice, the way it spoke, made it sound tempting even though it was utter madness sure to end in his death.

“I’ve a dislike for playing the games of others, I must confess,” Tristan said. “It is a bargain I came for.”

A mocking rictus that he only glimpsed, rows of white teeth over too-red lips.

“You need only come closer,” the god silkily said, “and you will have everything you need.”

Fortuna popped her head out of the wall.

“He’s lying,” she helpfully said. “He’s going to eat you.”

Tristan sighed.

“Thank you, Fortuna,” he replied.

“Just looking out for you,” she smugly said.

He suspected that if she had enough reach to pat herself on the back in that dress she would have. The god had gotten close, during that short distraction, edged in. He began to close the door and it froze. Ah, so it did want to talk. At least as long as eating him when he slipped up was on the table.

“I do not have a name to call you by,” Tristan said. “Would you care to remedy this, god of the land?”

“How polite,” the god drawled. “You may call me Boria.”

That word, that name, it rippled. Echoed. And when Tristan heard it, all he could thought was that he should step out. The god was tricking him, but it was wounded. Weak. And had he not beaten starker odds than this? It would be easier to bargain from there, and if it turned in him then his wits would be enough to… Nails dug into his palm as the thief breathed out shallowly.

Enough. Enough? Had he ever once in his life held enough in his hand that a victory had come cheap? He turned inwards, sharpened himself.

“You are,” he said, “a god of arrogance.”

Fortuna fanned herself, leaning against the wall to his side. She looked disdainful.

“The kind that dooms you,” she said. “Very specific.”

“Amusing, coming from the likes of you,” Boria laughed.

The goddess huffed up like an offended cat.

“Let us not lose ourselves in the weeds,” Tristan hastily said before she could throw a fit. “I’m not so sure you have the time for it, Boria. You have troubles.”

“Not even the touch of the Glare can still me forever,” the god scoffed. “I will return in full splendor and take my revenge upon those who dared to wound me.”

“Ah, but it may well be that the Watch comes for you first,” Tristan said. “They have discovered some of the secrets of this place.”

“And what is that to me?” Boria dismissed.

The thief did not answer that immediately. He would first, he thought, need to crack the shell. Just like eating crab.

“I thought you might the Red Maw for a time, did you now?” Tristan said. “Because of the tongue and that fearsome throat of yours. I only knew for sure it was untrue when I returned yesterday and heard the Watch had chased you off.”

Nothing so fearsome as the Maw could have been chased off my muskets, no matter how much salt was loaded into it. It had been confirmed later when he saw the projection of the machine on the other side of the pillar and how massive that entity had become.

“You spend my patience,” Boria warned.

“So I’ve since had to wonder about,” Tristan continued, unruffled, “why it is you’re here at all.”

The god did not answer.

“You’re not bound by the golden light and its rules while in the pillar, that’s true,” Tristan said. “But you’re not here by choice either, are you? You’re starving, Boria. I must have been the first piece of fresh meat you saw in centuries.”

Silence. The god watched him patiently, waiting for an opening. A way to gobble him up.

“The devils put you in here,” the thief said. “After they fiddled with the rules of the golden machine they stranded you inside the pillar and sealed the doors, knowing you’d be so fucking starved of fresh meat that you would attack anyone coming in like a good guard dog.”

This entire mountain, Tristan thought, had been turned into a sandpit for the Red Maw. The devils had created a makeshift seal by piling up gods atop the Maw and forcing them to feed on it through the rules imposed by the golden light, and when the Watch had evicted them from the island they’d sealed the doors behind them so the blackcloaks would not be able to accidentally undo their seal by tinkering with the aetheric machine.

And then, just to be sure no wily vermin would burrow their way to trouble, they’d tossed a starving god inside so it would eat whatever made it in.

Tristan went still as darkness billowed out, filling the entire room on the other side of the door until there was nothing at all left but dark and a great, unblinking poisonously yellow eye. It was close, so close he almost closed the door in a fit of fear. He mastered himself at the last moment.

“And it occurs to me,” Tristan said, “that these devils, they were meticulous. Paranoid almost.”

He met that unblinking eldritch gaze.

“That maybe they would have made it so there would a punishment for the guardian should the treasures within be stolen,” he said.

A collar for the guard dog, so to speak. The thief made himself smile bright and wide.

“But worry not, my friend,” he said. “For I have come to bargain out of the goodness of my heart to help you avoid such a grisly fate.”

Darkness thinned.

“And why,” Boria asked, “would that be?”

It was breathing in, as if tasting the air.

“The leader of those would breach the pillar is a woman who wants me dead,” Tristan said. “I would return the favor.”

 Darkness thinned further and further, until once more the thief saw the terrible creature before him.

“Speak,” the god ordered.

—

The door closed, not even the barest of cracks open between he and Boria.  Tristan allowed himself to sag against the wall, shivering as if out in the cold, and closed his eyes as he forced his breathing to settle.

“Now what?” Fortuna asked, sounding curious.

In and out, until calm returned. Ten more breaths passed before the worst of the fear had left him, before he felt ready to speak.

“Now we walk to Wen again,” he replied, “so that the last piece is put into place.”

—

The trick to making someone give you something for nothing was to make it so that every other decision was worse.

It was not a surefire trick, of course, though what was? Sometimes the mark would refuse out of spite or make a worse decision because fear or anger. People were not the automatons of story, making every call with clockwork precision and choosing to mitigate damage rather than stick a knife in their enemy on the way down. Tristan, however, had rubbed elbows with Lieutenant Wen enough to get a decent read on the man. The fat man was a practical soul, more interested in results than means, and his moral compass was clannish as any coterie man’s: there was the Watch, then everyone else.

Tristan had crossed that line in the sand, so he made sure to lie to the man.

“I ought to have you shot,” Wen snarled.

Having a lie almost as offensive as the truth helped, in his experience. When you told a man you’d killed his wife he did not usually think to question whether you’d actually killed his children instead.

“It wouldn’t help,” the thief shrugged. “And it’s an opportunity, isn’t it? To do it on your own terms.”

The bespectacled Tianxi was furious but they both knew that nothing could be done. Or rather that many things could be done, but all of them were worthless. And Tristan, though eminently executable, was still more useful alive than dead. It was enough.

“An opportunity to clean up your mess,” Wen scoffed. “Now I need to speak with Mandisa.”

“Don’t let me keep you,” Tristan said, idly fishing out Vanesa’s watch.

Half past six, he saw after popping the lid. He carefully closed it.

“If you are gone long, this may well be our last conversation,” the thief added/

The lieutenant sneered.

“Are you giving me your sweet farewells, rat?” he asked. “I’m touched.”

Tristan nodded, to the man’s visible surprise.

“I cannot say meeting you was a pleasure,” the thief said, “but it has not been a misfortune. May you fare well in the years to come.”

He even meant it. Lieutenant Wen was a bastard and something of a bully, but his cruelty was shallower than his sense of duty. Had Tristan been part of his tribe, the lives that mattered to the man, then he might even have grown fond of him. A guard hound was loved by the house, not the street.

“You have been nothing but a heap of trouble,” Wen bluntly replied. “Rats always are, it takes us years to beat the Murk out of their bones.”

Then he sighed.

“You’re not unfit for the cloak, though, I will grant,” the lieutenant said. “And your work today will force a good, so prick your ears up.”

Tristan cocked an eyebrow, openly curious.

“When you find your path through,” Wen continued, “be careful if you emerge on the mountainside.”

“Trouble?”

“The hollows on the islands are divided up in tribes,” Wen said. “Those who dwell in the mountains are worst of the Red Eye zealots: they kill on sight and they’ve even scavenged some muskets with the powder to match.”

Which they must have taken from the Watch. By force, as the blackcloaks did not trade guns to the hollows. He let out a low whistle.

“Bold,” Tristan said.

“You don’t know the half of it,” the Tianxi grunted. “They know they can melt back into the mountain paths after, so they’ve even attacked the fort that serves as sanctuary on the other side. It got overrun about a decade ago, all hands lost. The higher-ups ordered a vault built underneath so there’d be somewhere to retreat to if it happened again.”

“I will be sure to keep an eye out, then,” the thief seriously replied. “My thanks for the warning.”

“I don’t need thanks,” Lieutenant Wen said. “I need that machine broken. Get to it, rat.”

—

It was darkly amusing that Lieutenant Vasanti’s stalwarts – numbering a mere eleven watchmen – ate breakfast early and had orders to ensure he was not allowed anywhere near the communal cauldron of porridge. Vanesa’s legacy, he mused. The Someshwari lieutenant ought to have known there was near nothing left in his poison cabinet, since she’d ordered it searched, so in a way it was flattering that she still would not allow Tristan near anywhere food she was to eat.

How resourceful she must think him, to be wary of his making poisons out of thin air.

By the time Vasanti’s crew was finished his own was up and ready. The four of them claimed a table on the other side of the kitchen, busying themselves with stilted talk and cups of grass tea until the blackcloaks were gone and they were finally allowed to fill their own bowls with slop. Tristan forced himself to eat two, knowing he would need the vigor. For all that the blackcloaks would be the ones taking the vanguard he did not expect an easy way of it.

It was only when he set down his spoon after the second bowl that Yong broke the silence.

“All right, I’ll be the one since no one else is stepping up,” the Tianxi said. “What in the fucking Heavens happened last night, Tristan?”

“Vasanti tried to scapegoat me for her blunder in the pillar,” he casually summed up. “She failed to talk the watchmen into having me hanged, so she had to settle for an interrogation.”

Interrogation sounded better than torture. Usually meant the same thing, in his experience, but sounded better. Maryam cocked an eyebrow.

“Which yielded?”

Tristan cleared his throat.

“Remund Cerdan, that villain, stole the brand and hid it before attempting to frame me for this hideous crime,” the rat said. “Once this became obvious, Lieutenant Vasanti and I divined the hiding place together and cleared my name.”

Francho toothlessly grinned, shaking his head as he chuckled.

“A terrible villain, that lad,” the old professor said. “And should this reprehensible character proclaim his innocence?”

“That’d be quite the trick,” Tristan said, “as I saw a rusty piece of steel two inches wide go right through his throat last night.”

It was highly unlikely that anyone had seem him dispose of the Cerdan but not impossible, so he had a second lie prepared just in case. Remund had survived his wounding on the way down but been unable to walk, so he had demanded that Tristan carry him. When refused, the infanzon tried to force him at the point of a pistol. When poor Tristan had tried to wrestle it away from him a shot was fired in the melee, putting Remund to rest.

Remund Cerdan had been a noble, so it was only natural for Tristan to be terrified of the consequences even if it had been an accidental death while defending himself. It was the only reason he had lied.

On the other side of the table, Maryam’s blue eyes were knowing.

“The tunnels past the wheel room, was it?” she said. “I heard Tredegar almost got cut as well, they sound almost as dangerous as a test.”

In the lantern light Maryam’s hard face and long tresses looked as if they had been carved by hatchet, like as not to cut any hand daring to strike those cheekbones. She was pleasing to the eye, Tristan thought, in the way that a good knife was: entirely itself even when at rest, a knife even before it cut. There was something curiously reassuring about that, about having that calm sharpness on your side.

On his side.

It was a small thing, he thought, what she had just done. Helping him sell a lie the others would only barely care about. But it had been unasked for, nothing bargained or offered, and she had done it without batting an eye. It was a small thing but she gained nothing from doing it – it implicated her needlessly, if anything – and that meant it was not a small thing at all. Tristan looked away, clearing his throat.

“My differences with the good lieutenant have been settled,” he said. “Moreover, she now delivers an opportunity: as Vasanti believes she can open the front gate, we can make our own move while she sets out through it with her crew.”

“He expedition might draw the god’s attention and clear our path,” Francho approved.

It would. Tristan had seen to that. It surprised the thief some that it had been the old professor and not Yong who talked of distraction, however. When he turned he found the Tianxi’s dark eyes narrowed and resting on him.

“Put your hand between your shoulder blades, Tristan,” Yong said.

The thief’s face went blank. Lies came his tongue, rich and plentiful, but not a single one they would believe. Three seconds passed, then the Tianxi sighed.

“You can’t, can you?” he said.

“I could,” Tristan said, which was true. “But would rather not.”

Even truer. The poppy milk had taken off the edge, but he has still been thoroughly worked over.

“They beat you halfway to useless,” Yong said. “We should wait until tomorrow to do this.”

His jaw clenched. The others noticed. Gods but this fucking exhaustion was going to be the death of him, it was like someone was painting his every thought on his sleeve.

“I have made arrangements that require precise timing,” Tristan said. “I’ve been given something for the pain, Yong, I will not slow us down.”

“Arrangements,” the Tianxi flatly repeated.

I cannot tell you, Tristan thought. You will betray me. Yong had told him as much when he had drawn his own lines in the sand. Another obstacle to dance around. It was tempting to say he would soon reveal the truth, but that was sentiment talking. Even that much might let Yong deduce that Vasanti was involved, decide that there was something worth selling there. And you’ll want to turn on me if you figure it out, like you did the infanzones.

So he gave nothing.

“Arrangements,” he simply said.

The older man’s face tightened with displeasure turning to the rest of the table for support. Tristan’s belly clenched, at least until Maryam shook her head.

“I would be more worried if he-” Francho broke into a cough, rasping out a breath before resuming. “If he wasn’t scheming something, Yong.”

The Tianxi’s lips thinned with displeasure, but he was alone in wanting to push the matter. And he did not have the leverage to force it, not when his only option should he walk away was trying the maze alone. It gave no pleasure to Tristan to watch the older man realize he was in a corner and there was little he could to about it.

“Sending soldiers out without telling them the marching orders is bound to get someone killed,” Yong bit out. “You’ll have to learn that lesson sooner or later, Tristan.”

Everyone was trying to teach him lessons, these days, the thief thought. It was getting rather tiring.

“I will not make empty promises,” Tristan said.

Little else was said, after that. His mind was elsewhere anyhow: now all that was left was to wait for Vasanti to open the dance.

—

Within ten minutes of the blackcloaks disappearing into the pillar there was a loud clicking sound, as if someone were working away at a giant lock.

In practice, that was exactly what Lieutenant Vasanti’s watchmen were doing. Most the garrison still in the Old Fort gathered in the courtyard before the iron gate, or on a wall they could see it them from, and the four of them joined the throng. The metal tiles on the gate began to turn one after another in sequence, likely matching the tiles getting activated inside the pillar, and the machinery around them began to move.

It pumped and turned and ticked, until there was a deafening hum and lights lit up along the outer ring of the gate. Small pinpricks of light, which began slowly rotating. Like golden fireflies they hovered, getting impressed murmurs out of the watchmen.

Tiles began spinning again, but slower. As if a combination was getting felt out instead of known by rote.

“Vanesa, gods rest her soul, was convinced that the tiles were a way to command some hidden aether machine in the gate,” Francho said. “It appears she was right.”

Tristan’s heart clenched. He made himself nod.

“Pretty lights,” Yong shrugged. “What are they for?”

Instead of the slow, lazy clockwise rotation the golden pinpricks were now going back and forth in both directions by haphazard stretches.

“They’re not lights,” Maryam quietly said. “They’re stars. It’s the same as the pattern above our heads.”

The thief blinked in surprise. He had grown so used to the golden light of the aether machine above he had forgot what that machine actually was: an orrery, a mobile representing the movement of the stars of firmament. It was why Vasanti had astronomical equipment out on her bastion.

“And how does that open the lock?” he asked.

“The stars aren’t in alignment above and on the gate,” Maryam said. “But look at what’s happening with the tiles – Vasanti is adjusting them closer.”

Vanesa had told him, Tristan suddenly recalled, that she could not figure out what the machinery on the gate did because it was not like a clock, did not use a fixed unit of measurement. His fingers reached for the watch in his pocket, clasping the bronze.  Because the movement of stars is more complex than that of a clock’s arrows, he thought. But we use it to tell time as well, do we not? Stars set our calendars, in olden days.

“It’s a time lock,” Tristan breathed out. “Back before the devils broke it and shut it down, it must have been set to open at fixed intervals.”

Maryam hummed.

“Days of the year, as measured by the movement of the stars,” she agreed. “A grand, beautiful, pointlessly complicated wonder. “

“Antediluvian work in a sentence,” Francho drily said, then coughed into his fist.

It took another half hour for the Watch crew to match above and below, but when they finally did the lights winked out and the entire courtyard went silent – as if every soul had breathed in at once. The machinery between the tiles and the outer ring began moving again, but the dominant sounds were pistons withdrawing, latches undoing. Like a vest getting unbuttoned, the iron gate split open in the middle and slowly began to open.

Only for a horrid grinding sound to explode out.

Something prevented the gates from opening more than a foot and change wide, soldered bars of steel that fought against the strength of the opening mechanism until wheels and cogs began popping off and metal bent. The sounds were deafening, and as he covered his ears Tristan saw tiles begin spinning again. Vasanti was intervening. The gates stopped opening, remaining stuck with just a foot of space to press through.

The cacophony stopped.

“The work of devils, do you think?” Yong quietly asked.

“Seems likely,” Francho said. “They were the ones who wanted this place sealed forever.”

If so, then their last measure had failed. Though the small space would prevent the watchmen from bringing something like artillery pieces inside, the blackcloaks themselves would pass just fine. Unless that was always the plan, Tristan thought. To make it so that only a small force can enter, small enough their starved god can devour them without trouble. Only madness could come out of guessing at the intentions of devils, he reminded himself.

“It will be soon, now,” Tristan said. “We need to get you out of sight before she returns.”

—

Lieutenant Vasanti came to gloat.

It surprised him. Not because he had thought it above the old woman, but because he would have bet on her caring more about exploring the insides of the pillar as she had wanted to for years over browbeating a rat. He had not been wrong, only slightly off: it seemed Vasanti had some time to spare before her watchmen were ready for the delving, so she had decided to spend it looking down on him.

“Not a sign of the god we wounded,” she said. “It must still be licking its wound.”

A shallow smile from the weathered Someshwari.

“Sometimes all it takes is a sharp lesson before they learn their place, don’t you agree?”

The grey-eyed thief did not smile insolently and retort with a quip, or remind her the only reason she could get anywhere was that he had traded the brand to her. Even as a boy he would have known better. Instead he stretched his arm discreetly so that he would not have the fake the wince of pain on his face and looked away like she had beaten him. He did not answer.

“Nothing to say?” Vasanti pressed. “Should I go and ask your little friends?”

That he could not allow. He’d asked them to get out of sight in the first place so that Vasanti and her followers could not see their group was gearing up for a go at the pillar. At the moment she would assuming he intended to follow in the wake of her own expedition, unaware he still had a key to the other entrance. If she caught on, though… Best to give her something to bite down on instead. Pride was the most affordable of offerings.

“I’m surprised you can spare the time on me,” Tristan said, making himself sound resentful. “Are you not about to lead your crew into the great unknown?”

“So I am,” Lieutenant Vasanti smiled. “And it will be the find of the century – an aetheric machine of that caliber, untouched for centuries yet still functional? There are nations out there that would go to war to acquire such a thing.”

He made himself wince again, as if pained by her victory instead of simply pained.

“But you are right,” Vasanti said. “I have no more time to waste on the likes of you.”

She paused.

“Save, perhaps to give you a warning,” the lieutenant said. “Do be careful when you follow us down, Tristan. Accidents happen so easily when exploring dangerous places.”

With one last pleased smiled she walked away, leaving him to consider her back with a cold gaze. Had he intended to follow in her wake, that would have worried him enough for the calculations on some risks to skew a different way. Vasanti was not the kind of woman to be merciful in victory, he thought. It had not been a mistake to count her an enemy. More interesting to him was that she intended to head down.

The quick look he’d had past the iron gates had revealed two sets of stairs, one curving upwards and the other down, and he’d assumed she would be aiming up. Not his trouble, he decided.

He waited out there until Vasanti took her eleven loyalists past the gate, disappearing below, then finally joined the others by the armory. All were armed to the teeth, even Francho who now bore a pistol – that he barely knew how to use, but could at least fire the right direction if it came to that. Yong and Maryam both carried bandoliers provided to them at Wen’s order, as had been bargained for: paper cartridges containing powder and salt munitions, musket balls filled with Glare-infused salt. The bane of gods.

Three pairs of eyes came to rest on him.

“I hope you are not awaiting a speech,” Tristan said. “Yong’s the only officer here.”

“I gave a few of the yearly addresses at Reve,” Francho volunteered, coughing into his fist. “Shall I try?”

The thief paused, knowing this was a waste of time but too curious to refuse.

“By all means,” Maryam said, settling the matter for him.

Yong rolled his eyes at them. Francho cleared his throat.

“My eager young students, I share with you today the most important lesson of my long career,” he said.

He straightened his back, wizened rheumy eyes sparkling with wisdom.

“Tenure is the only thing that matters,” Francho told them. “Once you have that you can do whatever you want: they can’t get rid of you without a two thirds majority of the Masters and that is like herding cats, if cats could feud for twenty years about the variable declensions of irregular verbs in Cantar.”

Maryam raised a hand as he began coughing.

“Yes,” Francho allowed after it passed.

“Do you have any lessons that apply to our coming venture in any way?” she politely asked.

Tristan bit the inside of his cheek so he would not laugh, Yong looked faintly embarrassed to have ever known them and Francho duly considered the question.

“Do not get eaten by monsters,” the old professor finally replied.

“An ideal we all aspire to,” Tristan gravely replied, lips twitching uncontrollably.

Yong walked away, muttering something under his breath about ‘canal water’ and ‘brain fever’. They had to hurry and catch up when it became clear that the Tianxi would not, in fact, be slowing down.

So began their bold venture into the unknown.

—

They did not need to watch for blackcloaks keeping watch, as there were none: within minutes of Vasanti and her loyalists disappearing Wen had summoned the entire garrison to him, as Tristan had figured he might. They had a clear path the rope ladder, then through the room where the folded metal ladder no one had ever got to work still lay inert. Tristan took the lead near the locked door leading to the tile room, silently gesturing for Fortuna to have a look ahead. The golden-eyed goddess huffed, but she had her look on the other side.

She popped her head, and only her head, through the door to signify there was no sign of Boria. As if he’d needed a headache on top of everything else.

The thief made a show of only slightly opening the door after he unlocked it with the stone button, ‘risking’ a glance and then venturing into the room. He called back it was clear after, the other three following with their weapons out. None of them had ever come here before, so their eyes wandered – mostly to the wall filled with glyph-inscribed tiles that Vasanti’s crew must have earlier used.

Tristan himself paid it little mind, instead heading for the door with the broken latch that had nearly got him killed. Yong followed closely behind, musket already at the ready and loaded with salt munitions.

“The lift is that way,” Tristan said. “Quietly now, the hall is where I ran into the god the first time.”

Into the hall they went, step by step, until they found the door of transparent green glass they’d come for.

“Fuck,” Yong reverently whispered. “It really is a lift.”

Through the glass they could see the ropes and pulleys – all of it metal, dull and pale – that would pull up the small stainless platform on the other side of the door. There were no obvious controls for it, but they might be hidden from where this side of the door. The handle was easy enough to find: a simple grip carved into the glass, allowing the thief to slide the door into the wall. Tristan tested the platform with his foot and found it solid, then stepped onto it. A swift look around found what he was looking for.

“There it is,” he said.

A vertical stripe of cryptoglyphs carved in the wall, besides which three circular symbols of gold had been set into the stone. Yong, who had leaned in, nodded and withdrew.

“Francho,” he said, gesturing for the professor.

They both left to give the old man the time and privacy to use his contract and learn how to work the lift. They walked a little further down, staying close to the walls and keeping an eye on both sides of the hall. Maryam was keeping guard by the door with the broken latch in case anyone form the Old Fort intended on following them in.

“I thought the god would be lying in wait for sure,” Yong admitted. “We are the easier target.”

Now was the time to tell him, following the plan, but the thief still hesitated. It did not go unnoticed.

“Tristan,” Yong slowly said, “what did you do?”

He had to tell Yong now, he knew. He would have to ask the crew to wait here, and they were not going to agree to that unless he gave them a good reason for it. It’s too late for you to sell me out now anyway, the thief thought. It wouldn’t do you any good. Vasanti is too far and the end of this trial so very close. It should tip the balance his way.

“It’s not here,” Tristan said, “because I told the god when Vasanti would go through the front gate.”

The Tianxi went still, as if he’d been slapped, but Tristan had no regrets. Even with Yong along, it was a near certainty they would die if they fought the god. Tristan had, therefore, ensured that Boria would be elsewhere.

“Wen will kill you,” Yong quietly said. “Slowly. He’ll hunt you to the ends of this island if he has to.”

The words were an afterthought, compared to the disappointed look in the man’s eyes. Like he had misjudged Tristan. The thief had known it was coming: Yong had left the infanzones when he believed they were using the leftovers as bait, during the Trial of Lines. Now Tristan had done even worse, not even leaving the matter to chance.

“Wen would have been an issue,” Tristan agreed. “So I lied to him, told him that the god cornered me and I had to bargain that information so it would let me leave. He is preparing to ambush the ambusher as we speak.”

Wen had been furious that Watch lives were put at risk, of course, but recognized that Vasanti and her men would likely have been attacked anyway. All Tristan had done was forewarn the god, and in compensation he had given Wen something the man wanted: a reason to relieve Lieutenant Vasanti from command. After the fat lieutenant drove off the god with a counter-ambush, he would be able to call Vasanti reckless and argue she was out of control. Risking Watch lives for her pride.

He would then be able to pull the entire garrison out of the Old Fort, getting them out of the line of fire before Tristan broke the golden aether machine and the gods of the maze were freed of the rules keeping them leashed to their shrines – and unable to hurt mortals outside of the tests. But the timing for all that would be delicate, which was why he was telling Yong this in the first place and would soon tell the others.

“You made a deal with Wen,” the veteran said.

“I did,” Tristan said. “And it involves waiting to take the lift until-”

Maryam leaned through the doorway.

“Shots,” she called out. “I can hear them echo from further down, through the wheel room where Tristan almost died. I think the Watch ran into the god.”

“That,” Tristan finished. “Waiting until that.”

In a matter of moments, he thought, Lieutenant Wen would rescue the other watchmen and drive away Boria.

“Francho,” he called out. “How are we doing?”

A long coughing fit was his first answer. The second was more promising.

“I need Sarai to make a Sign,” the old man said, “but I believe I have found our answer.”

He did not even need to gesture for Maryam to come running, she had been listening in. They all went to stand on the stainless platform, Francho muttering his instructions to the pale-skinned woman as she frowned at the golden inscriptions.

“There were a lot more shots sounding below than there should have been given how many people Vasanti took down with her,” Maryam casually said.

“A question I’ll answer as soon as you get the lift moving,” Tristan replied.

“Well,” she said, “if you insist.”

She traced her finger over the topmost symbol, teeth gritted as she did, and a faint streak of darkness glimmered wherever skin touched gold. Sher withdrew her hand the moment it was finished, like she’d been burned, and black smoke wafted off the gold.

From the tip of her finger as well, until she wiped it off on her tunic.

“Did it-” Yong began, mouth closing when the platform shuddered beneath their feet.

It began rising after, perfectly soundless and at what felt like a brisk trot. The stone around them was smooth and identical, however, so there was no telling at what speed they were truly moving.

“Answers,” Maryam prompted.

Tristan gave them, same as he had with Yong. What he’d told the god, what he’d told Wen. Neither seemed irked at his tactics – Francho, if anything, looked pleased. After that, at least he told the crew what it was that Wen had asked in exchange for the salt munitions.

“He wants us to break the aether machine,” Tristan said. “That way the Watch will be forced to attempt to kill the Red Maw instead of continuing the trials.”

From the corner of his eye he caught the first break in the stone walls. A green glass gate leading into a well-lit room, the glimpse barely a second long.

“That is madness,” Yong grunted. “The maze might be failing, but it is still the only thing keeping the Maw at bay. What if it spreads out of control?”

“It has had centuries and not spread more than a mile or two into the seabed,” Francho said. “Even if it consumes every speck of life on the Dominion, how far can it really go? It will simply be one of a hundred blockaded islands in the Trebian Sea.”

Another break, this time for another side, and Yong saw it too. They shared a look, both wondering whether it was a sign they were getting near the summit.

“You think the Watch will starve it out?” Maryam asked, sounding surprised.

“It would not be the first time they were forced to handle a god this way,” Francho shrugged. “My concern is that if we act too early the gods of the maze might attack the Old Fort while watchmen are still in it. That would earn us a shallow grave.”

“Wen is to lead them out,” Tristan reminded him.

“If he can convince the others to side with him against Vasanti,” Yong noted. “He’s right, that is not a sure thing.”

“Waiting too long would be dangerous,” the thief said. “Whatever made the god desperate to attack intruders will turn it against us when it realizes we are heading to the summit. We have some time, but we cannot afford to-”

Green glass exploded from behind him scattering against his coat, and all Tristan saw as he turned was a flash of red. His spine, it was going to hit his – the thief hit the floor, warm spraying all over his face, and there was a scream. A woman’s scream. Maryam had pushed him down, and the hand that’d done it was still on his hip.

Missing two fingers.

Boria’s tongue withdrew with a wet slurp before the lift’s rise could cut it off.

“Fuck,” Tristan said, “Maryam, I need to-”

“Move,” Yong shouted, firing his musket past them.

Tristan hit the deck as green glass burst again, the god letting out a scream of hatred as Yong’s salt shot hit flesh. He scrabbled on the ground through shards of glass until he had his bag in hand, ripping out bandages.

“Reloading,” the Tianxi calmly said. “Cover your wall.”

“Maryam, give me your hand,” Tristan hissed. “You’ll bleed out.”

“Fuck,” she cursed, and slammed the mutilated limb into his lap as she fumbled with her pistol.

She shot into glass a moment before it exploded, a massive hand clawing at the stainless floor and trying to rip out Francho – who threw himself to the side, screaming as the glass shards cut into his skin. Tristan forced Maryam’s hand up and tied a tourniquet on the fingers. She’d lost her little and ring finger down to the bottom phalange. To save his life.

How did someone even out a debt like that?

“Francho, aim your fucking pistol,” Yong snarled. “Now is not the time to fall apart.”

The old man was trembling so badly he could not hold the gun up, Tristan saw as he rose to his feet. He drew his own, helping up Maryam, and grit his teeth. The same stone walls that had seemed like a haven now seemed sinister, like the muzzle of a gun. There was no telling when Boria would strike, or from where. How is it even keeping up with us?

Glass burst behind them.

“VERMIN,” the god snarled.

Tristan shot, but it went wide and Francho slipped on the glass as he tried to flee Boria’s searching hands. The old man’s feet was caught and Tristan cursed as he threw his useless pistol at the god, to his complete surprise hitting it right in the eye – it yelped, releasing Francho, and as Yong landed a shot to drive it off Tristan dragged the old man back.

“My pistol,” the old professor panted. “Take my pistol, I can’t-”

The thief took it, not having the heart to admit he might be an even worse shot than the old man. At least he could hold it the right way. The four of them stood together, clustered and fearful, as the lift continued to rise. Five breaths passed, then ten, then twenty.

When thirty had passed, one of them spoke up.

“Tristan,” Yong said. “Did I go mad, or did I see you throw your pistol at it?”

“I was improvising,” he replied defensively.

Maryam’s forehead fell against his back, his friend laughing convulsively.

“How are you feeling?” Tristan asked her.

She snorted, voice still taut with laughter.

“Like a god ate two of my fingers,” she informed him.

“Going against the single piece of advice I gave you,” Francho noted.

A heartbeat passed, then they were all howling with laughter. It wasn’t even that funny. It was just a release of tension, though none of them dared to take an eye off their wall. As the last chuckles began to peter out, the platform between them shuddered again.

“It’s slowing down,” Tristan said, almost disbelieving. “Are we…”

“We must,” Yong said.

The older man did not even try to hide his relief.

“Tristan.”

His gaze swept around and he found the source of the whisper: Fortuna, standing in a corner. She gestured discreetly. He cocked an eyebrow.

“Tristan?” Francho asked.

“Not now,” he said, then lowered his voice. “What are you pointing at?”

Fortuna, again, moved her chin oddly. Up, he realized, She was pointing up as discreetly as she could. Ignoring the worried gaze from Francho, he flicked as tactful a glance up as he could. He could see the top of the lift, he realized. Where their rise would end. There was even a glass door. But why would Fortuna – a second door, this one open. Leading into a room without light, so he had thought it part of the stone wall at first glance.

He met Fortuna’s golden eyes, cocking an eyebrow. She nodded back.

He swallowed a curse, knowing that if he said anything Boria would hear it. Its hearing was sharp. Yong was looking at him as if he were mad, but the others had been told – or put together – that he was speaking with his god. Tristan put a finger to his lip, then gestured up at the dark doorway. It took three heartbeats to make himself understood with a pantomime that couldn’t easily be seen from above, and they were just about to end their trip the thief grit his teeth and shot into the dark.

Light flashed, revealing poisonous yellow eyes poised on them, and the god leapt down before the lift could dock into place.

He heard someone shouting – him, Yong? – and there was another shot, but the Boria was just too large and too heavy. It landed among them, Tristan getting slammed into the wall and hitting his head against stone. Dazed, he blinked as he heard shouting as Yong bared his sword. Francho shouted, choking on his cough, and Maryam was thrown right through the glass door by a flick of the god’s tail. His vision swam, eyes tearing up as all that came in focus was golden eyes. Fortuna, still facing him.

Holding a single golden coin in her hand.

“All in,” he croaked, and her laugh was the loveliest thing he’d ever head.

He saw the flash of gold go up, spinning, and the string in the back of his mind pull the furthest it ever had. The clock did not tick, this time. No, the debt was too large for that. It felt like the heartbeat of an ancient titan, right against his ear. Like thunder rolling out, and the string pulled so far back it came all the way around.

Fortune and misfortune in a single stroke: beneath their feet, the platform broke.

“No,” Boria screamed.

The god scrabbled against the wall, Tristan falling on its back. He clung to the slimy scales as the god struggled to drag itself through the doorway, but Yong had thrown himself through the broke glass door and Maryam was with him, dragging up Francho. The Tianxi aimed his musket down at the god, hesitating when his gaze dipped to Tristan.

“Do it,” he shouted.

His hands were already sliding against the scales. Yong grit his teeth and fired right into the god’s hand, breaking its grip. It dropped.

So did Tristan, until his back hit a ball of solid Gloam.

Scrabbling desperately not to fall off, the thief hugged the curves as the god toppled past him with beastly howls of rage.

“Hurry,” Maryam snarled, “a rope, I can’t-”

But they had no rope. Instead Francho leaned over the edge, legs held by Yong, and as the old man trembled Tristan leapt across the gap – his fingers sunk into the professor’s clothes, ripping the cloth, and he shouted in fear but the collar stuck and then both Yong and Maryam were dragging them up. Up, up, as Francho’s clothes continued to rip around the collar and just before it came right off Yong caught him by his and dragged him over the edge.

They fell in a pile, bleeding and bruised and panting so loud they almost couldn’t make out the howling of the god until it no longer made any noise at all.

—

The summit of the pillar was as single cavernous hall.

They stumbled forward hesitantly, awed by the size and troubled by how utterly empty it was. There was nothing within save for a wide ring of stone seats, all facing the center of the room, and a shallow pit in the middle that could not be more than five feet wide and as many deep.

“Is it the wrong place?” Yong asked, sounding exhausted to the bone.

“No,” Maryam said. “There is… something here. The aether is too thick.”

It was Francho who found the answer by virtue of being the first to touch one of the stone seats. Lights flared, coursing out of the pit like a river in reverse and expanding into a massive riot of colors and shapes. Tristan swallowed, blinking away the headache he was getting just looking at it.

“I’ll leave that to you,” he told the old man. “I’ll find us an exit.”

It was not all that difficult to achieve as much, now that the flared lights chased the shadows out of the room. There were two smooth opening in the stone. Tristan traded a look with Yong as Maryam joined Francho by the lights, the two of them splitting the work. The thief’s ended up a dead end: it was, he found out to his mild amusement, a latrine. An absurdly spacious one with basins to wash your hands in, but a latrine nonetheless. Apparently even the Antediluvians had felt certain needs. Yong turned out to be the lucky one.

“I think this leads out,” the Tianxi called out, having doubled back.

Tristan crossed the room to join him, ignoring the moving lights and excited talk from the other two. Francho, he noted, was moving near one of the stone seats again. He could only approve of using the old man’s contract as a shortcut. He found a long, dimly lit hall when he joined Yong. Going in a straight line, it seemed to go on for long enough that outside the mountain seemed the only possible destination.

“That’s our bet,” Tristan agreed.

“And there’s that,” Yong added, pointing to the side.

The thief squinted, making out what the man was pointing at after a moment. Another green glass door.

“Another lift?” he asked.

“We’ve only seen the green glass on those,” the Tianxi shrugged.

The veteran leaned back against the wall, reaching inside his bag and producing a small tin flask.

“Yong,” Tristan reproached. “Truly?”

“You sent men and women sworn to protect us right into the jaws of a god for a plan that did not even work,” Yong mildly replied. “Shut your fucking mouth, Tristan. I’ll drink if I feel like it.”

The thief rocked back, hurt but refusing to show it. That’d not been unearned, he knew. He’d been the one to first break trust. So instead of the sharp answer on the tip of his tongue, he walked away. There would be time to mend that bridge later, if they both lived through the night. He hoped.

Returning to the great hall, he paused in sheer surprise at what now stood before him.

What had been a largely empty hall was now filled with tall steles risen from the ground, more emerging or moving to the sides as Maryam tugged at ropes of silver light going into the mess of lights at the heart of the room. Which were not so messy anymore. Shapes had come into focus, outlining the island only separated in zones of different color connected by red furrows.

“Tristan,” Francho called out, then broke for a cough. “We figured it out.”

“Figured out what?” he warily asked.

“What the Antediluvians were doing here,” Maryam said. “Or something close to it.”

Francho beamed, rheumy eyes bright.

“The Red Maw transported raw aether,” the old professor said. “Centuries ago the island was divided into areas where certain plants and animals were installed-”

“It’s why so many lemures from different parts of the world can be found here,” Maryam cut in. “They drew on fauna and flora from all over-”

“And then the entity that became the Red Maw was to release the aether into those specific areas, presumably so that the Antediluvians could study the effects,” Francho cut right back. “Presumably there was another facility dedicated to study, but I believe this one was meant to control the Red Maw itself. Maryam, if you would?”

She tugged at the silver strings, steles rose and fell as the floor parted like water and the lights changed. A new image came into focus. It was, Tristan thought, a much finer version of the sight revealed by the small machine they’d got to work below. A see-through sight of the island from the side, only this one also outlined the pillar they stood in: it was a massive spear pointing downwards, with thin filaments spreading out near the top of the shaft all over the top of the mountain. One of them, Tristan noted, seemed to be the hallway Yong had found.

It led outside, he realized with excitement.

Then his gaze turned to the Red Maw and the excitement faded. The tip of the spear was right above a massive nest of red lines and a thick knot at the heart that had to be the god’s heart.

“See?” Francho said. “It cannot be a coincidence the facility reaches precisely there. I expect there is a way to force the Red Maw to begin feeding the areas aether again instead of hoarding it, perhaps using the same phenomenon that forced rules onto the maze. If we could only-”

The shot took him by complete and utter surprise.

He dropped to the floor, the other two scattering to take cover behind steles, but it had not been them that were shot out. Instead Tristan turned to find that Yong had dropped to the floor, and that walking right past him a bloodied silhouette advanced. Black cloak torn to strips and face bloodied, Lieutenant Vasanti raised a second pistol.

“Not a move, you little rat,” she snarled. “You, with the Signs – step away from the lights or the boy gets a new hole in the head.”

Tristan swallowed, reaching for the luck, but his fingers closed around nothing. He could feel anything, borrow anything. Manes, had he even seen Fortuna since he’d made the lift drop? He could not remember. Did I burn out my luck? He raised his hands, not daring move an inch under Vasanti’s steady gaze.

“Lieutenant,” Maryam said, “I do not know what angered you so, but there is no-”

“Shut up, girl,” Vasanti said. “You think I can’t see it? Wen coming right when he did, like he’d been forewarned. You planned it together, and I won’t get shot by that idiot in Three Pines while the smug asshole eats a fucking pastry.”

Tristan’s eyes flicked past the blackcloak, seeking Yong. Was he alive? He couldn’t tell from here, but the Tianxi was not moving. How had she even-

“You took a lift up,” the thief breathed up. “The other one.”

“I was right, like usual,” Vasanti laughed. “The closest way up was below, a maintenance room. I pressed on after the cowards left, proved my point. Beautiful work that lift, it didn’t make a sound – and the drunk was too busy drinking to hear me coming, anyway.”

The cheer went away.

“And I told you to fucking step away from the lights, girl,” the lieutenant said. “You don’t know what you’re meddling with. You think the devils left it all to a single god? There’s always another angle with Lucifer’s brood.”

From the corner of his eye, Tristan saw Francho hiding behind a stele and palming a knife. Discreetly he tried to shake his head, but the old man ignored him. Tristan urgently sought Maryam’s eyes and after a heartbeat met them.

Then Pandemonium broke loose.

Francho popped out from behind the stele, throwing his knife at Vasanti, who ducked out of the way and aimed right at Tristan. He threw himself to the side, cursing as he saw halfway through the movement he’d done it too early – her pistol was following him. Then Maryam ripped her hands off the lights after a curt gesture.

The lights shut down as Vasanti fired, light flashing and the bullet whizzing past him.

“Oh, you idiot girl,” the old Someshwari breathed out. “You shut down the whole thing, you’ll trigger–”

Though it was dark, Tristan could tell exactly what happened: every single stele blew up in the following heartbeat. Francho’s scream was snuffed out and the thief hit the floor again. The floor shivered, unseen rivers of aether filling it, and a second later dim lights filled the room again – so shallow he could barely make out shapes. Maryam lay prone on the ground, unmoving. He looked for Francho and did not find him, until he realized he had.

The bloody, burnt strands of flesh on the floor were all that remained of the man.

Swallowing, Tristan reached for his knife as his eyes sought Vasanti – but he found neither the blade nor the blackcloak. His blackjack, though still lay nestled against his side. He took it in hand. Was the lieutenant dead as well? Had she- his vision swam as he hit to the back of his head slammed him forward. He turned, striking blindly behind him, but Vasanti casually stepped out of the blow and struck him with the grip of her pistol again.

He rocked back, teeth chattering.

“Fucking kids,” the lieutenant said. “I warned her the devils would have the damn thing trapped in case someone meddled with their work. The entire machine might be wrecked now.”

Tristan rosed to his feet, feeling faint, and brought up his blackjack. Vasanti snorted.

“I was killing men when you were in swaddling clothes, boy,” the old woman said. “I would have dropped you at your best – now I’ll get to make it slow.”

There was a sudden flare of light, something emerging from the pit behind them, and in that heartbeat Tristan moved. It took her by surprise: she fell for the feint, protecting her face as he landed a blow on her wrist and forced her to drop the pistol. She jabbed forward and he drew back, but then she did something strange with her footing – drawing forward and back, almost oscillating – and when he feinted she landed a blow against his jaw.

He spat blood, swinging at her temple, but she caught his wrist and flipped him. His back hit the ground and she struck him in the gut, sitting on his stomach as he desperately protected his face from another blow. She broke his guard and hit him again, baring bloody teeth.

“I told you,” Vasanti snarled, “that I would make it-”

The blade went through her throat. It was ripped out with a flick of the wrist, the old woman reaching for the open wound with something like surprise on her face. She was kicked to the side and fell, convulsing.

Three heartbeats later she was dead.

“You missed the spine,” Yong rasped out, standing over her cooling corpse. “And what do you know – rotgut makes for a very good painkiller.”

The Tianxi offered him a hand up and Tristan took it, the other man groaning at the effort.

“We need to get out of here,” the thief said. “I’ll take Maryam.”

“Francho?” Yong asked.

The thief shook his head. The ground shuddered beneath their feet again.

“Hurry,” the other man said. “I don’t like the way the floor keeps shaking.”

Maryam was unconscious and heavier than he would have thought, but her draped her across his back. It was only when trying to catch up to Yong that Tristan thought to look at the burst of light that’d almost let him turn things around on Vasanti. The shape were bare bones, all in pale yellow, but there was no mistaking what he was looking at. It was the pillar he was standing in, the spear pointed at the heart of the Red Maw. Everything keeping it bound to the peak of the hollow mountain was collapsing, as if sabotaged.

Vasanti had been right. The devils had left one last trap. If mortals dared to meddle with their seal, well, the structure maintain it was to have one last purpose: it was to be turned into a gargantuan spear to be sunk right into the Red Maw’s heart in the hopes of killing it. And if that weren’t enough, well, then the god would be buried under an entire mountain. That ought to slow it down some, surely.

“Fuck,” Tristan Abrascal swore, and began running.