Pale Lights

Chapter 164 37

Izolda Cernik had not been much of a tactician.

She'd not been a babe in the woods when it came to schemes, but she'd not proven all that great at them in either the royal hall of Volcesta or the forest groves of the Ninefold Nine. Looking back, Maryam saw that in the early days her mother had muddled through on power and charisma until she could hand off the actual campaigning to war captains. Thankfully, she had more than one parent to draw on. Goran Khaimov had reigned on the cunning side of kingship and never been one to turn down an opportunity to boast under the guise of storytelling – stories from which useful lessons could be dug up from the general mass of back-patting.

Always look at a man's shoes before bargaining with him, daughter, Goran Khaimov had told her. What he's willing to walk in will tell you more about his character than any amount of talking.

"He also told us to always take a double helping of kotlovina in the spring because it tastes better after winter," Hooks skeptically said.

"And it does," Maryam loyally insisted.

The man had loved talking. They weren't all pearls of wisdom.

"Bell peppers are horrid," her sister disagreed, wrinkling her nose.

For entirely unrelated reasons Maryam made a note to look into how expensive bell pepper seeds would be, and if they might grow decently in the cottage garden. The real difference between pettiness and sisterhood was the amount of effort you were willing to put into it.

"He was right about the shoes, anyway," she said. "So let's find out what this Captain Dafydd Beddow is walking around in."

Alas, the Pereduri slaver was not likely to chat just because Maryam asked nicely while asking not-so-nicely would not be allowed while the man had yet to be placed under the jurisdiction of either Marshal Camaron or Admiral Zokufa. They had the authority to order such a thing, but not her.

So they'd need a helper for this part.

Just after the green morning light of the Orrery heralded six in the morning, Maryam and her sister went on a walk. It was not difficult to find the Fourth Brigade, as Tupoc always drilled his crew in the courtyards near the barracks for an hour before class. Maryam merely had to check house by house until she found him. It was a mite awkward to first run into another two sleepy brigades doing the same, but she'd live. And it even turned out the gods were smiling on her!

When Maryam stepped into the third courtyard, she found she would be saved an additional walk: all of the Fourth save for Alejandra Torrero were present. Their half-naked Izcalli captain was sparring with Bait and Rations, the latter doing significantly better with his thick chopping dao sword than Bait was with his spear. Tupoc was making a game of both, though, clever positioning keeping Rations from closing the distance like he wanted while Tupoc constantly tripped Bait into the other man's way. He was teaching them, however.

"You're not in a spear wall, Bait, don't stop moving when you strike," he called out as he slapped the Savant's leg with the butt of his own spear.

He then whipped it back up while pivoting to smack the bottom of Emergency Rations' elbow, the burly Tianxi grunting in the pain but managing not to drop his sword.

"And you need to keep that elbow up, before someone cuts it off," Tupoc Xical added. "You're not facing farmers and sect brats anymore."

Interesting as the sparring was to look at – unlike the Fourth, the Thirteenth didn't regularly train this way – Maryam had not come for any of those three. The three men paused as she passed the threshold of the dusty courtyard, Tupoc calling out a greeting, but she ignored him and headed straight for the last member of the Fourth present.

With that narrow face and button nose, Cressida Barboza made it most of the way to pretty but still fell short. But where another woman might have been able to fall back on cute instead, there was simply too much sharpness in Barboza for the word to fit. Her dark hair was braided and sown in a severe fitting, folded under a flat velvet beret touched with a pheasant feather. Her loose sparring clothes revealed a slender frame with subtle muscle to it, not a warrior's frame but a killer's.

The Mask looked dangerous, because she was. And she'd been looking Maryam up and down even as the signifier studied her, putting on an unimpressed look.

"If you came for a turn with the boys," Cressida drawled, "you should have brought your little hatchet."

"It's you I'm here for, Turncoat," Maryam replied.

Neither bothered with proper greetings even belatedly. She did not like Barboza and never would: this was not Izel, with a buried core of decency that would win out if allowed. The fallen noble was a shark and no amount of petting would turn her into a carp. The shark, as if she could hear the thought, smiled at her toothily.

"I'll grant you are quite mannish, darling, but I only go for actual men," Cressida said.

Maryam made a moue of disgust.

"As far as I can tell, you go for whatever the going rate is," she replied, then put on a smile just as pretty. "Treason-wise, I mean."

They matched eyes, blue to brown, and now that gratuitous insults had been offered in the place of the courtesies neither would have meant Maryam decided they could move on to business.

"I've a use for your services," she said.

"You already have a Mask to call on," Cressida said, cocking her head to the side. "Unless he's finally decided to cut off your needy hide."

She let it pass right through her. Barboza was just throwing darts at the wall in the hope of hitting something that'd score, no need to give her more than she'd bargained for.

"I don't need something stolen," Maryam said. "I need your pharmacy, for an interrogation."

Tristan was rather tight-lipped about Krypteia business, but he had told all the Thirteenth that Cressida was training as a poisoner when reminding them be careful around her. Only Maryam very much doubted that all that Cressida Barboza was learning in some hidden alchemical laboratory was how to distill substances that killed men. Any idiot could put arsenic in wine, the Masks would have need for more – drinks that muddled the mind, loosened the tongue. That made those people the Krypteia disappeared talk even when unwilling. Cressida's lips quirked.

"Good on you for admitting that you are in over your head," she condescendingly 'praised'. "But I am not inclined to do you any favors for free, Khaimov."

She raised her hand, rubbing her index and thumb.

"What's the pay?"

Maryam's treasury tended to run light, these days, but she'd thought ahead.

"Information," she replied. "I don't ask for secrecy: you get to trade on what you hear."

Cressida put on a skeptical face but Maryam caught the glint in her eyes. She was interested. As she should be, since she was apparently positioning herself as some sort of information broker among the second years and that sort of trade needed secrets like a shopkeeper needed wares.

"And what might I hear that would be worth any of my concoctions?" Cressida asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Concoctions, Maryam mentally mocked. Just call them drugs, you pretentious shrew. They're not magic potions.

"The confession of a Pereduri captain that attacked a ship flying the black," she replied. "And if you've any wits, you'll have an inkling of what that might be worth."

Maryam didn't think the Morcant would be sloppy enough to get caught with their hand in the bag, but those papers claiming the Orels were escaped slaves hadn't written themselves. There would be a trail; who or what it pointed at was the only part still up in the air.

"My brews have material costs," Cressida pressed.

She almost rolled her eyes. Like Barboza wouldn't make that back tenfold selling the information to anyone interested in the Thirteenth's spat with the Forty-Ninth. Maryam might have been irritated at the prospect that Barboza would profit handily from this deal, if not for the fact that she wanted the information to be sold as broadly as possible.

There was a reason she'd gone to Cressida instead of asking Tristan for an introduction to another poison track student.

"I thought you were a Mask, not a trader," Maryam replied impatiently. "You'd rather have coin than secrets?"

"I'd rather have both," Cressida easily replied.

"And I'd like an island made of diamonds and mutton chops to rain from the sky," Maryam replied. "The offer's on the table, take it or leave it. You're not my only candidate."

She was by far the best, though, so when Barboza squinted at her Maryam pulled on the very real irritation she was feeling to cover her nerves. Both heard a light, careless gait approaching from the side but neither turned away from the stare down.

"Ladies, ladies," Tupoc called out. "Come now, there's no need to-"

"Sister," Maryam said. "If you please?"

A trace of relish against the veil as Hooks slipped out of her shadow, stepping into Tupoc's way.

"Better Khaimov!" the wretch greeted her happily.

"You are wise to recognize this," Hooks allowed, and Maryam gestured rudely her way still without turning. "Alas, I am bound by sacred vows to prevent your interference this day."

Tupoc leaned against his spear.

"What manner of vow is this?" he asked.

"Babble nonsense gibberish prattle Tupoc Xical drivel," Hooks replied in Recnigvor, then switched back to Antigua. "An ancient oath of our people."

A beat.

"Was that my name in there?" Tupoc asked, openly amused.

"No, the words are only phonetically similar," Hooks lied.

Maryam had not ceased meeting Cressida's gaze all the while, and now that it was plain that the Mask's distraction would not be able to get past Maryam's the dark-haired woman scoffed.

"You don't usually let her off the leash like this," Cressida said.

Maryam broke the stare to glance at her sister, then, at the grin on her face as she taunted Tupoc and traded threats with him, and felt a thread of grief. She thought of how eager Hooks always was to indulge Young Koval in playing, how Maryam had assumed it to be some kind of ploy to be loved by the Orels. She was coming to realize, instead, that it might just have been one lonely child happy to be let out to play with another.

She should have seen it after her sister disappeared for half a day when Amaru had sealed her inside Maryam's soul. Maryam hadn't been the only one feeling strangled, and it hadn't been the Watch with its hands around her sister's throat. But this, at least, was in her power to change.

"The Circle keeps turning," Maryam finally replied. "Your answer, Barboza?"

Narrowed eyes, then the other woman brusquely nodded.

"I'll meet you at the Allazei gates in ten minutes," Cressida said. "I'll need to swing by my lodgings first."

"I'll wait for you there," Maryam replied, inclining her head.

--

Getting permission to interrogate Captain Beddow of the Cusan Haearn was not particularly difficult.

The man had accused her contracted auxiliaries of being escaped slaves and plotted to clap them in irons, so Maryam had a right under Watch law to both see the papers making such a claim and to address the man who had tried to act on that claim. In practice that right was actually the Thirteenth Brigade's and as the captain Song was the one who should be exercising it, but Maryam being the sole owner of the skimmer muddled the waters enough that the officers of the Starlit Dove did not care to object. Captain Tianming was out in town but his first mate, a wiry Someshwari by the name of Yash, met with them willingly enough.

"The captain officially took Beddow and his second into custody," she told them. "He's responsible for what happens to them until they're handed over, so we'll require a man in the room if you want to talk to Beddow."

"We're not looking to torture him, only get a confession," Maryam assured her.

The older woman stared her down.

"Your friend there is carrying drugs enough for two physicians, but the vials have labels deliberately unclear," Yash flatly replied.

Cressida Barboza answered the unspoken accusation with a demure, maidenly smile that would not have fooled even a fool. Best to change tack, Maryam decided. It would have been useful for them to have the monopoly on what Beddow had to say, but if they could not then she might as well lean the other way entirely and make it usably official.

"Send your ship physician," she suggested. "They can verify the nature of the drugs as well as listen in."

And every ship physician in the Watch's navy was at least a warrant officer, meaning they'd testify as an officer instead of enlisted if summoned to stand before a tribunal. Not that Maryam ever intended to let it get to that, but there were uses to having a theoretical officer's testimony in her pocket. The first mate inclined her head.

"That is more than acceptable," Yash said. "I'll have a sailor bring you down."

The Someshwari's gaze swept over the three of them, lingering on Hooks – who had put on Watch black for this, an Akelarre cloak and tunic surprisingly bereft of decorations. Maryam had not introduced her, but the resemblance was hard to miss. They headed downstairs, Hooks forcing herself to 'walk' as if she were made of flesh until Maryam traced against the veil. Her sister's face found hers, unreadable.

"You're sure?" Hooks quietly asked.

"Where has hiding gotten us, sister?" Maryam said. "Let it end. We have nothing to be ashamed of."

Something flickered across Hooks' face – her very substance half-turning into Gloam for a moment – then she looked away.

"Let it end," Hooks softly echoed.

She slipped into a shadow, emerging behind an impatient Cressida who was waiting at the bottom of the stairs with their guide. Both jumped, to Hooks' visible pleasure.

"Boo," she said, like the smuggest ghost in all of Vesper.

"Apologies," Maryam told the others insincerely. "Let us proceed."

It was a short walk, for all that the galleon was one of the larger ships she'd been on. Much as Maryam would have liked Captain Dafydd Beddow to have the look of a monster – teeth like daggers, a bat's fur and eyes like burning coal – she knew better. The most practiced of evils took mundane form, and the slaver captain was simply a middle-aged man with some heft and an expanding bald spot on top of his head. He had soft features, though his dark skin was like tanned leather from sea and salt, and he was missing a finger from his left hand.

The slaver was wedged in between crates of ballast, tightened by irons to the wall of the hold though not in a manner that would be painful. He could move about, and stood up when they entered bearing a lantern. Captain Beddow's dark eyes flicked to her and then to Hooks, noting the pale skin before lingering on the Watch black, and his lips thinned.

"I had a feeling I'd get a visit from you before we left port," Dafydd Beddow said.

"Even a broken clock is right twice a day," Maryam pleasantly replied. "I'm told your false papers are coming with the physician, but would you care to repeat for me the claims you made to the mayor of Kofoni?"

The man laughed.

"Do you think putting on Watch black makes you any less of a paleskin, girl?" he said. "You are still half a hollow. I've nothing to say to some... pet of the rooks."

Maryam did not even blink. These days it was the surprise that made it sting, that sort of thing, and there was no surprise at all in a man who traded in Izvoric slaves being horrid to one.

"Quite the charmer you are," Cressida Barboza drawled. "And if I asked instead?"

Captain Beddow spat on the floor, just next to her boot.

"Answer enough for you, girl?" he asked.

The Mask's eyes grew cool.

"I expect you'll come to regret that," she said.

She had a temper, Barboza, for all that she outwardly ran cold. Before the prisoner could finish antagonizing everyone else in the room, they were joined by the Dove's physician. A tall Malani, Maryam saw, and her jaw tightened at the sight. Only then the man offered his hand, introducing himself as Gaspar with the heaviest Sacromontan accent she had ever heard.

"Maryam Khaimov," she replied, shaking it, and they did the rounds of introductions while Beddow looked on sullenly.

The ship physician offered them the promised copy of the papers, which Maryam paged through before handing off to her sister. Just as Captain Tianming had mentioned they were bounty papers claiming that the Orels were escaped slaves and that they could be turned in to a bounty broker in Concordia for the tidy sum of twenty ingilazi a head. The Malani gold coin was worth less than a rama, as the isles were not rich in precious metals, but Maryam was not familiar with the exact rates.

Probably around fifteen or sixteen ramas, she figured, which was a ridiculous sum compared to what the Orels had probably been bought for. This wasn't about making money, it was about making a point.

"How did you happen to get these papers, Beddow?" she asked. "It can't be in Concordia, the city's at the end of the western trade wind."

The westerwind started south of Saraya and hugged the coast of the Chelae most of the way to the port of Concordia. A merchantman coming from the Auric Strait would have taken the winds south towards Sacromonte, not turned the cape of Sordon in the middle of the storm season. Not only would it be making bad time, it would be outright dangerous. The waters between the southern shore of the Kingdom of Sordon and the isles further south were a veritable ship-killer come winter. The cold weather gave birth to winds that blew ships right into reefs.

Wherever Beddow had gotten those papers, it was unlikely to be that alleged bounty broker in Concordia.

"Does the Watch now claim to rule over trade?" Beddow scoffed. "I do not need to justify my sailing to you, halfsoul."

"I thought you might not be keen to," Maryam acknowledged. "Which is why I brought our friend Cressida here."

Cressida had already opened her pharmacy box and was measuring a dose of some milky vial under the lantern light and physician's wary eye, but she spared a moment to offer Captain Beddow a smile.

"This is the part where you begin to regret spitting in my direction," she informed him.

She fed him three substances one after the other, though only after Warrant Officer Gaspar checked them with tools of his own. He took Cressida at her word regarding the substances themselves, only checking the concentration and the prisoner's health after they were administered. Now let this work, Maryam half-prayed. She did not need much, but she needed something for everything else she'd planned to be possible at all.

"When fifteen minutes have passed the widow's bane will be in full effect," Cressida informed her, leaning closer to her ear. "With the harmel oil putting him in a trance and the madcap extract inducing hallucinations, he should be receptive to interrogation once properly induced."

"Induced how?" Hooks asked.

"Strong emotion," Cressida shrugged. "Fear or anger would serve."

Maryam caught her sister's eye, finding an unsettling amount of eagerness there.

"That can be arranged," she said.

By the time the physician's pocket watch marked the fifteenth minute, Dafydd Beddow was sweating and wild-eyed. He kept blinking and his lips were cracked as he flinched out of rhythm with the creaking of the ship in the water. Maryam shared a glance with her sister, who nodded. She suddenly struck out, grabbing the captain by the chin and holding him in place against feeble struggling as Hooks roiled Gloam-black and bellowed in Recnigvor while tracing a Sign.

Despite all the pageantry it was just a pretty basic Blindfold, but losing his eyesight made Beddow panic. He clawed at them, getting out of Maryam's grasp, but no amount of pawing at his face would undo the Blindfold. It was not a literal band of Gloam but a veil on the light entering the eyes. Maryam turned to Cressida and cocked an eyebrow, getting a nod back, and smiled. Good, she'd thought this might do it.

"Beddow, if you want your sight back listen to me very closely," she said.

"Witch," the man snarled, but a heartbeat later was begging. "Please, I'll do anything."

"The widow's bane is hitting him hard," Cressida noted. "He must not have eaten today."

Maryam ignored the commentary from the gallery. Hooks, at least, did not write down that part of the exchange in the transcript of the interrogation she was writing on their behalf. They'd need it later.

"Where did you get the bounty papers?" she asked the slaver.

"I drew them up," Beddow sniffled. "Like the trade factor told me to."

She blinked. The papers were always going to be false, but she had not expected Beddow to be the one to ink them. That was... well, he was fucked for this much already when the Watch put him to trial. Deliberately drawing up false papers to attack a ship flying the black would see him treated as a pirate. Still, it wasn't what she needed. Beddow would get his noose whatever happened, she needed the mud to have been splashed on trousers besides his own.

"What trade factor?" Maryam pressed.

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"Enfys," he said, licking his dry lips. "Enfys Wynne."

Another Pereduri name. Not one she recognized, for what it was worth, which was little.

"And who does he work for?"

"House Wynne, she works for her own house," Beddow bawled. "But she's got debts, everyone knows. Her family went broke, they rent their ships to the Morcant now."

Triumph surged in her veins. There, finally, a tie between House Morcant and an attack on the Watch. Not a direct tie, but enough to draw suspicion.

"Why did you draw the papers?" Hooks asked.

A question worth asking, Maryam conceded.

"My cargo was stolen in Rasen," Beddow wept, fat tears rolling down his cheeks. "I'll go bankrupt when my loans are due. Enfys offered to list that my hold was full of slaves if I brought back those five to Concordia with the rest, to pay accordingly. She's been offering deals to captains down on their luck."

There were others, then. Maryam gritted her teeth, but she remained calm enough to see opportunity in that. It meant the western Trebian was being prowled by ships trying to carry out bounties in breach of the Iscariot Accords. She couldn't sink those, not even using her skimmer and the most advanced Thalassics she had under her belt.

But she could get the Western Fleet to do it for her.

"Give me names," she ordered. "Every unlucky captain you know about."

They got their names, their tale, and by the time they left the room Maryam had what she needed. She tucked away Hooks' transcript, wondering if it differed from the notes Cressida had discreetly been keeping. Still, it wouldn't matter. She had the first half of what she needed to bring to Captain Tianming. Now she needed to convince the people owning the rest of the second half to let her have it. Thankfully, given how late they'd been in town last night the Thirteenth should have stayed at the Rainsparrow,

If Maryam moved quickly enough, she should catch them having breakfast.

--

It was a tense morning, and Song knew it was going to get worse the moment Maryam walked into the Rainsparrow's eatery.

For one, her friend wasn't alone. Hooks was alongside her and by the way she ghosted through the edge of a first-year brigade's table – one of them yelped and dropped his honeybread at the sight – the younger Khaimov wasn't even pretending to be solid anymore. Angharad was amused at the sight, Tristan feigned amusement and Izel was too busy slurping his third cup of tea and carefully not looking at a seemingly blank spot on the wall to notice anything before the Khaimov sisters plopped themselves down on seats at the table.

Song eyed her cup of tea mournfully, as for once she had caught the batch while it was still fresh and not yet an affront to all mankind spruced up with lemon. Alas, it was likely destined to go cold. She finished the last of her mushroom omelet, though, just in time for Maryam to awkwardly clear her throat.

"I have a proposition for you," Maryam Khaimov said.

Song didn't bother to take her to task for the abruptness, knowing that-

"Good morning, Maryam," Tristan drawled. "I'm fine, thanks for asking, and definitely did not run away while telling no one about my whereabouts mere days after being publicly attacked. How are you?"

-that Tristan would not be able to resist doing so. Instead she took her time studying the sisters.

Hooks was not difficult to read, her emotions were writ straight on her face, but 'writ' was not a word Song had picked by accident. Hooks' expressions were not a physical reaction to what the younger Khaimov felt, they were a projection of her strongest emotions of the moment. It meant, paradoxically, what while Hooks' heart was always on her sleeve Song tended to get less from her than from others: none of the subtle cues she could pick up from more material people showed on the spirit.

Reading Maryam, on the other hand, was often akin to measuring the temperature of water. Easy to tell when it was boiling or half-frozen, but otherwise you had to risk dipping a finger to find out. Fortunately, this morning was of the former sort. In contrast to their last conversation, she was sitting straight instead of contracting like a dog about to bite and there was a firm cast to her jaw. The same Maryam took on when she'd set her mind on toughing something out until results ensued, be it daily pistol practice until she achieved the Warfare class standard or memorizing the full set of Pastel Sea star charts for Seafaring even if they were both seasonal and rotational.

Maryam often was at her best when fighting. The struggle to overcome something she was not expected to beat lit a fire in her friend that brought out her finest qualities.

It did not provide a surplus of charm, however, as Maryam immediately proved.

"I want to buy out your parts of the prize money for the Cusan Haearn," she bluntly said.

Song found it interesting, the way the others reacted. Malani nobles did not hold coin and trade in high esteem compared to land, like most yiwu, but neither did they find talking of money a crude subject as most other nations' aristocrats did. Angharad had been raised as a mirror-dancer, her greatest occupation that of duelist, but also to rule and grow a port town – it made an odd mixture, leaving her aware of coin's worth compared to most highborn but also quite cavalier with it.

So she raised a curious eyebrow at Maryam's words, but nothing more.

Tristan, on the other hand, was laudably careful with his finances. He kept several stashes of coin for a rainy day, stole when he was reasonably certain he would get away with it – that part Song could do without – and Song had caught him looking around town for shops to invest in. That notion had been put to rest by Maryam's money problems, which he had helped by lending her what became a significant sum over time and at no interest.

So Song was not exactly surprised to see a hard, angry glint in those gray eyes. He knew better than most that Maryam had not a spare silver to buy out anything.

Izel, amusedly, had that half-squint he always put on when doing numbers inside his head. Between his private tinkering and his baking, he probably had the most constraints on his budget of them all and while he saved up little he managed his coin rigorously. Song admitted the discipline of sticking to the lines he drew, and suspected the numbers he was looking for was how much coin he could spare on whatever Maryam was about to say without cutting into his other expenses.

It said a lot about Izel Coyac that he did not seem to consider not lending a hand.

"Conservatively, a merchantman in good shape would be worth between two to three thousand ramas," Song mildly said. "Let us assume two and a half. A third would be... eight hundred and thirty-three ramas, one arbol. Four fifths of this would thus mean six hundred and sixty-six ramas, two arboles."

She drummed her fingers on the table.

"Not even the wealthiest princelings on the isle could pay such a sum, Maryam."

And Song would not let the rest of the brigade be cheated out of it. It was a genuinely princely sum – one hundred and sixty-six ramas, two arboles per member of the Thirteenth – and the auxiliary contract of the Orels was with the Thirteenth Brigade as a whole, entitling each cabalist to an equal payout of the profits.

"I know," Maryam said, sounding irritated. "Which is why I want to offer payment in kind."

The pale girl then looked at them across the table and grimaced.

"I'm not saying this right, I'm sorry," she said. "It's..."

She trailed off, looking a little lost.

"What happened yesterday, Maryam?" Angharad gently asked.

Blue eyes flicked to Song.

"I have informed them of the details of the events on Kofoni and the two suggestions made by Captain Tianming," she replied to the unspoken question.

Maryam exhaled, looking thankful that their own personal argument Song had not seen fit to mention. The sisters had been... raw during that talk, like an exposed nerve. Song would not forget what had been said to her, but she was inclined to forgive. She knew something of what the red haze that knew neither friend nor foe felt like, and it had been a difficult talk besides. Drawing lines in the sand was never pleasant.

"I was forced to look some unpleasant truths in the eye," Maryam admitted.

"We fucked up," Hooks coarsely said. "And apologies are owed all around. To some of you more than others."

She inclined her head at Song, which was returned. A look was flicked at Tristan after, but by Maryam instead. His face was a blank mask and he said nothing.

"I claimed the Orels were my burden, but then I took help from all of you at every opportunity while making all the decisions on my own," Maryam admitted. "I ran their lives without asking them what they wanted and demanded that you take risks for me without even the courtesy of treating you like comrades in the matter."

She paused, swallowed.

"I'm sorry," Maryam said, and not one of them doubted that she meant it.

But the three words were not an incantation that could change everything.

"Lovely things, apologies," Tristan quietly said. "But they are still just words."

"I know," Maryam said, passing a hand through her hair. "I..."

Hooks was the one to lean in when her sister's words failed.

"We tried to go at it alone," she said. "With our countrymen, with the skimmer. But we were only able to last this long failing at both by leaning on you. You can't stay under a roof and not hold up your end of guest right."

"The skimmer, it's my way back to Juska," Maryam quietly said. "I wanted it to be just mine because it felt like having my fate in my own hands. Not because I wanted to leave tomorrow, but because I could if I wanted to. It meant having the choice."

She shook her head.

"And the Orels, the others, taking care of them felt like repaying the debt I owe my people. It would have been... tainting the repayment, to have it done from someone's hand but mine."

"But once we made those choices," Hooks softly said, "we had to keep making them. At every fork in the road, and every time it cost more."

Maryam breathed in, let it out, and Song saw her steeling herself.

"I cannot afford to keep my skimmer," she said. "And I cannot afford to save those seven freedmen the Orels brought back. And I owe you an apology for the arrogance of being too proud to let anyone else have a hand in those decisions while not being too proud to take ever more handouts from you to avoid failing outright."

She clenched her fingers.

"And I kept doubling down on my pride even when you needed me," Maryam quietly admitted. "I – I don't regret helping them, I can't. But I was reckless with the trust and aid you gave me, and for that I can only apologize."

She swallowed.

"You did me a hundred favors, Izel, taking care of the engine," she said. "And another one last night, when I was about to double down again out of pride. Angharad, I-"

The Pereduri shook her head.

"I was taught the same lesson as you, Maryam," Angharad quietly said. "And I did not apologize so gracefully as this afterwards. It is behind us."

Maryam caught Tristan's eye, but the thief shook his head. Whatever they would say to each other, it would not be here. Telling, Song thought. If nothing had been said that night he visited her in the chapterhouse, if nothing had changed, he would have let her speak here. She nodded, and the gaze moved to Song.

"You've been cleaning up my messes," Maryam tiredly said. "And taking my shit even as you did – you don't owe me a miracle solution to the problems I make, Song. I'm sorry I was an ass to you for expecting otherwise because it was easier than actually have to look my troubles in the eye. And for dragging you into the delve in the first place."

Song swallowed. How could she accept that apology when deep down she knew it was not truly deserved, that she had been using the bargain with Colonel Cao to avoid admitting she would have joined the exploration even without it? Because she was here and her sister was across the sea and there was only one thing Song could do to save her, one match to strike in the hope the wind would not blow it out, and it was at the end of that murderous maze: the library, the favor, any miracle on offer.

How could she tell Maryam that as much as her friend had been using them, Song had been using her as a shield?

"It went both ways," she made herself say. "You are not alone in fault."

And more than she knew.

"But there's fault," Maryam said. "And I want to start where it went wrong."

She went picking through her cloak, removing a sheaf of papers – a transcript, Song glimpsed – and removing from them two sheets. That handwriting on the first one Song knew all too well. Evander's elegant calligraphy on the formally drawn contract marked Maryam Khaimov as the legal owner of the skimmer gifted to her by the crown of Asphodel, with all attendant rights and responsibilities. The way he'd curved the letter L had her feeling a pang of melancholy before she forcefully set it aside to look at the second paper.

It was much less prettily written in Maryam's hand, and Song recognized pieces of it as being taken from Watch contract formulas – she must have consulted Akelarre archives. Despite the dense language, the thrust of the paper was extremely straightforward. It had her face blanking and Angharad gasping.

"You're offering equal shares of your skimmer," Tristan said. "For all of us."

Maryam silently nodded. Having that skimmer had felt like holding her fate in her own hands, she had said earlier. And now she was offering them all a stake in that fate in the most brusque, honest of ways. It was Khaimov to the bone, Song thought. It was at once generous – a fifth of that skimmer would be worth laughably more than even nine hundred ramas, the entire Thirteenth's share of the prize money rounded up generously – and exacting, because the prize money would have been coin in hand while the skimmer was largely costs at the moment.

But beyond the concerns of balancing one way or another, it was a promise: that she wouldn't leave without them, that she would not forget what they were to her again. Gods, how could Song not sign?

"You are not even sharing your debts," Angharad quietly noted. "They remain solely your own."

"I took them on," Maryam said. "I'll pay them back."

"So that's the trade," Tristan softly said. "The prize ship for this?"

His face was calm, Song thought, but there was something... fragile about him. The way he held himself the way he twitched when refraining from looking to the side of him. She almost cut in, the urge was like a trigger under her finger, but this had to be Maryam. And the Izvorica swallowed before clenching her fingers.

"No," she said. "It can't be that. This I offer regardless. I won't take it back whatever you decide."

Song let out a relieved breath at the reef that had just been steered away from. Perhaps it was arrogant of her to have worried, when Maryam knew him better than Song did. She must have known that to make the giving of her trust a transaction would have rendered it worthless in Tristan's eye. If it could be bought or sold, the rat had no trust in it.

"But I have a plan to keep the freedmen out of chains," Maryam said. "To give them a real future, and maybe others too. And I need our share of the prize ship for it. I need your help."

And she laid out the rest of the papers then, the confessions of Dafydd Beddow and what she intended on offering to Captain Tianming. It was, Song admitted, a solid plan. She had little to add to it, save reminding Maryam that she would need Captain Wen to be present when striking it else it could be cancelled. It was Izel who broke the silence.

"There's one flaw in your terms," Izel told her. "One word that shouldn't be there."

Maryam frowned at him, but the tinker's gaze caught on Hooks. He smiled, quietly, at what he found there.

"Ah, but you know it," Izel said. "That exceptions are how it starts. I worry for nothing."

Hooks nodded at him, slowly, and Song was not the only one to feel lost.

"You have my signature," Izel said.

"And mine," Angharad said.

"Mine," Song softly agreed.

Tristan and Maryam locked eyes, across the table, and silence lingered. The thief, after a long moment, finally nodded.

"Mine as well."

"Thank you," Maryam croaked out.

She looked so relieved, so exhausted suddenly that Song almost laughed.

"I do not know about the rest of you," Song said, "but after that I cannot stomach returning to a meal."

"I should get moving, anyway," Maryam groaned. "I might still make it to class if I find Tianming quickly enough."

Tristan caught Song's eyes across the table.

"I can walk Ishanvi to the hospital alone, if you'd like," he offered.

She was tempted, but then from the corner of her eye she caught sight of Angharad and thought again. Thought of lines and ledgers, of a conversation had in the quiet of Black House. There comes a day where that choice has to be made, she'd said. She'd believed it then and, gods forgive her, she believed it now. So Song shook her head.

"I don't need to be there," she said. "I trust Maryam to take care of it."

And when she turned to look at her oldest friend, she saw beneath the dead eye and the ghost and the power she now wore like a cloak the trace of something older. The girl she had met on the Rookery, who even at her most powerless refused to let the world cow her. The girl who had been burned a hundred times but still had the heartbreaking bravery of offering kindness when she could, of taking the hand of someone whose name was even more cursed than hers instead of playing it safe.

That girl was smiling, Song thought, and that made all the rest worth it.

The Thirteenth rose one after another, each passing by a red-eyed Maryam and brushing against her and her sister. A touch on the arm, the shoulder. Tristan touched his head to the side of hers and flashed Hooks a grin before pulling away. And then there were only the three of them left.

"How many times," Maryam thickly asked, "can I say thank you before the words wear out?"

"Ah," Song said, "don't be too quick on the trigger there. Naturally, I only said that to avoid what is going to be the worst part of your day."

Maryam's brow rose.

"And what would that be?"

"You get the pleasure of interrupting Captain Wen's breakfast," Song broadly smiled.

"No," Hooks exhaled. "Come on, Ren, aren't you the captain? Surely you could-"

Song met her eyes and let her smile broaden even further.

"Blessings of the gods with you on your mission," she piously said.

Their copious cursing at least made up for her tea having gone cold.

--

Despite his constant intimations otherwise, Maryam knew that in truth Wen Duan woke rather early.

It was slightly past seven but when she knocked at his door she expected him to be already up. Only he was not, from the way she had to knock four times before he shouted for her to stop, and for some reason Mandisa wasn't there either. A groggy, disheveled Wen Duan with slightly bloodshot eyes and no shirt under his coat and suspenders wrenched open the door to glare at her. Without his glasses he had to squint to identify her. If he was surprised at Hooks standing right next to her, he didn't show it.

"Khaimovs, you have thirty seconds to talk me out of having you drowned in a barrel of tar," he said.

She cocked an eyebrow.

"You're the patron to the Thirteenth," Maryam replied. "I need you to be present at a meeting with Captain Tianming of the Starlit Dove, preferably before I have to head out to class."

She'd already missed yesterday's over this business. She'd miss today as well if she had to, but she'd rather not if she could avoid it.

"Ugh," Wen grunted out in disgust. "I was going to give you brats shit about not telling me about that, and now I can't even do it anymore. Fine, give me a minute and I'll be out."

His minute ended up more like three, and even from this side of the door they could hear him speaking to someone with a woman's voice answering. Maryam turned to her sister, both their eyes wide.

"That is not Mandisa's a voice," Hooks said.

"Agreed," Maryam muttered, then cleared her throat. "Of course, spying on our beloved patron would be a grave breach of trust. There's just no way for us to learn who it could be he's talking to."

"Be right back," Hooks amusedly replied, popping her head through the wall.

She was back within moments, looking a little sick.

"Oh gods, it sounded like they were kissing," Hooks gagged. "I think it's that turron shop lady Song told us about."

By the time a bespectacled and marginally less haggard Wen walked out, the two of them were standing with their hands behind their back smiling innocently.

"What's got you two so smug?" the large man asked.

"Nothing, nothing," Maryam said.

Hooks cleared her throat.

"Are you ever going to introduce us to Benedeta, captain?" she nonchalantly asked.

"Ten arboles a day," Wen told her.

"Pardon?" she replied.

"It's what Hage told me is the rate for a box to trap you inside of," he said. "I still got most of that Tredegar bribe money saved up, Khaimov, so think twice before crossing me."

There was a pause.

"Maryam made me do it," Hooks immediately said.

"You bitch, that's not even true," Maryam hissed.

Captain Wen, the traitor, patted her shoulder with a fond look.

"I believe you, sweetling," he said. "She's a real bully, that girl. Next time you should come to me directly, I'll straighten her out."

Gaping at her sister, Maryam was forced to follow along even as Hooks snuck her smug looks of victory. The mistake was hers, she should have expected that a historian would know to divide and conquer.

"Why are you two pulling ahead," she complained. "You don't even know where Captain Tianming is!"

Wen eyed her like she was a little slow.

"He's a sailor on leave in Allazei," he said. "I know exactly where he'll be."

The sisters explained everything as they went, Hooks even doing a proper report like the worst kind of suck-up. Fifteen minutes later, when they entered the cheapest gambling den within five minutes' walk of the barracks and found Tianming roaring out a laugh as he threw dice, Maryam was forced to reluctantly admit she had underestimated the wisdom of her patron. She hesitated a span to interrupt the captain before steeling herself, but it turned out that Captain Tianming was losing badly enough he was all too eager to talk with them – especially after Wen suggested visiting the Chimerical.

Maryam did not object, quick to grasp the advantages of handling this business in Officer Hage's earshot. It was almost unfortunate, how clever Wen Duan actually was.

"I haven't been able to get a cup in months," Captain Tianming enthusiastically said. "None of the isles on our patrol route sell bags."

"Not to assume, but," Maryam began, and the man laughed.

"I drink tea too," Captain Tianming assured her. "I expect even this yixin fuck does, it's in the blood."

The casual designation of 'yixin fuck' was accompanied by a gesture at Wen, who did not seem offended in the slightest and instead nodded in agreement. It must not have been an insult, then.

"Nothing like coffee to wake a man up, though," the one-eyed captain continued. "It makes the long nights bearable."

"You can brew it on the ship?" Hooks asked, sounding surprised.

"Not as well as a coffeehouse, so I'm thankful for Duan's suggestion," he replied, then frowned at her. "And who are you anyhow, girl? I thought there was only one northerner in the Unluckies."

Ah, poor Song. There would really be no getting rid of that name, was there?

"I'm the youngest sister," Hooks said, gesturing at Maryam.

"That's not a name," he frowned.

"No, it isn't," Maryam agreed.

A trace against the veil, hesitation. They couldn't keep doing that every time, Hooks was worrying, yet giving out the name Maryam had bestowed upon her was... risky, in several ways. I gave you a name, Maryam traced back. But you can choose another. Hooks was meant to have picked one weeks ago, of course, but then Maryam couldn't throw stones. Her skimmer still went nameless.

"Akelarre witchery," Captain Wen told the other man.

"Ah," Tianming grunted out. "Say no more."

The Chimerical had no customers, Maryam saw when they entered, and though Hage had added a mat for clients to wipe their feet on before entering none of them were able to use it: Mephistofeline was sprawled across it like snoring, twitching tumulus. She'd avoided returning to the coffeehouse since the first time, given the aether defenses its devil owner had laid here, but when she glanced at Hooks her sister shook her head. She would be able to stay out despite the currents, huh.

Their nav wasn't the same as it had been when she last came here, and if nothing else Asphodel and its broken aether had been a long lesson in how to weather such conditions.

Officer Hage was behind the bar, cleaning a cup with a fine cloth. Even now, knowing he was a devil and centuries old, it was difficult to see him in his dark blue jerkin and hose wearing that feathered merchant's cap and not think of him as a well-off shopkeeper. He didn't move like a devil, Maryam thought. Or rather he moved like one of his kind who had studied human motion for hundreds of years.

"Hage, Captain Tianming," Wen introduced. "Tianming, Hage."

"A pleasure," the old devil said, lips curling.

"That remains to be seen," Captain Tianming said. "Do you have anything Ramayan?"

"Monsoon beans from the west," Hage replied. "I prepare it with the proper chicory."

"A pleasure indeed," Tianming said, eyes lighting up. "A pot for me, sir."

"My usual," Wen replied without batting an eye.

When the devil's eyes came to rest on her, she cleared her throat.

"Totochtin gold," she said. "Two sugars, hold the contempt."

"Alas, I cannot," Hage drily said. "They come bundled together."

He glanced at Hooks, who was hesitating.

"A cup of Rafflesian for you," he stated. "You will enjoy it."

"I," she began then swallowed. "Thank you?"

"As well you should," he agreed. "Sit wherever you'd like."

They settled into the booth furthest from the door, Maryam and her sister facing Captain Tianming while Wen sat in between.

"I'm not sure if your first mate got word to you of my visit," Maryam began.

"She didn't," Tianming said.

"Then I suggest reading this," she replied, and after reaching into her cloak slid the transcript across the table. "We had a talk with our friend Daffyd."

It was not that long a read, all things considered, and Hooks' handwriting was about as good as her own. By the time the ship captain had finished, Hage had served their drinks. Maryam found her cup of Totochtin gold quite pleasant, the bitterness faint and well overcome by the sugar, but edged away slightly from Hook's own cup. It was visibly boiling and smelled foul, almost like rotten flesh, but for some godforsaken reason Hooks could not get enough after the first sniff. She almost seemed to enjoy the smell more than drink, which made sense given that she wasn't actually drinking anything.

After having taken a deep sip of the cup he poured himself from the pot, Captain Tianming let out a noise of pleasure and slid the papers back across the table.

"Captain Beddow will be dying old, for a man as stupid as he is bold."

"He wouldn't have been as much of either if he weren't also desperate," Wen said.

Tianming hummed.

"It's useful stuff, but it won't hold if the Malani insist on a tribunal," he told them. "Drugging and Signs don't disqualify testimony, but they'll be considered lesser to any testimony he makes without them."

"You don't need my papers to get him hanged," Maryam said. "Else you wouldn't have taken the risk of claiming his merchantman as a prize ship in the first place."

The man's brow rose.

"You're not wrong," Captain Tianming conceded. "So what difference are these supposed to make?"

"For you, none," Maryam said. "It's not to you I mean to offer them but to Admiral Zokufa."

The head of the Western Fleet, one of the two jurisdictions she could drop this whole affair on.

"And why should he care?" Tianming frowned.

"Because the Malani embassy on the Rookery won't raise a stink over this matter unless they're sure the affair won't blow up in their face," Maryam said. "Their reputation already got a black eye in Asphodel last year, they can't keep having scandals in the Trebian Sea. And Beddow confessed he got his instructions from a trade factor affiliated with House Morcant."

"Half the slave trade has ties to the Morcant," Tianming replied, looking like he was going to spit on the floor before glancing at Hage and reconsidering. "It's not solid evidence."

"But it could become solid," Maryam said, "if it were investigated. And if the Malani take this to the Conclave, the Krypteia is sure to investigate the incident."

"The Masks would have to be told," Tianming said.

An obstacle Wen Duan had solved half an hour before it was even brought up.

"Then it is fortunate," Maryam said, "that we are having this discussion inside a Mask front."

Tianming hesitated, now warily eyeing his surroundings.

"I'm not sure this will be enough for the admiral to let the matter with your freedmen go," he said. "Western Fleet can't be accused of piracy, half our mandate is pirate hunting."

"She's handing you more than rumors," Captain Wen said, tapping a finger on the list. "In there you have a shopping list, seadog. Another five ships on the take with false papers, all running around in the patrol grounds of the Western Fleet."

It was a rare thing for Maryam to be glad of Wen Duan, but today was to be such a day.

"We can't seize ships on suspicion alone," Captain Tianming replied. "Not six times, anyway. It won't stick."

"Then bait them instead," Wen said. "Beddow's not the only one who was desperate, the factor only picked captains about to lose it all."

The captain across the table still looked unconvinced.

"You want something practical to bring to your admiral," Maryam said, raising her hands. "I understand that. So I'll make you a practical offer: the Thirteenth has decided on how it would like its third of the prize ship to be paid."

Captain Tianming leaned back, arms crossed.

"And?"

"As a salary," Maryam said. "For the seven new sailors added to the Western Fleet's newest merchantman."

She met his eyes.

"You get the ship and you can pay them out of the prize money until it runs out," Maryam said. "Free ship, free sailors. Even an admiral should consider that a bargain."

"And once you have Izvoric on board," Wen added, "you have bait to use on the other five ships. The papers' descriptions of the Orels are short on details, impersonating them would be easy."

And then, when the slavers tried to grab the 'Orels', they would be grabbing Watch sailors. That was motive enough to seize the ships, and then the bounty papers on them would justify keeping them. Neither Maryam nor Hooks believed they'd get them all the prowlers, sadly: word would get around after a few and the captains would run. But if even only one more slaving ship was removed it would have been worth it.

"Well," Captain Tianming finally said, "you don't lack for boldness."

It wasn't exactly agreement, even though she could tell he was tempted. Maryam's fists clenched under the table. What more could she offer? She had put it all on the line. But even as she tried to muster one more argument, Hooks squeezed her hand under the table. Let me, she traced.

"It is personal, for us," Hooks admitted. "The odds are there some of the other ships will have slaves in their hold, captain. We would extend the same offer for them: if the Western Fleet takes them on as sailors, the prize money can be used to pay their salary until it runs out."

Tianming hummed, expression bland.

"The slaves won't all be northerners," he said. "You'd pay for the others too?"

Hooks sought her gaze, then, and Maryam met it. She was the one to answer.

"All are free under Heaven," Maryam replied in broken Cathayan, the hand not holding her sister's squeezing into a fist. "Yes, captain. For any of them."

Silence reigned for a long moment.

"I can't guarantee the admiral will accept," Captain Tianming finally said.

"But you can guess whether he will or not," Wen said.

The one-eyed man traced the rim of his cup with his finger.

"Old Stormy, he's a man of the law," Tianming said. "It's why he got appointed to lead our squadrons, we mostly hunt pirates and Iscariot breaches. The Western Fleet sees fewer slave ships in a year than Northern does in a month."

He withdrew his finger.

"Because of that, the brass tends to toss everyone with strong opinions on the slave trade our way – where there'll be less temptation to dole out a bit of justice out in the black, when no one's around to see."

Captain Tianming chuckled.

"Yes, Khaimovs, the admiral will take your deal," he said. "He'll want to, I expect, but even if he didn't he'd take it anyway. Because if it ever came out he refused a deal like that, half his senior officers would resign and he'd be fighting duels once a week until he dies. You think the Yellow Earth boys go hard, Khaimov?"

He smiled, flashing silver teeth.

"There's not a lot of Malani abolitionists, meimei, but they don't fuck around."

Maryam finally breathed out, victory feeling like a flush of blood, and she straightened in her seat.

"Let's draw up the papers, then," she said. "And strike the kind of deal that'll have them smiling instead."