Pale Lights

Chapter 78

The gods liked a laugh.

Black House’s location just outside the Collegium had once been a subtle slight by the Lords Rector but it had now become the reason the Watch headquarters in Tratheke hadn’t dropped in a hole. It had suffered attacks, but besides some broken windows and doors there was hardly a mark on Black House while most of the city’s heart was gone, disappeared into the dark below.

Tristan had read the reports, and despite how much worse it had seemed in the moment the corpse-god had only shattered about third of the Collegium grounds while breaking out. But, as was to be expected of a gaping hole in the ground over a cavern, the sinkhole had then continued to widen. Five days had passed, but word had it that this morning a street had still fallen with hardly any warning.

Not that he’d gotten to see any of it. He’d been unconscious the better part of a day after his little jaunt across the void, and woken up blind after – and with Fortuna nowhere in sight. That’d not even been the worst of it, for Song and Angharad had needed to pull out his fingernails. The odd nacre they had turned into was fusing with his flesh, turning into something like claws. As for the locks of his hair that had turned into solid gold, cutting them off had not been difficult.

Only a streak of his hair had then turned golden, and no number of dye bottles or haircuts could change that. A dangerous thing, for a thief to have such a recognizable mark.

He’d still been blind when their day and a half as ‘guests’ of the palace ended, but at least he could dimly make out Fortuna’s words by then. He’d been better off than Maryam, anyway, who only emerged from her feverish slumber to erupt in fits of screaming mania. When they were finally allowed back in the city the Thirteenth was whisked away by the Watch, shoved into a carriage that’d rolled down one of the few streets still connecting Fort Archelean to the city and then kept inside Black House.

Endless hours of debriefing ensued as the senior officers in the capital tried to get a handle on what exactly had happened and, once it was established it shouldn’t cost them anything, what they could get out of Asphodel for it. At least by the third day he could see again – and see Fortuna as well - while Maryam only woke up groggy instead of screaming. Lieutenant Mitra had assured them she would live, though she would need to purge herself regularly until she could return to Scholomance – where a ritual would stabilize her for good.

Tristan almost envied her the sleep for everyone wanted a piece of them, of what they had done, and that meant his waking hours were swallowed up by the demands of diplomats. Captain Wen, thankfully, proved a bulwark against Brigadier Chilaca’s wildest ideas as well their main source of news about what was going on in the city.

“The civil war’s been averted,” Wen told them as early as the fourth day. “Apollonia Floros being held prisoner cut the grass under the feet of the ministers. The valley nobles rushed to reinforce Palliades and together with the lictors they were able to take back the Lordsport this morning.”

Asphodel’s largest port had until then been in the hands of the rebel magnates who, after two thirds of their fighting men died either storming Fort Archelean or from the god’s rising, retreated to the Lordsport and seized it from the men of House Cordyles. They’d dug in, perhaps hoping for reinforcements or relief by foreign allies, but the Lord Rector had put an end to that.

It’d only been a matter of time, Tristan knew. The Lordsport wasn’t meant to be held against a force coming from the capital, its defenses were pointed at the sea.

“What happened to the rebels?” he asked.

“They refused the terms of surrender offered,” Wen said. “No quarter was given.”

His jaw clenched. Ming and Dandan had been mercenaries, in the end. Their death was fair, as much as any death was fair. But the others... the Kassa traveling men, Damon from the warehouse. Phoebe and Pollos, even Rhea. Had any of them made it out? He hoped so. Some must have thrown down their arms and faded back into the streets instead of letting themselves be talked into marching on the Lordsport.

But he knew, deep down, that most of them would be dead. All because the magnates had thought they should be the wealthy men ruling over the commons instead of the other set. It had been the Ecclesiast behind it all, Tristan tried to tell himself, but it rang hollow. The Ecclesiast had used the rebellion but it was the magnates who’d schemed it. No one had been to benefit from it besides those rich merchants, and now no one at all was to gain – not even them.

The only thing worse than a victorious revolution was a failed one.

“And the Cordyles flotilla?” Angharad asked.

“The remaining ships were last seen sacking fishing villages on the eastern coast,” Captain Wen said. “Our best guess is they’re gathering supplies before turning pirate.”

It was maddening, being stuck inside Black House while the capital was still a smoking wreck one wrong step away from riots, but Tristan admitted to himself it might be for the best. From his temporary seat in the southeastern ward Evander Palliades had overseen the reclamation of Tratheke and the Lordsport, and the moment he had them he began cleaning house.

And he wasn’t half-hearted about it, either.

Gallows and a headsman’s block were raised in the southwestern ward, fed a steady supply of corpses at every hour of the day and night while crowds came to jeer at the hated traitors, eventually growing bored enough with the spectacle that they only showed up when the death of a well-known name was announced in advance by the lictors.

Cultists and the leading figures of the traitor lictors hanged, while the rebel magnates and nobles were beheaded. For those latter types, death was far from the worse of it: word in the street was that Palliades had confiscated so much property from the families he’d be able to rebuild Tratheke twice if he sold it.

More quietly, the rank-and-file of both rebellions were put in irons until they could be sent off to their new fate – rowers in the Lord Rector’s galleys or working in the mines of Arke. Ten-year sentences, which in either case would be a death sentence for most of them. Galleymen were treated like slaves by most captains and Tristan had never known a mine that did not take a kickback of corpses in exchange for yielding its wealth.

Only a few souls were spared the axe and the noose, their fates up in the air until the grand ceremony Evander Palliades had announced at the week’s end – a celebration of the heroes of the ‘Three Risings’, where honors were to be distributed and the debatable notion of Palliades being victorious hammered in until there could be no more argument. Until that day Lady Apollonia Floros, Ambassador Gule and Lord Cleon Eirenos, as well as most of fence-sitting nobles who’d joined the rebellion at the last moment, were being held in Fort Archelean.

“Think he’ll kill Floros?” he asked Song on one of her rare breaks.

It had not escaped the Thirteenth’s notice that, despite opportunities otherwise, the Lord Rector had not met her in person since that long night. Even so she likely understood the man better than anyone else in black.

“I don’t know,” Song admitted. “It would be best for House Palliades if he did, else her descendants might rise to challenge his, but he won’t want to.”

“Her name’s being dragged through the mud,” Tristan noted. “That might neuter her enough for sparing.”

The people’s understanding of the Three Risings had been rather more unflattering to the rebels than the truth. The most popular story out there was that Apollonia Floros and Maria Anastos – the most powerful of the provably involved magnates – had been offered rule of Asphodel by the mad god known as the ‘Newborn’, some ancient deity of death and madness. The rebels had conspired to free it from its prison, only to turn on each other when they succeeded.

The use of the name ‘Newborn’ would have been a hint as to the source even if the temples of Oduromai weren’t outright preaching the tale. Not that the Lord Rector had wasted any time in sending men out to further vilify the rebels while praising how the loyal lictors and Watch agents had put down the Newborn.

Not that there’d been a need to tell the city of the latter. Apparently half of Tratheke had seen Maryam slay the Newborn, which had in a night’s span turned her into the most famous woman in the capital. That might well be true of the entire country by year’s end.

“Much depends on how strong he believes his position is,” Song finally said. “The western nobles fell in line, but the east is still being difficult – simply because they haven’t proclaimed a Lord Rector of their own does not mean they won’t.”

Tristan figured that the last thing Asphodel needed was a civil war, but it might not be beyond some ambitious fools to hear of the ravaging of Tratheke and the damages on the Lordsport then decide these meant the Palliades had grown weak enough to overthrow. They might not even be wrong, he grimly thought. The Collegium had not been as densely peopled as the southern wards, but losing such a large chunk the capital’s inhabited grounds had still meant the death of thousands.

Casualties were still difficult to assess, Wen had told them, because with entire neighborhoods gone it was hard to get an accurate tally. Tratheke was said to hold as many as eighty thousand souls within its walls and Tristan would not be surprised if a tenth of those souls had died to either the fighting or the sinkhole. A blow like that would take decades to recover from.

Either way, that was the business of Asphodel and little of his. Tristan soon found that he had the most free time of the Thirteenth, for even now that the interrogation was largely over Song and Angharad kept getting dragged back into officer meetings so they could contribute their ‘perspective’. Maryam and Hooks were still sleeping two thirds of their days away, and according to Lieutenant Mitra would for some time yet. The fever had lowered, and she no longer sweated through her sheets when he sat by her bedside.

Mitra had called what the sisters did ‘surgery by tooth and bludgeon’, sounding fascinated, which had Tristan firmly insisting that the Khaimovs obey their instructions of bed rest when they woke and demanded to be taken up the roof to have a look at the city. He even went as far as crossing the line by enlisting Song, which they rightfully treated as a heinous betrayal. Their captain was perfectioning her disappointed stare, which had already been a formidable thing.

Thankfully, he had something to while away the hours while the sister slept.

The rooms were in the guest wing of Black House, which while larger and nicer than what was reserved for lower officers also happened to be isolated from the rest of the grounds. And while the door itself was locked there was no guard at the door, because it was being kept quiet that the survivors of the Nineteenth Brigade had been put under house arrest.

Tristan began with the room to the left, rapping his knuckles against it.

“Are you decent?”

A moment, then there was a sigh.

“Again?”

“Again,” Tristan agreed.

“I am,” Cressida Barboza said in the tone of someone being marched to the gallows.

“That’d be-”

“- a first,” Cressida said with him, mimicking his voice in a high-pitched tone. “Die. That wasn’t even funny the first time.”

“That’s why it keeps getting funnier every time I do it,” Tristan happily replied.

And she’d learned that unless she went along with the joke, he would walk away and leave her to her boredom. The thief fished out the key he’d borrowed from the serving staff – which they would eventually realize had gone missing – and unlocked the door, waiting a beat before he opened it. Cressida was seated in a padded armchair like a brooding tyrant, wearing a coat and frilly green dressing gown which, along with the bare feet, had likely been meant to shock him at first.

After the sight failed to elicit embarrassment or raging lust – hah! – in him, he suspected she’d kept it up out of laziness. Her entire room was the kind of disorderly that would set Song twitching: bed unmade, clothes all over the floor, a half-eaten plate on the table with a book next to it. Her poison bag was open and several vials on the shelf. Tristan had been mentally marking the heights, and they kept slightly lowering every day.

She was liver-tempering, taking a little poison every day so her body would grow immune.

“Why do you darken my doorstep, Abrascal?” she sneered.

He brought up the first of the packages he carried, a cloth-wrapped book, and her eyes lit up. She then mastered her enthusiasm, raising her nose.

“Leave it on the table,” she said.

“It’s a nice book. I’m not leaving it next to...” Tristan paused, took a sniff. “Day-old pork and rice.”

“The Tianxi’s really getting to you, huh,” Cressida amusedly said.

He pointedly set down the book on her commode, ignoring the undergarments and chest wrappings adorning it.

“If she learns I enabled someone to spill sauce on an atlas that old, she may have me shot,” Tristan replied.

Finally doing away with the posturing, Cressida rose and padded across the room to take the cloth off the book. She quickly paged through the beginning, then stopped when she found – he leaned over to take a look, glimpsing what looked like a stretch of the Meridian Road. Interesting, that. The grand imperial highway linking Sacromonte to the obscured heart of Old Liergan was of interest to many, font of wealth that it was, but it was so well-policed by the Six that the Watch presence on it was supposedly quite limited. Mind you, that was the version that the Six put out. It might be worth asking the Watch what the real numbers were. Cressida snapped the book shut before he could get a better look.

“I would thank you,” she said, “but as always that production at the start burnt the gratitude out of me.”

“A mightily short candle, that gratitude,” he drawled.

Her eyes dipped to his other package and she leaned in, sniffing.

“Honeycakes?”

“Not for you,” he chided.

She tried glaring, but when his brow only rose in answer she retreated back to her armchair. She crossed her legs, then her arms, and looked exasperated for some reason.

“What did I do now?” he asked.

“You’re really not interested in the slightest, are you?” she sighed.

Ah, so the leg-crossing had been showing her bare legs on purpose. Why? Tristan cocked his head to the side.

“You’re trying to sleep with me to incite sentimentality,” he said.

“That and there’s worse ways to pass the time,” she said. “But I can take a hint.”

Why was only half the answer, he decided. Why now? Ah. It took a moment to parse through the possible suspects.

“Tupoc visited you,” he said.

“This lock does not hold me unless I let it,” Cressida acknowledged. “He had interesting things to say.”

Including, no doubt, that Hage had arrived at Black House late last night. Which meant the fate of the Nineteenth was about to be settled for good.

“He offered you a place in the Fourth?” Tristan asked, genuinely curious.

For a moment she looked as if she was weighing the price she should ask for, before deciding her bargaining position was not strong enough for that.

“If I live to return to Tolomontera,” she said. “He wants to fill his brigade back up to four.”

The Fourth Brigade was looking rather dented, at the moment, with both Acceptable Losses and Velaphi dead. Add to that how Alejandra Torrero’s forearm had needed amputation and it was only natural he would seek to bolster his numbers.

“If your involvement with the Ivory Library remains quiet, you could have better prospects,” he noted.

“Are you offering?” she said, batting her eyes.

He snorted back, hiding his genuine opinion on the prospect. Namely that Maryam would surely kill her, a thought that was not unfond.

“No, I thought not,” Cressida said. “It’s not me you’re eyeing.”

Tristan shrugged. Seeing he would give her nothing more, she pressed on.

“He seems a decent commander, and this way I am spared taking another test,” she said.

The Nineteenth’s contract had been marked as unfulfilled by the Lord Rector’s office, to his amusement. The Eleventh and the Thirteenth had joined the Fourth as marked fulfilled on what he figured was a collection of technicalities and the horrible look it would be for Evander Palliades to turn on the blackcloaks after they’d saved his city.

“But it all rests on my living through the month.”

The implied question hung heavy between them. Tristan kept his face calm, leaning back against the commode.

“Why?” he asked.

To her honor, she did not pretend to misunderstand what he was asking.

“The money,” Cressida frankly said. “And the potential to milk Tozi for favors if she rose high enough she was able to pull on family connections again.”

He’d ask her why she wanted the money, but they both knew she’d lie.

“Convince me you’re not going to be a problem,” Tristan said, crossing his arms.

“I will be the first suspect in anything happening to you from now on,” she said. “It would be in my best interest to warn and help you against foes to avoid having fingers pointed at me.”

“I’d have leverage over you,” Tristan said. “Which is power. But it would also mean I have leverage over you.”

Something that, in their common trade, was traditionally remedied by cutting a throat and burning the evidence.

“It’s not leverage I can remove,” Cressida pointed out. “Assuming you go to Hage with the deal Tozi originally took, the Krypteia still has knowledge of my indiscretion. It’ll be in my files. As long as you don’t use it to constantly twist my arm, I don’t achieve anything all that useful by killing you.”

Which was, Tristan would concede, a fair point. One he had considered himself, but that she would think of it without him offering so much as a hint made it twice as salient.

“You don’t regret anything,” he finally said.

Her brow rose, but those brown eyes stayed calm.

“I regret incorrectly assessing the situation,” Cressida Barboza. “Your caliber and Tozi’s. How far the others would push after encountering failure, the strength of the Ivory Library’s grip on them. I regret plenty, Tristan.”

Just not what I wanted you to regret, he thought. Nothing about the act of selling him like cattle sparked unease in her. That would make her a fine Mask, after loyalty in the Watch was branded on her back. It just made her someone he could never, ever trust. He made himself breathe out.

“I liked you, when we first met,” Tristan told her.

She looked startled.

“I liked you as well,” Cressida said, then reluctantly added. “You are not the worst company.”

“That fondness made if feel personal when you turned on me,” he said.

A fleck of something like pity passed in her eyes. For his naivety, his sentimentality? Before she could decide on her answer, he pushed himself off the commode.

“But it wasn’t, on your end,” Tristan said. “Only business.”

“I am glad you can see that,” she said in a guarded tone.

Looking for a trap. There wasn’t. He wondered if he could see the pity in his eyes, at the world she had chosen to live in. One built entirely on transaction, on gain and loss. The Law of Rats stripped of even its meager kindnesses. A rat waited to be cornered, before biting. Only cats hunted for sport. Cressida Barboza would make a better Mask than he, Tristan suspected. Or at least one better suited to many of the black works ahead.

But, at the end of the day, Tristan would rather have nightmares than live one.

“I’ll see you around, Cressida,” he said.

She only called out when his hand reached the door.

“What will you do?” the Mask asked.

He paused.

“I have no reason to answer you,” the Mask replied.

He closed the door behind him, locked it. It felt like too large and too thin a barrier all at once.

Tristan blinked as he saw the hallway – or rather, didn’t, for the world had gone black and... he breathed out when his vision swam, black turning to gray as he found someone leaning against the wall. Fanning herself with some ostentatious thing made of peacock feathers was Fortuna.

It still happened, sometimes, that when she focused her attention on him the world become eerily similar to what he’d seen that night. Black and white and gray, and he just knew that if he pulled deep enough he’d be able to see the – putting a hand on the wall to hold himself up, Tristan pushed down the nausea. Fuck. Even eyes closed it spun, there was nothing to do but wait it out.

Fortuna squeezed his arm in affection, waiting with him in silence until the worse had passed. He opened his eyes to an entirely normal hallway, save for the goddess standing in it. She had put away the Asphodelian dress for one rather similar to Tredegar’s on the night of the Three Risings, though naturally in scarlet. She’d even worn a saber at her hip, before his profuse and continued mockery forced her to cease.

“She likes you more than she let on, that girl,” Fortuna said.

Her guess, or divine insight? The former, he wagered. Fortuna, despite what he had glimpsed when she rode his soul, did not strike him as overly burdened with the latter. Tristan shrugged.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said.

A cat would be a cat, and that was all there was to it. Trust was rarer than gold, so it ought to be spent even more prudently. There were more deserving souls than Cressida Barboza, who he must admit did not disappoint because of who she was so much as because she was not who he would have liked her to be. In the end, he was the source of his own disappointment.

Fortuna sighed, angling down her fan.

“You should go bicker with Maryam,” she advised. “Her sister does funny things with soup.”

Like throwing it at him.

“After,” he muttered, eyeing the other door.

Fortuna hummed.

“Well, he’s fine too.”

His brow rose.

“You approve?”

“He sent me a prayer of thanks for saving all of Asphodel,” she preened. “Clearly he is a most discerning young man.”

He rolled his eyes at her. Tristan had expected change, after that lunatic stroll they took together. How could he not, when he had come so close to sainthood? He still had the physical marks of the beginning changes, put away in an iron box. And there had been other changes.

Tristan had a feel for it now, the way her power coursed through him all the time. Not in a way that would let him pull on it for a trick, but he focused he could feel the... tides in the odds, so to speak. When a situation became more and more unusual. Yet Fortuna herself had not become any different. It was only to be expected, since the nature of gods could not truly change, but some part of him had...

Well, it didn’t matter. If the sole difference in her speeches was that she now talked about prayers and added a duty to build her a peerless temple to her list of wild demands he could live with it. And if some part of him suspected that this was just the beginning, that the one thing in his life he could always count on had been irremediably changed, then he could dismiss that as fear talking.

He hoped.

“We’ll see,” Tristan replied.

He paused, then rolled his eyes at her again just to be sure she saw. Ignoring her offended squawking, he knocked on Izel Coyac’s door. A muted ‘come in’ reached his ears, so he did. Izel’s room had much the same layout as Cressida’s, save that it had a window at the back – though one that could not be opened higher than a thumb’s height. How both treated the area, though, stood in stark contrast.

Izel had his clothes folded on the shelf in neat piles, while the rest of his affairs were so cleanly put away Tristan would have thought no one inhabited the room. The sole touch of disorder was around the writing desk, over which he was currently bending. A chest full of small metal parts lay open, and several leather sheaths full of tools that went from simple to outlandish. Izel himself was staring down at the insides of a small bronze case through a handheld magnifying lens, delicately adjusting something with small pincers.

“Sit,” the tinker said without turning. “I am almost done.”

Tristan hopped onto his commode, which unlike the last was mercifully free of chest wrappings. Izel, tongue peeking out the corner of his mouth, pushed something into place that let out a small click and he straightened with a pleased look.

“Now, if I am not mistaken-”

He withdrew the pincers and closed the case, pressing on the button atop it. The quiet but audible sound of ticking needles was heard. Tristan’s eyes widened, for he had not recognized the piece from a distance.

“Already?” he asked.

The Izcalli put down the handheld magnifying glass and turned a smile on him, eyes ringed.

“I may have stayed up late,” Izel admitted. “It is a fascinating work – it is rare for Lierganen gearwork to impress me, but the artisan who made this was highly skilled. Vanesa, you said the name was?”

Tristan swallowed.

“Vanesa of Sacromonte,” he quietly agreed.

“I do not have the tools or pieces to replace the glass here,” Izel said, tapping the surface of the casing, “but the clockwork has been fixed and I should have the face in working order by evening’s end.”

His fingers clenched.

“Thank you,” Tristan said.

Izel dismissed the words with a wave.

“Any halfway decent tinker in Port Allazei could do the same,” he said, then grimaced. “Besides, I was a contributor to its wrecking. It is the least I can do.”

The least he could would have cost Tristan a tidy sum of gold coming from anyone else, the thief thought. There was a reason he had accepted, despite his misgivings, when Izel heard him carrying the scraps in a pouch and spontaneously offered.

“It wasn’t,” Tristan disagreed, “but hopefully this can serve as something of a salary.”

He produced a wrapped cloth, his second, and rose to offer it to Izel – who hastily rose to meet him halfway. The tinker tore open the wrapping and practically inhaled one of the three honeycakes, letting out a moan that had Tristan suppressing a snicker.

“Howw are theshe sho good?” Izel uttered, through a mouthful.

Tristan did not actually like them all that much, but it was always good for a laugh to watch the Izcalli massacre a plate of these. Izel swallowed, reaching for a second, then stopped himself.

“No,” he muttered. “Make them last.”

He put the pastries down on the desk.

“On the other hand,” Izel said, “it’d be a waste not to eat them while they’re still warm.”

So disappeared half of another honeycake, though Izel then guiltily glanced his way and set down the other half. He coughed into his fist.

“Would you like some?” the Izcalli reluctantly offered.

“Well,” Tristan smiled, “if you’re offering...”

He let them man despair for a good three seconds before sparing him. They chatted, for Izel was in a fine mood despite being under arrest. He was, Tristan suspected, relieved all the business with the Ivory Library was finally out of his hands.

“How is Cressida?” Izel finally asked.

“As she ever is,” Tristan replied.

He grimaced.

“She grows on you,” Izel assured him. “It just takes a while for her to pull the thorns.”

“That may be,” Tristan politely replied.

He cocked an eyebrow.

“Had any visitors since we last spoke?”

“Someone – I assume Xical – passed by this morning to slip an eerily well-inked depiction of me getting drawn and quartered under the door,” Izel shared.

Tristan closed his eyes and, with much effort, did not actually laugh.

“Bait is apparently a fine drawing hand,” he got out.

“That would explain it,” Izel drawled. “I’m guessing a senior Mask has arrived?”

“Officer Hage,” Tristan said. “Late last night.”

Izel nodded.

“I’ve already prepared my confession, though I expect we’ll be interrogated nonetheless,” he said.

Tristan eyed him, watching for deceit.

“I offered Tozi a deal,” he idly said.

Izel snorted.

“And then she tried to kill you,” he said. “By most standards, Tristan, that is considered declining the terms offered.”

“And for that, you killed her,” Tristan said. “Arguably you held up your end.”

Izel leaned back into his seat.

“It’s not that I don’t understand what you’re offering, Tristan,” he said. “But I’m not interested in buying a pardon with anyone’s blood, not even Tozi’s. That is the very sort of thinking that led me to obeying the Ivory Library in the first place.”

He gritted his teeth.

“It’s the very sort of thinking I enlisted to leave behind,” Izel said. “But then when you fear something you bring it with you everywhere, don’t you? My father told me that, once. And he is many things, but a fool is not one of them.”

“Confessing,” Tristan said, “will see you placed in Krypteia custody. Assuming you are not sold back to your enemies in Izcalli, you would be assigned to some dangerous wasteland at the edge of the world.”

Possibly Hell. Or the Someshwar’s border with the Desolation, which some argued was worse.

“I took oaths when I enlisted,” Izel gently said. “There is no arguing that I broke them.”

The thief hummed.

“I don’t care about the oaths,” he said.

Izel blinked.

“I, uh,” he said. “That is your prerogative.”

“It is,” Tristan agreed. “I am irked, Izel, because you are forgetting the most important part.”

“I am?”

“Indeed,” he nodded. “The Watch will get its due either way, but what about me? Am I not the most wounded party?”

Izel paused.

“I do not own much,” he said. “But once in custody I can will it to you to-”

“Paltry recompense,” Tristan said. “No, I’ll get my money’s worth out of you Coyac.”

He leaned in.

“Two years, at least.”

“I beg your pardon?” Izel said.

“Two years of tinker’s work,” Tristan said, then wagged his finger. “And don’t you think about shorting me on this. There’ll be no confession, else how are you to deliver?”

“Abrascal,” the other man said, tone disbelieving, “are you trying to bully me into joining the Thirteenth Brigade?”

Tristan smiled charmingly.

“That’s not important,” he said. “The real question is this-”

He leaned in, lowered his voice so Izel would have to do the same.

“Is it working?”

Izel’s face blanked for a moment, then he let out a startled laugh.

“It’s kind of you,” he said. “But your captain-”

Tristan reached into his pocket and slapped down the contents on the table. It was a folded paper.

“And this is?”

“Your transfer papers,” he said. “Signed by Captain Song Ren.”

Who had needed some talking into this, but less than he had figured would be needed. Izel had apparently tried to warn her of what was going on while they were both at Black House, which raised him in her esteem. The Izcalli paused.

“It would be trouble for you,” he said. “Khaimov detests me.”

“She holds you in contempt,” Tristan said, “because of what you did do.”

She was not a forgiving one, his Maryam. He rather liked it that way.

“She could set the contempt aside for the same reason,” he continued. “Unless, of course, scorn is too high a barrier for you to overcome.”

“More dead in a night than through the last three wars we fought,” he croaked out. “We hold together, barely, but the scars this will leave...”

“Scars will heal,” Song said. “And I know few souls would have better led Asphodel through this storm than you.”

He smiled bitterly.

“I suppose you’d think that,” he said. “The Watch got everything it wanted – it’ll be years before the shipyard can be put to work again, and the damages were significant.”

Song’s lips thinned. She had known that, for Brigadier Chilaca saw fit to share it. When the Newborn had broken out of his prison he had collapsed not only the ceiling of the cavern above him but the floor beneath, crashing tons of stone on the Antediluvian shipyard. Many in the underground town had died, and only the Watch revealing Menander Drakos’ secret path down to the shipyard had allowed any help to reach those below. Either way, with the lift leading down there now mostly scrapped metal it would be year of work and a colossal expense to get the shipyards anywhere near a working order.

“And even when they do, no more skimmers,” he said. “Only aetheric engines, and no more than one a year.”

That was not, they both knew, the true capacity of those shipyards even so diminished. But the great leverage the Watch had on Asphodel had made it the truth, and so it would remain for a very long time to come. Tianxia might be able to build war skimmers, using Asphodelian engines, but they would not rival proper First Empire warships and the build-up would take decades.

Long enough for Malan to prepare, for the balance between the great powers of Vesper to stay stable. Malan would lose power and Tianxia would gain some, but it would be a slow thing – no grand and sudden stroke, no desperate war. Arguably, the true winner in this debacle might be said to be Sacromonte. With its bridges to both Tianxia and Malan burned, Asphodel would be firmly wedged back under their thumb despite them having had no real involvement in any of this. All the gains at no cost.

“It is still a great source of wealth,” Song quietly said.

“Which will be spent rebuilding Tratheke,” Evander said, “and repaying the loans extended to me by the Watch. To call your Brigadier Chilaca a brigand would be doing him disservice, for he is more thorough a plunderer than any highwayman.”

Ah, so that was the brigadier’s ploy. The Watch would extend loans to restore the shipyard and slowly parlay that into influence over the facility. The Conclave, she thought, would love Chilaca for it. It was exactly the sort of ploy they applauded.

Evander reached for his glasses, put them back on.

“But look at me,” he said, thinly smiling. “Bringing Asphodel and the Watch into it so it can cease being about either of us.”

She ought, at least, to give him the closure of a clean admission.

“I made my decision knowing it would put an end to anything between us,” Song said. “And I could claim I had no choice, but I did – I chose my family, and my duty to the black.”

He cursed.

“As you should,” Evander bit out angrily. “I would have thought less of you for another choice. Which is what vexes me so.”

She licked her lips.

“Evander, I-”

He shook his head.

“No,” he said. “I courted you knowing you were a watchwoman and a Ren besides.”

He breathed in.

“Indeed, it only added to the allure,” he said. “Someone not beholden to me and... understanding of legacy, so to speak. It would be unseemly of me to now begrudge that you acted as these stations demand instead of putting me first.”

“But you wanted me to,” Song said.

“Isn’t that what everyone wants?” Evander tiredly replied. “To be the prize chosen.”

He shook his head.

“I had no future to offer you,” he said.

As much for himself as her, Song thought.

“And you did not seek me,” he continued, “I sought you.”

Which was true, and still.

“I wish I could have...”

His jaw clenched.

“There is that, at least,” Evander croaked.

He rose to his feet.

“It would be best if we did not meet again,” he said. “There is only so much foolishness I can stomach in myself.”

“You were not foolish,” Song quietly said. “Or at least, not alone in that foolishness. I chose to become involved even knowing the Yellow Earth was keeping an eye on me – it was madness, and only to be expected that they would make me pay for it.”

He stared at her for a long moment, then wrenched his gaze away.

“It was a summer haze, Song,” he said. “And summer has passed. It always passes, even if though it seems eternal.”

Her jaw clenched.

“Farewell, Song Ren,” Evander said. “Think fondly of me, if you can.”

And the Lord Rector of Asphodel left as she sat there, watching his back.

--

Angharad had waited to find out what happened to the infernal forge before turning herself in.

It had been eight days since the rising of the Newborn, and the morning after his ceremony on Victory Square the Lord Rector had opened the roads to the Lordsport to travelers again. A messenger was sent in the morning, as soon as she got the news, and by early afternoon they’d returned. Angharad sat with her uncle in the smallest of the drawing rooms, the two of the pouring of the letter sent by the captain of the Golden Tide.

“Captain Alagon writes the ship was damaged in the fighting and will not be able to sail until repairs are finished,” Angharad quoted, passing him the letter.

Uncle Osian sat on the sofa, ever calm, but she stayed standing. There was a fresh novelty to being able to stay up without her cane – she might not yet be fully healed, but she had at least left that part of recovery behind her. Her uncle had encouraged her to call on Brigadier Chilaca’s personal, but Angharad had declined. Not for fear she would lack skill, but for fear of them. The bones of her leg were still halfway made into coral, she could feel it from the way they sometimes bit at the inside of her flesh.

Angharad would prefer not to tell a soul about that, if she could.

“The Cordyles flotilla shot up their masts while they sat docked and they must have immediately flown a flag of surrender,” her uncle summed up. “Prudent of them. They have a few cannons but the ship’s a merchantman, unfit for real fighting.”

More worrying was what followed: Captain Alagon admitted to losing the cargo he was entrusted with, the crate in question disappeared when he went to check on it. The man was sparse on details, but it appeared the Golden Tide’s crew had fled their crippled ship after it was bombarded and only returned to it after the magnates drove the Cordyles crews out. By then the crate was gone, with the dockworkers swearing no one had seen anyone enter or spirit a crate away.

“I doubt the dockworkers were out and about during the fighting, so that means nothing,” Angharad noted.

They could not see something they had not been present to see.

“He adds something was left behind,” Osian frowned, and reached for a sealed fold at the bottom of the latter.

He broke the small wax mark and into his palm fell a small square of paper. Angharad leaned in, finding that stamped on the paper in red was intricate heraldry.

A triangle pointing out, with a stripe through the lower third, with a black ‘sun’ inside and two more on either side of the triangle, suggesting the repetition of the shape. This was all held within a round seal filled with scratchy cryptoglyphs, all unrecognizable save for the crown at the top. Angharad did not need to be told to know this was the seal of the Office of Opposition. Locke and Key acknowledged the debt, and one day would ensure she received the knowledge she had bargained for.

She shared a silent look with her uncle, both of them acknowledging this without being fools enough to speak of the Office out loud in a house whose walls held both Masks and ufudu. Angharad let out a long breath.

“Time for the report, then,” she said. “This is as much as we will learn on the matter until they deign hold up their end of the bargain.”

And she had delayed the settling of her debts long enough. Her uncle’s dark eyes tightened.

“There are better ways of doing this, Angie,” he said.

Not for the first time. The smile she answered with was thin, a slice of lips.

“I do not think it better, to avoid consequence for what I have done,” she said. “More comfortable, perhaps, but that is not the same thing.”

Angharad did not like the kind of woman it made her, having schemed with the Lefthand House and traded an infernal forge away under the Watch’s nose.

So Angharad would kill her, even if it killed her too.

Osian Tredegar clenched, from head to toe, somehow reminding her of a coiled spring. Eight times he had argued against the notion now, but she could tell he would not force her hand. Not that he could, truly. His eyes searched her face, and after a long moment he sagged. It made her heart ache, so see him looking so defeated.

“I am proud of you,” Osian Tredegar quietly said. “I only wish I were not afraid for you as well.”

“Fire scours clean,” Angharad said. “When I emerge on the other side, there will be nothing left to fear.”

“I have no influence with the Krypteia,” he told her. “Once that report is in Officer Hage’s hands...”

“I know,” she said.

As she knew that speaking the full truth of her uncle’s involvement in this would end his career, if not worse. So she had... stretched the boundaries of fact, in her report. As far as Office Hage would know, Uncle Osian had been under the impression he was helping his niece pawn Antediluvian trifles to the Lefthand House to help pay debts she had accrued there. Finding the right phrasing to avoid an outright lie had taken her several evenings.

As for the Thirteenth, she had erased all trace of aid being rendered to her. It was not particularly difficult, considering that besides Song holding back reports for her and Maryam securing a map there was truthfully little to speak of. That made it easier to hide.

Angharad put on a smile, squeezed her uncle’s shoulder and left before she could begin to doubt herself any more than she already did. She personally handed the report to Officer Hage, who raised an eyebrow at the oddity of it not going through her brigade’s captain before telling her to sit while he read it.

Much as Angharad would have preferred to simply kill Imani Langa and be done with it, that would be robbing the Watch of the right to interrogate her and she had already cost the order enough. So instead she confessed everything worth confessing in her report, before requesting a meeting be held with Captain Imani of the Eleventh and Commander Osian Tredegar.

The old devil glanced at her, those prodigious eyebrows rising.

“Well, this promises to be interesting,” he said. “Granted. I will send her summons for the meeting to be had in the large drawing room in half an hour. I trust you can handle your uncle?”

There was an ironic undertone to the question that had her clenching her jaw, but it was not unearned. She nodded back jerkily, rising to fetch Osian. He was sitting in his room when she did, uniform unbuttoned and cup of brandy in hand – which he drained in a single swallow before following her out, though the buttons at least were done back up.

Imani was already seated in the drawing room when Angharad opened the door. The liar, as always, was impeccably dressed: her uniform was tailored, touched with red accents on the sides while her belt was adorned with stripes of colorful Uthukile beads. Angharad kept the door open for her uncle, then seated herself on the side of the room furthest from Imani. Who was, despite how she must be beginning to smell a rat, still calmly smiling.

“Good afternoon, Lady Tredegar,” she said, then inclined her head. “Commander.”

Uncle Osian eyed the ufudu with open dislike. Neither returned the greeting. Instead he sat besides Angharad, arms crossed.

“Or not,” Imani idly said. “Shall we wait for Officer Hage in silence, then?”

If the shared silent antipathy from the Tredegar corner of the room unnerved her, it did not show in the slightest. Uncle Osian was the one to break the silence.

“I understand,” he said, “that the Eleventh Brigade served ably in the defense of Black House when the cult attempted to burn it.”

Uncle Osian had been out in the city, during the same time, and only made his way back during a pause in the fighting.

“Brigadier Chilaca and his bodyguard mounted a spirited defense,” she smiled. “We merely did our part.”

“I hope,” Osian Tredegar said, “that this distinction will serve them well after today.”

Her brow rose but she did not address the unspoken implication – them, and not her. Two long minutes of silence stretched out until the door was opened. Officer Hage’s presence was only natural, but his company came as a surprise.

“Angharad, you fool,” Captain Song Ren bit out, entering after the devil.

The noblewoman rocked back like she had been slapped – as much at the surprise as at the insult.

“Pardon me?”

“Not likely,” Tristan Abrascal said, stepping in after her. “I was going to nap, you know. Very inconvenient timing.”

He was, bafflingly, wearing his formal uniform. Song liked hers, but Tristan? If he avoided it any more stringently Angharad might have thought it burned him to the touch.

“Neither presence was requested, Officer Hage,” Uncle Osian said.

“Not by you,” the older Mask acknowledged, closing the door. “But as Warrant Officer Tredegar handed me a report in which she confessed to multiple instances of treasonous behavior as a prelude to this meeting, I judged it necessary to involve the captain of her brigade and her closest Krypteia observer.”

He paused.

“Captain Imani, in this instance, stands for herself as both accused and captain of her own brigade,” Hage added.

The old devil gestured for the other two arrivals to sit, and the pair claimed seats between the Tredegar and the Lefthand House. Song, she only now noticed, held several sheaths of paper in hand as well as ink and a steel-tip pen. Tristan had nothing openly, though that hardly meant he had nothing. He was a deft hand at hiding tools and knives.

“Before we begin,” Song said, “I must state that the report Warrant Officer Tredegar sent was sent without my say-so as her commanding officer, and must thus be considered private correspondence instead of-”

Angharad closed her eyes, at once grateful and irritated. She was missing the point.

“No,” Hage said. “This is a Krypteia matter, girl. Your procedural tricks mean nothing.”

Song gritted her teeth.

“Sir, I must protest that-”

“Song,” Angharad quietly said. “Enough. You do not need to do this.”

Silver eyes turned on her.

“I most absolutely do,” Song Ren replied.

“There has been enough deception,” Angharad said, turning to the devil. “I stand by every word written. The rest of the Thirteenth had no knowledge of my actions and I misled my uncle as to my intentions.”

Uncle Osian stiffened and turned a betrayed look on her, for he had not been told about that part of the report. Angharad had come very close to lying, in trying to get him out of the hole she’d dragged him into. And, Sleeping God forgive her, if she had to lie outright over she would. It would be a lesser dishonor than ruining Osian Tredegar with her foolishness.

“Angie,” he hissed. “You didn’t-”

“Your family’s sorrows are not unusual enough to be interesting to me,” Hage informed them. “Cease. Captain Imani Langa, you have been accused of being an agent of the Lefthand House. Your word on the matter?”

“That I am not,” Imani calmly said. “Does Tredegar offer any proof beyond her assertion that I am?”

“You have in your possession a token of ironwood, one marking you as a member of the Lefthand House,” she said. “I have had it confirmed it is still in your possession, which a summary search of your quarters will prove.”

“I can confirm this,” Tristan added.

She eyed him warily: of course he could, since he was the one who had picked the room’s lock for her. To her mild distress, Tristan hadn’t even let her finish the sentence when she’d asked if he knew how to break into Imani Langa’s quarters. He was only too eager to repay what he saw as a favor from her, the passing of the information about the Nineteenth – which, ironically enough, she was now unmasking the source of. She glanced at him and found his face unreadable. Unsettling, in a man who put on a smile like another might a shirt.

Officer Hage cocked his head to the side.

“I am inclined to order that search,” he said. “Captain Imani?”

She bit her lip, then sighed.

“I didn’t account for her reaching out to Abrascal,” Imani said. “My mistake.”

She paused, turning to the devil.

“So?”

Hage snorted.

“You lose points for having driven them to turn on you,” the devil said, “but, narrowly, this remains a success. You pass your first year of lesser tradecraft.”

Tristan stilled and Angharad blinked, something like horror dawning on her. No, surely not?

“What is this?” she managed.

“Captain Imani Langa is a Krypteia student,” Hage plainly told her. “She approached you with this offer at our behalf.”

“I,” she began, then licked her lips. “I do not understand.”

“She can’t be Krypteia,” Song intervened. “She’s in Stripe classes and the student list-”

Imani turned an amused look on the Tianxi.

“The Masks left a public way to ascertain their exact numbers,” she delicately said, “and you believed them?”

“She has you there,” Tristan murmured.

“How many of you are there?” Song bit out.

“It could be more, or less,” Imani smiled.

“Finding out such a thing and reporting it to Colonel Cao would be worth a great many points, I expect,” Hage chuckled.

And then the amusement was gone.

“But while it was judged necessary to test the loyalties of Angharad Tredegar,” Hage said, “there is a reason she was chosen to be tested first of your cabal.”

At the back of the room, arms folded, Uncle Osian paled.

“Me,” he quietly said. “The real test was for me.”

“Prior assessments had you marked as distant from your kin in Malan,” the old devil clinically said. “That was naturally revised when you spent several thousand ramas to extricate your niece from her troubles last year.”

The seeming old man drummed fingers on the table.

“Divided loyalties could be tolerated in a captain, whose workshop would act at the direction of superior officers,” Hage said. “In a commander, however? No. You would have answered directly to the Wednesday Council, operating largely without supervision. You could not be allowed to serve as a senior officer without being properly vetted.”

“And I failed that test,” Uncle Osian softly said.

“We will return to that momentarily,” the devil said.

His eyes went back to Angharad.

“Warrant Officer Angharad Tredegar,” he formally said, and by habit she straightened. “It is my evaluation that while you failed your loyalty vetting, you demonstrated commitment to the Watch and walked back actionable treason. That you then confessed to your actions is further mark in your favor.”

A pause.

“Warrant Officer Abrascal, as the Krypteia officer who observed her most closely you are allowed to speak on the matter.”

Tristan cleared his throat.

“That she acted disloyally is not in question,” he said, and Angharad’s jaw clenched but there was no arguing with the truth. “But I was willing to remain uninvolved in her personal affairs in large part because it was my assessment that even if leveraged she would not act directly against the Watch. Events have borne out that assessment.”

“She sold an infernal forge to Hell,” Imani Langa objected.

“She traded it for a shot at putting down the Newborn, our duty as an order,” Tristan cooly corrected. “The Krypteia must act on fact, not speculation, and the facts are as I stated.”

Hage cocked an eyebrow.

“Your judgement will be taken into consideration.”

The devil’s gaze turned back to Angharad.

“It is my decision that you will not be placed under arrest, though until the Obscure Committee has decided on your punishment any unsupervised contact with foreign officials will be considered treason and warrant immediate execution,” Hage said. “I will be recommending to the committee that you be placed under a probation of five years, under suspended writ.”

A glance at Song’s face told her this was worse than had been to be hoped for but better than she could have expected. Then the devil’s face turned towards her uncle and Angharad’s stomach clenched.

“Commander Osian Tredegar,” Hage said. “Despite your niece’s attempts to reframe the situation in your favor, you have been under observation for some time and her report is not our sole source on the matter.”

No, Angharad thought, stomach turning to ice. The devil smiled thinly, showing neither set of teeth.

“You have colluded with foreign powers with intent to breach the Iscariot Accords. You have facilitated treason on two counts – by failing to report knowledge of an infiltrator, then in helping Warrant Officer Tredegar doing their bidding – then committed treason by smuggling a restricted aetheric device.”

A pause.

“Your defense?”

Angharad rose.

“My uncle was dec-”

The devil turned a gaze on her that stole the words right out of her throat. Underneath the shell, under the skin of a well-to-do aging tradesman, was something that would snuff out her life and never think twice of it.

“Be silent,” Hage said, “or be gagged.”

Angharad swallowed, and let Song tug her back down.

“I have no defense, sir,” Osian Tredegar said, then rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I willingly chose blood over black, and cannot say I would not do it again.”

Angharad tried to rise again, but Song’s hands squeezed her arm until she stopped. The silver-eyed woman shook her head. Angharad almost ignored her – how could she abandon her own blood? – but there was still a tension to the captain’s frame. As if the fight was not yet finished for her.

“Then you are under arrest, commander,” Hage said. “You will be held in the cells of Black House until transport can be arranged to the Rookery, where you will stand trial before a committee-appointed tribunal.”

The only outcome for which, Angharad thought, would be death. There was no denying what had been done, and... what was Song doing, scribbling on a piece of paper?

“That will not be necessary, Officer Hage,” Song said.

She blew on what she had just written, then to Angharad’s bewilderment she passed the paper to devil. The creature raised an eyebrow.

“Chilaca’s pardon,” he said. “Interesting. You choose to save Commander Tredegar over having Tristan stand trial for Lieutenant Apurva’s death?”

Song put on a surprised face, visibly insincere.

“Why would he stand trial over such a thing?” Song asked. “Lieutenant Apurva was detained, interrogated and executed at the order of Captain Domingo Santos, who was appointed to investigate the Ivory Library by the Obscure Committee itself.”

Angharad looked back and forth between them, baffled.

“Did he now?” Hage asked.

Song smiled serenely.

“I have signed papers swearing as much,” she replied.

Hage turned a look on Tristan, who coughed into his fist.

“Tights as brothers we are, Captain Domingo and I,” he said.

Despite herself, Angharad felt hope bloom in her chest. The stare returned to Song.

“A pardon can be overturned by the Conclave,” Hage said. “The brigadier won’t put his neck on the line for your ploy.”

“You could bring this to the Conclave,” Song agreed. “Of course, doing so would require a broader examination of the situation and thus expose to an assembly including every single captain-general of the Watch that the Krypteia turned a blind eye to the attempted abduction of a watchman on contract, that they failed in finding or subverting a major cult that nearly took over Asphodel while mere students succeeded at the same and that under their nose an infernal forge was lost to the Office of Opposition while the Masks spent their time playing loyalty games.”

Silence hung over the room, thick as fog.

“I am but a warrant officer, sir,” Song Ren pleasantly smiled. “But it seems to me that such thing might turn into a great scandal. The kind that might damage the reputation of the Watch at large and of the Krypteia in particular.”

“Are you blackmailing me?” Hage said, sounding amused.

“I am discussing cause and effect,” Song replied. “If this seems a threat to you, that is not of my doing.”

The devil considered her.

“Shilin Zhuge’s fondness for you makes more sense, now,” Hage said. “That might as well have come out of his mouth.”

“My great-uncle is a teacher worth honoring,” she said.

“Then he will have taught you the limits of the means you employ,” the devil said.

Song inclined her head.

“I would listen to your terms.”

The devil glanced at Osian Tredegar for a moment, then clicked his mandibles.

“Demotion back to captain,” he said. “Loss of all revenues related to the isibankwa-pattern rifle beyond payment of your current debts. For the next five years you will be confined to an island workshop and you will permanently lose your enlisted officer's right to refuse being interrogated under truth-telling contracts.”

His head cocked to the side.

“Though that will not be an official punishment, do not expect to ever be promoted to senior command again,” Hage said.

Angharad swallowed. She had killed his careers. Sleeping God, she had good as ruined him. The devil rose to his feet.

“Captain Ren?”

Song turned to Angharad, then to Uncle Osian, with a question in her eyes. Angharad only silently looked at her uncle, who breathed out and nodded.

“We accept the terms,” Song replied.

Hage inclined his head, rising to his feet.

“It will be a black mark on your record to have intervened,” he said.

“Then is it a good thing my cloak was already of that color,” Song evenly replied.

The devil left without another word. Angharad genuinely could not tell whether or not he had been angry. She could tell, however, that Imani Langa’s smile at her when she got up was almost mocking.

“It was nothing personal, darling,” Captain Imani assured her. “I look forward to working with you again.”

“I hold no grudge for your duty,” Angharad conceded.

Then she smiled.

“My dislike of you is entirely on personal grounds.”

Unmoved, the other woman waved her words away and strolled out. A moment later Angharad her trip and curse.

“Sorry, it was an accident,” Maryam said, sounding utterly unconvincing.

The signifier then popped her head into the room.

“I see we didn’t need to smuggle her out after all,” Maryam said. “Good, Coyac says he can get my ship’s engine running but none of us can sail the damn thing.”

Angharad choked.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Loyalty pulls both ways,” Tristan mildly said. “What you give, you earn.”

“You’re not longer my least favorite member of the Thirteenth, Tredegar,” Maryam told her. “Don’t let it go to your head.”

Baffled, she sat there until Song rose and squeezed her shoulder.

“It’s a choice,” Song Ren reminded her. “We all get to make it, Angharad. And we have.”

She offered her hand, smiling. You don’t deserve it, Angharad told herself. She knew that. But then so did Song, and she’d offered it anyway. Angharad took the hand, and even as Song helped her up a shiver went down her leg – which she stood on fully, for the last of the pain was gone. Coral made into bone again.

The Fisher’s verdict: they were making something, the four of them, and it was not crooked.

Damned be she, but Angharad agreed.